I think it's an accidental holiday tradition of mine, at least for the last several years, to go to the movies and eat bad Chinese food. This year I think I went a bit overboard - on the movies not on the Chinese food thank goodness. This year I saw 4 films in the theater over the holiday: Here are some short reviews!
First; Mom, Ron and I went to see The Hobbit. Ron slept through the first third of the movie. Couldn't keep his eyes open. Sounds about right if you have a hard time getting in to the spirit of a movie. Here's the thing - Peter Jackson has a style. Guillermo del Toro has a style. J.R.R. Tolkien had a goofy smile.
He also has a pretty recognizable style - I'm just sayin' we're not seeing anything new here. The pretty, flashy lights and the loud noises don't impress me any more and honestly the 3D just gives me a headache and doesn't really add to the experience.
I will say this - as far as a movie adaptation goes it seems like they took their time going through the story step by step. They added back-story in places where it was needed and they left nothing wanting from a book reader going to the movie (thus far). I mean - they're taking that book and splitting up into three long ass movies. Think about that - they made three long ass movies for three books for the Lord of the Rings.
(Quick math - 169 minutes per movie x 3 = 507 total minutes. There are 330 pages in my paperback of the Hobbit. That's 1.5 minutes of movie time per page. - That's impressive! LOTR was ~.50 minutes per page)
Then Christmas Eve I really had nothing better to do so I bought a bottle of Merlot and a backup bottle of Pinot, but decided that I would go see one of my all time favorite actors portray one of my all time favorite directors on the big screen rather than catching it on small format. Hitchcock - best movie of the year (mainstream). Oh Anthony... Oh Helen... What a cast... Toni Collette, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Beil, Ralph Macchio, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Wincott... Every single person brought exactly what they were supposed to bring to their part in the story. If you ask me, this is something that Hitchcock tended to bring out in people - but also - this is something that Anthony Hopkins tends to bring out in people he's working with because of his style in acting - because of the way he takes on the roles he accepts - because of the way he embodies the role. ((There was a movie where I saw Anthony Hopkins say "I just fucking give up" though...))
This is a movie that stood on it's own - a movie for the sake of a movie. Something that we've forgotten about in the land that is movie. Storytelling. Humanism. The beauty of this film was in watching the people and in watching the script unfold. All I can think to say is that it was a movie that Hitchcock himself may have enjoyed (after all it was about him).
Have you ever created a mess and you didn't really feel like cleaning it up? Well - Christmas morning I decided to rearrange my apartment... So first thing in the morning I disassembled my bedroom and moved all of my office stuff into the big bedroom - resulting in this:
:-| (o.o) - My desk is L shaped from the window on the left edge of the picture all the way to the right edge of the picture :-o
So - I went to go see Jack Reacher at 12:30
This is pretty much all I have to say about this movie - you have seen this movie - If you want to see a decent movie with Tom Cruise where he plays a character named Jack watch this movie:
Tim Curry plays the devil in that movie which is a good qualifier - because - you know - any movie where Tim Curry dresses up in an outlandish outfit is sure to be the shiznit right?
So - yeah - Chinese food... And the next show for the movie I wanted to see was sold out so I went home and did this:
It may not seem logical for me to put my bedroom in the smaller of the two rooms, but I have a good reason - mainly having to do with my cat's digestive issues waking me up in the middle of the night and me not having much choice as to the location of his litter box. Also - it might be nice to have a little more leg room in my office when I have people over.
When I was a kid my dad subscribed me to this classic book of the month thing - I got books like - Huck Finn, Wuthering Heights, War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, Edgar Allen Poe's Collective works, Les Miserables. For some reason I seem to remember Jean Valjean being more active in the revolution. Maybe - seeing as how I would have been like 10 or 11 when I got that book, I was really confused - I don't remember it quite right, it's a very distinct possibility. Because that movie kinda made Jean Valjean look like a self serving, self righteous, cowardly man. Maybe it's just that I'm older now and I'm seeing the story in a different way and Jean Valjean was always just a backseat driver in the story. I don't know - I need to go back and read the book...
As far as a movie goes - at the end I was sitting in a theater full of crying people who were saying how good it was and I was sitting there going - "Really?" So I stuck in my seat, pretending to do something on my phone so I could drop some eves on people's conversations - FILTERS - I was surrounded by people who had read the book a hundred times and seen performances in different venues. They knew which songs were missing from this version, also were missing from the current Broadway version, but not the.....!!!!!! They WANTED it to be good... and it looked really really pretty on the big screen. Plus - major props to the cast - really - bang - up - job! I personally could have done without seeing Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe - both are pretty damn good actors - but you know - sometimes you like to see lesser known actors in those roles - or at least one of them.
As a movie - I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars. For me this is a game of would you rather. This is a film adaptation of a musical that is an adaptation of a book. There's something in a big screen musical experience - there are plenty of screen adaptations; they work... But would you rather see Les Miserables on a big screen with Russell Crowe showing you Javert (and a telephone in the back of your mind) ~~OR~~ see a live performance unfold in front of you?
Duh - both.
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