Friday, July 11, 2008

Movie Review: Wall-E

I have seen previews for this movie for the past couple years, and never really had much interest in seeing it. However, a number of friends said that it was a fantastic movie, and given the fact that Pixar has impressed me thus far as well, I decided to check it out. The beginning was a little slow for me, though still entertaining. My friend Chandler had told me that it is just like an old silent movie, which was interesting: though since I am used to modern movies with lots of dialogue, it was a little tough to get into. But once the story started to unfold, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, which represents a shocking and yet fairly believable futuristic dystopia. Also, as I was informed by friends, Pixar did new things in this movie that have never been done with digital animation before, such as making shots have in-focus and out-of-focus elements, to represent a real camera. While it is a children’s film, it is very entertaining for adults aswell, and I was very satisfied by the end of the movie. This is definitely the best movie I’ve seen in theaters this summer – though I have a feeling The Dark Knight will top them all.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Hancock and Dujardin

I saw a midnight showing of the new summer superhero movie “Hancock” a few nights ago. The previews made this movie look to be very promising: Will Smith as a superhero who drinks way too much and causes havoc because of it. I was also excited about this movie because of the originality of the idea. The first half of the film lived up to the hope, and featured a great mix of action, humor, and dramatic scenes. However, the second half of the film was a complete failure. While I won’t give away any of the plot, I felt like the second half of the story was poorly written, and didn’t do the movie as a whole any justice. All in all, this movie is a tough call since it is half great and half terrible.

I also recently finished reading “We’ll To the Woods No More” by Edouard Dujardin. This is an obscure French novel originally published in 1888, and according to the introduction it didn’t receive much acclaim and became a “forgotten novel.” However, it did receive recognition a few decades later when James Joyce discovered the novel and said that it inspired him to develop and perfect his stream-of-consciousness technique. As a fanatical Joycean, I had to check it out to see how it relates to Joyce’s work. This is definitely as stylistic read, since the story overall isn’t too exciting (though it isn’t necessarily boring). The work is written from first person, in the present tense, and follows the internal thoughts of a young man walking around Paris one evening as he waits for and ponders about the woman he loves. It is not difficult to follow (especially if compared to the stream-of-consciousness masters that came decades later) and can be quite interesting and a bit humorous at times. Now, as I said before, it is a stylistic read, and I found as I read along I was wondering if the story would ever reach a “climax,” or if it would just drift from here to there aimlessly. However, when I got to the final chapter, I was really blown away, as many of the seemingly unimportant events suddenly have a lot of relevance. Also, since it is told completely from the narrator’s mind, the reader can figure stuff out which the narrator hasn’t figured out yet (and perhaps never will). Also, the book is quite short, being less than 150 pages. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in modernist and stream-of-consciousness writing, especially fellow Joyceans; or, anyone interested in French love stories; or, fuck it: anyone that wants to read.

That is all for now. I am hoping to put a story up soon (though I have been saying that for a while and still have not followed through). Have a happy Fourth!
- Liam

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

You Don't Mess With the Zohan... Because He Makes a Bad Film

Movie Review: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.”

I saw this movie about a week ago, and was not impressed. While the premise of an ex-Israeli super soldier who becomes a hairdresser sounded very bizarre, I’m a huge fan of Adam Sandler, and consider him to be one of the top comedy actors from the 90’s generation (probably second only to Jim Carrey). However, even with Sandler at the helm ― in both the fact that he was the lead actor and also that his production company Happy Madison released the film ― the movie was tough to get through. In fact, much of what was funny about the film was just how bad it really was. It was filled with stereotypical jokes about Israelis and Arabs, and tried to turn a two-thousand year conflict into a comedy premise. Now I’m all for comedy, but I don’t think the Israeli-Arab wars are the right thing to joke about. On a plus side, there were some humorous cameos, including: Chris Rock, Henry Winkler, Kevin James, John McEnroe, Mariah Carey and George Takei; also, Michael Buffer, the guy who says “lets get ready to rumble!” before boxing or wresting main events, had a small but significant role, and Dave Matthews plays a racist hillbilly. I’d wait until this gets released on DVD; or better yet, wait for it to be shown on television.