I'm still here! Pardon the absence over the last few weeks, I've been busier than an extremely busy thing at the peak of the financial year in the industry of busy-ness. Or moving house, as it's also known. However, now I'm back for a bit, before the internet runs off for a little while again. So in the mean timey bit, I went out to the cinema once or twice...and saw the same film once or twice. Yes indeed, it's that time at last, the final instalment of the Harry Potter cinema adventure has landed, and I was one of those fortunate/sad enough to get themselves to the midnight screening. What a collection of life you get there...Honest to god truth, I saw a guy dressed as what I can only describe as an Italian wizard, complete with staff, standing under the projector beam, making weird magical movements with his hands. I wish I could get away with being that completely crackers.
Right, bit of a background on my take: I grew at a time that would have been perfect to read the books, being of that generation, however, I'm slightly ashamed to say I hadn't read a single book of the series until last November. Thanks to that though, I feel I can safely dodge around all the massive clichés you'll find from uber-fans whinging too much about how "it wasn't like that in the books!", but I'll inevitably still be a bit of a prat about it. So err, sorry, I think.
I'm just going to lay it out there; this film is pretty much faaabulous!We all know how the films have gradually become darker, following the novels, but there's also a great little twist of humour in a large amount of the scenes to keep the kiddies all happybouncy. Let's face it, if you've read any of the books, you've seen this film. If you've seen all the other films, you've seen this film. If you did neither, you're not going to watch this one...and it's probably best you don't as you're thrown straight into the action from where the last one ended, and it's at that point we start the endless reel of acting talent from the more senior members of the cast. First it's Warwick Davis' first appearance as Griphook...he genuinely makes you untrusting of a race of tiny, pointy-eared, weirdy-eyed imaginary people. Follow him up with one of my personal favourite actors, John Hurt - he returns as Mr Ollivander for the first time since the very first film, and even though he's only on the screen for about 2 minutes he's JOHN HURT...I mean, come on.
Other great (if fairly short on actual screen time) performances come from Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore, Helen McCrory as Narcissa Malfoy and of course, the surely-he-has-to-be-knighted-soon Alan Rickman, giving a masterclass of pretty much every emotion going (other than hysterical pregnancy), as Snape. But special praise needs to be held for two of the 'adult' cast who really make a close call of stealing the show. The first of these is Maggie Smith, Minerva McGonagall. Completely absent in the previous film (through no fault of anyone other than the stretching of the story), she was missed greatly, there's just something you have to love about her and that ridiculously stern business face. Here, we see her embodying the very spirit of the story: good standing up against evil no matter what the costs. In this case, the usually all sensible, highly strung professor cracks and throws aside even her tightly pulled bun of hair and bursts into several waves of emotion. None better than her excitement at animating the various statues of Hogwarts, or her simple expression of happiness upon the return of our eponymous hero.
Second in the list of They Were Pretty Good Them Like, is Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. Sidenote...Voldemort is apparently accepted by my autocorrect, nice. But yes, Fiennes shows brilliantly the downfall of an all too confident supervillain being brought slowly to his knees. We see He Who Will Try To Kill You Anyway So You Might As Well Call Him Voldemort go from being utterly heartless and brutal in his dispatching of a random henchman, to becoming a shaking mess as more Horcruxes are destroyed, until he finally seems to have cracked in relief, if nothing else, when he finally believes he has ridden himself of the Boy Who Lived. Indeed, there is a moment where we can't quite work out if Fiennes is overacting or if noseless wonder has simply lost one too many sandwiches from his picnic, where, upon 'killing' Harry, he laughs...somewhat similar to what I'd imagine a mentally special grizzly bear would sound. Fiennes really does present a great portrayal of someone who just can't get away from that pesky kid, but mixes it nicely with his SS officer experience from Schindler's List, to create something terrifying enough for children, and still seen as the one you want Harry to mop the floor with for the adults.
Now for the students...I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the majority of them can't really act, but they do the job. Of the main three, we've come to accept that Rupert Grint is the best at it, and although he has criminally few lines, he really does sink his teeth into them when they turn up, particularly when anything comedic rears a head. But by and far the best of all the kids is the performance of Matthew Lewis...the godlike Neville Longbottom. Again, I'm not going to say he's an amazing actor, frankly I've more chance of being cast as Indiana Jones in the 2030 reboots than he has of being given an Oscar, but he's pretty good. The fact that he seems a bit awkward just sort of fits, Neville is the hero that nobody expected, the true class donkey come good. He gets some of the best lines in the whole film and you just have to look at him in awe. In a total non-homoerotic manner, the man looks Herculean, it's staggering. Mind you, I do love the fact that he's so Yorkshire he pronounces 'DemenTOR' as 'DementER', it's the most trivial things you notice...
The film handles the story very well, and keeps pretty much everything in tact, and the tweaks made for the purpose of cinematic AWESOMEFACTOR are totally fine. Only gripe I have with the whole thing is a pretty lazy attempt at making a 3D production. At no point is the 3D effect used for anything other that "heh, that was in 3D", such as the Warner Bros logo coming right out of the screen at you, not to mention a good few snake attack moments. Not worth the extra cost, but there you go.
So yeah, it's pretty much great. And worth the price of admission simply for the reactions of superfans everywhere. I was tears, mass huggings, and, (it's your own fault for telling me this), I hear that one of my more cool acquaintances shouted out "IT'S THE END" as the credits rolled. Priceless.
The Harry Potter experience is over...for now, but it was certainly a good ride.
4/5 - Pretty great, just the whole acting and 3D thing that brings it down.
04/07/2011
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
First proper post alert! And there was much rejoicing!
Okay now that that's over with... The first film I'm going to be looking at is Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the third instalment of the Michael Bay directed franchise. And we're all still scared of any film with his name attached to it, aren't we? Yes, he did recreate Pearl Harbour in a manner so horrifically disastrous that the very release of the film can be considered somewhat of a microcosm of the event itself, and yes he may have actually attempted to direct a Vanilla Ice video (seriously), but I believe we're all a little guilty of criticising his massive...massive reliance on special effects and BIG SHINY THINGS. As an avid fan of most things horror - be they scary and great, or laughably terrible (and therefore still great), he has resurrected a few staples of the genre and updated them, some much better than others, but I for one genuinely enjoyed his production of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a whole lot more than I did with the original, and his reboot of Friday The 13th was also a nice way of dragging Jason back from the ludicrous escapades he got up to in space and scuffling with Freddy, the cheeky scamp. I'm not saying he's a good story teller, so don't get me wrong, I mean, the man hasn't really come up with an original idea in, well, ever, really. But he certainly knows how to entertain, even if you do feel slightly ashamed at just how preoccupied you are by the aforementioned big shiny things. Which leads us nicely to Dark Of The Moon.
A bit of a fuss was kicked up about just how this second sequel was going to turn out, given the utter dross that was Revenge Of The Fallen, and the finest lampost actress the world has ever seen departing the cast as Megan Fox was replaced by debuting model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the world of critics and punters alike awaited with baited breath to see what ridiculous plot Bay would throw at them next. I believe that world of critics and punters will have greeted it by making this face.
Fans of the franchise can finally be happy; the comedy side of the story has been removed from the main Autobots and relegated largely to the human characters, and the minor robot members of the cast, so yes, Bumblebee is allowed to just be fairly amazing and less like your uncle at a family birthday. More importantly, the comedy becomes mainly centred on John Turturro, which is no bad thing given that he can actually pull it off.
Now the story itself is a little more sophisticated than the previous offering, and is actually verging on decent: Decepticons hatch devious plan - Humans and Autobots try to thwart plan - Interesting twist about said plan - Autobots must save the day. Sorted. Just what people actually want, because that could have been an episode on the original show.
Yes, there are some annoying inclusions which drag it down somewhat though, such as 90% of Huntington-Whiteley's screen time being dedicated to her various lady-regions for no reason other than LOOK AT HER! Also, the bizarrely racial stereotypes of the Wreckers accents remains - comic relief in the form of Italian, Scottish and Spanish accents mean that somehow we've entered a world of ethnic robot tokenism. And there's a particularly physically infuriating scene involving being able to run up a 45degree angled skyscraper, being able to smash through a window at the top of that incline and then slide down the outside to safety which really boggles my sense of logic. BUT, at the risk of giving Bay his usual back-up plaudits, the SFX in this film are staggeringly brilliant. Be truthful, one of the main reasons why people who weren't avid fans of the original series are going to see this film is because of the transforming sequences, and they are by far worth the price of the ticket.
Then there's Optimus Prime. I don't know how, given that he has a criminally short amount of screen time given to him, but he's rapidly become one of my favourite heroes of the big screen, I poop you not, I actually had goosebumps every time he transformed. He's probably the second best actor in the film too, and he's not beaten by Huntington-Whiteley, I'm sorry to say.
Overall, the script is a bit shaky, and a few of the cast could really do with a bit more shoving in the right direction, but the plot is actually pretty good, and, of course, the visuals are fantastic. It's not a half bad film, and at the very least saved us from the memory of the first sequel, which is nothing short of cause for celebration.
So it's at this point that I'll probably start giving things ratings, so let's say an 'out of five' scale here...
3/5 - Decent plot and great action scenes, just a shame about some of the acting.
P.S. Leonard Nimoy is in it. So it should get bonus points.
Okay now that that's over with... The first film I'm going to be looking at is Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the third instalment of the Michael Bay directed franchise. And we're all still scared of any film with his name attached to it, aren't we? Yes, he did recreate Pearl Harbour in a manner so horrifically disastrous that the very release of the film can be considered somewhat of a microcosm of the event itself, and yes he may have actually attempted to direct a Vanilla Ice video (seriously), but I believe we're all a little guilty of criticising his massive...massive reliance on special effects and BIG SHINY THINGS. As an avid fan of most things horror - be they scary and great, or laughably terrible (and therefore still great), he has resurrected a few staples of the genre and updated them, some much better than others, but I for one genuinely enjoyed his production of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a whole lot more than I did with the original, and his reboot of Friday The 13th was also a nice way of dragging Jason back from the ludicrous escapades he got up to in space and scuffling with Freddy, the cheeky scamp. I'm not saying he's a good story teller, so don't get me wrong, I mean, the man hasn't really come up with an original idea in, well, ever, really. But he certainly knows how to entertain, even if you do feel slightly ashamed at just how preoccupied you are by the aforementioned big shiny things. Which leads us nicely to Dark Of The Moon.
A bit of a fuss was kicked up about just how this second sequel was going to turn out, given the utter dross that was Revenge Of The Fallen, and the finest lampost actress the world has ever seen departing the cast as Megan Fox was replaced by debuting model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the world of critics and punters alike awaited with baited breath to see what ridiculous plot Bay would throw at them next. I believe that world of critics and punters will have greeted it by making this face.
Fans of the franchise can finally be happy; the comedy side of the story has been removed from the main Autobots and relegated largely to the human characters, and the minor robot members of the cast, so yes, Bumblebee is allowed to just be fairly amazing and less like your uncle at a family birthday. More importantly, the comedy becomes mainly centred on John Turturro, which is no bad thing given that he can actually pull it off.
Now the story itself is a little more sophisticated than the previous offering, and is actually verging on decent: Decepticons hatch devious plan - Humans and Autobots try to thwart plan - Interesting twist about said plan - Autobots must save the day. Sorted. Just what people actually want, because that could have been an episode on the original show.
Yes, there are some annoying inclusions which drag it down somewhat though, such as 90% of Huntington-Whiteley's screen time being dedicated to her various lady-regions for no reason other than LOOK AT HER! Also, the bizarrely racial stereotypes of the Wreckers accents remains - comic relief in the form of Italian, Scottish and Spanish accents mean that somehow we've entered a world of ethnic robot tokenism. And there's a particularly physically infuriating scene involving being able to run up a 45degree angled skyscraper, being able to smash through a window at the top of that incline and then slide down the outside to safety which really boggles my sense of logic. BUT, at the risk of giving Bay his usual back-up plaudits, the SFX in this film are staggeringly brilliant. Be truthful, one of the main reasons why people who weren't avid fans of the original series are going to see this film is because of the transforming sequences, and they are by far worth the price of the ticket.
Then there's Optimus Prime. I don't know how, given that he has a criminally short amount of screen time given to him, but he's rapidly become one of my favourite heroes of the big screen, I poop you not, I actually had goosebumps every time he transformed. He's probably the second best actor in the film too, and he's not beaten by Huntington-Whiteley, I'm sorry to say.
Overall, the script is a bit shaky, and a few of the cast could really do with a bit more shoving in the right direction, but the plot is actually pretty good, and, of course, the visuals are fantastic. It's not a half bad film, and at the very least saved us from the memory of the first sequel, which is nothing short of cause for celebration.
So it's at this point that I'll probably start giving things ratings, so let's say an 'out of five' scale here...
3/5 - Decent plot and great action scenes, just a shame about some of the acting.
P.S. Leonard Nimoy is in it. So it should get bonus points.
We Have Lift Off
Hello, guten tag, bonjour, hola and various other overused, over-excited greetings that you see all too often on the internet to you all.
I have no idea why I started this page up, but apparently an urge overtook me to start inflicting my insights on various things upon the world in another format. I'll be brutally honest; this page will mostly consist of reviews of films I've either seen at the cinema recently, or ones that I've stayed up till far too late to watch on TV, hardly original, I know, but it's therapeutic for me, at least. You can pretty much count on the occasional dribbling on the world of football, though I hope not to spend my time moaning.Also, I'll probably be throwing in odd reviews of albums and gigs if I can ever really be bothered too. Warning: posts will likely contain comedy in-jokes and references from time to time, you can award yourselves gold stars if you spot them...even more so if you see one that I wasn't aware I'd plagiarised. Penguin.
I'm not going to say I hope you enjoy it, because I partially hope I'll make someone shake their fist at the screen in sheer gangrenous perturbitude at my plebocity that I gain a nemesis. Greetings, future Skeletor to my He-Man!
So without further ado...
Roboteers..ACTIVATE!
I have no idea why I started this page up, but apparently an urge overtook me to start inflicting my insights on various things upon the world in another format. I'll be brutally honest; this page will mostly consist of reviews of films I've either seen at the cinema recently, or ones that I've stayed up till far too late to watch on TV, hardly original, I know, but it's therapeutic for me, at least. You can pretty much count on the occasional dribbling on the world of football, though I hope not to spend my time moaning.Also, I'll probably be throwing in odd reviews of albums and gigs if I can ever really be bothered too. Warning: posts will likely contain comedy in-jokes and references from time to time, you can award yourselves gold stars if you spot them...even more so if you see one that I wasn't aware I'd plagiarised. Penguin.
I'm not going to say I hope you enjoy it, because I partially hope I'll make someone shake their fist at the screen in sheer gangrenous perturbitude at my plebocity that I gain a nemesis. Greetings, future Skeletor to my He-Man!
So without further ado...
Roboteers..ACTIVATE!
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