Curious indeed II

I had been waiting for this movie since July. Finally I saw it. A wee bit Forrest Gump-ish perhaps, but let me tell `ya, *whispers* I never really liked Forrest Gump all that much.

I'll make this short and sweet (because I had these notes months ago and I'm finalizing it only now). I've always said that the key to enjoying this type of movie, as with other fantasy stories, is to suspend disbelief. Once you are able to do that, accept the improbability of the premise as a temporary truth, then you're all set. Otherwise, there's a high probability that you'll feel cheated.

Random note: that whole kismet sequence with the taxi and the lady going shopping felt like a sore thumb when it shouldn't have been. It felt like it was extracted from a creative writing exercise and stuck in there. But you know what, I still liked it (because heck, I like `em words. Words + intriguing concept = win).

What intrigued me the most is that while watching, my brain was telling me this couldn't happen, yet my heart was also feeling the pathos, the sadness. Like the scene with the pimply teenager with Alzheimer's just about short-circuited my brain. It was an absurd mix of emotion and rationality -- it is exactly why I love this genre. The ordinary human condition transposed into an extraordinary, unnatural situation. Yes, it's absurd to think that a person can age backwards, but what does the film delve into? Abandonment, love at its first glimmerings, sadness, old age, death, all too natural, human concerns.

And then again, who's to say, I may just have been blinded by the sheer beauty of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, or extremely enthralled by the technology. (Yes, I have researched it. Way cool! Read this. *dork*)

Curious indeed

I came across the trailer of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button a few days ago, and I can't wait to watch it.

It is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born with the body of a 70-year old and grows backwards, that is, younger, as the years pass. Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) says of the film: "It's dark, it's romantic, and it also deals with mortality in a pretty unflattering way. Button is born in 1919 - with the film itself beginning in World War I, traveling around the world and carrying on all the way through to the year 2000." According to wiki, Fincher used a camera system called Contour (developed by Steve Perlman) to capture facial deformation data from the actors' performances. A character rigging system called AnEmotion was then used to recreate synthetic actors to illustrate Brad Pitt's reverse aging. Awesomeness.

We will have to wait quite a while though. The movie is set for release in December. In the meantime, you might want to read the story here. Or listen to an audio version at thoughtaudio.com.

In anticipation of Hellboy II: The Golden Army

So yeah, I enjoyed the first Hellboy movie very much. (And I've come to lurve Guillermo del Toro. ) Hellboy II should be showing soon in these parts, yay. As if the trailer weren't enough to pique my curiosity, this promotional video turned up on the web. It's an animated prologue that tells the backstory of the Golden Army. Gorgeous visuals!

Beowulf: How to take liberties with a classic and not get away with it

I had been looking forward to seeing Beowulf in 3D and finally I did it. So now, 450 pesos later (that’s 300 for the movie ticket and 150 for lunch – let me tell you, don’t attempt to watch a 3D film while eating lunch; I gobbled up my burger and fries 10mins before it started as I didn’t want to get distracted), here’s my verdict.

As usual, I didn’t read any reviews or join any discussions about the movie beforehand, but I did get wind that the story was a bit thin. No kidding, it should have been epic, it’s a classic piece of literature after all, a great hero story. It would have been so easy to make an animated feature of epic proportions, right? Well, apparently not. Don’t get me wrong, it WAS entertaining (I’m no purist) and it WAS a sight to behold (not perfect though), but what about the story?

Beowulf stands proud as one of the best known Old English hero epic poems in history. It’s a classic, and classics are called that because they are great stories. So with a base material like that, how can one go wrong? It is when one takes the risk of changing it. As it turns out, Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman took liberties with the plot, and oh mama, what huge liberties they were! (I am not sure though how much of Gaiman’s contribution was retained; I read that a rewrite was done somewhere along the way.) Now I don’t have a problem with writers making changes in movie adaptations (especially when I’m not intimately familiar with the original source material to begin with *cough*), as it’s always interesting to me to see if it will work or not. For this particular movie, I found that replacing the archetypal hero story – you know, great noble hero fighting many great battles against unimaginably formidable forces of evil and whatnot -- with a 21st century proclivity for anti-hero themes could have been so much more powerful than how it actually turned out. (I happen to be a fan of anti-hero stories.) It had potential which wasn’t quite reached.

If you like your heroes as perfect, infallible, noble warriors then you won’t like Beowulf at all. In the first half of the film, he is portrayed as this boastful, self-centered Calvin Klein-ish metrosexual (I don’t know, did anyone else get that vibe?) with a taste for hyperbole in the retelling of his heroic deeds. (But hey, it must have been a bitch being a hero in those times, being pressured into acting the part of a character you know would later be spun into songs and tales orally handed down from generation to generation for ages. If you were to be in a song or tale, wouldn’t you want to look good? I would have exaggerated too, heh. And on another less relevant note: that Ray Winstone sure sounded good, such great voice and delivery that I forgave him the annoying “I... am Beowuuulf!”) So uh, where was I? ...Ah right, Beowulf as the flawed hero. They could have made so much more of Beowulf’s burden, the king’s shame (both Hrothgar’s and Beowulf’s), the price of their ambition, and the demon (Grendel’s mother). Beyond the semi-naked Lara Croft in demon pigtails (hee hee) and heels (hwaar har), the only demonstration of evil shown was the visitation of her awesome power (which we didn’t even get to see, maybe it will be in the DVD’s deleted scenes? *sarcastic*) on Beowulf’s thanes in Heorot upon Grendel’s death. And uhm, oh yeah, I suppose seducing Beowulf, and more so, Anthony Hopkins, is evil. Seriously though, the notion that the greater demon is greed, pride, and ambition, that in itself could have been played much better. There were moments that could have been epic (e.g. the battle between the demon and Beowulf, Beowulf’s realization of his mistake as Hrothgar practically handed him the kingship, Beowulf’s death) but weren’t. In my opinion, the technology got in the way of telling and experiencing the story. If I hadn’t been so wrapped in the details perhaps I could have taken it more seriously. Instead I was thinking: Hmm, nice stones, very gravelly. Why are their garments so flat, hanging there like they were paper clothes on a 3-dimensional head? Oh look, Unferth has newly rebounded hair. John Malkovich, man, you act so much better in person. Never ever do this again. Ooh Anthony Hopkins, that was him – eww, I don’t want to see him naked thank goodness everything is CGI’ed. Why is Beowulf’s head old and weathered while his body is still Calvin Klein model-ish? Nice detail on Angelina’s face, soft down of tiny hairs. Eh, are my 3D glasses broken? Oh right, it’s a night scene, 3D doesn’t do those well.

I could go on and on here, but the long and short of it is, yeah it’s quite entertaining and engaging. I even turned my head away in reflex when a piece of wood hurtled my way (sitting at eye level is recommended). But don’t watch it for the story. Maybe Neil can do that better in graphic novel form. Also, here’s what I’m wondering: could Peter Jackson and WETA have done it so much better? Ahem.

Happy Feet: Don’t Pan the Penguins!

“I saw an animal do that once, but then they rolled him over and he was dead.”

~ one of Ramon’s mariachi buddies, on Mumble’s singing

One word to sum up the movie: Delightful.

What I liked:

• Need I write it down? It’s about penguins. Penguins are fascinating, and always adorable. Oh, except for Danny de Vito in the Batman movie.

• Mumble is extremely adorable. I didn’t realize that Baby Mumble’s voice was not Elijah’s until I checked the cast list. In any case, Elijah Wood, himself somewhat odd-looking, is a good choice to cast as one set apart from all others by his less penguinly looks and talents. I thought it an amusing touch to make Mumble’s coloring such that the tuxedo effect was more pronounced – yeah, all penguins do look like they are wearing tuxedos, but Mumble more so, with a bowtie and grey vest. Tuxedos and tap dancing, hee.

• The music. They had me at the 1^st scene. The Norma Jean and Memphis opening duet was so fabulous it reminded me of Moulin Rouge. Gloria’s Somebody to Love at the graduation had me giggling the whole time. (Pretty good singing too, hey!) Pop, R&B, blues, hiphop, even some gospel, so much of the music was fun and enjoyable.

• Ramon and his merry band of mariachi misfits (the tiny Adelie penguins) provided many of the laugh-or-cry moments that I loved in the movie.

• The pathos. Naturally it can’t top National Geographic’s March of the Penguins when it comes to dramatizing the Emperor penguins’ journey to the most inhospitable of environments to bear their young, but I also found Mumble’s own struggle to express his individuality easy to relate to, and touching. `Course, those who aren’t into anthropomorphism might not agree.
  

• The animation. Eat your heart out, Pixar, those are darn life-like fluffy feathers! Check out the grey down on the baby penguins. And very smooth, fluid movements. Fear not though, you’ve got one over Animal Logic where it comes to facial expressions (Animal Logic or whichever of the two other special effects companies they employed, that is). The filmmakers relied on music to convey emotions, not so much on characters’ visible expressions. To be fair though, how can you do that with only beady penguin eyes, a beak and a whole lot of feathers? Not that Mumble's eyes are anywhere near beady, nor Elijah's. They could have taken advantage of those clear blue pools, imo. (No one can beat Weta’s Gollum yet where emotions of CG characters are concerned, though.)

What I willingly overlooked: the booboos

• The abrupt transition from Mumble in Penguin Park to his return home. Surely they could have done that better? I would have loved to see a National Geographic reference.

• Apparently Lovelace is a rockhopper penguin. (Yes, there is such a creature, check it out here.) Robin Williams is great as a rock-hopping mad guru figure. Thing is, there are only 2 species of penguins that live in Antartica, and rockhoppers aren’t one of them. Well, they could have written a backstory for him, say Lovelace stowed away on a ship to Antartica... nah, too Madagascar, that. Well any long-travelling guru and such and such story then. (Heh, Lovelace should have been Latino too, rockhoppers live in South America.)
  

• Some critics gripe that the movie tried to be everything all at once: it was advocating for the environment, it was about being different, surviving in the Antartican wilderness, about love, loss of innocence, coming of age, humans' continuing domination of the planet, the cruelty of uprooting animals from their natural habitat, etc etc. Yes, it was ambitious to try to convey all that. But who cares if it worked in that respect or not? Happy Feet is about penguins. Who doesn’t like penguins?
  
  
  
  
  
  Interesting detail: Steve Irwin, the late crocodile hunter, provided the voice for Trev, one of the humongous elephant seals who Mumble and company spoke to as they approached the ocean. The movie was dedicated to Irwin.
  

`Abracadabra' is the operative word

* Note: I tried to make this as spoiler-free as possible.

The film is a sleight of hand, a series of misdirections, a skillful trick. Like Cutter (Michael Caine) says at the start, as in magic, you have to watch very closely. Who needs the Wachowski brothers? I’ll take the Nolan brothers over them anytime. They are so much subtler, not as in-your- face (I am not amused by the Wachowskis’ “look at how many allusions we’ve embedded in our movie aren’t we so very smart” references particularly in the indigestion-inducing Matrix Reloaded). I love The Prestige not so much for the mystery as for the writing. The film is structured in a non-linear fashion, with 3 timelines crisscrossing each other: in the present, a fatal accident occurs and Borden (Christian Bale) is on trial. He is given Angier’s (Hugh Jackman) journal, in which Angier recounts his search to unlock the secret of Borden’s Transported Man by decrypting the latter’s notebook, which in turn recounts how they started out as assistants and eventually became the most bitter of rivals.

It is a multi-layered story that is not only about magic in the Victorian age, but is also about rivalry and revenge, about what it costs to create a grand illusion, about the thin line between driving passion and all-consuming obsession.

Some were turned-off by the (Angier-related) twist at the end. (Waaha, it's a sci-fi fantasy film pala!) For me, that wasn’t actually the major twist that viewers were being led to. (If Tesla's science, or magic depending on whose POV -- I love how the setting was in the Victorian era, at a time when rationality and intuition were starting to collide -- was meant to be the climactic twist then they wouldn’t have shown us all those hats and cats in his backyard.) Borden’s secret was the greater twist. While I suspected it earlier on, I still couldn’t be sure till the very end, for, like a good magic trick, the filmmakers left room for doubt, much like Angier’s trapdoor in his final performances. You think you know but you really can’t be sure. (And then again, if you are a smart aleck and did know for sure, it’s still a dang well-written movie!)

What does it take to enjoy The Prestige? The very thing that witnessing magic requires: suspension of disbelief. If you fail at that, then the movie will probably suck.

End note. David Bowie is in the movie. What a surprise, I didn’t know that until I checked the cast list a day after seeing it. So that’s why Tesla looked vaguely familiar. I did recognize Andy Serkis (a.k.a. Gollum) instantly though. Huh, figure that out.

V is for Vitriol

"I'm not going to claim all comic books are literate — there's a lot of rubbish out there. But there have been some very literate comic books done over the last 20 years, some marvelous ones. And to actually read a comic, you do have to be able to read, which is not something you can say about watching a film. So as for which medium is literate, give me comics any day."

--- Alan Moore rants against movie adaptations and the V is for Vendetta film, MTV interview

For the nth time, the man is not pleased. He has again asked that his name be removed from the credits and signed away his share from its earnings. Can't blame him for spewing vitriol against the movie industry. From Hell sucked majorly, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, was well, from hell. *snicker* It was just too awful. But hey, I kinda enjoyed Constantine (but then I hadn't read the comic series).

I look forward to V is for Vendetta with considerable dread, seeing as how the last Wachowski brothers production I saw gave me a splitting headache (Matrix Overloaded), but we shall see. A 70% rottentomatoes rating isn't all that bad. It only means that several critics hated it, some liked it, and some were ambiguous (rottentomatoes isn't at all accurate but it's a pretty good indicator either of unanimous praise or unanimous disgust).

Tsk tsk tsk, poor Moore, such rotten luck. Neil Gaiman mentions how relieved he is that no one has done any Sandman films. If the universe is as good to us as it is to Neil, there never ever will be a Sandman movie. (I wonder if Peter Jackson would take up the challenge? Nah, I don't think even he can pull that off, much as I love him.) I am starting to get worried about Kabuki (I don't mean Japanese theater silly, but the David Mack comic series.). Even with the Mackster himself writing the script (sorry David). I can't believe I'm thinking this but, may it never come to pass.

(Idle thoughts following Neil Gaiman's Guardian article `$1M a minute to film? No problem', on movies and comics. Thanks to G for the heads-up.)