Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (RATING: 6/10)

I have never liked the Harry Potter movies. Although this was the best one so far, and indeed each one has been better than the last, I still didn’t enjoy it all that much. I admit that it must be an incredibly daunting task to fit a whole book within the space of two and a half hours, especially a book that has such an incredible fan base. But I think it could have been done better.

There are some very good things about this movie. The effects, of course, were amazing. The Inferi in the dark cavern were scary, the spells cast (especially when Alan Rickman—er, Snape—reverses the Septum Sempra curse) very neat looking, and all in all the art direction was impressive. The acting, in parts, was also very good. Alan Rickman was, as always, great, although even in this movie he didn’t have much screen time. Jim Broadbent, playing professor Horace Slughorn, was, to me, the perfect balance of absentmindedness and slight evil (not Voldemort-type evil, but just human self-serving weirdness, kind of like Ellen in BSG. Well, not quite…) The actor that most impressed me, however, was one that I wasn’t expecting anything from. Draco Malfoy was actually great in this movie. He was conflicted but not angsty (well, in some parts yes, but that was the fault of the director not the actor), and he just did a very good job. Especially compared to the main trio.

My favorite part of this movie was Harry being high. For some reason, the interpretation of the effects of the luck potion Harry takes was that it made him seem that he had just smoked a huge bag of weed. It was random, but hilarious (“It’s the pincers” is the line to look out for). There are actually a lot of funny bits in this movie, although whether they are all meant to be or not is a little in question. For example, the angsty Malfoy scene is great, when the camera zooms out a window from Ron making out with Lavender to a shot of Malfoy standing outside on the top of a tower in the blinding snow looking out at the horizon.

My least favorite part was the part that I had expected it to be. However, not for the reason I expected it to be. The big thing that happens at the end of the sixth book (I won’t specify for fear of spoilers) made me really really sad when reading it, even though I was pretty sure it was coming. In the movie, however, I just didn’t care. They didn”t really linger, and it just didn’t affect me. I was very disappointed with that.

Some revelations were also just side notes. We discover who the title character (the Half-Blood Prince, not Harry Potter) is with the last few words of a sentence, and then just move on. A character with ambiguity in the book has none in the movie (although that could just be hindsight). There was a lot cut out of the book, which had to be done, but I thought they could have made better choices. There were also some scenes added, which I actually approved of. Made the evil people more evil, the nicer, more nicer.

Actually, as one last thought, a take back what I said about Harry’s high being my favorite part. My favorite part was actually the music. Nicholas Hooper, who scored this movie and the last one, is infinitely better than John Williams, at least for something like this. Williams always sounds like Williams, and the first four movies were just boring, typical music. Hooper is very good at what he does, and the themes develop, and there’s more than just the main theme, which was almost not true with Williams. I am tempted to buy the soundtrack.

So, see it for the event. I went to the midnight showing when it opened, and that was fun, even if the movie wasn’t great. It’s a worthwhile phenomenon, so check it out for that, but don’t expect it to be perfect.

Television Review: Kings

I’m really interested by this show. However, I preface this review with the fact that I haven’t seen up to the most recent episodes, so I may be a little behind the times. I agree wholeheartedly with some other reviewers of the new NBC series that say that they don’t really know where the show is going, or what its point is. But I also agree with them that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I’ll attempt to summarize the plot and at least the point of the series on a superficial level. It’s the story of a kingdom in modern times, and the country boy David who slays a Goliath tank and is taken in by the king. We assume that he will eventually become king, but that hasn’t happened yet. It does, very loosely, follow the Biblical story by simply updating it, but as I haven’t ever actually read that part of the Bible I can’t say how much of the plot is taken from the book. I’m guessing not much. There are many sub-plots, counter-plots, and others so modern that they clearly couldn’t be from a story that old.

This show really brings together a huge amount of genres for its subject matter. There’s a lot of teen drama thrown in to the politics, a little comic relief (primarily given by two security guards that would typically [in another show] be inept and bumbling, but are actually just nice, entertaining characters not at the cost of their jobs, which is great, I think) mixed with warfare and social commentary. It has, I would think, something for everyone, which often has the side effect of having nothing to keep anyone’s interest for too long. I think this suffers from that problem, however the very fact that there are so many different parts of the show keeps me watching regardless.

There are a lot of things I like about the show. As I have previously mentioned, I love shows that are primarily real-life but with a little hint of the mystic, or magic, or supernatural. “Kings” hasn’t yet had this become any more than the briefest touch, but I have hopes. God is talked about a lot, and God’s plans for people do manifest themselves in signs, omens, and so on. I don’t expect this to become a supernatural epic (although it is from the creator of “Heroes”), but these little touches here and there are very nice. One of the big characters, who I expect will become bigger, is the Reverend Samuels, whose austere manner and polite animosity to the king are backed by his utter faith in the signs of God. There are points when it goes a little overboard, when David gets “crowned” by a swarm of butterflies in the pilot for example, but for themost part it is kept well inside the boundaries of cool.

The other thing I like about this show (and once again, many others) is that the dialogue is very stylised. Especially King Silas’ words, but almost every other character too, are essentially biblical. With one exception there is no “hath,” or “mine eye,” and other biblical phrases, but the same weight is there, the phrasing is right, and it feels just odd enough to be cool. It does flow in and out which is a little awkward, but when it’s fully there I love it. This makes Ian McShane, who plays Silas, even more entertaining and enthralling to watch than he already is (I’ve always wanted to see him in “Deadwood,” but never gotten around to it).

I have no idea where this show is going. I know it’s probably going to make up its mind towards a certain genre, and, depending on which genre it is, I might stop watching. But until then, it keeps me guessing—both as to the course of the plot and on a more meta- level, the general nature of the show—and that makes me keep watching it. If you’re interested, it’s broadcast every Saturday at 8 on NBC, or all of it is available on Hulu, where I’m watching it. [EDIT: Apparently this show has effectively been canceled, or at least not renewed for a second season. Sad. And also shows how behind the times watching things online makes you.]

N.B.: The pilot is often somewhat bad at times. But it gets better. Keep watching, keep checking it out, and it’ll probably end up worth it.

Review: Moon (RATING: 8/10)

I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie, as tends to be the trend for me and any movie I see nowadays; usually all I have to base my opinion on is the trailer and reviews from a friend or family member. However, I really enjoyed it. This movie, as I’m sure most reviews say, is not what you expect it to be (even if you came into it, like me, with hardly any specific expectations). The plot does not go where you think it’s going to, at all. What did meet my expectations, however, was the acting. Sam Rockwell was great, as was Kevin Spacey as a robot. Rockwell was especially impressive after the fact, for indeed (this is somewhat of a spoiler, but not much, so be warned) I really forgot that he was not two different people during the movie.

Still a spoiler, but it’s its own thought so a new paragraph. The acting that Rockwell had to do was incredible. There are two main Sams in the movie, one sick and dying, the other new and fresh. And I literally didn’t think at more than about two points during the film that he wasn’t talking to someone else. The dialogue was quick, back and forth, and meaningful, which must have been incredibly difficult to pull off when there is only one of you at any given time. So I guess this is as much praise for the special effects and editing teams as it is for the acting, but nevertheless it’s damn impressive. Usually when a movie has a conceit such as that, you notice it, and I really didn’t. They didn’t flaunt it at all, and it just worked out perfectly.

Much larger spoiler now, but still not death-threat worthy. This was the first piece of media that I’ve experienced that really disproved my theory of artificial intelligence. For years I have operated under the assumption that no film, no novel, no short story, ever had a robot that was not, if not outright evil, at least malfunctioning in some capacity. I took this as an embedded evolutionary knowledge that if we ever created self-sufficient machines they would take over the world. But this film negates that. Gerty, the computer, is nice. He helps Sam out. And that’s his programming. Even to the detriment of the company he works for, his loyalty is first and foremost to Sam. Which is cool. Because, as I said, nothing, to my knowledge, ever has really done that before. Throughout this movie you assume that the computer is going to be evil, that it’s going to kill, or lie, or something, but it never does. I have faith in Kevin Spacey.

This movie does have some flaws. Plot-wise, and really nothing else. I wonder how he gets out from the company facility where he inevitably must land in the end (that was hopefully sufficiently obscure so as to confuse non=viewers, and have people who have seen it understand). I wonder who the person he sees is (ditto). But for the most part it’s a great movie—fun, moving, funny, well-done.

What’s more, it’s directed by the son of David Bowie. How could you go wrong?

On Andrew Bird and A Generation’s Opinion of Science

Ok I don’t watch movies so I think I’m going to also co-opt this blog to ramble about music, which is the sort of culture I actually consume occasionally.  No, I don’t listen to enough new music to review it or make end of year lists. But I do like to pontificate at length about the things I do listen to. So here’s something I wrote a little while back and never published. It’s about Andrew Bird, who I’m seeing at the Bank of America Pavillion this friday. Maybe I’ll review the concert too?

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Science these days is to indie rock what drug-related crime has been to hip hop for quite some time. Everyone wants you to believe that they’re well-versed in it. Where some rappers are content to exclaim the names of various illegal substances, others like Ghostface Killah get an edge by demonstrating more specific knowledge of the process: “big heavy pots over hot stoves/Mayonnaise jars of water with rocks in them…” he explains methodically in “Kilo.”

Likewise a generation of indie rockers, from bands like We Are Scientists to Pitchfork.com darlings TV On The Radio with their recent release entitled Dear Science, want us to think they aced AP Physics.

Modern musicians’ liberal invocation the unspecific word “science” comes with a knowing wink at post-modern critiques of cold, enlightenment positivism. When the Dandy Warhols exclaim over their techno dance number “I Am A Scientist” that “I’ve gotta live on science alone,” surely they mean to mock the song’s narrator, simultaneously bearing their own complexly emotional, spiritual, post-enlightenment souls.

So the favored music of many highly motivated college students today employs irony by the truckload to mock the certainty of modernist science. A disturbing zeitgeist indeed in a nation which graduates so few students in the physical sciences, has a significant shortage of effective science teachers and is quickly losing skilled engineering-type jobs overseas. The NSF reports that in 2001 only 31% of bachelors and 21% of masters degrees were in “science and engineering” – apparently including the social sciences.

Where Ghostface waxes specific on the production of cocaine, a select few artists engage with science on a more meaningful level. One is Andrew Bird. In “Dark Matter,” Bird doesn’t mock science in order to expose a deeper spiritual questioning, but rather employs it for the same purpose. He asks us plaintively over one of his more rockin’ riffs, “do you wonder where the self resides/is it in the head or between your sides” and then imagines weilding a ray gun of dark matter – the unknowable flip side of the known – to ward off fear of death.

With loving honesty he announces to the subject of one song that “you’re what happens when two substances collide,” and in a more despairing moment exposes the ultimately self-serving nature of humans, describing a “playground like Petri dish/ Where single cells would swing their fists/At anything that looks like easy prey.” The chorus of this last song mourns the apparent non-existence of a higher spiritual plane: “what was mistaken for closeness/was just a case of mitosis.”

Bird even takes shots at our current educational system, which perhaps led bands like the Dandy Warhols to their ironic, surface-level treatments of science as a nun-human, non-spiritual endeavor. On “Measuring Cups” he directs his venom at an educator who instructs a class to “get out your measuring cups and we’ll play a new game/ come to the front of the class and we’ll measure your brain/ we’ll give you a complex, and we’ll give it a name.”

In conclusion: yeah. Andrew Bird! His new album out in 2009 is entitled “Noble Beast.” I personally recommend starting with 2007’s “Armchair Apocrypha” although his most recent is growing on me. Even if you don’t focus too hard on his literary and scientific tongue-twisters, his swirling overlaps of violin, guitar and otherworldly whistling are enough to chew on.

Review: On The Waterfront

I have seen so few of the great movies of our time that to review this film would be like someone with freakishly inconsistent taste buds reviewing the first steak that he or she had properly tasted in ten years. Honestly, I think the last time I saw a black and white classic was Casablanca during my junior year of high school. Five or six years ago. I liked Casablanca. I give it a 9 out of 10. On my Casablanca scale, I give this one a 7.5 or 8 out of 10. I really liked it. It was well-told with creative cinematography (packed full of blatantly intentional camera angles, the sort of thing that might be called over-the-top in a little indie flick today). Lots of nice, prolonged scenes like you don’t get ‘em any more. The scene where Marlo’ B. says “I coulda been a contenda” was, obviously, ballin’.

The reason this falls relatively below Casablanca on my Casablanca scale was because it was, well, predictable. After an escalation of bad things happening to good people, bad things happen to the bad people. But who cares that it was predictable? In fact, if I were to preface myself with a capitalized cry of SPOILER at this point it would seem bizarrely anachronistic. So here you go: big MB goes in all hot-headed to avenge his murdered brother, takes on the mob boss, gets beaten up but leads the terrorized populous to victory by limping example. The honest men working on the docks toss the mob overboard. The mob boss stands comically in the last scene railing at people to listen to him or they’re in trouble.

These days movies need to have a twist. They still fit the same formulas, and only a rare few (and rarely successful) toss the curve ball in the last scene (i.e. ‘On The Waterfronts’ where Brando gets killed. So like Planet of the Apes or Layer Cake). Usually they toss the curveball roughly 8 minutes before the end and still manage to get around to the walking off into the sunset (or the loading dock in this case).  If this movie was made today I think when the credits rolled I’d say: ” … so?” For such an adrenaline packed finale to end such a “linear” manner would be strange. But besides that, it was most surprising to realize how many elements of a suspense drama haven’t changed a bit.

Review: Be Kind Rewind (RATING: 8/10)

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I had heard that it wasn’t actually that great, and so I wasn’t expecting that much. I was pretty much watching it for the “sweded” movies that they did, and was assuming the plot and non-movie-bits of it would be your typical Jack Black insanity which is often funny but not always. And yes, there was that, but it was also just, as most people I have talked to have said, sweet.

The main characters in this story don’t come out victorious against the man, they just go out with style. There is a hint of a love story, but that takes up all of one scene and is never mentioned again. There isn’t even much of a villain in this movie, except for the rights violation lawyers—even the developer who wants to get rid of the old video store they work at is thrilled at the end of the movie (not enough, of course, to stop the demolition, but still…) Everyone else is nice, and everyone in the town gets involved (including, I’m assuming, a lot of the actual residents of Passaic, New Jersey).

And of course there are the sweded movies. Which, despite the niceness of the actual movie, and the characters, and the script, and so on, are really the reason I think everyone sees this movie. These are incredibly low-budget short versions of famous movies that the two main characters are forced to make because Jack Black accidentally erases all the VHS tapes in the store. And they’re hilarious, whether or not you’ve seen the originals (although much more so if you have). The first, and I think the one they show the most of, is Ghostbusters, which, with it’s Christmas tinsel for laser beams and action figure Pillsbury doughboy, is also probably the best (most likely because, as I said, they show the most of it). But the best scene in the movie is I think the brief montage showing Jack Black and Mos Def walking from one “set” to another, taking part in 2001, MIB, and all sorts of movies in one flowing shot. It’s typical Michael Gondry (whose style shows up the most in the film about Fats Waller that is shown at the end of the movie), and it’s a lot of fun.

I guess you could say this movie is all about people exceeding expectations of them—Black and Def (can you refer to him by his last name?) show that they are worth something, that they can create something great, and win the affection of the town rather than just being Clerks-type employees. And so, the movie is like the moral! But that’s really a stretch. It’s a friendly movie, and pretty much a vehicle for the odd pairing of Gondry and Black and Def, but that’s a good thing. It could have been funnier in parts, but as I said, it was much more than I expected. My only real qualm (and perhaps this is just my poor internet abilities) is that the website mentioned in the end credits, which supposedly contained full versions of all the sweded movies, did not exist (or no longer existed when I looked). If this has moved, and someone knows where it is, please let me know!

Review: Pulp Fiction (RATING: 9/10)

People have been nagging me to see this movie for a very long time. They kept saying that it was “just the kind of movie I would love.” This of course made me pretty scared of seeing it, for two main reasons. One is that it would not live up to its expectations, and the (perhaps more important) other being that I was sccared to see what kind of movie people thought I would like. This added to the fact that I had heard that it was pretty violent made me shrink from watching it.

But eventually I was to come back from England, and reactivate my Netflix. The first movie that I was actually interested in seeing on my queue (because yes, I have many movies that I am almost never in the mood for on my queue) happened to be Pulp Fiction. So I bit the bullet and had it sent. Even then it took almost a week for me to actually get around to watching it.

And I’m very glad I did. It was not at all what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless. It was much less coherent than I had thought that it would be, with about three very vaguely related stories. (the Netflix summary, as inaccurate as they always are, stated that the twists and turns fit together in ingenious ways, going back and forth in time. This wasn’t really true.) Each one was compelling on its own, but the real greatness of this film is, as most people (except me) were probably aware, the dialogue. It wasn’t entirely real sounding, as Altman dialogue consistently is, but it was really enthralling. These characters, be they hitmen, mob bosses, boxers, or whatever, were just going around their typical duties, but they weren’t really paying attention to things. They were talking as anyone might do, just about interesting things, and, oh yeah, they have to shoot this guy. I had always heard about the hamburger conversation in the car (although it is one of the few famous movie clips I had actually never seen before I saw the film), and a few others, but actually seeing it all put together was great.

It wasn’t that violent, either. There were a few select scenes, but for the most part it wasn’t really shown on screen (unlike what I hear of Kill Bill, another Tarantino film I’ve never seen). It’s still not really something to take the kids too, but it’s certainly nowhere near the deterrent that I was thinking it might be. The plot of a heist, or crime (as told by the Netflix summary) was completely inconsequential, to the point of never actually showing the supposedly great Macguffin that was in a suitcase, only people’s reactions. (I like that as a stylistic choice, however I just hate it personally, because I really want to know what it was…) I did sort of wish that the plot did fit together a little better, and that there was a bit more of a story, but for what it was I loved it.

I came out of it not at all worried about what people thought of my taste in movies. I could easily say that I loved this movie, although it wouldn’t be on a list of my top ten or anything. Then again, I’ve already discussed my difficulty with top ten lists, so who knows, maybe it would be. If you, like me, have been putting off seeing this movie, I would go out and rent it as soon as possible. And, if you haven’t, check it out. It’s not what you might expect.

Upcoming Animation

I used to watch trailers all the time, but I’ve hardy seen a movie in a theatre for a while, so now I’m resorting to seeing them on Apple’s website. As a theme for this entry, animation!

G-Force: So, this is a movie about spy guinea pigs. There is no way I will ever see this. I think I may have been almost as horrified with this trailer as I was with Beverly Hills Chihuahua. And that’s REALLY hard to do. It does have Will Arnett in it, which may be its only redeeming feature.

Battle For Terra: Why didn’t they make this look good? It’s a kind of cool concept (with humans as—it seems—unanimously the bad guys), but it just looks ugly. The graphics are just kinda flat, and undetailed. They could have done much better. That being said, the cast is amazing (Brian Cox and David Cross in the same movie? What?), so there’s some hope. Not much.

Up: This looks pretty cool. I like the idea of a curmudgeon as a main character. The scout looks like he’ll be pretty annoying, but I think the interaction between the two will remedy that. I have no sense at all of the plot, but unlike “Terra” it looks nice, and it’s in 3D. So I’ll see it. Also, Pixar is usually really good (“Wall-E,” “Finding Nemo,” etc. etc.) They’ve done really well with all of their past ones (even “Cars” wasn’t that bad). I have faith in Disney. Granted, “G-Force” is also Disney. So maybe not.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Well I basically have to see this. I actually loved the original, and so I’m looking forward to this. It also comes out four days before my birthday, so that’s pretty cool. I like the many varying sizes of baddies in this. Though again, no sense at all of the plot.

Those are all primarily animation-based, even if not fully animated. Now, for one that’s not.

Surveillance: This looks pretty cool. I heard that it got a bunch of awards, so I’m kind of looking forward to seeing it. Seems a little scary though, and I’m not sure how the surveillance theme fits into a random road in the middle of nowhere. But it has Bill Pullman, who is awesome. And that’s all I need.

Trailer Reviews: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Year One

So, I’m starting to take a liking to reviewing trailers. damn. I might have to switch over to ‘trailerreviews.wordpress.com.’ Dan, if you feel I’m adulterating our pure vision for this blog, feel free to voice your discontent by having dreams where I play unflattering roles in movies.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs   -   5/10

Nisse asked for the review, and he shall have it. Funny, this book was more important to my childhood than Where the Wild Things Are, and I liked the trailer a lot less. I think that’s to be expected, the way I’m hard to please about Star Trek but not Transformers, the Battlestar finale but not an episode of Gossip Girl.

Still, I think its more. I don’t like what I’ve seen of recent computer animated films based on books. Wall-e was visionary, Kung-Fu panda looked interesting (didn’t see it) but Horton Hears a Who (didn’t see it) had a trailer that struck me much the way ‘Meatballs’ did. A good story that would take about 15 minutes to tell, stretched into an hour and a half with unnecessary backstory and America’s new template for jokes based of Jack Black’s lame/awesome dualism, dripping with intentional awkwardness and sarcasm (“Ratbird! Squeekle-squeekle-squeek!!”)

But this is a trailer review. I think in all likelyhood, Wild Things will have as much superfluous backstory as Meatballs. Wild Things, though, didn’t choose to show it. If Meatballs had based their trailer more fully around the beautiful shot of storm clouds rolling in over the pier and hamburgers falling slowly like descending angels, I think I would have been sold. Instead, the length of that scene was second to the length of a scene where the main character flies around on some rocket apparatus in order to show that he’s a ‘wacky inventor.’ The trailer talked too much, and loose lips sink ships. Now I know it’ll be another story of a misunderstood inventor who does something right, which is actually wrong, but then is right (remember the plot of ‘A Bug’s Life?’).  Who knows though, it is apparently written by the minds behind Clone High, so it might be worth a viewing.

Year One  -  7.5/10

Ha! this looks great. I’m usually not sold on comedies by their trailers, but this one isn’t a hard sell. Just as we were getting tired of Michael Cera, and maybe a little while after Jack Black had last made me belly-laugh, comes a brilliant idea: don’t try to force chemistry between these two geniouses of new comedy, just let them take turns saying Jack Black things and Michael Cera things, in the same scene! With a wacky ‘theme’ to boot! (Literally, this could have been themed “Pirates,” “King Arthur,” “World War Two” or “The 2003 Looting of the Baghdad Museum” and it wouldn’t have made a difference. This has the unadulterated feeling of a true ‘vehicle’ which maybe all of the Judd Aptow flicks have tried to avoid, even while capitalizing on the growing fame of their repeat-cast actors? I want to see it.

Notes On A Scandal (2009)

I’m not a purist about reusing intellectual properties, but it seems to be spiralling out of hand these days. A good movie-from-a-book has been a staple of film since its early days, but sometimes I’m surprised to learn how many of the titles at my local cineplex are recycled from the 70’s and 80’s.  Sometimes, a recurring IP is trying to cash in on fond memories of the previous iteration, like the upcoming Star Trek or a movie like The Italian Job. Sometimes, one isn’t good enough and someone else in the business thinks they can do a better job.  I was really surprised with Ed Norton wanted a crack at the Hulk just five years after another version.

That brings me to Notes On A Scandal (2009).  Three years ago this movie, adapted from a book, came to the screen. It was a powerful character study, and I loved Judy Dench in it. The Dame definitely stood out to me  more than Cate Blanchett in the film, but as I recall Cate did a good job as well. Suffice it to say I was shocked to discover that this remake had all of the same characters cast, except for Blanchett. Taking over the role of the teacher caught between two creepy relationships was Meryl Streep. As far as I could tell, the scenes were shot with great care to be exact copies of those from the 2006 movie.

I think I might have given Notes On A Scandal (2006) about an 8 out of 10 when I saw it a few years ago. I loved the depth and the honesty of the characters, not to mention Bill Nighy.  I’ll have to give the same score to the 2009 remake, although I can’t shake the feeling that it was somehow superfluous.

In other news I apparently spend too much time staring at a damned computer screen trying to re-word my thesis statement and typing through hoops on government job applications to dream anything even vaguely original. I can’t wait to graduate.