Someone got me ABRAHAM LINCOLN-VAMPIRE SLAYER on Blu...trading it in...not very good and nowhere near as good as the book.

AndyDursin wrote:She was very good in the decent re-prequel of THE THING, plus SCOTT PILGRIM. She's incredibly attractive but also very talented and a favorite of MJ and yours truly.

She also got good reviews for the recent indie film Smashed, which unfortunately never opened anywhere I could see it. Like Andy said, she's the rare really beautiful young actress who also has true acting talent and screen presence. She's been due for a major breakout role for the better part of a decade, and I wish she were getting the kind of roles that usually go to the pretty-but-bland likes of Jessica Alba.

LIFE OF PI

9.5/10: Along with AVATAR, the best 3-D film to use that process without seeming like a gimmick, this film is a spiritual journey of a young Indian man who, after a shipwreck that causes a traumatic change in his life, finds himself the sole human survivor sharing a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Yup, a tiger named Richard Parker. This is only one of many amazing aspects in Ang Lee's new film, which is either a fantasy weaved by a man to explain a family tragedy, or...the real thing. A writer visits a man whom he has been told lived a miracle, and the man agrees to tell his story. From his experimenting with different religions to getting a life lesson about tigers and humans to his father suddenly uprooting his family and their exotic animals to move to Winnipeg, this young man is on the cusp of adulthood when the ship carrying his family and the menagerie is sunk during a monstrous storm at sea (an astounding sequence that makes a similar one in THE PERFECT STORM seem like a mild shower) and aside from a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and the tiger, he is the sole survivor, and eventually it is just him and Richard Parker (the way the tiger is re-introduced will make you jump about 3 feet out of your seat) in the middle of nowhere.

How this boy survives, along with seeing a whale make the most spectacular leap, finding himself on a floating island populated by meerkats and a supposedly carnivorous forest and killing a large fish so that he may train the tiger to respect and possibly fear him (although by the end of the journey you find yourself wanting to shout out "Don't hurt or kill the tiger!"), will keep you riveted. There is not much plot, so to speak, but the story that the narrator weaves is spellbinding enough to make you want more.

Lee is one of the most fascinating directors working today, and with the exception of his HULK film (which, although a misfire was still visually interesting) and considering that this film is from a book that many considered unfilmable (that makes two this year, along with CLOUD ATLAS) you have to wonder after watching this, "how could you not make a film of this story?" You HAVE to see it in 3-D, since it was shot that way but also for certain parts that use the process beautifully plus, for parts which do not require it, it has nice little subtleties that you would miss in 2-D (dissolves from one part of the story to another are done this way).

Astounding.

SCROOGE (1970) 7/10

Well made musical version of the classic Dickens story with Albert Finney doing a fine job as the title character. The production design is terrific, jsut what you want to see in any adaptation of A Christmas Carol and the widescreen cinematography is great, too. The songs are hit and miss though. After finishing the movie, the only one that truly stuck out was "Thank You Very Much" which is still stuck in my head. Maybe I would grow to like some of the other songs if I watched the movie again. The one sung by Scrooge and Isabel during the Ghost of Christmas Past sequence was nice. By far the strangest sequence was when Scrooge found himself in Hell, but at least that meant we got to see more of Alec Guinness's completely loopy performance as Marley.

The Marrying Man (1991): 6.5/10

Elisabeth Shue alert!!! Seriously, a bunch of these bargain Mill Creek Blus just started selling for a buck apiece at Dollar Tree stores, so I figured I've give some of them a spin. Too bad Shue is totally wasted as "the other woman" (replete with dowdy brunette hair) in this otherwise mildly charming, great-looking romcom.

Ghost Town (2008) 6.5/10

Actually, I like this film. At least it is different from the usual boy meets girl, boy loses girl ... Ricky Gervais is a rather pasty looking dentist who falls in love with the widow (Têa Leoni) of smooth-talking and very dead Greg Kinnear.

Someone should have told the screenwriters that getting hit by a bus - on camera - -twice - is not funny.

Unfortunately, Gervais' character is so repellant at the beginning of the film, and the film is so crude in getting across his difficulties in dealing with people, that I found it hard to believe he would be an attractive catch for anyone.

A certain sophistication seemed to creep into Gervais' character as the movie progressed, but this should have been there from the beginning. Its a shame, because there are people like that out there - I know a few myself.

Gervais does overcome his character's repellant personality enough to sell the plot. Têa Leoni is great as the love interest: she gets across that her character is slightly loopy (I loved how she looked so turned on and rabid when talking about her pet mummy) and intelligent enough to recognize the good qualities in Gervais' character. She is also very warm and sympathetic.

So a worthwhile film - different - but not as polished as it needed to be to achieve its ambitions. Definitely, I found it hard to anticipate where things would end up and that is refreshing.

21 Jump Street (2012): 8/10

Hey Mikey, I liked it! I thought the trailers for this were frigging DREADFUL, but following a weak opening fifteen minutes or so, the film just started making me laugh...unexpected titters at first, but bigger and bigger until I was laughing out loud by the climax. A lot smarter than I expected, and I never, ever expected to like Channing Tatum in anything. It even generates some genuine emotion in spots, not bad for an unneccesary comedic remake of a cheeseball 80's TV show.

Jimmy Reardon (Elmer Bernstein version) (1987)

A bittersweet, touching story about an irresponsible -- though likable -- teenager whose relationship with his parents, his girlfriend, and his life in general basically implodes over the course of 24 hours. Great performances from River Phoenix and Meredith Sallinger (and a sad reminder of what a great career Phoenix might have had if he'd lived).

I don't know why this film wasn't more successful. It certainly has more heart and more believable characters than just about any other teen flick from the 80s. Perhaps audiences had tired of the teen movie genre by 1987 (especially after the glut of John Hughes movies).

I've never seen the American cut of this film (which was scored by Bill Conti). But I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would have rejected Elmer Bernstein's original score. It's unquestionably one of his best of the 80s, and suits the film perfectly, with a great main theme that develops into a title song over end credits, with lyrics by Don Black, and sung by no less than Johnny Mathis. (Why don't they release this score on CD?)

Meredith Sallinger? There's a name. I remember her vaguely as someone who struck me as very attractive but a person I never saw in any movies.

Gotta hunt that movie down.

sprocket wrote:Meredith Sallinger? There's a name. I remember her vaguely as someone who struck me as very attractive but a person I never saw in any movies.

Gotta hunt that movie down.

Meredith weathered the years well...just looked her up -- she's on Twitter! (Caution: heavy political commentary at times. Not 'followed' on my list lol).

https://twitter.com/MeredthSalenger

The American poster for Jimmy Reardon was obviously designed to make it look like just another contemporary 80s teen flick...



When in fact the film takes place in the early 60s!

World War III (1982) 5.5 of 10

-This 1982 miniseries was just released by Warner Archive though oddly, they've formatted it for widescreen even though it doesn't show any signs of having been shot originally that way (and I wouldn't understand why that would have been the case way back when). This was the first time i ever heard a Gil Melle score and at the time (I was only 13) it was the first ever electronic score I'd ever heard which made me wondering "What the heck is all that?" It often sounds very discordant but with hindsight it's obvious they were going for an eerie tone that climaxes with their "Fail Safe" style montage signaling nuclear war has begun and I'll admit what Melle pulled off there may be the scariest sounding composition I've ever heard in my life. On that point I have to give him credit.

-Acting wise we have some good performances from Rock Hudson as the President (still looking in good health at the time) and Brian Keith is a more convincing Russian here than he was in the horrible movie "Meteor." This was also the first time I ever saw Jeroen Krabbe in any production and its easy to see how he graduated to more important roles as the 80s progressed since his nuanced portrayal of the Soviet invasion leader works. ' Not effective though are David Soul as the American colonel thrust into resisting the Soviet leader and the presence of Cathy Lee Crosby comes off as absurd window dressing.

-Story wise, it's a bit hard to figure out what to make of this. It has the aura of seeing an event like the Cuban Missile Crisis escalate out of control ultimately so that leaders who are not thinking this is going to lead to nuclear war ultimately feel boxed in on the subject. It almost seems like the film is trying to make some statement about how pride is responsible for why the American and Soviet leaders keep pushing and escalating until finally both go over the edge and neither is willing to trust the other to back off. The Soviets drop a commando team into Alaska to sieze and damage the pipeline if the Americans won't lift a grain embargo that is contributing to domestic turmoil inside the USSR. The President though, quite rightfully takes the position that he is not going to submit to that kind of blackmail in which Americans must be forced to sell their own resources. Is the point supposed to be that there should have been less "saber rattling" in response to this? Which of course would seem to suggest that this film, made during the early years of the Reagan Administration, is much like "The Day After" , which came out a year later, trying to make its stance against the "tough" rhetoric espoused by the early Reagan Adminstration (though the irony there is that Reagan reversed the Jimmy Carter grain embargo upon taking office because he saw it as counter-productive) as something more likely to lead us into nuclear war.
Indeed, since the Soviets resort to murder and slaughter to try and carry out a goal of blackmailing the Americans into submission, we're presumably supposed to believe we forced them into this step because of our "get tough" approach.

-If that's the case then, then it's overdue for people to look back on a film like this and realize that its message was proved wrong by history. Likewise with "The Day After" which was a big advertisement for the Nuclear Freeze. It has long struck me as funny how we will see critics look back at films or TV programs showing the US-USSR rivalary and how if its presented as a case of the good guys taking out the bad guys they call that "dated Cold War nonsense" (think of all the hysteria that still accompanies a review of the original "Red Dawn") but stuff like this (and you can throw in earlier efforts like "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe") are supposed to be "timeless" because they show some kind of "absurdity" in the Cold War struggle/competition. These critics evidently slept through the events of 1989-1991 and never learned the real reason why the Cold War ended peacefully and it was precisely because of the policies films like this were so anxious to condemn (this point now is readily conceded by Soviet sources).

-Sorry for the lengthy discourse on this, but a film like this can't help but make me chuckle when I look at it from the perspective of history.

-One other postscript. I remember at the time this first aired there was also a paperback novelization of the miniseries that I read a number of times and the funny thing is how (1) it was laden with profanity that never had a chance of being on TV and (2) it had a very different ending. Soviet leader Brian Keith is not killed prior to the climax, and in the "cruel twist of fate" category the American team actually succeeds in repelling the Soviet team but because communications are knocked out, the American and Soviet leadership never realizes that this happens, presumes the Soviets have control of it now and thus they go over the edge because they won't back down and the Soviets won't back down.

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS

8/10

Pretty entertaining holiday film about childhood heroes (Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, the sandman) who are also guardians of a child's wanting to believe and (unspoken but implied) their innocence. A potential guardian-Jack Frost-is reluctant to sign up because 1) he does not know who he was/is, and 2) he does not think anyone believes in him, but Pitch Black (the boogeyman) is turning children around the world into non-believers and the guardians have to stop him.

That's pretty much the plot-there is some excellent voice work by Alec Baldwin as Santa-a Russian Santa, Hugh Jackman as a hardboiled (not like in FATAL ATTRACTION) bunny and Chris Pine as Jack, although there were times I thought he sounded more like Christian Slater. The 3-D animation is quite lovely, especially the snowflakes (the ending is nicely done), the use of surround sound is masterful (especially when Pitch is taunting Jack) and the Desplat score is pretty good. I did not like it quite as much as WRECK-IT-RALPH, if only because the action sequences were sometimes hard to keep track of and the other film had more laughs, which I have to admit appealed to me more, but it was never boring and a lot of the detail was just incredible. The animated feature category at the Oscars will be very interesting this year...

Eric Paddon wrote:Which of course would seem to suggest that this film, made during the early years of the Reagan Administration, is much like "The Day After" , which came out a year later, trying to make its stance against the "tough" rhetoric espoused by the early Reagan Adminstration (though the irony there is that Reagan reversed the Jimmy Carter grain embargo upon taking office because he saw it as counter-productive) as something more likely to lead us into nuclear war.

The Day After was one of the most laughably bad TV movies of all time -- regardless of where one stood ideologically. I remember it was first aired, there was a panel discussion on afterward, consisting of luminaries of varying world views, including William F. Buckley and Dr. Carl Sagan. Buckley slammed the production as silly and ineffective, prompting Sagan to admit "For once in my life I find myself in agreement with Mr. Buckley!"

I do remember watching that panel discussion at the time and the exchange you mention. I have never seen the movie since the night it aired and have no desire to. "World War III" at least has a little more going for it.

The most tragic thing associated with the production of World War III was how the original director, Boris Sagal, during location shooting literally turned around and without thinking where he was going, walked right into a rotating helicopter blade and was killed instantly.