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Where the Wild Things Are

Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are is a beautiful movie.
I must state right up front though: NOT FOR KIDS. Not at all for kids. Probably not for anyone under 18.

SIDEBAR:
On the one hand, you can say "giant monsters?" but art is art. We should never mistake style for audience. You can do cartoons, puppetry, masks, all sorts of theatrics, all just for adults.

It is unfortunate that Jonze picked a children's story as the basis for a story intended for adults, but they should have made that clear in the marketing.
END SIDEBAR

The story is a meditation on what it is to be human, the joy and the pain. It's about the gift and the tragedy of the terrible power of our minds to imagine impossibilities, and to achieve great things. It's about the extraordinary imagined self, versus the entirely ordinary reality of ourselves. It explores our casual cruelty and our profound regret, our anger and our freedom.

It shows, as clearly as you can without having a single person alone as in Cast Away, our solitude, our otherness, our isolation, even amongst others.

The young actor who carries the movie, Max Records, the only human we see for the vast majority of the screen time, is extraordinary in what must have been a very difficult role (the world created looks great on screen, but it must have taken great imagination to live it in the moment). He conveys a wide range of emotions very convincingly and naturally.

I identified strongly with this movie because I spent a lot of time as a kid alone, moving in the real world yet simultaneously moving through my imagined world.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 20:21 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

What Star Trek could do

Star Trek can play the following roles:

1. Real information about science
2. Sense of wonder about space exploration
3. Envision future technology
4. Envision future society

The original series gave us 2, 3, 4. Some good science but it was never a focus.

Next Gen was ok with sense of wonder (although a bit muted since they were on a cruise ship) and was amazing with its vision of technology. It also had a very ambitious vision of society, unfortunately one so utopian (no money, everyone is nice, everyone is understanding, all is done by consensus, blah blah blah) that it made for terrible drama and would be a bloody boring future to live in. They pretty much dodged anything remotely controversial, unlike the original series.

The terrible particle-babble ("tetrions") of the Next Gen was a tragic lost opportunity, considering this is as close as millions upon millions of people will get to science.

There is also a major flaw in the "envision future society" bit - Roddenberry had a very progressive vision in the 60s with equality of women and races - the obvious modern equivalent would be with sexuality, but there are no gay people in the future in Star Trek. That's pretty lame. Why not make Sulu gay? After all, he is.

Plus which, for the straight guys like me, could we have some more interesting women characters? Seriously 7 of 9 and T'Pol? Hey, look at our b00b1es! You can have way way more interesting characters like BSG Starbuck and Boomer, who are complex and not in the barbie doll mold but still super hot.

The new Trek movie is FAIL:
1. terrible science
2. you barely know you're in space and no one is excited about it
3. no technology vision
4. a society that appears to be basically identical to our current one in every way

Wow, that's quite the science fiction adventure you've put together there, except without the science, and the science fiction, and the vision, and the future.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 20:47 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Star Trek: the problem of Delta Vega

(I'm pretty sure in the movie they said Delta Vega 4, but whatever.)

SPOILEROILEROILER

This is VERY BAD SCIENCE.

So this place looks to be like 100,000 km from Vulcan - in other words, it has to be a moon, or the spectacularly unlikely case of a planet sharing the EXACT SAME ORBIT.

But Vulcan is basically a desert, while with Class M breathable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, while Delta Vega is all ice, also with Class M atmosphere.

But they should be receiving the same amount of insolation.
So ok let's assume we have only seen the equatorial regions of Vulcan and we just happen to be seeing one of the poles of Delta Vega.

So we're obviously in the Vulcan star system, but there's only a Federation base there?
Don't you think the Vulcans would have a nearby moon covered with science bases?
What's the Federation doing with a base in the Vulcan solar system?

Makes no sense.

The unofficial info in Memory Alpha is very disheartening

Although the Delta Vega depicted in Star Trek is located in the Vulcan system, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman named it after the planet in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In an interview with TrekMovie.com, Orci said, "We moved the planet to suit our purposes. The familiarity of the name seemed more important as an Easter egg, than a new name with no importance." [1]

According to writer Roberto Orci, the part of the mind meld sequence in which Prime Spock sees the destruction of Vulcan was meant to be "as impressionistic for a general audience." The idea was that Spock saw the planet's destruction through "a telescope or some other type of measuring device," but showing it that way on-screen "isn't very cinematic." However, Orci himself prefers to think of Delta Vega as being in close orbit of Vulcan. [2]

This is one of the fundamental problems of modern science fiction, which is you have these TV and movie writers who know nothing about science or about the genre, and think it's just an excuse to make stuff up. This was particularly prevalent in the Next Generation, where it was clear they had writers from like random network TV shows writing stories for a completely different genre.


Things have names for a reason.
Scientists don't go hmm... ok that's alpha Centauri and right next to let's put Gamma Tarkania.

And you couldn't have Spock looking through a telescope? He's f&#king SCIENTIST for Christ's sake. He's SUPPOSED to look through telescopes.

Sigh.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 20:25 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Star Trek: the problem of time travel and Spock

*** SPOILERS ***

The Problem of Time Travel

Time travel, like any deus ex machina, always leads to major plot problems.
Most plots just avoid the issues entirely, and hope that the entertainment outweighs the flaws.
Sometimes they have the characters explicitly state: "um yeah if you think about this you'll get all tangled in temporal paradoxes so don't bother".
Others try to constrain the time travel in such a way as to make it possible only under circumstances that serve the plot.

There is lots of time travel in Trek (particularly Voyager), including in Voyage Home (ST 4) and First Contact (ST 8), both of which are movies I like.

The problem with unconstrained time travel is it breaks the rules of drama. In time travel stories, people are always rushing against time, while you're thinking... um, what's the rush? Just travel to yesterday sometime and fix it.

Now add to this the problem of Old Spock ("Spock Prime"). One of the ways you can get around time travel issues is by having the characters not know how it works, or how it happened. But Spock is a Science Genius. He has perfect recall. He knows 150 years of Federation history and galactic science. He's already travelled back in time in Voyage Home and knows about the Guardian of Forever, and he almost certainly knows about the Bajoran time-travel orb, just for three examples, plus he has this ship full of handy black-hole-making red matter AND he has Scotty, Super Engineer/Scientist. You're telling me out of all the thousands upon thousands of planets, devices, civilizations and scientific advances he knows about, there isn't one that would let HIM travel back in time AGAIN?

Particularly considering HIS ENTIRE PLANET INCLUDING HIS MOTHER ARE NOW STONE DEAD?

All Spock Prime has to say is "hi, sorry for the inconvenience, I'm just going to fly backwards around the sun in a certain way and un-f*ck this timeline, nice meeting you".

The Problem of Spock

Spock Prime loves peace. He has 150 years of deaths and wars in his head. You're telling me the most important thing for him is to help the Vulcan Colony? He's not going to try to stop the war with the Klingons? Make peace with the Romulans? Stop the advance of the Borg? Go to the Delta Quadrant and mind-meld the Dominion into pacifism? Or provide advice and information about the galaxy so that in a thousand thousand ways large and small, death and disaster is prevented?

Makes no sense.

Labels: movie, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 07:49 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Star Trek review

*** SPOILERAMA ***

For those of you keeping track, this is Star Trek 11.

The Plot

The fundamental core of the plot makes no sense whatsoever.

What is the problem exactly

So first off, it's not clear what the underlying problem is. A sun is... going supernova? The Romulan sun? Err, you might want to all leave then, not much you can do about that. But a sun going supernova doesn't expand, it just goes boom. You're going to what, "absorb the energy" with red matter?

So why don't all the Romulans use their fleet and get everyone the hell out of there?
Why is Ambassador Spock flying the "fastest ship in the Federation"?

In this universe, are there still Romulus and Remus?

Not Enough Time?

Ok so this guy is sitting around in his giant mining ship near his home planet, for some reason, not helping anyone, and bam! Spock appears and bam! the planet is destroyed and bam! they travel through time and...

and then he IMMEDIATELY attacks a Federation ship?
So your planet is destroyed and you're somewhere else and your first thought is - hey, let's attack the nearest thing.

And your mining ship has tons of missiles that can lock on ships, ready to fire?

And he knows Spock was on the ship? And he expected Spock to do what exactly? Fly faster? Shoot the red matter better? What?

So your planet has JUST been destroyed, you destroy a Federation ship for no clear reason, and then, having travelled back in time (which means your entire beloved planet IS STILL INTACT AND YOU HAVE THE MOST ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN THE QUADRANT) you... sit in space and wait for 25 years for Spock's ship? Err, what?

So everyone on the entire mining ship is like, hey, our planet was destroyed but now we have it back, but we're so ?angry? that we are going to SIT FOR 25 YEARS IN SPACE and wait for a ship to appear.

So at no point did it occur to anyone... err hey, why don't we all go tell our families that their sun is going to explode, so they might want to relocate to a less killy planet. And oh by the way if we're feeling all vengeful (for some reason) we could use our future technology to make the Romulan Empire far more powerful than any other in the quadrant.

Ok so, they capture Spock and then drop him on... a moon I guess? Called Delta Vega 4 or something? Which has a very good view of Vulcan becoming a black hole? Like a VERY good view... so close you'd think it might be affected by the planet you know, imploding.

So the Vulcans who have lots of spaceships and technology, they just sit there while an alien ship drills a hole into their planet? Considering the amazing drilling platform was overwhelmed by TWO GUYS from Starfleet, the Vulcans couldn't have sent what, a flying scooter to crash into it? They have ZERO planetary defence? They have ZERO ships in orbit? They have ZERO ships on the surface? What?

Ok, so the Enterprise arrives into a sea of destroyed ships and no one is like, hmm, it's kind of a shame that ALL OF OUR FRIENDS FROM THE ACADEMY ARE DEAD. No one is like, hey maybe we should see if there are any escape pods?

And when Kirk finds out this is the guy who killed his father, he has no emotional response?

And when THE ENTIRE PLANET VULCAN implodes, everyone is like, oh my, what a great pity?

And then EARTH has no defences? STARFLEET ACADEMY doesn't have a single thing it can send against a mining platform in the sky RIGHT NEXT TO IT?

All is Darkness

So their awesome solution to destroying the Romulan ship is to turn it into a black hole? But wait a second, wasn't it JUST RIGHT NEXT TO EARTH? So now you've got a black hole, at a minimum, in the Sol system, and most likely, very near to Earth. Awesome. Brilliant plan.

No Sense of Wonder

One of the great things about the classic opening is the sense that, OMG, we're in space, isn't this cool and amazing. In this movie, these people could be anywhere. They're not excited to be in space. They're not excited to see the ship. Mostly the run or walk in corridors a lot, they could be in some building somewhere for all the difference it makes.


Very Bad Science Fiction

The whole thing is very very bad science fiction. Time travel, black holes, red matter, imploding planets - garbage.

Very Bad Drama

It is also very bad human drama and plotting. It makes no sense. Almost none of the human emotions map to any normal reactions.

Yes, they blew up Alderan in Star Wars, but that was decades ago. If you want to see what a modern reaction would be, even the crummy Enterprise series had a reasonable sense of what a reaction to an attack of this magnitude would be, and of course BSG had an actually thoughtful take on what this would mean for the survivors.

I know it's all part of the dramatic reboot: kaboom, look at me, I changed the timeline, kaboom, look at me, I blew up Vulcan. But it's going a bit far.

In particular, since the Vulcans were the core founding members of the federation, this will alter dramatically its evolution.

The Transfer of Command

So Spock has to relinquish command because he is emotionally compromised by the death of his mother (oh and incidentally the destruction of his entire planet), but Kirk is fine despite the exact same guy killed his father?

Plus which this "emotionally compromised" language is ridiculous. ALL Captains are emotionally compromised. There is perfectly good canon language and ship's practice to remove command: insanity or severe illness are the main ones. "No longer mentally fit" etc.

Plus which at a minimum Kirk and Spock should be under courtmartial for assaulting each other and other members of the crew.

The Role of Women

In a remarkably retro move, which I hope doesn't indicate the current state of our society, women have basically no active role to play in this version of Star Trek. Their permitted roles are to be a helpless mother giving birth, to be a basically non-present mother with at most a couple lines, and to be sex objects, green or black or otherwise.

Head of Vulcan council is man, head of Star Fleet review board is man, security guards are men, all men all the time.

Uhura's entire role consists of being an object of Kirk's attention, being Spock's lover, and one time saying "I know Romulan but they're not saying anything so that doesn't help". I don't think she so much as pushes a single button in the entire movie.

This is completely anti the Roddenberry ethos. He was operating within huge constraints in the 60s, but he still managed to have women as scientists, ship captains, ambassadors... women in many different roles.

If he was doing Trek today, not only would he have women in all different roles (which is so normal today as to not even merit mention normally), including many command and action roles, but he would have a lot more diversity (instead of the usual "mostly white men plus some token colour / aliens") and at least one gay character.

The characters themselves

For some reason, they're all genuises except Sulu and McCoy.
Uhura - language genius (a la Enterprise Hoshi)
Kirk - unspecified genius
Spock - always a genius
Chekov - some kinda gravitational something genius
Scotty - general engineering / science genius

The general scope of McCoy's character is done well - one of the points you never really see in the series is he is much older than Kirk. But he doesn't actually do anything in the entire movie other than make Kirk sick. And say "I'm a doctor, not a X" a lot.

The only characters that get much development or actually do much of anything are Kirk and Spock.

That being said, as characters (physically and "presence" wise), they're all pretty good. Kirk and Spock are strong, McCoy and Chekov are the right ages, Sulu is fine. Uhura appears fine, kind of hard to tell since she had nothing to do. Scotty is much younger than he should be, but whatever.

The Academy

I thought the entire thing was going to be set at the Academy. Other than a few shots, what I thought would be the entire movie is skipped with "3 years later".

Captain Kirk

So the promotion path is: show up on a ship you're not allowed on, get arbitrarily immediately made First Officer, and then have your Captain in a wheelchair and become Captain. What is this, Klingon promotion? He's on ONE MISSION and he's Captain? Are you kidding me?

Galaxy Quest

Both the red matter and the ridiculous design of the mining ship were dangeously close to Galaxy Quest territory.

Star Wars and Banzai

Both the planet blowing up and the pointless alien companion for Scotty (Jar Jar Binkstar?) are rather close similarities to Star Wars.

The interrogation scene is oddly reminiscent of the interrogation in Buckaroo Banzai, right down to the unexplained water flooding the floor. (As a side note, their mining ship stocks mind-control bugs? How convenient.)

The Con

Basically the entire movie is just to set up Kirk in the Captain's chair, Spock as his first officer, Sulu and Chekov at the console, Uhura as the Space Secretary, Scotty as the engineer and McCoy as the gruff doctor. In an alternative trekverse.

They could have just started with that and done, you know, an actual movie.

The Alternative Universe

This is a rather convenient canon dodge. Why is X different? Oh yeah, Alternate Universe. In case you're keeping track, some highlights:

* Vulcan gone
* two Spocks
* Spock's mother dead
* Kirk's father dead (we never heard of in original series)
* Uhura Spock's lover
* Romulans look different
* They know way more about Romulans and Klingons than they did in original series

Faster Spacecat! Faster!

In keeping with our fast-paced modern times, it's much faster and more dynamic - the ships move faster, the people move faster. Which is entertaining for a blockbuster, but I don't know how sustainable it would be in a series.

Overall Ratings

3/10 as science fiction
6/10 as drama
8/10 as summer fluff

So basically what you would expect if you take a series that had some threads of science fiction, ideas, and character interaction, and make it a Summer Blockbuster.

In Conclusion

Abrams set out to make a dynamic movie about Kirk and Spock, and in that he succeeded. He also set out to re-cast the characters and put them all on the bridge, and he got there in the end. In any other aspect, the movie fails.


Reviews I Liked

* Roger Ebert
* IGN
* Huffington Post

The List

I think I have this in my blog already, but I couldn't find it quickly, so:

Star Trek 1: terrible. slowest. movie. ever. opening scene shows empty space for like 5 minutes. seriously.
Star Trek 2 (Khan): everyone likes this a lot. I think it's ok.
Star Trek 3 (Spock): also ok although I didn't like that they changed Saavik
Star Trek 4 (Earth): good
Star Trek 5 (god): terrible
Star Trek 6 (Klingons): not good. too many US references ("Nixon goes to China")
Star Trek 7 (Generations): I liked this a lot. almost perfect if they had just fixed up the themes a bit and given Kirk a better death
Star Trek 8 (Borg): also good except Data should have said "Resistance is NOT futile" and also Zephram Cochrane sucked
Star Trek 9 (umm, the one with the facepeeling guys): terrible
Star Trek 10 (Romulans and Picard clone who looks nothing like Picard): terrible
Star Trek 11 (reboot): acceptable as fluff but bad drama and terrible science fiction

Labels: movie, review, Star Trek

posted by Richard at 10:02 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 sucks

I liked the first one (IMDB gives it an 8) and I even somewhat enjoyed the second one (which my friends thought sucked),

but At World's End is utter garbage

incomprehensible plot

$300 million dollars

Can you think all the things you can do with $300,000,000?

Instead:
not funny
not entertaining
total junk
and it goes on and on and on (2.5 hours)

(and they give away the ending and talk about scenes that I don't think happened in the liner notes)

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 16:34 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Dark Knight IMAX

I'm just back from Dark Knight IMAX.
First things first: go early. I thought I was golden going at 2:30 for the 3:30 show and when I got to the ticket checker just in front of the regular entrance to theatre 8 (IMAX) at Silver City, she told me the line was outside (as in, outside the building) - I went outside (the opposite site from the main entrance) and discovered a lineup of at least 100 - 150 people.

You can get tickets online at cineplex.com with no service charge, I don't think you have to exchange your printout or anything, you can print scannable tickets at home (I saw people getting in with printouts anyway, although online it says "Please remember that you will need to present your printed ticket at any automated ticketing kiosk or the box office, in order to retrieve your tickets.")

The movie itself is good, definitely not for kids.
I found it drifted a bit in the middle (it's 2.5 hours long) but it ended strongly, which is an improvement over most movies.

I was pretty sceptical of this whole Heath Ledger Joker thing but he really does a great job of playing a terrifying psycho, and he has good plot and dialogue material to work with.

Whatshername scientologist woman isn't Rachael anymore, it's some other woman.

Definitely worth seeing, and it was cool in IMAX.

Photos of lineup to follow.

UPDATE 2008-07-28: The lineup

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 18:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

wisdom from 1938

Grandpa Martin Vanderhof: Lincoln said, "With malice toward none, with charity to all." Nowadays they say, "Think the way I do or I'll bomb the daylights outta you."

You Can't Take It With You - 1938

Labels: movie

posted by Richard at 21:06 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Bourne 1 & 2

Bourne Identity is very good. I particularly like the scenes in Paris, they really use the city well, plus which I was also on top of La Samaritaine, just like Bourne.

Me



Bourne



I think it's closed now.

I also liked that they closed the story off at the end of Bourne Identity.

Bourne Supremacy was good for about the first 3/4 and then it started to fall apart.
The car chase was way too long and not particularly interesting.
I did like seeing Berlin though, I want to go to Berlin.

They were both iTunes movie rentals, no problems, although unfortunately they are both wider than 16:9, so even on my widescreen LCD TV I only got a strip in the middle. Probably would have been better on the projector, I'm going to try movies from the laptop to the projector next.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 20:33 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Stardust (the movie)

Competently done but not a patch on the book.

Plus which please stop having Ian McKellen do voices. He's f-ing Gandalf.
If he wants to ACT, then fine, but if it's just voice as in Golden Compass and Stardust, it is very distracting.

Not sure why Clare Danes did the English accent, it sounded fine enough but I'm not English. She looked ok, but she needs to be careful. She looked totally anorexic on The Daily Show.

Plus which, a week? So he masters sword fighting in what, two days?

Plus which I didn't really buy the relationship, she's supposed to have a lot more antipathy towards him at the start.

But overall it was fine.

Well, the gay pirate was a bit over the top.

IMDB: Stardust

Oh and I don't see the point of ending a song-less period fantasy piece with a modern song over the titles. It don't fit.

In one scene Tristan's nemesis (Humprey) looks so much like the guy from Princess Bride (Wesley) that I thought he was the guy from Princess Bride (ok, I didn't know that was made 20 years ago... I'm just saying, they looked very similar).

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 21:58 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Golden Compass: it's no Northern Lights

The Golden Compass is a serviceable adaptation, that's about it. The daemons, the actors, the settings/scenery - all quite good. But the plot adaptation was a total hash from start to finish. Now I realise it's no mean task taking what was a ~11 hour unabridged audio book and making it a 2 or 2.5 hour movie. But it seemed to miss the whole point of the plot arcs and character exposition, and pick out minor elements, or in many cases, invent elements entirely out of whole cloth, or change events.

I originally listened to the audio book on the plane - didn't know much about it, was just trying to find something in iTunes that was roughly the right length that might be interesting, had vaguely heard of it.

The audiobook is unabridged with full voice cast, it's really well done, and the story is compelling.

What is the story?

What are the plot themes and arcs?

Well you have morality
- the hard choices of the basically good Master
- Mrs. Coulter and her cruel quest for power
- Lord Azriel and his single-minded quest to destroy the Magisterium
- the basic goodness of the 'gyptians
- the alien, honour-bound goodness of Iorek Byrnison

and you have adventure
- Lyra's escape and recovery by the 'gyptians
- the journey to meet Lord Farr
- the journey to Trollsund
- the journey to Volvanger (Bollvanger?) with the side journey to the haunted town
- capture and learning about Bolvanger
- escape from Bolvanger

and you have mystery
- the mystery of the Gobblers
- the mystery of Dust
- the mystery of Bolvanger
- the mystery of the City in the Sky

Plus there's this whole witch prophecy thing which is a minor element.
Plus probably stuff I have forgotten.

So to me the main arc is getting Lyra first to Trollshund and then to Volvanger, the devastation of the discovery of Volvanger, and the escape and climactic battle.

The secondary arc is getting to Svalbard, tricking the bear king, Lord Asriel, and the climactic ending. I really feel this second arc is quite weak, almost as if Pullman had needed to get Lyra to Lord Asriel, and so wrote the whole first arc kind of as a necessary task, doing an amazing job of it, but then when he gets to his Main Agenda about God and whatnot, it begins to fall apart - the bear king bit just doesn't quite ring right, why is she calling Iorik "my dear" all of a sudden? Goes all lectures about original sin and all. You can tell it's going downhill as soon as she gets in the balloon to go there, and there is page after page (or in my case minute after minute) of blathering about free will and prophecies and Grand Designs.

The ending is shocking and amazing though.

So, how is one to construct a movie out of this?

The opening scene basically sets up the entire book:
- Lyra and Pan, two aspects of one person
- the mystery of Dust
- the lure of the North and the Northern Lights, the city in the sky
- the armoured bears, the panzerbjorn

what else do you need - well you need to see that Lyra is strong-willed, independent, a creative liar, a playful child. And see her friendship with Roger, and hear of the Gobblers.

and finally she has to get the aleitheiometer
(I may be spelling these things wrong, keep in mind I've never actually read the written words of the book)

you also need to early on explain about the whole daemon thing, and the rules of daemons, and the horror of not having a daemon

And I can see in the movie, the pieces are there, but they just don't jell.

In particular the movie totally bludgeons the mystery arc, both with the opening narration that spills all about Dust, as well as ridiculously simple "Here's a page explaining everything, here's a scene where we explain everything" stuff.

So here's my movie:
- open with a professor at Jordan College lecturing about daemons, explaining their properties etc. Just enough to learn the basic facts - every human has one, they disappear when we die, a human without a daemon is an impossibility, a horror beyond imagining, humans don't touch other daemons, the daemon is an external soul, children's daemons can change, adults are fixed.

Maybe Lyra is sitting outside on the roof half-listening, then she runs off to go investigate the Retiring Room

Full scene in Retiring Room basically direct from the book - it is the key setup scene of the entire story.

Then you need a few scenes to set up her life in Jordan, to give you a sense of the years she has been there, to set up the aspects of her personality, establish who she is, and to set up her friendship with Roger.

Gets the aleitheometer, off to Mrs. Coulter's, montage of shopping, etiquette, admiration of Mrs. Coulter. Then party and devastation as she discover's Coulter's true nature. It's important to show the adults, so blandly chatting about evil things. Flee.

1st minor excitement scene: capture and rescue

Long sweep of sequences with Gyptians, hiding, the meeting with Lord Farr, planning. By now we should be at about the 35 minute mark. Sail to Trollsund. Meet Scoresby, help Iorik.

1 major excitement scene: Iorik's armour and the prevented battle
about the 45 minute mark

I would skip the witches entirely at this point, I don't think there's time for that whole aspect of the story.

Do a brief sidebar with Lord Asriel setting up his luxury research station, just so we don't forget he exists.

Preparations for the cold, sledges loaded, sled dogs...

(In the movie, they show people walking with a small amount of gear through some woods... then this magically turns into a giant ridiculously elaborate camp, plus a giant balloon.)

So here you stretch time out a bit. This journey should feel long, and hard, and cold, yet amazing, as the Northern Lights stretches across the sky.

(Incredibly, the movie DOES NOT SHOW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS AT ALL.)

If there is some needed exposition, that wasn't covered in the first leg of the Gyptian sail, it can be added in on this leg of the journey.

So at least 10, maybe 15 minutes to get to: side trip to rescue Billy Costa. At least 5-10 minutes to try to convey the difficulty and horror of this discovery and the pain of his broken return.

So about 60 minutes in we find out what they've been doing at Bolvanger.

Bang after that: the attack, 2nd major excitement.

From attack basically quickly snapshot some scenes, a couple minutes at most to get her to Bolvanger.

Bolvanger is IMPORTANT. It's about the banality of evil. It's about how Lyra works against the system of the adults. You need to spend TIME there, it's THE major element of the plot. Minimum 30 minutes of Lyra meeting the kids, telling her lies, making her plan, exploring...

90 minutes into movie: MRS COULTER
bang the intercision attempt
bang the escape plan in action
bang the

Spectacular battle conclusion, as she rescues Roger, and Iorik and the Gyptians triumph.

So we should be about 110 minutes into the movie by then.

Amazing balloon trip - emphasize scenery, arrival at Svalbard, attack of Cliffgasts

115 minutes in: next battle, Cliffgasts

quickly get to the bearfight, maybe 5-10 minutes MAX

125 minutes in: BEARFIGHT

another 10 minutes to get her to: Lord Asriel's research station

5 minutes of chitchat

145 minutes in: The Betrayal

The end.

Whole thing wraps in say 155-160 minutes.

Instead we get:
- bunch of gratitutous made-up Magisterium scenes
- no character exposition for anyone - from watching the movie, can you describe anyone's personality to me, other than maybe Mrs. Coulter's? their daemon's personalities?
- this weird glowing orb technology for no reason, including a scene of some orb-powered coach for no reason
- Iorik exiled for being DEFEATED? Are you freaking kidding me?
- no sense of the connection with the daemons and the incredible evil horror of intercision
- no Mystery of the Dust
- no Mystery of the City in the Sky
- no sense that Lyra, and the Gyptians, and Lee Scoresby, and Iorik, they all have a *moral* compass and stand in opposition to the banality of the other adults who have none
- no sense of the horrifying, incredible evil of Bolvanger, where adults torture and destroy chi1dren and call it science

What we get is:
bang a thing happens, bang a thing happens, bang a thing happens, ..., the end

Audience: the movie doesn't seem to know who its audience is. The book, despite all the nattering about "children's book", is actually much more for young adults, say 14+.

The Church Police: The book is not much about religion or the church at all. Basically you have an alternative universe where The Church runs... everything. In the background. This means the church is so gigantically big, it does everything. It had good groups and bad groups. It does science, both for good and ill. It is not really an actor in the foreground in the book at all. No one in the book thinks much about the church, except Lord Asriel, for the rest it's like anyone who lives in a religious society - it's just normal, something in the background. The book itself doesn't really touch much on religion, other than the obvious fact that one arm of the Magisterium is supporting Mrs. Coulter's mad project. It's only at the end when we get back to Lord Asriel that we have to put up with his blatherings about original sin. That being said, the 2nd book has more aspects related to the church, and the third is all religion, all the time, what with being about killing God. (The 2nd and third books, incidentally, suffer greatly from this, to the extent that the 3rd is basically unreadable.)

The movie, rather to my surprise, actually talks a lot more about the Church (in its Magisterial guise) and it wanting to control people, and makes it appear that it is a single monolith with the Bolvanger project being approved and directed right from the top. I honestly don't know why they did that, they'd have been better off sticking more closely to the book on this aspect.

Also the voice of Gandalf coming out of a bear, so distracting that when they came to an ice bridge, I kept thinking "say You Shall Not Pass... say You Shall Not Pass".

This movie, at least for someone who read and loved the book, is only passable.

Labels: movie, rant, review

posted by Richard at 22:44 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Harry Potter 5 IMAX

IMAX is PFC.
3D worked well too.

Movie Better Than Book.

I hated the book. The movie was good.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 21:59 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Faun's Labyrinth

Watched Pan's Labyrinth. I liked it a lot. The violent bits unexpectedly freaked out some of my friends.

Labels: movie

posted by Richard at 21:57 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

the good dahlia

I thought The Black Dahlia would be an interesting noir-ish mystery, but instead, while it has nice set decoration, it is long and boring and complicated. It goes on and on and on... and quite frankly at some point (after the world's least-secret 1esbian nightclub, which was much more boring than it sounds) I gave up.

Didn't finish watching.

Not recommended.

In the trend of long, dull movies, you can add The Good Shepherd. While I'm sure it is accurate that bland, cold men from Yale went about attempting to construct a world order with mixed and often disastrous results, I'm not sure I have to watch it unroll hour after hour.

Watch The Quiet American instead.

PS Super-smart spy guys, here's a hint: if a woman wants to sleep with you, she is a always a spy and the room is bugged. You might not want to tell her, say, all of your top secrets.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 06:27 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

movies

Idiocracy - as with a lot of movies, there's a small and potentially somewhat amusing idea, stretched way beyond the capacity of the writers, and perhaps of the idea itself

Not recommended

Blood Diamond - another one where the plot couldn't match the basic ideas. some lovely scenery though. But not so much fun in Africa.

Not recommended.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 03:17 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Stranger than Fiction

I liked it a lot.
Very well played.

Labels: movie, review

posted by Richard at 22:22 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)