Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

Archive for the ‘TV and Movies’ Category

Coraline is one of my favorite books for children, in large part because Neil Gaiman has a cleverness to his writing and imagination that lend themselves to such books. I find that such cleverness lends itself to children’s entertainment, especially those that can appeal to both children and adults (such as the Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons of old, or Animaniacs). Gaiman’s worlds are unique, and his prose is full of turns-of-phrase that I love, little ways of describing things that sound good to the ear and read well on the page.

When I heard that Coraline was going to be made into a feature film, I was very excited, and I enjoyed seeing the first trailer for it in the theater. I was, to be sure, annoyed that Gaiman’s name was not giving top or second billing in that trailer; in fact, he wasn’t even mentioned. Instead, the chief name was that of Henry Sellick.

If the name Henry Sellick is not familiar to you, that’s primarily because one of his best works is usually ascribed to Tim Burton: The Nightmare Before Christmas. While Burton was involved in the creation and production, much of the work, including the direction, was done by Sellick. That film is a perfect example of what I mentioned above: a clever, quirky children’s story that appeals to adults as well, and giving the tone of Nightmare, Selllick was a good choice for the creator and director of Coraline as a film.

However, after having finally watched it, I have to admit that I am, to a certain extent, disappointed.

And, I kinda feel bad about that.

See, I think Coraline is, independent of the source material, a good film. Henry Sellick makes fine, living, colorful worlds with interesting characters. I enjoyed the performances of all the voice actors: Teri Hatcher is great as the mother and other mother, John Hodgman’s father is, although not British (a small quibble I won’t mention again) spot on, and Keith David’s cat is appropriately smug. Dakota Fanning’s Coraline fits very well, and the others are great.  The film is also beautiful to look at. I haven’t researched how they achieved all of the animation effects, but there’s a wonderful dichotomy between what looks like computer animation and real world textures. Everything has a depth to it, and it’s wonderful to look at. There are scenes that are obviously meant to appeal to those watching the 3D version, but these work appropriately in 2D, and I didn’t feel pulled out of the film because of them.

Given how well everything works, it remains to find a reason for my disappointment. A part of it definitely comes from plot and character differences between the movie and the book, and this is one of those conundrums that fans of any book often find themselves in when it’s adapted to a movie. We want the movie to be exactly like the book, but we understand it cannot be. However, although we understand that it cannot be, we still (however slightly) resent the movie for not being the book. Admittedly, it’s not fair at all, but it’s just the way it is. No matter how much I try, I cannot approach this movie as someone who hasn’t read the book.  So take the following criticisms with a grain (or even a shaker) of salt.

First, I felt the character of Wybie to be completely unnecessary. That’s not to say I don’t understand why Sellick wrote him in (which I suppose to be to give boys a character to identify with and to give Coraline someone her own age to interact with), but I think it was not needed. What he did do was to take screen time away from Coraline’s interactions with the other characters, and I think this was a mistake. Wybie’s presence necessitates that some really great moments (especially between Coraline and the cat) had to be left out for time’s sake, which is, I think, always a problem.

Second, I didn’t care for the reordering of parts of the plot, specifically the number of times Coraline goes to and from the other world. Sellick adds one extra to-and-fro, and I feel this alters the dramatic tension. I think this might be one instance where the 3D imposed itself on the story; perhaps Sellick added one more journey to utilize the tunnel between worlds for the 3D version. Also, Coraline gets locked up with the ghost children earlier here, whereas in the book her parents are already missing and she has gone back to retrieve them. The separation of these events (her going back to get her parents and meeting the ghost children) weakens the story from a dramatic and thematic perspective.

My last criticism is really the reason that I think I was disappointed by Sellick’s Coraline. Although parts of the movie maintain some of the tone of the book, overall the book has a darker tone; the other world is not quite as happy, and there is more of a sense of danger even from the beginning. I suppose some people (perhaps Sellick himself) felt that making the other world lighter made it more appealing to Coraline, but I think this misses a key point of Coraline’s character. She is bored with the real world and craves something more interesting, even if it’s a little dangerous. And this is, for me, a completely believable character trait in a kid. For example, in the movie, Coraline is lured to the door in the drawing room by Mr. Bobo’s jumping mice. Certainly, this makes sense; the jumping mice are very cute. But in the book, Coraline is drawn to the door by hearing it creak open and by seeing a small dark shadow flit out from her room and into the drawing room. While this is much more creepy than Sellick’s version, the fact that Coraline is interested in the shadow and the creaking door fits with her character, and I think it makes her a more interesting and stronger character than just some girl chasing something cute.

Interestingly enough, there is one change in the movie that I think works. I like the way the other mother was portrayed as more like Coraline’s real mother. The reason I think this works is that this accentuates the weirdness of her button eyes, and in this way she comes across more disturbing than if the eyes were just one of many differences.

Given all of that, I did enjoy Sellick’s Coraline. It was fun to watch and continues the tradition of children’s entertainment that adults can enjoy as well.

UPDATE: Having watched the film again, I wanted to comment that I definitely appreciate it more the second time.  I think watching Coraline the first time worked out any disappointments/expectations that I had going in.  Now that all that’s worked out, I can enjoy the film on its own merits.

When Netflix Movie Streaming works, it is wonderful.  Sure, there’s a lot of really bad stuff in the movie section, but occasionally you come across a movie you might not have rented at the video store or caught on TV that is actually pretty good.  Death of a Ghost Hunter fits somewhere in the middle of the independent movie spectrum, but the next two movies, Dark Rising and Breathing Room, sit solidly on either side of that middle.

Dark Rising is a fantasy flick that, while it has a promising beginning, soon can’t decide what type of movie it wants to be.  It begins with Vincent Vale translating an ancient text late at night.  He is interrupted by his daughter Summer, who can’t sleep.  He takes her back to her room and tells her the stereotypical bedtime story about a beautiful princess who grows up to find her prince, to which Summer precociously replies “Why does a princess need a prince?”  After Summer is asleep, Vincent returns to his text, but he inadvertantly casts a spell when he reads the words aloud.  Woken by the noise Summer runs downstairs into the study, which is flooded with green light, and screams, her father yelling her name.

I thought this beginning part was interesting; I liked the interaction between Vincent and Summer, as well as the hint about Summer’s mother being dead (the ancient text was a gift from her).  The next couple scenes also piqued my interest.  First we see three girls, one of whom is asleep, pull up to a bookstore.  The sleeping girl (Renee) is having a nightmare about another woman being experiment on in an extremely vague way.  The other two girls (Jasmine and Marlene) wake her up.

The third (and final) interesting scene concerns Jason, who is talking about his ex-girlfriend while holding a ring that she had returned to him.  I liked this scene primarily because for a while we don’t see who he’s talking to: he could be talking to himself or a friend.  The reveal of who he’s talking to, and the playout of the rest of the scene, was quite enjoyable, and gave me hopes that this movie could pull off a combination of comedy and fantasy.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the high point of the movie.  I won’t go into the rest of the plot, which just gets convoluted with plot points that are never fully explained (perhaps in hopes of a sequel) and campy scenes (the relationship between Jasmine and Marlene is particularly exploited).  While I do commend this movie for establishing its characters and sticking to them (something recent Syfy Saturday movie Infestation couldn’t do), what it does with those characters is uninteresting.  The camp tends to crowd out the fantastical elements, and none of it is ever very funny past the scene with Jason talking about his ex (Jasmine).  Any plot holes are likely to remain unfilled given the chances of this movie getting a sequel.

On the other hand, I was quite impressed with Breathing Room.  The movie’s basic concept (strangers thrown into a room and forced to play a sadistic game) has become cliche by now (eg. Saw and The Cube), but this movie has a lot going for it.  First, I enjoyed most of the acting; unlike Death of the Ghost Hunter, I didn’t feel like I was watching community theatre actors.  Second, I love what they did with a limited budget (reportedly only $25,000).  They kept the cast small, the movie has exactly one location, and all of the effects were practical.  People not into torture porn like Saw will be pleased to know that, while many of the deaths (and of course there are deaths) are gruesome, they’re not dragged out in excruciating detail; they’re always quick affairs, with the action often taking place in the dark and only the end result revealed.  Like all of these movies, there is a twist, and while it may not be a subtle one, I still kept wondering (even if the end result was in my top list) what was going on.

Finally, there is a style to Breathing Room that I liked a lot, which is the very clean environment and bland, business-like plaques and notes giving the “players” various rules and hints.  The first plaque that main character Tonya (#14) reads, with it’s crisp sans-serif font and friendly manner reminded me of Valve’s videogame Portal.

So, there you have it.  If you’ve been keeping score, I’ve come out slightly ahead in viewing enjoyment in this Netflix Movie Marathon.

While browsing through Netflix on my Xbox 360, I came across Death of a Ghost Hunter.  Although I had never heard of the movie, the title intrigued me, and after reading the synopsis I decided to give it a try.  Death of a Ghost Hunter concerns Carter Simms and her investigation of the Masterson House, where the Masterson family was brutally slaughtered.  The film is shot in a documentary style, with opening and closing notes attempting to establish an air of reality, similar to that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Blair-Witch Project (which the characters of the film reference at one point).

A movie like this can fall apart very rapidly if it’s not handled right, but overall I enjoyed it.  I’ve always been disappointed by TV shows like Ghost Hunters, because  in the end you never really see anything.  After an episode, there’s still no evidence of a haunting; all you really have is people running around saying, “Did you hear that?” while tinted green by crappy night vision.  What this film does is take that basic reality-show idea and make a movie out of it, and for that it works.

Where the movie doesn’t work quite as well is in the acting and characterization.  For the most part the acting is not good.  It’s not terrible, but everything has an amateur air to it.  To the actors credit they never try to go over the top, but given the documentary feel of the movie, many of the lines are delivered in a “here’s my line” sort of way that clashes with the realistic feel the filmmakers were going for.  A fight scene between Carter and Mary Young (a stereotypical “everyone else is a sinner and going to hell” goody girl) is particularly bad.  Character-wise, there’s not a lot going on.  Carter is supposed to be the skeptic, but she never really displays that skepticism (nor is she given a chance to, as things escalate pretty quickly).  The two other members of her crew (hired by her employer, the current owner of the house) are also fairly bland; the cameraman is a wuss and the news reporter is supposed to be edgy, but their just not interesting.  Mary Young is perhaps the most annoyingly stereotypical character, however.  Her whole self-righteous act comes off extremely cliche.  Granted, it’s supposed to contrast to what happens later in the film, but it’s still cliche.

What makes this movie work for me, despite the acting and some of the lines, is the style.  The opening of the film is done as Carter’s journal entries, with her narration cut with dialogue in the scene.  I was worried that the whole movie would be like this, but the movie transitions into a more natural style once everyone’s in the house.  The build-up of weirdness is handled very well, with the situation getting more creepy all the way to the end.  The ending was also interesting, although I think it went a little too far in explaining things to the audience.

All in all, this movie did a good job of combining its basic components.  While The Blair Witch Project and Ghost Hunters are the most obvious, I think there is also a good bit of Richard Matheson’s Hell House in this as well, especially given the disturbing nature of what went on in the Masterson House.  This would be a good watch for most horror fans.

Chiller is like the poorer cousin of the SciFi (soon to be SyFy) channel, but I will give them credit for filling a niche in cable television.  The idea of a 24-hour horror channel is pretty cool, but I do wish, much like SciFi, that they had more quality stuff to show.  Regardless, even bad horror movies are often entertaining in their own right.  So, for this inaugural edition of “When Horror Goes Wrong,” I bring you two vampire movies: Rise: Blood Hunter and The Thirst: Blood Wars.

Rise: Blood Hunter’s only distinction is that it stars Lucy Liu as a reporter-turned-vampire/vampire hunter and Michael Chiklis (The Shield) as (what else?) as police detective Rawlins.  Liu’s character, Sadie Blake, is investigating vampire-themed parties and the deaths of two girls (one of whom is Rawlins’s daughter), and in the course of her invesitagion gets turned into a vampire by Bishop and his “family” of vampires.  After waking up in morgue, escaping, and killing a man in a homeless shelter, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge over a busy freeway.  She is recovered, alive but beat up, by Arturo, who gives her the tools and information necessary to begin her quest for revenge.  After destroying the other vampires, Sadie eventually teams up with Rawlins to destroy Bishop, but makes Rawlins promise to kill her after she kills Bishop.  They track down Bishop, discover Rawlins’s daughter Tricia turned into a vampire (then taken down by Sadie) and then kill Bishop.  Rawlins fulfills his promise to Sadie by stabbing her with a dart, but Sadie still ends up waking up in the morgue at the end of the movie.

I decided fairly quickly after watching a bit of this movie that I didn’t want to get too deep into it.  First, the movie annoyed by beginning in media res and then flashing back to six months before the opening.  Why is this a problem?  After all, starting a story in media res is a tried-and-true device, used with great effect in everything from The Iliad to James Bond.  There is a key to in media res that this movie completely misses.  What’s going on should be action, with the intent of capturing our interest.  The beginning of this movie, instead, is an abortive and completely superfluous lesbian kiss and Sadie shooting some old guy with a crossbow.  Furthermore, after starting in media res, the action of the story should continue moving forward and any relevant information about what went before can be filled in as we go.  However, this movie’s in media res is so far into the story that we have to flashback to six months before.

Second, the first (chronological) deaths that occur happen to, predictably, two collegey girls (the requisite blonde and brunette) who die essentially because they’re stupid.  The blonde is, of course, the stupider one, going first into this shady-looking house where the vampire-themed party is taking place.  The brunette (Tricia Rawlins) is only slightly smarter, going into the house to look for her friend.  Both end up dead, the blonde permanently and Tricia only so long as it takes for her to become a vampire.

Rise: Blood Hunter suffers from a strange illness that often affects B, C, or  D movies.  Paradoxically, the movie feels long but with very little happening.  The reporter-angle is never really covered, the characters are never really developed beyond stereotypes, and the big relationship of the movie (between Sadie and Rawlins) only happens near the end.  The character of Arturo, who seems to know what’s going on with vampires, is not seen again once Sadie begins her hunt, and Rawlins gets very little screen time until the end.  There’s supposed to be some sort of dynamic in his relationship with his daughter, but because she’s also out of the movie so quickly, that’s never developed.  Finally, with the exception of the beginning, it never tries very hard at horror, or mystery, or for that matter anything else this movie is supposed to be.

The Thirst: Blood Wars is a much different movie that Rise: Blood Hunters, but still suffers from the same feeling too long with little happening problem.  Thirst gets credit for two things.  First, it has Tony Todd (Candyman) as a the head vampire, and he has a good time hamming it up.  Second, the movie’s idea of vampire hunters: people almost turned to vampires, but who resisted the urge to drink blood, faced a sunrise, and survived, is actually kind of cool.  Like a lot of low-budget movies, however, this one fails to capitalize on its idea.

The movie takes place almost entirely on a college campus, and the reason is pretty obvious: it was a cheap (or even possibly free) location.  The acting is mostly horrible (except for Todd); lines are usually just said, rather than acted.  With the exception of the last couple minutes, the picture is very flat and uninteresting; bullet-time effects are used to dubious results a couple times, but other than that there is nothing interesting visually in this film.

Story-wise, I suppose it could have been interesting with a higher budget, but as it stands it wasn’t enough to really keep me interested, primarily because the characters are just stereotypes.  There’s Will, the “hero,” who’s a wimp, Jane, his potential love-interest and basic good-girl, Ash, the goth-girl, and Rico, a military buff, and Darren, jerky jock.  Darren, it turns out, is the son of a vampire hunter (called sentries), but he never went through the total process.  He did, however, receive some training by his dad, which he basically uses to bully people around.  When Darren attempts to rape Jane, Will tries to save her and stabs Darren with a piece of glass.  Darren bites Will and begins Will’s transformation into a vampire.  I have to admit that I missed exactly why Darren was able to turn Will; I’m assuming that Darren was able to do that because of his vampire-hunter heritage, but I really don’t remember.  Regardless, a vampire chick continues the turning process and gets inside Will’s head, encouraging him to complete the turning by sucking some human blood.

The rest of the movie basically boils down to this: Will resists his transformation and for some reason is super-strong, even for a vampire.  The vampire-hunter dad seeks revenge for the murderer of his son, and they all end of at vampire-leader Julien’s (Todd) coven for a showdown.  Various rather boring fight scenes ensue, and in the end Will resists the urge to feed and sees a sunrise, become a vampire hunter himself so he can hunt down the vampire chick who was in his head.

That’s really it.  I spent most of the movie confused about who was the vampire hunter’s son (for a while I thought it was Will), I still don’t understand fully how Will turned into a vampire, and I really don’t get why Will was so powerful.  They kept referring to Darren as a sentry, but according to his dad he wasn’t really a sentry, so that was confusing.  Plus there was a whole subplot of a struggle within the vampire coven and Ash wanting to become a vampire and throwing herself at Will and another vampire in the hopes of being turned.  With all this happening, I never really got a good handle on the movie, and that, combined with the bad acting and cinematography, just makes this barely even fun enough to watch ironically.

Overall, I have rarely been disappointed more by a vampire movie than I was by these two.  Neither one really embraced the whole vampire thing and had fun with it.  Instead, they usually took themselves too seriously and were unable to pull it off.

I’m finally back from an 8 day trek across Texas, down to the Hill Country, then to Houston, and back up to Lubbock; in all I clocked around 1400 miles on my car.  With my internet being spotty at best, I didn’t have much of a chance to post anything, but now that I’m back for a couple weeks, I should be able to get some more stuff up.  With that in mind, I thought I’d make a few comments on the upcomming SciFi Channel name change.

I mention in one of my reposts (Adventures in Bad SciFi – Bloodsuckers) that I have had a love-hate relationship with the channel.  Both SF (hard science fiction) and sci-fi (space opera, Star Wars, and other “(insert genre)-in-space” fare) are two of my favorite genres of literature, movies, comics, and overall entertainment.  Add horror and fantasy into the mix, and you have the vast majority of my reading/watching material right there.

However, I have not really watched the SciFi Channel as much as I expected to.  That has been a result of a couple of things.  First, much of what’s on it is bad.  It’s just not quality; hence my soon-to-be-resumed series ‘Adventures in Bad SciFi,’ which was inspired by the weekly “SciFi Channel Original Movies” that play on most Saturdays.  It is true that there has always been bad, cheesy sci-fi; it’s almost a subgenre.  But unless a movie is bad enough to be entertaining, then it’s just boring.

Second, I have reached a place in my life TV-wise where I just don’t watch much serial television the way I used to.  I haven’t watched a regular series as it airs in years.  Instead, I tend to watch TV shows (such as Doctor Who) in large chunks of episodes, on DVD, DVR, or other means.  As a result, I have yet to watch much of Battlestar Galactica, which is really right up my alley, every Friday.  I’m probably going to get the DVDs and watch it that way.

Thus, my SciFi Channel viewing as been spotty.  I also forgot that the executives at the channel have added shows that are either non-sci-fi/fantasy related (ala ECW; why is wrestling on it at all?) or reality shows (Ghost Hunters got old after 10 mins of one episode; “Oh, no!  It’s dark and our cameras can’t capture crap, but we’re all freaking out anyways!!!”) and I just get tired of that crap.

So, with all that said, how do I feel about the name change?  First, it’s a stupid name.  When I looked at it, it immediately became “sifee” (short i, long e) in my head.  They claim the renaming allows them to trademark the name (which they can’t do to a genre like “sci-fi”), but the claim that the new name somehow makes the channel easier to identify is ridiculous.  However, given my general feelings about the network as it is, I’m not really surprised.  I’m not going to boycott the new SyFy or anything like that.  I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing: barely watching it at all, except maybe every Saturday evening for a really bad “original movie.”

Front Row Crew – GeekNights » Blog Archive » Why it has to be “The Squid”.

GeekNights is one of my favorite podcasts, and they are huge Watchmen fans.  Scott, one of the two hosts, posted a short audio response to the change in the ending of Watchmen in the film version.  I have to admit that it had been so long since I read the original that I missed the ending change, but Scott’s argument is very well made, althought he admits that he hadn’t seen the movie yet (this was posted on March 5).  I’m going to be rereading it and posting my thoughts about it, so I’ll cover my thoughts about the ending when I get there.  If you’ve already watched the movie and read the graphic novel, then give this a listen.

Jen and I have just gotten back from Watchmen. (Currently, she’s looking up actors in the movie to see what else they’ve been in.) In getting ready for watching it, I did something that might seem counter to the normal way of doing things: I did not reread the graphic novel before hand. This is a case where I didn’t want my ideas about the comic to influence too deeply my opinion of the film. I know that sounds counter-intuitive; after all, those of us in the “geek cultures” of things like Lord of the Rings and comic books love to break down the adaptations into their components and compare those to our beloved works. But I wanted to approach this movie as it is and consider the work as an adaptation later. I can never, of course, be one of those for whom this movie is their first exposure to the work, but it’s been long enough since I’ve read Watchmen that I didn’t have every particle of the book in my mind, criticizing the film as I watched it.

By the way, the purpose of this article, as the title says, is just to get a few thoughts down, to sketch my initial impressions of the movie. It might be a while before I see it again (when the DVD is released, perhaps), so I want to jot down a few things before the memory fades.

I also want to follow up this article with a series of posts chronicling my rereading of the graphic novel. I got the idea from a series of blogs on tor.com, in which someone reread Lord of the Rings and chronicled their impressions of it. I think that might be an interesting idea to do for this and other works that I regard as classics, so look forward to that in the (hopefully) near future.

Now onto the sketch. Read the rest of this entry »

August 14, 2007
Catch Me if You Can and The Aviator
Filed under: Movies — duane @ 9:13 pm

My wife, Jen, and I recently watched a couple of DiCaprio movies that we had gotten in from NetFlix. Normally I would post a review of each of these movies separately, but since I’m not sure that I’ll actually watch these again anytime soon, I thought I would just get some of my thoughts down about each movie.

The first one we watched was Catch Me if You Can, which is based on the real-life Frank Abegnale, Jr., a teenager-turned-con-artist and forger. I have actually seen the real episode of To Tell the Truth that the movie opens with, so it was kinda cool to see it briefly with DiCaprio. The story is even more amazing given that it’s based on a true on; sure, there were certain liberties that were taken with it, but the idea of a teenager successfully impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, all while forging checks was really interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

In teaching Macbeth in my English IV classes this year, I have searched out various productions of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. Before this year I had never seen Polanski’s 1971 film of the play, but I found several activities that use it and so finally watched it.  There are several criticisms of the play, and responding to and considering each of those is going to be the primary focus of this article. Read the rest of this entry »

August 11, 2007
Adventures in Bad Sci-Fi – Bloodsuckers
Filed under: Movies, SciFi/Fantasy, bad scifi — duane @ 5:44 pm

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the SciFi Channel. For a sf/fantasy fan like myself, the concept is awesome. Unfortunately, throughout the years the execution has often left a lot to be desired. While one would think I would watch the channel a lot, the truth is I don’t. I haven’t cared for most of their original series, and even those with a premise I liked (such as Eureka) I just haven’t been that compelled to watch. And for every step they take forward, they always take at least one back. For example, it’s cool that they’re showing the new Doctor Who, but then they also show ECW wrestling, which has, as far as I can tell, no connection to scifi, fantasy, or horror.

With that said, one of the things I love about the SciFi Channel is one that I should probably hate: original SciFi Channel movies. These come in two types: mediocre movies that are neither good nor bad, and therefore are incredibly boring (such as Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, which I was going to review after this one, but just wasn’t interesting enough), or they are so incredibly bad that, as the cliché goes, they circle back around to good again. Thus, every Saturday and Sunday (when I remember), I check out the program guide for potentially bad scifi, fantasy, or horror movies.

Bloodsuckers, also known as Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe, is one of these movies. Read the rest of this entry »