Hanna

For years I was the master of trailers; indeed, I downloaded them every day and stored them for future use. My mouth watered with anticipation on the thick, raw blockbuster previews, many of which would prove disappointing. In the past few months I've slowed down to a standstill, and haven't downloaded a trailer in ages. I've left it up to other means, mainly the previews before a movie in the cinema, and the odd internet trailer. So now sometimes a film comes out and I'm caught completely off guard; for whatever reason I'm not in tune with the marketing machine and I miss it. And then I see these movies, and am pleasantly surprised. I can't help but feel that this has helped many films, but it's bigger than that: it's brought the joy of going to the movies back. Sometimes you see, without really knowing it, 10 minutes of a film - spread over three or four trailers - and lots of plot; indeed, most are spoiled.

Hanna is such a film that I had no idea was coming until twenty four hours before release (April 8). Oddly enough I heard about it on the radio more often than anywhere else; I saw a headline or two in my RSS feeds that described it as a Bourne-style film about an assassin travelling through Europe, but this time, Bourne is a woman. Then I come to understand Eric Bana is in it, and I'm further intrigued. To call his movie "Bourne-style" would be an insult. We get some great performances from everyone involved, including the young Saoirse Ronan, starring as the title character. Basically, to sum up the plot, you have Hanna being raised near the arctic circle in complete isolation, by her father. She's being trained, and educated, to be an efficient killing machine. There comes a time when Hanna decides for herself to leave the nest, so to speak, and begin her mission. What we get is Hanna being on the run, piecing together bits of her life (how she came to growing up in the woods) and interacting with others.

In her journey, she befriends another young girl and her family, learning how things work in ways that an encyclopedia can't teach you. Take for instance, this very subtle, underlying sexuality occurring between Hanna and her new friend. Hanna is young and the film tries hard to push it in your face and make you question it at the same time. Extreme closeups reveal so much character in her eyes, and allowing you time to analyze every detail in her face. Brutal fight scenes punch you in the chest and make you do a double take: how is someone so young, so small and unassuming, doing these amazing things? I don't question the realistic nature of it: a lifetime of training in anything can make you an expert. She's unassuming, fast and well trained; it's a work of art watching her move.

So, this is a great film that pleasantly surprised me. It's not a knock-off, and it's not your typical action film. It has a steady pace and is a great "coming of age story" (I ripped that from somewhere). And, to top it all off, the film was scored by The Chemical Brothers!

Sucker Punch

You can't help but get incredibly excited when you first see the trailer for this movie, and why shouldn't you? What you basically have, at first glance, is 300 but with all the nearly-nude me replaced with beautiful women, how can you go wrong? So there's a team of female ass-kickers, put into various situations: fighting fifteen foot tall gatling gun wielding samurai, crazy fire breathing dragons and steam powered Nazi robots. This movie has it all! So what happens? Baby Doll is traumatized and unfairly institutionalized by her deranged step-father, where the only way she can deal with the horrible situation is to fantasize.

She hatches a plan where she must collect a variety of objects that will help her and some of her friends escape. The layering is kind of odd: she enters the hospital (reality) then immediately switches into the fantasy version. In the fantasy version she goes deeper, until the end where we are pulled out and have to wonder how much of the fantasy world(s) spilled into reality, and vice versa.

We get lots of Snyder's trademark slow motion insanity, and some absolutely stunning camera work and effects. It's a great thrill ride, and makes me appreciate the medium. But I walked away from it feeling a bit mixed. Did I just watch a special effects roll? Was there any real substance there? Does there have to be? So many questions and no energy to really look into them.

This is where I shelve my discussion on the movie for a week and question whether to even publish this thing. I have nothing very insightful to say about it, and I wonder if that's a testament to this movie being so surface driven you can't derive anything but the most basic premise from it: escapism and I guess, injustice. Perhaps I'm not keen enough to derive much more from it than that. I also feel like this movie will grow on me and that I got exactly what I expected out of it: a highly stylized, exciting popcorn flick. I ate my popcorn and enjoyed my root beer throughout the film, and I must say it all meshed perfectly. Oh, and do yourself a favour and click on the poster above for the full resolution version!

Arrowhead Photos

Just a few nature photos from a trip to Arrowhead back in 2009.

Click on the slideshow above to be taken to the full gallery (seven photos).

Smoking in Films

Listening to the CBC around lunch hour is always nice: they typically have an interesting subject and have callers with a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints. The topic the other day was smoking in films, and in particular, Rango. Not seeing the movie I can't comment on the content; they mentioned that there were numerous scenes of various characters smoking. In most cases, they were the "bad guys" but I wouldn't be surprised to see Depp's chameleon lighting up at one point too.

The big talking point is this: should (animated) characters in kids movies be smoking? 

Well I'm going to have to go ahead and say no, they shouldn't. But there are some interesting viewpoints. The parents should take responsibility. This is a good one, and should be ever present anyway, right? You're not going to let social media raise your children for you...completely. It happens: the television has become a babysitter, and there is just no way you can protect your child from seeing everything naughty. They will witness violence, sexuality and drugs (i.e. smoking) on screen. They will process it, and I think there is a great degree of how they've been raised, that will determine the outcome. My niece hears cartoon characters in The Flintstones using the word stupid and she now reacts with a bit of an open mouth and saying "he's using a bad word!" like it's the end of the world. I can only suspect that is a good sign of things to come for her moral compass (although she can be quite devilish at times, but alas, thats kids for you).

I would be surprised to see a lot of smoking in an animated feature. I would be surprised to see it in just about any movie at this point, honestly. Hollywood is obsessed with making movies so universally accessible everything is and has been cut to the bone; case in point is the latest Die Hard film. So of course smoking is something that is easily removed from these films, and there's another viewpoint: simply remove smoking from any media. In Canada this has been happening for quite some time: you cannot advertise cigarettes (you only see them in American magazines here) and the actual product is hidden the counter. It wasn't enough that they were simply out of reach, they are now inside unmarked cabinets, although those cabinets can be plastered in ads for other non-tobacco products, such as soft drinks or chips. They threw some stats around saying this has all helped, so removing smoking from movies should contribute to success, success being a reduction in (youth) smoking.

Ghostbusters smoke. This is not something that I noticed as a child but as I rewatch those classics, I'm surprised to see how much of it was going on, and how it just wasn't a big deal. Perhaps that's the way it is: if you see it a lot in real life, and in movies, you think nothing of it. You're given more opportunity to decide for yourself, as opposed to hardcore pro-smoking (which I guess would be the glamourization of it, say for instance the hero of a film lighting up after conquering some bad guys...I'm looking at you Hellboy). Or hardcore anti-smoking, which I guess would be conveying the bad guys as addicts. Perhaps that's not the greatest view, but one of the listeners made a great point: if the bad guy is smoking all the time, as they do in Rango, kids will associate smoking with bad. But when they get a bit older and enter that wonderful teenage rebellion, they may be more inclined to take up behaviour that they've previously associated with being "bad" and in this case, that would be smoking.

An interesting situation; good luck to all you parents out there! 

The Troll Hunter

Every so often a movie comes around that picks you up out of your seat and firmly plants you in its own universe, this universe being Norway, in particular. And Norway is infested with trolls. I knew I loved this movie in one very particular scene: the camera crew have followed the hunter and lost tack of him in the woods. We see a series of flashes in the distance, then the scampering of somebody running towards the camera; the hunter enters the frame, only slightly out of breath, quickly looks at the student filmmakers and yells: "TROLL", with a strong focus on the "oh." From there the scene gets a little nutty and you know what you're in for. This movie features trolls in all their glory, and couldn't have done it any better.

The movie opens with some text on the screen that - properly translated - indicate that what you are about to see is found footage. Cloverfield? I must say this is my only gripe on the film; it could have just as easily picked up on the first scene, set itself up and told a proper story. The thing with Cloverfield is that you can believe it was one "tape" and the events were recorded over the course of an hour and a half. This movie takes place over a few weeks: basically you are looking at footage that was "found" then edited over a month or so to feature a proper, gripping story of a group of students learning that not only do trolls exist, they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. It's a small gripe but it's there; the movie finishes in a cheap manner but it's easy to get over.

This is an independent (presumably) film that features really fantastic special effects, but also some great characters. Otto is the perfect hunter; sufficiently confident, disgruntled and humbling. He's fascinating to watch whenever he's on screen, whether it's fighting a big troll, or eating breakfast filling out paperwork. The students do a good job too, with Glenn being on-screen more often than the others and conveying exactly how we feel: frightened, excited, intrigued; you name it. And the country itself is another character: in what feels like color-enriched mountainsides and lakes, there are many shots where the characters are talking with nature in the background. Now that you know what to look for, you scan the mountains and rocks, looking for signs of troll activity. You want to be there, dangers included.

So what happens next is the American adaptation, or remake. Supposedly it's been optioned by somebody, and in the works already. Perhaps we'll have a Dragon Tattoo situation, wherein the original foreign version is released Stateside, practically used as marketing tool for the soon-to-be remake. We'll hopefully get a proper BluRay release in the meantime too. I highly recommend the film: very original, with the perfect amount of humour, action and fantasy.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

The title is a bit lengthy, but so is Godzilla's illustrious movie career. And there is no way I've seen every Godzilla movie out there; it may in fact be a misconception that I love his movies and have seen a ton of them; I've certainly seen my fair share, but when I look at the pool, I can't help but think I've only swam in the shallow end. This is further verified by watching All-Out Attack: the movie looks and feels old, it has terrible acting and cheesy scenes. It has crazy action and awesome monster battles, and a little bit of a unique take on Godzilla himself, but most of the movie feels like it was from the sixties or seventies. It was hard to identify the age of the film, then you look it up: 2001.

Where are the modern special effects? Where is the modern storytelling? Why has this movie not been touched by today's movie-making style? Because Godzilla doesn't bow to that nonsense. It's never been about the special effects, or in some cases, the story. Godzilla is, and will always be, a guy in a suit fighting other guys in other monster suits. If you've ever been involved in one of our conversations about CGI, you know how it is: CGI doesn't look quite right, and "classic" effects will always stand tall, because they are tangible. They are caught on film, not added later and because of this, they are timeless. Anyway, as the film progresses the traditional effects start looking better and you can see a bit of modern influence in here, but it never detracts from the epic battles you are watching.

What's really great about this film is how it feels like a direct sequel to the 1954 original, where Godzilla is just evil. In that original, Godzilla just comes out of nowhere, wreaks havoc and moves on; a product and warning of the nuclear age, Godzilla was an uncontrollable, unstoppable beast that couldn't be reasoned with. Indeed, this film's events take place fifty years after Godzilla's initial attack on Japan. Over the years, Godzilla becomes a saviour, warding off other monsters and protecting the people of Japan. Perhaps his motives were questionable at times, but when aliens visit Earth and plop down some terrible creations, it's Godzilla who comes to the rescue. In this film, he's just plain evil. Rising from the waters, hunting down Japan's protectors, and with absolute fury, kills them all. And just in case you don't want to accept this version of Godzilla, you are forced to as your look into his soulless, inky black eyes.

Mothra and Ghidorah make an appearance too; in the past movies I've seen Mothra was fighting off an evil (although not this evil) Godzilla, and if I'm not mistaken, they become best pals and team up a few times. I'm not sure I've seen Ghidorah in a film before, but since I have him sitting on top of my speaker I felt it was high time to see him in action. IMDB trivia tells me this is a smaller Ghidorah than typical, and to further alter him, he's a good monster; in the past he's been quite evil. There's another beast in there too, but the little thing looks so sad and useless that I think the only reason he was in there was to show how cruel this Godzilla was. The four legged dog-like creature had puppy-dog eyes and a knack for burrowing underground, but was clearly outmatched to Godzilla. Once the three ancient guardian monsters are taken care of, it's up to the humans to step up their game and put an end to this malevolent threat.

Knowing that they are still churning out great Godzilla flicks, it's time to swim into the deep end.

Movie Update - March 2011

Not in any particular order, here are the movies I saw in March! Not a bad run if I must say so. I'm curious though, if I didn't put 60 hours into Fallout 3 over the past four weeks if there would have been even more movies taken in.

• Barbarella
• Reign Over Me
• The Fighter
• Battle: Los Angeles
• The Ghost and the Darkness
• Sucker Punch
• Troll Hunter
• Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
• Iron Man 2

Battle: Los Angeles

No, this is not Skyline 2; I had to get that out of the way. It's easy to draw the comparison, I'll grant you that. An unknown alien threat descends on the west coast (and the rest of the world) and starts messing us up immediately. In Skyline, they abuct people and steal their brains, while in Battle, they just rips us apart with projectiles and explosives. Independence Day is also a film that is quickly drawn into the mix of comparisons, and when you throw that one into the mix, you realize how the alien invasion pic has evolved and changed over the years. You could go back even further to something like The Day the Earth Stood Still and become incredibly scared: the brainy sci-fi invasion movie has turned into an action-driven vehicle of brainless special effects and action (yes, so much so it had to be said twice).

I really felt like I was watching a video game here. It doesn't help that games have come such a way graphically now, that their aliens are complex and full of character, just as much so as the movies'. You could create a Battle game with the exact same story and scenes, and get a decent little eight hour shooter out of it. The movie starts off wit the aliens coming down, and we are cheaply introduced to a variety of characters that will become the team of Marines we follow throughout the rest. I say cheaply because it's formula and annoying: stereotypes are introduced, a very brief backstory is provided for each person, and then we never see the relevancy later on. One guy is currently out of combat due to some stress and anxiety from a previous combat situation. He's full on in combat later on though, and this anxiety is never touched upon again. It just further constitutes the fact that you are here to watch these guys kick all kinds of ass, and nothing more.

To the point of intriguing action, this movie excels and is fantastic to watch. It focuses on this small team as they try to rescue and escort civilians back to the safe zone. It's fight after fight, understandably, and a climax of pure action that does not disappoint. I swear at times I was manipulating the controller in my hands at time. It was also kind of interesting as American streets are turned into war zones and points of skirmish. There was an abundance of broken up concrete and burning cars to make me believe I was watching Black Hawk Down for a while, and the heavy layering of pro-Marines was enough to make me wince once in a while. Perhaps, being Canadian I'm skewed a bit and have distanced myself from the ooo-rahs and retreat: HELLs that it practically became funny every time it came up. That being said, I have a great deal of respect for anybody who is putting themselves in harm way, and you can see the teamwork at play here and, unlike Skyline's group of sad sacks, believe in some degree of success for these Marines and the human race. Not Independence Day-like success, granted, but something.

I have to make one more gripe: the intro. Both Battle and Skyline started "in the action" so to speak, then reversed the clock by twenty four hours. There is no point to this than to aggravate me: they don't reverse and spend significant time developing characters or setting plot that we don't already know. It's a waste of screen time. Now that being said, those periods are short and we get right into the action, and that's what this movie is all about. It's a popcorn flick with awesome action and fantastic special effects.

The Ghost and the Darkness

So I'm not entirely sure this movie had much of an impact on me when it first came out: I definitely did not see it in the theatre, but certainly shortly afterwards when it came out on video. It was solid, don't get me wrong, but there is no way I could foresee the urge I would experience in wanting to see it, time and again. It certainly doesn't help the situation when my good friend seems to adore it and talks about it occasionally; it's like it comes out of the darkness and bam, you're reminded of this movie and the passionate way he talks about it forces me to watch it again. Every time I revisit the film, the more I appreciate it: I really think they nailed this film on many levels, making it timeless.

For those of you who don't know, or have simply forgotten (it was 1996, after all), this movie is about an engineer (Kilmer) named Patterson who is building a bridge in Africa. Shortly into the project, two lions start attacking the small camp/settlement, throwing fear into the workers. The two lions, the ghost and the darkness, seem to operate at a different level than your normal lion: they hunt man, they hunt together, and they seem malicious about it. They kill and terrorize, even when they are not hungry. The blood lust has settled in, for sure, but something else could be going on here too. They almost seem intelligent, and for a time, as I watched this the other night, I got thinking about evolution. Cats are smart, for sure, but can they be this smart? Perhaps some mutation that has given these two in particular an edge, and introduced something that seems limited to the human race so far: villainy. These lions are just jerks. So after a threatened walkout, the company brings in a revered expert hunter (Douglas), to bring an end to the lion menace. I won't spoil the rest for you.

What we get is a pretty interesting, and true story. Apparently these events did happen, and the two lions were killed in the end (ok, spoiled) and are on exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum (they may have been moved to Africa since). I was there just two years ago and don't remember seeing them, but there's a good chance I glazed over them like I did most of the exhibits (the fossil and rocks sections were the best). But this is great: apparently the only thing that was 100% fictionalized for the film was Douglas' hunter character: Patterson was so bad ass in real life he killed the lions on his own. He went on to write a series of books about them, which could have easily been exaggerated, but they seem to be the best accounts we have to go on. It's estimated these two lions killed a hundred or more humans in a relatively short amount of time. We see a cave full of human bones and remains in the film, and the horror should set in as this is not behaviour of lions we come to expect.

Either way you point it, the film is addictive and features a good cast: a young and trim Kilmer, a sufficiently gruntled yet wise Douglas and the rest: Tom Wilkinson, Emily Mortimer, Bernard Hill and more. Actors you just see in things all the time now. I don't feel like they tried to make things too deep here: one scene gets a little cheesy but it's kept pretty basic. You get a little taste of life back in 1898, and when you step back to think about it, the railroad really was epic.

Mahina: You know, I also have killed a lion.
Angus Starling: How many shots did you need?
Mahina: I used my hands.

Two Turntables

I think the first pieces of vinyl - if you can even call it that - was a set of ALF Burger King promotional records. The combination of ALF and Burger King was something that no nine-year old Ryebone could resist. They probably got some spin time on my sister's record player, which could have been a Fisher Price; regardless, it was big, beige and very plastic. Now, I don't remember my parents having a turntable, but I do remember my father's vinyl collection. He had it stored at the bottom of the stairs, just off the living room in an ottoman type device that we would sit on while putting on our boots. It was this light green colour, and the inside housed a few dozen records; not once did I go in to admire the big artwork or become curious what they were. They simply existed.

Back in those days I had a couple of cassettes, and my dad was just getting a CD player (perhaps 1989 or 1990); my dad and sister would be visiting music stores and buying music, but I just wasn't into it. Give me some video games to look at, great, but music, not so much. I think if the album wasn't a movie soundtrack to something I enjoyed, like Ninja Turtles or Batman, I would have none of that. Over time my musical interest matured, but I would always have a consistent focus: quality. I can recall recording Mega Man 2 with my parents' boombox from the television speaker, to upgrading to line inputs, getting the NuReality 3D (sorry, no link - I couldn't find the exact device online...although it was an early product featuring SRS technology) and experimenting with different speaker setups. I would embrace the digital world, downloading MP3s when they first came around (and weren't blatantly illegal). I would encode my entire CD collection not once, but twice with different quality settings, and experiment with lossless audio a few times.

But during this time, I would occasionally see vinyl records in stores: typically very old, beat up and featuring artists that I had zero interest in. But then I would see some new bands releasing records, and I became curious. Do they still make turntables? They must. The only one I would ever see is the lonely Sony model in what else: the Sony Store. The price of records seemed reasonable, but what about the quality? I don't even want to get started on this, as it's practically a subjective thing: people hear differently, some better than others. I'll say it now, I can't really tell the difference between CD and vinyl, or even a well-encoded MP3. When I listen to my CDs, I feel like they have more depth and presence but put me into a blind listening test and I'm sure I would never hear the difference.

So, over the years I've toyed with getting myself a player, and a few records. It's not a big investment, and I feel good buying a record for an artist I truly enjoy: I get more physical product than the CD counterpart, and these days, all records come with codes to download the digital version for free. So it's win-win. I would go ahead and buy a few records: The National's Boxer, Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary and the latest Interpol.

Our local Sony Store was going out of business, so I bought the display model of their standard record player at a nice little discount. I brought it home, got it connected and the sound was just horrendous. Scratching, noisy and messy. I couldn't make out the music at all. Over the next hour I would learn a lot about how these things work, and it was exciting. So mechanical, so simple and fun. I can see what parts you can replace, and how to do it. But this record player was finished; I returned it.

For quite some time, I subsided with nothing, until my recent birthday when my parents purchased me a Denon DP-29F. Looks like a fairly well built, standard player that will do the trick and what do you know, it does. I broke it in with Boxer; placed myself in the sweet spot and just listened. All the little cracks, pops and hisses were there, just like they said it would be. Did it sound better? Like I said before, I don't think so. But I took contentment in what was happening: the disc spinning steadily, the needle traversing the surface and magically transforming this disc into full, rich music. I love the large format; the big album artwork and the full size inserts. They are all pieces I would have no problem hanging on my wall, and putting on display. Finally, my system is complete with the addition of this turntable and I'm excited to get into this niche market.