Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones
I love Game of Thrones, really good TV. I only watch shows or movies if I have found them to be or believe they will be fantastic. The best show I've ever seen is LOST, and when it ended I never thought anything would fill the gap left by it. Game of Thrones has done that, and more. I never even knew the books existed before this show. It's absolutely beautiful, the acting is incredible, and it follows the books very well. I don't even have a Blu-ray player yet, but I'm getting this!!
Shameless
Shameless
The estimable William H. Macy stars as Frank Gallagher, the drunken paterfamilias and all-around loser. While he may have a shred of a conscience in there somewhere (as one character says of him, "Deep down, I think Frank is capable of doing the right thing"), far more often than not it's his children (one of whom turns out not to be Frank's after all) who keep this family afloat. That's especially true of the oldest and most responsible, daughter Fiona (the excellent Emmy Rossum), who acts as de facto mom while balancing a complicated love life (the two main men in her world are a car thief and the cop who wants to nail him), and Lip (Jeremy Allen White), a smart and enterprising teen who makes money taking tests and writing papers for other students but also looks out for his younger siblings, who include Ian (Cameron Monaghan), Carl (Ethan Cutkosky), Debbie (Emma Kenney), and Liam (an infant played by twins), all of whom have issues of their own. These (and various others in the sizable cast) are the folks who, we're told, put the "fun" in dysfunctional, and along with a steady dose of raunch (nudity, sexuality, and profanity all flow as freely as the liquor at Frank's favorite bar) and serious issues such as school bullying, cancer, suicide, prison, and Ian's burgeoning homosexuality, Shameless does have a darkly comedic sensibility. Perhaps most striking is that the kids, against all odds, are generally far more mature and sensible than the grownups, who also include Frank's agoraphobic girlfriend Sheila (Joan Cusack), her very snarky husband, Ian's older lover (who happens to have a wife and children), and various others of questionable character. Indeed, it's the younger Gallaghers, not Frank, who are the most dedicated to keeping the family together, and the grit, determination, and guile they use to do that are Shameless's heart and soul. --Sam Graham
Monday, February 6, 2012
Happy Feet Two
The sequel Happy Feet 2 begins a few years after the 2006
original ended: Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) is now married to Gloria
(Pink) and the father of Erik (Ava Acres), a chick who's afraid to
dance. When Erik sees the puffin Mighty Sven (Hank Azaria), he decides
he can learn to fly: Sven is the leader of a cult that preaches if you
believe it, it can happen. An unexplained seismic event causes a glacier
to shift, trapping Gloria and all the other emperor penguins: Mumble,
Erik, and two other chicks must rescue them before they starve. What
begins as a familiar story about a diffident chick quickly becomes
needlessly and hopelessly mired in subplots involving elephant seals,
skua gulls, human explorers, and a pair of renegade krill (voiced by
Brad Pitt and Matt Damon). The motion-capture animation is adequate at
best, with snow and water splashing around the dancing penguins to hide
the fact that their feet aren't making contact with the ground plane.
Endless tracking shots over the cracking glaciers recall the second Ice Age
movie. The vocal performances feature a discordant mélange of accents,
with African-American, Latino, and British penguins, surfer-dude krill,
Australian seals, and "fugeddaboutit" Jersey Shore seagulls. Even
more jarring is the presence of human actors who appear out of nowhere,
start to help the trapped penguins, then disappear. The standard-issue
poop and snot jokes do little to leaven the nonstop nattering. Happy Feet 2 confirms 2011 as the year of the unnecessary sequel in American animation. (Rated PG for some rude humor and mild peril) --Charles Solomon
Product Description
The sequel to "Happy Feet", the Academy Award®-winning animated smash hit, "Happy Feet Two" returns audiences to the magnificent landscape of Antarctica. Mumble, The Master of Tap, has a problem because his tiny son, Erik, is choreo-phobic. Reluctant to dance, Erik runs away and encounters The Mighty Sven - a penguin who can fly! Mumble has no hope of competing with this charismatic new role model. But things get worse when the world is shaken by powerful forces. Erik learns of his father's "guts and grit" as Mumble brings together the penguin nations and all manner of fabulous creatures - from tiny Krill to giant Elephant Seals - to put things right.
The Three Musketeers
I must say that I loved this adaptation of the Three Musketeers, and I have seen most if not all of them. Of course it was not true to the book, and we were sure of this going into the theater, as the preview and movie poster had air-ships on/in them. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was hilarious, action packed, somewhat romantic and did I mention - The Three Musketeers it was hilarious!
Bottom line: Is this a great period piece - no. Is it an amazing piece of drama - no. Is it completely true to Dumas' novel - no. Will it win an Academy award - no. What it was was sheer entertainment from begining to end. I am pre-ordering it today, and highly recommend it to anyone! The Three Musketeers
X-Men: First Class (2011)
When Bryan Singer brought Marvel's X-Men to the big screen, Magneto and Professor X were elder statesmen, but Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) travels back in time to present an origin story--and an alternate version of history. While Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) grows up privileged in New York, Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) grows up underprivileged in Poland. As children, the mind-reading Charles finds a friend in the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik finds an enemy in Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an energy-absorbing Nazi scientist who treats the metal-bending lad like a lab rat. By 1962, Charles (James McAvoy) has become a swaggering genetics professor and Erik (Michael Fassbender, McAvoy's Band of Brothers costar) has become a brooding agent of revenge. CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) brings the two together to work for Division X. With the help of MIB (Oliver Platt) and Hank (A Single Man's Nicholas Hoult), they seek out other mutants, while fending off Shaw and Emma Frost (Mad Men's January Jones), who try to recruit them for more nefarious ends, leading to a showdown in Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union, the good and bad mutants, and Charles and Erik, whose goals have begun to diverge. Throughout, Vaughn crisscrosses the globe, piles on the visual effects, and juices the action with a rousing score, but it's the actors who make the biggest impression as McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves worthy successors to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The movie comes alive whenever they take center stage, and dies a little when they don't. For the most part, though, Vaughn does right by playing up the James Bond parallels and acknowledging the debt to producer Bryan Singer through a couple of clever cameos. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Star Trek
Lady and the Tramp
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part I
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 delivers strongly for the rabid fan base who have catapulted the young adult novel series and subsequent movie adaptations to the worldwide phenomenon that it's become, but it alienates a broader audience with a lack of any real action. Similar to the tone of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, the first film of the two-part Twilight conclusion is heavy on romance, love, and turmoil but light on fight scenes and gruesome battles. The movie doesn't waste any time getting to the goods and opens with Bella and Edward's much-hyped wedding scene. It works--the vows are efficient and first-time franchise director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) moves the party along quickly and amusingly with a well-edited toast scene and some surprisingly moving moments between Bella and her father, cast standout Billy Burke. The honeymoon plays as a slightly awkward soft-focus made-for-TV movie, with a lot of long moments spent staring in the mirror and some love scenes that feel at once overly intimate and completely passionless. It's a relief when Bella retches on a bite of chicken she's cooked herself and quickly concludes she's pregnant with a potentially demonic baby. From bliss to horror, the Cullens return to Forks, where Bella spends the second half of the movie wasting away and Edward and Jacob are aligned in their anger and frustration over her decision. Throw in some over-the-top scenes with Jacob and his pack--including a strange showdown where the wolves communicate in their canine form by having a passionate nonverbal fight in their minds (a plot point that works much better in print, it's portrayed in the film via aggressive voice-over)--and the film overshoots intensity and goes straight to silly. The birth scene is horrific, but not as gruesome as in the book, and by the end, Bella has of course survived, though is much altered. The final scene features a delightfully campy Michael Sheen as Volturi leader Aro and makes it clear that the action and fun in Breaking Dawn, Part 1 is ready to start. Fans will just have to wait until Part 2 to get it. --Kira Canny
Hugo
In resourceful orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, an Oliver
Twist-like charmer), Martin Scorsese finds the perfect vessel for his
silver-screen passion: this is a movie about movies (fittingly, the 3-D
effects are spectacular). After his clockmaker father (Jude Law)
perishes in a museum fire, Hugo goes to live with his Uncle Claude (Ray
Winstone), a drunkard who maintains the clocks at a Paris train station.
When Claude disappears, Hugo carries on his work and fends for himself
by stealing food from area merchants. In his free time, he attempts to
repair an automaton his father rescued from the museum, while trying to
evade the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a World War I veteran
with no sympathy for lawbreakers. When Georges (Ben Kingsley), a
toymaker, catches Hugo stealing parts for his mechanical man, he
recruits him as an assistant to repay his debt. If Georges is guarded,
his open-hearted ward, Isabelle (Chloë Moretz), introduces Hugo to a
kindly bookseller (Christopher Lee), who directs them to a
motion-picture museum, where they meet film scholar René (Boardwalk Empire's
Michael Stuhlbarg). In helping unlock the secret of the automaton, they
learn about the roots of cinema, starting with the Lumière brothers,
and give a forgotten movie pioneer his due, thus illustrating the
importance of film preservation, a cause to which the director has
dedicated his life. If Scorsese's adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret isn't his most autobiographical work, it just may be his most personal. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Product Description
Welcome to a magical world of spectacular adventure! When wily and resourceful Hugo discovers a secret left by his father, he unlocks a mystery and embarks on a quest that will transform those around him and lead to a safe and loving place he can call home. Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese invites you to experience a thrilling journey that critics are calling “the stuff that dreams are made of.” *Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
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