6.19.2012
Men in Black 3
IMDb | Official Website
Series: 3rd in the Men in Black franchise
Overall Grade: A-
Plot: A villanous alien, Boris the Animal, put away early in K's career escapes from prison (on the Moon) and vows to travel back in time to kill K and prevent K from ever capturing him and killing off his whole species. Agent J is the only one who still remembers K and so must travel into the past to keep K alive and make sure K kills Boris instead of sending him to prison, and thus prevent Boris' future escape.
Review: Some might be sad for the paucity of Tommy Lee Jones in this film, but Josh Brolin must get major recognition for pulling off an incredible impersonation of him the whole movie. He even looks like a young version of Jones, well cast!
I also enjoyed the secondary characters, especially Griffin (in the green coat in the picture), who is the last member of his species which was wiped out by Boris the Animal's species
For those who fret over time travel, just turn off your brains and enjoy the film. There aren't any major plotholes and, as promised, you do in fact learn why K becomes so dour and humorless, and it's sad.
Two of my favorite scenes are when K delegates the job of neuralizing bystanders to an exasperated J, who comes up with two hilarious explanations for what happens if you don't turn your phones off on an airplane or if you flush a goldfish down the toilet.
Overall a good summer action/adventure/scifi flick.
Labels: genre: historical, genre: scifi, media: movie, series: Men in Black
Dark Shadows
IMDb | Official Website
Overall Grade: B
A re-make of the 1960's TV series.
Plot: A young woman adopts the pseudonym of Victoria Winters and arrives in the Maine seaport town of Collinwood to take up a position as the governess of David, a young member of the Collins family who claims to see the ghost of his deceased mother. David is not the only troubled member of the once prosperous Collins family. Fortunately, their luck is about to change with the return of a long "dead" relative, the vampire Barnabas Collins, who, despite his 2 centuries spent in the ground, sets about reversing the family downturn with his unparalleled knowledge of the family manor and his supernatural powers. Of course, things can't be too peachy, because the witch who cursed him and turned him into a vampire to begin with is still in town.
Review: I can't speak about the re-make-ness of it, never having seen the original TV series (my mom says the show was more soap opera and less comedy). Still, I applaud the movie's choice to stay in the 1960s. It is throughly amusing to watch Depp's Barnabas' mind-boggle at all the changes and interactions with "modern-day" people. The vampire Barnabas as all the usual vampiric weaknesses (sunlight, silver) except for travelling over moving water. An oversight on the writer's part? I don't know. Overall I give it a B for the humor and dramatic seacliff settings.
Labels: genre: fantasy, genre: historical, media: movie
6.09.2012
Star Wars: Choices of One
Series: Star Wars
Overall Grade: A-
Premise: Set between 'ANH' and 'ESB', Luke, Han & Chewie set off to escort a Rebel diplomat to a backwater world where the Imperial governor has offered them a base, logistical support, shipyards - a deal so good it's impossible to believe. At the same time, the Emperor's Hand, Mara Jade, picks up a group of vigilante stormtroopers for support and heads to the same planet to investigate the governor for treason. There's also Pellaeon, a senior bridge officer on the Chimera which is tasked with chauffeuring a mysterious masked official about the far reaches of space. And perennial Zahn favorites Thrawn and Car'das show up occasionally as well.
Critique: I've pretty much given up reading Star Wars novels when they started the Yuuzhan Vong arc, which is when I dropped out of the fandom and went off to others. But that's fine because Zahn doesn't seem to write much for the later/newer arcs, and I can still happily read his wonderful novels because he really is the best Star Wars novelist. 'Choices of One' heavily features Mara Jade, who is/was one of my favorite expanded universe characters (right up until she marries whiny Luke but that's another rant). With both her and Luke running around, I was worried that Zahn would some how ruin his own canon by having Mara and Luke interact too much. Although they do eventually encounter each other close to the end, they remain far enough apart that given the situation, Luke would not have had a good look at the woman who would later try to assassinate him. (And amusingly through out the book, Mara's a more skillful Force-user than Luke).
I also like the little band of vigilante stormtroopers which is why I now need to read Zahn's 'Allegiance' where they are apparently introduced.
Overall, a good Star Wars adventure, as I've come to expect from Zahn.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: scifi, media: book, series: Star Wars
Heaven's Shadow
Sequel: Heaven's War
Overall Grade: C
Premise: Set in the near future, two rival astronaut crews (one American, one Russo-Indo-Brazilian) land on a NEO during its closest approach. They quickly discover that the asteroid is actually a spacecraft. Said spacecraft is collecting intelligent lifeforms that it meets as 'candidates', and can also apparently bring people back from the dead.
Critique: So apparently this is what happens when screenwriters can't get their screenplays accepted, they revamp them into books. While I think it's strong on current NASA/space technology and protocols, the science in this fiction is lacking. Okay, maybe we're getting the astronauts' perspectives which aren't any more informed, but I am neither captured by the characters nor the hard scifi. Apparently the sequel 'Heaven's War' comes out in July.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: scifi, media: book
6.08.2012
The Avengers
IMDb | Official Website
Prequel films: Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America, Thor & The Incredible Hulk
Overall Grade: B+
I don't want to knock this movie too much, because it is the awesome superhero flick of the summer, but I do have a few beefs with it. Although the villian is Loki (Thor's brother, see the 'Thor' movie) and whatever aliens he's joined forces with, we hardly see the aliens until the end when everybody teams up to fight them off. Before that, the movie might be more properly titled, the Avengers vs. the Avengers, because it's pretty much a series of fights and arguments between all the team members. Which isn't too surprising when you stop to think that Stark is an egotistical genius, Steve is a time-displaced goodie-two-shoes, and that's just two of the members. It's like one big pissing contest all the time.
Ensemble moves like this also suffer from the danger of shifting between characters so much that you don't really get a feel for any of them. While it helps that we've had an individual movie (or two) for Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Hulk, we definitely feel the lack of character-building for Black Widow and Hawkeye. What is this shared past between them? Are we supposed to be feel romantic vibes between them or not? And as far as I know (not being a comic person) they are the only two Avengers without superpowers (or a supersuit).
I won't expound here on the cringe-worthy science discussed in the movie. I would just cautious the reader that sources of gamma-ray radiation are really dangerous, and should not be treated as cavalierly as shown in the film.
And finally, as you hopefully know from the prequels movies, stick around through the credits (ALL of the credits) for a couple more scenes... can we say sequel setup?
Labels: genre: action, genre: superhero/villian, media: movie, series: MCU
6.02.2012
Shadow
Series: The Scavenger Trilogy Book One
Overall Grade: A
I have not yet read a book by K.J. Parker that has not earned an 'A' from me. A few months back, after a shopping spree at Powell's and a shopping spree on Amazon, I loaded myself up with most of Parker's books that I haven't read yet. So this is the start of at least 6 reviews.
'Shadow' begins with our protagonist waking up in the middle of a battlefield after everyone else has died. He's surrounded by dead bodies and can't remember who he is or how he got there. He has the worst case of amnesia. But apparently he's very well versed in swordfighting because when the first person he encounters tries to kill him, he handily disarms the man and kills him instead without even consciously trying. Then he travels around for a while in a cart with a woman, pretending to be god and priestess and conning cowpoke villages out of food and offerings. But trouble seems to follow our protagonist, and people are continually trying to kill him, or somehow the people he's around get killed. And when he sleeps, he dreams he's other people, living different lives. And there's a swordmonk named Monach who's also running around. And raiders who mysteriously appear from across the sea and destroy whole towns leaving no survivors. And a running motif of crows.
Like pretty much any Parker novel I've read, it is really hard to do justice to this novel in a description that doesn't give anything away. Though I am very curious to see how the next two books play out, since you kind of have an idea of how the various threads are tied together by the end of this book.
Labels: genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, media: book, series: Scavenger trilogy
The Hunger Games
Series: The Hunger Games trilogy book 1
Overall Grade: A+
Some times books become popular because they really are good, entertaining reading. Though it's usually hard to tell until shut out the hype and sit down with the book. 'The Hunger Games' is one such book. It has help in the fact that it was written for teenage readers, so there's lots of action and forward motion of the plot, and little of the fluffy prose that one finds in "adult" novels.
As you have probably heard by now, the basic premise is that the protagonist, one Katniss Evergreen 16 years old, volunteers herself for the Hunger Games in place of her younger sister. The Hunger Games, run by the omnipresent rulers in the Capitol, collects two tributes, a boy and a girl, each year from each of the 12 districts and pits them against each other in a battle to the death. Katniss, who has been hunting to put food on her family's table for the past 4 years or so, is pretty good with a bow, but that still doesn't prepare her for the horror and cruelty of the Hunger Games. Nor does it prepare her to deal with the evoluting relationship between her and her fellow tribute Peeta.
The plot really does clip along in the this book, even though the Hunger Games don't start right away. Unlike may other YA books I've read, it was refreshing to have a teenage female protagonist so naive and innocent with respect to romance. Admittedly Katniss sees it as all a big calculation on how to win the favor of her sponsors and survive the games, but her perspective sees affection as just another possible tool and it certainly it isn't the be-all-end-all of her days and nights.
After talking with my brother (who has seen the movie but not read the book), it also became clear to me that movie suffers from losing Katniss's first-person narrative of everything. She provided backstory and anecdotes that are needed to flesh out the world of Panem, as well as set up the simmering unrest and seeds of uprising that must come to fruition in the next two books of the trilogy, since Katniss's Hunger Games are concluded by the end of this book.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: scifi, genre: YA, media: book, series: Hunger Games
Bridesmaids
IMDB | Official Site
Overall Grade: B
This movie is pretty much what it bills itself as a jab at all the feminine rivalry and pitfalls of planning a wedding and the modern day events that go with it. Mostly we follow the protagonist Annie, best friend and Maid of Honor, as she navigates a rocky life in the aftermath of her failed bakery business.
Certainly your male friends and family won't care to watch this chick flick, and probably neither will some of your female acquaintances, as there are uncomfortable sex scenes. Still, the rivalry between Annie and Helen results in more than a few laughs in its devolution into ridiculousness.
Labels: genre: comedy, media: movie
