Category: blog

Spielberg’s Lincoln – A Solid Movie

We all know the work of Steven Spielberg. Jaws, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” The Color Purple, “You sure is ugly!” And all the Indiana Jones movies, “Snakes? I hate snakes!” They are flamboyant, vividly driven stories that take the audience on a journey to sometimes familiar and most often unknown places. Spielberg relies on fancy linkage between scenes, and very true to life reenactments, particularly when it comes to battle scenes.

The battle scenes are present in Lincoln, but this time I think Spielberg reins it in – and it works. With a lovely script written by the enormously talented Tony Kushner (a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright for Angels in America), the film feels like a play and it is really refreshing for Spielberg to rely on the written words and the talents of the fabulous actors he has on board instead of his fancy camera work.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is spectacular – an Oscar nomination is definitely in his future. Sally Field plays the long suffering Mary Todd Lincoln and has a great moment where she gives Tommy Lee Jones (playing the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens) a piece of her (sane at the moment) mind.

It all works and in this trying time of the U.S. government, it is very timely to take a look back at history and see what men in power were once capable of accomplishing.

Lindsay Lohan in Liz & Dick – Colossal Failure

What else is there to say about poor Lindsay Lohan? The cute youngster from PARENT TRAP is gone and in it’s place is a depressing, sad, and terribly confused adult. She’s crashed and burned so many times that it’s hard to keep routing for her and unfortunately, her turn in Lifetime Television’s LIZ & DICK doesn’t do anything to improve her status.

The story is simple – a timeline arc of the stormy, lustful, love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. But the execution is…well…just wrong.

Lindsay phones in her performance. Her inflection isn’t near the soft, high, impish-like voice of the real Elizabeth. It’s more of a scraggily, smoker’s cough that we have all heard in every interview she’s ever given.  And can we talk about the difference in physiques? Where are the curves that Elizabeth made famous? And the weight fluctuations that made the news? Were you too proud to wear padding, Lindsay? The only thing she does to look remotely like Elizabeth Taylor is slap on a brunette wig and stuff her cheeks like a squirrel stowing nuts.

Poor,  poor Lindsay.

It doesn’t help her that her co-star Grant Bowler (a very cute New Zealander, who you might remember from TRUE BLOOD) who is a least twenty years older than Lindsay, doesn’t come close to exhibiting the booming personality of Richard Burton. He at least tries to convey a believable performance. Lindsay doesn’t. It leaves Grant to try to act by himself and so the movie is a colossal failure.

Overall, Lindsay’s performance is very much like watching a little girl play dress up that has no hope in ever fitting in the clothes. She just doesn’t care and because of that she should step aside for the thousands of young actresses that do. And who will show up. Ready to work.

J.K. Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy – Definitely NOT Harry Potter

First let me say that I am a huge…I’m talking HUGE Harry Potter fan and that I hold J.K. Rowling in the highest esteem for creating such a wonderful and exciting world. Unfortunately, her world building isn’t so much in A Casual Vacancy. 

Rowling’s first turn into adult books leaves me…disappointed. The book tries its hardest to remain relevant to adults, but fails by having all the conflict brought on by teenagers. I think Rowling still misses the teenage world,  and I hope she returns to her roots.

Vacancy is chocked full of characters – way too many to keep track of – and the biggest problem is that you can’t really tell whose story it is. Point of views change at a blink of an eye – sometimes mid sentence. That doesn’t bother me as much as not really caring about any of the characters, even though the circumstances of the characters should be worth caring about. 

Drug addiction, infidelity, political intrigue – yeah it sounds like ABC’s REVENGE, right? At least that show is so bad it’s good.  Vacancy lacks a true direction and makes the reader work really hard for very little in return. Its full of weird sentences like, “it fluttered in her stomach like a fetus.” Eck.

Where is the lovely alliteration? What happened to lines like, “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

That’s what I’m talking about…and miss.

 

ABC’s Once Upon A Time – Making Fairy Tales Cool

So, I’m finally getting caught up on ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME. When it premiered its first year, my Sunday nights were already occupied ( I think) with GAME OF THRONES and since I have given up my DVR so I may cut down on my exorbitant amount of television viewing and maybe spend some of my free time outside to breathe some fresh air, I wasn’t able to watch all the episodes of season 1.

Now, thanks to the Season 1 release on DVD (not to mention the lack of commercials), I’m halfway through the first season and have enjoyed (the commercial packed) the few episodes aired so far of Season 2.

The world building is exceedingly well done. Starting with the ten-year-old boy Henry (Jared Gilmore) venturing out to find his birth mother Emma (Jennifer Morrison – some might remember her from HOUSE) in order for her to free his town of Storybrooke from the evil queen’s (Lana Parrilla from SWINGTOWN – did anybody actually watch that show?) spell, the show’s creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis are smart to begin everything in the real world. Their smartness is then complemented by good writing that has the plot flip back and forth between flashbacks of the fairy tale world and present day – an often tiresome device, but it works tremendously well with this show and gives the fairy tales a new, cooler look and feel.

It does lead however, to some over the head bashing of character traits – the queen is overly dramatic, plus she is really mean and evil – we get it. Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) – Mary Margret in the real world – is soft and mushy, not to mention sweet and good and over the top weepy. It gets a little boring. But the smartness of the show’s creators again moves into play when at the end of Season 1 they break the curse – but a true happily ever after is not in anybody’s future – tossing some of the main characters through a wormhole-like thing back to the fairy tale world. SMART STUFF!

What proves to be the continuing winning factor is the great performance of Robert Carlyle as Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin. Some might remember him from his heart-warming performance in THE FULL MONTY or his hard-hitting turn in TRAINSPOTTING. He is marvelous and the backstory that the writers have created for him makes his character at one moment deliriously evil and then tragically sweet. Ingenious.

Can’t wait to see what’s in store for the Storybrooke gang this season. What do you think is  going to happen?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – A Great Read

So I’m a little late on The Perks train, but better late than never. This book written by the screenwriter and novelist Stephen Chbosky is a mix between the novels The Catcher in The Rye and Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret and the play Driving Lessons.

The novel is epistolary (told through letters) and the main character Charlie shares information about his family, his love life, and his occasional drug use. Throughout the book he grows and learns more about himself, as does the reader.

There is a very nice balance of the delicate art of reveal within the book. Charlie tells his anonymous friend about himself that is not so obvious that the reader has already guessed what has or what is going to happen to him. The plot is solid and well structured, as well as the characters. Also the depiction of high school life is pretty spot on.

Like a lot of good books, this one has been adapted to screen and is currently out in local theaters. The author is also a screenwriter and took it upon himself to write and direct the movie, which I’m sure makes it a very interesting show. But again, this is a first person story, difficult to adapt to screen. Fine personality nuances are harder to articulate to a viewing audience when the are written or told in first person (unless you use voice over – for example all the horrific TWILIGHT movies – definitely another post). But the author adapted the book himself and when an author truly knows his characters he can avoid the trappings that can come along with adaptation.

Have you seen the movie? What do think? In the meantime, go. Go ahead. Read the book.  It’s a great read.