Moviephile

Okay. I’m not a huge fan of musicals, or a huge fan of Sondheim. I don’t have anything in particular AGAINST them, I just tend to prefer non-musicals or non-Sondheim.

But I like Tim Burton (well, olden days Tim Burton, anyway) so I decided I would give Sweeney Todd a try. It was released, what, last Christmas? So I figured it was seasonably appropriate to finally watch it.

I had a couple problems with this movie right off the bat. For one thing… why did he cast a bunch of non-singers as the leads in this movie? I have nothing against Johnny Depp (except perhaps that I think his best performances were when he was receiving the least amount of praise, i.e. pre-Capt. Jack) and especially not against Alan Rickman (who I’ve always felt is very attractive in a Mr. Spock kind of way)… but, honestly. Sondheim tunes are always extremely complex (if that’s the word I want…) and I’m just not entirely sure it was the most melodious possible choice to cast a bunch of guys who can only kind of hit the right notes.

For another thing, I have a problem with the fact that all Tim Burton movies now feature his semi-wife/main squeeze Helena Bonham Carter. I mean, really. Granted it’s his call who he’s going to cast (and I can’t say she’s been terribly mis-cast in any of his films, although I didn’t really buy her in Big Fish … but I disliked the majority of the casting in Big Fish and Big Fish itself, so that’s no shocker) - but, come on. Really.

I had issues with the story - which I suppose I can’t blame Tim Burton for since he didn’t come up with it. Like was that era of London’s history really so permissive that nobody questioned a woman being openly raped at a party? That you could just randomly beat up and terrorize law-abiding citizens without arousing any annoyance on anyone’s part and only making one enemy? (I also take issue that it was a very eighties-type of “No Happy Endings!!” story.)

But in the end, the thing that ruined this movie the most for me is that it has essentially twenty minutes worth of actual story and character development that are stretched out over two hours with a bunch of semi-songs. (I call them semi-songs because I’m really not a fan of whatever you would call Sondheim’s style… avant garde, maybe? You know. Where it doesn’t rhyme, has no form, and you couldn’t hum it back to yourself if you tried.) Again, this is nothing I can blame Tim Burton for - except perhaps the fact that he chose to make it into a movie rather than leave it as the somewhat pretentious piece of musical theater that it is.

In the end… although it had some nice visual moments, I found Sweeney Todd depressing, vapid and unmelodious.  And that’s my last word on the matter.

I don’t know how it originally came up in conversation, or what train of thought led to me remembering the conversation… but I recently recalled an episode where I was relating to my husband how I had watched the Uncle Buck sitcom (spin-off of the film Uncle Buck) when I was a child. Mr. Hall, in his inimitable fashion, claimed that I was making it up and that no such sitcom existed (especially after I related that the concept of the show was that the parents of the children in the film were killed in a car accident, hence Uncle Buck moving in as their full-time caretaker).

I seem to have a habit of having watched shows that no one else in the world remembers. However, I know this show existed, so (inspired by whatever train of thought had recalled the conversation to me in the first place) the other evening I did a search on YouTube for the opening credits of the show.

I found them.

(Please note, after the opening of Uncle Buck are the opening credits for several other shows as well: apparently the gentleman who posted this posted the opening credits for all the “1990 TV Show openings” that he could find… enough to fill up ten parts. Thank you, sir, whoever you are! You have provided me with hours of nostalgic entertainment - and also reminded me of “back in the day” when there was actually an entire night of television every week that I looked forward to watching.)

Anyway, the Uncle Buck TV show existed, and I am vindicated and glad.  Well, kind of glad. I recalled the show rather fondly, yet this opening looks incredibly, horribly, cheesy.

Not to mention that the premise of the show (that the children’s parents have died in a car accident) is rather horrible, and even the opening of the show presumes that none of the main characters learned any lessons from the incidents of the film.

The film? Well, in case you haven’t seen that, Uncle Buck is a classic John Hughes film, and a tour-de-force for John Candy. In it, the parents of a dysfunctional (but stuck-up) family are called away for an emergency, and their low-class brother (Uncle Buck) comes to watch the kids. The teenage daughter is going through a “difficult” phase and they give each other hell; it’s a painful and yet hilarious movie, and very heartfelt. Mr. Hall and I re-watched it last night and enjoyed it thoroughly.

The TV show, however, looks as though it was a rather poor imitation of the latter. I was rather surprised to read the Wikipedia entry and discover that, no, it was not canceled because it was awful; it was canceled because it lost viewers after being moved from Monday nights to Friday. Oh well! I can’t really slam it because I watched (and, as I recall, enjoyed it) at the time. However, I was about eleven then, and can’t speak for my then sense of taste. (If it ever comes out on DVD I’ll have to pick it up and tell you how it fares nowadays…)

I don’t mind saying that I was very excited going into Quantum of Solace. As I’d already mentioned, Mr. Hall and I enjoyed Casino Royale quite a bit - it only made sense that we would enjoy this one just as much.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out that way.

From the very start, the movie didn’t grab me the way the first one did. The movie begins with a chase sequence in cars which is nowhere as interesting as the on-foot chase sequence that begins the first movie - and for another thing, the chase was shot and edited together so poorly that I spent the first ten minutes of the movie annoyed because I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was going on or who was chasing what. The title sequence was rather drab and uninteresting, and the theme song was not appealing to the ear.

There were three chase sequences in the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, and not one of them was interesting to watch. This film contained far too many “topical” references which may have been good five months ago but are already lacking in punch: remarks about the value of the dollar or the expensiveness of oil are already inconsistent with reality. The story was rather inconsistent about Bond’s character - is he hard and cynical or secretly caring? I’m not blaming Daniel Craig (even though a little bit of facial expression on his part may have assisted matters) - I blame the director and the writer. Why did he have no facial expression? Because they gave him nowhere to go! And what exactly gave him solace in the end? I have yet to quite figure that one out.

The bad guy didn’t work. Is he a cheap, smarmy little goblin who would run away from a fight - or is he a smart, intelligent con-man, willing to go hand-to-hand with master killer Bond? He was inconsistently characterized (which I also blame the writer and director for, not the actor).

The movie was muddled, inconsistent and kind of boring - not to mention visually drab and uninteresting. At absolute best, forgiving a whole lot and mostly for the sake of its predecessor, I give it a B-. But my gut reaction is to give it a C.

Probably the best thing that can be said about it was that it wasn’t very long, so at least you don’t have to spend too long in confusion and boredom.

My recommendation: don’t waste your money on this one. If you really want to see it, wait until it comes out on DVD and then put it in your Netflix list. That would probably be the best way to see it.

For the past two nights, Mr. Hall and I have been watching James Bond movies. We’re getting in the mood for the upcoming film. I imagine that, tomorrow night, we’ll finally watch Casino Royale so that it will be fresh in our minds for Friday (or Tuesday, depending on when we see it).

Monday night, we watched Diamonds Are Forever. This is a somewhat peculiar James Bond movie in that it’s sandwiched between the first non-Sean Connery Bond film (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) and the first Roger Moore Bond film. Mr. Bond wasn’t looking as young as he used to be, as Sean Connery had aged a lot in the years he’d been doing Bond (which was odd, since - after this aging spurt - he then stopped aging from about 1985-2005) - and the sleazy seventies had begun, in which Mr. Bond’s dinner-jacketed suavity looked out-of-place. (When I think of the 70’s, the first things that spring to mind are “wacka-chicka” music and people with seriously oily skin. The 1970’s were possibly one of the oiliest decades of all time…)

There are several bizarre elements in this film. It features Mr. Bond’s first (and only?) blatantly homosexual villains, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (who hold hands after killing a man with a scorpion); a cross-dressing Blofeld; and a special appearance by the sausage king, Mr. Jimmy Dean himself, as a scientist millionaire. It was a kind of an odd note for Sean Connery to go out on, which may have been why he agreed to be in the only official “unofficial”James Bond movie, Never Say Never Again, in the 1980’s. IGN apparently voted Diamonds are Forever as the worst James Bond movie, which is grossly unfair. Hands down, that honor must go to the truly appalling The World is Not Enough.

Last night, Mr. Hall and I watched the first of the two Timothy Dalton Bond films, The Living Daylights. It’s not the best James Bond movie ever, but it’s enjoyable. The worst criticisms I have are that it is a little slow in spots and that — due to the eighties and all that feminist “You can’t have a woman as a sex symbol! She has to be strong, independent, intelligent…” stuff that was going on at the time — the poor Bond girl has to wear the frumpiest clothing ever. I mean, it’s not just that they didn’t dress her “sexy” - it’s that they dressed her in outright unnattractive clothing. It’s almost embarrassing how unnattractive her clothes were; they were baggy, shapeless, and unflattering. And it’s not just that it was the eighties and everything was ugly back then. This is just plain ugly clothing, regardless of era. See that revealing night gown in the poster at the left? NOTHING LIKE THAT in the film. Now, let me emphasize that I’m not advocating women being used as sex symbols: in fact, I’d much rather that the Bond girls not walk around in skimpy, revealing clothing. But that doesn’t mean they have to be dressed like grandmas. (No offense, grandmas.) An outfit can be flattering without being revealing.

But to get back to the real point - The Living Daylights was a decent movie. Of course, I think Mr. Dalton’s second (and last) Bond film, License to Kill, was better (despite some odd elements which I will discuss at a later time).

It remains to be seen if Mr. Hall and I will watch another James Bond movie tonight - although it’s distinctly possible.

After the Summer of 1000 Hits, things have wound down to the extent that there is only one more movie coming out in 2008 that Mr. Hall and I are interested in seeing. And that would be Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie.

We’ve been looking forward to this movie expectantly ever since the closing scene of Casino Royale. I had mixed feelings about that film to begin with; for one thing, Mr. Hall has made me a fan of the series, so it had some seriously big shoes to fill. For another thing, I knew that it was essentially “James Bond Begins”, retelling the tale of the character from the start (and I’m about tired of “Begins” movies - beginning with Batman Begins. There have been far too many of those “We’re going to re-tell the story of so-and-so!” movies lately. I am downright disgusted to hear about the Star Trek “Begins” movie coming out… But I’ll rant about the creative bankruptcy of Hollywood another day.)

Plus, I was one of the many people who took one look at Daniel Craig and said, “He doesn’t look like James Bond.” In my mind, James Bond is a distinguished, upper-crusty kind of gentleman… Daniel Craig (no offense) looks more like a thug. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with looking like a thug, or that looking like a thug is unnattractive (in all cases)… I’m just saying, he didn’t fit my idea of James Bond. Rough around the edges. An obvious “tough guy” type.

And in all truth, I was not convinced that he was the right choice when I was watching Casino Royale. I had my doubts throughout the entire movie… UNTIL THE FINAL SCENE. I won’t say what happened lest ye haven’t seen it, but let’s just say, he convinced me. Mr. Hall and I walked out of that movie chirruping with delight at two hours well-spent.

And now we have Quantum of Solace. As I said, we’ve been eagerly anticipating this movie. The only problem is that it’s gotten rather mixed reviews so far. And the theme song (which has been previewed) is rather unmelodious. But - until we’ve seen it - we can’t make any judgments. I suppose the big test is this Friday when the film finally comes out. I was hoping to see it that day, but mine and Mr. Halls schedules don’t appear to be matching up - so we may see it next Tuesday instead.

As soon as I’ve had a chance to see this one, you can expect a full review - and to find out whether it lived up to the expectations or not!

Well, Mr. Hall and I finally watched another Hammer horror movie. (Yes, since it is now Halloween we have officially failed our quest to watch all the Hammer Draculas and Frankensteins by Halloween - but, oh well! It was a fun endeavour and leaves us room for more Halloween viewing next time around). This one was called The Brides of Dracula. It really should have been called “Only Faintly Connected to Dracula” - because Dracula had almost nothing to do with it, and the Brides only somewhat figured in (and weren’t actually his bride, anyway). Mr. Hall suggested that it should have been called “Son of Dracula”, because the real villain was this young Baron who had been turned by Dracula. Not that he was much of a villain: he succeeded in vampirizing just three girls in this film, and one of them was his own mother (gross!). Then, in the climactic scenes, Van Helsing totally whaled on the guy - until the vampire choked Van Helsing with a chain. I was sitting there asking why the vampire wasn’t using any otherworldly powers on him (no explanation. Guess he was just tired of using his vampire powers and felt like besting Van Helsing using old-fashioned fisticuffs.) The film had a few boring moments, some inexplicable plot devices and a rather compressed ending - but we were more or less happy with it, and the way Van Helsing defeated the vampire was pretty original.

Last night, we viewed our official Halloween movie and carved pumpkins. Our “official” movie is Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting, which is THE MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN. You know what makes this movie so scary? You never see any of the monsters. You are left to imagine the horrors of Hill House, and that is far scarier than anything they could possibly have shown. It is highly, highly unsettling, and will leave you feeling that ghosts are going to get into your brain.

By the way, I am talking about the 1960’s version of the film, not the recent remake. That film, by all accounts, sucks.

Then, because we were scared of ghosts, we watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! This was a good way to finish off the evening. I don’t know if we’re going to do any Halloween viewing tonight, because last Halloween I was so swamped with Trick-or-Treaters that I didn’t get an opportunity to do anything but answer the door…

Note: This post is actually from a 12.29.07 blog on another site. However, I am contemplating shutting down that other site (and I rather liked this blog) - hence, my moving it here. Enjoy my thoughts on a couple Christmas movies from post-Christmastime last year.

Well, like I said, I watched more Christmas movies and listened to Christmas music. In fact, since today was the first day of a four-day weekend for me (woot for two four-day weekends in two weeks), I decided I’d just waste the morning and watch another one.

I toyed with the notion of putting on one of our staples, since for some reason we never got around to watching the films that probably amount to my favorite Christmas movies - White Christmas, Holiday Inn and A Christmas Carol (1956). Our viewing time was limited thanks to the fact that John works most nights now, and I’m not going to watch our staples without him.

… However, since I won’t watch staples without him, I was left with few viewing options today. So I broke out the old cable remote and checked to see if the Reginald Owen version of A Christmas Carol was still on our “On Demand” channel on Comcast. (”On Demand”, in case your cable system doesn’t have it, works rather like pay-per-view. There is a list of movies, and you can pick whichever one you want and watch it whenever you want - but unlike pay-per-view it’s free.)

It wasn’t. Apparently the Reginald Owen version was removed from “On Demand” on the 26th. …. But there were several other Christmas movies still up! I flipped down the list and found a film called The Boy Who Saved Christmas. Promising title, right? Sounds heartwarming and whatnot. So I clicked on that.

I got about five minutes into it before I shut it off. Now, I’m all for bad movies. There are plenty of bad movies that I enjoy watching, and plenty that I didn’t enjoy that I still sat through just so that I could say I watched them. But this is one of those movies that is so badly acted, badly storied, badly dialogged that you just can’t handle looking at it - and speaking of that, it was bad looking, too. The scenery was ugly, the makeup was ugly, the costumes were ugly and - honestly - the actors weren’t too hot, either. That was probably the thing that turned me off the most, as I could have dealt with a bad story and bad dialog and bad cinematography if the actors had just been reasonably pleasant to look at. Even Santa looked gross. What was with that mustache? (I just went and tried to find a picture of him so that you could see how crappy the Santa costume is in that movie, but, perhaps not surprisingly, no one on Yahoo seems to have one.)

So, that’s that. I went back to the menu and flipped down it again, and to my surprise I actually found a movie that I had put on my Netflix list this year (but didn’t get, due to Xmas movies getting bumped down on my list by all the other people requesting them.) I’m speaking of the film Christmas in Connecticut .

I had never heard of this movie before, but Netflix recommended it to me when I was telling it what Christmas movies I enjoyed, so I added it to the list. Apparently it was the heartwarming tale of a GI hero (during WWII) who was sent to spend Christmas (in Connecticut) with a housewife named Elizabeth Lane who is the best-selling author of this column about food and housewifery. Turns out, that’s all a ruse and she’s just an ordinary working girl who fakes all the stuff for her articles, and then they fall in love and it’s Christmas and awwwww.

…. Or at least, so I thought. The first fifteen minutes or so of the movie deals exclusively with the GI, who fakes being in love with this nurse so that she’ll bring him decent food. He tries to back out on the deal claiming he doesn’t know how to deal with a family, so she writes the publisher of the Elizabeth Lane articles and asks him to send the GI to Elizabeth Lane’s place for Christmas so that he can experience a real family Christmas.

Following that so far? It’s kind of a muddled plot, and I wasn’t feeling very Christmassy about it at this point. Cut to, the publisher, who isn’t getting to spend Christmas with his family. Cut to Elizabeth Lane, who lives in a stinky apartment in New York and is poor and has no family, but she’s got this architect beau who she doesn’t really like but he wants to marry her anyway and she has this Uncle who is a really good cook and owns a restaurant and she actually just steals all her good food ideas for her articles from him… Eh… Then the Publisher gets the letter from the nurse (remember her?) and calls up Elizabeth Lane and tells her she’s hosting this GI. She goes to her architect beau and agrees to marry him because she’s going to be exposed and won’t have a job - but then her agent suggests that they just pull another ruse and invite the GI out to the beau’s place, because it’s in Connecticut, right where she claimed to live in her articles. And OH, she has to take her funny foreign uncle with her, because he’s the one who cooks, and OH, they have to pretend to have a baby, and OH, there’s a lot of hoo-haa with trying to get the judge down there to marry them but they can’t let the guests (the Gi and the Publisher, who decided since his family wasn’t going to be in town that he’d spend Christmas with Mrs. Lane too) see, and the Irish cook doesn’t approve….

Doh. It was a muddled mess of a film and honestly had very little to actually do with Christmas. It might well as have been called Thanksgiving in Connecticut or 4th of July in Connecticut for all the holiday actually had to bear on the story. Granted, those movies I mentioned earlier that I do like watching (Holiday Inn and White Christmas) don’t have a whole lot to do with Christmas themselves… But at least  White Christmas begins AND ends with Christmas numbers. And Holiday Inn revolves around Holidays, one of which (importantly) is Christmas.

The entire Christmas content of this movie consisted of the hero singing half a Christmas carol while whatserface pretends to decorate the tree. Then he sang a totally non-Christmas song while she finished, which rather canceled it out.

Still, I won’t say it was wholly unpleasant to watch. Granted, it didn’t have much to do with Christmas, the plot was a muddled mess and I found some aspects of the story wholly repellent (her agreeing to marry a man that she doesn’t love just because she has nothing better to do - the hero falling in love with her while he thinks that she’s a married woman, not even to mention bamboozling that poor nurse)… At least the scenery was pleasant, and the actors were decent performers (and pleasant to look at). And I can’t deny that I laughed a couple times, and that the story worked out okay in the end (despite being a muddled mess). So, I won’t say it was a wasted morning - but neither will I advise you to run out and add this to your list of “Must-Watch Christmas movies”. It was good enough for the first morning of a four-day weekend. Honestly, the version of the movie I had in my head after reading the synopsis was much better than it turned out to be. Maybe I’ll write that version myself. — Mrs. Hall.