8 posts tagged “review”
So, I watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium the other day. Don't look at me like that, I was on a nine hour flight across the Pacific. I was desperate.
Anyway.
I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. I like odd, quirky, feelgood movies. Especially ones whose main message is railing against the dying of the light and making every moment count. I'm a sucker that way. I mean, I like The Neverending Story. Hell, I like Toys. And I wish Emporium was of a rank with either of them.
Wonder Emporium did have a few noteworthy and memorable moments. There are a few genuinely sweet moments, a few genuinely comic moments, and even a cameo that put a huge grin on my face. It's just a shame that none of those moments had the movie's lead in them.
The movie has three plots: Boy must learn to make friends. Girl must begin to believe in herself. Man must rediscover his belief in magic. And all three will do so with the help of an unlikely hero - Mr. Magorium. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deliver on any of hem. Much. The standard elements are all in place and are all used well - you know the funny moment in the first act turns out to have emotional significance in the third; themes are presented with all the subtlty of a brick to the nose.
The trouble comes in that Dustin Hoffman, a capable actor in many respects, tried to play the title role as a version of Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. And the movie really needed Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka.
What I mean is, Depp's Wonka is an oddball who knows he's odd. He knows that the rest of the world does not operate on the same mechanics that he does and so he pushes it further and further away until he is more clown than confectioner. Wilder's Wonka, on the other hand, did not care if the world thought him odd. He was perfectly content to run his factory, and by extension, his life, on his own terms and he thought only in terms of candy.
Magorium is weird and knows it. He revels in it. He speaks in deliberate non-sequiters, trying to impart an entire philosphers worth of wisdom into every quip and pun. His eccentricities seem affectations rather than genuine discombobulation. (It's a word. Trust me.)
The movie sets up a contrast between the weird and wonderful Magorium and ultra straight laced Henry, played by Jason Bateman in the movie. And here is where the above problem really begins to come through. Bateman's journey is so entirely disparate from anything Hoffman does; rather, his journey is manifest through the store itself (and it is a character in itself, as well as being the best part of the movie).
The ostensibly main plot, Natalie Portman's journey to believe in herself is one we've seen a thousand times. And here, again, we need a restrained, genuinely odd Magorium, rather than the deliberate clowning Hoffman gives us.
The other plot I mentioned gets dropped more or less completely at the end of the film.
The movie is worth...obtaining...if not buying or, really, even renting, if only to see the effects that have been put to marvelous use bringing the store to life. But that's about it. Dammit.
Reactions were varied, of course, but when we compiled our data we learned one thing: Men love this movie, women think it's cute. Men think this movie represents everything that was best about childhood, friendship, overcoming adversity, the triumph of imagination, and baseball. Women think it's about a bunch of boys playing baseball.
Conclusion? The Sandlot is the greatest guys' movie of all time.
And it's finally on DVD.
My sister, who understands me, even if she doesn't always get me, sent me a copy for my birthday. My wife, who gets me, even if she doesn't always understand me, sat down with me last night to watch the movie.
She thought it was cute; it was a nice movie about little boys and baseball. I laughed until I couldn't breathe, and then I laughed some more, thinking about the movie, and about where I grew up and about my friends, back then and now, and the things we bond over and the idiot things we do in the name of adventure.
Moleskine, the famed maker of small, hardback, quality notebooks, has recently released a series of city guides. The guides are designed to turn a travel journal into a useful guidebook as well. From the website:
A special guidebook, to buy for your own use or as a gift for your friends. Ideal for those who travel, whether to see the sights or for work, as a way of organizing your trip and to preserve it for your memory and your records.
I can admit to being a huge fan of moleskine notebooks. I have several and I have been using them for various things for years, so, when I saw that one of the first in the series was for the city of Barcelona, I picked one up.
It is a quality notebook, with the same high grade construction and durability as regular Moleskines. Further, the organization of the notebook was very nice, with maps at the front, then blank journal pages, then several pages of...annotation pages, with icons built into tabs on the sides of the pages, and lines dividing the page into small blocks. At the back of the book is the standard pocket. One other final design note, in place of the usual sewn-in bookmark, the city guides come with three.
Having said all that, I did not really find the guide very useful. Well, the journal pages got filled up very quickly and I loved that, although I would have preferred lined pages, and the maps were nice, but the rest was just wasted space for me. I found that the annotation pages would be really useful if I lived in the city and needed to refer back to that little tapas bar I found last week, but for one time visitors, it was not very practical.
To be very brief and to the point - the books are wonderful for people who live in the city, or for people who travel there often. If they make one for Tokyo, I'll definitely pick it up. For other places, though, I will stick with just a plain old notebook.
The current incarnation of Rough Guide Publishing's Directions series does the former quite well. My recently arrived copy of the Rough Guide Directions: Barcelona is opened and closed with fold-out maps of the city. In between the book is broken into chapters, starting with an Introduction to the city, then Ideas, then Places, Accommodation, Essentials, and Language.
The Ideas chapter is what I have been most interested in as it lists an assortment of locations and events with only a photo and a line or two to provide the reader / traveler with a, well, idea of what there is to see and do in the city. The following chapter on Places provides much more information on many of the places listed in the Ideas section, and while keeping itself primarily to a brief description of the location, provides timetables, maps, phone numbers, and contact names where necessary.
The Accommodation and Essentials chapters do much the same as any guidebook, but the Language chapter stands out as an excellent travel preparation and in-country tool, with sections on pronunciation, words and phrases for hotels and taxis, and a well made menu reader.
As an added bonus, purchase of the physical book provides the reader / traveler with a CD containing the full e-text of the book in PDF format for loading onto a laptop or PDA or cellphone.
All in all, this is a quick, simple travel guide for people who like to explore and have a look around, written by people who like to do the same. A traveler heading to a European destination could do far worse for guidebooks than the Rough Guide Directions Series.
Links: Amazon Affiliate Link to Rough Guide Directions Barcelona
and Rough Guide Directions Venice books.Cross-posted to Soapadoo.
My wife, on the other hand, loves the story. She maintains that when I get as far into the story as she has (there are currently 47 volumes in Japanese, vs. 16 in English) I will read for the story rather than clever pictures.
The translated manga is published by Viz media, who have made a business out of finding the more popular Japanese properties and translating them with as much of the original art and format preserved as possible. This includes keeping the right to left reading format of both the book and each page. That said, there are little, helpful hints such as an arrow pointing left and the phrase "read this way" at the top of some pages to help readers adjust to the Japanese layout. There are other fun pages scattered throughout the book, such as the page that teaches you to draw a Jolly Roger and one that encourages the reader to design their own pirate flag.
Volume one serves to introduce the main characters and to get the story in motion. We meet Luffy, the central protaganist, as a young boy hanging out in a pirate bar, listening to the sailors tell stories. Luffy decides that he will become king of the pirates someday, somehow. In the meantime there is a scuffle with some bandits and Luffy eats one of the devil fruit, turning his whole body to rubber with the cost of never being able to swim. (Being made of rubber enables Luffy to use various combinations of stretched limbs to get himself or others out of tough situations.)
Luffy grows up and sets off to become a pirate. In the first volume, he saves another boy from a dangerous female pirate captain and, with the boy's help, saves the world's greatest swordsman from certain death. The swordsman becomes Luffy's first crewman and the story is launched.
The original Japanese story was first published in the pages of Shonen Jump magazine, a weekly that presents the next issues of several different stories in one volume. Shonen Jump is aimed at Japanese boys in the Jr. High School to High School range and the writing reflects this with its themes of friendship and its use of violence to produce humor. The art is, of course, manga style, with all the cliches and must-haves present. Emotion causes huge distortions to the mouths and eyes of whichever character is in the throes of an outburst, while Luffy's rubber body stretches to amazing and inconsistent proportions depending on the need at the time. The art is also brilliant. Clean lines and a minimum of shading are used to keep the page busy without being cluttered and to get the story from point A to point B easily and clearly.
The book is worth picking up if you are a fan of anime or manga, or simply curious as to what all the fuss is about. Priced at $7.95 U.S., each volume is almost twice the price of the Japanese versions, which makes collecting and reading the entire series a more daunting prospect. However, as the English language editions are still being translated, a dedicated reader can take his or her time and pick up new volumes at their leisure.
One Piece has its share of melodrama, absurdist humor, and cartoon violence, all of which makes it a fun, if sometimes simplistic read and I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next.
Links: Viz Media, Shonen Jump Magazine (English) and my Amazon Affiliate Link for One Piece Vol. 1 Romance Dawn (English)
This entry is cross-posted to Soapadoo.
Given all that, Wilcken's thoughtful and deep analysis, of the album as a whole and as individual tracks, does an incredible job of reinvigorating the listener's interest in the album.
The book is a series of essays detailing the physical surroundings where the album was created, as well as a bit of background on Bowie's mental state at the time - Bowie was strung out and in the process of getting a divorce - and how these affected the work in progress.
Once past the background and overview of the album as a whole, the book turns to tackling each song individually. The analysis of the songs is very well done, bringing into focus the instrumentation and themes of each track, plus how they relate to each other and to the album as a whole.
More than that, however, the book made me want to listen to the album again. And again. I found myself listening to each track before reading the analysis and then again, immediately after. I found that Wilcken's essays brought nuances and subtleties, of which I had previously been unaware, to light. The essays let me re-examine the album, changing it from an older, difficult listen to a master work that blended elements and styles in ways many have since tried to imitate.
That is good writing.
The book ends with a brief mention of how the album has withstood the test of time and the author does not attempt to force any opinions or conclusions on the reader. Instead, he allows the reader to take the analysis he has written and let the reader / listener draw their own conclusions.
The book is a worthwhile read for casual and die hard Bowie fans alike, as well as being an excellent example of pop music analysis that any music fan would do well to examine.
Amazon Affiliate Link: David Bowie's Low (33 1/3)
Time moved on and we continued to watch Kevin Smith movies - Mallrats and then Chasing Amy. Then we graduated.
Fast forward a decade and I have been becoming reacquainted with Smith's catalogue; after having watched Jersey Girl and Clerks II, I went back to the beginning and watched Clerks and Mallrats again. Clerks was much better than I had remembered and Mallrats was much worse. The benefit of being ten years older, I suppose.
Anyway, while on Amazon, I came across this book, "Clerks and Chasing Amy: Two Screenplays" and decided I would give it a look. The book is just what it says, the scripts for the two films, plus the Bluntman and Chronic comic book and a short introductory essay by Smith himself. It was an entertaining, if quick, read and I enjoyed being able to finally read all the thank you credits at the end without having to stare at my t.v. screen from a distance of only three inches.
What was most enjoyable for me, however, was that these scripts are un-edited. In other words, they contain all the cut scenes and original dialogue. (If you are unaware of the original ending of Clerks, I really recommend checking for it on YouTube or somewhere - it's...different.)
It was also fascinating to see how much of the dialogue was unchanged from the screenplay to the film, something that I imagine would not be true for, for example, a Robert Altman directed movie.
I was, however, a little disappointed in the lack of content. After all, the internet is full of screenplay and script repositories, so I feel a little cheated at having paid for them. I would have preferred more commentary from Smith, in the form of footnotes, or something, to justify the cost of buying the dead tree editions of the scripts. (It has been pointed out the the copyright / publishing date on this is 1997, when there was not so much on the internet.)
In short, the book is a quick, fun read for fans of Smith or for those who are interested in the process of filmmaking, but there is not much content that cannot be found online for those who look hard enough.
The story is a pretty basic, if original one. Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, with a "T" as he says several times in the movie, a confirmed bachelor who has never really wanted anything else. The movie opens with Johnston's current girlfriend leaving him and immediately moves into the main plot premise. Johnston receives a letter with no signature and no return address, informing him that he has a son whom he has never met.
From there, Johnston is off on an adventure, prompted and urged on by his neighbor and best friend, to find the woman who bore his child and, possibly, his child.
The viewer is treated to four very different reactions by Johnston's old lovers as he forcibly intrudes on their lives. We see a warm welcome, cold, indifferent, and hostile in pretty much that order without ever finding out too much about Johnston or his relationships with these women.
The end of the film leaves several questions unanswered, and, although I enjoyed the movie, these unanswered questions are nagging. I don't feel that there were enough clues given in the movie to let the viewer draw any conclusions about Johnston's character, or what changes may have occurred within him, save one, which I won't spoil for the viewer.
Bill Murray is fantastic as always, keeping to his recent roles of mature man grows up, as seen in Lost in Translation and Rushmore. Jim Jarmusch is a director that takes some getting used to, but one who is well worth the effort of doing so. He provides a very lush, bright canvas for the viewer to work within, while keeping the story moving quickly and efficiently.
Overall, I really enjoyed it, while my wife hated it, and for the same reason: No definitive answer is given for any question raised by the movie. The viewer must look into the film and draw what conclusions he or she can without losing sight of the films main themes of loss for what one never had, and desire for something one has never known.
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