I don't get it...

I just saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince today, expecting to be at least midly entertained.

I was wrong.

I was bored out of my skull. Bored with the moodiness, the lack of humour the damn teen angst. Has Twighlight even scared the makers of the HP movies?

I love the books. Can't read them enough. Have read them all at least twice, as I recall. I love the humor, the adventure and the not so hidden Christian message in the whole series. A scholar of children's literature, Jack Zipes - Marxist and athiest - said after only three or four of the books were out that this series was following the pattern of the Christian knight. I didn't believe it then, but after book 7, I saw it loud and clear. This profound idea is lost to the idea that we need to just show a string of scenes from each book.

The movies? Don't own or want to own any of them. I find they're more to appeal to fans who want to see "certain scenes" on screen. Unlike Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I feel the makers of the Harry Potter movies have lost touch with the spirit of the stories. Jackson added, deleted and manipulated the key events in the story to fit cinema and illustrate his own interpretations, but I don't feel that we lost Tolkien's original themes and ideas. Harry Potter tends to be scenes from the books, without the ideas that propel the story. I guess, in a sense, I felt the same way about Star Trek (2009) - something was lost in the translation to the big screen.

Although, like ST, perhaps in 20 years we'll get the "reboot" of the Harry Potter movies. I wonder what Jackson is doing after producing The Hobbit?

EDIT: Yay! Here's a review of the movie that I agree with! And it's from Philly!

But it's not Star Trek...

Ok, I saw the movie and I was impressed with the special effects, I laughed and I thought the opening sequence of Kirk's father's death was well done. I can see why the numbers are there and I can see why this will go down in history as a successful "reboot" of the series. It will make tons of money and that's just the way it is: I get it. I'm going against the grain by writing this, but Star Trek was supposed to be about going against the grain and perhaps it never should be "new, hip and uptodate." However, I can't get past the feeling that this is not really a "reboot" as others have been done. Let me try to organize my thoughts and explain why. I will also warn anyone out there that there will be spoilers coming. See the movie first and then come back to this.

Batman, Battlestar Galactica and James Bond have also done the "reboot" thing and started anew, but none of them betrayed their roots like this movie has done. All three of these franchises had something in common: they all kind of fell into "campiness" and silliness at some point and people just lost interest in the goofiness of it all. All three reboots did the same thing, though: they looked to the roots of the stories, stripped them to essentials and began again. The basic story of all three - the foundations of all three - stayed the same. This is important because it is in the foundations that we discover what brought us to these stories in the first place.

About the "nuTrek" as some are starting to label this movie: it has done what no other "reboot" has done - attacked and destroyed foundations by destroying Vulcan and betraying Vulcan culture with a kiss. It basically has eliminated all the TV series and movies that have gone before it with its time travel plot. It is an alternative universe, which is fine with some, but not with me.

Spock's character as revealed during the movie is not Vulcan in his behavior, which is just not consistent with who Spock and Vulcans have developed into over the course of the many shows and movies. Vulcans never - repeat NEVER - display affection in public. It is completely alien (drum riff) to their way of life - it would never even occur to them it is so distasteful. I have no difficulty with Spock/Uhura having a relationship, but openly kissing in front of not only others, but a superior officer is not going to happen. This single event took me out of the movie and wrecked that "suspension of disbelief" I have. It is especially unrealistic in light of the destruction of Vulcan and the death of Amanda, Spock's mother. If I have learned anything about human nature, it is that in times of extreme crisis we tend to cling to what we know and even have a tendency to become more fundamentalistic about our beliefs. Spock would not kiss Uhura in public - that is not Spock.

Star Trek, ultimately, is about characters and challenges to our ways of living and thinking. It is not a space opera like Star Wars. It is a way of exploring what it means to be human and the alien races on the series were ways of exploring different parts of human nature. I feel that this movie gave up on the thought and character development in favor of the quick joke, the grand special effects, and something that would appeal to a wider audience. The question that I have then is: Was Star Trek ever supposed to appeal to a wider audience? Maybe not.

Bad Movies

I guess the official protocol is to say: "Spoilers ahead!". However, I will be doing you a favor. Don't ever watch this movie: Swordfish. It's been a while since I sat through a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie. In a funny way....I feel a bit refreshed by it. No need for seriousness in thinking about this. No Nietzschian metaphors within the bad guys like The Dark Knight. No serious commentary on society's rejected ones as in Monster. No thought provoking commentary on the war in Iraq like In the Valley of Elah.
Nope! This movie is just so bad, it should be illegal to have "making of.." featurettes on the DVD like this one does. You know the ones, where the actors and others involved in this semi-crime against humanity talk up the movie like it's the next Citizen Kane. And the actors? Well...we're talking some of the best actors out there in this movie: John Travolta, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and Don Cheadle. I guess when there's too many good actors, that should be a sign of some kind?

Apparently this movie is trying to make a STATEMENT about how terrorism is to be handled. You see the key is (I am not making this up): Hit them back harder!!!!! TAKE THAT! That's what settles for profound thinking in this movie. Travolta says that the first few pages of the script are what sold the film for him. Basically the movie begins with Travolta explaining what is wrong with Hollywood films. Big long attempt at Tarantino-esque dialogue. Kinda ironic - an incredibly bad movie talking about....but I guess that was unintentional. This movie is so bad that their idea of a chase scene involves actors rolling after each other down an incredibly steep hill. I'm not kidding - rolling down a hill. It was an excruciatingly long chase sequence, too. Really.

Travolta is posing as a bank robber in order to be a terrorist of terrorists (like Dexter, but poorly edited and with lots more explosions). He's supposed to be our American hero, although we just think he's really a crazy bad guy, but is Halle Berry a DEA agent or is she just his main squeeze after all and we get to see her topless for no other reason than guys can go around and say they saw her topless. That's the movie...a big long run-on sentence. Oh, and Travolta randomly kills people in the middle of LA and gets away with it. I guess that's not as much a stretch as I thought it was initially.

Anyhow - Berry's topless. However, the filmmakers don't seem to understand that in well made movies, there is a reason for things like toplessness or shooting up senators or blowing up LA. In this movie, there's really no reason for any of it. It's so choppily edited that it seems more like a highlight reel and a poorly made highlight reel at that. Now there was toplessness in In the Valley of Elah, too, but it made sense and revealed something about Tommy Lee Jones's character(No, he wasn't the one that was topless. Sorry, ladies.) I won't tell you about it because that would entail spoiling a good movie.

Another test of a bad movie suddenly came to mind: I bet everyone who saw Swordfish remembers that HB was topless for all of ten seconds or so. I also bet that everyone who saw In the Valley of Elah and has been reading this is thinking: "I don't remember any toplessness in that movie...." That's a sign of a good movie - even boobs don't distract from a well made film.

I didn't watch the Oscars...

What's happening? I've stopped watching TV and now I've actually NOT watched the Oscars for the first time in at least a decade. I was talking to the principal of the school I work at when I'm not taking a year off for grad school and he was talking about Rick Mercer. I haven't watched one Rick Mercer this season!!! I don't even watch the last season of Corner Gas (Although I will by the DVD in Oct/Nov when it comes out.) The time for the Oscars came up, I looked at the clock and decided I wasn't interested. I haven't watched any of the Best Picture nominees this year, although I'm sure "Slumdog Millionaire" deserved the honor. I know just from reading about the movie that it was the one to root for - anything about an underdog is fantastic to me. I was miffed at the exclusion of "The Dark Knight" for nomination. I knew Heath Ledger would win for the Joker, but it should have been at least nominated for original screenplay and director.

That wasn't the reason I didn`t watch and it wasn't because I was too busy with school work. The stuff I've been reading in grad school is actually changing the way I think. The way I view things and I'm not sure what to think about that...

The Dark Knight: There's a Metaphor....somehow..

Ok, I've been totally not posting. What a whirlwind! I'm taking a leave of absence from teaching in order to work on my Masters degree and just getting my classroom packed up, doing report cards, helping Ruth with getting a full-time job AND finishing the paper that I needed to write since Fall (It was cool - don't know if it was written well or not, but it was on the idea of Monsters and forgiveness...)

Anywhoo, I'm just putting this out there: The Dark Knight is an incredible movie that has got to be a metaphor for something....something modern.

I should be profound, but I kinda get all the profundity wrung out of me by contemplating JRR Tolkien and the Inklings ~click on the word if you don't know what it means...

The Joker is an incredible villian in this movie. He is Chaos personified - Anarchy without the subtle wit. He has not interest in money or power - just destruction. Why? It seems to be more than he 'just likes to blow things up'. I definitely want to see this movie a few times (own it on DVD, too). Everything in this movie seems to be a Statement About Something. I know there's a connectiong with the Inklings - Dare I bring up movies in yet another grad paper????

Shakespearean?

I recently got around to renting The Departed , Martin Scorsese's oscar-winning film, and was impressed. Many go out of their way to put down this movie just because of the violence or the use of the 'f word'. Both seem to fit in the culture that is displayed here. Jack Nicholson's character (forgive me - I have a terrible memory for the character names, so I'll use actor names) says something to the boy he's training to be an insider (cop) for him, something like: "You can be a cop or a criminal. Is there any difference?" That's the main idea of the entire movie there. Is there really any difference? I was struck by the tragic ending and couldn't help but think of how the continual battle, the struggle to be insiders (Matt Damon vs. Leo DiCaprio) seemed to be so like a Shakespeare tragedy. I don't know how else to describe it except to say I felt the same way after seeing any of Shakespeare's plays, such as a Hamlet or, perhaps this movie better reflects: Macbeth. Some of the reviews talk about how long the movie was, but, I must admit, I was so caught up in the story of how Matt Damon was leaking info to Jack Nicholson while Leo DiCaprio was an undercover cop leaking info to the police from inside Jack's own organization - that I was surprised by the abruptness of the ending. However, in reading some reviews for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, I recognized the kind of violence: realistic. In reality, people live their lives, can be quite happy and BANG! violence intrudes brutally on their reality, shattering the moment. This is a movie to meditate on and think about. This is real film making at its best!