Chicks and Car Chases

I recently had the pleasure of watching the "unedited" version of Quentin Tarentino's Death Proof.

Good things:
Zoe Bell on the top of the 1970 Challenger is awesome. I wanted to be a stuntperson back in the day and so I know better than many when it's the stuntperson and what they're hiding or faking. Because Zoe Bell is a stuntperson we got to see all the things we normally don't and it was spectacular. I also like her attitude during the counter-chase scene where she grabs the metal pipe. Use what you can and don't hold back. She was also impressive when she tossed the metal pipe in via the car window and then jumped right after it. Having done something similar with the much easier entry port of an open car door, it is not the easiest thing to avoid that which you have just thrown in before you. Especially after you've made sure not to hit your buddy with the thing you just threw in.

The interaction of the groups of women were great, even if the dialogue made you want them dead. It's the chemistry and the naturalism that works here.

As always, the music was one of the biggest highlights of the movie. I'm a big believer that QT does more for a musicians career than big music studios ever do.

The girl power. Yes, it doesn't seem like it initially, but this is one of the few times that we have seen women(physically) fighting for something other than the standard "browbeaten woman gaining power and beating on the guy in self-defense."

I admit, I love violence in movies and video games and it was a true delight to be taken through what happened to each girl in the crash. We're usually given crashes from one perspective and only the happenings on the whole. If we are given multiple takes, it's usually just different angles. This was a treat.

The visuals. The graininess was fun. The costumes were so 70s even if the time frame was modern. Stuntman Mike's Icy Hot jacket was a hoot.

Bad Things:
The dialogue. I understand the goal of the girl chats is to make you want to see them dead but they just go on too long. Two minutes into the initial scene with the chatting in the car made me ask "Where's the boom?" Unfortunately the dialogue continued, albeit at different locations and times, for another half hour or so.

The distortion of the time it takes to do things. Kim, from the second group of girls, goes into a Circle A for coffee and Red Bull. She's in there long enough to grind her own beans, brew up the coffee, run down the street to the market for cream and sugar, drink the coffee and Red Bull, wash the coffee mug and recycle the Red Bull cans. During the time she's "getting coffee" one of the other girls goes into the same store, gets cash from the ATM, grabs a snack, and has a short chat with yet another girl, who is still outside the store, about that girl's appearance in Allure magazine, find the magazine, show the girl her spread, buy the magazine and snacks, go outside to talk to the other girl about another magazine, and then go back in for the other magazine. I'm sorry, getting coffee and snacks from a convenience store takes all of 4 minutes, MAX. And that's if there's a line at the counter. QT could have shown the foot fetishism and the creepy car appearances in that time. Just cut out the Stuntman Mike considering his latest targets bit that dragged on. If he really wanted the time, he should have had them getting gas.

The fact that the bit set in Texas had everyone going outside to smoke. Last I checked it was ok to smoke in a bar in Texas, why go outside for a smoke? OK, you can argue it's to show the car and set the tension, but really, no. It just makes it seem forced, especially since you have people inside smoking already. Also, Arlene tells Stuntman Mike she's scared of his car, but I don't recall any point before that where she saw him coming out of the car or when he pointed it out as his.

Overall this is a fun movie if you're into exploitation and violence movies. I really enjoyed watching it and I will buy it. I'll just fastforward through most of the dialogue.

A Star Hidden in Dust

OK, I have to say, whomever was in charge of creating the trailer for Stardust should be shot. The trailer makes the movie look like utter drek. Trailers usually contain the best parts of a movie so as to better entice consumers into going to the theater. So, when the trailer looks hideous, one can only assume the movie will be as well.

This is not the case for Stardust. I haven't laughed like that in a while. The costuming was good, the acting was good, the dialogue and situations were good, the sets were nice, the effects were good. Pretty much everything was good. Nothing really spectacular, but nowadays you're lucky to get good across the board. There were really only two weak points. The story was a bit thrown together, things seemed to lurch slightly from one act to the other, but not so badly that it threw off everything else. The other weak point was what they did to the looks of the men in the town Wall. The man who played Humphrey is actually quite attractive but in the movie it looked like a drag queen did his hair and make-up. The main character is not at attractive man. Yes he looks better with the long hair later in the movie, but he's still not what most people would call handsome. Really, the movie would have done better if Tristan were played by the actor who played the young version of his father shown in the beginning of the movie.

What's also nice is the movie had a little bit for everyone. There's the romance for the chick flick fanatics, there's sword fighting for the action crew. There's political intrigue, can can, pirates, witches, high speed chases, dropping boobs, there's even a built in peanut gallery.

All that being said, this is really a highly entertaining, see with your friends, underrated movie. I think it was well worth the price of full admission. And I think it's a shame that a good movie like this is doing so poorly when a stinky pile of poo like Eragon did well.

Yeah, if you haven't seen Eragon yet, don't bother. You'll just end up wanting your money and the two hours of your life back. I'd go into detail about how terrible everything in Eragon was, but really, the movie is so bad it's not worth the effort to describe how bad.

Strength and Honour

This weekend I saw the much anticipated 300(in IMAX). I will try to review it here without giving away anything you can't grasp from just viewing the trailer.

Now, I am a history buff, particularly ancient world, and I am a reenactment/recreationist and part of that is sword combat. My armor is based upon the 700 Thespian volunteer-warriors that fought alongside the 300 Spartans and refused to abandon them. I had to spend a good bit of time immersing myself in anything involving the movie 300 before it opened in order to get all my frustration at the historical inacuracies out before I went to see the movie so that it would not ruin my appreciation of the movie itself.

That being said, I LOVED the movie. And I will be going back to see it in the theaters at least another two times. My knowledge of the time period, cultures, soldiers, warfare, and armaments in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. Would that have been the case had I not "prepared" myself? I can't say, but I can say I still would have enjoyed the movie immensely.

The visuals are quite breathtaking. You know everything but the actors are CGI, whether you knew anything about the movie going in or not. This isn't to say the graphics aren't stunning and well done, they are. But, it's obvious that a computer was heavily involved. The visuals have a very similar feel to Sin City's. This is not a bad thing. As I said, things are obviously computer generated, but that only adds to the fantastical, graphic novel feel. If anything it helps, not hinders, the composition of the movie. The use of computers for the backgrounds and creatures definitely frees the creators to bring in these elements in ways they could not have achieved with the real things.

The costuming was superb. Now, I know, if all you've seen are the posters, you may ask "What costuming?" The details were there and they worked(unlike Eragon). The red cloaks of the Spartans had spectacular swoosh to them, undoubtedly for the same reason the Nazgul cloaks hung so well in LOTR: there's a lot more fabric to them than you would think. The outfits of Queen Gorgo defy gravity in ways that would make Donatella Versace proud. The fabrics all have texture to them, from the rough spun of the Spartan cloaks, to the fine silk of Xerxes' entertainment. The props were similarly impressive. The spears all showed leather wrapping during close-ups, the Persian arrows were barbed in painfully beautiful fashion, and the helms of the Spartans reflected the punishment they withstood.

The acting was pretty good. The actors did the best they could with the lines they were given, and I must say the real weak point of the movie was the dialogue. The various actors playing the key Spartans had a spectacular grasp of what it meant to be Spartan and you could see it from the way they moved in combat to the looks on their faces during battle. Vincent Regan was spectacular in what is his second Greek period epic(the previous being Troy where he played Achilles's second) and was one of the highlight characters of the movie, despite the fact that his character is never actually given a name but referred to simply as "The Captain." I think he actually did a better job of things than Gerard Butler, who put a little too much into a few lines.

The fighting, surprisingly, I loved. I must admit to liking the fighting of Troy a little more but different forms, different set-ups, and a different quantity of combat mean the two, despite their roots, can't really be likened to each other. Now, again, I'm a sword fighter for fun, and I will never say sword combat in a movie or TV show is realistic(documentaries don't count), but there are degrees of inaccuracy. Troy's shield work was more accurate and effective, but 300 is definitely more accurate than the European style point dueling done with Asian slashing swords that we saw in Ultraviolet. The tempo of combat is where 300 really shines. Time slowed and sped up in a way that flowed and can be understood by anyone who has experienced the perceived time dilation of melee combat. No one just stood there waiting to be center screen to fight, in fact I came out of each battle scene wishing the shots had been wider and shown me more. The biggest problem is one that seems to be shared by many people. Blood is shown flying everywhere from every stab of the spear and slash of the sword, but none is on the ground. This may be a rating thing similar to why some video games have green blood(red blood in a game means an automatic increase in the maturity rating apparently) or it may be due to the fact that the blood is computer generated and they didn't want to deal with "painting" the blood on the ground. I don't know, and quite frankly, it didn't bug me enough to really detract from the experience.

All in all, I would highly recommend this movie to any and all adults. I would highly recommend you NOT bring anyone under 18 to see this movie. The only thing it's missing from the unholy triumvirate of things that make censors freak is foul language.

As I said at the beginning of this review, I will see this movie in the theaters at least another two times. And I think that is the most telling statement I can make.