Kam
05-31-2005, 06:43 AM
Ok, so went movie crazy this weekend and caught up on my viewings...
Unleashed: Best movie of the weekend. Really took advantage of Jet Li's strengths. He's chosen faaaar better roles for himself lately, with Hero and now this, he really has gone back to what he does best. This dark character with mystery, he really has this quiet not-so-evil-but-dark quality about him, its what made him the perfect villain in lethal weapon 4. same in unleashed, and especially when he's acting in every scene with bob hoskins and morgan freeman, really helps a lot. the action and fight scenes were really good, and the story and acting were just as good. very enjoyable movie, if it's still playing worth checking out.
Madagascar - heavily slanted towards the kid and new yorkers. i enjoyed the references and digs at jersey, but not sure how much it'll really resonate with anyone else. not much for the big kids in it, although still good fun, it's not like the recent movies of pixar/dreamworks (shrek, finding nemo, shrek 2, incredibles, etc). where this one is defn a kiddie movie, BUT... they do say "shut up" a lot (although that's the most 'foul' the language gets), and, just as an fyi, not sure at what age you want your kids saying shut-up to each other, i know my sister is super paranoid about 'bad language' with my niece and nephew, so... just a thought. but Ali G voicing the king of the lemurs stole the show, along with the penguins. i think these animators love the side characters more than the leads, they ALWAYS steal the show.
Kingdom of Heaven - if you can get through the first 2 hours and 25 minutes of the movie... you'll have seen it. actually does have some very nice sentiments, and Balien (bloom) makes a nice speach before jerusalem exchanges hands (once again) about how the people currently there made no offense against who was attacking them, and the people attacking them were not alive when the original offense was made. aweful lot of boring crap though to get to this point. basically they make the 'badguys' the knights templars, and gibson's william wallace's best buddy from braveheart (rock throwing contest guy) does a great job of playing a horrid jackass here. (side note: Have you noticed the cast of braveheart has since shown up in nearly every single epic/period piece movie made since then?) The only problem with the grand, massive, cartoon-y levels of battles here.... is we saw them already, done on a much more grand, and better scale, in LOTR.
Was talking to a friend of mine about this afterwards, and thought about how the 'wonder' of movies is gone. i never once have thought, 'oh wow, how'd they do that' in watching a movie over the last... 5-6 years. because i know the answer is always "with a computer"
It's not fun to watch in that respect, because you know they didn't hire 200,000 extra's to make up the saracen army, they didnt build 1,000 ships in troy, and they used virtual cameras to compose and move the shots around, and digital cars to fly camera's through. i think the last shot that really got me wondering how they did it, was from Contact, where the young jodie foster character is running to get her dad's heart medicine up the stairs, down the hall, and in to the bathroom, only to have the camera 'come out' from the mirror. was a very cool shot. since then, the answer to 'how'd they do that' has always been, with 1's and 0's.
just the typical kam-rant of the day. :)
peace
k2
Unleashed: Best movie of the weekend. Really took advantage of Jet Li's strengths. He's chosen faaaar better roles for himself lately, with Hero and now this, he really has gone back to what he does best. This dark character with mystery, he really has this quiet not-so-evil-but-dark quality about him, its what made him the perfect villain in lethal weapon 4. same in unleashed, and especially when he's acting in every scene with bob hoskins and morgan freeman, really helps a lot. the action and fight scenes were really good, and the story and acting were just as good. very enjoyable movie, if it's still playing worth checking out.
Madagascar - heavily slanted towards the kid and new yorkers. i enjoyed the references and digs at jersey, but not sure how much it'll really resonate with anyone else. not much for the big kids in it, although still good fun, it's not like the recent movies of pixar/dreamworks (shrek, finding nemo, shrek 2, incredibles, etc). where this one is defn a kiddie movie, BUT... they do say "shut up" a lot (although that's the most 'foul' the language gets), and, just as an fyi, not sure at what age you want your kids saying shut-up to each other, i know my sister is super paranoid about 'bad language' with my niece and nephew, so... just a thought. but Ali G voicing the king of the lemurs stole the show, along with the penguins. i think these animators love the side characters more than the leads, they ALWAYS steal the show.
Kingdom of Heaven - if you can get through the first 2 hours and 25 minutes of the movie... you'll have seen it. actually does have some very nice sentiments, and Balien (bloom) makes a nice speach before jerusalem exchanges hands (once again) about how the people currently there made no offense against who was attacking them, and the people attacking them were not alive when the original offense was made. aweful lot of boring crap though to get to this point. basically they make the 'badguys' the knights templars, and gibson's william wallace's best buddy from braveheart (rock throwing contest guy) does a great job of playing a horrid jackass here. (side note: Have you noticed the cast of braveheart has since shown up in nearly every single epic/period piece movie made since then?) The only problem with the grand, massive, cartoon-y levels of battles here.... is we saw them already, done on a much more grand, and better scale, in LOTR.
Was talking to a friend of mine about this afterwards, and thought about how the 'wonder' of movies is gone. i never once have thought, 'oh wow, how'd they do that' in watching a movie over the last... 5-6 years. because i know the answer is always "with a computer"
It's not fun to watch in that respect, because you know they didn't hire 200,000 extra's to make up the saracen army, they didnt build 1,000 ships in troy, and they used virtual cameras to compose and move the shots around, and digital cars to fly camera's through. i think the last shot that really got me wondering how they did it, was from Contact, where the young jodie foster character is running to get her dad's heart medicine up the stairs, down the hall, and in to the bathroom, only to have the camera 'come out' from the mirror. was a very cool shot. since then, the answer to 'how'd they do that' has always been, with 1's and 0's.
just the typical kam-rant of the day. :)
peace
k2