My Bad, Apparently

Uh-oh. Apparently one is not supposed to post a review of a movie until the day it's released? According to this Slate article about early reviews, this is common knowledge for recipients of free preview screenings.

I guess I missed that memo.

Or, more likely, it doesn't apply to random people posting on tiny blogs, just to professionals writing for actual publication.

My scattered notes on whether or not movies contain any reference to libraries are probably OK.

Library! Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn

I saw My Week With Marilyn last night. It was all right. A bit slow and full of its protagonist, but nicely done. And it had Emma Watson, who's adorable.

Also, it had something too few movies have: a librarian!

In this case, the royal librarian at Windsor Castle, who shows Marilyn Monroe and our hero, Colin Clarke (third assistant director, a sweet, unspoiled young man whose kindness touches the heart of a troubled Marilyn) around the magnificently stocked library. What a job that must be.

This alone touches my troubled heart.

As for health, there was a lot of alcohol and pills, and some health consequences. For technological gadgets we have no more than 1950s telephones, which is acceptable given that the movie is set in 1956.

If you like a well-appointed historical drama with a touch of bittersweet love, and want to see Michelle Williams play Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branaugh play Laurence Olivier (reasonably well, I thought, though I am not enormously familiar with either portrayed actor's body of work or personal mannerisms), look no further.

Especially if you like a good royal library scene.

Awesometasticness Movie Review: Harold and Kumar

You guys, this movie...whew. I know, you are so filled with jealousy right now that I've seen it and am lording it over you because you haven't.

You know it was bound to be the best movie ever!

It was actually pretty funny, if you like crude drug-, race-, sexuality-, violence and genitally-based humor. Which, you know, who doesn't?

With a touching message about the importance of friendship, and the importance of family! And lots of cheery holiday songs!

Basically, Kumar is still a heavy user of weed and apparent general slacker, while Harold has become a straitlaced finance type with a fancy house. (Bonus timely Wall Street protester scene.) Harold's father-in-law is really into Christmas and having a perfect Christmas tree, which provides crucial tension and plot points.

Having drifted apart, Harold and Kumar haven't seen each other in two years, but then a mysterious package brings them together, and, along with one weird new friend each and one friend's baby, they set off on a series of wacky adventures trying to get that perfect tree.

It's by no means highbrow, but it's an entertaining trifle. Again, if you like that kind of thing.

Ah, Movies

Quick, what's the one upcoming movie you're most excited about seeing? Harold and Kumar's Very 3D Christmas, right? You can't wait to see that, and you're so excited because you have this secret plan where you're going to lord it over me that you've seen it and I haven't.

Well, I have passes for next week, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, Imaginary-Lording-It-Person.

Also, you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you.

Last night, along completely different lines, I saw Martha Marcy May Marlene. I wouldn't say I liked it, exactly, but it was interesting.

It had no particular library angle, but did present the important message that being in a cult is not really great for you from a mental health standpoint.

So keep that in mind as you make your choices in life.


Edited to add:
I couldn't rest until I corrected the title of your most-anticipated movie: it's actually A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.

Well, I could rest, since I went to bed and then didn't get around to making this change until the next afternoon. But I assure you my rest was fitful, and my thoughts were troubled, because inaccuracy weighs upon me.

Ding Dong!

Slate has an article up asking "Who Killed 3-D?"

It speculates on the possible guilt of:

1. Greedy theaters charging higher premiums for 3D tickets than customers are willing to pay;
2. Greedy film studios doing a lousy job of turning regular films into 3D films and hence weakening the value of the novel technology;
3. Smart customers realizing the novel technology isn't really all that awesome and deciding not to pay for it;
4. Lousy filmmakers making bad movies and weakening the value of the novel technology because there's nothing worth seeing in it.

My response: I'm just glad it's dead!

Well, it's actually not completely dead, but revenues for 3D movies are apparently declining dramatically compared to the 2D versions of the same movies. That is, more people are going to see the regular versions of something than are choosing to pay extra for 3D.

I know I'm not paying extra. 3D is welcome to die for all I care.

Brain Wallpaper

My yarn arrived at last, so I can set to knitting!

Knitting keeps my hands full, and means I can't be reading or mousing around the internet all the time, so I expect I'll have to catch up on all kinds of questionable movies, just to have something going in the background.

I can only be alone with my thoughts and my knitting for so long before being overwhelmed by all those questions about whether or not I put the right subject headings on that thesis, or managed a truly comprehensive search in that database, not to mention the dreadful tremors occasioned by reflection on all the stuff that has to go up into the archives lest my office become impassable...well, it gets pretty grim.

That's when random movies you've never heard of, or had heard of but never contemplated going to see, can suddenly seem like a brilliant idea.

Almost as brilliant as folding your socks down to cover up holes in the heel!

Oh no, I'm not letting that one die.

Science in Movies?

I haven't seen Contagion because I haven't heard about any free screenings, and may or may not see it depending on whether or not I do hear about any, because I'm not sure it looks so awesome that I'll have to make the effort of digging out some cash.

Although it will certainly have a huge health connection, which I always like to look for.

However, based on this article in Salon, they actually tried to make it a scientifically plausible depiction of a disease outbreak, and to present public health work realistically, so that's cool. Yay science and public health!

The piece is an interview with Dr. Ian Lipkin, who was a consultant on the film, and it's interesting to get his perspective on the work of moviemaking.

It's not a warning film for students about the dangers of crossing librarians, but I suppose some hard work still went into it.

Ouch! Movie Review: Warrior

I saw a free screening of Warrior last night, but was too weary to say anything about it once I got home. The vivid impact of a first impression has somewhat faded, but nevertheless I am not without opinion.

In my opinion, this was a moderately successful sports movie. It had relatively lively Ultimate Fighting Championship action, mildly engaging characters, and a final victor that I genuinely was unable to predict.

Basically, you've got this horribly estranged family, with a recovering alcoholic father and his two sons. The wife/mother, after leaving and taking the younger son with her when the boys were teenagers, has long since died, so she won't be showing up to cause any trouble with whatever opinions she might have about anything.

Son One, Brendan, is a former UFC fighter who's now a high school physics teacher, with a hot wife and two adorable, rarely-seen children. He's doing OK, except that the bank is about to foreclose on his house, leaving him no option but to return to fighting to make some quick cash. He asks his good friend, a famous trainer, to help him train.

Son Two, Tommy, is a former high school wrestling champion who's just out of the Marines and takes up fighting for reasons that are initially unstated. He asks his father, who trained him in high school, to help him train again. The father wants to build a better relationship with him than the apparently hideous one they had when the boys were young, but Tommy is unreceptive to these attempts.

Basically, this entire group is weighed down by crushing emotional pain. Well, Brendan seems to be OK at relating to his family and his friend the trainer, but he's clearly got lots of father-and-brother-related emotional pain. Ouch!

Meanwhile, a winner-take-all fight has been set up, 16 fights in 48 hours culminating with a final battle to determine the toughest guy on the planet, with a five million dollar prize!

Will the two estranged brothers wind up fighting each other for the money? Will Brendan's wife, who's opposed to him fighting because he's been injured before and she's worried about him and probably they don't have any health insurance, relent and come to the fight to support him? Will the recovering alcoholic father relapse in a dramatic fashion? Will Tommy turn out to have a compelling reason to want to win the money, the way Brendan needs it to save his house?

Those of us who've seen a movie or two in our day may feel free to make some predictions about these questions.

Within the somewhat predictable rhythm of a sports movie, however, it did OK. And as I said, since the movie follows Brendan and Tommy pretty equally, I was genuinely not quite sure how it was going to end: normally you're rooting for an obvious character or team and they're going to get a thrilling victory, but in this case, it's harder to say.

Brendan is more generally likable, with friends and supporters, while Tommy's sort of morose and unfriendly, but of course Tommy has reasons, based on deep, hidden pain, so you're set up to sympathize with him too.

I felt the movie worked it out OK in the end. It was exactly like that Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa are on opposing hockey teams, and then at the climactic moment they remember their shared past full of happy sibling moments, and both throw off their gear and embrace, jointly forfeiting the game. Then the crowd riots! It was awesome.

I'm just kidding, it wasn't exactly like that. But I like to remember The Simpsons.

Anyway, I'm no connoisseur of sports movies, but this one kept me sufficiently entertained that I wasn't looking at my watch every 10 minutes. The mandatory training montage is spiced up by splitscreens, so you'll see two or three scenes at the same time of different people training or sports newscasters hyping the coming fight. It was a collage montage, which I feel is an innovation that should be widely adopted (or perhaps has been, since I don't watch that many sports movies).

The acting was decent, and the fight scenes were full of dramatic punches and squirming and throws and pins.

In terms of relation to issues of health, the movie shows that training to fight can get you into really good shape, and that actually fighting can wreck up your pretty face something fierce.

I would say a main message is, don't be weighed down by crushing emotional pain. That stuff just makes your life as grim as all get out. Getting beaten up in a cage is a minor side issue in terms of ouch.

Another message is, do stop drinking if you're an alcoholic, because it somewhat improves your chances of reconnecting with your estranged sons. However, be prepared to wade through oceans of crushing emotional pain.

Another message is, times are tough and a lot of people really need money, and it's really hard to get enough of it to pay your bills, so sometimes you resort to desperate things. Which is all very well if you can beat up enough other guys to win five million dollars, but all the guys who didn't get the money, or who can't win a UFC fight, are on their own.

Enjoy!

Unamusing Movie Review: The Devil's Double

This evening we saw a preview screening of The Devil's Double.

This movie is about a guy with huge, brooding eyes who has the dubious fortune, with some minor plastic surgery and false buckteeth, of being a near perfect double for Saddam Hussein's son Uday.

He is forcibly recruited for this position, and spends his days filling in for Uday in boring meetings and generally hanging out with him and his guards, drugs, and women. In the course of these duties, he witnesses a wide variety of atrocities, because Uday Hussein is a horrible person with few limits on his ability to do whatever he wants.

That's kind of what there is to this movie.

Takeaway messages I felt the film conveyed:

Uday Hussein was terrible and we're not sorry he's dead. Power corrupts. Dictatorship is a form of government that serves very few of its citizens, although the elite will always find a way to have fabulously debauched parties while others get by as best they can. Being close to a horrible person, even if they don't always treat you horribly, basically sucks.

Valid points, if not striking ones.

It's an interesting story, based on someone's certainly very interesting actual life. I don't know that it's one that struck me personally with many deep insights, but others may have another take on it.

Another thing I couldn't help but notice is that, as often happens in movies, the lead roles are played by people who, as best I can tell (and I could be making an unwarranted assumption), are white.

No insult to Dominic Cooper, who plays Latif Yahia and Uday Hussein, or to Ludivine Sagnier, who plays the main female role, Sarrab, but you just wonder if there were no people of Arab descent in existence who could have played these parts.

Dominic Cooper resembles a dark-haired Karl Urban. His giant eyes are truly magnificent. Only Ludivine Sagnier's are more enormous and tormented. They each did a totally fine job.

I just thought that an actor who perhaps was actually from Iraq might also have been able to do a good job. But I guess we shall never know.

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Educational Movie Review: Sarah's Key

We saw a screening of Sarah's Key last night.

This is a movie about the Vél' d'hiv' Roundup in Paris in 1942, which is an event of which I was previously unaware, so I learned something. Learning is good.

The movie follows two parallel timelines, one the story of a little Jewish girl (Sarah) in Paris in 1942 who, with her parents, is arrested and held in the Vélodrome d’hiver before they're all sent to the camps.

Before leaving the house, she hides her little brother in the closet and locks the door with the key referenced in the title. As the story goes on, she works desperately to get back to the apartment to save him.

In the present day, a journalist (Julia) is preparing to move into an apartment which has been owned since 1942 by her husband's family. It is the apartment Sarah and her family lived in, made available after they were arrested and taken away, and Julia becomes engrossed in an investigation of the history of the place.

If I were to make a broad summary, I'd say it's a movie about how the past lives on inside the present; about secrets; about, obviously, the horror of the Holocaust and how people can turn on each other, or simply stand by and do nothing. Complicity. Guilt. Intentional and unintentional wrongs.

So there are some heavy themes, as you might imagine, but it wasn't overwhelmingly dark, nor did it seem overly didactic or heavy-handed about the historical information it conveys or the points it addresses.

It's mostly in French, so if you fear subtitles (and don't speak French), be aware of that.

I thought it got a little bit slow toward the end, as Julia is trying to contact members of Sarah's family in the present day and we lose the immediacy of Sarah's own timeline.

Overall, however, I would say it was well worth watching, and I'm glad I saw it.

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"Yup. Aliens" Movie Review: Attack the Block

Tonight we had a free preview screening of Attack the Block. I did not know anything about this movie other than that the promotional materials (tag line: "Inner City Vs. Outer Space") suggested an alien invasion in, I don't know, the inner city, and that the title was kind of silly.

These days it's so easy to know so much about movies before you see them. It's actually kind of fun to go in with no particular expectations, and just sit there in the dark waiting to be entertained. Or bored silly. Or possibly disgusted. You never know!

In this case, we were entertained. I found out afterwards that this movie was produced by the same people who did  Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and that was not surprising at all. It had the same mix of horror and hilarity. In fact, I will coin the cumbersome portmanteau word 'horrorlarity' right now to describe this combination.

Dry British wit! Gore! Get 'em here!

I'm going to just flat out say that if you liked those two movies, you should definitely see this one.

I won't say too much about the story, since that would seem kind of odd after I threw in that little paean to going to movies without knowing all about them, but let's just say this:

Some kids are mugging a woman in a tough London neighborhood when aliens land in meteors. A motley cast of characters attempts to defend the Block (an apartment building) from Attack. Horrorlarity ensues.

It's all fun and games until someone gets reduced to a fountain of blood.

There are lots of classic horror movie jumps and suspense scenes and waiting anxiously for the dimly-seen monsters to appear. They mostly play coy in the threatening shadows, leaping from off-camera in, as I say, classic horror fashion,  and they work pretty well there. What we see of them is reasonably creepy, and I liked the effect of the glowing bits (which, as someone notes immediately, are not eyes).

Nothing wrong with the classics, after all. The story itself is a solid monster-fighting plot, and the characters and the dialogue make it new and interesting. There are a bunch of people with varying levels of friendliness and hostility toward one another, helping and hindering one another's efforts not to get killed.

To warm the medical librarian heart, there are some wounds, some grisly deaths, and one character who's a nurse. She doesn't visit a medical library during the course of the film, but presumably she's been in one at some point, right?

If you like humorous monster movies, you should check this out.

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Hungry Movie Review: Forks Over Knives

I certainly had to see the free movie offered this evening, which had a blatant health connection since it's all about how diet can impact health.

Forks Over Knives is a documentary that makes an enthusiastic argument in favor of "a whole-foods plant-based diet"--basically vegan, although that specific word is only used a couple of times.

With the use of numerous entertainingly goofy animations, charts and graphs (my favorite may have been the one we whisperingly subtitled "Suddenly: Nazis!" although there was also a very nice one dramatizing the action of epithelial cells in the arteries), it suggests that consumption of animal products is responsible for pretty much all the most common physical ills of life in the developed world.

Strokes, heart attacks, and certain cancers, specifically, as well as diabetes.

It felt a bit heavy-handed in places, and the implication that going vegan will cure basically everything that ails you is probably going a bit far, but it cited a lot of studies, addressed a lot of aspects of diet, and presented several people who talked convincingly of their improved blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and other health indicators after adopting a whole-foods plant-based diet.

It didn't really lay out any recipes or explain in detail what eating plans the diet they were on involved, but it sounded like the basic whole grains, lots of fruits and vegetables, limited processed foods advice we all know, with the additional stipulation that it almost or entirely avoids animal products (both meat and dairy).

Thinking back, my main complaint is that at no point did it say "ask a librarian if you need to find more information on this topic."

'Cause really, how hard would that have been? This movie was crying out for a library tie-in!

Anyway, go eat your vegetables.

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Classic Wedding Movie Review: Jumping the Broom

I got a last-minute pass to Jumping the Broom this evening, and attended with minimal expectations, given that I had never heard of this movie and knew almost nothing about it.

Still, judging from the title it's about a wedding, and judging from the cast list it's got Angela Bassett, and judging from my senses that are capable of perceiving awesomeness Angela Bassett is awesome, and by all accounts it's free, so I'm in.

You have probably seen this movie before in other guises.

And it was freakin' awesome, right?

If your answer is yes, go see this movie. If no, avoid.

Because this movie, like others before it, follows a fairly standard path. We have a couple (Sabrina and Jason), whom we see very efficiently meet and get engaged, and then for most of the movie we have the main event of their big, flowery, fabulously planned wedding.

And there is much tension and occasion for both laughter and sorrow, because this wedding is an occasion for the previously unacquainted extended families of the couple to gather together, and these families contain many an interesting character, and there is much interpersonal drama on account of the families are very different.

In this case, one family (the bride's) is wealthy and oozing with highbrow culture and has a fabulous mansion on the Vineyard with servants and groundskeepers, while the other family is working class and lives in Brooklyn with jobs at the post office, oozing with forthright average-person quips and solid, homely traditions.

The groom's mother, Pam, is the one who wants the couple to jump the broom, while the bride wants to have a very "simple, modern" wedding without this tradition. (As Pam--played by Loretta Devine--explains in case we don't know, slaves on plantations couldn't legally marry, so jumping over a broom was the customary way to seal a union.) Sabrina similarly wants to avoid the Electric Slide, saying it's such a cliche at black weddings, but of course the groom's family wants this tradition as well.

The standard "modernity vs. tradition" arguments, and the working towards a compromise that represents the joining of two families with different ideas. Hilarity and heartwarminess ensue.

Members of both families obviously have moments where they shine and moments where they fail to shine, and in the course of the film uptight people are encouraged to relax, pushy people are encouraged to back off, and lessons are learned all round through the liberal application of ever so much melodrama.

Delicious, delicious melodrama.

We have family secrets! Misunderstandings! Culture clashes! Hashing out of old grudges! Last-minute issues that threaten to derail the entire wedding! Unlikely pairing off among the guests!

Every classic thing you would wish for from a dramatic wedding movie is here. Also, Angela Bassett. She plays the bride's mother, Claudine.

And everyone else was fine too. They played the material with sincerity and good will. I wished all the characters well.

In closing, if you liked this movie when you saw it before, you will probably like it again here. If you hated it before, you can probably safely pass on this version.

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Trippy Movie Review: Rango

This evening, good people, I saw Rango.

And that is one weird movie. A rip-roaring good time, to be sure, with goofy action to entertain the children and some big-worded, rather naughty jokes for the grown-ups. But weird.

It features:

• A perfect classic wild west movie town in miniature, made out of bits of rubbish and inhabited by lovingly detailed and astonishingly grizzled desert animals
• Johnny Depp as a lonely lizard with big dreams who becomes the unlikely sheriff of the town
• A mariachi band of owls who continually predict the lizard's tragic death
• A posse (of course)
• A wild wagon chase (of course!)
• Let's just say basically every western movie cliche, carefully redone with small animals (but of course)
• Bats out in the daytime, which bothered me slightly because they must have been unhappy
• A truly surreal visionary conversation with the truly legendary Spirit of the West
• Walking cactuses
• Ever so many romantic misunderstandings (OK, not all that many)
• No library, sadly
• The helpful health-related advice that an arrow through the eye is not necessarily much of an inconvenience, although conjunctivitis is a bit disconcerting to others
• A show-down! (of course)
• A reminder that water is extremely important in the desert, and golf courses in the desert are...kind of evil

The animation was very nice, with beautiful detail and some really lovely scenery. Lots of clever visual jokes with the buildings being made up of pieces of recognizable items, like a Pepto-Bismol bottle, the Telechron face on the clock tower (those things are collectible, you know), and so forth.

And it was kind of worth it just for the meeting with the Spirit of the West. 

Man, that was bizarre. Awesomely bizarre.

This movie was like a combination of classic western and light-hearted fever dream. 

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What Might Have Been

Man, I wish I were in New Zealand right now. Or, more precisely, next week.

As The Hobbit Movie Blog reports, there's a casting call for elven extras on February 26th. And I would make an awesome elven extra!

The description might as well be (very briefly) exactly me, personally!

WOMEN – aged 17 – 40, Height 5ft 9 (175cm) and taller

Sigh. That could be me, looking elvish in The Hobbit...if only I were in New Zealand.

I guess I could quickly book a flight to Wellington right now, but then if (I should say 'when,' on account of it's such a perfect role for me!) I got the job, I'd have to quit work here at the library...and I'm sure getting a work visa in New Zealand is a pain...

Alas, I fear it is not to be. But if you're in New Zealand and bear some resemblance to a Middle Earth elf, get the heck over there.

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'I'll Have the Sidekick' Movie Review: The Green Hornet

Last evening we were privileged to witness the unveiling of the most recent superhero film that I know about: The Green Hornet.

Now I don't know anything about the character of the Green Hornet as traditionally presented, so perhaps someday someone can advise me: was it part of his deal to be super annoying?

Because I found Britt Reid, as played by Seth Rogen, intermittently amusing but mostly extremely irritating. I will state right now that my favorite part of the movie was Britt Reid getting beaten up by Kato.

Kato, Britt Reid/the Green Hornet's nimble partner, is played by Jay Chou. Kato is a martial arts expert and does most of the duo's actual fighting. Also the design and building of their heavily armed and armored car. Also the generally being cool.

Britt Reid is actually kind of a doofus. He may or may not have a good heart (he kind of lost points in that regard when we learn that he fired everyone who worked in his father's vast mansion, for no apparent reason), but he can't fight, he claims credit for Kato's ass-kicking, and he acts like a jerk to Lenore Case, his secretary (played by Cameron Diaz).

Again, I have no idea if this doofus-ness was the Green Hornet's thing all along, or if that's just this movie's take on it.

Let's just accept that in this incarnation, Kato is much cooler than the Green Hornet.

Which brings me to the fact that the movie does a somewhat interesting thing where it plays a bit with the whole idea of who gets to be a superhero and who's a sidekick, in a masked-hero-inhabited world.

Kato, who was Reid's father's mechanic and coffee brewmaster, essentially works for Reid. He drives the car, and sort of follows along with Reid's plans. So he's in the official sidekick position.

But he's so much cooler that this seems a little unlikely, and the movie suggests that Britt Reid pretty much knows that logically he is not the hero in their dynamic. Still, he clings to the 'hero' title rather than just saying "OK, we'll be equal partners," because...he has the money, I guess.

Possibly also because he's a white dude. White dude with money = main character: you can't argue with that.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this movie intended to raise thought-provoking questions about the nature of heroics and the inability of moneyed white dudes to share superhero status with Chinese dudes who work on their cars, but let's give it credit for having a little bit of something going on there.

Even if it doesn't do a whole lot with it, beyond making it clear that both Britt Reid and Kato are aware that Kato is awesome and Britt Reid is a doofus, but they're both just playing along with Britt Reid's need to feel superior.

The story: legendary newspaper owner/editor dies, leaving lackadaisical underachieving son to take over news empire. Son wants coffee, implausibly strikes up semi-friendship with genius mechanic/coffee brewmaster/martial artist from Shanghai.

While son is committing vandalism in a cemetery, he and genius stumble into saving a couple from robbery and assault. Son hits on brilliant idea of fighting crime as a masked vigilante while pretending to be a criminal himself, so that he can get closer to criminals and...fight them from close. Also, if bad guys think he's also a bad guy, they won't try that stunt where they threaten some innocents to make the good guys surrender.

Smart!

Anyway, this conveniently allows the Green Hornet to wreck up the city, run cop cars off the road, etc., as part of his clever cover, rather than just because superheroes are horribly dangerous to have around, which is usually the lesson one might take from the numerous demolished buildings and traffic pileups that fill these movies in the wake of the dramatic fights.

Christopher Waltz is kind of fun as LA's main crime lord, demonstrating a sort of understated, almost self-deprecating blood lust. Edward James Olmos is also here for some reason, as a trusted elder statesman of the newspaper.

And then there's Lenore Case, who's apparently very smart and could totally be a journalist herself, but, for reasons she states she doesn't want to talk about (and which the movie, respecting her privacy, never explains), is working as a temp until Britt Reid hires her to be his full time secretary.

Actually, this is probably just a symptom of the horrible state of newspapers and journalism these days. I'll imagine she lost her job as a hotshot investigative reporter due to brutal downsizing in the industry.

Also, don't we say administrative assistant these days? Who's actually a secretary anymore? Aside from the Secretary of Defense. But whatever.

Both Britt Reid and Kato develop powerful crushes on Lenore Case, leading to many opportunities for them (mostly Britt Reid) to act like asses.

And then there's a District Attorney. There's usually a District Attorney. (I think he was a DA, anyway. Somebody running for office on an "I reduced crime in Los Angeles" platform.)

And there's a big plot involving Truth and News and so forth, and lots of fighting and car crashes.

Nobody visits a library onscreen, although Lenore Case provides the results of detailed research that may have involved one at some point, and one scene does prominently feature giant rolls of paper. There's the health issue of severe allergy to bee venom, and there's a USB drive and some mentions of the internet to represent technology.

The movie has its amusing bits, I won't deny that, and if you like Seth Rogen a lot, you may find the Britt Reid character less grating than I did. Jay Chou is fun to watch, and you get the sense that some of the people in the supporting roles (some of the criminals, particularly) were having fun doing it.

There are also stretches that just felt kind of dull to me, though. I didn't care enough about the larger story to have much interest in how it worked out, and watching the destruction of an entire office building, while entertaining, only goes so far.

It had moments, but personally, if I were contemplating paying for this one, I would probably just wait for video.

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Grimy Movie Review: True Grit

This evening we saw True Grit. It displayed no discernible connection to any kind of library, but there was plenty of health stuff going on, given the usual Cohen brothers penchant for offhandly jaw-dropping hideous violence (yet with a sort of upbeat cheeriness, and with such stolidly matter-of-fact characters that you can't help but kind of laugh!).

It's a Western, with a classic washed-out Western color pallet and lots of horses, plains, scrub, and guns. Lots and lots of guns.

I was interested to see how gunfire was repeatedly employed not only in the usual attempts to kill people, but also as a communication device. It makes sense; you use what you have, and a gunshot can be heard over a longer distance than a shout.

Anyway, the story briefly: a 14-year-old girl named Maddie (Hailee Steinfeld) hires a U.S. Marshal (Jeff Bridges) to track down the lowlife who killed her father and stole his horse and his two California gold pieces. A Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) is also on the trail of said lowlife.

So they all set out into the scrubby wilderness, and various humorous and/or horrible shenanigans ensue.

Everyone uses very stilted, formal language, with no contractions whatsoever (not a won't or don't or isn't to be heard), which makes for an interesting film style. I don't know if people actually talked like that back in the 1870s, but it sort of creates a certain mood and sets up a distance from the present time.

It could get kind of old, but the actors pretty much manage to make it work.

It was interesting. Not my favorite movie ever, but entertaining. Very Cohen, if you like their stuff.

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For Lowell! Movie Review: The Fighter

It will surprise possibly someone to learn that boxing is not foremost among my passions.

The Fighter is a moving about boxing. More generally, it is a sports movie, with the training and competition narratives common to the genre.

For the non-sports-inclined, it is also about family, and how family can support you, but sometimes also mess up your life, and how you need to find a balance with what's good for you, and what your family wants. It's based on a true story, so there's that.

It's also about Lowell, Massachusetts, which is generally considered to be one of the less-glamorous of the Boston suburbs, in 1993.

It's about Dickie Ekland, the Pride of Lowell as a welterweight fighter, who fought Sugar Ray Leonard at the high point of his career, and also got addicted to crack. He trains his brother, Micky Ward, who is also a fighter.

They have seven sisters, and their mother is Micky's manager, and things aren't going too great in his career as the movie opens. But of course he gets an opportunity, or there wouldn't be much of a story, and we get some dramatic familial tension, ups and downs of life and crack addiction, and some boxing.

I thought the movie did a nice job making all the people involved sympathetic and believable, with all their quirks and flaws (although it was kind of hard to differentiate the seven sisters, who often seemed to be presented as being one big scary mass).

It's filmed with a low-key, gritty look, mimicking television at times and in general looking more like something you might see around town (especially if you go to Lowell) than like glossy movie sets.

It was also fairly relaxed in pacing. You get a lot of time for character development and interaction between the people on the screen--it's not nonstop fighting or heart-wrenching drama (although there's some of each).

There are health issues aplenty, what with the crack addiction and the frequent facial damage of the boxing. I did not see any libraries, however. But there were posters of old fights at the gym, so that's semi-archival, right? I say yes.

Boxing has not become one of my passions following this movie, but the fight scenes were nicely done, and sufficiently exciting that I was thoroughly engaged. "Punch him!" I would have yelled helpfully at the screen, if I hadn't been in a crowded theater where that would be rude.

Also, "For Lowell!"

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Grudgingly Positive Movie Review: Tangled

Some say that Disney is a bloated, soulless corporate monster bent on sticking its copyrighted, candy-colored, mouse-flavored tentacles into the brain of every child on earth, using every adult with any money as its pawn to do so.

For example, I just said that.

A free movie is a free movie, however, and I was pleased to see a screening of Tangled, Disney's take on the story of Rapunzel, this evening.

Here's what I will tell you: that movie is beautiful.

It's computer animation, with a nice balance of 'real' with cartoon, making for super-clear, color-saturated scenes that still have a soft edge. They didn't try too hard to make the characters look realistically human (which so often just turns out weird and alien), so you have very unrealistic, cartoon proportions (especially on the female characters) that convey the idea of people without sticking too close to what people really look like.

Although there were a few scenes where the huge, HUGE eyes of both Rapunzel and the witch did make them look kind of creepy. But the landscapes, wow. I want to play that video game.

They fancied up the story a bit, as they usually do, throwing in some magic and giving the witch more of an evil motivation, and of course really beefing up the role of the male lead, who in the story only turns up at the end, but here is the narrator and co-star.

This is the latest in their Princess (registered trademark copyright sparkling fairy wand) line, and Rapunzel is the daughter of a king and queen here, while the hero is a dashing scoundrel. This is a reverse from the original story, where Rapunzel's parents were just some people who lived next to someone else's garden, and the prince was, well, a prince.

There's also the usual animal sidekicks (here a chameleon and a horse that seems to think it's a dog), but they mercifully do not talk. They get pretty good use out of funny expressions instead.

Rapunzel is a spirited sort who does interesting stuff using her hair as a lasso/weapon/extra limb as well as for the classic tower-access purposes, so she's probably a semi-positive role model for girls as long as they don't internalize the message that their bodies should be thinner than their heads. (There's a scene where she's trying on a crown, and she could seriously have worn it as a belt just as easily as on her head.)

The hero is a nice enough guy--I mean, he's a thief who abandons his partners and takes off with the loot the first chance he gets, but hanging out with Rapunzel soon brings him around and he turns out to have a decent heart and does the right thing when he gets the chance.

So pixie-ish charms and true love make everyone awesome!--except the woman who raised you as a mother but is really a horrible person who never loved you but was only using you to cheat death. Never trust anyone who raised you as a mother: that's a wholesome message I think we can all get behind.

Anyway, all flip remarks aside, I pretty much enjoyed this movie, and as I say, it was gorgeous to look at.

In terms of relevance to the purported main topics of this blog, I would note that Rapunzel's boredom in the tower (where she has only three books) makes a strong argument for the value of libraries. Also, there's a scene in a library of some sort later on, where Rapunzel shows appreciation of books and maps. This will clearly encourage young people to read and love literature. Right?

As for health, apparently both men and horses can easily survive falls down 50-foot cliffs onto solid ground, so don't even worry about that, but a knife to the gut is still pretty fatal. So worry about that, if you must worry about something.

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Important Medical and Movie News

I saw this exciting news, passed on by GruntDoc from The Australian: "Scientists turn skin into blood in medical breakthrough; could help cancer treatment."

It's already been possible to make blood from skin cells, but the previous technique used embryonic stem cells, while this one takes a person's skin cells and makes blood that is a genetic match.

With the ability to create blood for transfusion from a person's own skin, the advance means someday patients needing blood for surgery or to treat anemia could bypass the blood bank and derive the necessary supply from themselves.

This is exciting news, obviously, for many useful health reasons (although the implication that I might not be able to score cookies at blood drives in the future is troubling).

But know what else is exciting about it? It's obviously fuel for a fantastic gory movie! In this movie, the technology will be corrupted and used for evil (sorry, hard-working scientists whose work is always being portrayed as corrupted and used for evil), and then there will be dramatic scenes of peoples' skin turning to blood right on their bodies and pouring all over the place. Think of the exposed musculature! Organs falling all over the place!

Please feel free to use this idea in your screenplay and give me full credit and large piles of money. I'd work on it myself, but I've got this novel.

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