Sucker Punch

I won free tickets to an Empire exclusive premiere screening of Sucker Punch and thus got a tad more excited about the film than I should have. I could tell from the various trailers I have viewed that it would perhaps be rather underwhelming but I wanted so desperately for it to be good because there is a real lack of proper action films with bad ass female leads. Plus there are two hot young Aussie actors in it who are pretty cool and everyone loves an Aussie A-lister.
The film began and if it weren't for the turning down of the lights I would acctually have thought that we were watching a trailer and not the actual film. The music throughout this first part was completely unnecessary and really inappropriate considering what was going on. The whole establishing of the film using montage worked for Watchmen, but here it was just weird and annoying. I felt totally removed from this incredibly emotional scenario, and I felt that I needed to be drawn in in order to empathise with what is going on. The idea is simple; a young woman (Babydoll - Emily Browning) is sent to a mental institution by her abusive father, where doctor's signatures get forged and she is set for a lobotomy in 5 days. She sinks into a world of imagination and hatches a plan to escape her fate. In this imaginary world her captor's are the bosses of a brothel and the other patients in the hospital are the "dancers" and prostitutes. In order to survive she must dance, and when she starts to feel the music she is transported to a world of magical, demonic samurai's, a creepy old guru, zombie Nazi's, dragon's and cyberpunk robot's. In this world the girls are ass-kicking, leather clad heroine's who have all the right moves and must recover the 5 things needed to escape their prison. In the brothel world, when Babydoll dances everyone can't help but watch and this is how her friends are able to claim their desired items.
This is director Zack Snyder's first turn as writer, in the past he has adapted comic books for the screen but this is the first of his own stories (he may write more, who knows). The idea is simple and beautiful enough; exploring the power of dreams to survive the most extraordinary situations, and also searching inside ourselves in order to find the tools to help others. The continuous use of slow motion in the action scenes got tedious. The action was very impressive, but after two of these scenes, you get the picture. The dialogue was clunky and obvious and did make me cringe on occasion. Perhaps this was the point but the quality of the production didn't lend itself to exploitation send up. The conclusion was underwhelming and the unnecessary voice over at beginning and end again induced a cringe.
Given what they were working with the performances of the central cast were satisfactory, though I thought there were a few too many teary-eyed facial expressions throughout.
I hate to seem so harsh because the film was very impressive, but so was Avatar and when you look at the film itself and ignore the special effects, it's pretty straight forward and dull.

How did I miss this?

The Grand Moff revealed some clues for the upcoming series of Sherlock in an interview for the Guardian in January.
"You can have three words to work from; Adler, Hound, Reichenbach. Those are your clues."
I have read so many Sherlock Holmes novels and stories since the first series aired, I am so excited about the second series. The first series of Sherlock ended on such a massive cliffhanger, it's been hard to go on not knowing what was coming next.

I seem to always fall in love with the geeky types who have faces I find extraordinary but that others find bizarre. And always the skinny, pale, British types.

Never Let Me Go

Having read almost every review of this film for the past year and a bit, what I am about to say may upset every person in the world because I am going to be completely honest and that seems to contradict everything people are saying about it. So this...

is the film I am talking about. Now as you may know, i did read the book earlier and I loved it. I mean 5 out of 5 is a pretty good recommendation. I love Carey Mulligan and I have been looking forward to seeing this film since I read a small one paragraph about it in an old old old edition of Vanity Fair over a year ago. But I am a practical person, I didn't get too excited about it because when you look forward to a film a little too much you will be let down, a lot. So I was practical going in to the film and I was only let down a little bit.
The excitement of the book is in the not knowing; you want to keep reading so you can find out just what is going on. It's never really, properly said; there are weird little phrases that the characters use, and as the novel progresses we start to realise what these words really mean. But in the film the mystery is dissolved right at the start of the film and what is left is a pale, shallow adaptation of an exciting and thought provoking story.
If you've seen some of the recent trailers and reviews, you know the story already and I won't be spoiling any surprises. The three main characters Tommy, Kathy and Ruth are clones, raised in an idyllic English boarding school under the tight watch of their guardians. They indulge in sport and art and until new guardian Miss Lucy arrives, the ignorance of youth. But Miss Lucy spoils the surprise and tells them that they will grow into adults and not reach middle age because they will start being called in to make "donations", meaning their vital organs will be harvested until they "complete". Part of the romance of the novel is not knowing, just like the mystery and romance of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is not knowing whether or not Deckard is a Replicant. Ridley Scott gets this and that's why the film adaptation Blade Runner is such a respected, classic film.
The performances were amazing, nobody, not even me, can take that away from Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley. The film is lovingly shot and beautifully photographic, which is no great surprise considering what other films cinematographer Adam Kimmel has worked on. But none of this can save the lack of character development in the film. The relationships make no sense what so ever and the sheer speed with which we are whipped through the story is staggering and I fear, like the fourth Harry Potter film, those who have not read the book would not understand either the story line or the complexities of the characters.
I had a real problem with this film though I am sure people will enjoy it. I personally wouldn't bother, but it is a pretty film filled with good performances.

Rango

On Monday it was Josh's turn to pick a film which meant that we went to see this...

because Josh is secretly a big kid. I didn't really have any great desire to see Rango but it was surprisingly funny. From little Johnny Depp themed in jokes to broader western tropes, the premise of Rango is that a domestic chameleon falls out the back of his family's car in the middle of the desert. After much stumbling and meandering he ends up in a little town called dirt where, seeing as nobody knows him and he is a budding young actor, he slips into the role of western renegade and all round fierce-don't-mess-with-me good guy. He quickly becomes the towns new sheriff and after his luck has him ridding the town of the dreaded hawk with one bullet, he becomes and instant hero and friend to all towns people. The water in the town is running dry and it's up to Rango to find out why.
I found the characters all really unique and charming, the voice-work well handled (what a star studded cast - Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Isla Fischer, Abigail Breslin) and the smattering of western film tropes. Rango is actually rather a delightful little film. The adventures and action are enjoyable, the folklore captivating, I actually laughed out loud on a number of occasions, I don't know what else to say except that you should see this film. It is a fun little guilty pleasure.

SOOOOOOO EXCIIIIIITED!

Doctor who: Apollo 23 (book)

when my obsession with Doctor Who started verging in to fangirl territory I started collecting the Pandorica action figure set, each of which comes with one of a two part audio story set and I decided (as I was already collecting the new comics) I would try my hardest not to miss a doctor who story, whether it be a book, comic or audio story (but not the podcasts because only british people are allowed to download them). So I went out and bought this...

and I started my venture. On the whole I find this Doctor Who story incredibly interesting but completely derivative. The language I think is designed for a lesser mind (ie children) but the ideas are completely captivating. The basic premise is that the American's (who else) have stumbled upon something they don't quite understand, that allows them to walk from the earth to the moon. This allows them to set up a kind of top secret prison base on the moon where they can "process blanks". I won't spoil what that is all about but the whole premise of the experiments they perform on the moon base (for how could America set up a secret prison base on the moon and not run experiments on the prisoners) questions what it means to be human. Throughout their visit to the moon Amy and the Doctor are faced with many life threatening situations, but it's when the Doctor gets stranded on Earth with Amy and the TARDIS still on the moon when the shit really hits the fan.
Overall I found this story light, easy and enjoyable, an interesting adventure for the Doctor and his current companion. I found that Justin Richards struggled a little with the personality of the new Doctor as I imagined the David Tennant Doctor on many occasions throughout and not the Matt Smith Doctor. This should change after another season when people start to turn to camp Smith.

Wated on the Young

Yesterday I whisked my lovely hard working friend away from her workplace early and raced down to the Sun Theatre in Yarraville because it was the last day they were playing this

and I really wanted to see it. Two weeks it ran for at Nova, pathetic really considering it is Australian and everything the critics have said about it has been positive, yet people still won't go and see it. Anyway, let's get back to the film.

We had the cinema to ourselves so we had the comfort of being in a homely-living-room type setting which allowed us to whisper about what we were watching and to exult shocked squeals without reserve when shocking events prevailed. I was not prepared for the level of violence in the film at all and I sat clenched and anxious the entire film thinking someone was going to shoot some one else, or get shot themselves.

The themes dealt with in the film are rather intense but fitting considering the school yard and cyber bullying epidemic news and current affairs programs have told us is going on right now. In fact this epidemic has gotten so bad that the clip of an Australian boy fighting back against his supposed bully going viral was headline news on NBC in America.

This film basically centres around two step brothers - Zack is the cool, rich sporty, jocky guy who holds parties in his mansion for everyone on a seemingly weekly basis, and Darren the dorky, sciencey brother who stays in his room when the parties are on doing his physics homework. The parents of these boys are no where to be seen and the popular Zack has been getting away with too much for too long. When the beautiful and intellectual Xandrie develops a crush on Darren, Zack and his band of sluts and thugs decide she needs to be taught a lesson about the social hierarchy of the school. Drugged by Zack's two slutty girlfriend's and lured into the out of bounds basement of the house by the boys, you can basically guess what happens next.

In such a modern world, it doesn't take long for rumours to start spreading around the school, and that's when things really get crazy. I found the flashes of "what if" moments clunky and distracting, making it a little hard to follow what was actually happening in the film or in the imaginations of the character's, but these moments did work to make the tension almost unbearable.

The story twisted and turned and ended rather unexpectedly, which was refreshing, but overall I found the film rather surreal. The lack of adult figures throughout made the school setting almost fantastic and the film rather bizarre. I have been thinking about it non-stop since though, so I guess it did it's job.