Musings

Over the fortnight while the Olympics was in season, most evenings were spent in front of the living room TV. Not that I was consciously watching what was going on-screen, but I like having background audio while I’m working away on my notebook. It’s a habit that I picked up during the three odd years I spent in Perth. The television was on around 18 hours a day (that’s how I got to finish all those entire 7 season TV series in days) while I was working on my thesis.

With the Olympics over, I’ve started re-watching a bunch of films on Blu-ray. I’ve blogged about several of them here before already, but I often still acquire new reflections on these movie revisits. The bunch included:

Blood Diamond; the 2006 film about the conflict diamond trade, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. I didn’t think much of the film when I first watched it years ago, but the revisit affirmed why Hounsou was heaped with nominations for acting awards for his supporting role as a father seeking rescue of his young son who is press-ganged then brain-washed into the violent rebel factions in Sierra Leone civil war. The film doesn’t flinch from representing on-screen serious controversies, and these include mass murder of innocents and child militia executing prisoners. The film can be a little draggy at spots running at nearly 2.5 hours, and Jennifer Connelly has a supporting role which sees her all doe-eyed but otherwise doesn’t have much else to do, and the last 10 minutes feel somewhat preachy. Still, well worth a watch if you enjoy thrillers.

Leonardo and Hounsou dashing through the war-torn city of Freetown.

The Watchmen: re-watched the butt-hurting more than 3 hours Director’s Cut of the film in a single siting. I’ve blogged about the theatrical edition of the film here, and the extended edition fleshes out numerous bits from the comic book with Rorschach benefiting the most off the additional time. I think director Zack Snyder did a great job condensing the very complicated graphic novel into a manageable size, but it still remains somewhat thick for viewers unfamiliar with the novel, given its large cast of super-hero characters spread across several generations. Most of the cast do alright, but Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach remains the real stand-out. He gets the best line in the film too.=)

Rorschach about to barbeque an unlucky foe.

Up in the Air: Also blogged here before too. I enjoyed this comedy-drama from two years ago, and found myself paying even more attention to its subtleties in the Blu-ray revisit. There are spots of the film that reminds me of Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional, especially with regards to Ryan Bingham (George Clooney)’s love for predictable routines and having to reconcile it with love interest Alex (Vera Farmiga) and his young upstart colleague companion Natalie (Anna Kendrick). One of the major themes of the film – that of corporate-level downsizing and the reactions and sentiments from those getting fired – remain thought-provoking for me, eliciting memories of the companies I worked for pre-Millennium who went through the Asian Financial Crisis and saw retrenchment. Has a heart-wrenching ending that even surprised Ling (“So sad”… and she sniffed).

How many times we’ve also sat this like waiting for our ride.

More film re-visitation snippets to follow in the coming weeks.=)

I first started reading fantasy fiction nearly 30 years ago when my elder brother picked up the first book of the Dragonlance Chronicles. There’s been a lot of such epic fantasy book series – some spanning as many as dozens of volumes – and I must have read or at least sampled-read at least one title from most of the major series published then over the 15 years I was a fan of this genre.

Now that I’m older and rounder on the tummy, there still remain just two series out of the entire lot which I enjoyed more than the rest. It’s Dragonlance Legends, a trilogy of books that followed Chronicles, and Raymond E. Fiest’s Riftwar Saga. Interestingly, while both trilogies are very different in writing style, tone and themes, they were also both published in the 80′s. The fantasy worlds that these two series are set in have spawned off numerous other books; sometimes written by the same author, and other times either in collaboration or by entirely different writing teams.

Until recently, these novels were typically too hard to film. There were the obvious concerns of trying to show on screen complex fantasy worlds (think Orcs, Dragons etc.), and also how do you cram typically 600 page monsters into a 2 hour film. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings changed all that of course, demonstrating that with the right production team and studio support, you can turn what are normally unfilmable books into films, albeit running for almost 12 hours – each of the three special edition movies averaged 4 hours in length!

So, there’s been a somewhat resurgence of films based off popular fantasy fiction. LOTR sticks in most people’s minds as the most critically and financially successfully series, though there’s been also a couple of real turkeys (e.g. the decidedly ‘D’ grade Eragon film from 2006). A more recent production is HBO’s TV series adaption of George Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, a set of seven novels that started in 1991. The TV series is titled Game of Thrones and each of its first two seasons have been based on the first two books of the series.

I picked up the first Season a fortnight ago, and after spending about 20 hours in all watching each of its ten episodes twice, have got mixed feelings. The series has been critically acclaimed for its adherence to the literary source, quality cast which excepting three or four recognizable names are mostly unknowns, costumes, and general production quality. The first season of the series does indeed follow the book quite closely, and each scene in the series having a strong traceable source from the book, though in many cases, long dialog and conversations that you can afford in print are heavily summarized or truncated for TV consumption. Credits go to the casting too. Though several actors are younger than the characters they play – e.g. the older children from the first book’s protagonist, Eddard Stark, are played by older actors, they nonetheless perform their roles well, with a special nod going to 15 year old Maisie Williams, who plays the tomboyish daughter Arya.

Eddard and Arya Stark glowering.

The older actors are mostly all good, especially the always recognizable Sean Bean (Boromir from LOTR), who plays the perpetually brooding Eddard Stark, an honorable nobleman stuck between his temperamental king and his master’s scheming wife, Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion, a dwarf who easily compensates with his wit, intelligence but soft heart for all who are equally as disadvantaged, and Aidan Gillen who plays Baelish, the kingdom’s accountant and who seems to be playing both sides. The cast all look reasonably distinct, so it’s easy to tell characters apart, especially important since the cast is huge.

On the flip side. While the series is shot in some amazingly gorgeous backdrops in Ireland and Malta, there’s no escaping the sense occasionally that the series doesn’t quite enjoy Peter Jackson’s LOTR budget. There’s the odd violent and scene where medieval weapons are broken out and people get killed, but the first season has gone past without any large battle scene that we’ve come to associate medieval or fantasy productions with. You do get to see the aftermath of a battle fought between two rival houses, but that’s it. While the wide-shots of the key cities – Winterfell, the Wall, King’s Landing and the Eyrie – are gorgeously and seamlessly rendered using computer wizardry, the ground footage of its inhabitants milling about with what should be their daily routines gives away that this is a very much a made-for-TV production. And for persons who enjoy stories that move along briskly, Game of Thrones’ almost ponderous story progression at times won’t sit well for them.

Picked up the first two books to read too a fortnight ago. About 1,700 pages in between them, and at around page 370 right now.

Still, one is short on alternatives since there just isn’t many quality epic fantasy TV series out there. It’s still a good series to watch and one that I recommend.

Soul Surfer (2011) – on rental. The story of this not-too-mainstream film goes like this. Bethany Hamilton is a 13 year old girl living in Kauai. She has two brothers, loving parents, and is in a Christian family who loves surfing. However, on a morning surf with friends in October 2003 however, she loses her entire arm when she’s attacked by a tiger shark. Undeterred, she remains guided by her faith and with witnessing of others suffering, she goes on a journey of emotional and physical recovery to pursue her dream of competitive surfing and charity work.

Sounds corny and something straight out of a film adapted out of a Nicholas Sparks book? Nope. The story’s real. The incident did happen, and the character is very real. The story is both tragic but also inspirational, with the real 21 year old Bethany Hamilton today competitively surfing and winning trophies despite her disability. I learned of the real story while casually browsing for sports news, and upon finding out that a film was being made about her story, queued up the DVD rental as soon as it was released.

The key role of Bethany is played by AnnaSophia Robb, an actress I’ve named on our blog here before as one of the best young actresses to watch; her parents Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, and the rest of the cast mostly non-recognizables, excepting Craig T. Nelson as the town’s doctor, and American country singer, Carrie Underwood in the odd role of a church worker. The film was made on location in Hawaii, and apart from what looks like a neighboring set dressed up to replace a Thai location depicting the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, looks pretty authentic. The surfing is easy to follow, and as I understand it, done with minimal CG enhancements.

The story is pretty well-documented in news that viewers who have an inclination to find out more only need to do a quick Google search. Nonetheless, it’s not an easy film to watch. Every scene where you see Robb on-screen without her arm (done through CG) and struggling to re-learn everything that she once took for granted, is heart-rendering. Much of this is due to Robb amazing performance. She’s easily likable as a young growing up girl who loves her hobby, and when tragedy strikes, presents real emotions as she struggles to reconcile her loss with her faith. Bit of snippet: the real Bethany Hamilton when asked who she’d like to play her in this film, she named Robb.

AnnaSophia Robb and Bethany Hamilton.

One thing though is that Hollywood routinely has the habit of turning into cheese inspirational stories like this, and Soul Surfer comes dangerously close to the same failings. The package that includes camera angles, dialog and music, feels pretty manipulative to elicit tears from you. Similarly too, the film poses very tough questions like how can God allow for such tragedies to happen, but doesn’t do resolve it well for the most part. There’s a weak attempt to provide some sort of answer from Underwood’s church worker character but sorry, she doesn’t act very well; and it’s only in the film’s closing scene is there an answer of sorts coming out from Bethany herself.

If this film doesn’t make shark fin lovers want to go out and eat a pot of shark’s fin soup, nothing else will (to be fair though, the real Bethany Hamilton has nothing against sharks, and in fact thinks they are great creatures – see DVD supplements). Outside that, the film is on a bit of a fine edge. The film passes or fails based on AnnaSophia Robb’s performance, and thankfully she does not disappoint. Deducted a star for the cheese injected, but on the overall, worth an easy watch.

Love and Other Drugs (2010) – on rental. By coincidence, this was the second of two rented films I’ve watched in this month about relationships centered on casual sex.

Like the earlier film – No Strings Attached – Love and Other Drugs stars two well-known and attractive-looking leads engaged in physical relationships without long-term commitments. The two are Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Jamie, a smooth-talking ladies man employed as a salesperson for a mega pharmaceutical company; and Anne Hathaway, who plays Maggie, a waitress suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease. The two start off in a relationship based off sex-on-demand, and not surprisingly so, as the film progresses, potentially turns into something more.

Funnily; it’s not this central theme of casual relationships that I found most engaging. In fact, if nothing else, I thought that the premise of Maggie having an incurable illness and thus wanting non-committal relationships had promise. However, the film doesn’t do anything much with that material, and only in the last act when Maggie attends a sharing between others having the same condition is there progression and a glimmer of what might had been. Rather, it’s the subplot of the machinations of large pharmaceutical companies that was given better treatment. It’s fun to see how cutthroat these companies can be against each other if the film’s representation of sales people is anything to go with.

But the film was killed for me with a bunch of other problems. Apart from the story that springs no surprises, neither of the two leads are likable in their roles. Jamie is a serial womanizer, and by the film’s end, has slept with five women, two of whom in a ménage à trois. Hathaway looks unattractive, what with her curls and heavy eye-liner and shock-red lips. The dialog has lots of profanity – not surprising for a show of this nature – but good parts of it coming out from the Hathaway sounds forced.

And the amount of skin… oh my. There is nudity in this film, and lots and lots of it. I’m not certain if Hathaway was willing to disrobe this much because she thought this was a way of demonstrating her progression to more adult fare, but a lot of the flesh paraded in this film was gratuitous.

So, watchable though still somewhat disappointing. The other film stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. I’ll blog about that soon too . =)