Tag: Movie

And yet another Star Wars

Yes, we succumbed and went to the cinema to see the final chapter.

But, Disney on a winner, will it be?

However…

What was I expecting?

A mega weapon in the hands of the bad guys that can destroy planets.  Tick.

The bad guys amassing to destroy the resistance.  Tick.

The last of the resistance amassing to take on the bad guys in a battle they can’t win.  Tick.

The fate of everything put on the shoulders of the Last Jedi.  Tick.

A bad Jedi versus a good Jedi.  Tick.

And, of course, the bad Jedi trying to turn the good Jedi to the dark side.  Tick.

It doesn’t matter what we call the bad guys, whether it’s the Empire, the First Order or the Last Order.  They’re all going to lose; we know that before we stepped into the cinema.  It’s what we came to see.

The internal struggle within those who are the Jedi provides some deep thought-provoking moments along the way, but this ever-pervasive sense of doom and gloom is overshadowed, and sometimes counter-balanced by the comic light relief that the robots, sorry droids, provide.

And the fact no one really dies.  The physical version might disappear, but they always come back, glowing, and with all of their powers somehow still intact.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.

Along with the fact that only the magic of the movies could bring back someone who had died years before, and appear so lifelike.

There were surprised, and a few of my assumptions were dashed, but it was worth it, despite some of the negatives I’ve read about it.  Could it be longer and flesh out some of the disjointed plot lines, maybe, but 140 minutes was long enough for me.

Long enough to prove that good will always triumph over evil.

But I do have one question; going back to the days of old westerns where you could always tell the bad guys because they always wore black; why were the empire/first/last order stormtroopers always in white?

Back to the movies…again

It’s not as if we have nothing better to do but …

Who’s not a sucker for a kick-ass CIA movie, well sort of …

To be honest the premise that a 9-year-old could blackmail a battle-hardened soldier used to taking out bad guys, sounded a little silly.

But..

Hang on, it is a kids movie after all, and it surprised me how many people had come to see it. And it wasn’t all young children, but quite a few teenagers as well.

Was it worth the nearly two hours viewing time?

Yes.

There could be less ads at the start before the movie started but I guess they keep the movies affordable. And allow you to run up to a half-hour late.

So, back to the movie.

It had everything you’d expect, unexpurgated violence, schmaltz, and the inevitable rescue of the 9-year-old and her mother from the bad guys at the end. It might have been predictable, but it was a gentle, and sometimes humorous, journey to get there.

I’m not sure I could write a story along those lines, but I might give it a try. I’m beginning to realize that sometimes there are different ways to tell the same stories.

And for once in what could be called a high action movie, it was a relief to find the dialogue not riddled with endless expletives.

All it takes is a cast who make it reasonably believable, and are not there just to collect a paycheck, or being cardboard cutouts with CGI going off all around them.

I’ll certainly be seeing it again when it hits the DVD stores in which no doubt I’ll get to see the nuances I missed the first time around.

Star Wars, Star Wars, and more Star Wars

To get ourselves into the mood to go and see the final episode of Star Wars, the rise of Skywalker, we sat down and watched all of the previous eight episodes.

Despite the fact our viewing of Star Wars, like everyone else, started with Episode Four, many, many years ago, this time around we started with Episode One.

Now, when this second set of three episodes started, we didn’t go to the cinema to see them. I think at the time, we’d heard a lot of negative comments about them, centered around a character called Jar Jar Binks, and that was enough.

I did hear sometime later some fans had created a version of the movie with that character completely edited out. I’m still yet to find it.

But, this time we started with One, and it didn’t take long to get tired of Binks, and his appearances were a perfect time to get coffee, drinks or a snack.

It was also interesting to see the origins of ObiOne Kenobi, who had been an older version called Ben Kenobi in Four. And we got to see the Clone Wars, another myth in Four brought to reality in Two and Three.

Lets hope, in reality, we never come to see the likes of robots fighting wars on the scale these movies present.

Additionally, we got to see, in the first three, the birth of Leia and Luke, how they came to be separated, and how they finished up where they were at the start of Four. It was just a shame Padme never lived to see them.

The first three episodes were hard work in the viewing, but they filled in the back story for the next three, how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, and how the Senate Leader, who was secretly a Sith, became the charred looking, gravelly-voiced Emperor.

But after seeing the first two of the third series, something became obvious. Jedi were not born Jedi, they were just ordinary people who had that life force that gave them their powers running strong in their being. Annikin was one. Rae is another. I’m not sure about Ben Solo who had one Jedi parent. That was never fully explained.

That should mean, despite all this rambling by the Emperor and others that the Jedi are extinct, that’s completely and utterly wrong. It’s a large universe and there have to be many, many candidates.

This means that Star Wars could run forever.

A bit like Yoda, really. Interesting that he can still move mountains even after death. I guess a Jedi doesn’t die, well not in the sense that we do. But, then, how could you kill off a cute character like Yoda?

So, eight down, we have only one to go. It should run to the formula. The good Jedi faces off against the bad Jedi and good triumphs over evil. Planets are destroyed by Deathstars, Deathstars are destroyed by single fighters, and we have the awards ceremony at the end with much singing and dancing.

I’ll let you know once I’ve seen it. I will not be reading a recap of the movie before going.

Yet another movie…

There are two ways of looking at this, either we rented or bribed our grandchildren so we could see “Frozen II” without feeling embarrassed, or our grandchildren wanted to see it and dragged us along for the ride.

I’ll let you work out which is true.

But having seen the first Frozen at least a dozen times, watched our youngest grandchildren wear out their Elsa and Anna costumes, and endure that song Let It Go, so many times even I could remember the words (but never, never, ever, sing it), it was inevitable that we see the second.

After all, I’d seen the promo at least a thousand times, and it looked, well, interesting.

At the outset, I have to say the animation is amazing. In my time, the animation wasn’t great, but, back then, we didn’t have the resources we do now. Computers have made real-life animation almost perfect.

There are songs. You have to expect that, and I’m still trying to come to terms that the voice behind Anna is actually Kristen Bell, whom I am familiar with in ‘The Good Place’.

And the voice behind Elsa is equally amazing.

Perhaps what made this sequel better than the original was that it had a story, and a lesson to be learned.  In the end, it was well worth seeing.  And I’m still on the fence as to whether these types of movies by Disney are just for children.

What you need to look out for?  The reindeer. Not only Sven, but there’s more, and they’re not the usual run of the mill reindeer, and after seeing one particular song, you’ll understand why.

So, perhaps I’m transitioning into my second childhood, because I thought it was great.

No doubt, once it becomes a DVD it’ll be equally ingrained into my brain as much as the first. I guess worse things could happen.

The year so far, a movie to remember

It’s three days old and I have managed to fit in a couple of movies and start writing the second Walthenson novel.

Guess what was the most important event…

I have been seeing the trailers for Little Women for a while and knew it was going to be a new version of Louisa Alcott’s novel.

To me, it was the American attempt of writing a Jane Austen story with an American slant.

To my surprise, actually not really a surprise, I remember seeing the original version many, many years ago and was quite taken with it, certainly enough to go out and buy the book.

I guess being of English extract, it seems odd to me that I should be interested in American novels, particularly those of the 19th century.  My thoughts often ran to nature and American heroes like Davy Crocket and places like the Alamo.

Certainly, there was any number of stories about the civil war.

But, most of my impressions of Americana came from Hollywood, the wild west, and John Wayne, who was, to me, larger than life.

History dripped from the storylines of many of the 12940’s and 1050’s films that had people like Humphrey Bogart.  My favorite, of course, The Maltese Falcon

But I digress…

Little women was brilliant and taking my two granddaughters one 13 and the other 16, their appreciation of the film was quite interesting, if not very positive.  In a theatre that was filled with a lot of people over the age of 40, it surprises me more teens don’t come along and see what ‘real’ films are like.

Unfortunately, we are inundated with cartoon characters, comic book heroes and remakes of remakes, the sort of rubbish that makes money, but does little for educating a teenage mind.

Perhaps this film should be made mandatory viewing for every teenager.

 

 

I was going to write a movie review but…

It seems nostalgia got in the way.

It’s school holidays on this side of the world and we decided to treat our grandchildren to a film.  Being 8 and 11, it was always going to be one of those children’s films that we either didn’t understand, had minions, monsters, or bratty children.

This didn’t, but it had a baby elephant with large ears.

Dumbo.

Saw the cartoon version, read the book countless times at bedtime, but live action?  I suspect with the advances in movie technology, anything is not possible, even flying elephants.

Yes, and somewhere in the film was the byline, ‘making the impossible possible’.

I guess only Disney and a handful of others could do that.

But…

What interested me the most was the train at the start, the circus winter home, and the manner in which the great circuses moved from town to town throughout the midwest, and other areas of e continental United States.

I may live on the other side of the world, but the magic and mystery of circuses has fed my imagination since childhood, and the notion one day that I might see the circus arrive, led by the steam calliope and followed by a parade of circus performers and animals on their way to the first vacant field.

And the thought of seeing that huge big top tent.

It never happened.

Except in the pages of a book I received one Christmas when I was about 7 or 8, called Toby Tyler first published in 1880, a boy who saw such a circus arrive, and hating his foster life on the farm ran away when the circus left town.

My only other memory of that story, Toby being called ‘the death-defying daredevil of the lemonade stand’ after being promoted from the concession stalls to bareback horse riding, for reasons I cannot remember.

But, today, seeing the film’s opening, it all came back.

Was it a good film?  For kids, yes.  It has the usual message of good triumphing over evil, and that you should follow your dreams.  For those older people like me, well, it will bring back a few other interesting memories, some of which will not include running away from home to become a circus performer.

And the fact they don’t make circuses like they used to.

 

Who do you think you are?

I’m not sure how other people see your characters but sometimes I think mine are based on actors and actresses in various roles.

Ok, in the first instance, they are an an amalgum of people I’ve met or seen before, but they always seem to have what might be called an avatar in the back of my mind.

So, as a case in point, some years ago I was writing a story, but I didn’t have a clear picture of what my character looked like. I knew most everything else, but it made it difficult to go beyond a certain point.

Then I saw Bruce Willis in the original Die Hard, and the character suddenly took form in my mind. Of course, Bruce Willis wouldn’t recognise that my character was based on him, but if the film of the book was ever made, back then, he would have been ideal cast as the mc.

In another instance I was writing a YA story for my granddaughter and after she read the first 10 chapters I asked her what she thought. It was a good story, but the characters needed another dimension.

We then sat down and discussed who we might ask to play roles if we were casting a movie version.

It was unanimous, Lily James was Marigold. Probably not now, but when we first saw her. Emma Thompson was the Queen, and Jeremy Irons the King. We had others for the captain of the guards, the good witch and the bad witch.

Sometimes it takes a casting call to picture how your character might take physical form, and if the actors selected are very versatile there are so many traits you can pick up.

The question is, do you cast you characters

NANOWRIMO Day Eleven

nanowrimo-blog-banner-2019-journal

Like yesterday, the Maple Leafs are playing again, and as much as I want to forsake i and get on with the story, The fact that we are down by a large margin at the end of the first period given me the opportunity to turn it off, or watch the stage a come back.

Damn.

I stick with it.

Then, we make a decision to go and see a movie, Last Christmas, because it looked interesting when we saw the preview some weeks ago.

That means mossing half of the third period of the ice hockey if we’re going there.  Well, there’s always the live broadcast via the phone.

It is not easy driving a car and listening to a brilliant comeback by the Leafs, and the excitement in the car is almost at the same fever pitch as the commentators.

Alas, we lose.

As for the movie, it was everything we hoped for.  Two delightful leads who didn’t overact, Emma Thompson as a Yugoslav, and Michelle Yeoh in a restrained performance that I’m unused to seeing her in.  Perhaps Star Trek Discovery kick-arse was not needed here.

Christmas, no swearing, no killing sprees, a few songs, and a lesson hidden between the lines.  What more could one ask for?

As for the story, I’m having a coffee and then it’ll be time to get back into the groove.

Or watch Jack Ryan series 2…

My mind is running at a hundred miles an hour

Having got through my quota of words for the NANOWRIMO project, I turned my mind to another story I’m writing.

It started out as a bit of a lark, just to see if I could write a story that fitted around with an old castle we’d visited in Tuscany, after hearing stories of the pockmarks on the walls attributed to gunfire.

It conjured up a group of men occupying it with a single mission, to capture and return a high ranking German boffin who wanted to defect to the allies.

The twist is, of course, that the occupiers are British, sent there to facilitate the repatriation to England, only the men are really German double agents.

A bit far fetched, but from some of the stories I’ve read and shows I’ve seen, it’s not quite beyond the realms of possibility.

And, after all, it is fiction.

So, parts of this story have been running around in my head, waiting for a time to put it on paper.  Now is that time.

So, three more episodes have just been completed, and I’m thinking of watching Von Ryans Express again just to keep the mood going.

Oh, and the NANOWRIMO project, it’s proceeding apace.

Do you ever think about…

And probably it is a matter of being better off not thinking

But…

I’m sitting here and writing a piece for a novel about one of my characters, and all of a sudden I stop, right in the middle of where he’s about to get violently murdered if he lets his guard down.

Why have I stopped right there?

A strange through goes through my mind.

Did he remember to have breakfast, did he make the bed and tidy up after he got up?  Did he have to arrange to have his clothes cleaned, or were they cleaned for him?

Does he have a maid and a butler and a cook to do all those things?

The problem is, we don’t know what happened before he finished up in that precarious position.

We may know that he was taught to fight by a zen master, a swordsman, though I’m not sure if there is a requirement for fencing, to drive defensively, to kill people in more ways than you’ve had hot dinners.

We may know that he was in a similar fight the day before, and his energy has been depleted and may be running on painkilling drugs.  Of course, if that’s the case, and knowing the side effect of some of those drugs, he may be impaired, and slower in reaction time, which might mean premature death.

But we don’t know if he ate anything, whether he slept well, or not at all (though sometimes it rates a mention more often than not as an afterthought or an excuse), whether he has any distracting thoughts, like what the hell am I doing here?

Everyday things which all of us, and I’m sure even the most successful of spies, have to deal with.

Just a thought.

Back to the fight, yes he wins, got a couple of slashes and there’s a copious amount of blood on his shirt.

Let’s not worry about whose going to clean up the mess, or do the washing.

A few running repairs with needle and thread, including the requisite grimaces in pain, someone else will clean the shirt, and yes, there’s always a cupboard full of clean clothes to change into.

Moving on…