An update, I am Irate!

Today, I was finishing my daily tasks, when I saw a tab on Yahoo! news that Guillermo del Toro is quitting the Hobbit. What a bust! (Exclamation points show my raw emotion.)
I don't blame del Toro, it is the studio's fault that the Hobbit is not happening as planned.

"We have designed all the creatures. We've designed the sets and the wardrobe. We have done animatics and planned battles sequences ... We are very, very prepared for when it is finally triggered," del Toro said.

Then, he has to quit because of financial ( I assume, everything seems to boil down to money flow.) and contractual conflicts. I wouldn't stay in New Zealand for twice the promised time either if I was Guillermo. He has better things to do than wait for the some production official to provide the say-so that the filming could start. The whole Hobbit thing has been a mess from the beginning. But if bloggers could wrangle movies like "Snakes on a Plane" (I haven't seen it, but it is notorious for both the internet involvement and the lack of a plot). Browncoats begged for "Serenity". Loyal watchers of CBS sent in a ton of peanuts for the revival of "Jericho" (which I watched faithfully because of Skeet Ulrich and the amazing character, Hawkins.), then fans should rally to spur the Hobbit into casting, production, and filming! I had hyped that the Hobbit would be awesome if del Toro got a shot at the story. Now, it will be further postponed. Another reason I am disappointed is the Bourne series also got nixed, causing the Green Zone instead of a 4th installment. (Not nixing the Green Zone, but Jason Bourne is a compelling character).

What do I have to look forward to watching now!? I might have to just rent the Hurt Locker (I've heard it is amazing) and the Green Zone (reason stated above), and watch Iron Man 2 (as a two hour distraction). As for waiting - September for the 2nd Strain book to get a del Toro fix, and 2011-12 for more Marvel movies to come out.

Production and movie makers are killing golden geese in favor of tired cash cow projects. (i.e. Shrek 4, Sex and the City 2, and the Karate Kid.) Yes, we all know that the films will end out right, but the reality of film creation is disillusioning and depressing to me.

Falchion

My Recent Fascination with Guillermo del Toro

The truth is that I never quite intended this fan-ship of this director.
It started with Pan's Labyrinth, which I reviewed in a previous post. I was in a movie watching mood and wanted to have a taste of what the upcoming Hobbit film would look like. After all, Pan was del Toro's dream project, and that would be an accurate indicator of what the LOTR prequel would be envisioned. The visuals on that film left me curious for more, so I checked out his two Hellboy movies from the library.

The first movie was distinctive for the fact that it was both filled with more wisecracks than Spider-man and was more darkly serious than the Dark Knight. Hellboy is a paradox in himself - a demon who was raised to be a Catholic. One of his superiors tells the crimson hero what a farce the whole thing is, "The joke is that no matter how many monsters you dispatch, there will always be one left - you." Even with this kind of animosity, Hellboy still perseveres in saving a world that would abhor him living on their street. By the end of the first film, the audience learns about Hellboy's fated destiny. His intended purpose is not beneign savior of mankind, but to be its end. The perennial question of the first movie was - What defines a man - does the origin determine the life, or can a man change himself to become something better?

The second movie picks up a little while after the first ended. Hellboy's girlfriend Liz (who happens to create and manipulate fire) is, kindly put, in a dysfunctional relationship with Hellboy. They like each other, but their affectionate love for one another is not made easy by Hellboy's hygiene and Liz's paranoia. Abe Sapien, a amphibious psychic, is Hellboy's best friend and voice of reason. He is the Blue to Hellboy's Red. They do field work together. Abe is the research, Hellboy the muscle. For being almost 60years old, Hellboy is very juvenile. What defines the second film is color and effects. While the first movie had the deeper plot, the second has a faster moving action flick feel to it. My favorite parts are the sword/spear dance by the pale elven prince (just fluid motion with a fatal brilliance) and the oddly fitting scene of "Can't smile without you" being belted out by Red and Blue. (You'll understand when you see it. It is an absurd moment next to the threat of the golden army, but is also needed to make it a... different and quirky superhero movie.)

Hellboy's monstrous opponents are imbued with the bizarre touch of del Toro's mind.
There is a world of difference between del Toro and Tim Burton. Burton is weird for the sake of being weird, his movies are humanity twisted to a bizarre cliff. Del Toro's bizarreness stems from his audience's divide from having never seen a creature like that before. Del Toro depicts the unnatural in its own habitat, behaving as if it knows that earth is not its natural home. (At least in the daytime - nighttime is different.) As Hellboy's adoptive father explains, "You know those things that go bump in the night? They exist - We at the B.P.R.D. are the ones that bump back."

Right now I am reading del Toro's Strain trilogy, a reenvisioning of a horror film staple. The first book, The Strain , centers around an airplane that shut down moments after landing. All the passengers are found dead, no trace of why - There is no evidence of trauma or panic involved. Even weider discoveries await the Center for Disease Control personnel as they notice subtle details. CDC officials designate the airplane disaster as a freak occurence; Abraham Setrikan is am elderly pawnshop owner who knows better. He survived more than the holocaust in a Nazi death camp. The head of the CDC Canary project, Ephraim Goodweather, senses something is amiss. This inquisitiveness may lose him his job, but along with Abraham, they are the world's best hope at defeating an ancient hunger from stealing millions of lives.

"To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted." - Dr. Mortimer (Hound of the Baskervilles, By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Falchion

An Opportunistic offer

Yes, I do love thrillingly mysterious movies – ones that keep the audience wondering whether the players are great actors, or the actors great players. Allow me to clarify… Some characters in movies are imbued with an aura of illusion. When actors act in character, and in turn, their character acts out a part in the plot. This is the real magic of storytelling – Why I love Princess Bride by William Goldman. (As a sidenote: if anyone comments below, “I don’t own the Princess Bride”, I will choose six to personally recieve a copy. It is my personal pleasure to do so. ) The book is notable for Goldman writing the book three times. First authorship as Simon Morgenstern, ancient Florin historian. Secondly as William Goldman, the real author’s chosen pen name. This persona was “read” the Morgenstern classic by his florin-american father, and as an adult discovered the book to be longer than his father’s telling. Thus Goldman translated the book from the original florinese and pared it down from his tome-like size to a “good parts version”. The effect of the first two personas is that “Goldman” comments on “Morgenstern” ‘s rambling, explaining why and what he had to cut out from the original work. This leads to a level of abstraction that is incredible and remarkable. Of course, the book wouldn’t be truly great without a worthily entertaining story, which Princess Bride is. I tip my hat, my coat, and my wallet for such a feat. Thus the above offer. If there is a lack of response, I shall also be satisfied, as I have tried to provide copies to many of my friends already. (Meaning, I’ve been so good so far.)
The contract for obtaining a copy of Princess Bride. 1- You will read the book. 2- If you are not satisfied You can either return the book or pass the book on to a bibliophilic friend who does not have a copy. 3- You will write a paragraph about the book and post it as a comment to this. (This is optional, but would be nice to have. I can take your criticism… pretty well.)
Tell your friends if you like. It might take me a little while to obtain all the copies from half price books – I only buy a certain edition, but I will try to get it to my patient and faithful forum. (Yes, her and… him… not you: you are an internet troll… Ah, how could I forget? Yes, you qualify too.)
Thanks for reading.
Falchion

The Prestige – What you see is not what you saw.

One critic said that this is a movie you’ll want to see repeatedly. I happen to agree, there is so much you can miss after the first pass of the hand. I am sure you can watch this a dozen times and still miss something. This is a film project designed to deceive the eye. In the Brothers Bloom I witnessed the same quality. The magician, the con artist, and even the actor – all are professions designed to misdirect your eyes to looking away from the trick. The perfect trick leaves the audience in wonder, wanting to believe it is real. The perfect con ends with everyone getting what they wanted. The perfect acting job blends the actor into the character’s persona. Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn, Mandy Patikin as Inigo Montoya, Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.
The Prestige utilizes jump-cuts to display key moments without the benefit of context. It opens with Robert Ansier drowning in a water tank while Alfred Borden watches. Now Borden is on trial for killing Ansier. Something happened that caused these two renowned magicians to be at each other's throats. Both has gotten their start while working together under a old has-been magician. When they broke out as solo acts, they became natural rivals, each determined to be the best magician in England. This pursuit leads to a dangerous game of sabotage and one-up-manship. Borden is the genius illusionist, creating tricks that mystify magicians. Borden is the crowd pleasing showman, amazing audiences with his building presentation of the tricks. Each magician utilizes disguises to observe the rival’s shows, systematically tearing holes in the other's best tricks. The title of best magician escalates from a grudging rivalry to a burning obsession to learn and reveal the other’s secrets. The name of Tesla, a reclusive scientific genius living in Colorado Springs, is the key to the secret of the mysterious Transported Man. A trick in which the performer "teleports" fifteen feet through a door in the air. By the end of the movie, many of the secrets appear to have unravelled, revealing many simple and ugly truths. However, as the movie ends, those truths are thrown in doubt once more, raising more questions than answers.

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"." - Cutter

Fiddler on the Roof - Homeschool Style

Last night I went to the University of Indianapolis's Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center Gallery to watch this classic musical being performed by homeschoolers.
I'll be up front, one of my friends was playing the lead, so I am biased to like the play even if it was not the best. However, it surprised me with its accuracy to the beloved film, right down to the Russian dancing in the L'Chaim number and the bottle-on-head manuevers after the wedding. There were three homescholers able to do the latter. (Proving the superiority of some of our members.) Tevye did a fist shaking and bowing dance for "Tradition", and while not as unforgettable as the original, "If I was a rich man" had its own charm. The best songs though, were "Matchmaker" and Hodel's "Far from the Home I Love."
The dream sequence featuring Fruma Sarah was beautifully done, the towering specter gliding over the stage to haunt Tevye's dreams.

Please go see it, free admission can't be beaten!

Overdue post - Final Assignment

Reason for not posting last week? Reviewing for Finals to finish a semester.
This was the last writing assignment for my Journalism class. Not a review, but something I wrote:

Journalists hold a powerful privilege – the words that they use influence and shape the minds of the public. Tied to that ability is the solemn charge not only to report what is true, but to be objective in the telling. The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics and American Association of Newspaper Editors’ canons of journalism are voluntary guidelines for media professionals to avoid inaccuracy and errors. Such codes are important because they protect the public as well as the media practitioners; shielding the journalists from libel suits and the public from hoaxes.
The three areas from which ethical guidelines are derived are professional, philosophical, and controversy. The professional area is concerned with daily conduct of journalists performing their job, such as reporting truth, checking sources, and shunning plagiarism.
The philosophical area has two schools of thought, absolutist and situational. The absolutists think in terms of clear cut right and wrong decisions. Their mindset is to search for the categorical imperative – the search for principles that hold true in all situations. The situational school of ethics believes that there exists a grey area in which decisions are moral to different degrees. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, wrote in 1863 of a utilitarian principle. This principle measures the morality of a decision by whether it results in the greatest good for the most people.

The last area from which ethical guidelines are derived is controversy. This field seeks to minimize conflicts of interest and other misuses of the power of media. Controversy can arise from films when directors choose to depict artistic truths rather than historical facts. Another source of controversy is fixing odds in programming so that certain people win, generating buzz over the show. In 1958, the quiz show “Twenty-one” was fixed in the favor of Columbia University student, Charles Van Duren. He was a contestant on the show for 15 weeks and won $129,000. Disgruntled opponents brought Van Duren to court, proving that he had been fed the answers and was coached on his on-air behavior. Van Duren was convicted of perjury. The court case set a precedent that cut advertisers’ authority over programming and restored that privilege to the broadcast networks.
A recent controversy arose around former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Blair was hired at an entry level position at 23 years of age. By 2002, he was a national reporter for the Times. His career was brought under scrutiny when a Texas paper claimed that Blair had plagiarized off of his paper. When the Times analyzed 73 of Blair’s previous articles, they discovered that 36 of them contained plagiarism, factual errors, and fabrications. Blair resigned immediately after being confronted by the Times editor. The Times’ probe into Blair’s career ran 14,000 words. This length was usually reserved for catastrophic events of global importance, demonstrating how seriously the Times took Blair’s deception.
Blair’s career serves as a warning to journalists who are self-serving and careless in their professional duties. Of the four conflicting loyalties of journalism, personal conscience is the first defense. David Schorr, television reporter, had a personal code of ethics that prevented him from reporting on the Jews modern exodus from the Soviet Union. Schorr felt that a report could jeopardize the lives of the persecuted refugees, so he withheld the story from the broadcast news.
The second duty of journalism is to one’s emplolyer. The Gannett Corporation has a set of ethical guidelines for the employees of their 100 daily newspapers. The code states that journalists should report the truth, serve the public interest, exercise fair play, maintain independence, and act with integrity.
The third duty is the artistic perspective to the journalistic profession. Journalists see themselves as carrying a beautiful banner of truth and accuracy for the world to notice. Sometimes, the obligation to the nobility of their job demands that the indiscretions of family and friends be exposed.
Finally, there is a duty to society. The Communications Act of 1934 said that broadcasters should operate “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity,” This duty involves courtesy and sensitivity to the subjects of stories, such as granting media immunity to SWAT teams in operation.
At times it is not obvious which duty is to be followed, such as in times of war. There exists a balance of keeping the public informed while respecting the need for secrecy in military maneuvers. In WWI, countries could track the enemy’s position by reading that country’s newspapers. At the other extreme is the Vietnam War, in which the U.S. government withheld reasons for remaining in a war not our own and that America could not win.

Nurse Matilda

I confess that there is only one reason I like this collection of three books. It is out of the dark pleasure of fantasizing that my large family could raise mischief similar to what is mentioned in this book. The plot is simple - Supernatural meets super nanny. Step 1 - Find house full of delightfully naughty children. (It is never mentioned just how many children are in the Brown family.) Step 2 - All other house staffs have been chased away by said mischief. Step 3 - Intervention by stern, but fair, authority figure. (The ugly nurse Matilda, whom becomes more beautiful as the children behave. Her one rule: When the children need me, but don't want me, I stay. When the children want me, but no longer need me, I leave.) Step 4 - Children misbehaving are forced to continue in their actions until it becomes no longer "fun". Step 5 - Children shape up, Matilda leaves. And the curious 6th component... Christiana Brand has the Brown children relive their wickedness in a collective nightmare where they are the victims of the pranks they pulled.

My favorite collection is the third in the series - Nurse Matilda goes the the hospital. It begins with the Brown children going to church. Their first show of force is to sing whatever hymn they want at the top of their lungs. All the other members must either join in the song or be drowned out. At the end of the service, which was on loving your neighbor, the Brown children delightedly put the minister to the test of practicing what he preached. As he shakes the hands of his congregation, the children rush around to the back entrance to emerge once again shaking the Minister's hand repeatedly. Their naughtiness is overdrawn, over-the-top, and upon hapless and clueless victims. Nurse Matilda provides their beloved nemesis who reforms them by judo flipping the force of their mischief upon their own heads. Having to be naughty defeats the purpose of snubbing rules.

In summation, it is a trilogy of outrageous misbehavior and the magic of childhood. Just don't ask me to visit them in reality, being an observer is much preferable to being a potential mark for the resourceful Brown children...

Stardust, a film based on a Neil Gaiman novel

This will be an experiment: comparative review of the original novel vs. the film version. Stardust is the tale of Tristan Thorn, inept and eager shop boy from the English town of Wall. Young Thorn is enamored with the beauty of Victoria, the town flirt. One night, he sees a falling star, and to prove his love for Victoria, sets off to cross the town's forbidden wall to retrieve it as her birthday present. She promises him that if he returns after a week (in time for her birthday), she will marry Tristan rather than his rival, Humphrey. Alas, the other side of the wall was off limits for a good reason - it hid the magical realm of Stormhold from the world. The star manifests as the beautiful maiden, Yvaine, in this realm, and unknown to Tristan, the star has two other pursuers. The first group seeks the item that was the cause of her fall. The king of Stormhold charged his sons to retrieve the necklace which he flung into the heavens. The son who finds it first will become the new king of the realm. The second group seek the star for her heart, which when eaten provides instant youth. They are the royalty of the witch order, the sisters Three. Tristan quickly finds himself in a situation for which he did not account. Instead of merely retrieving a hunk of stardust, he finds himself the protector of a lady whose presence endangers his own life. For both of the groups who seek Yvaine have no qualms about breaking bloody eggs that impede their will.

Which medium tells the story better - novel or film? Stylistically, the end is less dragged out in the novel. Characters accept the end with a lot more peace. However, with Michelle Pfeiffer starring as the villainess, the writers wanted to give as much screentime as possible to her talents. Also, Robert de Niro's character gets a bit more screen time than was allotted for his character in the book. The Sky pirate Captain Shakespeare was more of an aside in Neil Gaiman's vast mental realm. The author did not choose to elaborate on some of his players, though he might have formed them more fully in his mind. The book is a fast paced plot that draws readers into its thrall, to spit them into the lush and exciting place of Stormhold and the unremarkable town of Wall. Gaiman's literary landscapes appear boundless. The part that he reveals only hints at the glory of the realms that inhabit his mind. This intangible entity of Neil's imagination must be filled with unenforced borders and trade among the various plots and members of his creation.
The movie is colorful and dazzling, the book is dreamy and whimsical. They complement each other, but I prefer the pacing of the novel to the movie, which tries too hard to show the fruit of Gaiman's mind on a physical screen. Rather, the story is best viewed in the venue of the psychological level of a reader's imagination.