conuly

It wasn't a half-bad movie, though it was awfully long.

Because I've read the books, a lot of what I'm going to say has to do with the differences between the books and the movie. After thinking it over, I think for the most part the reason behind most of the differences is because, watching the movie, there is no voiceover. The books, as you know, are filled with Katniss making cynically snarky little commentary on every aspect of her life.

This serves two purposes. First of all, her attitude helps lighten the fact that it's all a bunch of child-killing (even if most of those kids are annoying teenagers) and secondly, it provides lots and lots of nifty exposition in easy-to-manage chunks! (Of course, some people can't stand all the whining, which is a perfectly valid viewpoint. Me, I think as a teenage girl in a dystopia she's entitled to a little whining, but I can understand if you don't want to read it.)

Dropping it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that there are a lot of scenes in the book that simply won't make sense because we don't have the context. And if the context can't be provided in another way, it makes sense to drop those scenes altogether. The rest of the cut scenes probably had more to do with the movie's length than anything else. As it is, it was a very long movie.

There are a lot of different lists of changes between book and movie online. The most comprehensive is probably the one at the wiki, but they don't give any commentary and, frankly, even by the standards of group projects it's pretty badly designed. The book and movie lists aren't aligned neatly, so that by a few entries down they don't match up at ALL; they are, as noted, in no particular order, so it's hard to find out if a particular change is mentioned; and as a result of the first two reasons several scenes are mentioned twice. Sheesh.

But anyway, my entry is probably a little redundant, but that's all right because I want to type it anyway. I'll only focus on what caught my attention, instead of trying to be totally comprehensive.

( Read more... )

There also were some additions to the movie, and on the whole I liked them.

( Read more... )

On the whole, I think the movie wasn't that bad. I do prefer the book, but I usually prefer the book, so that's no surprise.

A few more, non-spoilery thoughts about watching the movie in a theater:

1. There was an ad for IE prior to the movie. God, Microsoft must find that humiliating to have to advertise their product!

2. I was stuck sitting in a group of gigglers who apparently have no patience for love triangles. Fair enough, but giggling every time there was a Gale reaction shot was a bit much.

3. I was also sitting directly in front of some commenters. Now, I'm all for snarky commentary during a movie, but it has to be interesting. If all you're doing is saying things like "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no" you can do us a favor and shut up, shut up, shut up. And as for the person who decided Rue's death was THE time to start rummaging through her popcorn bag? I don't even know what to SAY to that.

4. Apparently they're coming out with Titanic in 3D in April, presumably to coincide with the anniversary of the crash. Do we really need this?

5. Also, do we really need a new Spiderman origin-story film? REALLY?

There's this group that wants you to boycott this movie because they OMG cast Thor as white, and that's SO WRONG because THOR was NORSE and therefore WHITE, and I guess I can see that, yeah (although the only Thor I've ever met in real life was a little boy with an Icelandic mother and an African-American father, so there you go), but they're ignoring the much greater issue here.

In their quest for historical accuracy they seem to have forgotten something much more important than petty issues of race: VIKINGS DIDN'T WEAR HORNS ON THEIR HELMETS! Why would they do something so stupid? That's like giving your enemy a great handle to grab! But this group is okay with dumb and ahistorical fashion choices that make Thor and the Vikings look like twits, just so long as they're all white twits, is that it?

That's just wrong.

Now, prior to seeing this movie, I'd read a bit about it, and truthfully, what I read wasn't all that complimentary. Even the language (or, at least, the process of making it) didn't really escape this scrutiny. (And on the subject of language, I'm impressed that they went through all the effort of conlanging up a whole language and making the actors learn it, but meanwhile, why did the Na'vi consistently pronounced "Sully" as "Sooly"? That's a mispronunciation I'd expect from somebody who had seen the word written, but not somebody whose first (and possibly only) association with the word was hearing it spoken. Those two phonemes aren't that similar, are they?)

Well, apparently the guy I went to see it with had not read all I'd read beforehand, and neither was he clued into the fact that "long braid down the back +/- sparse beads and/or asymmetrical feathers = INJUNS! Native Americans! So I was there the second he figured it out. "Wait - they're supposed to be Indians! That's not... that's not right!"

(If those braids had been a little more cornrow-y, they would clearly have been Africans, and if we'd heard a little more of that random didgeridoo that was in one of the background music bits I could've called them Australians... but (gratuitous, non-alien Western musical scales aside) I can't blame them for that one, the didgeridoo is a pretty awesome instrument.)

So, now, what did I think of the movie? Well, I took a day or so to think about it. And then I thought, before I posted, I'd head over to TVTropes and see what they have to say. (And that sucked up my entire day, yes, yes, when will I learn?) And boy, do they have a lot to say on the subject! Holy FUCK!

So I'm gonna take some parts and talk about them, but I'm not tackling the whole thing. That *is* what TVTropes is there for.

( Read more... )

So, basically? It's a so-so movie with great imagery. It has some troublesome aspects (seriously), but they're mostly troublesome in the context of... well, everything else that shares those aspects. This wouldn't be so bad if the story itself weren't largely formulaic. But it is.

So I saw it once, liked it well enough once I turned my brain off, and don't intend to see it again any time soon. If you aren't spending your life on TVTropes you might like it more.

Cloverfield

Let's see. Die here, die in the tunnels... oh look. Seems like it's another movie about destroying my city.

Do I ever hate that! I even turn off disasters on SimCity!

Honestly, why don't they try Walla Walla for a change? Be creative! Be novel! Besides, I've heard that it's the place people enjoy so much, they decided to name it more than once. Or... something like that, anyway.

This will either be Very Very Good, or Very Very Bad.

In favor: Narnia movie is said to rock. I'm still debating where my ethics lie, and my finances.
Against: Cheaper by the Dozen sucked, and was a travesty. A travesty, I say.

Oh dear.