Oz the Great and Powerful

Oz the Great and Powerful directed by Sam Raimi starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, and in one small scene Bruce Campbell.

This is by no means a great movie and I would say a pointless movie as it doesn't really add anything to the highly superior Wizard of Oz.  James Franco was completely miscast as the Wizard.  He was out acted in every scene by the three witches played by Mila Kunis, Rachel Wiesz, and Michelle Williams.  His character was rather bland and Franco didn't do anything to make the character more charming or more salesman-like as he needed to be.  The screen play didn't do him any favors either as it gave him little to work with.  On the other hand the three witches should have been the main focus of this movie.  Their characters were far more interesting and would have served the movie much better if they had been the stars.  The perspective of this movie should have been around them reacting to Oz, as the viewer would have been seeing everything through their perspective.  Their perspective would have been much more interesting, than the bland Oz.  Even seeing things through their eyes could have helped with a bland Oz. 

Even the visuals of this movie seemed outdated as the CGI overkill was way over used, to the point where the original Oz's effects are masterpieces when compared the CGI on display here.  The colors were too colorful.  The sun light too bright and interfering.  Everything had a stagey feel to it, much like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom movie where everything seemed like it was filmed for TV, versus the raw energy of Raider and the Holy Grail.  That same feeling of fakery was persistent throughout every scene of this movie.  I don't know if that was done on intention or not, as that sort of feeling would help this movie's visual pallet connect better with the original Oz.  But personally I thought it hindered the movie more than helped it where as the original Oz that feeling never amounted to much.  The story line was so engaging, the characters so much better developed that that stagey feel just didn't exist.  But in this Oz the CGI dominated so much that it overpowered everything and the weak storyline and characters didn't help.

About the only thing this movie has going for it was Raimi is a competent director.  With this movie he continued is visual feast of the eyes.  I just wish he'd get some better screen plays to direct because when his screenplays are good, his movies turn out rather well: A Simple Plan, Spider Man 1 and 2.  But then he's always had a knack for modest screenplays and his direction or fierce passion saving the day: Evil Dead 1 and 2, the Army of Darkness, and Darkman.  But I would put this movie, overall, near the bottom of his movie list, as it just didn't engage on any level at all.  The last thing I think about this movie is, "How cool would it have been if they had focused on the witches as the main characters?  After all this is the same man who did some amazing things with crazy paranoia in Evil Dead and The Gift.  Just think about how this movie could have turned out with the witches as the leads and the Evil Dead director unleashed?" 

All Star Superman

All Star Superman Vol 1 and 2 written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Frank Quietly. 

Over the years I've been deluged with all sorts of comic media telling me how great a writer Grant Morrison is.  So, I've gone out and read a lot his works - and by a lot, I mean I've read a lot - the end result of this reading comes to the conclusion that he is one of the most overrated writers writing comics today. This comic is proof of that.  The pacing is too quick for the plot, characters are introduced too fast and with little time to get to get know them before their gone and story quickly moves on. This comic should have been much longer, than I think it would have been much better, as Morrison would be able to explore the ideas he came up with for this series, in more detail. But Morrison has does this countless times with countless comics I've read from him.  He invests too much in ideas and not enough in storyline and characters.  His stories are also too small when they should be much larger to fully explore every idea he brings up.  He writes short stories when his should be writing novels.  Joe the Barbarian and Flex Mentallo are two of the prime examples of this. 

I also think it's funny that one of his best comics ever is We3, which has hardly any dialogue and is told mostly through images.  It is easily his best work.  The more I think about this though I don't think it's Morrison's writing that made that book work.  It was Frank Quietly's art that make We3 and it's Frank Quietly's art that also makes most of Morrison's work shine. If anything I think Morrison is riding on the coat tails of Quietly.  There's just something about Quitely's off kilter art work that seems just amazing because he truly doesn't draw like anyone else in comics.  He has his own unique style. The many times he's been paired with Morrison has been some of the most visually amazing comic art I've seen in a long time.  This series is just another example of how good Quietly is at drawing anything. Don't read this book for the story, read it for the art and enjoy seeing one of the best artist in comics today. Give Quietly more work to do and would some please put him with a good writer.

Red Dawn (2012)

Red Dawn (2012) directed by some guy I don't know, nor ever heard of, who honestly probably signed up just for the paycheck, which I can't blame him, as long as he admits it was the money, not the "great" story line, that drew him to the project.  Starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, and Josh Hutcherson.

I honestly can't see why the original Red Dawn needed to be remade.  Granted the original isn't a perfect movie, but at least it was original and John Milius knew how to create actual characters instead of carbon copies this movie managed to cut out.  He also knew how to use and earn cliched moment to the story line's advantage instead of leaning on them as a crutch.  This movie had nothing new to say that the original Red Dawn didn't already say.  Therefore making it just another Hollywood remake churned out by everyone in tinsel town who has had their fountain of originality dried up decades ago.  It's really sad as remake syndrome, sequel-itis, and franchise hungry producers seem only concerned with quantity versus any resemblance to quality in their movies.  In fact, quality, I'm convinced, is a four letter word around those offices.  This Red Dawn remake just cements the fact that Hollywood is utterly and completely lost when it comes to fresh ideas.  I wonder when it will ever come back from wherever barren, isolated island it has become stranded on.  Then I wonder if I really want them to be found.  I think, as the quality of the ten years or so of movies has shown, I would rather they stay lost.  I think it's better for everyone.

In case you haven't caught on yet I didn't really like this movie.  It was just a pointless remake that didn't need to be made.  There's a couple of things it does have going for it though that I didn't mind.  It wasn't a long movie as it came in just over 90 minutes., so, it didn't feel like a complete waste of time.  Unlike other over bloated, over long movies that just wonder on from spectacle to spectacle completely devoid of the fact they are nothing of substance.  This movie didn't even try to come up with anything of substance on its own, everything of substance in the movie it stole from the original. If anything this movie can act a metaphor for the over all philosophy of Hollywood and that is unoriginality.

Some things that caught me by surprise as I watched this movie.  Chris Hemsworth didn't take his shirt off.  It seems every movie he's been in, he's taken his shirt off and given all the girls in the world a money shot of his chest.  Honestly this movie could have made more money if they had included a shirtless Hemsworth because my wife was disappointed that shot wasn't in there.  A training sequence that absolutely made no sense at all and in its short time proved why the original Red Dawn was so much better.  In the original they were just high school kids who hunted and were just learning things on the fly.  This made them more relate-able but here they have Hemsworth's character be former military, which absolutely helps to take the viewer away from identifying with anyone in the movie.  The last mission the Wolverines take on is absolutely ridiculous and goes against everything they've been trying to do since the movie started.  

H2O: Season One

H2O: Just Add Water: Season One.

Here's a good little Australian show about three girls who can turn into mermaids and the powers that come with it, which I didn’t know about until this show. The main reason I'm plugging this show is because there are so few good shows out there directed to girls that are, you know, actually good. This show is not anywhere near like those stupid shows made by Disney and Nickelodeon aimed at teens.  This show is actually written well with some well thought plot lines and character development, something the Disney and Nickelodeon shows never would have conceived of doing in their wildest of dreams. Those shows have a manufactured feel them where as H2O seems a lot more organic in nature. Abby, my daughter, just loved this show even though a lot the things in it were over her head (relationship-wise) but she got the big theme of it and that is girls dealing with being a mermaid, which I guess could be a metaphor for dealing with growing up, if it is this show doesn’t push it but just tells some good stories. There is also a good family structure in the show something a lot US shows seems to be trying to deconstruct with each passing year.

A Local Habitation

A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire. 

I finished book 2 in the October Daye series and feel the same way about it as I felt about the first book: it's not a great book or series - so far - but there's enough fantastical things happening to keep me interested. 

McGuire does a great job of world building.  It really is an in depth fantasy world with many layers and it's these many layers that make it an interesting read, but her one problem still remains her characters. The characters in the book just don't seem to be as interesting as they need to be to keep a series like this going, but her world building makes up a little bit of that because I'm still interested enough that I'll continue with the series. I still have a problem with her plots because they aren't interesting enough either, which would be fine if she had interesting characters, then those characters could make up for a lack of a story. The whole detective thing doesn't work too well either because in both of the books I spotted the killer less than half way through the book. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but interesting characters - to harp on this more - would go far in this great world. 

It seems like there's a lot problems with the book.  There is, but even saying that I know I'm going to go eventually read the other books in the series just not like I did with the Dresden series, reading them one right after the other after the other after the other like popcorn. But if you're looking for a good urban fantasy series to pass the time you really can't go wrong with this series (so far) it meets those standards well and will do well giving you something to read.

Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie starring Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Richard Jenkins, Rosamund Pike, and Werner Herzog.

First off this was a lot better than I thought it was going to be, but it still isn't any kind of ground breaking movie.  Yes, there is a scene where the Cruiser gets his shirt off.  And, for the first time in a long time, there wasn't a scene of the Cruiser running somewhere, really fast.  This did surprise me because in most Cruiser movies there always seems to be at least one scene were he's running really hard to get somewhere.  I don't why this is, but, I think, somewhere inside of him there's some deep psychological attraction to the Road Runner.  But to compensate for these non-running scenes, there are also countless scenes where the Cruiser enters a room and it seems every woman he walks past or even looks at him is sizing him up for a thrown on the bed.  Cruises ego has got to be the size of a galaxy at this point in his life, as he likes to play people that are basically ordinary, but have elevated their life to a place where they are extraordinary.  I think the Cruiser thinks his life is like that and I bet Scientology isn't helping with the ego check either.  But all of this aside the movie a good watch.

It's not an all out action movie.  It does have action scenes but instead of being over the top, the scenes are played more or less as realistically as they can played with a character of Jack Reacher's abilities.  When he fights, he fights to win not to extended the fight scene out longer.  No, in this movie Reacher fights like a man who knows how to fight and he shoots to kill, not to maim.  And this movie is all the better for it.

The movie does a good balancing act of setting up bias' with the characters only to have them presented with evidence that contradicts their preconceived bias' and unlike most movies, these characters act, as any sane person would act, when presented with the truth.  They change their perspective, the bias is still there, but their perspective of the situation has changed.  This aspect of the movie I really liked, because if there's one thing I can't stand in stories is dumb characters who continue to act as they normally would act when everything logically tells them they should act in another way.  But because the writer/producer/director of the movie has their own ideological viewpoints and would rather stick with their ideologies than what makes a story good.  They end up sacrificing a lot more realism and believability in pursuit of preaching than storytelling.  Jack Reacher does not stoop to these levels, and, as I said before, it is all the better for it.  This type of movie owes a lot things to that superb show on FX, Justified, even Cruisers character has a lot of things in common with Justified's main character Raylan Givens.   

  

Doctor Who: Season Three

Doctor Who Season 3. 

BBC does it again, as they continue to show they know what they're going when they produce anything for the television. 

OK, it's official David Tennant is the best Doctor.  And after this season ended I'm really looking forward to Season 4 even though it will be the last season of David Tennant, but what a good two seasons he's had and I imagine what a good third season he's going to have. He really got the time to flesh out the Doctor and bring his own eccentricities to the role, which are really what help to make the Doctor, well you know the Doctor. His acting ability has just blown me away as he seems to bring just a joy and passion to the role that started with Tom Baker and continued with Christopher Ecccleston, but now David Tennant has brought it to a whole new level that has been a joy to watch.

This season also gave the Doctor a new companion, Martha Jones, and I thought the best thing about her was that she was training to be a doctor.  This dynamic brought a whole new twist to the companion assembly line, as she's first companion of the new Doctor to have some education behind her.  Personally, I thought the writers should have focused more on that aspect of her instead of her infatuation with the Doctor, which I never really bought into.  There just didn't seem to be enough time for her to fall in love with the Doctor, as there did with Rose.  This is why I thought her education should have been focused on more thoroughly, because it would have explained things a lot better as to why she willing went along with the Doctor.  I mean why wouldn't a doctor in training want to go exploring all sorts of strange alien races and cultures?  It would open up all kinds of new physical characteristics, bone structures, uncommon anatomy to name just a few that any doctor in their mind would give up a lot to go gallivanting through universes just to behold those strange and wonder things.  Her being a doctor in training and more educated than Rose brought a whole new awareness of things to the role of the companion than Rose did in the first two seasons. There was a comment on the education of people and how it influences reaction and decisions. I don't know if this was intentional or not but it did factor into the show, at least I noticed and that was the best thing about Martha Jones' character being as educated as it was. It added a whole other dimension to the show that hadn't been there before. 

Now the writing for this season was just flat out brilliant and in full on nerd mode. I will admit the first 7 episodes weren't the strongest but when the episodes that followed were, as strong as the ended up, I will forgive the first 7 episodes.  They seemed to be laying a large part of the ground work for what followed after them. The last 6 episodes were as follows: a two parter, a stand alone episode and a grand finale three parter. There's not many American shows that have the balls to do multi-part episodes anymore. The main television networks - I'm not not writing about the Cable shows because they really seem to understand how to do television shows - seem to think viewers are stupid and therefore produce nothing but stand alone episodes, with little or no continuity with the plots or characters. Doctor Who bucks that trend in spades, as they continually put things in ever episode that foreshadows things to come. Like I've said before, to me that just shows the writes really care about what their doing.  As they continued to stick to the over all plan and not just free wheel it all time like Lost, X-files and about every other show out there, that seems to have a plan, but instead just want to milk everything and get no where.  In the end they only end up frustrating the fans. Doctor Who is the exact opposite of that. 

I will stay this, season 3 has one of the most brilliantly executed stand alone episodes ever, called Blink, that used statues in a horrific way and make them truly scary.  Just writing sentence seems oxymoronic, but this episode proved it 100% wrong. As Jess and I were talking about after that episode: to do what they did with nothing but statues, that technically didn't even move in that episode, and yet they ended up being some of the scariest and creepiest monsters and scenes I've seen in a long time, was on a whole other level of awesomeness than about 90% of the horror movies achieve. They did more with less than many horror movies do with more and they proved that less is more when it comes to being scary. The mind produces so much more intense things than can ever be filmed. 

The last three episodes bring a truly great story line and give some good nerdgasms.  We finally get another time lord.  Who turns out to be insane and calls himself the Master.  We get to see the time lords planet and a city on the planet.  We find out that time lords chose their names - thus the name of the Doctor is a chosen name, just like the Master is chosen name.  And we get to see how what an evil time lord would be like - and well it's not good at all - as the Master turns out to be one of the best villains the Doctor has ever had. Let me tell John Simm, who plays the Master, does an amazing job of it, as he equals the intensity and charisma brought by David Tannant.  Watching those two on screen together was some great TV. 

Just some random things I noticed during this season.  A lot of actors I saw who in my opinion have a lot more to give to the acting world as they've been prove that popped up in some Doctor Who episodes.  Andrew Garfield from The Amazing Spiderman and The Social Network, personally I think The Social Network is of more worth.  Carey Mulligan whose been in Public Enemies, Shame, and Drive, is a really good actress and completely carried this episode that didn't feature much of the Doctor.  Derek Jacobi who is easily one of the best actors I've ever seen and who I've liked in everything I've seen to name a few: The Brother Cadfael series, Gladiator and he stole every scene he was in, Henry V and again he played the narrator but he was absolutely amazing, Dead Again, Hamlet (1996), and I Claudius.  Jessica Haynes who helps to show the Doctor love she's from Spaced which she also helped write. Now looking forward to season four.