My 2011-2012 Oscar Predictions – Part 2: The Technicals

This is the section which includes the technical aspects of film-making.  I went 6 for 6 last year, so the pressure’s on!

VISUAL EFFECTS:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson
Hugo, Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning
Real Steel, Erik Nash, John Rosengrant, Dan Taylor and Swen Gillberg
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier

Rise of the Planet of the Apes really the only film here to make any sort of significant leap in effects technology.  Its motion capture work was very good and really made some believable apes, especially the character of Caesar.  Effects in service to the story as integral as it was here, since the character of Caesar was the center of the movie, will likely be recognized.

Prediction: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

–

ART DIRECTION:
The Artist, Production Design: Laurence Bennett; Set Decoration: Robert Gould
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Production Design: Stuart Craig; Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan
Hugo, Production Design: Dante Ferretti; Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo
Midnight in Paris, Production Design: Anne Seibel; Set Decoration: Hélène Dubreuil
War Horse, Production Design: Rick Carter; Set Decoration: Lee Sandales

Hugo received the most nominations of any other film this year, but I can’t see it winning any of the major awards.  Art Direction seems like a good bet however, as a wonderfully imaginative world was created for this throwback film from one of the masters of cinema.  And most of the art was actually used to show the beginnings of film history?  Think the academy might be interested in that? Hmm, possibly.

Prediction: Hugo

–

COSTUME DESIGN:
Lisy Christl – Anonymous
Mark Bridges – The Artist
Sandy Powell - Hugo
Michael O’Connor – Jane Eyre
Arianne Phillips - W.E.

I have a tried and true rule for this category.  Always go with the film set in the Victorian or Elizabethan era.  Well, this year has both a Victorian film (Jane Eyre) and an Elizabethan era film (Anonymous).  So its a coin toss, but Jane Eyre seems like the more respectable film.

Prediction: Jane Eyre

–

MAKEUP:
Albert Nobbs, Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnston and Matthew W. Mungle
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight and Lisa Tomblin
The Iron Lady, Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland
It’ll be Harry Potter and for two reasons.  First, recently this award seems to go to the most popular of the nominees. Secondly, Harry Potter has come to the end of its ten-year, eight-film run.   It has been a monster of the movie industry and has proven to be one of the most successful film franchises out there, both commercially and critically.  And yet the boy wizard has never taken home an Oscar.  It may be best make-up, but I think they will give it to Deathly Hallows as a recognition of the entire series.

Prediction: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

–

SOUND MIXING:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce and Bo Persson
Hugo, Tom Fleischman and John Midgley
Moneyball, Deb Adair, Ron Bochar, Dave Giammarco and Ed Novick
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Peter J. Devlin
War Horse, Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson and Stuart Wilson

I have to say that one thing which really struck me as I sat in theaters watching the spectacular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was how great the sound was.  Even little things like a knife being drawn from its holder or a motorcycle racing down the highway, the sound was incredibly full and authentic.  I’m calling for Dragon Tattoo to win, just because I want it to so badly.

Prediction: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

–

SOUND EDITING:
Drive, Lon Bender and Victor Ray Ennis
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Ren Klyce
Hugo, Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl
War Horse, Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom

I also have a tried and true strategy for Sound Editing.  If there’s a war film among the nominees, chances are it will win.  It has to do with the fast moving gunfire and all that jazz I guess.  Well, War Horse it is then.

Prediction: War Horse

My 2011-2012 Oscar Predictions – Part 1: The Outliers

And so another set of Oscar predictions for a new set of Oscar nominees.  Some interesting choices for many of the categories, but which will win?  I’m out to break last years prediction score of 67%, and I think I can do it!  Here we go!

Part 1: The Outliers
This group is made up of the categories celebrating whole films which are not up for Best Picture.  They are usually the “forgotten” films at the Oscars, but also the toughest to predict because so little about them is known.  I didn’t do too hot on them last year, so hopefully I can turn that around this year.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM:
A Cat in Paris (GKIDS), Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli
Chico & Rita (GKIDS), Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal
Kung Fu Panda 2 (DreamWorks Animation), Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Puss In Boots (DreamWorks Animation), Chris Miller
Rango (Paramount Pictures), Gore Verbinski

Hmm, five nominees this year, opposed to the usual three.  And none of them are Tintin, my personal favourite animated movie of the year.  And no Pixar as they went for commercial success over critical with Cars 2 this year.  And of those that are left, Rango seems like the likely winner.  Its a mainstream flick which offered something different in the animation realm.

Prediction: Rango.

–

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
Bullhead (A Savage Film Production), Belgium
Footnote (Sony Pictures Classics), Israel
In Darkness (Sony Pictures Classics), Poland
Monsieur Lazhar (Music Box Films), Canada
A Separation (Sony Pictures Classics), Iran

Well, I’m sort of relying on Roger Ebert this year, who says that A Separation is simply one of the best films of the year.  I’m not sure if the academy voters agree, but I’m going to say that they well.

Prediction: A Separation

–

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:
Hell and Back Again (Docurama Films), Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Oscilloscope Laboratories), Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (A Radical.Media Production), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
Pina (Sundance Selects), Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel
Undefeated (The Weinstein Company), TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas

Wow, what an interesting set of predictions.  In a year with many stand-out documentaries, hardly any of them are here.  Herzog’s Into the Abyss nor his Cave of Forgotten Dreams is here, neither is Bill Cunninghm’s New York, Project Nim, or The Interrupters.  Hell and Back Again seems likely, and Undefeated has the Weinstein name attached to it, but I’m going out on  limb to say Pina.

Prediction: Pina.

–

DOCUMENTARY SHORT:
The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement, Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
God Is the Bigger Elvis, Rebecca Cammisa and Julie Anderson
Incident in New Baghdad, James Spione
Saving Face, Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen

Okay, so Ive decided that since I really don’t know much about short film, I would just do some research and simply go with whoever seems like the front runner.  Here that looks to be The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.

Prediction: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.

–

ANIMATED SHORT FILM:
Dimanche/Sunday, Patrick Doyon
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
La Luna, Enrico Casarosa
A Morning Stroll, Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
Wild Life, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby

Alright, so for this category I’m using an even simpler strategy: I’m going to pick the film who has the most interesting name (which should be obvious), which also happens to be the frontrunner.  This does mean I have to go against the fellow Canadians who made Wild Life, but c’est la vie.

Prediction: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

–

LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM:
Pentecost, Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane
Raju, Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren
The Shore, Terry George and Oorlagh George
Time Freak, Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey
Tuba Atlantic, Hallvar Witzø

Ah, short films.  I confess to making a few myself, though I can’t see mine being nominated any time soon.  But which of these five will win? Well, inside sources (aka. doing a google search for blogs from people who know what they’re talking about more than me) tell me it will be The Shore.

Prediction: The Shore.

IanTheCool’s 300th Post Spectacular!!!

Hey hey everyone!  Well, I’ve reached a blogging milestone: post 300! Though to be honest, I only realized that because of that sidebar wordpress has been putting up after each new post now.  So I have decided to do some shameless self-promotion and reflect back on my blog thus far, and also see where it might be going in the future.

So how did it all start?  Well, it all started with a review of the movie Watchmen in this post back in October 2009:

Post #1: Watchmen

And so that’s how the blog started, with very small blurbs on the films of 2009.  After I caught up with all of the films, I began reviewing the 2008 movies I had seen (which were even shorter, less in-depth reviews).  But I eventually decided to stick to only doing reviews of the most recent films, which is what I’ve been doing apart from a couple special categories which I began to include.

And so my blogging began.  My blog extended into a series of Top Ten lists, board game reviews, and other small features. I didn’t even notice as Post 100 and 200 passed me by.  By the way, they were the following:

Post #100: Clash of the Titans

Post #200: My 2010-2011 Oscar Predictions: Part 4 – The Majors

And now to #300.

Most Popular Post

So after all this time, what is my most popular post?  Well, I’ll be honest, its not one which I expected to be.  Yet time and time again, it keeps popping up as the post with the most visits (and consequently, most comments) and it is my most read post by a massive margin, a full 50% more than its closest competitor.  So what is it?

The Ten Best Comic Strips!

I’m not really sure why, but it is insanely popular.  Thousands of people have tuned in to find Calvin and Hobbes at the top of the list.  I wonder how many of them agreed?

On that note, lets talk about…

The Top Tens

Far and away, my most popular category of posts are my top ten lists.  I started doing these on discussion board which I have been a long time member of and then transferred them here.  My purpose was to make theses lists as objective as I could, though I recognize I could never be completely objective.  And though many of these lists have a movie-based slant, I’ve also tried to make a diverse range of lists, from history, to board games, to beer.  I have made 36 of these lists in total.

Obviously, the Comic Strips lists is the most popular, but it all started with

The Ten Most Influential People of the 20th Century

However, I must profess that I am running out of ideas.  Therefore my Top Ten List production has been slowing down a lot.  If you have ideas of lists you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments.  If its something that also interests me, perhaps I will try it.

The Movie Reviews

I have written reviews of most of the movies I have seen from 2009 up until 2011.  They started off as small blurbs, but grew, though never to great lengths.  I’ve always believed in keeping film reviews rather short, only a few paragraphs.  One way I do this is by not rehashing the plot, which is something I’ve never understood.  I’ve always felt like a line or two is all you need to let the reader know what its about.  Though even the great Roger Ebert does long plot rehashes, so what do I know?

I’ve also gradually added little extras to my reviews.  In 2010, I began adding pictures to spice things up, and in 2011, I’ve been adding funny captions to these pictures, found when the cursor sits over the picture (although I’m not sure that anybody has even noticed this yet).  What should I add in 2012?

Most popular movie review: The Social Network

Most Neglected Movie Review: The Informant!

The Board Game Reviews

Movies are obviously a big hobby for me.  Yet the other hobby I’m passionate about are board games.  And so I eventually decided to start posting Board Game Reviews.  These I have gone into more depth with than my film reviews, mostly because they are usually games many people have not heard of, so more explanation is required.  And some of the more popular games like Monopoly, Chess or Clue I have tried to appraoch my reviews almost like an essay arguing some sort of thesis.

Most Popular Board Game Review:  Monopoly: Why So Popular?

Most Neglected Board Game Review: Memoir ’44: History in a Box

The Other Stuff

I have tried to do other small segments on my blog to spice things up.  These include:

- Oscar Predictions – For the last two years, I have posted by Oscar predictions after the nominees are announced.  This means that my third installment will be coming soon!  Each year I make my predictions in four posts, breaking up the categories.  The fifth posts is where I post the results and see how I did.  Year 1 I predicted 63% right, year 2 it was 67%.

- Film Club Reviews – This is the only segment where I do full reviews of less recent films.  On a movie forum board I am a part of, I am a semi-regular member of a film club, where we are partnered up and recommend movies for each other to watch, writing a review about them later.  This category is by far my least popular on this blog, but I would encourage people to read them as they are usually lesser-known films which may surprise you.  They encompass a wide range of newer and older films, foreign to documentary, sci-fi to comedy,all sorts.

- AFI Recap – I also did a recap of the AFI’s 100 greatest films list from 1998, as this has been a popularly referred to list.  I went through the list ten films at a time and made my comments on whether or not they should be there.  But since I’ve gone through the whole list, this segment has been retired.

- The Blu-ray Files – After finally getting into the world of HD movies, I decided to do a segment on the blu-rays I was buying.  I commented on three films a post, talking mostly about video and audio quality and the difference blu-ray makes in the viewing experience.  I made 15 posts covering 45 blu-ray movies.  But now I think I’ve run out of things to say as the “newness” of my blu-ray experience has started to worn off, so I’ve put this segment to rest also.

The Future

So what is next?  The Blu-ray Files and AFI Recap have been put to rest and my top tens are slowing down.  I have thought about a few different segments to spice things up.  One idea is to do a TV series segment where I do full analyses of my favourite shows.  I also have thought about doing something altogether different, like a travel segment where I write about all of the different place I have traveled to.  Or perhaps I could revisit my top ten lists and try to extend them past ten.  Or maybe I could do a movie review segment based around individual directors.

What do you think about these ideas?  What would you rather I try?

Supporters

There are some supporters I would like to send a shout out to.  These people have great blogs of their own which you should visit, and a healthy  community of comments have been exchanged betweeen their blogs and mine.  Its nice to know people are reading and its nice to have something to read.  These are only a few of the many great blogs I’ve come across.

The Best Picture Project                              PG Cooper’s Movie Reviews                                     Boards and Bees 

                                                                                                         

Focused Filmographer                                           Fog’s Movie Reviews                                 DanTheMan’sMovieReviews

                                                                                                              

Wow, that was self-indulgent.  But fun.  Hope you keep reading!!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

As background for this review, I have both read the book and seen the original Swedish film, so this is my third go around with this story. And I have to say that David Fincher`s adaptation is very faithful to its source material as well as being a huge step up from the Swedish version.  It also happens to be one of the best films of the year.

Fincher`s film feels much more cinematic and much more complete than the first one did. With the Swedish film, I felt like they tried their best to get all the important elements into the film, but it still felt fragmented and didn’t quite piece together properly. But with this Hollywood version, Steve Zallian’s script flows beautifully and everything that needs to be included is. And best of all, it all fits together. It doesn’t feel like they are tacking things on. Everything here makes sense; its a cohesive story.

Even the small details of the investigation are given their due here, like the photograph analysis, the ‘phone numbers’, the Wanger records. Fincher doesn’t just skimp over these details. Instead, he analyzes them meticulously, but also in a way that is entertaining to the audience. Its really a treat to watch this material in the hands of a modern master of cinema like Fincher.

Not only was impressed by how well the story was handled, I also loved the look and feel of this movie. The tone fits exactly as it should; brooding yet natural. Fincher really puts us into the icy north of Sweden while giving us an Agatha Christie feel to Hedeby Island, albeit much more sinister. The cinematography here is wonderful. Not only does the island feel like a real place, but the camera also works to the benefit of the character; Lisbeth Salander in particular. The way the camera follows her through hallways and gives us interesting angles on her adds to the mystery of her very alienated character.

Let’s talk about Lisbeth for a second. In the Swedish film, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo was played by Noomi Rapace, and I marveled at how spot on she was for the role. Therefore I was skeptical of anyone else in the role, but Rooney Mara went above and beyond. She really sunk her teeth into Lisbeth and made her one of the most interesting screen characters this year. She and Daniel Craig, as Mikael Blomqvist, also have a wonderful chemistry for a pair of very different people.

I have to profess myself to be very impressed with this movie. Its certainly not just a remake of the Swedish film for those who don’t like subtitles. Its an improvement in almost every way. It manages to maintain almost everything from the novel (with a few changes here and there, most notably the final reveal) and does so in a way which is clear to anyone unfamiliar with the story. Performances are excellent, art direction is excellent, sound mixing is very immersive, and the tone and atmosphere is damn near perfect. I might argue that there is a slight case of Return of the King syndrome where the falling action after the climax goes on for too long, but that’s really the only noticeable flaw. Fincher and company have made one spectacular mystery thriller.
9.5/10

The Ides of March

In Ides of March, Ryan Gosling plays a young, ambitious political aid high up on a democratic presidential primary race. His candidate is George Clooney’s Governor Morris. The movie starts off by giving us a backdoor look into the campaign and setting up the candidate as a man of ideals. This is some good stuff and gave hints of the presidential campaign in The West Wing’s amazing final season.

But then the movie takes a turn as the metaphorical backstabbing which the title eludes to starts to happen. There’s some interesting twists and turns here and the movie starts to move more into political thriller territory. The real problem though is that the whole movie seems to lack a certain level of grandeur. The tone and setting doesn’t quite seem as big as a nationally covered race like this would be. I couldn’t help but feel like it was missing some deeper level of drama somehow, but the whole storyline build-up kind of fell flat.

Rest assured, this is a pretty solid movie, it just doesn’t manage to hit its crescendo and turns out to be much less dramatic than you may be hoping for. There are some excellent performances, mind you. Gosling, whose had a pretty impressive year, is very good carrying the movie. All Clooney really does is campaign speeches, but he does a damn good job of it. And its starting to become a cliche to talk about how great Philip Seymour Hoffman is, but that’s because it also happens to be true. He gives another subtle yet electrically compelling performance here. These actors are the real reason to watch this film.
7.5/10

My Top 5 Worst Movies of 2011

This has been a very down-the-middle year for movies.  Last year saw a couple of films stretch out on both ends of the spectrum.  We saw some brilliant movies, two of which (Social Network and Inception) quickly became a couple of my favourites.  I also saw some absolutely atrocious films which showed just how bad movies can be, namely Repo Men, Kick Ass, and MacGruber.  2011 on the other hand didn’t  have many films which I saw which stretch out into the very good or very bad.  Most were right up the middle.

Nonetheless, there are still quite a few films I saw this year which I wish I hadn’t.  But there is some solace in the fact that seeing bad movies only makes us appreciate the good ones even more.  Now keep in mind, I do not go out o my way to watch movies I suspect will be bad, so I’m sure there are worthier choices out there.  But these are the worst of the films I personally saw this year.

5. The Change-Up

Bateman and Renoylds should have been a better match up.  But instead we were given disgusting gross-out gags (one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time mind you) and lame jokes.  But what is worse is that the filmmakers didn’t have the courage to really explore this tired body-switching formula and take it somewhere new.

4. The Dilemma

Wow, Ron Howard is on a real cold streak lately, with Front/Nixon, Angels and Demons, and now this entirely uninteresting “comedy”.  Actually I’m not sure whether or not it was supposed to be a comedy.  Something tells me Howard didn’t know either.  I’m not really sure what he was thinking when he decided that Kevin James had enough star power to match Vince Vaughn either.

3. The Hangover Part II

Really?  They followed up on of 2009′s best and most refreshing comedies with this?!  They just repeated everything, minus the jokes.  Lazy trash by a group of people who should have known better.

2. Lucky

Not many people saw this movie.  Lucky them.  There are no characters you can connect with, none you can sympathize with, none which have any redeeming qualities.  And that makes for a tough movie to watch.

1. Immortals

And the easy choice for worst film of the year (that I’ve seen) is Immortals!  An absolute mess completely devoid of character motivation.  Its about a guy who fights people, then goes somewhere else to fight people, then somewhere else to fight people, then somewhere else were he inexplicably has an army to help him fight people.  Awful.  But what I really don’t get is how people talk about how great looking this film was.  It didn’t look that good, to be honest.  And they did was make everything gold to fool peopl einto thinking it looked good.  Oh Greek Myth, when will Hollywood do you justice?
So that was the year in bad films I saw.  Not as bad as last year.  I hope to have my ten favourite films of the year up sometime in the next month or so.  Until then, lets hope 2012 is a good one!

Contagion

I have to say, the microbiologist in me loved this movie. Contagion feels like this is how things would very likely go down if such a deadly virus were ever to be released up the world. It felt very authentic, and I don’t mean just the science behind it, I mean the ways in which people would react to it as well. We see the pandemic through the eyes of regular people who have lost family members, through epidemiologists trying to track down the origin of the disease, through high ranking members of the CDC, National Security officials, independent researchers, and free lance journalists.

Contagion is shot in a really raw style which makes it feel almost documentary-like. This is both a plus and minus of the film. It definitely adds to the authenticity of the story through this tone, but it also makes it a slightly impersonal story at the same time. However, I am glad that this wasn’t over-sentimentalized or sensationalized, otherwise we would probably just have a copy of 1995′s Outbreak. Not that Outbreak is bad, but by staying away from classic Hollywood formula, Contagion is able to be its own beast and distance itself from the film they knew this would be compared to.

This movie also scores big with its cast. I really liked Lawrence Fishbourne here as a high-up CDC guy, as well as Jennifer Ehle as one of his top researchers. Kate Winslet was also excellent here, sinking into her role as a socially awkward epidemiologist. Matt Damon did a nice job of providing the emotional core of the film (what there is of it anyway), and it was also nice to see Elliot Gould and Brian Cranston here as well. The only storyline which didn’t work for me was the Marion Coutillard story.

I also thought that it was neat in the way that the movie was book-ended. Soderberg decided to start the movie with a cough through a black screen, then a shot of Gweneth Paltrow and the subtitle “Day 2″. Already out interest is captured. And the ending of the movie brings this back around again nicely. Very cool stuff.
8/10

Film Club Review – OSS 117: Lost in Rio

What a great comedy. This French James Bond spoof set in Brazil scratched just the right comedy itch. As a Bond spoof its not nearly as over-the-top as Austin Powers, but its just as hilarious. Jean Dujardin hit just the right note as Hubert de la Bath, France’s top womanizing spy. He has a sort of David Brent/Michael Scott aspect to his character through his suppressed racist and sexism, which makes for some hilarious dialogue.

I was a little worried that the jokes wouldn’t translate well because of the subtitles. But I only came across one or two which fell flat due to the language barrier. Otherwise, the jokes came across just fine and had me laughing more times than not. There’s some great lines in here, like “The World’s fine! Why change it?” “They believe in love, not war.” “But both are possible.”

Lost in Rio is an excellent example of what a parody movie should be. It exists in its own world despite the many references to Bond and other spy films (including one of my favourites, North by Northwest). They are even able to use the French New Wave style they shoot the film in as a tool of satire, especially with the use of split screens (even used during a hippie orgy!). But what Lost in Rio accomplishes especially well is how it seems to straddle the line between natural humour and absurd humour perfectly. It is somehow even able to give a scene where de le Bath arrives at a Nazi party in a Robin Hood costume just the right amount of ridiculousness for it to work.

This is a funny, funny movie with a lot of style, a lot of wit, and a lot fun.
9/10

The Adventures of Tintin

Spielberg’s first venture into animation is, well, a sight to see. He turns the Belgian comic character of Tintin into a full blown adventure film hero. This movie is a lot of fun and is also great to look at. Speilberg seems to be going back to his roots here, although working with a whole new medium.

Lets talk about the animation first. I was really impressed with the visual style of this film and the details in the sets, background and props. It really creates a feast for the eyes while creating a very Tintin worthy world. The people in the story are also masterfully designed. They’re cartoony yet realistic at the same time, especially with the eyes and mouths which are usually the big obstacles towards realistic motion capture animatics. The characters here manage to climb their way up from the other side of the uncanny valley.

The story is a pretty solid story used to maintain a mystery adventure film. There is a real ‘treasure hunt’ feeling to the movie, with secret clues and coeds, and the like. Not only is this perfect for a Tintin movie, but its really refreshing to see a classic treasure hunt plot. Filling up this story of Tintin, his dog Snowy, and their new companion Captain Haddock finding the secret of an old pirate ship, are many absurd and unrealistic action sequences (complete with a crane fight!). But somehow it doesn’t matter that these scenes are wildly exaggerated and unbelievable because: a) its an animated film, which inherently allows us to suspend more belief than usual, and b) these scenes are so well directed and so imaginative that you really don’t care about reality and just want to go along for the ride.

There are problems with Tintin which mostly have to do with the bookends of the movie. The story is pretty poorly set up at the beginning and Tintin’s initial motivation is not well explained. The ending is also rather weak and I was actually expecting at least a scene or two more. However, everything in between the middle and the end makes for one great time at the movies.
8/10

Rant time!
Now, I saw Tintin in 3D, but this was not by choice. There was no 2D option at the theater, so if I wanted to see it I had to watch in 3D. Grrr. Why does Hollywood seem to be forcing 3D down our throats? From what I can tell, the majority of the movie-going public is really not wowed by 3D and would prefer to see a movie as is. But now we’re not even getting the option of seeing it in 2D. It really feels to me like studio heads and marketers are refusing to accept that movie audiences don’t want 3D.
Am I wrong? Is 3D as popular as they think? are audiences demanding more 3D? Or are movie studios just pretending that we are demanding it so that they can charge more and hope to eventually convince us that this is what we want?

Our Idiot Brother

This was alright. I was expecting more of a comedy to be honest, but there weren’t a whole lot of laughs. It wasn’t failed laughs mind you, just not a lot of attempts. It did make me chuckle at times.

The characters were good, especially the character of Paul Rudd’s Ned who is actually quite likable. I like that they didn’t make him a total buffoon, but actually created a real person with real relationships with his family. The story was enough to keep me interested probably because these relationships felt authentic. But man, talk about movies where the loose ends are tied up nice and neatly; this one was professionally wrapped from Sears during Christmas season.
7/10

Memoir ’44: History in a Box

To honour the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004, Days of Wonder released a game called Memoir ’44. The purpose was to give players a sense of the history behind the battles in France at that time while also being accessible to anyone who wanted to play. Mission accomplished.
Memoir ’44 as a wargame manages to perfectly straddle the line between historical and accuracy and enjoyablility. It may not have the battles down to each detail like many of the extensive wargames out there, buts accurate enough for what it’s trying to do. But the rules are easy enough to follow that you are able to play it without getting too bogged down by these details and focus better on simulating the battle.
What’s really cool about this game is how it manages to both educate and entertain at the same time. Each battle scenario provides a write up about the actual WWII battle, and the map set-up does as good of a job as it can to recreate the same conditions and objectives. This is the perfect wargame for those who want to play games based on real-life war scenarios but don’t have the time or energy to be a full blown wargamer with room-long tables full of accurately detailed boards and millions of chits. Memoir keeps it simple and helps us remember.

Gameplay

Memoir ’44 has a very basic and rather simple structure behind its battle mechanics. Each side has groups of four soldiers called units. To engage in battle, simply roll dice (the number depends on how far away you’re attacking from) and for each hit indicated by the dice, the other unit loses that many men. Once a whole unit is destroyed, one point goes to the attacking team. Pretty straight forward.
The variability comes in the details centered around these battles. Your units could be made up of infantry, tanks, or artillery, each of which have different ranges. Different terrain hexes can also affect the battle slightly; for example, you will have to reduce the number of dice you roll if you are attacking a unit who is hiding in the forest or in a town.
Because the objective usually involves the defeat of a certain number of units, this allows for a lot of free reign for each player. They can really go wherever they want around the board (terrain allowing) and attack the units of their choice, so long as they have the proper attack cards. These cards tell you how many troops you can move and where on the board you can move them, providing just enough control over a full out blood bath. There is still a lot left to the decisions of the player himself. This allows a lot of room for strategy while the dice are able to give the illusion of the unknown factors of battle where you can never be sure of what will happen despite your best laid plans.

Components

If the goal of Memoir ’44 is to put the players into the battles, the components only make that goal so much easier. There are so many great details here, from the army action figures to be used as troops, to the hexagonal tiles to show the terrain. It is all high quality craftsmanship.
The terrain hexes and board are probably the best part of the game. The artwork shows everything from a birds-eye view which is really quite neat. On town hexes we see the roofs, on forest hexes we see only the treetops, etc. What’s really great is that the rules for these different terrain hexes make sense in the physical world; for example rivers can’t be crossed without bridges, and hills block line of sight. Very thematic.
The plastic figures also add a lot of aesthetic value. The soldiers for the allies and the axis are different colour of course, but also have different designs befitting actual soldier outfits of the period. Sure they may look pretty close to those plastic army men we used to strap to rockets as a kid, but why wouldn’t they look like that? The tanks and artillery are also very nicely crafted, but what’s really cool are the D-Day beach hedgehogs, sandbags and barbwire, which do a great deal to make the board look as authentic as possible.

Conclusion

A lot of respect and admiration for the veterans of WWII went into the creation of Memoir ’44. This shows through the level of detail added into the components and the rules for each type of component. This is also shown through the battle recreations and how each scenario is given a page write up on the real history behind each battle.
Not only that, but playing the battles can usually give the players a strong respect for the soldiers in the war. Playing as the allies during the Omaha Beach scenario for example is incredibly difficult, and makes you appreciate just how tough of a task they would have had to take that beach.
Now don’t get me wrong; Memoir ’44 is a very fun game, but not in a disrespectful way where you are excited about warfare and killing. Its focus is on strategy and using your environment and surroundings and putting yourself in the mind of a military tactician. And as you’re playing, you may just learn something along the way about a very important period in our history. Not bad for a simple two-player board game.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Good movie, too bad there wasn’t more action. Kidding, kidding! MI4 is loaded with action. And not just any action: great action. Great suspense. Great movie. This is just one of those amazingly well-constructed action flicks which pump you up and leave you exhilarated as you walk out of the theater.

Ghost Protocol follows the same basic idea as most of the Mission Impossible movies. A covert op involving Ethan Hunt’s IMF team goes wrong, and he is blamed for it. In this case, its a bombing at the Kremlin. He must now assemble his team to find the real reason for the bombing and stop the other threats which lead from that.

Brad Bird is the director here, and his first live action project is a triumph. He is able to put just enough clarity and suspense in the action scenes that we are never bored by them and give them our full attention. Scenes like the jailbreak at the beginning, the escape from the drowning car, and the sandstorm chase showcase this brilliantly.

There are a couple great scenes here which feel like action scenes since it gets our adrenaline running as we watch, but they are really masterful suspense scenes. The first is the popularly referred to Burj Khafali scene, where Ethan has to climb the outside of the worlds tallest building with nothing but questionably functioning suction gloves. This is a visual spectacle with a tension similar to the white room scene in the first MI film. The second scene actually follows right after this one, where the IMF team must fake two different meetings between enemies simultaneously. There is some very cool spy stuff going on here and some great cat-and-mouse suspense.

This feels like a return to form for the Mission Impossible series. Now, I am a big fan of the first film in the way that it feels like a very authentic, classic spy story, and I felt that the sequels lost that style and tone. Ghost Protocol seems to gain some of that back with some really neat spy tricks (like the hallway screen), but still doesn’t come close to the first film on that level. But it still feels more like Mission Impossible than either of the other sequels so far.

There are some faults, most noticeably Simon Pegg’s overdone comic relief and a pretty weak ending scene at an outdoor bar, but those aren’t enough to deter this excellent movie. Smart and coherent film which reminds us what great action movies can and should be. 9/10

The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I know these movies have made a gazillion dollars, but I was still kind of surprised when I heard a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean was announced. After all, everything was wrapped up at the end of the third. But I underestimated Hollywood’s ability to keep on flogging that horse.

On Stranger Tides sees Captain Jack Sparrow on a search for the fountain of youth. However, so is everyone else at the same time, inexplicably enough. I didn’t really understand why there was a sudden race to the fountain other than just to add some complications to the film. And perhaps because of this (but perhaps because of other reasons too), Pirates 4 appears to be missing a lot of the high drama which was present in the original three films. There’s no real sense of urgency and no real reason for me to care whether they make it to the fountain of youth or not.

But forget about all that. There is one reason and one reason alone that this film was made, and why people went to see this film: Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. But, even though he had his moments, this character is really starting to feel old and tiring. When the first pirates was released in 2003, people couldn’t seem to get enough of Jack Sparrow. Well, I think we’ve had enough now.

As for the rest of the characters, the only two from the other films we see are Gibbs, who has a bit of a bigger role, and Barbossa, another character who is starting to wear thin. For new characters we get Blackbeard, a menacing enough villain played by Ian McShane, and Angelica, a love interest for Jack played by Penelope Cruz who is a decent enough fit. We also get a love story between a mermaid and a young missionary which goes absolutely nowhere and has nothing to do with the rest of the film whatsoever. It feels completely disconnected and out of place. I never really understood that.

Alright, with all that negativity out of the way, I do have to start giving it some credit. The production values here are really good. The locations and st designs really are top notch and give a great adventure film feel. And I really liked the mermaid design as well. The moment where the first mermaid arrives is really stirring; its wonderfully eerie and surreal. And as an adventure film, there are a lot of action pieces to keep most people interested, and there is still some wit left in these scripts to retain a healthy chuckle throughout. But I do think they really should end the franchise here; the well is running noticeably dry.
6/10

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes is one of my all-time favourite science fiction movies, so when I heard that they were going to try to restart the series again, I was worried. After all, the 2001 remake was a travesty, and other remakes and prequels these days usually just make things worse, like Clash of the Titans or X-Men Origins; Wolverine. However,this prequel ended up become a movie that satisfied the inner Apes fan inside of me.

The back story is handled really well here as we watch the story of a Scientist trying a new brain function drug on chimps, only to have it work incredibly well on an orphan chimp named Caesar, whom he takes home to raise as his own. The explanation for the increasing intelligence of these apes is far more convincing than Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ idea that two apes went back in time to the present and left their baby here. This film also explains the devolution of the human race, albeit in a loose end-ish way.

There are a lot of nods to the original film, including references to names and even a news story in the background about astronauts lost in space. They’re very minute and will be missed if you blink, but I like that they are there anyways. I am really disappointed that they couldn’t resist the urge to use the most famous line from the first film “Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!” That was definitely a facepalm moment. But it was soon forgotten by the great and shocking moment which immediately follows.

But what really works well here is the emotional core of the film, surprisingly enough. James Franco plays the scientist who takes Caesar home to care for him, and John Lithgow plays his father whose Alzheimer’s disease Franco is trying to cure. The way Caesar becomes a part of their family is really quite touching, and as things get serious, these relationships add a lot of depth to Caesar’s actions.

As important as the human characters are, Caesar the chimp is really the star of this film, played in motion capture by Andy Serkis. Caesar has his own personality which is both likable and touching. And as the movie continues and we start to see things through his point of view, we understand his revolution in the final act. Even the other apes in the film are given their own distinct personalities as well. But make no mistake, this is Caesar’s movie.

This is one really solid effort for a summer blockbuster based on an old classic. It respects the original while being distinct in and of itself. The action near the end is great, with some haunting visuals such as the one with the apes holding spears on the roof. The CG animation of the apes is very, very good. But its the story and the relationship between Caesar and the human characters which gives this film its weight and elevates it from a simple sci-fi action movie. Great stuff.
8/10

Film Club Review – 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days

4 Months etc. is a film about a woman helping her roommate have an illegal abortion in Communist Romania during the 80s. The movie starts out in a drab student dormitory where Otilia is helping her friend Gabi pack for a three night stay in a hotel room. We don’t know what its for until we get to the hotel room and they meet with the man they hired to terminate the pregnancy.

I really liked the story structure of this film. Its very non-traditional with no obvious climax to anticipate and with long blocks of dialogue in long scenes, most notably the meeting with the man they hired. There’s also quite a lot of tension in small moments, such as when Otilia is searching through a suitcase or when she’s trapped in an awkward social situation with her boyfriend’s parents as a potentially important phone call is ringing unanswered.

However, here is my problem with the film. What is the goal of the movie? What is its purpose? Is it pro-abortion, anti-abortion, or neutral? And if its neutral, then why is the movie about it? Or is it supposed to be about a lack of freedom in the soviet Eastern block? Because if so, I didn’t really feel that either. I feel like I should have walked away from this movie with some sort of emotional pull, but I didn’t really.

I didn’t understand the reason for the making of this film. I guess that is a wider question: why are films made in the first place? And of course there is no single answer, it varies depending on the movie. Some entertain, some inform, some are meant to strike an emotional chord. I just can’t pinpoint the purpose for this one.

So there we go. Its a masterfully constructed film with great characters and performances which personally I felt lacked a central core of purpose. 7/10