I Need to Wake Up By Melissa Etheridge
From the film An Inconvenient Truth
Have I been sleeping?
I’ve been so still
Afraid of crumbling
Have I been careless?
Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be
To comprehend the things that I can’t see
Cause I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now
And as a child
I danced like it was 1999
My dreams were wild
The promise of this new world
Would be mine
Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth
That I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now
I am not an island
I am not alone
I am my intentions
Trapped here in this flesh and bone
And I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now
I want to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Oh, Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Alice In Wonderland Review
So I just came back from watching Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. Now I will say this up front: I love the cast. I mean how could you make a movie with Johnny Depp, Michael Sheen, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Fry, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee, Timothy Spall, and Crispen Glover not be great?
Let me tell you how, get the worst script you can find and then tell the actors not to actually bring anything new to the characters. For the first time I can actually say that Tim Burton really did not direct this movie well. I think the whole "Oh look what we can do with CGI" phase is now over because of a guy called James Cameron made a movie that had the best CGI ever and everything will seem bad in comparison.
The acting in this movie was not bad exactly, but it was so safe. I mean Johnny Depp played basically the same character he played in Pirates of the Caribbean. He did well as Jack Sparrow because it was so out there and by the third movie the role was getting a little old and annoying. The Mad Hatter took about half a scene to get old and annoying. I have yet to see a version of Alice In Wonderland that I like, which is a little unsettling as I'm in a play version of the book. Also the way the dress sometimes shrunk and stretched with Alice while other times it did not. The Ending was also terrible.
The writing for the beginning of the movie was just terrible. All the characters just basically said what they were thinking and feeling. The scriptwriter didn't even try to make Alice's suitor sympathetic. In fact, the scriptwriter didn't try to make any of the "bad" characters sympathetic. The Red Queen got on my nerves really quickly and Knave was just kind of weird.
On the plus side Anne Hathaway was great as the White Queen and Mia Wasikowska was very good as Alice, she succeed where the previous actresses who have played Alice failed, she made her sympathetic and not annoying.
In short it was a boring, deeply strange, and safe movie. It was highly formulaic when you strip away the odd characters you have hero hates real world, finds weird one, discovers that he/she is the hero of a prophecy and meets a wise old man, he/she doesn't think that they can fulfill it, friend of hero is capture by villain, hero rescues friend, hero escapes to good guy's hideout, hero stills doesn't think that they can do it, mentor tells hero that they can and then dies, hero fights bad guys, hero wins, hero decides to leave the wonderful world where they have been staying and goes back to the far inferior real world solely because it is the "real world"(why can't the nice world be real and the bad world be fake, who decides that one is real and the other isn't?), Hero turns life around and becomes happy, peppy song plays over credits. Tim Burton, you done us wrong this time and what's with Alice not telling her sister that her sister's husband is having at least one affair? What message does that send to your daughter? And while I'm talking about your daughter and messages that are sent to her from this movie, why does Alice have to have a romantic relationship with the Mad Hatter, why do movie heroines always have to have romantic relationships? It's so messed up.
Let me tell you how, get the worst script you can find and then tell the actors not to actually bring anything new to the characters. For the first time I can actually say that Tim Burton really did not direct this movie well. I think the whole "Oh look what we can do with CGI" phase is now over because of a guy called James Cameron made a movie that had the best CGI ever and everything will seem bad in comparison.
The acting in this movie was not bad exactly, but it was so safe. I mean Johnny Depp played basically the same character he played in Pirates of the Caribbean. He did well as Jack Sparrow because it was so out there and by the third movie the role was getting a little old and annoying. The Mad Hatter took about half a scene to get old and annoying. I have yet to see a version of Alice In Wonderland that I like, which is a little unsettling as I'm in a play version of the book. Also the way the dress sometimes shrunk and stretched with Alice while other times it did not. The Ending was also terrible.
The writing for the beginning of the movie was just terrible. All the characters just basically said what they were thinking and feeling. The scriptwriter didn't even try to make Alice's suitor sympathetic. In fact, the scriptwriter didn't try to make any of the "bad" characters sympathetic. The Red Queen got on my nerves really quickly and Knave was just kind of weird.
On the plus side Anne Hathaway was great as the White Queen and Mia Wasikowska was very good as Alice, she succeed where the previous actresses who have played Alice failed, she made her sympathetic and not annoying.
In short it was a boring, deeply strange, and safe movie. It was highly formulaic when you strip away the odd characters you have hero hates real world, finds weird one, discovers that he/she is the hero of a prophecy and meets a wise old man, he/she doesn't think that they can fulfill it, friend of hero is capture by villain, hero rescues friend, hero escapes to good guy's hideout, hero stills doesn't think that they can do it, mentor tells hero that they can and then dies, hero fights bad guys, hero wins, hero decides to leave the wonderful world where they have been staying and goes back to the far inferior real world solely because it is the "real world"(why can't the nice world be real and the bad world be fake, who decides that one is real and the other isn't?), Hero turns life around and becomes happy, peppy song plays over credits. Tim Burton, you done us wrong this time and what's with Alice not telling her sister that her sister's husband is having at least one affair? What message does that send to your daughter? And while I'm talking about your daughter and messages that are sent to her from this movie, why does Alice have to have a romantic relationship with the Mad Hatter, why do movie heroines always have to have romantic relationships? It's so messed up.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Okay, let me just get this out in the open to start with. I like the Twilight Saga, I actually went to this movie because I thought it would be good. It wasn't. Let me explain.
Okay first, this film was doomed from the beginning as the book that it was based on was a very internal book, there is really no action to speak of and what the book is about is Bella's mental attachments to Jacob and Edward. A movie can't really have most of the action take place in a person's thoughts, so they movie was of course going to not be as good as the book. But there is absolutely no excuse for it to be this bad.
The many terrible casting mistakes which were hidden behind the masterful directing of the first film, called just Twilight and I strongly recommend it, is now way too apparent. Mr. Pattinson may have a great following among the female fans, but his acting is, at times, painful. Watching him struggle through some lines from Romeo and Juliet at the beginning is unbearable.
I have to say though, as both of the lovers, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, are both doing the same thing with their acting I assume that it was because they were told to do it by the director or, alternatively,she saw in the first movie that Mr. Pattinson can not act so she started matching his acting style to make it look intentional. I have no idea why Mr. Pattinson has become such a teen idol, as he is neither talented nor particularly good-looking, and he seems to have no understanding of the character he is playing.
And that is one of the places where this movie, and in some ways the last one as well, falls short of the books, the character of the male romantic lead. In the book he is not as brooding as Mr. Pattinson decides to play him as, also, and this is what really bugs me, is that in the books Edward has a sense of humor which is non-existent in the film. He never seems to have any emotions other than brooding confusion.
Also, and I apologize for hitting on Robert Pattinson so much, he won't say his freakin' lines!!! All he does is insert pauses into places where there should be no pauses! It makes the already bad script worse. It becomes just comical when he says things like "I left so you could have a normal life" with several pauses insert into it.
There is also a lot of blatant attempts to appeal to the teenage girl market with most of the male characters walking around shirtless for most of the movie. In the first scene where a werewolf, who has obviously been pumping some iron(played quite well by Taylor Lautner), rips of his shirt for no particular reason, it is the first time for this movie but by far not the last, the cinema exploded in what was either laughter, which I was participating in, at the sheer stupidity of the moment or cheers at Mr. Lautner's ability to work out or take steroids, whichever.
The movie itself dragged, focusing to much on the dull elements and not enough on the interesting bit. The pace was so slow that one might very well fall asleep during the film, as one of the guys who went with me to see it almost did 4 times.
One last point, there is way way too much kissing. One passionate kiss at the end can be much more powerful than the 5 or so kisses that occour in this film. Actually there was an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel in which the lovers never kiss. It felt like the filmmakers knew what their audiences wanted and gave it them, disregarding the fact that it killed the movie. They knew that all the kissing was out of character, they knew that all the shirtless men didn't really make sense to the plot, but they did both of those things anyway.
However my favorite character, Alice, is played very well by Ashley Greene and Michael Sheen is terrifying as the King of the Vampires. Dakota Fanning is also very good as Jane one of Mr. Sheen's minions.
2/5 Stars
Okay first, this film was doomed from the beginning as the book that it was based on was a very internal book, there is really no action to speak of and what the book is about is Bella's mental attachments to Jacob and Edward. A movie can't really have most of the action take place in a person's thoughts, so they movie was of course going to not be as good as the book. But there is absolutely no excuse for it to be this bad.
The many terrible casting mistakes which were hidden behind the masterful directing of the first film, called just Twilight and I strongly recommend it, is now way too apparent. Mr. Pattinson may have a great following among the female fans, but his acting is, at times, painful. Watching him struggle through some lines from Romeo and Juliet at the beginning is unbearable.
I have to say though, as both of the lovers, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, are both doing the same thing with their acting I assume that it was because they were told to do it by the director or, alternatively,she saw in the first movie that Mr. Pattinson can not act so she started matching his acting style to make it look intentional. I have no idea why Mr. Pattinson has become such a teen idol, as he is neither talented nor particularly good-looking, and he seems to have no understanding of the character he is playing.
And that is one of the places where this movie, and in some ways the last one as well, falls short of the books, the character of the male romantic lead. In the book he is not as brooding as Mr. Pattinson decides to play him as, also, and this is what really bugs me, is that in the books Edward has a sense of humor which is non-existent in the film. He never seems to have any emotions other than brooding confusion.
Also, and I apologize for hitting on Robert Pattinson so much, he won't say his freakin' lines!!! All he does is insert pauses into places where there should be no pauses! It makes the already bad script worse. It becomes just comical when he says things like "I left so you could have a normal life" with several pauses insert into it.
There is also a lot of blatant attempts to appeal to the teenage girl market with most of the male characters walking around shirtless for most of the movie. In the first scene where a werewolf, who has obviously been pumping some iron(played quite well by Taylor Lautner), rips of his shirt for no particular reason, it is the first time for this movie but by far not the last, the cinema exploded in what was either laughter, which I was participating in, at the sheer stupidity of the moment or cheers at Mr. Lautner's ability to work out or take steroids, whichever.
The movie itself dragged, focusing to much on the dull elements and not enough on the interesting bit. The pace was so slow that one might very well fall asleep during the film, as one of the guys who went with me to see it almost did 4 times.
One last point, there is way way too much kissing. One passionate kiss at the end can be much more powerful than the 5 or so kisses that occour in this film. Actually there was an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel in which the lovers never kiss. It felt like the filmmakers knew what their audiences wanted and gave it them, disregarding the fact that it killed the movie. They knew that all the kissing was out of character, they knew that all the shirtless men didn't really make sense to the plot, but they did both of those things anyway.
However my favorite character, Alice, is played very well by Ashley Greene and Michael Sheen is terrifying as the King of the Vampires. Dakota Fanning is also very good as Jane one of Mr. Sheen's minions.
2/5 Stars
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