Clive Owen night

Somebody should arrest Clive Owen for being so dangerously gorgeous. I don’t know what it is with me and British actors. Well, British in general. The accent thing sounds so cliché, doesn’t it? I can’t help it, I love his voice, each and every aspect of its deep, low pitch. Even though sometimes I can’t hear what he says.

Anyway, I just had a Clive Owen night. Everybody I asked opinions for when King Arthur was out in theatre claimed it was dull, perhaps compared to Troy at that time. Well, when it concerns plots and such, I’ll say all barbaric epics are similar, whatever the examples are. There are the power issues, faithful horses, massive army, obligatory bows, swords, and other war apparatus being demonstrated in average time of 20 minutes with the “killing fields” set behind, and last but not least, the scene when the hero gets to kill the enemy’s boss, followed by a scene when everybody else seems to lie dead on ground, and from there, signifying the battle has ended. I’ve gotten so tired of them all that I had to fast forward to skip them. Artistically, Hollywood fights and battles rarely impress me; I watched kungfu fights since I was a child, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just barely covers the artistic beauty of a real fight. So, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the Scottish, the Greeks, the Romans, or other Indo-European races that go into battle, as long as Hollywood directs them, they usually come up with the same theme. Even Lord of the Rings got the same treatment.

There’s nothing new with King Arthur, except maybe some historical discrepancies so obvious I wouldn’t even bother to mention. In all honesty I rented it because I wanted to see Clive Owen. I wasn’t disappointed. The cold and quiet disposition suited him well. Even Lancelot looked vaguely familiar to me (in a positive impression). Later I learned he’s Ioan Gruffud, previously seen in Fantastic Four. Somebody else that caught my attention is Mads Mikkelsen, a Denmark actor cast as Tristan, one of the knights who in the end died because of his own unnecessary and exaggerated heroism (it’s really just the way I look at it). It’s Keira Knightley I had issues with. Does the tortured-victim-goes-heroic version of Guinevere mean anything for the plot? For all I care her character might as well not be present and the story would still go on normally, because Arthur himself didn’t seem like he needed a female company. By the way, the love triangle thingy could’ve been more substantial. If only she hadn’t taken the role of Elizabeth Bennet, I could go on disliking her as an actress. But we shall see as soon as Pride & Prejudice arrives here.

I personally wouldn’t call it dull, as it is unique in its own way (meaning ‘hey, take a look at this fairytale version of Arthur and his knights’). The other thing notable enough to mention is, of course, Hans Zimmer’s composition. I’ve heard the score before watching the movie, so once I speculated the movie to be good, at least able to to live up to greatness of the score. So, combined, I guess it wasn’t really that bad.

Right after King Arthur I re-watched Closer. My brother asked me not too long ago what kind of movie it was. Perhaps he was taken aback by the obscenity and not truly prepared to watch such highly publicized actors playing in a “semi-pornographic” movie. Well, I don’t know. In this second chance, I was struck by how many times the L word was said, and how easily the four of them said it. Like saying “I love you” out loud could represent how the movie wants to be perceived. I get the idea, and it served the purpose well. It’s just that instead of getting swamped with emotional kind of love, I felt the movie was just trying to tell me about their conflicts. I couldn’t symphatize with Anna, Alice, Dan, or Larry, because I wasn’t supposed to? Also the pace: it’s painfully slow, but at least headed to the right direction (steadily future, only a few minor flashbacks). It would be confusing otherwise. In a moment there I thought I was watching a play, while it was indeed a play of the same title, before adapted into a movie. I like all the characters except Dan, merely because he’s Jude Law (well, a British actor I don’t like) and he’s such a wimp.

Not so surprisingly, the main music reference behind Closer, as anyone could associate with first thing when asked, is Damien Rice’s The Blower’s Daughter. It’s so captivating, the way it was the background in the first scene, with Alice and Dan looking at each other while walking in the street. For people like my brother, though, who normally can’t endure dramas like this, probably think it’s all crap. I define Closer as an honest portrayal of sex, love, and relationship. This, too, might sound cliché, but it’s true.

My own consideration, Clive Owen aside =) : 3/5 for King Arthur, 3.5/5 for Closer.

Anticipating Rent

Eh, from 100% fresh reading to 47% in a day. Is RENT really worth turning into a movie?

One of my highly anticipated movies this year, I thought it ought to be good, at least close to being as good as Chicago, as a musical standard. I loved Chicago, the story and the the songs. But if it’s done in the way Joel Schumacher did Phantom of the Opera… well, nothing more to say.

It just happens that I watched Phantom again yesterday, almost a year since my first giggling theatre experience. While the giggles had ceased, the frowns were still there. Phantom is, quite simply, a stupid movie. Nevermind that Andrew Lloyd Webber himself produced it or picked up the right actors for each role (loved Miranda Richardson’s French accent), I think that in a musical the line between talking and singing should be clear. See, for example, when Raoul was begging for the Phantom to have compassion for his situation (what? being in love with the woman the other guy falls for?), and singing out his lamentation, while the other two shrieking their own songs at the same time, it was a maddening moment. Conversations throughout the movie are mostly done in singing. Also maddening. It’s not a movie, it’s a play being recorded. There are a ton of other things I don’t like about Phantom, but I’ve been through those once earlier this year.

Back to Rent. Judging from the soundtrack already released, I thought the movie interpretation would likely fall between Chicago and Phantom, but would lean more towards the former. Most of the original cast are present in the movie, so I don’t think acting ability and emotionless actors are the main problem (I honestly can’t wait to see Idina Menzel—I have a thing for her). Whether direction gone astray, or the story simply sucks and should better off stay in stage. I truly hope I won’t come out of theatre humming “eight thousand fortysome irretrievable seconds, how do you measure the time that you wasted on Rent?”

Days of Heaven

Note to self: never watch oldie when not up to it.

Come to think of it, when did I ever feel up to any old movie at all?

There must be something about old movies that bewitch people enough to rate them as classics. Or maybe it’s the age thing. Unfortunately the spells never work on me, and I’m merely one and twenty (sorry, Ms. Austen, I borrow your line). As fas as the age thing goes, the earliest movie I remember to have watched was Batman Forever. Yeah, when I was in elementary school, my then-teen sister didn’t bother to take me to the movie at all.

Days in Heaven, 1978, a Terrence Malick feature is a movie with a plot, according to a Portuguese reviewer on the IMDb, unimportant, tells a story about two lovers and a child, the latter is the narrator, whose family connection to the first is still a mystery to me. To cut to the short: they came to work in a farm with a bunch of other people riding on train from Chicago, then the guy (Richard Gere) gives up the woman (Brooke Adams) to the farm owner (dubbed only as “The Farmer”, Sam Shepard) he believes will die soon, so they could reap the money later. Turns out the women falls in love with her husband, so the guy leaves. Comes back six months later, the husband gets jealous and tragically killed. The trio runs away, chased by police. Guy gets shot, dies.

It’s a simple story, so simple I can’t understand what it’s trying to say. I figure the script must be easy to write, though, seeing the lack of verbal exchange between the characters and all. Well, they say it’s about visual beauty and rich cinematography, which is, age-wise, my main problem when discussing old movies. They’re just too old, too sleepy, too silent to watch. Gone with the Wind, my fave oldie, was a pain to sit through, but I survived it because of the story (being a romantic helped a lot).

I rented it yesterday, watched it last night. A promise of a love story drove me to it, but I have to say Richard Gere looks cuter when he’s older.

Sigh. 2 out of 5 does its justice? (me being a sucker for critics’ reviews)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Lucky me today. I got into one of the earliest screenings in this nation, and the theatre wasn’t that full as I had thought it would be. Boy, did it still attract middle schoolers, who, I suspect, skipped some classes to run into the movie. Thank God they behaved.

Anyway, the movie itself was, um, considerably nicer than the last one, Prisoner of Azkaban, in the sense that I enjoyed the whole 2 hours and 27 minutes of it and had some good laughs (couldn’t help snickering when Ron put on his dress for the Yule ball). Story line’s poor as usual. Direction’s better than the two earlier movies, but then it could be because of the young actors who got older and more mature in acting skills.

My biggest grief is the lack of Snape scenes. Miss that curtain of greasy hair and, out of books depiction, Alan Rickman’s voice. I think it focused too much on Harry that other characters seemed to just drop by and say hello. Dumby Gambon was too busy prancing that it convinced me even more Richard Harris shouldn’t have died so young (heh). Several characters lived up to my expectations, like the scarred Mad-Eye Moody (though the eye could’ve looked more magical than a fish eyeball), Karkaroff (he’s just perfect, with all those yellow rotten teeth), and Fleur Delacour (oh, she’s pretty all right). Voldemort was spectacular. I like him the best. The most worthy scene, I think, is the graveyard scene when Voldy resurrected. I see they took the nose job seriously. I like how they put together the details to create a baby alien into a fully grown alien with two slitted nostrils. I’d never imagined how Voldy really looked like before, and now after the movie, I think Ralph Fiennes passed it well. The Death Eaters mask, though, looked like some stupid unknown superhero mask. Dementors got dressed better.

Just don’t expect too much from the plot line. Sucks, as before. Even for non-readers. I know Quidditch World Cup didn’t add much to the story line, but we could use some entertaining flying game for sure.

Tomatometer currently displays 83% reading for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but it’s too early to tell. Just because it didn’t do justice to my beloved Snape, I’m gonna give it 3.5 out of 5. Heheh.

Anticipating Pride and Prejudice

USA Today has a piece about Pride & Prejudice, in which it mentions past adaptations and the newest one, that officially sets me in “silent slobbering” state. I’ll admit I’m not privy to the 1940 version, but looking at the horrendous picture (how could they be?), I don’t feel like missing anything. The BBC version, however, is tough to beat, because not only do I (and millions of other women viewers around the world) adore Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy so much, it also happens that the mini-series sticks right to almost every line in the book, so it’s a significance, indeed, that the critics approve of the new version, if it’s considered more “Hollywood-ish”.

Ever since I learned of a new Pride & Prejudice version coming out, I’d been in doubt about the cast, i.e: an unknown Matthew Macfadyen to play the ultimate women’s beloved snob, and Kiera Knightley, who, well… isn’t she too young? But I forgot that Elizabeth Bennet is merely 20 years old. If I have to describe Jennifer Ehle (Lizzy in ‘95 version) in a word, I’d say she was wholesome, and she was also perfect for the role. Knightley certainly isn’t wholesome, but she’s slim and looks a bit, just a teensy bit, snappy, quite a contradiction to Ehle, I think. Anyway, I’m kinda unwilling to let go the picture of Colin Firth as the dashing Mr. Darcy in my head now, so if Matthew Macfadyen screws up… I’ll thank him.

Pride & Prejudice is currently rated fresh (82%) by the Tomatometer critics. Release date (limited in U.S.): 11/11/05. Local release: unknown. =(