Swoon!

from men.style.com

Chris Pine, from the new Star Trek film. The movie's amazing, you should go see it if you haven't yet!

My Little Pony: The Movie

I'm not even kidding, I would totally go see this!

We Missed the Ark!

My friend Lauren made this video and it's hilarious:

I want one of those hoodies.

Mama's Gumbo

Here's a skit I helped make for my French 201 class recently (I did all of the editing):

Carousel by Adam Berg

WTF

The trailer for Lars Von Trier's new movie Antichrist. I was more scared watching that preview than I was watching most horror films I've seen recently!

Willy Wonka Made Me Cry

The trip down the chocolate river in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory absolutely terrified me when I was a kid. I remember burying my face in my pillow, crying, and forcing someone to stop the movie, fast forward, or at least tell me when it was over. Good times. 

2001: A Space Odyssey

I recently bought 2001: A Space Odyssey on DVD and just finished watching it again. I think the movie is still very impressive and beautiful, but what is most memorable and striking is the ending. A wordless presentation of images that does nothing to explain itself, but leaves the viewer entranced and weirded out, is a ballsy and awesome way to finish a film that was already strange and disorienting. 2001 was released in 1968, and now, in 2009, there still hasn't been a finale made that comes close to matching 2001's ending. 

I think there was a chance though. The end of Watchmen (the comic book) is very strange, disturbing, and off-putting. The willingness to be so bold, graphic, violent, and flat-out weird really resonates and makes for a finale that's shocking. Can you imagine if the recent Watchmen film had ended with a giant psychic squid leaving NYC littered with corpses instead of the more clean and sterile Dr. Manhattan version? It would have made the film even more dense and alienating. Just an interesting thought. 

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I absolutely love this book. The preview looks good, especially Sienna Miller. I'm just pissed that

they got rid of Arthur! He's one of my literary boyfriends.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I love Harry Potter and I'm pretty excited for this movie. I've been somewhat disappointed with the

adaptations, but I guess you have to sacrifice certain things to make the movies. My favorite of the

films is definitely Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Even though a lot of material was left

out, the filmmakers still managed to maintain the tone and feeling of the books, which is more somber

and dark than some people give the novels credit for.

I'm currently re-reading the series again, which I've done so many times that I've lost count. I'm on

the 4th book Goblet of Fire. It never surprises me how much I enjoy the books no matter how many

times I've read them.

Watchmen Reviews

From Rotten Tomatoes:

(+) Hitflix: "Zack Snyder's Watchmen is a profound work of art, a beautiful, deliriously weird, meditative spin on a genre that is as American as jazz."

(-) IGN Movies UK: "This movie is a shallow interpretation of Watchmen, shorn of sophistication or literary density. Worst of all, watching the film makes you wonder whether the source material was actually any good to begin with."

(+) CHUD: "A huge budgeted superhero movie that delivers intellectually? That takes serious, ballsy chances with the form? Why, that sounds like a piece of art. A glorious, epic, mind blowing piece of art."

So I know the ratio of positive : negative reviews is uneven, but whatever. I haven't read all of the early reviews, but out of the ones I have, most of the negative ones are pretty dumb. The main problem the negative critics seem to have is distinguishing between Watchmen as a graphic novel and as a movie. It's a fair topic to address, as the movie is an adaptation, but you have to draw a line somewhere and acknowledge that the story is being told in two different mediums. Certain things that work in the comic are not going to work in a movie, and there's even a good chance that the movie will do some things better than the comic. The positive reviews seem to understand this concept better and judge the movie as a film and not in comparison to the graphic novel. 

There's been a lot of controversy about the changed ending. Not different exactly, as it sounds to me like it's the same basic premise with the same ideas behind it, but they simply changed the mechanism through which that premise is executed. In my opinion, the ending, the way it is in the graphic novel, would not have worked on film. I don't think any amount of special effects would have made the ending appear anything other than cheesy and ridiculous. I think it's similar to the ending of The Abyss, in that the whole movie is so suspenseful and just keeps building and building, only to have all that momentum disappear once that hokey giant alien thing rises from the ocean. It totally takes you out of the movie and causes your mind to wander about why the filmmakers allowed something so cheap looking to finish the movie. Basically, I think the same thing would have happened with Watchmen if they went with the exact same ending as the book. As long as the different ending is just as shocking and brutal than it will be the same in my mind. 

Regardless, I'm so excited!

Watchmen

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Watchmen comes out in 13 days and I am so excited! This clip doesn't really have much to it and doesn't do anything to show why Watchmen is such an amazing story, but I think it looks great. I have faith in Zack Snyder. 

DKNY 20th Anniversary

Check out this cool short film celebrating DKNY's 20th.

Great Documentary

from Amazon

I watched this last night and I highly recommend it. It was interesting to see the differences between the 'world' portrayed in this movie versus the one portrayed in Lagerfeld Confidential; Karl Lagerfeld and his day-to-day business appeared very formal and professional while Marc Jacobs and his crew were filled with so much youth and energy. Marc and his team at Louis Vuitton seemed like a family or group of close friends working on a hobby. I think creativity flows better in an environment like that, where people can laugh and smile and feel comfortable throwing out any idea they have. 

Franklyn

I hadn't even heard of this movie until I read about it on CHUD but now I absolutely can't wait to see it! The production design is breathtaking.

See This Now

from The Village Voice

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last night and I was blown away. Everything you would expect from a movie was great in this film, such as the acting, etc. I don't mean to cheapen the talent on display, but three things about this movie stood out for me:

1. The energy - This movie is alive. There is an urgency that makes you feel what the characters are going through. Every one of your five senses will be stimulated while watching this, which is an incredible feat. The only other movie which comes to mind that stimulated the same reaction in me was The Bourne Supremacy. They are two very different movies, but both have a pulse that is undeniable. 

2. Love - In general, deep down, I'm a big softy. A hopeless romantic. I believe in love and how happy it can make you. Slumdog Millionaire has been added to my internal list of movies that affirm the magic of love and how, if you fight for it, love can overcome anything. Cliche alert! 

3. The soundtrack - I think this is inextricably tied to the "energy" I highlighted earlier. The music in this movie is amazing and gels so perfectly with what is happening on screen that the whole thing becomes one big experience. The work that M.I.A., AR Rahman, and others accomplish here is really awesome and satisfying. 

Slumdog Millionaire totally deserves all of the praise it's been getting. 

I also need to give a shout out to Danny Boyle, the director. I'm just amazed at how diverse his talent is, judging from the movies he's made. Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions, Sunshine, and Slumdog Millionaire are all great movies, but they are all undeniably different. It's incredible how easily he shifts between genres and stories while still maintaining his consistent quality.

Xmas Gifts: Movies

from firstshowing

Iron Man is the lighter, funnier side of the superhero coin we got this year, the other side being The Dark Knight, of course. I feel like people tend to forget how good Iron Man is because of its tone (kinda like how comedies usually don't get nominated for film awards), but that tone is one of the many reasons why the movie is so great. Iron Man perfectly captured the playboy character of Tony Stark and the sleek, over-designed world he lives in. I started watching it again recently and the chemistry between the actors is so infectious it just makes you smile. I can't wait to see where they go with this franchise (hopefully more of the James Bond + superpowers thing). 

 from cinemaverdict

What can be said about The Dark Knight that hasn't been said a million times already? It's

one of the best movies of the year. It's easy to single out Heath Ledger's unbelievably committed

and feral performance as the Joker, but everyone in the cast does a great job. I think the biggest

achievement of The Dark Knight is its ability to make you forget you're even watching a superhero

movie. The idea of Batman, the Joker, Gotham City and everything else in the movie is conveyed

so impeccably that the audience is able to cross that line from being an outside viewer to being

someone just experiencing a story.

from myokyawhtun

Wall-E is another movie that doesn't need any more praise. The fact that animated robots

in this movie have more personality than many real-life actors speaks to Pixar's talent. Wall-E

combines the past and the future of movies. A lot of the running time lacks any words, instead

relying on the magic of the moving image to tell the story, while the amazing animation shows

that filmmakers now the have the ability to do almost anything they want.

Terrifyingly Amazing

Generation H20

Generation H2O from John Overwine on Vimeo.

Here's a video my sister helped make for school. I think its really great!