I tend to agree with him, however, a work colleague brought up a good point: watching something like the original Alfred Hitchcock film, North By Northwest would be better to see in the theater but something like Dodgeball just might be okay to watch on a phone….
Category: movies
This looks like an interesting site: Freedocumentaries.org, looks to have a fair amount of political documentary.
If you’re interested in submitting to them, you can post your doc up in google video and send them a link for review.
Makes me misty-eyed at the memory of when I had the freedom to work on them myself, before I drank the kool-aid and became a member of the hated advertising world. Bah.
Okay, so I’ve put off a little review of Stardust long enough. In fact the reason that I haven’t posted a blog in a while is because I wasn’t really sure what to say about it. 
Overall the movie was really fun, I read the book about 7 or 8 years ago, and what little I remember of it, it stuck well to the story. Even some things that didn’t seem like they would carry over into the visual medium, like one scene where Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) creates an inn in the middle of nowhere as a trap for the fallen star Yvaine (Claire Danes) were easily woven in. The special effects were of course, amazing.
Gaiman’s humor came through well, especially in the case of the seven brothers, who all end up dead by the end of it, but in death become quite funny.
This movie has gotten a lot of comparisons to the Princess Bride, especially falling within the singular genre of the Princess Bride. I’m not sure I get that, unless the critics are just trying to say that this is a movie that’s like a fairy tale and is at times funny. In that case Labyrinth or the Neverending Story would seem to fit the bill as well, but whatever.
Now having said that I liked the movie, thought it was “fun” and “funny” I also have to say that there was a definite Hollywood veneer over everything. That’s really the best I can describe it.
Robert DeNiro was surprisingly dull for playing a cross-dressing air pirate that harvests lightning. You almost come away with the sense that he looked the part over, “yeah, gay pirate, whatever” takes a slug of wild turkey, “let’s roll, assholes”.
Claire Danes, as I was telling a friend the other day, has an uncanny knack for playing Claire Danes in all of her movies… in this one, she’s a fallen star, whatever, she’s a fallen star that acted just like she was in My So Called Life.
And Tristran (Charlie Cox) “looked like he was in need of a bath” and “every time he was on screen, I wanted him to go away,” according to my girlfriend… she also seemed to enjoy the movie much more than I did, if that tells you anything.
So, go see the movie, or don’t… you’ll like it, or not… hmm…. I’m not sure what you’ll get out of it, if you’re like me, you’ll cheer a little, inwardly, whenever Michelle Pfeiffer is on screen because she played in this movie like her job depended on it (which maybe it did?). Anyways, she made the movie fun and believable, and at times, damn scary.
