thewayne | Entries tagged with movies seen 2013

7/18 Red 2
7/14 Pacific Rim
7/10 Despicable Me 2
7/7 Lone Ranger
6/30 Monsters University
6/25 Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)
6/19 The Great Gatsby
6/9 Now You See Me
6/8 Epic

6/30 House of Steel, David Weber
6/25 Death's Daughter, Amber Benson
6/10 The Human Division, John Scalzi

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Books Read:
5/30 John Scalzi: The Last Colony
5/24 Scalzi: The Ghost Brigades
5/21 Scalzi: Old Man's War
5/17 Harry Harrison: Bill the Galactic Hero
5/14 Beethoven's Letters, Vol. 1
5/13 F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
4/9 David Weber: Shadow of Freedom

Movies Seen:
5/31 After Earth
5/25 Iron Man 3
5/19 Star Trek Into Darkness
5/11 Iron Man 3
5/9 Oz the Great & Powerful
4/13 GI Joe Retribution

John Scalzi's Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. I started re-reading Scalzi's Old Man's War series because he recently released the fifth book in an interesting model: each chapter was released individually as an ebook chapter. I wanted to refresh my memory and read the first three and am now reading the fifth, The Human Division. The fourth book, Zoe's Tale, is a re-imagining of the third, Last Colony, from the perspective of John and Jane's teenager daughter, Zoe. I like the concept, and will re-read it after I finish Human Division, but didn't think it critical to read before reading #5.

I've previously mentioned Scalzi's series, so I won't bother digging in to them again. Though last night I was hit with a realization: most of his books focus on a single character or sometimes two. The first book was all about John Perry's adventures, the second was about Jane Sagan (John's love interest) and Jared Dirac, the third book was about John and Jane, the fourth book is about Zoe, but the fifth breaks that style. Each chapter is mainly around a single person's perspective, but that changes from chapter to chapter. And I think it works fairly well. The thing that caught my eye is that in the first book, a group of people who were hanging out together on the ship leaving Earth for the Colonial Union were calling themselves The Old Farts. By the end of that book, there's only three of them left, and John gets the other two re-assigned to planetary base jobs to get them out of combat. One of those two, Wilson, is quite prominent in this book and I don't think Perry will be appearing, though he is mentioned several times for his events at the end of Last Colony.

Anyway, excellent series and definitely recommended. I would love to see a movie made out of them, but I'm sure I'd be disappointed.

Bill the Galactic Hero. I re-read this because a Kickstarter finished recently that funded making a movie out of it. The whole thing is being filmed in black & white then scanned for post-production, and what I really love, is it's being filmed in Boulder, Colorado, just South of where we are right now. The book has an interesting history, apparently Harry wrote it in response to Heinlein's Starship Troopers, sort of going for a farcical approach to a perceived fascist approach, and apparently Bill soured relations between Harry and Robert from that point forward.

It certainly feels like a book written in 1965, and certainly feels like a farce. It's a fun read, you develop a lot of sympathy for Bill, though you see him slowly change from an innocent in to a manipulator. I didn't care for the change, but it does feel honest.

What I didn't know is that Harrison authorized six sequels, he wrote the first and edited the remainder. I found the third book, eventually I'll find the others. I'm really looking forward to the movie, I'll be getting a DVD of it when it completes.

Beethoven's Letters, Volume 1. We were listening to a podcast about the perception of time and they talked about the metronome being introduced during the time of Beethoven (early/mid 1800's, he was born in 1770), they also mentioned something about his letters. So for the heck of it, I popped over to Project Gutenberg and searched for them, and they were there! Two volumes! Apparently autograph hunters were scrounging back then, in addition to people like nobles who had archivists, and someone scrounged all the letters that they could find and assembled them in to two volumes. They're interesting to read, even though you're only getting one side of the conversation. It would have been amazing to have both sides because he was a pretty prolific writer. You get a lot more feel than just his Wikipedia biography for his daily life and how he suffered medically and financially. He got custody of his nephew after his brother died because he thought the boy's mother was unfit to raise him, and it became a major event in his life, managing the boy's education at a boarding house and trying to keep his mother away. But what I found most interesting was the frequent problems he had with stolen copies of his work. I guess he had problems with people either going through his trash for early editions or maybe bribing his servants to preserve them rather than burning them. But it was definitely a major problem for him.

I have started the second series, but put it aside to finish Scalzi's new book.

The Great Gatsby. We were never assigned this in high school, and the (then forthcoming) movie intrigued me, so I wanted to read it before seeing Baz Lurman's version. Russet hated it, and I actually enjoyed it. I wouldn't say I liked it, because for me the characters in it were more to be pitied for their shallowness and shortcomings that they spackled over with money. I thought it was an interesting character study in bad character as pretty much none of the main characters had any really redeeming features, though I did have some sympathy for Nick as he felt kind of like he was being forced in to a group that he wasn't really comfortable with, and had it not been for Jordan and his cousin Daisy, he probably wouldn't have been there. But that's just my opinion.

Shadow of Freedom. I've been a big David Weber fan for a long time, particularly the Honor Harrington series. The series has split in to three, you have the main line following Honor, a secondary line (the Saganami Island/Shadow Of... series) which follows her friend and cousin to the Queen, Michelle Henke, and the third line that follows the new planet of Torch (Crown Of... series), home of the genetic slaves. Mike Henke is now the commander of all forces in the area that's most likely to encounter the Solarian League. Things continue to heat up with the destruction of the Soli's fleet when they invaded the Manticore system to try to bully them in to standing down. That didn't work too well for the Soli's. In this book, nothing improves for the Soli's, but lots of intrigue continues. Weber is still building up to the big climax, which I'm sure will be an Honor book.

Unfortunately I really don't remember any of the details, except it nicely built towards the ultimate confrontation with the Solies and I'm always eager for the next Weber book.

MOVIES

After Earth. I honestly had no plans to see this movie, because the trailers made it look badly flawed. And I was not disappointed. IMO, it sucked, and the Rotten Tomatoes meta-critic score seems to justify my opinion. I did not know in advance that this was an M. Night Shyamalan movie, and after seeing it I can see his imprint. There are times when I will gleefully ignore plot holes in movies, and there are times when I cannot. This was one of the latter. I will talk about two things that were in the trailers, so I wouldn't call them spoilers. First, “the planet's temperature plunges to billions of degrees below zero every night!” Yeah, right. If it froze every night, how would it be so green every day? Wouldn't happen, we see evidence of it every winter where it snows. Second, they've been gone from Earth for a thousand years, and “every species on it has evolved to kill humans.” First off, evolution doesn't do much in a thousand years, ignoring the 'every species'. Second, if there are no humans on the planet, how could they evolve to kill humans? If you want to read what I consider a reasonably accurate portrayal of a planet that likes killing people, take a look at Harry Harrison's Deathworld.

Star Trek Into Darkness. I was very disappointed. In fact, I'm disappointed in Abrams' reboot thus far. I've bitched about Into Darkness previously, so I won't harp on it further, except to say that Abrams was given a blank slate and he re-visited an iconic episode and an iconic movie. He could have gone just about everywhere, and didn't. Very disappointed.

Iron Man 3. I've seen it twice thus far, quite likely might see it again. I think they've done a great job with this series, especially with Downey. Excellent movie. I was blown away by the plot twist, and that's pretty much what I want to see it for again. Definitely will be buying it when it comes out on DVD.

Oz the Great and Powerful. Saw this in Phoenix, we got in to town at 4am and that was the last night that it was showing in town, so off we went. We were quite pleased, it had great girl power in that it boiled down to power balance between three witches. Oz was part of the conflict, but not central to it. Not bad, but probably not one that I'll buy.

GI Joe: Retribution. I went to this movie for one scene: the cliff-face fight between ninjas, all hanging on ropes. That aside, the movie was well worth seeing. It was a direct continuation of the first movie, The Rise of Cobra, I really liked that. And honestly, it was one of the better action movies of the year. No where near the best, but far from the worst. It's also one that I'll buy, but I'll look for a used copy. And Bruce Willis was great. I'd rate this one much better than the most recent Die Hard.

Books Read:
3/10 Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment
2/28 Cory Doctorow: Homeland
2/23 The Hobbit
1/27 Susan Collins: Mockingjay

Movies Seen:
3/16 The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
3/2 Die Hard 4
2/17 Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
2/9 Warm Bodies
2/7 Life of Pi
2/2 Parker
1/30 The Sessions
1/8 Les Miserables
1/5 Django Unchained

Monstrous Regiment. I was in Phoenix in January to do some work on my car with my dad before the start of the semester and a friend of mine called to say that he was going to run a Three Musketeers RPG session. My first thought was to do a woman posing as a man in the musketeers, so I ran out and bought a copy of Terry's book based on that subject. I ended up re-reading some Dumas for the game, ran a man as a man, and had a huge amount of fun. The game system was Fortune's Fool, which uses a tarot deck instead of dice for all conflicts, and I'm a little ticked at myself because if I had used my special ability I might have been able to kill a dragon. Oh, well. Anyway, Monstrous Regiment was a very interesting read. I got it when it first came out, and to my memory, I wasn't too thrilled with it, I thought it one of the weaker Disc World books. But re-reading it I liked it a lot. It had some very interesting cultural observations that plainly did not stick in my memory on my first read of it. Recommended.

Homeland. Cory Doctorow's successor to the YA novel Little Brother. It's a return to M1k3y and his friends, and time has passed and they have changed and matured, at least some. The economy has tanked and Marcus can't find or keep a job then has an unusual encounter at Burning Man and gains possession of a flash drive that has more destructive documents than Bradley Manning's Wikileaks releases. The woman who gave it to him, former friend/enemy Mashs, tells him that if she disappears, publish the documents. Naturally she is abducted moments later. This time Marcus isn't up against the government, he's up against a private Blackwater-ish mercenary corporation that has a lot to lose. Doctorow has an interesting way of making his characters face tough decisions. While I liked it and it had lots of cool things in it, such as the Maker revolution, I thought Little Brother was maybe the better of the two. Perhaps I'll read them back to back and see what I think then. Like all of Doctorow's books, it's available free off his web site.

The Hobbit. I picked this up while in Phoenix in January. I had been intending to re-read it before the movie released last December, but that didn't happen. I finally finished it, mainly to get more of the story refreshed in my head, also because my wife is writing an extremely good slash fanfic that fills in some of the holes in the movie, and she's talking about things that I just didn't remember. The book has a very different feel from the movie, it's much less epic and a lot more child-oriented. You can sort of feel Tolkien developing it as a story that he read to his kids, which he did. It's kind of odd comparing the tone of the original book to the written Lord of the Rings trilogy to the (now) four movies, lots to think about and discuss.

Mockingjay. The final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy. The series takes a very grim turn as the revolution goes in to full swing. Katniss has a lot of problems, and I like the way Collins has her wrestling with them. I quite liked the ending and am really looking forward to seeing how the next two movies deal with the books.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Another movie that my wife just wasn't interested in, I really like the fact that she works nights and I can go off and see movies like this without feeling guilty. I LOVED this film! Lots of good stuff, starting with an amazing cast: Steve Carrell, Steve Buscemi (who, since this wasn't a Coen Brothers film, doesn't die), Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, and Jim Carrey. It's the story of two magicians, Carrell & Buscemi, who met as kids and started doing magic to try and, more or less, gain some leverage over bullies. They make it big, get a huge show in Vegas, and are doing well until along comes Carrey who is doing sort of a Chris Angel: Mind Freak act. They have a blow-up after a stunt goes wrong and Buscemi is badly injured, they break up, and Carrell can't maintain the act on his own. It's a buddy flick, a redemption flick, and lots of silly fun with some good magic thrown in. David Copperfield makes an appearance. I was pleasantly surprised by Jim Carrey: in the past I didn't like him overall, but he seems to be maturing and taking on much more interesting roles. I look forward to seeing him in Kick Ass 2.

Die Hard 4(?). At least I think it's the fourth movie, I could have missed one. I saw this because I have a certain fondness for the first movie, and it looked interesting. Yes, it's just another shoot-'em-up, but this one's different: it's set in Russia! Yippee. The visuals were very neat, and I think they might have set a record for the most cars destroyed in a movie. There was a lot more to the story than I expected, and they did a fairly good job of developing it. But it's still just an excuse for good guys shooting bad guys. I think the best thing about this movie was the preview for Red 2, which I really liked, and it looks like the original cast is returning sans Morgan Freeman.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. It's interesting how some old literature is gaining a second life through TV series like Grimm and Once Upon A Time and Lost Girls. I knew this was going to be a bad movie, just based on the masks and the over the top stunt work, but it looked like it would be a bit of fun so we went and saw it. Like Die Hard, it's a pure fluff/popcorn movie, check your brain at the door before entering. The movie was somewhat predictable: I don't purposely set out to figure out what's coming next, I think script writers are weaker of late. The one thing that really bugged me was the age difference between Hansel and Gretel: when you see them as kids when their father takes them in to the woods, they looked like they were within a couple of years of each other, and I seemed to think that Gretel was older than Hansel. Then, as adults, Hansel is a good decade older and they don't bother trying to explain why he's so much older than his sister. Pure fluff, but decent as B movies go.

Warm Bodies. My wife and I LOVED this movie, definitely one of the better ones that we've seen of late. Definitely a date movie/chick flick, but a quite nice romance/zombie movie. I loved the fact that the main zombie, R, has this really rich internal dialogue talking about his life and what he's thinking, but then all he can normally articulate is the typical zombie groans. Features straight lifts from Romeo & Juliette, and who can fault John Malkovich as the President/Zombie Hater In Chief. Quite a good little redemption movie.

Life of Pi. We missed this when it first came out, and following a doctor appointment in El Paso it happened to be showing there before the Academy Awards, so we were finally able to catch it on the big screen. This was a very impressive movie with great visuals and a complex story that you're never really able to say "this was the reality and that was the fantasy", which I liked. I liked it, but for me, it has pretty much zero repeat value.

Parker. I hate to say *meh* about a Jason Statham movie, but, *meh*. A revenge flick about a crook with a code of honor who is almost killed by former associates when they try to force him to violate said code, he then must hunt them down and make them pay the price. Frankly, I think I would have been happier staying home, making popcorn, and re-watching The Transporter (the first one) for the umpteenth time. The Transporter was a much more interesting character, definitely a rogue but a much more focused one and it wasn't just shooting/beating people up. But Luc Besson is, IMHO, one of the best filmmakers out there.

The Sessions. Like Warm Bodies, my wife and I LOVED this film. It's a biopic about a man who had polio, is very weak, and sleeps in an iron lung. He's a writer, and is brought in on a series of articles about handicapped people and their sex lives, and he decides to see a sex therapist/surrogate to lose his virginity. Excellent and touching story, and William H. Macy as a long-haired Catholic priest in whom the main character confides is absolutely brilliant. While this is not a movie I would watch often, it's definitely one that I can see buying as an impulse purchase if I came across a used copy.

Les Miserables. I've never read the book or seen previous adaptations, but my wife has, so we caught it. I won't bother with describing the details as it's a fairly well-known work, but we liked it. I thought the singing and visuals were very good, and they seemed to pay attention to period details. After the movie we went to the local book store which happened to have a copy of the 1998 Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush version, which we watched that night. It was interesting seeing the two versions back-to-back and comparing the subtle differences in the stories. I think the musical was much more emotionally tugging, simply because of the evocative power of music and singing. But both were quite good.

Django Unchained. I freely admit I have a soft spot for Tarrantino, and I was not disappointed. I thought it was an excellent revenge flick, and it covered a lot of ground and twisted a lot of tropes throughout the film. I saw it without my wife, and it's one that I'll ultimately buy and shelve next to Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction and occasionally watch when my wife is at work. If you like QT's work, you'll probably like it if you haven't seen it yet.