Films

4 June, 2012

The Perks of Being A Movie Trailer

I just had a look at the movie trailer of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, embedded below.

TPOBAW is one of my favourite teen contemporary novels, and this trailer captures all the things I love about it: it’s quiet, it’s cute and funny, and it’s smart and relatable in a way that makes my heart hum. I don’t know if it’ll do all that well in the cinemas, because it lacks of a lot of the exciting fistfights/explosions/drama that people expect. But it looks like I’ll love it nonetheless.

It seems to be targeting the ‘Juno’ crowd. That’s fine with me because I thought Juno was funny and awkward, especially when it tried to make Michael Cera seem even remotely sexy because pfffftttttt no. But I know a lot of people didn’t like Juno, so that’s a nice little ‘this movie is probably not for you’ red flag.

What do you think? Have you read the book, or is this your first glance at the story?

25 March, 2012

“The Hunger Games” Movie

Along with a significant chunk of the YA writing/reading/reviewing world, I went to see The Hunger Games on it’s release day.

I’ll try to keep this as low on spoilers as I can, but I’m assuming all you cool people have read the books. And if you haven’t, read the friggin books, because even though this is a faithful and brilliant movie adaption it will never be as good as the books. The movie had to cut out or just imply a lot of things the book covers in more detail. So read the books.

The Good

Haymitch! I didn’t care much for him in the first book, but movie Haymitch is brilliant. And he has an eerie similarity to Thor/Chris Hemsworth.
Tracker Jackers! I was strangely concerned about them overdoing this and giving us some brightly coloured giant super-wasps. They didn’t do this. What they did instead was TERRIFYING and so very well done. The entire Tracker Jacker scene is made of win and awesome.
Most of the ‘soundtrack’ songs weren’t actually in the movie, the soundtrack used was almost entirely instrumental. I liked a lot of the soundtrack songs, but the movie worked much better that way.

The Not-Quite-What-I-Expected

Peeta. He’s a great actor, just not what I expect from the boy with the bread. But he won me round by playing the role so well.
The dog-creatures (the mutts). They showed a 3D model of them that looked kick-ass, but something about their design in motion didn’t mesh well with me. They handled the fear in that scene very well, but they also took out a very creepy and powerful element from the books.
The bloodlessness. I know this is a useless complaint, and if they had tried to add more blood this movie would never have been made… but sometimes the character deaths just felt too clean. It took away from the horror.

The Awesome

SENECA CRANE’S BEARD.
They somehow made Effie Trinket funny.
The Gamekeeper’s Control Room.
Rue’s lullaby.
SENECA CRANE’S BEEEEAAARDDD.

I really loved this movie, and recommend it to anyone who loved the books — just be sure to treat it as a separate creature to the books. Totally worth sitting through the 30 minutes of boring cinema adverts, and the one hour bus ride with loud drunks and no seatbelts that followed.

24 February, 2012

New Trailer for Disney Pixar’s “Brave”

New trailer:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOmc2GzWtSE[/youtube]

And the original teaser trailer, if you missed it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uG4mi17Ao[/youtube]

Needless to say, I am extremely excited about this movie. The Scottish female warrior, the accents, her HAIR, the landscapes…
I’ll definitely be watching it when it comes out in the cinemas.

“Awwwwwww, the wee lamb…”

7 February, 2012

The Fault In Our Film Industry

In a blog post about the movie rights being bought for “The Fault In Our Stars”, John Green gave us a quick insight into the minds of those in Hollywood:

I am reminded of something a very prominent and famous Hollywood producer said to me about Will Grayson, Will Grayson: “The only thing audiences hate more than smart teenagers are gay teenagers.” Hearing things like that made me disinclined to work with people in Hollywood.

Kind of depressing to know what Hollywood thinks of their audience, isn’t it? Apparently we all fit into the same, lowest-common-denominator box.

27 January, 2012

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” Movie Stills

(via yahighway.)

I’m so excited about the movie coming out – not only is the book a personal favourite, but EMMA WATSON. I love everything she’s in… by which I mean, ‘man isn’t Harry Potter the best?’ (It is the best.)

25 December, 2011

Sexism in Doctor Who’s “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”

“You might want to look away now, we’re about to critically examine a children’s Christmas television special.”

Just finished watching the Doctor Who, and I have some strong opinions on it already. Oh dear.

They are:

a) The Doctor trying to ‘take care’ of things was adorable.

b) Bill Bailey and his crew needed much more screentime. Great actors, funny dialogue, and wasted potential.

c) The attempt to tackle sexism made me seriously hate the writer (who I just found out was Stephen Moffat. Oh, Moffat, why do you have to disappoint me?).

The story began with a woman who can’t drive, and continued to crash every vehicle she came across in the episode. Then in the middle, the story decided to make it very clear that the alien race view females as ‘strong’ and males as ‘weak’ – a cute little cultural twist that I liked, and it worked well with the story. These aliens made a big deal out of how much of a strong person the car-crashing woman was, and everyone present generally nodded and agreed ‘oh yes, the strongest woman ever because she is a mum and that is wonderful’. Shortly afterwards, this ‘strong’ woman started gushing about how she met her husband: he followed her home every day from work, even though she didn’t seem romantically interested in him, and eventually she gave in and married him.

So this strong, admirable woman was blackmailed into a relationship? What.

If you’re going to write a story about how strong women are, it helps if you put a strong woman in it. Just an idea.

(EDIT: ‘even though she didn’t seem romantically interested in him’ originally read as ‘even though she didn’t care for him’, this was reworded for clarity.)