I'm still here! promise.Good lord, it's February 2nd, 2010. My last journal was December 31st 2009. Yikes.So my secret new year resolution to post more journals in 2010 went to hell. A whole month without a new journal, that's a new record. one I plan to NOT repeat. I have let myself become a truly awful friend to you all. Yes I'm really busy, but I still write, and I still am on this site, so I'm going to be more active, and try (keyword try) to post a journal once a week... ish. I won't let it get this bad again. even if I have nothing to write about, I'll whip something up. so much is going on in my life I can find enough to talk about. Such as the increase of my movie intake. Yes, increase. See, since the start of 2010, I've seen 14 movies in theatres. Since the last time I did a movie review was last bloody decade it's time I picked that up again. But since we're now in a new age, a new time, and people are all obsessed with texting and twitter, and can't sit still for more then a few minutes, I'm going to post just a short blurb for most of them. (yeah, that's the reason, it's nothing to do with the fact I'm lazy.) 1) Daybreakers. Oh I loved this. best modern Vampire film since Let the Right One In. all the actors are great, it's beautifully shot, and I LOVE the universe it's set in. the way it sets itself up, all the small details it puts in place to sell the story. yeah, loved this. 2) Youth in Revolt. Has some funny moments, great acting by Michael Cera (there's something I didn't think I'd type). it's not great, but I felt it was a good way to spend two hours, and it reminded me that no amount of money would make me go back to being a teenager. Ever. 3) Book of Eli. On paper, this is amazing. great cast, cool concept, GREAT CAST, cool acting scenes, and a truly amazing cast. Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Tom Waits, Ray Stevenson, Malcolm fricking McDowell... these are some of my favourite actors. and I love post apocalyptic films. and yet I was bored to tears by this. the writing is truly dreadful, it's poorly shot (there's about five awesome shots, but the rest are bad.) it's overly dark and muddy, so you can't clearly see what's going on in the scene. in the beginning I thought "oh cool, that's a neat stylistic way to open the film... oh. oh. you're going to keep doing that the whole time. oh." disappointed on every level by this film. 6) The White Ribbon. Now we're talking. This is amazing. It's bleak, it's happy, it's heart breaking, it's AMAZINGLY SHOT. Black and white photography that is so well composed it'll bring a tear to your eye. By a German film maker, and it's set in a small German village before world war 2. It follows the day to day lives of the townsfolk, and their children. That's the basic story. Sound dull? It does, but you will be riveted. And here's the fascinating thing. The film will make you think of: the birth and rise of fascism, the nature of control over people, the nature of evil, the mentality of the mob, and the way WW2 happened and it's influences over the world. Interesting thing? the film NEVER ONCE mentions, hints, alludes, even subtly visually hints, or talks about any of that. It puts all this in your head without ever talking about it. That's how well made it is. Top notch film. 7) Daybreakers. Love this still. IT HAS SAM NEILL AS A VILLAIN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Dr Grant from Jurassic Park is evil in this! 8) Taxidermia. Hated this. Hungarian horror film. It's disgusting. I'm all for gross gore films. But gore works two ways. 1: to tell the story, to shock the audience, or move the story forward. 2) to shock the audience and be used as a comedy device (yes I'm sick, shut up.) and to be over the top humor. This is neither, it's trying to offensive for offensive sake, it's acting like it's telling a great story and the gore is used to effect to tell a deep story, but it's BS, the story is pointless, filled with unlikable characters, and the film is basically two hours of "you thought that was bad? well, look at THIS". Waste of time. 9) Repo: the Genetic Opera. Ok, this may be cheating, since I only saw this because I'm in a shadowcast of it. but it's a movie playing in a theatre, so it counts. Also, as a pre show the cast did a burlesque show... yes I was in it. I didn't strip though. May have danced on stage with two girls who were stripping though... Shadow casting is fun. 10) Legion. Went into this expecting to hate it. The trailers looked like crap, and the concept seemed awful. and yet, the film was more fun then I expected, and was filled with some pretty bad ass moments and characters. It's a really fun popcorn acting film. It's the Terminator meets the bible. Instead of Kyle Reese falling from the sky, getting a trench coat, a gun, and taking a car and going off to kill people and protect a pregnant women, it's an angel. A BAD ASS angel played by Paul Bettany. (An actor I really like.) He then goes to a small dinner filled with cliché filled characters, and they fight off a whole hoard of attacking evil things. It's fun, it's dumb, and it's got some great action and horror moments. way more fun then it looked like. It has flaws, but I enjoyed this greatly. 11) The Lovely Bones. I'm of two minds on this film. haven't read the book, so that doesn't enter in. It's well shot, and incredibly well acted, but... when I look back on it I don't feel like highly recommending it. I'm not sure why. It is a good film, and the acting is truly great (the scene where the cops tell the parents they can't find their daughter brought tears to my eyes) but it feels lacking some how. I'd recommend checking it out to see good acting, and it's tensely shot.  Last three inside journal.
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