In a fit of spontaneity Mr Pharmacist and myself decided to go to the cinema when we were supposed to go grocery shopping. For no good reason we decided on Daybreakers, and I was informed by the guy who checked my tickets that it was “very scary”. I answered “It’s only a vampire movie,” and I was right.
The guy probably thought I was a Twilighter who thought vampires are cuddly fluffy stuff, but I’m not a n00b to vampire movie and I can tell you right now they hardly ever scare me. Zombies are totally creepier than vampires, and in this movie they made the vampires creepier by, err, letting blood withdrawal turn them into creatures that seemed like zombie bat ish things. I don’t know either.

Plot: It’s in the future, vampires have taken over the earth and there’s too few humans to feed on. Ethan Hawke is a vampire named Edward (no, seriously) who is working at a blood facility trying to manufacture synthetic blood, while the company’s main business is draining humans of blood in a very matrix-like facility that our Edward stares at broodingly every time he has to pass it. See, Edward doesn’t like to be a vampire, and he feels bad for the humans.

I think you can already tell where this is going. Edward meets some humans, there’s a Revelation that changes everything, and basically he’s like Neo in the Matrix but everyone else are Vampires rather than Agent Smith. It starts of very bleak and interesting and goes hardcore into gorefest at the end. It of course has a totally open ending that sets the stage for the unavoidable sequel. Basically it’s a bit like Zombieland if Zombieland was about vampires and not meant to be funny. It’s unintentionally funny several times, not to Van Helsing standard as that’s a hard trick to pull off, but in the end I thought it was a laugh and it held my attention the entire movie. The best thing about it was Willem Dafoe, and how much time had clearly been spent thinking about how a vampire society would look and act like.

I’d give it about a C+.

Mr Pharmacist and I went to see Avatar earlier today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We saw it in 2D because Mr Pharmacist is partially sighted and can’t see 3D at all, so I pretty much have a big hate-on for this whole 3D mania that’s going on right now.

The plot itself is nothing new or special, and the noble savage element of the movie is very troubling, no doubt about that. It’s absolutely colonialism, where the evil white people come to a distant land to take the resources from the native tribal society, who aren’t able to save themselves but must instead be saved by the human who understands this is Wrong, and becomes the bestest tribal man that ever was. The human hero is an ex marine in a wheel chair who only landed himself there because his twin brother died and they needed someone with the same genes to take over the gig. His brother was a scientist, but Our Hero knows nothing of the science or research, but ends up being the Bestest Avatar Driver anyway. The film is narrated by the human by way of video diaries.

The baddies, predictably a corporate hack and a crazy old marine, are paper thin and not very interesting, but the “plot” doesn’t really even matter that much because as soon as the protagonist starts to interact with the blue people (The Na’vi), that’s all you really care about. The world is beautifully created and you want to GO there. The different species are really interesting, and their version of horses are great. They also ride on what can only be described as dragons. Seriously awesome dragons, which they interact with by.. you know what, I’m not even going to tell you.

I liked the lead a lot, the narration worked well for me and disabled hero getting to walk again is a profound scene for me, even if he’s mentally controlling an avatar it feels real to him. Rather than “it ain’t easy being blue” it turns out the human is much happier as a Na’vi than he was as a disabled human. He then turns on the humans that want to destroy the tribe, of course.

The story all the way through is entirely predictable, but the effects are spectacular and the movie is visually stunning. It actually did blow my mind. It was three hours, but I would’ve happily sat there for a while longer and stayed in this beautifully created world. It also has Sigourney Weaver being her awesome self, which is always a thrill to watch.

The first thing I said when it was over? “I want my own dragon friend..” to which my taller half hugged me and said “I know, darling.”

There had better be cuddly toys.

I went to see Moon today, which was a very interesting movie. I just had a peak at the Wikipedia page and saw the following line:

The director took steps to minimise production costs, such as keeping the cast small and filming in a studio, as opposed to location shoots

Source: Moon (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The movie is set on the moon. Imagine the press if they’d actually filmed on location.

Today I realised that the Pixar movie Up is out in the US already, and I’m seeing a lot of excited blog posts. I would’ve happily been one of them, only I can’t see the movie until October. That’s right, the film is not released in the United Kingdom until mid-October. Even countries that dub the movie get it before we do.

I’m sure some sort of marketing reasoning on behalf of the UK distributor is to blame, and the date probably coincides with a school holiday. But that’s not good enough for me.

I am sick and tired of seeing large movie studios cry crocodile tears about their precious income suffering due to the evils of piracy, when they pull stunts like this. Yes, I admit it, I am very likely to download this movie. Why? Because I am a massive Pixar fan, and the movie is probably going to be out on DVD and leaked to the internet in fairly decent quality a long time before it even hits the cinemas here. Does this mean I won’t watch it in the cinema? Sure I will – I watched Wall-E four times in the cinema. I paid every time. I also bought the DVD, and plenty of merchandising. I love Pixar movies almost more than any other kind of movie, and have been eagerly anticipating the next one, as I always do. I am also a massive Disney fangirl, and am on a mission to get all the animated movies on DVD.

Disney and Pixar, I am not your enemy. I am not the awful pirate that you would never get money from. You will get my money, you’re always getting my money. In fact, because I also bought Disney movies on VHS back in the day, I am paying you several times over for a lot of your movies. So why are you fucking me over? I can go to Norway a month before the film comes out in the UK and see it there – in English. There is no good reason not to release the movie at the same time as in the US, when it’s a high profile movie from a hugely successful studio. I will download a pirate copy of this movie, not because I don’t want to give you my money, but because I desperatly want to do so now, not in four months.

That’s what the studios don’t seem to get. The majority of us download pirate copies not because we don’t want to pay, but because we don’t want to wait any longer than the US to watch the movies and tv shows that we love. We want to pay you, but you’re not giving us an option to do so. So if I hear even a single complaint from Disney or Pixar about the evils of piracy on the internet, all I can say is boo-frikkin-hoo. I have no sympathy for you.

I’ve seen four out of five films that were nominated for Best Picture Oscar this year. The one I’ve missed out on is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which for some reason keeps slipping out of my grasp due to bad times, general illness or hungover Mr Pharmacist. But, anyway. Slumdog Millionaire.

Here’s what I don’t get. How on earth is this a feel-good movie? I don’t know how YOU felt after watching this film, but my friend and I did not feel good. Sure, the two leads get a happy ending in the end, but to what cost? Sure, the story of the poor boy done good and winning a fortune is sweet. But there was so much more I wanted to see in the film that just wasn’t there. There’s a whole period of his life that’s cut away, you miss several years of development that were probably crucial to his story, but it doesn’t even get a mention. Not to mention the fates of everyone else in the story. Where was their happy ending? And that’s what I ended up thinking about after watching the film. In the end, the story of Jamal and Latika didn’t grip me as much as the story of his brother, of the harshness of life that he has to go through, how much of himself he sacrificed for his brother.

I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, it isn’t at all. I liked it, but I didn’t see the “wow” factor. And I really wanted to like it, I wanted to be swept away by the Slumdog Millionaire Wave of Love that so many people appear to be surfing on. But I’m sorry, I find poverty far too depressive to be cheered up by the thought of one person managing to get out of it by winning money on a game show. It’s false hope, really. It makes me think of Pretty Woman in a way – prostitute gets the dream after her client falls in love with her. That story line is also far-fetched, but Pretty Woman makes it works purely on the chemistry and performances of the two lead actors. You believe they love each other. Jamal and Latika? Not so much.

But the movie is visually very appealing, and the narrative flows well, so I can’t really fault the director, nor the cast, it might be more that the problem for me is the story itself, as this sort of pretend realism annoys me quite a bit, when the top layer is glossing over what’s a harsh reality for a lot of people, including some of the kids that star in the movie. So what’s the deal? Is this a Western fascination with a rags to riches story that we’ve seen a million times, but that’s more exciting because it’s set in India, and that’s new and exciting to the Western public? I don’t know, I’ll leave that to the academics and other people who are much better equipped than I am when it comes to this discussion.

I didn’t study film, but I did study music, and the soundtrack is awesome. A deserved win on both counts for A. R. Rahman, who I need to hear more stuff by. My favourite track on the soundtrack is Ringa Ringa, embedded below for your listening pleasure, which features Alka Yagnik, who until today I’d never heard of. Check out the song, her voice is fantastic and I would love to hear more of it. Let us also not forget that the soundtrack also features M.I.A., who I saw live at the Hultsfred festival in Sweden a few years ago, and damn what a cool gig that was. A+ and gold stars for this soundtrack, which is currently selling for a fairly low price on iTunes UK.

Oh and that bewildered kid, Dev Patel, was adorable on every show he went on. As a good English boy, he’s responded to the massive attention with humility and child-like joy. Watching his grinning face at the Baftas and Oscars put a big smile on my face. Well played, Dev Patel. Well played. I hope we see more of you in the years to come.

Let me start of this quasi-review by saying that I am completely unable to separate the film from the graphic novel. That’s the problem with knowing a film’s source text, you become too focused on how it does or does not differ, instead of the story telling of the film. This in itself is why I prefer to read a book that’s been adapted after I see the film, rather than the other way round. So I guess my review is more on the adaptation than the film itself.

The film is very faithful to the graphic novel. It looks completely right, from the outfits to the shots to the colours, with some exceptions that didn’t bother me at all. The film followed the same narrative pattern overall, mostly following Rorschach, who true to form was a True Citizen of CrazyTown. He’s rude, messy, bitter and damn creepy, and not someone you want to meet, let alone cross. He’s such an interesting character from how his experiences shaped him into being fully defined by his character, and ceasing to exist as a normal human being. I don’t know how Jackie Earle Haley managed to do it, but he absolutely nailed it.

To be honest, after Rorschach being almost perfect, everything else is a bonus. The Comedian was portrayed really well by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who gives The Comedian a lot of depth, because The Comedian is the hero you don’t want to identify with, because of his cruelty. To me, he’s a reflection of humanity, because in real life the same person can be both a rapist and a good man – sometimes to the same person.

They’re all flawed in their own way, the characters of Watchmen, and that’s what I like about the comic, and also about the movie. Doctor Manhattan has lost touch with humanity to the level where he doesn’t care if they’re all dead, Night Owl is impotent without his suit on, Silk Spectre is a frustrated girl who is stuck in a relationship she doesn’t know how to leave (and her relationship defines her entire existence) and so on. Compared to normal super hero movies, these guys are neither super or much of heroes. I thought all the actors did a great job portraying these complex character – yes, even Malin Åkerman, who to be fair didn’t have that much to work with. Silk Spectre in the comic is more a tool to get the story moving rather than a fully developed character in her own right, so the same happens in the film.

However much I liked it, it did drag a bit in the second half. I was fascinated by every scene, but I doubt this is a film that will lend it self to many repeat viewings. But it was filmed beautifully, and the action scenes were great. I loved the Owl Ship especially. A special mention must be given to the start of the film, which moves through the super hero history until present day and the death of the Comedian. It is the best bit of the film by far, and the choice of Dylan’s The Times They are A-Changing was a very good match.

As for the ending.. Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. It’s a bit of an anti-climax, but I prefer the ending of the film to the ending in the book, which I found a bit silly. This change from the source material fitted with the narrative of the story, which makes you wonder what else could’ve been expanded upon by the adaptors in interesting ways, rather than staying so completely faithful to the source.

All in all I thought Watchmen was really good. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it an instant classic? I doubt it. But what to I know, I liked the first Hulk film more than the second one.

One last thing – whoever did Nixon’s make-up – his nose is not that long. He looked like a caricature and I could barely follow his scenes, all I could thing of was “NOSE NOSE NOSE”. That this made a stronger impression on me than Dr Manhattan’s blue dangly package should tell you something.

Between Death Cold of Doom and studying like mad, my blog has been neglected. Poor blog. I intend to make it up by posting about the films I’ve seen in the cinema this year so far, starting with Milk.

Milk, which stars Sean Penn, is a biopic about the gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978. Now, you may say that it’s a spoiler to point out that he died, but a) he died in real life, yo! and b) the movie tells you that he was assassinated in the first five minutes, so it’s not like I’m ruining the ending for you.

I knew very little of Harvey Milk. Okay, I knew hardly anything about Harvey Milk, apart from the sentence below, and who killed him. The movie starts out in New York in 1970, when Harvey turns 40 and meets his boyfriend Scott Smith, who is beautifully played by James Franco.

Yes, there’s a lot of gay relationships in this film. Go figure! But unlike Brokeback Mountain, which I didn’t really like very much, it showed a lot of day-to-day life, romantic moments, problems that occur between long-term couples – and the relationship between Harvey and Scott was beautifully portrayed. If this was a gay romantic comedy, they would’ve ended up together in the end, and I admit to have spent most of the second half of the movie mentally begging them to get back together.

The politics of the movie, which has its climax in the defeat of Proposition 6, which was very powerful to watch in the wake of Proposition 8 passing in the same state last year. To think that Prop 6 could be defeated in a time when we hadn’t come so far with gay rights, and here we are, 30 years later, and gay rights in America is taking a giant step backwards. As someone who had followed Prop 8 with great interest, this is what I came back from the movie with most strongly. It’s absolutely food for thought.

Of course, the movie’s message is preaching to the choir in my case, and I doubt that the movie will attract the sort of crowd that could do with realising that gay people who want to get married are normal people just like them, who loves someone and want to show their strong bond to the world, and get the same legal status as heterosexuals. The movie does well to show gay relationships with honesty and tenderness, and has a wonderful leading character that you cannot help to adore. Sean Penn is amazing as Harvey Milk, and in my opinion his golden statue was well deserved.

An absolute gem, and one of my favourites so far this year.