It’s not very often that a trailer puts me off a film I had previously wanted to see, but the trailers for War of the Worlds managed it for me. “Another Tom Cruise film”, thought I, “that’s taken a perfectly good storyline and twisted into brainless hollywood fare.”
Actually, that summary isn’t too bad – this film is all about Tom Cruise’s character (Ray), who has custody of his kids the very weekend the Martians choose to invade. Except that it was never clear they came from Mars. And they utterly trashed the previously chilling opening paragraph. But I digress.
So Ray, an almost entirely odious man, decides the answer is to travel to Boston, where his ex is visiting her parents, and the film is basically him and his kids narrowly escaping death for 90 minutes of screen-time – usually by shafting someone else who’s got in the way. I suppose all due respect to TC for playing someone so unlikeable.
Sure sure – the special effects were pretty well seemless. Yeah yeah, Tom Cruise does “man on the edge” without breaking a sweat – but the ending is hugely anti-climatic: what sort of film suddenly (literally in 1 minute of screen time) from “absolutely no hope – it’s the end of world” to “oh hang on – actually we’ve beaten the rotters after all”, and has to explain the ending with a voice-over as the credits roll?
So while it paints a pretty realistic doomsday scenario, and doesn’t pull too many punches in terms of dispatching people, I’m afraid it just didn’t hit the spot for me.
This was a surprisingly good film, actually. The basic premise follows a young lad – Stanley – who is found guilty of theft, and is sent off to “Camp Greenlake” to dig holes in order to “build his character”.
An interesting back-story of him and his family emerges, and we follow his trials and tribulations on this correctional facility with its oddball warden and guards. Of course all is not what it seems at Camp Greenlake, and as the story emerges the true reason for the digging comes out – and could the c4-generational urse on Stanley’s family finally be broken?
Squarely aimed at its 12 rating audience, this film never the less covers issues of love, justice, bullying, honour, truth, respect, and loyalty. Wow – that makes it sound heavy.. perhaps it would help to point out that “Mean Girls” covers similar ground?
The only downside, as with the film mentioned above, is that the adults are all very wooden, and there as caricature; it’s the children who have real personalities. Nevertheless it is an engaging film, who’s storyline is never entirely predictable. It is also fairly amusing.
What a very silly film; I hugely enjoyed it! It’s a film that’s quite tough to call between very funny and in very bad taste, but I think I just about slip onto the “funny” side.
This is not a film with some deep message, although the satire does hold up a mirror to much of our materialistic and shallow culture, and ask if we like what we see…
Another “Fridat night with beer and curry” film – not a classic by any means, although more than enough opportunity to play “spot-the-celeb”.
We had a friend staying this weekend, who’s a music teacher and a worship leader (indeed she played at our wedding), and she was relating a story about a conversation she’d had with one of her students.
Said student spotted the bible on her piano, and said something like “Miss – so do you use the psalms like a songbook or something?”, to which the reply was “Well actually, yes!”.
But it’s an image that really grabbed me – quite often our piano at home will have a songbook on it, or perhaps some sheet music (the Moonlight Sonata is a fave, not that I can play it mind). In many ways this is exactly what the Psalms were… our equivalent of Hymns Ancient and Modern – except the music hasn’t survived as long as the words (or at least, it hasn’t as far as I know). But the image of having the Psalms open on your piano music stand, and using it as a songbook is an evocative one. Clearly it requires a certain level of musicianship to be able to ad lib a song in this way, especially as much of the poetic structure has been lost in the translation. I’ve written one or two songs that have “cherry-picked” bits and pieces from a couple of psalms – perhaps most of our worship songs and hymns do this – but this is not the same, somehow.
I realise that there is a long tradition of singing, or at least chanting, the psalms in the church (with a robed choir for instance), but even this doesn’t seem quite the same as sitting down at a piano and singing a psalm, on your own, just for God.
It’s interesting because at my work we meet once a week to pray, and we start the meeting by looking at a Psalm together. Typically one of us will read it out aloud, and then another will have prepared a short exposition/reflection on it. It’s especially relevant as it’s my turn to prepare the Psalm this week (we’ve got to 51). What a very different way to interact with a psalm by using it directly as a worship song.
Theme music is so evocative, isn’t it? Whether it’s the sweeping orchestra of the opening bars of Star Wars, or the spine tingling ‘dings’ of Harry Potter – the semi-comedy trumpty sound of Wallace and Gromit never fails to light my spirits and bring a smile. DOO-do-do-DOO-do-do-DOOdoo da-da-DA-dada-DA-dadada-DA. Or something.
Before I go any further, I should probably say that this is a fab film, but it is measured against the expectation that it’s a Wallace and Gromit film, which is an awful lot to live up to. And.. dare I say it – I’m not sure it fully lives up to that expectation.
I hardly need say what’s good about it. The animation is as gorgeous as ever – you plain forget that you’re watching clay figures! The characters are wonderful, and so expressive. The humour is still very much laugh-out-loud, although in a production of this length there are “bare” patches, and some of the jokes are a little bit predictable. That said for most of the film the jokes come think and fast – so much so I’m not at all sure I caught them all. For instance, the opening sequence has a picture of Gromit graduating from “Dogwarts”. Plus there were endless nods at other films – too many to mention here.
So why the reservations? Well, I’ve hinted at it above – I think the film relied almost too much on a constant stream of gags, with no real hint of character development – which for a film that clocks in at well over an hour is a lacking. The characters are in the main wonderfully well rounded, but I don’t feel like I’ve got to know them any better after spending (what amounts to) several days in their company.
In a less nebulous sense, there were two specific problems the film had – firstly it was, in my opinion, too adult. There were genuinely scary moments, and at one point Wallace is wearing nothing but a cardboard box which has the label “may contain nuts”. I’m all for little jokes to keep the parents amused, but I think they go to far in warerabbit.
The other big flaw in the film is that at one point Gromit and another dog are going head to head in toy aeroplanes – one of them crashes and explodes with a huge fireball that (a) looks completely out of place and jarring compared to every other effect, which is claymation, (b) is a level of violence/realism which has no precedent (or place) in W&G world, and (c) for a while has apparantly killed the dog who was in it. That one fireball came very close to spoiling the entire film for me.
All this said, by any normal standards this is a solid 10/10 film – 99% of the time the humour is spot on, the characters are glorious, and the plot (such as it is) is enough to keep up interest. Could it have been 15 or 20 minutes shorter? Without a doubt – but that would deprive us of 15 or 20 minutes in W&G’s lovely company.
There were some interesting spiritual themes as well – the vicar correctly spotting that the true monster we need to be aware of are within. Is the real villain a giant rabbit who (just) eats vegetables, or the people who want to kill it? I love the vicar, by the way, and this out-of-context quote makes him sound like a totally different character from who he actually is.
Oh yes, and definitely one to buy on DVD – would easily survive multiple viewings.
At home group this week, Proverbs 19:21 was mentioned – which is, from the NIV, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord‘s purpose that prevails”. Interestingly, one of the people had a different version of the bible, and her version simply said;
Man proposes, God disposes.
I suspect a different meaning is coming across, but it’s a phrase that’s lodged very deeply in my mind, and I keep taking it out to chew over. I haven’t yet decided if it’s a helpful or unhelpful way to translate that particular proverb – but I can’t really help thinking it might capture a bit more of pithy spirit of the proverbs than the often laboured NIV…
I was surprised by absolutely nothing in this film – it’s like the Da Vinci Code without the intelligence, and I loved every minute. The whole film worked on the premise that if it kept things happening quickly enough, you wouldn’t actually notice the extremely flimsy house of cards keeping the whole thing afloat.
I could spend the next 3 pages pointing out all the ridiculous holes, flaws, and shortcomings – but what’s the point? This was always going to be a no-brainer action film with major suspension of disbelief required – and, to be honest, it was a riot! Sort of a cross between the aforementioned Da Vinci Code and The Goonies.
Diane Kruger (as the love interest Dr Chase) was a new face for me – and possibly one to watch – but the cast was pretty solid. Nic Cage as the goodie, Sean Bean as the baddie, Jon Voight and Christopher Plummer in solid suppporting roles. I kept thinking that Justin Bartha was in fact Dominic Monaghan (aka Charlie in Lost, aka Merry the hobbit), but otherwise the casting was without distraction.
I actually really enjoyed this film – the plot, such as it was, meandered around a fair bit, but the story telling was basically very gentle, and also very funny. I would have to add that it’s unnecessarily crude; full of swearing, nudity, and people in flagrante delicto (with not a lot left to the imagination), which did spoil the film for me.
The basic premise is that two middle-aged men – Miles (English teacher and would be author) and Jack (past-it actor) set off to vineyard land in California, ostensibly on Jack’s “stag week” to do some wine tasting and play golf. In reality Jack is looking to get “down and dirty” on one last fling before his wedding day at the end of the week – which comes as a surprise to Miles.
The film charts their ongoing relationship with one another, and with some local ladies – particularly Miles’ relationship with Maya (a local who he’s “loved from afar” for a while). The web of deceit is spun – mainly to Miles’ chagrin – and Jack gets his action, all to the backdrop of discussions about Pinot grapes. It is interesting to see just how easy Jack finds it to lie and pretend in order to get his way – and when his finace phones his reacted is more “what an inconvenience” then anything remotely approaching shame. In fact Jack’s apparant lack of conscience is breath-taking, especially played against Miles’ angst. That said, Miles’ behaviour is no better, but at least he feels bad about it.
The humour is wonderfully understated though – mainly playing on the ridiculous/ironic. Jack really is too stupid to be true – one of the funniest moments is when Jack has had to run 5k naked back to hotel room, including taking a shortcut through a field of ostriches. His comment: “They’re mean f*ckers.” The worst bit – probably the ending, which failed to resolve anything!
So on balance a good film, spoilt by unnecessary swearing and sex. While not really worthy of an 18 rating, it did seem to me to be beyond the boundary of a 15.
I don’t mean to be sensationalist, but I am amazed every single time there’s an outcry against speed cameras. I cannot for the life of me think of any reasonable argument against there being a system that automatically fines you if you break the law. The speed limit is the law of the land – ok so it’s true that almost everyone speeds (espeially on motorways), but let’s not try to take a moral high ground over it. You break the law, you pay the price. Of course there are sometimes extenuating circumstances, and there is a process for dealing with these – but 99% of the time this is not the case.
The thing that has brought this to my mind again is there is now apparantly an online service that warns you if you are about to get a parking ticket. Motorists who see a traffic warden coming can text the registration plates of nearby cars, and if the owners have signed up for the service they get a text telling them to move their car.
Now, sorry if I’m being simple – but surely you only have to worry about traffic wardens if you’re parked illegally? If you’re in a legal parking zone and have either a permit of a ticket, there’s no problem. One of the founders of the service said something along the lines of “After getting tickets for three hundred pounds last year, I got fed up so decided to set up this system.”
If you want to avoid parking fines then park legally – or, even better, use public transport.
Now don’t get me wrong – I’ve broken the highway code [although never in a dangerous fashion, I would like to add], and been done for it (which was particularly embarrassing, as the car was full of friends from Church at the time) – but I don’t see these as anything other than mistakes and poor judgement mainly due to impatience, and I’m ashamed of them all (even the ones I’ve not been caught for).
Have we lost respect for the laws of the land. If we disagree with a speed limit, or with a no parking sign, do we just turn vigilante, and then take The System to the courts when we’re caught out? I might agree that 70mph is a somewhat outdated speed like for modern cars on modern motorways, but what happened to democracy?
Sunday’s reading was all about the transfiguration, and it got me to thinking about Peter’s response to the revealed glory of Jesus.
Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters – one for you, one for Elijah, and one for Moses.
(Mark 9:5, NIV)
The classic evangelical take on this is that Peter wanted to prolong the mountain-top experience, and stay there forever. “Let’s build a memorial” – or as one commentator put it “let’s make a theme park!”
I just wonder if something else might have been going on as well. The next verse tells us the disciples were scared witless, and didn’t really know what they were saying – I wonder if Peter was trying to get a handle on things and make a scary situation a bit safer?
What I mean is this – if the transfigured Jesus, and Moses and Elijah were safely installed in their tents, then the disciples would have this holy mountain-top they could come and visit whenever they wanted.
In the meantime, they could go back down the mountain, and pop into the nearest local for a swift half – just to calm the nerves. This would be fine – Jesus could natter with those two for hours, and we’d feel nice and safe and sound knowing that all that glory was going on up the mountain.
Certainly there’s a sense today that Sunday’s might be like this – this is the time we engage with God, perhaps see His glory… but then we can quickly leave Him in his tent – I mean church building – and know he’s there for next week.
