Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009 movie)

It is amazing how name-brand can affect how much people like something. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, for example. It carries the weighty name of the HP and people have collectively given it 7.3/10 on the ever-popular Internet Movie Database. There are several lengthy reviews on the value and brilliance of this composition, but I find it more than dull and not at all worthy of the source work.

7.3 might not really sound all that bad, but if I were into giving numbers it wouldn't be half so high. It is like the makers of these movies realized that they left out so much in the previous movies that they would have to split #7 into two and to correct this they made sure everything was in there somehow. Let alone how choppily it fit in.

This movie is just "Bland". It didn't induce very much emotion in me, even in the horrifying final scene which caused everyone who read the book to simultaneously break out into sobs. I laughed a few times, but I feel I was laughing at the movie, not with it. I just didn't care about anything that was happening. Nothing was developed, nothing was explained. My cousin watching with me, who hadn't read the book in a few years, found herself lost. Even though she had read it once, it wasn't enough to help her along through the movie. That is when you know you didn't plot out your story very well.

But pretty much every plot is there: two romances, Aragog, death and destruction, Malfoy being a prick, searching for horcruxes, Slughorn and his collection of students, getting forgotten on the train. There's even a few new ones: HP being an idiot and running out into a hayfield (why? cuz he's dumb). It's all packed in there like forcing jigsaw puzzle pieces together whither that is where they go or not. I think there's some boarder pieces in the middle.

What makes Harry Potter such an enrapturing series? It has captured children's imaginations and even wrangled a few adult ones. I believe that one of the things that has done this is her character development. But the characters in the movies are largely boring.

Planet of the Apes (comparison of the 1968 and the 2001 films)

I should have posted this about 3 months ago.... I didn't even realize that I didn't.

The Acting Skillz Sarah de Palin

    The most amazing thing about Sarah Palin is that anybody listens to her. And not just because of the inane and senseless babble that pours unheeded from her mouth, but at how badly this babble is actually poured. I'm not going to talk about the subject of her babble, but just its delivery: she is a worse actor than she is a thinker. The fact that there is a person on our planet that takes her seriously is depressing and doesn't bode well for the survival of our species.

    Many people by now have seen this video. I don't watch a lot of Palin, so I don't know if this is typical of her, but her performance would be laughable if it weren't jaw-droppingly pathetic. I have a deep and broad sense of humor, most of the time, but I still find it hard to laugh at this level of sadness. I am tempted to predict that this is one of her worst rolls? I kind of hope that it is.
 
    Now I am conflicted. I am displaying the same sort of behaviour that so many liberal press-men exhibit. By sharing this video, I am supporting Palin: No publicity is bad publicity, right? If we all ignored her like we ought to, then she would disappear like she ought to. And the world would be a better place. But instead, we are all playing into her hands like puppets with half of her intelligence.
 
    Which makes me feel like a blob fish in a school of retarded liberals. Instead of putting up our own media gimmick, we are castrated by Bveck and Palin and their melodramatic acting which wouldn't even be respected in a Soap Opera as good enough. It is just not believable to an IQ over 80. It's unlikely a blob fish would be so stupid as Sarah Palin, let alone me and my friends who pay enough attention to her to write opposition to her.
 
    And yet, here I am.
 
    But the acting really impressed me that much. There is an impressive similarity between her delivery and that in a shitty infomercial. Her change in inflection isn't even on the right words. Like she realizes what she's saying and remembers: "oh, compassionate voice here, Oh, now concerned voice, now reprimanding a child voice..." But it is always a few syllables late. Despite the simplicity; those are the only emotions she goes though. I would think it'd be easy enough to keep three measly and simplistic emotions separate, but she doesn't quite get it together.
 
    If this caliber acting is all that is required to convince people of... well, anything. If all one has to do is say something to a camera and have a hoard of people believe you, then it shouldn't be so hard to convince people of things that really are happening and are really big deals: over-fishing, peak coal and peak oil, dehydrating aquifers, over-population... Global warming...
 
    Instead, there is a surprising number of people who put their effort into such mundane things as making sure people speak English in America! and trying (and failing miserably) to fight a war on drugs (and often the wrong ones). We have people in this country determined to undermine their own access to health-care for some really inconceivable reason. It's like we want to get sick or die of a broken elbow. Which, honestly, I wouldn't be that against, we hare deathly overpopulated, if it weren't for the heinous environmental degradation that comes from poverty. Without security, no one has time to realize that we are destroying the biosphere. Once it is gone, so are we, by the way.
 
    Meanwhile Palin, possibly in pursuit of assuaging her own guilt, has washed her hands of the murder of a few politicians. And there are a few people who buy it, even though it was sold with a cardboard mask on.

Inception (2010 movie)

Inception is the second movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio that I have been pretty impressed with. The first (which I didn't see all of, hence there is no review) was Shutter Island.

The similarities of these movies are substantial. There's even a common being-washed-up-prone-on-a-beach scene. The central character played by Leo DiCaprio is very similar as well, "conflicted, tortured by their own demons, needs to deal with their past" et cetera. I almost wonder if there is some event in Leo's history, like he killed his wife or something which leads him to play in these movies.

But the choices are good. Inception is one of the better movies I have seen recently and I feel like I've been fortunate enough to have seen some good ones recently. Mostly because there is a good ending, which is so important to me. It is hilarious, those last few seconds, and make this rather long movie as brilliant as it is. Without such a quietly genius scene, the movie suffers a little too much from what I'll call "Star Trek Syndrome"

In Star Trek, there was often a great idea that was explored for a little while. It was intriguing, an idea that really made a person say, "wow! What if! Hmm!" and then, after the conflict was established, the only solution offered was Captain Kirk punching an alien in the face. Curtain.

Inception is the same way. A wonderful idea, but none of the characters can think of a wiser way to deal with anything in a whole fictional dream world than shooting it. Woo. Lack of imagination in a world of imagination. I don't know why they needed to use certain devices so much when nothing was real; they really could have used Neo.

It is still a "Good Movie". I liked it, at least.

Black Beauty (movie, 1994)

Black Beauty; a classic of a movie. But for the life of me, I cannot understand why: "I Was Bored".

There is some rather phenominal cinematography in places which reminded me of the shots that Milo and Otis achieved. And the story line is alright, I think, but it is hard to tell under the surface veneer which is so sooty and tarnished. The central problem with this film was the way it was told. With unabashed narration. There's hardly any dialog and really no other characters than the central one who is just telling you why his life is so hard. The moving pictures are supposed to "show" you, but what the film-makers should  have been told before they began is that having video is not the same thing as "showing". There was, for me, not emotional connection to the characters. There was nothing personal in its creation.

Instead, I spent most of the movie trying to decide how much abuse their equine actors sustained in the making of the movie. I don't think it was as much as one would expect, the horses rarely have their ears laid back, so at least the movie avoids that cruel irony.