Elvina

I have to ask did you stay for the extra scene at the end of the credits? If not, the Wikipedia entry has a description about it. The scene is interesting, but does bring a finality to my books on one of the plot lines.

Yup. I made my husband wait around because I knew something was coming. I'd missed it twice before in the cinemas, not knowing it would be there.

 

However, I do have a couple complaints. One is the major battle...it's not the drag down fight with armada vs. armada and Beckett's final scene to me wreeks of they ran out of FX budget...

Yeah, I agree on that point and forgot to write about it.

 

Spiderman 3 ~

 

I went and saw this after reading some reviews here, even after being warned off by some friends. I can't believe I spend the price of a movie ticket to see this crap.

 

"Emo Parker" was so laughable that most of the "serious" nature of this film completely passed me by. It was also incredibly predictable. I saw what was coming with Hobgoblin, and as well with the guy who becomes Venom. What was the deal with that stupid dance sequence!? We already got the point by then that Parker was losing it. If it was all a setup for what happened to MJ, it took forever and was pretty incredulous. The movie itself seemed to drag on for ages. About three separate times I thought the movie would end, but it just... kept... going...

 

The only thing that made this movie slightly bearable was the fact that there were about four guys sitting behind us who kept snickering and cracking jokes all through the movie. They seemed to think it as incredulous as us, and we were paying more attention to what they were saying than the twaddle that was happening on the movie screen.

 

A terrible movie with any potential unused. Rubbish. I rate it one angry face out of five angry faces.

 

 

The Holiday ~

 

This movie starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet looked funny in the previews I saw, so I rented it out on DVD and watched it with my hubby and a friend. Bad move. The premise was kind of amusing, and I enjoy Kate Winslet's acting, but very soon the movie Cameron Diaz was explaining her life story to her new beau - over and over again, I might add! - and the movie began dragging on unbearably. It came to the point where we were booing the screen whenever Cameron Diaz appeared, and I even ended up fast forwarding her parts by popular demand. Kate Winslet was great. Her story was more interesting than Diaz's, and her lines were far less redundant. Diaz seemed to just talk, talk, talk, repeating herself continually more often than not.

 

The Holiday had some funny parts, but overall was boringly overlong. I think the director would have done better to concentrate on Kate Winslet's character instead of Diaz's. I must sound anti-Diaz here. I don't mean to. She was good, but whoever wrote the dialogue and/or edited this movie didn't do a very good job and the movie suffers for it.

 

Two cups of English tea out of five; just for Kate. :)

 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End~

 

An enjoyable addition to the Pirates movies. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I had high hopes seeing as Geoffrey Rush is back in it. He didn't disappoint, and neither did any of the other actors. I liked that this movie seemed to focus more on the characters of Captains Balbosa and Swallow, and Elizabeth, rather than on Will. The ending was a pleasant surprise in that I hadn't expected a Disney movie to do what they did to one of the main characters. It wasn't a happy ending for all, but a conclusion was definitely reached in the movie, and I left feeling that it had been wrapped up rather nicely, with plenty of room to expand into a Pirates 4. The interplay between Balbosa and Swallow was hilarious, and it was interesting seeing what happened with Davy Jones. After a run of bad movie viewing lately, and despite the knowledge that Pirates 3 was three hours long, I really enjoyed this movie.

 

Five Arrs! out of five! :D :D

memory

oblivious

lose

Horrible

"This would be fine if I was the bride at a pagan wedding," cried Moire, naked in the downpour since she had locked herself outside wearing only a thin blanket that was now sopping wet and completely see-through. She banged on the metal casings of the nearby drainpipes shouting, "Let me in!" at the top of her lungs, praying for deliverance before her neighbours could see her.

 

 

New words:

 

Eruditeness

Lecher

Enlightened

Grubby

medieval

still

C'mon!

 

 

 

(Only beause I got that song in my head, you know: "Celebrate good times, come on...!")

falling

friend

awesome

parrot

drunk lambs

 

 

16 Blocks - I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, rented out only because I saw a trailer at the video store and it didn't look too bad. I expect good acting from Bruce Willis, and although I feel he was a little underused in this story, it wasn't so bad that I didn't enjoy it.

 

Bruce Willis plays Jack Mosley, an aging, burnt-out detective who seems intent on drinking his way through what's left of his life. By chance, he is assigned the unenviable task of transporting a man he thinks is a convict (Mos Def) from jail to a courthouse 16 blocks away. An easy assignment, his boss tells him.

 

Along the way Mosely decides to stop by a local liquor store to get a bottle of fortification, leaving Def's character in the car, much to his consternation. Mosely ignores Def's rambling about how he has to be in court by ten, thinking him just another criminal and they have plenty of time for a pit stop.

 

What Mosely doesn't know, however, is that Def is really supposed to testify against Mosley's colleagues, and the entire NYPD wants him dead. When the hit men come for Def, Mosley must choose between loyalty to his colleagues and protecting the witness. He discovers his reflexes aren't as slow as everyone thought when it counts...

 

I loved the way they show Mosely's reflexes. I thought it was all over at the very beginning, but director Richard Donner did a great job in showing Mosely's reaction to things that are happening so quickly, and that helped draw me into this beaten-down character who's still got something left in him. Made me wonder how good he'd once been if this is how it is for him now.

 

Mos Def played his part well also, although his way of speaking kind of grated at me and I sometimes found it hard to understand. David Morse was a good antagonist; I usually like him in his roles.

 

All in all, I thought 16 Blocks was not great, but good. Simple entertainment if you want to watch something with a bit of action and an interesting twist at the end.

 

~Elvina

I'm happy to give you feedback for something you've written, but I'm not sure why you're posting something someone else wrote... do you want feedback for it - or her... or something...?

So... Are you planning on posting more than this?

I don't have much time to comment right now, but the impression I got from this was telling, telling, telling. It's like your focus in the telling is not on the action, what moves the plot along, but on what's happening, if that makes sense. For example:

He heard a shout of victory and jerked his head towards a sudden rush of enemy soldiers where they had broken through the Triceran lines and were rushing through to the tattered walls. He raised his hand again, sending a flaming boulder from the demolished section of wall screaming into the midst of the triumphant soldiers.

Instead of making the narrative more active by showing the action first, and then Ceran's reaction to it, this reads more slowly because of the order in which you tell things. Also, you switched the attention to quickly from something minute - the rubies - to something large scale and happening elsewhere - what's happening on the battlefield. A new paragraph was needed there, and some more description of what the setting would have been very helpful; I had little clue as to the setting of this.

 

Sorry if that sounds harsh. Like I said I don't have much time so I'm probably being brusque. This story has definate potential. Is it the opening of a story or some other part?

 

Elvina

Thanks! And what a bummer that the site has to resort to that. Mutters, "Spammers..."

YAY! It's over! No more of this:

 

*is left with a novel that has no direction*

 

Gah. I think a rewrite is in order.

 

Well done to all of you who made it, though, and good try to those who gave it a shot but found that life intruded a little to much (or were just lazy like Venefyxatu - Bwahahahaha!).

 

Merry Christmas to you all!

 

Elvina

So, ermm, is a 21-letter word enough? Well, I hope so, because I'm putting forth the first word for the Bs.

 

Beryl

 

Meaning: a mineral, beryllium aluminum silicate, Be3Al2Si6O18, usually green, but also blue, rose, white, and golden, and both opaque and transparent, the latter variety including the gems emerald and aquamarine: the principal ore of beryllium.

The Prestige

 

Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London, this story is about two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy - full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences. From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier (Huge Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making them fierce enemies-for-life and consequently jeopardizing the lives of everyone around them.

 

This story has a killer twist at the end. It's not so much a killer twist in that you never saw it coming - which you don't (or, at least, me and hubby didn't). It's more that you come out of the movie still dealing with the ramifications of the killer twist. I spent a good bit of my evening afterwards thinking about how much some foreshawdowed things all made sense now.

 

I was actually almost bored at the start of this movie. It jumps around a LOT, but that's part of what gets you engrossed once things start happening. I don't think I was really engrossed until maybe half an hour into it. The story turns very morbid, especially at the end. Huge Jackman was great, though his accent was a little off. Strange, since he played the Duke in Kate & Leopold with a perfect English accent, but then I guess that particular high-English accent had no part being spoken by a turn-of-the-century non-Duke English magician.

 

I didn't like how morbid it became as it progressed, or the depths to which these two characters went in their competitiveness, but the story and the ending are still quite good from a technical standpoint. For that reason, four stars.

 

Elvina

Congrats!

Mission Impossible III

 

This movie was better than I thought it would be, but certainly not something you need your brain switched on to watch. Even with my brain as dormant as I could make it, I was still prone to the occasional: "What? You've gotta be kidding me!", and a rare "Oh, puh-lease!" Tom Cruise was good in this role, I thought. I can't help thinking every time I watch him that no one ever uses him properly in a movie. Maybe that's just something to do with the way he acts, though, since I've yet to see a movie in which he really just looks natural.

 

This was JJ Abramms' first feature film (the director who brought us Alias). There are some great camera angles in this film that made things more interesting for me, like when Ethan lands on the building roof and slids under the camera, which goes upsidedown to follow him down the glass and we get a great, bold geometric shot that really makes you feel the height and just look interesting. Also, the helicopter chase through the windmills was a little different, which was good. The stunt raved about in the extras - where something explodes behind Tom and he's thrown into a parked car - seemed unbelieveable to me. This is mainly due to the fact that he is thrown sideways, not forwards. Come on, people! Who get's thrown sideways when the exploding force is directly behind you??

 

Maggie Q was great. I wished I'd seen more of her. Her dress was fantastic. Philip Seymour Hoffman was good. I'm glad we see more of him not only as the bad guy, but as the good guy playing the bad guy, which he did well. He wasn't really a match for Ethan physically in this film, but thankfully it wasn't just about good guy and bad guy beating the daylights out of one another, or just shooting everything up. I still want to know what the Rabbit's Foot is. The hypothesis put forth only ever remained just that.

 

I was pleasantly surprised by Keri Russell in this action role. Her first? I'm not sure. I thought she did a good job, though. I didn't think Michelle Monaghan who played Ethan's fiance was anything really special.

 

Overall, a good switch-off-the-brain-and-watch movie if you're in an action mood, with some interesting sets, settings, twists on old chases, and camera usage. I'd give it three and a half out of five stars.

 

Elvina