The Hunger Games and Stage Fright

The Hunger Games

(Mild Spoilers)

It's been a while since I've seen a movie in theaters.  It's been an even longer while since I've come out of a newly released movie and just been unabashedly excited about the movie.  The Hunger Games is awesome!  However, I have not read the books so I am very curious to hear what fans of the book think of the movie.

The movie is well crafted.  It draws you into the dystopian reality of The Hunger Games immediately.  You can tell that there are rules, customs, and traditions to the world: the contrast between the capital and wealthier districts and the poorer districts, the mocking jay, the horrendously bright fashion of the people in the cities, the sick tradition of the Reapings, and the games themselves.  It also does a good job building the suspense.  Even though I knew something was going to pop out from the woods or that the countdown clock was going to get to the start soon, I was nervous for the characters for what was going to happen next.

Katniss Everdeen is a fantastic heroine.  She's genuinely tough (nicely played by Jennifer Lawrence)-rough around the edges.  I appreciated that she was motivated by her family to make it through the games.  It's refreshing to see a heroine motivated not by romantic love but by something else- the sheer will to survive and familial love.  I wish we got to see more of Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and I'm interested to learn more about him as the series progresses.  He had a very natural chemistry with Katniss.  And then there's Peeta (Josh Hutcherson).  I appreciated that early on, they establish Katniss and Peeta as having different strengths, and in many ways their strengths are complementary.  (On a side note, don't you love the unstated rule of how YAs have characters with fascinating names?)  Another little thing I also appreciated was the nod to fans and fandoms.  There're the viewing parties as well as the snarky note from the parachute for Katniss and Peeta ("You call that a kiss?").    

I'm not sure how great of a movie it'll be on a second viewing.  It tells a good story well, but I feel like knowing the story already takes away from the excitement of the initial viewing.  I am, however, fascinated by the world in the Hunger Games and I want to learn more- I want to learn about the background- how did the districts come about?  Why hasn't there been an uprising already?  Overall, great movie and great performances.  I'm excited to see what happens in the series (if I don't pick up the books before then).  


Stage Fright

I caught this on TCM the other day with the movie about 30 minutes in.  Not knowing the name of the movie or too much about it, I was drawn in.  I was even more captivated when Hitchcock popped on the screen in one of his signature cameos.

Stage Fright is about Eve Gill (Jane Wyman) who involves herself in a murder mystery when her friend Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd) comes to her with a problem: the police suspect Jonathan of murdering his lover-actress Charlotte Inwood's (Marlene Dietrich) husband.  Eve is convinced of Jonathan's innocence and sets out with her father (Alastair Sim) to gather evidence to prove Jonathan's innocence.

The characters are all well developed and likable.  In particular, the female characters in this film were really great.  Eve's a great heroine to root for- she's plucky and smart.  And Charlotte, just when you think you know her, you see another facet of her and you almost feel bad for her in the end.  I liked the relationship between Eve and her father- in many ways, it reminded me of my favorite father-daughter duo Keith and Veronica Mars.  The only character who didn't really work was Ordinary Smith, the detective, who for plot purposes was important but generally just felt flat and one-dimensional.  He seemed to get more boring as the movie continued.        

There are some really gorgeous, well made scenes in this movie.  One of my favorites is when Jonathan finally hugs Eve-it's all she thinks she's wanted for a long time, but right then and there, all she wants is to hear Smith play the piano again.  While Stage Fright, for the most part, maintains a humorous tone, you also learn why Hitchcock is known as the master of suspense.

The Descendants and Once Upon a Time

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The Descendants 

The Descendants is about Matt King (George Clooney), a real estate lawyer, whose wife is in the hospital after a boating accident.  He has to reconnect with his two daughters Alex (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) and also make a big decision about his inherited family land.  

I had the pleasure of watching this movie last weekend.  It's a fine, grown up adult movie with really great performances.  Clooney, who just keeps getting better and better, is excellent in this.  I was also very impressed by Woodley and Miller.  It's nice to see children not depicted as cliches or stereotypes.  

All in all, a really intimate story that felt immensely personal.  There are moments from it that you stick with you long afterwards, in particular Matt's final exchange with his wife.    

Once Upon a Time 

Once Upon a Time is a new series on ABC about fairy tale characters trapped in the quaint town of Storybrooke.  Emma Swan, a newcomer to the town, is the only one who can break the spell.  

I love fairy tales so I was really excited about this show.  I like that it has leaned more towards the darker elements of the stories instead of just going for the candy coated Disney versions that I loved when I was a kid.  Both can be done well (see Enchanted for the later).  

So far, Once Upon a Time is interesting.  There are overarching mysteries and characters that you really want to root for: Emma, her son, Snow White, the Prince, and even Rumpelstiltskin who actually plays a large role.  There've been a few moments that have just blown me away and I'm really hoping to see more of those  moments, like the ending of the pilot when the clock starts ticking or the Snow White and Prince Charming story.   A few weak points: their version of Cinderella has so far been the weakest of the stories and also sometimes Regina, the queen just falls flat.         

The Godfather

So I finally watched the Godfather (I and II only).

Some thoughts:

• As a big Simpsons fan, I watched some of the episode commentaries. At one point, someone said that they'd done so many parodies of the Godfather that they could probably do a Simpsons version of the Godfather with just Simpson clips.  After watching the Godfather and having those awesome "oh that's where that reference comes from," it looks entirely possible.  
• On the note of those classic moments- those very famous scenes and moments- they are all completely worth it in the Godfather Part I.  Even though I knew roughly what was going to happen (e.g. what the movie producer would find in his bed), it didn't take away from how great the scenes were. 
• Part I >>>Part II.  
• There's the storytelling where I liked how they kept certain aspects of the story ambiguous throughout so that there was always that mystery, whereas, early on in part II, we find the answer to one of the big questions so it's not nearly as satisfying as it should be when we see the characters finally figuring it out.   
• Brando.  Brando. Brando.  In a lot of ways, he really made part I.  After watching part I, I just wanted to snatch up all the Brando movies I could find and watch them.  Part II really felt like it was missing something and even though we got to see Vito Corleone's early days (by De Niro who does very well), there wasn't quite enough of Vito.  
• I experienced the Benjamin Button effect watching part II.  Let me explain, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Forrest Gump but not nearly as good) is an okay movie, but the last 20 minutes or so are really quite good (compared to the rest of the movie).  I'm not sure if I would have thought the last 20 minutes were good on their own, but having gone through the whole 2 hour long + movie, it really was a good ending.   
• In part II, the flashback at the end to the Corleones when they're all still back in New York was fantastic.  My favorite scene of the movie hands down.  It really makes you miss how things used to be and it was nice to see some old faces again and quite sad to see how things have changed.  
• In some ways, the Godfather is an awesome Thanksgiving movie.  It's about family and there's constantly food around and...anyhow, I'm stretching it.   Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

On TV Shows: Underappreciated

Party Down:

Party Down was a fantastic show on Starz (Wait Starz has TV shows?  Yes, apparently.) that only lasted 2 seasons, for a total of 20 awesome episodes.  Party Down is about the Party Down catering company- a group of aspiring Hollywood hopefuls (many of them delusionally so) who half-assly cater various parties.  There's Henry Pollard (Adam Scott who's now on Parks and Recreation) a failed actor who's known for his one line in a commercial, aspiring comedian Casey (Lizzy Caplan), always trying his best caterer manager Ron Donald (Ken Marino), blindly optimistic Constance (Jane Lynch), nerdy sci-fi writer Roman (Martin Starr), and dumb blonde Kyle (Ryan Hansen) who's in the "handsome business."  Lydia (Megan Mullally), a single mom, joins the second season.  


Party Down starts falling into a great groove three episodes in.  Everyone is funny and  likable.  It's TV-MA so it can and often does do a lot of great raunchy humor.  The characters really meld well together and they establish a really great dynamic and rhythm.  Scott and Caplan also have fantastic chemistry, and Henry and Casey probably fall on my list of all time favorite fictional couples.  It's also a treat for former Veronica Mars fans b/c a lot of the characters make guest appearances on the show.  Hansen and Marino were consequently characters on Veronica Mars.    




Party Down is a really great show.  It's one of those shows I still get excited about when I hear that someone has watched it before.  Catch it on Netflicks sometime.  


Community

There's recent news that Community is probably not going to get a 4th season.  I can see how Community is a unique comedy that doesn't appeal to everyone- it's quirky and very meta, but it is a really great show.  I've rarely seen a show that's delved so deeply into the meta and done it well.  


Community is about a group of friends who all go to the same crazy community college.  I still like Season 1 of Community the best.  Every episode was balanced funny and touching aspects.  The show features very unique characters you don't often see featured on TV shows like a senior citizen (Chevy Chase) or a nerdy athlete (Donald Glover) or a movie nerd who potentially has Asperger's (Danny Pudi).  The characters grew over time and by the end of season 1, all of them have become quite likable- you buy them as a group of friends and each of the characters are funny in their own way.  I'm still very impressed with how they really do try to get all the characters to interact with each other.    


Season 2 felt very experimental- the show went off and tried lots of different tones.  Some worked well like the fake documentary episode and the fantastic Dungeons and Dragons episode, while others had more mixed results like the more serious the Group takes a trip to the bar episode.  It was still fascinating to watch, and even got into some uncomfortable territory when the Group starts excluding one of its own members.  


Season 3, so far, seems more balanced than season 2 and features one of the best Alternate Universe episodes ever.  Here's to hoping it doesn't stay off the air for too long.    

Better Off Ted 

Better Off Ted is another short lived comedy that was canceled just after ~26 episodes.  It was really funny, entertaining, featured a really strong cast of characters (including Portia de Rossi), and had an insanely cheerful score.   


Better Off Ted is about an evil corporation- Veridian Dynamics.  There's the protagonist and moral center of the show, Ted (Jay Harrington), who as one reviewer described perfectly, is a cross between Woody (Toy Story) and George Clooney.  There's also his super aggressive boss Veronica (really great performance by de Rossi), adorable meek scientists who are joined at the hip (figuratively) Phill and Lem, and rebellious product tester, Linda.  

A few trailers

I'm procrastinating so here's a quick update:

Here are three of the best trailers I've seen in the past few months.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo : One of the best trailers I have seen in a long time.  It's eye catching- the cutting and the music (I cannot wait to listen to the full version of that song- it sounds amazing) are really well done.  Although watching the trailer again after watching the original Swedish version of the film, if you know the story, I feel like you can place the scenes you get quick glimpses of really quickly.  I thought the original film was fine.  It was a solid movie with an interesting mystery, but it was definitely one of those movies that relied more on plot than characters.  There are various reasons why I'd rewatch a movie, but I can't imagine myself wanting to go out of my way to rewatch this one (not that it was a bad movie, it was interesting and solid) since I already know what happens.        

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: There's a newer trailer for this one floating around online but I far prefer the first one.  It really uses the music well to establish this great, taut, tense mood.  I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie.

Take Shelter: this looks intriguing.

Also a kudos for the Muppets for their parody trailers.    

Here's to hoping there're good movies as well.

Art

I work in a pretty technical field so I don't think about art, in the general sense often.  I still remember in one of my literature classes as an undergraduate, one of the most striking things I learned was the power of art.  My professor gave a simple example: in World War II, after both of the atomic bombs had been dropped, there were the devastating statistics, of course, of just how many people died and how many people would continue to die much later from radiation poisoning. But it really wasn't until she and many other people saw this picture, a school girl's tin lunch box where the peas in her lunch had carbonized that they really connected to something human and emotional about the bombings.  (see here)

In light of a recent decade anniversary, here is a youtube video from Story Corps.  I've seen a few of Story Corps videos and they are fantastic.  They are a national project to record people's stories and memories.  There's some really moving stuff of the site.

Oldies

They don't make em like they used to.  I've been getting into older stuff lately.  I've been watching black and white films and episodes of the The Twilight Zone that I hadn't seen yet.  I watched Sunset Blvd and The Apartment recently (aka my Billy Wilder kick) and they really made me miss how much more dialoguecentric films used to be.  Of course I think it's awesome that film-making technology has advanced so much, but in a lot of ways, that has also made films a lot more visual, which is fine but I do miss smart, sharp, banter.  On that note, one youtube movie reviewer I've enjoyed watching is The Blind Film Critic, who really provides a pretty fresh perspective on movies.  The explosions in the old movies really had to come from the words and the characters and not the special effects.  I was pleasantly surprised that I could take bathroom breaks while watching the movie and not miss out on too much when I came back and that if I wasn't looking at the screen the whole time, I could still get a general sense of what was going on.

Sunset Blvd

Sunset Blvd is a film noir about young Hollywood screenwriter, Joseph Gills (William Holden) and his relationship with aging, former silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson).  Gills is struggling financially when he first encounters Desmond and ends up becoming employed by Desmond. You've probably heard one of the many famous quotes from this movie or seen clips of this film at some point.  It's dark and Desmond is one of the most ambiguous characters on film ever.  I can't remember deciding whether or not I wanted to hate, pity, or like a character so much since watching Gollum in Lord of the Rings.  There are also so many little things in the movie, little details (the funeral, the story of that movie Desmond plans to star in, the unlocked doors) that make the whole movie intensely creepy- and that what we get to see in the movie is only just the surface.  All in all, it's a classic and definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of movies.  
  
The Apartment 

The Apartment is about CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon), a businessman who tries to get ahead in his company by letting executives at his company use his apartment for their own private affairs.  It's humorous in the first half or so but then suddenly turns quite serious when we learn more about the elevator girl that Baxter likes, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).  
   
A little bit of trivia: The Apartment (1960) was the last black and white film until the mostly black and white Schindler's List (1994) to win the best picture Oscar.

It's been a while since I've watched a movie where I found myself wondering and genuinely caring if everything was going to be all right for everyone in the end.  You're really not sure how things are going to turn out in the last act.  While the movie got more serious in the second half, I did appreciate the levity they  incorporated.  I'm still a bit torn about the ending and I wonder where the director, Billy Wilder, would have chosen to end the film if there really weren't any rules.  Also features one of my favorite creative uses of a tennis racket.  (see video above)

Twilight Zone


What's there not to like?  It has one of the creepiest opening sequences ever, great acting, fantastic writing, and stories that are relevant regardless of the time.  It's like reading really great short stories.
I wanted to highlight a few of my favorites.

• The After Hours- This was the first twilight zone episode I'd ever seen.  I saw it during one of the Sci-fi channel's yearly marathons and even though I was reluctant to watch something in black and white, the story really drew me.  The After Hours is about a woman who is looking for a special thimble in a department store.  She ends up on a strange, non-existent floor in the store.  The suspense and atmosphere in this one is really fantastic.  
• Lonely - This one breaks my heart, and it really makes you think about how people define what constitutes life.  Lonely is about a prisoner who is imprisoned on an asteroid.  His only company are the guards who deliver supplies to him four times a year.  After a disappointingly short visit, one of the guards gives him a female robot to keep him company.  The space suits are goofy but don't let it distract you from the rest of the story.       
• The Shelter- I'm surprised that fewer people cite this one on the notable twilight zone episodes.  It doesn't have any sci-fi elements, it's about a suburban neighborhoods that has just received a potential nuclear bomb threat and only one family on the street has a proper nuclear shelter.  The episode really hits at the core theme of many twilight zone episodes-fear bringing out the worst in people.  Definitely more believable and better executed than the more famous, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.  
• Other notable episodes:
• The Eye of the Beholder and Number 12 Looks Just Like You: The Eye of the Beholder is the quintessential Twilight Zone episode and if you haven't seen it, it's a really great place to start.  It does what Twilight Zone does best: twists your perception of things.  Both are about beauty and the importance that our society places on it.  Number 12 is thematically quite similar to Eye of the Beholder about a girl who refuses to go through an operation that will make her "pretty" and look like everyone else around her.  It really hits hard when she realizes that no one understands her desire to keep her looks so that she can preserve her identity.       
• A Stop at Willoughby and Walking Distance: Some of the two more "realistic" twilight zone episodes.  Both are well told and highly relatable.  I'm sure that everyone at some point  has just wanted to escape into their fantasy land as the overworked, stressed businessman in A Stop at Willoughby wishes to do or wanted to go back to the past, where another businessman actually gets to do in Walking Distance.         
• Perchance to Dream and Twenty Three: Two really great, haunting episodes about dreams.  Both are taut and suspenseful.  
• One for the Angels: I initially thought this one was a bit on the cheesy side, but the characters really grow on you.  It also gives you a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling at the end which is rather rare for the series.   Death comes to tell a salesman that he is going to die at midnight but the salesman opposes- he still has a lot he wants to do!  Namely he wants to make a fantastic sales pitch.  Death makes him a proposition: he will not collect the man's soul until he's completed the pitch.    
• The Silence: I keep thinking about this one, because it gets under my skin and reminds me of "The Gift of the Magi", that frustrating short story you probably read at some point in grade school , about the couple that buy each other presents by sacrificing something extremely precious to each other to get those presents.  The Silence, I think, is the polar opposite of that.  In The Silence, an older member of a country club gets annoyed at an extremely talkative young member of the club and makes a bet with him: if he can go for a whole year without talking, he will receive a large sum of money.