Kimputer's Weblog

Period drama that brings Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet back together, with this time their relationship heading for a figuratively ice berg.
Shown is only a small fraction of life, focusing on work and every day life, and how to escape it. Besides this, there’s not much to experience. The story feels limited and small-ish, and doesn’t really take you anywhere. Can’t say it’s really easy to identify with the main characters at all.6.

A small indie movie with a strange title that might be considered deceiving. The trailer has the same problem (focusing on an terrorist attack), as the itself is more of a weird mix of love, grief and anything inbetween.
It’s an unbalanced heap of strange human behaviour (mostly the main female lead), so it’s hard to really recommend this, even with names like Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams attached. The story doesn’t follow the way you want it either, with strings left dangling, and focusing on nonsensical inner narrative and dialogue.5-.

A contender for the upcoming kudo season, but I’m not so impressed. Sure, the make-up is great, showing Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in their better and worse years (though the sharp-eyed will see some CGI remnants floating on top of the bodies). Sure the outline sounds interesting.
But in the end, it runs too long, and still has the feeling of a normal Hollywood flick. Acting is good, but not phenomenal. Also the story is a bit slim and linear.
So, curiosity solved.7-.

Yes, it’s funny. No, it’s not hilarious. This is just your run of the mill comedy. The outline is funny, and the rest of the story builds on it, though in a somewhat predictable way. Overall, it’s a nice life message mashed inbetween work, plus a cute love story is intertwined. Easily identifyable, so it works great, but doesn’t leave a deep impression.7+.

While Will Smith has proven to be the most bankable actor in recent years, the specialty drama flicks he produces aren’t exactly the box office hits. At $58 million domestic, Ali could be considered a bomb, and Seven Pounds only performs slightly better (with his actioners easily averaging around $150 million).
So people don’t want to see Will perform well in dramas, but this movie adds a layer of mystery to it, with posters and trailers keeping a tight lid on the story. The story though, proves to be quite easily guessable, and it’s executed in a slow and predictable way. Performance are okay, so as a whole, it’s good, but not overly special.7½.

Ron Howard is an acclaimed drama director, and he knows how to give every movie a special twist. Still, somehow most of his movies are just above average, with the truly memorable dating back from the eighties and nineties.
This one is no different, a movie leading up to just one interview, filmed analogous to a Rocky boxing movie. The strategy, the training, the sparring and ultimately the final confrontation. It’s quite interesting, but honestly, the trailer seemed more explosive. The interview might be a bright spot in real history, but in movie history, while good, it’s still missing the wow-factor.7½.

Pair up Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, and you’re in for something special. These two dinosaurs are guaranteed some explosive scenes together (for instance, the meetings in Heat).
Jon Avnet however, just takes advantage of their names. Both actors do their parts, but the characters are just so plain. The story isn’t that much either, depending on just one twist.
Nice try, but total waste of talent. This is definitely one to miss (or just one to download).5.

A Woody Allen movie, starring Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, in a quick relationship-exploring light play. Movie is dialogue heavy, but only in a frivolous way. If you’re into Woody Allen movies, this one might be for you, mostly focusing on the sex and passion part of the relationship, but never having a real message or bright insight into the matter.6½.

Baz Luhrmann takes a 7 year break (after the award winning Moulin Rouge!), to get things going big, in the form of a eye catching 2 and a half hour long attempt to sell us Australia. Heck, if this long running ad wasn’t enough, he was offered a job to do some more TV spots after finishing the movie.
Yes, you could get sold watching this movie, with lots of wide angle scenery shots of desert, mountains and oceans. The characters however, didn’t pay off that easy.
It’s actually your basic different society love story with its usual relationship hurdles. To my feeling, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman don’t match up too well, but the story takes all kind of other turns, trying to insert some real life Aboriginal history (the Stolen Generation), but for supposed cinematic reasons, also inserts some mysticism. It literally takes a page out of a random X-Men or Wolverine comic (fans will know what I mean, with the extra irony of Hugh Jackman starring), and that’s just too laughable.
So, big budget, basic entertainment. Nothing more.6½.

Another Adam Sandler vehicle, relying heavily on role-playing, but luckily, no obnoxious characters in sight (a la Waterboy), so it’s quite bearable. Clearly made for kids in mind, the fantasy outline seems nice and opens limitless possibilities, though it still leads to a pretty predictable main storyline.
British comedian Russell Brand is a good addition to the cast, while Courteney Cox is obviously typecast.
All in all, not bad for a comedy in the Sandler genre.7+.

In an immensely lazy movie, I start my reporting with a video that’s not even mine ! The fact is, the last day of 2008, I forgot my camera. Actually, I was thinking the search for my Fujifilm Finepix S2000HD would be an easy one. It proved not to be. And I was left New Year’s Eve cameraless.
So, here’s a YouTube link of a fairly well documented shot. Don’t forget to click the “View in high quality” link right under the video.
Of course, it’s nowhere near the quality you’d expect from me (old cam, high res widescreen 848×480 pixels, new camera 1280×720 resolution), but it’s the best you’ll have to do with (till next year, I guess). Enjoy.

I should’ve seen it coming. Green screens, virtual studios. It’s supposed to open a whole new world of movie making. But like Frank Miller’s previous projects (300, Sin City), it’s just dark and bleak. It’s both limiting the experience, and there’s no atmosphere to speak of.
Again, you have narrative that irritates to the bone, the same dull self exploratory dialogue that leads nowhere. It tries to be both darkly serious and funny at the same time, and acting is typically comic-ish. It would be all good and nice, if only the story would be amazing. But it wasn’t.
Go if you are both an Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson and a Samuel L. Jackson fan, otherwise, let it go (along with Sin City 2 and 3 and 301).5.

A book to movie conversion, but somehow I think the book title must’ve been “How to make vampires boring”. Clearly written for teens, they still manage to make the story slow, and non-eventful. The vampire aspect is cliche, and only one visual aspect is introduced as something new.
Acting is the most gruelling point for this movie, with the main characters spitting out dialogue as if on the toilet with a major bowel obstruction.
Then it has to have cool vampire action in it, right ? No action is worth mentioning, both in originality and in screen time. All in all, a complete waste of time.3.

Clint Eastwood seems to have a knack for dramas, and he spurns out one again, again directing a story based on true facts (like his previous movies Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima). How preposterous the story seems, the facts are real, and Clint shows it in a natural way. Slowly building up and going through several phases, each lighting up another aspects. Themes like supressed women come by. And the powerful female character portrayed by Angelina Jolie (award worthy), fighting for justice, rings true (again, like his previous movie, Million Dollar Baby). As a drama, Clint hits all chords with subtlety, and makes you cheer for the underdog.7½.

Happy Belated New Year to y’all. A full week too late, but hey, with at least a few Terabit internet connection lines (most notably SEA ME WE 3 and 4) severed before Christmas, the ping times reached over 1 second with all traffic from Tapei rerouted through the US first. Internet to overseas was therefore nigh impossible.
Now that I’m back in Europe, I can comfortably do everything I did before again. Watch out for more picture updates, now in 10 Mpixel ! Halfway through the journey, I picked up a new Fujifilm Finepix S2000HD, so I could ditch my old Panasonic DMC-FZ7 (other updated specs and improved functionality include 15x zoom, use of zoom _during_ filming, higher resolution movies (now at a whopping 1280×720), use of SDHC cards, use of AA batteries instead of proprietary, no need for full operation (extend lense, both unncessary and eating power) for view mode). And all that for barely the same price.