This is the end for now.

Goodbye my friends.

Movie review: District 9

What a cool movie.
Yesterday I saw this one,

District 9 is the first feature movie of South African director Neill Blomkamp. Is basically the apartheid with the aliens, is even set in South Africa!

Is astonishing to see what a rookie director managed to do. I think being the protégé of Peter Jackson must be really helpful. At first he was supposed to do the Halo movie but luckily that one was stuck in development hell and so we got this masterpiece which is actually a revised and expanded edition of a short movie that Blomkamp directed 4 years ago, "Alive in Joburg".

This is a high concept movie that doesn’t shy from taking risks. The aliens are not pretty. There is a reason they are called "Prawns". They are scavengers, obnoxious and terrible. Our hero is not a good person. In the beginning of the movie he roasts alive some alien eggs while cracking jokes. He is a bureaucrat, he tends to flee when in danger and he is not very good at fighting.

The transformation is definitely unsettling.

The actor playing the protagonist, Sharlto Copley is a nobody. Actually he got the part because he was the protagonist of "Alive in Joburg". Well, he did a wonderful job. He put to shame a lot of incredibly paid Hollywood actors.

The special effect are top notch but when the director is an ex special effect guru this is not surprising. The aliens are really aliens and not the same men in suit with a little prosthetics. The mother ship is wonderful and the alien weaponry is really cool.

A lot of the movie is shoot as a fake documentary giving to the entire tale a very realistic undertone, here we have a director willing the search a difficult shot, an innovative way to show what is happening, willing to experiment.

Maybe the only part that left me unsatisfied is that in the end we still don't know why the aliens are here but considering that they are already talking about a sequel we can wait.

This is a masterpiece that every scifi fan should see.

Movie review: Live!

This is certainly a high concept movie. We follow TV producer Eva Mendes who conceive a new show based on Russian roulette. She logically faces a lot of opposition in her bid to bring death to the TV audience.

To further complicate matters there is a documentary crew following her every move and the movie that we watch is the fictional documentary that they produced.

For such an interesting concept the movie is strangely bleak. Probably is the fake documentary gimmick but a movie with almost no soundtrack, with only one camera angle, no voiceover can be really strange. It is also largely devoid of rhythm.

Eva Mendes cares about the subject and probably produced the movie as a vehicle to finally show her artist prowess but alas she largely failed. She does a good job but her character is sadly unbelievable. Too determined in her quest to air Russian roulette, too oblivious to any moral objection she is a single character.

As a satire this feels flat compared to the recent and splendid efforts like “Thank you for smoking” and “Lord of war”.

The best bit is certainly the fake TV show. The final scene is honestly unnerving probably because we know that if it was legal a TV would certainly air a show like this one.

Anime review: Beck Mongolian Chop Squad

Beck is a Japanese animation series. It’s a long one, 26 episodes, originally made for the TV.

This is a classic coming of age story. Our young hero, Koyuki, is a teenage boy who doesn’t know what to do with his life. A chance encounter with a young guitarist, Kiosuke, and he found a new reason to life in an Indie rock band, the namesake Beck.

The story is relatively simple but this is strength for this anime. We don’t have to think too much about it while watching and is nice to see our heroes making stride in the harsh world of music. Good things won’t last because in the second part of the anime the author, probably in a creative crisis, comes up with a terrible plot about an evil rapper gangster which is completely out of synch with the rest of the story.

The direction is competent and the animation of decent quality. The design of the characters is somewhat rough and so we have a guy who is depicted with his eyes perennially closed, another who seems much older than is actual age and, generally speaking, the facial animation aren’t that good.

Having said that there is a good sense of storytelling at work. The final concert is really nice and you can even see the developing of some characters.

If you don’t like the genre this will never convert you but for everybody else this is a nice viewing.

Movie review: Goodfellas

So last night I finally get to see “Goodfellas”. This is a very famous movie, the kind of movie that every movie lover should see at least once in his lifetime. Martin Scorsese masterpiece. Empire Magazine gave him 5 stars. The best of the many Scorsese – De Niro collaborations.

So I sit down and finally watch it and I must say that for me is not that good.

Bear with me I am not saying that is actively bad. But it was a somewhat void experience. My girlfriend nailed it right when she said that we couldn’t feel emotion from it. That it wasn’t gripping.

For me it was like watching a documentary. A very good documentary but a documentary nonetheless.

Look how the mobsters live! See the charm of their lifestyle! Their brutality! Their love for pasta!

All well shot and well edited, all probably true (Especially the food part which for me was very amusing) but as a story this was severely lacking. No development at all.

The terrible first post

The terrible first post.

Certainly is an act of Hubris to start a blog. By definition you presume that you will be writing something worth reading.

I also decided to write in English, to better my writing in that language. Because I’m not English but I’ve been living for a year in an English speaking country.

So to write something worthwhile in a different language. We’ll see where I’ll get.

Back to the terrible first post.

What prompted me to start this?

The one and only Neil Gaiman.

I love his comics, his books, everything that he’s been doing. I like so much what he does that is difficult for me to express it in a reasonable way. Maybe this is a good topic for another post.

Anyway Gaiman has been writing a blog for years. When questioned about this he answered that for him is like stretching is writing muscles before starting the actual writing and that when it will become an obligation he will stop it.

This is very cool and I think he is right. Practice makes perfect but I can’t start by writing “The divine comedy”, I must first heat up.

The other day he was in Edinburgh for the book festival. Being myself I was too late for the tickets of his talk with Ian Rankin. I thought that I could meet him afterward and get a book signed but the girls in the signing tent told me that I could have a signed copy only after the people with a ticket. This was meaning many hours of queue.

I was dejected but while I was going away I caught a glimpse of the man himself entering the event tent. He even smiled in my direction but before I could even wave my hand he had to enter.

So here I am because if I don’t do this thing now after seeing Neil Gaiman in person I’ll never do it and I’m not ready to give up my dreams.

So long