Book review: reaper man

Death is found guilty of having a personality and so it becomes mortal.

Death can be considered, strangely enough, one of the main characters of the discworld series. For starter it appeared on almost every book and all his appearances have been somewhat memorable.

For the uninitiated Death is a strangely sympathetic character. He somehow manages to do his day job without being scary at all and he really has got a quite distinctive personality.

He is my certainly my favorite character but honestly on this regard this book fails to deliver. Terry Pratchett simply didn’t have enough stuff to say to sustain a whole novel and so he interject death plot with another one, set in Ankh-Morpok, about a bizarre invasion and an undying wizard.

Not only he needed two mainly unrelated plots to make a book, those plots also aren’t very strong. Death one is of course the strongest but even that one manages to drag along a lot in the middle bit. The other one feels mainly like filler.

On the other hand the signature Discworld humor is still present in spades and some of the scenes show so much creativity that they are really worth the price of the book all by themselves.

DVD review: my name is Khan

The difficult life of a good natured Muslim in the post 9/11 world.

The stated goal of this movie was the make the somehow bridge the gap between Bollywood and western sensibilities. Bollywood movie are peculiar to say the least and it’s really difficult to get into them, I personally never watched more than a few minutes. On the other hand it is the most vital and most popular movie industry on the planet, far surpassing Hollywood both in the number of new releases and their popularity. Of course India is a relatively poor country, cinema tickets are much cheaper there so they earn far less than the equivalent American blockbuster.

As far as I’m concerned this movie is a success. It’s clearly different from the standard fare that we get here. It’s much more melodramatic, improbable things happens one on top of the other and there is an emotive streak underneath it all that’s more than a mile wide but luckily no dancing numbers.

The star Shahrukh Khan is Bollywood biggest star, he’s been called the Indian Tom Cruise, and he is actually very good. He plays an Asperger’s syndrome sufferer and he really manages to convey a lot of feelings for his character. It’s all really a lot Forrest Gumpish obviously but in a really good way. We couldn’t help but be moved by how Khan, he shares a name with the actor, goes through life. It’s honestly heartwarming.

This movie even got something important to say about how it’s really difficult for an honest, good natured Muslim person, because they do exist, to be what he is in this terror stricken world.

Overall it’s a must see movie.

DVD review: Get him to the Greek

An hapless low level talent scout needs to drag a degenerate rock start to his big comeback concert.

For many Aldous Snow, played by Russel Brand, was the real show stealer of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I didn’t share their enthusiasm, not a fan of Brand work, but I admit that the character is original and has a strange appeal. “Get him to the Greek”, therefore, is the spinoff starting Aldous Snow, this time relapsed on drugs, on a cross continental journey to the Greek theatre in Los Angeles (By the way it’s just me or these Californian really thinks that just name dropping the name of one of their theatres is normal business. Because they are so important that we know all their establishments by name!).

Anyway this time Snow character is even more egotistical and incredibly unsympathetic. He is a fictional version of Russel Brand public persona; they even share the same dress code. We sense a real problem with the introduction of his mismatched buddy, Aaron Green.

Jonah Hill always had trouble connecting with the audience. Due to his physique he doesn’t normally play the bad guy but that is actually the kind of role where he does excel. By the way, another strange fact, Jonah Hill doesn’t play the same character that he plays in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, I know it’s the same actor and they share the same insane obsession for Russel Brand in leather but they are actually two different people, they are not even related. I can only suspect that in the sequel we’ll discover that they are long lost twin.

So the first big problem is that there is virtually no body to root for. The humor, fundamental in a comedy, is of the lewd, cruel type. Aldous does terrible things, mainly to Aaron, all over the movie. It’s occasionally funny but overall it’s cringe worthy material.

Funnily enough the real show stealer is Rose Byrne Jackie Q as the incredibly vapid pop star and the mother of Aldous child but if this movie teaches us a lesson is that certain things works only in little portions. It’s like a cake, a slice is fine but the entire cake is a certain cause of indigestion.

DVD review: In the electric mist

An investigation among the swamps of Lousiana.

This movie was never released theatrically in USA and that’s really a shame. This is certainly no masterpiece and it could have been so much shorter but this is not direct tot dvd material.

King here is the mood. The swamps with their stories, the mists and the ghosts! are such a refreshing view after countless California set productions.

The story is wacky and really roundabout, it reminds me of a saner Tarantino. The main plot is fairly linear to follow but it’s interspaced with subplots that really out there. I don’t want to spoil too much but there is a ghost subplot which according to the guidebook on how to write a story should have been excided because it’s not really connected to the rest of the movie but in reality it’s somehow the high point of the story. It changes the story from an almost banal investigation into a kind of dreamy quest along the mists of the swamp.

Tommy Lee Jones basically plays himself but for once this is not a problem. This movie really needs the archetypical Tommy Lee Jones Character, the great grandson of the classic hard boiled detectives.

As I alluded in the beginning the only real problem is the running time. A movie that slow, because this is a really slow movie, needs to be shorter, at 112 minutes it gets really tiring near the end.

DVD review: MacGruber

Special Forces operative MacGruber fights evil in various ineffective ways.

MacGruber started as a sketch on Saturday Night Live, it was a parody of MacGyver, the famous TV series from the 80s where the titular character solves every situation by building incredibly complicated mechanism with what amount to just spare junk.

I never saw the original sketch but in movie form this really doesn’t work. First I think there should be a statute of limitation regarding parodies. I grew up in the 80s so I actually saw MacGyver and the rest of the stuff that they are referring to but honestly these things only work when the parodied object is fresh in the mind of the viewer. It should be an immediate recognition followed by a quick laugh not befuddlement followed by vague recollection of the original stuff. There is a reason nobody parodies Nixon any more.

The titular character is unsympathetic and simply not funny, as most of the supporting cast. Only Val Kilmer is half decent and has a lot of fun turning up the stereotypical action movie bad guy all the way to 11.

The story never finds his footing, you’ll smile a couple of times but really there is not enough in this MacGruber guy to sustain a whole movie.

DVD review: Creation

The story of Charles Darwin.

This is an extremely well made movie. A period drama starring Charles Darwin and his family that tries to tackle the subject of what a devout Christian like Darwin, and his wife, would have felt about the publication of “The origin of the species”, without any doubt a most damaging book for religion in general.

There is not a lot of interesting debates about the subject sadly but throughout the movie, probably thanks to the very good performances from Bettany and Connelly, we really get to feel the distress that Darwin discoveries brought to him and his family.

Although strangely the movie, instead of focusing on this very interesting thing, spends an inordinate amount of time on the relationship between Darwin and his eldest daughter, Anne. This is certainly not a bad thing in itself, it’s a really touching story, I just wonder why concentrate on this when you have a much juicier subject at hand. I can understand that there is a thematic relationship, that we naturally question the role and the very existence of god when a tragedy befalls, but I honestly believe that the filmmakers wanted a tragedy to make us care because they were scared that the movie would have been too intellectual.

Having said that this is still a superb period drama. The rural English setting is gorgeous, all the actors give very good performances. Real life husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly are spotless as Charles and Emma Darwin, Bettany is at his career’s best.

The script is very well written and even if it doesn’t really approach the thorny question of faith vs science it work perfectly on every emotional level. The assured direction, from none other than the director of “The core” how ironic, is just the icing of the cake.

Highly recommended.

DVD review: How to train your dragon: gift of the night fury

A Christmas tale set in the “Now to train your dragon world”.

“How to train your dragon” was the great surprise of 2010. After years of decline, and uninspired “Shrek” sequels, Dreamworks proved they could still do it with “Kung Fu Panda” in 2008 but, given the amount of resources that are required for something like that, nobody was betting on “How to train your Dragon”. Certainly a lot of credit is due to Sanders and DuBlois, the directors of “Lilo and Stitch” which had been terminated by John Lasseter practically on the day he took the reins of Disney animation came late in development and drastically overhauled the script.

Anyway, I rented this direct to DVD sequel of sort and I must confess I’m disappointed. Instead of going the Kung Fu Panda direct to DVD sequel route, with a traditional simpler animation to keep the cost down, they tried to keep up with the quality of the main movie and so they released a very short and limited feature, only 22 minutes it’s practically an episode of a daytime animated serial.

Gone are also the breathtaking visuals of the cinematic feature replaced with pretty standard CGI, rich in color but devoid of anything of interest.

The story, and all the blue ray content, is for kids, there’s nothing there that an adult could appreciate. If you liked “How to train your dragon”, keep waiting for the sequel.

DVD review: Heartbreaker

The strange story of Alex, a professional heartbreaker (he is actually paid to break bad relationships by seducing various unfortunate women), latest assignment.

The best rom com in quite a while, certainly last year best, “The heartbreaker” is an extremely traditional example of his genre. All the usual staples are present, including the infamous “Mad dash at the end to declare unending love” luckily not at the airport this time, but they are all simply very well executed. There is a reason the rom com formula is still so strong after dozens of terrible Jennifer Aniston vehicles, when it’s done right it work wonderfully.

This movie comes from France, and it starts Vanessa Paradis, Johnny Depp fiancée, as the romantic lead. Probably that’s the reason it manages to be so traditional and so refreshing at the same time. The latest Hollywood examples have been so prone to the various stupid fashions that they are getting increasingly unwatchable. Judd Apatow is making ton of money with stoner comedies? Now every Hollywood comedy got a stoner character!

This is really stupid, as “The Heartbreaker” proves you just need funny lines and some sympathetic characters to makes a good movie, the rest is just padding.

Dvd review: Four Lions

A group of young Muslim clumsily attempts to stage a terrorist attack.

This movie certainly tried to generate controversy. Satirizing Islamic terrorism in this day and age is still something that a lot of people frown about. The problem seems to be twofold. First that this somehow diminish the importance of the war on terror and second that this also somehow makes fun of the victims.

After watching the movie I’m honestly still conflicted. While I certainly believe that terrorism has been wrongly portrayed in popular culture as a superhuman treat this movie, while certainly rectifying that issue, didn’t convince me completely.

The main problem is that this is mainly a satire and so the majority of the running time is devoted to highlighting the various contradictions of the terrorist mind set. The tone therefore is uneven, there are not a lot of genuinely funny moments, and it communicates mostly puzzlement and uncertainty.

There is a vague attempt at character study but in the end this is one of the blackest comedies ever, if you appreciate an exploding crow you’ll certainly have fun but for the rest it clearly misses the target. Too comic to make a statement but too serious to be really funny.

Anime review: Nadesico

A ragtag crew aboard the battleship Nadesico fights in a futuristic space war.

At the time, 1996, Nadesico was a big deal for the fandom. Heavily promoted both in Japan and Europe this anime series was an event but when it arrived here it didn’t exactly set the world on fire and also in Japan a planned second series was scrapped due to low ratings while the main story was finished with a movie “Prince of darkness”.

In hindsight Nadesico had a big problem, it’s an anime, a super robot one, from fans to fans, so if you are really into the genre, a lot in to, probably you’ll have a lot of fun because a lot of the stuff that happens in this anime can’t be properly appreciated without proper knowledge of the various anime and super robots tropes.

Everything in Nadesico is a shot out, a parody or an homage to earlier stuff. They even have a super robot serial, drawn in the style of the 70s anime, that the protagonist watches between the battles!

Now while all this is certainly nice Nadesico is sadly missing in the main story and characterization department. Even with a couple of cliffhangers and plot twists the storyline is really stupid and kinda boring while the various characters are all stock people from anime tradition.

Honestly, even if you are a big fan of the genre, I’ll give it a pass.