Jurassic Park
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Jan4
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Time for some christmas roundup type things, I really did have a great time during our extended break, so much so that I didn't post all the tedious minutiae (can you tell from my embiggened vocabulary I've been playing a lot of Scrabble?), so I'll try and revisit some of it, starting with things what I did watch.
Night At The Museum - Ben Stiller, in a museum, at night. Not mentioned in the title (but figure-out-able from the poster) is that everything comes to life. So bits of lots of nice family fantasy films like Jurassic Park and Jumanji and things rolled into one, with plenty of extended cameos from big names like Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan. Cheesy, and a kids film really, but worth seeing.
Holes - watched the same day, by chance, on TV, absolutely great. Cheesy again, but a great story line linking characters through several generations. A bit of a feel of a film like The Shawshank Redemption. But good.
Hmm, Even though we didn't watch any xmas day TV, and haven't seen much apart from our Amazon DVD rentals for most of the year, and even missed Hogfather and the new Dracula filmed at Eastnor Castle, I'm sure I watched more than that. Perhaps I'll return to this theme.
Not watching: Celebrity Big Brother. Yet. All the papers were full yesterday of rumours of more interesting participants (than Jermaine Jackson, Danielle Lloyd, Ken Russell, Jo O'Meara, Leo Sayer, Shilpa Shetty, Cleo Rocos, Carole Malone, Donny Tourette, Ian 'H' Watkins, and Face out of The A-Team), rumours planted mostly by people working on the show. The final list are far less famous / interesting than anyone had expected, I was hoping to see Justin Hawkins cracking up on screen personally. Without viewing any of it I would say Dirk Benedict is my favourite, I hope he doesn't turn out to be too much of a twat. Seems he is a vegan so I guess it's a safe bet he's ALRIGHT.
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Dec11
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Invited to the star studded Leicester Squre Premiere? With my reputation? Read on...
Do you remember the last time you heard applause at the cinema? Seemed to happen all the time when I was a kid, whooping and cheering as the opening titles rolled up the screen. This was Hampshire, so possibly it was the wonder of electricity that people were applauding. Anyway, last night it happened all over again at the Lord of The Rings premiere...
Anyway, that applause - there was a big old fight, Boromir (Sean Bean) got it pretty bad from some big Orc goblin type beast so the full size hero of the film - Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson) - steps in. He thrusts, he parries, he slices, he dices, he cuts this big mother's head right off, and the audience went wild... It's one of many GRATE fight scenes in the film; if you were worried the film was going to be a bit Belle and Sebastian, stop fretting now...
They (Director Peter Jackson and New Line entertainment) don't seem to have taken any liberties with the story line as far as I can see, but they've possibly cut out some of the flowery dialogue - basically they've "sub-edited" it, and made it more relevant to the cinema goer. This is not a an academic text, this is a modern film for a wide audience after all... Some of the best examples of this are the encounter with the troll in the mines - it's CGI-tastic, so much more dynamic than I could have envisaged. It's Jurassic Park's T Rex terrorizing the kids, times a hundred. It may seem to the purist that casual mentions in the book are given too much of the film (like the love interest), and important bits aren't played out in enough detail, but I think the balance is, well, balanced... Another scene with more OOOMPH than you might expect is Arwen (aforementioned "leading" lady, Liv Tyler) is being chased by the Black Riders - it looks like they should be on Land Speeders rather than horses. This is NOT an episode of Black Beauty...
The New Zealand scenery is spectacular. If I had a garden, I'd be digging me a hobbit-hole to live in as we speak. At times (please forgive me) the setting of the film seems to slip into cliche, but then you realise - Lord of the Rings, uh, um - how do I say "wrote the book" in a non wanky way? This film blows the froth off anything I've seen for a long while (Harry Who?)
The effects are amazing, but subtle; it's easy to forget that Elijiah Wood (Frodo) and Ian Holm (Bilbo) aren't really half the height of Ian McKellan (Gandalf) and Christopher Lee (Saruman). Well not so easy for me, as I was sat about 20 seats away from them, but that's not important. Filming must have been MIGHTILY COMPLEX, but it flows together seemlessly, to make an exhilarating and moving experience. This film is smashing, and I liked it very much. It just about makes up for me missing my nephew's nativity play today.
Elvish has left the building.
(If you were wondering, I got in as a last minute stand by (replacing a major Eighties pop star) for the hottest film of the year, and found myself lovin' it lovin' it lovin' it for the whole three hours. More premiere league name dropping in Stalking Heads... Thanks to Emma @ Impressive PR who made it possible.
