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Friday, December 28, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Reed Solomon Reviews: Django Unchained
It has been a while since I last saw a western in theatres. I couldn't even tell you the name of the last one. Django Unchained is a western. Anyone who argues the fact has never seen a western.
Sure theres some rap music and hip hop and Jim Croce and harp music in there. Just because the movie has a hardcore soundtrack doesn't mean it isn't a western.
Does it have some nods to blacksploitation flicks? Sure. Is it a blacksploitation western? No, I don't think so. It's a western. Even though it mostly doesn't take place in the old west.
Django Unchained is about a German bounty hunter goes by the name of Schultz. He used to be a dentist, but theres more profit and a slightly lower death rate in bounty hunting in those days so I guess he switches careers. He's a clever bounty hunter, and ends up freeing a slave named Django, in order to help him track down a particularly difficult bounty Django can help identify.
They accomplish their mission and they stick together so that Schultz and Django can find and free Django's wife, named Broomhilda, who conveniently enough to the plot was previously owned by Germans and speaks German. Some people might say Tarantino is reaching with this plotpoint, but at one point German was even considered as the official language of the USA, and a large population of Americans have German ancestry, so it's actually a valid historical point, how about that! Go Tarantino. She is being held at a place plantation called Candyland.
There they end up meeting Calvin Candy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. A despicable individual who entertains himself with cruelty, but at the same time intelligent and ruthless. His slaves have a Stockholm syndrome type loyalty to him, especially Stephen, the "house nigger", played by Samuel L. Jackson (surely a nod to accusations of Jackson being just that in relation to Tarantino in the past)
Tarantino seems to be comfortable with the western format. It's a more subdued atmosphere than most of his films. Even the violence, though clearly Tarantino, is subdued. Perhaps because you expect a gunfight it in a western. Theres embellishment and dark humour, but its not the point of the movie. The movie does have a heart.
The movie is just under three hours long. Maybe a bit too long, but you get your moneys worth and for the most part theres no unnecessary part of the movie.
As a fan of Sergio Leone movies, would I put it up there? No. Django Unchained is not a masterpiece. It's a fun movie, and it sheds light on a part of history I don't think has been particularly thought about. The last bit of violence in the movie felt a bit out of place and over the top. I wasn't surprised by it, knowing Tarantino, but it seemed like he was going through the motions for his fans who like that sort of thing rather than doing it for the good of the movie or story.
There is an interesting point in the movie where Alexandre Dumas is brought up. While the movie brings him up in his reference to being part black (therefore, to the people of the south of the time, completely black), I felt he was mentioned because the storyline seemed very Dumas-esque. Maybe a bit of Count of Monte Cristo revenge fantasy.
All in all I liked the movie. The popcorn was decent though I seem to have spilled a bit of my drink. I give the movie a rating of infinity-2 out of pi. Maybe not for everybody, but if you like Tarantino and westerns, it's worthwhile.
Sure theres some rap music and hip hop and Jim Croce and harp music in there. Just because the movie has a hardcore soundtrack doesn't mean it isn't a western.
Does it have some nods to blacksploitation flicks? Sure. Is it a blacksploitation western? No, I don't think so. It's a western. Even though it mostly doesn't take place in the old west.
Django Unchained is about a German bounty hunter goes by the name of Schultz. He used to be a dentist, but theres more profit and a slightly lower death rate in bounty hunting in those days so I guess he switches careers. He's a clever bounty hunter, and ends up freeing a slave named Django, in order to help him track down a particularly difficult bounty Django can help identify.
They accomplish their mission and they stick together so that Schultz and Django can find and free Django's wife, named Broomhilda, who conveniently enough to the plot was previously owned by Germans and speaks German. Some people might say Tarantino is reaching with this plotpoint, but at one point German was even considered as the official language of the USA, and a large population of Americans have German ancestry, so it's actually a valid historical point, how about that! Go Tarantino. She is being held at a place plantation called Candyland.
There they end up meeting Calvin Candy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. A despicable individual who entertains himself with cruelty, but at the same time intelligent and ruthless. His slaves have a Stockholm syndrome type loyalty to him, especially Stephen, the "house nigger", played by Samuel L. Jackson (surely a nod to accusations of Jackson being just that in relation to Tarantino in the past)
Tarantino seems to be comfortable with the western format. It's a more subdued atmosphere than most of his films. Even the violence, though clearly Tarantino, is subdued. Perhaps because you expect a gunfight it in a western. Theres embellishment and dark humour, but its not the point of the movie. The movie does have a heart.
The movie is just under three hours long. Maybe a bit too long, but you get your moneys worth and for the most part theres no unnecessary part of the movie.
As a fan of Sergio Leone movies, would I put it up there? No. Django Unchained is not a masterpiece. It's a fun movie, and it sheds light on a part of history I don't think has been particularly thought about. The last bit of violence in the movie felt a bit out of place and over the top. I wasn't surprised by it, knowing Tarantino, but it seemed like he was going through the motions for his fans who like that sort of thing rather than doing it for the good of the movie or story.
There is an interesting point in the movie where Alexandre Dumas is brought up. While the movie brings him up in his reference to being part black (therefore, to the people of the south of the time, completely black), I felt he was mentioned because the storyline seemed very Dumas-esque. Maybe a bit of Count of Monte Cristo revenge fantasy.
All in all I liked the movie. The popcorn was decent though I seem to have spilled a bit of my drink. I give the movie a rating of infinity-2 out of pi. Maybe not for everybody, but if you like Tarantino and westerns, it's worthwhile.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
I am a mime trapped in an invisible boxing day
Labels:
box,
boxing day,
canada
Not the best deals this year. Black Friday was better. Is black Friday stealing all the good deals, or does it take competition with the USA to make the good deals happen?
Also Winnipeg transit having a holiday schedule for boxing day is completely inadequate. The need at least a bit more service than what they have going. Sunday hours are shit to begin with.
Well hopefully someone found a good deal cause I'm disappointed
And I hate that online stores start their boxing day deals on the 24th or 25th. That just goes totally against the ideals boxing day was founded upon... shame on you all, online merchants. Bring the true meaning of boxing day back to boxing day.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Happy Christmas
Once again I did my Christmas shopping between 2pm and 5pm on December 24th, and once again I win the "best present giver" of Christmas award from everyone in my family. Somehow I'm brilliant when I shop under pressure. Yet if I went and bought stuff early, I'd buy garbage. How does that work? I have no idea.
Thinking I'll go to the movies tomorrow. Nice quirk of fate that movie theaters get to stay open on Christmas thanks to the non-existence of TV's at one point in time. Unless you work in a movie theatre, then maybe it sucks. Still, thinking of going to see Django Unchained. I'm a fan of westerns, especially sergio leone, and I want to see Tarantino's take. One thing nice about Quentin Tarantino is he's always original. But I still haven't seen the Hobbit either. If that's playing in Imax 3D or what I don't know. I'm confused by which manner I should watch it. Should I see it in Imax 3D? Should I see it in regular Real-D 3D? Or should I just see it without the 3D? How many frames per second? I have no idea. Maybe I'll just wait for the DVD/Blu-Ray.
In any case, thanks for reading my blog. We survived yet another end of the world, and hopefully won't have to deal with any more of that nonsense for another 87 years.
2013 is a week away. We're in the future. Two more years to go until Back to the Future flying cars and hoverboards and weather control. I think we can do it.
Thinking I'll go to the movies tomorrow. Nice quirk of fate that movie theaters get to stay open on Christmas thanks to the non-existence of TV's at one point in time. Unless you work in a movie theatre, then maybe it sucks. Still, thinking of going to see Django Unchained. I'm a fan of westerns, especially sergio leone, and I want to see Tarantino's take. One thing nice about Quentin Tarantino is he's always original. But I still haven't seen the Hobbit either. If that's playing in Imax 3D or what I don't know. I'm confused by which manner I should watch it. Should I see it in Imax 3D? Should I see it in regular Real-D 3D? Or should I just see it without the 3D? How many frames per second? I have no idea. Maybe I'll just wait for the DVD/Blu-Ray.
In any case, thanks for reading my blog. We survived yet another end of the world, and hopefully won't have to deal with any more of that nonsense for another 87 years.
2013 is a week away. We're in the future. Two more years to go until Back to the Future flying cars and hoverboards and weather control. I think we can do it.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Happy Winter Solstice day!
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly” - Author Richard Bach.
Finished your Christmas shopping yet? Been waiting for the end of the world just in case before you made any major purchases? Well that was dumb! Wasn't it.
People should really stop predicting the end of the world. It's been here for billions of years. If humanity dies out, well whatever, that'd be too bad I guess, but c'mon nothing is going to happen today.
ASIDE FROM THE SPACE LOCUSTS COMING TO DEVOUR US ALL! HIDE UNDERGROUND!!!
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Reed Solomon Presents Movie Reviews: Chronicle
Today I was checking out Netflix, and up popped Chronicle - A movie that I was interested in seeing until I saw the first 5 minutes of it and decided it's shit. But, I completely forgot about that experience and saw it on Netflix, so -- yay! I guess? SPOILERS. I spoil the whole movie. Though for something to spoil, you'd think it had to have been good in the first place.
Chronicle is about 3 teenage idiots who obtain superpowers from some sort of alien macguffin for no real reason. They're idiots because they don't know how to use superpowers, they've never read a goddamn comicbook. Perhaps comicbooks don't exist in their universe? I don't know.. But anybody who has read a comicbook or even watched a comicbook movie (which this isn't) would have some idea of how to use superpowers and with great responsibility comes something something or something.
Anyways, the main character is a loser whose mom is dying of, I dunno, lung cancer or something cause she smoked. Maybe not, she didn't have her larynx removed or anything. Whatever. His father is a firefighter who gets workers comp I guess and spends his money on alcohol. He's a dick, because as we all know,firefighters are all dicks who never did anything for anybody His father beats him and pushes him around because he's drunk I guess.
I forget all of the characters names. Except the black kid, Steve. Steve is the first to die at the hands of loser boy. Well maybe not, maybe it's just cause they were both flying in the air during a lightning storm. They seem to have telekenesis based powers so I don't know if lightning and stuff defeats telekenesis, I'm not good at paper rock lightning telekenesis scissors fire. But it seems to kill Steve. RIP Steve.
Loser boy can't even gets laid and throws up on the girl who is practically begging him. He has superpowers, he gets popularity, and whatever. I dunno. Maybe he has Aspergers. Seems to have the symptoms. I don't know if that was the impression they were going for but that's what I got out of it.
Anyways loser boy has a cousin who is a pretty cool guy. After Steve dies loserboy goes down the winding road to insane psychopath. I suppose the writers and directors were trying to tell a story about how an abusive situation leads to blah blah blah, but it really came off as kid is a mentalcase. He ends up turning to supervillainy, robbing a bunch of street hoodlums in his fathers firefighter uniform. He gets like #50 bucks out of it. You have superpowers, idiot. Rob a freakin' bank or something if you're going to be a supervillain. Or make money as a magician or government assasin or something. So many job opportunities available to you, but idiot loser boy has only $50 and needs more money for his mothers medicine (It's the third world nation known as America after all) and robs a gas station, but accidentally blows it up and he's in the hospital in a coma.
He wakes up from comaville after his father tells him his mother dies and it's all his fault. First, did he make his mother smoke those cigarettes? No. And the father says its his fault because instead of being home he was out looking for his son. Whatever.
Anyways, loserboy goes on a rampage of killing and messing things up, and his cousin tries to reason with him. Cousin had a sidestory with some girl, I don't know maybe she died, she seemed nice, aside from her ugly Volkswagen. Anyways, cousin eventually kills loserboy and flies away. Only one guy with superhero powers left and he goes to Tibet to fullfil the promise he, Steve, and loserboy had. Poor Steve. Steve didn't really care about the Tibet thing, though.
Anyways, could have used some shots of the cousin character in Tibet messing with the Buddhist priests or something. The ending was somewhat underwhelming, least of which the downward spiral of loserboy made no sense whatsoever.
But maybe crazy psychotics aren't supposed to make sense. Maybe superpowers shouldn't be given to unstable emotional anti-social individuals with aspergers. I blame the aliens.
It's interesting to note that Steve gets hit by lightning while flying in the sky during a thunderstorm. If people did have the power to fly, would they be stupid enough to fly into a thunderstorm? What's interesting about it is the power to fly is probably the most desired superhero. Most desired, yet most likely to kill you dead unless you have invincibility with it.
Could this movie have been better? Yes. Definitely. No question. I did sit through all the way to the end of the movie hoping something useful would happen, but alas, no. Still, this movie is one of the movies that came out in 2012, so there you have it.
Chronicle is about 3 teenage idiots who obtain superpowers from some sort of alien macguffin for no real reason. They're idiots because they don't know how to use superpowers, they've never read a goddamn comicbook. Perhaps comicbooks don't exist in their universe? I don't know.. But anybody who has read a comicbook or even watched a comicbook movie (which this isn't) would have some idea of how to use superpowers and with great responsibility comes something something or something.
Anyways, the main character is a loser whose mom is dying of, I dunno, lung cancer or something cause she smoked. Maybe not, she didn't have her larynx removed or anything. Whatever. His father is a firefighter who gets workers comp I guess and spends his money on alcohol. He's a dick, because as we all know,
I forget all of the characters names. Except the black kid, Steve. Steve is the first to die at the hands of loser boy. Well maybe not, maybe it's just cause they were both flying in the air during a lightning storm. They seem to have telekenesis based powers so I don't know if lightning and stuff defeats telekenesis, I'm not good at paper rock lightning telekenesis scissors fire. But it seems to kill Steve. RIP Steve.
Loser boy can't even gets laid and throws up on the girl who is practically begging him. He has superpowers, he gets popularity, and whatever. I dunno. Maybe he has Aspergers. Seems to have the symptoms. I don't know if that was the impression they were going for but that's what I got out of it.
Anyways loser boy has a cousin who is a pretty cool guy. After Steve dies loserboy goes down the winding road to insane psychopath. I suppose the writers and directors were trying to tell a story about how an abusive situation leads to blah blah blah, but it really came off as kid is a mentalcase. He ends up turning to supervillainy, robbing a bunch of street hoodlums in his fathers firefighter uniform. He gets like #50 bucks out of it. You have superpowers, idiot. Rob a freakin' bank or something if you're going to be a supervillain. Or make money as a magician or government assasin or something. So many job opportunities available to you, but idiot loser boy has only $50 and needs more money for his mothers medicine (It's the third world nation known as America after all) and robs a gas station, but accidentally blows it up and he's in the hospital in a coma.
He wakes up from comaville after his father tells him his mother dies and it's all his fault. First, did he make his mother smoke those cigarettes? No. And the father says its his fault because instead of being home he was out looking for his son. Whatever.
Anyways, loserboy goes on a rampage of killing and messing things up, and his cousin tries to reason with him. Cousin had a sidestory with some girl, I don't know maybe she died, she seemed nice, aside from her ugly Volkswagen. Anyways, cousin eventually kills loserboy and flies away. Only one guy with superhero powers left and he goes to Tibet to fullfil the promise he, Steve, and loserboy had. Poor Steve. Steve didn't really care about the Tibet thing, though.
Anyways, could have used some shots of the cousin character in Tibet messing with the Buddhist priests or something. The ending was somewhat underwhelming, least of which the downward spiral of loserboy made no sense whatsoever.
But maybe crazy psychotics aren't supposed to make sense. Maybe superpowers shouldn't be given to unstable emotional anti-social individuals with aspergers. I blame the aliens.
It's interesting to note that Steve gets hit by lightning while flying in the sky during a thunderstorm. If people did have the power to fly, would they be stupid enough to fly into a thunderstorm? What's interesting about it is the power to fly is probably the most desired superhero. Most desired, yet most likely to kill you dead unless you have invincibility with it.
Could this movie have been better? Yes. Definitely. No question. I did sit through all the way to the end of the movie hoping something useful would happen, but alas, no. Still, this movie is one of the movies that came out in 2012, so there you have it.
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