Narnia

On the way to the theater this morning, Ang and I drove along I-25s
recently snowpacked roads. It was a bit of a pain, and I was annoyed
at the accidents that stalled traffic, but it was worth it when we got
to Denver, got off on University Ave. and had a couple of miles of
flocked trees lining the parkway. It was quite possibly the perfect
way to prep for seeing the movie, driving down the snow quieted
streets listening to some quiet Christmas music.

Ang and I just got out of the preview screening we had an invitation
to this morning. First things first, it's not the Lord of the Rings
and I never really felt that it was trying to be Lord of the Rings.
There's a certain lightness and choice of color that doesn't exhibit
itself in the three Rings' movies. I'm not saying that as a good or a
bad thing, mostly just a creative choice. LotR is deadly serious. The
other day, I was in the Aintitcoolnews chat room and Moriarty was
crabbing about the fact that it was the "passion of the lion king" and
that the children were wooden. I didn't get that.

I'm mostly trying to get a grasp on the movie. We just walked out of
the theater and there was an Apple Store, so we figured we'd get a few
lines in before we headed off for other activities. She's blogging
from a 20" iMac I'm lusting after, and I'm blogging and e-mailing from
the 23" cinema display hooked up to a Powerbook that I'm lusting
after. Man I love the Apple Store.

Effects wise, there are a few areas where you can't quite buy the
illusion of the talking animals, but they're only moments. I was also
pleasently surprised with the battle scene. I was fearing that it
would be a rehash of Helms Deep or any of the major hour long Rings
battles but while there are some elements that are similar (can there
not be when it's thousands of CGI creatures combatting one another?)
it's different enough and spread out enough that as it started I was
thinking about it as it pertained to its own story and not to the
stories that are related.

Andrew Adamson has shed the burden of Shrek. I'm happy, very happy, to
say that the movie is maybe not great, but certainly good. It will do
very, very well.
There's no "poor old lu", but that's alright.

More thoughts when I get home.

B

Alice in Wasteland

I blame Commodore for keeping me from blogging the last couple of
days... he's kept me up working on a project for him. (ok, ok, so
maybe I can't blame him for the lack of blogging, but it's the excuse
I'm going to use)

I got confirmation that I get to see Narnia tomorrow morning. I really
hope, like I mentioned before, that I can say good things about the
film. I was in the aintitcool.com chat room the other day and
Morirarty mentioned that he had been to a screening and really didn't
like it. He referred to the movie at one point as "The Passion of the
Lion King" and that the kids didn't work and Liam Neeson's Aslan voice
wasn't right, but I've read positive things too. Just in case, I'm not
going in with any expectations and I think that's the proper way to go
into most movies...

I saw a movie yesterday evening called "Alice In Wasteland". It was
produced locally and with local talent and being that I'm involved
with the Colorado Springs Film Society, I felt obliged to go. I tried
to not go in with expectations, but the brother of the director had
mentioned that it looked slick so I had that in the back of my mind.
I'm not entirely sure what film was watched that looked "slick" but I
just can't imagine this was it. Everything about it screamed
mediocrity and the sad part is that they rounded up $300,000 to pay
for it. I'm not entirely sure where the money went. I really wanted to
like the movie, but between inconsistent framing, weird lighting, same
scene color shifts, shoddy compositing, a storyline that could have
been trimmed by a good 30 minutes, and dialogue that was hammy at
best, it was really hard to find something good to say about it. I
felt a bit like I had lost two hours of my life that I would never
retrieve.

My boss was there as well and this morning I asked him how he felt
about it. He mentioned that he liked it and couldn't see how anything
was wrong. What baffles me with that is that this is a guy who's even
more of a camera snob than I am. The thing just didn't look good and
with a $300,000 budget, they should have been able to make it look a
lot better than it did. I know they shot on video, and I can
understand that with shooting on video things aren't necessarily going
to look as good as they might if they had shot HD or even 35mm instead
of DV. That said, DV CAN look good if it's lit right. You have to know
how to work with your tool.

Here's a link to the <a
href="http://wattimagination.com/alice/">trailer </a>. Maybe I'm being
too hard on it... maybe I'm judging based on the criteria I'd use to
evaluate a feature film. Maybe I don't have the right to criticize
because I haven't made my own feature yet. I give them credit for
creating a film, but not the "A for effort" that giving credit just
for making a film independantly might earn.

Anyway, I couldn't believe my boss had enjoyed it. I also couldn't
quite believe all of the people who were literally guffawing all
throughout the movie. I left perplexed at the adulation of the crowd
after the movie ended and the Q and A began. I hope they're able to
turn a profit with their movie, but I wouldn't pay to see it again.

back to being busy...

but that's the norm, thankfully. In any case, I just got an invitation to see the Chronicles of Narnia Saturday morning. I'm looking forward to it. I really hope that I can write good things about it, but we'll see.