Dragon Stones: A Lulu Of A Review

So I found out today that someone wrote a capsule review of Dragon Stones on Lulu.com.  (My father, who keeps closer track of this sort of thing than I do, let me know about it.)  With some trepidation I went to read the review, but I needn’t have worried — this is the best review I’ve gotten since M. Kenyon Charboneaux rated Night Watchman “1,000 on a scale of 1-5″.  Although the review is anonymous, let me assure everyone that I didn’t write it myself; I was busy in the mountains all day today!

Dragon Stones

6 out of 6

1 Jun 2008

by

The story captures the reader right away with interesting characters and descriptive writing. The writer is, in fact, facile with words and the book is an easy read. While it follows the adventure genre of characters moving from situation to situation, one does not wonder, as with some novels, when the string of obstacles will end. I might add that the cast of characters is diverse and interesting. Although it is a lengthy novel, it was not overlong and kept my interest. While the ending ties everything up decently, there are enough strings left for a couple of sequels, and I, for one hope they follow soon.

To the anonymous reviewer:  I don’t have any sequels in the works right now, but I’ve got plans …

Review: “The Illusionist”

So last night we watched The Illusionist, in which the famous magician Tyler Durden (Edward Norton) plays tricks on John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) in an attempt to steal away his putative fiancee, Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel), all the while being investigated by the persistent Inspector Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti).

Okay, so none of those characters are actually the ones that are in this film, but that should give you some idea of how twisty this movie is.  Nothing is what it seems, except for the stuff that’s exactly what it seems; it’s up to the viewer to figure out which is which.  Edward Norton is an illusionist in love with a woman waaaay above his station in life, Jessica Biel is some sort of Hungarian noblewoman, Rufus Sewell is a crown prince who wants to use Biel to line up Hungarian support, and Paul Giamatti is an inspector who owes his position to Sewell but is fascinated by Norton’s magic.  I won’t give away any plot details, except to say that Rollie Tyler has got nothing on Eisenheim the Illusionist.

Despite being called The Illusionist, this film might as well be called The Inspector, because Paul Giamatti’s character is actually the most central figure.  This is a good thing, because he’s easily the most interesting person in the movie.  The actors all do fine jobs, especially (no surprise) Giamatti and Norton.  You could put these two in a movie where all they do is make faces at each other and it would probably be riveting.  (Okay, I will admit that I had a little bit of trouble accepting Jessica Biel as a duchess; but she didn’t embarrass herself at all playing opposite three heavyweights, and she certainly looks good in period garb.)

My wife stayed awake for the entire movie.  In one sitting.  Starting at 8:30pm, which is pretty close to when she falls asleep even when we’re not watching television.  This could well make The Illusionist the top-rated film of all time, or at least, since I started posting reviews …

Review: “The Orphanage”

So this week we watched The Orphanage, which can perhaps best be described as a casserole of The Devil’s Backbone and The Others, with a pinch of The Sixth Sense and a little Poltergeist garnish.  Sadly, though, this casserole was only baked about three-quarters of the way, so it’s still a little runny on the inside.

The Orphanage wasn’t quite as good as most of those other films I just named as ingredients, and it was nowhere near as good as The Devil’s Backbone.  But it was much better than The Others, which my wife and I both found to be a great big predictable snoozefest.  (Even I almost fell asleep watching The Others.)

Anyway, The Orphanage involves, yes, an orphanage, and some orphans, and some treasure hunting, and some weird noises, and a tall, skinny, less funny version of Zelda Rubinstein’s medium, and some ghosts, and the usual crowd of people who don’t believe in ghosts vs. the one person who does.  It has a few jolty moments and an ending that I half saw coming and that half surprised the heck out of me.  I like to be surprised by movies, so I was half satisfied.

My wife had really been wanting to see The Orphanage, mostly on the strength of its good reviews and its association with Guillermo Del Toro, a director she worships, but only when the people in his movies are speaking Spanish.  Unfortunately, The Orphanage put her to sleep in about 30 minutes, and when she woke up, she didn’t bother to ask how it ended.  Not a good sign.

Review: “Cloverfield”

So I finally saw Cloverfield, which I had been wanting to see ever since I caught the trailer when we watched Transformers last summer.  (NOTE: Transformers did not put my wife to sleep.)

Now that I’ve seen Cloverfield all I can say is, God am I glad I didn’t see that on a big screen.  Even on our relatively small television (36″ — it seemed big when we bought it eight years ago …), the shaky-cam style made me a little uncomfortable.  In a real theater with a screen the size of a barn wall, I would’ve been yakking all over the person in front of me.  (I’m extremely susceptible to motion sickness.)

Anyway, aside from the shaky-cam issues that made me watch a good part of the film sidelong, I liked Cloverfield a lot.  I’m a sucker for giant-monster movies and this one was about 100 times better than the sad-sack remake of Godzilla from several years back.  Watching Godzilla I just felt sorry for the monster; this one scared the crap out of me, and the weird little critters that fell off of it were pretty nasty pieces of work, too.  (Have I mentioned that I periodically dream about one or more giant monsters rampaging through the city where I live?  Is that weird?  Doesn’t everybody have that dream … ?)

Interestingly enough, in the special features for Cloverfield, we learn that the monster is just a frightened baby and when it roars it’s calling for its mother.  So we were supposed to feel sorry for the monster this time.  Ummmm, okay, if you say so.  I thought it was just some badass trashing New York City for reasons unknown …

As per usual with a “rescue” movie, we have our little band of heroes who are risking their own lives to save a friend.  (The lesson of Cloverfield might be “After you sleep with the girl, call her and tell her you love her; it’ll make things a lot easier on you when a giant monster starts chewing up Manhattan.”)  I’d heard bad things about the performances, but I thought they were quite good.  In particular, T.J. Miller as Hud, the “guy behind the camera”, managed to make his character sympathetic with next to no screen time, just voice work.  Lizzy Caplan was terrific as Marlena, making me completely forget about her character from Mean Girls.  The other actors were fine and believable as well, but they were saddled with less interesting characters than these two.  In particular, I found the Robert Hawkins character, the putative hero, to be kinda one-note and boring.  Useless and uninteresting trivia:  In the late 80s I played a play-by-mail (PBM) game of space exploration called “Beyond the Quadra Zone”.  (This was before we had online gaming.  Hard to believe, eh?)  Anyway, the name of my character was Robert Hawkins.  Mr. Abrams, I’ll be expecting my royalty check in the mail.

The shaky-cam invites comparisons to The Blair Witch Project, but it’s really the only similarity between the two.  (I hated The Blair Witch Project.  Blech!)

My wife more or less completely ignored Cloverfield the whole time it was on (all 84 minutes of it!), so I can’t really give it my usual rating of how long it took to put her to sleep.  But she must’ve spent at least a little time paying attention to it, because she said she also thought the performances were good.  Draw your own conclusions …

WARNING:  Comments on this review may contain spoilers.

Review: “Peter Pan”

So this week’s Netflix selection was Peter Pan, the live-action version from 2003, not the animated Disney film. I had originally planned to do this as a double feature with Finding Neverland but we ended up watching them several weeks apart. (Finding Neverland put my wife to sleep almost immediately despite the fact that it starred Johnny Depp, but that’s because she was very tired.)

Anyway, Peter Pan is of course the story of how a small company introduced a new brand of peanut butter that eventually became part of the ConAgra Foods inventory of products … oh, wait, that’s not it. Ehhh, you know what Peter Pan is about so I won’t bother to rehash it. I will say that the film has an excellent cast, particularly Jason Isaacs as George Darling/Captain Hook (even if I did keep expecting Hook to say “My name is Inigo Montoya … you killed my father … prepare to die.”) and Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy, not to mention the guy who played Smee, who was just about perfect. (IMDB says his name is Richard Briers. Well done Richard.) We also get Olivia Williams sitting in a chair pining for her children in a fashion that gave me Sixth Sense Olivia-Williams-Pining flashbacks, but if you’re going to flash back, that’s a good movie to go to. Finally, Ludivine Sagnier makes a saucy little Tinkerbell, even if I have no idea how to pronounce her name, because she’s French.

Although it’s probably technically a children’s movie, there are enough humorous asides going on in Peter Pan to keep the grownups amused. (Most of these involve Smee and/or Michael’s teddy bear.) It gets quite dark toward the end, culminating in the climactic fight between Hook and Pan. Let’s just say that if you’re having a midlife crisis or anything, you may want to avoid this film; it’s not going to make you feel any better about your lost youth.

Peter Pan is basically one long CG effect with actors in it, but for once, the special effects do not get in the way of the story. In fact they’re gorgeous, and greatly enhance the overall fantastical feel. It’s like the entire film is set inside a Maxfield Parrish painting. I would recommend checking out some of the “making-of” special features, as the techniques used to create the effects (crew in head to toe blue suits — freaky!!!!) are quite interesting.

This movie put my wife to sleep in about an hour — not bad for a fantasy film starring a bunch of kids and not featuring a single appearance by Johnny Depp.

Hook & Inigo — Separated At Birth?

Review: “Idiocracy”, or, “Mike Judge Says It’s YOUR Fault The World Is Going To Hell”

So the other day we watched Idiocracy, which tells the story of a man who is put into cryogenic sleep and awakes centuries later to become an interplanetary delivery boy in a world populated by aliens, robots, and talking severed heads. Oh, no, sorry, that’s Futurama. Actually, Idiocracy is the story of Joe, who (along with a woman named Rita) is part of an army cryogenics experiment that goes awry. When Joe and Rita awaken 500 years after being frozen, they discover that the world is populated by rejects from the early elimination phase of shows like American Idol, Survivor, and The Real World, as well as the sort of people who try to emulate the things they see on shows like Jackass. (Somehow, despite being complete morons, they manage to keep all their high-tech equipment more or less functional. We can probably assume this equipment is serviced by robots like Bender [Futurama again, sorry].)

The conceit behind this dystopian future is that all the smart people dithered too much over having kids until it was too late, or only had one or two, while the nitwits from Jerry Springer were popping out offspring by the dozen, until eventually they more or less took over the world. This conceit is so plausible that it’s actually frightening.  (I don’t see any kids running around the house here. Sorry, Mike. Do dogs count?)

Anyway, when our hero, average Joe (his name is, literally, Joe), awakens to this new reality, writer/director Mike Judge has plenty of satirical ammunition, which he expends cheerfully obliterating everything from ubiquitous product placement and corporate sponsorship to “reality” shows like Ow My Balls to mass-market consumerism to monster truck rallies. He even gets in a few digs at Child Protective Services that are only marginally less realistic than what we saw earlier in August Rush. While not quite up to the level of his earlier Office Space, there are a number of giggles to be had in Idiocracy.  The relentless stupidity of the future population does eventually get a little wearing, but if nothing else, the President and his cabinet members have plenty of flair.

Idiocracy put my wife to sleep in about 45 minutes, which is pretty good for satire. I definitely heard her laughing once or twice, too.

Book-In-Progress Review: “World Without End”

Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books (even before Oprah featured it), so when the quasi-sequel World Without End came out, I immediately wish-listed it over on BookMooch. A few weeks later it arrived in an enormous package — this is one massive book, just like its predecessor. I’m not that far into it yet so I can’t do a full review, but I can say that it doesn’t hook the reader immediately the way that Pillars did. However, it does seem to be better than the last Follett book I read, Night Over Water.

One thing that is obvious already, though, is that the author’s breast fetish is operating at full tilt — pretty much every single female character who wanders across the page has her breasts stared at, felt up, fantasized over, or otherwise put front and center (so to speak) of her character’s description. Some would suggest, accurately, that all this indicates is that Ken Follett is a dude. But come on, Ken! We’re supposed to at least pretend to occasionally raise our gaze above chest level! You’re going to make the ladies paranoid, and that’ll just make it tougher on all of us …

Having said that, I have of course written my share of such descriptions, especially in my vampire book, Long Before Dawn (available now!). But you know how vampires are; being dead and all, they don’t have many amusements besides stalking humans and drinking blood (Spike’s addiction to the soap opera Passions notwithstanding; most vampires don’t have television in their crypts), so they spend a lot of time being horny.  Which, I guess, makes them not so different from Ken Follett and the rest of us guys …

Review: “Enchanted”

So the other night we watched Disney’s Enchanted. First, a caveat: My wife can’t stand Disney princess cartoons. They rank one notch above anime in her book, with their huge-eyed tiny-waisted opera-voiced waifish heroines. Enchanted, of course, is Disney’s spoof of their own canon. It’s not a spoof in the way that Scary Movie is a spoof of Scream, though, but more the way that Scream is a spoof of other slasher flicks — if you’re not paying attention, it looks like the thing it’s poking gentle fun at. (Make extra sure to listen to the lyrics of the songs, especially “Happy Working Song”.)

Enchanted boasts an excellent cast, particularly Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey as the principals. (I still have trouble looking at Patrick Dempsey and not seeing the kid from Can’t Buy Me Love but that’s because, as we discussed in the 16 Blocks review, I’m old. And a guy.) James Marsden is quite funny as the dimwitted, self-centered, but good-hearted cartoon prince, and unleashes not a single optic blast; Timothy Spall is a hoot as his sidekick. The movie contains no serious stumbles or wasted scenes until the very end, with a rather unnecessary and incongruous climactic fight between the heroes and the evil queen (gleefully played by Susan Sarandon). They even get the dance frame more or less correct for the big waltz scene, although someone could have at least choreographed a few twinkles or promenades or sahsays instead of just a bunch of lady’s underarm turns. But, you can’t have everything.

My wife stayed awake for the entire movie, although afterwards she tried to claim that it wasn’t really that good of a film. But hey, a rating system is a rating system, and I didn’t really see her doing anything besides watch Enchanted for 100 minutes or so.

Review: “August Rush”

So we watched August Rush tonight at our friends’ house around the corner. I wouldn’t normally do two reviews back to back, but I wanted to get this one done while the memory of this claptrap was still fresh.

August Rush is the story of a boy named Evan who’s in an orphanage but dreams of finding his parents. All I can say, after having seen this movie, is: <KRONK VOICE> “Riiiiiiiiight.”

WARNING: Spoilers follow. If you plan to see August Rush (please God, don’t do it), you may want to stop reading.

Review: “16 Blocks”

So last night my wife wanted to veg and watch a movie, because she’s had a long, hard week at work. Let’s see, what do we have from Netflix … hmm … looks like we have 16 Blocks and Ghost in the Shell. She already knows that 16 Blocks is a cop movie with Bruce Willis where “lots of people get shot”. She has never heard of Ghost in the Shell.

WIFE: What’s Ghost in the Shell?
ME: It’s a classic anime movie.
WIFE: Anime. <PITCHES VOICE REALLY HIGH> That’s where the girls all talk like this and giggle hee hee hee!!!! all the time.
ME: I don’t think Ghost in the Shell is like that … it’s a classic, like Akira and Cowboy Bebop.
WIFE: Mmm. We’ll watch 16 Blocks.

So now we know that although my wife hates cop movies where lots of people get shot (except for Running Scared, which she loved, but that’s a comedy so it doesn’t really count), she hates anime more. In goes 16 Blocks.

16 Blocks is of course the film in which Bruce Willis’s broken-down alcoholic guilt-ridden limping cop has to escort Mos Def’s oft-unintelligible (I had to turn on subtitles to understand all his dialog) witness 16 blocks to the courthouse so he can testify before a grand jury. He has to do this by 10am, or the jury’s term ends and the testimony becomes moot. Unfortunately, Bruce Willis is unaware that Mos Def is going to testify against some dirty cops, including Willis’s ex-partner, played by David Morse. If this reminds you a little bit of the Clint Eastwood film The Gauntlet (at one point, our heroes even end up on a bus, surrounded by heavily armed cops) then congratulations — you’re old!

All of this may sound like I’m dissing 16 Blocks, but I’m not. I actually quite enjoyed it. The performances from the three principals are excellent (anything with David Morse in it is worth watching), and in several cases where the film could have gone the Hollywood blockbuster route, it didn’t. 16 Blocks put my wife to sleep in about 45 minutes, which is rather astonishing for a film of this nature; not only that, but when she woke up, she was actually interested in how it ended.

A note about the alternate ending: It’s good to see that the filmmakers considered doing something a little unusual with the denouement, but unfortunately, the alternate ending just didn’t work for me. A big theme of the film is that people can change, but in the alternate ending, they changed a little too quickly for my taste. It’s still worth checking out, though.