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“V for Vendetta” is a film, looking at a very Orwellian view of the near future. It could be a warning like “1984” was from Orwell. Either way it is a fine movie. It mixes political intrigue, a detective story, a maverick revolutionary who lives underground and some mighty fine fighting scenes and explosions. It was created by the same team that created the “Matrix”, which is why the action is actually clear and you can tell what is going on in the fight scenes, which is the downside of so many other action movies. The story, which comes from a limited edition comic series of the 1980’s, follows V, a masked inciter of the people to overthrow the government.
Set in 2020, the London society is controlled completely by the government. Curfews and oppressive food and water rationing are the norm and the government pushes the price up whenever they see fit. The 1984-esque London also has a Nazi-like Secret police service taking out any and all who speak out against the government. After dark, the streets are open to Fingermen, basically gangs of men who take the law into their own hands, even if this means rape and murder of those who are out after curfew. One night, our heroine, a young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) is saved by V (Hugo Weaving), the masked revolutionary in a Guy Fawkes mask trying to change London for the better. After an explosive meeting, Evey’s interest is spiked. The next day, while at her job at a TV station, V hijacks the signal, sending his message of revolution over the city, one year from that day. While escaping, he is saved by Evey and an unlikely friendship is formed. What follows next are the murders of several high powered people by V in the lead up to the great day of revolution. While V carries out his carefully laid plans, Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea) tries desperately to find out why and what the link is before he reaches the 5th of November and the end of the oppressive totalitarian government.
The acting in this film is quite good. With a relatively dense script, it is a remarkably easy film to watch. Hugo Weaving is great as V. While seemingly a madman on the rampage, looking to cause anarchy and chaos wherever he goes, there is a deeper reason for his violence. He appears to have a penchant for killing those inspiring the people to blindly follow their leaders, there is more to it. He is a character that is multilayered, and difficult to judge on face value. Natalie Portman plays the role of Evey, V’s initially unwitting accomplice, beautifully. While it seems like fate to V that he should come across a girl all too perfectly named Evey, Evey is held back by her morals and does what she believes is right. V realises he has to make her realise her potential for her to reach her destiny. It has to be difficult to play a character that is terrified and yet so intrigued at the same time. Stephen Rea as Inspector Finch is another great character. He plays a dedicated detective, trying to finding out what is going on. But as the film goes on, it appeared as though he wasn’t sure what side he should be on as he begins to realise what is going to happen. There are also several other great cameo’s, including Stephen Fry as Gordon Deitrich who is a television satirist and one of Evey’s only friends, or at least the only one she can trust; John Hurt as the Adam Sutler, the evil head of the government; and Tim Pigott-Smith as the villainous Mr Creedy, whose ambition is only exceeded by his wickedness.
It alludes to some great elements popular culture like the Count of Monte Cristo, Benny Hill and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as well as excerpts from speeches from people such as Malcolm X. It uses a very refreshingly well written and intelligent script. The use of symbols also shows the society. It isn’t quite as dystopic as 1984 but it is a view of what will happen if we allow symbols to control us, like, advertising. The script is interesting and keeps you involved in the story and has a point, unlike so many other films released in today’s film culture. It’s refreshing to watch a movie and enjoy it and actually feel like it isn’t speaking down as if it expects its audience to be stupid. This movie uses shot selection and camera movement are really good too. It keeps the flow of the film really well. The way it was shot, especially in the action scenes meant all the action was clear and coherent and it wasn’t flickery or hard to watch like in so many other films. While the ending may not be a huge twist, and some may see it coming, the build-up to the ending is very well done.
It is a beautifully constructed film. The message, the plot, the whole movie is wonderfully done. And it looks great, and is well acted. While the story builds steadily towards the climax and the realisation of V’s master plan, the tension builds until it explodes in a wonderful finale. Whether it’s glorifying a terrorist act, as many people have criticised the movie with doing, is up to you. It’s a film that, while it has quite a bit of action, uses its script better than most others. It is a movie that looks at the democratic right of the people. That we have a right to be heard. That we can’t afford to blindly listen to those in charge. We have to talk about government and criticise them or eventually we won’t have that choice. And it only takes one person to lead the masses. I'd give this film 4.5 out of 5 stars.
I haven’t blogged in a while but I felt the finale of Scrubs (which is my favourite TV show) deserved one. When you are with a TV show from the beginning, you always feel a little empty when it’s all over. You expect so much from the end, that you will always remember the episode, that sometimes it is a bit disappointing. The departure of John Dorian from Sacred Heart for the final time was not. It was quintessentially Scrubs. It tells it as it is. In reality there is not the big ending. When you leave a workplace, it is not met with great fanfare. You just leave. But what you take with you is the shared experiences you have had with the people you’ve met and touched, and all you have to look forward to is the future.
This is how the show said goodbye:
“Endings are never easy. I always build them up so much in my head they can’t possible live up to my expectations and I just end up disappointed. I’m not even sure it matters to me so much how things end here. I guess it’s because we all want to believe that what we do is very important. That people hang onto our every word. That they care what we think. The truth is you should consider yourself lucky if you even occasionally get to make someone, anyone, feel a little better. After that, it’s all about the people you let into your life.
It’s never good to live in the past too long. As for the future, it didn’t seem so scary anymore. It could be whatever I want it to be.
And who’s to say this isn’t what happens. Who can tell me my fantasies won’t come true…just this once.”
One of the best - well most satisfying - endings to a TV show that you could ever hope to see. The use of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Book of Love’ in the pivotal scene was perfect. The goodbye between JD and Carla and Dr Cox finally saying what he really thinks of JD were also great moments. But the final scene with Zach Braff and Bill Lawrence was the best way to finish it. Simple. Beautiful. Moving. I loved it. I just makes me sad that Zach is leaving and that this could be the end. It’s one of those shows I wish would never end.
* Please don’t take this to heart if you are religious. I am not against religion and do not want to create a hostile backlash. These were just the issues and reflections that I took from this movie.
“Religulous”, the documentary from Bill Maher, looks at faith in religion and how this blind following makes people feel certain in a world full of uncertainty. Science is supposed to be fact, although so much of this life is unknown. While he looks at some kind of faith as being good in small increments, he talks to people who see it as their whole life. When it becomes a look at religion and the state, that’s when the movie becomes really real for me. The quote early on, in a George W. Bush speech when he says “I believe that God wants everyone to be free. That’s what I believe. And that’s why it’s part of my foreign policy” is truly one of the scariest things I have ever heard. That a leader with the biggest nuclear arsenal the world has ever known thinks of a Christian god when dealing with foreign policy is a scary thought to me. The conversations with religious people are interesting, opening up several another angles looking at the different religions.
This documentary is not meant to discredit religion. If you are religious and have faith, it should not make you question that faith. Faith and fact are different. When people try to undermine evolution, which is backed up with solid scientific fact, with creationism, which is a faith-based teaching, it is unfair. In this world we have seem to have so much religious based hatred because religion is sometimes shoved down the throat of people who don’t want it. Religion is very important to many people. Faith is necessary for some people. It can help some people through the day. But faith is a belief in something that is unproven. Science should be seen as fact, or at least as much fact as it can in this uncertain world.
Doubt is the main thing in this movie. Bill says himself that religion is “just selling an invisible product. It’s too easy. These questions about what happens when you die, they so freak people out they will just make up any story and cling to it”. It’s like religion sells certainty and he’s there to give some doubt through questions. The people he is talking to won’t be persuaded. Those religious people follow religion blindly and with faith, but Bill just asks questions, observation based questions, which, if you see the movie without religious certainty, will raise some very good points. There were people who got straight up and couldn’t stand their faith being questioned at all. This is what I see as problem. Life is meant to be questioned. People are curious by nature and are supposed to ask questions.
Insanity prevails over sense in some cases. Cantheism is one of the religions he tests out. A religion where you smoke pot. I don’t really know the religious value of it but it appeared to be real. The man Bill interviewed didn’t seem to know anything about it. When he caught his own head on fire, that was enough for me to dismiss that religion. Most prominent in most religions were some people who exploit followers with corruption, looking for a cheap buck.
It uses clever editing in pointing out what people say to be false and uninformed. Several quotes from the religious people are placed next to the scientific researchers who say the opposite. It really does use the Larry Charles directing technique that we have seen in “Borat” and the episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. The shaky camera and great traditional style of shooting a straight documentary for the live bits along with the edited in bits from movies and TV shows and file footage, all make this movie more watchable. Mostly because it shows it is real people talking yet they are saying fairly ridiculous things or talking about things they have no knowledge of. Bill tries not to take the piss completely out of religion but he just can’t help himself at some points. But having seen some of his shows, he was trying his darndest to hold back and not make a mockery out of his interviews. He just let the interviewees take the mockery out of themselves.
Bill’s jokes are a bit hit and miss. He tries to push his point too hard in some points but it is all just part of the point he is trying to prove. But his political and social awareness are spot on. The ending of this film really makes you think. The whole tone changes in the last 10 minutes. Against the reasonably light hearted first 90 minutes, the ending is deadly serious and ultimately shows what Bill was attempting to convey to the audience. The Armageddon and Judgement Day talk is shocking. The absolute conviction most people have about their religion is realised is the extreme. The visuals are quite stunning. I found one visual of Jesus walking across the water particularly unsettling for some reason. Despite how chilling they were, I found myself nodding in agreement of Bill’s closing thoughts, which are as follows:
“The plain fact is religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists. By those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says ‘I’m willing Lord, I’ll do whatever you want me to do’ except that there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people, with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone that tells you they know what happens when you die, I promise you you don’t. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that’s the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble and that’s what man needs to be considering human history is just a litten of getting shit dead wrong.”
Personally, my philosophy is similar to Bill’s. I would like to believe in something else, like there is more to this life. A greater being that created us and everything around us. I really would like to have the faith that other people have sometimes. But the great mystery of our lives is that we just don’t know. I don’t know if there is anything else after this life. I don’t know what was before this life. I just know that I have this life. I mean, if there is a God, under any religion, would they really be as vain as to needing our constant prayer and acceptance? Wouldn’t they have put us here to live our lives rather than just worship and serve them? If we did just exist to worship and serve them, shouldn’t we know for certain that there is something else?
This is a necessary documentary. It is about time someone asked these questions of a church and of the followers of any religion now that the time of persecution by the state for going against the church is over. It is a brave thing Bill Maher did anyway. Nationalism and religion are intrinsically linked but shouldn’t be. It’s difficult to see American Congressmen and Senators talking about religion like they do. When religion and state are mixed, that’s when problems start. The only problem I have with this film is that he sometimes goes for the really easy target, such as Cantheism, the man who thought he was the second coming of Jesus and several other evangelicals who he makes fun of. But most of the time, he talks to regular, intelligent people who make fun of themselves using the questions that Bill asks. It is well done, especially the final 10 minutes which really makes you sit up in your chair and pay attention. I’d give it 4.5 out of 5
Finally, a movie that tells you exactly what it’s about. No fart arsing about with confusing abstract names to movies. This tells you exactly what is going to happen. Zach (Seth Rogen) and Miriam (Elizabeth Banks) make a porno to get themselves out of their financial problems. It could not be easier. While you might see the name and expect smut, it is actually about two life long friends realising they have more than just platonic feelings for each other. It’s also mixed with some smut, but overall, it is a sweet,
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The 81st instalment of the Academy Awards have come and gone. In a wonderful extravaganza, hosted by Hugh Jackman, the Academy recognised who they saw as the best of the best in film over the past year. The show was theatrical, with Hugh Jackman giving a polished performance, singing and dancing and telling jokes, sometimes being cheeky. The big winner of the night was, without a doubt “Slumdog Millionaire”, winning 8 of its 10 nominations. Other multiple winners were “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with three and “Milk” and “The Dark Knight” with two each.
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The 29th Annual Razzie Awards have come and gone and the worst of the worst in film for 2008 has been announced. The big winners, or losers, however you choose to look at it, were Mike Myers and Paris Hilton with three awards a piece, as well as Director Uwe Boll, who was given the Worst Career Achievement Award for his atrocities committed against cinema, as well as the Worst Director of 2008.
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“Slumdog Millionaire” is a rush of colour, filled with stereotypically Indian sounding music and industrious work of the people living in the slums of Mumbai. It is a pauper to a prince story with a rather unique version of the slums of India. The use of the game show “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” to tell the story is fantastically done. The game show is one of the highest rating shows in India and, while a western audience sees $1 million as a large sum of money, for an Indian kid from a poor family working as a tea server in a call centre, it is completely life changing and is, as the movie says, more than anyone he works for will ever earn. But to Jamal (Dev Patel), the money doesn’t mean anything. He just has to stay as long as he can so that he may have a chance at love with his childhood sweetheart.
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We're less than a month away from the announcement of the 81st Academy Awards on the 22nd of February. I'm going to show the early predictions and the nominee I hope will win on the night.
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Sean Penn’s movie “Into the Wild” is the real-life story of Christopher Johnson McCandless (Emile Hirsch), and is also the adaptation of the bestseller by Jon Krakauer. The story begins with the his unhappy family driving Chris to find more out of life, which he sees as a call to go into the wild, and ends in tragic death in a sudden, unexpected manner. But while the sadness is on either end of the story and his family struggles with his decision to leave in search of meaning and experience, the tone of the film is upbeat and inspirational. It makes you want to get out into nature and live.
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“The Butterfly Effect” is a very simple film. Well in terms of story at least. The subject matter of time-travel and of the choices we make defining how our lives, as well as the lives of those whom we impact, end up is pretty heavy. But it works pretty well. It’s a decent film which has been critically slammed, mostly, I assume, because of Ashton Kutcher being the lead. It’s mostly because the script is fairly weak but it is a decent movie. The story holds up and the acting is passable.
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