"Red" (2010) -- Initial Thoughts

My dear friend DKoren has been bugging me to see this for ages now, and so she and I watched it together over a couple nights this week.  Oh my goodness!  I wish she had bugged me more!  This is one wild, crazy, wacky water slide of a movie.  I cannot wait to see it again, because it is pure fun.  And because I laughed so hard at times that I not only missed dialog, but I'm kind of hazy on some plot points.  But when we watch movies together, we're on opposite ends of the continent, and I can't just rewind and watch what I missed or we'll get unsynced.  So... I will be forced to watch it again.  Oh, the agony!

The basic plot is that Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA agent trying to live a normal life, but after he's almost assassinated by unknown assailants, he gets back in the game and drags a bunch of his fellow retirees (and his almost-girlfriend) with him.  Those fellow retirees include Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich), Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Ivan (Brian Cox).  And don't forget the CIA hitman who's now been tasked with taking Frank down -- that would be William Cooper (Karl Urban).  And then there's the almost-girlfriend, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), who adds smile-inducing quirk to her every scene.

While I was watching this, I started comparing the cast to a hot fudge sundae, and the analogy worked so well, I'm going to up the dessert to a banana split and include all the main players.  Because I can.  And because this is that kind of movie.

We'll start with the ice cream, since that's what gets put in first.  Cooper (Karl Urban) is all three flavors:  vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.  For the first 2/3 or so of the movie, he's too flavorless, all clean-shaven and being the good soldier who never questions orders.  But then he gets in over his head, he gets scruffy, and he starts getting a sweet-yet-tart thing going on.  And by the end, oh, he is rich, creamy, chocolatey goodness.

Next come the bananas, which definitely represent Marvin (John Malkovich).  The dude is completely loony, but in the most hilarious way possible.  He's twitchy, he's paranoid, he's unpredictable -- he truly is bananas!

Okay, that's the base ingredients, so now on to the really good stuff.  Victoria (Helen Mirren) is the crushed pineapple -- tangy and sassy, demanding all your attention whenever she's around. She's like a lethal Martha Stewart, if you can imagine that.

Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) would be the whipped cream.  At first you think she's just tossed into the mix to add some sex appeal, to make us laugh, to make Frank seem more interesting, or because there weren't enough female characters.  But like whipped cream, you eventually realize that without her, the whole thing would be kinda blah.

Joe (Morgan Freeman) is the butterscotch sauce.  He's both sweet and salty, loveable and deadly.  I wish he'd had more screen time, just like I always wish my banana splits had more butterscotch sauce.

Frank (Bruce Willis) is the hot fudge, and I do mean hot.  He's one of the few white guys who actually looks better bald than with hair -- very few, since, as someone once said (was it Dave Barry?), most bald white guys look like giant thumbs.  But wow, he is smooth and yummy in this.

He held me at gunpoint until I agreed to post 3 pics of him instead of 1.

And finally, Ivan (Brian Cox) is the cherry on top.  He completely steals every scene he's in, he's scrumptious and wonderful, but he only has a tiny role and leaves me wanting a lot more.  Like those maraschino cherries, I can't get enough!

Is this a family-friendly movie?  It's got a good bit of violence, though none of it is gory -- it's kind of old-school movie violence, with little blood shown, and a lot of deaths implied or off-camera.  There's some bad language, including the dreaded f-bomb, but I see Clearplay has a filter for this movie, so if you're into Clearplay, it could easily become very watchable.  No sex, no nudity, just a few kisses and one or two lower-cut blouses.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title, R.E.D. stands for "Retired -- Extremely Dangerous."  They definitely are all of that!

Finally, this is one of Ernest Borgnine's last movies, and he's adorable in it.  So I'll end with a shot of him :-)

This Week's Playlist

Inspired by Classy with a Dash of Quirk, I decided to post the five songs I've been listening to over and over this week.  They're in a playlist I call "Bounce" in my Windows Media Player (cuz I don't have an mp3 player).  [EDIT:  I've added little descriptions of each instead of just their title and artist.]

1.  The Avengers theme by Alan Silvestri -- full of romping joy, makes me fist-pump and want to go tackle some enormous task.



2.  "The Ballad of Cat Ballou" sung by Bobby Darin.  It's the theme song from the wacky 1965 western by the same name.  Bobby doesn't sing it in the movie, but I love his rendition (of course).



3.  "Whiskey in the Jar" performed by Metallica -- possibly my favorite Metallica song, and it's not one they wrote, they just took an Irish ballad and rocked it.



4.  "Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond -- makes me want to kick back and groove for a bit, though I usually end up dancing around the living room with the kids to it instead.



5.  The Rare Breed suite by John Williams -- this is part one and 7 minutes long, so use it as background music if you want.  It's from one of my favorite westerns, one I grew up with.  I've been playing this suite a lot while writing.

Monday Movie Quote Link Up 2

I've missed doing this for a few weeks, thanks to one thing or another, but I'm back at last :-)  Today's quote comes from my second-favorite movie ever, The Fugitive (1993).  It's another movie I quote a lot, but with my kids being 1, 3, and 5 right now, I use this line the most lately:

"My, my, my, my, my, what a mess."  -- Deputy Marshal Sammy Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) eyeing a train wreck.

I've actually been to the place where they filmed the big train-and-bus wreck!  They used a real train and a real bus, not models, and it was the biggest wreck ever filmed to that date, IIRC.  They filmed it up on the Great Smoky Mountain Railway in North Carolina, and they filmed some of the chase stuff in that area too, like the river that Dr. Kimble swims in after he does a Peter Pan right offa that dam.

Man, I love this movie.

Click the button above to join the fun!

"Jane Eyre" (1997) -- Initial Thoughts

So, I watched this over a period of three weeks, which is not at all ideal.  I finished the last twenty minutes tonight, and I'm so glad I made a few tiny notes here and there, or I'd have to watch the whole thing over to review it properly.  Not that I'd mind, but I don't really have the time right now.  Obviously, or I'd have watched the whole thing in one swoop the first time, right?

I've been having a bit of a Spring Fling with Ciaran Hinds, in case you haven't noticed that he's popped up several times lately.  I'm also crushing on Ewan McGregor again, and you'll see him mentioned a lot in the next few weeks too, I'm sure.  But anyway, ever since I watched Persuasion a couple months ago, I've been eager to see Ciaran Hinds play Mr. Rochester.  But I've also read a ton of reviews of this version that said it was terrible.  So I approached it kind of apprehensively, fearful that it would butcher my favorite story, and that I'd be disappointed in both Ciaran and the movie.

I needn't have worried.

I'm not saying I love it, mind you -- I think I like it about as well as the 2011 version.  Which means that the 1983 is still my favorite.  But this has a lot of good qualities.  (EDIT:  After thinking about it while falling asleep last night, I've decided I like this one better than the 2011.)

First off, it trims down the first section of the book into a couple of short scenes that show us that young Jane is imaginative, starved for love, intelligent, and possessing a keen sense of right and wrong.  Second, it also trims the third section where Jane is off living with the Riverses -- it even goes so far as to cut one of the Rivers sisters out, and totally removes the facts that Jane is their cousin and that she inherits money from their mutual uncle.  But I'm okay with that, because all those cuts means there is more time to focus on the whole point of this version of the story:  the relationship between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester.

Awww, so happy together!

Ciaran Hinds plays a much angrier Rochester than Michael Fassbender or Timothy Dalton.  He has been wronged by life, he has a chip on his shoulder the size of one of Thornfield's towers, and he does not care a whit what anyone thinks of all that.  He's grumpy and he knows it, and he wants you to know it too.  He growls and he rants and he glares and... hot diggetty dog, he is attractive while he does all that!  Even despite his dreadful mustache and the silliest sideburns I've seen in many years, and some really unruly hair.  He's all intensity and fire and barely simmering desire... I need to stop now before my prose turns positively purple here.

Oh, but I didn't mention that he sings!  Yes, yes, he does!  Go here to hear him. Since Ciaran sang his own stuff in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), I'm fairly sure he does here too.

For this Mr. Rochester, every day is a bad hair day.

As for Samantha Morton as Jane Eyre, she's a little prettier than I'm used to, but she totally pulls off the mixture of youth, determination, and sensibleness that Jane requires, so I don't mind that she's not very plain. She might be almost a little too spunky, as there are times when I almost expect her to put up her dukes and go a couple rounds with Rochester.  But she tempers the spunk with a wide-eyed naivete that was sweet and believable.

Rochester looks positively batty here, but Jane looks lovely.

I've read that some people are not fond at all of the proposal scene in this version, especially the kiss, as it's, well, it's awkward.  It's not all fanfares and sunsets and perfectly placed lips.  But do you remember your first kiss?  I remember mine.  It was horrible.  It made this look like high art.  This is Jane Eyre's first kiss, though it's not Rochester's and he does get some points deducted for not taking over and showing her how it's done.  But over all, I didn't hate it, and it certainly didn't make me hate the whole production.

Now, I need to note that this screenplay does not adhere to the dialog from the book.  It paraphrases.  It rephrases.  It uses bits here and there when they work for these portrayals, and throws out what doesn't. I think my favorite example of this is when Jane refuses to live a lie with Rochester.  She says, "You are a married man."  He shouts back, "But I'm still ME!"  (This Rochester shouts a lot.  A lot.)  Her words are pretty close to the book, his aren't even remotely.  But they work ever so well.  For me, that is :-)

So anyway, I guess the one thing I really didn't like about this version is that they totally cut out the idea of religion.  Any time she brought up morality, he dismissed it as "Brocklehurst claptrap."  Jane was left, then, with only her instincts to guide her actions, much less defend her against Rochester's request that she live with him as his pretend wife once the wedding option is out.  This made her seem contrary and a little bit mean, which is all wrong.

Okay, so... there are no good screencaps on the internet from this.  None.  And I watched it on YouTube, so yeah... I have no even decent screencaps from it either.  Sorry!  I did find this one picture that gives you a good idea of the sorts of clothes they wear.  Rochester generally looks wealthy and manly, and Jane wears a lot of plain grey dresses.

Is this version family-friendly?  Pretty much.  There's one suggestive moment involving Bertha, and Jane tells Rochester she will not share his bed, which is a bit more direct than some versions get.  So it's not 100% squeaky clean.

I kind of thought their first kid was a boy, but it doesn't really matter.  Happy ending!

A Loss

My camera died :-(  The one I named Haldir, that I got from Deborah Koren back when Dano was still in utero.  It's almost six years old, seen a great deal of use, and taken thousands upon thousands of pictures, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Just sad.  He died right in the middle of a trip to DC with some visiting family members, and already I've missed a bunch of photo-taking opportunities, though I've been trying to capture things on my video camera (Yakima) than usual to make up for the lack.  I'm almost tempted to pull out one of my 35mm cameras (Gabriel, Marlowe, and my trusty Kodak) just to fill in the void, and may end up doing so.  Been a long time since I took one of them on an adventure, and I really want to get some shots of my daffodils that are blooming for the first time!

But anyway, thanks to a generous birthday gift from my dad, I've ordered a new camera.  It should look like this:

It's the Canon PowerShot A3400, and I don't know about you, but given the color and the fact that it has an A in its model number, I'm thinking it needs a very Asgardian name.  But I'll wait to decide until I actually get it :-)

Still More Period Drama Tag

We've finished month three of the Period Drama Challenge!  Here are my answers to Miss Laurie's questions for this month:

1. What period dramas have you watched in March?

Pride and Prejudice (2005), Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), "The Man with the Twisted Lip" (1986), and Laura (1944).  That brings my grand total to 11!  I originally signed up to watch 10, but since I've surpassed that, I'm now aiming for the 12-15 bracket.

2. How many adaptations of Jane Eyre have you seen? Do you have a favorite?

I've seen almost 3.  I've watched the 1983 version many times, the 2011 version once, and I'm almost done with the 1997, which I'll be reviewing here soon.  So far, my favorite is definitely the 1983, starring Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke.

3. Do you prefer period drama villains who are cleverly cunning or downright diabolical?

I think cunning, as diabolical villains are less interesting.  Someone who's just evil for the sake of being evil doesn't have much depth usually, but a cunning villain can be fascinating.

4. How often does watching a period drama make you want to read the book it's based on?

I'd say about 90% of the time.  (I'm assuming you mean, "If I haven't already read the book.")  If I didn't like the story line or characters, then I'm not usually interested in reading the book.

5. What older period drama would you like to see a remake of?

We can never have enough Hamlets, can we?  I myself own 8 different versions (and have seen 3 or 4 others), but we haven't had a new major motion picture version since 2000.

Delighted

We moved into our house 19 months ago, and until yesterday, I had not decorated the library at all.  I know exactly what I want to do in there, but the time and means had been lacking for a while.  But encouraged by how well the border in my bathroom turned out, I decided to find an Etsy shop that makes decals and get a custom-made one for the library.  I settled on a shop called A Lasting Expression, and they worked with me to find just the right script and size.  

Last night, I put it up, and once again... don't do this sort of thing with small people around to distract you.  My first attempt was horribly crooked!  And that despite careful measuring and everything.  Just too many distractions.  But because I had only stuck it to the wall a little, not smoothed over the whole thing and pressed it down, I was able to peel it back off, and then Cowboy saved my bacon by being able to hold the whole giant, sticky sheet while I re-measured and re-marked where it should go.  And the second time, it worked perfectly!  

So here it is, the first decoration in the library:

I'm going to be doing this whole Shakespeare theme in there, and when I get more things put up, I'll probably post about that here too.  The wall opposite this one will have two framed Hamlet-related items, and the other bare spots will get other nifty Shakespeare things that I already have.  Just need to get them framed!  But this is a good start.

I paid for this with money I made from my own Etsy shop, Huggermugger.  Woo!