Hey Look -- It’s Another Scott Pilgrim Review!

So, my sweet husband took me to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for our anniversary.  I would make a pithy comment about the 12th year being “comics” but, for us, every anniversary is the comics anniversary.

So, Scott Pilgrim.  I liked it, I liked it a lot.  But that was pretty much a given.  What’s more surprising is the parts I expected to dislike didn’t bother me so much.  

You see, I love the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.   I also love Edgar Wright.   I like Kieran Culkin, and Brandon Routh and Chris Evans.  I like Beck.  I like video games and 8 bit art.  So, most of this movie is in my wheelhouse.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Let me state, straight up, that this is not the type of movie that I would normally seek out.

I ran across it the other day while I was helping out the circulation workroom.  It caught my eye (Hello, RDJ!) and since working in circ makes me think of college, I decided to check it out.

Back in my undergraduate days, I majored in Women’s Studies.  Diane Arbus, the subject of Fur, was a name that often came up in discussions.   Arbus was a photographer who is best known for her portraits of “deviant” groups – transvestites, circus performers, nudists.    She’s credited for pioneering a new spirit in documentary photography, empathizing with her subjects rather than displaying them.

She’s also an artist I have never really understood.   Although people who know a hell of a lot more about art photography than I do have said her photos are astounding, they never really struck me as anything more than voyeuristic .  

So – Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.  I went into it with a little knowledge about the subject and not a whole lot of expectations.    I accept that this film is not a “biography” and that plenty of artistic liberty has been taken with Arbus’s life.    Since I only have the barest sense of Arbus’s history anyway, I was willing to separate this fantasy from the historical person.     Even with that caveat, I don’t think this film works very well. 

Movie Review -- The A-Team

Let me start by saying -- I didn't watch the original A-Team.


I was only allowed an hour of TV a week as a little girl, and 30 minutes a day as a teen.  And I can pretty much guarantee that the A-Team wouldn't have been appropriate viewing, in the eyes of Mom.   I think I saw half of one episode of the original show -- it had something to do with smuggling watermelons.


So, other than knowing the basic setup of the plot, and of course, that Mr. T pities fools, I had no prior knowledge of the characters or what the movie was "supposed" to be like.


So why, you may ask, did I go in the first place? I went because it was my hubby's birthday, and unlike me, Hubby is well versed in '80's TV.  He was pumped for this movie.


And, it was better than I thought it would be.    Lest that seem like damning with faint praise let me make it clear,  I went into this movie with one expectation -- that it was going to suck.  Hard. 


It didn't suck.  In fact, parts of it were downright fun.  Sometimes, particularly in the summer, all I want from a movie is cute boys and explosions.  This had both, so I was reasonably content.  

Judgement Afore: Movie Trailers!

Hey Everybody --

This weeks "stuff I love" will be delayed till I'm in a better mood -- I'm getting a cold and there's not much I love right now.

Instead, let's make my bad mood work for me by getting judgmental on some movie trailers! These are all childrens' or teen books that have been adapted to film.

Stuff I Love: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

(Sorry about the late post guys! I had to work Sunday, and the kidlet got a nosebleed after she fell asleep, so last night was kind of hectic.)

Anyway, on to (belated) Stuff I Love.

I hesitated to write a post about Percy Jackson, because I’m late to the party. I’ll be honest, when the first book came out way back in 2005, I ignored it. I saw it on the VOYA Top Shelf Fiction List and the School Library Journal Best Books; but, I didn’t read it. It just… didn’t look like my kind of book.

Fast forward 5 years to a darkened movie theater playing one of those annoying trailers that aren’t trailers. You know, the ones that they try to disguise as “sneak peaks” but are really just extended commercials? Well, this one is for The Lightning Thief, and the main actress is talking about her character, Annabeth Chase as “intelligent and fierce.” My 8 year old daughter looks at me and says “We are SO there.”

However, one of the hard and fast rules in our house is “No Book/No Movie.” You must read the book before you see the film. The only exception to this rule is Lord of the Rings because asking an 8 year old to tackle Tolkien is a bit much, even for us.

So, we started listening to the audio-book of The Lightning Thief. Before long, we got hooked.

Movie Review: Disney's Alice In Wonderland

Disney's Alice in Wonderland

Directed by Tim Burton

Starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Wasikowska, Anne Hathaway and Crispin Glover.

Although it’s against geek orthodoxy, I’ve never been a big Alice in Wonderland fan. I’ve always liked the elements of Wonderland, particularly the Red Queen, but not the book itself.

It’s not really that surprising though, seeing as the book is rife with talking animals, and according to this article in the New Scientist the whole book is really about algebra. As we’ve discussed before, talking animals are a big NO in my book, and the same goes for books about math. (I’ve hated The Phantom Tollbooth for well unto two decades, ever sense my 6th grade reading teacher forced it upon me.)

Again, fighting the geek consensus, but I’m at best a casual Tim Burton fan. My favorite movie of his, The Nightmare Before Christmas, really isn’t his, it’s Henry Selick’s. Burton is just too strange for me sometimes. I like weirdness (seen every episode of The Prisoner, remain oddly fascinated with Lady Gaga) but there has to be a point behind it, and sometimes, I think Burton …doesn’t really have one.

Taking those to things into account, I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The trailers made it look like Mad Hatter --Plus Alice! However, I have an 8 year old who likes spunky girl stories and a husband who’s much more invested in Tim Burton than I am, so we went.

And surprisingly, I liked it. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Stuff I Love: Howl's Moving Castle

I’ve decided that every Sunday night, I’m going to post about something that I 100% adore. 

This week, it’s Howl’s Moving Castle. 

I first read Howl’s Moving Castle when I was about 16 years old or so.  I was going through my “I only read CLASSICS” stage; I would sniff disdainfully at my peers who had a Stephen King or a Dean Koontz under their arm, and proclaim the superiority of Elizabethan playwrights. 

I was not a popular kid.

However, I did have a shamefaced secret.  I was a voracious and indiscriminate fantasy reader.  I haunted a used paperback store near my house, and gobbled up all of the dragons, knights and damsels I could get my hands on.  Unfortunately, since I was shopping at a junky used book store, I read a lot of crap.  Sometimes, it seems like any author who can spell dragon thinks they can write a fantasy novel.  Most of these were straight up Tolkien rip-offs.  Some took Star Wars as their guiding text.  Others just novelized the D&D handbook. Objectively, I would say that 85%  of what I read was terrible.

I remember the day I found Howl’s Moving Castle on the shelf.  In my memory, it was shrouded by a golden glow, in a shaft of divine light, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case.  It cost $1.50, which was a whole hour of babysitting for me.  Normally, I only paid $0.25 for my paperbacks; but something told me to blow my budget for this one.