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nightmare_lady
Reviews
Underworld: Awakening (2012)
Selene comes back... as a bitch!
... I know indiscriminate murder seems to solve most problems in these flicks, but I had no idea 12 years of cryo treatment turned someone into a bitch.
Because that's what Selene is in Underworld: Awakening. Indiscriminate murder seems to be her answer to everything. I know love makes people blind, but Selene was always level-headed in the previous movies. Amazing combatant, but always rational. Here, she's on a killing rampage. Evidently "incapacitation" isn't in her dictionary.
The story itself is unremarkable; no twists, no revelations, no lasting impacts. The action is the same too; flying through air, jumping, twirling, pirouetting. It seems like Resident Evil gone vamp; but we already have Resident Evil for that kind of action, and Twilight for Werewolf/Vamp love flick, rendering this movie pointless.
Kate Beckinsale definitely aged, and that shows. She is no longer the cool-headed assassin that we all knew, but rather this bloodthirsty bitch (sorry for the repetitive expletive, but I lack the proper word to describe her as anything else) who seems to think stabbing people indiscriminately and killing them will get her to her goal. Some of her kills seem utterly pointless, and I ended up feeling more for the "baddies" who end up getting killed than Selene. That's not a good sign for this kind of action movie. There are almost no humane interaction between Selene and anyone either. It almost feels as if I'm watching Kate Beckinsale do gymnastics in the air in black spandex with blood spewing about.
I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking when they wrote the script, but they were certainly getting lazy with one-liners and lack of dialogue. Save an hour and half of your time and go watch the 1st Underworld. Then the 2nd. And then the 3rd. And stop there.
Camelot (2011)
Literary? Not really
I have read most of the Arthurian Legends on the market, starting with Green's (which gave a fairly good rundown of the popular tales), Zimmer Bradley (which gave an insight to Morgan's side of the story, which is often ignored) and of course, Malory. What I am amazed at is that Morgan is suddenly Uther's daughter, not Igraine's; it is my opinion that this father-daughter relationship changed the course of Morgan's psychological formation. I will not go into much details here (as I've only watched two episodes), but Morgan in the texts are drawn as a conflicting character; on one hand she's an evil sorceress (while Guinevere is drawn as a Christian queen - I never understood that, to me she's just a cheating harlot), while on the other she is the only one who can save Arthur from eternal death.
So is this good for a B-rated pseudoliterary/historical drama series? Probably. Should you expect some literary accuracy? No. But then again, this is a TV series, not Documentary Channel, so maybe it is wrong of me to expect some accurate depictions.
Black Swan (2010)
Not as impressive as it was advertised to be
I am a huge ballet aficionada and therefore I am very familiar of the story of Odette and Ziegfried (and I have no idea why she is called the Swan Queen in this rendition... most of my friends who are in ballet companies just simply call her Odette). First off, the crucial part of the story, Odile, is portrayed in a very different manner from what is generally accepted to be Tchaikovsky's premise (after all, he decided upon the story). She does not "become" a bird (in fact, Odile is never portrayed as a bird), so I found the transformation jarring.
As a performer myself, I have suffered a very similar predicament to what Nina has suffered; however, from what I have gathered about myself AND my fellow performers, the suffering is MUCH more agonising, more earthly, and extremely dirty even. We all have our fortes and our weaknesses; I cannot deliver Mendelssohn worth a pile of beans, while my Sibelius is relatively well delivered. There are times, however, when I must perform Mendelssohn, when I need to shape my psyche into that which fits the repertoire. Everyone has a different method; I read, my friend meditates, others go to the bar. But the suffering is internalised, not externalised, and therefore it rarely shows upon our faces. We carry on with our daily regimen, we practice, we practice, and we practice more.
The path to art is nothing like which is depicted here. It is a solitary confinement within yourself, and hardly nothing is externalised; when you externalise (by crying, for instance), you release the emotion and then it is gone. We pent it up until we are about to burst, and then we channel it through our performances.
This is a good entertainment for the general population, but it does not depict the sufferance of the artists well enough in my opinion.
A very good performance of Odette by Gillian Murphy of the American Ballet Company is available on DVD. I had hoped for a little higher-quality ballet performance.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Don't even bother
I watched PoTC on my friend's birthday, and honestly, the money was rather wasted. Most of my friends went to watch "Orli", and unfortunately, we do not see his valor such as the role of Legolas in this movie. Rather, as my friend (who went to watch Johnny Depp, not Orlando Bloom) said, "He looks like a sick puppy who was kicked in the ribs". I also felt that Will Turner pretty much gets to do anything he wants, because he's a hero. So not. So if you are going to watch your Orli, don't bother.
Johnny Depp, on the other hand, showed a wonderful performance. Wild, funny, and a bit crazed, he acts as a "gentleman-Pirate" who can't live without rum. He is probably the only one who upholds the dignity of this movie as a movie. He's a typical pirate, rather in a slight lewd way, his drunkenness, and his crazy acts.
Captain Burbosa acted as a typical bad pirate, but he strongly reminded me of Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
Elizabeth Schwann... different story. She acts as a typical Mary-Sue, a pretty rich girl who gets abducted and turns a warrior and marries her love. Wonderful. Congrats. The end. This typical "Hero-girl" storyline might make viewers puke. Between Will Turner and Elizabeth Schwann, a world of 'I love you, you love me' unfolds, and they dramatically "gets over the difference of class" by dumping poor Captain Norrington. Although Keira Knightley is a good actress, there is little doubt that this role is messed up.
Action scenes are so muddled that I don't remember anything except skeletons dancing or some other similarity, which is ridiculous. If you love Johnny Depp, go and watch it. Otherwise, see other movies that worth spending time and money on.