CHONGLAND
GOODBYE WORLD
Starring: Adrian Grenier, Gaby Hoffmann, Ben McKenzie, Mark Webber, Kerry Bishé, Caroline Dhavernas, Scott Mescudi, Remy Nozik.
Director: Denis Hennelly Duration: 1 hr 39 min
Genre: Comedy | Drama
I’m not sure why but my weeks are almost always full of highs and lows, but I’m getting quite frustrated with it… I would be really happy with just an average week…
This week has mostly been a good week; though paired with most uplifting events, I seemed to experience disappointment, stress or frustration, giving an overall impression of feeling down or sadness…
This week has been mostly relaxed, however as I write this, I’m not feeling particularly great, emotionally….
So this week has been a fairly fun week.
The week just gone has been up and down, yet another that I have learnt from.
Monday seems so long ago… The Abel boys came in to work, doing some data entry and manipulation for a database we’re migrating to at church. I sat down with Gary and Bruce to look at the future of the office at St Paul’s as well. At night I caught up with Geoff. We headed off to Macquarie Centre for dinner and a movie: Cowboys and Aliens starring Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde. It was a pretty bad movie… There wasn’t a great deal of explanation, but then there was too much for the viewer to try and work things out themselves. After the movie we also got to have a good little chat in the carpark…
I went to see Where the Wild Things Are this afternoon all by my lonesome. I read the picture book as a child, as I’m sure most people have. The movie adaptation was really good and enjoyable, bringing a smile to my face as I relived the story.
The movie really gives you a connection with Max; you feel for him as he runs away, as he screams and shouts, and as he feels for the ‘Wild Things‘. The characters of the ‘Wild Things‘ were pretty interesting, a few of them are strong and well developed, whilst others were very weak and could have potentially been left out. The imagery within the film is absolutely breathtaking, I absolutely loved the scenery that it was placed in, amazing glimpses of the world that we live in, places I wish I was able to get away to.
There’s plenty of humor thrown in amongst the drama and action of the film, and the story is well fleshed out considering the original book being a fairly short picture book.
I felt very much like Max whilst watching this film today, having a pretty crappy weekend, I just wanted to run away to another world, some place where people would recognise me, look to me for things, care for me and share things with me. A place where I could go wild and run about and be free. I don’t know why, but I feel so alone in this world, even when people are about… It’s one thing to continually serve people, but how do we go about being served ourselves?? Surely it should be a two way street…
Thanks to Alfie’s Dad and subsequently Alfie; who gave me 2 free movie tickets to be used by the end of July, I got along to see Public Enemies a couple of Fridays ago with Jase.
The Synopsis reads:
In the action-thriller Public Enemies, acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Academy Award® winner Marion Cotillard in the story of legendary Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger (Depp)—the charismatic bank robber whose lightning raids made him the number one target of J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling FBI and its top agent, Melvin Purvis (Bale), and a folk hero to much of the downtrodden public. No one could stop Dillinger and his gang. No jail could hold him. His charm and audacious jailbreaks endeared him to almost everyone—from his girlfriend Billie Frechette to an American public who had no sympathy for the banks that had plunged the country into the Depression. But while the adventures of Dillinger’s gang—later including the sociopathic Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi)—thrilled many, Hoover (Billy Crudup) hit on the idea of exploiting the outlaw’s capture as a way to elevate his Bureau of Investigation into the national police force that became the FBI. He made Dillinger America’s first Public Enemy Number One and sent in Purvis, the dashing “Clark Gable of the FBI.” However, Dillinger and his gang outwitted and outgunned Purvis’ men in wild chases and shootouts. Only after importing a crew of Western ex-lawmen (newly baptized as agents) and orchestrating epic betrayals—from the infamous “Lady in Red” to the Chicago crime boss Frank Nitti—were Purvis, the FBI and their new crew of gunfighters able to close in on Dillinger.
I enjoyed the film, although it did jump around a bit, as you’d expect from a biographic film. Depp portrays Dillinger brilliantly, his character develops well throughout the film. He is this ruthless bank robber that cares much for those close to him, yet regards pretty much everyone but the police…
Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis was alright, though not the the standard of several of his other films, I guess his character seemed to lack depth…
It was quite enjoyable to see the calibre of guns as they tore through police cars and buildings, and the tommyguns racing at an unrelenting rate…
In a recent interview with Letterman, Depp mentioned that quite a number of the locations used in the movie were the actual places where these events occurred, which was interesting.
All in all it was an enjoyable film with plenty of action, some interesting romance, and some unbelievable occurrences. Recommend that you get along and see this one.
I’ve just finished watching this and it was a great movie!! More transforming robots thrashing and trashing each other as in the first outing, and also some awkward comedy and gorgeous Megan Fox loving.
We had a pretty big group of people from St Pauls come along: Gaz, Nat, Geoff, Lairdy, Andrew, Trevena, Tim, Jack Day and Magee. The first Transformers movie, we went with an even larger group and unfortunately lucked out on sitting in the front row, with the exception of 4 people. This time we were in the back row. I was surprised at the apparent number of females in the audience too, at least 1/3 if not more….
Shia LaBeouf does well as Sam, a convincing performance with intensity and comedic elements thrown in. Megan Fox is needy, gorgeous, strong and sweet all at the same time. She does seem to sprawl herself all over the screen, camera and whatever else is in her path, showing plenty of flesh, which I’m sure was meant to drag the male population in. Isabel Lucas, the Aussie who used to be on Home and Away, is really sexed up, but does well, although she looked a little off for me; possibly a bit skinny and orange?? I can’t talk too much more about her character, otherwise this would count as a spoiler for those that haven’t seen the movie.
The storyline wasn’t too bad, but it could have been stuck together alot better… There seemed to be too many elements that were put in out of convenience, or didn’t have enough background. It was also good to have elements from the cartoon series in there, but I’m not particularly sure of the history behind the story… I don’t recall this Fallen ever being around (do you??).
There were plenty of moments throughout the film which made me gasp with excitement in either special effects, or storyline/character developments or revelations. The bad thing for me was the lack of character development, especially with the transformers themselves…. At the end of the last movie, we were introduced to Jazz, so you would have, or I was at least, expected to have seen more of him, or at least have his character developed. The two major developments were Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and even those were pretty pathetic. One trouble was that there were soooo many transformers, both Autobots and Decepticons that it was particularly hard to keep track of them, and sometimes even tell one from the others.
There’s been quite a bit of buzz around racism within the movie… I guess it could be taken that way, but it’s a little extreme… there’s a lot of stereotypical portrayal of different cultures, but I’m not sure how racist it is…. There’s other movies which are worse.
Definitely a movie to see for the amazing special effects with giant robots smashing each other with some well choreographed fight scenes, a bit of crude humor, but not if you’re expecting a well written storyline and great camerawork, or aren’t keen on seeing alot of female flesh.
Last night after basketball I went to see the Watchmen movie, a long, visually beautiful tale of a unique time and place.
I went with some of the guys from the team: Nima, Ethan, Gareth & Geoff, and then JJ turned up as well. I didn’t really have any expectations of the movie, perhaps thinking that it’d be another superhero movie, I was wrong…
When I first heard that they were making such a movie, I decided that reading the comic was a good idea, however I didn’t have enough dedication to doing so and fell off after a couple of issues, so only the first half hour or so of the film seemed familiar. Upon further investigation it appears that the film stayed true to the original comics.
The movie is quite overwhelming; there are plenty of visuals to take in, including significant symbols that hint at significant events occuring/points being made, and some heavy dialogue and themes mixed in. The characters are complex and intriguing, each one having their own facets to be explored and different agendas, they definitely show a different portrayal of the superhero.
I enjoyed the movie overall, despite losing the plot at times, it’s definitely something to be watched again to clarify information.