Music Artists: I call you Copycats.

I love Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream", I like "California Girls", and I love "Firework". And Lady Gaga is one of the greatest pop artists of all time, no question. Is it too much to call her the Shakespeare of her time- inventing new words and catering to the mob rather than snooty royalty? But honestly, these two spend so much time trying to be unique that I'm constantly sighing over how boring they are. All the overdone make up, the glitter and paint, untoppable unstoppable "creativity" seems mostly to just make them look more like...everyone and anyone else. I liked early Gaga better than the Monster, and I liked Katy Perry better, well never; it was her voice, not her image that made her great- she should quit with the Gaga ogling and let her voice speak for itself.

Review: 127 Hours

127 Hours was the film that started the series, "I'm Most Excited About". It's actually part of what got me back to writing on this blog at all, and I finally saw it.

Despite the common misconception, the film is
not actually 127 hours long.

127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle, stars James Franco as the mountaineer/climber Aron Ralston. Ralston drove into Utah's canyons one weekend to hike a trail he knew well. It just wasn't his weekend. He slipped and fell into a canyon; a boulder came tumbling down with him and pinned his hand to a rock wall. Ralston was trapped. He had limited water, virtually no food, and only rope, carabiners, and a pocket knife as tools. He knew he was going to die. After five days he was waterless, severely dehydrated, and his hand was decomposing still attached to him. His only choice is to slice through skin, snip nerves, sever arteries, and saw through his muscle to amputate his own arm.


This movie was amazing. Remember when I Am Legend came out, and everyone was like, "Who wants to watch a movie of just Will Smith wandering around?" This concept is kind of like that. 70 of the film's 90 minutes are of one guy trapped in the bottom of a canyon. He literally cannot move from that spot. So what's so interesting about it? 

This guy.

James Franco owned this movie. First off, can we talk about how awesome James Franco is for like two seconds? This guy in running at a breakneck pace through life. He's an extremely successful actor who has worked on comedies, as well as several Oscar award-winning films, not to mention - oddly- General Hospital. He has a Bachelor's Degree, a Master's Degree, and has been accepted toYale University to earn his PhD in literature and creative writing. He's attended schools for a degree or just for the hell of it, including UCLA, Columbia University, NYU, and now Yale. He acts, directs, produces, and writes. He's had a book published, hosted the Oscars, been named Sexiest Man Alive, hosted Saturday Night Live twice, had his art displayed in LA art galleries, produces funny home videos for the comedy website Funny or Die, and frequently paints. He's obviously brilliant. 

Also he looks like this

Franco took this role, and became putty. He molded himself to not fit Ralston, but to become him. When the dust settles after his fall and he realizes he is trapped, that moment of realization? The horror in his face is unbelievably awful. You feel his desperation, and his pain, and when he films his last goodbyes to his family you aren't seeing a close-up on James Franco; you're looking into the eyes of a dying man.

So. James Franco. Also 127 Hours is brought to you courtesy of director Danny Boyle, who also directed the 2008 international megahit Slumdog Millionaire. These guys slaved away for hours on a set the size of Harry Potter's closet-room at the Dursley's. The set was so claustrophobic that Franco resorted to the not-weird-at-all behavior of hiding his textbooks near him so he could remind himself during breaks that he wasn't actually going to die on the set. As I've explained to you before, Aron Ralston did actually film himself hallucinating, recalling memories, and saying his last goodbyes. The footage is so disturbing and so personal that it has never been released to the public. Only Franco and the director were allowed to review the footage to accurately portray Ralston and his state of mind.

Which was pretty much "[every cuss word evar] + I AM GOING TO DIE"

Boyle does a fantastic job of breaking from Franco to show us his hallucinations, to relive his memories, to truly let the audience have this experience with him. As he is an audience to his own recollections, so are the viewers. I noticed a deliberate use of sensual elements to convey a sense of time and place to the audience. The use of color, the super-saturation or the absence of sunny color is a superb storyteller, as are the sound effects- slurping water, echoes, and the like.


The idea is to trap you in that canyon with Ralston. You are supposed to feel this experience with him. Because the story isn't about him being trapped, it's about his escaping. The guy epic-ly cuts off his own damn arm with a dull pocket knife, after breaking the both bones of his trapped arm because he knew he couldn't chip through them with his blade. He is still stuck in the bottom of a canyon with a bleeding stump of an arm, but manages to get out of the canyon, rappels down a cliff, and starts hiking out of the desert. Dehydrated, hemorrhaging, and starving.  

The tourniquet and knife Ralston used to amputate his arm

In the video below the real Ralston describes his experience of being trapped....



This film is something you should see if you can stomach a little gore. Honestly, I was expecting a nasty, splurting (I just made up that word) gorefest of an amputation, and that's not at all what it is. This is a film about hope, about humanity, about adversity, about triumph. You shouldn't miss it.


Director: Danny Boyle
Length: 94 min
Rated: Rated R for language and some disturbing violent content/bloody images.
See the IMDb page here
Trailer:
.

New Transformers 3 Trailer

THIS is what a trailer should be like. Editing, sound, epic. It's all there.

Music Video Meanings: 21st Century Girl

Here's the video in case you haven't seen it. Watch it first and then read on.

So I really liked the beginning of the video. I'm definitely feelin' the mysterious vibe okay, and she's like in a desert and picks ups some dust and a butterfly appears out of it and flies away. Then she's running across the desert with her friends, and also a pack of wolves, but she's all dressed to the nines and you're going "Oo pretty!" and then things start to get weird.

Well first Willow Smith starts to sing-talk in a Ke$ha voice, which is weird enough, but then her friends start pulling stuff out of the desert earth. And the video starts out with Willow appearing out of the dust, and then the butterfly, and heck, she pulls a guitar out too. But her friends are pulling out weird things. The whole video starts to take on this anti-nature theme that's not even cool. Like the guitar is cool, but her friends pull out parking meters. Parking meters. Seriously, I don't get how that's awesome. You start pulling stuff out of the ground, and you pull up the parking meters?

Then they pull out a sweet car, and you're like "Now that's more like it!" Nope. The next scene is her friends as child slaves pulling these heavy metal chains over their shoulders that are connected to...a...house. Okay, so the kids are now slaves pulling giant-ass skyscrapers out of the ground, probably blistering up their hands on those chains. Meanwhile, all of nature is being destroyed as they slave to pull up the chains of these buildings.

And then Willow Smith turns into some kind of nine-year-old dictator singing that she's going to take over the world and her friends/slaves are like pulling up more buildings behind her. Then they roll back the desert floor, and there's streets, and then they have a dance party in the streets of what's now a city 'cause the desert is gone, and Willow's like the cool friend obviously,  and the music is kinda fading out and you think that's the end, but then Willow starts whispering to a toddler, who makes a butterfly out of dust and starts chasing it.

WHY IS THE BABY ALONE? And for that matter, why is Willow wandering around in the metropolis she's created? Either she's going to get mugged, or they're living in a deserted city, which is just super creepy. And wait, where is that toddler's mom? Why is the baby running around by itself? That child is totally unsupervised, which is just horrible parenting practices.

I wish this video made more sense, you guys, but I see no other option but to interpret this video as Willow Smith declaring herself a tyrannical empress and making her friends do backbreaking slave labor.

"Uh, excuse me, where are you going?
You are my slave and you haven't
finished mining rhinestones for
my fingernails yet."

Review: Sucker Punch

Directed by Zach Snyder, the director-demigod of slow-mo action, and tons of CGI, Sucker Punch is an action movie with no heart. Remember 300? Yeah, that movie had heart. Like here's this army of scantily-clad men standing up for freedom and stuff by running around with swords cutting off extremities and watching the blood spurt. Ah, that's heart. This movie was supposed to be something similar. Scantily-clad barely-legal girls fight for their freedom by standing up to the Man. Literally, though, they're standing up to the men subjugating them. That's heart, right? Well it could be, but somehow it gets ruined.

Look, Zach Snyder's movies are all about the awesome special effects and the action and what's happening on the screen. I mean did you see 300? It's all blood and guts and abs and swords okay, the plot kind of gets lost in the mix and you don't really care about it by the end, you care about a single theme: freedom. But Sucker Punch kept trying to push its plot back into the picture and make it about this twisty Inception-dream story, and we all just wanted to see Emily Browning fight some dragons, okay.

And you know what? The plot looks awesome from the outside! This girl

gets committed to an insane asylum against her will, and is treated like crap by the people inside

like this creeper, and so escapes into the fantasy of her mind to escape

Wow, sounds pretty amazing right? Yeah, well it would be except Emily Browning just really doesn't sell her role as Babydoll. At least a third of the movie is close-ups on her face, no joke, and she seems incapable of making any other face besides this

Seriously. That photo of her crying up there? It's the only time she ever has a different look on her face.

"Being in an insane asylum makes me dress like a sailor and have perfect skin
I guess? I'm not sure though because I'm just so sad"

It's so annoying it was hard to identify with her, or look at her, or focus on anything except her sad face all the time. She's supposed to be a tragic character, but seriously. So like, if this were a drama that would make sense. But um, it's not. It's an action movie. Speaking of that...

I'm confused by Snyder making Sucker Punch a PG-13 film. It's an action movie in which scantily clad insane asylum inmates are forced to be hookers, and are beaten for insubordination, so they escape into their minds to fight...well, anyone who happens to be there. They slit throats, hack off limbs, shoot people in the face, and by the end of the film these hooker/inmates must have a kill count of like several hundred guys. If you want to kill that many people, and make a movie about hooker/inmate/killers, you're going to have to have an R. Otherwise you water everything down and it's booooring. How could I have been bored during a Zach Snyder movie?! I was just a teensy bit disappointed.

"AAAAAAGH CANCEL CHRISTMAS!"

I recall naming this as one of the movies I anticipated most this year, and the movie is just like the trailer, so I was right about that, but the badass factor went way down with Emily Browning.

"OMG I'm half naked, I have a sword and pistols, and I'm
STILL BORING. How is this possible, Zach Snyder?"

Actually, the other girls were great, even Vanessa Hudgens, but particularly Sweet Pea. In truth I wish they'd cast Abby Cornish as Babydoll.

This is why.

In that same post I recall writing something like, "Five girls, who have starred in a few movies, including High School Frickin' Musical are about to become the newest team of action heroines. Hopefully they think for themselves instead of blindly following the orders of some guy on the other end of the phone, like a few Charlie's Angels who will remain unnamed. " My "hopefully they don't do THIS 'cause that'd be lame" turned out to be EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID.

"Hey, I'm a totally unnecessary character, what's up?"

This guy shows up in like every other scene to tell the team of action heroines their mission. Honestly, I could not believe the amount of time they spent standing around listening to exposition by this guy. I thought Babydoll was going to be the leader, and have some great lines. Like remember Leonidas yelling "THIS IS SPARTA!" It was like the catchphrase of the year. But no, instead this guy shows up and after telling the girls  their mission in the most horrible monotone like it's the intro to a video game quest, he spouts off one or two one-liners. I think the writers thought it was like, gonna be cool to have this old ninja guy saying stuff to these girls, but mostly it was just... boring. There'd be this dramatic pause as the five girls are about to rush an entire army of Nazi demons (yeah, they make it into the movie) and the old guy's like "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

Wow.

Profound.

Thank you for that lil' tidbit as we head out to battle to DIE. Couldn't you say something like "Give them nothing! But take from them everything!"

Look, I didn't want to have to say this, I really didn't. But I'm sensing a certain decline that starts with M. and ends with Night Shyamalan. And I really hope that's not what's happening, because I like Zach Snyder, I really do! I love his effects and his vision, and the themes, and the action, but something just isn't translating to the screen.

In conclusion. It's entertaining if you know what you're getting into and don't expect much but what looks like a Zach Snyder video game adaptation.

Most Distinctive...Rutina Wesley

PEOPLE IN HOLLYWOOD LOOK ALIKE. Moving on.
This week's Distinctive Face is Rutina Wesley.

Wesley has bounced into a tiny spotlight from out of nowhere. She was in one pretty crappy movie in 2007, and a couple of TV shows, before landing the role of Tara Thorton in HBO's True Blood in 2008. Her no-nonsense, also-alcoholic character is tormented by the writers. Everything that could go wrong with her goes wrong. Her mother's an alcoholic, her brother's a drug dealer, she gets kidnapped, beaten, possessed, used, misused, and abused. And Wesley is beautiful throughout. She does an incredible job of portraying Tara as both strong and vulnerable. She's a survivor.

Possibly because she's freakin' buff.

The entire cast of True Blood was nominated in 2009 and then 2010 for outstanding ensemble performances, awards which Wesley was included in. Overall the show has garnered eight Emmy noms, four Golden Globe noms, three Grammy nominations, and a total of 35 nominations counting every other guild and awards ceremony for TV ever. Check out any top ten list of Best Shows on Television, and this one is one it, guaranteed. The show is written by Academy Award winner Alan Ball (American Beauty) and has emerged as one of HBO's strongest shows since Sex and the City and The Sopranos. It runs in the summers and takes 9-month-long breaks between seasons, but that hasn't stopped viewership from rising from 2 million in its first season to 3 and then more than 5 million viewers last summer. The show's fourth season is set to premiere this June.

"Watch my shoooow!"

The show's ad campaign is so incredible that it will soon get its own article by yours truly on this blog, but let me just say that the marketing team behind this show is incredible. I mean look at this tagline:

Ah chuckle chuckle, that's a good one. This is a teaser, I'll write you a whole thing about it soon. Well back to Tara- er, Rutina.

"Hey just chillin', lookin' gorgeous in this weird
dress thing"

She's amazing. I don't get how Anna Paquin wins an Emmy for her performance and this girl here gets no major award nominations, because Wesley here is wonderful.

OH.Right.

Well if you can stomach a lot of violence, gore, sex, language...pretty much anything and everything considered offensive, and you want to see a good show, check out True Blood. The entire cast works together so well, and a show set in the redneck South rather than the Upper East Side or LA is wonderfully refreshing.

IMDb

Most Distinctive...Colin Firth

 

Some celebrities look freakily alike. Case in point: the two brunnettes on the above left may look like the exact same person, but the far left is actress Jennifer Morrison, and next to her is actress Ginnifer Goodwin. They even creepily have the same name. On the right there are Kirsten Dunst and Emilie de Ravin, who also look strikingly similar. I'm just saying. The appreciation of a truly distinctive face is legitimate. And without further ado, I present Colin Firth...

"Hallo, I'm aDOrahbly British"

A little over 15 years ago, Colin here starred in a TV mini series called "Pride and Prejudice" based on the Jane Austen novels. He played Mr. Darcy, and ever since then he's been the adorably painfully British guy in pretty much everything. From Bridget Jones' Diary to What a Girl Wants to Mamma Mia! Colin has been British, British, British. There's this scene in the aforementioned miniseries in which dearest Colin jumps fully clothed into a pond and takes a swim on account of the hot weather. The comments on the YouTube video make it seem like he stripped down naked and danced on a pole for the viewers. The ladies just love it.

Look how cute he is when he's making his "Mr. Darcy
disapproves" face!

See, the thing about Colin is that he's not Brad Pitt. He's not the suntanned California boy, or the hot werewolf, or the cute Irish guy, or whatever. In fact, it's hard to find a picture of Colin looking anything but intellectual. Trust me, I tried.

But isn't this piano playing in B&W sexy?

No, Colin is the serious man, so him jumping into a pond is hot. One reporter described his fans as an "alarming following among the good women of middle England, many of who seemed about to rip this mild-mannered fellow's flowing white costume-drama blouse from his back and do unspeakable things to him." Poor Colin, all he ever did was be a stiff-upper-lip-Brit with a heart. And now his fanbase consists of lonely women who like to read. But that's probably better than illiterate screaming tweens, like the teen idol fans, right? Don't answer that. Let's just move on.

"I'm very serious and well-dressed"

I have to search for pictures of the week's Most Distinctive, and believe me, I had trouble finding normal pictures of Colin. Not because he makes faces or something- he actually mostly just looks terribly serious all the time. No, it's because Colin can't sit like a normal person.

"Wot? This is a completely normal way to sit on a pahk bench"

I thought this was a fluke. But no, if Colin Firth is sitting down in a photo, he inevitably looks awkward: Look, it's funny

"I'm in a bawth tub!"

"Wot do you mean 'relax'? This is how I olways sit in my bed whilst on a bus"

Seriously, go back up and look at that picture of him playing piano. Doesn't it look like a weird way to play piano? It is. But he's just so British that it doesn't matter. Let's have another picture of him looking serious

You know you're a serious, lonely woman
who likes to read a good book if this photo
made you sigh and mutter "Oh Colin, you're
so dreamy". 

Colin Firth has been giving us his best performances ever with the smaller independent films he's been doing lately, and his recent collaboration with director Tom Ford for Single Man. His latest film The King's Speech scored Firth twenty-one best actor nominations from every major and minor film festival and guild and whatnot. He didn't just score the Academy Award on Sunday night for his performance, but he's also nabbed the BAFTA, the Golden Globe, and the SAG award. While he was once discounted as "just" a romcom actor, Firth has been bashing critics over the head with great performance after great performance in the last couple of years. No wait, that's not very British. Ummmm, he's been politely and humbly accepting  dozens of awards for his performances in the last few years and graciously giving the credit for them to everyone but himself. Aw, how adorable. Here, watch his acceptance speeches this year at the Oscars and the BAFTAs just so you can get understand what I mean when I talk about how British he is...

Oh Colin, let's read books together