Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

A very interesting musical story thing. I really love this sort of alternative to live TV. It deals with depression, bullying, mental health, parental death, and parental abandonment. But it is really good. My favorite part is when all 5 kids are sitting around the table having dinner and singing about how hard it all is to have been abandoned by their dad after their mom died. Especially the youngest.

I think it's actually been ages since I watched a zombie movie or even an apocalypse movie, though I did actually watch this movie on Friday. It was The Adventures of Tin Tin, which was amazingly good, though it was animated. Although it was animated in that way where the people and things look almost real, not like cartoons, and not like Pixar. I did think it was really odd that there were only two female characters in the entire movie and one of them (the landlady) had maybe 45 seconds of screen time. And the other lady was a singer, so she basically sang a song and maybe had a line or two. Otherwise it was pretty much boys' adventure time, set in maybe 1920's or 30's Paris (I think, they were playing French music and showed the Eiffel Tower, but everyone was speaking English with English accents) and then a few other places.

But it was funny and witty and the plot was excellent. A reporter named Tin Tin buys a model ship in the market place which turns out to have a partial treasure map inside. Then he and his dog are basically chased all over hill and dale while he figures out what the heck is going on. The dog is an amazing character all on his own, I swear the head villain was modeled after Steven Speilberg in appearance (he was the director), and they just exaggerated his features. There are pirates, and they end up somewhere in India or the Middle East (it's never really quite clear what country, though they do give the city name), but they are wearing flowy clothes that look more Indian from that time period than Arab or Persian and there is a British military force there, so likely India. Although I swear the Great Wall of China was there in one scene. I don't know. I swear it made sense in the movie.

I really, really enjoyed it, and I kept thinking Tin Tin sounded like Jude Law so I looked it up afterwards. It wasn't Jude Law. And then as I was perusing the list of people involved with the movie, I saw who the writer was. And it kind of made me angry. Because the plot made sense (except maybe the Great Wall bit), it went sensibly straight through from beginning to end, the few flash backs in it were not the least bit timey whimey and it was funny and incredibly well-written. The words "hot mess" didn't even occur to me. Yes, I'm sure you've guessed from that description that the writer was none other than Steven Moffat. (This is where the end of the world theme comes in, y/y?) And if he can do that consistently for a 2.5 hour movie, why the hell can't he do that for my beloved Doctor Who?! And also I suddenly understood why there were no women to speak of in this boys' adventure. *sighs*

Still, it really was an excellent movie and I highly reccommend it, even if you don't have children to watch it with. Credit where credit is due, after all.

In two hours we get to dump the kids, the boy at MIL's house and the girl at a birthday party and then DH and I are heading down to Burlington and going out to dinner for my birthday. Which isn't technically until tomorrow, but I didn't think it would be very nice to actually dump the kids on my actual birthday, since they kind of like to spend it with me and all. But it will be nice to have an actual conversation without being interupted and spend some time alone with my husband. T is going through a major interuption phase right now and it is driving me straight up the wall. We can't even sit through a DVD right now without him wanting to ask a question every five minutes, and not about the movie.

Last night we watched Abduction. It was really good for what it was, though I think there was far too much swearing for a PG-13 movie. I'm not a big fan of the Twilight contingent, but I've been watching Taylor Lautner since Shark Boy and Lava Girl, so I give him a pass. I think the kid is going to be an excellent action star one day. He's well on his way and he's certainly got the muscles for it. That kid's arms! The movie was really good, despite having to pause it every five minutes. At first I thought it was going to annoy the crap out of me, because Taylor's character was one of those smirking boys you knew in high school that you just want to wipe the smirk off their face, but that passed after the opening and things got much better from there on out. It was a really good action/adventure, blow them up sort of thing. I can see him moving into this type of movie and not being typecast like I'm sure quite a few of the others will be.

After the kids went to bed I watched Letters to Juliet. What a sweet movie. I really like Amanda Seyfried, the more I see of her. There's something so ethereal about her. Anyway, a nice little romance.

But it sure is inspirational.

( Clicky for Vid )

I found this last night and thought I would share.  It's a short movie, about 20 minutes.  It made me cry and laugh and smile and sigh.  It was sweet and heartbreaking and beautiful.  Just a lovely slice of life and romance.

Yeah, yeah, I know it isn't Friday.  And it isn't actually a zombie movie either this week, but after several weeks out of it, I wanted to get back to it.  Let's just call it postapocalyptic Saturday than, shall we?

I'm not really a big fan of Tim Burton.  I liked Beetlejuice and I liked Edward Scissorhands, but after that it just got weird.  9 changes things.  9 is a beautifully done movie of hope and survival after a war between the humans and their robotic machines that turn on them.  One man imbues 9 tiny little robots that look like dolls made out of burlap with bits of his soul, charging the final one, 9, to save the world and in the process save part of humanity.  Which they basically do.  In a sort of almost steampunk way.

Netflix's summary was a little LOL-worthy:

In a postapocalyptic world, a small community of rag-doll robots hides in fear from dangerous machines out to exterminate them.  But when a brave newcomer named 9 joins the group, he ispires them to stand up and fight for their survival.

Seriously, if I hadn't watched the trailer first I probably would not have been inspired by the summary to pick it out.  And the best part of the trailer is the second half.  But I'm glad I saw the trailer because it showed how visually stunning this movie is.  I wasn't ever actually afraid of the bad machine, except when I went, "Oh, Terminator."  I kept getting distracted by 1, played by Christopher Plummer, thinking he both sounded like and looked like a tall version of Rigel from Farscape.  Elijah Wood played one of the heroes, 9. and Jennifer Connelly played the herione 7.

I don't know, it was really kind of a weird thing, but I would definitely rec it on side of movies of awesome as opposed to dropping it down the movies of fail slot.  I think they needed to give a bit more time to establishing the plot.  But all in all, a very good movie tonight.  And the animation (which I hesitate to call it that for it looks much more realistic than just animation, it might be that stop motion stuff) is supurb, visiually stunning, really.  The score was fantastic, too.

And as a mother I'd have no problem letting my kids watch this one.  They are almost 15 and 11.  I don't think a child of seven or eight is ready to handle some of the "deaths" that occur.  Or some of the freaky bits with the evil machines coming to life and popping around corners to startle you.

Not much of a review, was that?  Oh, well.  My brain still isn't running on all 8 hamsters yet.

Well, Zombie Friday didn't go so well tonight.  The first movie I picked, Zombie Town, had so much gratuitious swearing in the first five minutes I was already thinking of stopping it when the first onscreen zombie attack happened and it was far grosser than anything I've seen in a zombie movie before.  Too grossly graphic.  Plus I'm used to hot guys and pretty girls for eye candy in these movies and there wasn't any of that.  Just fat, bald, old guys.  No, thank you.  So I gave up on that one and took the next one offered to me called Below.

Below turned out...not to be a zombie movie at all, but more of a haunted submarine thing.  Which was scary but totally not what the point of Zombie Fridays is about.

I am glad I at least got my appocalypse fill this week.  I watched both The Stand and 2012, which I don't think was supposed to be quite as funny as it was.  It was also very scary as the Earth worked on tearing herself apart, especially in light of what we've seen it do in the last month.  It was a real adrenaline rush, though.  And a good movie.

I'm eyeing Toxic Skies for next week.  It takes place in Spokane and has a killer virus.  I always like it when they wipe out an area in my home state.  I'm kind of perverse that way.

So I started watching Bedlam today and I can't decide if it's properly spooky or just a little bit lame or maybe a bit of both.  Male lead is a nice piece of eye candy though and I've discovered that this is where Bambi from Secret Diary disappeared off to, so I will probably give the rest of the episodes a watch just for those reasons.  I kind of like the vengeful ghost trope so it won't be too much of a hardship to watch the rest of it.

Finally saw Tron Legacy this weekend.  It was pretty good, but honestly, the way some of my f-list raves over it, I thought it would be more than what it was.  Also saw Skyline which had amazing special effects (and a female lead who looked surprisingly like the female lead in Tron).  It was really a gorgeous, gorgeous sci-fi movie.  Also really gross with the aliens.  But it had Eric Balfour so it made up for it in the prettiness factor.  Also had that sexy cop who married Laguerta on Dexter...um...Batista.  And the guy who played Turk on Scrubs (only way more buff now).  Skyline counts as my end of the world, sort of zombiefied Friday night movie.  A little liberal with the swearing for something rated PG-13, but lots of jump in your seat moments.
 

Oh, my gosh, you guys, I just found out they made a movie of Tomorrow When the War Began!  You have no idea how big my squee is right now.  That book is like my all time favorite young adult novel, from my favorite series, ever.  It's got adventure, survivalism, and romance all in a tangled heap.  At times it was scary as all get out and it was so compelling.  I hope they didn't screw it up in the movie.

The movie synopis:

Seven teenagers from a small Australian country town called Wirrawee – Ellie, Corrie, Homer, Kevin, Lee, Robyn and Fiona – decide to pack a Landrover and go bush for the weekend. They don their packs and venture into the wild, little-visited, cliff-encircled gorge called Hell: flirting with members of the opposite sex, mucking about, and generally enjoying themselves so much that they think little of the fleet of planes that fly overhead one night.

When they finally make the return trip to civilisation they emerge into a Hell of a different kind...


I can't wait to see this.  Checks clock.  An hour and ten minutes to go...

Oh, my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh found the trailer.  It looks awesome.