Movie Review: The American

Sadly, he only rocks the Connery beard
for the first scene or two.

Most thriller pieces fall into one of two categories: the more action packed version, focusing on using lots of showy gunfire, fights, car chases; and the more psychological one, focusing on examining one character. The first one is fast paced, high adrenaline stuff that if done well both excites and entertains, but often the action takes away too much from the story it is trying to tell. But under no conditions should you go to The American expecting this type of movie, because while it is certainly a thriller, it falls decisively into the second thriller category, perhaps you would call it a psychological thriller, and here character development and plot structure are key. This explains the sedate pace and brooding tone, instead of flash-bang action.

Guest Writer Review: The American

Pictured: Nothing actually happening.

The American, starring George Clooney, is . . . well . . . not much. I assumed this movie would involve a fair amount of action and violence, after viewing multiple previews involving Clooney being buff and “playing” with guns, but tragically this is not the case. Nor is this movie really in the category of “romance:” despite multiple scenes of Clooney having sex with a prostitute, the focus is clearly not on one specific relationship. After looking at numerous lists of film genres and sub-genres, it’s genuinely hard to figure out where this would fit under. Perhaps in a trash bin? That’s where I put it.

Winter is Coming...Err, Next Spring, That Is

There is supposed to be a trailer here. Click Read More to watch; it's there but it isn't displaying on the main page.

George R.R. Martin's dark fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire is probably near the top of the list of post-Tolkien fantasy when it comes to popularity. Unlike the two series I would consider its closest competitors - the late Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun - as an utterly irrelevant side note, Gene Wolfe also invented Pringles, which is amusing because he looks rather like the Pringles man without hair. But unlike the dense, overwhelming, psychologically driven memoir of a possibly mentally ill ruler of the world and his creepy sword that Gene Wolfe wrote, and the increasingly enormous Tolkien-meets-Herbert-meets-Tolstoy epic that Robert Jordan wrote so long he died of it, Martin wrote A Song of Ice and Fire as a trilogy of byzantine intrigue, resurgent magic, vengeance, justice, fire, blood, and the most likable characters getting screwed over constantly by the same attributes that make them likable.

But you see, because Martin is a fantasy author, a trilogy was too little. Unable to cap it after the first 2400 pages, Martin announced upon the release of the third book, A Storm of Swords, that he was extending the series to a seven-part epic. This news was met with surprise on the part of those who ASoIaF had introduced to fantasy and a resounding we told you so from everyone else. But there were quite a number of people who got into fantasy from ASoIaF, because, considering its doorstopper size, it is a remarkably accessible story - far more so than, say, Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a work of similar length and scope. And now it gets an HBO series, to be released Spring 2011.

Some spoilers may follow. The big one won't, obviously, because it's big.

MTSBM: The Lay of Leithian

 I don't want to talk about it.

As we all know, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy is a marvel of modern film-making. More importantly, though, it made scads of money. The obvious Hollywood response to such an obvious cash cow is to milk it for all it’s worth, and to that end The Hobbit will be released in two parts sometime in the next five years. But The Hobbit is a happy children’s tale, not the gritty epic that is Lord of the Rings. I mean, come on, in the book, the main character wins the One Ring to Rule Them All in a riddle contest, and spends most of the climactic battle unconscious. Oh, and it has an even worse deus ex machina than Lord of the Rings. But even if The Hobbit does bomb, Hollywood executives need not fear! Because Tolkien had significantly more than just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit up his literary sleeve. Tolkien wrote entire detailed histories of Middle-Earth, going back all the way to it’s creation, with stories spanning thousands of years. That’s a lot of movies. But one of these is so perfectly suited to be a movie that it’s almost shocking no Tolkien nerd has ever sent this idea off to MGM, and that is the Lay of Leithian, or Release from Bondage, possibly called more simply “Of Beren and Luthien.” The story goes sort of like this:

Upcoming Films: The Dark Tower, New Most Ambitious Project In Hollywood

Uh, wow.

Stephen King is famous for making a ludicrous amount of money on mediocre but thoroughly entertaining hack horror fiction, thereby causing H.P. Lovecraft to do a barrel roll in his grave every time King cites him as an influence. However, King's own magnum opus - according to him - is the Dark Tower saga. The Dark Tower is a seven-book series, with books ranging in length from too big to doorstoppingly enormous, and this being Stephen King it's likely that about sixty percent of it could have been edited out entirely. But here come Universal and NBC with the claim that they'll be adapting the series into a movie trilogy, with the gaps between the movies bridged by a TV series.

So what is this Dark Tower business? As always, spoilers may follow.

Upcoming Films: Monsters

Gareth Edward's Monsters has been a film I've been keeping my eyes on for a while now. Way back when, I wrote up an article on how it may change horror and sci-fi films (again...) with its in-depth look at characters (which is weird for horror films to do because characterization goes by the wayside in modern slasher flicks. If you're female and white, you live, albeit shallowly, and everyone else dies. Now you know the ending to every horror film created). I was also impressed by its ridiculously miniscule budget!

Not much more news on this film, but there's a pretty good trailer. The studio seems to be hyping it up as a seriously insane action, sci-fi flick, but all the reports I've read, say it's a rather slow moving character study with a lot happening in the third act.

Trailer Courtesy of Hulu (sorry for the ads):

Open Thread: I'm Too Tired to Write a Catchy Title

I don't actually know how this ends... I'm sorry if it's rude...
link to original at the bottom

Hello bloggers and viewers and peoples,

I hope you are excited to perhaps start up school or all that jazz. I am looking forward to get the actual school part started... Week One Orientation is crazy busy.

Anyway, not much more is going on besides ridiculous schedules and stuff. I'm sure my colleagues are similarly swamped. However, that has not stopped us from posting some pretty neato articles. I had not priorly anticipated much activity here over the week, as seen in this article.

Week in Review:

~ Oscar Watch: First Installment
~ Comic Book Adaptions, Upcoming Films, and Other Cool Things
~ Top 10 List, the version of Joseph
~ Box Office Brawl, Round II
~ Movie Review: Spirited Away

So, check those things out if you haven't, and comment away!
We like hearing from you, and we love your ideas! Well... some of them...

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