Ramblings and Musings and Wibblings

...but it is not an extraordinary film. It's neither astonishingly bad, nor astonishingly good. It's an enjoyable movie, provided you suspend disbelief by the neck until deaddeaddead. Which I did, and therefore I enjoyed myself.

Just one slight peeve:

Book-Nautilus. Nemo's ship. Sleek, stealthy bugger, very luxurious inside. At least that's what I always imagined when I read "20,000 Leagues".

Movie-Nautilus: beautiful artwork, both exterior and interior. All very pretty. And also completely stupid. This was supposed to be a fairly secret mission. Now, Nautilus is a submarine. Which should mean the aforementioned stealthy sleek bugger. But what do we get? We get a baroque (or maybe rococo) version of the Brittanic. In exquisite detail. Seriously, 90% of the screen time Nautilus gets is of her on the surface. Now in my book, stealth does not mean popping up to the surface so Allan Quatermain can shoot clay pigeons. (Also: fiddly details? Not so good for aerodynamic flow.)

And the other thing: Nautilus is meant to be big. Looking at the film, she's easily 500 yards long, probably more. And what do they do with her? They breeze into Venice with her! You know, Venice? The watery city of the narrow waterways with lots of low bridges and corners? And they sail this big fuck-off ship in there! How the bloody hell is she supposed to turn corners? Teleportation?

Troy was...disappointing. Not badly done, but I didn't believe the story. I couldn't sympathise with any one character (or side), really. I spent most of the first half of the movie shouting ´Girlie man!´ whenever Brad Pitt appeared on screen.

And I'm sure it's in bad taste to giggle at a Greek tragedy, but come on people, where's the heart in all this? Where the passion for the story? Where's the respect for what is essentially a part of mankind's history (be it fictional or not)? It left me cold, to be honest. I didn't care whether or not the Greeks would win, and I didn't care whether or not the Trojans would win. I didn't care. I just watched and went ´Hmmmm, I wonder if they built an anatomically correct horse?´ and ´Oooooh, girlie man!´.

Even the big battle scenes just didn't get my blood up. For some reason, there was no passion, no bloodlust, no...energy. The duels didn't do anything for me either. It was all nicely done, but there was no soul in it...

And as for Orlando Bloom...does he only have three facial expressions? Yes, he is gorgeous and I'd shag him in a minute, but dear lord, whenever he tries to play an emotional scene, he looks like he's having a particularly nasty bowel movement. (And damn does he look good while doing it.)

Sin City, however, made me drool. It is a most shiny movie. In fact, this is one of the few movies I will at some point buy, just to watch the story again and again and again. And again, for good measure.

(Oh, and, Elijah Wood as Kevin? Staring. Staring a lot. It's like watching Frodo...except without all the emotions. I hereby nominate Elijah Wood for the Best Staring Actor Oscar.)

So, all in all, I had a fun evening.

Also: My Lord of the Rings reviews should be done fairly soon...as soon as I can stop myself from frothing at the mouth and violently lunging at the screen whenever Faramir appears in The Two Towers.