Some Thoughts . . .

            Well, blog followers of mine, let me be the first to say: there are barely any exciting movie releases right now. However, that does not mean there are no good movies. I’ll be posting a review of Gone with Amanda Seyfried later on (my spellcheck tried to suggest “Refried” instead of “Seyfried”….).

            And I’ve been thinking lately. Even though the title MoNoMuGa suggests we’ll be posting reviews about movies, novels, music and games, I haven’t really gotten around to discussing any of the others with mom. There are some books I want her to read, and some I have to read for her, so they’re coming, don’t worry! We haven’t deceived you. :]

            Thank you for being patient with the posts coming. We’ve got over a hundred page hits! That’s something big for small town girls like us. Here in Maine life can be so transient and uncertain that all you can do is brace your britches and make yourself march toward whatever end God has in store for you. And, believe me, with the tough times we’ve been having mom and I have DEFINITELY been bracing our britches. Right now she’s got a butt-load of work at the theater along with taking care of her elderly mother. That’s a lot of work! And I myself am taking college courses online, which are no walk in the park, and taking care of my grandmother while mom works. While I’ve hit the easier end of the ballpark, mom’s been a trooper in supporting me and stuff.

            Plus—I should mention—mom and I are writing a novel composed of letters and I’m working on a solo project on the side, the third book in a series. PLUS appointments for mine and my brothers’ Tourette’s, my braces, running people to and from places, shopping, church on Sundays, and driving practice for me…!

            Needless to say, we’re a pretty busy bunch of beavers.

            If the enter key was hit every time an idle minute passed on a document that’s up, I would have about six blank lines between this paragraph and the previous one. I got distracted building a playlist for iTunes, so I think I’m going to sign off and try to write a movie review.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -- A Poem by Mary K. Wiebe

     Wow! February and only two posts! I haven't really gotten out to the movies lately, and I've been bogged down with the work from my math course. Not that I haven't wanted to see movies. Just haven't had the time, is all. But recently, while being bored at work, my mom came up with a poem about the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I was having a bad day, and it made me laugh, because it's exactly how I felt about the failed "thriller" attempt. Hope you enjoy the literary masterpiece. (I'm going to make her submit it to magazines)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
watched the movie, thought I'd die
sitting in a theater dark
I start to think,"Where did I park?"

Can't see the point of watching this
should have been the one I missed
wonder why they thought it good?
probly make it longer, if they could

Ah it's coming to an end
my life will start to move again
I shall not recommend this flick
I would rather face a tic

So listen wisely to my words
this one's out there with the birds
so cut and dry I hope it dies
and stays away from my poor eyes.

Movie Review: The Woman in Black

Another point they didn't touch on was why
the woman scratched out the eyes on the photo.

            I had been waiting for The Woman in Black to come out since I heard about it last fall. Daniel Radcliffe’s non-Harry-Potter film debut looked promising and, above all, creepy. The previews promised a good scare and a great story to back it up. I love haunted old houses with a twist of hidden tragedy behind the mortar and brick. However, as usual, the previews’ promises did not strike true.

            Yes, the house held tragedy. But it was a tragedy not faithfully explained or stuck to within the frame of the plot. The Woman haunted Eel Marsh House due to a sad case of a fatal accident on the road leading up to it and because of sibling betrayal. But the loss of Janet’s son didn’t justify her taking the children from the people of the village. She “forced” them to kill themselves, which sincerely bothered both my brother and I. If she was so PO-ed at her sister, why didn’t she kill the parents instead? The whole “I can’t have my son, so I’m taking all your children” ploy is weak here. Besides, why would a writer, even of a horror movie, take an innocent life and destroy it like the ways in the movie? Yeesh.

            The preview promised to make me jump, give me the creeps. Well…neither was given. I knew when I was supposed to jump (like with Apollo 18), and there was only one part—the rocking chair rocking by itself—that gave me the chills inside, but they ruined that by placing The Woman in it (which was also supposed to make me jump but failed). A rocking chair WITHOUT somebody at all is creepy. Putting a body to the action takes away that weird factor.

            Also, I noticed that the villagers seemed to know more than they let on, or that the story gave us in explanation. And if you’ve seen it, don’t give me that “Oh, they just knew about the woman’s killing” crap, because that’s a sore excuse. They knew; yeah, I get that. But there was more to this village than was written in. Sadly.

            Another thing the writing failed to do was satisfy. As I noted with my review on The Thing, horror movies are NOTORIOUS for rotten, craptastic endings. But the genre’s writers’ general failure is no excuse. Any story, even a horror story, can have a decent ending. The Woman in Black did not. I saw it coming a half-hour before it happened. As soon as I suspected—and was right about—the woman killing the kids, I knew Arthur’s (Daniel Radcliffe’s) four-year-old son Joseph was gonna get it. Which was unnecessary, really. Arthur died with him, but I think he could have thrown Joseph up off the tracks and been the sole and final fatality of the woman’s sick rampage.

This is about as expressive as Mr. Arthur Kipps got

            Now, don’t get me wrong, the writing was bad. The acting was spectacular. Ol’ Dan was sincere and very convincing as a grieving lawyer, and as any old Englishmen should, showed almost no emotion when he started getting freaked out. His body stance said it all; his face? That’s a different story. Even the kid actors were great! The part that made the movie’s bottom fall out was the writing. It was like building a magnificent chandelier with one support ring and a gorgeous display of crystal, only to have it crash around and break because of the lack of structure.

            I really wanted to like this movie. But all I could do was find myself disappointed in the poor plot. I wanted more. Meat, not water. Amateur writing is no excuse for a bad movie. They should have fixed the technicalities in editing the script. The acting, however, saved this movie from my Crap List. 3 kernels out of 5.

Movie Review: Chronicle

Steve, Andrew, and Matt, respectively

            Non-label superhero movies usually turn out to be a boo-fest—I’m talking not DC or Marvel. Look at all the video games they ruin with bad adaptations and tell me I’m wrong (Max Payne, Judge Dredd, The Mario Bros., to name a few). And mockumentaries can turn out just as train-wreckish (Cloverfield, Apollo 18). However, take three teenagers, a weird thing underground that glows, and steady camera work and you have Chronicle, a not-too-shabby movie I actually rather enjoyed.

            The previews (as they ALWAYS do) promised us a good movie: a tale of intrigue and psychic coolness that would be mixed with angst so the target audience—teenagers—would like it, and maybe even adults, too…though probably not. What we got was a well-thought-out, imagination-bending, and sometimes heart-rending tale of three friends who discover a weird…thing together and are imbued with telekinetic prowess. The writing is to be commended. All of my questions—except one—were answered, there was no jump-to-this-scene-now cut-and-paste plot crap, the characters were believable and connectable, and the story moved at a nice pace, climaxing at a satisfyingly-long fight scene that ended one of the two ways I predicted and ending with a tragic sort of video log from one cousin to another. The circumstances of the anti-hero’s (he wasn’t really a villain) death turned out to be one of necessity, yet somehow you ended up wishing it could have been avoided anyway. Once Andrew named himself the “apex predator”, though, I knew it couldn’t bode well for him.

            Several unforeseen things threw me for a loop, and I looooooove that in a movie/story/plot/anything-with-writing-sort-of-thing. You ALWAYS want to be able to say “WHOA! I never saw that one coming!” There are things that can and should be predicted, but if your predictions are shaky, it’s likely—and good writing delivers this—that either 1) you missed the clues and will be completely blown away or 2) your predictions are only partially right and you’re astounded anyway. Chronicle gave me just that, and that’s rare in a teen-angst movie. Seriously.

            While the psychic action got a little Akira in some places (I half-expected Matt to start yelling out “TETSUO!”), the progression of character development and plot mad me forget my woes and enjoy the movie for what it was. Had this been a case of Apollo 18, I would have hounded it for the nearness to Katsuhiro Otomo’s work.

KANEDA!!!

            I half-expected to leave theater 9 disappointed, as I had been with a lot of the movies this winter. However, Chronicle gave me a reason to hope Hollywood hasn’t completely crapped the originality bed yet. The satisfying film gets 4 kernels out of 5.