Movie Talk (Because I Don’t Drink Coffee)

Over the last few months, I’ve been making a painstakingly serious effort to keep up with American cinema. I’d let myself go, so to speak, regarding actually going to theaters to see movies and not just adding everything to my already triple-digit Netflix queue that I never seem to make a dent in. I’ve seen a movie every weekend since X-Men Origins opened save the weekend between Star Trek and Terminator Salvation. I had planned to see Angels & Demons that weekend, which didn’t end up happening until this past Sunday, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Anyway, I’ve also been Netflixing (hey, if Google gets its own verb, so does Netflix!) movies I don’t get a chance to see in theaters as soon as they come out and just overall trying to be a good pop culture lover by actually watching movies relatively soon after they are released to the public. So, now I’ve got all of these movie-related opinions bottled up inside and I’ve got to let some of it out:

I watched Confessions of a Shopaholic two evenings ago. I cried when I had to put it back in the Netflix envelope and again when I placed it in a mailbox (slight exaggeration…maybe), but it has been added to my Amazon wishlist and will hopefully be on my DVD shelf soon. Yes, I want to own Confessions of a Shopaholic—it was THAT good. Isla Fisher was beyond amazing. Because of this performance, reviewers are calling her cinema’s next sweetheart. I concur. This was a Sandra Bullock/Julia Roberts caliber performance. I know it’s a “chick flick” and romcom-ish, but the physical comedy and the ridiculous things that happen in the film make that entirely forgettable save for a few moments in the film when it slows down to actually let itself be romcom-ish. But, to be honest, I would watch this movie for the rest of time even if it sucked worse than every made-for-TV Tracy Gold movie ever made simply to enjoy the Stephen Guarino scenes. Guarino plays Allon, the receptionist for Dante-West publications where Fisher’s character goes to work. There are only a handful of scenes that feature him, and I have a sinking feeling that he was intended to have a bigger role in the film but some spots were cut out, but everything he does is perfection. Anyway, Confessions of a Shopaholic has the best elements of a successful romantic comedy coupled with the PG-13 elements of Sex & the City, and to me that makes it a must-see. And, apparently, own.

I also finally saw Angels & Demons in theaters this past weekend after I locked myself in the house with no television on Saturday so that I could finish the last 450 pages of the book (yeah, it’s about 569 pages…my bad. I’d been trying to get through it since April!) and head to the theater before it stopped showing. So, I am aware this is not timely by any means, but I get to share anyway because this is my blog. The book was good, but not as good as The Da Vinci Code. I imagine this had something to do with the character already being established and with author Dan Brown developing as a pop fiction (new term! coined!) writer. But the movies were made out of chronological order, thus making Angels & Demons the better film as Ron Howard and perhaps even Tom Hanks learned from their Da Vinci Code mistakes. The Da Vinci Code was painstakingly detailed in an attempt to “get the book right,” while Angels & Demons, as I said immediately after the credits began to roll, was more like a film that was loosely based on the Dan Brown novel by the same name.

Normally, I get really upset when filmmakers completely change the story from the book or leave out details I thought to be crucial to character motivations and so on, but with books that are sold in grocery stores it’s hard to be picky and argue about the story having integrity because, well, it was sold in a grocery store. So, I saw the merits of changing things up a bit. The book was huge, so in order to make the film unpredictable to viewers who had read it before (because there were going to be LOTS of them), it was necessary to alter the story in places. That way, people who had read it could enjoy the unfolding story as much as someone who hadn’t. And, this way, the book works as a way to inform the story in the film by filling in the gaps and bringing greater meaning to events and so on. Because I had literally just finished the book less than 12 hours before seeing the film, my brain couldn’t help but argue and question every change. I had to will myself to let it go and just try to enjoy the movie. It probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal had I not just finished the book. So, lesson learned if they end of making the next Robert Langdon book, The Lost Symbol (scheduled for a September release) into a film.

I will say that I was kind of floored by the amount of things they changed from the book, most of which could probably be explained by the lack of time to develop the back story that goes along with that particular detail. But for a good number of differences, I couldn’t really see the point. For example, they made up an entirely new character to be the Swiss Guard commander and made Olivetti a police officer. So random. Additionally, they made an entire team aware of the project Vittoria and her research partner (who was not her father in the film, but I can sort of rationalize why) were working on, which in my mind was stupid because it elevated the number of possible suspects and made it not as big a deal that someone had stolen an antimatter canister. Anyway, I could sit here and list and question differences between the book and movie all day long. The point is that I, for once, am seeing the benefits of not reading the book before going to see the movie if the book isn’t some kind of literary masterpiece.

Another random movie-watching tidbit: Taken with Liam Neeson was not as awesome as the trailer made it look and what was actually going on with his daughter, in my mind, made the film take a turn that was entirely unnecessary thus making the movie more like a really long episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in which Stabler travels abroad to solve a case.

Finally, I officially got out of having to see Transformers 2 in theaters. Well, so far anyway. I think that Brian Lynch post really helped, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m safe for now and can’t wait to go see Public Enemies in a few days. Fini!


*Images: Blogspot, Style Bakery, Filmofilia*