Netflix – Page 9 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Tag: Netflix (page 9 of 24)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Kingdom of Heaven

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A cynic is likely to look at the release of the Director’s Cut of a movie, scoff openly and accuse the studio or the director of trying to milk a few additional coins out of the movie regardless of its overall merit. And really, I can’t blame them. I like most sane people fear the prospect of an In The Name Of The King: Uwe Boll’s Vision Extended Edition hitting Wal*Mart shelves because John Q. Buynlarge will see Jason Statham on the cover and think it’s going to be Crank with swords and dragons. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, a little thing dubbed executive meddling takes a director’s vision for a film, carves it up from a delicious roast into processed lunch meat and passes it off to the unwashed masses. That’s what happened to Kingdom of Heaven. Having seen both versions, I can understand why Ridley Scott wanted to get his cut into our hands. It completely and totally changes the movie.

The plot is relatively unchanged. The year is 1184 and a young French man named Balian has recently lost his wife and child. A crusader appears at his smithy and claims to be Balian’s birth father, offering to take him to Jerusalem to leave his sorrow behind and find redemption for his sins. The journey is a perilous one, but Balian survives to become baron of Ibelin and a prominent member of Jerusalem’s nobility. An ill-advised war erupts between the Christians who hold the city and the Muslims under the command of Saladin, with Balian caught in the middle.

This being a Ridley Scott film, you can expect some liberties being taken with history and its figures. Some characters are composites of historical figures and some events turn out a bit differently than they actually did. However, this is definitely a different film from Gladiator in that Balian doesn’t challenge Saladin to single combat or anything like that. The events happen in the right order at the right time and are mostly unchanged despite the fictionalization. Also being a Ridley Scott film, there’s plenty of enjoyment for the eyeballs in terms of scenery, costuming and brutal swordplay. While Kingdom of Heaven follows the traditions of Gladiator and Black Hawk Down in humanizing grand events by giving us the point of view of a few key individuals, it breaks from Scott’s previous work in the message it’s delivering. And this message is etched into the bottom of the anvils dropped throughout the movie.

“Our God can kick their god’s ass!”
“Um… they’re the same god, sir…”
“Blasphemy! Our God will prevail! GOD WILLS IT!”
*facepalm*

The protagonists who are pious have a significantly modern and humanistic stance on their faith while the bad guys mostly use religion as an excuse to wage war and earn booty. The rallying cry of “GOD WILLS IT!” is used on both sides of the conflict. Clearly, there’s a lesson on tolerance to be learned here, one that works quite well on the individual level but is harder to spread to a large group. There’s a scene towards the end where Saladin, entering a temple to pray, comes across a golden crucifix that was knocked the ground. He very carefully and respectfully picks it up and puts it back where it belongs. From what I understand, this scene was met with cheers and applause in Middle Eastern theaters. So much for all Muslims hating the West.

As much truth as there is in the actions and events we see, the movie isn’t perfect. It runs longer than Gladiator, especially in the Director’s Cut, but you might not necessarily notice… I’ll come back to that. Balian can come off at times as something of a Mary Sue, being that he’s a blacksmith and a swordsman and a seige-crafter and a man of virtue and looks like Orlando Bloom. That doesn’t make the mass knighting in Jerusalem (another real-life event) any less awesome. Speaking of which, some history buffs may not be able to accept the depiction of events, or the lack of detail given on one of the biggest battles of the Crusades. These are minor flaws, in my opinion, and they apply to both the theatrical release and the Director’s Cut of the movie.

Admit it. You wish Liam Neeson was your dad, too.

The original release, which I saw a few years ago, felt disjointed and badly paced. While we get a great deal of detail on Balian, his father, Saladin, Guy de Lusignan and King Baldwin IV (Edward Norton behind a very stylish mask),one of the key players, Sibylla, is given very little screen time and characterization. It’s like she’s introduced, gets into Balian’s life and then is swept aside in favor of fluttering banners and the siege of Jerusalem. Her role in the events that unfold in the Holy Land is rendered nearly to non-existence. I never thought it was bad, per se, but I definitely ranked it below Gladiator.

In the Director’s Cut, Sibylla’s role is expanded and deepened, and her son, which wasn’t even mentioned in the theatrical release, also has a pretty significant part to play in the plot. Balian feels a bit more real and less of a Mary Sue, there’s some good payoff in his relationship with Guy, and everything I liked about my first viewing – the scenery, the shot composition, the brutal realistic fights and the message of tolerance in the face of a holy war – remained intact, if it wasn’t enhanced. This is no cash-grab. This is no pandering re-release. This is an entirely different movie, and it’s one of Ridley Scott’s best. Put the Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven on your Netflix queue for any one of the following reasons: It’s a period drama, a tale of adventure, an interesting romance and climaxes in a battle that feels taken right out of the Pelennor Fields in Return of the King. It feels shorter than its three hour running time and it’s worth every minute.

Except for that Overture and Entr’acte bits at the beginning of each disk. I really didn’t like the idea of Saladin suddenly breaking into song.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Ladyhawke

December 17, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/ladyhawke.mp3]

Ah, the 80s. A time of big hair, big money and big ambitions. It was a time when actors could be presidents, MTV actually played music, and a young writer wrapped his hands around the joystick of an Atari 2600 for the first time. Many an afternoon in my house was spent with my sisters and me navigating digital corridors and writing down maps and passwords. Good times.

Okay, the nostalgia’s out of the way. Let’s take a look at a movie born of the 80s – Ladyhawke.

We are introduced to the medieval fortress city of Aquila, France through the eyes of young thief Phillipe Gastone, called the Mouse. Aquila is ruled by her corrupt and powerful bishop, and nobody has ever escaped from her hellish prison until the Mouse wiggles his way out at the very beginning at the movie. The captain of the guard catches up with the loquacious pickpocket only to have the arrest interrupted by a mysterious man, dressed in black and accompanied by a majestic hawk. The man’s name is Navarre, and he takes Phillpe with him to learn of a way into Aquila for a personal vendetta. By night, however, Navarre is nowhere to be found, and Phillpe instead encounters a vicious black wolf and a hauntingly beautiful woman named Isabeau.

With its setting and sparing use of magic, this is a story that could be taking place in the world of George RR Martin. Along with the trappings of the setting is a very strong ensemble cast of well-developed characters. Among other things, the movie does a good job of capturing the attitudes of the hawk and the wolf. The hawk is a spirited, beautiful creature, refusing to be bound and returning to whom she chooses. The wolf is a skilled and deadly hunter whose rage is only abated in the presence of Isabeau. I’m sure those of you who haven’t seen the film have already gotten an inkling of what’s going on, but I won’t say more for fear of spoiling the entire story. Which I do recommend you see, by the way.

“Wait,” I hear you ask. “Didn’t you recently review another fantasy movie from the 80s? And didn’t you hate its guts?” Yes and yes. Let me explain the difference.

Navarre is French for ‘badass’.

Here we have an example of how good storytelling can compensate for things that might not age or work all that well. Rutger Hauer, Leo MacKern and John Wood were already veterans of the stage and screen before Ladyhawke, and Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer went on to become household names. Not every line is a complete winner, but lines good and bad are delivered with just enough sincerity and concrete emotion that we are drawn completely into the story. Nevarre is a strong and resolute man, but he’s also a man of deep emotion. Phillipe may seem a vain and somewhat cowardly thief, but he’s also a pious and generous one. The Bishop is all the more menacing for the rigid control he maintains over his emotions, rarely speaking above an cold and edgy rasp. There’s nuance and presence to pretty much every major character we meet, and they damn near carry the entire movie on their own.

It’s a good thing, too, as the story may have suffered at the hands of some of the 80s trappings. The music is permeated by the syths of the Alan Parsons Project, orchestral sequences underscored or outright interuppted by rock riffs influenced by early digitization. It shines in places and plummets in others, causing some major distraction from the story. Some of the special effects haven’t really held up, though one sequence in particular still chokes me up. You’ll know it when you see it. Lastly, while the fights in the movie are pretty gritty and lean more towards the realistic than the flamboyant or fanastical, some of the swords used in the action shots aree clearly not the sturdy ‘hero’ blades. I know steel is meant to bend before it breaks, but the degree to which some of these blades curl had me scratching my head a little.

The Mouse, having an argument with the Lord.

All of this fails to matter, though, when the story is this good and told this well by actors this skilled. This is the difference between a movie like Ladyhawke and one like Masters of the Universe, or Revenge of the Fallen or Attack of the Clones. At its core, Ladyhawke is all about the stories, the lives of its characters. It takes time to develop its players and weaves connections between all of them in a very deep way. Combine this compelling storytelling with good cinematography, well-done fight scenes and some moments of both geniune levity and heart-wrenching emotion, and you have a great movie. Without that story, it’d be just so much sound and fury.

The soundtrack dissonance is overcome in a few key places. The somewhat lackluster level of special effects fails to matter in the moments the story is at its best. Things like magic and curses work as framing devices for the drama, rather than shouldering the story out of its way. This is what sets Ladyhawke apart from those other attempts at film-making. This is why it succeeds and they fail. This is why, while it shows its age in places, the core of the movie is pretty close to timeless. Ladyhawke absolutely belongs on your Netflix queue, because it is one of those movies that tells its tale well no matter what the year is. In other words, it’s a classic. And classics never go out of style.

A Christmas Announcement

December 11, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

Among the other things I’ve been ‘meaning to do’ when it comes to the creative endeavors in my life was something I considered doing for a recent competition but did not have the time to do a justifiably decent job. It’s continued to sit in the back of my mind, and the trends in my traffic lead me to believe that, with the time I’ll have away from the day job in a couple weeks, it may be worth doing even if I may not get attention from people that see its potential. If it has any.

So, mostly for kicks, to see what would be involved and what the result will be, the IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! on Christmas Eve will be The Emperor’s New Groove as a video, with new audio and a few surprises.

Given how the schedule is falling together, there will still be new fiction on the 15th and the (hopefully) final rewrite of Citizen In The Wilds will be finished by the end of the year. I’ve also contacted some artists to give me a hand with character sketches and other promotional art.

Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement. I hope I don’t disappoint you with the results of my endeavors.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Casino

December 10, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

This week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! brought to you by a generous donation by Mike Jarossy. Thank you for your support!

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Good filmmaking is rightly lauded in modern cinema. Consistently good filmmaking is damn close to a miracle. Take a look at the films of Martin Scorsese, and it’s very possible that this little guy with bushy eyebrows is the closest thing filmmaking has to a god amongst men. Casino is no exception.

Told mostly as a narrated flashback, Casino introduces us to life-long friends Ace & Nicky, who come to Las Vegas in the service of their old-school Italian mob leaders. The old men saw Vegas as virgin territory for profit and their agents go to ensure the cash flow. Ace, a natural born gambler, quickly becomes involved with a casino, the Tangiers, helping the already-assumed house wins to grow to giant proportions while Nicky begins carving out a little criminal empire of his own, free from interference or even much oversight from back home. A grifting hooker, corrupt politicans and the hubris of these friends are the aggravating factors that cause their endeavors to start coming undone, and in the process it’s likely Ace and Nicky will come undone as well.

There was a time when a film like this would have Ace and Nicky be a close-knit wise-cracking criminal duo. Ace would be the smiling, charming face of the operation, while Nicky works behind the scenes with brass knuckles, a baseball bat and a silenced .22 to get the real business done. In other words, they’d be the villains in the story. Casino instead focuses on Ace and Nicky as protagonists. We don’t see them as victims or even great guys, but they’re still human beings with dreams and ambitions just like any other. Putting a face on ‘the bad guys’ is something Scorsese is legendary for doing, and Casino is a shining example of this work.

“I am, in fact, talkin’ t’ you, Ace.”
“Yeah, well, you amuse me, Nicky.”

Scorsese is also known for having an eye for talent. Casino was the 8th film he made with Robert DeNiro. Playing Ace, DeNiro’s intensity is focused entirely on how his character is trying to keep things together. Here’s a man who knows a sure bet when he sees it, bets with confidence and never loses. The very prospect of losing doesn’t even occur to Ace; left to his own devices, he’d achieve just about anything he went after. When Nicky and Ginger get involved, though, you can feel Ace’s frustration, the sort of anger a stereotypical villain might rant abouot at the drop of a hat only to put some outrageous scheme of revenge into motion. Ace is too smart for that, though. He plays his hand close to his chest.

Nicky, on the other hand, may not be playing with the entire deck. As much as it seems sometimes that Joe Pesci only has one role, he plays things so well here it’s hard to hold some repetition of roles against him. Nicky is as ambitious as he is uncompromising. Where Ace does business with a handshake, Nicky does it with a bat. Where Ace tries to keep the peace, Nicky itches for action. Yet these two are friends, and very close ones. They really are flip sides of the same coin, a bright and lucrative coin that spins through the air and catches the lights of the Vegas strip. As the film goes on, it’s hard to say which side of the coin is going to land right-side up.

Yeah. She’s pretty distracting.

Further complicating matters is Sharon Stone as Ginger. At first appearing as the sort of arm candy that shows up with high rollers to skim a bit for herself, Ginger becomes the one unpredictable variable in Ace’s life that starts to unravel the disparate threads he’s woven together. While none of the main characters are unaffected by Las Vegas, and indeed all of them succumb to varying degrees of decadence and depravity, Ginger is the one most dragged under by the the booze, drugs and lifestyle that was Sin City in the 70s and 80s. We watch her fall apart practically before our eyes, from her inability to seperate herself from her manipulative boyfriend and pimp to the lengths she’ll go to further her own ends, especially when it comes to the daughter she has with Ace. Everything goes to hell in a gradual fashion, a painful and inevitable backslide that unfolds as the movie rolls on.

While the movie is not painful in a bad or sickening way, it’s quite an ordeal to sit through. It’s nearly three hours long, and much of that is featuring fights, arguments, breakdowns and discomfort on a public or private level. There’s moments of levity and vindication, to be sure; the acting, writing and direction are all fantastic; the soundtrack is top-notch and walks us through the changing times as much as the cinematography does – but the overall length of the narrative begins to wear on the viewer. And it’s only at the very end that Scorsese delivers the ultimate point of his story.

“You sure I should be wearin’ this color, Marty?”
“Bobby, I ain’t let ya down yet, I ain’t startin’ now.”

This movie is a eulogy for Vegas of old. It’s the sort of movie that longs for old-fashioned machismo, the slight haze of cigarette smoke in back rooms while the glitz and glamour flash in the eyes of suckers betting against the house run by the Mob. Nowadays, suckers bet against the house run by corporations. Ace lays it out for us: “In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it’s like chekin’ into an airport. And if you order room service, you’re lucky to get it by Thursday.” His arc follows that of Vegas itself. He rises out of nowhere into the Nevada desert, fastitious and self-assured. His life begins to spiral out of control, from his ne’er-do-well wife to his taste in clothes. And when all is said and done, he’s still the same guy – but hollowed out, older, a shadow of his former self.

That’s what makes Casino such an effective tragedy. That’s what makes it worth the long running time and Sharon Stone’s chewing of scenery. That’s why it’s one of Scorsese’s many great pictures, and why it should be on your Netflix queue. It is, like many memorable and timeless stories, a cautionary tale: Excess and success are not the same thing. If you’re unable to moderate your excesses when you’re successful, life’s circumstances are likely to take it all away from you. All you can count on, in the end result, is being who you are, and if you aren’t careful, they can take that away from you, too. Just a little bit of wisdom, and a touch of keeping your goals in sight, goes a long, long way.

Sorry, this is getting preachy. Watch Casino to see DeNiro in a salmon-colored suit. He looks fabulous.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Gamer

December 3, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

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The last time I reviewed a movie that had any connection to a video game, things did not end well. On the other hand, I’ve been meaning to watch Tron, WarGames and The Last Starfighter again to see if the “holy trinity” of movies about gamers stand the test of time, especially with the long-awaited sequel to Tron just around the corner. I mean, there’s got to be more to the fervor than just seeing Olivia Wilde in a skin-tight neon future-suit, right? Then again…

Anyway, Gamer isn’t looking to compete with that high a pantheon, or any other group of movies. It’s kind of looking to be it’s own thing, and taken it’s own, it’s not that bad. You can’t take it on it’s own, unfortunately, because just about everything it does has, on some level or another, been done before.

Once again, we’re in the near future. Not the glitsy, flying-cars future of Back to the Future Part 2, the gritty, brownish-grey near-future in pretty much every action movie and first person shooter made in the last decade or so, give or take a few stand-out examples. Internet media mogul Ken Castle is flush from his success in the phenomenon called Society which allows players to take control of real people and have them do anything the player wants. Now, he’s introduced SLAYERS, in which gamers assume direct control of death row inmates and have them shoot each other for fun and profit. It’s online deathmatches with flesh and blood hardcases instead of digital simulacra. The top badass in the game is Kable. He’s close to freedom, but with not only a wife and daughter on the outside and a wrongful case keeping him locked up but also a big secret about Castle’s success, the moment we see him it’s just a matter of time before he breaks out and joins the underground resistance movement.

So yeah, this one’s playing in the same yard as Equilibrium, District 9 and Repo Men. And using a mass media distraction to placate the masses while they’re getting bent over for a nefarious purpose has also been done before, viz. The Running Man. To a lot of people, especially people who see lots of movies all the time, this is going to feel a little “been there, done that.” Especially with Gerard Butler as Kable. A lot of people can’t see him as anybody but Leonidas, having all but forgotten that he was also the Phantom of the Opera. As much as the movie might want to be taken on its own merits, the connections to previous and (let’s face it) better-done work is inevitable and waters down the experience a bit.

You keep making that face, Gerard, it’s going to stay that way.

So let’s talk about what Gamer does differently, and what it gets right. It’s not here to preach to us about the evils of video games or even to extol their virtues. It’s here to play around with some concepts that have seeped into gamer culture and write them large across the screen. Glitched NPCs, game mods, the allure of online popularity – there’s even a very brief joke about teabagging. Given that this is being directed by the guys responsible for the Crank movies, it should be no surprise that just about every aspect of gaming in general and first-person shooters in particular gets pulled out at one point or another, even if it’s just touched on in passing.

There’s also the fact that Society is very clearly a send-up of the online simulation Second Life. If you’re at all aware of the existence of Second Life, you probably know that it’s a haven for all sorts of people seeking an outlet, from counter-culture to free-form role-playing to out-and-out deviance. The approach that Gamer takes by replacing the customizable user avatars of Second Life with the real-life remote-controlled people of Society is calculated to make the entire enterprise seem sick and wrong. Not only does it make the antics of this sort of adult playground look ridiculous, it makes no bones about its portrayal of the kind of people who actually indulge in this sort of thing on a regular basis. It certainly isn’t very nice in how it sees the players of Society, and by extension Second Life, but it’s definitely funny.

Believe it or not, this is a modest outfit in ~~Second Life~~ Society.

While Gamer can be fun, it’s also flawed. As I said, Butler is still shaking off the stoic badass visage that seems to paralyze the ability to convey emotion. The plot of the movie is inconsistent at best and disjointed at worst, and some of the camera work is too quick and confusing. The action sequences aren’t going to set the world on fire and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of inventiveness at work. Some characters are introduced only to have them die or disappear arbitrarily, some things happen with only the most threadbare explanation and a couple of plot threads that might have proven interesting go entirely unresolved. It doesn’t maintain the frenetic pace of the aforementioned Crank flicks and it suffers, as the manic energy that both fuels the action and gives the scorn of the Society bits its edge drains very quickly when neither of those is happening. I think a couple of plot meetings and screenplay edits could have smoothed out these rough bits.

However, the dialog does pop in places, Michael C. Hall’s fun to watch as Ken Castle, we get some great stuff from Ludacris as the leader of the resistance and while you might not be blown out of your seat by the action, the way Gamer takes the piss out of Second Life you just may catch yourself having a good time. A few moments of intelligent writing and a fresh take on a tried-and-true concept manage to poke through action sequences that would look right at home in a Transporter movie or any given game of Gears of War. Watching Gamer is like eating an entire giant Oreo cookie when all you really want is the cream filling but, for some reason, you just can’t unscrew the damn thing properly. In my opinion, it’s good to see a movie about gaming that has little to say about gaming itself from a pontification standpoint, and focuses more on the game.

Which you just lost, by the way.

Tag: Netflix (page 9 of 24)

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Kingdom of Heaven

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Ladyhawke

A Christmas Announcement

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Casino

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Gamer

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