kismetism

Saw this with my parents the other day. Thought it’d make a good Father’s Day flick, since both me and my dad are closet (or not-so-closet maybe) Jackie Chan fans and we’ve both seen the original. He also reacted positively to the trailer when we went to see… uh… oh, How To Train Your Dragon.

Summation? I quite liked it! Sure there wasn’t a whole lot in terms of originality, when compared to the original… but I thought it was an incredibly decent remake overall. Moving the film to China made a lot of sense and gave the filmmakers a lot of awesome scenic stuff to shoot, that’s for sure. :P

There was a great amount of humor balanced with a fair amount of drama and tension and action. You could definitely tell that Jackie Chan’s team had most of the say in terms of choreography, as I saw a lot of throwbacks to his original Chinese films, especially in the early chase scene.

I suppose I might complain about the camera work when it came to the fighting scenes; there was too much jolting and jilting around that you couldn’t always make out the movement of the characters so well. Obviously this is deliberate, but I know that at least in Chan’s older films, they kept the camera still as often as not, just because his motions were so impressive to watch without the extra ‘dynamism’ of a wobbly camera.

My mother thought the scenario was unrealistic; she didn’t think a bunch of Chinese kids would dare strike an African American. But I rather think that kids are kids, no matter what color or creed.

I’ve read a lot about how people are annoyed or offended at the idea that Jaden’s parents are uh… so well situated to boosting their kid into the limelight. And while that’s certainly true, I have to say that I can’t really complain when he does a pretty decent job of holding up to the standards set to him. He looked pretty good doing all his own fighting; apparently he trained for months with Jackie Chan’s stunt coordinator.

It was also pretty amazing to see Jackie Chan in a dramatic role. Again, referring to his older films… they had plotlines, but the acting was pretty hammy in general. So seeing him as this sort of desperately broken, widowed husband was an incredible shock. I totally cried. >_>

Anyway! I enjoyed myself greatly and that’s about as much as I would have asked of it. (And my Dad gave it an “A+”.) Plus it was the first film I hadn’t seen in 3D for a while now. XP

Caught a showing of this with my dad, on Sunday. It was, let’s see… well, the plot and characterization was nothing extraordinary. But the animation and care of Toothless was freaking amazing! His eyes, his feline manner… sooooooooooo awesome!

… Yeah, that’s all I really have to say. :x

But I’ll link vladstudio’s Night Fury tribute, cause it’s cute. :x

Saw this on TV, mostly on a whim. I had heard good things, of course, but never had any interest in seeing it, nor did I do any research when it was recent news… just knew that it was based on a comic.

Kind of wish I hadn’t seen it now. ;x Not that it wasn’t good, but it was pretty gruesome. I did think that the visuals were really striking, but not really “aesthetically pleasing”… if you can appreciate the difference.

Stories were all right, though, if you enjoy that sort of plot where every character is despicable. >_> Looking for justice seemed more than pointless for the most part, really…

Made the trip to see this last night, in 3D, before it departs theaters forever. 3D wasn’t anything special (which I guess I should have expected, since the film was converted to 3D, not filmed in it), but nevertheless, it was a fairly amazing visual romp.

I don’t have any other experience with Alice other than the Disney film (bleh), so this was really quite refreshing. While the plot was hardly anything unexpected, it served its purpose… though I did find something about the ending to be a bit trite, but inevitable. >_>

Interestingly enough, I thought the Hatter came across as much more delightful in the trailers than he did in the film… I think I just ended up seeing too much of Jack Sparrow in some of the line delivery. x_x Kind of wish Depp had stuck to using the less serious tone of voice the whole time, rather than sometimes dropping into his lower register. Then again, I suppose Sparrow was insane to some degree, too, so it shouldn’t surprise if some of the character interpretation ends up overlapping…

Couple reviews that I read complained about understanding the speech… which I’m going to have to agree with. Some of the time it was mumbling and the other half of the time, they were speaking names or terms that don’t actually exist, so when struggling to make out what was said, you had to try and guess which one of those scenarios it was. >_>

Still, really not bad at all. I dunno what it is with me and surreal world films… I just likes’em. :x

Also… I’m in love with the Cheshire Cat. amgiwantone >_>