What the Folk!

Just seen The Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

And I have to say I throughly enjoyed it. Laughed a fair bit also which was nice

Non spoilery stuff...

The child actors were very well cast, all four of them held their own against the backdrop of Narnia and the mythical creatures. I found their parts, very well handled. The CGI was good, sometimes not brilliant, but it more than did the job. And Aslan was wonderful. Swinton as the White Witch was impressive.

I enjoyed the 1940's setting, clothes and manners. The use of locations, after Jackson was done with NZ for LOTR was no where near the scale it could of been. Whearas Jackson used the scenery almost as another cast member, in Narnia it played second fiddle. Which was fine with me. This was one film, and did not have the luxury of being able to dwell for too long.

The plot moved along at a decent pace, a few changes to the book, but nothing that failed on film. All in all, a great family film that will keep the grown ups/adults happy also.

*On edit*

One annoying thing. The whole film was cast with English/British accents. This of course makes sense to me. Yet why o why was Maugrim given a distinctly American English sounding accent. It completly ruined the part for me. Never in all my years of reading this book have I *ever* imagined Maugrim with an American sounding growl. And to make it even more noticeable, it was the only use of an American accent in the whole film. Afwul thing to do. But there, tis done

I saw "Syriana" this afternoon. It was way too real and "right now" to be thoroughly enjoyable... it was actually painful at times. But, like I said, it tells the truth, and when the truth isn't pretty, it hurts. George Clooney did one of those "disappearing acts" into his character. He gained a lot of weight, and grew a pretty full beard. I'm thinking he's going to be nominated for an Oscar for this role. He was that good. Who knew? I thought he was just pretty.

Next up: "Memoirs of a Geisha".

I finally saw Harry Potter this week and enjoyed it quite a bit. I have bad retention when it comes to books, so I didn't feel like it was missing too much, and I really liked the end with Voldemort. It was much as I had pictured it when I read the book.

I saw Syriana tonight. It was way serious. I thought there were good performances all around. But, like Kate said, it was too real to be very enjoyable. I mostly felt sad after seeing it.

The thing that bothered me most was how we, as Americans, have no say in the way this country is run. I am pretty sure that even the Bush supporters would have to check their political choices after seeing this movie. I heard that some walked out of the movie at the premiere. I guess they couldn't take the heat.

I just hope lots of people see it and get a little perspective about what's really going on here and in the Middle East. I know! No Politics Allowed!!

Good movie, but not if you'd like to be in a good mood when you walk out. I turned on the Mermaid song on the Folk the World CD to cheer myself up. And of course it did the trick.

I went to see The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe this evening. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. I loved the book when growing up. Still do, actually. I found it so neat to get to see the characters come alive on screen. It is very close to how I imagined it as a kid, which doesn't happen a lot for me. Maybe because of that, I got really caught up in the whole plot. Even though I KNEW what was going to happen, I still got very emotional at parts. Yeesh. I'm such a girl.

I loved Aslan and The White Witch. Very well done. It was a little odd seeing the actor who played the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory play such an evil minion. I wasn't sure about the child actors in the beginning of the movie, but I grew to enjoy their performances as the movie progressed a little bit.

The only character I found a little off was Mr. Tumnus. I always pictured him older and well green? Wasn't he green? Or red with green hair? Anyway, I still enjoyed the character in the movie. Just didn't click quite right.

I hope this chapter does well and they continue to make the books into movies.

Totally HUGE ditto. I have been sad about us for way too long already, so I just got angry and feeling sort of frustrated. It was not enjoyable for that reason.

Deirdre, didn't you think George Clooney's performance was a real surprise? I was slightly taken aback to find he could actually act without that "wink, wink, sarcastic" charm he usually uses to, in essesnse, always play himself in his movies. There was absolutely no George Clooney in that character. (And, in his character in "Good Night and Good Luck", either, but he still had his looks present in that one...)

As far as the "Narnia" movie, I really would like to see it, but the controversy of how it is being aggressively marketed to Evangelical Christians in this country by Disney in order to cash in on what are being called "Passion Dollars" (people who paid to see "Passion of the Christ" as a part of their religious Christian duty), is just way too cynical for my taste. I almost don't want to reward them with my movie-going $$$ just because of this campaign of theirs. I find it repugnant. So, thanks for the review, Sherry. I enjoyed your "take", because I probably will not be seeing it in the theaters.

I think George Clooney did a lot of physical acting in this movie. The way his eyes darted around constantly and the way his mouth was hanging open much of the time made him appear to be fearful in a way you don't usually see CIA operatives on film. And the torture scene was well done. (I don't want to give too much away.)

But, I did feel that the way the CIA delt with him was sort of cliche'. It makes you wonder why anyone would work for such a ***** organization.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown

Its a documentary that was years in the making about the musicians who played in the studios of Motown records. They got paid what they had coming but never really got credit as being the musicians who played on more number 1 hits than The Beach Boys,The Rolling Stones, Elvis and The Beatles combined. It very moving at times. The story behind the making of the movie is quite karmic. This man who had written the book was looking for financial backers and kept getting his hopes up just to be let down. Well a friend of his who was helping him work on the project died of cancer. A mutual friend of their's was on his flight back home from the funeral and happened to start a conversation with the man sitting next to him and he happened to be a Motown fan,a bass player and had coincidently owned copy of the book. That man along with a friend of his ended up financing the movie. Now talk about a friend of your sending you a parting gift that is just hair raisingly beautiful.

I'm going to cry. Still no Pride & Prejudice in my area. This exact thing happened when Gosford Park came out (or in my case, didn't come out.) It came out on DVD before it showed up in theaters. Well, Pride & Prejudice is slotted to come out on DVD on February 28th...will it make it to theaters before then? Hm?!

The theaters in my area are prejudiced! Prejudiced, I say! Time to picket, write a letter to the crappy paper, post bulletins!

That is all

Ok - so I have to brag about my little brother a bit. He is a 3-D modeler for Sony and he woked on Narnia - pretty cool, huh? I think so. He worked on some of the centaurs (Sony did some of them and another company did others) He's going to be supporting me when I retire.

And I loved Narnia! I thought they did a great job! I think they did a rather good job of not delving too much into the characters, since they were never incredibly developed in the book, it had to be difficult to write them as characters that people can get into without throwing the whole story.

And Andria - I cried too and I know the story as well=-) such saps!!

on edit - OK, so I am a month or so off of this conversation, oh well......I'm still bragging about my little brother

My faves of recent times;
Charlie and the Chocolate factory (The DVD comes out here tomorrow - With free chocolate bar!)
Flight plan - That was fairly good.
Just like heaven - Saw that last night.
and my fave current movie of all time is....

THE PRODUCERS!!!

loved it to pieces.

I saw Narnia a few weeks ago but I missed a bit cause I ended up getting sick

Wow! That is neat about your brother working on the movie. I thought the centaurs were very well done.

Did you see the original or the remake of The Producers? I've seen the original and it's hilarious (Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel) but I haven't seen the remake (Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane?).

I might hire it out tomorrow. I have been dying to see it to compare. Gotta love Mel Brooks' sense of humour.

This is one of the things I love about this forum - the vernaculars!

You would never hear someone 'round these parts (there's some southern vernacular for ya'll) talking about renting a movie say "I might hire it out tomorrow" - I Love it!!

My son's bottom is now his Bum - its pretty funny to hear him say it He was being horrible this morning and I told him he was about to get a spanking and he said "No Mommy. You don't hit my bum!" (and the only spankings he's ever gotten are with a diaper on - it doesn't hurt him. just thought I'd mention that before this goes in another direction)......