Cinderella (2015)

Other people with whom I am friends and who also have written reviews of this film: I was determined to write my review without any brain-clutter happening from others' opinions. Not that I disregard your opinions, because I will actually be quite happy to find them out -- I just want to present my review ;)

Ella (Lily James, Downton Abbey) is a sweet daydreamer of a girl with an idyllic life: a loving mother (Hayley Atwell, Captain America) and devoted father (Ben Chaplin). That is, her life is idyllic till the unthinkable happens and she's left motherless and her father widowed. Though he still misses his wife, a few years pass and Ella's father decides to marry the widowed Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett, The Lord of the Rings) and take responsibility for her two ditzy daughters, Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drisella (Sophie McShera, Downton Abbey). While Ella immediately dislikes the three, she, in the goodness of her heart, tries to look past their flaws and love them for her father's sake. It's only when he dies that their pettiness and, yes, cruelty is revealed -- and she's forced to wash their clothes, cook their meals, feed their animals, and sleep next to the fire in the kitchens to keep warm, thereby donning her new name “Cinderella,” and slowly losing hope for a happy life.

Warning: I might randomly start gushing in this review. Other warning: I might not gush enough for your taste in some areas.

Oh goodness . . . I really really want to present a somewhat calm review, but sometimes when a film is this good it's hard to say anything other than, “Oh my gosh wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it sweet? Wasn't it absolutely the best live-action adaptation of Cinderella ever?” Because . . . well, it was. Lily James, who stars in the beloved Downton Abbey as the fun-loving Rose, was the perfect choice to play Cinderella -- she has this sort of innate sweetness about her that is just as Cinderella should be. She also looks remarkably like Hayley Atwell, which I suspect is part of the reason they chose Hayley to play her mother. Cate Blanchett was also, like, the only reasonable choice for Lady Tremaine by far -- I've only seen her as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, and while she plays the majestic “good side” lady well, I find her infinitely better as the wicked stepmother. She's seductive, cunning, beautiful (I mean, that red lipstick . . . and that hair!), and without all the ridiculousness that other live-action stepmothers (yes, I am thinking of Anjelica Huston in Ever After, who really does pale in comparison to Cate Blanchett) tend to showcase. And the prince . . . and the king . . . gah, could it have gotten any better? Whoops, nope, I already told you all that it couldn't. Basically, Richard Madden played his caring, wistful prince excellently, the king (Derek Jacobi) almost looked like he'd been brought to life from the animations, and they gave the Grand Duke a personality. But more on that later.

I have two arguments with this film. Yes, two, and one of them is hardly viable because it's based on my unfair expectations. I expected Cinderella to have a more, well, “adult” -- or at least less “silly”/childish I guess -- vibe; I expected there to be a little more logic than there turned out to be (although, thank Heaven, spoiler alert Ella meets the prince before the ball end of spoiler) and a little less “girliness” total. I think if I had gone in without those expectations, I would have liked the movie even more than I do now. My second complaint is that much of the scenery looks CGI'd; in fact, in the scene where Ella's riding her beautiful dapple gray horse (I. Want. That. Horse.), my mom noticed that the scenery moved too quickly for her horse's speed! As far as other details go, I randomly noticed that if Lady Tremaine can't afford servants, then why is Ella's horse newly shod. . . . But, you know, that was indeed a random detail.

Plot-wise -- and I guess this is logic-wise as well -- it does a good job of filling in the awful holes the animated story gives you. Ella isn't just naturally good; her kindness arises from a promise she made to her mother on her deathbed, to “have courage and be kind.” Lady Tremaine is also given a reason for her jealousy of Ella -- she sees Ella as a girl who has the purity and kindness she never had, who is happy despite having lost a mother and a father, and Lady Tremaine can't bear that when her heart is broken from the loss of her first husband. I enjoyed the subtly added intrigue between Lady Tremaine and the Grand Duke -- as I said, they gave the Grand Duke a personality; rather than being buffoonish, he plays a much larger, more realistic role in running the kingdom smoothly, even if he sometimes leads that role immorally.

Altogether, I really liked this movie. The costuming was beautiful (HER DRESS, people) and so were the settings, even if they did look overdone sometimes. I thought the casting was spot-on in almost everybody's case and it's definitely a film I'd love to have on DVD (I don't say that often, mind you -- I don't watch many movies anymore and renting them is cheaper than buying them since I watch so few of them).

Did you go see it? What were your thoughts?

The Last Goodbye: My Response to The Hobbit's Final Movie

Let's be clear: I am not writing a review of The Battle of the Five Armies. I saw it in theaters last Tuesday and didn't desire to review it. Instead, I'm writing this article in response to the WORLD magazine article in their most recent issue.

If you're a WORLD reader and also happen to be a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's books being adapted to the big screen, it'll be no secret that WORLD has overtly criticized Peter Jackson since the first Hobbit debuted two years ago. As a disclaimer, I want to tell you that WORLD is a wonderful magazine with a Biblical perspective, but also that recently I've been disappointed with their movie reviews. For example, their review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was hardly more than a synopsis, yet they felt it necessary to say nothing but bad things about The Battle of the Five Armies. As an example, “Now that they have drawn to a close, it will be hard for even director Peter Jackson’s most die-hard fans to look back on his sprawling Hobbit prequels with real affection” (Basham). What? I'm not a die-hard fan of Peter Jackson. I wasn't all that impressed with his adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, to be honest, particularly The Two Towers. In fact, laid side by side, I might even tell you I like The Hobbit trilogy better. But I am a die-hard fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, so I should be even more upset by Jackson's adaptations, right?

Wrong.

See, Jackson has stated before that his desire with The Hobbit was to create the movie out of the book he thought Tolkien wanted to write. That sounds a little hogwash-y from the start, but let me tell you something. If you're a serious writer, you'll know the trouble than can be caused with plot holes and how much logic is required to fix them satisfactorily. To me that's what Jackson did with the movies. At the beginning of The Hobbit book, it's mentioned that Azog the goblin died years and years ago. BUT at the end the goblins and orcs still want to exact revenge on the Lonely Mountain. Think about that -- sure, goblins and orcs love treasure and all that, but it makes it more logical to revive Azog and give him a hardcore reason to hate Thorin Oakenshield so that the Battle of the Five Armies makes a little more sense. Don't think I'm necessarily condoning Jackson's resurrecting of Azog, but I do think he's right on one point: if Tolkien had written The Hobbit in the same mood/adult level as The Lord of the Rings, he probably would have done something similar.

Also, take a break from the bookish perspective and instead think on the cinematic level. Ten years ago (well, more than that now) Jackson ended The Lord of the Rings trilogy with a flourish. The trilogy won multiple Academy Awards and everyone loved it. Then he decided to make The Hobbit. And do you really think he would have gone without criticism if he'd made this prequel a children's film? Really? No. No matter what he did, he would have been criticized for it. He had to try to equal the level of The Lord of the Rings for the satisfaction of the public. But as the old saying goes, when trying to please everybody, he ended up pleasing nobody.

To me, this trilogy has been absolutely beautiful because of the sheer magnificence of it all. Cinematography, costuming, makeup, CGI -- it was all brilliant. And because he split it into three movies, Jackson was able to go into tremendous detail. Remember at the beginning of An Unexpected Journey when Bilbo is trying to write down the history of Dale for Frodo? I adore that segment because it's a history lesson of Middle-earth. If Jackson had tried to cram all that into one movie . . . you think he'd be able to do it? Sorry, no. Besides which there has to be focus on the connections The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings share -- the White Council's defeat of the Necromancer/Sauron, Bilbo's finding of the One Ring, his decision to spare Gollum's life which consequentially ended in the death of Sauron, and his growing fondness of the Ring itself. All that takes time to show in detail. Plus Jackson was able to deeply characterize people like Thorin, who, yes, was “blustery, elderly, often buffoonish” in the books, but still had a greed problem (Bashan). And Bilbo as well, whom we see transform from a frightened, unadventurous Baggins into a courageous Took. 

Sure there's that one storyline of Tauriel and Kili that shouldn't have been added at all. I highly doubt Tolkien would have written a Dwarf-Elf romantic relationship -- to me it doesn't make sense because at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings trilogy Legolas and Gimli do not get along, and if Legolas had really witnessed Tauriel's love for Kili, my thought is he would be easier on Gimli when they first met. But other than that, I'd say Peter Jackson did a darned fine job with what he had, and I really wish more people could believe that.

Bashan, Megan. “Tolkien take away.” http://www.worldmag.com/2014/12/tolkien_take_away. Pub. 19 December, 2014. Web. 2 January, 2015.  

The Prince & Me (2004)

Yep, I know I've been gone for upwards of forever. AKA, seventy-five days. I trust you'll cut me some slack though. Since then I've started my sophomore year in college and I've been trying to figure out where my life is headed after I (hopefully) receive my Associate of Arts transfer degree in June of 2015. (Can you believe it's going to be 2015 in . . . wait . . . forty-nine days? WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?) If you want more consistent updates of my life, you'd better head on over to my fashion and lifestyle blog, Dance A Real (yes, I do realize that “real” is spelled incorrectly for that phrase--it's a play on words).

Anyway, I thought I'd break the silence with a movie I saw for the first time last evening.

In The Prince & Me, Paige Morgan (Julia Stiles, The Makeover) is a college student bent on becoming a doctor--refusing to let any distractions get in her way. That's including her new chemistry lab partner, Eddie (Luke Mably), an incorrigible flirt who doesn't even know what turkey looks like, let alone how to do his own laundry. But, well . . . Eddie needs help learning how to work in the school kitchen (and how to do his laundry!) and Paige needs help deciphering Shakespeare. Then Paige caves in to her friend's ploy of luring her into asking Eddie home for Thanksgiving, and she finds herself falling in love unexpectedly. Once returned to school, journalists catch Eddie and Paige alone in the library, forcing Eddie to spill out the fact that he's actually the Crown Prince of Denmark.

This was a cute chick flick of a film, and Luke Mably as Eddie = awesome. I've never seen him in any other role, but his mannerisms and appearance are greatly reminiscent of J.J. Feild, one of my favorite British actors. And while I have no complaints about the level of acting talent in the show, Julia Stiles has to be one of my least favorite actresses ever. I saw her in Hallmark's The Makeover a couple months ago as Hannah (the contemporary female version of Henry Higgins), and she played a very similar character--cold, focused, and dubious about any romantic entanglements. Hence it's hard for me to see her as anyone else. Though maybe this was the fault of the screenwriters in crafting a remarkably flat character.

Also, despite its “cute” factor, the screenwriting was disjointed. I won't give away any spoilers here, but if you've seen it, then you should know what I'm talking about. (A girl can only leave a guy so many times . . . that's all I'll say.)

I've heard that The Prince & Me 2 is actually the better of the two movies, which is a rarity--but I'm eager to try that one out regardless. What are my readers' thoughts about this one?

{For your discretion, this movie is rated PG. There are multiple kissing scenes, references to a girl having slept with a man twenty years older, other sexual references, as well as one suggestive scene in which two characters are kissing and the girl takes the guy's shirt off, though after that point nothing happens.}

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

I was fortunate enough in December 2012 to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) in theaters. Last December, when The Desolation of Smaug hit cinemas, it seemed nobody wanted to go, and my family didn't want me to go alone. Yesterday I decided to rent it from Redbox, and last evening after finishing up the week's schoolwork assignments, I watched this two and a half hour film.

Cinematically, this is an absolute specimen. New Line Cinema and Peter Jackson spare nothing to make Tolkien's film adaptations excellent in the aesthetic sense, in scenery, imagination, costuming--everything. I remember at least subconsciously knowing that An Unexpected Journey was the same, and good cinematography is a huge draw to me--it's partially why I so recommend War Horse (2011).

But I am not without my complaints--unfortunately. An Unexpected Journey I absolutely adored. I was a little miffed at how much Jackson rent the story up by including Azog, who, at the beginning of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, is already dead. I enjoyed the inclusion of the Necromancer and the White Council's meeting about him. That movie, when I first saw it, seemed the right amount of action and character involvement. I cannot say the same for this installment--at all. It was as though Peter Jackson looked at his audience and said, "Okay. You know the characters well enough. I'm making this second movie purely for the action." There was maybe one or two instances of character development within the Dwarves and Bilbo. There was at least half an hour too much of action. I was like, okay. Let's take some extra needless shots of Orcs coming to Laketown because we really need more action. Let's include more attacks so we can make this 2 1/2 hours like its precedent. Let's make it extremely emotionless because you've already basically told me that every second there's going to be a surprise attack so it's not going to be a surprise for me anymore.

But faulting this movie incessantly for overly dramatizing everything takes away from many of its good points. I already said that the cinematography was excellent. And Legolas was an absolute oaf in this movie. That isn't exactly a good thing, but it showed how much he matured within the sixty following years. Tauriel's relationship with--Kili, right?--that was a bit weird, but it was sweeter than I expected, and I felt that it added, rather than took away from, the general plot. What can I say, I'm a romantic. Bard the Bowman was incredible. I loved him. Perfect, perfect casting.

Now to the best part of the whole movie. 

Smaug the Great and Terrible.

He's pretty obviously CGI'd, but you can't help that because he's a dragon. His sheer size was magnificent. And Benedict Cumberbatch! Agh, can I just fangirl for a second? I watched him in War Horse briefly, but had no idea who he was then. His voice for Smaug was just absolutely perfect, his acting impeccable. Of course they modified the sound of his voice to make it bigger, more earthy, but I just loved that. It was like listening to Treebeard, but much less exhausting. I could listen to Smaug's voice forever. And his fire did not look CGI'd--except maybe once. Final assessment of this dragon: I LOVE HIM.

And . . . Martin Freeman. Best Bilbo ever. Couldn't have cast a better one. I can only imagine how difficult to act the Smaug scene was, yet he pulled it off so darn well. I just love Bilbo. And Martin Freeman's acting. Did I already say that? :)

The movie definitely had its faults. But it had its good features too. What Jackson lost in overemphasizing drama he made up for with a brilliant cast and amazing effects. And did you know that the trailer for The Battle of the Five Armies is out? Pippin's song is just the right fit for the trailer, which looks much, much better, and far more enticing, than the trailer for The Desolation of Smaug, which I remember thinking looked a little mmm-blah ish. 

What do you think of the trailer? What did you think of The Desolation of Smaug?

The Sound of Music LIVE! (2013)

On Thursday, December 5, NBC aired a special live production of the classic musical The Sound of Music. Though I’m fortunate to have seen this remake, prior to its advent I was rather reserved. After all, can any reproduction ever aspire to the stunning soprano of Julie Andrews, or top Christopher Plummer’s flawless interpretation of Georg von Trapp in the 1965 film?

Let’s begin with a disclaimer. If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you know me as a sometimes-silly, sometimes-serious, tending-to-be-very-critical book reviewer, writer, and “fashionista.” This is, yes, my first attempt at reviewing a play or movie, so I am certainly not adept at it. I apologize if anything that I say annoys you. You are welcome to disagree with me in the comments below, but remember that any blatantly rude comments will be automatically deleted.
It was in August that I first found out about this remake from the very talented reviewer Rissi. I was very disappointed to hear that Carrie Underwood had been cast in the role of Maria, for though I hadn’t heard many of her songs and hadn’t seen anything in which she’d acted, the very fact that she was a country artist repelled me. I said thus on the subject in August: “I’m not a Carrie Underwood fan. . . . In my own opinion, she just doesn’t have the voice needed to play Maria. You need a voice like Julie Andrews’s: clean, operatic soprano with none of the ‘modern sound’ in it.” As for the remainder of the cast, I had never heard of any of them.

This stage production was not supposed to be a reinvention of the 1965 film, but rather a remake of the original Broadway musical. Therefore, we get introduced to some new songs sung by Frau Schrader, Herr Dettweiler, and Captain von Trapp. I didn’t mind these additions, though the “misplacement” of the scenes (according to the movie), the swiftly-moving relationship between the Captain and Maria, and the general lack of the ’65 movie turned me off. (Where did I Have Confidence go??) I fully admit that I’m being narrow-minded, so please don’t move right on to the comments after the last sentence and voice your irritation without having read this sentence.

Well, I do have to come to it sometime. Carrie Underwood as Maria. Where to start? Her voice, her acting, both? Let’s get this out of the way: Carrie has an exceptional voice with a to-die-for vocal range.

But an exceptional voice is not enough for Maria.

Despite some opinions that there was no “country twang” in Carrie’s voice, I disagree that she completely eliminated all the “modern” tone. And I also know that since this is a 2013 production and not a 1959 production, some might expect more “modern” classical voices to adorn the stage. But no. Of the adults in the production, Carrie’s voice as Maria was the only one ripe with the provocative “female power” so common among women singers today. That is why selecting a country artist to sing as Maria was a mistake. Carrie’s use of dynamics is almost exclusively forte and fortissimo, rarely falling into mezzo-piano or piano. I shouldn’t compare Carrie to Julie, so I will refrain in this instance—though it’s extremely hard to do so. Maria is not an incredibly confident person, though she does have a brazen temper which makes her confident in certain situations. Yes, Maria became more confident when she sang, but she was also fully aware of the beauty of her songs and that they didn’t have to be powered out like a Clydesdale pulling the Budweiser wagon. They could be soft lullabies or startlingly dramatic. And she knew it. She knew the power—not the depth, not the loudness, but the ability to move oneself—of vocals. And Carrie Underwood didn’t exhibit this knowledge in this production.

As an actress, also, Carrie fell incredibly flat, so much so that I almost couldn’t even see this musical as being about Maria. I do realize that she wouldn’t have wanted to copy every inflection Julie used, but her awkward intonations were such a bother! I nearly always preferred it when Carrie was off-screen.

As for the other characters, I found Frau Schrader’s actress to excellently interpret her slimy character—she leached even more sliminess into the role than Eleanor Parker did in 1965. I disliked the fact that they costumed her in trousers in the latter half of the play, but after mulling it over I realized that it was a great fit for her: women’s lib/money-sucker that she is. Herr Detweiler was also wonderful (though he came onto the stage looking just like a nerd)—selfish just like Frau Schrader with a heart buried deep inside that selfishness.

The von Trapp children were unextraordinary. Liesl, on whom most of the focus is given as the eldest—well, her voice isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. Kurt, however, was very well-cast, with an extremely high voice perfect for his part. The young girl who played Gretel, however, is still growing into her voice, yet is unfortunately forcing too much unnatural sound into it. (Or that’s how it came across to me—she could just be struggling between two realms in her voice at the moment.)

The settings were mostly gorgeous, particularly the von Trapp house. The costuming seemed spot-on, except for Carrie’s wig, which was obviously fake, whereas Frau Schrader’s hair looked much more natural—slightly frizzy and just real. I disliked the “hill” where Maria sings the title track and also where Liesl and Rolfe share their “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” duet, their dance, and their first kiss. It was too dark there. The abbey, also, was very dark and gloomy.

You think I’m leaving someone out, don’t you?

That’s because I’m saving the best for last. . . .

Who saved the day of the play was Stephen Moyer as Georg von Trapp. Handsome, enigmatic, afraid to love, and gifted with an angelic tenor voice, I could not be more satisfied with their casting of this man. I joked to Hallie before he sang “Edelweiss” near the end of the production, “I’ve been waiting for this the whole time.” When he began to sing, I realized that it was true. At first Stephen came across as stiff and awkward, but I realized later that this was probably an asset to his character, for at the beginning of the play Captain von Trapp isn’t a man who knows how to act around real people—he’s tried to convince himself that these “real people” can be treated like soldiers or like dogs. His transformation into a loving father with a bashful infatuation with Maria was cute; not quite Georg-like, nor as mature as it should have been, but I think I liked him all the more for it. No, he’ll never be the stern, subtly dangerous man Christopher Plummer played, but he was refreshing in a cast which seemed disappointingly full of amateurs.

If you watched this live performance, did you find Carrie Underwood a satisfactory replacement for Julie Andrews, or could you barely stand her? Are you an open-minded lover of remakes or more narrow-minded, like me, a lover of the glorious traditions?