Les Chansons d'armour

After watching "The Hurt Locker" and reading all the experts weighing in on the authenticity, Victor and I watched "Armoured" and boy, if I don't desperately want to blog about the accuracy of that movie because I know there are people spending sleepless nights wondering about it.

In a break from tradition, it was actually good. The previews struck me as a bit ridiculous, and I had mentally categorized it as "crap" but it was actually worth watching. Even watching on blu-ray (admittedly it was a free rental after I'd rented all three Pirate of the Caribbean [see This is not a Sick day] but it still won out over "Nim's Island" and I seriously love Jodi Foster [No Homo]) was an unregrettable experience, and my measure for movie has dropped alarmingly in the last few months. It's like I'm a sinking Zeppelin, and tolerance is the first cargo to go in my bid to stay aloft.

The atmosphere seems much like usual, the nature of the armoured truck business is that big family meetings like the two shown are almost impossible, and slightly ridiculous anyway, since half of the employees would be returning from shift, and the other half leaving. Because normal people like all of you have lives and apparently desire to live in the sun, I have to be a nocturnal creature to adapt and still draw wage for the ridiculous slacking that I do.

They get badges. I want a badge. There is literally no point to issuing badges. Except, I guess, they are in America, where the gun alone is not going to command fear and respect, but then if they want to discourage bad guys, they are unlikely to find support in a badge, since bad guys are notoriously apathetic about symbols of authority. They are shiny though.

The main problem that we noticed, in fact, was the cavalier attitude towards their firearms. People were swinging them around, covering other people off, gesturing with them, and I don't mean during the heist, I mean in the locker room, on the street. There is a scene, and I can't make this up, where the two men go in for a pick-up in a crowded bank,and one has his sidearm drawn. The likelihood he has his safety on is ... not likely, but he's just holding it like it's a matching clutch that also coordinates his earrings to his shoes. We'd be fired at that point.

My favorite part, which should come as no great surprise, is the trucks. These giant beasties are gracefully arranged into a car chase.
A chase? Aren't these things tremendous chunks of iron with the grace of a heifer?
True, true, my dear reader, but the director has spared no such frivolity in the name of Action Movie. These Brobdingnagian boxes are hauled up to their highest speeds and smashed into each other in a vague imitation of transformer sumo wrestling. It boldly demonstrates their acceleration and handling without ever being fake. "These are giant cubes," says the director, "but watch them smash into each other like continental drift." In the special features there's a section for stunts, and bless his little heart if he doesn't talk about the truck's "personalities" and how they were each extra characters on set, and I totally agree. These honkers we work with each have their own features and strange quirks; I appreciate the director eking each extra km/h out of these majestic lumps. They also corner like a fat man chasing cake.

On the last point, the movie's a bit dated. There are a bout a billion measures in place to avoid exactly the situation they play out. But if we can accept that it happened before the Armoured Car services realized that people might want the money they are protecting, and decided to dissuade them from getting it, then it is entirely believable. And all in all, a darn good watch.

Sylvestor Stallone is older than dirt.

I hit 300 posts with my last post; I was going to mark the occasion, got too distracted, so here I am marking it late. 9/10. Marked.

So we finally had a day off, and went to go see the Expendables, which Vic wanted to see because it's guns and fists and explosions of awesome, and I wanted to go see it because it's Jason Statham and last time we saw him he was half-naked sliding around in oil so...

Unfortunately I didn't realize a) it was directed by Sylvester Stallone b) it is starring Sylvester Stallone and c) Sylvester Stallone wouldn't understand a joke if it was aimed at him. Not to say the movie was bad. There were explosions. There was a cool plane. There was Dexter's Detective Batista trying to be serious, tough, and dictatory. There was an attractive lady who had a personality trait. Guns, bikes, tattoos and height jokes.

Unfortunately they were stuck between the need for a simple script in order to hang so many diverse yet fascinating actors off, and someone's apparent desire to just hang them off his massive, aged, biceps. A movie with this many big names really needs to space them so we don't all suffer star shock, but they were almost so spaced it was unwieldy, never really gaining speed. Perhaps if it had been paired down a touch, and hung on something like a "mission: impossible" framework? Then again, ocean's eleven has already been done.

The downside is that you never develop enough empathy that you care about the good guys winning; not always a problem, but typically the visual effects are incredible enough you don't care that the characters are about as interesting as a hairball. In this case, however, you have two big holes (How many stunts can you really have when the main character is this old, but no one is allowed to top him?) and no distracting lump of glittery awesome. (That's a really uncomfortable statement)

So in closing, it's sort of sad I'm even trying to assess this so much, because it's really like critiquing the food at McDonald's, you aren't there for home-made or haut cuisine, you're there because it's pretty cheap, and you used to love it as a kid, but I'm trying anyway, because, gosh-darnit, we need to start demanding more from our movies. The last "epic saga" we had was based on some blue guys that didn't want to give up their tree. Yes, yes, it was pretty, but so was "gone with the wind" and it still said something.

Half review, half PSA, all awesome!

I went to go see the movie Inception a while ago, and then always intended to write a review of it, but then I enjoyed telling people about it so much I never ended up writing it. It has recently come to my attention, however, that people should be forewarned about it so they do not suffer the same fate I did. This won't contain any spoilers (like there's anything to spoil...)

This movie has been pushed as a mental-thriller, a headtrip, or a thinking movie. It's not. If you can wrap your mind around the notion that sometimes people run out of ideas for fiction and resort to "But it was all a dream!" and then sometimes that gets overplayed so people say, "No, THAT was a dream" then you have a pretty good basis to watch Inception on. If you can further tax your mental resources and continue one step further to conclude "No, THAT was a dream!"Then congratulations, you've just watched Inception. The movie plot suffers from a form of "Dragonball Z"-kosis where they assume it furthers a script to continually shout "No I'm going down 3 dream levels" and "Well, I'm going down 4 dream levels!" but no one has the ability to go super-sayan.

Not to say it isn't a good movie. There are interesting notions and some cute visual effects (yes, I said "cute"), and a pretty good fight scene in a hallway, but since I had expected thinking, I kept expecting twists, and was sorely disappointed. In fact,my overactive brain came up with several mind-assaulting twists that I debating sending in the direector, even one that plays very heavily on the notion of "it was all a dream!!" that they present, while still, in my opinion, knocking your socks off.

All in all, it's an okay movie. Something you'd go see if the tickets were free, or you could borrow it free of charge from a friend. It does what people expect from movies now; it entertains. It is entertaining. Sometime just recently, I blame "Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali" for this, but that is no longer sufficient for me.

One final note: I do not want to hear "Let's see you do better!" or any variation thereof. My job is not to make movies. If I was given the same resources, heck yah, I'll make a head-case of a movie. But just because I have not made a movie does not mean I can not judge them. I've never raised a child, but I know when I think people are scum.

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