Eat Your Carrots

The Hitcher, Old And New

The Hitcher seems to be quite the film for eye candy, if you're a female who's into gruff blokes with craggy features. Wife is, so imagine her delight to find that Sean Bean is in the remake of the movie that originally starred Rutger Hauer. How good can it get.

Having watched the remake at the weekend we decided to also watch the original tonight so we could compare and contrast. I have to say that the remake is pretty true to the original, though keen fans of the original complain that the "finger in the chips" scene is missing from the remake. A minor omission, I assure you.

For my money the remake had a lot more "jump out your seat" moments than the original did, though I suppose these days gore is more acceptable than it was back then. It's hard to believe that it's 21 years since Rutger graced the role, and it shows. He was well in his prime then, whereby comparatively speaking Bean is past his sell by. Needless to say wife preferred the original, though she claims it has nothing to do with the star's blonde hair, blue eyes and wicked smile.

A few minor plot changes along the way don't make one film better or worse than the other (e.g. in the remake the female interest is the hero's girly; in the original he was alone but some diner waitress helps him out of a scrape and then tags along - it's all small stuff). What does make (for me) the remake better is purely the shock value of the events. The same events occurred, but were more tamely portrayed in the original. For that reason alone I'd suggest watching the remake first if you're going to do as I did, the effect will be better. Perhaps the biggest of all of the shocks though was how un-bad (as opposed to good) Sean Bean was. We really dreaded that he'd have to do a posh English accent for some reason, and were thankful it was only a crap American one that he had to try. Why on earth can't people just cast him as Yorkshire?

IMDB voters gave the original 7/10, the remake only 5.4. I'd go along with the 7 for the original, but I voted the remake 9, it was so much better for me.

As a side note, the hero in the original is played by C. Thomas Howell who's only other movie (that we've seen) was also one of our favourites - Soul Man. Made in the same year, it bombed, but it's one of the funniest films we've seen.

Hitcher 1986 7/10
Hitcher 2007 9/10

300

We just finished watching 300. It's a bit of an oddball movie, not quite what I expected of it. The use of animations, slow/fast-motion fight scenes, an annoying voiceover and inappropriate incidental music were the bulk of my criticisms, along with the fact that most of the cast sounded Scottish rather than Greek. I suppose the fact it was based on a graphic novel (and why not just on history itself?) explains all of the artiness.

For the first ten minutes, almost all a mix of live action and animation, accompanied  by said annoying voiceover, I really thought I wasn't going to enjoy it. It got better later, particularly when the blood, guts and general gore started to flow, even despite the Matrix/Crouching Tiger style fight scenes.

You have to say too, while watching the film, what a lot of grotesquely ugly geezers there were around in classical times! Of course none of the heroes were ugly, the uglies were reserved for enemies, cannon fodder (metaphorically, there were no cannons of course) and traitors. The heroes were all paragons of Greek classical manhood, and I'd be interested to know just how many plastic six-packs were in use. If it was all natural then those actors got way too much gym time!

For anyone who knows their history or who's seen the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans", you'll know how it ends. For those others of you the Four Word Film Review has this to say: "Three Hundred All Die".

300 7/10

Films, Films, Films

Wow we've watched a lot of films lately. I've not got the time nor the inclination to do my usual full and wordy review of each one, so I'll just summarise.

• Mistress Of Spices.
  Dull and slow paced.  Aishwarya Rai plays the female lead in her usual style (lots of glamour, moderate talent) but plays opposite a totally uninteresting and unappealing "romantic interest". We just kept thinking "why the hell's she even looking at him?" Wife has read the book, but couldn't remember anything of the plot, which I think says a lot.
• The Devil Wears Prada.
  Perhaps not quite up to all the hype and publicity it's been getting but still a very good movie. Meryl Streep was absolutely superb as the dead-pan bitch of a boss, and Anne Hathaway (I though she'd died in the 1500's?) decent as her put-upon assistant. I thought the ending could have been better (i.e. different) but we still really enjoyed it. A good Sunday night movie (though I think it was a Thursday when we saw it).
• 40 Days and 40 Nights.
  Sometimes hilariously funny and sometimes overstepping the boundaries of good taste, this film wasn't what we expected. To see Josh Hartnett playing a part in a movie that pushed American Pie for grossness at times was a bit of a surprise. Not one to watch on a quiet night in with the in-laws, which is what we'd imagined it might be.
• She's The Man.
  Based loosely around 12th Night by Anne Hathaway's better half, an everyday tale whereby a girl dresses as a boy who perhaps then pretends to be a girl and which invariably leads to much confusion and slapstick humour. The names of the characters fitted with this (Olivia, Viola, Duke and, err, Coach!) and that and the cross-dressing is as far as it went. A girl pretends to be a boy so she can play soccer, but falls in love with one of her team mates, who himself falls in love with the girl's "sister" (i.e. the girl herself). You can see where this is going. Another American rom-com based on a Shakespeare play, but not quite up there with 10 Things I Hate About You, mainly let down by Amanda Bynes' unconvincing performance as a boy (as a boy she looked 12 when all the others were 19+).
• Walk The Line.
  Was this an Oscar winner/contender? If so it's easy to see why. A superb biopic about someone who I previously knew nothing about, beyond knowing (some of) his music. The movie held our attention from start to finish and we didn't even get up to make the usual cups of tea/snacks. I wish we'd seen it a few weeks earlier - last time we were at the Indian in town they had a CD on which can only have had 5 or 6 tracks on it. By the time the meal was ended we'd heard the entire thing about 10 times. Thankfully it was on random, so the changing track order  kept me from stringing myself up, though it was getting to that point by the time we left. Anyway, one line of a song stood out, and each time it came on we'd sing along to it "but I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die". Turns out that was Johnny Cash's first single!
• Click.
  Not the best movie Adam Sandler's ever done, but certainly not the worst. Basically a man comes by a remote control that can control everything. Literally. Tired of the wife nagging? Put her on mute. Need more time to think of a good answer? Put her on pause. Need to finish something in a hurry? Try fast-forward. The trouble is, this guy ended up fast-forwarding most of his life, to the extent that he missed most of it. "What? My little girl is married??" - that type of thing, and more. It turns out it was just a dream - though strangely that was made very obvious, which made you take the "remote control" scenes a bit less seriously. You always knew he was going to wake up and it would all be all right. Still, quite enjoyable if not side-splittingly hilarious.

Wow, turned out full and wordy after all, didn't it!

Mistress Of Spices 5/10
The Devil Wears Prada 8/10
40 Days and 40 Nights 7/10
She's The Man 6/10
Walk The Line 9/10
Clicked 7/10

Atonement

We went to Redcar on Saturday to see the set of the film Atonement, part of which depicts the Dunkirk evacuations, being filmed in the town. It's a sad indictment of Redcar that it can still pass for a bombed-out 1940's French coastal town! (OK, so they gave it a bit of help with some clever set-dressing).
Looking at the sets it was hard to know what was set and what was really Redcar, they're really clever these set builders. I wish we'd been there when the huge landing barge was on the beach. Despite appearances this too was simply a piece of cleverly painted plywood. By the time we visited the town they were in the process of dismantling everything.
We did manage to see the "dead bodies" though. Unconvincing from this distance I'm sure they look real enough by the time they translate to film. I wish we'd managed to make it down here to see some filming, that must have been fascinating. And if I'd gotten a part as an extra I'd have got £50 a day, a free (1940's) haircut and as much food as I can eat!

X Men 3

We went to see X Men 3 - The Last Stand today. I've always been a big fan of the comic books and have been very happy with the portrayal they have received on the big screen. Today was no exception, though with one minor grumble and one very major one!
Minor grumble first: Vinnie Jones. I've nothing against the guy, other than the fact that he's a crap actor. I'm sure he could do a good job of playing Juggernaut if all he had to do was growl and look mean. But they gave him a speaking part. Why oh why? His lines were corny and cheesy and delivered in his usual ham acted way and with an over-emphasised English accent. It made me cringe.
And now the major grumble: Don't you hate it when scriptwriters tinker with things that ought to be sacrosanct? My biggest complaint of any movie script ever was in Mission Impossible (1) when they made the bad guy turn out to be Jim Phelps. That would never happen, and it spoiled not only that movie but the whole MI genre for me. Well in X Men 3, they kill off three of the major mutant good-guys. That just didn't happen in the comics and as a plot premise I just can't buy it. Maybe the actors in question didn't want to be in any more sequels, or maybe they wanted too much money, who knows. It still sucks though.
Anyway, on to the movie. Apart from those grumbles I thought it was excellent, though maybe not quite up there with X Men 2. It had sufficient moments of tension for me, and what with killing off main characters left right and centre, enough unpredictability too. Having said that, the final and closing scene was all too predictable. But it points the way to another sequel - the fourth in the trilogy, to paraphrase one of the Orange adverts. The characters were all their usual selves, no different from the other movies really, well acted (on a whole - Vinnie Jones excepted). Oh, I have another gripe... How come Ice Man, Beast and Angel have been brought in now, as if they are "new" characters, when in actual fact they were the original X Men!? (Maybe I'm being just a bit too geeky and intense here).
X Men 3 - 7/10

The Da Vinci Code

OK, having seen the movie now I can declare (in my opinion, anyway) that it's not as bad as all the critics say it is. It's probably not as good as the critics would hope a blockbuster (and it's sure to be one) would be, but it's probably as good as you could make it given the subject matter. Face it, the book is not full of comedy, romance, nail-biting suspense or edge-of-the-seat thrills, and so neither is the movie. And you don't come out full of excitement declaring "what a great movie that was" - but then I did do that with King Kong and War Of The Worlds and plenty of people didn't like those movies either.
This movie does a pretty good job of faithfully telling the story as told in the book. If you enjoyed the book then probably you'll enjoy the movie - though for some reason they did tinker with the ending, to no logical purpose that I could see. I've read criticism of almost every aspect of the movie, from Tom Hanks' hair to the size differential between he and Audrey Tatou. That's just ridiculous. I didn't find Hanks' hair anything like as distracting as I was lead to believe, and not every woman in the world is 6 feet tall, so size differentials are a fact of life!
It didn't even feel like a 2 3/4 hour movie to me either. If it had been as boring as it was painted I'd have been asleep or itching to leave. As it was, the time passed quite quickly and I didn't find time dragging at all.
My favourite character was Paul Bettany's Silas. I though he played him well, with just enough mad menace about him, and looking almost exactly as I had painted Silas in my own mind as I read the book. Quite a decent Spanish accent too.
I doubt I'd place this film on my list of all time favourites, but then neither is Gone With The Wind or Titanic, and they were both blockbuster's too. I just thought it was a decent movie, well acted and well directed, telling a very good story and being not at all deserving of all the criticism it's received.
The Da Vinci Code - 7.5 / 10

Da Vinci Code Panned

I've not read a single good review of The Da Vinci Code movie, in fact I've not seen anything that has been better than totally scathing. Yesterday's Mail called it "the greatest turkey ever sold". Having said that, their reviewer yesterday said, "the book was terrible, the film's worse", but I don't know anyone who didn't enjoy the book. I think reviewers can tend to get a bit up themselves.
Well, I'll be able to judge for ourselves soon enough.

Booked & Paid For

We've booked to go and see The Da Vinci Code on its opening weekend in Middlesbrough. We'll be going to the 18:15 showing on Sunday 21st, along with Laura, our friend from Canada. It's a long way to come to see a movie, I guess we must be decent company or something. Anyone who's going to see it sooner than that - I don't want to hear about it!!!!

Wedding Crashers

For the third time recently we sat down and tried to watch Wedding Crashers. This time we actually managed it, having failed to get beyond the first minute or so the other twice (something else just "came up" on those other two occasions). Having watched it at last I'm not sure it was very much worth the effort.

It's OK, quite funny at times, but at other times it just seems to drag a bit. It just didn't quite have enough. Wife also thought that it "wasn't quite what she expected", though her main reason for wanting to watch it anyway was because Owen Wilson is in it. At least now that I've seen this I've finally seen Christopher Walken in something other than The Deer Hunter and the Weapon Of Choice video. Fine actor, underutilised.

Described as "the surprise comedy hit of 2005" I can only add that I too am surprised by that - there must surely be funnier and better films out there.

Wedding Crashers 6/10

Hide & Seek

It's been quite a weekend for Premieres at Casa Del Carrots and tonight it was the turn of Hide and Seek. This stars Robert De Nero and Dakota Fanning and is a psychological thriller/horror movie that revolves around a little girl (Fanning) who is traumatised by the suicide of her mother. She invents an invisible friend, Charlie, who gradually turns darker and darker, dragging Fanning down with him. Strange events happen in their house, all attributed to "Charlie" (and therefore, you imagine, to Fanning) until things take an unexpected twist. The truth is revealed sooner than I would have expected, but the movie still runs on for a while after that, losing none of its tension.

We thought it was a pretty good film - too scary for wife who "watched with her eyes closed" some of the time, and a few moments had me jumping out of my seat. It was pretty tense throughout and although you suspected there was going to be a twist, I didn't guess correctly what it was going to be.

Hide & Seek, 7/10