Category: movies

Black Friday

Published on by Juli D. Revezzo2 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I hope you all have (or had) a lovely one. While we’re all eating and out shopping for Black Friday,I tried to find some Thanksgiving creature to tempt you with, but…well, this month doesn’t really lend itself to mythology very much. (There’s no Great Turkey, Charlie Brown, or anything like that…) However, the late, great Jim Henson gave his own spin to the holiday in a show about a bizarre little town called Turkey Hollow that is (or was) on November 22. No, I didn’t get to see it. But it looks like it was really interesting. Or at least, different. (What else do you expect from Henson?) You can read about that in this article.

Well, I think it looks neat. What would you think if you ran across something strange like those Turkey Hollow Creatures? Me I’d probably write a story about them. hehe. I’m grateful for people like Henson for having an imagination like that; without them, I probably wouldn’t be a fantasy writer. 🙂 As Marc and Angel say, I’m thankful for whatever or whoever is sending me –all of us–our unending creative imaginations. 🙂 I’m also grateful to all of you, my readers and friends, who read, encourage, and love what comes out of my imagination. 🙂

Anyway, before I let you all go off to your Christmas shopping, I wanted to let you know that the ebook of KEEPER OF THE GROVE is on sale for $.99, today and tomorrow–for Black Friday. You can find it at Available at Amazon,

Keeper of the Grove (Stewards War, Book 1)

(formerly titled Passion’s Sacred Dance )

Stacy Macken has one goal in mind: saving her renowned history center from greedy creditors. Losing it would be a catastrophe—one she doesn’t know how she’ll avoid.

Until Aaron Fielding arrives. To all human eyes, he is just like any man, but he reminds Stacy of one of the fae. He certainly enchants her like a fae lover would.

But Stacy suspects there is more to this sexy fellow, with his tales of the Tuatha dé Danann, and magical warriors from Celtic legend who protect humanity from a wicked enemy seeking their destruction. Does his appearance mean the end of the world imminent?

Can she, a studious woman more intent on history books with no training in or love of war, possibly have anything to offer when a long-prophesied druidic battle explodes around her?
***
Bonus: Includes brand new flash fiction piece, “About A Warrior”

 

The Celts had their own harvest festivals, but mainly in early August (Lughnasadh) and (depending on what source you read) again at Mabon at the fall equinox. And let’s not forget the big “New year” celebrations at Samhain. Thanks giving was a part of all those festivities, and friends, family, and …well, celebrating. I think they would welcome this November holiday, as well.

So! To all my friends, enjoy this holiday (and the book!) and have a happy, thankful, safe weekend!

***

Sources: Five Ways to Have a Pagan Thanksgiving

30 Things we Forget to Say Thank you For.

Movie review: Beowulf

Published on by Juli D. Revezzo2 Comments

Caveat: I’m sure someone somewhere will disagree with me on this. This is just *my* feelings on this story/movie. It’s not meant to offend anyone.

***

ImageThis is the 2007 animated version. You all remember the story from high school: a king awakens a monster who wreaks havoc on his mead hall. The king sends for a hero and Beowulf comes and saves the day. Kills the monster only to anger his mother who then attacks. And they all drink a lot of mead and boast.

Despite the fact that this is the best known and in some circles beloved story of all time (right up there with the Bible), strangely enough, it is possible to at once make it easier to swallow this Medieval fish tale—and ruin it.

Okay so the story goes as above. Grendel comes, destroys the mead hall, kills a bunch of people but oddly, won’t touch the king. Ashamed, when the word gets out of this strange occurrence the king calls for a hero.  Beowulf comes, screaming and full of himself from across the sea, eyes the queen with more than a little lust, drinks a lot, tells a lot of cockamamie stories (most of)  his listeners believe, and thrusts his sword (and damn near everything else) at the camera (did I mention the directors decided to buy into the 3-D gimmick?) and screams: “I am BEOWULF! I’ll kill your monster!” a lot, like that alone means victory. :p

Then he does just that to end up ticking off Grendel’s mother (whose grief is played way over the top). Turns out, maybe sorta kinda the king left one itty bitty detail out: He’s Grendel’s father and the mother? She’s an evil harpie. The king slaps Beowulf on the shoulder with a “good luck, my boy!” and sends him off to Grendel’s cave to face the mother, be raped by her (depending on your point of view) so she can later give birth to their next foe: a dragon. (The king gets a deformed wretch, Beowulf gets a beautiful dragon—do you see where the favor lies here?) Meanwhile, in a complete wtf moment I didn’t remember, the king throws himself from the battlements.

So, Beowulf takes over the kingdom, gets the queen he’s been lusting for and all the goodies that go with being a king, except he still can’t die, which apparently he wants to. Meanwhile somewhere out there the baby dragon grows up, and finally comes after the humans. Beowulf and he do battle, Beowulf rips out his heart, and falls to his death.

It’s an heroic story for sure, but… I’ve always wondered if the Medieval audience it was intended for even dismissed it as a little over the top. Because let’s face it, Beowulf talks a good game, but I always thought he was the kind of fella who was all talk, with nothing honorable about him (he steals the king’s wife, after all).

I was never a huge fan of the story and I had an instructor that flat out ruined any chance I might ever have to love it. But my hubby’s reading it right now so we gave the movie a shot. Storyline-wise the movie lives up more or less to its namesake, from what I recall.

Here comes where the whole thing, that could’ve been done well, utterly failed. Well, two bits. They could’ve done the whole thing by putting the, arguably otherwise great cast (Anthony Hopkins, Brendon Gleeson, Angelina Jolie, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn) in period costume and shot it live action and only leave the CGI for Grendel and Mama’s harpie suit. But no. They decided to do the whole thing in 3-D. *headdesk repeatedly* Doing so caused it to feel like a video game, made all the characters look like creepy dolls, and let’s not forget the added touch of thrusting everything at the camera to play on the hot shit 3-D gimmick.

Listen, Hollyweird, 3-D died out a long time ago because it was so corny. Time and “upgrades” hasn’t made a difference. It’s still corny, and worse, like I said above, you still fail to get it right. All you end up with is a piece that feels and looks  like a video game, creepy dolls included—whose graphics will be passé and old fashioned in about two–five years. Sadly for them,Beowulf (the movie)’s  fame didn’t last that long.

And don’t get me started on Grendel. Personally, and my husband being the bigger fan of Beowulf right now said it first, Grendel is the big, fat FAIL of this movie, in our opinion (though friends of mine were more ticked by Grendel’s mother). Don’t get me wrong, Crispin Glover is good, he pulled off the motion cap as well as the other actors, (if you can call motion cap pulling off acting), but the decision—whoever’s it was, Gaiman’s or the director’s? Shame on you guys! Yes, the story was written 1200-nearly 1500 years ago (Crossely-Holland says we’re not sure which) for a barely literate audience who spoke a Middle English dialect.

But fellas, this ain’t 1300-1500 years ago!!!

I’d venture to guess that only maybe 1-5% of your audience (and I may be being generous saying that many) don’t understand Middle English. Don’t you think maybe it would’ve been a good idea, if you had to insist on making Glover wrap his tongue around the language, you could do him–and your viewers–the favor of, oh, I don’t know, captioning his speeches? For gods sake, man! He’s the most important character in the first half of the story, and no one can understand a word the poor thing mushmouths—er, grunts—er, says.

If the 2001-era movie lost an audience (and they got slew of  huge glaring FAIL reviews on this thing) that might’ve been the culprit. Yeesh! I don’t know how many ways to say this: it’s one of the things that drives me absolutely bonkers in literature and it didn’t fail to do so here, if your character needs to be understood DON’T PUT DIALECT IN HIS MOUTH!! It just doesn’t work!!!!

*puts hammer down*

Anyway, yeah. Love the actors and gods know they tried, and while  it sticks to the story from what I recall and I applaud them for that, it gets a big thumbs down for animation and gimmickery.

But I never cared for the loudmouth that is Beowulf. As Kevin Crossely-Holland says in his introduction to the translation of the poem:  “It is rude and rough… singularly cheap in construction… thin and cheap…’ And, yep, the movie isn’t much better. If you’re in the mood for creepy dolls, go for it. Otherwise you’re better off with the book.

Beowulf in print. Gutenberg Project.

Beowulf translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland.

Beowulf translated by Francis Barton Gunmere

Beowulf on Wikipedia

Beowulf on IMDB

Monday movie–A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Published on by Juli D. Revezzo

I meant to put this up last week, but didn’t get a chance to. Been in my writing cave.

AI artificial Intelligence movie posterAI. Artificial Intelligence is the story of a futuristic world in which the ice caps have melted and the governments have put limits on how many children a family can have. In the midst of this, a robotics company takes its first steps into making robots seem more human. To prove whether or not they’ve accomplished this feat, they chose one of their own, Henry Swinton  (played by Sam Robards), to test a new android. The poor man’s son had some sort of tragedy (which the movie never elucidates on)  and so when he shows up at home with this perfect little boy robot (played by Haley Joel Osment), his wife, Monica (played by Frances O’Connor), doesn’t know what to make of the “gift”. The boy is strange, though he looks like a real boy, he doesn’t really act like one, always in her face and oddly curious about her reactions.

Finally Monica sees no alternative and “imprints” herself on David. No longer is he just a robot, but he’s now, irrevocably her son. The poor woman is having conflicts and anxiety enough, but then the impossible happens: her real son wakes from his coma. They bring the boy home and he begins to make David’s life a living hell.

When Monica and Henry begin to suspect David might pose a threat to their son, and possibly to themselves, Monica abandons him and he ends up scooped up in a human-led sweep of robots, and thrust into a demolition circus, of sorts. Here, he meets Gigilo Joe (played by Jude Law) whose life he saves by the sheer fact that he’s with him when the crowd begins to doubt whether David is a robot. Could he be a real child?

Joe then takes David into an underworld of the robotic sex trade, on his never-ending quest to find the blue fairy. Instead, he finds the man the made him and subsequently loses his sense of self and becomes trapped at the bottom of the vast ocean that New York (and most places in the world) has become for all time.

 

In a nutshell.

 

This is one of Stanley Kubrick’s last films. I never knew it was a short story, until, literally, the other day–and by SF Grandmaster Brian Aldiss too *smacks forehead*. (My apologies to Brian Aldiss) So I took a peek at the story. It’s…well, a shell of what the movie became so how closely it sticks to Brian’s story, or how many Pinocchio references the story itself makes, I have no idea. The actors pulled off their parts nicely, but going back to its release date, my initial thoughts were… well, it was an odd little story with plenty of missed potential. Unfortunately, the movie leaned far too heavily on blatant references to Pinocchio. (Apologies, Brian). Pre-Once Upon a Time, I wasn’t a big fan of leaning on fairy tales to tell one’s story. If “originality is everything” as it was for me, back when this was first released, A.I. fell flat. The constant reminder that “THIS IS A PINOCCHIO RETELLING!” (just in case you didn’t get that from the theme) drove me absolutely nuts the first few times I saw it.

Now, some years on I’ve read Brian Aldiss’ story and I still think the movie’s heavy handed on the Pinocchio retelling “yellow warning signs!” *Laughs* Oh well… it’s an entertaining movie, either way.

It’s got some nifty extras that explain the world, the robots, and of course, we can’t forget the all-important computer graphics.

If you haven’t seen it and would like to, it’s available on DVD from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster online, and Netflix.

Movie Monday–The Aviator

Published on by Juli D. Revezzo2 Comments

I thought for sure I had this review up here, but can’t find it. So I hope this isn’t repeating on this blog.

aviatordvdThe Aviator (2004). Ah, now here’s an interesting one. Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the life story of Howard Hughes. The young Howard inherits his father’s tool company and fortune and wants to use his riches to make movies. But he also has a passion for tinkering with things. So he starts building airplanes (with the help of some loyal, talented friends). He makes a couple of really bizarre movies, sleeps with almost every starlet of the 1940s (like Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner) and builds an aviation empire called TWA. He keeps experimenting with planes and makes several innovations, and gets a lucrative government contract. Unfortunately he builds this massive plane that , by the time it’s done, the government can’t use so he became a sort of joke. He was also what we’d now call obsessive-compulsive. Everyone thinks of Hughes as a madman, but this…this is interesting! If you haven’t seen this one, it’s one of those, “how creativity can drive you mad” movies (which, *cough I have no interest in whatsoever *cough*evidencedbymynovelTheArtist’sInheritance*CoughCOUGH*. hehe. So, yes, I think the movie is very, very good. 🙂 DiCaprio does a fine job here of acting Hughes exactly the way you’ve probably seen in the old videos of him; the actor even begins to look like the legendary money man in certain scenes. At any rate, it’s one of my favorite movies.

Here’s the trailer…


If you haven’t seen it, do. It’s available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster, and Netflix.

post signature

The Woman in Black

Published on by Juli D. Revezzo

The Woman In Black (2012)

The movie opens on three little girls playing with their dolls. They hear a voice, and suddenly drop their dolls and walk to the windows, open them, and jump to their deaths.

Then we cut to a young man, our hero Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe), grieving over his dead wife. He hugs his son and goes off to work for a lawyer that tells him ‘buck up or you’re out on your ear. (because, he only lost his wife, for god sake nothing to cry over (freaking 19th Century alpha men, what are you going to do?).

Anyway, Arthur’s employer informs him he’s to oversee the probate of a deceased woman in Crythin Gifford (a village in England) and the selling of her home Eel Marsh House. Arthur leaves his four year old son behind and heads off a train for the town.During the trip he meets a nice, but somewhat ominous figure,  Daily (played by Ciarán Hinds). However, Daily seems personable enough and invites the lawyer to dinner. Arthur arrives the home of the family solicitor to find him not at all forthcoming. On the contrary, he wants Arthur out of his hair, and out of town as soon as possible. In fact,  everyone warns him not to get involved with the Eel Marsh house–including the innkeeper who doesn’t want to give him a room, until the wife offers him the attic. Yep. That attic, the one they little girls jumped from.

Stranger still, all this going on around him and no one will tell Arthur much; they just all want him gone.

Daily finally tells him the whole sad story: A family got stuck in the bog that stands between the town and the house, and a little boy died. The mother never got over the child’s loss, blamed the family, hung herself in the Eel Marsh house and cursed the whole town–supposedly.

Arthur shrugs off the spook story and heads to the police station to find out more. Two children rush in; the boy says “my sister drank poison.” And the little girl dies in Arthur’s arms. The grief-stricken family, and the gossips around town, blame “the woman in black.”

Arthur finds out at the promised dinner with his new friend Daily that even he has had a son that perished. And Daily’s wife (played by Janet McTeer), well, she still hasn’t quite gotten over it. Might be because she’s a wee bit psychic and seems to be in communication with the boy and several of the other dead children.

Still, Arthur’s not so sure the town is cursed. That’s silly, isn’t it?

He goes back to work in the house. Late that night, odd things start happening. He sees the shadow of a hand, on the window, hears whispering, a rocking chair starts creaking on its own. A dog barks frantically, and he hears someone crying but can find no evidence for anything causing all this. Bewildered, he takes the story of his night back to his friend. Then there’s a fire, and a little girl trapped inside the burning building. Arthur rushes into save her, just in time to see her light another lantern over her own head.

You can imagine what happens to her. And that’s when he sees a woman dressed all in black, yet he can’t get to her, and she won’t come to him.  Again, he goes to his friend, his wife goes into some sort of trance and warns him “Whenever she’s been seen, something horrible happens.”

So what does happens? You’ll have to see the movie to find out.

I found this version* of The Woman in Black quite entertaining. Maybe the fact that it’s a Hammer film had something to do with that, but that alone had me hooked from the beginning. Nice to see Hammer still out there. And for the movie itself, as I said, I enjoyed it. Radcliffe did a great job as the curious and brooding Arthur. While the movie does have its creepy moments, it’s not horror per se as we know it today (Freddie Krueger and Jason Voorhees this is not even though they share themes), nor does it have the gross factor that seems so bloody popular these days. There are some creepy “flash for startling effect” type scenes, but it’s more for those who enjoy Gothic horror like the stories of Poe or other such stories. As a fan of those types of stories, I found the story intriguing and enjoyed the film very much. I look forward to reading Susan Hill’s book someday.

Related links:

The Woman in Black official movie site.

The Woman In Black at IMDB.

The Woman in Black–Hammer Films site.

*I say this version because a quick check of Amazon and the web shows that there are several versions of the story out there, that are a bit more play within a play type stories.

Trailer