The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug--short movie review

Photo: Movie poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Very good "hallway" movie that connects the first to the yet-to-be-released third film, and apparently only meant as such.  I say that because when the one moment comes that you've been waiting for, the movie ends.  The fact that that's disappointing speaks well for how good and gripping the movie is.

Mostly it's a special effects action flick, which isn't bad, but I got the feeling that the three LOTR movies were about something a little bit more.  The first Hobbit movie was, as well.  A great deal about friendship, honesty, greed, and stamina are mentioned in those films, and for good reason.  The Ring is destroyed, after all, more because of friendship than because of any lava at Mt. Doom.  The first Hobbit movie takes a good twenty minutes right up front in the movie to show everyone's camaraderie (which seems unnecessary at the time, but isn't) and friendship, and that theme played itself out as the movie went on.

Here, there's no time for that.  We get nonstop action from the first moment until the last, with the occasional moments for budding romance thrown in.  We see swordfights galore, and lots and lots of running, and many instances of hiding, and...well, you get the idea, and I make it seem much worse than it is.  It's actually a lot of eye-popping fun (even with a very verbose dragon, and some very silly barrel / riverbanks scenes, where the Dwarfs and Hobbits run and jump like Olympians, and dozens of Orcs are nice enough to stand in a straight line so they can get knocked over by the same one barrel) and you won't realize that the two hours and forty minutes have passed until the abrupt ending.  It's a movie well worth the money.  In fact, as with all special effects flicks, if you plan to watch it at all, you have to see it on the big screen.

I'm just going to trust that the third film wraps up the themes of friendship and of reclaiming your home (I've sort of done that in real life, as you know if you follow this blog) and that the last film won't just be amazing visuals and riveting action like this one was.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  

New Blog, American Horror Story: Coven, Is Up

Photo: This season's main advertising poster, from AHS: Coven's Wikipedia page.

Please go to my new blog, http://stevestv--ahscoven.blogspot.com/, to read about this season's American Horror Story: Coven, episode by episode.  Thanks.

Elysium--Movie Review

Photo: Movie's poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Elysium is a very satisfying action / sci-fi movie with a surprisingly blatant social commentary about immigration and health care.  Because immigration is such a fireplug, your stance on it may very well decide how you enjoy the movie.  As a guy who's usually sick with sinus infections, and who has a mostly-liberal bent, this stance was okay with me, but if you're a solid conservative, or severely anti-immigration, consider yourself forewarned.

It stars Matt Damon, who can do this sort of action movie in his sleep these days, and Jodie Foster, in a role that's rather thankless and one-note.  Foster, in fact, is sort of wasted in this role, and she gives herself an occasional accent that befuddles as well.  Writer / director Neill Blomkamp didn't seem to know what to do with her character after the film's bad guys enter Elysium (the utopian society in space populated only by the rich), though while watching the movie, I thought her character could have still gone places: though a psyche reversal was clearly not going to happen, she could have been more of a problem for Matt Damon's character.  Maybe Blomkamp felt the bad guy was more than bad enough, and I suppose he is.  After all, he gets a large chunk of his face blown off, and stays conscious the whole time until he's re-configured by one of Elysium's health pods.  And as you may imagine, if he was a really angry bad guy before his face was blown off, he becomes even more severely pissed off afterwards.  In truth, his character is a comic book villain, and I have already taken the character more seriously than the viewer is supposed to.  Suffice it to say, he, more than Jodie Foster's character, is Damon's character's obstacle.

Speaking of Damon, he does a good job here, even though he plays an ex-con, a side of his character that is not heavily covered, which is perhaps a good thing, since Damon doesn't come across as an ex-con kind of guy, whatever that is.  He's too earnest, too sacrificial.  In fact, all of the ex-cons (and current cons) on Earth come across much more altruistically than I'm going to guess ex-cons really would.  There's not a sincerely bad guy in that bunch; they're all victims of dystopian class-consciousness.  Originally his character was going to do some shady things in order to get himself to Elysium's health pods, to cure him of a massive radiation blast he accidentally incurred at work.  He's got just five days to live otherwise, and a truly depressing, soul-sucking, worker-ant life to go to even if he is cured, so he really has nothing left to lose.  But when we're introduced to a little girl who needs to get to Elysium's health pods to cure her of Stage Three leukemia, you know that Damon's character will willfully get the short end of the stick.  It is one of the slight letdowns: the viewer never has a doubt that he will overcome all odds and save the little girl.

Despite the transparency of the plot, the movie still worked for me because of Damon's earnestness, because of the incredible special effects (which are shown only with necessary, and never overdone to the point of CGI overload), and because of the great action pacing.  And the score, too, I guess, though that, more than the special effects, gets overused at times.  I also could have done without the blatant moralizing, though I do agree wholeheartedly with its point.  It's just that the message is as in-your-face as the action sequences, and so they made odd bedfellows to me.  If that message doesn't bother you, the movie is worth seeing if you like action / sci-fi / special effects movies.  If the message does bother you, I still recommend the movie if (and only if) you really like action / sci-fi / special effects movies.  There's enough to like here without the message getting in the way, if you don't agree with it.

And what is that message, exactly?  That every immigrant who wants to come to the U.S. for health care should make it?  (In the movie, Earth is very clearly Mexico, or other very poor countries, and Elysium is very clearly the U.S.)  That health care should be universal?  That the U.S. / Mexican border wall should come down?  I don't know, and I don't think the movie really knows, either.  But it's some combination of all of those things.  The movie won't sway you, either way, and it certainly won't change your mind, no matter what side of the fence you're on.

Signs You Have Too Many Books

Photo: The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, Manhattan

I realized recently--okay, I've had this "realization" frequently over the years--that I have a book-hoarding problem.  You know, like those people on the show Hoarders, who have psychotic breaks when a professional therapist, visiting the squalid house, tells them that pooping and peeing on their stereo speakers because they have too much stuff in the way to make it to the bathroom is not a normal thing?  Well, I'm not that bad, as my floors and hallways are mostly bare, but I have lots of piles of books in the living room, on the table, and on the kitchen table, and in my office on my desks and chairs.  I have books in seven bookcases in the house, and in about nine boxes in the garage, and in a giant bookcase in the spare office/bedroom downstairs, which has ten deep bookshelves.

If this sounds like you, these are signs enough that you have a book-hoarding problem.  But here are a few more signs that you have too many books:

--You find yourself reading six books at once, and yet you still look for more things to read.

--You realize that fifteen bookcases are not close to enough to hold all of your books.

--Your reading material in your bathroom impedes your path to your "favorite chair."

--And you look forward to needing to go to the bathroom so that you can read.

--You read much more than you need to in order to research your novel or story.

--You have so many books that you actually consider opening your own free library, somehow.

--Except that you don't want anyone else reading your books.

--You have so many books that you end up getting duplicates at yard sales or library sales because you forgot you had them to begin with.

--You buy books that your friends want to borrow from you because you don't want them to read yours.

--You own every book ever written by Stephen King, and Robert B. Parker, and Jonathan Kellerman, and Mickey Spillane, all of whom have written at least 40 books each.

--You've forgotten which books are in the seven or eight boxes in the attic and basement.

--You have about fifty anthologies of short stories, poems and short novels.

--You still have all of the books you ever needed to read in college, and you majored in English and Philosophy.  That's a lot of required reading.

--You tell your friends that they should ask you if you have a book before they buy it, even though you have no intention of ever letting them borrow one.  (See the comment five bullets above.)

--You have to instigate a policy of no book-buying for yourself.

--You promise yourself that you'll just get new books from the library, so that you can read them without being driven to keep them.  And you know you won't follow through with this.

--You say to yourself that you won't buy anything new until you've finished reading all of the books you have, even though this couldn't possibly happen during what's left of your lifetime.

--You realize that you'd rather stay at home and read a lot rather than go to Disneyland or some such thing during your vacation.

--You think that the best thing about summers is the reading you can do on your house deck or in your house in the central air.

--Your favorite characters are more endearing to you than are your favorite people.

--You realize that you like more characters than you do real people.  And you're okay with this.

--You think that e-readers of any kind are blasphemous.

--You have books by Wilkie Collins on your computer desktop.  Unread.

--You think that one of the best things about finishing a book is the review you'll write on Goodreads.

--Or for the blog entry, of course.

--You've considered wall-papering a wall with small posters of your favorite book covers.

--You can actually tell someone why the white bookcovers of the post-1990 Catcher in the Rye is a sinful, crying shame compared to the classic red carousel horse and NYC skyline of the original.  And you sound like a lunatic doing so, and don't care.

--After you've recently shelved literally hundreds of books into your new library, someone says to you, "Are you actually keeping all of those?"  You say, "Yes," and don't realize their incredulity until over an hour later.

--You've been in minor branches of public libraries with fewer books than you have in your house.

--You have five favorite genres.

--One of your favorite places in Manhattan is the New York Public Library.  And an actual wish is to have one that's just as beautiful, if not a little smaller, in your house.

--You have three different editions of Shakespeare's Complete Works.  And you're not getting rid of any of them.

--You realize you have more books in your home than some of the more poor schools do in their classrooms, their bookrooms and their libraries.  Combined.

--You have over 30 bulleted reasons about why you have too many books, including this one.