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2012-MAR-10 [SAT] 10:18 - Trilogy NOTES
It's the third month of the year, and so we
thought; what better time to do a couple blog post about trilogies
than March? Well maybe September, but that would be a trilogy multipled by
itself. We don't even know what that means, a trilogy of trilogies, or
maybe a trilogy about trilogies? Dave says he'd pay to see that. Yeah
right!
Ha ha, but don't you fret my pretties, just sit back, relax and enjoy this
month's post about two of our favorite trilogies:
We watched an unusual kind of movie trilogy Saturday. It was unusual because, most times when you say movie trilogy, most people think you are referring to something like the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
This was not that kind of trilogy. These were a trilogy though, if for no other reason than because it involved three movies about the same monster, and that monster was introduced to us in the first movie (in the trilogy that) we watched, which was made in 1951 and called, "The Thing from Another World". One of the more interesting trivia factoids about this movie was that James Arness, an unknown actor at the time, played the monster.
Most of you younger folks (like me) might not remember who James Arness was, and who he is famous for portraying; but Dave remembers back when there were essentially only three major national television broadcasting powerhouses at the time. Long before the advent of cable, one of those powerhouses, CBS, had an hour long-running western drama on called "Gunsmoke".
James Arness (of "Thing" fame) played Marshal Matt Dillon on that long-running TV series:
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunsmoke
" ...Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West.
[...]
The TV series ran from September 10, 1955, to March 31, 1975, on CBS with 635 total episodes. The first twelve seasons aired Saturdays at 10:00, seasons thirteen through sixteen aired Mondays at 7:30 and the last four seasons aired Mondays at 8:00.
[...]
As of 2010, it is the fifth globally, after Doctor Who (1963-1989, 2005-), Taggart (1983-), The Bill (1984-2010). James Arness and Milburn Stone portrayed their Gunsmoke characters for 20 consecutive years, as did Kelsey Grammer as the character Frasier Crane, but over two half-hour sitcoms... "
Getting back to our theme for this month, I guess you could also call the three movies we watched a kind of "remake" trilogy too, because not only did we follow the original 1951 movie (mentioned above) with the 2011 Prequel to the original 1982 remake by John Carpenter, we also watched the 1982 remake last. Here are the notes we took as we watched all three:
Produced by Howard Hawks "Who [also] gave you: 'I Was a Male War Bride' 'Red River' and 'Sergeant York'" (some of) THE CAST: Nikki ------------------ Margaret Sheridan Captain Patrick Hendry - Kenneth Tobey Dr. Carrington --------- Robert Cornthwaite Scotty ----------------- Douglas Spencer Screenplay based on the story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. Anchorage, Alaska Seattle is mentioned within the first five minutes. Scientist at North Pole are holding a convention and Dr. Carrington is the head Scientist. He calls for a rescue plane to help survivors of a possible crash up at the North Pole. Seismograph readings indicate the possible crash (of something weighing around 20 thousand tons) occured approximately 48 miles away. At the same time a kind of radar device that, clicked on automatically when radioactivity was detected and, tracked the object just before it crash landed. The blip moved parallel to earth and then up and finally down. Air Force 191 responds. It looks cold Brrrrrrrrr Dave remembers the warehouse scene in the beginning on the way to Dr. Carrington's office at about 10 minutes into the movie. They find a rudder sticking out of the ice. They spread out to figure the size and shape of the ship. Almost a perfect circle. A sidenote, this is allegedly what you see in the 1982 remake when they show a black and white photo of the original scientist trying to measure the size and shape of the craft they found buried in ice. In the photo, the shape of the landing path looks the same, but where the scientist stand don't look the same. The scientist in the 1982 remake look like they are standing in the snow, while in this movie, they are still on the ice. Thermite melt the ice in 30 seconds explosion looked fake but the exploding ship looked better there's a reference to Air Force Bulletin 629-49 item 6,700 extract 75,131 explaining the reason why the Air Force had discontinued the investigation of UFOs. You see the monster for the first time at about 57 minutes into the movie and the second time at 1:10. Very quick look the first time, but you can see that it is James Arness. The movie tells a very good story that builds on itself and becomes more suspenseful as the movie goes along without any CGI or other high tech special effects. watch the skies
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. Kate Lloyd - Mary Elizabeth Winstead Carter ----- Joel Edgerton Adam Finch - Eric Christian Olsen This is the prequel to the John Carpenter 1982 remake of the 1951 horror classic. We decided to watch the original first, then the prequel (this movie) and finally the 1982 remake next. The original took place at the North Pole while this one takes place in Antartica There's a structure in Antartica and we need a paleontologist (paleontology: study of prehistoric life) wrap it up in a couple days nasty storm coming up Damn good special effects. The monster is different in this movie. In the original it was a vegetable. Someone even compared it to a carrot. In this prequel to the remake, it is made of weird cells that devour, take over and then imitate the original cells. It can also divide up into little arm like creatures. Very gory and also very suspenseful. And one of the best things of all, the ending leads directly into the 1982 beginning. Very well done overall.
Directed by John Carpenter. He also directed the original 1978 movie "Halloween". THE CAST: Kurt Russell Wilford Brimley T.K. Carter David Clennon Keith David Richard Dysart Charles Hallahan Peter Maloney Richard Masur Donald Moffat Joel Polis Based on the story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. Antartica, Winter 1982 It makes for an interesting and satisfying experience if you watch the 2011 prequel before this one. The movie begins with a helicopter chasing after and shooting at a running dog. If you watched the 2011 prequel first, you'll know why. Another interesting difference betweeen this remake, the prequel, and the original is that in the 1951 original, they actually tracked the UFO as it landed with a radar tracking device that was triggered by the radiation coming from the craft. In the remakes, the craft (where the thing is found) is guessed to be about 100,000 years old. The special effects for the 1982 movie are comparable to the 2011 film. "You got to be fucking kidding me." That moment in the movie (actually, a couple minutes before that line) took us both totally by surprise also. No spoilers, just get this movie and watch for that line of dialogue or fast forward to the 1:17 point in the movie. This movie is definitely worth watching all the way through, if for no other reason than to see what the cutting edge special effects looked like for that time.
2012-MAR-17 [SAT] 12:12
Since we're on the subject of trilogies, here's one of our newest favorites.
Dave started reading the "Dragon" trilogy by Stieg Larsson a few months ago. It starts with "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", book. This was just before the Americanized version of the movie had been released by Hollywood. He told me that I, "had to read this book".
"Whatever," was my reply, but than a week later, I noticed he was crying. Crying? What the hell, I thought and said so outloud.
"This book, you have just got to read this book."
I was already deeply immersed in one of our many UFO books and comparing the facts to real science and didn't want to be bothered, "No thank you. I already saw the movie."
"You know that the books are almost always better than the movies. That's why I had to read this book. If the movie was awesome, I can just imagine how good the book (it's based on) must be.
I unfocused my eyes from the two books I was reading and focused on the title of his book, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", and thought for a minute, "Oh yeah that's the movie we watched a while back with subtitles that (despite the subtitles) I actually liked."
I hate movies with subtitles. Dave does too. He says, it's like reading a movie. Might as well read the book and screw the movie. Although he agrees with me in principle, he himself introduced me to some of the best subtitled movies ever. This movie was one of the latter for sure.
Anyway, the trilogy revolves around a very weird girl named Lisbeth Salander. She's, at the most, five feet tall and a brilliant computer hacker and able to kick ass when she needs to and can take care of herself in some pretty gawd-awful difficult situations. I hate to say this, but if I ever needed a hero or someone to look up to or worship, Salander would fit the bill quite nicely.
The movie we watched was not only a foreign film, but also filmed in the native language of the author, Stieg Larsson, who is Swedish, and even though we had to read the subtitles, we both thoroughly enjoyed it.
Dave had decided to add it to our "Queue" about a month before while watching the previews of coming events, at the beginning of another rental from "Netflix" that I think was another foreign film also, I think. After that, it sat around in our "Instant Queue" for about a month until late one Saturday night, late last year, we watched it.
The other two books in the series have already been made into foreign films. Hollywood has finally gotten on board. Sometimes, we Americans are too slow for our own good.
Soon after that, we started noticing trailers for the Americanized version. It didn't look bad either, and I've noticed that (just as I'm writing this) the DVD comes out this month too. We're looking forward to watching it soon.
After we saw the subtitled movie, Dave had to get the book, and then he had to get the other two books of the trilogy. And finally, he didn't want to watch the other two foreign versions until he had finished reading the whole trilogy.
After seeing him cry, I had to at least read a couple chapters. Needless to say, I was hooked. Dave has finished the third book and he is now waiting for me to finish. I'm a faster reader so having to wait for him to finish a book always irritated me, but I chalked that up to my aggressive nature and not because I hated Dave. Ha ha.
Hopefully, I'll finish before we watch the new American version, but if not, too bad for me.
The story itself is complicated and thus why it is spread out through three novels, each one way over 500 pages in length.
Each novel can be read separately and independantly of each other, or in sequence, and it's still easy to follow along with the complicated plot line.
One of the things that caught my attention was something that happened in the second novel. You have to remember these novels were written before 2004 when the author died. Why is this important? Because in the second novel, Lisbeth Salander is accused of a triple murder and somehow gets labeled a "lesbian satanist" by someone in the press and the resulting media frenzy that followed was eerily prophetic of what would happen to Amanda Knox a few years later.
2012-03-25 13:12 [SUN] ================================================== (2011) "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
THE CAST
-------------------------------
Lisbeth Salander - Rooney Mara
Mikael Blomkvist - Daniel Craig
To begin with, we were wrong about it being an Americanized version, because according to a blurb from Netflix, It is an English adaption:
"David Fincher directs this English adaption of Stieg Larsson's novel."
The first thing we noticed (I say we, but I noticed it first) was that the same actor (Daniel Craig) who played the last James Bond (in his 2006 debut "Casino Royale", and the 2008 sequel "Quantum of Solace") and then the lead opposite Harrison Ford in the 2011 movie called "Cowboys and Aliens". I like the guy. He just exudes sexuality. Dave... ha ha, he's a guy. He doesn't care either way, but he has admitted that Dan was a good looking guy, and he didn't complain when we found out who was playing Mikael Blomkvist.
Blomkvist, along with Salander, are the two central characters in this trilogy. Both lives intertwine as he (Blomkvist) is hired on to investigate a 40 year disappearance. The rest you can find out about by either reading the books or watching either versions.
I personally enjoyed the opening credits, the cinematography was pure eye candy (it literally reminded me of melting chocolate) while the background music sounded vaguely familiar, and that's when Dave pointed out that it was a cover of Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" performed by Karen O and Trent Reznor (according to a review blurb at Netflix. It's on his iPod and he played it for me after the movie was done. He's a huge Led Zepplin junkie, so it surprised me when he agreed that this version was pretty darn good.
The rest of the movie was also pretty darn good too. We've seen reviews condemning it for being a rip off of the Swedish version, but that's just plain silly, because the same can be said that the Swedish version is just a rip off of the book. We personally believe it's comparable to the original version and thus also the book. It's obvious to me though that the "English adaption" was made with both the book and the original in mind. In both movies, Salander breaks the cryptic code surrounding a list of names and numbers in Harriet's bible, while in the book someone else discovers the secret code. It could just be a coincidence, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that this part, in the newest version, was taken from the Swedish version rather than use the book version. Not that it's a bad thing. Usually, when we've watched movies from books we've read, there are many things that don't make it into the movie. Time is usually the reason. An actual scene by scene replication of the book would probably (at the least) double the movie length by two times.
The movies were pretty fathful to the book. The actors and actresses for both movies were outstanding and good choices. Each breathed a different kind of aspect into their character. Each actress played Salander differently, and even though they approached them differently, they were both equally successful in what they were trying to do. In my opinion, her calm but angry anti-social attitude and disgust were plainly evident and believable for both actresses. I liked the English version of Salander better, while Dave liked the original Swedish version.
All I can say is watch both the Swedish trilogy and the current English movie, but most of all read the books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
(Arranged in chronological READING order)
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The
Girl Who Played with Fire, The
Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The
Our next trilogy is another movie trilogy and of course what else could it be but the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The one based on J.R.R. Tolkien's series of books by the same name. According to Dave though, there are actually four books to this trilogy; the first, "The Hobbit" is not as widely discussed as the other three that are more well known.
In Dave's opinion anyway (me, I don't give a hoot one way or the other), "The Hobbit" is important to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, because it introduces two of the most important characters of the series, and because the opening chapter of the book is simply hilarious. I've read the first chapter and I agree, but still don't give a hoot. Yawn. Anyway that is why, even though it is well-known as a trilogy, it really isn't.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
"The Hobbit
"Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called The Hobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication. However, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.
"The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic novel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes 1954-1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it... "
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