Solitary Man

Great movie with awesome music.

• IMDb: Solitary Man
• Spotify: Johnny Cash Experience — Solitary Man

Alice in Wonderland

I can not think of anyone better suited for interpreting Alice in Wonderland than Tim Burton. However, I do not feel that the extremes of the pleasant wickedness found in Edward Scissorhands or Corpse Bride is present in Wonderland.

Johnny Depp is, of course, a good fit for playing the Mad Hatter; I also like Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are funny in a Disney “they look and speak funny” kind of way, but I would have loved to see more Tim Burton in those two and a few other characters.

I think that this movie serves well as a gateway to the world of Tim Burton.

Side note #1: Family fun: IMDb’s Parents Guide of Corpse Bride weighs in at roughly 1,600 words, whereas the entry for Alice in Wonderland is barely 400 words long.

Side note #2: I will be giggling inside at the thought of girls going to see this movie for gazing at Johnny Depp for one and a half hour.

Side note #3: Was the Knave of Hearts called Ilosovic Stayne in the original version? I love how Eastern European names come to use when naming bad guys.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This movie has an impressive cast! I especially liked Willem Dafoe as the knife-swinging, cider-drinking rat. The witty and awkward humor appealed to me, and I enjoyed the atmosphere-building music. (Trailer, soundtrack.)

Edit: I figured it wouldn’t be fair not to include these two guys as well, they are both excellent!

Avatar — Space Opera or True Science Fiction?

In a not so typical movie review, “Copernicus” gives his view on Avatar from the perspective of a professor of astrophysics.

The writer mentions both what’s plausible and what’s not. He writes:

It is an interesting question as to whether planets around either Alpha Cen A or B could exist in stable orbits that would last for billions of years. You might think they couldn’t because the gravity of the other star would perturb any forming planet. However, simulations show that at least at Earth-like distances, stable planets can form in that system.

Good! Au contraire:

In one of my biggest pet peeves regarding the science of Avatar, there is one scene where the gas giant, Polyphemus, can clearly be seen to be rotating in the span of about a second or two. Let’s say it rotates about a degree out of 360 degrees in those 2 seconds. That means it makes one rotation in 720 seconds, or 12 minutes! Jupiter takes about 10 hours to rotate. So the gas giant in Avatar rotates about 50 times faster than Jupiter. Winds on Jupiter can exceed 100 meters per second, so the winds on Polyphemus would have to exceed 5000 m/s – this is supersonic and clearly implausible. Here’s one case where Cameron opted for visual effect over realism, but to me the bargain isn’t worth it. It looks unrealistic and takes me right out of the movie.

Read the whole article here. Personally, I’ll try to stay away from astrophysics in fear of being “thrown out of” sci-fi too easily in the future.

Avatar hadn’t been on my radar for long when I saw it. I knew the plot involved a foreign world with dexterous humanoids, and a paraplegic with the ability to become one of these creatures. I expected an adventure movie with emphasize on the main character being sort of liberated from regular life.

My loose forecast was met. The story isn’t very complex, and you get a feeling of knowing where the ship is heading from early on. Something I didn’t see coming, however, was the focus on a newcomer being accepted in society. Nor did I expect a love story to be such a big part of the film.

To sum up, I left the cinema happy and recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. The sound and graphics are astounding, making it worth catching it on big screen.