Yearly Archives: 2012

I Can Has Cheezburger is Now Saying, I Can Has Steak Dinner: ‘LOLwork’ Debuts on Bravo Network

Picture images of little kitties playfully spinning about with a meme tagging the photo “Calgon, take me away” or imagine a video of a massive St. Bernard so scared to go down a stairwell as his owner tries to lure him down that all he can do is cower and whine at the thought. These are the types of things you can view on the website icanhas.cheezburger.com. They are cute and they are funny.

Founder and CEO of Cheezburger Inc, which landed on The Wall Street Journal’s 2012 list of top 50 U.S. venture-backed companies, Ben Huh has a very simple philosophy: “We want people to make each other happy.” It seems to be working because, according to the Wall Street Journal, the company now has $32 million in venture funding. Cheezburger asks for user-generated content, which is reviewed by the employees and highlighted on the home page.

The website is so huge that Bravo has based a television series on it called “LOLwork,” and it’s basically a show about how to make the Internet funny. It highlights amusing animals, funny videos and the swift and nimble rise of Internet pop culture and the people behind the Web pages.

“Platform of Humor”

Cheezburger’s motto is to “make people laugh 5 minutes a day.” The I Can Has Cheezburger? website is not about cheeseburgers or food at all; it’s about funny cats, adorable dogs and kooky animals of all kinds. It highlights images and videos capturing our domesticated and loveable furry (sometimes furless) friends adorned with quick-witted grammatically incorrect captions. That’s it. But that seems to be enough.

The employees at Cheezburger work all day to understand what users want to see, so they research what is trending and put that on their website. It isn’t easy creating content that is not only funny but appropriate for all ages to view. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Huh says they want to avoid the “starfish” shots (this is when an animal is showing too much anus) and obeying the rule “absolutely no dead cats” (being sure there are no posts of animals that did not survive the highlighted incident) is a testament to their values and convictions.

Not only do they operate the website I Can Has Cheezburger but also Fail Blog, Memebase, ROFLrazzi and The Daily What — all of which offer different types of humorous content, not strictly animal-based.

From Cheezburger to “LOLwork”

Going from icanhas.cheezburger.com to the Bravo TV Network, “LOLwork” is quite a leap for this Seattle-based Internet company of 90 employees. While not all of the staff will appear on the show, the ones that do are quirky, charismatic and quite-curious computer gurus who create content, debate about what is and isn’t funny and argue, but this documentary is low drama. It’s more a tongue-in-cheek view of the world behind what we see everyday on our computers. The things happening behind the scenes are really happening in their lives and not scripted.

Their jobs are strange, their work is odd and that is just normal to these employees. They aren’t actors but they do know they are being filmed. So their “normal” may be a little over the top, and that is OK because they are all awkwardly entertaining.

What’s Up With Ben Huh

Cheezburger is “a thesis about the Internet; (the Internet) needs it’s own platform for humor, so we are going to let people express their sense of humor and remix it to create something brand new,” explains Huh on Forbes.com. Huh was named Entreprenuer of the Year in media and entertainment for the Pacific Northwest region by Ernst & Young, reports The Seattle Times. With a network of online humor sites, the Cheezburger Network’s fan base is at 20 million users monthly.

Written by Casey Farley.

The first film review Casey ever wrote was on a McDonald’s napkin. It said E.T. = awesome! He was 5.

Sean Penn To Star In Film Adaptation of “Prone Gunman”

It was announced today that actor Sean Penn is set to star in an upcoming action movie franchise. Penn is currently in negotiations for the upcoming film adaptation of Prone Gunman, an action thriller being produced by Silver Pictures’ Joel Silver and Andrew Rona.

Prone Gunman is based on the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette. The story centers on an international operative named Martin Terrier (Penn) who is betrayed by the organization he works for and must go on the run in a relentless game of cat-and-mouse across Europe.

Martin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game—so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that’s why he took up this profession! But the Organization won’t let him go: they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone shooting position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusions about life and politics as bodies.

Manchette has been described as leftist French author, and his books — in the French noir genre — as an existentialist and involving explorations of politics as well as the human condition. Sound’s right up Penn’s alley who is most known for his high-profile roles such as gay politician in Milk to a lost soul in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, as well as winning a pair of Oscars along the way.

Peter Travis is writing the script. StudioCanal is financing the project and is currently looking for a director to helm the adaptation.

There is no word of who else may be attached to the project or an anticipated release date.

Patrick Lee’s The Breach Heads To The Big Screen

Lorenzo di Bonaventura and David Goyer has announced they are teaming up to produce a feature film adaptation of The Breach, written by Patrick Lee. Justin Rhodes is set to adapt the screenplay and Goyer is the only producer attached. No director has been officially announced.

The novel which was published in 2009 and Patrick’s other novels include Ghost Country and Deep Sky.

The official plot of the novel is as follows:

Travis Chase, a man putting his life back together after fifteen years in prison, takes a solo hike into the Alaskan Rockies. He’s just looking for a quiet place to think about his future, but what he finds is trouble: a 747, downed in remote wilderness, the wreck impossibly undiscovered by authorities. Those aboard are dead, though not because of the crash. They’ve been shot.

This aircraft, along with the terrifying object it was transporting, is only the beginning for Travis. Within hours he finds himself at the center of a violent conflict that spans the globe, and a secret war that dates back three decades. A war for possession of radically advanced technology—that wasn’t created by human hands.

There has been no word yet on who will star in the adaptation or a projected release date.

World War Z Adaptation Releases First Trailer

It has long been known that the big screen adaptation of the Max Brooks novel, World War Z, has been plagued with issues from day one. At one point, it was felt that the massive project might be better off being scrapped for a better story, director, and budget. The film had been delayed several times, reworked over and over, and even had the script re-written. However, through all of that, we finally have a trailer for the long anticipated adaptation.

The movie follows around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself. Those who have read the book will notice that the movie barely resembles the novel and has changed drastically.

I already have huge issues for the adaptation of this novel from the mess that Marc Forster has created to the fact that Brad Pitt has replaced the actual oral documentary feel from the novel in favor of a more pressing generic “must save the world” storyline.

So will this be another generic, run of the mill zombie feature that cost billions but grosses half that?

World War Z comes from Paramount Pictures and stars Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox and David Morse. Directed by Marc Forster, the action thriller hits theaters on June 21, 2013.

You can watch the trailer for World War Z below:

Jurassic Park 3D Reveals New Poster For Anniversary Re-Release

We (and the rest of the collective internets) reported on the 20th anniversary release of Jurassic Park: 3D earlier this year as it is set to return to theaters on April 5th 2013. Today, the re-release has unveiled a brand new poster which you can see above.

Next Summer marks the 20th anniversary of the big screen adaptation of the 1990 novel written by Michael Crichton. The film featured a cast that includes Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough and many more.

Jurassic Park was initially released in 1993 and was directed by Steven Spielberg. The film centers on the fictional Isla Nublar near Costa Rica in the Central American Pacific Coast, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs. The novel was already amidst a film rights bidding war before it was even published with Universal Studios winning out.

Over the years, Jurassic Park has remained one of the most loved films as well as being highly regarded as a landmark in the use of computer-generated imagery, and received positive reviews from most critics. During its release, the film grossed over $900 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing film released up to that time (surpassing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and surpassed four years later by Titanic), and it is currently the 23rd-highest-grossing feature film (adjusted for inflation, it is the 20th-highest-grossing film in North America). It is the highest grossing film produced by Universal and directed by Steven Spielberg.

Jurassic Park 3D will hit theaters next summer, April 5th, 2013 with a trailer set to be released later this week.

Game of Thrones Casts Coldplay Drummer Will Champion for Season 3

Season 3 of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is still months away (unfortunately) and with that news is on the upcoming season is still slow going. However, Entertainment Weekly has reported that Coldplay drummer, Will Champion is set to have a cameo as, unsurprisingly, a drummer in the upcoming new season.

Champion isn’t the first musician to cameo on the series, with Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody also having a small role in season 3.

There is no word yet on when we can expect to see Champion in the new series but with time, more information will be released.

Season 3 of the hit series is based on the third book, A Storm of Swords, in the A Song Of Ice and Fire trilogy written by George R.R. Martin. The season will focus on the first half the novel with season 4 concluding the third book adaptation. Like previous seasons, several new cast members have also been added along side Champion and Lightbody.

New cast members, most of which were announced at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con include:

  • Kristofer Hivju as Tormund Giantsbane, a Wildling raider
  • Thomas Sangster as Jojen Reed and Ellie Kendrick as Meera Reed, two young Crannogman siblings, children of Howland Reed, a Stark bannerman
  • Tobias Menzies as Edmure Tully, Catelyn Stark’s brother
  • Clive Russell as Brynden Tully, the “Blackfish”, Catelyn’s uncle
  • Tara Fitzgerald as Selyse (Florent) Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon’s wife (the character, played by an unnamed extra, briefly appeared in the second season’s episode “The North Remembers”)
  • Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon, their daughter
  • Diana Rigg as Olenna (Redwyne) Tyrell, the “Queen of Thorns”, Margaery and Loras Tyrell’s grandmother
  • Richard Dormer as Beric Dondarrion, the leader of the “Brotherhood Without Banners”(the character, played by David Michael Scott, briefly appeared in the first season’s episode “A Golden Crown”)
  • Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr, a red priest with the Brotherhood
  • Philip McGinley as Anguy, an archer with the Brotherhood
  • Mackenzie Crook as Orell Skinchanger, a Wildling
  • Nathalie Emmanuel as Missandei, a Naathi servant of Daenerys Targaryen
  • Anton Lesser as Qyburn, a former maester of the Citadel
  • Iwan Rheon as “Boy”
  • Ciarán Hinds as Mance Rayder, the Wildling “King-Beyond-The-Wall”.
  • Ed Skrein as Daario Naharis, a Tyroshi mercenary captain
  • Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm, a eunuch soldier, captain of the ‘Unsullied’
  • Dan Hildebrand as Kraznys mo Naklaz, a wealthy slaver of the Ghiscari city of Astapor.
  • Ramon Tikaram as Prendahl ze Ghezn, a captain of a notorious company of sellswords known as the ‘Stormcrows’

Other new characters will include Vargo Hoat, the leader of the mercenary group “Bloody Mummers”.

“Game of Thrones” returns with its highly anticipated third season on March 31, 2013.

Sarah Wayne Callies Talks Walking Dead “Killer Within”

:::Obvious Spoilers Involving Season 3:::

Last weeks episode of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” may or may not have been a suprise to you with the death of two main characters in one episode. T-Dog, played by IronE Singleton, was killed by walkers while the much hated Lori Grimes, played by Sarah Wayne Callies, had a redemptive moment for the life of her and Rick’s child.

The day after the shocking episode aired, Callies spoke with critics and the Huffington Post about the implication of Lori’s death and why it was imperative for the show to move forward. It is important to note that Lori’s death is one of the few within the show that are caused by the person’s choice to die.

“I think the Lori death is very unique among the ones we’ve had on ‘The Walking Dead’ because it’s one that she’s chosen. It’s an interesting tone because it’s not surrounded by quite the same level of crisis and panic, althogh she’s clearly in a situation where things are going to go badly.”

In regards to being one of the most unlikeable characters (at least until the end of her character) described how that was the point from the very beginning.

“I loved Lori. I love Lori. She’s one of those characters that I think will live in my heart for a long, long, long, long time. I learned so much from her. [In] one of my first conversations with Frank [Darabont], we agreed that we wouldn’t do the TV version of this. Lori was not going to be some big busted, beautiful woman with flowing perfect hair who was standing by her man. We talked about doing the ugliest, dirtiest, most dangerous and sometimes unlikable version of this that we could. It was so exhilarating to be able to dig deep into the darkness of motherhood and the darkness of marriage … To work on a production that had the courage — even though some fans kicked up a fuss about it — to have the courage to say, ‘We’re going to tell this story a way it’s never been told before’ is remarkable. It’s the best work I’ve ever done on camera, and that’s because the material was so strong. It’s an experience unlike anything I’ve ever had, and I’ve learned so much from it. I love Lori so much. Her passion, her fire, her lack of vanity … [laughs] I love that woman and I am going to miss her.”

Her death, while shocking, was completely neccesary for the storyline to progress, especially for Rick and Carl.

“Frank and I talked a lot about the necessity of Lori dying, and we fought about it. Glen [Mazzara] and I talked about that scene a lot — what pieces had to be in place for Lori, for Carl and for Rick. In a way it was an intimate process, because Glen had lost his mother shortly before they started writing the season … The death of Shane. The death of Lori. Those, to me, were very difficult things to get around. I had spoken to Frank about that at a certain point and he goes, ‘I don’t need to kill you.’ And I said, ‘Due respect, sir, yes you do.’ [Laughs.] He said, ‘I’ve never had a leading lady argue her way off a show.’ And I said, ‘In the books, Rick goes nuts because his wife died. And I think the way he goes nuts is pretty cool, and I think you’re gonna do that at some point, so know that I’m a big girl when you make that call.’ I can’t wait to see those episodes afterwards and see what happens.”

Callies also spoke about how the scene was important for the cast members outside of the show.

“It was pin-drop quiet throughout that whole scene … there was a level of concentration and respect and focus from all 80 people who were there that was remarkable. It was also significant that the entire cast showed up. I finished the scene and I came out, and there was almost every single member of our cast that had just come to sit and watch and be there. It was difficult, I’ll be honest. Chandler and I didn’t really talk at all the week that we were shooting that because we couldn’t really look at each other without losing it. I love that kid.”

In case you were wondering who is the baby’s daddy, Callies explains there is only one way to tell.

“The only definitive way to tell in a world where there’s no paternity test would be if the baby has blue eyes, then the baby is Rick’s … both Rick and Carl have blue eyes, and it’s a recessive trait. Shane had brown eyes, and Lori had brown eyes. If it’s a brown-eyed baby, there’s no way to know.”

Francis Lawrence Signs On To Direct Mockingjay Part 1 and 2

When Gary Ross left the The Hunger Games franchise after the first film, it was up in the air whether or not new director Francis Lawrence would stick around. Thankfully, he recently announced that he would be also helming the two part adaptation of the final novel, Mockingjay. 

Lawrence came in to take over directing the second adaptation of Catching Fire which is currently filming in Atlanta.

Franchise star, Josh Hutcherson, who plays Peeta Mellark, commented on the new director saying,

“He’s fantastic. He’s such a smart guy. He has some great ideas for the movie. I just really like where his head is at. I really like him a lot.”

Catching Fire also sees the addition of several new cast members as fans are given a whole new set of tributes for the 75th Hunger Games Quarter Quell. Main cast members Jennifer Lawrence, Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, and Elizabeth Banks also return.

New cast members include Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair, Jeffrey Wright as Beetee, Amanda Plummer as Wiress, Jena Malone as Johanna Mason, Lynn Cohen as Mags, Meta Golding as Enobaria, Bruno Gunn as Brutus, Alan Ritchson as Gloss, E. Roger Mitchell as Chaff, Maria Howell as Seeder, Stephanie Leigh Schlund as Cashmere.

Catching Fire will hit theaters on November 22, 2013.

Arrow Reveals First Look at Huntress

It was announced back in August that actress Jessica Gouw was set to portray Helena Bertinelli also know as The Huntress in the CW’s new series “Arrow.” Now we have a first look at the anticipated character.

The character will make her debut on the November 28 episode, titled “Vendetta.”

According to Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg,

“She is the dark mirror version of Oliver and it was a nice contrast to him because he’s pretty extreme. He goes a lot further than not only his comic book version but lots of comic book characters — most have a code of draws the line against killing… Oliver has taken the darkness inside with him and is doing something positive with it. She’s taken the darkness inside her and is seeking revenge and doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process.”

So far The Huntress will appear in two episodes but there is a chance for that to be expanded. Kreisberg added,

“It’s two episodes for now but we definitely hope we see more of her. We certainly set her up as an interesting foil for Oliver and we’re excited to see where else we can take her.”

“Arrow” stars Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, Colin Donnell as Tommy, Willa Holland as Thea Queen, with Susanna Thompson as Moira Queen and Paul Blackthorne as Detective Quentin Lance. The show airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Cloud Atlas Is Better As A Trailer – A Review

Directed by: Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski

Adapted from the novel of the same title by David Mitchell (published 2004)

Why are you interested in this adaptation? 

Elena-

Oh, wow, I am interested in this movie for a lot of reasons, none of which have to do with the book itself which I have never read or even heard of until this movie was announced.

Probably the biggest reason I’m interested in seeing this one is the idea that drives it—a web of stories of the same souls meeting again and again, sometimes as lovers and sometimes as friends, but always looking for each other.  That kind of reincarnation/affinity has always resonated with me; regardless of whether I believe it, the idea is powerful and beautiful.  It perfectly suits my aesthetic of High Romance.

Otherwise, the film looks visually stunning.  I was sold on seeing it after the first 10 frames or so of the preview (so maybe my primary interest is the visuals).  I am especially interested in the future sequence, and would see the movie for that storyline alone even if all the others looked terrible.

There is also the matter of who is involved in it…I trust Tykwer as a director, and I think the Wachowski brothers shine much more brightly as producers rather than directors (unless they go old school Bound style and stop using CGI).  I think they all make a great pairing of artistically conscious directors who have experience with fragmented narratives, large casts, and Butterfly Effect nuances of how big a difference one change can ultimately make.

Rachel –

I’m not particularly interested in Cloud Atlas. I guess you could say I have a chip on my shoulder about novels that are talked about as “Literary Fiction” when they are clearly frakking SciFi. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE when genre stories are embraced by the literary elite. They need to realize that genre stories are just as relevant, hard to write and hard to read as any other piece of fiction. (I mean…the good ones. Let’s just admit there is some pretty bad genre stuff AND some pretty bad “literary” stuff. But mostly the resistance to genre is all about pretensions and outright prejudice.) Cloud Atlas was short listed for a Nebula Award so, ya know…SciFi. Accept it.

I was also pretty epically disappointed in The Matrix Trilogy. I’m expecting this to be a bit of a mess. A pretty one with a couple of good fight scenes and a lot of heavy-handed appropriated mythology.

Elena-

The last Matrix movie pretty much ruined me on the trilogy. The first one was pretty good, and the second was mostly good.  The third just free-fell down the black hole of letting the CG nerds do anything they could jizz out onto the screen. Also the behind-the-curtain mythology got stupid.  So I agree there is definitely mess potential.

What would make it awesome?

Elena-

If the movie lives up to its preview, it will be awesome.  I expect it to look beautiful throughout, tell interesting sub-stories, and weave together into a sweeping epic where everything truly is connected by the end.  Also I expect there to be some creativity in the filming and editing (hallmarks of both Tykwer and the Wachowskis as directors).  If they can deliver that…I will be satisfied.

But that’s just the technical side of things. What would take this movie over the top is if I also love the characters (or at least some of the characters) and their stories.  If we get some Fountain-esque tale of spending 500 years trying to save someone that just pushes all my button about impossible (but maybe not!) love stories that span space and time…you know, all those glorious True Love motivations that the pragmatic German in me just couldn’t do in real life and hence must live out vicariously.  Yeah.  Give me that, and the technical spec’s I asked for, and you have made an awesome movie.

Rachel –

Girl, did we even watch the same preview? I watched a trailer that was 6 minutes long and made no damn sense except I got to see Tom Hanks and Halley Barry wear a bunch of terrible wigs…

FOR SERIOUS WHAT IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT?

LOVE.LIFE.KISSING.

DEATH.TOMHANKS.SUNSETS.

I gave up and read the Wikipedia synopsis of the novel just now. Nesting novels! Dystopian futures!!! The structure of the novel is the most interesting part about it; I hope they keep that structure in the film. That would make it awesome.

What would make it suck?

Elena-

A movie of this scope carries a number of inherent risks:  having to rush through the various storylines to fit them all in, having one weak sub-story/sub-cast that brings the whole to a screeching halt because it just doesn’t work, getting so lost in the sub-stories that the main story/overarching story is left undeveloped.  This is a bigger cast and set of storylines than either Tykwer or the Wachowskis have handled before, so while it might not be beyond their reach to pull off, it will be a stretch.

Beyond that are a couple of risk factors specific to this project.  First is the possibility that the story is built on an idea that seems profound at first glance but, when examined, turns out to be nonsensical or totally shallow.  I haven’t read the book, so it might be that the book is based on a not-so-profound idea, but there is the secondary risk that an adaptation of the book will dumb down a great idea into a trite one.

The other danger I see is how the stories are woven together.  I actually really enjoy tapestry movies when they are done well.  Crash was a movie that, I thought, did it well, whereas Babel was terrible.  The sub-stories have to be intimately connected for the whole to work; otherwise they just look like coincidences, and coincidence is weak storytelling.

Rachel-

I’m having all sorts of The Fountain flashbacks, I really am. And I didn’t enjoy that film like you did. I fell asleep.

I get really bored when movies try to preach at me and say “everything happens for a reason.” I am emphatically against that mindset. I think it’s a huge problem in our society…but I won’t start ranting now.

The way the novel ends, with a reminder that no matter what your contribution to the human race – it can affect someone. I think that’s nice. I think it’s even nicer that such effects are not based at all upon having children and spreading a philosophical legacy via them. I like that it’s more particular and individual. (Okay…the whole society on Hawaii things (no Spoilers) is just…fucking hackneyed, but everything else seems interesting so I will let it slide.)

This movie has a high “total mess” probability.

Additional thoughts on casting or production?

Elena-

I have really high hopes for this film.  I know my expectations are high, but I don’t think they’re unmeetable, and I trust the people involved enough to be capable of pulling off a movie like this.  While I do have some fears that this one will ultimately be a disappointment, I am hopeful for a movie-going experience that sweeps me off my feet and never lets me down.

Rachel-

Eh… there are lots of people in this movie that will appeal to my mother (but I love Tom Hanks!!! I luff him I dooooo). Casting is whatever. I heard that there was some yellow-face going on in the film (when a white person plays an Asian person, a la Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s), but I didn’t see any evidence of that in the trailer. Some of the actors play different characters indifferent time periods…I sure hope they don’t have any white people playing Asians in the dystopian Korea. That…would be a terrriiiibllleee idea. 

Reaction to film?

Rachel-

I’d like to tell you a story. A story about a couple generations of highly evolved mammals on the planet Earth that douched around using up fossil fuels and screwing with several world eco-systems until said planet Earth started becoming another planet altogether – Planet Hurricane.

One day Planet Earth (not quite yet Planet Hurricane) conjured a Hurricane as big as an ocean and sent it blasting along some of that planet’s most heavily populated shores.

One of the cities on those shores was called New York, and New York functioned almost entirely through a maze of subterranean electric trains. In the days that followed the Ocean-Sized Hurricane’s visit, New York was renamed THUNDERDOME, and it didn’t have those subterranean electric trains anymore. It didn’t even have food anymore. No, all it had were diseased migrating rats, block after block of cold, dark buildings, and a halo of ash floating in flood waters that used to be where the latest generation of highly evolved mammals lived.

THUNDERDOME was not a place of frivolity. THUNDERDOME didn’t have such establishments as Movie Theaters.

THUNDERDOME ONLY HAD THUNDERDOME.

Elena-

I think the moral of “Welcome to Thunderdome” there is, Hurricane Sandy happened in order that Rachel would not have to watch Cloud Atlas.

Truth be told, I almost envy her.  I liked this movie so much more before I saw it.

I really, really, really wanted to love this movie.  Obviously.  I walked out of the theater not sure how I felt about it.  A movie with this many storylines and messages does take some parsing out.  Unfortunately, the more I thought about it the less I liked it overall.

Technically, this movie was up to my expectations for it.  Beautiful to watch, varied and creative without being distractingly so, just a treat to look at.

However.  If you did more than look at it, by which I mean, paid attention to the stories and characters, then problems arose.

First of all, ugh. This movie was so politically correct! Big evil oil trying to control the world’s energy! Misunderstood ghey lovers! The slave with career skillz and a heart of gold who convinces a man to become an abolitionist!  The evil government overlords who want to control everything and kill anyone who opposes them!  A slight complaint, really, but it did make me roll my eyes, like “Really, that’s the best you could come up with?”

I didn’t mind the multiple castings.  I don’t know if there would have been a clear way to delineate who was who in each scenario without something even hokier than repeating actors, like always putting the “same” character in one particular color or giving them physical ticks or habits like smoking, reading the same book, eating the same thing, etc.  That would have been worse.  None of the parts really stood out to me as amazing character work on their own; Tom Hanks definitely differentiated his characters better than Halle Berry.  The others played such different parts, in such different stories, that I sometimes forgot they were the same actors.  But the real scene stealer was Hugo Weaving.  Mr. Anderson was a fucking fabulous villain, playing the, or at least an, antagonist in basically every storyline and nailing each one—even the comedic one in the most light-hearted of the stories.

To address Rachel’s concern about the yellow-face—in the context it did not bother me at all.  This was because it was applied consistently, and to characters who were from a different race than Somni.  She was a fabricant (cough *replicant* cough), while they were not.  So I don’t know if they were actually meant to be Asian or if they were meant to have some odd forehead deformation that was part of their physical characteristics as a race at that point.

Honestly, the two biggest problems I had with this movie is that there was no real philosophical or emotional payout from the film as a whole, and most of the relationships didn’t really work for me.

The two that moved me were the gay lovers and the dystopian city genetically modified girl/natural “full human” man.  Interestingly enough (or perhaps this is so expected it’s not interesting) those were also the storylines that engaged me the most.  I didn’t really like the publisher’s story. It seemed needlessly frivolous, like it was comic relief for a movie that really wasn’t intense enough to require comic relief.  The reporter/scientist storyline seemed built mainly on their mutual sense of déjà vu, and the plot was a pretty tried-and-true evil corporate cover-up gone murderous.  The future, post-apocalyptic story was just sort of there.  The sea journey was painfully cliché.

I did really, truly enjoy the composer’s story.  That was a very compelling storyline, and I enjoyed the characters and their relationship. Definitely the most complex of them, and the story that will stick with me the longest.

I also enjoyed the future story.  The city was definitely in the mode of Bladerunner dystopias, and the events carried the sort of desperate romanticism I was expecting.  The girl’s philosophy, of only needing to convince one person of the truth of her words, was a nice twist away from the typical over-the-top rhetoric about telling “the people” the truth and giving them enlightenment.

But that leaves a tally of 4-2 stories I didn’t like to stories I did, and in the end I really didn’t feel much of a connection between the stories and characters other than being told these were reincarnations.  Small pieces were woven together—the composer is reading the journal of the abolitionist, the reporter knows the composer’s only work, the publisher has a manuscript for novels written about the reporter by her friend, the future girl watches a movie about the publisher’s time in a nursing home, the goat-herder’s religion is based on the girl’s “revelation.”  To Rachel’s point above, it actually is a clear representation of things we leave behind us, marks on the world, that have nothing to do with children.  A positive, but in the end much more a Babel than a Crash in terms of weaving stories together and making them necessary to each other.

So for me, this movie is better in the 6-minute version than the 136-minute version.  The long trailer captured many of the most beautiful scenes and most of the best lines.  It hinted at an idea that was really never explored more deeply in the film than it was there in the trailer, and thus done better with the brevity that allows your own imagination room to breathe.

I’m not saying this movie was a bomb.  It wasn’t terrible.  It had a lot of redeeming qualities.  But for all the glitz on its surface, its heart was made of tin, not gold, and so I have to come down solidly on the ground, having been let down, after all.