you may have missed the boat on: HARPER’S ISLAND

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Elizabeth Flux

Harper's Island

What is it?
Harper’s Island is the ideal location for a wedding retreat if you overlook the gruesome killing spree that took place there seven years earlier. For everyone other than Abby,whose mother was one of the original victims, enough time has passed and they can just shake it off like a bad ghost story. The murderer is long dead, the week is just starting, and hey, Cousin Ben probably just missed the boat. It takes them a while to notice that the party’s numbers are gradually dwindling, one by one…

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LIFE OF PI [REVIEW]

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Elizabeth Flux

LifeofPi

Life of Pi brings a whole new meaning to the nautical term “there’s no room to swing a cat,” with the bulk of the film being centred around the 227 days protagonist Pi (Suraj Sharma) spends trapped on a boat with a tiger named Richard Parker. It sounds like it could be boring. It sounds like it could be preachy. It sounds like it could be a film pretentious people go to see so they can tell their other friends how cultured they are. But it is not. It is an engaging, strange tale interweaved with at times breathtaking visual elements.

The story is structured in a vaguely Titanic-esque way. Writer finds man to tell him about his infamous shipwreck story, which he has been told will “make you believe in God”. From the comfort of a well-lit and cosy living room, Pi begins his story through a long flashback.

Pi is a boy named after a swimming pool and who follows three separate religions, much to his father and brother’s amusement. Having spent his childhood growing up in a zoo in Pondicherry, French India, his father decides to sell up and move the family and a few animals to Canada, which is how Pi finds himself on a Japanese ship in the middle of the Pacific as a storm is about to hit. Forced into a lifeboat, Pi is the only survivor, bar a hyena, a rat, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan, and a tiger. Continue reading →

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THE HOBBIT: GANDALF EX MACHINA

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Adam vanLangenberg
I sure do love chocolate Hubba Bubba

I sure do love chocolate Hubba Bubba

Full disclosure, I am not a massive Tolkien fan. I tried to read Lord of the Rings and put it down after several chapters due to excessive boredom. I have seen the trilogy of films and really enjoyed them but never went full fan-boy.

Yesterday I ventured out of the safety of my quiet, dark house and went to the cinema which appeared to be under attack by hordes of teenagers. Avoiding their stench of aura of self-entitlement my friend and I purchased two tickets, dropping over $50 to see the 48 FPS, 3D xtreme-Screen magic. (Cinemas take note: this is why people download movies).

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CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER [REVIEW]

Posted on December 21, 2012 by H D Thompson

Marriage can be hard and getting married young and trying to maintain the same ideals as you grow as people is understandably a tough thing. Young love can’t maintain a lifetime of responsibilities, but at the same time it is difficult to lose your best friend as well. Walking into a film I assumed was going to be a quirky little indy romantic comedy, with the always lovely Rashida Jones and reliably affable Andy Samberg, it was a refreshing surprise to leave having just witnessed the emotional unfurling of a woman who didn’t know how to handle having everything she wanted, and struggled to remain solid amid the crumbling of her world. Continue reading →

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THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO THE SILMARILLION [REVIEW]

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Elizabeth Flux

The-Hobbit-poster-2

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) just wants to be left alone to blow smoke rings and eat a healthy six meals a day. What he doesn’t want is a flood of dwarves raiding his larder and a wizard telling him to be more like his younger, adventurous self. Despite this, less than twenty four hours after Gandalf (Ian McKellen) scratches a mysterious symbol into his newly painted door, Bilbo is off, without a handkerchief, on a quest to help the dwarves reclaim their home from the grips of a dragon.

That is the basic plot of The Hobbit (book). The Hobbit (film) is still essentially this at heart, but, much like a real heart, whilst integral in keeping something alive, only makes up a small part of the bigger picture. The original book was penned with children in mind, and is therefore less dark in terms of content and a whole lot more twee than its sequel. It is also significantly shorter.

So, keeping in mind that you could pretty much use The Hobbit as a bookmark for The Lord of the Rings, it is interesting then that it is also going to be split into three instalments at around three hours each. Continue reading →

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