I went to The Golden Compass with Meredith today. We've both read the book, and we'd been planning to go see it for a few weeks now. It didn't live up to my expectations.

QUICK STATS
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence.
Length: 113 minutes
My Rating: 3.5 stars

TOP FIVE ACTORS
- Jim Carter as John Faa
- Ian McKellan as the voice of Iorek Byrnison
- Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra
- Ben Walker as Roger
- Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby


Now if you haven't read The Golden Compass of any of the other His Dark Materials books and you go see it, you'll love it. If you've read them, you'll be disappointed.


Good things:
Cool computer imaging and animation [bears, airships, etc.]
MUSIC. The soundtrack was written by Alexandre Desplat, who I admire because he wrote the fantastic music for The Painted Veil, another of my all time favorite movies. But, more on that one later.

Cheers.

The Kite Runner - movie

I went to see the movie The Kite Runner on Tuesday [January 1]. I saw it at the State Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I'm drawing largely from the Internet Movie Database to help with with this post, so I may as well tell you a little about that first.

The Internet Movie Database, or IMDb, is a movie database, hence the name. It provides trivia, credits, photos, and information about movies, actors, and television shows. If you want to find out who played a role in any movie or how, you can find it on IMDb.

Alright, enough mindless advertising.

The Kite Runner was originally a book written by Khaled Hosseini. The book is remarkable because it is the first novel by an Afghani author published [and written] in English.

"The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do Pashtun boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime."

- Wikipedia

I haven't read the book yet, so expect a review, or at least some sort of comment, on that once I get ahold of it and read it.

The main charactersof Amir, Hassan, Assef, Baba, Ali, Soraya, and Sohrab are all in the movie, but Hassan's mother Sanaubar doesn't figure in the movie.

The beginning of the movie shows Hassan and Amir as children playing in Kabul. The young Amir is played by Zekeria Ebrahimi. Young Hassan is played by Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada. My two favorite scenes are the children in a movie theater, which in the movie has very little relevance, but is sweet, and the last time Amir and Hassan meet at the pomegranate tree, which has alot of sgnificance that I won't get into at risk of ruining the movie for those who haven't seen it.

I think all of the acting was phenomenal, but if I had to pick my top five actors, they would be:
1. Young Hassan
2. Young Assef
3. Sohrab
4. Amir
5. Young Amir
At first glance, it seems odd that I didn't mention any women, but there were only two roles of any significance, and neither of them are in my top five. Soraya would have to be my number 6, though.

Sohrab was possibly the best actor-role fit I saw. Assef is a close second. Reading the short biographies on Wikipedia of these characters, I can easily see the actors in my mind. I think they were truely amazing.

The Kite Runner deserves the Oscar for Best Picture, in my view. Of course, that's unlikely, but I think that this poignant film was truely amazing.

The movie was produced by William Horberg, and driected by Marc Forster.

STATS
- Released 2007 [wow, that was last year, wasn't it....]
- Genre: Drama
- Tagline: There is a way to be good again...
- Time: 122 minutes
- Rating: PG-13 for strong thematic material including the rape of a child, violence and brief strong language.


- My rating: 5 stars.



MELANIE'S RATING SYSTEM
1 Star: Blech
2 Stars: Not very good
3 Stars: Okay, but not for me
4 Stars: Good
5 Stars: Amazing. When does it come out on DVD?!?!

The Summer Skinny

The Summer Skinny is a band from Culver City, California. According to their MySpace page, the band was formed because of a bet.

"Winner gets $5. Loser forms a band."

Pandora [a music sharing site that I like a lot - similar to Last.fm], has nothing to say about the band itself.

The members are, according to MySpace, Claire Ditusa, Phoebe Parros, Willard Matthews, Matt Van Winkle, and Liz Scully.

The band has two songs out on the internet: The Great American Napkin and It's A Struggle Everyday. The Great American Napkin was featured on the soundtrack of the film Disturbia. You can listen to both songs on their MySpace, and The Great American Napkin can also be found on Pandora.

However, the lyrics are difficult to track down. I've looked, and most sites do not feature the band. The ones that I've found claiming to have the lyrics actually have a different song's lyrics posted.

The Summer Skinny is a very interesting band. I like both their songs alot. I would write more about the music itself, but I don't know anything about music theory, so I have to leave that up to someone else.

Give them a listen and let me know what you think.




Cheers.