The Prestige: Movie Review

I really enjoyed this movie although the people I went with did not. It was basically a tale of two magicians that hated each others guts so badly that they would go to any length to destroy one another. It was a great morality play and was well acted, staged and directed. Lots of great costumes and sets too to make you feel like you were actually seeing something happening in the late 19th early 20th century.

In many ways it was a truely Victorian story which had many rivalries in which one man tried to destroy another at any cost. In this movie we see Edison vs. Tesla (who was played by David Bowie) which was a real life rivalry that kind of mirrored the one between the characters played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. All morality and restraint is thrown out the window in their quest for revenge. Even when they get their revenge it still seems kind of hollow since they get a sense that they wasted their life getting back at their rival and they have nothing to show for it.

This movie also had one of the best plot twists that I have seen in years. I won't give it away but it is the kind of thing that bewilders you and leaves you with the feeling that you don't know what will happen next. I was on the edge of my seat at the end of the movie and that is kind of a rare feeling in movies nowadays.

This movie also had a pretty cool machine cooked up by Tesla that enabled someone to supposedly teleport from one place to another through some kind of powerful current. The machine even had a kind of Lovecraftian twist because instead of the machine transporting the person it would actually make a double of them. This harkens me back to the Philidelphia Experiment which was supposed to be influenced by Teslas work. This machine was a really nice way of putting forth the theme that real magic and science were one and the same during the Victorian period.

The acting was superb all the way around with Hugh Jackman mostly stealing the show. He was excellent in the role and he made you feel bad for his character even though he does quite alot of underhanded stuff. Even Bales character was not thoroughly unlikeable but I guess you can consider him the villian of the movie. The sad part is that much of what they do seemed to be very real reactions and not a stretch as the plot unfolded. I mean Bale did kill his wife even though it was an accident and Jackman did blow off Bales fingers trying to kill him.

I felt Scarlett Johansson could have been in the movie more but I guess she was just supposed to be a supporting actor and not one of the main stars. She played a mainly airheaded magicians assistant that is a pawn in the game between Bale and Jackman. Michael Caine played the only character that was likeable throughout. He did a great job of playing a grizzled vet that wants one more shot at the big time and latched onto Jackman to do it.

All and all it was a great movie that will probably go into my permanent DVD collection. If you like well acted period pieces that had great plot twists then this movie is for you.

Red Cross to Overhaul Itself

It looks like they are trying to push through some much needed reforms. I did not know they had a 50 member board. It must have been like a meeting of the UN general Assembly every time they had a board meeting. Here are the other reforms that they are trying to impliment:

_Explicitly delegating responsibility for day-to-day operations to the Red Cross' full-time professional management, with the board focusing mainly on longer-term strategic oversight.

_Reducing the board of governors to between 12 and 20 members by March 31, 2012. An interim goal is to have no more than 25 members by 2009.

_Creating a single category of board members. Now, most are elected by local chapters, some are elected by the board, and others, including the chairman, are appointed by the U.S. president.

_Shifting seven of the presidentially appointed governors — all but the chairman — into a newly created Cabinet Council that will be merely advisory.

Movie Review: Marie Antoinette

Mein Gott was this movie slow. It was a long, languid sort of film with lots of different mood shots and not much movement in the plot. We have endless shots of Dunst running down the hall like a robot in a corset or waking up surrounded by French courtiers. We see her change her clothes over and over and basically ends up looking bored some of the time and then frustrated at others. We also get a scene after scene of her walking slowly in the grass, drinking with her other royal relatives, trying to get the King to sleep with her, etc.

We do get a sense though that the French Court of Louis XVI was totally out of the loop when it came to world events. We get a little smattering of the American Revolution and a barest hint of the buildup to the French Revolution. I guess this was intentional but it left the movie in a sort of limbo where we were forced to care about this poor Austrian girl surrounded by opulence who's only goal in life was the have a child with uber-dork Louis XVI.

It was basically a coming of age teen drama set in Pre-Revolutionary France with a rock beat. Kind of like The OC with beautiful dresses, gilded bedrooms, and real princesses. Also everyone seemed to have an American accent and only the child playing her daughter actually saying anything in French. It could have been filmed in Santa Barbara or South Beach for all we know.

One thing that was positive about the movie was the costumes and sets. They were 100% spot on from all of the stuff that I have read about the period. The food arrangement was also top notch with lots of different little French cakes and weird cooked pheasants or meat towers and things. It's kind of sad to say that a movie is so slow that you are noticing things like the cakes and the costumes more then the plot.

In my book it seemed like I was waiting for the payoff pitch for the entire movie. I thought they would show her finally going to the guillotine as the picture of composure; stoic to the very end. It would have been the perfect bookend to the movie and would be a nice play off of the languidness of the earlier parts of the film. All of the chaos of the Revolution and the uncertainty of her fate (to people that haven't studied history) would have really have given nice motion to the end of the movie.

It would have been exciting to see the confinement in the Tuileries with everyone scared, stoic, crying, etc. Then they could have had the escape attempt with lots of suspense about whether they would be caught etc. These scenes would have made for a great climax and finale of the movie. Instead we have some stuff about her affair with some Swedish dude and the climax turns out to be when she gives birth to the new Dauphin. The last scene is her saying goodbye to the other princesses and then her saying goodbye to good old Versailles one last time.