The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.

The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar

2014/01/25

I, Frankenstein

Saw the preview for I, Frankenstein a few weeks back. Very rarely is a preview even memorable, but this looked pretty cool. Sure enough, it was! Frankenstein's monster (Adam Eckhart) survives being in the Arctic, buries his creator Dr. Frankenstein and is then attacked by demons. His rescuers are semi-divine beings who name him Adam. Dr. Terra Ward (Yvonne Strahovski) is the human who befriends him around 200 years later and together they work to defeat the demons. If there are any higher powers in this particular universe, they never make an appearance.

2014/01/19

Frozen

A few weekends ago, I saw Anchorman 2. It was okay. I thought the Ron Burgundy's (Will Ferrell) dumbing-down and over-sensationalizing of the news was spot-on. The weatherman (Steve Carrell) and the girl he falls for were just way too weird for my tastes.
My sister and I wanted to see Frozen as it was getting rave reviews, but last Saturday at 9:00, the showing was sold out. I've long since concluded that total audience size isn't that important for determining the quality of a movie, but the length of time it spends in the theater is a very critical way to measure that quality. It came out a while ago, just before Thanksgiving! 
So we saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. As I told a few people, it was a good superhero-type flick. Alliances made and broken, heroes making strenuous efforts, villains being at least reasonably smart and resourceful, etc. Some pretty amazing coincidences, though. Fairly typical of the film was when our heroes the dwarves, get to the border of the elf kingdom with the elves in hot pursuit. Things are looking bad, but then the Orcs attack! Our heroes get away during  the confusion.
Pretty amazing that the dwarves don't suffer a single casualty the whole time. One would think with all the dangers they faced that they'd lose at least a few comrades along the way.
So I was finally able to see Frozen on Saturday. Quite good! Plenty of silly comic relief in between all the serious drama, plenty of romantic expectation with sensible warnings to young people and plenty of magical stuff and gorgeous scenery!