Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – Not overly rebellious.

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

Even though the tagline of the most recent movie of the Harry Potter series is The Rebellion Begins there is not too much that is opposed to convention. Not even much that would be unconventional. Entertainment as we know it. Better than the hauntingly bad first two episodes, worse than the magic third, on par with the fourth episode. That would be my judgement and depending on how you liked the different episodes that should be enough to tell you if you might want to see this movie or not. If you haven’t seen any of the Potter movies or – shock and surprise – not even read the books, than watching some other movie might be a wise decision.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – entertainment, nothing more.

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Not much to say about this one. The most remarkable fact is probably that I saw it in the cinema on an island (Juist, of course). If you enjoyed the previous movies, you’ll enjoy this one too. There are some nice scenes, but I think that the story of the first movie was better, while the second one had some funnier aesthetic ideas (think of Johnny Depp’s eye make-up) – in this one, however, Keira Knightley is prettier than in the first two movies, so it kind of equals itself out. It’s a Jerry Bruckheimer production, so it just can’t be really good.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – We want drama, not theme parks.

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

Keira Knightley is just not the kind of woman that should be put into glamorous costumes with lush hair. To see her real beauty, one must see her fine features contrast with a harsh style of clothing and behaviour. Luckily, in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest she is granted at least a few of these moments. In addition, we are also allowed to feel more affection for her since now she also is permitted to show her interest in Captain Jack Sparrow more … explicitly. Good thing. I guess, though, that this is the only actual improvement over the first part of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. It is still a clean story without real drama, without real frustration – without the desperately hoped for grittiness of characters. Instead, it again featured scenes playing in the dreaded pirate theme park called Tortuga in this movie. Bah.
Small expectations – that was the title which I thought would be appropriate for this entry, because watching this movie actually was a fun experience. A much better experience than watching the first part. Lovely tentacles, and a well designed face of horror and pity for the enigma that is Captain Davy Jones. After some reflection about the movie, however, it became apparent that this is only because our expectations were much, much lower than what we allowed us (I went to see it with Kerstin and Olli) to grow before watching the first part. Pirates! Adventure! Loss! Love! The Sea! Well, all of this is there – only in the sad and pitifully clean Jerry Bruckheimer production kind of way. We can only be thankful to Johnny Depp and are paying our tributes to him for keeping the movie alive and enchanting.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Solid magics.

Saturday, November 19th, 2005

The Kulturbrauerei‘s cinema 4 wasn’t exactly stuffed on this Friday night’s showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The most recent Harry Potter has has a new director, Mike Newell, and he does a decent job – much better, actually than the two first movies which were directed by Chris Columbus. However, it does not come close to the last one, which was directed by Alfonso Cuarón. That film was magic, strange and had a dreamlike atmosphere encompassing both fear and delight. This one evokes amusement and a small shudder here and there. Solid work, nice effects, good cooking down of the story, but not fantastic or inspired.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Actually entertaining, therefore much better.

Monday, June 21st, 2004

I never thought I would go and watch another Harry Potter sequel in a movie theater, thinking that I might as well throw the money from my balcony and be a happier Lars than I would have been after watching The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Then I heard that the director of this movie is the director of the fabulous Y Tu Mama Tambien and suddenly became interested. I liked this movie a lot more than the other two; it was magical and the setting both gloomier and more fairy-tale-like. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to people who don’t like fantasy settings or the Harry Potter series. For such an audience, the movie is not good enough. I was very relieved that it wasn’t as bland and superficially funny as the first two movies. Do I have to mention that I would have totally adored Emma Watson (a.k.a. Hermione) in my teens?
IMDb entry | Trailer

Back on track.

Tuesday, January 13th, 2004

I have now fully recovered myself from the illness and took same as an excuse to get involved in some playing of Neverwinter Nights ;-) Today has been a day of work, although it has been hampered somewhat by problems of my system harddisk which made booting the machine not work anymore. I did not want to fiddle around with the file system because the install that I am currently running is not at all fresh (I think I just updated incrementally from OS X 10.1 to 10.3.2 – which surprisingly worked without problems). So I took this as an ocassion to reformat the disk, and reinstall the system plus all needed apps. Myth would have that everything should now be Snappier™, only I don’t perceive any special snappiness. Well, whatever. At least I got rid of some really old apps and files and not-used-anymore settings. Feels good too. (And leaves me with an additional 12 GB of harddisk space.)

Finally, a day for NWN again.

Saturday, November 29th, 2003

It has been about two weeks since I had time to play a bit online, and I am quite excited to meet my online gaming friends again. Yay! Hagen Elsternhorst is back!

I will get better again.

Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Sorry about the lack of updates to my blog during the last two weeks. Updates will come out more regularly as the start of the next semester draws closer, weather gets worse again and I reduce the online gaming time with Neverwinter Nights.

Neverwinternightabsorbiert

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Liebe Leserinnen und Leser,
ich wollte nur kurz mitteilen, dass Lars hier anscheinend nichts mehr Neues schreibt, weil er ununterbrochen seit Tagen schon vollkommen in der virtuellen Realität gefangen ist und dort neue Freundinnen und Freunde gefunden zu haben scheint, mit denen er spricht, Geschenke austauscht und sich verabredet. Also los, wer von Euch vermag ihn zu befreien?

Exploring the online realm.

Monday, September 8th, 2003

Yesterday I played Neverwinter Nights for the first time on an online, guild hosted server. It has been a very good and interesting experience. People there (there are usually about 3-10 people online in the setting I am playing in) are quite eloquent, funny and charming. Of course they are, because they are all Mac users! The guild (the Avengers of Coramir) recruits itself from the Mac Neverwinter Nights forum, where I have lurked for the last year or so.

If anything virtually interesting happens, I’ll inform you through the virtual hyperspace. Allez les Internautes!

Oh, when will it arrive?

Tuesday, July 8th, 2003

The city of Neverwinter is in great peril. And only Timo and I can save it. There is a big obstacle blocking our way to the rescue, though. It is called lame progress in porting NWN to the Mac. Bioware, the producer of this and related Games taking place in the Forgotten Realms of AD&D, seems to be almost ready with the game, things are obviously delayed by the publishing house, MacSoft. Get your act together, so that Timo and I can save those poor people from dying! Slaughter some monsters!

Up until the great day when I will find the game box in my mail, I have to bridge time and space by relying on the computer hardware accessible here in Darmstadt, using a … windows … machine. That’s how hard it is.

In trockenen Tüchern.

Saturday, June 21st, 2003

So, zur Abwechslung mal in deutsch. Und zwar weil ich den Ausdruck in trockenen Tüchern so gerne mag. Stellt sich bloss die Frage, was nun eigentlich in trockenen Tüchern ist. Es ist: Der Sommerurlaub. Warum? Weil das alte Mietkautionskonto endlich freigegeben worden ist. Jo.
Und sonst? Hier ist’s Wetter netter als daheim, was mich ja schon mal erfreut; desweiteren werd ich heute Abend wohl zum ersten mal seit vielen Monaten wieder eine Runde Neverwinter Nights mit Timo dädeldaddeln. Sozusagen in Vorbereitung auf das (hoffentlich baldige) Erscheinen der NWN Mac Version. Die hätte ja eigentlich schon vor einem Jahr fertig sein sollen, aber manchmal ist der Mac dann doch eine exklusivere Plattform als ich es mir wünschen würde.
Bis Timo so weit ist, werde ich vielleicht noch mal ein paar Buffy Folgen aus der finalen Staffel rekapitulieren, auf dem Schlossplatz wandeln, mir einen kleinen Snack besorgen und ein bisschen das Treiben anschauen. Und vielleicht auch noch ein bisschen mit meinen Liebsten chatten.