Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I just watched “V for Vendetta“. Back when it came out in 2006, I was a busy parent, and used any excuse I had to hate the movie.  Just so that I didn’t feel very bad about not going to the cinema to see it.  I saw a brief trailer of this film on TV and thought that it was yet another comics-based movie about another superhero or somebody like that.  Definitely, not something I wanted to see, especially back then.  So I passed.

I have to say that I am really glad that I rented it yesterday.  I picked it up just by chance.  I already had two other movies in my hand, and when I saw this “V” thing, I thought maybe I’ll grab three movies today, since the weekend is upon me.

Brilliant movie!  It has all the easy parts - the photography, acting, directing, special effects, etc.  Many films do these days.  But, this one goes beyond that.  It has a really good story.  An interesting one.  And the one that needs more attention. I’d go as far as call it a political movie.  It is about the role of government and mass media in our lives, how it used to be, and how things are changing, and how they aren’t changing for the better right now.  It’s a brave story too - not that many films are willing to risk the ensured profits of the entertainment industry by bringing in strong political discussion into a film.  But, as it has been proven many times, Wachovski brothers aren’t afraid of risks.

I really enjoyed how this political story was prepared and told.  It’s interesting, and it’s very human.  If I had to describe it in terms of other movies, I’d say that “V for Vendetta” is a very good mix of “Brazil” (think George Orwell’s “1984” ), “The mask of Zorro“, and “Invisible Man” (any version you like).  Yes, something like that.

This is also a film that can be watched over and over again.  The photography is beautiful, the soundtrack is great.  There are plenty of small details all around.  And there is this sense of style and class to it.

10 out of 10 (I know I’ve been giving away too many of high ratings recently, but it appears so that I missed a lot of really good movies)

I was thinking if I should or shouldn’t spend the rare chance of going to the cinema by watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe“. I haven’t heard anything about this film before, except for a trailer that I saw once and didn’t particularly make anything of it. The rating on IMDB seemed high. So I decided to check it out.

Directed by: Andrew Adamson
Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Family, Fantasy
Cast: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Kiran Shah, James Cosmo, Judy McIntosh, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Patrick Kake, Shane Rangi, Brandon Cook, Cassie Cook
IMDB raintg: 7.3
My rating: 7.0

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Olga was watching one of those cheap sci-fi space movies on TV. It took me only about twenty seconds of looking at before I started joking about it - immitating voices, using quotes from other movies, and doing all sorts of other fooling around.

When I satisfied myself with all the mind crap that I could produce, I took a two minute break by thinking seriously about space stuff. The choice of topic this time was - other races.

In just under two minutes I managed to come up with a three gender choice - Triorids. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Well, in this race, they would have your regular Male and Female, and they would also have a Catalyzer.

The thing is that a Triorid Male cannot have sex with Triorid Female. Their genitals just doesn’t match. So they need a Catalyzer. It’s like a converter. It connects to both Male and Female and helps them to have proper sex.

There are good and bad things about Catalyzers. The good thing is that they are more normalized. If you think of Males as plus, and Females as minuses (you can safely reverse, if that’ll change your attitude), than you Catalyzes would be about zero - somewhere in between. They also help a mating couple to stay together by finding compromises in conflicts and complimenting both other sides all the time.

The bad thing is that Catalyzers have the character, soul, and spirit of their own. They live their own lives. In turms of sex, that means that if Male Triorid wants to have sex, he has to convince not only a Female, but a Catalyzer too. Even if both Male and Female want to have sex, they still have to make Catalyzer agree.

I’m writing this idea down, because it occupied the whole two minutes of my two minute break, but I liked it enough to want to think it over next time.

Now I am back to my usual crap of impersonating cheap movie characters and using qutoes from other films…

There’s been a lot of crap released by Hollywood recently. It’s been a while since I watched any movie at all - the motivation is gone. And I don’t even want to go to the cinema no more. No, actually I want to go. It’s just that there isn’t anything to watch there at the moment. Except for “King Kong” of course.

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Colin Hanks, Andy Serkis, Evan Parke, Jamie Bell, Lobo Chan, John Sumner, Craig Hall, Kyle Chandler, Mark Hadlow, Geraldine Brophy, David Denis
IMDB raintg: 8.3
My rating: 8.0

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With all my recent negative experience with random movies, you would probably think that I stopped picking them. Nope. Not yet. “Northfork” is another random movie I just watched.

Directed by: Michael Polish
Genres: Drama, Fantasy
Cast: James Woods, Nick Nolte, Douglas Sebern, Claire Forlani, Duel Farnes, Mark Polish, Daryl Hannah, Graham Beckel, Josh Barker, Peter Coyote, Jon Gries, Rick Overton, Robin Sachs, Ben Foster, Anthony Edwards
IMDB raintg: 6.3
My rating: 8.0

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