Il Racconto dei Racconti (2015)

Recyclin' recyclin' ... again I'm writing my weekly entry before an early flight in a couple hours, so indulge me being short with something picked from my degrading brain memory cells, not the oldest ones, but still enough to not remember everything ... A reason is that "Il Racconto dei Racconti" = "Tale of Tales" as international title is a mix. The way it develops first made me think on "Cloud Atlas". Strictly for switching the focus from one story to another, not the whole thing (different times, etc). More precise we have three stories going on in parallel. Where story = an actual fairytale. What connects them is probably just the human selfishness analyzed through three different perspective by looking at the fate of three city rulers, each of them advancing towards a more/less bitter end. The stories shock sometimes. I realized again actually how atrocious the fairy tales for children can be, and the interesting fact that you don't realize that when you're a kid.

There's no happy end here ... Although it might look like in one of them. In any case: - not recommended for sweet dreams :)

Rating: 3 out of 5

11.22.63

I've read just one book by Stephen King. In the summer of 2014, when I somehow got a small slice of tranquility in ages ... Probably that's why I had the required patience with "11.22.63", which is not a weekend book (size related). Well, in 2016 the movie got out. A mini-series ... 8 parts .. as I said, not just a week-end.

Subject: An English teacher (from Maine, of course .. we're talking about Stephen King), finds out that his every-day diner has a time portal that the owner struggles to use to prevent the Kennedy assassination (ergo -> the title), which he thinks triggered the worst events in the US history. The problem is that he fails. The whole operation must start with several years before, the fixed arrival temporal destination being earlier than 1963. And since the diner's owner gets suddenly struck by cancer before managing to go through all years up to '63, the task is passed to our English teacher. That's a very compressed summary of the intro of a subject with many side stories and spanning plenty of branches.

For comparing the book and the movie I should give lots of spoilers. It's complicated without. Generally speaking the the differences are big, and unfortunately not also good for the TV version. First of all we have lots and lots of pieces cut out of the original. You could think that 8 parts are enough to fit everything, but the screenwriter decided no. More bizarre is that there are also added parts, so I don't think that lacking screen time was the problem. What's really bad is that the additions are sometimes senseless, the worst of all - compared to the written version: the main character gets a sidekick for his mission ... spoiler 1: in the movie he finds a "brother" on his way to Dallas; spoiler 2: the presence of the new character varies from useless to utter annoying, finally the screenwriters deciding that he's better gone ... I said I can't do it without spoilers :) But let's stop here ...

Final verdict: If in other cases - check out "The Man in the High Castle" - who wrote the script managed an exceptional adaptation, even including major changes, "11.22.63" is a failure that can be interesting just for who didn't read the book ... And that's without including the lead (James Franco) who I think can get a nod for the most tormented try to play a novel character that I've ever seen (to put it nicely) ...

Turbo Kid (2015)

I've watched "Turbo Kid" last night. A crazy indie where sometimes you can't really get if it's really bad or just too good.

The year is 1997. In an alternative reality, the humanity collapsed into a wasteland where water is rare and hard to get (guess I've heard somewhere this context). There we have "The Kid". A boy of something like 15-16 years old, who lives his life trading scavenged waste. Sold for water in one of the existing camps .. the normal camp .. led by Frederick - the arm wrestler (a sort of Crocodile Dundee without the knife but with an iron fist - metaphorically speaking ... at least until a certain point in time). The other camp .. not so normal .. is led by Zeus - a guy with a single eye, who resembles a bit Immortal Joe from Mad Max, as well as his subjects (I was saying something about the water context, right?). Well, in all this uncertain and sad existence, in a sunny (or not) day, the Kid meets Apple. A girl about the same age, in a total contrast with the surroundings considering her continuous smile, the hair color and other things, who invades the personal space of our kid, who can't anymore get rid of her.

Writing the above, I realize that what looked like a sort of "The Quick and the Dead" mixed with "Mad Max" mixed with "Defendor", and which seemed to me that covered a simple revenge subject, is actually a bit more complex considering how much it puts together. I'll keep away the details for now, you have them in the titles above (on which you can add "Terminator" - now I'm getting the subtle '97 reference ;), "Tomorrowland" and others) + also in the trailer. Probably all this mix makes "Turbo Kid" so good in the end as combined product - not taking itself too seriously, being an assorted salad, and the way the salad is served. If some acted parts, starting with Apple, could get in line for an Academy Award, some others are utter abysmal, but overall they compensate each other. The production design has most often the level of a diploma movie for graduating film studies, but the directors were enough aware of that to make fun of it - and it works ... Chases using cheap and small bikes (the only wheel-based transportation apparently left after the apocalypse) - that I doubt I've seen in any other movie. On top of all we have also the '80s synth on the soundtrack that completes perfectly the image.

To conclude: I liked it. If you don't have an issue with blood & gore exaggeration and you're open for self-satire, you should see this. The verdict is positive, after placing everything together. Or maybe I got soft sensing the need for a "Apple" in my life ... :) ...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Omar (2013)

Recycling ... Recycling ... I didn't really have a subject, so I remembered that a while ago I've seen a movie made in Palestine, when I was looking for something more different than the typical mainstream. "Omar" is .. interesting, as long as you have the capacity to watch it from a fictitious perspective. To be read = I don't want to get into Middle East politics ...

Omar e is a young guy of Palestinian origin, residing close to the Israel border, working in a bakery, and saving money for a home. For a family. With his future wife. Tarek's sister ... Tarek being the leader of their resistance cell, and the guy planning the attacks ... The cell includes Amjad too, another guy who has his eyes on Tarek's sister. Things get complicated when an Israeli soldier gets shot. Omar is thrown into prison, released for the price of snitching on his friends, and further you'll see in the movie ... Tarek's sister gets married until the end, that's all I'm saying :) ...

The movie has an obvious bias, and as I was saying I don't want to get into politics. Strangely though, I think that the action can be separated from the real context. Or better said, it can probably be set in any other real context of a conflict area ... If we do that, we gradually get to see something else. It's a sort of mix between a thriller and a family drama, which when you think it was concluded, you notice that there's still something like 15 minutes up to the end. Enough to change it completely catching a tint of soap-opera, but the way the movie's solved is so quick and to the point that it doesn't get cheap. Still, there's the need to see the movie as a movie to appreciate it ... and not as political propaganda ...

Rating: 3+ out of 5

Man in the High Castle

Existence is complicated. Existence is weird. Existence is a novel. That's probably how a marketing tagline would look for the book written more than 50 years ago by P.K.Dick. Probably one of the first tries of alternate history where WW2 had a different ending, which got a Hugo at that time. And brought recently in a series that deviates quite a bit from the original, but offers though enough to catch the viewer, and keeps a decent level of PKD feel in it ... At least for the first season. We'll see for what's following ...

Unfortunately, I don't have the proper mood to extend the description, but considering that I'm lately neglecting my blog, I said it might be a good idea to catch up at least with a brief recommendation :)

"It is far from easy to be a good man. In fact, as one gets older, it becomes more and more difficult to know what a good man is. Yet it also becomes increasingly important to at least try." (Man in the High Castle, series I, episode 10)