Stardust

Old Refrain
Review by Vives Anunciacion
(print title: Once upon a star)
Inquirer Libre, October 27, 2007

Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Based on the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman illustrated by Charles Vess
Starring Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer
United International Pictures

“Sometimes I wonder why I spendThe lonely night dreaming of a
song.” Stardust, words by Mitchell Parish

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" That’s how Stardust begins, as narrated by the voice of Ian “Gandalf” McKellen. Now this isn’t a philosophical movie, rather it’s a fairy tale romance. Once upon a time, movies told stories. Stardust is like one of them.

A hundred and fifty years ago in the English town called Wall, there lived a simple store clerk, Tristan (newcomer Charlie Cox), who promises to retrieve a fallen star to impress the pretty girl he loves, Victoria (Sienna Miller).

But across the stone wall of Wall, in the magical realm of Faerie, three witch sisters as well as the surviving princes of Stormhold all witness the falling star at the same time. For the old witches, led by Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), the star’s heart meant several hundreds of years more of beauty and youth. For each of the princes of Stormhold, whoever retrieves the star and transforms it back into ruby becomes the next king.

So between Tristan who wants to take a piece of the star back to Victoria, a trio of witches who want to eat its heart in the name of vanity, and a group of ruthless princes out to kill each other for their father’s crown, a small twinkling star falls into Faerie land and transforms into Yvaine (Claire Danes).

Little does Tristan know that his quest to get the star would yield him the love of his life, a piece of immortality, and, as it turns out, the throne of Stormhold. Just like old fairy tales.

However, Stardust isn’t exactly old-style fairy tale. It has a little bit of wry adult humor, a little bit of bloody violence, and the cross-dressing, Can-can dancing sky pirate Captain Shakespeare played by Robert De Niro. A “fairy” tale, indeed.

I watched this movie to see the return of Michelle Pfeiffer – you actually get your money’s worth with her and her alone. Some characters are unnecessary, the music tends to overwhelm, and the effects are a little less magical. But the main reason Stardust works is that it has fairly clear and determined storytelling, and a lot of earnestness that comes along with it, as it shows onscreen. Those who worked on this movie seemed to have had lots of fun making it.

So Stardust may not be an instant classic, nor is it magical romance of the Arthurian order. It’s still staged enthusiastically, with a little bit of charm. After all it starts with “Once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after” just like old tales before bedtime, before the lights go out and the stars start twinkling in the night.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

The Googler
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre October 19, 2007

Directed by David L. Cunningham
Based on the book by Susan Cooper
20th Century Fox

There’s virtually unlimited information available on the Net, which is where I got my 4-1-1 on the (here) little-known The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. Published in the 1960s, the children’s books are about the battle between good (light) and evil (dark) based on the Arthurian legends set in the British Isles.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising is the first movie based on Cooper’s series, which follows the emergence of the Seeker, a guardian and warrior of the Light tasked to find the circle of six Signs to be used in the battle against the Dark.

The Seeker in the movie is Will Stanton (a very Aryan-type Alexander Ludwig) – the seventh and youngest son of a seventh son – whose American family just recently relocated to rural England. A few days before Christmas, Will is about to celebrate his normal teenage 14th birthday when the mysterious Merriman (Ian McShane) tells him that he is the chosen Seeker who must find the six Signs within five days or else the Dark will envelope the world.

Will, Merriman and a group of other Light warriors known as the Old Ones then travel back and forth through time collecting the Signs in order to restore the power of the Light and defend the world against the Dark. One by one, Will manages to find the Signs in time for the showdown against the ultimate baddie, the Dark Rider (Christopher Eccleston), but as always with youth adventures, not before a few obstacles he must endure.

As far as the movie goes, it’s a little bit of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and Hardy Boys put together, but from what I gather from Wikipedia the books are largely different from the movie, which isn’t always the case with children’s fantasy adaptations. Most interesting is the movie’s large departure from the book’s Arthurian themes (unless they were so subtle no one outside London can recognize them.)

Unlike Narnia or Potter which manage to explain why the bad guys want to inherit the earth, The Seeker wants its audience to take the Old Ones and the Dark Rider for granted, because the better movie is intended for the expected sequel. Ah, but the problem is whether there will be enough interest in the Seeker left for the audience to wait for part 2. Technically though the movie is decent.

While Will was properly presented to struggle between being a normal kid and being a magical Seeker with a few supernatural powers, the search for the Signs itself was almost effortless to the point that they render Will’s heroics stale and uneventful.

Ludwig as Will is a capable normal kid, but not so much as the Seeker especially in the final battle scene with the Dark Rider. The Old Ones don’t do much in the movie, which means the audience can care less about them.

Interestingly, Will learns about the battle between Light and Dark not from the Old Ones but from a successful Google search. I wonder if he would have found the Signs sooner if he Googled them as well.

The 11th Hour

Global warming, take 2
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre October 11, 2007

“You've heard it hundreds of timesYou say you're aware, believe and you care,
but...Do you care enoughTo talk with conviction of the heart?”
- Kenny
Loggins, Conviction of the Heart

Directed by Nadia Conners, Leila Conners Petersen
Documentary presented by Leonardo Di Caprio

Kung kinulang ka pa ng impormasiyon tungkol sa global warming at climate change, baka makatulong kung si Leonardo Di Caprio na ang magpaliwanag ng sitwasiyon sa The 11th Hour.

Global warming and climate change are already big issues in many countries, lalu na sa China, the US and India which are the biggest air polluters in the world. Since last year’s Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, ipinaliwanang na that human activity in the last 100 years has caused severe damage to the earth’s atmosphere, putting life on the planet, specifically human life, at risk.

Wasting no time to preach the doom of environmental degradation, Di Caprio and a diverse group of some 50 experts – scientists, authors, activists, scholars, politicians – take turns lecturing on the extent of damage caused by pollution, overpopulation, overfishing, deforestation and other human activities, which all began sharply during the Industrial Revolution. Towards the end The 11th Hour makes repeated calls for humans to take positive action.

At 95 minutes, the movie is a continuous stream of factoid after scary factoid all meant to drive a point that if humans do not act immediately the dangers of ignoring the problem would be catastrophic on a global scale. As such, the actions that humans must make should also be global in effort. As the movie stresses, not only is it the 11th hour, it’s 11:59.

However important and dire its messages may be, The 11th Hour as a movie is but an extended advocacy advertisement with an endless barrage of talking heads and loosely edited images, frequently without audio-video lock. Unlike An Inconvenient Truth which had a digestible volume of information, The 11th Hour threatens to overwhelm its audience with information actually already available months or years before.

Worse, the movie offers no hard-line solutions even if it tangentially attacks the powers that be. Solar power, wind power and hydrogen-fueled cars are mentioned solutions. As they were10 years ago. What about the vast tracts of forested land converted to cattle grazing pasture to supply beef to multinational burger chains? Or the human addiction to oil?

Watching The 11th Hour is but a small part in the process of finding solutions, but watching it inside a large air-conditioned mall powered by petroleum is ironically part of the systemic problem.

The 11th Hour is released in limited theaters beginning October 10.