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the book of eli

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another movie night coming up this w/e with some friends and students from the uni.
the movie of choice this month is the ‘book of eli’. i have already seen this twice, but it's a good'un!
denzel is eli, a lone drifter travelling the open highways of a washed-out post-apocalyptic landscape. in his possession is the only remaining bible in the whole world [oddly enough, he also seems to be the only remaining black man!]. gary oldman is carnegie, a crazy [no surprises there] despot controlling/trying to control a small town. carnegie wants the bible so he can use it to… have more control over the people!
into town strolls eli, and that’s when the touch paper gets lit.
personally i’m a bit of  a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, although some aspects do get rather repetitive - lone wanderer – check, washed out landscape – check, cannibalistic animal behaviour – check. however, this is not your usual run of the mill p-a movie. this is a far more powerful movie than you first realise.
the film is essentially a christian metaphor. eli appears to be protected by some greater supernatural force, on a journey guided by "God". this is a movie about faith and believing in something/someone bigger than yourself. if you haven’t already – go see.
even though it does have it’s weak points, this is an excellent film.
yes ‘the book of eli’ is violent – but so is most of the old testament. hey, sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.
faith in the one true God in the world that we live in today looks a certain way, this same faith probably looked very different 200 years ago, and who knows how it will look in another 200 years. even in this day and age it differs from country to country. we are relatively un-persecuted here in the west, most of which amounts to people thinking of christians as different or weird or even weak in some way. our actual physical life and the lives of our loved ones are not threatened with *death* because of our faith in Jesus Christ. how much would we be willing to stand firm in our faith if it were *really* put to the test? would we cave in as the disciple peter did and deny him or would we stand strong and face the consequences?

Jesus said to martha: “the one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. and everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. do you believe this?"

so?... do you?...

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by gaz

one train you'll want to miss! [sorry]

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"oh look, an unstoppable train."
truth time... i love tony scott movies. i know i know, they are loud, shaky, bold [in colour] and i think i'm right in saying - uses pretty much every trope going when it comes to action movies.
all the way from top gun through crimson tide, days of thunder, true romance, enemy of the state, deja vu, man on fire and even pelham 123, they are all great fun and cheesier than a giant cheese thing covered in cheese!
which is why i'm a little upset by having to confess that i absolutely hated unstoppable. i think he's gone too far. with both the tropes and the cheese!
i'm not giving anything away here when i tell you how the movie begins. see it as a warning if you will.
a huuuuuge freight train, uncoupled brakes that will be "connected when we've moved her to the other track!" [1st doh!]. a chubby driver who has to then disembark said train in order to change the track direction, obviously he doesn't make it [2nd doh!]. the jerking of the train causes the throttle lever to move into full steam ahead [3rd doh!]. a train full of school children coming straight at it on the same track [4th doh!]. denzel is a train driver a few days from retirement [5th doh!] and then there's the cocky rookie who comes good [6th doh!] and so on and so on ad nauseum.
it really doesn't get better. for instance half the movie is showing the story on foxnews, interviewing bystranders who are basically telling us what we are already watching on screen. *yawn*
i'm even bored of writing a review of it...
an unstoppable train that needs to be stopped but can't because it's unstoppable... until someone stops it!!
nuff said!

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by gaz

movie vs book

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haven’t written a movie review for a while. so let’s get stuck in…

the last movie i watched was the boy in the stripped pj's.
i read the book about two years ago and it blew me away. by the end i was crying like a little girl, and had to force myself to pick it up and finish reading it to it's inevitable heartbreaking ending.
i put off seeing this movie as i *knew* it wouldn't match up to the book, and i knew that however 'great' the film was, to me it would be a huge disappointment.
and so to the story.
it's 1942 in berlin, and a family receives good news: daddy has been promoted…
…however daddy’s promotion is to the post of commandant of an extermination camp.
this story, however, is not about daddy. It’s about bruno, his 8 year old son. bruno is blissfully unaware of what his father is involved in. to him the people in the fields out the back of his new home are just oddly dressed farm workers.
like so many young boys, bruno wants to be an explorer, and it’s bruno’s forbidden explorations in his back garden that bring him to the fence that surrounds the ‘farm’.
behind the fence sits a boy his own age, shmuel. shmuel is experiencing the same loneliness as bruno and very quickly a bond builds between the two boys, but they are both unaware of the horrible reality of their situation.
you can’t say that you “enjoy” a movie like this. you simply observe it and hopefully - if it’s been done right - it will absorb you. also – I feel I need to point out that this isn’t a war film. It’s a film about a family experiencing change beyond comprehension. coming to a realisation that so many must have gone through.
Even though I think the impact of the film was muted due to me having read the novel, I have to say this is one of the most human stories about this dark era that i have ever seen.

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by gaz
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