The Book of Eli

[Tjol]

The beginning of the movie is very reminiscent of 'There Will Be Blood', which had me worrying... oh no not another character sketch without a point... but then it started feeling a little like '2001' where the context of the character was bigger than the character (even if not the most wonderful thing for people with short attention spans). These '2001' moments presented in a semi-artsy black and white and yellow of a post apocalyptical sun-baked world are what I went to see the movie for. And then, after the context is established, the actual story unfolds. There wasn't as much of the black white and yellow as I expected, but all in all not a bad flick.

The story didn't have as much punch as it was supposed to I think, because as much as I appreciated the 'Farenheit 451' type ending, the movie did not do a compelling job of portraying just how much of a trial 'Eli' faced in pursuing what he determined to be his calling in life. Rationally I can put it all together, but the movie itself did not compel that kind of empathy. But all in all the general theme of the movie,

Spoiler

about the schism between actual believers in anything (Washington) and the people who would make themselves leaders of those believers (Oldman)

, is timely enough, and I think clear enough even if you change the place holder that was used in the movie.

[Montresor]

I've heard that this is a remake of Zardoz, though they change much of the detail (such as the 'holy' book being the Bible instead of The Wizard of Oz). Is this so?

[Tjol]

I've heard that this is a remake of Zardoz, though they change much of the detail (such as the 'holy' book being the Bible instead of The Wizard of Oz). Is this so?

I have to be honest and admit I've never heard of Zardoz. The movie does borrow a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Not to spoil the twist too much, but it's a unique version of the Bible as well, granted maybe that was the case with the copy of Wizard of the OZ in 'Zardoz'?

There are a lot of similarities with the story of the movie 'Children of Men' (haven't read the book yet)... although there are differences in the details. If 'Children of Men' seems a bit like a remake 'Zardoz' to you, then I'd say yes 'Book of Eli' is probably a remake of a sort.

[Montresor]

I can't recall any similarities between Zardoz and Children of Men, but it's been a decade or so since I've seen Zardoz. I mostly just remember Connery's hilarious costume, and the story being about how false beliefs can control the masses.

You've piqued my interest to see Book of Eli. Thanks for the write-up.

[Tjol]

I can't recall any similarities between Zardoz and Children of Men, but it's been a decade or so since I've seen Zardoz. I mostly just remember Connery's hilarious costume, and the story being about how false beliefs can control the masses.

You've piqued my interest to see Book of Eli. Thanks for the write-up.

Oh, it's different than that I think. The antagonist kind of imagines such possibilities, but the competition between the antagonist and the main character isn't rhetorical so much as it's simply two competing inspirations that have different ends intended for the same object.

[Usivius]

Zardoz...











...ohhhhh Zardoz.

[lucimay]

a bit trite. some decent cinematography but nothing really stand out.
like, i can't say "oh remember that shot of blah blah blah" or "that longass blah blah pan was blah blah blah" but not bad. i suppose it prolly looked better on a big screen but seemed like an awful lot of surrous tight in close ups.
the SF images were sorta fakey lookin. when i realized where they were headed i thought ohhh goodey! but that little "rowing toward god" *scene just looked totally fakey to me.

i'd been told there was a twist at the end. pft. not much of one if you ast me. could see it comin a mile away! NO PUN INTENDED!!! muahahahah!

and i'm sorry, the final voice over was...well...not even meh.
reminded me of how disappointed i was at the end of freakin
Saving Private Whatshisname... like.. i had to endure all that
bloodshed for this loada tell-me-i-was-worth-it type hooey. bah.
call me a cynic. it was waaaaay over sap-sauce.

(don't sugar-coat it luci, tell us how you really feel)


*reference to anne sexton poem "the awful rowing toward god"

[Montresor]

Haha!

You should write film reviews professionally. Honestly.

[Cagliostro]

and i'm sorry, the final voice over was...well...not even meh.
reminded me of how disappointed i was at the end of freakin
Saving Private Whatshisname... like.. i had to endure all that
bloodshed for this loada tell-me-i-was-worth-it type hooey. bah.
call me a cynic. it was waaaaay over sap-sauce.

There are so many movies that have bookends that just totally ruin the movie for me. Shaving Ryan's Privates was definitely one, and more recently in The Curious Case Of Benjamin's Butt.

[lucimay]

Haha!

You should write film reviews professionally. Honestly.

it was nearly 3 am! whaddaya expect?!

you know why i watched this movie mostly? because i love denzel.
i'll pretty much watch him do anything. and i liked the scene at the
beginning where he's listening to his ipod and al green is singin
"how can you mend a broken heart". that was cool and raised my
expectations a bit.

[Tjol]

a bit trite. some decent cinematography but nothing really stand out.
like, i can't say "oh remember that shot of blah blah blah" or "that longass blah blah pan was blah blah blah" but not bad. i suppose it prolly looked better on a big screen but seemed like an awful lot of surrous tight in close ups.
the SF images were sorta fakey lookin. when i realized where they were headed i thought ohhh goodey! but that little "rowing toward god" *scene just looked totally fakey to me.

i'd been told there was a twist at the end. pft. not much of one if you ast me. could see it comin a mile away! NO PUN INTENDED!!! muahahahah!

and i'm sorry, the final voice over was...well...not even meh.
reminded me of how disappointed i was at the end of freakin
Saving Private Whatshisname... like.. i had to endure all that
bloodshed for this loada tell-me-i-was-worth-it type hooey. bah.
call me a cynic. it was waaaaay over sap-sauce.

(don't sugar-coat it luci, tell us how you really feel)


*reference to anne sexton poem "the awful rowing toward god"

I can't tell if the movie required less empty space, or more of it. My impression after the movie that it was too long, but I can see things that might have worked better if the movie was longer too.

A montage of Eli's prior experiences over the thiry some odd years during the credits (hey, the movie borrowed from so many other things, why not borrow from Snyder's credits at the beginning of his Dawn of the Dead remake?) might have done a little bit better of a job making the main character play better as a stoic hero.

The action seems to come in very quick spurts, although it was interesting when it happened, it didn't last long. The dialogue was the only spot that really fell down in the movie in my opinion...which is a shame considering that they had Washington and Oldman (and Waits for that matter), the dialogue portions could've been a lot more powerful... and instead were extremely subtle.

And I still really liked the black white and yellow shots.

[Tulizar]

[quote="Montresor"]I've heard that this is a remake of Zardoz, though they change much of the detail (such as the 'holy' book being the Bible instead of The Wizard of Oz). Is this so?[/quote

Zardoz was such a bizarre flick. I saw that years ago and totally loved it!

Two totally different stories though. Even though both might touch upon similar themes--search for truth, faith, crazed devotion, control and post apocalyptic worlds inhabited uneducated people-- I think the goals and compulsions of the main characters aren't even closely related.

The only other obvious similarity would be the plot twist that involves each stories' respective books

Spoiler

Connery's character discovers finds an old copy of the wiZARDofOZ and the King James Bible is written in braille--useless to Oldman's character.

[lucimay]

a bit trite. some decent cinematography but nothing really stand out.
like, i can't say "oh remember that shot of blah blah blah" or "that longass blah blah pan was blah blah blah" but not bad. i suppose it prolly looked better on a big screen but seemed like an awful lot of surrous tight in close ups.
the SF images were sorta fakey lookin. when i realized where they were headed i thought ohhh goodey! but that little "rowing toward god" *scene just looked totally fakey to me.

i'd been told there was a twist at the end. pft. not much of one if you ast me. could see it comin a mile away! NO PUN INTENDED!!! muahahahah!

and i'm sorry, the final voice over was...well...not even meh.
reminded me of how disappointed i was at the end of freakin
Saving Private Whatshisname... like.. i had to endure all that
bloodshed for this loada tell-me-i-was-worth-it type hooey. bah.
call me a cynic. it was waaaaay over sap-sauce.

(don't sugar-coat it luci, tell us how you really feel)


*reference to anne sexton poem "the awful rowing toward god"

I can't tell if the movie required less empty space, or more of it. My impression after the movie that it was too long, but I can see things that might have worked better if the movie was longer too.

A montage of Eli's prior experiences over the thiry some odd years during the credits (hey, the movie borrowed from so many other things, why not borrow from Snyder's credits at the beginning of his Dawn of the Dead remake?) might have done a little bit better of a job making the main character play better as a stoic hero.

The action seems to come in very quick spurts, although it was interesting when it happened, it didn't last long. The dialogue was the only spot that really fell down in the movie in my opinion...which is a shame considering that they had Washington and Oldman (and Waits for that matter), the dialogue portions could've been a lot more powerful... and instead were extremely subtle.

And I still really liked the black white and yellow shots.

well i'd have to say i think it required a better SCRIPT for one thing.
there were a couple of contradictions that bugged me.
was he "protected" or wasn't he?
how come it took him 30 years to walk to the west coast?
they sorta tried, in an annoyingly simplistic way, to explain that.
he "went where the path took him." what. ever.
that explains nothing, far as i'm concerned.

what was the point of this post-apocalyptic fiction?
was it a plug for christianity? faith (of any sort)?
a warning to society about the road its headed down?
a commentary on society? what? what was the point?

i just needed more from this film than it actually had to offer.
i'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. started when i was
in high school english and read Pat Frank's Alas Babylon.
plus being raised in an age where anyone, at any moment,
could press a button and screw us all to hell (SK's The Dead Zone)
or where some horrific gv'mnt experiment could get right outa
hand and kill a huge amt of the world's population (Richard Matheson's I Am Legend Frank Herbert'sThe White Plague, SK's The Stand, or Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang) etc so on and so forth.
i mean i've read a lot. not to mention the movies made of such books
or screenplays based on the ideas many of them generated. (The Quiet Earth comes to mind)
so yeah, maybe my expectations of such stories are a bit high considering how much i've read of them.

[Tjol]

I'd go with it being a comment on society and where it could go... to me there's a lot of Farenheit 451 in it. It wasn't that the story was illegible in my opinion, but that it wasn't as moving as it would seem to have to be. That could have been done with a little more depth, or simply by fleshing out the context a little more.

'You Can Ring My Bell' will never sound the same though, who would've known that it's the anthem of

Spoiler

cannibals

.

[sindatur]

I'd go with it being a comment on society and where it could go... to me there's a lot of Farenheit 451 in it. It wasn't that the story was illegible in my opinion, but that it wasn't as moving as it would seem to have to be. That could have been done with a little more depth, or simply by fleshing out the context a little more.

'You Can Ring My Bell' will never sound the same though, who would've known that it's the anthem of

Spoiler

cannibals

.

HEHE

Spoiler

Dinner Bell apparently?

[Cagliostro]

The beginning of the movie is very reminiscent of 'There Will Be Blood', which had me worrying...

What? 15 minutes with no dialogue, and consciously and awkwardly so?

I just finally saw There Will Be Blood yesterday, and I really don't see what the big deal is. Then again, I'm not a fan of the director anyway.

[Tjol]

The beginning of the movie is very reminiscent of 'There Will Be Blood', which had me worrying...

What? 15 minutes with no dialogue, and consciously and awkwardly so?

I just finally saw There Will Be Blood yesterday, and I really don't see what the big deal is. Then again, I'm not a fan of the director anyway.

I agree. I mean Day-Lewis portrayed an interesting character, but the whole story when it was said and done didn't seem to have much of a point. No Country for Old Men had more of a point, and I had to dig for that one... so much so that my interpretation of NCFOM is probably full of excrement.

If I remember right Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the same year right? I was more impressed by that movie than either 'No Country' or 'There Will Be Blood'.

[jacob Raver, sinTempter]

Awsome! I thought I was the only one that liked but not loved either No Country and There...Blood. Usually someone loves one and hates the other.

[Cagliostro]

If I remember right Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the same year right? I was more impressed by that movie than either 'No Country' or 'There Will Be Blood'.

If that's so, I should see that movie, as 'No Country' and 'There Will Be Blood' left me pretty cold. I guess the awards season comes along and has always had clunkers, but they've had more clunkers than usual within the last few years. And don't get me started on 'Babel.'

[Tjol]

If I remember right Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the same year right? I was more impressed by that movie than either 'No Country' or 'There Will Be Blood'.

If that's so, I should see that movie, as 'No Country' and 'There Will Be Blood' left me pretty cold. I guess the awards season comes along and has always had clunkers, but they've had more clunkers than usual within the last few years. And don't get me started on 'Babel.'

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly..in short synopsis, is a movie about a guy who suffers a stroke, and what he does with his days after the event. The beginning of the movie is interesting for trying to recreate his experience of the world in the first person, and in my opinion comes off credible... and the rest of the movie is in part his attempts to overcome his new disabilities, and in coming to terms with what he did in his life prior to having the seizure. The co-worker at the time who'd reccomended it put the movie best, it's a movie about disabilities that's more uplifting than being about gratuitous pity.

It doesn't have a profound message necessarily, but between the portrayal of his experiences from a first person point of view, and the general touching on the human condition overall made for a very touching and enjoyable movie.