THE WOMAN IN BLACK: A REVIEW
THE CHARACTERS
ARTHUR KIPPS - portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe. Kipps is a young lawyer and widower, someone who lost his wife. He has a four year old son named Joseph whom he loves dearly. He is solemn, and quiet. However, he seems to be more than willing to help try and save the townspeople's children from this deadly specter. Radcliffe does a wonderful job with this role of a young father and lawyer. However at times you can clearly see that Daniel is expressionless where there SHOULD be emotion. Lots of it. Even if you’re in shock something other than blank nothingness would work. You care about his character, and feel immensely sorry for his great loss. And you sort of understand that pain he is going through in trying to move on from the death of his wife.
JOSEPH KIPPS -
portrayed by Misha Handley. You can tell right away that for a four year old,
Arthur's son is quite sharp. Always noticing how sad his father is, when he
wants him to be happy. He's a sweet boy, very likable character right from the
start. Yet he is rather sick, and you can't help but feel a sense of foreboding
when it comes to just how long the boy will live.
Cube is largely considered the precursor to the Saw films. It's about a group of people who wake up in a cube shaped room with tunnels in all directions that lead to other cube shaped rooms with no idea how they got there. As it turns out some of the cube rooms have traps like acid, spike and razor wire, that are triggered by different things, like sound, motion, heat ect. But everyone wonders why they're there, what the cube are for, and why them? Well that's the million dollar question. As it is revealed kind of blatently later in the film, almost in an anime epiphony kind of way, the meaning for the cube is a kind of clever political message. The characters are not overly interesting but at least they're not boring, and the way it progresses with all the characters dealing with the situation the way they do, its a surprise, and a bit of a jar of character, to see which character eventually completely loses their shit.
Cube is one of those enjoyable thrillers with a very clever concept. Other films that fall in a similar mood and concept are The Game by David Fincher and to an extreme case Clockwork orange. The Game is about a CEO (Micheal Douglass) who signs up for 'a game' by a corporation recommended to him by his brother (Sean Penn) only afterward to find everything in his life has gone to hell and he runs into several situations where people seem to be trying to kill him. It's a great creepy concept, however after the regular rhythm of twists in the story, near the end it get to where things don't shock you anymore.
So this book is a part of a three part series about the post zombie apocalyptic world preceding, I'm assuming, about a hundred years. Our main character is Mary, a teenager of unknown age, who has grown up in a remote village surrounded by a two-layer chain link fence to fend off the zombies.
When I first picked up the book I loved how Gothic and creepy the title is. I also like how average the model is to portray our main protagonist. She's not all dolled up and giving us a seductive stare. She seems to be contemplating her situation and her dark waving hair adds to the Gothic tone.
I read the reviews on the back to see what other authors thought of the book, since there wasn't a plot summary to be found. Scott Westerfeld, author of such works as Peeps and Extras, had this to say "a post-apocalyptic romance of the first order..." So I was expecting a romance. I read the book, though I did enjoy it, it's actually not a romance. Don't let that review fool you, the romance is only a subplot. I'm not saying Westerfeld is stupid, I have never read his works so he could be a well written author for all I know. I guess he enjoyed the romance in the story the most.
As I said, it's not a love story. It's more of a survival-thriller with well written action scenes. What bugged me the most was some of the characters and their interactions were not written very well. For example, there's a scene where the main character's best friend becomes uncharacteristically angry almost to the point of insanity. This is supposed to be a some-what intense scene and is supposed to shock the audience that this side of the character exists. But the problem is this is the longest scene of dialogue with the character. For all we know she's actually like this all the time. It's like that with a lot of the characters. I think it needed more exposition to introduce all the characters as they are instead of waiting for them to be dynamic when we can't see how they're being dynamic. The characters motivations are never fully explained either. Some are kind of explained, but then thrown to the side for us to just assume that the character is either indecisive or an asshole. Two characters especially just abandon and treat the main character like a social leper for no reason whatsoever.
...
One of the greatest entertainers in history, the kind of artist that only comes once in a generation, and defines that generation. To say that his quite literally life-long career was groundbreaking, is (also) the type of understatement that only comes once in a generation. I know this list will be very different from most people's; I even surprised myself a bit with the final ranking. You'll notice that several major songs are missing, but that doesn't mean I don't like them.
http://www.squidoo.com/top-10-michael-jackson
:)
If you love Minority report, then we do not share our tastes I can tell you that much.
I recently saw a list of top sci-fi films and Minority Report was included and I did a double take: because, while the film Minority Report was commercially successful, and many critics liked it, and while I wouldn't say it's the worst thing that I've ever seen: I have no respect for it.
I have no respect for it, and neither should you my friends because Minority Report has absolutely no respect for us.
...
Paprika is a slightly flawed, but challenging sci-fi anime thriller that explores the nature of dreams. It's an intelligent, crazy, and oddly charming movie that takes risk in order to create a unique experience.
Paprika is a slightly flawed, but challenging sci-fi anime thriller that explores the nature of dreams. It's an intelligent, crazy, and oddly charming movie that takes risk in order to create a unique experience.
