New Movies to DVD: 25 May 2010

So, the two new movies for the Memorial Day weekend were "Dear John" and "The Road." Is Memorial Day not enough of an important holiday to get some better movies to watch on that weekend? Does everyone have to go to the beach on Memorial Day? What if it rains and all the kids are off school? Is Hollywood supposing that everyone's actually going to hang with the families and sit around, talk and read books that day in the case? I thought Hollywood was shallower than that - in fact, I pretty much have run with that assumption ever since Avatar became the biggest movie of all time. If Hollywood is commercially-driven and shallow, wouldn't they put out bigger movies than these two? Like, a family-film... like... "Alice in Wonderland," which, by the way, comes out to DVD the day after Memorial Day.

This just seems retarded. But I guess Hollywood has their reasons. I have no idea what they are, but they must be something. Oh, and by the way, I'm going to post an Avatar review in a little bit, because I have to say my peace about this movie.

So, the two movies out are "Dear John" and "The Road." Now, I tried to watch "Dear John," but only made it through the first five minutes. Now remember, these reviews are highly critical, but I have to believe that if you can't catch my interest (as the audience) in the first five minutes, the film is on a downhill slope, and will probably get the fast-forward button for the majority of the film, just so I can see the ending. Now, I'm not saying I'm not going to watch "Letters to Juliet" because the trailer gives away the ENTIRE PLOT because it does, but I will probably fast-forward through most of it if it gets slow, which it undoubtedly does.

I guess I should talk about "Dear John." I like Channing Tatum and I like Amanda Seyfried. I think they hold promise as actors. But these fast adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels? You see, the root of the issue here are the books themselves. We need to consider if Sparks' books are considered good literature in a "theory of literature" sense of the phrase. You can argue all you want about this topic, and there can be multiple perspectives here.

But the answer is no.

So the movies are only going to be so good. They have the potential to be better than the books (like Twilight, which is still horrible, but I thought the movie was better than the book, and the book could not catch my attention when I gave it the benefit of the doubt and thoroughly read the first... 250 PAGES!), but this rarely happens with book to film adaptations. So the people who liked "Dear John" probably have read the book, are already in love with the characters (which is nothing to be ashamed of - I didn't say they weren't good books - they just aren't great literature in an academic sense), and so they get to see on film things they already like.

This is called a subjective bias to the film.

Obectively, if anyone were watching this film who hadn't read the book, then it just comes off as slow, somewhat depressing, but mostly slow. Now Sparks' is a good storyteller (again, this is not about great literature, which his books are not), so it has a plot that structurally works. But it's still slow and somewhat depressing.

Happy Memorial Day.

And then "The Road." Now this is a movie also based on a book (with the same title) by Cormac McCarthy. And that same author is the one who wrote "No Country for Old Men," of which the film adaptation was realy good. And Viggo Mortensen's in there. So maybe this movie is good. At least that's what you think to yourself. But this movie comes off to audiences the same way "Up in the Air" comes off. That it's a good movie, mostly everyone can say that, but that a bunch of people just really don't like it that much.

Talk about a depressing movie. Happy Memorial Day, again.

So on Memorial Day weekend, we get two movies that not all the family can enjoy, and even those groups that these films are marketed to will probably not enjoy all that much. So anyway, until next time...

Coming up: Avatar review and DVD releases 1 June 2010.

2010 Update

Hello everybody - sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been distracted by other important blogging and this blog has fallen to the wayside, but I really want to start posting on it again. So this is, I guess, my apology post in which I say that if you have been following this blog, it's about to get updated (finally) and I thank you for your patience.

And if you don't follow this blog, well, then, you can enjoy it from here on out with some updated information.