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kalihaI’ve certainly had a themed week of film watching this week. This week’s theme: magic and magicians. (It must have been because of the Harry Potter phenomenon) 
First up The Prestige :
I read the novel this film is based on, probably about four months ago on the recommendation of my flistees and I really enjoyed it although it was a bit confusing if you weren’t paying attention all the time.
The film follows two magicians, Angier (Jackman) and Borden (Bale) who worked in the late Nineteenth Century and how a terrible accident broke their friendship, turned them into enemies and made them spend the rest of their professional lives trying to out do each other. In a nutshell.
Unfortunately, knowing how it happened in the book did spoil my enjoyment of the film because in my head I was going “but’s that’s not how it happened in the book” *pouts* But I can understand why they had to change things the way they did, after all the whole ‘split-personality’ thing that wasn’t revealed until the last pages wouldn’t have worked on-screen the way it did on film.
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman were quite excellent though. Bale’s Cock-er-knee accent was a bit scary though – it always had that slight edge of threat to it.
Nice to see Andy Serkis in real clothes (as opposed to a ping-pong ball covered gimp suit). I thought he was rather good as Tesla’s assistant. I am somewhat worried though by how David Bowie is slowing turning into Ricky Gervais (he had the look of Brent about him in this)
The various magic tricks were very well realised, and very similar to how I imagined them to look when I was reading the book. The Real Transported Man in particular looked really impressive with all it’s CGI lightning (it’s a shame that we still can’t animate really realistic looking CGI lightning)
But yes, I did enjoy it.
7.5/10
Next: The Illusionist
Vienna, late Eighteenth Century. An Illusionist, Eisenheim (Edward Norton) is impressing audiences across the city with his show. So much so that the Crown Prince of Austria rucks up one night with his fiancé in tow triggering a series of events that leads to a terrible incident (as these tings are wont to do)
I was seriously frightened by Ed Norton’s goatee of actual evil. Shocking. His Austrian accent was really good, so was Jessica Biel’s and Paul Giamatti was wonderful as always (as a sort of Austrian Columbo (as His Lordship referred to him). Rufus Sewell was less good but I don’t know if that was just down to the fact his moustache was very obviously pastede on yay.
Some ace little magic tricks and Norton’s sleight of hand looked real as opposed to being CGI’d in (like Naomi Watt’s in King Kong) And I want some highly trained butterflies like that too.
My enjoyment (and eyesight) was somewhat marred by this film due to the awful picture quality (and this was a disk from Lovefilm and everything). I don’t know if it was just a crap transfer or a duff disk or if it was the way it was actually filmed but the refresh rate was so low that everyone was flickery and when they moved little ghostly images were left behind them. It was awful – I had such a headache by the end of it.
Ignoring the crap picture:
8/10
A proper Harry Potter review to come later. I still need to think on it a bit.
First up The Prestige :
I read the novel this film is based on, probably about four months ago on the recommendation of my flistees and I really enjoyed it although it was a bit confusing if you weren’t paying attention all the time.
The film follows two magicians, Angier (Jackman) and Borden (Bale) who worked in the late Nineteenth Century and how a terrible accident broke their friendship, turned them into enemies and made them spend the rest of their professional lives trying to out do each other. In a nutshell.
Unfortunately, knowing how it happened in the book did spoil my enjoyment of the film because in my head I was going “but’s that’s not how it happened in the book” *pouts* But I can understand why they had to change things the way they did, after all the whole ‘split-personality’ thing that wasn’t revealed until the last pages wouldn’t have worked on-screen the way it did on film.
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman were quite excellent though. Bale’s Cock-er-knee accent was a bit scary though – it always had that slight edge of threat to it.
Nice to see Andy Serkis in real clothes (as opposed to a ping-pong ball covered gimp suit). I thought he was rather good as Tesla’s assistant. I am somewhat worried though by how David Bowie is slowing turning into Ricky Gervais (he had the look of Brent about him in this)
The various magic tricks were very well realised, and very similar to how I imagined them to look when I was reading the book. The Real Transported Man in particular looked really impressive with all it’s CGI lightning (it’s a shame that we still can’t animate really realistic looking CGI lightning)
But yes, I did enjoy it.
7.5/10
Next: The Illusionist
Vienna, late Eighteenth Century. An Illusionist, Eisenheim (Edward Norton) is impressing audiences across the city with his show. So much so that the Crown Prince of Austria rucks up one night with his fiancé in tow triggering a series of events that leads to a terrible incident (as these tings are wont to do)
I was seriously frightened by Ed Norton’s goatee of actual evil. Shocking. His Austrian accent was really good, so was Jessica Biel’s and Paul Giamatti was wonderful as always (as a sort of Austrian Columbo (as His Lordship referred to him). Rufus Sewell was less good but I don’t know if that was just down to the fact his moustache was very obviously pastede on yay.
Some ace little magic tricks and Norton’s sleight of hand looked real as opposed to being CGI’d in (like Naomi Watt’s in King Kong) And I want some highly trained butterflies like that too.
My enjoyment (and eyesight) was somewhat marred by this film due to the awful picture quality (and this was a disk from Lovefilm and everything). I don’t know if it was just a crap transfer or a duff disk or if it was the way it was actually filmed but the refresh rate was so low that everyone was flickery and when they moved little ghostly images were left behind them. It was awful – I had such a headache by the end of it.
Ignoring the crap picture:
8/10
A proper Harry Potter review to come later. I still need to think on it a bit.
