Lucky Number Slevin

Lucky Number Slevin is a movie that tricks the audience (spoilers to follow). This is important because there is definite distinction between tricking our protagonist - the character with whom the audience is usually supposed to sympathize with - and tricking the audience, whose very embodiment in the film is channeled (usually) through the protagonist. The difference between the two is that there is a clear violation of trust in tricking the audience not involved in tricking the protagonist.

The nature of trust stems from the principle of sympathy in films. We, the audience, need to embody our emotions in a character in which to understand the story. And so, we do that with a character who gains our sympathies. We want to feel things - and if we feel for a character, we root for them, and thus put our own emotional backing within that character. In Star Wars, Luke wants to become a Jedi; his parents die; Han Solo makes fun of him; and we emotionally back Luke - we want him to succeed. Luke becomes the embodiment of our sympathy and eventually so do the other cast of characters in the film, as well. In Lucky Number Slevin, the introduction is a bit more unconventional, but we are eventually made to believe that a guy named Slevin is our protagonist. And so, through his constant perils at the mishaps of mistaken identity at the hands of mafia henchmen, we are probably going to sympathize with him.

However, when characters do things that violate our trust - things that we disagree with - we (the audience) become unsympathetic to them. This is most common with villains, the "bad guys," of a story. Back in Star Wars, Darth Vader chokes the helpless rebel man who doesn't know where the Death Star plans are; he chokes again his own subordinates on the Death Star; he kills our dear friend, Obi-Wan. As a result, we don't like him - we are unsympathetic to him; and as a result, we don't want him to succeed. Rather, we want our protagonist, Luke, to succeed. In Lucky Number Slevin, we see the mob bosses and assassins of the film as unsympathetic in general, for they run contrary to Slevin's goals. They want Slevin dead, hurt, mangled, or otherwise. So we want Slevin to win, right?

Things become complicated when the film unveils it master trick, or "twist" (called a 'Kansas City Shuffle,' no doubt). Tricks are usually nice in movies - we like a good twist. But since Lucky Number Slevin tricks the audience rather than the protagonist, it fails to win our sympathies. When we find out that Slevin was really working with Mr. Goodkat, it meant that Slevin was lying to us the entire time. And because he was lying to us, that is a clear violation of our trust and we lose our sympathy with him as an audience. As a result, we don't feel anything in the twist - we just feel that we were lied to. We can't embody ourselves in him anymore as a character, because we never really knew him. In Star Wars, when it was revealed that Darth Vader was Luke's father, we felt that, because it wasn't revealed to the audience, per se - it was revealed to Luke. And we were right there with him, taking in all the joys and sorrows of his journey.

But Lucky Number Slevin violates this trust in tricking the audience, not the protagonist. We don't feel for the twist because Slevin wasn't tricked - we were. And the filmmakers knew that. Slevin knew everything that was going on, and we were led to believe that he was just as clueless as we were. We were rooting for him because we thought he was in peril. When we find out he was just deceiving us the whole time, we have no one to sympathize with who isn't killed, except for perhaps Lucy Liu's character. The one moment of redemption in the film is when she is saved, for she is one of the few characters kept alive who didn't know Slevin was a liar. When she dies, the movie becomes cold to us; when she is saved, there is some hope left.

Lucky Number Slevin is a movie that violates our trust, and in so doing, loses the audience. Movies are all about trust - we trust our characters, and we trust the filmmakers to provide a certain experience. When that trust is violated it breaks the suspension of disbelief and our sympathy. If we can't feel anything from a movie, then that movie failed to do what movies should do - and that is to tell us a story, not trick us for the sake of it.

Film Review: Moon

Moon (2009), by Duncan Jones, is a very complete film. It's not exactly the most thrilling, entertaining, or even thought-provoking film, but it succeeds on every level of what it tries to do, and for that, it's hard not to commend it. As I was watching the film, and approaching the ending (warning: Spoilers commencing in 5--), I was worried that it wouldn't complete the film. Thankfully, however, I was wrong.

What Moon successfully achieves during its last several minutes is the already over-analyzed and discussed term, "a character arc." Thanks to Wikipedia, I can tell you that a character arc is "the status of the character as it unfolds throughout the story, the storyline or series of episodes. Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events in the story, that viewpoint changes."

As an example, what is the character arc (for Batman) in The Dark Knight? In the first scene with Batman, he forcefully ties up his unwanted allies, the people of Gotham, along with his captured foes, reclining their offers of help. This sets up a character flaw: a mistrust towards others. When nearly all hope is lost and the Joker has Batman pinned down near the end of the film, he needs the people of Gotham in order to succeed. In order to succeed in his external goal (stop the Joker) he must overcome his flaw and complete his internal goal (trust in others). He needs to have faith in people--to believe that each boat will not flip the switch to destroy the other--and because of that Joker falters and Batman succeeds. Batman's character arc in The Dark Knight is to go from a lack of trust in people, to having faith in them instead.

Then what is the character arc in Moon? At the beginning of the film, Sam has one goal: to get back home after his 3 year stint. What is his flaw? His life is centered around him and his desires. Toward the end of the film, Sam² gets into the pod to escape the Moon. It was at this very moment I was worried that the film would carry me off into an unsatisfying ending, because Sam's lack of intervention would let the cycle of clones continue. It is at the exact point when Sam decides to jump back out, destroy the pylon tower, and care for someone other than himself, that he completes his character arc. That is the moment when the film becomes complete. He goes from being self-centered around his goals, to caring for others, even if they are the same as him.

Thanks to that transformation, I was satisfied with the film. Sam completes his character arc, the world changes thanks to his intervention, and some nice credits music rolls. The film reminded me of this point: It is not a sequence of events that results in a satisfying film--rather, it's an emotional transformation, a change, a payoff, that reveals a bit more of what it means to be human, a bit more of the humanity that lies within us all. It is not events that satisfy, but emotion.

Review :: Terminator: Salvation

Movies usually have goals, directions--things they want to accomplish. For example, District 9 wants to tell you a story about racial segregation in Johannesburg through a guy who turns into an alien. Up wants to tell you a story about love, loss, and dreams through a journey to South Africa. Terminator: Salvation, on the other hand, is just confused. It doesn't know what it wants to be, what it's doing, or what it's trying to say. All it really knows is it wants to have a lot of action scenes.

First of all, the movie is confused about who the main character is. The movie tries to swap between three characters, and in so doing, lacks any clear protagonist at all. We don't know whose story this is. First, we have Sam Worthington's character (A terminator?) in the introduction, who also appears to be the antagonist, flashing forward into the future, rising out of the flames like every confused Terminator before him. We also have Christian Bale, who mainly sits around yammering for people to obey his orders, probably due to his control-freak disorder brought upon by his prophetic status, making him one of the most unlikeable characters in the film. And lastly we have a young Kyle Reese, who mainly exists just to exist, otherwise John Connor couldn't have existed.

The film starts off with Sam Worthington, then goes to John Connor, and then back to Sam and Kyle Reese. Just when the film seems to be about John Connor, it goes back to Sam, and then to John, and vice-versa. The film is split between two protagonists, and eventually it seems that Connor is more of an antagonist, being the unlikeable chap that he is, and Worthington the protagonist (although this is reversed again in the end), due to him being the only real character with a direction. It's fine to swap between different characters and storylines, but we need to know who is the instigator of the action, who the hero is. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo is the bearer of the ring, the ultimate goal, and this allows us to understand the swap between the secondary characters. In Star Wars, Luke is the one who must master the force and destroy the death star, not Han Solo or Leia. We don't know who the main character is in Terminator: Salvation, and that just makes it all the more confusing and apathetically charged .

Additionally, the film is confused about what each character's goals are, a.k.a. desires. Movies are usually about characters trying to get something: Indy tries to get the Ark, Neo tries to save Morpheus, Batman tries to save Gotham. But in Terminator: Salvation, there is lack of this--a lack of want. Sam Worthington wakes up in the future, and we are just as confused as he is about what he is doing there. Is he a terminator? (Obviously, or how else would he get into the future?) But then what is he doing in the future and how did he come from the past (and what was he doing in the past)? He eventually runs into Kyle Reese, and it becomes his goal to save him, for some humanized reason. At least Kyle has some kind of goal--to find John Connor--but that is quickly interrupted by his capture. Lastly, the character of John Connor does have a goal: it is to successfully test the doomsday weapon of a radio signal. He does it. And succeeds; and then moves on.

The movie does look nice, and atmospheric, and most of the scenes are well-done (However, with the added niceness of each shot, it seems to become an annoying recurrence to have the camera pan over a character aimlessly staring, reflecting his lack of humanity, and then stepping down into the next scene). What the movie lacks is any sort of coherence, any unifying thread, any reason to keep watching it as a movie, not a connection of well-paced action sequences. Terminator: Salvation tries to grasp at what it thinks an entertaining film should be about, but in the end is just a poorly concocted sequences of events that suffices for a 'story.'

Film Review: "9"

Several days ago, I watched Shane Acker's feature length film "9" (based after the short of the same name). I wanted to like the film a lot, and I did; it is visually captivating, beautifully animated, and contains all the pieces of a powerful narrative. What I was disappointed with, however, was how it did not connect these pieces together in the best possible way in order to unfold the narrative to the audience.

The film starts out with the character, '9', being created by his master. This initial scene is fascinating to behold as it develops, because it handles the transmitting of information from the screen to the viewer much better than the rest of the film does.
The world of '9' is introduced through the awakening of the protagonist, who stumbles upon an open window and views this world he must discover. At this point we don't know who he is, why he is created, or why the world is in the shambles that it is in, and that is fine; in fact, it's much better that we don't know these things.

Information is best given out in controlled amounts, spatially placed for the viewer to consume at chosen intervals. At the beginning of 'Portal' we don't need to know that Glados killed everyone in the facility; we don't need to know that there were other test subjects who tried to escape; what we do need, however, is to be spoon fed just enough information (little bits of dialog slowly giving hints who and where you are, in Portal's case) so that we are hungry for the next bite--we don't need a gigantic mouthful of information that we can barely swallow in one gulp. Stories do not need to reveal everything at once; the viewer can be satisfied without knowing huge chunks of information, and the introduction of '9' does this quite admirably.

Immediately, '9' is a somewhat likable character; his lack of a voice causes the audience to sympathize with him--perhaps if they kept him voiceless for a longer period of time the addition of a voice would carry more weight with it. Shortly after he meets '2,' however, the story starts to sway from its promising beginnings.


One reason that the story loses its weight is by faulty motivations through its characters. When the character '2' is kidnapped, '9' agreeably wants to chase after him. At this point it's a bit hard to sustain a suspension of disbelief since '9' just woke up in this world, has no emotional attachments whatsoever, and seems to spontaneously bond just enough with the character '5' to convince him to disobey his leader's--for who knows how many years--orders just at the simple whim of his new buddy and pal whom he barely even knows, our protagonist, '9.'
When the characters' motivations become unbelievable, it causes a lack of sympathy, because the audience can no longer put themselves into the shoes of a character who does something unreasonable. What would have made this choice more believable for the audience is if they were introduced to the rag dolls' daily routine in their sanctuary. Instead, the audience is thrust to this new place for a brief moment to have '9' suddenly state, 'let's leave and advance the plot because we must save time on animation costs!' so they do that instead and it's much less believable. If the film spent more time with its characters, this would create more realistic motivations that the audience can sympathize with.

What I would have liked with the film is:
a) More character moments - as the director stated, the audience needed to care for the characters more, and to do that we need to spend more time with them in just simple, humanistic ways. One thing they could have done was have '8' pull out the magnet earlier in the film, get chastised by '1' for doing so on duty, and then the audience would wonder what 'the deal' was. Little quirks and mannerisms like that make characters more believable and real, so more of that would have been nice.

b) Exploiting the nature of the tiny rag dolls more - these rag dolls exist in a miniaturized version of our blown up (literally and figuratively) world. I would have enjoyed to see how their size played more of a function in interacting with their larger human counterparts.
c) Feeling of hope and desperation - this is something that the short film did extremely well: it portrayed a sincere and utter hope of laying everything on the line for one last chance at redemption after every other character had been killed by this beast. '9' only had one opportunity to destroy the beast, and it created some increasingly tense drama that is not present in the feature film, only because '9' is never put in the same desperation in the full length version.
d) More solid story goals - currently, the story goals of the film go something like this: '9' must explore this world; he wakes up in the sanctuary and now must save '2' by destroying the beast; he does this but awakens the master beast and now must do research to defeat it; somewhere along the line he decides to go back and destroy the master beast; he figures out he needs to grab something off the master beast before they kill it, and then does so. This sequence of goals sort of works, but it's quite hard to follow and to relate to the characters as they pursue each ensuing decision. I think the story would benefit a lot more from a restructure that would simplify each goal to a couple of basic concepts and then exploit those concepts to their fullest potential. For example, off the top of my head: '9' wakes up and goes back to sanctuary; sanctuary is destroyed and some get kidnapped leaving '9' to choose sides about whether to hide or go after the kidnapped people (this would give him more of an incentive since the stakes are now higher); the beast lets '9' kill him but the trade-off is somehow '9' activating the master bot; then '9' must find the missing members to set up a final trap to destroy the master bot. That's just one simple example.

All in all, '9' is a great film to look at, but could be improved in the story department. It was interesting to hear how the director himself said that they needed much more time than the given 6 months of pre-production to lay out the story, because once the story is set, animation is expensive, and you can't throw away money out the window. It just goes to show that story--is everything. You can have great visuals, great characters, and a great setting, but unless the viewer is catapulted on one long emotional, narrative ride, it can all be for naught.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor", a two-hour mini-movie as an extension of the series, is quite simply, a history lesson. History lessons--although this is a large generalization--are boring. Assuming you know history, history lessons are not exciting, tension-filled, or suspenseful because they contain an outcome already known by the audience.

When the audience watches the attack on the Battlestar Pegasus in the opening scenes of "Razor", they are not fearful or worried about the characters because they know the characters will be "okay" in the end. The characters aren't going to die here, they aren't going to kill "so-and-so" because the audience has a window into the future that tells them who is going to live and who is going to die. This creates a lack of sympathy with the protagonists because the audience can't worry about the characters, they can't put themselves in their shoes. Instead, they are watching them from a distance, through a history book. (This was also the same problem I had with LOST season 4 and its use of flashforwards.)

So what's the point of creating a history lesson, then? In this case it would be to explore the differences in morality and ethics between the crews of the Galactica and the Pegasus. What makes this pointless, however, is that we already know these things from the 3 episode arc in Season 2. All "Razor" does is put a face to the stories we have already heard before.
For example, in Season 2, Colonel Tigh asks the Pegasus colonel about how the Pegasus survived so many months in deep space. The Pegasus colonel, drunk and intoxicated, tells Tigh about how the Pegasus crew killed civilians and stole their supplies.
This was a great bit of exposition. It worked because this short snippet of dialog in itself provided all the information we needed to know that the Pegasus and its crew were ruthless in their survival. By leaving out certain details, the show lets the audience ponder what actually happened and speculate on the true nature of the Pegasus' past.

Now, "Razor" comes along and what does it have to add to this story? Nothing, actually. It just creates a visual record to reinforce exactly what the Pegasus colonel said in season 2. Entire scenes are devoted to restating what we already knew, which makes them pointless. The show is not making any new point, or revealing any details we did not already know. Instead, the show makes us sit through dozens of minutes of exposition in order to arrive at the same conclusion which was reached in a simple line of dialog in season 2. Effective? No, just boring, and redundant.

The other thing that "Razor" suffers from is being a one-dimensional story. The entire film is centered around the idea that Pegasus had to dehumanize themselves in order to save mankind. This is a fine idea, and it was already explored in season 2, but it is not substantial enough to devote an entire two hours of film to it.
One thing that makes the new series of Battlestar Galactica so successful is that it explores every aspect of its concept of the human race on the run. It is not concentrated on just the military element of the escape. Instead, the show also explores the maintenance crew's lives, politics, a traitor scientist, enemy Cylons, personal relationships, and more. Razor only focuses on the military aspect of the show, and because of this is not as "multi-layered" or interesting as the show it attempts to emulate.

If there's one thing you can say about Battlestar Galactica: Razor, I would say that it shows that portraying the entire backstory of a character is unnecessary. You don't need to visually communicate a whole character's history in order to reveal his or her qualities. Simple lines of dialog suffice just as well. Creating entire scenes to just reinforce one point about a character is a waste of the audience's time and attention span when there are much more efficient and quicker ways to relate the same idea to the audience.

Patton

After finishing the movie "Patton," I thought to myself, what makes this movie work? What keeps the viewer, interested, entertained, an intrigued (hopefully) for nearly 3 hours (170 minutes), especially when most of the scenes center around one character?

There are a lot of qualities I admire about the film. One of them is the epic scale, authenticity, and brutality of the battle scenes. When I watch this film I get nostalgic for a time when tanks and fights weren't rendered from afar so as to hide their superficial quality, which is so present in this day and age. Instead, we get an epic scope of how large these battles truly were. The film moves between every side, angle, and perspective of the battles, from the tanks, soldiers, and commanders. This puts the viewer in a position where the battles are real, and not so 'cosmetic' in appearance. However, despite these positive qualities, the battles are not primarily the central factor that makes the film work.

The film works because it centers around a particular type of character--one that has inner conflicts. Patton is a man who is torn between two worlds: contemporary vs. historical; authoritative vs. compassionate; disciplined vs. subordinate; brutal vs. polite; glorified vs. sacrificial. What the film then does is sequentially explore each aspect of his character through the various situations he is put in. Every new scene in the film literally has two outcomes: He can either go with his often contrary nature (and face the consequences), or against it (which is often what is required of him). Because of this, each scene in itself is a battle in which the viewer must ask: Which decision Patton is going to make?

As a biographical film, it truly works in this respect. The very opening shot of the film presents Patton in a speech to his troops, illustrating his character, ideals, and mannerisms. Through the backdrop of World War II, the film places Patton in situation after situation examining his character. Is Patton going to sacrifice his glory and protect his fellow general's flank, or is he going to leave them behind and race to the city first? Is he going to slap an insubordinate soldier who is afraid to perform his duty, or is he going to show him compassion in his failure? Is he going to accept the Russian victory and subsequent friendship, or deny it entirely at the expense of foreign diplomacy? The film puts all these questions and more to light through all the different environments Patton is placed in.

World War II also works as a significant plot device to further explore Patton's character. The very fact that we know that World War II is approaching an end puts Patton on a time-constraint to change his ways (implausibly, I might add) or remain the same as before. Moreover, the film uses the characters of Rommel, Bradley, and Montgomery to contrast with Patton. Rommel presents a formidable villain--if you could call him that--to Patton, and this sets up a necessary conflict and goal to which Patton must aspire. Bradley contrasts with Patton in the sense of glory vs. sacrifice, in which Bradley does what is best for his men, and Patton pursues glory for himself. Montgomery presents a similar situation which also extends into Patton's diplomatic character; will Patton sacrifice his bitter relationship, or accept an unwieldy friendship? Through the contrast with these characters, Patton's own qualities are heightened in that respect.

All in all, "Patton" is an admirable film for what it succeeds in doing so well. It paints a picture of an iconic, conflicted hero, all through the midst of an inspiring history lesson of World War II.

Army of Shadows in 5 Sentences

Note: This is about the film, not the French Resistance.

A quiet-mannered man in his mid 40s--who in fact happens to be the chief of the French resistance--is taken to a German prison camp and eventually escapes.

He goes back to his resistance's headquarters and executes one of his own men (a traitor, of course).

He, along with his other resistance members, continue to frolic about recruiting other people, get help from the British, and live in fear--all through long, painful extended shots exhibiting mundane and everyday behavior, most notably long, drawn-out sequences of walking or performances of ordinary tasks such as putting on a coat in the slowest way possible.

Eventually, they get captured several times, escape several more times, and then kill their own members several more times.

By the end of the film, they accomplished nothing, got arrested a lot, endangered the lives of everyone around them, killed their own members, and then all died shortly after.

THE END

Seven Pounds

Seven Pounds is a movie that has one idea, and tries to stretch it into a two-hour length movie and does so unsuccessfully.

From the immediate start the movie poses a question that controls the entire experience of the movie: Why does this man want to commit suicide?
If you are a competent viewer with a brain, you can arrive at the correct conclusion after 30-40 minutes as Will Smith continually speaks to people in need of organs; we, as the audience, receive car-crash and life-debilitating flashbacks; and then Will Smith wraps up any notion of doubt by talking about killer Jelly Fish and signing organ donor papers--and he does all of this about 40 minutes in about a 2 hour movie. This leaves the remainder of the time just pointlessly re-establishing Will Smith's intentions. Everything he does thereafter has already been stated before in the movie. The whole second half is basically a load of redundancy and boringness. Yes, he cleans and fixes some kind of machine because he's an engineer and he wants to do nice things for people. Yes, he gives a poor lady a house because he's abandoning his former life. Yes, he is doing all these things, but we already know that because it was established priorly in a different and perhaps more effective manner.

The movie goes on and on and on, seeming to meander around in pointlessness as we are approaching the ever nearing conclusion which was already solidified in the back of viewer's heads an hour ago. The only thing that film attempts to do in the second half is establish a romantic subplot which nulls viewers to sleep. I would attribute this boringness to a lack of any conflict in the story--but I am not a professional screenwriter--and since the mystery has already been solved, there is nothing else to watch for. As such, the romantic subplot does not provide much of a context in order to improve the plot.

This movie was interesting at the beginning, but once the mystery is solved, there is nothing else there. The IDEA itself is not bad--it's just not fit to be a 2 hour length film. It would work MUCH better as a 20 minute-or-so short film of the like, where they cut out all the redundancies, chop up all the meandering dialog, and give the basic plot in a much more tight execution.

Seven Pounds, as it stands, has a good idea, but its execution cannot support it for a full two hours.

The Prestige

The Prestige (2006) was made by Christopher Nolan after Memento (2000) and Batman Begins (2005), but prior to the Dark Knight (2008). The Prestige, like The Dark Knight, is an excellent example of storytelling in film, no less due to a grasp on film and literary techniques.

Starting off from the beginning, the opening shot once again represents the idea of the film in the scattered field of top hats. It presents a moral dilemma in the nature of a magic trick and what lengths a magician will go to to deceive an audience. This is further explained through Michael Caine's ever-so-eloquent dialog about the 3-Act structure for a magic act. The Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige, which can be said to represent the movie's structure up until the very end.

Right from the introduction, which is the inciting incident, thankfully, you have three key things in The Prestige that Nolan also did in the Dark Knight: conflict, things go wrong, and mystery. First you have the conflict between Bale and Jackman as Bale rushes on the stage and watches Jackman drown. Bale appears to make no attempt to save Jackman, which works to establish conflict between the two characters--one wishes the other to die, or at least it appears so. Without this conflict, a story about an obsessed magician wouldn't be very fulfilling. Second, things go wrong in the inciting incident. It appears that Jackman fell into the wrong tank, or even a tank to begin with, and in so doing altered the correct state of affairs. A lesson learned from The Dark Knight: Everything going according to plan = BORING. Lastly, the inciting incident also has mystery--the audience needs a question that must be answered, otherwise there won't be an incentive to keep watching. Why does Bale kill Jackman, through inaction, no less? What is this giant Tesla machine that Jackman is using? What fueled Bale to let Jackman die? Questions also existed in the Dark Knight, except to a lesser degree, because Jokers could rob banks for any standard reason. In essence, however, both the Dark Knight and The Prestige have excellent inciting incidents that provide a strong foundation for each respective film.

The Prestige is told through a non-linear, flashback structure, starting the film at the ending, and then reverting back to the beginning. I usually loathe structures like this because they suspend the real narrative at hand and keep you restrained from further plot development. However--of course--I actually loved this in The Prestige, because it does it a bit differently. The film is set up so that there are three narratives going on at the same time: The End narrative (Christian Bale's jail cell), The Beginning narrative (Starting with the feud and the first murder), and the Middle narrative (Tesla storyline). Furthermore, each narrative has its own plot problems and goals for each character to achieve: Christian Bale must escape prison, Hugh Jackman must be a better magician than Bale, and Jackman must get the machine from Tesla. This works much better than those boring flashback story structures where the flashback is just exposition and buildup until the story problem which was revealed at the present (Iron Man--har har). By having three narratives, the stories intertwine and strengthen each other better than a linear narrative could. The non-linear aspect sets up key questions, such as: why did Jackman go to find Tesla? How and why did Bale murder Jackman? This non-linear narrative structures the story in a way that benefits it more than a linear narrative could.

The editing in The Prestige is also very well done. Key sequences are built up suspensefully by swapping shots between the incident itself, and the aftermath of the incident. When Jackman goes to Bale's magic show, the film does not portray this in a linear sequence with the show, and then Jackman's thoughts afterward. Instead, the film swaps in between what Jackman thought of the show afterward while reverting to the present, building up suspense toward the prestige (har har) in Bale's current magic trick. Doing this places a higher value on the scene and the suspense level. Nolan--or his editing man for that matter--also did this in The Dark Knight, most notably in the scene where Joker crashes Wayne Manor while simultaneously murdering the judge and the chief of police. This swap editing technique used in both The Prestige and The Dark Knight is an excellent trick to build up suspense.

So how does The Prestige compare to The Dark Knight and Nolan's other films? I would say that each film has its own distinct theme, and therefore must be judged separately for that. Each film endeavors to encapsulate its own ideas, morals, and themes, and should not be judged for not doing what the other films did do.
Memento is a film about memory--leading to death, revenge, trickery, deceit, obsession.
Batman Begins is a film about fear--leading to death, revenge, trickery, deceit, obsession.
The Prestige is a film about trickery--leading to death, revenge, trickery, deceit, obsession.
The Dark Knight is a movie about suspense--leading to death, revenge, trickery, deceit, obsession.

Each film has its own specific theme, but uses that as a foundation to catapult itself into its own unique story with its own twists and turns. The Prestige is no exception, and uses trickery as its method for success.

Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace is a movie about two things: chases, and over-editing.
It seems like the makers wanted to make a movie about a guy getting chased, and/or chasing a character, over, and over, and over. The movie starts off with a car chase in a tunnel at the side of a body of water, and then the chase ends when Bond gets back to his lair. Then, the film only gives us about 10 minutes of exposition in a brief interrogation scene before throwing us into a foot chase across Spain or whatever random European country Bond is in now. After this lengthy foot chase is over, we are told through an over-extensive use of technology, marked bills, laundering money, plot elements, and blah blah exposition, that Bond must now go to another random European country to find another random bad guy (the Bourne similarities are already lining up). In this new country, Bond enters the bad guy's hotel room and fights him off in classic Bourne style with a pen and a q-tip before walking outside and hap-hazardly coming upon the movie's female lead. This scene eventually leads Bond to get on a motorcyle and start a motorcycle chase of the female's car. Just when that finishes, we get some more exposition about needlessly-confusing events that priorly occurred, and then the female character's alignment gets thrown off to the "good" side for convenient plot reasons. Bond proceeds to chase after the newly good female character on his motorcycle, only to jump off his motorcycle onto a boat, whereupon a boat chase starts. After this, it appears that the movie has exhausted every form of transportation usable for chase sequences when it once again proves you wrong. Bond eventually gets on an airplane in the middle of the desert in order to start an airplane chase with his fellow enemy airplanes, thus giving this movie the honor of containing the most varied chase sequences ever.

The second item that the movie does exceedingly--not well--(imitating the Bourne Supremacy in the process) is over-edit every single shot and action sequence to the point where you start to lose sense of what is going on. Straight from the get-go you get a The Dark Knight-esque zooming in camera technique, but Quantum interrupts this serenely panning camera by repeatedly chopping in flashing splits of different shots. Even in every action scene in the movie, it constantly switches the camera angle every time a different action is preformed. Villain lifts up his arm to stab Bond? Switch the camera angle. Bond turns his head to dodge? Switch camera angle. It's annoying to have to reorient yourself every split second in an action scene, because then you lose the idea of what's going on. I'm pretty sure it's quite possible to pull off an exciting and daring action sequence without changing the camera angle every 0.8 seconds.

That being said, is it a bad movie? No, not really, but it's not a very good movie either. The entire movie is just a concoction of action and/or chase sequences in a variety of European countries fueled by some arbitrary plot reasons primarily focused on revenge. After all is said and done, there is not much more to be talked about.

Worth Watching? If you want action, but not story.

The Dark Knight in Nine Acts

Revised Jan 5/09

Spoilers follow.

The Dark Knight is a movie with many themes, morals, and meanings. However, this analysis is mainly focused on the plot through the Nine Act Story Structure.

A brief description of the Nine Act Story Structure:
0) All the background information and setting: the things that happen before the story
1) Initial Shot: establishes the premise.
2) Inciting Incident: starts the story.
3) Character introductions: the good guys and the bad guys.
4) Pursuit of first goal: go after the initial goal.
5) Realization of wrong goal: the story twists and turns
6) Pursuit of correct goal: going for the new goal.
7) Climax at resolution: something changes to reach the correct goal.
8) Conclusion: ties up the story.

The Nine Act Story Structure is considered the basis for many blockbuster movies and well-written screenplays. Using this, here is a brief analysis of The Dark Knight.

1. Opening Shot -- Setting/Premise
The opening shot in The Dark Knight serves two purposes: it provides the setting of the film (Gotham in its heavily dense and populated city) and the whole premise of the film (to keep the viewer guessing what will happen next, or "Things not going according to plan"). The setting is self-explanatory, and that is what the opening shot is supposed to do in terms of the Nine-Act structure. The premise however, is a little more tricky. The camera starts off by moving in at a high speed, setting the story in motion. After the inciting incident (Act 2 -- Intro), the story never stops until it reaches its conclusion. When the camera zooms in closer to the central building, we are given the entire idea of the movie: Something bad is going to happen--but we don't know where, when, or how, as the window finally explodes and reveals who is inside, which leads into Act 2, the Intro. This idea of "Something is always about to happen" permeates the movie, and that is what makes it so suspenseful, paired with the chilling and tension-filled soundtrack, which always escalates before every major incident.
2. Intro -- Things Go Wrong, Fast
The first scene (after the opening shot of a movie) should be the inciting incident, not a load of backstory, boring monologues, character introductions, or history lessons. This should be the event that sets the story in motion and lets the rest of the movie try to fix it. The audience must have the problem of the story to know what the goal is before letting the movie drag them off into nothingness. The Dark Knight does that here with the Bank Heist. This scene sets off a chain reaction which leads to the first goal, the second goal, and so on until we reach the conclusion of the movie. In this scene there is the acquisition of the mafia's money from the bank, which eventually leads to Batman's involvement in the matter and the first goal of the story. Things also catch us off-guard and go wrong in this scene (such as the killing of each heist member), and these things make the story interesting. If everything went according to plan (a theme central in the movie), this scene would be much less effective. However, the introduction also serves a secondary purpose in The Dark Knight to introduce the character of the Joker.
Here, we get background information about the Joker through dialog, not by itself, mind you--but as an extra through the already occurring action. The audience is told how the Joker acts, what he does, and everything he stands for until his reveal towards the end of the scene. By doing this, the movie saves the audience the boringness of having a 'proper' introduction and instead introduces the Joker through the action sequences. By introducing the Joker early, the movie makes the viewers aware of the character's potential actions for every scene he is subsequently in, and thus those scenes are made much more intense.
3. Introducing The Main Players
This act is where all the main characters are properly introduced, so we understand their relationships to each other, who they are, what they want to do, and why they want to do it. Immediately after the heist we are first given the city's view on Batman, his relationship to the criminals, and how he has eluded the police's capture for so long. This leads into a fight scene where Batman reinforces his stand on the city and his new relationship to the criminals and citizens there. The scene also contains has the "Mad dogs"--another theme in the movie--who represent the Joker, and are unleashed by the unsuspecting mob. The real mad dogs in this scene promptly attack Batman and thus scar him, which is what the Joker will do later in the film. The scarring also works as character sympathization, so that the audience can root for the protagonist. Afterwards, Bruce Wayne goes back into his underground lair to stitch himself up (The conversation during this sequence being further informative of story themes), and this leads into the next character introductions: that of Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes.
The courtroom scene is mainly focused around Harvey, who is shown in his poise to be a crusader for good, and unafraid of the mob, even when they try to kill him. On top of that, we are also reintroduced to Lt. Gordon in his meeting with Harvey Dent (after a brief scene with Batman and Gordon) and led into the first goal of the movie: to stop the mafia's flow of money by seizing their funds from the city's banks. Finally, we are given the Joker's new relationship to the mafia in his first 'proper' introduction, and we are told of Bruce Wayne's new relationship to Harvey Dent in the next restaurant scene. The character introductions in these scenes establish each character's motives and outlooks. Over the course of the movie, these characters are changed from who they who are initially by the actions of the Joker. The audience must be clear who the original characters are, so that the audience can understand who they transform into as the story goes on.
4. Pursuit of 1st Goal -- Stopping the Mafia's flow of Money
Act four is where the characters commit to the first problem.
Stories are all about solving problems. Things go wrong, and the protagonists have to fix them. Antagonists, on the other hand, try to stop the protagonists, and this conflict between good and evil makes up the chunk of any good story.
The first goal of in the Nine-Act Structure has the main players committing to the initial problem, created by the inciting incident (Act 2). We have two opposing forces here that provide the conflict (a necessary ingredient for any story) in the movie: Joker, whose goal is to kill the Batman by working with the desperate mob; and Batman, who continues to try and put the mob out of business by going to Hong Kong and stopping the flow of money after it eluded the police in Gotham.
Batman arrives in Hong Kong with the plan to arrest and capture the mafia accountant--only after things did not go according to plan with the Bank seizures. This first goal was brought upon by the Joker's initial bank heist, and this idea of two forces of good and evil bouncing back upon each other will continue throughout the movie and escalate each stage until the final conclusion. Every subsequent action that either the Joker or Batman preforms from this point on will have an equal repercussion from the other side. This bouncing back and forth is what will drive the plot continually, over, and over. The first goal provides the primary incentive for the audience to commit to the film.
5. Pursuit of Wrong Goal -- Realization
Act five is where the main characters realize that they were pursuing wrong goal and instead go after the new goal.
Movies today--for the most part--do not survive on One-Goal screenplays. A One-Goal screenplay means you start out with the initial goal of "saving the princess" and then at the end of the story the hero "saves the princess" and the story ends.

Things going according to plan = boring.

Screenwriters realized this and they adapted to include a double-goal in many successful movies. This is because the viewers need to be tricked in a story; they need to be surprised and carried off in an unexpected direction for that story to be successful. The initial goal of a story will not be the final goal.

The new goal is only brought about after the first goal is realized to be the wrong one. Batman succeeds in his capturing of the Mafia accountant, but instead this leads into the Joker's public announcement, and his intent to introduce mayhem and anarchy in Gotham. Through the previous introduction of the Joker, the viewers know what the consequences are if Batman does not stop him as the new second goal. If the audience was just given the "capture of the Joker" as the initial goal from the beginning of the movie, the story would be made much less effective and feel needlessly protracted. Instead, the Joker is introduced as the prime goal later in the movie.
6. Pursuit of 2nd Goal -- Attempt to Capture of the Joker
In the protagonists' pursuit of the second goal, things are usually at their lowest in terms of moral. The city is in turmoil over the Joker's terrorism and assassinations, and the Joker continues to evade police (The [k]night is darkest before the dawn). This act in the Dark Knight subsequently starts when Batman and Harvey Dent commit to capturing the Joker (the press conference scene). The stakes are at their highest, and failure is more costly than ever. This act contains much of the conflict in the film, and thus provides much of the suspense and action. Throughout this act, Batman succeeds and fails in capturing the Joker (things didn't go according to plan!), and subsequently reaches the final goal, but not without cost.
7. Completion of 2nd Goal -- Victory at a Price
For the second goal, victory always comes at a price--something changes because of it. In the final act it is made apparent that the Joker's true intent is to change people from who they are (to dethrone Gotham's 'White Knight'), and the Joker does this through introducing anarchy, chaos, and mayhem. Batman nearly breaks his one rule by almost killing the Joker in the final scene, but instead saves him from his own demise. Harvey Dent fails to resist the Joker and lets himself fall to what he believes is a chance fate, and thus demoralizes himself. He eventually lets chance--or even more, the illusion of chance--decide his fate. This entire point of character adaptation is boiled up in an allegory on terrorism by showing what Batman must do to stop a madman and prevent subsequent deaths. Batman must sacrifice the freedom of the city in order to stop the Joker.
In the end, the whole movie builds up and ends on the theme of inherent good and evil. Will people destroy themselves when put under the pressure and anarchy of villainy, or will they prevail and hold fast to what they believe is right? When the Joker realizes that he cannot dethrone society into anarchy and change people into what they are not, that is when the movie reaches its climax; Batman apprehends the Joker, and the second goal is achieved. The plot reaches its conclusion; the theme of the story is made; the story draws close to an end.
8. Conclusion -- Wrap up the Loose Ends
Act eight, while wrapping everything up, also contains a short epilogue in Harvey Dent's character. We are given the final themes of the movie regarding what it must mean for one to tackle a psychopathic anarchist, and how the world will view the one who battled him afterward. These themes lie along the lines of heroes, lies, and what it means to live in a society of good and evil. Batman is what Gotham needs: not a hero, but The Dark Knight.

Obi Wan (Digital Painting)

Digital Painting Attempt #02.
Rules:
1 Layer + Background
No Tracing, No Color Swapping
No Photoshop Effects, No Transparency (100% opacity brushes)
No Manipulation of image (Brushes Only)
5-10 MIN: My main plan is to work from large forms and break them down smaller and smaller until I reach the final image. I want to start out with large brushes, and only several colors, no more. I attempt to start out with loose shapes to Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy (Thanks, Miss Frizzle)! I currently have three colors here: Skin, Robe, and Dark Robe.20 MIN: I realize that the round brush in Photoshop is not very good. I switch to a somewhat horizontal brush that closer resembles that of a paintbrush. I go down slightly smaller in brusher size and I use more colors, but I still keep the palette manageable.
30 MIN: Now some real forms start to appear and it looks like a human, but not Obi-Wan yet; continuing with smaller brushes and more colors. This is the first real stage where I start to refine the shape from my messy beginnings.60 MIN: I get pickier about the palette and try to nail the basic forms down to the wire. It starts to resemble Obi-Wan. I must get the likeness and impression down here, before I go down and refine it, or else I am a goner.
100 MIN: This is where I start the process of refinement to break down the larger forms into smaller forms. It starts to look like Obi-Wan a lot more. I still must resist the notion of going into details, however. I also must be careful in my smaller work process not to destroy the basic forms. 150 MIN: Further refinement leads to a crisper image. Since I have the basic forms down now, its just a matter of more refinement (last time I use this word, I promise), cleaning up, and alteration to fix any mistakes. This is where it can get tedious.190 MIN: I add in a background. I'm getting slightly bored after three hours.
300 MIN (Final Image): Five hours later I break my rule to add a lightsaber with a glow effect on a separate layer (it wasn't worth it to paint the glow). That didn't feel like five hours. Luckily I am not a perfectionist anymore, or else I would be here for at least two more hours. I think I did alright for my second ever digital painting, but this is more like my first digital painting since my self-portrait doesn't really count. That was more like a digital mish-mash experiment.
The End!

Pixar Movies

Pixar Movies in Order of Their Horribleness (in descending fashion)

Cars - Boring, predictable, and trying too hard to be likable.
Monsters Inc - Too long, too many chase-sequences--although the idea was good.
A Bug's Life - A standard Pixar movie. Not bad at all, but doesn't enthrall you as much as others.
Toy Story - The beginning. The standard.
Toy Story 2 - More fun than Toy Story 1.
The Incredibles - Ripping off other people is okay as long as it's entertaining to a high degree.
Finding Nemo - Interesting concept that takes a long time to fully fulfill.
Ratatouille - An excellent film, except somehow feeling watered down to its basic premise.
Wall-E - Filled to the brim with interesting ideas, concepts, and storytelling devices. Beautiful movie just to visually experience. Gets slightly predictable, which only marginally hampers enjoyment.

The Departed vs. Infernal Affairs

The Departed (2006) was based on a Hong Kong movie entitled Infernal Affairs (2002). There are many similarities between the two, and many differences as well. The result is two differing takes on the same screenplay.

First off, the most glaring difference between the two movies is that The Departed is nearly fifty minutes longer. Many of these fifty minutes are devoted to character development (particularly at the beginning of the film) and a building tension up to the first scene where both sides of the war discover a mole on the other side. Infernal Affairs just jumps into this concept about ten minutes in, whereas The Departed allows the story to boil over for about forty-five minutes first--as far as I can remember--before kick-starting the plot. The result is that the same scene in The Departed has a greater impact, because you care about the characters more and you contemplate the potential outcomes that every little repercussion the characters make may have.

Second, the two movies go off about handling the plot devices slightly differently. Infernal Affairs makes it immediately clear who each mole is and what side they are on. The Departed instead uses a long dialog between many characters, and still after that you are not 100% sure of what is going on. Other differences in the plot include little clarifications on The Departed's behalf, such as the cops asking 'Why are we chasing Martin Sheen?' before actually doing it. Little things like this give the viewer a more concrete understanding of each scene before going into it. This allows the viewer to better evaluate what is going on before it happens. Lastly, in The Departed, Matt Damon kills Jack Nicholson because Matt believed that Jack was ratting him out to the CIA. This was much more plausible than the idea in Infernal Affairs that the 'asian' Matt Damon decided to kill the 'asian' Jack based on some kind of childhood vow to make a choice in life and turn to the good side.

Third, most of the pivotal scenes--the scenes where major characters die--in Infernal Affairs were handled much differently. Infernal Affairs would use long, drawn out, slow cut-scenes, and then proceed to use flashbacks after it was revealed who died. In my opinion, this just lessened the shock and emotional impact of the surprise that somebody died. The Departed just kept the movie going at a fast-pace and didn't stop for any breathers. This upped the shock of every subsequent death as the movie progressed, as the murders seemed to come out of nowhere and be even more surprising than the last.

In conclusion, I would say that The Departed is a much more concrete and satisfying movie than Infernal Affairs. The Departed is much longer, but for good reason, and the result is that every scene has a greater impact than it did in Infernal Affairs.

The Mummy 3

Thoughts On Pan's Labyrinth

I didn't get it.


*SPOILERS*



*SPOILERS*

There are two stories going on here: the story of Ofelia who is given three tasks by a mystical faun in order to prove her worth as a princess (um, what?), and the story of the guerrillas versus the soldiers which involves a cast of characters, betrayal, and intrigue, resulting in lots of people getting killed off.
As far as the story is concerned, I didn't really get how this was supposed to work. The main problem of the story is that the girl doesn't know if she is a princess and must do 3 tasks to prove it?
Anyway, what I did like was the parts of the movie where the fantasy world interacted with the real world and had consequences that impacted the plot and the characters. These would be the parts where Ofelia ruins her dress, the mandrake root has a weird, allegorical impact on the baby, and the final sequence of the movie where you don't know what's going to happen.
However, despite whatever qualms I had about it, I thought the movie really picked up during the second half, and had some great scenes, such as the one with the baby-eating-feast-man. It was very reminiscent of the Mummy-Stare-Freaks in Zelda, or entering an unknown dungeon in Oblivion.
In the end though, the movie completed on an unusual note, making me feel like I missed something or just didn't "get it." It would appear that the movie would be good to those movie viewers who could decipher some obviously hidden meaning, putting all the scenes and actions into perspective, but I find it hard to be enjoyable since I don't understand what all the undertones mean (though they appear to obviously be religious-based).
I watched Spirited Away, and I knew there had to be some hidden meaning, but I didn't have any clue what it meant. Did I still enjoy it? Yes.
In Pan's Labyrinth, I felt as if I had to get the hidden meaning for the movie to actually be enjoyable. At least that's my experience.

Worth Watching? Yes, to draw your own conclusions about it.

And seriously, how many times is the director/cinematographer going to do scene transitions by panning the camera over the giant black tree/post/pillar/rock/wall to lead us into the next scene?

Iron Man

Spoilers Follow
Iron Man was pretty good and enjoyable, if not rather predictable. I thought it was great how they made the plot so the main character was forced into "becoming" the 'iron man' in order to escape from these terrorists, but then I started to see where the plot was going after that. When you see that enemy terrorist leader get shot at with the rocket but it slightly misses, you know his face is going to be scorched and he's going to come back for the second half of the movie to take his revenge. And that scene where Tony is testing his boots at 10%? You knew he was going to fly away and break his neck, seriously.

Iron Man seems to share a screenplay in common with a lot of other successful blockbuster movies that are equally enjoyable. This screenplay, which has been employed in Minority Report, Batman Begins, to a lesser extent in Casino Royale, and probably in more movies basically runs like this:
1 - Introduce the main character and the first plot problem of the two-goal story-arc. Also introduce secondary characters like love interests and mentors. All four (including Iron Man) of the above movies sort of do this.
2 - Flashback to show the main character's life and history up to this moment. All of the above movies did this except it didn't really happen in Casino Royale, as far as I can remember.
3 - Flashforward back to the present where the first main problem has been solved. In Minority Report, you could probably say the first main problem was solved in the intro, or it was actually introduced here as the second problem of a three-goal story-arc.
4 - Develop the character and have him change his views (or not). This would be where Batman learns to become Batman in Gotham City, or Iron Man tests out his equipment.
5 - Introduce the second problem of the two-goal story arc. Batman must now save Gotham from the scarecrow. Iron Man must save the middle-east from villainous weaponry. In Casino Royale and Minority Report it's a little more muddled and hard to see.
6 - Twist the story by making one of the secondary characters the TRUE villain (this would be the mentor in Batman Begins, Minority Report, and Iron Man). Now the characters we introduced in (1) have more importance.
7 - Go down to the final showdown and end the movie with some kind of moral statement.

There were some plot holes that I would've jumped at, but they were skillfully, if not patiently resolved at the end of the scenes they were introduced, such as:
- How can you build an iron man suit while terrorists watch you? Oh, he's doing it BEHIND the curtain!
- How can you build an iron man suit in what feels like only a week in movie time? What? It was really THREE MONTHS? Oh-kay!
- If the terrorist's mission was really to kill Tony Stark, why did they keep waiting for him to build the missile? What? They didn't know that he was the real target and so had to negotiate a new deal with their employers about how to kill him? Okay, that makes sense!
But it all worked out in the end.

I don't know if it's me or the CGI, but the whole time I was watching the movie, I wasn't consciously aware that I was watching CGI. Of course you know it's fake, but it just looks so good and blends seamlessly into the live action scenes.

All in all, Iron Man is a pretty entertaining movie that is well structured, makes good fun of superhero cliches (especially the ending), has excellent CGI, and is an enjoyable romp.
Recommended. See it.

The Golden Compass (Movie)

Three things about the Golden Compass:

First off, the Golden Compass as a movie would benefit from one main thing: more exposition. Every scene and dialog between the characters would try and cram as many story and world elements as possible, and each scene would pass much too fast, without any time for the viewer to become established in this world. I never felt particularly engaged in the story, because it seemed like the movie didn't fully develop anything long enough for me to get settled in it. And to top that off, it seemed like the movie was introducing a new character in every scene.

Second, another thing to note here is the re-ordering of a main section of the plot. In the book, Lyra (Laura?) goes to the North, finds the ghost-kid, goes to the Aperture Science Center for Learning, then to the Bear Kingdom, and then to her fathers observatory for the grandifantasticaluous finale. In the movie, the sequence of events is switched up by sending her to the Bear Kingdom first, and then to the Science Center. The 'people who make this movie' must've did this for a reason, but I can't really see what it is, and I don't particularly see how it strengthens the story at all (or weakens it for that matter).

Thirdly and lastly, they chopped the ending of the book to smithereens by ending the movie at about page 170/200. Having read the book, I was expecting the movie to end at a certain time, and since the plot wasn't fully comprehensible about what the characters were trying to achieve, the ending just seemed to be slapped on out of nowhere. It was basically like the characters said, "We are going to solve the final problem set out upon by the beginning of the movie!" But instead of them spending the approximately needed twenty more minutes to do that, the movie ends. However, I can see why they didn't want to end a happy children's' tale with a little boy getting killed in order to open up a portal to another world. But then you have to start the second movie with that, so I guess it would just be postponing the inevitable.

Final Score: It's not as good as Enchanted.

Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy (Book)

Once upon a time there was a book called Douglas Adams written by a guy called Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy. Lots of SCI-FI fanatics loved this book. It was later turned into a movie that was kind of random, nonsensical, not very funny, and pointless.

But this is a review of the book, not the movie.

HHGTtG (hooray acronyms) is meant to be read as a comedy book. And as such, it lacks any real form of plot such as the kind you would find in any Star Trek or Star Wars movie. For that matter anyway, the book also lacks any real conflict, tension, or suspense, and the plot is basically pointless until the last quarter when there is a small revelation that puts the whole sequence of events into perspective but then the book just quickly ends. If the book didn't have that revelation, the whole story would basically be, 'earth man gets world destroyed --> hops on a ship of random alien men --> they frolic around the galaxy for no apparent reason --> the end.' Actually, that's pretty much the entire story, in both the book and the movie, minus the plot revelation.

Since there's no real conflict in the story, the movie tried to fix that by adding in a whole subplot where the crew go save one of their fellow kidnapped crew members from ugly aliens on an enemy world. This didn't really save the movie, but just turned out to be a pointless attempt to add a plot to a comedy story that didn't have one.

Speaking of which, the comedy in the book falls under two categories: narrator comedy, where the author goes off into whimsical facts about this odd universe where everything is so ironic, or, situation comedy, where strange things happen to the characters or they make jokes and have quirky mannerisms.
Narrator comedy works fairly well, but to me, it easily seems to fall under the pretentious category and as such, I can't enjoy it as much while the author blabbles off about space ships and galactic wars about a misunderstood transmission from a planet never yet discovered.
The situation comedy works better for me, but most often times the characters seem to fail to be characters just to create these oddly comical scenes for the narrator.

In the end however, I would recommend the book, as it does have its truly funny laugh-out-loud moments, but as a coherent story, there's not much substance here.
Final Score: 8.1/10

Fight Club (BOOK)

So it turns out the Fight Club movie was based after a book of the same name, and books are generally supposed to be much superior to their movies counterparts, right?

Well, that's debatable, for Fight Club at least.

The book is surprisingly similar to the movie in almost every way, from the plot progression, to lines of dialogs, and to the way characters act.
The movie is surprisingly a very faithful adaptation of the book, but there are three major differences though that I thought were interesting:
1. Expositional Fleshing Out
Okay, so in most media including books and movies, the director/author reveals details about the character through that character's speech, actions, etc. Fight Club (the movie) did this with simple dialogue and mannerisms, and the book does the same. However, the book goes into more detail often describing a character's life with a whole page, while the movie just used a couple of lines of dialog, basically to the same effect. I thought about this, and it seems that the movie didn't really lose any of the expositional benefit of fleshing out the characters more. For this, I thought the movie was superior because it accomplishes the same effect in much less time.
2. Chronogically Confused
A very interesting matter is how the book is very, very, chronologically different from the movie. Many events happen in different order, and it's hard to realize the effect this has on the story. Also, the book would start off many chapters at the pivotal moment of a future scene, only to go back in time and explain how the characters got up to this scene, by using the rest of the chapter to do so. This is an interesting literary technique, but I'm not sure of its benefits.
3. Randomness & the Ending
When I watched Fight Club (the movie) I saw a bunch of stringed together scenes that at first glance, seemed totally incomprehensible to each other. The book also goes off into randomness a lot, except at times it seems like the author doesn't know what he's doing or how he wants the story to end. The movie went off into randomness, but it all seemed to come together by the end.
The end of the book is actually surprisingly different than the movie, and in my opinion, just worse.

Anyway.

The movie actually seems to improve upon the book by changing pivotal scenes and plot elements by consolidating them together. This adds more significance to each of the characters and prevents the movie from going off in too many directions.
The movie also seems to better chronicle the evolution of the main character than the book did.

So, I have to say it, the movie is better than the book.