Austinist: New Movie Releases!

b

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:49:36 -0600

i know molly posted on this weeks ago. that's okay. if you haven't seen no country for old men, do it. hoo, boy! it's delectably sick. javier bardem gives a performance that is *legend*. you're gonna wish you could nestle your head in his hair.

seth

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:53:13 -0600

Another credit to "I Am Legend" is that there was no love story. It's nearly impossible to get major blockbuster funding for a PG-13 movie that doesn't have something 8th grade girls can relate to. Seth

cram

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:59:44 -0600

As expected, I was completely let down by the ending of I Am Legend. It was so hokey in the big movie zombie fight kind of way. I knew I shouldn't be shocked, but that combined with the complete lack of what made the end of the book so cool... it just let me down, because I enjoyed the rest of the movie (which also had nothing in common with the book, other than the title and Neville's name). The end of the book is just as moving and interesting as the movie attempted to be, but in a different way. I guess with how they set up the bad guys being human eating zombies vs old fashioned vampires, the book's ending would be almost impossible to imagine.. though when it appeared that the zombie dudes could begin to tolerate a little sunshine/UV light, I thought "Shit, they're going to do the ending like the book! Amazing!" I also thought Will Smith's descent into crazy land was done better than the book. In the book, Neville is just a raging alcoholic which is understandable.. but not quite as compelling as the way they handled it in the movie with the video store scenes. What confuses me slightly more is I saw a copy of I Am Legend in BookPeople with Will Smith on the cover. Any person who picks that up expecting to read about a black dude living in Manhattan in the year 2012 is going to be completely shocked by the book. Talk about bad marketing, though I bet most people who would pick up a book with Will Smith on the cover aren't really book readers to begin with. Not a bad movie though and the CGI for the NYC scenes was awesome/worth price of admission. And again, Will Smith really played his part amazingly.

math

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:12:33 -0600

Oh, totally, Seth. CGI isn't the devil or anything--most of the "deserted Manhattan" scenes were super well done. And for the most part, they didn't look CGI at all (with a few exceptions). I just think that the decision to make the infected humans completely CGI was, well, completely crappy. Mostly because they look so computer generated that you never get the sense they were once human, which kind of drains the emotion out of Neville's interaction with them. What I mean is--one of the most interesting parts of the story is that these monsters used to be human (maybe even some people Neville knows and loves), and that he's obsessed with curing them. But instead of "humans-turned-monsters", they just seemed like plain old monsters, and consequently I didn't really care if he cured them or not. In Omega Man, the monsters weren't all that well executed either, but at least they seemed real. I liked Omega Man for the most part, and I liked I Am Legend for the most part. But I'm not sure I agree that liking one guarantees liking the other.

seth

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:01:19 -0600

oh, another cool part in "I Am Legend" is when he lipsynchs to Shrek and the dialogue is a metaphor for his own situation, like how Charlton Heston's Neville lipsynchs to "Woodstock" in a somewhat ironic manner. Seth

seth

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:36:59 -0600

The funny thing about the CGI in I Am LEgend-- it's not just the interactions with the creatures that are CGI-supported. All those emotional, brooding scenes with Will Smith walking around in a deserted, dilapidated Manhattan are CGI-rendered. Very convincing panoramas. The movie does a great job. People in my group were crying. It scared all of us. The climax approaching the end is pretty stressful. The 'spiritual' ending is no more so than the ending of Charlton Heston's "Omega Man." If you liked "Omega Man" like me, you'll enjoy "I Am Legend." It's got a LOT of faithful references to that movie but redone in modern times, such as the obvious Ford Mustang product placement. Not giving anything away, there are some fun borrowings from other great movies like Mad Max and a dog movie that I won't name. Go see it at the Alamo so you can see the trailer from the Omega Man before hand. Seth

math

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:42:14 -0600

Oohh, good call Tim. I stand corrected. I've actually seen Kicking and Screaming, and I have no idea why I wrote "debut". Well, other than that I'm stupid. I haven't, however, seen any of Baumbach's other movies either.

tim

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:06:15 -0600

So I was going to let my Noah Baumbach fanboy out and tell you about this awesome movie by him I saw just out of high school called "Kicking and Screaming", but then I went to IMDB and realized I was a pretty crappy fanboy since I've only seen three of his movies and yet he's written nine of which he's directed six. I'm off to update my Netflix Queue. But rent Kicking and Screaming. The version without Will Farrell.

cram

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:45:17 -0600

I'm interested in seeing I Am Legend to see the ending, because I can't imagine it'll be faithful to the book. After all, Robert Neville is supposed to be a white dude with blonde hair and a beard living in California which is about 180 degrees from Will Smith's character. I'm hoping someone will just ruin the ending in the next comment and save me $8.