Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

I’ve been very slack – it’s three months since I’ve blogged anything. I’ve just done a lengthy write up of Superman Returns, and I’m going to do one of The Lost Echo in the next few days, but in the meantime I’ll do a quick summary of the films/plays I’ve seen recently.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at Hoyts, Broadway.
Quite fun, but nowhere near as fresh as the first one. They seem to have the idea that if something was good in the first film, having much more of it in the second will be even better. It isn’t.

Hoodwinked on Qantas flight QF580 (Perth to Sydney).
An enjoyable take on a fairy tale, and I liked the way it was all told in flashback from different perspectives. Compared to other digital animation films, it wasn’t as good as Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles or Shrek, but much, much better than Ice Age or Madagascar.

Thank You for Smoking at Hoyts, Broadway.
Funny and clever.

Embers (Campion Decent) – Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf Theatre.
At the Talk With The Actors I learned that this style of play is called “verbatim drama” – absolutely everything said on stage is what someone said in an interview. The only other example of this I’ve seen (though I’ve heard of others) was The Permanent Way, which I found a lot more compelling, and in which I got a much better sense of the individual people the actors were portraying. Embers was strong, but didn’t really match up. My other thought was that it was such a celebration of Australian-ness, I wondered if it would ever get an overseas run, and, if so, whether people would understand it.