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Treated with a light enough hand that it doesn't become maudlin, sappy,
or annoyingly cute, Fairytale is a charming film based on a true
story of two little girls in 1917 who managed to capture pictures of
fairies with a camera. The film proceeds to follow the story of their
lives, their families, and the controversy that follows the discovery of
their photographs, as some believe them to be scientific proof of the
existence of fairies while others maintain that somehow they are fakes.
I did have a hard time buying Harvey Keitel as Harry Houdini, but the
rest of the film is told with a bright and vivacious air and manages to
be satisying even without taking a firm stand on whether the photos are
indeed real or fake, though they are pretty clear about the existence of
fairies.
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Created in part by Jim Henson Productions, the show sports many puppeted
characters, but this ain't no Muppet Show! First season introduces John
Crichton, a young astronaut with an experimental space craft. During a
test flight there is a freak accident. A wormhole opens up, sucking
Crichton into the far reaches of space. He literally tumbles into the
middle of a firefight between an escaping ship of fugitives and the
Peacekeepers. Dragged on board Moya, a living ship, Crichton finds
himself in the hands of escaped criminals and a captured Peacekeeper
soldier. An uneasy alliance is struck between the ragtag group who, for
better and for worse, are forced to rely on each other. And if that
weren't enough, a dangerous Peacekeeper, Scorpius, discovers that
Crichton possesses highly prized knowledge about wormholes, which must
be extracted by any means.
First season starts off a bit rocky as this
complex show struggles to stand upright. The first few shows alternate
between being really good and pretty lame. But by mid-season Farscape
stabilizes and really takes flight! There are great characters,
interesting alien worlds and beings, and excellent action, drama, humor,
and pacing that will suck you in faster than a wormhole!
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And it just keeps on getting better! Season two brings in more stories
about the living ship Moya and her passengers. Carrying on from Season 1
we follow the many varied adventures they must go through as Moya
becomes pregnant and is going to give birth to a baby Leviathan ship,
new crew members must settle in and earn their place, and they are all
still being ruthlessly pursued by Scorpius.
This season spends a little
more time delving into the background of the characters, exploring who
they are and who they are becoming. It is marked by a growing
romantic relationship between John and Aeryn, the unexpected "gift"
given to John by Scorpius, and D'Argo's son being discovered, resulting
in a combination rescue/robbery. With a better grasp on the large cast
and the clearer picture of the universe they live in, season two is
overall better written, more exciting and interesting, and even more
addictive than first season. Hang onto the handle bars, cause this ride
is gonna get rough!
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Season three once again returns to rather rocky ground, with major cast
changes and complications shaking things up. The crew of Moya gets split
in half, with one group on Moya and the other on Moya's child, Talyn.
Alas what happens then is the crew on Talyn get all of the good stories
and the crew on Moya get the lamer, goofier stories. So once again, like
the beginning of first season, we get a see-saw effect, shifting every
other show from one ship to the other ship and in doing so shifting from
good story to blah story. There are blessedly a few exceptions, and your
mileage may vary. It's all worth it though for the story arc "Infinite
Possibilities" which is very dramatic and climatic. The season comes to
a very odd and unexpected end, finishing as always with a climactic
ending, though this time around it felt ludicrously forced and
unrealistic. The ride, my friends, is slowing down.
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An elegant, stylish, and charming period romance that begins from the
most unlikely of places. A woman, desperate to pay off her beloved
father's debts, agrees to act as a surrogate mother, sleeping with a man
she does not know and giving birth to a child she will never see again.
While the affair is loveless and brief, an act of convenience for both,
attraction blooms and a bond is forged between the pair. Years
later, unable to forget her daughter, she manages to track the
mysterious man down and applies for the position of governess, swearing
that she will not reveal her true identity to her daughter. But
circumstances change, forged bonds remain compellingly strong, and by
firelight all secrets and dreams can be revealed safely, only to be
forgotten by the light of day. Not just forgotten, but as if they never
even happened. I found myself drawn to this movie and its simple
honesty and examination of the choices that people make. Viewers will
likely notice some very strong similarities to Jane Eyre.
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This is it! The cheeziest of the cheezy movies, and I ain't talkin'
Swiss or Cheddar here, I'm talkin' the kinda cheese that comes out of a
can! With flamboyantly wild costumes that are only eclipsed by the
flamboyantly over-the-top acting, this film is a delight for the eye and
a break for the mind, which is more than welcome to retreat back into
the depths somewhere and calculate out quantum mechanics. Flash Gordon
must save Dale Arden and earth from the evil clutches of Ming the
Merciless, and while he's at it, teach the other worlds ruled by Mongo a
thing or two about standing up for themselves and fighting for freedom!
Based on the famous comic strip and serials, this Flash Gordon is full
of 80's goodness, with kick-ass theme song and soundtrack by Queen, sexy
outrageous outfits, squealing heroines, brawny muscle-bound heroes, and
one of the most wickedly wonderful villains ever, Ming the Merciless.
You'll laugh, you'll ... ah ... cry?, you'll kiss $3.75 (or enter your
rental/purchase cost here) goodbye, but you won't be sorry! Unless
you're one of those people that just can't let your hair down and enjoy
a goofy movie that's all about the silly and the fun and the not
serious. Yep, this is a cult classic and worthy of revisiting every so
often just to refresh your memory of just how much fun film can be.
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This is the new Jodie Foster flick that is coming out this
weekend. In short? Not too shabby. It isn't amazing, it isn't going to
knock your socks off, but I definitely enjoyed it and had a good time.
The basic premise is that Foster is a woman who has recently lost her
husband under uncertain circumstances. He "fell" or perhaps jumped off
of a building, and it isn't clear which it was. An aerodynamic flight
engineer living or just staying in Berlin, she packs up her husband and
her daughter to return to the United States. On the flight, however, her
daughter goes missing and the already distraught woman goes frantic. To
make matters worse, strangely no one on board has seen her daughter, and
a check of the flight manifest shows no listing for her and further
evidence arises to make it seem like Foster couldn't have brought her
daughter on board. So the question of the film becomes this - is she
crazy with grief and has imagined that she has brought her daughter on
board with her? Or did someone actually take her daughter, and if so,
why?
My first recommendation is, if you want to see this film, avoid the
trailers for it. There is a tiny clue in there that pretty much answers
that question for you, if you remember it. I did, so even though they
did an excellent job of both showing why no one noticed her daughter
coming on board as well as how it could be that her daughter was never
there, I always knew which was the truth. There are some clumsy red
herrings, which blessedly are red herrings and some unexpected
situations and motivations. Overall the film is well acted, but I can't
say that it wowed me or that I was at the edge of my seat while watching
it. It also has some rather odd and kind of ridiculous plot devices in
it and a terrible denoument ending (just the last 5 minutes or so) that
is way too annoying, trite, Hollywood, and unnecessary. They should have
just cut as they pan away from the plane. Ah well.
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