Sahara

Blah blah blah. So what that it's based on the best-selling book of the same name by Clive Cussler and failed to gross the film's budget, amidst many negative reviews. It doesn't matter because you have to separate adaptations from their original medium.
Sahara was supposed to be first film out of several surrounding the Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey) novel series. Much like every film adaptation the producers of the film must strip the plot down to it's most central elements and that is Dirk Pitt, marine engineer, explorer and former Navy SEAL along with his team (Steve Zahn) are in Africa essentially treasure hunting when trouble, in the attractive form of Eva Rojas (Penélope Cruz), a World Health Organization doctor surfaces. He's on the search for a Civil War Ironclad ship, and she's on a mission trying to discover the source of a terrible illness that is killing innocent Africans. By helping each other, they help themselves.
I have to admit that the plot did cater to the, I know this is fiction so it's okay to be unbelievable side while it stung like a bee with social commentary. Since viewing I'm stuck with the line, "Don't worry. It's Africa. Nobody cares about Africa." as said by General Zateb Kazim, the film's antagonist when informed his actions may have consequences the whole world would have to suffer. Hey, go big or go home.
Getting down to business, what we have here is a fun, light-hearted adventure story with an ending we can all guess will happen before the second act. As long as you don't take the film to serious you can't really be let down.

Drag Me To Hell

When I first signed up for Netflix two years ago I was really excited to watch as many movies as I possibly could. Not only for the price that it would cost me to buy one DVD a month I had the potential to view around 12. After two years of watching 6 to 12 DVDs a month I started to feel really desensitized to everything. Horror movies don't scare me. Romance-dramas don't make me bubble. Teen sex comedies no longer get me hard.
Over the summer as the latest from the Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi was putting out his latest, Drag Me To Hell a healthy buzz followed the film. It was a good buzz. A buzz that he left the Spider-Man series behind him and was returning to his horror roots. I think this is where the problem for me begins.
As a fan of film, an ex-film major and an average person in general I like to sit down and be entertained. I want to laugh. I want to cover my eyes and deny it later. Drag Me To Hell had these elements but they just didn't follow through to the big screen.
The major problem plaguing this film was the casting. Although it was a rather small role but Justin Long was never right for this role. I don't imagine him being right for any role. Allison Lohman was great in Matchstick Men. She's not an actress suited for horror.
I certainly enjoyed the plot, letting the story unravel in front of me up until the near the end when the obvious ending was going to happen. Raimi should have known better than to give his audience what they knew to be coming. There was no way getting around that but to suffer horribly waiting for the inevitable to happen.
I read that after working on Spider-Man for all those years with huge inflated budgets he wanted to work on a film with a small budget. I imagine $30 million to be small compared to his last three films. It certainly paid for good CGI and a creepy score that chilled my bones. Raimi certainly had the production value, there was no reason to venture into campy sequences. I know there were small and far in between, but you must agree with me that they had no place there.
Drag Me To Hell is just another check mark along a long list of seemingly disappointing films that overshot it's objective either by overproduction or the film maker's wavering dream.

BBC Photos of the Day

The photo I was looking is the fifth photo following this link. It's of two men standing in front of a fountain at the first sign of snow in St. Petersburg Russia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8302553.stm

I was attracted to this photo for many reasons. Most importantly it was the overall feel. As I went through the photo--only having seen a smaller portion of the photo at the bottom I was expecting to read that the image had been aged. The snow didn't look like snow to me. It's barely visible in the snippet. Once I had click on the photo to bring it to life I didn't see a picture of two men outside as snow fell. I saw a grainy picture, something that has been tossed around and the color scratched off.
I really like the coincidence of the water element in two different forms: snow falling from the sky and the fountain in the background throwing water up into the air.
One thing I noticed was the framing inside the picture. The bottom half is framed by the fence and then by the chain. That leaves the top half free as ever, free to snow and free for water to pour out of sprockets.

The Girlfriend Experience

For all what's been said about this movie, I was bored through out the entire piece. Obviously this is not the typical film or film setting we would expect to see porn star Sasha Grey act in. Let alone work with acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Eleven series, Traffic). There's an old cliche saying that porn stars can't act. Grey certainly would not be the exception to the rule.
For all 77 minutes of this film set in 2008, the dialogue in at least one-third if not half were Chelsea's clients (played by Grey) talking and worrying about the up coming stock market crash. Excuse me for not weeping for my brotheren who are no longer reaping the financial benefits of being the rich white elite. Throughout the history of mankind money of any kind has always been a worry since it's conception. It is none more relevant here than any movie of the week, just because the clients that visit Chelsea are all wealthy white men of varying ages.
Soderbergh like his past films never finds the need to set the focus of attention on the actors themselves (nonprofessionals who often improvised their lines) while letting a scene play out in front of them, with his actors out of focus or hidden behind props. If this was from another director I might have been shocked or maybe let this drag me in, but not from Soderbergh. For an experimental film shot within two weeks for under a budget of two million dollars, the only thing that feels experimental is the budget and the time it took to film.