ironSoap – Complete

Volcano eruption in Chile.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — February 17, 2012 at 10:52AM

Calvin and Hobbes grown up by Mike Henry. Reminds me of Hobbes and Bacon.

#comics, illustration, art

from Like a Detuned Radio — February 17, 2012 at 10:37AM

George Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University

#books, libraries, architecture

from Like a Detuned Radio — February 17, 2012 at 08:21AM

Gun Mecha by zeiram0034

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from Like a Detuned Radio — February 17, 2012 at 07:59AM

The Adjustment Bureau

★★★☆☆

Directed by: George Nofli

Written by: George Nofli

Based on the Short Story by: Philip K. Dick

Early on in The Adjustment Bureau, I thought it was going to be really great. Take the scene where David Norris (played stoutly by Matt Damon) meets a mysterious woman who has just revealed herself to be hiding out in the men’s restroom, overhearing Norris rehearse a concession speech. The woman is played by Emily Blunt and the chemistry between the two actors and their characters boils off the screen. This is a pivotal moment in the film because it will set up the obsession Norris finds himself in over this woman that must last for years otherwise unaided and the direction, acting and writing find that magical sweet spot of doing everything the scene demands they do as precisely as you could want. In the span of maybe three or four minutes, we get—without being bludgeoned over the head with it—the intense connection between these two people.

Then in short order we start to become privy to a group of curious, hat-wearing men who hint of something perhaps sinister in their machinations. We get glimpses of their power or technology, far beyond what should be possible. And then there is some sort of accident and suddenly the world David Norris knew comes unraveled. A curtain is peeled back and the group reveal themselved to Norris and warn him to do two things: Keep his mouth shut and stay away from the girl.

So far, so good. The pace is swift and sure, revelations coming but opening more questions, the atmosphere tense and ominous. But then Morris just kind of accepts things and doesn’t really respond very convincingly. Of course eventually he and the woman (Elise) find each other and their on-screen heat returns to draw the viewer back in, but suddenly the movie starts on a rail toward an action/thriller that it never is really able to divert itself from. Norris acts implausibly in the face of powerful “others” and gets some help from a predictable source against a string of escalating antagonists (who are conspicuously all older white dudes), none of whom really give that initial air of threat much credibility.

I would still have forgiven most of The Adjustment Bureau’s flaws had the third act not completely crumbled into a tired race-against-the-clock cliche that overwhelms the audience with audacity and poor Emily Blunt with a challenge to convincingly portray a woman in the most mind- and reality-perception-shattering circumstance who must somehow reconcile a betrayal, a loyalty shift, a commitment and all this new information. Predictably, she fails, but I don’t blame her. I blame the writer who was unable to craft a sequence in which she was allowed to express a human range of emotion. No actress in the world could have pulled off that feat because the script seemed to simply say at this point: “She just copes. Whatever.”

Endings are funny things. Sometimes a great ending can salvage a bad or somewhat flawed movie (The Usual Suspects, Skeleton Key); sometimes a bad movie can utterly ruin an otherwise good movie (LotR: Return of the King, Signs, The Number 23). In this case the ending of The Adjustment Bureau doesn’t quite go so far as to ruin it, but it does diminish the promise of the first 45 minutes enough that it kind of feels like you wish they could have Adjusted the plot enough to make it actually about the stuff that works—the romance and the mystery.

from No Thief Like a Bad Movie — February 17, 2012 at 07:19AM

@ironsoap — February 16, 2012 at 06:32PM

@ironsoap — February 16, 2012 at 04:00PM