QZ qz thoughts
a blog from Eli the Bearded
Tag search results for 2013 Page 4 of 5

The Place Beyond The Pines


It's very easy to see this as not one movie, but two or three movies. There is a single character connecting everything, and a single concern, but much of the story is not from from that character's point of view.

To me I see this story as a hinge. The story starts off on a flange, reaches a pin, rotates, and goes off on another flange. The two flanges, and the pin, all have separate main characters.

The first flange is very reminescent of Drive, both have Ryan Gosling as silent figure with a complex moral code, and as an expert in motor vehicles. In Drive, it is car repair and racing, here it is motorcycle driving, with some car repair. Drive has Gosling's character take in interest in protecting a woman with a child he meets living on the same floor of the apartment building. Place has Gosling's character, Luke, learn he has fathered a son, and suddenly he wants to be there for the kid, even though the mom is not so interested in that.

In the pin, the story switches to a newly introduced character, Avery Cross, a man who has a chance encounter with Luke. Avery and Luke have similarites, most importantly: age and baby boys of the same age. The story of the pin is short, full of uneasy tension.

The second flange is fifteen years later, the present time, and switches to the two sons, now in in the same high school. Both are drug users and have other behavior problems, but one is much more boisterous.

The common concern throughout the movie is fatherhood and what it means to the fathers and the sons. There isn't a single message about fatherhood, but three outcomes, including Avery with his own dad.

The movie on the whole is dark, and might not be a good choice for a father's day outing, despite the unifying theme. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it, but some people I saw it with found the complexity of the story daunting and the story too dark.

Four out of five moral lapses.

The Place Beyond The Pines at IMDB

Drive (2011) at IMDB

Final thought: motherhood is a surprizingly small concern here

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)


It roughly tries to be a prequel to the 1939 film that everyone knows.

But what a complicated story it has become. The 1939 movie strayed from the story of the book, and the sequels to the first book were inconsistent with each other. Now this creeps in and attempts to add a backstory consistent with the first movie, while incorporating some of the other aspects of the Land of Oz that are in the books, while being inconsistent in new ways with the books. For example, the china dolls freeze up when they leave their land in the books.

Donald Rumsfeld's well-known quote is apt:

You go to war with the [Wizard] you have, not the [Wizard] you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Glinda practically says as much in the film.

Things that could have been done to improve this: more characters from the circus world showing up as people in Oz. Oz should have had more of a reaction to Theodora's decidedly not-in-Kansas-anymore outfit when he first meets her (really, skin-tight rubber pants are pretty reaction-worthy in 2013, much less whenever this is supposed to take place). Evanora could have offered something other than an apple to Theodora. Yes, there is a parallel with the apple of knowledge in Eden, and the poisoned apple of Sleeping Beauty, but that's a bit cliche to me.

Things I'm glad were left as is: there were hints that the Tinkers would have made the Tin Man, but they did not, which is good because it would have been inconsistent with his backstory in the books. I'm glad the china people made it into this story. The world was suitably colorful, although I could have done with less of the sight-seeing. Different books handle the colors differently. In some books different areas have favorite colors, like blue and white for Greece; in others the colors are from the actual landscape, like the earthy colors of New Mexico. This movie doesn't seem to endorse either position.

Rating: two of three hot air balloons.

Final thought: I loved how in the books, the jealousy of a wicked witch iis instrumental in Tin Man's creation.

Side Effects


Before watching this film, I was expecting a slightly-in-the-future drama with sci-fi elements for the "side effects" of the title. I was completely wrong. This is a in-the-present drama with fictional drugs having fictional side effects that seem completely plausible as actual drugs and side effects.

They are drugs for serious problems and side effects with serious consequences. If a patient's life is irreversibly ruined by a side effect, what responsibility does the doctor have? If the side effects a patient experiences end up causing someone else harm, who is responsible: doctor, patient, or drug maker? Those are some of the questions raised front-and-center in this film. The answers provided are clearly not universal, but the questions are worth consideration.

The actual story is complicated and very easy to spoil. This isn't a Crying Game twist at the end, but a rollercoaster of re-evaluating the previous action with new information.

Four years of a five year sentence for insider trading.

Spoilerish: I heard one reviewer compare it to Wild Things (not just because there is a lesbian relationship), and that seems a fair comparison.

Side Effects at IMDB

Final thought: but don't watch this for the lesbian scenes, you'll be disappointed

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)


I found, for free, the first two books of the series. I read the first one, I don't expect to read any more. I have also watched the first two seasons (all that have been broadcast) of the HBO series. My summary of the general backstory would be:

A thousand years ago people from the continent crossed over a land bridge to a previously long isolated island and established a kingdom. The land bridge closed and everything was isolated again for several hundred years. Then people started to come across by boat and new kingdoms were carved out. Eventually this guy who had some dragons decided to unite the whole island, this was about three hundred years ago. That guy made a throne out of swords of his enemies which is still being used. Then his family ruled, with incest as a rule, until one particularly crazy guy got the throne. The people rebelled, and the old king was killed. This is about ten-fifteen years before the story starts. Book one deals with the end of usurper king's life, and the rest of the series is about the "free-for-all battle" for power. Will it remain a single kingdom or revert to separate smaller states? Who will have power and how much? There are long histories of who did what to whom that are still motivating people.

The island is somewhat modeled after England, with a frozen northland kept walled off (ie, Scotland) and a continent to the East. There are various families with substantial power at the start, each with their own motivations, rules of conduct, and resources. Each family also has distinguishing physical attributes and naming styles. Eg, the Lanisters are all rich and blond; there is a tradition in the Starks of naming one boy in every generation "Brandon".

There are hints of a substantial threat mounting in the frozen northland that will probably figure into the conclusion of the last book. The story in many ways uses examples from European history for how things are done. King Robert, in the first book, reminds me of Henry VIII in many ways: his love of tournaments and hunting, and his lavish spending. Robert has a single wife, however, and does not instigate a religious shift.

I've heard people gripe about the new words the books introduce.

I did not find this to be a problem. Some of the words are not real terms, but coined for the series, eg "sellsword" for "mercenary". All of them seem well enough obvious from context. Or perhaps I'm just better versed in medieval terms.

There is far too much visual detail about everything. My understanding is he is a frustrated TV script writer who turned to novels because TV companies did not want to work on the scale he did. The books, if half as long, might be worth reading, but bleh. I'd rather read something that's a real history, or something that is really historical, not bloated fiction about a fictional world.

Final thought: just finished Les Liaisons dangereuses (1990 translation of 1782 book)