Saturday, August 28th, 2010
Life Changing: Ryan Murphy's movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love promises to transport you, if not transform you
Film: Who should star in a movie about your life? Inspirational writer Elizabeth Gilbert now joins Erin Brockovich in getting to say Julia Roberts. Eat Pray Love (Photo by F. Duhamel) Often found in the Religion & Spirituality section of the bookstore, Gilbert's 2006 memoir, Eat Pray Love, has urged millions, mostly women, to dream of changing their lives in profound ways. Those who have imagined following her lead but who haven't booked that trip yet can now get one step closer to recreating her life-changing experience by seeing the film, which promises to transport you if not transform you. Recently divorced and desperate to break her pattern of serial relationships, Gilbert packs her belongings into storage and begins a year-long, three-country quest to learn about herself through different cultures. Director Ryan Murphy, creator of Glee and Nip/Tuck, leaves behind all the sarcasm and angst that these shows are renowned for to create a movie that's simply told and completely earnest. … (more)
Source: www.metroweekly.com
Dream State: Though it has plenty of action set-pieces, the high-concept Inception does little to involve us with its characters
Film: Ever had one of those dreams when you couldn't wake up, a dream that seemed to go on forever and ever? Welcome to Inception. At 2 hours and 28 minutes it's not just a blockbuster, it's a clock buster. Inception (Photo by Stephen Vaughan) Inception is all about the concept. It's part Matrix, part Ocean's Eleven, with a dash of James Bond. But rather than shaking or stirring this concoction, writer and director Christopher Nolan throws it into a blender, which he then pitches off a cliff into a whirlpool. What else do you expect from the man who wrote and directed The Dark Knight? However, while Nolan includes plenty of explosions to keep his Batman base happy, the film is much more like his earlier work, Memento. In Nolan's world, shared dreams are common. It's a useful tactic for getting needed answers from others, also known as finding out their secrets. But tampering with someone's thoughts is much trickier than just obtaining them. For Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), successfully planting a thought into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), otherwise known as an inception, is the only way he's going to see his children again. … (more)
Source: www.metroweekly.com