Skyfall

I went and saw Skyfall this afternoon. And it was awesome. I think Casino Royale has a better story, but Skyfall is definitely more epic (we won't worry about that other movie). The cinematography was fantastic, and I loved the lighting, too. Plus I enjoy how Daniel Craig plays Bond - much more restrained and dryly humorous than any of the previous actors. Not quite so smarmy as Pierce Brosnon (but I'll always love him nonetheless), but still suave. I thought the opening credits were fantastic, and the titular title track [is that redundant?] was an instant hit with me.

All in all, it might be a movie I have to see twice in theaters. Yes, it will come out on DVD and still be awesome...but not as awesome as seeing Daniel Craig's face five or six times as tall as a man on the big screen.

Jane Eyre

Growing up, Jane Eyre was one of my favorite books. I don't remember how old I was when I first read it; probably about 12 or 13, since I was a voracious reader at that point. I read my mother's copy, one that was probably much older than I was. It had a dark pink cover and a painting of Jane running away from Thornfield Hall on the front. It's probably out of print now; anyway, I can't seem to find a picture of it online.

I saw the new movie with Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester over break, but I've been wanting to watch it again. I picked it up at the library when I was there the other day and rewatching it has confirmed that I'm pretty much in love with it. I loved Mia Wasikowska as Jane, and the soundtrack by Dario Martinelli (the same man who scored Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen) is superb. The track above is one of my favorites off the soundtrack. I think it suits the tone of the book exactly, capturing Jane's intelligence, passion, and restraint all at the same time, as well as her frustration at being trapped by her role as a women at her level of society.

Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett and Anne Shirley were the heroines of my childhood, and still are today. There are many film adaptations of each of these women, but I hope that my girls - and maybe even my boys - will get to know them as I did, curled up on the couch with a book.

O Remember, Remember

 Big Bang's TOP in the movie 71-Into the Fire

I watched 포화속으로 (translated literally as "Into the Gunfire") today after class with a friend of mine (my "cousin," actually). The story is of a single battle that occured during the Korean War. Due to the lack of troops, a group of 71 student-soldiers were charged with defending a strategic point against the advancing North Korean army making its way to Pohang, a shipping port in the south of Korea. As this summer marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, there's been a lot of films and dramas being released that deal with the war; this is one of them.

I swear I haven't cried so much in the last five years as I did in one two-hour span today. I used to really enjoy action movies, though war movies weren't ever really my thing, but at some point I stopped cheering at all the explosions and started thinking about all the collateral damage they cause. Watching a movie that is based on an actual historical event just multiplied that feeling a hundredfold. Everything is a thousand times more tragic when you stop to think about the things that don't show up on the screen -- all their mothers, their little brothers and sisters, their fathers, their sweethearts, the children they would have had, the things they would have done, the innocence they lost and all the terrible things they had to do and live through.

I'm not doing a terribly good job of saying what I was feeling. Ideas and feelings that seemed so impressive at the time really lose all that when you try to put them into words. Suffice it to say, it was a good movie, one that made me think, and remember.