Well, I finally decided on a major. I want to be an entertianment journalist. Decided to post my last work. S'from my school paper. Hence the odd style rules.
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Kriston Lynn
Entertainment Editor
The acting is great. The photography is awesome. But Dreamcatcher is one confusing mess of a film.
It seems that writers William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan took Stephen Kings book and squished it into two hours and 16 minutes of confusion. The book would have been better off as a four or five part miniseries. The makers of the film should have taken into consideration that not everyone will have read the book first; therefore they will not get the gist of the story. The movie made it extremely hard to pick up.
The film develops well. The first hour of the story gets the viewer hooked. Then it dives into a messy rendition of Kings novel with no particular genre in mind thoroughly confusing anyone who does not know what the heck is going on.
Lets start from the beginning.
When Henry (Thomas Jane), Beaver (Jason Lee), Jonesy (Damian Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) were kids they came to the rescue of a mentally retarded boy Duddits. It turns out that Duddits gave them a form of clairvoyance, bonding them beyond normal friendship. But this was twenty years ago in a small town in Maine.
The four men are now on their own with four very different lives. When Jonesy unexpectedly gets hit by a car, they all notice that something odd has been happening lately. When they get together for their yearly visit to a hunting cabin in the northern woods odd things begin to happen.
First off, a half-frozen hunter shows up on their doorstep covered in an odd rash and with rather humorous stomach problems. Down the road, Henry and Pete are driving back from the store and encounter a woman with the same problems. From there the story unfolds.
It appears that over the past who-knows-how-many years, there has been a rather constant alien invasion that even has its own specialized military force chasing after, trying to destroy it. The problem is, though, that the aliens need hosts, any living animal (but preferably humans), to spread their parasites to more. So they can destroy Earth. Of course. Or at least that is what the movie makes the viewer think.
Jonesy, though it seems, is a special human. The alien decides to take him over, locking Jonesy into a room in his own brain to watch what is happening through his own eyes. When the alien takes him over he even speaks different! He speaks in a quirky British accent, of course. Why? Because their British aliens, duh! Who knows?
As the film ventures on (dont worry, even with this much revealed there is still much more to be confused with) the plot seems to twist in so many ways the person watching is not quite sure what is going on half the time. But that is okay, there is a lot to watch. Literally. The film, as a picture, is done extremely well and would have gorgeous with a better thought out film.
Though the film goes by quickly because of the lack of slow spots normally allotted to explanations, it is left with a lot of holes and knots to figure out. If anything, Dreamcatcher is worth seeing for the movie short that plays before it. The Animatrix (see http://www.intothematrix.com for details) was only fifteen minutes long but entertaining. And hey, it made sense.
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[Music: Bjork - "I Miss You"]
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Kriston Lynn
Entertainment Editor
The acting is great. The photography is awesome. But Dreamcatcher is one confusing mess of a film.
It seems that writers William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan took Stephen Kings book and squished it into two hours and 16 minutes of confusion. The book would have been better off as a four or five part miniseries. The makers of the film should have taken into consideration that not everyone will have read the book first; therefore they will not get the gist of the story. The movie made it extremely hard to pick up.
The film develops well. The first hour of the story gets the viewer hooked. Then it dives into a messy rendition of Kings novel with no particular genre in mind thoroughly confusing anyone who does not know what the heck is going on.
Lets start from the beginning.
When Henry (Thomas Jane), Beaver (Jason Lee), Jonesy (Damian Lewis) and Pete (Timothy Olyphant) were kids they came to the rescue of a mentally retarded boy Duddits. It turns out that Duddits gave them a form of clairvoyance, bonding them beyond normal friendship. But this was twenty years ago in a small town in Maine.
The four men are now on their own with four very different lives. When Jonesy unexpectedly gets hit by a car, they all notice that something odd has been happening lately. When they get together for their yearly visit to a hunting cabin in the northern woods odd things begin to happen.
First off, a half-frozen hunter shows up on their doorstep covered in an odd rash and with rather humorous stomach problems. Down the road, Henry and Pete are driving back from the store and encounter a woman with the same problems. From there the story unfolds.
It appears that over the past who-knows-how-many years, there has been a rather constant alien invasion that even has its own specialized military force chasing after, trying to destroy it. The problem is, though, that the aliens need hosts, any living animal (but preferably humans), to spread their parasites to more. So they can destroy Earth. Of course. Or at least that is what the movie makes the viewer think.
Jonesy, though it seems, is a special human. The alien decides to take him over, locking Jonesy into a room in his own brain to watch what is happening through his own eyes. When the alien takes him over he even speaks different! He speaks in a quirky British accent, of course. Why? Because their British aliens, duh! Who knows?
As the film ventures on (dont worry, even with this much revealed there is still much more to be confused with) the plot seems to twist in so many ways the person watching is not quite sure what is going on half the time. But that is okay, there is a lot to watch. Literally. The film, as a picture, is done extremely well and would have gorgeous with a better thought out film.
Though the film goes by quickly because of the lack of slow spots normally allotted to explanations, it is left with a lot of holes and knots to figure out. If anything, Dreamcatcher is worth seeing for the movie short that plays before it. The Animatrix (see http://www.intothematrix.com for details) was only fifteen minutes long but entertaining. And hey, it made sense.
--
[Music: Bjork - "I Miss You"]