Category Archives: Movies

Snow White & The Huntsman – Movie Review

It’s official. We can call 2012 the year of Snow White. Let’s see, there’s a whole TV show – Once Upon a Time – centered on her story. There has already been a movie, Mirror Mirror, which tackled the infamous fairytale with a comic approach and now Hollywood has decided to bring the world yet another adaptation which plays with the Brothers Grimm story: Snow White & The Huntsman.

Following a war that he wins, the father of Snow White (Kristen Stewart) finds a hostage with his enemies and he’s entranced by her beauty (as an aside, who wouldn’t be?). The woman’s name is Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and he immediately marries her. However, on their wedding night, Ravenna kills the king and takes over his kingdom, taking the still-young Snow White as a prisoner. Years pass by and Snow White comes of age, threatening the queen not to remain the fairest of them all. As she manages to escape her prison, Snow White joins forces with the huntsman the queen hires to kill her (Chris Hemsworth) and eight (yes, not seven. Eight.) dwarves to try and dethrone the queen.

Snow White & The Huntsman starts off promisingly but quickly fizzles away as Theron gets less screen time. In fact, the only person cast correctly in the movie is Charlize Theron who manages to do the impossible: pull you to her side. You actually root for the bad person in this movie and do so whole-heartedly.

Kristen Stewart, on the other hand, is entirely miscast. I have seen Stewart in other roles (no, not Twilight) and despite what people want you to think, she actually has potential. But she keeps choosing the wrong roles. Snow White is no different. To begin with, when it comes to being the “fairest of them all” how could she exactly compete with Charlize Theron? But let’s leave that argument aside for now. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I may have a thing for blondes. Her performance is not as riveting as Theron. She dwarfs in comparison when their scenes come after each other. Their characters meet only twice, one of which is an entire action scene. Theron still outshines her there.

She’s not feisty enough and when she feigns strength, it comes off as forced and not natural. Perhaps she could pass as Snow White in another version of the story. But in this Joan of Arc-esque take on the fairytale, Stewart fails miserably. She’s sulky and passive most of the time, while she needs to be commanding and strong. The attitude just isn’t there.

Chris Hemsworth is simply there most of the time. He doesn’t add anything substantial to the movie as he does in, say, The Avengers. He just hovers around, providing input when needed. Apart from that, the role of the huntsman in the story of Snow White is nowhere near how this movie makes it out to be. But I guess twists to the fairytale are needed in the 21st century.

When it comes to Snow White & The Huntsman, the movie’s main problem is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It aims at being an epic version of the story of Snow White but still manages to take Snow to a land of fairies and legendary elks. It aims to keep the feel of the fairytale alive but fails at that, totally losing the charm of the story the people fell in love with many years ago. It relies heavily on its visual effects, which were very well done – the eight dwarves are all regular-sized actors, as an example, but loses itself in the fact that it has diluted the story up to a point where those visual effects serve as the wheel moving the movie forward.  At the end of the day, Snow White & The Huntsman is visually pleasing, enough so to keep you entertained for two hours, but is essentially hollow. Blame it on the Hollywood rehash of the story.

Walt Disney’s 1937 take on the story still stands unscathed.

6/10

Tannoura Maxi is Banned in Lebanon

Because the government has so much free-time on its hands,

Because nothing else is important & going on nowadays,

Because there’s nothing wrong in Lebanon that needs to be rectified,

Because our threshold for offenses is so damn low and our pride so damn high,

Because our journalists are so keen on research,

Because our TV stations can’t wait to eat up a controversy,

Tannoura Maxi has been banned in Lebanon, following a request by the Lebanese Catholic Information Center. Hate or like the movie, you can’t but be against such a thing. If you think this is irrelevant compared to what the country is going through, you are right. But then think about how such a decision came to be in the light of what the country is going through and you’ll come to the same conclusion I got to.

This is pitiful. This is a disgrace. This is an insult to our intelligence and our freedom. This is an insult to Christianity, an insult to the Bible and an insult to anything Jesus Christ stood for.

Christian priests, are you happy? I am a Christian and I’m telling you – you are disgusting. You are so narrow-minded that if I tried to look through the hole that is your mind, the only thing I can see is emptiness. Is that what they teach you at whatever school you go through to become priests? To close in your mind and get offended at anything that touches on your religion in a way you find unfavorable?

How does this reflect on us, Christians, when your narrow-mindedness if the only thing people can see of us? Have you perhaps wondered that if some people decided to convert from Christianity because of a movie like Tannoura Maxi, however unlikely that may be, it’s not the movie’s fault but it’s your own? Or it’s perhaps because you don’t want the reality of having so many people with so little faith on your hands that you are panicking about anything and everything?

Weren’t you offended, dear priests, by Muslims smashing statues of the Virgin Mary in Where Do We Go Now? Weren’t you offended by them faking a miracle and saying the word “waté” in church? Weren’t you offended by one of the actresses throwing dirt at the statue of the Virgin Mary?

Or is “offending” religions also hypocritical in Lebanon, some can get away with it while others are burned at the stake?

The whole idea of bans in Lebanon needs to be banned. Censorship is never the solution. Prohibition should never be allowed. Religious men should not be permitted near anything that exceeds their field. Go to your churches, parishes and mosques and leave books, movies and TV shows alone.

A Lebanese Priest On Tannoura Maxi’s Potential Ban in Lebanon

If you don’t want to hear it from me, how about you listen to someone who’s among the most concerned (Arabic article) with Tannoura Maxi?

Father George Massouh, who teaches at the University of Balamand, wrote an article for Annahar in which he discussed the matter from the perspective of basic liberties, without even watching the movie.

Sects in Lebanon today, he said, are not only hijacking a person’s sense of nationalism but they are also attempting to take over people’s taste by trying to dictate what they can or cannot watch. And he’s totally right.

Religions are supposedly a voice for liberties – none of them, in theory, ask for oppression. Those who start oppressive measures are the people whose understanding of religion is quite limited. Do you think Jesus would be offended by Tannoura Maxi? There’s only one answer to this question and it’s a no. One only needs to look at the Bible and read the teachings of the Man to know that such a thing wouldn’t register on His radar of relevance, which begs the question: who are we offending here?

The answer is simple. Our Christian pride.

I think Christians in Lebanon have reached a point of mass hysteria, especially with the recent events in Tripoli, where they’re feeling increasingly threatened, unjustifiably so. Even though their reason is telling them they have nothing to worry about, their passion is telling them to grasp at anything that might make them feel strong and in control. Tannoura Maxi turned out to be the casualty.

The argument I’ve heard being tossed around: “But if this had happened with them, the whole country would have burned.”

Perhaps so. But two wrongs don’t make a right especially when it comes to something that touches on basic liberties. The moment we start compromising on what we allow others and ourselves to be exposed to is the moment we start biding farewell to our position in Lebanese society and the region. And that’s the true danger we are facing, not some irrelevant extremists whose effect far transcends their actual size.

Father Massouh concludes his article by saying: instead of asking for bans on things that we think are offending religions, we need to use civilized platforms to get the message across. Clergy and religious figures nowadays are only contributing to increasing ignorance among the people by failing to grasp that point.

So, as I said, instead of making a big deal out of Tannoura Maxi’s religious content, just let the movie be. For religions that have been around for thousands of years, how big of a threat can a movie be? In the grand scheme of things, it’s totally irrelevant. How about we see it as such instead of asking what religious people shouldn’t ask for: a policy of bans and limiting freedom?

Tannoura Maxi – To Ban or Not to Ban? To Watch or Not to Watch?

 

A woman running towards a Church. She barges in, takes some dirt and throws them at a statue of the Virgin Mary, shouting at Her. Do you remember that scene? If you don’t, it’s a scene in Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now.
I see no one who has a problem with that scene.

Tannoura Maxi, a new Lebanese movie, is being challenged as an offense to Christianity. What’s the content of the movie that might be offensive?

1 – Sexy outfits in church
2 – Flirtatious and suggestive looks during Mass
3 – Talk about sex in church
4 – Sex scene in a convent to church bells.

So in a nutshell, it undermines the role of clergy and apparently portrays the Lebanese Forces in a bad light. The movie is supposed to be taking place during civil war Lebanon. It’s the story of a priest falling for a girl. Overdone? Definitely. Nauseating? Beyond any doubt. Should it be banned? Hell no.

The movie is somewhat autobiographical for the director whose father, a deacon, fell for his mother while on his way to priesthood. In Tannoura Maxi, however, the main character is not a deacon but a priest, who’s not allowed to act on this type of impulses. Is that reason enough for the outrage?
If priests alone represented Christianity, then we are in deep trouble. If representing priests in bad ways in movies is now frowned upon, then we are in deeper trouble. Has anyone watched the movie “Doubt” where a priest is accused of being sexually-abusive to a child?
Has anyone watched or read “The Hunchback of Notre Dame?” – Belle, the song from the play, has the following lyric: “O Fleur de Lys, si je ne suis pas un homme de foi, j’irai ceuillir la fleur d’amour d’Esmeralda.” [I am not a man of faith, I will go and collect Esmeralda’s flower of love].
I don’t see anyone being offended by that as well.

Is anything priesthood and Christianity-related offensive only when it’s done by Lebanese and tolerable when done by everyone else?

Think about this for a second. Would The DaVinci Code have been the phenomenon it was in Lebanon had it not been banned?

I haven’t watched Tannoura Maxi and I don’t intend to – not because of its religious content but because of its content in general.
The movie is directed and written by Joe Bou Eid. His previous works include Miriam Fares music videos. Enough said.
The movie’s script was presented to a priest for approval, lacking anything that might be controversial. So they double crossed a priest in order to get what they want.
A Lebanese movie about religion, set during the civil war… How original! At least Where Do We Go Now had an interesting take on the topic. But if Nadine Labaki does another war-related movie, I, for one, will be far less accepting.

Moreover, if director Joe Bou Eid wants to take a jab at the Lebanese Forces and make it seem legitimate, I suggest he does it in a serious movie that is not pushing people to nausea when they watch. So regarding that matter, I think Tannoura Maxi is irrelevant enough to be of any relevance. The LF have nothing to worry about.
The director said the LF admit they did “bad stuff” during the war. Well, so did everyone else. I don’t see him addressing that. But you know how it is with Christians in Lebanon – we have chosen our war-scapegoat in the form of the LF. Anything else simply wouldn’t make sense. God forbid anyone else did bad things.

I don’t want to watch Tannoura Maxi because everything I’ve heard about the movie can be summed up in the following way: it’s a waste of time, money, talent. It’s a waste of your neurons firing to keep you awake during the movie. It’s a waste of the effort that your brain has to do in order for you to watch the movie.

So now you know why there’s a story about it being offensive to Christianity? Controversy brings audience. Just ignore it and Tannoura Maxi will die a slow, painful death.

Finally I ask Lebanese movie makers this to ponder on this: when you need to spring up controversy to get your movies noticed, you know you’re doing it wrong. How about you focus on making decent movies, worthy of the budgets you’re getting, instead of regurgitating the same topic again and again and again and then following the same marketing tactics to put your movies on radars?

The trailer of Tannoura Maxi:

The Avengers – Movie Review

Before you start reading this, you need to know that I am a superhero-movies enthusiast. Those types of movies always manage to thoroughly entertain me, whether they get critical acclaim or not and whether their die-hard fans think they’re good or not. Case in point? I enjoyed watching Captain America, Thor & Transformers (please read on) among others.

The Avengers, a movie that has been hyped for years, has been well received by critics. But I would be the first to tell you that critics loving a movie isn’t always a recipe for a good movie. Is this the case here? Definitely not. Once again, my inner superhero fanboy was awed at what was happening on screen in a movie that brought together not one but four superheros from four different movie franchises that he likes.

Bringing in characters from the movies: The Incredible Hulk, Captain American, Thor and Iron Man, The Avengers manages to create a story weaved out of the fabric of all those movies. The Tesseract, which first appeared in Captain America, is a source of unlimited energy. It is also sought after by an alien species using Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the exiled brother of Thor, as a key element in its plans of dominating and destroying Earth. In order to deter those plans, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) decides to bring together a team of superheroes: The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). Helping Fury in his plans is agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johanson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner).

Despite some sequences in the dialogue being trite and somewhat cliché, as is expected from movies of the sort, The Avengers doesn’t leave much room for you to dwell on such shortcomings. There’s always something taking place on screen: when it’s not a special effects-loaded scene that has been fine tuned to perfection, it’s a quirky, fun, or hilarious interaction between the characters of the movie.

The director Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, has managed to give a movie where he balanced comedy with the sci-fi aspect impeccably. The leeway he gives the characters to breathe and let their wings stretch is very welcome. Whedon knows how to set up the character interactions. He knows which characters to place together, he knows who’s the gunpowder to the other’s lead. He knows how to work the chemistry of the superhero characters. The overall effect gives the movie an organic feel that is at odds with the underlying theme it’s working for, giving a product that is quite interesting in its contrast.

As mentioned before, the special effects in The Avengers are top notch. The camera work is really well done. The performances by all the actors involved are engaging, especially Robert Downey Jr. who definitely takes the cake when it comes to being the most engaging and interesting of the superheros. Chris Evans, as Captain America, is the refined old-fashioned man full of confusion and disorientation. Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo give way to some needed comic relief. Scarlett Johanson is stiff at times but she’s beautiful enough to get away with it. Jeremy Renner is terribly underused.

However, despite its flaws, The Avengers left me thinking at some points how much better the Transformers movies would have been had they been taken this route. There’s something about this movie that is simply charming and captivating. As the movie culminates in an epic battle scene in New York – speaking of that, how many times has New York been destroyed and rebuilt by Hollywood? You’d think it’s the new Beirut – and some hilarious comment by Robert Downey Jr. about shawarma, you don’t want The Avengers‘ last minutes to tick away. The movie entertains you for the entirety of its duration. It will make you laugh and it will make you catch your breath. There are no dull moments. I don’t know about you but I just can’t wait for round two.

9/10