Ed's Review Dot Com

AEG Live, Insurge Pictures, Island Def Jam Music Group

Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Sean Kingston, Ludacris, Jaden Smith, Usher, Pattie Mallette

This is a documentary about Justin Bieber. This film follows him from his early years when he was born in a small town with a large love of music, through the You Tube years, to the present where this kid made a huge mark on the charts. Justin is just plain talented. It also follows him on tour and shows scenes from the shows, so it’s a mix of “Behind the Music” or “Biography” and a concert film. A sure hit for those with Bieber Fever!!!

There have been a lot of concert films coming out lately. Trying to mix in the new techniques in 3D with the music of the particular star, I think they hope to make you feel like you’ve been to a concert. This one is somewhat different in that it has a lot of old footage, home movies, and interviews of family and friends in it mixed in with songs from the concert tour. I did NOT see this in 3D, as I watched it at home on DVD, so if there was a big plus to seeing it in a theater of screaming 9 year old girls, I missed out on that. As such I didn’t rate this film very high because I felt it failed on several levels. First of all, as a documentary, it covers highlights of how baby Justin was a drummer from the crib on, and it starts out with a cute montage of viral youtube clips setting us up for the obvious early Bieber clips to come. That was a clever opening and a quick hook, but there was not nearly enough meat to make this a biography film. Then it mixes in the concert footage and I found it pretty good (Justin is one hell of singer) but that too is lacking because it is too few and far between. I think I could have enjoyed this much more as a one hour Biography segment with the documentary stuff, and a 90 minute concert letting him just entertain. I’m not sure why it was done in this half and half format. I obviously have never seen a Bieber concert, so maybe he can’t hold an audience of grown ups for 90 minutes. Or perhaps since the Jonas Brothers film bombed so badly, that they wanted to put move Bieber history in it to make it more interesting to fans, I’m not sure, but it was disjointed for me and not enough of either story.

Obviously any Bieber fans are going to go crazy for this film, and please feel free to get the Blu-Ray and enjoy it over and over, and I wish you well. It just didn’t work that well for me, although Justin is an interesting subject and the little bugger can really carry a tune. And he’s cute as a button, as they say. I just wasn’t blown away by the way this was edited. (Of course it’s possible I was just being a crotchety old guy who is too tough to please.) If you loved it and though it was very good, please take a moment to comment and tell me why. I’d like to know why I just didn’t seem to get it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Ecosse Films, Film4, UK Film Council

Aaron Johnson, Thomas Sangster, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff, David Morrissey, Ophelia Lovibond, Josh Bolt, Sam Bell, Andrew Buchan

Nowhere Boy is the story of the youth of John Lennon from 1944 through 1960. There were two strong women who played major roles in John’s upbringing, Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) who raised him from a small child, and Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) his birth mother who gave him up when he was a small child. The struggle between these two women for John’s affections was fierce and no doubt had a large impact on him. John (Aaron Johnson) inherits Julia’s love of music and is only interested in becoming a musician much to Mimi’s chagrin. The story ends here shortly after John meets a fellow musician in Liverpool named Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster) and the two form a band. The rest, as the say, is history.

I was looking forward to this film, and was excited when the DVD arrived, but I was sorely disappointed. It’s very boring! I was interested in John’s life, but there wasn’t anything really going on that made it worth watching. Mimi and Julia fighting over why Julia gave John up, and whether or not Mimi stole him. Mimi trying to convince him that music was a waste of time and would never give him a stable career and pushing him into his school work. Wow, this could just about be any family. I tried to concentrate and pay attention to what was going on, but found myself distracted and my thoughts wandering throughout. I found this to be one of the worst biographical films I have ever seen, and I’m not sure why they bothered to make this. I guess people are very interested in John’s early life, but I am not sure this is an accurate portrayal, and it’s certainly not a very interesting film. I just didn’t appreciate it very much.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

See-Saw Films, Bedlam Productions

Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Andrews, Eve Best

Britain’s King George VI (Colin Firth) struggles with an embarrassing stutter for years until he seeks help from unorthodox Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in this biographical picture, and winner of the academy award for best picture of 2010. From his youth, Prince Albert, or Bertie as he was called by the family, stuttered very badly. He was called upon to speak from time to time and feared it greatly. Then with the death of his father, the king, and the abdication of his elder brother Edward after a year, Albert was crowned King George VI. His work with Logue made it possible for him to speak on Radio, in person, and then eventually on film and television. This is the story of the approaching war with Germany and role that King George VI had in modernizing the British Monarchy and in preparing and sustaining England through another terrible world war.

Ironically I watched this film on DVD the same day of the wedding of his great-grandson Prince William Arthur Phillip Louie, now Duke of Cambridge. It is ironic because watching the wedding and the views of Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, the same locations are shown in this movie. The same carport at the palace where Prince William and his bride exited the carriage and entered the palace are in this movie, as is the famous balcony where many monarchs have appeared, and the scenes inside Westminster Abbey are the same place where the wedding occurred yesterday. This brought the history home and certainly gave a sense of continuity to the film. I approached this film with trepidation. If you recall my comments earlier in the year about the “unlikelihood of this film deserving the “Best Picture” award, you must forgive my ignorance of speaking without any knowledge of what I was talking about. I hate people who offer opinions on films without watching them. Reviews like, “I turned this off after the first ten minutes” or “I haven’t watched it and I know I would hate it so I’m not going to” make me very angry, but then I made up my mind that I was not going to enjoy this film before even seeing it. I expected it to be a boring historical piece. The previews did not do it justice, and how could they do a decent film about an ancient king with a stutter? Actually I was very embarrassed while watching it, as I became fascinated with the history, especially with the lead up to World War II and the changing of the British Monarchy of the time. I wondered how a country has a Queen who has no power and no real clout. King George VI bemoans this same situation as the kingdom was moving into a new era. Through this I learned the value of having a strong symbolic leader through tough times who has no political relevance. They don’t take political sides, but they pull the country together in strong patriotic (not political) ways that we here in the U.S. do not have. The struggles between the right and left leave us divided and the hatred and attacks from each side on the other cannot be lessened by someone who stands for America but does not take sides politically. This is a wonderful thing.

Back to the film. Colin Firth is excellent as King George VI. On the special features is a recording of the speech Colin gives in the latter part of the movie, and you can see how, listening to King George VI, that Colin was spot on in his interpretation and the performance of the speech. Geoffrey Rush is Logue. Without much to go on (even though he was close friends with King George VI for 25 years or so) it is hard to imagine him as other than Geoffrey Rush. Even Logue’s grandson who is in a special feature on the DVD says that since his grandfather was gone before he was born, that he will always have a little Geoffrey Rush in him. Helena Bonham Carter was also wonderful as the loving and caring wife of the king. All in all the film is a wonderful historical perspective of the times leading up to the second world war and I learned a lot of history from watching it. It was excellently done, and I must eat cake and admit that it certainly was worthy (and then some) of the best picture nod this year! I stand humbled at my ignorance. 🙂

Here is some info on the life and background of King George VI.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Disinformation Company

Anthony F. Aveni, Walter Cruttenden, Benito Venegas Duran, Graham Hancock, John Major Jenkins, Lawrence E. Joseph, Jim Marrs, Alonso Mendez, Daniel Pinchbeck, Douglas Rushkoff, Alberto Villoldo, John Anthony West

This documentary takes a long hard unflinching look at the end of days, December 21, 2012. The Mayan people used multiple calendars. One was knows as the long calendar which calculates the cyclical history of the world and ends on Dec 21, 2012. This day is significant for several reasons, one, it’s the first day of Winter, the shortest day. Another thing is the unusual lineup of the planets and the sun. Third is that it’s at a climax of a very active period of solar activity, solar flares, and the like. This is a scientific piece, interviewing a variety of minds, from Mayan experts, to astronomers, authors, and historians and the like to get their views on why this time is significant and what it might mean.

There seems to be a clamoring for doom and destruction tales of all kinds. People would like to belive that Nostradamus sat in a chair centuries ago and saw what is happeing in our day. It is easy to take words that are gibberish and apply them to things that have already happened and jump to the conclusion that matching statement to future events means they will happen. I remember watching Johnny Carson as a little kid and seeing “The Amazing Kreskin” doing his predictions. Guys like this make lots of predictions and if one happens to come true, nobody remembers the hundreds that don’t. Kresin told us with a wave of the hand and a profund “harrumph”….”I predict that the next president of the United States will be Henry Cabot Lodge”. I remembered that one.

I lived through the end of the world on 1/1/2000 unscathed, (even though all the rides were shut down at 11PM at the local amusement parks for our safety). I sat at work and watched as the clock clicked 11:59:59 TO 12:00:00 and nothing happened. What did we expect–Cars crashing, fires breaking out, elevators falling hundreds of stories to the ground!!! I lived through the collapse of Niagara Falls years ago that was going to kill hundreds of tourists and sink one of the Maid of the Mist ships. I lived through the giant earthquake that was going to devistate Southern California a few weekends ago due to the largest high tide in recent history, and so forth.

This is not a very good documentary. It is interesting in many ways, and the general concensus of most of the “experts” is that life will go on after Dec 21, 2012 so we should pay our mortgages and taxes, and that the Mayans were trying to tell us of a new “golden age” of civilization, not the end of days. But still, this documentary is full of theories and guesses and lots of “it has been said” statement without any backup. If you’re interested in the way scientists think, it might be worth catching on Netflix Watch Instantly, but I don’t think it’s worth renting unless you are really interested in the subject.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

National Geographic Explorer

Rodd Houston

Rodd Houston narrates us through this National Geographic Explorer episode called “The Science of Dogs”. This TV documentary views the extreme rapid evolution of dogs in a very short period of time evolutionary speaking. It’s a close look at the relationship between man and dog, and even into the dna to attempt to determine how we were able to evolve all these different species in such a short time. It also looks at what this mutation of the genes of our canine friends has cost them. The same “slippery” genes that allow vast difference in size, shape, and such, has also introduced genetic problems in certain breeds like blindness, deafness, bone deformities, etc. It also looks at the differences between the wolf and the dog. It seems that dogs are 99.8% identical, and all the differences between great danes, collies, chihuahuas, and dachshunds comes from differences in the last .2%.

There are also very interesting looks as specific experiments in developing breeds of dogs for very specific uses; how dogs can be used for identifying cancer, drugs, explosives, and other types of things. There is a very interesting experiment where a couple raised a group of dogs and a group of wolves from birth, and they can experiment on the two groups in the same way. In an interesting experiment, the showed how a wolf sets about to solve a problem by himself, and a dog, on the other hand, would give up very easy and depend on the human for assistance. There are some very interesting reasons why dog is man’s best friend. Not only have the been helping us for centuries, but the experimentation of the dog genome is very useful because of the ability of a dog to evolve very quickly. By having 2 litters a year, it speeds up the process even faster, and developing ways to help genetic problems in dogs may very well help us to correct genetic problems in humans.

This is a very interesting documentary, and a fascinating hour learning a lot of new things about our closest animal friend. I found it all very intriguing and quite entertaining. I gained a lot of respect for my dogs behavior and why he’s like he is. I also learned a lot about the value of “the mutt” and why a pure breed is not always the best thing for the dog. I highly recommend this documentary for anyone who is interested. It is an excellent episode of Explorer.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog