Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Burton)

Overall:

It's not easy doing justice to a Roald Dahl book. The man was a creative genius with such imagination that to recreate one of his tales on screen would require a tremendous amount of effort, not to mention extreme skill. Luckily, Tim Burton was willing to put in the hard yards to not only do justice to this literary childrens' masterpiece, but to bring it to life. The work poured into this 2005 film was enormous, but the result was nothing less than spectacular.

'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' is possibly my favourite Roald Dahl book; I'd highly recommend it to anyone of any age. I love what the filmmakers did to this movie, because it seems as if they read the book, let their imaginations run wild, and then put what they saw onto a screen.

It was brilliant.

Plot:

Don't you hate it when filmmakers think they know better than the author of the book on which the film is based, and make drastic, unnecessary changes to the plot? Of course, it is ridiculous to say that a film should not deviate from the novel at all. There are always some sensible, smallish tweaks to the original story that are needed to make the movie more cinematic, or more understandable, or to fit into the time frame with more ease, but a lot of the time the filmmakers take these changes much too far.

Thankfully, in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', Dahl's genius has been appreciated and the main story has been largely untouched. The main changes came from delving deeper into Willy Wonka's past and developing the character more, so they were worthwhile.

Characters:


Charlie



Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) - The thing which defines Charlie Bucket in the book 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' is that he is quite normal. His family is poor, which makes him nice and appreciative - not rotten like the other children who win tickets to see Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This is how the filmmakers kept him in the movie.

I liked this. Charlie was not 'special'. He didn't have any super-powers, he wasn't a genius, and he didn't have any cool gadgets. He was normal, like us. We can relate to this boy!
Also, in a world where many films have main characters that are selfish, reinforcing the 'it's all about me' message that people seem to like so much, Charlie was a refreshing change. Polite and caring, he's a good role model to the kids watching the movie.
Thumbs up to Tim Burton for keeping Charlie's character true to the book!



Augustus

Augustus Gloop (Philip Wiegratz) - Grandpa George tells Charlie that the first person to find a golden ticket will be "Fat, fat, fat!" Augustus Gloop sure did prove him right! The actor had to wear a fat suit to appear porky enough for the part, and was constantly eating a bar of chocolate. He wasn't quite disgusting enough to put me off chocolate, though...  but a good portrayal of this character.

Veruca

Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) - The way Veruca Salt was portrayed in this film was absolutely priceless. Julia Winter played this spoilt brat brilliantly. It was so entertaining!
Veruca is also a demonstration to children of how having everything isn't necessarily that great. That, and that throwing tantrums makes you look ridiculous.

Violet

Violet Beauregarde (Anasophia Robb) - I imagine that Roald Dahl must have really hated seeing kids chewing gum all the time when he created the character of Violet Beauregarde, because in the book her sole purpose was to show children what a disgusting habit it is to chew gum all day. The filmmakers have expanded Violet's character a bit to turn her into a girl bent on winning anything and everything, mainly to do with chewing gum. This wasn't a bad change, as it made her a less likable, less deserving character.




Mike

Mike Teavee (Jordan Fry) - The novel 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' was written in 1964, where not that many people owned televisions. Even then, Dahl could tell that children were spending far too long in front of screens. The original Mike Teavee was a kid who watched lots of spy/gun shows, and carried around some ludicrous number of guns with him. This film was made in 2005, so the filmmakers have modernised Mike a bit into a violent video gamer. This is established early into the film as the audience are introduced to him playing a video game, yelling, "DIE, DIE, DIE!" Unfortunately, the filmmakers chose to make him a know-all when it came to science, which I thought slightly undermined the 'TV makes you dumb' message. Apart from that, though, I thought that Mike Teavee was portrayed very well, and made the film seem more modern.



Wonka

 Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) - A lot is left to interpretation when it comes to Willy Wonka in the novel. He's simply seen as some marvellous, generous man who happens to be an eccentric genius. When putting this into a film, though, one has to consider exactly what an eccentric genius looks like. The book describes him as a man who wears a top hat, a purple waistcoat, green pants and a black goatee. Obviously, that doesn't tell us a lot about who he is and how he got to where he did. What I like about the film is that they looked at Willy Wonka's backstory: what his childhood was like, etc. On top of being very entertaining, it helped us as the audience to realise why Mr. Wonka was so... unusual. Johnny Depp was said to have based his character on Michael Jackson. It wasn't quite what I imagined Willy Wonka to be when I was eight years old, reading the book, but I prefered this to the Willy Wonka from the previous film rendition (who was kind of scary).



Oompa Loompas

 Oompa Loompas (Deep Roy): All the Oompa Loompas (Tens? Hundreds?Thousands, maybe?) were played by just one man in this film, which I thought was fantastic. A lot of work, yes. Effective, definitely. The attention to detail was phenomenal. All the dances to the songs were choreographed and excecuted perfectly in time. Keeping them at knee height for the whole movie (involving a lot of shooting on oversized sets and CGI) was done so smoothly that the first few times I watched the film, I thought the actor must have been naturally that small. The Oompa Loompas were a hilarious part of the film that really helped bring it to life and added some great humour to the film. Loved them. :)

Themes:
In the book, all the themes are fairly self-explanitory, and most of the important ones have been outlined in the character section of this review. To my delight, the film included the great majority of these. It also added a theme: the importance of family. I still can't decide whether I'm pleased or upset that they included this (to be honest, I'm not sure I care too much), because on one hand, it fights for the main focus of the film, leaving less time for the themes in the book to be explored, but on the other hand, it's a family movie and it didn't really hurt to have it thrown in. I suppose it doesn't really matter too much.

Props / Scenery:
Wow. Just wow.
The sets for this film were absolutely amazing. Wacky, beautiful, eccentric, fun, mysterious, colourful... they were Burton's imagination come to life. The effort that was put in to create the sets must have been phenomenal. I can say one thing: this was no half-hearted endevour. The pictures are so vivid... Charlie's tiny little house with its twisted charm in the foreground, with the dull, orderly city behind it and Willy Wonka's huge chocolate factory looming over it all, dark, mysterious and inviting... A room where everything, from the candied grass to the viscous chocolate river is edible... you can imagine being in every single scene of the movie with no difficulty, which draws the viewer right in.
Again, wow.

Special Effects:
As has been the trend with this film, the special effects were so great that the viewer couldn't tell they were special effects. Well, I couldn't, anyway. Take, for example, the squirrels in the nut room. When I thought about it, I could never figure out whether they were real or CGI. They looked as if they were real ones, but I was quite sure they couldn't be trained to do what they did. It turned out that it was a clever blend of filming real squirrels, CGI and animatronic puppets. Animal trainers spent three months training baby squirrels to run where they wanted them to and appear to be cracking nuts. Three months! Talk about making an effort! The only special effect I thought could have been a bit more realistic was Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry. It looked slightly fake. Yet again, what's realistic about somebody turning into a blueberry? Altogether, the SFX were very good.

Music:
The music in this film is probably one of my favourite scores ever. It fit so perfectly into the film that I could probably write an essay on it. But I won't, because I can't be bothered and nobody would read it anyway. So I'll try to fit all of what I want to say into a couple of paragraphs:
The music is all done by Danny Elfman - the score, the Oompa Loompa songs... he even sang all the different Oompa Loompa voices himself, and it was perfect. The score he composed for the opening credits was the best part, in my opinion: low brass playing mysterious, rising undertones; percussion enforcing the in a regular, mechanical beat that emphasised the factory background; Oompa Loompa voices singing in a somewhat sickly-sweetly manner that reminds the viewer of candy; all meshed together in a theme that intrigues the audience and draws them right into the film from the very start. It just goes to show what a high standard the music is at not only to have made me interested in the opening credits (which, admittedly, are generally the most boring part of the film apart from the end credits), but to make that scene one of my favourites in the film.
The Oompa Loompa songs are also brilliant - each of them is so unique, with a completely different style each, but all of them are utterly entertaining. What I was particularly impressed with was the fact that the lyrics were all taken from the book, once again honouring Roald Dahl and his masterpiece. The soundtrack is one I would highly reccommend to anyone who has seen the film or read the book (to those who haven't, the lyrics might seem a bit... odd).

Good Things:

• The complete respect with which the filmmakers treated every aspect of the book :D
• The casting - all the actors suited their characters very well
• The Oompa Loompas - a lot of work, but worth it
• The sets. Amazing.
• The special effects - for the most part, very realistic
• The music

Bad things:
(Not much here, really)

• Being nitpicky, perhaps the Violet-turns-into-a-blueberry scene needed to be slightly more realistic
• No sequel! And now, Freddie Highmore is probably too old to play Charlie in 'Charlie and the Glass Elevator', which is very disappointing.

Overall:
This film really respects the book (which, being a bookworm, I cannot encourage more), and look where that got the filmmakers - a movie that made heaps of money because everybody loved it! I'm sure that Roald Dahl would have loved it. As far as adaptations go, I'm giving it five stars (out of five). For entertainment value, I give it four and a half stars. I highly reccommend both the film and the book to all of my readers.

~IoP

Bear with me...

Hi everyone,
Sorry I haven't been around lately. I have a music exam coming up and I've been using most of my spare time preparing for it. So I apologise for my lack of attention to this blog for the next month or so (not that that's exactly a different trend from the last two months), and hope to blog soon!
Thanks for your patience,
~SON

VDT Film Breakdown - Overall Character Development

One of the best things about fantasy, I do believe, is the fact that a well-written fantasy novel can indeed be more realistic than a book set in the real world.
Why? Well, it's quite simple. The fact that the world in which the novel is set is so surreal means that for the tale to be believeable, each of the characters must be 100% relatable, with the same thought processes as ourselves. Because a fantasy world is so far from our reality, the characters must be especially close to it.
They may be fighting a dragon, or sailing to the end of the world, or running away from a host of nightmarish creatures, yet the fact that the characters act the way we might in the same situation makes us believe every word the story is saying. It intrigues us to see everyday people who are very similar to us face adverseries we will never have to face (such as dragons) and overcome everyday things we all have to face (such as lack of confidence). It is this mixture of the unbelievable and the believable that makes fantasy so entertaining.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons I was not a fan of VDT when I saw it on DVD. All the sets were absolutely gorgeous, many of them depicting Narnia very close to what I had imagined, but the lack of character development throughout the film was pitiful. Shallow character arcs with terrible dialouge made for a film that was visually stunning, but lacked any connection to reality.
Over the next while, I'll be going into detail over each of the characters in VDT and how they fell short of the characters C.S. Lewis wrote about in his novel.
I realise I haven't been around for AGES, and I really do apologise for this. But I've been learning how to be diligent lately, putting church, family, violin and school in  front of my hobbies.
I've also discovered an amazing fantasy series, called 'The Wheel of Time'. I just finished the first book, 'The Eye of the World' this morning. All the elements of a great fantasy book are right there, including... yes, you guessed it, incredibly believable main characters. The series is an exceedingly long one; the first book was almost 800 pages and so far there are 13 in the series (a fourteenth coming out this December, I'm told), but 'The Eye of the World' was very easy to read, and with about 30 minutes of reading each day, I managed to finish it in about a month. I'll be sure to dedicate a whole post to it later.
I hope you all haven't given up on me just yet!
Signing off,
~SON

P.S. If anyone has a preference to which charaver they would prefer to be analysed first, feel free to comment. :)

VDT - Second Thoughts

So it's been about five months since Voyage of the Dawn Treader came out in the cinemas. A couple of weeks ago my brother, Sir Lipine, and I borrowed the DVD and rewatched it. Our thoughts, now it wasn't on the big screen?
Well, there's no easy way to say this, so I'd better just get this out of me. We thought it was pathetic. Most opinions we had of the film in the cinemas were completely washed away, leaving only disappointment their place. We so wanted this film to be great, to capture the heart of my favourite book, but once we saw it on DVD we could no longer deny that this was a terrible adaptaion and a terrible film.
For the next while or so, in an effort to keep myself blogging more often, I'm going to write small posts covering in detail different aspects in the film. I'll have a post for the plot, a post for each of the characters and a post for each of the themes. After this, I'll do a sum up of all these things and the way they all impact on the overall film.
That's the plan, anyway. :)
~SON

A Christmas Carol (2009 Animated)

Hello there, my loyal bookworms! I've finally escaped (for a time) that ugly black hole of homework and study! With this new-found (though likely short-lived) freedom, I am very happy to present to you another one of my (admittedly rare) comparative analysis reviews. This is one I've been wanting to do for ages, so now, without further ado, A Christmas Carol!

Overall position of the film:

I began watching this film expecting an adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol' for children, with more modern, easy-to-understand language and a fair bit of slapstick humour. However, I was completely caught unawares! This is a thorough, very close adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel that barely deviates from the plot, language and most importantly, themes, that were in the book. I would even go as far as to say that it is the closest film adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol' that I have ever seen.

Plot:

As I mentioned earlier, the plot barely deviates from the book at all in this film. There is slight poetic licence taken here and there (for example, Scrooge is at one point chased by the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come), but for the most part, Dickens' work is greatly respected and great attention to detail is shown in the story.

Characters:

Scrooge - This was certainly one of Jim Carrey's more serious roles. He voiced Scrooge with much conviction and character, bringing the old miser at the centre of this story to life. I also loved the way the animators portrayed him: tallish, very skinny, with thin lips, and a long, hooked nose.

Marley - I thought that the filmmakers were very clever in the way they portrayed Marley's ghost. He was, in all truth, a fairly scary guy, with his glowing chains and message he gives to Scrooge, besides the fact that he is the first ghost we see in this tale. The filmmakers proceeded to make him seem a little less intimidating by throwing in a little bit of slapstick humour, but not so much as to make the audience forget the what is about to happen to the main character.

The Ghost of Christmas Past - I was quite startled at how well this ghost fitted the book's description, for it is one of those things that is easy to imagine but hard to visually portray. Dickens described it as:

"Like a child: yet not so like a child as an old man, [...] from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm."

The thing I was perhaps most impressed with was the way the face was constantly changing from old to young. I applaud the animators for the admirable job they did in bringing this character to life.

The Ghost of Christmas Present - Can't really complain for this ghost, either. Of course, this ghost, being the one closest to human form, is the easiest to visually depict. The way he was represented was not really very different to any other films, but it fitted the book's description, so I was still fairly happy with it even though is perhaps lacked the 'wow' factor of the other ghosts.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - My goodness, this spirit was by far the scariest of the three! I absolutely loved the way the animators chose to portray it, for it was like nothing I had seen before and highly original. It actually had no form; it was only seen as the shadow of a cloaked figure, and this made it all the more frightening. Because there was no indication of how tall or short it was, and because it wasn't something one of the characters could touch any more than you or I could grasp a shadow, there was a huge element of mystery involved in this character. The filmmakers understood a very important concept here: the fear of the unknown is far greater than the fear of what you can see, because it lets the viewer's imagination fill in the gaps.

Themes:

I think that anyone who has read this classic novella would agree with me that it has the amazing theme of redemption running through it as Scrooge goes from a miserable old man who cares for nothing but himself to one who sees the error of his ways and is completely changed into a new man. This was not at all downplayed in the film for the comfort of the general public, which I was greatly appreciative of.
The theme of compassion is one that also runs throughout the book as Scrooge learns the importance of caring for others, not just one's self. This too was very much a part of this movie.

Christian Messages:

Even though the novel never explicitly mentions God having a hand in Scrooge's redemption or Scrooge realising Christ to be his personal savior, there are nevertheless many Christian messages present in this book. One of them is the fact that said main character was not able to change on his own. For that matter, he didn't even realise that magnitude of his actions until the three spirits showed him. This is something also picked up in the film - that redemption is not something we can achieve ourselves.

Setting:

All the background sets were very well thought out to highlight the fact that this is a story set in England somewhere around the year of 1843 (which was when this tale was published). I found it a fascinating insight to the way people lived back then, with the horse-drawn carriages and the huge churches and the small shops. They were the sort of sets that really took you back to the time and showed you what day to day life looked like.

Animation:

What can I say? The animation and art departments for this movie did a truly spectacular job. There is nothing I can really complain about, because everything they visually presented absolutely respected and embraced the spirit of this classic tale.

Music:

The music very much fitted in with the emotion of the film, at points full of Christmas cheer, at other times suspenseful and fast-paced. I especially loved the incorporation of much percussion with the other orchestral instruments (in my opinion, a good film score is one that makes good use of percussion!).

Things I disliked about the film:

• The only thing I can think to say is that this was advertised as a family film, but because of some scary scenes and the complexity of the language, it's more geared towards the 10+ age group.

Things I liked about the film:

• Accurate portrayal of all the characters
• Preservation of key themes from the text
• Lack of deviation from the text
• True to the cultural and historical context of the text

Overall:

I must say that I was very impressed by this adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol'. The choice to use animation rather than live action lent itself extremely well to this story, as things that would be difficult to depict in real life were presented skillfully in this medium. What I most of all enjoyed about this movie was the respect the filmmakers had for the original text and their reluctance to deviate from it. At the same time, however, their approach was creative. I would definitely recommend both the film and novella, but would caution that the film should not be seen by children under the age of ten years.

So there we have it, folks. I'd be interested to hear what you think of 'A Christmas Carol', whether it's insights about the book or comments about other film adaptations. You know what that means. ;)

Signing off,

~SON

Help!

Greetings, bookworms.
Currently trapped in a pile of homework with a mass greater than that of a black hole the size of jupiter. Will not let me blog. Hope to escape soon. Wish me luck!
~SON

Escape by a Hair

Hi there, bookworms!
I just realised, there are a few things on  my last post I probably need to clarify. Firstly, I should probably let you know that I was practising my 'council of Elrond' tone in the first few sentences, in preperation for my Lord of the Rings review. Then I sort of forgot about that for the rest of the post, hence the change from the 'you are doomed' tone to a more casual voice.
Secondly, I started writing that post last Monday, but didn't finish it. I banned myself from my computer for the next few days because of assessments due for my classes in the following days, hence I didn't get the post up until Thursday. I thought I would say that just to let you all know that I am at least making an effort to post more regularly, even if it appears I am not.
Anyway, to the actual point of this post. A while back, I introduced you all to a friend of mine named Henry (see here). King Henry the Tenth of Destria, to be precise. Of all the characters I have devised in my stories, he is by far my favourite. Watching him learn what it means to be a king, through many tantrums, arguments and discussions, has been the most enjoyable writing experience I have ever been a part of.
I've been thinking a bit, and I've missed Henry a fair bit. I think he needs to play a far greater part in this blog. So... I'm going to be posting a few short stories on here centred around my pal.
Some of them will also involve other main characters from the Kingdom of Destria, such as Sam, Will and Petra (three teenagers who slew the usurper keeping Henry in prison for five years), James (Henry's best friend and only companion during his imprisonment), and Neville (Henry's valet being his formal position, although 'Castle Mum' would perhaps be a more fitting name).
So, without further ado...

'Escape by a Hair'

King Henry the Tenth, ruler of the Kingdom of Destrian, flung open the door and, slamming it behind him, darted into the room beyond.
From where he was sitting at his desk, James looked up.
“Nice of you to knock,” he remarked with a wry smile.
“No time for sarcasm!” Henry snapped exasperatedly. “Just hide me somewhere!”
Truth be told, James almost laughed at his best friend’s ripped clothes, dirty face and wild hair that was sticking up in all directions. He looked more like a highway robber than a king! However, the hunted look in Henry’s normally even, measuring gaze made James uneasy and he found himself escorting the king to a wardrobe in the corner of his room.
Soon, Henry was comfortable (that is to say, as comfortable as one can be when squashed into the bottom of a closet) and James shut the door of the wardrobe.
“So, is there any reason as to why the King of Destrian barged into my room looking like a beggar?” James asked casually. “I mean, you look as if you’ve been in a stampede!”
“I have,” came Henry’s muffled reply.
“Care to explain?”
“No.”
James waited patiently for ten seconds.
“Alright, alright, I’ll tell you. But you mustn’t breathe a word to Neville about this!”
“I won’t,” James promised with a smile. Neville was Henry’s personal valet, a short, blustering man who was constantly mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. He had good intentions, but was rather a worry wart. Whenever Henry was so much as scratched from battle training, the poor man acted as if the world was coming to an end!
“I was attacked,” Henry began.
James’ ears perked up. Attacked! Perhaps the assailant was in the castle that instant, about to burst into the room and demand to know where the king was!
“By whom?” He was unable to hide the curiosity in his voice.
Henry proceeded to tell his friend the whole story from the beginning, and James listened with mixed sympathy and horror. How close it had been! How lucky he had been to escape!
“......and there was not one, but two of them, James! And they were both fighting over me, pulling me this way and that as if I were a rag doll!”
“It sounds horrible!” Disgust was plastered all over James’ face.
At that moment, Neville burst into the room.
“James, you - well - have you seen - is Henry around?” blustered Neville.
James adopted his best puzzled face. “No, haven’t seen him all morning, actually. But he is 21 years old. I expect he can look after himself.
Neville wasted no more time, rushing out of the room.
Cautiously, Henry crept out of the closet. “Thank you so much, James!”
James shrugged. “What are friends for?”
Suddenly, Henry frowned. “Just one question: how will I escape the royal hairdressers tomorrow?”

THE END

So that is Henry early on in my novel, before wars break out and such. :) You can tell me what you think about my story if you like, but I'm not desperate for the feedback. I'm just using this blog as motivation to write a bit more in my spare time.
Anyway, that's all I really have time for, so there you go.
Yours Sincerely,
~SON
P.S. Please comment, even if it's only to say "Hi!"