Movie Mondays: American Psycho

And we're back with another Movie Monday!

Today we're looking at a comparison and review of American Psycho, movie starring Christian Bale, book written by Bret Easton Ellis.

American Psycho is an interesting, dark and satirical look at the 1980's Wall Street yuppies. The story is told in first person by the main character, Patrick Bateman who narrates his day-to-day activities as a wealthy 20-something investment banker. The dialogue goes from talking about his expensive stereo system, music, conversations about fashion with his colleagues to his murderous bloodlust. This story has created a lot of controversy, coming out first in the 90's due to the highly detailed nature of sex, violence and the treatment of others (homophobia, misogyny.)

Without spoiling too much, I have to say that I feel like the movie had more to it than the book could tell. Yes. That's right. I liked the movie better than the book. I felt like I had a hard time getting through the novel as the dialogue seemed to drag on and on in some places and felt that the pacing could have been greatly improved. Although I understand what these parts of dialogue represent, it's also incredibly difficult for me to not want to completely skip chapters.

I felt that the film itself was just a better portrayal of the ideas that Bret Easton Ellis was trying to convey, from the juxtapose of lifestyle to the details of Bateman's relationship with Evelyn. I think there's a reason when people mention American Psycho, they think of the movie and not of the original book. No need to skip chapters here to actually make a point here, folks, Mary Harron had the right idea when she decided to recreate this story. 

Movie Mondays: The Princess Bride

Gosh, I read some really fun books and watch some really good movies for this new segment. I'm pretty stoked about it, aren't you?

This week I decided to go for The Princess Bride [imdb]. Mostly because the book has been unread and sitting on my shelf for about two months and it's about time that I got right down to it. The best of it is that this is a perfect summer read for me -- casual, satirical, and light-hearted.

So I'm going to go right out and say this… it's a rare case where I watch the movie before the book, but hey, it happened. I watched this movie for the first time sometime in my youth -- I believe a TV station was broadcasting it at the time and I didn't even know that a book existed until well into my teen years. I'm not unhappy that I read the book after seeing the film, but I am in fact, content. I think if I didn't imagine Andre the Giant playing the character Fezzik then I would feel like something would be missing from my life somehow.

I think, honestly, that the movie did a fantastic job at adapting the book and that the book filled in the things I desired from the movie -- backstories of Inigo and Fezzik and how Humperdinck came to choose Buttercup for his wife and other such information. The adaptation was insanely spot-on and the dialogue is nearly identical to the book. I felt that the characters were actually written for the actors that portrayed them. Of course, Goldman, the author, is also a playwright and screenwriter so I'm sure he felt he had certain people in mind as first-choices. Andre the Giant as Fezzik remains to be my favourite role from anyone, ever. Of all time. Especially after seeing this (Warning: ALL THE FEELS.) And let us not forget that no one else can say the famous line: "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die" quite like Mandy Pantinkin. The very thought of any other person than Wallace Shawn playing Vizzini? Inconceivable!

Okay, I'm done quoting. I swear, I'll stop. Really.

It's not often that a film is better than the book, mostly the book is almost always better but in this case? Neither are true. They are equal in what they give to the audiences and both are companions to one another. The compliment each other brilliantly and as most of you have almost seen the movie well before reading the book, I highly encourage you to do so! Reviewing these two together has actually been a pleasurable experience and I've only done a few book reviews that I've been so proud of and this is honestly one of them.

Movie Mondays: John Dies At The End

Movie Monday is a new segment that I'll be introducing every other Monday henceforth. This is going to be an analytic review and comparison of movies and their book counterparts. I also realize that I describe myself, and this blog as being a little sassy and I've yet to really fully express my sassiness and have thus decided that this is an excellent opportunity to rip something apart. I'll try to keep the language to a minimal (but that's not a promise.)

For my first comparison, I decided to go with John Dies at the End [IMDb] which, if you've been following since the beginning (AKA a month ago) then you'll know I actually quite enjoyed reading the book. I apparently had no idea at the time of reading the book that it was actually made into film last year. Because I didn't have any clue that this was already a movie, I thought about how the book would be awesome to see on screen as it read in a way that would have made the transition quite smoothly on film and after a quick post-read wiki search , I was pleasantly surprised to find that my thoughts had already been made true.

So it kind of took me a month to actually get down to finding and watching it and I was… pretty happy with the movie adaptation. Sure, many adaptations will cut parts of the book out for length and pacing, but I thought that in this case, it was done tastefully so. Considering the book itself is a clusterfuck of a weird, chaotic mess, there was actually bits in the book that didn't contribute to the main story at all and pulling them out from the movie adaptation made a lot of sense, especially to keep things moving forward. The main premise of the story was told in less than 2 hours and honestly, if all the parts of the book were involved it probably would have taken ages. That being said, there were some parts that I missed dearly from the novel that were left out of the book, the main one being the Vegas conference. Oh well. I also wanted the characters to share the scene where they talk about their last requests and Fred Chu's character talks about how he wants rumours to be spread about him haunting the city as a ghost.

Speaking of Fred Chu, something I really liked about this movie? Well, firstly, I love the fact that Fred isn't portrayed as a stereotypical Asian who knows kung-fu or whatever. I'm greatly annoyed at the fact that there isn't a better number of Asian characters in traditional media who aren't karate-chopping people (or presented as super-nerds) considering that a large chunk of the human population is Asian. I would hardly think that calling us a 'minority' isn't quite right, either. The media and entertainment industry is just silly, sometimes. Second thing I liked about Fred Chu is that he's portrayed by Jimmy Wong. If you watch as much YouTube as much as I do, you'd be pretty happy about that too. That dude is rad.

Since we're talking about casting too, I quite liked the portrayal of the characters even if they didn't really match up with who I had thought of in my head… well, except for Arnie. I did picture him that way. The environments were also-spot on with how I envisioned them and my only other complaint is the fact that Molly, the dog, was never really referred to by her actual name and her prominence in the book held a much larger significance than in the movie. 

Overall, the movie was…not bad. I admit it was a lot easier to follow than some things in the book and there were some things left to be desired but for the bulk of the movie, and for the things that weren't cut from the book, it stayed spot-on and dedicated. I also want to mention that seeing as how the book is a bit campy, the cheesy special effects were totally appropriate and I totally approve. Michael Bay, you got cool explosions and stuff but there is a fondness in my heart for awkward green screening.