Salon is part of the Salon Media Group, and it is an online magazine that covers a range of issues in American politics. It also reviews and produces articles about music, books and film.

‘A Christmas Carol’ the way Dickens envisioned it

Jim Carrey as Ebeneezer Scrooge in Disney's ‘A Christmas Carol’

Scrooge learns the Christmas lesson of giving in a dark portrayal of Dickens’ classic novel.

By Jennifer Sansolis

November 8| It’s that time of year again, for yet another remake of Charles Dickens’, ‘A Christmas Carol’ (movie trailer).

This time though, it’s darker and more frightening than any other version that I’ve seen before. One thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t recommend it to younger children who easily succumb to nightmares.

Ebeneezer Scrooge begins the holiday growling at his clerk, Bob Cratchit (voiced by Gary Oldman), and his merry nephew Fred (voiced by Colin Firth), until he is visited by his late business partner Joseph Marley (voiced by Gary Oldman), who warns Scrooge to break out of his heartlessness or end up paying the price in the afterlife.

This latest materialization of Dickens’ novel is not unique at all and strips down the classic tale to its bare bones. This may be what director Robert Zemeckis meant when he said that he attempted to make the film exactly as Charles Dickens wrote it (interview clip).

To Zemeckis, the novel already read like a movie script and only needed to be captured by a great actor on the big screen.

Since the film was all Computer Generated Imagery (also known as CGI), it was difficult to establish a connection with the characters. The characters facial features and eyes were lifeless and soulless, even though their physical appearance was life-like.

For anyone who saw Zemeckis’, ‘The Polar Express’, there is some improvement on the non-responsive eyes and malleable facial features, but a lot is still missing.

Aside from the non-inventive take on the classic novel, the film is outstanding in terms of its visual effects and life-like qualities. There is so much detail, that every hair and wrinkle on Scrooge’s substantial nose is noticeable.

The set design and overall appearance of ‘A Christmas Carol’ is astonishing. The manufactured lighting, especially the image of a flickering candle in the dark appears genuinely convincing.

Jim Carrey’s acting brings out the character of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the three ghosts of Christmas brilliantly. Carrey was able to capture Scrooge’s cruel nature whilst also portraying the wonder of the ghost of Christmas Past, the joy in the ghost of Christmas Present, and the mysteriousness of the ghost of Christmases Yet to Come.

While Zemeckis has commented that no other actor could pull off what Jim Carrey did with the four characters (interview clip) with as much ease, it seems as though he could have very easily sought someone else. This is because Zemeckis did very little with Carrey’s natural performance and there was very little in terms of the comedy that is generally tied to Carrey.

The film’s visual is extraordinary, especially when watched in 3D. Yet, this was the only thing that made the experience unique, and it may take more than this to please some audiences.

If you’ve seen this movie, we’d like to know what you thought.

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‘All About Steve‘: A Puzzle only Sandra Bullock can Solve

Sandra Bullock as a wacky stalker named Mary

Brainy crossword puzzler and trivia fanatic takes a crack at the puzzle of love.

By Jennifer Sansolis

November 6, 2009| Produced by Sandra Bullock’s production company Fortis Films, and starring Bullock as the lead actress, ‘All About Steve’ (movie trailer) leaves audiences in an uncanny state of mind.

When the film opens, audiences are introduced to Mary Horowitz, a crossword puzzle creator (or as she likes to call herself, a ‘cruciverbalist‘). Living with her parents while her home is being fumigated, Mary’s only friend appears to be a pet rodent until she meets and falls in love with Steve (Bradley Cooper).

Essentially, ‘All About Steve’ is about what happens when an eccentric and babbling Mary goes on a blind date with a news cameraman and falls into an unrequited love.

When Mary and Steve first meet, the pair are smitten until just minutes into their first date, when an outburst of trivia from Mary overwhelms the passionate mood.

Steve is immediately alarmed at her personality and excuses himself, declaring that he was just assigned an assignment and really wishes Mary could be there, but he has to go.

Mary takes his excuse to heart, believing that Steve truly wants her to go to work with him and the stalking begins, as Mary follows one news disaster after another to be with Steve.

To make matters worse, Steve’s self-absorbed news correspondent, Hartman Hughes (Thomas Haden Church), encourages and facilitates Mary’s stalking by leaving her notes about where Steve is headed next.

Mary is an irritating character who incessantly yammers about trivia to the discomfort of other characters in the film and possibly to the dislike of audiences too.

And throughout the movie, a companionless Mary struts around in a pair of fire-engine-red go-go boots because they make her feel like she’s wearing “ten friends on a camping trip”.

But, the problems with the film are not solely the character of Mary’s fault, nor a result of Bullock’s over-performed-craziness. The script, by Kim Barker (writer of License to Wed) is sloppy and filled satiric clichés about the media versus plain folks.

Additionally, director Phil Traill has a bad start to his first feature film, subtracting the comedy from most scenes, and instead presenting viewers with a display of over-hyped wackiness. This is clear in some of Bullock’s supposedly witty one-liners such as “Hey Norm, thanks for not raping me” as her character hitches a ride with a truck driver.

And as for the ‘romantic’ in the genre of romantic comedy, there’s none there. The only glimpse audiences get of romantic is when Steve is parked outside of Mary’s house and the pair attempt to have sex in his car.

While some might find the film hard to digest because Bullock’s character can be silly rather than comedic at times, there are a few laughs to be had at the stupidity of what’s being said and done if you’ll accept the film as eccentric and in a world of its own.

Though 2009 was good to both Bullock and Cooper with their roles in ‘The Proposal’ and ‘The Hangover’ respectively, with both receiving reasonable reviews, ‘All About Steve’ takes away all the credibility that they have built up in previous films.

Bullock defends her portrayal of Mary as a character that falls out of conventional Hollywood portrayals of women and says that the film was an attempt to re-define the normal (interview clip). Trouble is, not everyone will understand the normal reality presented in ‘All About Steve’.

If you’ve seen this movie, we’d like to know what you thought.

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I’ve kind of become accustomed to writing one every week, so I thought, how can I transfer the skills that we’ve learned in class into the real world?

I realised that in order to be read by people other than our family or friends, we need to do more than simply produce great content because good content doesn’t necessarily translate into an audience. First we need to determine our audience and then find ways to reach them. I found a great article by Darren Rowse about 9 things that bloggers can do to be read by someone other than their mom and I just thought that I’d share the link.

However, I just stumbled across a video on youtube discussing the first blogger, which I found a little useful, so I’d like to share it.

However, Rosenberg rightly points out that the term ‘journalist’ has never faded away even though there are two ways of understanding the term: as a profession, and as a description of an activity. Thus, he maintains that the term blogger is unlikely to expire any time soon. What do you think?

There are those who think that “real” journalists sit in offices, publish impressive layouts and have been credited with a sense of trust. It is this notion of credibility and trust that has got people debating about whether citizen journalism is a valid form of journalism.

However, if we go back to the creation of newspapers, we’ll find that those now large corporations once grew out of small groups, families and individuals of concerned citizens who wanted their voices heard. For instance, the New York Herald was founded in 1835 as an American newspaper that proclaimed complete political independence, which was different to other newspapers during that time.

Although, blogs are different to traditional ideas of journalism. Bloggers may not have all of the skills, or know-how, or the contacts that professional journalists have, but they do offer something more. Their opinions generally aren’t restricted by their editors or seniors because they have none. And they have the capacity to simply offer what they believe and contribute to public discussion in new and innovative ways (even if this isn’t always the case).

What I’m trying to say is that both blogs and newspapers originated with people, who wanted to publicize their views and be heard in the public domain, and it is only right that those who discredit blogs and citizen journalists begin to see that.

Here’s a great video explaining what exactly ‘citizen journalism‘ is.

Murdoch and Tom Curley (executive of AP) claim that Google is making money by using their content and running them out of business.

Yet, you have to wonder, are their complaints legitimate? If all that Google and other search engines are doing is linking to AP and News Corp. stories and providing people with brief teasers and headlines and then directing them to the newspaper website’s full story once clicked, then what did Google steal?

In fact, if AP and News Corp really didn’t want to be listed on Google searches, then all they’d need to do is type in a few keys and their sites would be removed and robots would be prevented from crawling their websites in the future.

Perhaps AP and Murdoch didn’t know that they could remove their websites from Google or maybe they do. Maybe the reason why they haven’t taken action to remove their websites from search engines is that search engines are doing news organizations a favour in providing some free traffic.

While some may believe that online social networking is a complete waste of time, studies have shown that using new media to socialize (whether on MySpace, Facebook, or in chatrooms) gives us better technological and literary skills to succeed in the contemporary world of new media.

But are these sites necessarily a good thing? A recent comment by a leader of the Catholic Church in England says that they aren’t.

He says that social networking sites lead us to develop brief relationships that lead us to feel suicidal.

While I admit that I’ve had random conversations with people I don’t know on the web, I don’t think that social networking sites equal suicide.

I’m no expert, but I think that most people use social networking sites to socialize with people that they already know and occasionally people they don’t.

How does social networking make you feel? What do you use social networking for?

Salon.com is part of the Salon Media Group, and it is an online magazine that covers a range of issues in American politics. It also reviews and produces articles about music, books and film.

“District 9”

Alien spaceship hovering over ‘District 9′ by Sony Pictures

Head to ‘District 9′ to evict the aliens as Blomkamp delivers a remarkable piece of sci-fi cinema.

By Jennifer Sansolis

October 10, 2009| Neill Blomkamp makes his debut in the sci-fi mockumentary ‘District 9’ (full screen trailer upon clicked entry). Mentored by the award-winning director Peter Jackson from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Blomkamp constructs an original, heart-pounding sci-fi film that merges with reality. While it’s easy to see that he’s not all that experienced at directing, Blomkamp makes a name for himself with the action and suspense that he builds on throughout the movie.

While most preceding sci-fi movies depict humans in fear of aliens and tease out ideas of what aliens would do to humans, Blomkamp instead invites us to consider what humans would do to aliens. Moreover, in ‘District 9’, humans rescue starving aliens from a spaceship that is hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa, and toss them into an area called ‘District 9’.

In choosing the city of his youth, Blomkamp is able to establish a sense of place, from the accents to the towns to the dusty environment. Additionally, the South African setting hones into a metaphor of the country’s history of apartheid and social problems.

With Nigerian gangs soon operating in the area, ‘District 9’ is quickly transformed into a slum. With nothing to sell but their weapons in exchange for food, the aliens are forced to live in substandard circumstances and feed on cat food, and are derogatorily labelled “prawns” because of their appearance with hard shell areas and thin joints.

Yet, although humans effortlessly buy the alien weaponry, they are unable to use them because their activation requires alien DNA.

Therefore, after 20 years in ‘District 9’, people are getting irritated by the alien presence and want them to leave. As a consequence, the government agency and weapons manufacturer, Multi-National United (or MNU), declare that it’s time to relocate the aliens further away from the city. For this task, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge, a man who is married to the daughter of MNU’s boss.

While delivering eviction notices to the prawns, Wikus comes into contact with an illegal lab run by an alien named Christopher Johnson and accidentally sprays liquid on himself. Within hours, his DNA begins to change and he becomes the first human-alien hybrid, which makes him a value to anyone who wants to operate alien weapons.

At first, the film seems to focus too heavily on the simulated documentary-style footage, news reports, political commentary and security camera footage. Yet all of the pseudo-footage creates a sense of realism and makes you feel like you’re in the movie alongside Wikus.

The aliens, created completely using Computer Generated Imagery (also known as CGI), are given real substance and appear to have as much character as the human characters in the film. Yet, aside from the little we learn about the alien character Christopher Johnson and his son, it’s a shame that we don’t learn more about the aliens and how smart they are.

Still in training, Blomkamp is not able to capture the other characters aside from Wikus. However, the film wouldn’t have worked without Wikus, who is the only human character who develops in the narrative. This may be why Blomkamp prioritizes Wikus’ storyline over the alien one.

Nonetheless, without a $200 million budget, Blomkamp is able to capture our minds and get our hearts thumping with a budget of about $30 million, indicating his promising skill in filmmaking.

If you’ve seen this movie, we’d like to know what you thought.

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“Up”

Mr. Frederickson, Russell and the talking dog Dug hang on for their lives, by Disney and Pixar

Let your imagination whisk you ‘Up’ into the sky as a suburban house takes flight with thousands of multi-coloured balloons.

By Jennifer Sansolis

October 12, 2009 | In Disney and Pixar’s “Up” (movie trailer), a sense of realism is brought to the screen with incredible animation and traditional storytelling, adding to Disney and Pixar’s list of successful children’s films including WALL-E, Ratatouille, Cars and The Incredibles.

“Up” begins as the wishful adventure of two neighbourhood children, Carl and Ellie , who want to explore the mystical place of Andes in South America and who are fascinated by a gallant explorer named ‘Charles F. Muntz’ (voiced by Christopher Plummer). As Carl and Ellie grow up, they fall in love and get married with plans of fulfilling their childhood dreams, but everyday life gets in their way and their plan never eventuates.

“Up” evolves into 78-year-old Carl Frederickson’s (voiced by Ed Asner) attempt to live out his late wife’s yearning to go on an adventure. The cranky widower and balloon-seller, Mr. Frederickson, decides that it’s not too late to make his wife’s dreams transpire.

The night before he is supposed to be taken into a retirement home, he fills up thousands of balloons with helium and attaches them to his home as he takes flight for South America.

Little does he know that he has company aboard his flying-home, until he hears a knock on his door in mid-air. It’s the chubby, annoying boy-scout, Russell, who he shooed away a few days earlier. 8-year-old Russell, voiced by Jordon Nagai (interview clip) accidentally tags along, in need of obtaining his final Wilderness Explorer boy-scout badge for, ‘assisting the elderly’.

When the pair arrive in South America, they realise that they need to cross to the other side of the cliff and rest the house where Ellie wanted it. While walking day and night with the house attached to their backs, the two come across talking dogs and an enormous brightly coloured bird named Kevin.

Their journey is not without danger as they bump into someone who wants to capture Kevin. The pair work together to save him and learn about themselves and each other along the way.

“Up” appears to be a children’s film with bright, boisterous colours, but the narrative itself can be appreciated by children and adults alike. The story is both sentimental and funny; it has a genuine family appeal.

The animation, which can be viewed in both 3D and conventional cinema is exceptional. The three dimensional version used in the film is used to convey height and depth to the forest in Andes, South America.

The writers and directors Peter Docter (WALL-E and Monsters, Inc. co-writer) and Bob Peterson (co-writer of Finding Nemo and Ratatouille) deliver a warm-hearted and amusing tale. It’s no wonder that it was chosen as the first animated feature ever to open The Cannes Film Festival.

If you’ve seen this movie, we’d like to know what you thought.

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The Solicitors at Griffin Law sought an injunction against a Twitter account titled Blaneysblarney, claiming that it was impersonating the owner of Griffin Law, Donal Blaney, who is a right-wing blogger.

The anonymous Tweeter will receive a message from the High Court the next time they open their account, asking them to remove their posts and identify themselves to the High Court.

Though even with a ban placed against the anonymous Tweeter, you have to wonder how the High Court will be able to enforce it if the person doesn’t come forward. With the hundreds of online impersonators out there, you have to wonder if such an order can truly impede those impersonators?

With the likes of Rupert Murdoch, we may no longer have a choice. In May, he announced that News Corp would start charging for some newspaper titles over the next year. There are still loads of other news outlets, but what if they all follow suit in a bid to generate cash?

Surely, this isn’t what Berners-Lee had in mind when he envisioned the world wide web. He believed that the web would be a place where people would openly and productively share information, not charge for it.

There’s no doubt that newspaper ad sales and circulation have been plummeting with the British Financial Times looking to a click-per-view system of payments, comparable to the iTunes model. The New York Times too, is also looking to a charging system and tiered membership.

Yet, will their plans to change the liberated nature of the Internet eventuate? And if they do, will those who charge for content survive? With filtering systems like Google and the newly launched Bing, it remains easy to find unpaid content. In spite of that, there are still those who are willing to pay for niche publications and specialised information inaccessible elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal and ESPN have successfully created a paying market, but whether it would be as successful for the Herald Sun, for instance, remains to be seen.

According to a poll from Harris Interactive, three out four online news readers would switch to an alternative free source if their favourite news site began charging for access, and a mere 5% would continue to pay for their preferred news source if it started charging for content.

In Australia, however, a study from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers reveals that people would pay for online news, sports, weather and finance. According to the report, people will pay for content if it saves them money, helps them make money, is specialised content or helps them use other products like software.