Edward the Confessor's Dream

From Mat Vašíček’s album „Salt Lake“, production by Thomas de Balder, guest artists Ivana Morysová and Louise Hallgren. For more information visit www.matmusic.cz.

Two monks came to me the other night

And said God had set on us evil spirits

"God'll have no mercy?" said I.

"Oh, he will when a tree cleft in two

By a lightning stroke

Should grow back together on its own accord."

Are we past the time of mending trees?

Is now the era of big lightning strokes?

Is it pointless to endeavor?

For no tree cleft in two by a lightning stroke

Will grow back together on its own accord.

A tree cleft in two

By a lightning stroke

Will never grow back,

Will never grow...

Two monks came to me the other night

They said our sins made God set on us

Evil spirits that will never go

They will never leave

They will never go

On their own

Accord....

Edward the Confessor's Dream

 From Mat Vašíček’s album "Salt Hill", production by Thomas de Balder, guest artists Ivana Morysová and Louise Hallgren. For more information visit www.matmusic.cz.

Two monks came to me the other night

And said God had set on us evil spirits

"God'll have no mercy?" said I.

"Oh, he will when a tree cleft in two

By a lightning stroke

Should grow back together on its own accord."

Are we past the time of mending trees?

Is now the era of big lightning strokes?

Is it pointless to endeavor?

For no tree cleft in two by a lightning stroke

Will grow back together on its own accord.

A tree cleft in two

By a lightning stroke

Will never grow back,

Will never grow...

Two monks came to me the other night

They said our sins made God set on us

Evil spirits that will never go

They will never leave

They will never go

On their own

Accord....

Review: Interstellar

This motion picture features the elite of current Hollywood artists, including, for example, Christopher Nolan as the director, brilliant Matthew McConaughey in the leading role, and also the music composer, the one and only, Hanz Zimmer. Well, do you ask whether this all-star team worked well to produce a masterpiece? Let’s discuss the premise (but the answer is “no”, anyway).

As we might have expected from Nolan, one of the major strength of the movie is its visual impact. If I am to sum up the plot, it is about a space journey to find a “new World” to live in, for the Earth is not co-operating with humanity anymore. Blight (whatever that actually is) is destroying all grains except for corn which is unfortunately also to be doomed by blight, (what I found quite peculiar was that the main character drank beer all the time, sorry Mr. Nolan, you also need grain to make beer). So there’s this secret NASA program to launch a shuttle with explorers to find a new sufficient place for the humans to carry on living.

This is basically the synopsis; however, the movie tries to function on an emotional level as well, very badly though. For starters, the characters are not written very well, or not presented in a way so that one could actually relate to any of them. To be honest, I considered the on-board robot TARS (voice-acted by Bill Irwin) as the character with most personality, all the other characters were plain and there was always somebody new to show up for no reason (which is not surprising as the film runs about three very long hours) which makes it confusing and annoying.  Overall I felt like I was watching two very different movies, one was the new space odyssey and I more or less enjoyed the spectacular views and the drama in space, and the other was an incoherent emotional mishmash of personality-lacking characters (except for Murph, who emerges as an adult in the second half of the movie).

The end of the film is just bad: there is the “touching speech track” in the back as it usually happens in such big American movies, about the resilience of humanity, while McConaughey’s character Cooper sneaks into a super modern and for some reason unguarded hangar, gets into a space ranger and flies away to help his friend... There’s this feeling of cheesiness present throughout the movie, it always surprises you, for the movie is basically about space stuff. But no, then they tell you that love is actually the fifth dimension, erm…

There is something I’d like to consider, that is, the fact that this film can be produced only in America. I am not talking the money here, I am talking the Frontier, the imaginary line which has been pushed forward by the American people, first into the previously unoccupied West, then further! It is also an idea, a promise to destroy poverty, to expand to new virgin lands, to conquer the outer space and so on. This movie shows an attempt to push the Frontier once more; the New World is no longer good for living and people, and it is the people of America that matter and make action, design space craft to push the humanity forward, “again”. Well, it certainly does look stupendous when there’s the American flag flying on an unknown planet behind the curtain of a wormhole, I can give them that one.

In conclusion I shall not surprise you by neglecting my attitude, the movie is indeed a mess, a note-worthy, overwhelming and at times entertaining mess, so don’t worry, just sit back, relax and enjoy it.

Matěj Vašíček

"I Origins" - A Review

I have called ‘dibs’ on reviewing this picture, for it struck me with an overwhelming power and sincerity.  One may stop right now and consider the title – I Origins. Well, primarily, the movie tells a story about a PhD student in New York City whose major is science - he studies the ‘eye’, eyes of life forms.

Please, do not be deterred by this fact; yes, it is actual science and has nothing to do with what we do at the Faculty of Arts and it might be scary (although, sadly, a lot of people at our faculty use the word ‘science’ exceedingly often, as though they actually believe that what they do is science), but the movie is not only about eyes! This student, called Ian Grey, attempts to discover a connection between the iris pattern (use Wikipedia) in one’s eyes and some kind of re-incarnation. So the ‘I’ in the title could stand both for ‘eye’ and ‘I’, the first-person pronoun, because the film is concerned with the origin of both eyes (to show the creationists that the eye is not really such a complex thing and that it did not have to be introduced by some kind of a ‘creator’ – God, of course) and the origin of a person’s consciousness, character features, memories and so on.

In this review, or whatever I am actually doing, I’d also like to focus on the female part of the cast, both Brit Marling (whom I find insanely attractive, for she sort of has the air of some ‘visible intelligence’, if you will) and the other actress, some Spanish lass, were absolutely believable that I had a feeling that neither of them is acting anything. These two female characters were written as each other’s counterparts, Sofi (played by the Spanish girl) is an aloof, childish, gorgeous and superstitious lady with her head in the clouds. On the other hand, Karen (as if the names actually support the difference, right?) is a reasonable, beautiful, strict woman who believes in science and fact. This difference is important, for they both represent a certain attitude towards life and religion. Ian encounters both of them and it influences him in pursuing what he does. I especially appreciated Karen’s reason when she caught Ian looking at pictures of his former lady, Karen does not give way to any kind of a hissy fit, no - she just calmly asks for an explanation.

There is quite a lot going on in the movie and there are a few moments that seemed to me like an emotional slap in the face - I wept. Despite the rather emotional ending, it does not give you a clear conclusion, as life never does, eh? Well, I shall tell no more. Enjoy!

Matěj Vašíček

The Grand Hotel Budapest

Blimey, I was absolutely delighted! These are the reasons why:

Foreword - I had no background information about the director or the plot (which I reckon is based on a book). Thus, I shall present you only with direct impressions concerning the movie.

Firstly, the cast – well, it seemed over-starred in the poster but in the actual film each of the renowned face had about five minutes maximum to star on the screen. It would be rather pointless to describe the plot, for it is quite convoluted and surprisingly insignificant. What makes the film worth praising is the humor, although no scene was hysterically funny, it was all rather “sweet”, witty humor edging towards absurdity. There were some funny bits that require good background knowledge for understanding, for instance, the manager of the Grand Budapest (Ralph Fiennes) is to inherit a painting called Boy With Apple, he goes to a lounge in a big house to pick it up where there are other paintings, he remarks that everything apart from Boy With Apple is a “worthless piece of shit”, removes his heritage off the wall and, not to leave a blank patch on the wall, replaces it with an erotic painting by Egon Schiele, then runs down a passageway and we can distinctly see a picture of Gustave Klimt’s somewhere on the floor – by the way, has anybody ever heard of Boy With Apple?

An important feature of this movie is, of course, metatextuality. What the heck is that? Well, it means that there’s a story within a story (perhaps within a story within a story – yes! this is actually The Grand Hotel Budapest’s case), or, as Lisa once patiently explained to her father Homer Simpson, “like when you’re watching TV and in the TV, there are people who are watching TV”. However, the audience can easily orientate in the plot even though the main character’s - Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes, yes, I believe this was the main character) – storyline is the “forth TV”; in other words, the fourth layer of perspective.

I do not find my review very convincing, I was dreading writing it but I hope you understand my enthusiasm somehow. What is the most valuable thing for me, is that the setting is Central Europe, there are associations that the American audience can hardly work out and that the movie, despite its production and cast, is not very Hollywood-like as you would think.

Matěj Vašíček

The Hobbit: The Second Something Is Out

When you first found out that there was going to be three films out of a 300-page book, you may have been surprised and scowling, indeed. Nevertheless, once Peter Jackson did not disappoint me with The Lord of the Rings, I decided to go to the movie theater without any prejudices. The first installment of the trilogy, The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey, rather pleased me since I do not seek much violence and exaggerated actions in movies. To make my points in this review I should also note that I have gotten ever so tired of hearing ‘the book is better than the film’ in reference to every movie that has been made out of a book (how can we even compare a film to a book?), so my review shall regard the film version, not the book.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has, compared to the prior part, very exaggerated action scenes, so exaggerated that they make us think whether Jackson really meant them seriously, alas, I reckon he did. The dwarfs are ridiculously immortal so that when Smaug hunts after them for a half an hour in the Lonely Mountain, he cannot kill them, even though he has got fire coming out of his mouth at will – I do not understand how he could conquer Erebor in the first place, lazy dragon. Secondly, there is this rather peculiar dwarf-elvish romance which is obviously a very unlikely thing to happen (well, it teaches us not to be racist; but a dwarf and an elvish lass, seriously?), so why did it happen? I sense that Peter Jackson has fallen to the stream of creating entertainment where cheap laughs, romance and exaggerated actions are essential to entertain. The romance thing quite worked in The Lord of the Rings (Arwen and Aragorn) perhaps because it was not so far-fetched. Tolkien wisely omitted involving romance in his books, I wish Jackson had as well.

The main problem is, I believe, that the movies attempt to trick us into thinking it is the LOTR all over again - but it is not! It is a different book and we do not really need to be seeing all those LOTR characters that has no say in the plot anyway because of its little story (with the exception of Legolas that actually was in the Hobbit book - even though Tolkien himself did not know his name then - , because he really comes from Mirkwood and Bilbo and his dwarfs do encounter Elves there). The same goes for dividing the 300-page book into three three-hour long films - the extended edition of The Return of the King is mind-bogglingly astonishing despite its four-hour run time. But what shall you see if you get the extended version of The Hobbit movies? Well, more walking and singing, I reckon.

Another problem is, that neither of the first two installments of The Hobbit films do not have an ending. Each of the LOTR movies had one because it was made out of three separate books but The Hobbit: There and back again is just one book, and if you divide it into three parts, you get two somethings and one ending. 

Matěj Vašíček