Count

10/01/2006

Illusionist

Always liked Ed Norton the actor. Like many movies that he is in, the story is okay and the actors are great. Wouldn't really recommend it though. I keep thinking to myself: you have the woman already, why do you have to rub it in!? It's obvious that the Illusionist doesn't care about his country and what not; why did he have to go through so much to eliminate the prince? Anyway, Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti did a good job in the movie. Wouldn't expect anything else.

A week of school has gone by, and you can definitely differentiate the enthusiastic first years from the lack luster second years. We need a few more weeks to soak it in and return to student mode. Those who have offers are in vacation mode right now; don't force us otherwise.

4 comments:

Le Voyageur said...

Were we this bushy-tailed and bright-eyed when we first got here? I think so, but the difference is so glaring once you've gone through the 1st year gauntlet huh?

shmoo said...

The thing that bothered me about the movie is that most of her illusions were believable- in the sense that I believe that someone can actually do that while I'm watching, but then at the end they just turned into special effects and my suspension of disbelief was broken.

I read the short story that the film is based on, and one of the coolest illusions in the story wasn't in the movie. In the story, Eisenheim has a rival and they each keep one-upping each other in their performances, and it becomes the talk of the town. People keep going to each performance to see what the two of them will do next. Well, in one final performance the rival reveals... that he was Eisenheim all along. The entire rivalry was an illusion!

Josekin said...

In one of the previews of Illusionist was a movie (The Prestige, I think?) that had two duoing magicians.

Per usual, I have no point. But your point is well taken - that sounds like a much better ending!

shmoo said...

Wasn't really an ending, just a cool trick. The short story was much simpler than the movie and without modifications would have been a pretty boring film.

The Prestige- I want to see that too. I've read that book (a full novel) as well. I own it actually. But from what I've seen in the previews (which admittedly is not much) it doesn't seem to resemble the book, except that there's two magicians.

I wrote about both movies back in August: http://users.livejournal.com/_shmoo/59732.html