Corpse Bride & Lord of War

Corpse Bride...welllll....Gorgeous, obviously, the puppeteering is astounding, the visuals are great, the bride's legs are great (for a puppet...truly, check them out). All nice and well, obviously, but I was expecting a bit..more... somehow. Danny Elfman's musical score is as usual a very Elfman affair, but I couldn't really escape from the impression that his genius stretches itself all over the general "instrumental" side but as soon as actually singing is involved it sort of..bombs. I couldn't understand most of the lyrics well, it was muddled with to many voices, to many lines, and it was just very tiring to be listening AND trying to comprehend.
But over all, it was a nice movie. Go for the visuals, stay for the bride (who is really well done, and has the only moveable outfit in the entire film, always a good thing) and don't think about the storyline too much, cause that will leave you perhaps a bit unimpressed.

Lord of War on the other hand.. Grand.. Darkly comic, very well written and shot, good casting and ocations..everything was right there (except for Ethan Hawke, but he hasn't been really all that right since wel,, Before Sunrise, I guess)
Nicolas Cage is really the only actor who would be able to put down the center of morality that well, and with center I mean center. Not good, not evil, just in his own very limited world of morals. Money, the beauty of his wife and house, and the "sale" is what he cares for, and very little else. At a certain pooint in the movie a bit-character tells him he has a beautifull everything, and she is very, very right. About the only unattractive things in the movie are the parents and mr. cage himself, and these are more or less not all that there. The parents because we only see them for about 30 seconds in total, and the main character because he is an illusion, a sales pitch given life, one has a problem seeing him for real f he isn't doing what he does best.
I kept thinking about the character WAR from the novel "Good Omens", one of the horsemen of the apocalyps, horsewoman, in this case. She doesn't start wars, she is just always there where wars are. She imbodies everything worth fighting over and the spirit of the fight.
That, for me, is the character Yuri Orlov, he isn't a weapon, but he is the impersonation of why people pick up guns, he isn't what is wrong with the world, he isn't what is right, he just is, and around him, you buy a gun and fight. You don't kill him because he really isn't there, he is the grey figure that tells you how things are, deep inside your head. And he does tell us how things stand, he is right, almost always, and you can't hate him or like him. A well written character. Truly.
Go see this movie, please, please. It WILL give you somehing to think about, even if War and suchlike isn't really your thing (it isn't mine, I was there because of Jared Leto mostly, and the preview had a couple of good lines)


Reading the above gives me the distinct impression it's all a bit disjointed. I apologize. I'll do a better job next time.