Americans = anti subtitles

Are Americans too lazy to read subtitles? Yes! The first time I realized this was when I took a Mad Men and Monsters class at the University of Northern Colorado. We had to watch a select film each week and one of those films was Let the Right One In; which came out in 2008 by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. The film was phenomenal! It had everything, mystery, suspense, gore and horror. All the makings of a good vampire flick. The only thing that was different was that it was foreign, and therefore had subtitles. Then just two years later Let Me In (2010) by Matt Reeves was released in America. Now the same thing is happening again! Just last week I watched a great movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), another film out of Sweden, go figure. To my surprise, today I went on the Internet Movie Database and saw a trailer for the upcoming film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, featuring Daniel Craig. This remake is due out December 2011, again, just two years after the first was released. Soon the other two films in the trilogy will follow just as this one has. This appalls me! Especially when these remakes, are for the most part, shot-by-shot the same as its foreign counterparts. Dare I ask again; are Americans too lazy to read subtitles?

The Red Shoes

              In the upcoming week the International Film Series at UNC will be showing The Red Shoes. For those who don’t know what The Red Shoes is about, it is the original Black Swan. Black Swan recently received several Academy Award nominations, one in which was won by Natalie Portman who got best performance by an actress in a leading role.

              The Red Shoes is about an up-and-coming ballerina who is torn between love and her dream of being a prima ballerina. Black Swan is about a prima ballerina who is set to play the white swan in the Swan Lake production. She is torn between what she is perceived as, the white swan, and the black swan that people say she can’t portray.

              With both films reality and the stories that they are thrown into with dance merge within the prima ballerinas, and reality loses in the end. There have been a lot of people who say they can be lost in dance, lost in a story. With these two characters it becomes reality.
              For any audience who dares to watch either of these two films should be in for a reality altering experience.

Tron: Legacy Update

I finally went and saw Tron: Legacy, and I enjoyed it immensely. It had action, special effects and a plot to follow it through. I can see why Roger Ebert says in his review of the film that the plot is “a catastrophe, short-changing the characters and befuddling the audience.” Though to contrast that statement in Tron: Leacy’s defense, the audience is supposed to be confused, because the main character, Sam Flynn, is confused. Sam struggles to find out where he is, and where his father is; not to mention he needs to find a way out amongst it all. I kept trying to find other reviews that side with mine, and “came up short.” USA Today's Claudia Puig says, “the cutting-edge visuals and an exciting motorcycle chase compensate somewhat for TRON's listless man-vs.-machine story line.” I guess in most cases people find Tron: Legacy to be nothing but glitz and glamour.