So I haven't been to work this week cause I'm 'on call', but to be quite honest it's actually really nice. I fixed up my demo reel, got my resume in order and typed up a breakdown so I got all my documents ready to go job hunting. Yesterday Anke, Charlie and I went to California Adventure and Disneyland and that was really nice. Today I'm planning on working on Erica's project and do laundry, that's about it. Oh, and I've been watching lots of stuff. It's good.

And the movie review:

Pan's Labyrinth

I was hoping I'd like this movie much more than I actually did. It felt very disjointed to me, like they couldn't REALLY figure out how to stitch the 'real' story and the 'fantasy' story together. What I'm taking away from this movie is that the little girl made the whole fantasy world up in her head to escape from the horrors of her life. They tried leaving it ambiguous but a lot of the fantasy elements felt stuck in there, especially the very end where she goes home to her fantasy world.

Really, I blame a lot of this on the writing and the directing. While the real world story was really good there was no true reaction to the fantasy elements. The little girl never reacted to ANYTHING. She just always stood there and accepted it and went on to do her little missions. Which makes sense if she was making it all up to begin with but it was really distracting and took me out of the movie. And then there was the convenience factor. It really annoyed me when she ate the grapes on her second mission when she was specifically told NOT to eat or drink anything and that her life would depend on it. I get that they had to insert something exciting but wow...to just literally have her stop and eat a grape when she already got what she came for, was almost home and the fairies are telling her not just because she thought 'no one would notice'? Are you serious? that was horrible. Absolutely horrible and lazy writing and I hated it.

Also, the graphic violence seemed unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the movie. The real world was already horrific enough, they didn't NEED to constantly have something oh so shocking happen. But that's really just a preference thing.

All in all: a very pretty movie with a disappointing execution and delivery.

PS- I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one who has problems making blood hits look 100% real.