I am Legend plus Blog Thoughts

For the first part of tonight's performance I will review the movie I Am Legend. I watched this movie tonight with friends and family and thought it was pretty darn good.

Will Smith stars in this movie about his struggle to survive in New York City alone for three years after the island had been quarantined. He is free to move around in daylight but the darkness is his enemy. The year is 2012; three years earlier a woman discovered a cure for cancer which then began mutating. It killed a lot of people and caused others to become extremely violent but averse to UV light. They are called dark seekers. Will Smith is a military scientist named Robert Neville who stayed behind to try and discover a cure for the airborne and physically transmitted virus. He is aided by his loyal hound Samantha.

These two live day to day. Neville has a system which keeps him sane. He wakes up after sunrise, works out, performs tests in his lab, goes to a dock to wait for anyone to show up (he broadcasts his location on the AM radio), and then when it is getting dark he gets back to his nicely furnished house shuts all the windows with metal plating and goes to sleep. This would make only for a mildly exciting movie if not for the twists thrown in.

Director Francis Lawrence adds in plenty of encounters with the dark seekers as they are known which make for a few heart pounding moments. Neville thinks he is all alone in the world because the virus spread outside of the quarantine all over the world; this belief holds true until Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan) show up and rescue him from a grief induced suicidal attack on the dark seekers.

This is when it gets ugly; the dark seekers tracked them to their house, apparently led by one individual, some cool explosions and fighting ensue and then the movie ends. Just kidding. I don't want to tell anymore because I will ruin the movie, although I know Gaby could figure it out.

The big meaning that I took out of it, which Zombie-type movies don't usually have, came through the Will Smith. He and the director did a good job in illustrating the devastating effects of isolation. They showed that it played with the mind (Neville yelling at mannequins) and affected how you interacted with people. Overall, what really came through was the need people have for other people, which didn't get lost in the terror.

Overall, for a zombie-esque film, it was good. Apparently it is based off a book, which I have not read, yet. But it has all the elements necessary to make a great zombie flick. Terror, suspense, pop up scary, a hero, and a good ending (like a lot of good generic movie qualifications). I liked that the two lead female characters didn't get together and that Lawrence did not rely on gore to make it scary, though it does have its place (Dawn of the Dead). My only criticism of the film is that the CG was not the greatest; as a person used to the cutting edge in movies, it was different to see them similar to the mummy in The Mummy. But, I didn't let it get to me, they were still able to be very scary.

Grade: A-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/
http://iamlegend.warnerbros.com/

Part II is analysis of blogging. In continuing my study of blogs, I have found that they really lend themselves to personal journaling and gratification. I guess it feels good to talk about one's self and to put it for others to see. I never thought I would follow that track. It is also really hard to escape that path and maybe I just haven't tried hard enough. I guess I am okay with talking about my personal life. A lot of other people do it as well; maybe it helps that no one reads it.

Also, since it is not routine, I think the novelty is wearing off. I kind of had to tell myself to write this blog, to keep up the research and such. Maybe it is just because I am tired tonight, but we will see.

I think I just have to get used to doing this blogging activity. I hopefully will get more comfortable with a writing style and with talking about my personal life or other things. Also, I may experiment to see if I can increase my readership. I may actually have to talk about things more important than movies. But I will probably want to save that for later, as I get used to just blogging regularly, settle into my role as a blogger, and learn the cultural scripts necessary to do this activity comfortably. I should try to guide my blogs in the discussion of more important topics (but to whom?) in an effort to see how that feels. This is what many of the Iranian blogs do, but as before I still need to be comfortable being a blogger. (It's funny, as I write I hear a naration like they do in the movies when a character reads a letter.)

Don't be afraid of the dark.