The last half of Nodding Off, and Football Friday Nite, do they just give you a ‘BUFFERING’ message?

Well, we’re working on it. We’re not sure what’s causing it. Hold tight, gang….

The issue is resolved. Not sure what it was, but it’s done now. If you have any more probs with audio, msg me on FB or e-mail me.

I’ve never been more creeped out at screen-villain like I was in “The Lovely Bones”. While my friend and I were at a sneak peak/press screening of Lovely Bones, the film shifted it’s focus into two arenas: Beautiful and wistful albeit boring visages on what Saoirse Ronan’s Susie Salmon’s own heaven or in-between is like, and then what is actually happening back in reality, the place where Susie was forced to leave behind by the amazing and brilliant Stanley Tucci as Mr. Harvey.

While I’ve heard many things about the differences between the book, despite never reading the book itself, I’ve come to conclude that film’s only real flaw is the lack of focus. As the credits begin upon Susie offering us a goodbye along the lines of ‘I wish you all a long and loving life’, the only thing I felt was the feeling that I should of felt more. The film was good but felt way too long.

The film, directed by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings and King Kong fame, is about Ronan’s Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered by the local neighborhood man, Tucci’s Mr. Harvey. And as Susie begins to realize she is in the world of dreams, or the place in between life and death, guided by perhaps, someone else who is not only her guardian angel in this place, but also someone who knows all about Mr. Harvey, her placement of not wanting to ‘go to the light’ to stay behind and watch her family allows her to see how her family is dealing with her death, including her father and mother, played by Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz.

By the time that Susie is gone, we get a sense of that the place Susie inhabits is somehow tied to reality, and we’re given the impression that her staying behind to observe her family is more damaging, then helpful in some cases, and when the family’s lives begin to crash across the rocks, the boats in Susie’s world begin to crash in hers. During all this, we are also shown what Mr. Harvey is doing. And as Susie says, paraphrasing here, but “my killer felt safe”. And we see it.

From the moment you hear him speak, it takes more than once to realize that Stanley Tucci is completely transformed. To say that just because Tucci’s Harvey sounds nothing like Tucci himself, or what we’re used to from Tucci is in itself not giving the man full credit; Tucci is masterful here, possibly, in my opinion, the best I’ve ever seen him. While there are physically traces of who the actor is, but, ranging from his creepy eyes (more likely due to help with color contacts), the slow and steady way he handles the situations he is thrust into my his own horribly dark desires of rape and murder, it is intense, and dare I say, amazing to watch such a performance come from the film which due to it’s other worldly sequences, mostly seems to distract us from what we care most about.

The film seems meant to emote a sincere case of loving life, beauty in life, and melancholy, all from the viewpoint on what has been taken from Susie, all whilst everyone who she left behind tries to deal and in some cases, solve her murder, and in this regard it evokes nothing. For every moment that Jackson gets right there are more sequences that he gets wrong. The real drama was what was happening with the chilling Harvey, and the family and it’s loss of Susie. Yet, Jackson seems more charm and beauty in showing us Susie’s personal heaven, to the point where shots seem to linger a bit too long, and while although very beautiful in their own right. Overall, a film to watch for come Academy Award time for Tucci ,and while my praises were not fair, but to the supporting nod for Wahlberg, who dialed into a very real, if not stilted due to the script, performance as Susie’s father.

So what do you think? Am I off my rocker? Perhaps some of you who read the book, are you excited for the film? Not excited for the film? Or those who see the film, do you think I should read the book instead?