FrankTG

I love Polanski movies, and this one didn't disappoint me. Albeit a bit over-long, I really was mesmerized by Johnny Depp's convincing portrayal of a sleazy book dealer who is hired by an eccentric occult book collector to find two copies of a same book, supposedly written by a devil worshiper (what else?).

The most fascinating about this movie is the camera work and the dialog. The story telling is really well done, one simply is grabbed by the intrigue in which Depp is immersed while searching for the books, and the riddle they seem to form.

I give this movie four-and a-half stars, out of five, for the fine performances, the story and the fine direction.

Puccini's Tosca is probably one of the most famous and well known opera in the Western world. This Italian production with Placido Domingo and Catherine Malfitano is simply superb: Malfitano is extremely well as Tosca, her dramatic soprano voice has always delighted me; and Domingo's Mario Cavaradossi is well played, although I'm more partial to Jose Carrera's Cavaradossi. Raimondi is excellent as the evil Scarpia, he is simply enjoying himself playing the villain. And as always, Puccini's melodic and well orchestrated music is so much a pleasure to listen.

The production values are very well done, giving the opera a you're there atmosphere. I've always liked this opera, and this made-for-TV production has everything to recommend it to opera buffs such as myself.

This under-budgeted film has the kind of stuff I like to see in sci-fi movies: A cool premise (two factions using giant Mech-warrior type robots to fight for land or politics in an arena), two-dimensional characters and great miniature filming!

The story's about a soon-to-be-retired jock who drives giant robots and slugs it out with the other faction's jocks and robots. He is unwillingly replaced by a novice girl he cares about or something, and she tries to fight the old jock's nemesis. Before this guy kills the girl, the old jock gets a chance to mount a robot and fight his enemy until both robots are done with.

The fight sequence are nice to see, the miniature filming is top-notch, and the story breezes through without been noticed (believe me, it's not important enough to notice)... The space-fighting scene at least has an honest-to-God true fact about space fighting: no sound!! (for the first time in Sci-fi movie history, except of course for "2001: A space odyssey", but they had no space fighting in "2001...").

For sure, a fun grade-B movie.