Nim's Island: movie review

by Janine Ashbless

Ever hear the one about the reclusive female author living a life of vicarious adventure through a fictional hero who looks exactly like Gerard Butler? No, they haven’t made a film of my life (although if they did I’d be honoured to be played by Jodie Foster): this is Nim’s Island, a movie for kids. And writers.


Plot: Nim is a pre-teen living an idyllic but isolated life with her scientist father Jack (Butler) and her animal friends on a Pacific island. Everything Nim knows about the world comes from books, and her great hero is the adventurer/writer Alex Rover. Jack goes off to collect protozoa from a reef and becomes lost at sea. Nim, left alone except for her sea lion and frigate bird and lizard, contacts Alex Rover via e-mail and asks him to come and help. What she doesn’t know is that Alex isn’t a macho explorer but an agoraphobic forty-something writer (Foster) who hasn’t left her apartment in 16 weeks, dances to Youtube videos and is scared to fetch the mail.

Alex is goaded by her animus/alter ego/imaginary self (also played by Gerard Butler!) and despite her neuroses sets off to the rescue. So the film splits into 3 segments: Jack trying to keep afloat on a damaged boat in shark-infested waters, hapless Alex (plus imaginary friend) making her journey, and Nim fending off an invasion of fat Australian tourists from the secret island.

This is by no means a serious film; it has a broad streak of silliness and the sort of super-intelligent animal friends that gave Skippy a bad name. But the jokes about writers and their eccentricities are rather good, and the two adult leads look lovely, and the fantasy juxtapositions are clever. This is the sort of feel-good, innocent childrens’ adventure you thought they didn’t make any more.

And if neither Jodie Foster nor Gerard Butler flailing about in a wet shirt does it for you, there’s another reason you should take your small female relatives to see this. Nim’s Island is a Hollywood rarity: an aspirational movie for girls, that treats them as capable imaginative individuals rather than as shrieking fashion-obsessed herd animals. What took them so long?

xxx
Janine

300

By Janine Ashbless

“Then the gods did say unto Janine Ashbless, Mortal often hast thou questioned the reason for thy existence, and now we shall give thee the answer. Rejoice, for there shall be a movie made in the very image of a Frank Miller graphic novel.

And Janine Ashbless did say, Oh cool. I shall watch it.

Then the gods did say, And that movie shall be called 300, for it shall be about the heroic Spartan stand against the mighty Persian army at Thermopylae. And lo, there will be much bloody swordplay.

And Janine Ashbless did say, Oh, Yeah!!

Then the gods did say, And King Leonidas shall be played by Gerard Butler – whom we shall afflict with an horrid beard, for fear that otherwise thou might drop dead on the spot for pleasure. As it is thou shalt have to be peeled off thy cinema seat and thy limp body carried from thence by two strong men*.

But Janine Ashbless said nothing, for the blood had run from her brain and she was no longer capable of human speech.

All these things came to pass and Lo: it was very good.”

300 : It’s violent. It’s stylised. It reeks of testosterone. It has 300 buff men wearing nothing but leather codpieces. It has GB and Dave Wenham and more sculpted abs than a gay gym. Finally - proof that this is a benevolent universe after all.

xxx
Janine ‘Practically Snuff’ Ashbless

* It takes two men because they both have crap knees, not because I’m lardy. Honest.

Crush Wednesday

Shall I kick off, then? Let me praise Gerard Butler...

I was vaguely aware of him as the cute Scottish guy who dies early in Reign of Fire, but one day I found a DVD of Attila the Hun while in HMV and ... and ... I thought "Bloody Hell - it's Veraine!" Veraine is the main male character from my novel Divine Torment (and now he's in Burning Bright). I went into mild shock.The rest is, well, undying lust.

There are loads of pictures of him on www.gerardbutler.net (4 million hits and counting - I am not alone!)




Same actor, different look.

What's the attraction? Well, for me it's the fact that in real life he is by all accounts both smart (ex-lawyer) and a thoroughly nice guy, both of which are essentials. But when acting he can turn on, at the drop of a hat, an intense, and occasionally threatening, alpha-male physicality.

Just delicious. Sigh...

Janine