Bin & Skones

The Lovely Bones
Rattle & Huh?
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

You know right off the bat that lil Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan and her impeccable set of peepers, who can purty much own the world of acting for the rest of her life if she wants to) gonna die. She tells us this in voice-over, and so we wait and wait for her innocent youth to be stripped from her body and her soul to linger on forever in the heartbroken minds of her family (including miscast parents Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz). And by the time we’ve gottsen to know Susie Q with her simple hopes and dreams (she’s ohhhh so close to kissing the hot guy with the curly hair!!!), and her vibrant colorful 70s world (the costuming rox & the shopping mall was so mad foreals it gave it chills… see below) we didn’t want her to die. And yet she does. Then the movie, based on Alice Sebold‘s breastselling novel, splits into two worlds: the one she left behind and the new one she’s stuck in, a sorta fantasia purgatory where she comes to terms that life is over

The world without Susie is where Peter Jackson (w/scripting partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens)’s film excels, and the other, a dreamlike wonderland, turns out to be one giant CGI-filled nightmare. Remember that scene in Contact where Jodie Foster talks to an alien who looks like her dad on a distant planet’s beach, and how crummy it looked? All of the Lovely Bones netherworld stuff is juss as crummy if not more crummy (also probably a lot like What Dreams May Come, but we never saw that, so we can’t vouch if it’s crummy or is as crummy)! There’s a lot of this nonsense, and maybe it worked in the book where you could picture it however you wanted to, but brought to life on screen, it’s kinda more dead than Susie. Petey was certainly the right man for this job, but if he can’t pull it off then no one probably can (well, maybe Tim Burton?)

While Susie explores la-la land, her family grieves and her killer (Stanley Tucci, one of the few bright spots in the film, who with green contact lenses out creeps Michael Jackson and his yellow eyes that pop out at the very end of the ‘Thriller’ video) remains at large, and barely in charge. The heat starts to turn up on him as a suspect, with Susie’s sister (hello lovely boned Rose McIver!) carrying the torch of the witch hunt. So what’s the focus here? Catching the killer? Letting Suse rest in peace? Having Markie Markus prove that he can do more than talk to animals? None of the above?

Time continues to pass and pass, but the girl’s haunting memory remains for one and all. We’re haunted as well, but sadly more so by those not so surreal surreal images that made us wish that The Nothing would swing on by and eat up her neverending story

Last Mall Standing: THE MALL!!!! yes, that funky retro looking mall in Bones is the effin shaz!!! and how could it not with it’s LOTR nod early on (look for it in the bookstore window) and Peter Jax cameo (juss remember, he’s skinny these days). and ya know what, it is indeed fo real (or was)!!! Although most of the filming was dones up in New Zealand (duh!), the mall shiz was dones down, second unit style, at MacDade Mall, right outside of Philly!! Here’s a Flicka set of the mall’s closing, and another of it reborn as a Lovely 70s hang out + some video shmideo!! Thirsty for more ye olde awesomes malls? then look no further then this classic thigh fav: Malls of America: Vintage photos of lost Shopping Malls of the ’50s, ’60s & ’70s

Verdictgo: Jeepers Somewhat?? Worth A Peepers

Skin
Deep!
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We’re a fan of anything with the word ‘skin’ in it (cept for J Simpsons’ In My Skin & CANCER!!!): Skins, Mysterious Skin, potato skins, Mr Skin, your mother’s silky smooth skin, and flubvs course, the Redskins. Add Skin, a South African true story about a dark skinned girl (we remember you Sophie Okonedo!) born to white parents (Sam Neill and Alice Krige, both so fine maybe they shoulda been the Lovely Bones parents) struggling to define herself in the time of apartheid, to that list!!! Bring some Kleenex, but leave the Jergen’s at home you dirty fork, cause this film is juss toooo greaaaaaaaaaaaaat to miss!!!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show, yo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bones opens in NY/LA only this Friday and elsewhere elsewhen. Skin be already being thick in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…