94% Hugo

An enigmatic young boy lives behind the scenes of a parisian train station within it's great, clockwork structures, living off of pilfered croissants and bottles of soda pop. But food isn't the only thing the boy is stealing: he also helps himself to the station's toy shop, not for playthings but for parts. He's attempting to re-create a mechanical boy, you see, an automaton his father rescued from a burning museum. One day, the boy is caught by the toy store owner, and has his research notebook confiscated. The shop owner tells him he must come and work for him if he ever wants to get it back. What is this mechanical boy and what is it's significance? That, it turns out, is not even the interesting question to ask of "Hugo", Martin Scorsese's first foray into 3D film. Hugo was not arbitrarily set in Paris. Paris is the setting specifically because it is the birthplace of film (sorry Hollywood) and more specifically, the birthplace of Georges M?li?s, an early film pioneer. M?li?s, a magician, began making films in 1896, a year after attending the Lumi?re brothers' first public film screening. After making over 500 films, including the landmark film, "A Trip to the Moon", he found his popularity fading at the outbreak of WWI. The ugliness of war had chased away the magic of imagination. No longer able to "make dreams happen", M?li?s became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station. It's quite something to watch Scorsese intertwine so many stories in Hugo, all while paying tribute to both french cinema and his own predecessors. There is also a clear message about the importance of film preservation. The dreams of the past can live forever if we choose to preserve them. Hugo is visually stunning, artistically gorgeous, and truly a bit of the director's heart and soul captured on film.

January 8, 2012

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hugo/

michael jackson trial carlos the jackal namibia namibia hell on wheels hell on wheels new york city marathon