The Island & Surprises

I saw the Island a little while ago, then again on my last time off. I really enjoyed it, and while it has it's flaws here and there, it's a fairly solid movie. The story, acting, action and cinematography was there, which really surprised me.
When I saw the trailer for The Island, I was interested, then I saw that Michael Bay was directing it. That was a bit of a disapointment, because his last several movies really sucked. Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II, all bad, in terms of plot. I remember watching BBII, and thinking, if Bay were to direct a movie about some Army Rangers or something, he could do an excellent film.
The Island has everything in it. It's not terribly original by any means. It borrows elements from THX 1138, Minority Report, Blade Runner and a number of other SciFi films. The result is a souped up, sleak version of this story. In the story, a group of people exist in a small environment, where they think that they're the only ones who exist on the planet, after a global disaster, the conamination. In reality, life outside goes on as normal, while the people in the shelter are Clones. They've been cloned from rich donors who are looking for extra body parts to continue their own life. The main character, Lincon, is an inquisitive one, and begins asking questions about everything, and eventually finds the truth, and with his friend Jordan, runs. From there on out, it's mostly action. Good action. It's over the top and exciting, with some very good camera work. Things go boom, and it's usually for a reason, although there are some times when there explosions that are seemingly out of place.
The story really worked for me here. It's got some serious questions in it, but it doesn't take itself too seriously at any given point. There are some jokes and light moments, and enough serious ones to counterbalance it.
Visually, the movie's really cool. Lots of rich colors for most of the film, making it very bright, a sharp contrast to Minority Report, which was very drab. There are some very cool things that they do with the camera angles as well.
I also picked up the soundtrack, which was a pretty good listen. It's taking a little while to grow on me, but some of the songs are pretty cool.
The main problem that I had with the movie is the various plots. Like in Minority Report, there are several smaller side stories, and like in Minority Report, there are some that exist, but ones that aren't paid as much attention to, such as the mentions towards the middle and end with the Clones re-aquiring their original's memories. My only other gripe is that at times, the action was a little too much, making it hard to see what was going on at times.
Other than that, it's a very enjoyable movie. I'll probably see it at least once more, and definently going to pick it up on DVD when it comes out. I'd love to see how Ewan McGregor played two of the same characters at the same time.
My really cool find this time around was that Best Buy is now selling boxed sets of the 1st Season of Battlestar Galactica. The US version isn't out for another couple of months, but demand for the entire season must be high enough to warrent them selling the British version of the series (There's really no difference that I can see, just a different and better theme song on this one). It's an entire step up from the episodes that I have saved on my computer from last semester. Much better quality.
I also picked up a book called the Kite Runner, a novel about Afghanistan. Amazing read. I really got into it quickly and blew through it in a week. The story is fairly depressing and hard to read a times, but it's such a good one. The basic plot is about a boy growing up in Afghanistan, and witnessing a fairly disturbing event to his best friend, something that haunts him throughout the rest of the story. He moves to America, where he and his father make a living. He returns to his homeland when he learns that his friend is dead, and sets out to find his son. Definently an author to look out for in the future.
It's almost the last session of the summer. I thought that my village would be closed for the rest of the summer because we only have 90 or so kids coming to camp next session, and in order to get better coverage, a problem that has been plauging us all summer, we closed down one village, originally Tamakwa, and had double coverage everywhere. Now everyone is coming to my village. I don't have the next two weeks without kids like I thought, and I'm somewhat relieved. Campers are one of the primary reasons that I come back year after year.
Now, sleep.