TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

As much as people acclaim the "Lord of the Rings" series, there are those who find fault in the nearly nine and half hour saga that's had fan-boys craving more Middle Earth since the end credits of "Return of the King" rolled.  You don't hear much about them, as only six or seven inhabit the world at a time.  I revisited the series this year after seeing them for the very first time in mid 2010.  I have a goal to see all of the Oscar-winning Best Pictures, and because "ROTK" fell into that category, I was obliged to watch the gargantuan trilogy.  I feel foolish now for thinking it was a chore, as "The Lord of the Rings" is a truly moving, ambitious and genius driven trilogy that refreshed how we all looked at science fiction and fantasy, and how it could be crafted as this dead-serious work of art.  Jackson had Hobbit-feet sized shoes to fill with this first of three installments, "An Unexpected Journey." I've always adm...

Before I go into detail about the powerhouse musical that is "Les Miserables" (referred to as "Les Mis" in this review, though throughout awards season I've heard it referred to as at least 5 other titles.), let me exclaim my bias for musicals, as I have worked on several of my high school's musicals along the way.  At first guys never want to profess their interest for the movie musical, but after a "Grease" or "Sound of Music," their interests are usually turned for the best.  The truth is, despite the macho stereotype, there are decent, non-Disney musicals out there on the market for an audience, and "Les Mis" happens to be one of them. Well, I suppose you could go into a "Grease" or a "Seussical" with no prior musical background and still be pleasantly surprised.  "Les Mis" is strictly for musical lovers, as it's not so much a musical as it is an opera (think "Jesus Christ Superstar,...

The age-old question concerning movies and books arose as I was about to enter the cinema to see "Life of Pi 3D..." should I have read the book after the movie (books are 99% of the time better)?  By pure chance I had picked up "Life of Pi," a thick, small novel in my school's library based on the cover alone, of a small foreign child with a tiger in a tiny boat, both looking down at the sea.  Of course with "Pi" you're expecting some math genius, "A Beautiful Mind" type-deal, but then I read the first few chapters that night.  The novel was written in the form of a series of flashbacks, presented as one big story Piscine (Pi) Patel tells a couple of Chinese investigators.  While it was a mammoth of  a thing to get through, it was enchantingly rewarding, and was one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. "Life of Pi" opens up quietly in a zoo, where Pi and his family make a living.  Pi is so thoroughly in ...