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More hand drawn robots and dinosaurs than yesterday.

Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category

How to enjoy time travel

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Ever see a movie so bad that you wish you could travel through time and stop yourself from watching it?  I know I certainly have!  The good news is that the latest movie I watched, “The Time Traveler’s Wife”  wasn’t one of those movies.  Don’t take that as a recommendation though, because it was still an unsatisfying piece of cinema.  The guy gets shot.  That may or may not be a spoiler, I don’t know.  It happens pretty early on.  But he is a time traveler, so it is actually in the future after the movie is open.

The Time Traveler's Wife I’ve never written a movie about traveling through time to kiss your wife or watch your dead mother sing in her opera performance, but I did watch one last week.  Not all time traveling movies are created equal.  There are so many little details and chronological cares that have to be done just right.

This movie does an okay job at that, there are still some questions, but none are incredibly jarring and offsetting.

Aside from some guy getting sucked through time every time he sneezes, the main character also has to deal with trying to keep his wife happy.

It’s not quite like he can use his traveling powers to great benefit here either.  He can’t choose when to go back in time to get out of arguments, he can’t zip back 15 minutes and put the seat down or run the vacuume.

What he can do however, is go back 30 years to when his wife was just 6 and start hitting on her before she knew what was going on.  That kind of creepyness just weirded me out.  And I know some creepy people.

There were a couple of loose ends in the movie, and the ending was very predictable and anticlimactic.  If you only see one time traveling, paradox creating, love empathy stiring movie this year, see “Star Trek“  If you decide you still have an hour and a half to kill and don’t mind paying $8 to have a weird flavor in your mouth, then see “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”

I’m not sure what to think about Disney-Pixar’s “UP”

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

The other day I watched the new movie ‘UP’ from Disney-Pixar.

I’m not entirely sure what to think about it. Yes, it was a great movie. Yes it causes an emotional response from everyone who watches it and happens to be human. Still, I feel weird about it. It could have been because the kid was an annoying chuckle-head, the bird was an annoying siren, and the dog was an annoying dope.

The main premise of the story was absolutely great.

(And here come the spoilers!  Go watch the movie, then come read the rest.)

up-pixar-2009 (more…)

Star Trek… Did I really just watch that?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

After hearing about how great the Star Trek movie is from both geeks and ‘normies’ alike, I decided to check it out.

My history with Star Trek is quite limited. I have only seen a couple of episodes and one of the previous bad movies. Honestly there was not much that I found appealing about it. So I wasn’t to worked up to see the show. I was more than pleasantly surprised to by the time the opening credits appeared.

The opening scene was perhaps the best scene I have watched in a movie in a LONG time. It had huge explosions, ruthless attacks, emotionally gripping moments, great effects, and selfless acts of heroism. All of this happened before the opening credits.

Now I am a man. I am I manly man who does manly things like lift heavy rocks and does pushups. Even considering how manly I most certainly am, Star Trek made me want to cry. Just in the opening scene it made me gooshy.

The story was put together quite well. I’m sure that this will bring in a new band of followers. Some of them might actually become full blown Trekkies, complete with the funny starfleet uniforms.

Star Trek looked great, that is for sure. However ILM did the effects. George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic did a bunch of work on it’s longtime rival franchise’s new hit movie. That’s got to make some nerds mad and have Roddenberry rolling in his grave.

I am amused by Star Wars people making a great Star Trek movie. Especially considering the last three Star Wars movies.

No Klingon?  How good could this movie actually be?

No Klingon? How good could this movie actually be?

This is one you should check out. I really liked this movie. Star Trek exceeded my expectations by FAR!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine… Did I really just watch that?

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

The latest Wolverine movie just came out.  This time they didn’t beat around the bush. After making three movies about him,the finally put his name in the title.

As the name implies, X-Men Origins Wolverine is all about his early days as a lovable young mutant with slight rage issues, wicked chops, and a strange set of values and morals.

XMen Origins: Wolverine  SNICK SNICK!

XMen Origins: Wolverine SNICK SNICK!

Wolverine IV wasn’t as good as Wolverine I. Which makes it not nearly as good as Wolverine II. I’m not quite sure how it compares to ‘Wolverine III: The Last Stand.’ I suppose it must have been better, considering that my eyes didn’t bleed in this one and aneurysms were kept to a minimum.

Admittedly my knowledge of comic books is quite limited. And if I tell you anything about anything, it’s clearly because I saw it in a movie. I am a total poser in this realm. Although I suppose posers pretend to care. I couldn’t care less about comic books. My knowledge on the subject can be easily surpassed by glancing over a page or two of Wikipedia.

That said, Wolverine is the next James Bond.

People care about the little guy. He doesn’t know who he is and he’s really mad about it. In Wolverine IV, you get to find out all about his past. To bad he won’t remember any of it.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Wolverine as a musical. These guys did a great job with this bit.

Wolverine The Musical

Go see the movie. It’s not the greatest Xmen movie, but it’s not a bad one.

Monsters Vs. Aliens … did I really just watch that?

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

The latest Dreamworks animation just came out “Monsters vs. Aliens”  and for some reason I decided to go.  If you are looking to waste a chunk of change, perhaps you should burn it before seeing this movie.  Perhaps it wasn’t THAT BAD.  I do remember going to the Simpsons Movie in theater as well.

Monsters Vs Aliens

The script was absolutely terrible.  The characters were flat.  Every single line in the movie was cheesy.  The story was boring.  There was no tension in the movie.    There were one or two good gags in the movie, but certainly not enough to justify an hour and a half.

And there were five people making the screenplay?  Furthermore there are two more people credited as story writers?  This goes to show two things.

  1. Committees cannot write good movies.
  2. Anyone can get a job as a screenwriter.  What recession?

The most disappointing part about this movie is how good DreamWorks did on Kung Fu Panda last year.  I really thought they were going to be setting the bar a little bit higher after seeing what a GOOD movie can do for them.

This movie is in 3d, which is cool because the theater gets to charge an extra 3 bucks per person for silly looking glasses.  If only the theater would be optimized for that technology.  I’m sure that the 3d picture is better in other places where they have a decent sized screen and actually turn down the sidelights during the movie.

In the very first scene of the movie there was a 3d gimmick done only to remind you that you were watching a 3d movie.  A paddleball was done into the camera.  How clever!  Good thing I have these stupid glasses.

I really hate getting ripped off from bad movies.  The best part of this movie was the trailer for the new Pixar movie.

Oscar Contender or Just Great Movie? Australia

Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Australia directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman

Australia directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman

The epic feel good movie of they year… Well, that might not be exactly true, but it certainly was a great movie.  I hope it does well in the theaters. This movie deserves it.The movie is about a gal who goes down to Australia to get a little cattle outpost ‘Faraway Downs’ sold off.  Of course she finds corruption and tries to stamp it out along the way.  In doing so, she isolates her little community and is now stuck with a huge herd of cattle that are hundreds of miles from Darwin.  The town on to the north that needs cattle to feed the troops going into WWII.

She finds Hugh Jackman, and convinces his character to be the master drover and have one heck of a cattle drive.  As expected, they drink and kiss each other.  Ick!

At the town of Darwin, there is one hell of a bombing.  Japan decided that their little stunt at Pearl Harbor wasn’t good enough, so the fleet moves south and decimates this little one horse town.

In the interest of letting you watch the movie for yourself I won’t talk very much more about the details.

While the film was a big epic romance/adventure/drama/action/coming of age story, it didn’t take itself so seriously as I had expected.  There wasn’t needless drama just for the sake of having tension and the movie almost seemed to mock those moments.  But when the drama was needed, it certainly pulled it’s own weight.  In these respects I think it can be compared to ‘Gone With the Wind.’

Another similarity the two movies have is the effective use of swearing.  While most movies today curse left and right Australia refrained from any swearing until a very emotionally charged and appropriate moment.  It was nice to see it used for emphasis, rather than part of a regular vocabulary.

At points the cinematography was a little jarring as the camera moved around in unusual patterns, but once getting used to the style it really adds a unique feel to the flick.

But with all of that, the question still remains… Who is the real king?  King Carne or King George?