Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen

What an obscene show of budget! Explosions and fights and explosions and CGI and explosions and for what? For What? There is just so much money oozing out of this blockbluster show-off of a movie that I am beginning to really dislike Michael Bay and his Bruckheimer and his Spielberg backing. Really now… There are, I am sure, 20 indie films that could have been made with a 10th of this $300 million budget and I am sure the indie movies would have had a far more positive, enjoyable and collective sense of ‘whatever’ (fill in to what you think is cosmically appropriate) impact. (Okay so I watched the Screening Room on CNN about struggling African film makers today as well).

Never mind that! We go to the movies to escape and for a film like Transformers 2 (the first one I thought was a bit juvenile) that escape should last the mandatory 90 minutes. Anything beyond that is just too tiring and you start wanting to escape from the escape.

And so, yes, if you’ve seen Michael Bay movies you recognize his signature shots on various movies. You see Pearl Habour, Bad Boys etc. These were huge budget films and in each one there are unique shots that, if you did not know it was a Bay movie, those shots would smack you across the face as if Mr Bay himself was doing the smacking. (I suddenly need to cleanse myself)

Whereas typical movies have that one whimsical, quirky character that provides comic relief, most characters in this movie had that role, which was a little bit lame. The John Turturro character who is looking to die for America at every opportunity but does not manage to meet this demise, the ditzy mother whose role it is to embarrass her son when ever she can and is also an under ground dagga fiend. The cowardly college room mate who has conspiracy theories only to see them realized. The two Autobots painted to parody Chris Tucker’s character in Rush Hour. Even the main character is a kind of a side kick who has a nervous condition that makes every single situation in the movie a life or death one. Pity he did not stay dead in the end.

All in all, I either was going through nicotine withdrawal or I was getting extremely impatient with this movie. I would, nonetheless, discourage people to go see it, there are far worthier films out there (worth your 2.5 hours, if you go see this one you allow Mr Bay to make yet another obscenely over budgeted blockbuster which fills plot with explosions), I am sure of it!

Transformers 2 gets 1 spoon, choo chooing towards my rectum.

If you are thinking of having a Bay festival, here is your definitive list: Bad Boys; The Rock; Armageddon; Pearl Harbor; Bad Boys II and then; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

No ‘Doubt’

Meryl Streep is master. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is her bitch. Great, great presentation in all aspects.

Not quite understanding nor comprehending this debate, but lets please have a discussion.

I tend to have a very severe and unambiguous view of what is right and what is wrong. It is wrong to have a relationship with a minor, but what is minor? It is right to speak up, expose and act against what you deem to be wrong, but is your definition of wrong, right?

The movie was dedicated to a Sister Margaret McEntee, so if this is somehow, reflecting a story that may be true, then this is not a philosophical debate, I would have to, unambiguously, support the actions of the nun. BUT, if this is hypothesis, my feelings would remain clouded, especially, given the boy’s situation at home, positive role model and all that.

This is a significant movie, watch it and ruminate.

Out on DVD, and it gets 4 spoons.

The Secret Life of Bees

I had my fingers on the keyboard for a while wondering what to say about this movie.
I guess it is one of those that get you all upset because you just can't understand how things could have been that way. How it could have been allowed. It just boggles my mind really.
There's a part where the old white man character says, "is she one of them dumb niggers or is she a clever nigger." When Jennifer Hudson's character answers back she gets a back slap right across her face. When she continues to defy this white man, she gets a couple of kicks and a couple of fists wacked on her face.
It is infuriating.
We've come a long way but for me that history, that it exists at all infuriates me. How could that time have existed at all?

I loved Sophie Okonedo in this. Her character is just the way I feel some times. Just so very sad and disappointed with the world that some of the things that happen, happen. So many injustices, all of it can be so overwhelming sometimes that you kind of feel like you want to leave this world. I loved her character.
I loved everybody in this movie. Alicia Keys can act, she was spectacular I thought...atleast for a musician. And Dakota Fanning is so grown in this movie.
Two and a half spoons

Nazi Movie

I am always reluctant to watch war movies especially Nazi movies. Specifically though, Nazi movies from the Nazi perspective. Somehow I am just not interested in their experience, their thought processes, the reasons why Hitler triumphed in that time. To me (and I do realise that, put in the same position I don’t know if I could pass the test but think my humanity should always be my guide) these movies want us to consider some of the other dynamics that were taking place when crimes against humanity were being committed. I don’t want to know, if knowing urges me to forgive a little. If anything I think the focus should remain on the horribleness of the era and recognise each and every situation (that would make us bigots or racist) for what it is and rage against it.

I’ve seen Valkyrie and the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I think, it is not enough. Hitler still happened. These movies seem a little distasteful to me.

I suppose the same can be applied to the whole Rwanda tragedy. Shooting Dogs and Hotel Rwanda. There aren’t much films that focus on Rwanda and I think there still needs to be more if anything to educate. No one disputes the WW2 and the Jewish genocide that took place. Everyone knows about the concentration camps and the other atrocities that took place. Not enough stories have been told however about the atrocities that took place on our continent and that, in itself, is a continuing crime against humanity.

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas and Valkyrie are out on DVD.

Pan’s Labyrinth

I can't remember if I ever blogged about this movie. I really enjoyed it. Love fantasy types.
Wondering if Brokensword ever saw it, and what she thought of it. It's so depressing, my heart...well I really felt sorry for Ophelia/Ofelia. And for a while I thought that creature was taken her for a ride. All's well that ends well.
4 Spoons

Angels and Demons

I was never a fan of Dan Brown. I read the Da Vinci Code and watched the movie. The book was the only one of his that I managed and have no qualms about that. Dan created a world that I simply was not interested in and the conclusions he made I know I do not have the knowledge, (nor am I inspired to know more) to argue with the absurdity of it.

Angels and Demons is the next movie installment on this with reputable Ron Howard’s direction (fatally limited to the sequence of events of the book) and starring Tom Hanks and a bunch of Italian gorgeousness.

The movie starts off with the death of the Pope and this takes us to the workings of the Catholic Church and what actually happened in real life when the then Pope kicked the bucket. It also very nicely weaves into the story the debate on the implications of the recent experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, which took place in Switzerland a few months ago when scientists were trying to recreate the conditions just prior to the big bang.

I don’t know if these bits were actually in the book, as I said, I did not have the inclination to go into another Dan Brown universe, but it is clever that they brought it into the movie to make the debates being had more relevant to our world.

The movie is the race-against-time type movie following clues that have been there for a few centuries. The protagonist (the Illuminate) is threatening to kill cardinals that the next Pope will be chosen from. To add to that once they are all dead, the big bang experiment will be used to blow up the Vatican so that the Catholic Church is destroyed along with it. The Illuminate are a group of guys who were Catholic but also believed in science and believed that the two could coexist and did not have to be at odds. So this is all supposed to be very suspenseful and most revealing about the history and workings of the Catholic Church, much like the Da Vinci Code.

The movie is interesting and I am sure it will give a lot of comfort to the believers amongst us out there. It ends off saying that religion, the church, is not perfect as man is not perfect. I’ll buy that. And it is a good lesson to learn but why does the church not learn fast enough that there is a need for contraception and abortion. On the other hand, there is also a need for pure faith and tradition so as not to lose ourselves in modernity. What is the saying? I’d rather die for an idea I believe in than to live for an idea that will die?

Angels and Demons gets 2 spoons.

WILL I AM is in X-Men Origins :Wolverine!

That's all anybody needed to say to me to get me to watch this movie. I must be a little out of touch, I had no idea. So imagine my surprise. I almost jumped up and down. Ah Willl, sweet Will, sexy Will...

So there's been a lot of bed crits on this here movie. I didn't think it was all THAT bhard. Don't think it was a waste of me money. Would do it all over again if I was asked.

Its not the best of movies either. I don't get what the craze is with these pre-quals. I remember Hannibal Rising and what a big disaster that was. Can't say I know of any successful prequals. Brokensword?

The movie is about Wolverine's origins, and goes back to his childhood - not for long though. I found that particularly disappointing as I thought they could have better developed his story as a teenager growing up alas, the movie is about a grown up Wolverine.They don't even tell the story of how he became what he became. They ignore that. So you never get to know how the mutants became such really.

Don't want to spoil it too much for you, so this is where I will end. I loved one of the characters. that appears towards the ends. Wonder if they'll develop his story in future XMen.

Also realised that XMen is so Heroes....or the other way round.
1 and three quarter spoons

Star Trek

The cast:
James T. Kirk - Chris Pine (did not know him before this but he’ll do)
Spock - Zachary Quinto (Sila in Heroes, his wooden acting is perfect for this role)
Spock - Leonard Nimoy (Naturally!)
Nero - Eric Bana (The hulk was goooodddd)
Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy - Karl Urban (also don’t know him but he was brilliant)
Nyota - Uhura Zoe Saldana (chick in one of those teen dancing movies, she is sexy enough to live up to Uhura’s legendary sexiness)
Scotty - Simon Pegg (Genius!!!)
Hikaru Sulu - John Cho (also genius)
Pavel Chekov - Anton Yelchin (don’t remember this character well but the kid was good)
Amanda Grayson - Winona Ryder (She plays Spock’s mom, is she that old?)
Tyler Perry also has a small role in the movie!

I was always more into the Star Trek The Next Generation (TNG) rather than the original Star Trek. I suppose being born at the time that I was, it was only natural that I connected more with the series that was current at the time that I was growing up. But with this new installment, I am now able to buy into the original.

More than that though, when I compare the two, I always found that TNG always seemed to be more cerebral, more philosophical than the original which was more brawn. The villain of TNG always posed a more terrifying threat. You were not just going to get physically hurt when you took them on, there were far reaching consequences, like getting assimilated. When the enemy tells you that resistance is futile, where do you go to with that? And those episodes with Species xxx (forgot the number), resistance is futile, they could assimilate you and change the history of human kind.

So yes, Star Trek has gone young and I think they seem to be wooing the generation I love to loath, those teenyboppers who let there be 100 scream movies, final destinations and Saws etc. But they luckily caught me in the net along with them (I think I was never young, I was born old and sometimes resent the young for some of the shenanigans they get up to that I never did).

It is a very solid cast with a semi solid story (I still don’t understand how old Spock and young Spock can meet. How can they both occupy the same time and space???). the special effects are great but it is not the focus of the movie. The set is so much brighter than the original set. I suppose the original set could not have huge amounts of light because the technology to make you buy into it being a space ship was just not there. There is far less orange in this new movie and everything and everyone is lit perfectly. I dig that.

So the movie basically tells how the relationships began and it is believable. Here is a spoiler, pointy ears is boinking the comms expert. How sexy is that? Although I did not pick up on the chemistry in the TV series, not that I watched it religiously, the link is totally justified. TNG always had inter-co-worker-relationships, why can’t the original season?

Star Trek gets 4 spoons. It loses one because of this April fool’s joke: Check it out: http://www.afterelton.com/movies/2009/4/startrekgoesgay. And I believed it, how stupid am I?

Milk

Best Actor - Sean Penn – Milk
And he was up against:
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I think possibly, the category should be split between best real life character interpretation and best interpretation of a fictional character. Because really, how can one compare the performance of Anthony Hopkins’s Nixon and Hannibal Lector? Both monsters but also, both totally different performances drawn from totally different places.

The movie was interesting, but I remain not a big fan of the real-life-true-story dramas. Name a truly great real life movie, and I will probably not have enjoyed it. There is more poetry, philosophies to live by and real life strife in stories that are just not true.

Have to give it up for James Franco who is really flexing his acting muscle. Pineapple Express was the chronic shit and now this. I look forward to seeing him again in what ever he is in. I am enjoying the choices he is making.

He’s just not that into you

I remember seeing this dude on Oprah a couple of years ago and he had some interesting insights into what men do and how women should interpret these messages.

I was therefore surprised that these insights would be turned into a movie.

It also surprised me that the movie would conclude that the insights are all .subject to exception.

The rules

• He's just not that into you if he's not asking you out
• He's just not that into you if he's not dating you
• He's just not that into you if he's having sex with someone else
• He's just not that into you if he's not calling you
• He's just not that into you if he's disappeared on you

One of the main characters gets these insights from a bar tender who turns into a love interest for her. The barman lives by these rules and eventually buckles under his own rules. The point of the movie?... Disregard everything that has been said prior and hang on to whatever misinterpreted, misplaced signal inadvertently made.

Us women are so stupid, and made even stupider by these kinds of movies.