Raise your hand, if you're a Basterd

I'm not a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino's films. I fell asleep during Reservoir Dogs, I thought Pulp Fiction was somewhat interesting, but nevertheless have no intention of watching it again, never saw Jackie Brown...Kill Bill Volume 1 was awesome, 2 was a bit of a letdown, and Death Proof was definitely the weaker of the Grindhouse films. Which leads me to Inglourious Basterds (which I think is the correct way to spell Inglourious...I know that's not the right way to spell "Bastards"), Tarantino's attempt at a war film.

Now, if you've never seen a QT film, just to let you know, he is known for having long dialogue scenes...and I do mean loooooong dialogue scenes. His character's like to talk about everyday things, and while from a nuance side, I do appreciate the fact he's trying to get as much characterization and what not in there, sometimes it can lead the audience member to wonder what the point is of the entire scene. Basterds is no different, though I'm becoming acclimatized to Tarantino's style, so it didn't bother me as much as usual. There's also a lot of brutal scenes, including a bat-wielding bastard taking it to a Nazi, the carving of swastikas into Nazi foreheads, scalping, and at one point, shooting a corpse until their face is basically destroyed. That's right, this film is not for the squeamish, and it's certainly not for people who look away at the very sight of implied violence. When it happens, it's brutal.

Also, this film is not really about the Basterds (though they do play an important part), and one thing I did appreciate, is that if a character was supposed to be German or French, they spoke in German or French, it was not implied that everyone knew English or German or whatever (this also accounts for subtitles, so if you don't like reading dialogue, don't bother), and this film is also not historically accurate, other than the fact that there was a World War 2, and a Hitler, etc, etc. So, don't go looking for a history lesson.

What you get though, is a pretty interesting ride, with over-the-top characters (Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz excel as the leader of the Basterds and the main villain of the film, respectively), and gratuitous violence (did I mention the blowing off of a corpse's face?), so quite frankly, if you're into that, then you'll like the film. I often find it amazing that Tarantino can have characters discussing the most mundane of things in one scene (take strudel, for instance), and then in the next scene, a character has two guys pointing guns at his balls. That's pretty much what you're going to get for the film, so either you like it, or you don't. For the record, I did.

I bid thee a fond goodnight (with the blowing off of corpse's faces)

- Stephenstein

Rating 4 out of 5 stars.

Be-yawn-ce.

Obsessed.

Where to begin. First off, this is Disclosure – but no sex – (actually he didn’t go all the way in Disclosure) but Disclosure was just Fatal Attraction in an office. Ok, are you with me? So Obsessed is about Beyonce and her hubby who recently got married and have a child together. She used to be his assistant then they started dating etc. She is no longer his assistant and he has a gay guy instead. The gay guy gets sick (for 2 days) and they get a temp Ali Larter…hold up.

When I am sick for 2 days THEY DON’T HIRE A TEMP???? – BUT I think she was already temping there for someone else, so they kept her on an extra few days to cover…hold up.

How can a generic temp be so skilful at multiple jobs in the same company – and to be an assistant to one of the head guys? Anyway she likes her boss and makes a move and nothing happens….but in Ali Larter’s mind it did happen.

So the guy never tells Beyonce and one day Ali shows up at a convention in vegas - I think it was vegas…I cant remember, but this is AFTER another person gets sick and she gets to temp for them for a week…ok, this is getting ridiculous. Anywho, she OD’s in the guys bed and then Beyonce figures it out and doesn’t believe him when he says nothing happened. Why didn’t he tell her a month ago when Ali made a move…well he was about to tell her when just before he can speak, she reveals that her sisters husband cheated on her…so of course he cant tell her then…etc.

The movie is FILLED with these super fake coincidences that wouldn’t happen in the “real” world…or maybe they wood, only Dr. Manhattan knows. Beyonce finally forgives him, but Ali is now pissed and breaks into their home, takes their child, BUT BUT BUT…whew…he’s ok, she just left him in the backseat of the car!

She comes back again and her and Beyonce duke it out catfight style. Now the fight is pretty even considering the fact that Beyonce would probably kick the hell outta Ali Larter in 2 seconds. Ali Larter is skinner than my baby toe!

Anyway, I was able to call how Ali would meet her death – yes I just gave that away – but I saw it coming a mile away...so will you.

But this movie is really made to have fun with. Not to be taken too seriously, and on that note it was pretty fun to watch (even though I watched it in 3 sittings), but in any case it wasn’t bad.

2.5/5

--J-KraKen--[>

Avatar Day -- why it pisses me off

Is it me, or is this Avatar Day thing frickin’ stupid? I mean, I honestly don’t understand going through the trouble of showing only 16 or so minutes of the movie in only 100 IMAX theatres across the country for free. a.) you have to get the tickets off of only ONE site in all the internet, and of course that one site was prone to crashing every two seconds, b.) to me, by doing this, they’re only catering to die-hard geeks who are going to see this movie anyway. They’re the only ones who would camp out on a website for hours, clicking "refresh" every minute (or second) and get their tickets, get excited about seeing 16 minutes of something, and they’re also the only ones who would watch the movie guaranteed on opening day with or without hype, so the whole exercise seems like a giant waste of money, c.) word-of-mouth hype springing from this Avatar Day is a wash-up because who listens to movie-geeks anyway??? Nobody listened when I said Transformers sucked and TF2 would amplify the stupid humour even more so, d.) why in the hell would I want to go out of my way, set aside time one night and drive out to see what is essentially a frickin’ commercial for Avatar? It’s not even feature length. I don’t care if it’s “free”. Is Fox also going to pay me gas money and give me my time back? Unlike these unwashed super-douches who are all excited over watching a measley 16 minutes of a movie that will be old news this time next year, I actually have a life. I can’t be setting aside time to watch 16 minutes of something in a movie theatre. What am I going to do afterward? I’d watch a movie, but then that requires another $11.00 of my money.

I have a crazy idea. It’s so crazy, it just might work. I don’t know if I should tell you, it’s that crazy. I don’t know. Should I? Okay, here goes: RELEASE TRAILERS IN THEATRES AND ONLINE SO THAT I CAN ACTUALLY SEE THEM CONVENIENTLY WHENEVER I WANT TO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why am I forced to go out of my way to watch your commercial? This ain’t Star Wars. Bring the hype TO ME!!! Fox better get their arses in gear quickly, because right now when I talk about Avatar at work or wherever, people have no clue what I’m talking about. Seriously. People at large don’t know what Avatar is. Honestly. Unless you’re a geek who visits joblo.com or whatever and are going to see Avatar anyway, the mass audience doesn’t know what Avatar is, and if they do, they think it’s The Last Airbender. This Avatar Day only penetrates geeks. Horray! Good for you. Getting geeks excited by blurry CGI aliens and spaceships is like shooting ducks in a barrel.

And another thing, and I know this is tantamount to sacrilege, but I’m getting a little sick and tired of these sniveling filmmakers bellyaching about their vision on the big screen. Avatar is in some new fandangled 3D process and James Cameron wants you to watch it on IMAX 3D, the only “true” vision of his “work”, which is why he wants everyone to preview the movie in IMAX theatres in 3D on this Avatar Day. Oh, he does, does he? Listen, filmmakers have to get with the 21st Century. In the average lifespan of a movie (which is seemingly infinite), a movie will be watched on TV, computer screens, tiny iPods and whatever other screens they come up with in the future waaaaaaaaaay more so than on a movie theatre screen. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a movie theatre at home. No matter how big your TV screen is it ain’t comparin’ to an average movie theatre screen, let alone an IMAX one. Movies need to be able to hold up on whatever screen you can see it on. If your movie needs IMAX and gimmicky 3D for me to watch your movie, than you SUCK! If your movie can’t hold up on anything other than a movie theatre screen, then back to the drawing board with you! And let’s face facts: 3D is a gimmick. It’s cool and all in moderation, I suppose, but you don’t need it to tell a story. If Avatar sucks without 3D, then it sucks outright. I’m willing to bet that it doesn’t need the 3D gimmick to be enjoyed by audiences as I’m sure the story is very good (this ain’t Michael Bay we’re talking about here), but James Cameron’s insistence that 3D is necessary is annoying at best. The only way that 3D can be the wave of the future is if you don’t need glasses to watch it. Until then, it’s a gimmick. End of story.

Anyways, that’s my Avatar Day hype. Summary: Fox, give us actual movie trailers! And stop being dicks.

Deceptisean

Not B13

District 9

Aliens land on Earth and are put into a slum. Well they call it District 9, but it’s a slum where they are treated as second-class citizens maybe worse. Wikus is a regular guy (a bit nerdy) in charge of evicting the aliens (called prawns) and relocating them to a death camp. Wikus seems to be very happy at serving these eviction notices, and you may not like the guy very much. Now he’s not all bad, but sometimes Wikus can be a real Dikus. But after he accidentally gets exposed to some of the alien fluid he starts to sing a different tune.

The movie is basically showcasing the way we treat outsiders and minorities and anything we don’t understand, and what happens if we suddenly become the outsider.

The first half of the movie is set up as a mockumentary to explain what has happened in the last 20 years with the aliens. Slowly we merge from that to the movie, and when the action starts, it’s really impressive.

One of the titans mentioned the films budget at approx 30 million (imdb backs him up) and that is pretty darn good for a movie that shows the cgi aliens all the time. They are not hidden, or in shadows, they are in plain site throughout the movie and when the alien mech shows up! Wow! What an accomplishment for the film makers!

Great film.

5/5 – will be remembered as great scifi movie!

--J-KraKen--[>

SRK in a duel role...who'd a thought?

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.

SRK (Shahrukh Khan) stars as Surinder (Suri) a big time nerd…just look at the pic! He is good friends with his teacher, who is at death’s door and his teachers daughter, Taani, is getting married, and once Suri gets a look at her, he falls in love.

The day of the wedding there is a terrible accident and Taani’s fiancé dies, and her father gets sent to the hospital. He sees that Taani is completely destroyed by the death and before he dies he wishes her to marry Suri. There is no love there (well, there is on Suri’s part, but no one knows that), but Taani agrees to marry Suri anyway.

Suri is a “geek” which now a days means a smart nice guy. He loves her, but she tells him that she can never love anyone again due to her loss of her fiancé and father at the same time. She spends the next few days alone at the house while Suri works. He treats her well, makes her breakfast and loves her, but cant tell her.

One day she decides on taking some dancing lessons so Suri forks over the cash and she goes. He decides he wants to watch her, but in disguise. He visits his friend who owns a salon and they make him over but accidentally shave his moustache, and he becomes Raj. A superstar kind of guy, who is overly cool, and really over the top!

What happens next is obvious, Raj and Taani end up being dance partners, and she ends up liking him.

The running theme throughout the movie is that “God is writing this love story”, so things are going well, the only problem is that Raj is really Suri and Suri is really a geek. Suri says (in a great line in the film) “I will be Raj to make her smile and laugh, but when she loves me I want her to love Suri.”

I wont give away the ending, only to say it ended the only way it could. I have to admit I really liked this movie. It was really well done and believable.

SRK was great as usual and the story was new (to me anyway) and I love his attitude, that she has to love me, the real me.

Most movies have their characters make compromises. Like I will change to be with you, but come on, that doesn’t happen. And it didn’t in this film.

4.5/5 – great film.

--J-KraKen--[>

G.I. Joe: A Real International Hero

I can't help, but comment on the fact that G.I. Joe has an "international" cast. Huh. Good work, United States. You've jaded everyone with your political shenanigans, to the point that if you present a squadron of United States military as titular "heroes" in a film, you're likely to be bombasted with cynical rhetoric about how ridiculous the notion is. You've managed to destroy your own good press. Good jobs.

But enough about my political comments. I feel all dirty just making them. This is G.I.Joe. Not the G.I. Joe you know from being a kid. This is a different G.I. Joe. One with a wise-cracking Wayans' brother in it. I know, I know, I thought the movie would be garbage, too...and you know what? It's not! That's right, all my posturing and sneering at how crappy this movie was going to be and it...wasn't...CRAP! Whooo hoo, somebody proved me wrong! Excuse me, I must high-five a random individual on the street.

[Later] You know, that guy didn't have to ask me for spare changed, as well! The high-five was enough! Eh...people...where was I? Oh yes. G.I. Joe. So, if you like action, this is the movie for you. There is non-stop action...when the Joes are fighting Cobra at the beginning, when Cobra infiltrates The Pit, when Cobra tries to unleash a devastating weapon onto unsuspecting Paris, when they infiltrate Cobra's underwater base, I mean the action simply does not stop!

That's not to say there aren't bad parts, and I'll list them here:

1. Baronness turning good sucks.

2. Ripcord's character is for the most part, annoying.

3. The proposal scene between Duke and the Baronness is horribly written.

4. Cobra Commander's mask is terrible and Destro doesn't have the mask until the end.

5. I didn't like the romance between Scarlett and Ripcord.

Yeah...but Snake Eyes is awesome. Storm Shadow is awesome. All the characters (with the exception of Ripcord, and he's not Jar Jar Binks) are cool, the gadgets and weaponary in this film are unbelieveable, and let me just re-iterate that again for the people in the cheap seats, the gadgets and weaponary are UN...FRICKIN'...BELIEVEABLE. No, seriously, now I know where all the creative people are in Hollywood...they were on G.I. Joe, making the cool stuff. The stuff in this film is genius, and I can't, and I really mean this, I cannot wait to see what things they come up for in the sequel! I mean, those were worth the price of admission, alone. This movie deserves to be seen on the big screen, with a pumped up sound system, and all the bells and whistles. Honestly, this was the most exciting visual movie of the year, for me at least, and you could even see the action! Hurray! Score one for Stephen Sommers! But honestly, go see this film, it's entertaining, it's fun, it's not exactly G.I. Joe as you may remember it, but at least it doesn't piss all over the legacy.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.

I bid thee a fond goodnight

- Stephenstein

Julie & Julia (& Juliet & Julianne...)

Good friggin' grief, Charlie Brown...Stephenstein went and saw a "chick flick". I must be mad. Well, I am. I'm mad because why did Julie get her name in the title before Julia? I mean, Julia Child was famous, for crying out loud! She's been on television, she's been published, I've at least heard of Julia Child, who in the blue hell is Julie Powell? And why is Amy Adams playing her? And that usher, the guy who comes in right before the movie before it starts, you know, the dork with the hat and the notepad, what is he writing down, while looking at the screen before he leaves? Will somebody please tell me?

Alright, enough about my pet peeves. This movie is about cooking...and making something of yourself through cooking. That's right, no Hell's Kitchen, no Gordon Ramsay shouting and swearing at people (entertaining as that is), we have some serious people here who want to cook. Julia Child is bored, and discovers through her passion of eating, that she should try cooking. She goes to an all-male classroom, the woman who let her into the the program in the first place doesn't like her, and despite these obstacles, becomes a master chef.

Julie Powell, on the other hand, has a dead-end job, her apartment is terrible, and her dreams of becoming a writer have never come to fruition. Her husband suggests that she combine the two things she's good at...cooking (duh), and writing, and write a blog about doing all of Julia Child's recipes. She begins the quest, and gradually, her blog picks up momentum.

So, we now know it is possible for people to care about you through a blog. Great! Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Needless to say, though Amy Adams is terrific as Julie, there are some things about this movie I'm a little iffy on. Firstly, Julie's quest, while noble, is not as noble as Julia's. Julia just wants to do something with her life, not caring about fame and fortune. Julie had the advantage of following Julia's footsteps, and of course, because Julia Child is a brand name (at least in the arena of cooking), you had a built in audience that would be willing to buy whatever you were selling. Julia Child brought French cooking to America...Julie did what?

Added her blog to the galaxy of other blogs out there? Like I said, not saying Julie doesn't deserve her good fortune, because doing over 500 receipes in one year has gotta be tough, but arguably not as tough as going against the norms of an entire society.

Then we have the problem of this movie being too long, and I do mean, too looooong. The movie is over 2 hours, which is problematic when the most exciting thing anyone is doing on screen is...cooking. Of course, there's spats with loved ones, spats with collaborators, a little bit of personal stuff in both women's lives that DON'T involve cooking, but overall, yeah, it's cooking. Not too exciting.

That's not the say the movie was completely boring or anything. Meryl Streep is extremely amusing as Julia Child, and she works well with Stanley Tucci, who plays her husband. Amy Adams has a sweet vulnerability about her that makes her sections of the film tolerable (and no, I didn't buy that she was a self-centred bitch, like the movie tries to imply at one point), and both women are struggling to make something of themselves in the world, so that's good, too. In the end, this movie is decent, not something you want to replay over and over again, but it was a nice little tale of overcoming odds, and making something of one's self, which is always nice to see.

Rating 3 out of 5 stars.

I bid thee a fond (and full) goodnight.

-Stephenstein