ARG... Becoming Jane trailer

Ach! Anne Hathaway is playing Jane Austen in the film Becoming Jane. I find this extremely annoying. Not only did she ruin my favourite book Ella Enchanted by being in the absolutely terrible movie version, she is most likely going to ruin this film as well. I agree with everyone else cast, as James Cromwell (on 24 as of now, but is famous for Babe), Maggie Smith and Julie Walters (both from Harry Potter), and James McAvoy, seeing as they're either ACTUALLY British/Scottish, or they're capable of imitating the accent. Anne Hathaway? Let's forget that she was the only non-British cast member of Ella Enchanted (because even that wouldn't have saved it from being terrible) and go straight to the point: She is not a great actress. The only reason why everyone believes she did so well in The Devil Wears Prada is because of Meryl Streep, plus it was also a fluff movie. Ugh. This news annoys me. I hope it turns out to be like the "Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet" thing, but I have a feeling it won't.

Knocked Up, Penelope trailers

When I first heard about this movie, I thought it sounded like utter crap. But, it *does* have Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel in it, and how can you go wrong with two of the main guys off of Freaks and Geeks? So here's the trailer for anyone interested:




Another movie that looks pretty good is Penelope, starring Christina Ricci and rising star/hot Scot James McAvoy.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End trailer

I'm entirely over the whole Pirates of the Caribbean thing. Sure, the first one was entertaining, plus it was back when Orlando Bloom wasn't a poncy jackass, and when the Jack Sparrow schtick wasn't grating as hell. I was really disappointed with the second one. The plot was so thin, and the only thing I enjoyed about it was Jack Davenport. BUT, saying that, I'll probably end up seeing the third one. It looks entertaining enough, and it looks like they've abandoned the whole "let's get Jack and Elizabeth together to see how the audience reacts" thing. Anyway, here's the trailer if you're interested:

300

I ended up seeing this movie with two people who were not all that interested in seeing it. Of course, by about 20 minutes of seeing a bunch of hot muscled men running around half-naked, they were won over, and I think I saw Maggie actually fanning herself at one point. It wasn't just the eye candy that made me want to see this movie, and it wasn't the fact that it was clearly going to be a hit... it was partly the visual appeal, and partly the fact that David Wenham is in it.

Based off of Frank Miller's graphic novel (which I have yet to read, but it's on it's way), the plot is fairly simple: 300 Spartan soldiers under the command of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) fight against the Persian armies in 480 B.C. at the Battle of Thermopylae. It begins with the story of how Leonidas became King of Sparta; almost got tossed off a cliff as a baby, then beat up some kid when he was sent away from home in Spartan tradition, killed a wolf in the woods, etc. The audience then learns that he pissed off the Persian "god-king" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) by kicking his messenger and his hangers-ons down a well ("This is madness!" "Madness?... THIS. IS. SPARTA!" fun dialogue, and I'm pretty sure there were someone behind me who said it along with Butler). Unfortunately, his decision to punt some dudes down the well pretty much ensures that Xerxes is going to want to attack, but Leonidas doesn't get permission from the Oracle to take the Spartan army north to meet the Persians. Instead, he takes his 300 finest soldiers and marches towards the coast.

At this point, the 300 soldiers meet up with Arcadians, who are like "wtf? you only brought a handful of guys?" to which Leonidas asks a few Arcadians what their professions are, and of course none of them say "soldier", so Leonidas makes a point of asking the Spartans what their profession is, and they all yell in unison and it's all very silly and masculine. They then see a village burning in the distance, so of course they investigate and Dilios (David Wenham), who is also the narrator, finds the villagers dead in a tree as some sort of sick message. Once they finally get to the Haut Gates, or whatever they're called, that's when the real action starts. Army after army of the Persian empire attempt to defeat the tiny Spartan contigent only to be chopped up into teeny pieces.

The battles themselves are filmed in a really interesting way: they speed up the action in parts and slow it down in others, so it's more interesting to watch than something like Braveheart where the battles seem incredibly dull and long. In 300, you get to see legs and arms chopped off, and even heads! It's very cool. The costumes were great. I read somewhere that they had to dye the cloaks numerous times to get it to the Spartan red, which is some crazy dedication, considering the phalanx itself was changed from being historically accurate because the film version's phalanx "looked cooler" (direct quote from the director, Zack Snyder). The one thing I had a problem with were the weird creatures in Xerxes camp (the dude with the goat head? the fat troll guy with the saw-like arms?... crazy). I mean, maybe they're in the graphic novel, but everyone in the theatre laughed at that point. I wasn't too fond of the Oracle scene or the sex scene between Leonidas and his wife, mainly because they were just awkward to watch.

While the Spartans are chopping left and right, and just generally making the women in the audience all hot and bothered, Leonidas' wife Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) is back in Sparta trying to persuade senators to send the rest of the army north. Needless to say, she runs into some opposition from Theron (Dominic West), who's just basically a dick about everything.

Essentially, this movie's mostly action and eye candy, with bits and bobs of plot, but it was extremely entertaining and enjoyable to watch. It wasn't as gory as I expected, and the gore was done, for the most part, pretty tastefully so that it was more artsy rather than bloody.

Even though it's basically a historical epic with some gore and is not actually considered historically accurate since it's based on a graphic novel, I thought the acting was pretty good. Granted, there was some serious cheese in it, mainly in the battle scenes ("Give them nothing... but take from them everything!", and "not right now, I'm busy"), but overall it was pretty good dialogue. David Wenham's narration was great as well, and it was nice to hear him get some laughs from non-slapstick style dialogue a la Van Helsing (ie "it's only an eye, luckily God was sensible enough to bestow me with a spare" or something to that effect). Butler was great, as usual. Hopefully this will get him out of his preference for being in relatively stupid movies after this blockbuster (need I remind you of Timeline, Reign of Fire, or Phantom of the Opera?), although it looks like he's going to be in a remake of Escape from New York, so I guess we'll have to wait on that. Lena Headey really impressed me. I've only seen her in The Brothers Grimm, which was not an entirely fantastic movie, but she won me over in this. I thought she was fantastic. I can't even express how much more I love David Wenham now because of this movie.

It's funny when you're in a movie theatre and you can hear people in the audience exclaim things at certain points during a film. I heard a number of different people say "oooooh shit!" during 300, specifically at points during the battles (the arrows blacking out the sun, the rhino, etc). It was great. I don't think I've ever enjoyed seeing a movie in a theatre so much. I only wish I could have been one of the uber-geeks and gone to the midnight release.

Ghost Rider

While looking for this picture (which is laughable in itself) in google images, I noticed there was a variety of opinions on the film: "Ghost Rider is quite disappointing", "Ghost Rider wow it was a great film" and my personal favourite "Ghost Rider So Bad It's Enjoyably Funny".

I didn't go to the movie theatre last night planning to see this movie. But it was the only thing playing around the time that I got there, and, since 300 was sold out, I figured, why the hell not? It could be a laugh.

You don't go into a Nicholas Cage movie expecting to be wowed. Ever. I enjoyed National Treasure, sure, but I didn't walk into the theatre going "hm, I bet this movie is going to be fantastic". Maybe that's why I wasn't disappointed, seeing as my expectations were so very low to begin with. This same phenomenon didn't occur with Ghost Rider.

Going back to the three opinions above, I'd say I fall between the first one and the last one, because I wasn't completely disappointed, and I thought it was funny, but not enough to convince me that it was worth the money.

Essentially, the movie boils down to this: Johnny Blaze sells his soul to the devil (Peter Fonda) to rid his father of terminal cancer. But, once his dad is healthy, the devil kills him in a motorcycle accident. Blaze then grows up into Nicholas Cage, who has apparently become a huge celebrity by making incredible jumps on his motorcycle (we're talking over 20 18-wheelers through fire, etc etc blah blah blah). Once he's completed his super crazy Guinness Book of World Records jump over 6 helicopters with their rotors going and over a distance of a football field, he reconnects with his old flame (ha ha get it? flame??), but then the devil decides to use him to get a contract of 100 souls, which, for some reason, makes him turn into skull-on-fire dude who can transform his motorbike into a chrome monstrosity. So he goes through all the hooplah of becoming Ghost Rider, then meets up with the 4 main evil dudes of the movie, three of whom represent elements, and the main guy, who looks like he stepped out of a My Chemical Romance video (not a compliment), who is revealed to be the son of the devil (no his name is not Damien, sadly). Anyways, the gist of it is that he decides to become the "devil's bounty hunter" and fight these four dudes, while romancing his highschool sweetheart and creeping out his best friend.

The CGI wasn't that great, there was a ridiculous amount of terrible dialogue ("you sure you can keep up?" "no, thank you kid", etc), emo kid had way too much make-up on, water dude was creepy and gross-looking, wind dude looked like a caveman, plot holes, plot holes, plot holes. I ended up laughing for the last hour just because it was so unbelievably camp, and not in a good way.

One last thing: it seems that blouses that button all the way up were of short supply on the set, because Eva Mendes' boobs were popping out the entire movie.

300 trailer

The trailer for Frank Miller's "300" have been floating around the internet and tv for ages now, but I'm still going to post it. This is the one movie that I have been looking forward to seeing for the past 4 or 5 months. Not only because David Wenham's in it, but also because it looks spectacular visually. The producers look like they've worked really hard to maintain the look of the graphic novel. The one gripe I have about it is Gerard Butler, mainly because he's supposed to be Greek and he sounds Scottish, as per usual. I understand that his accent may be his "thing", seeing as Sean Connery apparently tried to get rid of his early in his career only to be told that he had to keep it to get jobs (resulting in the Spanish character he plays in Highlander to sound like he came from the Highlands), but I've seen Butler play characters that have no business sounding like they do. Beowulf? Not Scottish. But I digress... it'll still be a great film.

I was going to post both trailers, but since this one has David Wenham narrating, I figured this is the better one to post. There's also some great footage on the website of the making of the film which I was going to post, but instead I'm just going to provide the links.

Video Diary 1 - First Look
Video Diary 2 - Production Design
Video Diary 3 - Spartan Training
Video Diary 4 - Wardrobe
Video Diary 5 - Stunt Work
Video Diary 8 - Creatures

I'm not posting the links to every single one, because there's eleven of them, and only a few of them are vaguely interesting. Go to the movie's official website if you're interested in the rest.

The Prestige

The Prestige

Wow.

I have to say, I never really liked magicians growing up. Mainly because they always did the same crap (the coloured hankerchiefs, wand, etc etc). It just didn't seem impressive.

This movie impressed me. I don't know how it compares to The Illusionist, and frankly, I don't really care. I don't need to see Jessica Biel and Ed Norton affecting a British accent for two and a half hours (and aren't they supposed to be in Russia or something?... odd). It doesn't really seem like the two movies are about the same thing anyway. The Illusionist looks like it's more about the personal lives of the characters, whereas The Presige.... well, you're basically guessing what the two main characters are up to the entire time.

I already figured I would like this movie, since Christian Bale, Michael Caine and David Bowie are in it... with the added plus of a little Andy Serkis. I was worried Scarlett Johannsson was going to be weak, but she actually impressed me. Say what you will about her, but she *can* act. And pretend she's British pretty convincingly. Everyone already know how great both Christian Bale and Michael Caine are, so it was really Hugh Jackman that had to convince me that buying this movie before seeing it wasn't a waste of my money. And he was pretty good... no scratch that, he was really good.

The plot though, is fantastic! I mean, it really is a thing of genius. I saw in the credits that it's based off a novel, which makes me interested in reading it. For some reason, I can't see it as a book, which says a lot for the screenplay writers.

If you haven't seen it yet, I guarantee that you won't be disappointed if you rent it. It's jaw-droppingly good.