Review - Babylon A.D.
BABYLON A.D. [PG-13]
Sci-fi epics like Babylon A.D. are a lot like Frankenstein’s monster. They are large and clumsy, and stitched together from the parts of many others. And with an action hero like Vin Diesel in the lead, the best it can muster when it speaks is echoes of Peter Boyle’s cry, “Super duper!” from Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein.”
Puttin’ on the glitz here is French writer-director and former arthouse darling Mathieu Kassovitz (”Hate”). He has the story of a mysterious young nun named Aurora (Mélanie Thierry) and Toorop (Diesel), the muscle hired to shuttle them from Russia to New York, with which to work, and a number of thoughtful touches suggest that some far more thoughtful was intended. Instead, this vague, heavily dystopian future tale appears to have been heavily edited by studio Fox for length and to earn a more marketable PG-13 rating, and it neuters the film right […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” Diary
EXCERPTS FROM THE SPANISH DIARY
by Woody Allen
JANUARY 2, 2007
Received offer to write and direct film in Barcelona. Must be cautious. Spain is sunny, and I freckle. Money not great either, but agent did manage to get me a 10th of 1 percent of anything the picture does over $400 million after break even.
Have no idea for Barcelona unless the story of the two Hackensack Jews who start a mail-order embalming firm could be switched.
MARCH 5
Met with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. She’s ravishing and more sexual than I had imagined. During interview my pants caught fire. Bardem is one of those brooding geniuses who clearly will need a firm hand from me.
APRIL 2
Offered role to Scarlett Johansson. Said before she could accept, script must be approved by her agent, then by her mother, with whom she’s close. Following that it must be approved by her agent’s mother. In middle of […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Hamlet 2
HAMLET 2 [R]
Hey, the Mormons wrote a sequel to the Bible, so why not a follow-up to that other greatest story ever told — William “Billy The Bard” Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”? That’s the premise behind Hamlet 2, the latest comedy from one of the writers of the “South Park” movie and “Team America: World Police,” in which a sad sack high school drama teacher named Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan) takes a group of aimless students and rallies them around his wildly politically incorrect masterwork.
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Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Transsiberian
TRANSSIBERIAN [R]
review by Robert Nesti
In Transsiberian, Brad Anderson’s deft thriller, an American couple discover far more than they bargain for on a trip from Beijing to Moscow. Their journey - nearly a week long - is on the Transsiberian Express, a train, which despite its exotic-sounding name, doesn’t offer Old World glamour. Instead it’s an outmoded throwback to Communist era style - crowded, dumpy and utilitarian, making it a less-than-elegant ride for the couple.
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Original post by Robert Newton
DVD Giveaway - Dinosaur King: The Adventure Begins
“Dinosaur King,” the colossal fantasy adventure of three young dinosaur enthusiasts whose discovery of some mystifying artifacts pull them into an incredible world of adventure, danger – and dinosaurs – and one of the hottest new kids’ franchises, is scheduled to make its U.S. DVD debut on September 23, 2008. Shout! Factory, in association with 4Kids Entertainment, will summon up Dinosaur King: The Adventure Begins, the first DVD release from the smash hit TV series, which currently airs Saturday mornings on 4KidsTV (FOX). Featuring the first five adventure-filled episodes, a Special Edition Trading Card and dino-sized bonus extras, the Dinosaur King: The Adventure Begins DVD is priced to own for $14.99 SRP. Based on the internationally renowned arcade and collectable card game, the fantasy adventure series Dinosaur King has already evolved into a monster-sized hit. The DVD, featuring the first five episodes (Prehistory in the Making, Battle at the Pyramids, […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Traitor
TRAITOR [PG-13]
review by Robert Newton
Don Cheadle leads an engaging and pedigreed cast in first-time director Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s tense thriller Traitor, in which Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a deep-cover government operative who may or may not be working with the terrorist cell he has infiltrated to stage a series of bombings across America’s heartland. The screenplay, which Nachmanoff also penned (sharing a story credit with Steve Martin), is a far cry from the formulaic fodder that was his script for the 2004 floater, “The Day After Tomorrow.” It is a smartly-acted slow-burn with a payoff that comes in the form of one of the best endings ever.
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Original post by Robert Newton
Review - The House Bunny
THE HOUSE BUNNY [PG-13]
review by Padraic Maroney
Ageism and beauty are everywhere we look. Whether it’s at the local bar on a Friday or Saturday night or at the gym during your workout after a long day at the office, we are always being judged by how pretty and young we look — mainly because in our culture, youth equals beauty. But the bubbly Shelley (Anna Faris) finds out that for a Playboy Bunny, being 27 years old is equal to being 59 in the real world, and no one wants to see someone who is that old hanging around the Mansion. So goes the concept for The House Bunny.
Funny girl Anna Faris came up the story on her own and tapped the writers of Legally Blonde. The movie follows Shelley, who dreams of nothing more than being a Playboy centerfold, but is instead kicked out of the Mansion on her […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Death Race
DEATH RACE [R]
review by Padraic Maroney
A time-honored complaint about Hollywood is that everything old is new again and that Tinseltown has no new ideas left. When you consider the huge number of remakes being churned out, this would appear to be true.
But a decidedly huge rift has grown in the genre. First, there are the faithful remakes that follow the source material with only minor tweaks to make it relevant to a modern audience. The second group consists of those that are remakes in name only, retaining the most basic premise while nipping, tucking, tweaking and chopping everything else. Being that the movies being remade tend to be cult and semi-popular titles — and not exactly the AFI Top 100 to start — improving upon them should not be that hard. Yet for the most part, improving does not tend to happen all that much with the modern-day counterparts.
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Original post by Robert Newton