Since I saw it in the smaller theater I’m not sure if I got the same quality of experience that another person (not watching imax or some mega screen) would have gotten.  I thought it looked pretty good and the sound was pretty good so I don’t have any complaints in that department.  The action sequences were pretty decently done.  They were big and expansive.  If you are going expecting to see robots beat the hell out of each other..by all means this is the show for you.  If you are expecting some kind of “plausible” story or any type of acting…avoid this flick.

People have said this is the best transformers of the series, and that might be true.  It was certainly better than the 2nd one but I’m not sure if it was better than the 1st or not.  The chic (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is IMO a bit hotter than Megan Fox, but her acting is right there with her in the crapper.  For whatever reason, I thought her performance felt more “genuine” if that can be said about anyone in this flick.  Where fox had an “omg I’m hot, look at me” air to her I thought Rosie had more of a smirk on her face about it…”yeah, I’m hot…” with a wink and a smile.

I wonder if the people in this movie can actually act.  If they were given a solid script would they be able to put out a performance that I’d like to see?  As it stands, the people are in this movie just for comic relief.  How does a 6 foot person deal with a 60 foot robot shooting energy weapons whom is also as agile as any of our athletes…oh and they are fast as a vehicle….  It just doesn’t work well.  By the 3rd episode we should have been in space or something…seeing an all out robot war with very little involvement from the people.  Maybe something about the robots leaving the planet, some people coming with to explore or something and blamo we see why fragile little bags of water can’t hang with intelligent hunks of metal.

The plot of this moive?  Well, um…it had something to do with sentinel prime being the last great hope for peace, his ship being shot…crashing in to the moon with a “super weapon”.   The space race of the 60′s was all a front to get to the moon and see what this thing is…then we never go back because we think we might have an idea of what it is?  I don’t get it.  Now the autobots are pissed cause they know the humans have kept this from them.  They use their ship to get to the moon, wake up sentinel, bring back 5 rods plus the controller…then a human realizes there should be 100′s of them.  The humans find out where they have gone, and tell the robots.  Autobots are betrayed by sentinel, and the decepticons plan to use these rods for a space bridge to bring cyberton to earth so the humans can work as slaves to rebuild it.  Humans are working with the decepticons…battle..\the autobots are told to leave the planet…which they do in one of ours/their shuttles, it’s blown out of the sky…and we have 40min of movie left.  battle…good guys end, optimus soliloquy…end.

Now, that plot sucks…I give that to you, but one of the large over all problems IMO is there is no solid story arc from 1 to 3.  They are not connected in any way.  Each one acts as completely separate episodes with very little knowledge the former existed.  In 1, yeah megatron is pissed and they fight…O.K. I get that…but in 2 the decepticons try to suck all the energy out of the sun…then in 3 they want to use them as slaves to rebuild cybertron.  Had they killed the sun, who would be their slaves to rebuild the planet?  Seems to me they should have enslaved the race first, rebuilt their home, then blown up the planet.  They don’t even try to explain the space bridge, “it violates the laws of your physics” is what the humans are told…well, if “our laws” of physics are violated, then they aren’t really laws and we are clearly wrong.  How can these things be so damn advanced and still suck at conquering earth?  I don’t get it.

Normally I get irritated at movies like this because the concept had so much more potential…with this one though, they are pretty much stuck where they are at.  Story would just get in the way of their eye candy.  I wasn’t all that in to this flick, but when sentinel (voiced by lenord nimoy) busted out a “good of the many…” line, I was done.

Horrible movie, don’t even rent it.

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For a “professional” review of Thor, check out screen rant’s writeup.

In essence, the story was about Thor being powerful and arrogant, odin needing to knock him down a few notches…and Thor finding…well, I don’t want to say “humility” but I suppose the connection would be “humanity”.  Basically, he met a hot chic he wanted to hook up with.  For me, the switch between arrogant and humanity happened too quickly.  It was like someone flipped a switch..he was acting one way then suddenly acting another.  He didn’t gradually find out what it’s like to care for other people.  But, what depth do you expect from a comic book flick?

The final battle sequences were quite disappointing.  By far the battle at the beginning with the ice giants blew away the bit of fighting at the end.  The initial battle really showcased Thor’s strength and all balls no quit attitude.  At the end, it seemed like you were to assume the fight was a formality on the way to his victory.

Chris Hemsworth played the character well, IMO he was very good at the arrogant part…it felt right like it fit the character but I think humility took him a little to quickly and because of that it never felt like it was natural.  The only place I’d seen Hemsworth before this was the few min scene at the beginning of star trek.  He really had to bulk up for the role of Thor.  From what I read, he put on more muscle than the studio expected and the suit didn’t fit him when he showed up for shooting.  There is a scene for the ladies with his shirt off, and he looks cut well, but not overly muscular.  I would be curious to know if any HGH or ‘roids were used during the process…but given his good definition I think he could have hit this body type with just diet and exercise over the course of a year.  Looking over his movie list, Red Dawn releases after Thor, then he is shooting The Avengers.  I wonder if he’s going to try to cut weight for Red Dawn, then have to put it back on to play Thor again.  I would expect something like that to be pretty hard on his body.  I am curious if the body type he has to keep up to keep playing Thor is going to take it’s toll on him physically and limit the roles he will be offered in the future.  We’re not talking about a guy like Arnold who made a career first as a body builder then brought that body to acting…this guy wasn’t a large guy who had to get large to play a role.  I’ll be curious to see how this plays out.

Overall if you’re a fan of the comic book genre this movie is worth seeing…if you are a passing fan, wait to watch it on blue ray.  I read a few places that said this was the best comic book movie to date…and IMO that is just flat wrong.  It’s not up to the caliber of spiderman 2, and I don’t think it’s even as good as the Incredible Hulk (not the ang lee hack fest…I’m talking about the one with Ed Norton).

We still have x-men first class and captain america coming out this year for comic book movies.  Initially I thought x-men would suck, but from the previews I’ve seen it looks quite interesting.  The jury is still out on cap.  I think I’ll wait to rent that one unless it’s a really boring weekend in botno when it hits the theater up here.

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I’m not going to go over a synopsis of the flick, if you want that here’s a link to screenrant‘s review and comments.  I’ll give my views on it but it will contain spoilers…so read at your own risk.

****Spoilers****

The capt (Jake Gyllenhaal, I can’t remember the character name) gets thrown back on to a train where everyone was killed by a bomb.  He’s got 8min to figure out who set the bomb so he can relay it to the army and they can stop another larger threatened attack on Chicago.  They send him back to experience these 8min over and over again.  Really 12 monkeysish…but not so tough to follow the first time through.  The premise is that he’s suppose to be limited by the original dude’s memories, but they quickly break out of that and go -really- sci-fi.  I thought it would have been a much better movie if they had actually stayed within the guy’s memories and worked out the problem…essentially stayed within the train car.  The huge hole in the whole thing is when they kept telling the guy he couldn’t affect the past/future but he somehow pulled out the license plate number of the van…which turned out to prevent the big bombing of the city.  That’s the huge hole…how does no one question how he was able to pull out this plate number?  It wasn’t part of the original person’s memories.  Everything else could have been written off as the two brains creating some large world out of fragments of memory…but that exact license number is just too far out there.

After that, he asks to be sent in to try and save all the people on the train and then have them turn off his life support (the capt is just a brain…shocker!).  The lady does this just to make him happy as kind of a one soldier to another favor.  The capt goes in, save the train…gets the bomber in a fairly believable scenario given what has already transpired and the previous knowledge he has.  As time expires, he get the entire train car laughing, kisses the girl…the 8min are up and the whole scene pauses…she disconnects life support.  This would have been a great place to roll credits…if they hadn’t done the whole license plate deal.  That problem had to be resolved…so obviously they turned to the time travel angle.

I didn’t like the ending.  It would have been much better if they had some something else with the “catch the criminal” part and left everything right in that cabin.  Once you add in time travel you go from a nice sci-fi drama to way out there sci-fi.  In the end though it was a pretty good story and worth a rental.

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Actually I know what they did and I think they completed all the work in the past week or so.  For what the building is, it’s fine…it’s just not some ultra modern thing.  The screen is O.K….but not as good as Minot or Fargo.  The sound isn’t all that good.  I wouldn’t recommend seeing a block buster in there when you expect some high quality visuals and amazing surround.  They charge 6 bucks to get in, which is a little more than a 2nd run theater but not as much as a first run.  They seem to get movies at a decent time, they are running source code for the late show this coming weekend, which is 3 weeks after release?

I don’t know if they will ever make much money, but hopefully they make enough to keep the place going.  It’s nice to have some place close to kill a few hours.

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link

Emily Browning was left fuming after her sex scene with Jon Hamm in Sucker Punch was axed from the upcoming action movie in a bid to please U.S. censors.

The Australian beauty gets intimate with the Mad Men actor in Zack Snyder’s latest project, in which she plays a young woman who is involuntarily committed to a mental institution. But the 22 year old was outraged after learning Snyder was forced to chop down the film after officials at the Motion Picture Association of America took offense at the racy scene.

She tells Nylon magazine, “I had a very tame and mild love scene with Jon Hamm. It was like heavy breathing and making out. It was hardly a sex scene… I think that it’s great for this young girl to actually take control of her own sexuality. Well, the MPAA doesn’t like that. They don’t think a girl should ever be in control of her own sexuality because they’re from the Stone Age. I don’t know what the f**k is going on and I will openly criticize it, happily. So essentially, they got Zack to edit the scene and make it look less like she’s into it. And Zack said he edited it down to the point where it looked like he was taking advantage of her. That’s the only way he could get a PG-13 (rating) and he said, ‘I don’t want to send that message.’ So they cut the scene!”

But the actress admits there are benefits to allowing kids under 17 to see the movie, adding, “I’m torn. I want an ‘R’ (rating) because we can get a lot of cool scenes into it, but then I like the idea of younger girls being able to see it.” (PAW/NN/ZN)

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/me sighs.

‘Red Dawn’ Tweaked to Please China

Monday, 21 Mar 2011 08:04 AM

By James Hirsen

The government of China routinely stifles dissent, imposes censorship, and engages in human rights violations. But despite the oppressive environment and hardship that the Chinese government has created, the Chinese people have somehow managed to develop a healthy appetite for Western cinema, and the Chinese market is a huge one.

Hollywood, being the big biz that it is, must always be concerned with the bottom line, and that means getting the most profits it can for its products.

Consequently, one Hollywood studio has seen fit to significantly alter its remake of the 1984 Cold War cult classic, “Red Dawn.” Changes were made out of concern for the sensibilities of the Chinese government, which ultimately decides whether or not a movie makes it in onto the Chinese screen.

In the “Red Dawn” original, the villains of the flick happened to be Russian. In the remake, though, the script had the villains undergoing an ethnic transformation, one in which they eventually emerged as Chinese.

That’s not good for the Chinese market.

After the film had already been shot, MGM, mindful that the distribution of the movie in China could be detrimentally impacted, went about making a change to the ethnicity of the villains once again. The dastardly ones were converted into North Koreans.

Through the magic of digital technology, the studio was able to tweak the footage during post-production at a reported cost of less than $1 million.

It wasn’t really a difficult decision for the Hollywood executives since North Korea doesn’t provide Hollywood with significant economic opportunity.

The original movie starred the late Patrick Swayze, his iconic movie dance partner Jennifer Grey and, believe it or not, Charlie Sheen. All played U.S. teens fighting invading Soviets.

It’s staggering how in such a short time the international film market has changed so dramatically. Back in 2009 the decision came down to make the new “Red Dawn” bad guys Chinese. However, the Chinese market has grown to approximately $1.5 billion a year since then, and it’s one of the fastest growing movie markets in the world.

The Chinese government already sent a message when it disallowed the distribution of “The Dark Knight” because a villain in the flick was Chinese.

Pursuant to a recent World Trade Organization ruling, the Chi-coms are initiating a policy of allowing more foreign films into the country, and in the future, MGM would no doubt be pleased as punch to distribute franchise films such as the “James Bond” series.

Interestingly, writers are concerned that their choices of villainous characters are being whittled away at by autocratic world leaders and PC police alike.

Guess soon they’ll only be picking villains from countries that have bad box-office numbers.

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So the wife and I headed out to this flick, we decided pretty late in the evening to catch a movie so we snagged tickets for the 2140 showing.  We got there as the previews were just finishing up, which is right on time in my book.  The theater wasn’t packed, probably 1/2 full or so.  We sat fairly close, because it was the easiest seats to find and get to without stumbling over 20 people.

Below is going to contain some spoilers.  The movie wasn’t so great that I’m going to wait for people to see it.  TBH, this movie was a rental at best, you are not missing anything by not catching it in the theaters.

The basic premise of the movie is that this Dr (played by Neeson) is scheduled to give a speech or some kind of talk at a conference about some sort of research.  Getting to the hotel, he forgets his bag and has to head back to the air port to get it.  As his wife goes inside to check in he climbs in a cab and heads back to the airport.  The cab gets into a wreck, he is out for 4 days and tries to get back to his wife.  He has no ID on him and no way to prove he is who he is.  He gets back to the hotel, finds his wife…and there is some other dude that everyone is pretending to be him.  His face has been replaced on the website for the school that he teaches…and people are following him.  He is in a rush to figure out what is going on and why he’s been replaced.

The next section will contain spoilers.

****SPOILERS****SPOILERS****SPOILERS***

Something struck me very odd at the beginning of the movie, when he realized he forgot his bag he was outside the hotel.  His wife was inside checking in.  Without talking to his wife, he climbed into a cab and headed back to the hotel.  He checked his cell several times, presumably to let his wife know he was heading back to the hotel.  This didn’t sit right with me.  She looked over her shoulder and saw him doing this, and didn’t look like she cared at all.  I haven’t been married that long, but it’s difficult for me to imagine a situation where I could just walk away from the wife to do something without her freaking out.  No matter how many years they have been married, I would think he’d stick his head into the hotel and let her know he has to head back to the airport.

The doctor says something very interesting in his second visit to the hospital, “who would want to replace you?  These people caused a car wreak?  They might have planned things out well, but they are not gods.”.  The cab wreck didn’t look like it was on purpose at all.  It was clearly an accident.  That part seemed really weird.  Why would a group of people that wanted to replace this guy leave something like that to chance?  The “how” of him being knocked out was pretty random.  Then there was no follow up to find out what hospital he was in and either kill him or cart him off.

We were about 1/3 or a little more through the movie and I leaned over and told the wife “this is for an assassination attempt on the prince”.

Neeson ended up finding the cab driver that ran off the road, an illegal in Germany with no cab license.  I could have sworn that the trailer I saw made it look like she was involved in the conspiracy somehow…but alas, in the movie she was as in the dark as the head character.  Before he finds the cab driver though he gets the name and address of this “guy that finds people” from the nurse (whom is killed) at the hospital.  She thought maybe this dude could help him find out who he was?  Neeson finds the guy and it comes out that he worked for some old school Nazi/communism regime in East Germany.  There are several scenes of this guy snooping around and finding information…but it’s not clear exactly what information he’s finding.  It looks like he is digging up info about Neeson flying in with his wife.  Then we see some dude walk on the screen that (it seems to me) always plays bad guys in the movies…Frank Langella.  He is on the phone with this “Nazi” guy and says he will stop over.  I can’t remember if it was this point or before (I think before) where I told the wife “wouldn’t it be cool if neeson’s the assassin”.  This is where it comes out that Langella is part of a group call section 15 that kills high profile people very efficiently.  The Nazi guy poisons himself and avoids giving out any information.

Mean while, Neeson and the chic meet up with his wife at some kind of art show.  His wife seems lovey…but it’s emotionless.  They head to the airport to try and find the brief case.  It looks like she is guiding him there…but it’s not blatantly obvious that she’s directing him to where he can get caught (I said blatantly…because everything else in this movie is laid out so clearly a child could follow it).  He gets the case and the illegal chic asks him “what if this is a trap…”, at this point…it’s blatant.  Langella abducts him and we hear everything.  Neeson and this chic are assassins, he’s under cover and after he got hit on the head he started believing his cover story.  They are going to kill him but the illegal kills everyone.  Neeson realizes 3 months earlier he planted a bomb in the prince’s suite and someone was going to get kills.

{insert action sequence}

Turns out they were gunning for some guy that developed a new kind of corn that could grow anywhere quickly and “feed the world”.  The “wife” was blown up while she was trying to defuse the bomb (which was a sloppy way to wrap up her character) and Neeson goes hand to hand with the guy that replaced him…finally killing him.  During the fighting he remembers some of the planning they did about this assassination attempt.  After he killed the guy the illegal meets him in a door way of the blown to bits building…I thought it would have been pretty cool if he’d have killed her to protect his identity, but apparently the amnesia made him softer and they run off together…

“Bourne identity” meets “Taken”

This might have made an alright story…but the audience was really spoon fed information and there was no real drama during the unveiling of information.  The idea was pretty unoriginal (Bourne Identity) but Neeson is a good actor.  His skills and demeanor seem to shine in the drama with a little bit of action.  This movie just wasn’t written very well.

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