I caught the Source Code in Bottineau tonight.  It’s a decent flick, nothing over the top but not something you need the theater experience for either.  It’s a renter and worth an evening watch with the wife.  The movie was about a project that lets someone experience the last 8 min of a person’s life.  Basically you jumper cable the brains together and the user can read and interact with the shadow of memories from the dead person.  It sounds out there a bit, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility.  I’d put it in the semi-believable sci-fi category.  1/3 of the way through I picked up on the “kicker” part of the movie, which is quite predictable if you are thinking about the flick.  You won’t think about it if you are just watching the movie though.  There are subtle indicators but nothing that slaps you in the face.

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.

They “remodeled” the Bottineau theater over the winter and finally opened things up this past weekend.  I went in to check it out…I’m not entirely sure what they did…

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.

I’m not sure if Emily Browning actually feels this way or if she understands DVD sales and is trying to market.  There was a “love scene” between her character and some dude off of mad men that was cut from the theatrical release so the movie could get the PG-13 rating that so many desperately crave.  I think this is a good thing for the movies in what seems to be an ever more popular trend.  Push out the theatrical release to appease the censors and get box office dollars…put the theatrical release on DVD for a little bit, then pump out the “RAW UNCENSORED UNRATED!!!” version of the film.  I would think that’s a good way to get people who have already seen the flick in the theater to pony up for the DVD release.

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)

I found this article pretty interesting.  In 2009, the Chinese movie market was pretty low.  The writers of the new Red Dawn didn’t think twice about a Chinese villain.  Now the Chinese movie market has grown to a 1.5billion industry…so the makers of Red Dawn changed the movie villains to North Korean…

/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.