Category Archives: Movies/TV

Fox To Lower Price of Digital Copies and Release Them Earlier

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How do you get people to purchase something that isn’t selling well? Lower the price, of course! That’s the strategy Fox is banking on to boost digital copy sales on services like Amazon, CinemaNow, iTunes, and VUDU.

Not enough? What if Fox sweetened the deal by giving the digital copy an advanced release date over the DVD/Blu-ray?

Starting September 18th, Fox will be serve movies to under the name Digital HD (DHD) and the first title is Prometheus, which will be made available about 3 weeks before the Blu-ray (October 11, 2012). Other titles such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Watch, Ice Age: Continental Drift will also be available for around $15 before their disc releases.

I am definitely a fan of the VUDU UltraViolet service and think this is a big step in the right direction. Blu-ray prices continue to drop but the sacrafice of sharability, extras, and nice packaging seems like a strong case for digital copies to be significantly cheaper. At $15 dollars, we can arguably call this a bargain. The Blu-ray for Prometheus is currently listed for $27.96 on Amazon. Sure, we get extras that we may or may not watch but at $15 dollars, we’re paying about the same price as one movie ticket.

Chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, James Gianopulos, said Fox would offer the new low price for forthcoming movies but what about catalog titles? Shouldn’t those also be repriced?

With plenty of titles in my Netflix/HBO Go queue, the window of theatrical and home video release has never been a big factor in my interest of purchasing digital copies. It’s always been price. Let’s hope the other studios follow or go a step further in releasing titles earlier or at a lower price.

Source: New York Times via Engadget

The Adventures of Pete & Pete Reunion

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Hey Sandy!  It’s the adventures of Pete & Pete the Reunion.  After almost about twenty years since it first ran, the cast and creators reunite for a panel discussion of their time on this gem of a series.  They talked about how the third season hasn’t been released, and probably will never be released, so we’re relegated to viewings on youtube… thank you internets.

Lately my childhood is becoming more and more present in my adulthood, never has there been a time in society where one’s childhood has been so easily accessible, what with everything being released on DVD and reboots and now reunions.  It is possible to go home again.

We also then got treated to a Polaris concert.

And then look who I met after the show?  It’s Dan Harmon from Community.  I talked to him about his recent episode with Duncan Trussell.

Lawless

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I attended a Q & A screening of Lawlesslast night, thanks to Jeff Goldsmith.  The film is another team up by director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave, who previously brought us The Road and The Proposition.  This film is based on the book entitled The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant.  It’s about the Bondurant brothers during the prohibition era in Franklin County Virginia, they make moon shine and have run ins with no so nice people.  The film stars Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska and Gary Oldman.

The good; it’s Hillcoat and Cave collaborating again, I love their movies.  They manage to blend two genres together, the western and the gangster/mob genre, this melding is much better than that of Public Enemies.
The acting is great, there’s a great sense of family with the Bondurant brothers, normally I don’t like Shia Le-Beef, but in Lawless he’s casted perfectly as the young brother Jack.
Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Forrest, the brains behind the operation, is wonderful, he reminds me of Clint Eastwood in a western, long stares with minimal dialog.
Guy Pearce plays Special Agent Charlie Rakes, and is creepy as all hell.

The action and violence is gritty and visceral.  It gives this film that wild west feel, where frontier justice ruled over any authority.  The pacing is methodical, but not to the point of being slow, and these moments are then punctuated with scenes of violence.

The music for the film is great as well, it’s done by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (non-comic book).  The score feels period appropriate but then there are songs with lyrics and even those songs are done as if they came from that time.  Great choices.

The bad; it does detract from history, but then again the movie is “based” on a true story.
There’s not enough Gary Oldman, his introduction in the film is superb, I wanted more of him.  We’re introduced to his character, Floyd Banner a wanted gangster, through the eyes of Jack, we see this brutal act of violence with a sense of longing and romanticism that influential youths have, this is what leads him down the road to criminal activity.

Overall a gem of a movie, I can’t wait to see Hillcoat’s next movie, I hope he teams up with Cave again.  During the Q & A Hillcoat mentioned that it’s hard for him to make films in this country, USA, cause there’s not enough time, things are rushed.  I couldn’t agree more.  When people talk about Grindhouse cinema, I might argue that that period of filmmaking never ceased, it just became the  norm.  I highly recommend this movie.

Oh and don’t sit next to old people during movies… during the Q & A this guy brought out a book and started reading…

Why Isn’t Carly Foulkes Verified On Twitter?

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Twitter is a fantastic service that lets you follow people and services. It has given people a voice to be heard by anyone. Naturally, being verified is a big deal. It means you’ve arrived. When a person searches for a Justin Bieber or Alec Baldwin, they’re looking for a window into the mind of the same person they see one TV or heard on the radio.

Since anyone can sign up, we have to deal with parody accounts that add noise, making it difficult for the unknowing user to discern which account is truly theirs. Some fake accounts are even able to amass hundreds of thousands of followers. One example is the fake Will Ferrell account (@itsWillyFerrell) . Even the bio reads: “Here to make you laugh! I am not Will Ferrell. Fan/Parody account. No affiliation with actor Will Ferrell”.

When Biz Stone was on Howard Stone, he discussed the process of verification. It became an obsession for staff members who recently signed on. Biz explained that the program is completely human and is determined by various factors such as parody account generation and confirming the celebrity is truly that user (e.g. personal pics).

We all know that I have a thing for Carly Foulkes. Since my first post about her, T-Mobile changed their marketing approach and put her in all black. Perhaps, T-Mobile thought she needed a new look after the acquisition attempt by AT&T was denied. Gone is the girl next door who wears a summer dress and in is the leather-clad version riding on motorcycles like she’s Trinity.

She may have changed in commercials but I’m still following her on Twitter and sometimes I forget that she’s even the T-Mobile girl. Looking at her stream, you’d find tweets about traveling, pictures of her meals, her cat, and commentary about music/shows she’s at. It’s all standard stuff for someone that has access to these things. Occasionally, we’ll see a pic of her in costumes to remind us why she’s relevant.

But let’s get back to the point. She has over 10,000 followers. Surely, they can’t be all personal friends. My guess is that they are other fans of her adorable work. When you search “carly foulkes” on google, her twitter stream is the second link (first is her Wikipedia page). Somehow, the internet has determined she’s who she is and I question why twitter hasn’t confirmed this. We know the tweets are personal based on the content and plethora of self portraits. Does Twitter just have a thing against Canadians? Is it going to take a scandal with her on the cover of US Weekly?

Here are some examples of spoof accounts that might force Twitter to verify @FoulkesCarly:

  • Parody account by another carrier
  • Parody account of someone goofying on T-Mobile commercial scripts
  • A fake account like @Carly_Foulkes, @CarleyFoulkes impersonating her. Her last name already has an “F” and a “K”. Can you imagine if a porn star used a similar name?

If you thought Carly Foulkes wasn’t on the screen enough, we might see even more of her on the screen in the FX series she’s casted, Powers. Until then, we’ll have to watch her career flourish on TV and YouTube pre-rolls, wondering why she still isn’t verified on Twitter.

There’s only one way to know if she’s verified or not: @FoulkesCarly

Premium Rush

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I saw Premium Rush this weekend.  It’s about Wilee (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who’s a bike messenger in New York.  He gets a delivery and from there it spirals down into a world of complications as he tries to just make the delivery.  Sound simple enough right?

The good; this movie is slick, I mean it’s a fairly straight forward story, but the integrate some nice devices.  Wilee uses his smart phone to plot the course to the destination, we get to see this on the big screen, it’s an advertisement for google maps, new gps and the like.  What could’ve easily become a gimmick actually worked well.
Another thing they used reminded me of the Dragon’s Lair cartoon series that came out after the popular arcade game, where Dirk would imagine different scenarios of how to overcome an obstacle, this was also used much later in the CG Action Man cartoon series, but the film uses it as Wilee’s judgement on how to navigate through traffic safely.
They also incorporate non-linear editing with the way they tell the story, and I like it in this case.  We start the movie with an accident shot in slow mo, the movie rewinds to earlier that day, but then it continues to do this through out the film because events are overlapping each other, it was quite impressive to see the same scene covered from a different angle at a further point in the movie.

Wilee as a character is great, Gordon-Levitt plays a very good everyman-good hearted guy.  The script focuses and allows us to understand who Wilee is, his set of rules that he lives by and why he lives by them, we really got to know his motivations and routing for him wasn’t forced.  I gotta hand it to Gordon-Levitt, he did a lot of peddling for this movie.  They also nicely employed the use of a stunt man to do the more tricky bike stunts, this is one instance where motion blur was used to mask that fact, bravo, very well done.

The bad; this movie will under perform, I don’t know who to blame for this one.
Wilee not only has an antagonist in the form of a suit wearing Michael Shannon, but he’s also got bike messenger rival Manny.  Physically this guy looks like he could out peddle Wilee any day, but his “roid” usage and multi-gear bike loses out to Wilee’s endurance and smarts.  So not only is Manny the heel as a messenger but he’s also the love interests’ rival.  If Manny’s role was more prominent it would’ve felt forced, but his presence was appropriate.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie, when I said that the eighties were back I meant it.  Premium Rush felt very much like an eighties movie, but not of the action ilk, just more of an average Joe (pun intended) getting caught up in something crazy that interrupts his everyday world.  Other movies that come to mind are Gleaming the Cube and No Way Out.  Premium Rush is  written and directed by David Koepp, you might know him more for the movies his written; Men in Black 3, Angels and Demons, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, War of the Worlds, Zathura, Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, The Lost World Jurassic Park… well done with Premium Rush Mister Koepp, now I know that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s failure rests all on George Lucas.
The story of this film is strong and that’s why the so called gimmicks of non-linear story telling, integrated computer usage and multiple outcomes works.  Future movies, please take note, focus on the story first and don’t let the tricks be the focus.

PS. it also doesn’t hurt that the movie is bookended with Baba O’Riley by The Who, hehe.

The Expendables 2

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The Expendables 2 opened this weekend.  I haven’t looked forward to a movie since The Dark Knight Rises, and boy did this movie deliver.  It’s about a team of mercenaries that get hired to recover something in a crashed plane, they wander through some third-world European country and find a bad guy that they need to take down.  Simple enough right?

The good; the opening sequence.  It starts off with a condensed version of the first movie, the team comes in guns-ablazing (as if there were any other way) and they pretty much decimate this Nepalese hide out.  Seeing this masterpiece in the Arclight Dome was perfect, the screen was adequately large so I could see all the bodies flying and being eviscerated, and then the sound was in my face!  It’s the only way to go.
What an opening to a movie, the thing felt twenty minutes long if it was a yard… is that a saying?  Explosions, body count, bullets, cheesy lines – The eighties are/is back, with a vengeance.

We get the old team back together with some additions and we even get more time with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The first film had all three of these action stars in one scene, the sequel integrates all them in to the plot, very very enjoyable.  The back and forth with Willis and Schwarzenegger during the shoot out is that first scene in the church amplified and then fuel injected, these guys are such great sports to have done that scene.

The action is amazing, they were able to re-create the tone and feel of the first movie, why can’t other sequels follow this mold?

Van Damne!  He’s in the theatres again!  And we also get Chuck Norris!  These are not spoilers, if you’ve seen the trailers and advertisements you know that these two are in this movie.

How did all these action stars come together to make this greatness?  Please give us a third one.

The bad; I don’t know if there’s much to put here.
I would’ve liked to have seen more Chuck Norris… I know that sounds weird, but with the tone of this movie, they really could’ve played up his part in it all.  It felt as though they only had him for a small window of time, because the bulk of his time is taken doing Total Gym infomercials, but most of his scenes he was in a cutaway of him shooting and kickin’ butt.  The only real time he was with the cast was his introduction.

Van Damne’s death scene was too short, I would’ve liked some more in his last fight.  The man can still kick, that’s for sure.
His hence men were lacking, there should’ve been a pecking order that the team had to work up to before they get to the big boss.  The first film had Stone Cold and Gary Daniels before you got to Eric Roberts, I wanted that repeated for this sequel.

Schwarzenegger mentions that he’s got his team waiting when he meets the Expendables team… what if the team from the first Predator movie showed up as his team, tell me you wouldn’t want to see that?

Overall it was everything I wanted and it certainly delivered.  So avoid this movie if you don’t want  your expectation met or if you weren’t around for the eighties action movie.  This sequel delivers and satisfies.

Tai Chi 0 Combines Kung-Fu and Steampunk

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We’ve talked with a bunch of steampunk fans that should probably be excited about Tai Chi 0. The movie poster shows a steampunk yin-yang and clearly states the theme with a tagline: A Steampunk Kung-Fu Throwdown. The film stars Yuan Xiaochao, Angelababy, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Shu Qi and is directed by Stephen Fung. The action is directed by legendary Hong Kong actor Sammo Hung.

Synopsis

In legendary Chen Village, everyone is a martial arts master, and uses a powerful form of Tai Chi in all aspects of their life. Yang has arrived to try and learn it, only to find that it’s forbidden for the villagers to teach their secret style to an outsider. But when a mysterious man comes to town with a frightening steam-powered machine and plans to build a railroad through a village, the villagers realize they may have no choice but to put their faith in Yang, who has a secret power of his own. With action directed by the legendary Sammo Hung (Ip Man 1 & 2), Tai Chi 0 is a full-on steampunk kung-fu throw down that will knock you out of your seat.

Check out Tai Chi 0 in theaters October 19, 2012

source

Lena Dunham Created A Promo For The New Yorker iPhone App

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I have seen some of Lena Dunham‘s work via Netflix (Tiny Furniture) and became a fan of her HBO show, Girls (I can hardly wait until the new season starts in 2013!). With movies and a show already under her belt, she now has a new achievement: creating a promo ad for the New Yorker iPhone app.

The promo video shows a very confused Jon Hamm as a late night TV host talking with Lani Darham (Lena Dunham) about the app. It cuts to a demo of the app by her to a Alex Karpovsky (also from Girls/Tiny Furniture). If you think you’re having connection issues while watching this video, think again. The late night TV portion is shot/edited to look like it was recorded decades ago or very low budget.

Jon Hamm is best known for portraying a mysterious, marketing director, Don Draper, on AMC’s Mad Men but he’s no stranger to comedic roles (e.g. Bridesmaids, SNL, 30 rock). He makes a bunch of unchallenged comments like “what’s an app?” and “you can’t watch TV on an iPad”.

Take a look below. I LOVE the awkward handshake at the end and the poke at corporate hype of apps.

But we just have one question: What about Android?

The Dark Knight Rises

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Just saw The Dark Knight Rises. It’s about Bruce Wayne and his one man war on crime. This time it’s eight years after the last movie, The Dark Knight, Bruce’s body is worn down (like an athlete) and so is his faith in people. There’s a plot to destroy Wayne Enterprises and Gotham, which bring both Bruce and Batman out of “retirement.”

The good; the movie is about three hours long, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It had me pretty much on the seat of my pants the entire time, beautifully edited.

The acting is great. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, love me some Anne Hathaway. Much like Charlize Theron in Prometheus, Anne Hathaway’s in that catsuit most of the time, no complaints there.
Gary Oldman as the ever faithful Gordon.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake.  Tom Hardy as Bane.  Michael Caine as Alfred the father-figure.  Everyone delivers a wonderful performance.

The Bat, flying thing, what’s great about these movies is the science and logic behind the technology, they make it believable. From the movie physics of the Bat-Pod to the Bat vehicle, I just love it all cause when you watch it move on screen you think, “yeah, that’s how that would move.”

The bad; oddly enough, I do have some complaints. There wasn’t enough Batman, when you’re watching the movie you don’t really notice this, but thinking back, Bruce Wayne is Batman in the end of the first act, and then at the of the third act, I kinda wanted more Batman-time… on screen that is.
Bane’s voice – in the comic books he’s supposed to be Latin-American, I don’t know what accent he has in the movie, but it’s obviously dubbed and very stage present-ish.  In a shot where he’s in the far background of the scene his voice is still coming in very present at the center channel, that bugged me.

*SPOLIER* When Bane breaks Batman’s back, it doesn’t take him long to recover, there could’ve been more passage of time at this point. His back goes from a vertebrae protrusion to doing push ups and scaling the wall to freedom.

*SPOILER* The ending, very easy, almost too easy, and predictable. Much like Nolan’s previous movie Inception, this one ends in a montage and we’re given information visually. Alfred is away on holiday and sees Bruce just like he’d imagined years and years before Batman showed up, he’s sitting at a table with Selina. I wonder how it would’ve been if they’d taken the ambiguity of Inception’s ending and applied it to The Dark Knight? Leaving us with Alfred’s forming smile instead of cutting to Bruce at the table? And then to have Blake’s character’s real name be Robin? That almost felt like the studio pushed that onto the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I liked that the cowl and mantle would be passed along, but why dumb it down?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, despite the criticisms I state above. I guess I’m so critical of this new film because I extremely enjoyed the previous films
Definitely worth watching on the big screen, and what a way to end a trilogy.

The Amazing Spider-Man

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Saw The Amazing Spider-Man, it is a reboot.  We all know the story, nerd-loner Peter Parker gets bitten by a radio-active spider, he gains super powers and his Uncle Ben dies in the process.  He learns some life lessons and is the better for it.  But this film does add something different.

The good; I like the swinging scenes, I didn’t think I was going to like the video game like FPS POV angle, but it worked, and it wasn’t over used.  They got a lot of those classic Spider-Man poses in, always love when the film imitates the comic.  The fight scenes with the Lizard are very well done, I love the use of the web-shooters and how they’re choreographed in to the fighting.

Andrew Garfield doesn’t do a bad job, he’s like-able enough and believable enough as the nerd high schooler.  Denis Leary is great as George Stacey, I’ll probably enjoy everything he does anyway.

Without spoiling too much, we get Peter’s parents’ backstory, which is a nice touch.  But that plot line, along with the murderer of Uncle Ben go unresolved by the end of the movie.  Yet, it didn’t bother me at all when the credits roll… strange.

There’s a rather cheesy scene as we approach the climax of the third act that involves Spider-Man being helped by the “common working-class man,” but it works.

The bad; a lot of CG usage.  I miss having a stunt man that has the physical prowess to perform what’s needed of the character.  I miss practical effects, while it takes limitations off of the filmmakers we also lose a sense of, “wow, how’d they do that?”  I remember watching this.
Sure it’s dated, but it’s a guy actually climbing up a building and swinging and doing stuff.

We don’t get any resolution with Uncle Ben’s murderer, Peter goes out in search of this thug and doesn’t find him like he did in the previous franchise.  We also never find out the whole truth of what happened to his parents… I know I put this in the good section, but why were we given these plot threads to begin with?  If they’re going to reboot the franchise and start over with another origin story, why not give us this “new” part of the origin?  Why does everything have to be a trilogy these days?

The scene where the Lizard emerges from the sewers and on to New York’s streets with his bag of “goodies” is so the Sony lot, hahaha, but that wouldn’t bug anyone else but THIS GUY.

Overall, I actually did enjoy this movie.  It wasn’t the best, but considering that first trailer left such a bad taste in my mouth, my expectations were low, then it turns out that it isn’t the worst of the worst, so I was able to enjoy this.  They mentioned Norman Osborn without showing him, such a delight.  Dangling plotlines were unresolved, but masked well so that I didn’t care while watching the movie.  I wish they would’ve had more of the Jekyll/Hyde thing going on with the Lizard.  Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb do a very good job, they were able to craft a story without the set piece of the Daily Bugle or J. Jonah Jameson.

*SPOILER* or speculation… there is a scene during the credits, so stay and read the names of all the people that worked so hard to bring you this film, cause you should… know how to read that is, hahaha.
But Doc Connors is placed in prison, he then sees and talks to a mysterious man… who is this person?  We never see his face.  Is he the voice that’s talking to Connors in his sewer lab?  Is Connors crazy and talking to a dual personality?  Is it Norman Osborn?  Certainly a man that rich can buy his way in to prison.  Or… is it Richard Parker?  Since we never really find out what happened to him???  Dun dun… dunnnnn, Kurtzman and Orci better not screw up the sequel… one can hope write?  See what I did there??

Brave

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I saw Brave at the El Capitan, always a treat at the El Cap.
The short of it, it’s about Merida a Scottish Princess who buts heads with her mother, the Queen. They argue over who and what Merida should be and how she’ll be married off. Through the course of a contest to win the Princess’ hand in marriage Merida chooses to change her destiny, be careful what you wish for… throw in some bits and gags and there ya go.

The good; it’s Pixar, it looks amazing. They pull out all the stops with the hair and Merida is the first female protagonist as well as the first period piece in a Pixar film.

The opening of the movie is incredible. It grabs you immediately with child-like wonder and then slams the brakes as danger approaches. Merida’s learning to shoot a bow and arrow, then wanders off in to the woods. Upon arriving back to her parents… a bear has followed her, Merida’s father, King Fergus, stares down a ferocious bear – opening title card, wow, it had me from that moment.

The spine of the story is very simple and relate-able, it’s about a child growing up and wanting to be their own person, and rejecting the person their parent imposes on them. Who can’t relate to this? It seems that it’s a part of life these days, must rebel and resist… older… people… ah what the hey, money money monies.

The bad; the trailer is misleading. Honestly not much here, just that the marketing was for a different movie. You’d probably never know this from watching those excellent trailers, but the movie is a mother/daughter movie.

I wanted more story and character moments, instead we got more action and thrills. This could be because the lead is a girl so they want to bring in the boy audience with the action.

Overall, check it out. Pixar delivers again. It’s fun for everyone and there’s something for all the members of the family. The brothers never say a thing through out the whole movie, I wonder why that was. Don’t get me wrong, they were still funny on screen, but that question just kept creeping in. Oh, and stay for the credits (as you should), there’s a dedication to Steve Jobs and a scene at the very end.

Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph Includes Legendary Video Game Bad Guys

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Video game movies are a sore subject. When’s the last time you loved an adaptation of a video game? A few searches in IMDb might even help you to discover Street Fighter movies you wish you had forgotten. These are movies that look so awful in trailers you refuse to invest a fraction of what you paid for the actual game just to rent it. Let’s face it, the imaginative fantasies captured in video games weren’t mean for live action.

Disney decided to skirt around the genre by creating an original character that interacts with real video game villains in its new CG animation movie, Wreck-It Ralph. It will be produced by Disney’s own animation studio (i.e. Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt).

Take a look at at the trailer below:

Cameos include:

  • M. Bison / Zangief (Street Fighter)
  • Clyde (Pac-Man)
  • Bowser (Super Mario Brothers)
  • Doctor Ivo Robotnik (Sonic the Hedgehog)
  • Kano (Mortal Kombat)
Gamers should love the 8-bit style of the Wreck-It Ralph and the movie looks like it falls under the things-that-happen-behind-closed-doors formula (think Toy Story).
Mark your calendar. Wreck-It Ralph comes out November 2, 2012