Lost in Translation: Funny People

I've watched Funny People (applause). And, like any person with an opinion and a soapbox, I'm going let you know what I think. Instead of sharing with you my thoughts (far too easy), I've translated them once again into Japanese and back again via way of Babelfish. Enjoy!

Misnomer.

The strange people are the movie concerning the comedian who never really does not hit to large and. Oh truly, secretly laughing, the movie concerning the comedian who brags about the power where this casting ones are strange - especially 1 - being consistent, when it is stranger, the large number of joke it had smile on my surface, but many there is the point which differs in the movie which makes, thinks.

The movie itself was in some genre, it could not define. On the one hand, as for that comedian who's concerning it possessed the element of the story of rather good growth; which exactly obtains that large being broken eye. The love story of those which obtain the change which leaves remain, that's arrange subpar at the very most. This time being clear, throw the help of accumulation of the old drama.

And however, every one of that is clumsy, it seems that disorder does not work exactly together with the enormous lump. In its movie the way because it seems the way, it is strange or, either one which goes somewhere. It reverses. There are no all assemblies or the punch line.

Just Seth of the entire movie was Rogen passing possible. While believing, that me it is the actor where he really is strange, he is clumsy, it seems that is the majority of all that elements. As for me lion you must say as for the share of laughing supporting position, all people you. The empty it came we which is heard never perhaps (certainly me didn't). Appreciating, that this movie won't it means the loom of on those remaining for carrier.

I remain the theater completely to regret the fact that you see, the movie which leases me whom perhaps it had the chestnut it probably will return. Favor to do you yourself, this just that time you see re-curiosity does not remove the forcing or the money for that from the shell.

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Of Wizards and Men

I find myself in an interesting cross section of popular culture. I enjoy the Harry Potter series enough to watch the movies, but not enough to forge ahead and read (devour?) the books. And since I'm about the only person in this demographic, either you don't care to see the movies or I'm not going to be spoiling anything for you having read the books.

This is what we call in the blogosphere a spoiler alert.

Ok class, let's try to ONE have a lab that doesn't involve someone's death.
The Half-Blood Prince was a good divergence in movie from the other previous ones in that it really felt like there was no closure at the end of the movies. Previous films all left me with that same episodic feeling, like Harry triumphed over Voldemort once again - but he'll be back another day. Kinda like how The Claw from Inspector Gadget always shouted "I'll get you next time, Gadget! Next time!" as he made his escape.

In this movie, things got real. Over the course of the movie, you see an interesting playout of Dumbledore and Voldemort infiltrating one another's ranks and trying to out maneuver one another. Dumbledore knows he's missing crucial information needed to defeat Voldemort, one a former teacher has. This teacher is reluctant to give up the goods, as they say, and after much persuasion, Harry finds out how to defeat Voldemort: destroy the horcruxes - things that contain Voldemort's soul.

Meanwhile, Snape is infiltrating the Death Eaters - Voldemort's band of merry murderers - and acting as spy to Dumbledore. All this is happening as Malfoy, who looks like a band member of My Chemical Romance, is trying to get the Death Eaters into a magically fortified Hogwarts to kill Dumbledore.

All the while Emma loves Ron but Ron doesn't know it. So Ron dates some floozy and that pisses Emma off. Top that off with a heaping helping of Harry falling for Ron's sister, Ginny Weasley, and you've got yourself a love cocktail that's fit for any soap opera.

Confused? Too much to follow? To its credit, the movie does a good job of making sure you aren't lost over the course of the 2.5+ hour movie.

So we get the buildup of what I've been told by my book-reading friends is the final arc. And the movie plays out like a buildup movie. The story progresses. We see newer darker sides of a lot of characters. We see a lot of ambiguities in characters that need (we hope) to be reconciled.


Ron's helmet was part of his "special needs" at Hogwarts.
I came out of the movie theater feeling the same way I did after the second Matrix movie - I understood this movie was a necessary transition to the end of the series, but the movie left me wanting more. More action, more wizardry, more excitement. Half-Blood Prince didn't quite feel like it was dragging, but it did feel much slower than the other movies.

Notice how I'm primarily focusing on the story of the movie. This is because you know the other aspects of the movie already. This is Potter, after all. It's like trying to dissect how different yearly batches of Madden '0X are from one another. It's what you've already come to expect from the series:

• The supporting cast all play brilliantly around Daniel Radcliffe who plays a perfectly capable, though comparatively underwhelming, Harry Potter.
• Everything else was superb. The music, the costumes, the setting, the visuals - you name it.

I believe that this movie, on it's own, is the weakest of all Harry Potter movies. That said, even a B-B+ Harry Potter movie is better than 90% else that Hollywood's been producing. It is a necessary (and fitting) transition movie for the series, and one I wholly recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in the series.

Oh, and Snape kills Dumbledore.

9/10

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Not Down

Oh god, not more Jehova's Witnesses!

I'm a sucker for just about everything that Dreamworks or Pixar puts out. I know they're geared towards a younger audience, but these movies have plenty of entertainment for adults. I also will probably never outgrow my love of cartoons.

A recent trend in these movies is to make them 3D, which really adds to the movies and all but guarantees that I'll go see whatever it is they put out. Seriously, if they put 2 girls 1 cup in 3D, you know I'd go see it. I'd regret that decision, sure, but I'll have already bought the ticket and want to stick around to get my money's worth.

So Disney/Pixar's (Dixar?) latest incarnation, Up, is about a man trying so hard to keep a promise to his wife. We first see the two in their childhood meeting up in an abandoned house, find out they share the same spirit of adventure, and are then treated to a 5 minute montage of their lives together, culminating in Ellie's (the wife's) death. Their dream was to live at Paradise Falls, so Carl - the old main character - in a incredible disregard for building code, attaches a ton of balloons to the house and flies off.

This movie was funny, and Ed Anser was amazing as the crotchety old man. I must confess, one of my favorite TV shows growing up was Freakazoid, and every time the old man was on the screen, I kept imagining Cosgrove. The other characters played off him incredibly well, including a naive boy scout, a large rare bird, Carl's childhood-hero-turned-rival, and an army of talking dogs.

I was taken aback, actually, at the amount of emotion that was inherent in this Pixar movie - there were times where you couldn't help but feel sad. This movie brought my girlfriend to tears on more than one occasion.

The 3D aspect of the movie never really jumped out at me. This means it was either done poorly, or so well that I wasn't noticing the 3D details. Given Pixar's reputation I'm inclined to think the latter, but that's the ironic thing about details - do them well and no one notices. I'll have to watch it in non-3D (likely when the DVD comes out) for comparison.

Verdict: See it in theaters

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A shotgun blast of content 2: Electric Boogaloo

Once again, I find myself splicing together a few ideas that wouldn't be postworthy separately.

1. I think I want to make a movie. I've had this idea for a movie mulling around my head for a while... I'd like to do a mock-documentary of a team of writers trying to write the next great comedy. Something in the style of The Office, one of my favorite shows on TV.
   
   This is a partial solicitation. While I have a bunch of ideas for this, I need people to actually play the parts. If you're interested, and in the Connecticut area, let me know. At this stage of the game, I'm flexible with the cast (having not written line 1 yet). Knowing who will be playing the parts will help me tailor each character to the personalities and strengths of the people playing them. I hope to start on the script sometime in the not-too-distant future.
   
   I remembered how much fun I had making the Bomber's commercial way back when, and am equally excited to give this a go. It may bomb, it may rock, but I'm going to have some fun with it.
   
   
2. On pain of online harassment (the worst kind of harassment!) I've been coerced to mention a co-worker's side project, The Musicfan Gallery. He takes great pride in it, gathering all photos he feels capture the essence of whatever artist is the subject of the photo. For legal reasons, he also asked me to explicitly mention that collecting these photos in no way violates any restraining orders said artists may or may not have against him.



3. Mr. Rogers popping and locking. Enough said.

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Dark Chivalry

I saw the Dark Knight tonight. If you haven't seen it, go see it. Right now.

Seriously, right now.

I cannot review the movie because I could never hope to do it justice. But I can say this: this movie actually made me upset that Heath Ledger is dead. Callous as that sounds, and as tragic as his circumstances were (any death is always tragic), I personally don't believe being able to entertain a few people is cause for national mourning. Soldiers killed in combat serving our country move me much more, and where is their press coverage? That's a rhetorical question, of course, and perhaps a rant for another day.

But Heath did something magical as the Joker. At all times when he was on screen I was simultaneously fascinated, appalled, frightened and captivated. It's selfish I admit, but I'm pissed off no one will ever be able to be the Joker again... at least not one as perfect as Heath Ledger's.

See, my exposure to the character of the Joker was that of the cartoon show as a kid, and the Jack Nicholson version of the Joker. As I was explained to by a friend, those were at best a parody of the comic book's version, ironically making the Joker to be more of a clown than he was. Heath's Joker was truer to the comic book: dark, and truly twisted.

And yet, the Joker makes sense. He's the exact opposite of Batman. Where Batman is trying to protect the order within Gotham, the Joker is simply trying to plunge it into chaos. No more, no less. And though he was an agent of chaos he had a plan all along, only finally knowing what his true motives were at the end of the movie.

The depth of this Joker was almost unreal too. His insanity was apparent from get go with the bank robbery he masterminded, and his "magic trick" shortly thereafter is something that's going to stick with me for a good long while.

Balance that out with the Joker's comic nature which was shown in subtle, yet powerful ways. Watch the scene where he's blowing up a hospital in a nurses outfit and tell me that isn't anything but brilliant. There were little mannerisms here and there all throughout the movie that really made you laugh as you were anxious to see what the Joker did next.

And the different stories the Joker kept telling on how he got the scars on his face was an incredibly powerful way to get me to think about what makes the Joker tick. Throughout the movie I kept trying to figure the Joker out, and at no point - even at the end - did I ever really get much answered, which makes him now (at the time of this writing) all the more enthralling.

For me, this Joker is easily as the greatest movie villain of all time. Before seeing this movie, Hannibal Lecter held that spot without question. Hannibal is a smart, calculating, chilling villain that would make me soil myself if I met him in real life.

Heath Ledger's Joker? He's like that but to a much much grander scale. Also, he does it with a smile on his face.

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Unwind Movie Review: Wanted

DISCLAIMER: I've done my best not to include any major spoilers but trust me when I say even if I were to spoil the plot, it won't ruin the movie.

An age-old philosophical question asks: "if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?" Wanted pointedly asks: "if a movie makes absolutely no rational sense, is it still entertaining?"

This is me after trying to make sense of this movie.
Perhaps I'm a little ahead of myself. What I knew going into the movie was that it was a typical guy movie: over-the-top action where guns/explosions are given more weight than less-manly things like "plot" and "character development". I was told by those I knew that I would have to suspend belief to get the full enjoyment out of the movie. They weren't kidding...

Wanted is a typical superhero story where our hero (Wesly Gibson, a previous nobody) suddenly discovers his hidden ability, trains really hard (via montage, of course) and then proceeds to kick butt in the name of good. What is his ability? He can make his heart beat really fast so as to pump adrenaline throughout his system and speed up his reaction time to superhuman levels. How fast does he get his heart going? About 400 beats per minute.

400 beats per minute. According to Wikipedia, your maximum heart rate is about 220 minus your age. This is presumably because anything higher than that would cause your heart to explode.

Plot device aside, our explosive-hearted hero joins and trains with a thousand year old fraternity of assassins (cleverly named "The Fraternity"), run out of none other than the textile industry. While I suppose everyone needs a hobby, it's a little frightening to think that the people that supply Jo-Ann Fabrics are the same people that will also happily end someone's life. Come to think of it, I never see Jo-Ann Fabrics do any legitimate business...

I digress. The movie then continues to spit in the face of reality, for example:

• The first scene sees an assassin jump through a skyscraper window and across the street into another building while shooting 3 people in midair. He only drops one floor in height.
• Another scene sees the hero hit his fellow assassin's car to flip over his target's bulletproof limo and shoot at him through the limo's sunroof. Not only does he pull this off, the car actually lands and the hero drives off.
• There's some kind of "magical bath" that, when immersed, causes you to heal from your injuries in hours instead of days. Non-fatal bullet wound? Have a bath, you'll be all set by dinnertime.

There's literally about 50 other examples, but my head hurts enough trying to make sense of this movie already and I'm not going to get into them. Most prominently though, the movie had obsession with "curving the bullet" where the shooter can bend the trajectory of a bullet and have it move around corners. I don't know if this is possible in real life or not, but I have a hunch that anyone who has actually tried to use this in any kind of gun battle isn't alive enough to speak to it.

So you take the tenuous plot device, odd bit about the textile industry, and the general disregard for all physics with a grain of salt. A very, very, VERY large grain of salt that overwhelms you and leave you on the brink of dehydration. It can't get any tougher to swallow than that, right?

Wrong. In comes "The Loom of Fate". This thousand-year-old loom weaves patterns into the cloth it produces. In binary. Of the names of the targets the Fraternity needs to kill. I couldn't even make that up if I tried.

Because let that sink in for a second. The cloth told these mighty assassins who they need to kill. That's not the actions of a highly-sophisticated organization of death, that's something a crazy person would do. I'm pretty sure that "the cloth told me to kill him!" wouldn't even hold up for an insanity defense in court, simply because the judge and jury will just think you're f***ing with them.

But in all honesty, I liked Wanted. Taken within the framework of its crazy universe, the story did kinda make sense and had a surprise twist I never saw coming (very pleasantly surprised). I was promised an over-the-top, action-packed experience and this movie delivered that in spades. Also, it showed Angelina Jolie's butt for about 2 seconds. If any of that appealed to you, you can safely assume your ten bucks won't be wasted seeing it in theaters.

Just do yourself this favor: don't try to make sense of the movie. I did, and it almost gave me a brain aneurysm.

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Captain Planet Begins: the live-action movie

I was thinking the other day how much I would like a live-action Captain Planet movie. Instead of taking it seriously, though, I decided to "improve" upon the formula a little bit and shake things up a bit. Here's the cast of the movie I want to see:

Captain Planet

Captain Planet was the go-to guy to catch the bad guys. When someone was looting and polluting, you could always count on him to make it right. On top of that, he had a great mullet. That pretty much sums up Dog the Bounty Hunter, who I think is perfect for the role.

Captain Planet

Gaia

Gaia was the one who first rounded up the planeteers and set them forth with guidelines to protect the planet and whatnot. I don't really remember, because I tuned her out whenever she was on the screen - she was rather boring and getting in the way of the ACTUAL planet saving. You know who else I kinda tuned out? Fran Drescher, who played the the nanny in "The Nanny". Gaia was a nanny of sorts, and Drescher's laugh really grated me the wrong way, so I learned to tune it out.


Gaia

Ma-ti

Ma-ti could talk with animals... seriously. Where most people would be labelled as insane and carted off to a loony farm, Ma-ti converses and communes with animals. Cesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer, is his real-life counterpart. Whether or not he can actually talk with dogs remains to be seen... but he does have a hit show and makes more money than me, so we can definitely rule out insanity.


Ma-ti

Gi

If I were to ask you who the least useful planeteer was, you'd probably go with Ma-ti and the power of heart. I'd have to disagree with you - unless there was a body of water around, Gi was limited in what she could really do. Granted, she did come through on a number of occasions, but she was the planeteer equivalent of Aquaman of the Super Friends. For that reason, I want Pamela Anderson filling out this role. In Baywatch, she was always around water (the ocean) and has yet to capture that kind of success elsewhere.


Gi

Kwame, Linka and Wheeler

I really have nothing to say here. These were arguably the three most useful planeteers in the bunch having control of the elements of earth, wind and fire. However, if I were to improve on the formula I would use the actual Earth, Wind and Fire simply because that would be awesome. Sure it doesn't work out number-wise, but who cares? Besides controlling the planeteers' elements they would inherently control the power of funk, which would make them all the more versatile.



Earth, Wind and Fire (collectively and literally)

Hoggish Greedly

Every story needs a villain. One of the staple Captain Planet bad guys, Hoggish Greedly was meant to represent the evils of industrialization and greed. Industrialization and greed aside, you'd have a hard time convincing me they didn't originally base him entirely off of Louie Anderson.


Hoggish Greedly

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