The New York Times just did an article claiming that the new James Cameron film “Avatar” is going to hit a $500 million dollar price tag once production and marketing costs are all totaled.
If accurate, that means Avatar will have to make about $750 million at the box office just to break even… and I’m sorry… but that’s NOT going to happen.
Despite all the online buzz for Avatar, the fact of the matter is this film is not going to out perform Transformers 2 at the Box Office.
I’ve got to say that the newer trailers for Avatar have looked a LOT better to me than the first one that came out months ago (which I didn’t like all that much). I’m very pumped to see this movie… but wow… that’s quite a price tag, and I don’t see them breaking even on it at all.
I took in a lot of movies the last couple of days and I’ll get around to putting up the reviews soon… but I wanted to ask this question out loud. You see… one of the films I saw was “Christmas Carol”, and even though it wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be, it still ends up being a pretty decent flick in my opinion. A good (not great) CHRISTMAS movie. Which begs the question…
WHY THE HELL IS CHRISTMAS CAROL BEING RELEASED THIS FAR AWAY FROM CHRISTMAS?!?! I mean bloody hell… it’s still a while before American Thanksgiving. Call me crazy… call me a maverick… but wouldn’t it have made a bucket full of more sense to release “A Christmas Carol” closer to say… oh I don’t know… CHRISTMAS!?!?!
I mean come on… there are some people out there who still haven’t even taken the pumpkin off their porches yet.
Whatever… it doesn’t effect how much I didn’t or didn’t enjoy the movie… I just don’t understand why you bother to make a CHRISTMAS movie and don’t release it anywhere near CHRISTMAS.
You know what… hold on a second. I think I actually like this idea.
It’s been almost 20 years since the last “3 Men and a Baby” movie. When the first film came out, it had 3 of the hottest stars in the business (Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck… I told you it was a LONG time ago). The three of them aren’t really doing all that much these days… so why not another film.
AMC is reporting that there are now plans for another sequel to be called “3 Men and a Bride” and to be honest I think the story sounds like it has promise.
Taking place nearly twenty years after the sequel “3 Men and a Little Lady” (which I remember watching in the theater in first grade, hence the feeling old), the film will apparently be titled “3 Men and a Bride” and reunite Guttenberg and co-stars Ted Danson and Tom Selleck as they prepare to give their now fully grown daughter away.
So color me optimistic. I think this has a lot of promise. I also hope Leonard Nimoy (yes… THAT Leonard Nimoy) comes back to direct like he did for the original… he didn’t do the sequel).
Holy shit YES YES YES YES! As any of you who have been around The Movie Blog for a while know, Oscar season is like Christmas to me. Seriously… besides Christmas it’s my favorite time of the year, and each year I am keenly interested in who they select to host the show.
Last year, Hugh Jackman did a great job… and this year I think they may top it.
Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin wil co-host the show.
Steve Martin has been the best host they’ve had on the show the last 10 years, and I think he and Baldwin will work great together.
So yeah, I’m very happy about this choice. I’m sure not everyone is, and that’s cool.
So what do YOU think of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting the Oscars this year?
There is a new trailer up for “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”, and I’ve got to tell ya I think it sucks. This movie looks HORRIBLE. I’ve been really excited about this project with high hopes that a video game movie may actually work… but those hopes took a HUGE dip after watching this.
Now keep in mind… this is just a trailer. The movie may end up working just fine… I’m just saying it doesn’t look like it right now. Take a look and judge for yourself:
This is fantastic news if it turns out to be true (but this is normally a pretty reliable source). The website Marketsaw is reporting that Spider-Man 4 is going to only have ONE villain… and that villain is going to be The Lizard.
You might remember that a couple of days ago it was confirmed that Dylan Baker was indeed going to be back for Spider-Man 4 as Dr. Connors… but it was never mentioned if he would become The Lizard or not. Looks like he will!
I think this is good news… especially the one villain part. What do you think?
Hey there guys! This post is more for our regular readers who have been following The Movie Blog for a while. You may have noticed that over the last few months, I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I usually do and that Rodney has been picking up most the slack. Well… there is a very good reason for that:
A few months ago I was contacted by AMC Theatres and agreed to become the Editor for their brand spanking new movie news blog “Script To Screen”. Since that time we’ve been working on getting the site ready for launch… and yesterday, the new AMC site went LIVE! You can see the new site here.
I’m joined by my new associate editor, the immortal Kellvin Chavez, who is also the Editor n’ Chief over at Latino Reviews, and by our contributing writer Christina Warren of Mashable (you’ve been hearing her on our podcasts a lot lately). We’re adding more writers in the coming days as well.
First of all… I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to continue to do The Movie Blog as a place for my thoughts and opinions, and I’ll be doing AMC STS for news. Now that the STS site is finally up, you’ll be seeing more from me around here on The Movie Blog.
This is going to be a great arrangement for The Movie Blog, and I’m really looking forward to getting the ball rolling!
Sorry for my absence, but it’s been a hectic couple of months and we’ve had to keep quiet about it. But now we’re live. Thank you for all your continued support and encouragement!
As a side note, today I put up my first video for AMC. It’s a quick interview with our old friend Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes about his new movie Armored coming out next month. You can see it here:
Thanks for checking out our Astro Boy review. If you’d like to see a video version of our Astro Boy review you can watch it at the bottom of the written review below.
Like “Speed Racer” before it, Astro Boy was destined to bomb at the box office. Like Speed Racer, a semi-recognizable name that is too far removed from its days of popularity to the point that it lacked enough of a built in audience. Still, that doesn’t mean that the movie itself can’t be good (Speed Racer wasn’t). So off I went to see Astro Boy and I was very surprised by how strongly it started… but not so surprised about how it all went downhill from there.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for Astro Boy reads something like this: “Set in futuristic Metro City, Astro Boy is about a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist in the image of the son he has lost. Unable to fulfill the grieving man’s expectations, our hero embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators, before he returns to save Metro City and reconcile with the father who had rejected him.”
THE GOOD
Without question the very best thing about Astro Boy was the hard hitting, and rather dark, first act that introduced us to the story. It was NOT what I was expecting. We are introduced to the brilliant scientist Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nic Cage) and his his bright excitable son. Being a kids film, I expected some sort of accident to happen where Dr. Tenma had to turn his son into a robot/cyborg in order to save his life and thus turn him INTO Astro Boy. What the film gave us was much darker. The son dies, and in his grief Dr. Tenma creates a Robot in his son’s image to replace him. He gives the robot all the weaponry and defenses science has conceived of to make sure nothing ever happend to this version of his son like it did to the last one. The emotional depth if this was surprisingly effective, and it got even better as the doctor realizes the robot does not replace his son, and only serves to remind him of what he lost… leading to him rejecting the robot (Astro Boy). This whole component, in my opinion, was handled brilliantly and gave the rest of the movie a solid base to launch from.
Some of the action in the film was quite visually appealing from both the perspectives of animation and cinematography. Those elements help the film become something quite pleasant to look at… if there was no sound… but unfortunately there was. Which leads us too…
THE BAD
After the effective first act, the film just spirals out of control to become the cheesy, cliche riddled, unfunny, uninteresting, ineffective piece of cinematic drivel we all feared it would be.
One of my pet peeves in movies are useless characters. Characters who serve no function other that to take up valuable screen time and whose presence would not be missed in the slightest if they were to suddenly disappear. There are a group of these characters called the Robot Revolutionary Front. A small group of three robots dedicated to freeing robots from human enslavement. They don’t… do… ANYTHING. Their actions and presence have absolutely no effect, positively or negatively on the story or the path of the film. The movie itself acknowleges this at the end when Astro looks to them and say “Thanks for everything” to which the robots respond “well… I guess we didn’t actually DO anything”. So true… so true. If you’re going to have useless characters taking up screen time… at least make them funny or entertaining is SOME way. These things weren’t.
I need to do an editorial post about this later… but WHY DO THESE ANIMATED MOVIES FEEL THE NEED TO USE ALL HIGH PROFILE ACTORS FOR THE VOICE ROLES?!?!?! It’s stupid. The only voice that remotely worked was that of Bill Nighy who voices Dr. Tenma’s best friend. All the other voices were flat, emotionless and usually distracting. What ever happened to using… you know… trained VOICE actors for these movies? But I’ll go into that in another post later.
OVERALL
Astro Boy stars off with a bang, but then echoes out into an android like whimper. Clearly little to no thought was put into this movie other than “Hey, let’s do an Astro Boy movie”. No good humor, no interesting characters, no story and a completely wasted fantastic introduction leaves this film wanting. Because of how effective I thought the first act was, I’ll go so far as to give Astro Boy a 4.5 out of 10.
Thanks for checking out our “The Vampire’s Assistant” review.
Continuing the trend of young adult books being turned into movies comes Cirque Du Freak: The Vampires Assistant. The trailers for the film seemed interesting enough, but right from the first time I saw one, the casting of John C. Reilly as the Vampire Crepsley seemed out of place. It’s almost as if I expected to see Will Ferrell in the next clip. Still, I’ve always enjoyed Reilly’s work in both drama and comedy, so why not as a Vampire? So off I went to see The Vampire’s Assistant. Was it worth it? Yes, but I can’t help but feel there was a lot of missed potential.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for The Vampire’s Assistant reads something like this: “A young boy named Darren Shan meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a Vampire. After a series of events Darren must leave his normal life and go on the road with the Cirque Du Freak and become a Vampire.”
THE GOOD
The trailers for the movie made it out to be a very thin concept of some young boy bored with his life who decides to run off and become a Vampire for thrills. However, that’s quite misleading and the underlying mythology and background story to the film is MUCH deeper and actually quite rich. There are two fractions of Vampires (One called Vampires and one called Vampanese. The only difference between them is that one kills humans to drink their blood, and the other just knock out humans to drink SOME of their blood. So it’s just a philosophical difference, nothing else) that have lived under a peace truce for 100 years. However, there is an ancient prophecy of the two sides going to war, both lead by young leaders, which brings about the apocalypse. As the film progresses we learn of the role Darren has to play in this. The idea is rich and leaves me quite interested in seeing a sequel (if they ever get to make one).
Where the film tries to be funny… it modestly succeeds. Though I can’t remember any “laugh out loud” moments in the movie, there are a good number of giggles which kept the tone light.
Despite the fact that his role is a relatively small one, Ken Wantanabe always just blows me away and his performance as the head of Cirque du Freak, Mr. Tall, he gives an erie and dark feel of texture to the movie that is otherwise missing from the film. This guy is just amazing.
THE BAD
This film reminds me a lot of the first Underworld movie. A fantastic mythology and background story, that is ultimately wasted. Referenced in passing, but left on the shelf for a much inferior plot line. In the case of The Vampire’s Assistant, the movie abandons this terrific mythology it introduces us to about the Vampire war prophecy for 90% of the movie in favor of whimsical teenage jokes of a kid adjusting to being a Vampire. It was such a wasted opportunity.
I think John C. Reilly is beyond fantastic, but as I suspected from the trailers, this movie is a firm example of miscasting. I was never able to buy him as a fearsome warrior Vampire general, nor was I able to buy him in his softer moments. Essentially, Reilly was a bust in this movie, and without buying into the character of Crepsley, the rest of the film seems to buckle under its own weight.
An efficient movie introduces us to side characters who, without taking up too much valuable screen time, add more dimension and depth to a movie… but not in this movie. We get introduced to a series of freaks who add NOTHING to the movie and just eat up screen time. For example… the snake boy you see in the trailers… if you remove him from the film… NOTHING CHANGES. If you remove Orlando Jones, NOTHING CHANGES. I kept expecting some sort of relevance to be revealed about these characters in relation to the story… but it never comes.
OVERALL
The Vampire’s Assistant has a terrific foundation for a solid movie with an interesting mythology and background, but wastes all that potential as it uses its screen time for other, more useless stuff. John C. Reilly is completely miscast and never works as the key character in the film. I’d be willing to see a sequel because of the potential of the mythology, but I wouldn’t recommend this movie on its own merits to anyone. Over all I give The Vampire’s Assistant a 4 our of 10.
We all know that Bill Murray’s experience on the set of Charlie’s Angels was a miserable one. First, there was the reported incident on set where Murray openly blasted Lucy Liu in front of the cast and crew, saying “I don’t know what you’re doing here. You can’t act”, which lead to Liu physically attacking Murray to the point where they had to be pulled off each other. Then McG (the director of the movie) recently said that Murray actually headbutted him on set. No wonder Murray didn’t come back for the sequel.
Now, in an interview with the London Times, Murray not only denies McG’s allegations, he takes it one step further and says McG should be pierced with a lance… not just headbutted… and should DIE.
Damn Bill… tell us how you really feel.
After Terminator: Salvation, there are probably a lot of people who agree with Bill.
But here’s a question for you… do we like hearing about this stuff… or do we wish the people involved would just keep it quiet and between themselves?
Ok, this one just takes the proverbial cake with stupidity frosting and a creamy center of WTF. I know there are a lot of remakes and reboots… and I’m ok with the idea of them in general… but sometimes things just go too far, and this appears to be one of those instances.
It’s being reported by the folks over at Cinema Blend that the Weinstein Company is planning on rebooting… are you ready for this… Scary Movie. Yes… THAT “Scary Movie”.
I’m one of those guys who has NEVER understood what anyone has ever seen in any of these films. But the fact of the matter is they make money at the box office which means there are people out there willing to go see them. But even with that being the case… how the hell do you “reboot” Scary Movie? And why on earth would anyone want to? These movies suck. But whatever…
The story goes on to say that neither Wayans brothers or Anna Faris would be involved.
I’ve been really interested in the new Frank Langella/Cameron Diaz flick “The Box” ever since I first saw the trailer. I dig movies that pose interesting moral dilemmas to the audience and the premies of this one seems to fit the bill.
From what I can gather, Diaz and her husband (who have a kid) are in some financial trouble when Frank Langella shows up with a box that has nothing but a button in it. He tells them that if they press the button, they will instantly get $1 million dollars… but the catch is that someone, somewhere in the world…. a person they don’t know…. will DIE. What do you do hot shot?
Anyway, the trailer can be seen here… but the good folks over at i09 have also put some new stills of the movie online. 26 of them to be exact. You can take a look at them here.
Thanks for checking out our Black Dynamite review. If you’d like to see a video version of the Black Dynamite review, you can watch it at the bottom of this post.
Since the trailer first emerged with the classic line – BLACK DYNAMITE: “I’m going to declare war on anyone who sells drugs in our community”. PIMP: “But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs to the community”, my anticipation level for Black Dynamite was through the roof. However, my anticipation was tempered by the fact that the movie looked like it would be better served as a set of Saturday Night Live skits rather than a full length feature film and would ultimately not live up to the trailer. I was invited to the premiere of the film last night and off I went, excited but not holding my breath. Did Black Dynamite deliver? You bet your jive turkey ass it did!
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for Black Dynamite reads something like this: “This is the story of 1970s African-American action legend Black Dynamite. The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House.”
THE GOOD
I always say the most important thing a comedy must accomplish is making the audience laugh. Almost everything else can be forgiven if you make the audience laugh. Well… Black Dynamite may not accomplish much else as a feature film, but dear heavens IT MAKES YOU LAUGH. This movie is flat out hilarious. I literally lost count how many time it made me burst out… and when I wasn’t laughing hysterically I was grinning from ear to ear most of the time.
This is the most quotable movie I’ve seen since “Army of Darkness”. Every single scene holds at least one immortal line. The only problem is that there are so many of these fantastic one liners, you forget most of them. As a matter of fact that’s essentially what this movie is… a big container for all these magnificent one liners. If you see this movie with a group of friends, I guarantee you you’ll be quoting lines from this movie to each other for a LONG time.
Michael Jai White was magnificent. No seriously, this guy throws the movie on his back (that he also co-wrote) and single handedly makes it work. Not only from the way he delivered the incredibly funny dialog, but also for his kung-fu (as it’s called in the movie). White is a legitimate pure action star in the making. I can easily see him transitioning out of this film into legit mainstream action films.
THE BAD
This is not a long film, but it really should have been about 10-12 minutes shorter. As I feared, the movie starts to feel played out by a certain point, and goes from hilarious parody, into just plain silliness that I think it honestly could have done without. By the time you get to the end and they reveal who the BIG bad guy is, it lost me. Oh there are still some solid one liners in the last 10 minutes, but even they lost a little of their effectiveness as the film started to feel a little more like “Disaster Movie” than anything else. But do keep in mind, that’s only once you get into the last 10-15 minutes.
OVERALL
Black Dynamite is a hilarious parody of the 70’s blacksploitation films filled with fantastic one liners and impressive martial arts that you and your friends will be quoting for a long time. It starts to lose a lot of its steam near the end of the film, but by then you’ve already had a great time. Michael Jai White will be a star, you can quote me on that. Overall I give Black Dynamite an 8.5 out of 10.
You can see the video version of our Black Dynamite review below:
Hey folks. Thanks for checking out our Paranormal Activity review.
You’ve gotta love stories like this one. A little, ultra low budget indie film that YEARS after it’s made gets some traction, gets picked up by a “name” studio, and then gets a theatrical release with some MAJOR positive reviews. Such is the story of Paranormal Activity.
The hype surrounding this film has ben of the scale. Many well respected horror sites going so far as to call it “the scariest movie of all time”. Those are some big claims.
So does Paranormal Activity live up to the enormous praise and hype? No, not at all. However, that’s not to say it isn’t still a solid little horror film that is quite enjoyable.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The synopsis for Paranormal Activity reads something like this: “After a young, middle class couple moves into what seems like a typical suburban ’starter’ tract house, they become increasingly disturbed by a presence that may or may not be somehow demonic but is certainly most active in the middle of the night. Especially when they sleep. Or try to.”
THE GOOD
The very best thing about Paranormal Activity to me is the concept of escalation. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a horror film do a better job of slowly, gradually and effectively “taking it up to the next level” throughout the run time. As the film progresses it gets a little more creepy, then a little more… then a little more… then holy crap… then HOLY CRAP… then CRAP I JUST CRAPPED MYSELF! It never moves backwards and it does a fantastic job of not “blowing its load” too early. The result is that it you’re never given a chance to really catch your breath. With the fear level ALWAYS going up, it creates a pace to the film that leaves your fingers digging deeper and deeper into the theater chair arm rest. This is where the real strength of film resides.
The use of the handycam may be a little “blair witchish”, but in my opinion it’s the reason the film works at all. The FEEL of it being real is what gives the movie its underlying sense of eerieness that quite frankly I don’t thing would have been there if this would have been a multi-million dollar production. You could have done this exact same movie, same dialog, same action, same location, same everything… but if you did it on a huge budget with multi high quality film cameras and lighting crews and editing, it would have completely lost the effect of the film.
The performances by the 2 actors in the film is what sells it. They were both so natural that you sometimes forget you are watching a movie and not a real home video.
The movie is scary, and that’s the #1 most important thing about any horror film. No, it’s not the scariest film I’ve seen, no it’s not as scary as some of the hype suggests… but it IS scary and has the theater jumping out of its seats on more than a couple of occasions.
There are obviously not a lot of visual effects in Paranormal Activity, but when they are used, they are PERFECT.
THE BAD
Remember that old comedy bit by Eddie Murphy where he talks about how black people would never make good horror movies… because the moment they heard the house say “get out”, they would actually GET OUT. The problem is, if the family or couple actually “gets out”, then the movie is over. That’s the dilemma for the filmmakers in Paranormal Activity. Because listen folks… if ANY of the stuff that was happening to these people in this house were happening to ANYBODY, they would get the hell out of the house and run. EVERYONE… except these two people. That’s the only time the movie didn’t feel real to me. All this crazy stuff starts happening, and they just stay in the house… which is stupid and would never happen. They needed to come up with a better device to explain why they would stay there.
There is a friend character who shows up a couple of times in the film that I thought was just a complete waste and didn’t need to be there at all. Whenever the character showed up, the story seemed to stall. That’s not a criticisms on the ACTOR playing the character, but rather the character itself.
Dead empty time in a horror movie can be very effective to built tension, and for the most part Paranormal Activity uses it quite well… however, it also uses it too much in spots. It also repeats the same conversation between the couples too many times that makes some of the scenes just feel like time filler.
OVERALL
While Paranormal Activity may not be the “scariest movie of all time” or live us to the insane hype its been getting, it is nonetheless a VERY GOOD movie executed very well that will leave you both entertained and pretty creeped out. What more can you ask from a horror movie? Overall I give Paranormal Activity an 8 out of 10.
Thanks for checking out our Couples Retreat review.
On the surface, Couples Retreat looks like just another cheap, throw away, romantic comedy that at best could be mildly entertaining, and at worst a complete waste of time. However, the film sports a fantastic cast (with the likes of Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Kristen Bell and a few others) and was written by Favreau and Vaughn, who have a pretty decent track record together. Add on top of that the fact that the trailers have looked pretty solid, and I found myself really looking forward to it.
Did it live up to my mildly heightened expectations? No, it didn’t, but at the same time it wasn’t a complete waste either.
THE GENERAL IDEA
The basic synopsis for Couples Retreat reads something like this: A comedy centered around four couples who settle into a tropical-island resort for a vacation. While one of the couples is there to work on the marriage, the others fail to realize that participation in the resort’s therapy sessions is not optional.
THE GOOD
Vince Vaughn is pretty much a one character actor these days. Oh he may have started out dramatic, but he’s made a fortune in comedy, and made it with the exact same character over and over and over again. However, unlike Michael Cera, this character doesn’t seem to get old (at least it hasn’t really yet). It’s a more charismatic character with more personality and is, well… funny. When Vince Vaughn is “on”, he has some of the best comedic timing in the business which means whenever his character opens his mouth, you’ve got to be prepared to laugh, and in Couples Retreat, Vaughn is on.
This is a dialog driven movie and for the most part the dialog works really well (for a comedy at any rate). Many comedies rely on shtick, gags and physical comedy to get their laughs (and there is nothing at all wrong with that when it works), but I found that the best moments of this movie were with the straight forward dialog between the characters.
This part may sound redundant since the movie takes place in the tropical paradise… but the movie really was very pretty to look at. The cinematography in the film took full advantage of the surroundings and really helped us “fell” the place the way the characters did.
It’s just a funny film most of the time.
Carlos Ponce, who plays Salvadore the Yoga instructor is brilliant. I loved this character. He was this movie’s McLovin (a side character who ends up stealing the show every time he’s on the screen). I can honestly say I would go see a “Salvatore” movie.
THE BAD
I find these sorts of movies are best when they know exactly what they are, and stay within those limits. For example, when you look at Wedding Crashers, the film quickly identifies itself as a mid-shallow comedy with minor life lessons encompassing a comedy based on a pretty unrealistic set of circumstances. The movie knows that’s what it is, and never moves outside of that and firmly establishes its identity. When I comedy establishes it’s identity and operates within it, it has a greater chance of success. However, Couples Retreat never establishes and identity, because you quickly get the feeling that the movie THINKS it’s smarter and deeper than it really is. This creates several moments in the film when it wants to be taken seriously, but you as an audience member just can’t. At times the movie tries to make deeper and more insightfully observations about real marriage and relationship problems, but they just come off as silly, especially when they’ve already used blatant slapstick comedy tools.
The movie veers way too much into the pure “silly” at times. Once again, if it had established its identity as that right off the bat, then it could have worked, but it doesn’t. For example, there is a completely ludicrous “Guitar Hero” battle scene about 2/3 of the way through that felt so out of place it just made me feel embarrassed for everyone involved in it.
Like many comedies, Couples Retreat all too quickly and all too conveniently wraps up everyone’s problems into a big happy ending. Some deep and potentially complex life issues suddenly rectified by a 45 second epiphany conversation 5 minutes before the end of the movie. It felt cheap. It felt forced, and it felt like the filmmakers just had no idea what else to do with it.
Whereas the first 2/3’s of the film moved along pretty well and was quite funny (if not all that smart), the last act grinds to a complete and painful stall.
OVERALL
Couples Retreat, at its heart, is a funny movie with a pretty solid premies that shoots itself in the foot repeatedly by not developing an identity for itself, acting like it’s smarter than it is one minute, and the nose diving into unfunny nonsense slapstick comedy the next minute. A movie that starts pretty strong but leaves you feeling like the filmmakers didn’t have a clear vision for where they wanted the film to go, and thus the movie stalls in the third act. Still, there were enough laughs and smiles in the film that I don’t regret taking the time out to see it, and so overall I give Couples Retreat a 5 out of 10.
There is a very interesting documentary coming out by Chris Rock called “Good Hair” that I’ve got to admit has me very interested. The film revolves around the world of black women and their obsession with “good hair”. To me it’s looked really fascinating.
However… it looks like Rock completely ripped the idea off from another filmmaker who made an identical film, showed it to Rock, and then a few years later Rock makes this.
Here is a clip from the press release:
Yesterday filmmaker Regina Kimbell filed a $5 million copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against Chris Rock, HBO, the domestic and foreign distributor theatrical distributors for soon to be released documentary “Good Hair.”
The complaint alleges Kimbell’s movie, “My Nappy ROOTS: A Journey Through Black Hair-itage” was copied by Chris Rock after he and his production team viewed the film in June 2007. After hearing the buzz about the film, Rock requested a private screening at Paramount Studios. Unaware that Rock had a deal to produce a black hair documentary for HBO, Kimbell agreed to let him see the film.
When Kimbell saw the trailer for “Good Hair,” she immediately saw the similarities and was stunned.
“This was an important story for me to tell, which is why I poured over five years of my life researching, traveling, and, shooting this film,” explains Kimbell. “I had a feeling of disbelief and disappointment, so overwhelming that all I thought was I am seeing my film with a different title.”
It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here’s the trailer for Rock’s “Good Hair”
Hey guys. As you know, we’ve been talking a little bit about this little indie horror film that has everyone talking. Paranormal Activity is being called “One of the scariest movies of all time” by some of the big horror movie websites, and everyone I know who has seen it just RAVES about it.
So here’s the thing… it only has a very limited release right now… BUT YOU CAN CHANGE THAT!
If you go to THIS SITE and “demand” it, you could help the film get a wide release. Paramount has said that if the film gets One Million “demands”, then the film will go nation wide. Nice.
So take a minute and head over here and let your voice be heard.
Ok, so I JUST started getting into “Entourage” a few months ago and it’s a pretty good show. But this week it had me rolling on the floor laughing.
Matt Damon was the guest star on the season finale the other day as himself (as most celebrities are on the show). Anyway, in the episode he was doing charity work for a kids foundation and he was being a hard ass trying to get Vince (the lead character of the show) to give a big donation for the kids (getting Lebron James and Bono to help apply extra pressure). Finally at the end of the episode Vince agrees to send a check for $150k. And the credits roll.
But AFTER the credits, this comes up… and I laughed my ass off even more. Damon rules:
Hey there folks, and welcome to the newest installment of The Movie Blog Podcast. Today I’m joined by regulars Soul Video and Christina Warren (of Mashable.Com and Flick Cast) and also by first time guest Roth Cornet of ThinkHero.Com.
