Morning Glory - Pretty Darn Good For a Chick Flick

 

Morning Glory is a  fairly new (still in theaters) comedy that mostly delivers. While admittedly a "chick-flick", it is still altogether enjoyable and entertaining film. I never really found myself bored or checking my watch (phone). As a straight guy who enjoys his share of football and midget fights, I can boldly declare that I did in fact like this movie.

Rachel McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a energetic, overly-optimistic, and recently fired television producer. After being fired from a local television network, Becky begins to apply for a slew of television networks with little success. Until - that's right - until she gets a call back from a struggling (perennially in 4th or 5th place - my memory is a bit foggy) television network. After a painfully awkward interview, she gets the job and begins a long and grueling job at turning the network around or facing cancellation (that's right!). Oh, and by the way, she only has a few weeks, pretty crazy stakes, am I right? Oh, and she fired her lead anchor and replaced him with a very vain and angry Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) - I wasn't sure where to put this last line so I just threw it in here.

The acting is fine and honestly, the thing that holds this whole movie together is Harrison Ford who puts together a great performance as a continually angry and obnoxious anchor. As he explains to Becky why he won't do a segment on puppies, "I've won eight Peabodys, a Pulitzer and 16 Emmys," he scowls. "I was shot through the forearm in Bosnia, pulled Colin Powell from a burning jeep; I laid a cool washcloth on Mother Teresa's forehead during a cholera epidemic." Yes. He is that type of guy and he plays it well. Really, when the old grump is not on screen. the movie severely lacks. The other actors are fine and the plot does it's part, but honestly, the movie is all Ford here. There's even a love story thrown in here between McAdams character and what looks like a male model that writes short segments for the station, but this feels forced and unnecesarry.

So, overall, I liked it. But then again, I bet if I rented it and watched it over by myself I'm sure I would come to my senses and realize just how awful it really is. But who knows, go out and see it yourself.

I give it 3 Roger Eberts

Trailer: 

Music: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Snow (Hey Oh)

Brooklyn's Finest - A Good Fast Paced Cop Drama About Morality & Ethics

Brooklyn's Finest is a gritty and brutal police drama from Antoine Fuqua, the director of such films as Shooter and Training Day. The film follows three cops as they are forced to confront their own moral dilemma and the deadly and often brutal consequences that follow.

Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), a washed-up, drunk, and bitter Irish cop who is days away from retirement is forced by his boss (not sure of the rank) to actively train new recruits. He is disliked by those around him and he dislikes them right back. The only solace he finds is in that of a prostitute. She's nice enough, but I mean, she's a prostitute. Oh, he's also going through a divorce! Good thing I didn't forget that! His moral dilemma is whether he should muster courage and take action against blatant evil or whether he should just turn away and find his solace at the bottom of a bottle.

Clarence "Tango" Butler (Don Cheadle) is a undercover cop who must navigate the dangerous gangs of Brooklyn. He desperately seeks a promotion and a nice coozy office job so he can get his life and more importantly, his marriage, in order. His moral dilemma: His last assignment is to take down the very man who saved his life, ex-con Casanova Phillips (Wesley Snipes in a powerful return  to the screens before he's sent to prison I guess).

Lastly, there is Det. Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke) who plays a officer assigned with the more dangerous police jobs such as taking down drug houses and things like that. He is undergoing a severe crisis in his life as his wife is pregnant with a third child. Barely able to afford the two they have and with his wife having increasing health problems due to the mold in their small house, Sal has taken steps to buy a new house for the family. Apparently not watching the news for the past several years, he really doesn't have the money to afford the first payments and must do whatever he can to get those funds - including stealing drug money in very dangerous circumstances - that is his dilemma.

Overall, the movie is pretty good. It is a very gritty police drama and is depressing throughout. The acting is very good even if I'm not a Richard Gere fan (he cries in all his movies) . The plot is well constructed and never confuses or misses a beat. The beginning is somewhat slow and I found myself never really getting into it until about midway through, although by then I was on the edge of my seat - no kidding. Warning: This is a fairly violent movie.

I give it 4 out of 5 Roger Eberts

Music: Edwin McCain - I'll Be

The Wolfman!!!! Zzzzzzzz

The Wolfman, a 2010 remake of a 1941 flick is a dull, stupid, apathetic, and dull movie. Sitting through this two hour movie I begged no, prayed for sleep hoping that atleast I would have a scary nightmare because I wasn't getting much from the movie. No luck I'm afraid. Well, where shall we begin?

Out of sheer laziness, here is the synopsus provided by IMDb:

"Lawrence Talbot's childhood ended the night his mother died. His father sent him from the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor to an insane asylum, then he goes to America. When his brother's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe, tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns to his father's estate to learn that his brother's mauled body has been found. Reunited with his estranged father, Lawrence sets out to find his brother's killer... and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself. Someone or something with brute strength and insatiable blood lust has been killing the villagers, and a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline comes to investigate."

Yup, Del Toro looks meh as a werewolf (have I given too much away?). He doesn't exactly impress or frighten  and his acting skills are cringe inducing leaving me to wonder why he's considering such a great actor, perhaps it's just the movie that's doing it to me, I dunno. Hopkins plays the same character he plays in all his movies, the gruff, wise man with something mysterious about him. Emily Blunt is really hot, like wow. Umm...

Umm, yeah, stay away from this movie, this isn't just a slow movie, a lot of slow movies are rather good, this is just boring and I just feel apathetic about the whole thing. Ugh.

This gets 2 Roger Eberts (out of 5)

Btw, Don't Do Drugs, Don't Be Like Helen Hunt

Music: Bill Withers - Lovely Day

Hostage

Hostage, a 2005 action flick starring Bruce Willis is purely a tale of redemption. The film opens with Jeff Talley (Willis) negotiating with a frantic and disturbed father who has taken his wife and son hostage. Talley attempts to play it cool with the armed man over the phone. Presented with an opportunity  to kill the madman as he appears in an open window, Talley refuses, scrawling on a whiteboard: No one is going to die today. This proves a disastrous decision in Talley's life as the gunman abruptly hangs up the phone and proceeds to kill his family and then himself. One wrong decision and Talley breaks down. He must grapple with the choice he made that day, he must come to terms with the innocent blood on his hands.

Several years later, Talley finds himself working as a small town cop. His relationship with his wife and children is distant and he finds himself a sad and troubled man. He needs a chance to redeem himself. All he needs is an opportunity - lucky for him (lucky?) just such an opportunity presents itself.

Three local scumbags decide to move on up in the criminal world. Sick of just pickpocketing and holding up convenience store clerks for petty cash, they get the notion to break into a wealthy family's house with loot on their mind. Willis is called into action as the home invasion turns sour and a peering local cop loses her life. As the three invaders are trapped in the house, Talley must find a way to fix this situation and fix it quickly through his specialty, negotiation, and if that fails, he'll just have to blast his way in. I mean, it's Bruce Willis after all.

The acting is good with strong performances out of Willis, Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects) as the father of the family with something to hide, Jonathan Tucker (Chainsaw Massacre 2004) as the dimwitted home invader, and a truly disturbed performance by Ben Foster as the sadistic and truly evil one of the group with a eye for the father's daughter.

Overall, I give it four Roger Eberts. It was a solid action flick, one that keeps you interested and guessing. The director knew what kind of movie he was making and what the audience expected and delivered.

Trailer:

















Btw, here's an awesome mugshot with the full article:

http://perezhilton.com/2010-11-11-mark-siebenmorgen-arrested-for-criminal-mischief

And...some music:

The Beatles - Yellow Submarine.   Just because.

New Design + Horoscopes

I got bored with the rain design and decided to switch it up on you guys, how's the new design looking? Hard to see the type?

And this week's Onion online horoscopes:

• Aries It's very principled of you, not to mention brave, to stand by your beliefs, but by week's end you'll have graphically conclusive proof that bullfighting is not fake.
• Taurus This week's revelations will be especially traumatic for you unless you get it through your thick head that sex is natural and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with transvestism.
• Gemini You were just being clever, if a bit arch, when you said "Either this wallpaper goes or I do," but the wallpaper will use its powerful social connections to have you ostracized from polite society.
• Cancer You've always believed that everything happens for a reason, so there will probably be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what the less philosophical would call your senseless death next week.
• Leo It was probably a little cynical for you to have used such base physical tactics to get a husband, but on the other hand, he doesn't seem to mind.
• Virgo You've always thought your life would be better if you could go back in time and tell yourself a few things, so it'll be pretty depressing this week when you find out you've tried that already.
• Libra You've never claimed to be a genius, but you have a nagging suspicion that you should have known sheets could be changed.
• Scorpio Your drug experimentation enters an exciting new phase when you find one that makes the throbbing pain in your head subside almost completely.
• Sagittarius You will find precious little to live for now that the age of the extended synthesizer jam is well and truly over.
• Capricorn You can't understand why people keep telling you they're tired of your act. Why, the costume changes alone are nothing short of breathtaking.
• Aquarius Take heart—there is absolutely nothing wrong with love. However, be warned that love is not exactly what you're feeling for those poor terrified nurses.
• Pisces You will indeed live fairly fast, and you'll die relatively young, but no one will be able to say you left a beautiful corpse.

The Crazies

I saw this baby in theaters, but I rewatched it over the week so let me give you a bit of what I thought of it. First off, The Crazies revolves around small and rural fictitious town in Iowa. Everything is as it should be in this peaceful little town, that is until a local man stumbles onto a baseball field in the middle of a game. Not so bad you say? Well, the man is clutching a shotgun. So, yes, this causes quite a commotion. The man is confronted with local sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant) with his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) by his side. During a increasingly hostile and bizarre attempt to have this man put down his gun, the man makes a quick move to shoot the sheriff but instead meets a quick demise as the horrified  David rushes to his side, smoking gun still in hand.

This of course, is only the beginning as more and more town folk begin to act erratically and outright hostile. David, his wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), and Russell must stay alive long enough to find out what is destroying their once beloved city. It doesn't help that the town is under a secret government quarantine where no one is allowed in or out and all phone and internet connection is non-existant. Just wait until the military moves in! Guns-blazing! Or did I give too much away?



The movie, it's ok. I suppose it's worth a viewing if you like a quick horror with a lot of violence (oh yeah). Along with the violence, this film uses a lot of cheap scares with the camera. The bad guy is behind you scare and they use it quite a bit. Also they let the viewer know they are supposed to jump at certain times be afraid when they raise the music (the score) of the film at certain times. They do this way too often. This is a simple movie, easy to follow, and I guess they need to let the audience know when they should be frightened. This is not a subtle film. Also, I am not big on visuals but the ending scene of this movie is simply breathtaking the way the use a heightened color and the special effects during this scene are honestly breath-taking. One of the coolest if not horrific things I have seen in a movie.

I give it a C. There, my first grade.
Trailer:

 

Oh! And here is a great questionaire to find out how you would taste to a cannibal! Need I say more? 

I taste like a broiled fish apparently. 

http://www.recipestar.com/quizzes/view/cannibal-taste

Vertical Horizon - Best I Ever Had

The Walking Dead

Before I talk about the new AMC series the Walking Dead, I have to say after watching that awesome 90's action flick Payback, I bought it on dvd and I guess I bought the Director's Cut thinking it was pretty much the same thing - big mistake. The Director's Cut completely ruins the mood and the flow of the original cut and well, it basically sucks. I repeat, do not see the Director's Cut, there was a reason this cut didn't make it to the box office.

And here we go: Ok, so I'm two episodes into this because I am a really big zombie fan (fan? Is that the right word?) I just always loved and grew up watching George Romero's classic zombie flicks, The Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc. so, needless to say, I found myself very excited for this upcoming show.
Trailer:

Overall, it's a pretty decent show. It stars relatively unknown  Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, a Georgian police officer who is healing from a gunshot wound. He wakes up to find himself in a deserted and cluttered hospitable. How long has it been since he was first brought in? Weeks? Months? The viewer isn't informed and neither is Grimes. He wakes up to a world on confusion - confusion and death. As he makes his way out of the hospital he witnesses many of the dead around the hospital, in parks, in the streets - and then he witnesses the living dead. He is forced to befriend a father and son in the early going but then he must be off - off to Atlanta to find his wife and son. That is his quest.

The second episode was a downer. The plot became convoluted in spots and the dialogue was overall flat and well, dumb -it was wooden. Even for a horror. The characters are starting to come across as generally stereotypical and they're involving race into the show, which could actually work as Romero did well when he interjected his movies with timely social commentary but the use of race in this show feels forced, outdated, and unnecessary. After a promising first episode, this left me very disappointed, to say the least.

This tends to be a rather violent show as they disregard the less is more approach and instead keeps the camera focused on the violence - which doesn't always work, even in a zombie show.

Honestly, I'm just not getting my full satisfaction from your typical zombie movie and I think I know why, hear me out here (who am I talking to?). In all the great zombie movies - except for Zombieland, but that was more of a comedy and would never work if it worked solely as a horror - there was an overriding, a suffocating sense of doom pervading throughout each and every one of those movies. The worst possible had happened - the world had turned into decaying monsters, everyone, family and friends. In these movies, the mood was such that you knew, no matter what happened, no matter how much you hoped and prayed for them, there was no escaping this horror. The survivors enjoying being barricaded in a mall - the viewer knew as it was crying out in every last scene - that sooner or later - the undead hordes would break in in a horrible horrible way and it would be judgment day for the surviving crew. There was no survival, just postponent.

That to me was what made these films so enjoyable, this is what set them apart from dracula, from freddy kreuger, from jason, there was hope in these movies, hope was gradually distinguished in these zombie movies. And this, most of all is why The Walking Dead just isn't doing it for me. The mood of the show, the atmosphere of it is pretty bland, pretty meh. The only thing dark and dreading about this show is the zombies themselves, and that can bore after awhile. Atleast, that's my feelings about it.

Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around