Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category

To be quite blunt, this was a bad movie with a poorly crafted and misleading social message. Many fellow reviewers undoubtedly found the message a redeeming enough quality to warrant a good review for a poorly written movie with poor continuity; but I feel the director either misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented the situation in warn-torn diamond producing African nations, such as Sierre Leone. Upon suffering through the lengthy, often slow-moving film it is not difficult to understand how Blood Diamond flopped so miserably at the box office.

The movie itself was full of continuity errors, to name just a few examples, in the first scene of the movie, Solomon (Danny Archer) is walking his son to school. The two have quite obviously walked several miles from their home where they started out when suddenly several off-roading vehicles blaring rap music turn the corner and speed off in the direction of their village. Somehow, from miles away and on foot, Solomon is able to beat the speeding vehicles back to the village and warn his family in time, just before the vehicles pull into the village.

There was also a scene on a bus when one of the minor characters was smoking a nearly-finished cigarette on-screen and when the camera cut back his cigarette was longer than it had been before. He was in the center of both shots, and the cut away did not last long. In the context of the scene it was a painfully obvious discontinuity. Those were two very in-your-face errors, among many which I caught during my first and only viewing; I was amazed and disgusted that the movie was full of these types of errors and the editors either did not notice or just didn’t bother to edit for continuity.

Perhaps even more condemning than the movie’s total lack of continuity was the poor writing and the overacting that accompanied it. The movie was entirely too predictable to be entertaining for entertainment’s sake. If it did not have a carefully crafted, politcally correct social message I doubt the movie would have gotten any good reviews at all. If one can imagine the end scene in Titanic with DiCaprio clutching onto the piece of debris and telling Rose to never let go; that would give one a pretty accurate picture of the final scene in this movie – except that in this movie the whole thing is very drawn out and every step DiCaprio takes is so predictable it’s painful until the moment when he whips out his mobile phone (which has amazing reception for such a remote

Preview

I have not watched a scary movie for some time. Of course, not the funny Scary Movie, but something that really scares me. The Strangers is not a ghost movie and more like a psycho type of movie. My first impression was that this movie might be a little bit boring to watch. Well, it was quite fun to watch though. Just one thing to note. The Strangers with initial capital letters represent the movie while the strangers with small initial capital letters represent the true strangers in the movie. The Strangers is inspired by a brutal event that happened to a couple, James Hoyt (Scott Speedsman) and Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler), years ago. That night, James proposes to Kristen but is rejected. They proceed to Hoyt family’s summer house where James has initially decorated the house to celebrate. The situation is tense between both of them and they hardly talk to each other.

At 0400 hours, a girl knocks the door to look for a person named Tamara. She leaves after James tells her that no one by that name lives there. Soon, James leaves the house to buy Kristen cigarettes. The girl comes back and asks for Tamara when Kristen is home alone. Kristen is getting suspicious and frantic because it seems like there are people stalking on her.

James and Kristen try to leave the place but their car is damaged by the strangers. At one point, James tries to call for help using an old CB radio but he is caught by the strangers. Eventually, both James and Kristen are tied up on chairs and met face to face with the strangers.

Storyline

The beginning is a bit boring and that is the part that make the audience guess what is actually happening between James and Kristen. The narration at the very beginning kind of gave me the some predictions on the sort of things that will happen in the movie. What I am trying to say is that I know it is going to happen in a house and five minutes into the movie, James and Kristen have reached the house. Is The Strangers going to be exciting for the rest of it? Or is it going to be repeating some act over and over again?

Well, not that bad after all. As soon as Kristen is home alone, the strangers start stalking her and scare the hell out of her, not me. When James comes home, the strangers get violent and follow every move they make. Of course, the strangers scare the hell out of James and Kristen but not me. You may be thinking that I am suggesting that this movie is bad with the not me’ factor but read on.

The Effect

What scares me is the effect. I turn the volume up whenever I watch movies. Most of the time, The Strangers is very quiet. The strangers will just come out of nowhere and be in front of the screen. The sound of knocking doors and windows will make you jump out of your seat.

Verdict

Some of you may have thought that why James would leaves Kristen alone at the house to get cigarette for her. Well, I thought that is pretty normal since James and Kristen have quite a tense situation there. In addition, that is Hoyt family’s summer house and in some places, people do not even lock their door.

I was startled by the effect rather than the story. The whole plot looks simple and like normal horror movie where the strangers always know James and Kristen’s position and not vice versa. However, I was attracted by the acting especially the scene when Kristen is hiding behind a closet.

No place is safe.

NBC has not done it again. The new Bionic Woman television show premiered Wednesday September 25th 2007, and despite being “the most anticipated show this year” (as NBC is hailing it) it was lackluster and meandering. The set up is this: Jamie (the soon to be Bionic Woman) takes care of her little sister who is not allowed to be anywhere near a computer with a phone jack (obviously due to some kind of hacking incident but that is not addressed in the pilot). She is also involved in a relationship with a man named Will (who just happens to be the one behind the Bionic experiments) and has gotten pregnant by him. On the night she tells him he proposes that they get married. Then, when they are driving home, tragedy strikes. A semi truck slams into them, seriously injuring Jamie. Somehow Will is left unharmed enough to perform emergency surgery on Jamie, thus turning her into the Bionic Woman.

While Jamie adjusts to her new life as a bionic person, viewers are privy to glances of Sarah (played by Battlestar Galactica’s Katie Sackhoff), the first Bionic Woman who is, (gasp) unstable. Sarah hounds Jamie throughout the episode, and attempts to kill Will with a sniper rifle. This triggers a showdown between the two Bionic Women that could have been visually stunning and lots of fun, but just turns out to be flat and uninspired. The action scenes in the god-awful VIP starring Pamela Anderson were better than this fight. Also, and I admit this is a little thing, but it is indicative of how bad this show really is, Sarah lights a cigarette in the rain, and it remains lit as she walks around a rooftop. Bionic Women I can accept. Bionic Cigarettes, on the other hand, that just goes too far for me.

All in all, this pilot episode did not spark any real interest in the series for me, and I wonder how long it will take to pull this steaming pile of crap off of the air.

Anthony Bourdain has got to be the coolest guy on television. And that’s a fact.

I have always been interested in traveling, eating and learning other cultures, so when his show first aired on the Travel Channel, I had to give it a chance. His show was different from any one I have ever seen. It was the fusion of a cooking show and a travel show and the life and times of an old hippie.

I had previously despised cooking shows. I usually put them in the same category as Nyquil: both things I had to endure as a kid when my mom stayed home with me when I was sick. They were always hosted by peppy, upbeat people who had everything pre-prepared to the last detail, and nothing ever went wrong. To me, that was so improbable and unrealistic. After watching my mom cook, there was always a moment where something was spilled, or we don’t have quite enough of one ingredient or we leave it in the oven a minute too long, and sometimes was “floured” with a handful of colorful vocabulary, followed by a cigarette. So when I heard that this was also a cooking show, I threw up a little in my throat. But, after watching the episode, I thought, “Hmm Maybe cooking isn’t so bad. That looked really good. I bet I could do that.”

I haven’t traveled extensively in my life, but I have spent some time in the Japan (Tokyo), Canada (Winnipeg), Brazil (Curitiba, Porto Alegre), as well as parts of the Midwest United States (Indiana, Chicago, NW Minnesota). I’m also a linguist, so traveling is also a test to see how much of the language I have learned. I know that in my travels, the local cuisine is the one thing that I absolutely love! Even if it’s local fast food restaurants. Anything different from Indianapolis, Indiana is automatically on my list. Once my husband and I drove to Philadelphia just to pick up something we bought off of e-Bay, because we also wanted to get a real Philly cheesesteak sandwich. We asked the guy who we were meeting where the locals go to get the best cheesesteaks. And he was right. Tourist food isn’t local food, and that’s what I love about Anthony Bourdain. Even though he has been trained to cook in haute cuisine restaurants, he’s not above eating street food (which is always much cheaper and probably tastes better and fills you up). And I love his take on vegetarians: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It’s healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I’ve worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.” (from Kitchen Confidential, p. 70.)

Anthony Bourdain is the anti-Rachel Ray. He’s the anti-Samantha Brown. He tells it like it is. And with a cigarette in one hand, a fork in the other and alcohol close by, he shows us how real people live, by way of our stomachs. No rose-colored glasses here. Nor is it sugar-coated. It’s not always healthy, but who cares? Life is short. Meals are the most important time of the day. It’s a time when you regroup and relax with your family and friends. It’s when you actually have conversations with people around you. It’s not always the world according to Berlitz: the tourist hot spots and basic history. And it’s not always the positive side of life either (watch the episode on Beirut). But it’s raw and it’s real, and it makes me want to get a cigarette, a beer and some sushi.

High-heel shoes and Cigarette star in the diamond heist snoozer Flawless. Cigarette’s performance is smokin’ but it couldn’t save the movie from its ridiculously illogical and uneven script or from the likes of the other performances. Flawless? – there couldn’t be a worse name for this movie.

London Diamond Company owns the diamond trade all over the world. Rotund, greedy diamond executives keep the entire supply of diamonds in the vault in the basement. Laura Quinn (Demi Moore), assisted by her sidekicks Cigarette (Marlboro Light) and High-heel (Jimmy Choo), is a negotiation manager who gets passed over numerous times for a better job. After the last time she got passed up, Mr. Hobbs (Michael Caine), the night janitor, offers her the opportunity to stick it to the man by stealing a thermos full of diamonds. What Laura Quinn doesn’t know will hurt her.

To call the writing in Flawless atrocious would be like calling Bill Gates a man of comfortable wealth. The character Laura Quinn is the stupidest smart woman in the history of cinema. Smart enough to see hidden negotiating tactics waiting to be deployed but such a simpleton she couldn’t see the writing on the wall. I think I actually got a new wrinkle from crinkling my eyebrows at her bizarre behavior.

The heist itself reminded me of an old duck caring for kittens while making sausage in a toilet on a space station; utterly nonsensical. In fairness, all diamond-casino-bank heist movies try to implement the ridiculous to make the story exciting by asking us to think outside the box. Flawless doesn’t ask us to think outside the box, it just lights the box on fire with the audience inside, cruelly leaving us to burn in fiery cinematic damnation. Writer Edward Anderson deserves to eat duck-kitten-toilet-space-sausa ge for what he has done to my sensibilities.

Demi Moore performed like a crying two year old having a tantrum because she wants a cookie. Her crocodile tears were cause for unrestrained laughter. She was one step from putting the back of her hand on her forehead and sighing as she collapses on her fainting couch. I spent a great deal of the “film” wondering if she had ever acted before and then remembering that she is Demi Moore and she had no excuse for such an amateur quality performance.

Michael Caine isn’t nearly as terrible. I believe he does his best to give the character warmth and sincerity. I believe his worst decision was agreeing to portray any character in Flawless, but more specifically Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Hobbs strives to be a character of depth and complexity but is just a minnow in a wading pool. He only seems deep until you realize a minnow is tiny.

I don’t know if director Michael Radford and cinematographer Richard Greatrex are extremely fond of cigarettes and women walking away in high heels. Nearly half of the movie takes place while smoking or lighting up a cigarette. Thirty percent is dedicated to Demi Moore’s rump walking away, always starting from her shoes and working up to a wide shot showing her figure. It is no surprise the movie Hoovers a bowling ball, only twenty percent is dedicated to plot or character development.

Given the choice between watching this movie again or have sandpaper repeatedly drug through my anal cavity, I’d gladly bend over. Please, save yourself, don’t see this movie. The world seems much gloomier now that I have.

Driving through America’s mid-west can be a tough thing, especially if you’re just a young kid transporting a car to another state to earn a little extra cash. Night falls, an eerie mist envelops the road, rain crashes down and thunder roars. Your eyes feel weary, tired and you just want to go to sleep, but you know you’ve got to stay awake and keep your eyes on the road. Then you see a human shaped black figure signaling you to stop. Do you pick him up in the hope some conversation will keep you awake, or do you drive on hoping you don’t fall asleep doing sixty?

The Hitcher may open in a cheesy, not trying to do anything that hasn’t been done before fashion, but you quickly realise it’s all the better for it. The film does take itself seriously, painting a bleak picture of the barren, no-man’s land of endless deserts, long seemingly never ending highways, and rickety, lifeless old gas stations. It becomes obvious that the gloriously golden backdrops and magical ambiguity of the Marlboro cigarette adverts are a far cry from the desolate, lonely nothingness our good-deed driver finds himself surrounded by. It is a testament to the filmmakers that they can keep up a sense of life detached from the rest of civilisation for most of the film, only returning things to pseudo-normality when it comes time for the pay-off.

The film begins with Jim (C. Thomas Howell, who played one of the kids flying past the moon in Steven Spielberg’s E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial) lighting up a cigarette as he drives along a highway. Showing he’s a good kid, as well as attempting to stay awake, he picks up a hitchhiker. Opening the door he says, ‘My mother told me never to do this’, and you just know he should have damn well listened. They drive for a few miles, and Jim notices a car badly parked by the side of the road. Without stopping he questions the Hitcher about the car, and he reveals that that was the person who picked him up before Jim. ‘Was that the driver in the car’ Jim asks, and the Hitcher replies ‘I’m sure it was, he couldn’t have walked very farbecause I cut off his legsand his armsand his headand I’m going to do the same to you.’ Thus, the terror begins

Eventually the Hitcher’s name is revealed, or at least what he likes to call himself – John Ryder. For the most part though, we don’t know his identity and know next to nothing about him, which is one of the film’s most pleasing attributes. His psychosis and total willingness to stop at nothing to get his man, gives

Thank You For Smoking is an acerbic, witty and sometimes shocking look the way American politics works. It will have you laughing uproariously, mainly at the things said by the lead character Nick Naylor, (Aaron Eckhart, Paycheck) in the defence of smoking. See he is a lobbyist for the tobacco concerns and it is his job to defend cigarettes and to make sure people carry on smoking by telling them of all the good points!

Right from the very start Thank You shows a stylish touch, the opening credits being based around cigarette packs and logos with the cast and crew names in place of the brand names. I like to see some originality in credits and this certainly stood out enough to make me sit up and actually watch these credits properly.

Thank You is based on the novel by Chris Buckland and manages to be both scary and funny at the same time funny because of the things that Nick says and does to promote and extol the virtues of cigarettes and scary because his logic for these points actually almost make sense, it may be skewed logic but logical arguing can win the day if done properly. You can win any argument if you can backup your view with logic and examples, I know I’ve done it often enough even for things I don’t believe at all! Nick actually says to his son, Joey, (Cameron Bright, Birth, Ultraviolet) at one stage “If you argue correctly you are never wrong”

As you follow Nick around, doing his job of promoting tobacco (his what your father does’ talk to his sons school class is just tear inducingly funny!), meeting up with the self-styled Merchants of Death’ (representatives for Alcohol (Maria Bello, Coyote Ugly, History of Violence) and Firearms (David Koechner, Anchorman, Snake on A Plane) and taking his son on weekends away (always coinciding with a work related visit) you get an understanding of just how corrupt the whole US political system can be, and probably is. The lobbyists for big businesses wield such power and have such persuasive powers that they can get elected officials to agree to almost anything at all, or if all else fails just twist things around to get what they want anyway.

Of course there is more to the film than this and Nick gets himself caught up in a scandal that may or not lead to his downfall. The question is not only can he actually escape it but also do you, the viewer, actually want him to?

Eckhart is one of those rare examples of perfect casting in this film. He has the good looks to make you believe he

The 2004 movie “Coffee and Cigarettes” was filmed in black and white, which allowed the film a candid aesthetic quality, and which was an excellent device for depicting the staleness of habitual coffee breaks, and the eventual dullness of chain smoking. The coffee and the cigarettes were utilized as effective props, in order to enable a context for conversation. The film, though reliant on the coffee and cigarettes in every scene to provide a purpose for the characters to have a conversation, is not at all about coffee and cigarettes, but rather a realistic portrayal of the dynamics of ten examples of relationships. We are meant to question the reasons for why people meet for coffee to begin with; whether they meet for the sole purpose of imbibing coffee, regardless of whether or not they will have interesting conversation, or whether the coffee and cigarettes come secondary to a meeting with some kind of agenda.

As it is, the characters in each vignette are essentially without an agenda, aside from consuming caffeine and nicotine. There isn’t any essential plot to story, but the theme of the film presents a sort of existential dilemma, in that the characters seem not to have any sense of purpose, and rely on coffee and cigarettes in order to give themselves an excuse. In most social situations, people who drink coffee and smoke cigarettes do so in order to have something to do with their hands, and in order to feel comfortable with the dynamics of accepted social behavior. But the simplistic, uneventful sketches are all similar, because we, as audience are meant to understand that everyone is in the same purposeless situation, regardless of whether this involves coffee and cigarettes.

The momentum of the film is driven by the subtle suggestion that nothing ever changes; each day is defined by a typical cup of coffee, and a cigarette that doesn’t taste any different than the one before. But we still must question whether every cup of coffee is actually different from the last, depending on the context, the person one is with, and the novelty of conversation. This film also suggests something about real life that is actually tragically existential, uneventful, and mundane, and only interesting enough when there is a recognizable relationship. The film is effective because it captures something real, and is an honest representation of relationship dynamics. There isn’t anything comedic about this film, but was actually quite strange and random,

You could argue that this movie is about cigarettes. You could argue that it is about politics. Maybe you could even argue that the movie is about love. There isn’t one shot of someone actually smoking, or one truly clear political statement, or anything in it that could make it a love story, but if you argue well enough, you would still never be wrong.

I give this movie a birdie.

Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the big tobacco companies in America. His job is to convince America that smoking is just fine, despite the fact that he himself is in agreement with everyone else that smoking is harmful and even deadly.

The film includes appearances by Rob Lowe, Robert Duval, Maria Bello, Katie Holmes, and William H. Macy, along with many other recognizable faces. The entire cast does a great job under the direction of Jason Reitman.

Naylor’s marriage is failed, his love life is a mess, he barely gets a chance to see his own son, yet he is an American success story. Naylor is simply a man of the twenty first century. Gone are the days where marriage and family has any kind of cohesion or structural norm. Gone are the days where people actually work in a field they studied in college. Gone are the days where smoking was cool.

Smokers in America today are shunned and despised to the point that they have to hide in corners and stand outside in the cold if they want a cigarette. It is common knowledge that cigarettes cause cancer and other deadly illnesses, yet Tobacco companies are still some of the richest in the world, because everyone still smokes. Naylor is one of the reasons for that.

The film is full of fun characters and an entertaining story line. What could easily have played out like a documentary about Tobacco in America, is actually a nice, neat little story well worth watching, no matter what your view point is on some of the issues mentioned throughout.

The movie is honest, objective and will get you laughing. It give us a great snap shot of the world we live in with a bit of caricature thrown in for fun. It is worth moving to the top of your rental list.

Directed & Written: Jason Reitman; adapted from novel by Christopher Buckley

Starring: Aaron Eckhart (Erin Brokovich, No Reservations), Cameron Bright (Birth, Butterfly Effect), William H. Macy (Fargo, Pleasantville, Bobby), Katie Holmes (Batman Begins, Wonderboys), Rob Lowe (Waynes World, Austin Powers), Adam Brody (Mr & Mrs Smith, TV’s The OC)

This film is a very clever satire following the life of Nick Naylor (Eckhart) who is a tobacco industry lobbyist. Naylor has a son Joey (Bright) who he is trying to be a good role model for while defending Big Tobacco. This is a black comedy that matches the wit of satirical classics like Election, Drop Dead Gorgeous or The Truman Show and Eckhart is truly charming as the man who can argue anything. Naylor introduces himself with the line “You know the guy who can pick up any girl? I’m him. On crack.” Naylor basically justifies working as the poster boy for cigarette smoking in the same way that lawyers argue that every criminal is entitled to be represented by a fair defense, and that taking up smoking is about the right to choose, and that hes good at defending indefensible positions and enjoys the challenge, and when all else fails there the “Yuppie Nuremberg defense” that he has to do something to pay the mortgage. This film is set in the period of time just before cigarettes were legally proven to be addictive and before the landmark law suits affording victim of smoking related illnesses damages . . . the depiction of the ruthless tobacco industry execs peddling smokes to children is the blackest of humour, the deadpan delivery of razor sharp dialogue is nothing short of brilliant . . . sarcastic, ironic, and absolutely scathing . . . this is fantastic writing . . . and keep an eye out for Adam Brody, he has a small but fantastic role with an absurdly long and inappropriately placed private joke with a coworker that is a major highlight.