Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime, to just name a couple.
I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff GarlinJohn Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.
This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.
I was hoping that the Sex and the City movie would be that holdover. I enjoyed the television show, but I can’t say I’m a part of its rabid fan base. So, the advantage for me was that I knew all about these 4 women going into the film…
After watching the movie, I felt that it held pretty true to the television show and would satisfy the film’s built in fan base. It felt like 3 or 4 episodes of the television show back-to-back. After telling the person I saw the movie with this, I realized that this may not be such a good thing after all.
The film didn’t just feel like 3 or 4 episodes of the show, it felt like the film ran long, with these episodes just tacked onto the back of each other, instead of a tight continuously flowing story.
The next realization I had was there was very little setup for the main characters (and why the casual viewer should care about these 4 relatively well off women). Now, for someone like me, who knows these four strong ladies very well from their tv escapades, this was not a problem, but what about for someone who has either never seen the tv show or has only seen a handful of episodes? Well, these people just get a quick (~2min) video recap of the tv series laying out the history of the characters and a voice over by Sarah Jessica Parker to go with it and my guess is that this will leave the uninitiated confused and in the lurch.
Even with these misgivings and the fact that there were times when I felt the film was just a bit long, I DID enjoy the movie, there were a handful of unexpectedly funny moments, Charlotte’s troubles during international travel being one of them (a point I disagree with my favorite reviewer, Roger Ebert on). I feel like for those people who are NYers, New Yorkophiles or fans of the tv show, you should definitely go out and see this film (especially if you’re planning on pre-gaming with a Cosmo or two), but if you’ve never really seen the show or know the characters, you’d be better off not initiating yourself to this world with this film, just go back and rent/borrow/buy the dvds of the original series.
Most mainstream podcasts seem to come out of the west coast, but Wine Library TV is made daily out of NYC and tonight, the host of Gary Vaynerchuk held a viewing party tonight for his Late Night with Conan O’Brien viewing party for his second appearance on Conan’s show.
It was a blast watching Conan with Gary (who hosted the event) and a few dozen of his NYC upper east side fans at Bounce. I even got two free glasses of wine out of the whole affair (one red, one white) and I don’t normally even like the vino, I’m more of a beer guy myself.
I was walking around Chinatown NYC and walked by this store front on one of the side streets and HAD to snap a picture of this after it made me laugh.
Even though the geek worship time travel show Quantum Leap ended almost 15 years ago, there are still geeks hoping that the show’s main character, Sam Beckett (played by Scott Bakula) will be brought home finally… by God?
If you are confused by that last line, go back and watch the show’s final episode, which is probably one of the best final episodes of a long running series I can remember.
Don’t get me wrong, this video won’t get me to vote for Senator McCain this coming November, but I do like to see these candidates take a break from the intense politicking, to try and have some fun.
After living my entire life in NYC, I went to college in Washington DC and have traveled back and forth every possible way imaginable, by car, bus, train and plane. I used to be able to get one way flights for $41(!) as a student, but that Delta Shuttle deal didn’t last too long and more recently, I’ve mainly just taken cheap buses (like Washington Deluxe) when I’ve wanted to take trips to either Boston or back to Washington DC, where most of my friends are living at the moment.
To get the $1 fares, you need to reserve your tickets online, two weeks in advance, from their prospective websites, but Megabus.com wants to make an even more enticing offer, if you make reservations to travel between May 30 and June 5, they’re offering free tickets! I think I know where I’m going to be heading for the next couple of long weekends now!
I saw the trailer for the Mamma Mia! movie last time I went to the movies. Now, I didn’t have any idea what the Broadway musical, that this film is based on, was about… actually, my only knowledge of it comes solely from this poster:
Today I was listening to the latest episode of Net@Nite where they interviewed the founders of Drop.io, a New York City based (they’re already on my good side), online storage company that specializes in security, anonimity and sharing. It’s an odd combination, but it allows you to save documents and files in numorous ways. Probably the most useful aspect of this for a lot of people is to create a free drop page and you will be given a fax number and voicemail that you can give out to people. Maybe half a dozen times a year, someone will want to fax something to me and I don’t want to buy a fax machine! This way, I can just give out one of my Drop.io assigned fax numbers (856-632-7637 or 856-632-7640) and people just have to add this cover page to what they want to send me. I thought that alone was interesting enough that I just set up a link on the sidebar of this site to my Drop.io/master1228 page in case anyone wants to send files to me (thanks for the idea Leo).
I think the voicemail number provided would be a useful tool for women (or men) to give out at a bar when they meet someone, but don’t want to give out their main phone number or if they wanted to post their number on a social network (like Facebook or MySpace) without fear of someone they don’t want, to find their phone number.
After watching the movie, I’m so glad I caught that news.com video. At no point during the movie did it look like I was watching CGI. The blending of live action actors with the many many fanciful characters was a ton of fun to get absorbed into. Mary-Louise Parker does a great job as the mother of this troubled family, that is trying to essentially start a whole new life after moving away from NYC. The dynamic between Parker and her children, as well as the dynamic between the syblings was a lot of fun to watch, since it felt so natural and realistic, while the family problems were surprisingly mature.
The movie is also surprisingly scary and after I left the movie, I was glad to see that it was rated PG. This movie would probably scare very little children. I don’t think most adults would be drawn to this movie, unless they were as interested in the computer animation as I am, but if you want a fun movie to bring your younger teen sibling/cousin/child, this is really a great choice.
I have been voting in NYC since I turned 18 in 2001. I started out as an Independent, but in 2004 I switched to becoming a Democrat (and voted absentee while at GWU) and since then I have voted in all elections and Democratic primaries. I went to vote tonight, but this time my name was not on the register rolls! I have voted at the same facility before, but for whatever reason, I seem to have been dropped from the computer generated pollbook. So they gave me an Affidavit Ballot, I filled it out and gave it to them, I also filled out a voter registrationform to reaffirm my affiliation with the Democratic party and mailed that in after I left the voting facility.
I was so excited to vote today… I know it’s not quite the same thing, but I can’t help but feel, at least somewhat disenfranchised. While I know my vote does count, it feels like it just doesn’t count as much as it could have if I had been able to pull that lever and know that they would record my vote right then and there inside that voting booth.
I heard about Glassbooth.org from CNET Live, episode 38, where one of the founders was interviewed and he talked about how the site allows people to see how their political views stack up with the candidates running for President in 2008.
I checked it out and oddly enough, when I tried it myself, I seemed to match up best with Mike Gravel. I ended up voting for Hillary Clinton here in NYC despite that though. I wasn’t going to vote for Gravel today, even if he was still on the ballot. Check out the site, it’s interesting and fun if you have a few minutes.
The game was low scoring, but back and forth the entire time. The Pats played a good game, but the Giants‘ defense, with all the sacks and knockdowns of Tom Brady was just too much and they ended up with one of the biggest upsets in recent Superbowl history.
As I’m writing this, I can hear the celebrators at the local bars down the street, as well as all the truckers celebrating with horns blaring as they drive down the street. The office is going to be interesting tomorrow.
I just hope that with the parade for the Giants scheduled for (Super) Tuesday, that it does not lower voter turnout. I think it could hurt turnout for a candidate like Obama. I’m not voting for him, but it would be too bad if the Superbowl hurt his chances here in NY.
Woody Allen seems to be making a different style of movies lately. He made Match Point back in 2005, which was an extremely well made romantic drama, but very different from the types of movies that made him famous (like Annie Hall and Manhattan).
Now that his latest movie, Cassandra’s Dream, is going out on limited release this Friday, January 18th I wanted to bring some attention to the film. I know I’ll be seeing the film here in NYC, if not on opening night, maybe this weekend. This film looks to be a tightly made, hard nosed, murder mystery, but the film looks to be following the killers instead of what most films do: follow the people tracking down the killers. The movie stars Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson (an actor who is becoming one of my favorite actors, by picking some really memorable roles).
This is probably pretty close to the perfect way to tell a political comedy drama, especially when based on a true story. This film was directed by Mike Nichols and written by Aaron Sorkin. These two powerhouses have been creating some of the most interesting and entertaining big and small screen productions over their careers and their partnership (their first joint venture) to bring this movie to the silver screen is no different, this movie was just a joy to watch.
Tom Hanks plays Charlie Wilson and is GREAT in this role, there is a perfect mix of hilarity and surprisingly, of a man who is smarter than the persona
he publicly promotes. I must say, I was extremely young during the early 1980s, I don’t really remember most of the events that the movie talks about and the only things I knew about Charlie Wilson specifically was what I saw from the previews for this movie (I didn’t want to research the history of this until after I saw the movie). So, I was not expecting the glimpses of an extremely smart politician that were presented.
Most of archive footage was very well interspersed into this film, but the very first helicopter scene was a bit jarring and unexpected, mainly for the amount of violence they showed, which was pretty unexpected because of how humorous the film had been up to that point. In the grand scheme of the story, the scene works to bring the audience into the degree of violence going on over seas, but it WAS unexpected. I was watching this film in a NYC theater and when Rudy Giuliani’s name came up during this film, without giving too much away, there was NOTICEABLE laughter from the audience for this.
The other massively enjoyable performance came from Philip Seymour Hoffman. He has played great parts in so many movies and this performance is no different. The scene where he is arguing with his boss may just be THE best scene in the entire movie. Julia Roberts also stars in the film, I am not usually a big fan of hers, but in this role, I didn’t think she was bad… a stellar review of her performance, I know, but at least she didn’t detract from the movie (like she did from Ocean’s Eleven).
I would recommend this movie for almost anyone, it is a really enjoyable film. The only people I would say should avoid this film are those who don’t like politics/history, if this is the case, you would probably be pretty bored not understanding what’s going on.
After watching I Am Legend in IMAX, the latest movie starring Will Smith, I realized just how difficult this movie was to pull off. Smith had to carry the entire movie virtually all by himself, he spent a majority of the film only able to interact with a dog, a few assorted manikins and some totally terrible CGI characters. The last movie that tried this was Cast Away with Tom Hanks and I hated that movie, I usually love Tom Hanks, but I was so bored watching him interact with that stupid volleyball!
With regard to the CGI characters, I think it was said best by the guys on the latest Filmspotting podcast, when they reviewed this film: “Anytime you put CG characters next to real ones,” it totally takes me out of the film, “thinking how bad they look.” CGI can look absolutely amazing when used to create landscapes, scenery and completely alien monsters, but CG humanoid characters never look right. Recently, in Beowulf, the scenery, Grendel and the Dragon look absolutely flawless as CG, but whenever characters moved or tried to yell, things just didn’t look natural. The non-character CG work in this film, creating a lonely, overgrown forest of New York City, a city known for being one of the busiest and hectic cities on the planet, it was a stunning sight which was a joy to watch.
The first two thirds of this film were absolutely riveting, I was TOTALLY with Will Smith act his way through the empty city, even with the completely unbelievable CG zombies (on that note, can we please go back to the slow moving zombies? I’m really getting tired of the whole faster than a blinking eye zombie.) Without giving too much away, I thought the juxtaposition of the very first minute of the film was great, it was easily one of the best parts of this movie. I was surprised though with the last third of the movie though, I didn’t realize going into this movie that it was only going to be 100 minutes, I thought that last third of the movie was too rushed and would have been better served if it had been stretched a bit longer and the film had ended up around two hours long.
I must say though, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and would recommend that it be seen, especially if you could catch the IMAX version. On a side note, if you can get to an IMAX screening of this film, get there early because one of the previews they are showing with this movie is a 6-minute prologue for the new Batman movie: The Dark Knight and I must say, I AM IN! The instant I find a link to this content, that isn’t a bootleg copy, I will post it myself! I remember not being very excited about Batman Begins, I ended up waiting until it made it to DVD before seeing it, but boy was I wrong with that expectation.
Thanks to Wost Previews for the above picture.
Film Racing is a contest that seems to have started around the idea of getting people to get off their butts and just start creating films, no matter how much or little money they had. They started out by having contests where entrants were tasked with creating a 3 minute (max length) film in a 12 hour time span. Now, they have a Film Racing Grand Prix where you have 100 hours to put together a 4 minute movie. Each film team is given a theme and a surprise element they need to use in their film.
This is an extremely interesting concept, you can go here to see some examples of films that have already been submitted.
Thanks to BoingBoingTV for spreading the good word about this contest. The film above is called Eggsistence and was created in <12 hours, their theme was “a fortune” and their surprise element was they needed to use an “egg.”
The highly anticipated film by J.J. Abrams, which was initially only known as 1-18-08, has released a far more extensive trailer and we now know the film is titled Cloverfield. It looks (from all the gunfire and shadow shots) and sounds like some combination of monsters, both Godzilla big and Alien small (and hungry) has attacked New York City.
Take some time and get a looksy at the HD trailer from Apple trailers by clicking here. or just watch it from youtubeabove.
You may think you remember what Denzel as a bad man was from Training Day, but from the opening scene of this film, you know you are in store for an entirely different kind of BAD MAN. This movie is not for the squeamish, the film has enough violence and death to fill its almost 160 min runtime. The story takes place during the late 1960’s and 1970’s during the Vietnam War and a very dark time in NYC police history in relation to the drug war in and around President Nixon’s famous decree in 1971.
At first I thought Denzel was going to overpower what seemed to be a much muted Russell Crowe, but soon I realized that Ridley Scott wanted to build up Crowe’s character slowly while pouring on the overpowering presence of Denzel Washington.
It was interesting seeing how Scott juxtaposed the corrupt NYC Special Detective (Josh Brolin) with the strait and narrow NJ detective (Russell Crowe).
This is another big movie with Ted Levine playing as cop, which makes me smile, considering he is probably most remembered as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. For all you Serenity fans out there, Chiwetel Ejiofor (you know him as The Operative) plays Denzel’s brother and right hand man. What’s sad is that this is probably the best movie Cuba Gooding Jr. has been involved with in a decade (As Good as It Gets) and he really didn’t do anything too special in this film either…
I am certainly glad to have ended the night with Bee Movie at the tail of this double feature. Even though American Gangster was enthralling, Bee Movie served as a hilarious cleanse of my palette.
Jerry Seinfeld really knocked this one out of the park. Almost the entire way through I was laughing. It was funny though, because I ended up seeing the 9:30pm showing, The only people younger than me in the audience was a group of 17-19 year olds! Regardless of the lack of kids in the theater, the audience was cracking up the entire time as well.
The only thing that threw me for a loop in the film was that it was rated PG and then about 3/4 the way through the film, the word suicide is mentioned, which is probably what pushed it away from a G rating, it was all in good fun, the moment passed with yet another funny joke inserted to break any sign of tension in the scene. I would check with the MPAA about this, but since I hate them, I really couldn’t care less what they rated the film.
I don’t know what made me go out to see this film, I didn’t think the trailer was all that enticing, but since I usually like Robert Duvall and Joaquin Phoenix.
I’m glad I did, though. This film does something that The Darjeeling Limitedtried to do, but failed, the first half of the movie was almost an entirely different movie from the second half. I won’t reveal what happened, you’re going to have to find that out for yourself, but with We Own the Night, the turning point and the second half of the film were completely engaging.
The film takes place in 1988Brooklyn, NY and has an interesting (and surprising) cameo from former NYC mayor Ed Koch (who WAS mayor of NYC in 1988)! It was interesting seeing this film after Eastern Promises, since that film revealed to me the importance of tatoos for the Russian mafia.
After the first 10 minutes though, I realized that this film has many deep rooted connections to The Godfather (my co-favorite film, with the other co-favorite being Casablanca). Robert Duvall is in both films, but this time, instead of consigliere to the boss, he IS the boss… well, police chief, instead of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), you get Bobby Green (no, not Moe Greene, Joaquin Phoenix) and Sonny Corleone (James Caan) is replaced with Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg). The twist is that instead of the prodigal son growing up in a mob family and going off and joining the military, Bobby has the opposite experience, he changes his last name, hides who his family is from everyone he knows and becomes a successful night club manager. Also, both in both films, the families of their wayward main character (Pacino/Phoenix) are suspicious of and don’t like their love interest (Diane Keaton/Eva Mendes), to the point where the families rejected them for not being the same religion/race (Keaton not being Catholic and Mendes being Puerto Rican). There are actually many more similarities between these two movies, but I don’t want to give anything else away, the film is so entertaining to watch that I don’t want to spoil the experience. I am glad that I decided to see it.
This film is worth checking out, it’s no Godfather, but it was surprisingly solid, although there were a couple of scenarios that were a bit unbelievable.
I remember watching the live action promotions for this film at the beginning of the year, but after seeing the Bee Movie ad campaign plastered all over NYC telling me that Honey Just Got Funny (thanks slashfilm) over the past few weeks, it made me not want to see this film, also, the film was created by Dreamworks Animation and I’ve had mixed results with their animated movies. I loved ANTZ (How could I not enjoy a Woody Allen movie… just with the entire cast playing ants?), thought Madagascar (which also starred Chris Rock) was pretty funny and heard good things about Over the Headge (but never got around to seeing it), yet I HATED Shrek and never wanted to watch the rest of the Shrek trilogy. In the end, I decided to watch the trailer on Yahoo! trailers. I was reluctant, but with Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock in the film, I HAD to give Bee Movie a look.
I loved that they used the song Brazil as the opening theme to the trailer (a very good sign) and I must say, the trailer had me laughing , maybe honey DID just get funny! Hearing Jerry reminded me just how much I missed Seinfeld.
If you want to see the HD trailer, you can get it here, otherwise, just give the SD trailer a look below. You can also see the other clips I was talking about here too.
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