Zombie Column: Fast and Furious 6

We’ve planned to go to see this movie ever since Steve got overly excited upon seeing the trailer. Now, I hate to throw Steve under the bus, but he was as giddy as a schoolboy on a snow day (and not any other analogy, understand?). Rich couldn’t make it because he ran a marathon that started at 7 the next day and needed sleep, so we took Clement with us.

Trailers for the week were The Lone Ranger, which is growing on me. Even if they put all the action bits in the trailer, it would be impossible not to have impressive set pieces all around those bits of action. People are thinking it will bomb (and it might) but I’m betting I’ll enjoy it. Mind you, I also enjoy plenty of crap movies, so it might be best for the rest of you to reserve judgement. Other trailers were for White House Down (I’m all in on this), R.I.P.D. (Jeff Bridges has waaaay too much fun, and that might hurt it a bit), and Rush (a character piece masquerading as a racing/action flick).

As for the movie itself … it’s all kinds of ridiculous, and everyone one of those kinds is AWESOME! This movie has all the awesome. All. Of. It. From now on, every movie described as awesome will be compared to this movie. “It was a good movie. 86% as awesome as Fast and Furious 6.” Or “That was great! 105% as awesome as Fast and Furious 6” (although don’t believe for a minute there is anything more awesome than FF6).

Particularly the last 10 seconds. Right at the end of the movie, there’s a warning that all the stunts were done by trained drivers, and please don’t recreate them at home (not that that’ll stop people from doing it for Youtube purposes, but at least they can’t sue the Fast and Furious franchise for their own stupidity), and then there’s a scene that sets up the villain for the next movie. And frankly, I have not been this excited about any movie related business in about … well, in about three months, actually, since that was when they announced J.J. Abrams would be doing the next Star Wars. Do you know how lucky we are as movie fans? Tremendously lucky. Also, awesome.

Now, I could talk about how the past movie and this one were about reuniting everyone who had been in a FF movie and introducing new ones (Hi, The Rock), but to do that, they need to kill off some characters or they’ll have too many to focus on. Nominally, the movies are about Dom (Vin Deisel) and Brian (Paul Walker), with the others around them. Actually, I should have said the movies are about cars, because they totally are. Then they are about Dom and Brian, and then about the banter between the minor characters (let it be noted that Tyrese Gibson is willing to have shots taken at him in the dialogue. He’s a stand up guy) while Dom and Brian talk about meaningful stuff. Then it’s back to cars. But mostly, this movie is about the awesome. It’s an awesome theatre movie.

Xbox One

I wanted to jot down a couple quick thoughts about the Xbox One reveal and press conference today, because apparently that’s what this blog has descended into. Ha, just kidding. I’ll be melting my brain with Fast & Furious 6 this weekend, unless something unexpected happens.

First, I think I know why it’s called the Xbox One, even though it’s the third generation of Microsoft’s gaming system. It’s not called the Durango (isn’t that an SUV?), the Infinity (that would've been cool) or the 720 (I know that it’s 360 x 2, but that’s just two circles. Wheee). I think it’s called the One because it’s a homonym with Won. “You buying a Playstation or an Xbox?” “Well, the Xbox won, so an Xbox one.”

Now, let’s get into the specs, and find out why I probably won’t buy one (hint: it rhymes with “Shmomputer.”) It has an eight-core CPU (twice as much as my computer), 8 gigs of RAM (as much as my computer, but I have 4 slots with 4 gigs of RAM sticks each. I don’t know why it only registers as 8 gigs. Any technowizards out there that can help? Also, that doesn’t count the 2 gigs of DDR5 I have for my graphics card), and a 500 gB harddrive (waaaay less than my computer). Finally, it’ll have a blu-ray drive. How much did that stick in their craw to have to license Sony technology? Oh yeah, and my computer has one too.

Of course, what Microsoft is trying to do is turn the Xbox into a multimedia machine. Which my computer can do as well. They’ve touted the ability to get TV, which anyone can get on their computer for a $100 video capture card. Hell, I bought an external doohickey that plugs into my USB port (USB 3, just like the Xbox One) and has a cable connection on the other side. It cost $60, and now I get TV. With some software, anyone can have DVR capabilities (I have Windows Media Centre from a previous computer). Also, they bragged about instantly switching between TV, game, and the internet. We’ve had that on computers ever since ALT+TAB came about. Seriously, anyone that’s had a boss is intimately familiar with that.

Mind you, they’re big on voice and action commands too, which is something my computer cannot do (yet). It’s why I have a mouse, which is much more accurate than most gestures. The voice thing is cool though.

While games played less of an emphasis in the announcement, they did state they had 15 games coming within a year, eight of them being original franchises. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Steam. Cheap games, good games, almost any games you want. World of Warcraft? Not on steam, but downloadable. Blizzard has an online store. Gamefly for more games. GOG for old games. Origin for EA games, because they saw Steam and said “We can do that worse.”

So yeah, anything you can do, my computer can do better. Well, I guess they do have Halo going for them.

Zombie Column: Star Trek: Into Darkness

It seems my movie-going habits have changed from well-scheduled summer months to sudden invites an hour ahead of time. Not that I mind, because a sudden invite to see Star Trek: Into Darkness is just the thing to perk my week up. It’s like a sudden invite out to a great restaurant when you were just planning on microwaving something at home. And the cook at that great restaurant was J.J. Abrams. Who in this analogy is a fantastic cook (okay, maybe my analogies need a little work).

So yes, I went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness last night, and it was awesome. In fact, it was so awesome I can’t even remember the trailers beforehand, because they were all overshadowed by the awesomeness thereafter. I can remember World War Z, which has great trailer music that I can’t seem to find anywhere. I think I recognize one part of it by Audiomachine, but I could be wrong, and then they use other songs that are just as awesome and just as unknown. Also, I pay way too much attention to music in trailers. Besides that, they showed the scene where people fly out of a hole in a plane. PLANE HOLES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Especially at that altitude. This is one thing that movies consistently get wrong. Give plane makers a little credit here, people. Anyway, I suppose I should actually get started before I get completely sidetracked.

The movie itself opens (after some title screens) with Kirk and McCoy running through that red forest that you’ve seen in the trailer. And yes, it’s just as funny as the trailers, so that’s good. What’s not good is why Kirk’s doing that in the first place (SIDETRACK ALERT). Why would the captain of a ship go on an away mission? I know that it’s a time-honoured Star Trek tradition, but my gosh – it makes no sense. You don’t risk the most important people on trivial matters. In fact, you do your best not to risk them at all. Not that that’s a bad idea. Can you imagine how few wars there would be if heads of state had to go to the front lines every time they declared war? They’d learn how to settle things over a beer and a game of Mortal Kombat.

In Star Wars (and just for the record, I’m not a fan of comparing Trek and Wars), you don’t see General Dodonna up there piloting an X-wing against the Death Star – he lets the pilots do that. Not that it would have mattered. The Death Star was seconds away from obliterating the whole planet anyway. Later, they let a general lead a mission, but it was Han Solo, and I’m guessing it was a placating gesture before he went and killed himself on a suicide mission to take down the Death Star II’s shields from the forest moon of Endor. Lando was given a general-ship, but I think that was based on piloting merit, or the need to have him be the one to give orders to the rest of the star fighters. The one in actual command was Admiral Ackbar, sitting safely in the Home One (flagship of that particular alliance fleet), only the fully operational Death Star laser forced him to engage the enemy directly. So yeah, Star Wars does this better.

So … back to the movie. Kirk gets in trouble, because he’s Kirk. Before he can really be punished at all (because again, he’s Kirk), Benedict Cumberbatch shows up to be evil. Has there ever been a more perfectly British name than Benedict Cumberbatch? Quick, someone give him a title so he can be Lord Benedict Cumberbatch. He needs to name his kid Thornwood just to keep the theme going. Anyway, he shows up to be evil, and then the movie adds some twists, with callbacks to previous movies and TV shows, only with a little twist. Like having a different character in the callback. In the new version, Spock and Uhura are dating, but it was Kirk and Uhura in the original who kissed (TANGENT ALERT!). In fact, theirs was the first interracial kiss aired on TV. They did one take where the kiss was spectacular, but the producers were nervous about showing it, so they asked for more takes. William Shatner kept intentionally messing up so they’d have to use the good take, because William Shatner is cool that way, and totally aware that hotness knows no racial boundaries. Now it’s just taken for granted that someone as smokin’ as Zoe Saldana can get whoever she wants, be it white, black, purple, green, or alien.

So … back to the movie … again. It was awesome (as if you couldn’t have gotten that from the first paragraph, or the trailer, or the fact that it’s Star Trek and directed by J. J. Abrams), so it’s definitely a theatre movie. Good action, good lines, good comedy, good acting, good music. And to think, this is the guy who only likes Star Trek. Imagine what he’ll do with Star Wars.

Zombie Column: Olympus has Fallen

This past Saturday, I got a sudden invite to see Olympus has Fallen, and I'm not one to turn that kind of thing down. Not when such a cinematic masterpiece is being offered (alright, enough sarcasm). I went with some of the same people as last week (GI Joe), and it had enough of the same audience that I thought we were going to get the same trailers. Nope. I can't really remember which ones they are, except that The Internship was one of them, and that they were pretty much all movies that I would pass on.

In case you didn't know, Olympus Has Fallen is one of two movies released this spring in which the White House is taken over. The second one is called White House Down (so Olympus definitely won the battle of the names) and comes out in June. That one was Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, while this one has Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler. I'm not quite sure who I'd give the casting nod to, but I'm going with Olympus, since even thought Channing is red hot right now, Olympus has Morgan Freeman and can afford to have Ashley Judd cameo after her TV version of Taken set in the Amazon didn't pan out.

Anyway, this movie opens sometime right before Christmas (possibly Eve) up at Camp David, as the first family is getting ready to go to a fundraiser or event of some sort. It's quite snowy outside, and the motorcade spins out on a bridge (because of course it does). Mike Banning (Butler, and let me say what a great action name Mike Banning is. I'm pretty sure it's the best hero name ever. I mean, we're all attached to John McClane, but that might just be because Die Hard was so good it coloured our perceptions. If Die Hard had had a detective Banning, Hans Gruber would've given up on the spot. There's just no fighting a guy like that) pulls the president to safety just as the limo plunges into the icy waters below, carrying the First Lady with it (good-bye, Ashley Judd. Thanks for coming out. Now you have more time to cheer on Kentucky. Or Kansas. Or whichever College Basketball team you're wildly overrated to cheer for).

18 months later, Banning has been reassigned to the treasury building (fun fact: The Secret Service is under control of the treasury. I don't know why, that's just the way it is. That means that threats to the president get even more jurisdictional, since you now have the treasury involved, the justice department involved, Homeland security, possibly the military, and whoever the CIA and NSA answer to. The state department, maybe? I don't actually know that one) where the desk job is slowly driving him insane. Let me tell you, Banning, I have a desk job and it's actually pretty awesome. But I'm not used to throwing my body in front of bullets, so I gather that cubicles might be kind of boring for you.

There's a South Korean delegation that's meeting with the president to discuss the rising threat of North Korea (wow, the standard of movie villains has really fallen off. First we had Nazis, who were legitimately terrifying, since they were winning World War Two and one point. They gave way to the Russians, who were smart and resourceful, not to mention big, but had also had a lot of shoddy business practices. And they gave way to North Korea, whose people are starving and only credible threat is a nuclear weapon or two. We could glass the entire country several times over. You know, if we didn't care about the civilian population or anything. So that's why we don't do that. Anyway, if NK isn't the main enemy, it's terrorists, who can be counted on to strike anywhere, but can't really maintain a sizeable standing army).

During the meeting a plane enters the no-fly zone around the white house and shoots down the jets sent to intercept it. Then it starts randomly shooting people on the ground before it's shot down as well. The president and the SK delegation have been hustled to the Presidential Security Bunker, where it turns out the SK delegation was made up mostly of terrorists, who kill everyone they want to and take the president and some high-ranking cabinet members hostage, thus forcing the military to back off instead of retaking the White House, which has been taken over by those same terrorists posing as tourists with a rather cool strategy, actually. Mind you, there's a lot you can accomplish when all your followers are ready to die. The secret service puts up a valiant fight, but they get overwhelmed (fun fact: the Secret Service employs less than 1000 people, most of whom are deployed elsewhere, or at home in their off time. It's not like you can have all your employees working around the clock, every day). Banning hears the devastation from the plane and then sees the invasion going down. He fights through it from the rear, eventually making it into the White House, where he runs and guns with the terrorists for the rest of the movie.

I liked this movie. Not as much as I could have, maybe, but enough. It's not a great movie by any means, nor a fantastic example of what a mindless movie can be (last week's was much better). But it's competent, and has a lot of action, and even some humor. Yes, there's a scene specifically inserted so that Banning can be proven right and a four star general proven wrong (because nothing makes a hero as heroic as having the opportunity to say "I told you so", especially when people's lives are on the line). So, some problems, including a baffling nuclear decision that I want to rant about, but realize that this post is long enough as it is, without getting into the nuclear nonsense of the past two weeks.

Maybe that'll come next week. All in all, I think it's a blu-Ray movie. Almost a theatre quality movie, but I think they just left something on the table, even if I can't point my finger at it. Too many unfired Chekhov's guns, maybe. Still, good movie. Now, let's see about that one in June.

Zombie Column: GI Joe: Retaliation

I saw GI Joe: Retaliation this Good Friday, because nothing says Solemn Religious Occasion like an action-fest. I went with a group of friends, so it was me, Steve, Rich, Jay and Brian. We went to the best theatre in town (probably). It's a little more expensive, but it huge, and loud, and you can reserve seats ahead of time, and we got in for free because I have a SCENE card and it's awesome.

Anyway, previews were for The Fast and the Furious 6 (Aww Yeah!), Star Trek: Into Darkness (Aww Yeah!), Iron Man 3 (which Steve and I tied on, and also Aww Yeah!) and World War Z, which I lost to some guy in the row behind me and a few seats over. Well played, sir. Well played.

The movie had four company screens, but the last one was for Hasbro, which I'm sure brought a lot of smiles to faces in the theatres. They can go on making movies, as far as I'm concerned, and I will happily pay money for whatever blockbusters they put out.

The movie opens in the North Korean DMZ, with our heroes starting a mission to retrieve a prisoner. So they cut the chain link fence, create a diversion and extract the prisoner, who's conveniently jailed a mere 20 meters from the border. I don't think North Korea is inept enough to put anything in the DMZ except for watch towers, let alone prison cells within spitting distance of South Korea, but whatever. Anyway, one of the Joes goes a little independent and raises the Joe flag on the NK flag pole, but no harm came from it, and it was all in good fun and no one got hurt.

Next, we get to see Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson) bonding, and it's hilarious. I know 21 Jump Street proved Tatum had comedic chops, but it's always nice when he adds in a little extra humour.

From there, the Joes get sent to Pakistan to secure some nuclear weapons, and the plot kicks off. I won't spoil it for you, even though it barely matters, because GI JOE! Whoo! Explosions! Guns! Martial Arts! Fights while rappelling down the side of a mountain! That sequence was actually fairly lengthly, and also awesome. More movies need to do that. Sword fighting while running along the sides of cliffs? Yes please!

Besides that, the rest of the action scenes were pretty good as well. I didn't mind the short cuts and chaotic action as much as I usually do. Maybe I'm willing to cut GI Joe a bit more slack, or maybe I'm just getting used to it, but they were all awesome. Ridiculous, but awesome.

My only quibbles with this movie are small. There are accusations that the movie was delayed so that more Channing Tatum could be written in. Turns out, those accusations are unfounded, so the only reason to delay it for 9 months was to put in the 3D. And while most of the 3D was good, there were some curious camera placements choices. We had an over the shoulder shot of one guy speaking, except the blurry shoulder was still in the shot. Normally this isn't a problem, except it was in 3D, so the blurry shoulder jumped out at us. That's just poor cinematography, and I know my cinematography, having studied it not at all.

Also, the music was merely alright. Some of it was pretty good, and some of it wasn't. All in all, it balanced out to okay, but I want more than okay in my bombastic soundtracks. I want epic themes of heroism and saving the world from global catastrophe.

But those niggling problems aside, this movie is fantastic. Don't get me wrong, you'll need to turn your brain off before you get inside. But once you do, prepare for the awesome! It's a theatre movie for me, and probably the best movie I've seen this year (not that that helps much).

Zombie Column: Movie-pocalypse

IM IN YOUR CITEE, WATCHIN UR MOVYS

Or at least, I was last weekend, when I went to visit Evan and Mel in their new home. I was lucky to get very nice weather for the weekend. In fact, we got to spend the morning on Saturday walking their dog Mikah on the beach. Fun times.

I got in on Thursday evening and left on Sunday at noon. Over the course of Friday and Saturday, we went to see six (!) movies, alternating between theatres and Video on Demand (VOD). They were, in order of when we saw them:

1) Jack the Giant Slayer (In theatres)

2) Wreck-it Ralph (on VOD)

3) Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (In theatres)

4) Red Dawn (on VOD)

5) A Good Day to Die Hard (in theatres)

6) Taken 2 (on VOD)

All those in the course of about 2 pm on Friday afternoon to maybe 10 pm on Saturday. Six movies in 30 hours. We haven't had that density of movies since we did the Harry Potter marathon way back in the fall of 2011.

I took the preview game, both individually and aggregately. For Jack, I got GI Joe (even calling it as the first preview as we walked into the theatre), Evan got Ironman 3, and I finished up with the next three (I think they were Burt Wonderstone, Oblivion, and Man of Steel, but I can’t really remember). Hansel and Gretel was shown at a cheap theatre, so I got the preview game with Jack the Giant Slayer after we tied on Oz the Great andPowerful. Finally, Evan took the preview game for A Good Day to Die Hard with Olympushas Fallen (we both whiffed on The Heat and After Earth). All told, I got two games out of three, with the aggregate score of five to three, with one tie.

Two surprising things about spending that much time in theatres. One, apparently Chevrolet has paid a ton of money to Cineplex, and now they're allowed to show ads during the previews. What? After the first preview, there's a Chevrolet ad, and then more previews (yes, this is even after the cinematic introducing the previews). I am not a fan, but can't quite summon the level of outrage I think I should have for this kind of blatant commercialism. Secondly, in some BC and Ontario theatres, there's an onscreen game called Timeplay. You download a mobile phone app and answer questions, competing against the other players in the theatre. After three quick questions, it's over, and there's a reminder to turn off your phone. Both Jack and Die Hard played in those theatres, and Evan beat me in those both times, although we were the top two in both theatres. We won token prizes (free drink with popcorn purchase), and now I'd kinda like it if Alberta theatres had that.

Anyway, on with the show. Because six movies in two days tends to mash the experiences together, I'll try and jot down some quick thoughts about each. And if giants somehow wind up in Die Hard, please excuse me while I rearrange my memories.

Jack the Giant Slayer

Another in the line of gritty-fied fairy tales, this one taking Jack and the Beanstalk and making it PG-13. It opens with the standard Fee Fi Fo Fumm (technically, they're the names of Giant Generals) rhyme, which is the start of a story being told to Jack by his father, as well as the Princess Isabelle by her mother. One thing I like about this movie was how the managed to intertwine what was happening to Jack and Isabelle when they were in two different places. I guess they were meant to end up together, because everyone else already had a sidekick. Seriously. The evil human villain had a sidekick. The King (Isabelle's father) had a sidekick. Ewan McGregor (Isabelle's bodyguard) had a sidekick, and no, it wasn't his awesomely-flouffed hair. It's like they had a surplus of characters who tended to agree with the most powerful person around them, so they had to parcel them out to all the important people. Only Jack and Isabelle didn't get one because they needed to be together.

After the story opens, it skips forward ten years, where Jack's father and Isabelle's mother have died, and both of them are looking for adventure. I'm sure everyone would have been a lot safer if only people took Hobbits' advice and stayed away from adventures. Anyway, Jack and Isabelle have a brief encounter when Jack stands up for Isabelle's honour, and then she runs away from the castle to have an adventure, and be out and about (because the King, though nice, wants to keep her safe inside the castle with no going out). She ends up at Jack's house/hut just as the beanstalk grows up to the land of giants, and is thrust up there alone.

The king assembles a team to climb the beanstalk and go after her, and Jack volunteers because ... well, Adventure! And the plot demands it, I supposed.

Anyway, things go from there, and I won't spoil it. But I will relay Evan's review, which was that it was "Surprisingly not half bad." Now there's a poster blurb if I ever heard one. I enjoyed it. It wasn't a great movie, but I think it was good for what I needed it to be. Fun time, good action, funny, nice special effects. Although Jack seemed far too happy-go-lucky for the life threatening situations he was put through. How can you be smiling and joking and have all that witty banter when you're about to be eaten? Also, the last minute of the movie was the worst ending I have ever seen. Atrocious. Completely spoils the flavour of the movie. If you can leave those minor aspects aside, I think it's a solid Blu-Ray movie.

Wreck-it Ralph

Wreck-it Ralph is essentially a Pixar movie done by Disney. And that's not a bad thing, as Disney has a lot of good people working for them. They've essentially nailed the Pixar formula. Loveable characters, additions for the adults (usually it's humour aimed at them, in this case it's video game cameos), and even the part before the climax where the two main protagonists have a falling out and little kids get a hug from their moms.

The movie centres on Ralph, who's the bad guy in a video game called Fix-it Felix. No one likes Ralph because he's the bad guy, which could easily lead to Then Let Me Be Evil, even though he's clearly a Punch-Clock Villain (almost literally). Instead, he tries to prove he's not such a bad guy after all, which leads to all manner of hijinks but also introduces him to Vanellope, a glitch in the racing game near Fix-it Felix's arcade stand.

Because it hews so close to the Pixar formula, it also gets the Pixar quality. This is a good movie. Funny, sweet, hilariously detailed video game animations (the tenants in the building Ralph demolishes move like eight-bit characters, even outside the video game). Even though it was aimed at a much younger audience than me (well, maybe a slightly lesser maturity than me, but not by much), I still liked it a lot. Definitely a theatre movie.

Hansel and Gretel: Which Hunters

We had to drive for about 45 minutes to get to the only theatre that was still playing Hansel and Gretel. It was called Hollywood 3, and the preview for the latest movie was released that day. So yeah, cheap, slightly sketchy. Oh yeah, and late at night, because 9:45 pm is the only time it was showing, and really late for old farts like us.

The movie opens with two kids being led into the woods by their father, who leaves them there. He doesn't come back, so they search for him, eventually stumbling across a cabin made of candy. They shout for help, and the door opens ... by itself. Man, those safety lessons in school were a lot different back then. Anyway, they meet a really creepy witch, who chains Gretel and locks up Hansel, making him eat by threatening Gretel. She eventually picks the lock to her chains just as Hansel's about to be cooked, and the siblings knock the witch into the oven, roasting her alive. As Jeremy Renner's voiceover explains, it's a solid way of killing a witch.

Then the opening credits come, and then we get to a town that has a witch problem, who are also behind the kidnapping children problem. The Mayor hires Hansel and Gretel, now grown up and played by Renner and Gemma Arterton, to find the children and kill the witches. After that follows a ton of action, funny jokes, gory action, bloody jokes, the occasional f-bomb, and Gretel continually waking up in new locations after being knocked out (seriously, count the times she gets knocked out. It's a drinking game).

Did I love it? Of course I loved it! It's a whole lot of fun. Keep in mind that my taste in movies is terrible, but it's probably the best movie I saw last weekend. Action, comedy, plot-twists, action, comedy, Gemma Arterton. What's not to like? Theatre movie, and I can't believe it didn't do better.

By the way, Jeremy Renner is creeping up our Mindless Movie Power Rankings. He's been in this one, The Bourne Legacy, The Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and cameo’d in Thor. Led two, starred in two more, appeared in a fifth? Coming up on Jason Statham territory (for the record, Statham has led three - Safe, Killer Elite, and The Mechanic - and starred in two more - The Expendables 1 and 2).

Red Dawn

This remake has been on the shelf for a while, possibly so the original Chinese antagonists could be turned into North Korean antagonists. Not realizing China could be a major market for movies? Pretty dumb. Mind you, dumb was kind of the modus operandi on this film, so it's perfect for us.

It opens with a football game in which an older brother watches a younger brother quarterback a football team to a loss. The younger brother proves he's not much of a team player by constantly running, which puts them just outside of field goal distance, so the kicker misses. Then the younger brother leaves with his girlfriend while the older brother sleeps on his father's couch, since he just showed up out of the blue while on leave from the marines. Got it?

The next morning, North Korea invades Spokane, Washington (where this movie is set) and the boys barely escape with some friends and the adults are pretty much all left behind. Older brother uses his marine skillz and size to take charge (seriously, he's got six inches on all the other actors) and teaches the others how to fight (it's time for a montage) and then they do operations in Occupied Spokane. I have no idea if there are actually sensitive military targets in Spokane, but we can pretend. I think the original was set in Denver, which actually has a nuclear something-or-other and NORAD, so there's that.

This movie is decent. Not great, but not bad. Enough stupid action to make me happy. A bit too much shaky-cam for my tastes. Even in quite moments, close-ups on faces would be done in shaky-cam. Usually that stuff's reserved for action scenes, but they went all Friday Night Lights on us (by the way, I might be the only guy who preferred Studio 60 over FNL, but I guess I preferred a soap opera masquerading as a TV show over a soap opera masquerading as football). Anyway, I think this is a blu-ray movie. All the characters were so generic that we kept on calling them by nicknames instead of their actual names (Big Bro, Little Bro, Girlfriend, Older Black Kid, Younger Black Kid, Latino Girl, Manly Kid). And if the characters are that generic, the movie's just not memorable enough to be a theatre movie.

A Good Day to Die Hard

This was pretty much the entire reason I visited. All the other movies were picked on the fly, but this movie we picked out in advance when we knew the dates of my visit. And I gotta say, I'm a little disappointed.

The movie opens with the assassination of someone by Jack McClain, who looks a bit like Sam Worthington. He gets arrested, and offers a plea deal. Meanwhile, his father (John McClain, pushing 60) finds out and flies over to Russia to deal with it. Once there, he's generally a stubborn pain in the ass until about haflway through the movie. Seriously. Which is very annoying, because I don't like stubborn pains in the asses (being one myself), and not liking John McClain is a very disorienting experience.

Anyway, there is a lot of explosions and action, and a plot twist (it turns out, the bad guy is just a thief, like every other bad guy in the Die Hard franchise, except for 2), and very cool shot at the end. That does not make up for the fact that I spent half the movie resenting John McClain for his mere presence. Idiot Ball, much? Blu-Ray movie, but I can't go higher, and that makes me sad.

Taken 2

This time around, there are no awesome speeches to put on the poster, but Liam Neeson still has the skills acquired over a very long career. These let him Liam Neeson his way across Istanbul with the help of his daughter (Kim), who initially has to break him out confinement. Then he gets around to the shooting and neck-punching that made up so much of the first Taken.

Kim is very brave to help out, but is also very scared. I like how she's pretty much what a normal person would be in an action movie - on the verge of panic the entire time. It's only her father's influence that gets her through.

It's a theatre movie for me. Quite a bit of action, not much humour, Liam Neeson laying the smack down. One thing that blew my mind while watching it is when Evan told me Neeson was probably working so much because his wife died. How did I not know that? It suddenly explained why he's popped up in so many of our movies - Taken 2, The Dark Knight Rises, Battleship, Wrathof the Titans, The A-Team, and Clash of the Titans. He's by no means led or starred in all of them (only three, by my count), but that's still a fairly impressive resume for less than three years.

And that about wraps it up for my trip out west. Great weather that I missed because we spent most of it indoors, frying our minds and popping out our eyeballs.

Zombie Column: The Last Stand

Last night, a few of us went to see The Last Stand. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movie, so of course we saw it (or more accurately, of course I saw it). If we had been doing this during the 80’s, we would have seen all of his movies. ALL OF THEM.

Preview for the week where The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (a movie about magic. With special effects and camera tricks, is there actually a point to filming magic anymore? It’s not like any of us will believe what’s portrayed onscreen is actually what’s happening on screen), GI Joe: Retaliation (I’m all in on this. I've been all in on this since it was supposed to be released last June. In fact, I've been all in on this since it was announced. Because hey, GI Joe), a horror flick I didn't get the name of (and really don’t need to) and Snitch (the next attempt by Dwayne Johnson to get into actual acting roles, no matter how many times I tell him not to. “Don’t do it” I scream at the screen whenever he tries. “You’re so good when you don’t!”)

The movie opens with a lot of exposition, which is probably not a good choice. Exposition is boring, and probably violates the writing rule of “Show, don’t tell.” But so many directors find it easier to tell and not show, and so there’s less action, and that makes me sad. If you need a lot of exposition to set up the story, at least have a nice action prologue, like Skyfall or The Expendables 2. The Dark Knight Rises can have a slow opening (even though it doesn't), because, well, it has so many other things going for it (like good acting, and insane fanboys).

Anyway, a very dangerous drug lord escapes from custody in Las Vegas, and steals a very fast, powerful car to make a break for the Mexican border. I thought going to Canada would be shorter, but apparently my knowledge of American Geography is way off. The Americans have smartly built a moat around their country, so the dangerous drug lord hires a team of mercenaries to build a bridge over it before he gets there, so he can simply zip over it where no authorities are looking. Unfortunately for him, there’s a town nearby, sherrifed by Arnold (who’s named the incredibly un-Austrian Ray Owens). Arnold finds out about the bridge and all that when he and his deputies are involved in a shootout near it, and from then on, it’s about setting up to stop the dangerous drug lord and the mercenaries (Now on tour in the Midwest!)

Most of the movie takes place over the course of a few hours. About as long as it takes to speed from Las Vegas to the border at 150 mph. Maybe a few minutes more to stop for gas. Any roadblock are taken care of, but it’s this part of the movie that really fails to love up to its potential. There could be a huge Death Race thing going on, with all sorts of obstacles and death traps. Or a Fast and the Furious thing, with a lot of chases. Instead there’s two roadblocks, and lots of close-ups of the very fast, powerful car shifting. As Steve pointed out “You’re on a highway. Why are you shifting?”

Besides Arnold, you may recognize some of the actors. The guy who plays Jerry is used to being in small towns, since he also played Matt Saracen in the Friday Night Lights tv show. He was the backup (then starting) QB for the Dillon Panthers. Also, there’s Jamie Alexander, who’s used to being the only woman on an otherwise male team from her time on Thor (she played Sif, of Sif and the Warriors Three).

The music is decent. More strings than I expected. Not great, but decent. Not quite up to Audiomachine. With strings in this kind of flick, you might expect something by Jack Trammell, but it was a lot more orchestral.

Humour wasn't too sparse. Johnny Knoxville was a nut, but he’s always a little off, and it wasn't that funny to begin with. However, there’s a hilarious scene with a shotgun-toting grandmother that more than makes up for it.

All told, I think it’s a theatre movie. The action isn't quite there, but it’s made up for by other things, including a surprisingly emotion scene in the middle. Usually there isn't this sort of scene in this sort of film, but they put it in, and gosh darn if it didn't work. So that’s in there, and the music’s in there, and the humour’s in there, all for a good movie. Ridiculous, but good.