Ferrera

America Ferrera, the star of Ugly Betty, has gotten married...

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/america-ferrera-weds-at-star-packed-bash/66050

Today, will be watching Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon at Pavilion... crazy... tickets have sold out since Monday...

Craig-Weiss

Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz got married! Did not even know they were dating...

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/daniel-craig-and-rachel-weisz-secretly-wed/65882

Box Office

Cars 2 zoomed past Bad Teacher and Green Lantern for the win!

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/entertainment/2011-06/27/c_13951052.htm

Katy Perry

Katy Perry performing magic while singing Hot N' Cold... have a good weekend everybody! :)

Review - Green Lantern

Now it's The Green Lantern's turn at the cinema. I am not a fan of DC Comics. More of a Marvel fan myself. Come to think of it, I don't really own much DC Comics, except for the special stories. I don't own any Superman or Batman comics... I do own plenty of X-Men comics... I am pretty well-versed when it comes to Marvel characters (but not completely)... but DC characters? I am not really familiar with them...

The Green Lantern in question here is Hal Jordan. He is a pilot who was chosen to replace a dying Green Lantern. You see, there is more than one Green Lanterns in the universe. In fact, there are thousands of them. Hal happens to be the first human chosen.

So this movie is about Hal Jordan accepting his fate/destiny and the responsibilities that comes with wielding the power of the ring.

Hmm, sounds to simple eh? Let me try that again. A great supervillain by the name of Parallax who had been imprisoned by Abin Sur, one of the best Green Lanterns around, had escaped his confinements and sought Abin Sur out for revenge. Abin Sur was mortally wounded and sought the nearest inhabited planet to find a worthy successor of the ring. Parallax continues on his journey of devouring people's souls by instilling fear in them, heading for Oa, the Lanterns planet, for more revenge.

The Earth happens to be in the way of Parallax's journey to Oa and Abin Sur also landed on Earth. The ring found Hal Jordan to be his replacement. Unfortunately, Hal Jordan is not the responsible type. Him being chosen also did not set well with the other Lanterns. But Hal Jordan has to step up and stop Parallax before he destroys the Earth on his vengeance quest.

The movie itself was a bit subpar when compared to all the other superhero movies, especially the recent ones. However, if looking at it from a standalone point of view, it is a fine movie. I like all the human aspects instilled in the movie, as opposed to just concentrating on the superhero aspects. I think Batman Begins started this trend...

Ryan Reynolds is a good actor. Has fine comedic timing. Has great body for action-y stuff. And we know he can pull off dramatic roles as well. So he's kinda perfect for The Green Lantern. And maybe Dylan Dog... huhu... The movie kinda rests on his able shoulders. Supporting casts are fine but not too memorable and none stole Reynolds' thunder.

Villainy of the movie is kinda weak, which ultimately led to its downfall. The mini villain was not too scary although he did kill someone in cold blood. The main villain himself was not really scary. A dark cloud of fear? Come on. The final fight was not climatic at all. But fear not (pun intended), after the credits it was revealed who would be the villain in Part 2... guess that is where the battle lies...

Box Office

Green Lantern blasted away the competition...

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/19/2274569/green-lantern-is-no-1-at-the-box.html

Trailer - Fright Night

Fright Night has been remade... with Collin Farrell, Anton Yelchin and Toni Collette...
coming soon... I remember watching this movie when I was younger... scary stuff... not too sure if the new version is as scary... or maybe it's coz we've seen so much stuff already... *shrugs*

Review - Super 8

Super 8. A title that is quite misleading, unless you’ve watched the movie and know what the title was referring to. If not, then you would get the impression that this movie is about 8 superheroes or something, especially this summer where we get comic/superhero overload.

This is what my friends were thinking. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this was why they felt the movie was not enjoyable. At least a part of the reason why they did not enjoy it. Yes, 7 out of the 10 people watching it did not like it. Me? I loved it.

Super 8 is about a bunch of kids who were filming a zombie movie in the summer of 1979. While they were filming at a train station, they witnessed a train crash and after that, mysterious things started happening at their town, such as being overrun by the military, dogs disappearing, power failures and such.

But for them, none of those things matter. The only thing that matters was the movie they were making. And for one of them, the movie was really important because it gave him the chance to get close to a girl he was crushing on.

Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when the object transported on the train turns out to be a huge alien and it started rampaging in town.

This movie was written and directed by JJ Abrams, the writer/creator/producer/director behind TV’s Felicity, Alias and Lost as well as movies such as Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Cloverfield.

Speaking of Cloverfield… if you enjoyed that movie (which Abrams produced), then you’d enjoy Super 8. Cloverfield was a film about New York under sieged by a gargantuan creature but it was told from a small group of people’s point of view. The fact that they were living their lives and trying to survive was the main focus of the movie instead of showing the monster on a rampage was a pretty good angle in my opinion. You can relate to them better, which is always a good thing because once they perish, you feel something… or you’d get worried about their safety.

Super 8 is the same way. It focuses on the teenage children as they live their lives and try to make their movie, at the same time, facing a extraterrestrial attack. And here is another reason why some of my friends might have gotten turned off by the movie. A normal monster movie would have you seeing the monster rampaging from beginning to end. Super 8 did not really show the alien until after more than half of the movie.

For me, this is the better way of storytelling. It is far scarier when you do not see the scary thing like what The Blair Witch Project had done… than showing the monster every other frame like what Karak: Laluan Puaka had done…

Anyway, the cast of this movie are young and relatively unknown, except for the supporting cast. But then again, the most prominent actor in the supporting cast is Kyle Chandler of TV’s Early Edition and Friday Nights Lights. He plays the main character’s almost absentee father.

Joel Courtney has the burden of playing the main character and this is his debut in a feature film or any sort of acting actually. He did a really good job of making you feel for him and his pain, sorrow, joy and happiness.

Helping him with a solid acting is Elle Fanning, playing Alice Dainard, the object of his crush. Yes, Fanning. Dakota’s younger sister. Guess acting runs in the family, but Fanning, the elder Fanning, needs to be careful coz she is starting to get stoic as she matures… she was a fantastic young actress and I do hope Elle doesn’t go Dakota’s route. Not that Dakota is really bad though. There’s still hope…

Anyway, in case you did not know, this movie was produced by Steven Spielberg. So flashes of The Goonies and ET was evident in this movie. Guess you can say Super 8 is like The Goonies meets ET meets Cloverfield. For the three of us, this was an enjoyable movie anchored by strong performances by the two leads.

Stick around for after the ending because they actually show the zombie movie that the kids were making, using 8mm cameras and entering it in a movie festival. It’s really hilarious! Yup, that was what the title was referring to. The film that was used to make the zombie movie.

Box Office

Super 8 defeated the X-Men...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sns-rt-us-boxofficetre7590ku-20110610,0,4134561.story

Super 8

It was either Dylan Dog or Super 8 and Super 8 won... Dylan Dog will have to wait until the weekend... Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams... should be really good, if not awesome...

Cancellations

The TV season is almost over... almost time for the summer TV season... and the cancellations have begun...

http://www.rickey.org/v-brothers-sisters-and-no-ordinary-family-canceled/

Box Office

First Class is at the top of the class...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/06/movie-projector-x-men-first-class-hangover-part-ii.html

Wonder Woman

The new Wonder Woman series would not see the light of day...

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/nbc-passes-on-wonder-woman-pilot--2972

Review - First Class

X-Men. Children of the Atom. Four movies have been made about them. Now comes a fifth movie. But this one is not a sequel. It’s a prequel. Which means the story is set earlier, before all three X-Movies and the Wolverine movie.

X-Men: First Class is the title. Referring to the first few mutants Charles Xavier took under his wing. Unfortunately, this is one of the many liberties the filmmakers take in this movie. The first class of mutants that Xavier taught were Jean Grey, Cyclops/Scott Summers, Hank McCoy/Beast, Bobby Drake/Iceman and Warren Worthington/Archangel (as pictured below). Only Beast shows up in this movie.

So the story goes like this. Erik Lensherr was a survivor of the Holocaust. His parents were murdered and he himself was tortured and experimented on. When he grew up, he sought revenge against his tormentor, who has now gone under the name Sebastian Shaw and is running the Hell Fire Club.

Charles Xavier was studying genetics and grew up with Raven Darkhome. Moira MacTaggert, CIA, is investigating a possible terrorist threat and chanced upon the Hell Fire Club’s mutants. So she sought Xavier’s help to understand the threat and also to make her superiors aware of the looming danger.

Sebastian Shaw has an agenda of getting Russia and America in a nuclear turmoil so that more mutations would develop faster and normal humans would be eradicated. It is up to Xavier and a bunch of young mutants under Xavier’s wing to stop a nuclear war from occurring. Meanwhile, Lensherr is tagging along to exact his vengeance upon Shaw, not caring about the imminent nuclear war.

The acting in this movie is not bad. At first I thought James MacAvoy could not possible embody Charles Xavier but he proved me wrong. Or was I just indifferent? Anyway, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr? Wow. Genius. He was really good. Not just because he did not wear underwear while wearing a track suit and you can kinda see his ‘weapon’, hehe. But he was actually awesome at portraying the vengeful and hurting Magneto.

Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar nominee for Winter’s Bone, has it easy with Raven / Mystique. She was not required to do much but just to be pretty and sometimes blue.

The other supporting characters were quite good as well. Rose Byrne was okay playing Moira MacTaggert, although Moira’s Scottish lilt completely disappeared. January Jones was perfect playing the White Queen, Emma Frost. She really looked the part. Although her diamond state was completely weird. It looked like she turned into a human tin foil instead of diamonds. But that’s not her fault.

Kevin Bacon was deliciously evil as Sebastian Shaw, without being overly creepy or overly gross or even overly campy. I was thinking that he was not as big and imposing as Shaw in the Saturday Morning cartoons, but it worked out nicely. Guess Bacon has a natural flair for playing a bad guy like he did in The River Wild.

Watching this movie as a regular layman, First Class is really awesome. It has action, hunks, babes, superpowers, drama, a bit of comedy, heroes and appropriately bad-ass villains.

Watching this movie as a comic book nerd? It is still awesome. Plenty of mutants and powers on display. Lots of pop culture reference, especially of the X-Men mythology and lore. They even have cameos by Rebecca Romijn and Hugh Jackman. Who wouldn’t wet their pants?

But then again, as a self-proclaimed comic book nerd, I did not like the liberties they took with the characters and the storylines. Maybe it’s just me. But I hated the second Transformers movie with a vengeance! The robots took a back seat and some of the more bad-ass robots were made lame and easily disposed off. What the…?!

Like the Phoenix storyline in the original trilogy… that was also a WTF moment for me. Guess this really can’t be helped because they needed to make the story cohesive and kinda foreshadow the original trilogy. But some things they could’ve not done. For example: Emma Frost’s diamond state. If I am not mistaken, she only got that secondary mutation after a trip to space where she was exposed to the same radiation that empowered the Fantastic Four.

First Class takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis and is not even close to when Emma Frost can turn into a walking diamond. But I guess only die-hard nerds would care about this stuff. I am sure the people who have not read the comics did not know/care about it. *shrugs*

For the comic book nerds, just check your knowledge and memory at the door and just enjoy the movie. I know I did, even when I forgot to check my brain at the door.

Finale - Smallville

The lowdown on the series finale of Smallville...

http://tv.yahoo.com/slideshow/714/photos/

Review - Kung Fu Panda 2

I have an issue with Jack Black. Not a major issue like hatred or anything. It’s just… Most of his movies are the same. It involves a man-child whose living a life under a rock until something happens that shake said life and the man-child needs to grow up and deal with the issues. Sometimes I think he is not really acting but just being himself. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. For the most part, I did enjoy some of his movies. Like School of Rock. And of course, Kung Fu Panda.

So of course, when Kung Fu Panda 2 comes out, I was excited to see it. The first Kung Fu Panda was quite a good movie. It had comedy, action, drama and lots of slapstick, courtesy of Po.

In the first movie, Po was just an ordinary panda that was working at his father’s noodle shop but has big dreams about being a kung fu master. He got his chance when he crashed a ceremony and was named the Dragon Warrior. Nobody believed he was actually the Dragon Warrior, until he defeated Shenlong, once in line for the title.

Now, Po is back with more awesomeness. This time, Lord Shen, a peacock gone mad, is hell bent on taking over the world with a new weapon that uses the technology of fireworks and metal and obliterating kung fu. Po and the Furious Five are called to put the kibosh on his plans.

This was a nice progression, storyline-wise, from the first movie to the second movie. Especially with the addition of Po’s muddled past. The Furious Five all have had their back stories told via the short animated film years back.

And they way they tie it to the current villain was quite nice too. Years ago, a soothsayer predicted that a warrior of black and white will stop Lord Shen. Lord Shen then did something about it, to stop the prophecy from coming to pass.

The voice acting was on top form, like in the first movie as well. Besides an all-star cast of Jack Black (Po), Angelina Jolie (Tigress), Lucy Liu (Viper), Jackie Chan (Monkey), Seth Rogen (Mantis), David Cross (Crane), Dustin Hoffman (Shifu), we now have Michelle Yeoh as the Soothsayer, Gary Oldman as Lord Shen, Danny McBride as the Wolf Boss, Dennis Haysbert as Master Ox, Jean-Claude Van Damme as Master Croc and Victor Garber as Master Rhino.

Like the first movie, this movie has comedy, action, drama and lots of slapstick. But as the curse of sequels go, The Kaboom of Doom could not really match Kung Fu Panda’s level.

However, I do find the part where Po needed rescuing from the Furious Five a lot a bit grating on the nerves. No, I am not talking about the group attack. Plenty of times, he needed to be saved by Tigress or someone. He’s supposed to be the Dragon Warrior. I get that his training was the shortest of all of them but it just seemed like he was relying too much on the others. Other than that, it’s a fun movie. :)