A Christmas Carol was wonderful. I’ve always been partial to the older version that comes on TV each Christmas season, but this is definitely right up there as well. It’s the first time I’ve had to separate my kids based on the fact that some could handle the scariness and some I knew could not. If you’re thinking of taking your kids, I’d draw the line somewhere above 4 years old and probably above 6 (though my 6 year old made it through with just a couple heart attacks).

I’ve never read the book, but this movie well reflects the other version a with a few differences. The Ghost of Christmas is a flame instead of a woman. Jim Carrey does four different voices and they are so different you’ll have difficulty figuring out which ones they are without the cast list in the credits. The motion capture animation is usually really good with the notable exception of Scrooge’s nephew whose mouth moves in odd ways and who gestures in odd ways. He doesn’t have a big part, so it’s no a big deal.

I”d recommend watching this movie and even adding it to the collection once it comes out on DVD (or blue ray – whichever).

There’s nothing quite as much fun as making movies. Making a movie in only 48 hours compresses the fun into one sleepless, exhausting weekend. It was our first experience with this kind of competition, and we certainly learned a lot. Hopefully, we can give it a go the next time the competition comes up and use what we learned this time to make an even better mini-flick.

The film genre we picked was film noir. That is a highly-stylized, crime drama genre most popular in the 40′s and 50′s that usually featured high contrast shots, strange camera angles, a femme fatale, and a detective.

I squirmed in my seat and laughed at the same time. There’s nothing like seeing a guy in a neon blue speedo rythmically shove their crotch into another person’s face. So Couples Retreat turned out to be much better than I thought it would be going in. I’d heard that it was depressing but it’s actually relatively honest and more polite than you might expect. I liked the character interaction even if Jason Bateman’s character annoyed the heck out of me.

What I thought was going to be a waste of time but better than seeing a horror flick ended up being a movie I might actually see again. Call it the sleeper hit of the early fall.

GI Joe.
hmmmmmm
What to say about GI Joe…..

Did I like it? I don’t know.
Would I recommend it? I don’t know.
Did I watch it? Yes, of course I did or why would I be asking those other questions of myself.

Many people want to compare GI Joe and Transformers but they’re really two different animals. GI Joe is all about reality (I’m sure the government has those pulse cannons hidden away somewhere) but Transformers are about unrealistic things. I could believe aliens, but alien robots are obviously a stretch.

I could try to compare them but really all I can come up with is that Transformers is better because things blow up. In GI Joe, they just break. They must have gone through 80 million tons of glass. Car windows and building windows and some places were decorated with glass that broke as well. Magically, no one is seriously injured by the stuff but let’s ignore that for a moment.

Let’s focus on the fact that I think I didn’t like the movie because of all that breaking glass. I got sick of seeing it. And there were no shards or dagger shaped pieces. It all broke into really tiny pieces. What happened to go ol’ fashioned impaling on a piece of glass – if it happened I missed it.

I guess I must ruefully admit that no I didn’t like it and that no, I wouldn’t reccommend it and it’s all because of the glass.

I’m Harry the sixth I am! Harry the sixth I am, I am!

Yes, I liked the movie.  Our Lawful Good main character and his fellow Lawful Good comrads once again take on the forces of Chaotic Evil and manage to come out ahead.  None of us doubted that they would but you never know – “Cheaper By the Dozen” the movie doesn’t go quite like I remember it in the book.

In the run up to the release for this movie, I kept hearing Daniel Radcliff talking in interviews about how much better everyone’s acting had become.  Boy was he right!  But not only that – the scoring is better, the script is better and the special effects are better.  The score was helped by the fact that there were some tender moments in the movie that deserved subtler music which helped change the pace from previous movies that just required epic loud music or abject tragedy music.

So am I recommending this movie?  Of course – it’s good!

Although, I think I would have even if it stank.

After many years of sidetracks and backtracks, the producers of LIFE ROOM (us) have finally finished the project. It is available on DVD to the masses. Click here to buy your copy.

An infection is quickly spreading around the world. It causes the recently deceased to rise and attack the living. Even though the infection seemed to be initially limited to Miami, it is quickly spreading to cities worldwide.

Five strangers in Phoenix find themselves trapped at a church with the infected outside. They’ve all lost friends and family to the infected, but now they have to survive the night in the LIFE ROOM.

This was a fun project at many points, but equally frustrating and difficult in many others. I am so very appreciative to all of my friends and the people that I met during this project for all of the time and effort that they put in to make this movie a reality. So many people came down to help out, just to be in a zombie movie.

Parts of the project didn’t end up as planned, but we were a small and flexible team that adapted to the many hurdles thrown our way. As a whole, I am pleased with the finished project. There are parts that I think are disturbing or horrifying. There are other parts that I think speak to larger themes in society. But most of all it’s a fun zombie flick done on the cheap.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy the film.

With the summer releases kind of winding down, I still find there’s one that I’m looking forward to. As an adult, I can’t admit to certain movies (harry potter) being on my list. But as a child of the ’80s I’m allowed to say that GI Joe better be good.

It was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid but the only character my flawed memory can remember is Lady Jane. I guess I just thought it was cool that a girl could be in the army. (Insert women’s lib diatribe here)

I took the kids to see Ice Age 3. It’s the first time I’ve taken 3 of them at once but all went well and they really seemed to enjoy themselves.

Is there anybody else out there that wishes Manny weren’t such a wuss? Where did the tortured but righteous mammoth from the original Ice Age go? Why does he freak out about the birth? He’s been through this before presumably (referencing the very touching scene from the original in which a baby and momma mammoth are killed by humans in the first one and Manny is clearly effected).

Diego is also a lot more angsty than I prefer for his character.

Over all I would still see this one again before I saw any horror flick so it wasn’t a waste of money.

Everybody, say it with me:

I vow (I vow)
From this day forward (From this day forward)
That I will never (That I will never)
Ever (Ever)
EVER (EVER)
See another Michael Bay movie, no matter how much I think that I might like it, or how cool it might look in the trailer, or how much someone else says, “Aww, come on”, or I might think that THIS time he’ll make a good movie that makes sense and isn’t all just one big action scene explosion of not making any bit of damned sense. (…bit of damned sense.)

If you had the misfortune to actually watch the Transformers sequel before someone warned you off of it, I sympathize and empathize. Did any single scene or word of dialogue or plot point make any single bit of sense? How did the government convince the world that the giant fighting robots from the first movie didn’t happen? Why couldn’t the Cube fragment revive Optimus? Why do the soldiers constantly fire small arms at the Decepticons when they never, ever cause any damage? Why wasn’t the rail gun used against the robots more than once when one shot kills the biggest robot of them all? Come on. I can accept the premise of giant alien robots fighting on Earth, but I can’t accept so many parts of this movie.

I rate this movie as Chaotic Evil. It is both random and bad.

Boo you, Michael Bay.

Boo you, sir.

I suppose that seeing The Taking of Pelham 123 wasn’t a total waste of time. The first half was good but the second half and the ending itself didn’t make much sense to me. The main character starts making decisions that I couldn’t figure out.

I wish Denzel Washington had found a more complete role. I haven’t seen him in anything for awhile. IMDB doesn’t have him in any roles last year which is a darn shame for such a wonderful actor. If you’ve ever seen ‘Glory’ or ‘Philadelphia’ you know what I’m talking about and you are probably as desperate as I am it see him in roles like those again.

In this movie, his character is likable enough. He isn’t weak or pathetic but he makes REALLY strange decisions over the course of about 2 hours in which the movie takes place.

John Travolta is the other big name in the movie and he does a good job playing a wacko. His performance reminded me of his role in ‘Face Off’ which I greatly enjoyed but somehow this wasn’t as riveting

Maybe I was just in a bad mood when I saw it. I think I should have picked a comedy instead.

Although I’ve seen this movie discounted as being formulaic (and it is) it’s a good formula and it is well used here. Since the time of ‘Speed’, I’ve been a fan of Sandra Bullock as a romantic lead and in this movie, she does her usual good job. She manages to turn herself from a woman thoroughly disliked by the audience (after all who could like a person who is mean to Ryan Reynolds with that beautiful baby face of his) to one who wins our hearts and makes us hope she gets her guy.

There is one particularly strange scene in which Betty White tries out some sort of Alaskan ritual that I think they could have left out and the movie would have worked just as well. The cast also includes Craig Nelson from ‘Coach’ and Mary Steenburgen (I know her best as the mom on ‘Joan of Arcadia’ but I hear she’s had some other roles in her time).

All in all I definitely recommend this movie as a pick me up kind of flick (which is what it did for me the day I watched it).

“The Princess Bride” is an excellent movie. It’s almost the perfect combination of romance, action, and comedy. The cast is perfect, the characters memorable, and the movie quotable. I was under the impression that every girl in the world loved this movie.

I’ve been proven wrong.

A girl I work with absolutely hates this movie. She despises it.

I though that was bad enough.

I also work with another girl that had never seen it before. After lending her my copy, she came back to say, meh? Really!

I guess there’s no accounting for taste and that nothing’s a sure thing.

Another worthy effort from my favorite movie making machine, Pixar!

I really never thought that talking dogs could be so funny but I nearly ripped a gasket when I heard one dog talking like Alvin of chipmunk fame. Unfortunately, my kids didn’t get the joke so it was just me laughing really hard at an otherwise half decent joke.

This particular venture had a couple heart wrenching moments but I resolved not to cry and actually managed not to (can’t scare the kids too much you know).

As usual there was a wonderful short at the beginning that drew several laughs and altogether this was a very nice film to watch. Of the 11 Pixar films out so far, I would put this one somewhere in the middle.

I can actually make a connection between these two movies and many of you have probably already seen it. If you have then I certainly hope you saw Terminator first because I found that watching Star Trek first detracted from the Terminator experience.

Chekov is John Connor’s DAD?! All I could think while I watched the guy in Terminator is that at any second his Russian accent will pop through and he’ll start muttering “wicktor, wicktor” as his password into someplace. I think Star Trek should have just dumped the character all together (I’ve never been his biggest fan) but they should certainly have warned us if they were going to use the same actor so that I could watch the movies in a better order.

On the up side, Star Trek turns out not to be horrible (thank you Simon Pegg) and Terminator turns out to be too packed with action for us to wonder about all the time loop problems associated with the story line.

As long as you watch Terminator first you shouldn’t have any problems with these movies.

Great news for the Mohave!

Elizabeth Shue will be starring in the newest remake of a 70′s horror classic. (Emphasis on the ’70′s’, and not so much on the ‘horror’ or ‘classic’). Piranha 3D will be filmed next month right here in Lake Havasu City.

Radio and newspaper articles have recently announced calls for extras to participate in the movie. The released information so far says that they’re looking for 1000-2000 18-25 year-old’s to come down to the lake and pretend that they’re drunk and on spring break. Cool!

The movie is supposed to be about an ancient super-piranha (or probably a lot of ancient super-piranhas) that are released from below the lake by an earthquake. (What have they been doing living underneath a recently-created man-made lake for millions of years? Good question!)

The sequel to the original ‘Piranha’ was directed by a then-unknown James Cameron. Everybody’s got to start somewhere, huh? Betcha the key grip from ‘Piranha 2′ didn’t expect the director he was working for to go on to make the highest-grossing movie of all time.

(Did I use way to many dashes in this article?) -

After a couple of years of constant waiting by every comic-book geek in the world, the ultimate comic-book movie was finally released. Watchmen isn’t the ultimate comic-book in general popularity or in sales but is a contender among the fans of comic b00ks, the people that actually go to comic book stores on a regular basis instead of relying on Barnes & Noble for their graphic novels.

Watchmen picks up directly where 300 left off in terms of style and visually stunning slo-mo scenes. A solid cast without any superstars ensures that there are no strange distractions (like Brad Pitt as Dr. Manhattan; too weird). The opening montage stretches the movie to be a little longer but also serves to establish the alternative reality that we’re about to spend 165 minutes in.

Although filled with the occasional over-the-top sex and violence, Watchmen is an entertaining, yet very different superhero film that explores what vigilantes dressing in costumes without supernatural powers might evolve into. There are no Lawful Good Superman characters. Each character brings his and her own problems, neuroses, and issues with them. Some are driven mad, others are driven to despair. It is Rorschach that falls permanantly into his masked persona. While the Scarecrow demands his mask in the Batman movie, it is Rorschach who freaks out without his alter ego.

The dilemnas that the characters face at the end of the story are the most interesting part of the movie. Can you truly justify the murder of millions of people? Do the ends justify the means? In the context of this movie, it is ironically the fictionalized versions of real people that are the most cartoonish. Both Richard Nixon and Lee Iacocca among others make appearances in the film. With these super villians running the country, industry, and the world, the extreme actions that the Watchmen take can be justified. But is the case in the real world?

If the general populace of the world chooses to make the most evil and destructive among us into our world leaders, than the only was to save the people of the world from ourselves  is to force us all to get along. The creators of this story seem to have a very low view of people in general and the leaders that we elect. The story suggests that it is inevitable that we will destroy ourselves through war, pollution, or nuclear devastation. Therefore, killing a few million innocents to force the rest of us to unite against a common foe is a justifiable plan to save us all. After all, it’s just a few million of the same

The problem, of course, is that our leaders are not as evil and cartoonish as they are portrayed in this alternate universe. Despite the constant and overwhelming exaggeration of the threat of nuclear war in the 1980′s, Reagan’s policies did not result in the inevitable confrontation that the elite predicted, but in the end of the Cold War and the peaceful destruction of the Soviet Union. The doom and gloom of the elite prognosticators is never as bad as they say, and the conservative and liberal leaders of the world are rarely as bad as their opponents would like to make them.

The idea of destroying cities around the world to unite the world in peace may appeal to some self-appointed elite of society but is a terrible evil when considered for the real world.