Review
Review: Clash of the Titans (2010) [Movie]
Posted By Jeff On April 26, 2010 @ 8:41 am
Movie: Clash of the Titans {2010)
Genre: Action, Fantasy
Rating: 5/10
To be honest, I was going into this movie with a lot of hope that it would be spectacular and it turned out to be craptacular instead. So close, but not what I wanted to see. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it was a bad movie, but I just felt a little ripped off.
As anybody who has read my reviews before would know, I’m a stickler for format. If there isn’t a solid plot, true character development or even any good special effects: You don’t have a good movie. This is the case for Clash of The Titans.
Though the plot wasn’t bad, it felt rushed. Though it was apparent that there was a plot line, many parts could have been expanded or explained better (or at all). There was many parts of the movie where there was missing information, or more so missing character interactions, that needed to occur to pull the scenes together. The way they laid it out, the characters knew the answer to everything before it happened, which makes me feel like I’m are watching actors.
The character development…well there wasn’t any. The relationships the characters had changed from one moment to the next without warning or reason, making me wonder if I fell asleep during part of it (which is quite likely at this point). This movie attempts to capture many aspects relating to the connections the characters have to one another, but the presentation simply isn’t even to justify the fact or make it believable. It would have been better off if they didn’t try at all.
Clash of The Titans was presented in “3D”, which was nothing but a waste of an extra $3, on top of the cost of the ticket prices. I noticed 1 scene where it came remotely close to being 3D, and even then it wasn’t very good. This is one of those movies where all the cool parts with monsters and action are shown in the commercials.
Conclusion: Wait for it to come out on DVD, rent if it you really have nothing else to watch. If you’re smart, you’ll wait until it shows up on TV for free instead, you’re not missing anything.
Review: Fan Boys [Movie]
Posted By Jeff On April 6, 2010 @ 9:35 am
Movie: Fan Boys (2008)
Genre: Comedy
Bored one night, I was surfing around looking for something good to watch and stumbled upon Fan Boys. This movie freaking a hilarious and I have no idea why. I also haven’t the faintest clue how I managed to miss this movie for over a year, it’s something I can see myself watching.
Short form summary is that 4 star wars fan boys / high school friends decide to take a road trip to the Skywalker Ranch to steal Star Wars: Episode 1 before it gets released in theaters. They do stupid shit along the way. This movie falls in the same category as Super Bad, Eurotrip, American Pie and anything good made by Kevin Smith: It’s funny just because it’s genuinely dumb and unrealistic, but you can see one of your friends doing it. A little spoiler for you all, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes make a short cameo in it. That should be reason enough to go see it.
I don’t want to recap too much of this movie, as the plot line itself is pretty standard. Instead, I’m going to just give some point forms that I found awesome, which do include spoilers.
- The have a van with an R2D2 head on it, a light speed button and the Leia/Han painting on the side.
- They make fun of Jar Jar Binks
- Comment on naming their hands Princess Leia.
- Constantly make fun of Trekkies.
- Rush is one of the greatest bands of all time.
- William Shatner mother fucker!
This movie was great, but could have been better. I’ve watched it 3 times, and I think I’m done.
Final Rating: 7.5/10
Movie: Role Models (Review)
Posted By Jeff On January 28, 2009 @ 9:04 am
Role Models is a good example of what a true comedy movie needs to be: Funny. I’m not exactly sure where this genre has been hiding the last year or so, but there has been an evil being trying to masquerade as one. It’s about time that Comedy return to slay the dull and Role Models is just the one to do it.
The plot of Role Models involves two friends, Danny (Paul Rudd) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott). Danny’s girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) breaks up with him, the guys break some laws and are assigned to community service. Their punishment was to take part in a mentoring program lead by Gayle Sweeny (Jane Lynch), ex crack addict and quite frankly pretty insane. Danny gets paired up with a role-playing knight of LAIRE named Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and Wheeler gets the joy of hanging out with the foul mouthed 10-year old nightmare that is Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson).
This movie comes off as a simply fun movie. The characters are well written and there is enough of a consistency of humorous parts that the movie never seems to settle down. Development of the character relationships flowed smoothly, without ever missing a beat that this movie is supposed to be funny (a rare thing lately). A good combination of banter between the characters lead this to it’s success, and a few shoots of Scott getting hit in the nuts didn’t hurt.
Though fairly new to the stage, Thompson and Mintz-Plasse (yes, he was McLovin’!) did a fantastic job and if nothing else may have even cast a shadow on the veteran acting skills of Scott, Raul and Lynch combined. I can only look forward to seeing some more greatness out of these two.
Overall, I was really impressed with this movie. Being that comedies are by far my favorite genre out there, it’s nice to see that there are actually still some people working in Hollywood that are willing to put some effort into making one solid movie instead of trying to squish it together with another one (ie romantic-comedy) to get a bigger audience. If you build it well, they will come. And did I mention they dressed up as KISS?
Final Score: 9/10 ‘Almost as good as seeing her whispering eye’.
Movie: Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Review)
Posted By Jeff On January 25, 2009 @ 9:02 am
Steve Carr’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop, starring King of Queens Kevin James and hottie Jayma Mays, comes off as a pretty funny movie in the trailer. Fair warning, it’s not.
The whole idea of this movie is that an overweight failure of a security guard is caught up in an organized crime in the mall and has to stop it on his own. Throw in a crush on a kiosk worker and low blood sugar and you have yourself a movie. Unfortunately, they forgot to include good writing with this story line, which leaves the movie with a hollow half-assed feel to it.
The acting itself really wasn’t that bad, but the characters just didn’t have enough substance to carry the movie. If they weren’t going to give us a hardcore decent fulfilling plot, at least give us some character background or slapstick humor. Given that these are the top two factors needed for a successful movie of these genre, it’s fair to say that the mark was missed on this feature.
All in all, Mall cop seems to fall short of being a comedy as I only found myself with one chuckle the entire course of the movie (which was also in the trailer, go figure). The only real entertaining thing that I found was that on an episode of King of Queens Kevin James was forced to shave his mustache because his wife said he “Looked like a motorcycle cop”. Oh how things repeat themselves.
Final score: 3/10 ‘Buy this from the dollar bin when it shows up at the dirt mall’.
Problogger: The Book (Review)
Posted By Jeff On January 5, 2009 @ 1:26 am
Recently while browsing my local Chapters book store I came across a small soft cover book, among all the ‘big bad books’ on programming, with a strangely familiar name:”ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
For those of you who are unaware, Problogger is one of the leading (if not the leading) blogs about blogging tips. The site is maintained by Darren Rowse, who is likely one of the best educated people on what needs to be done to get a blog off the ground and keep it there. With he updates daily, you can bet I’ve been a subscriber to his RSS for some time.
In this book, Darren (and co-writer Chris Garrett) go through the process of explaining how to set up a blog and make it work. They do a great job of setting forth introductory steps of choosing a topic (Niche), available platforms and how to write to your audience. Some of the more in depth topics that they go into are different kinds of advertising, networking and community building.
Though short (210 pages I believe) they pack it full of tons of information in an easy to read tone. I throughly enjoyed it and recommend it anybody looking to start out blogging, or even those just looking to do it better.
Movie: Street Kings (Review)
Posted By Jeff On December 31, 2008 @ 12:25 am
I went into this movie not actually knowing what movie it was, which is the best state ti be in for movie watching imo. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes into the movie that I realized ‘hey I think I saw a trailer for this’. Quick summary is saying that Tom (Reeves) is a detective who is top dog and kills people. He then gets caught in a weave of corrupted cops and scandals.
The plot annoyed me for the only reason that I went most of the movie feeling as though I was watching a sequel. There was a gap between the first scene and the second (which started the chain of events) that was so poorly and briefly explained that I had to pause it and think/make up what ‘might’ be the reason for this (that and to get banana bread). If there is going to be a linear plot, the inciting force has to be explained well. Aside from the initial gap, the rest of the movie had a decent flow to it.
I can’t say anything about the selection of actors, Reeves played his part well: Dumb and simple. With a supporting cast of Whitaker, Cedric the Entertainer, Mohr and Nolasco (Go Sucre!) it was well cast.
The only thing I would have liked to see is a little more character development. They noted on the fact that Tom was drinking a lot, but it had no significance to the plot. The same goes for his romance, no significance. If you’re going to try giving a character a life, give him a reason to have it or avoid it all together and throw in some more explosions.
Overall it wasn’t all bad for a movie about cops.
Final Score: 6/10
Movie: Twilight (Review)
Posted By Jeff On December 6, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
Movie: Twilight
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Thriller
To start off, I was going into this movie with big expectations since 2008 seems to be the year of the vampire. I wouldn’t consider this a good representation though.
A quick summary: Girl (Bella) moves to new town and becomes the new girl in high school. New Girl falls in love with outsider kid (Edward Collins) who is a vampire.New Girl and Vampire have strange relationship, girl almost gets killed by evil vampire. End.
The nitty-gritty that bothers me of this movie is not only the inconsistency within itself, but the fact that the attributes of these vampires seem to be lacking towards those that we commonly know. For example, these vampires do not sleep at all (aka no coffins). I can live with this I suppose, it doesn’t effect the plot. However, they also are able to survive sunlight. In fact, not only does it not harm them at all it makes them shiny. Worse off, the Collins’ family states they only drink animal blood and it is left at that. Well there goes the entire vampire aspect of these people.
The plot itself that annoys me is that for the first hour and twenty minutes of this movie you could replace the ‘vampire’ factor of Edward (the male love interest) with just a pale emo kid and it wouldn’t change the plot at all. There is no real vampire-human obstacles that they’re overcoming here, just a lot of him saying “I don’t know if I resist myself”. *yawn* Now at this 1h20m point, it does a complete 360 degree turn here and suddenly they’re being chased by an evil vampire (who was awkwardly placed in the story might I add) and they’re trying to kill Bella. So it was 1h20m of high school emo garbage then the final 30 minutes is a horribly cliche fight scene.
As an added bonus to this pathetic attempt of a movie, Edward is able to read minds. He can’t, however, read the mind of Bella. He also often refers to her as ‘the one’ or similar there of because she has a different scent from the rest of the humans. It might just be me, but I’m pretty sure I already saw this before…Oh yeah, on True Blood. Suki (the female on True Blood) has the different scent and she can read minds. She is also in love with a vampire named Bill. It looks to me like somebody stole somebody else’s idea and just mixed it up. I think I like True Blood better.
Final Summation: Avoid this movie, watch True Blood on HBO instead. If you don’t have HBO, run over your face with a lawn mower, it’s still more entertaining than this movie.
Score: 4/10
'cause Webnotes stick on me!
Posted By Jeff On November 19, 2008 @ 1:33 am
Now with invites and annotations!
Ever wish that you could have a cheat sheet for a webpage? Get through all that useless junk that the author wrote? I’m sure that most of my readers do. And thus comes Webnotes.
Webnotes is a new web-working tool designed at letting users add annotations and highlighting to websites. They combine two of my personal favorite things: Post-it notes and websites, it was just a matter of time. The utility is easy to use, just install the toolbar (Firefox plug-in FTW) and you’re set. There is a button to create a sticky note, button to highlight text and a button to share what you’ve done. It’s that easy.
Once you have that done, it’s easy to place sticky notes around. I know I’m going to have the bad habit of putting them on every site I visit (I have 29 of them in sight right now around my desk offline, yikes!). The good use for this is that you’ll be able to see a site, put your options on it then send it to your friend so they can see it how you see it. Here, check out I R Blogging with some annotations I put in (I may have put a few too many…).
Some uses for this that I came up with:
- Looking at somebody’s website and giving them pointers.
- Studying notes and highlighting the parts that would be important.
- Adding reminders for the next time you visit the site (like checking out a certain link that you know will be a time-sink)
- Being used as a bookmark when going through archives.
The only thing I can think of right now that this is missing is a social aspect of this. For example, if I could make my notes, send it to a friend then have them add some of their notes and send it back to me (displaying both sets of annotations) it would make it a great collaboration tool. Also, being able to select the color of sticky note would be pretty cool as well.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on a few invites (Thanks Ryan!), so for those of you interested in some just leave a comment to this post. Be sure to include your email address when filling out the comment form, I’ll be using it to know where to send it.
Movie: Hancock (Review)
Posted By Jeff On July 8, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
I just want to start by saying Will Smith, you suck. The movie started off good: a drunk asshole of a superhero. He played that really well, almost too well. But then he went to jail and became all goody-goody. Now before anything starts saying “Yes Jeff, but you knew that would happen” they just did a really bad job at it.
Actually, on second thought I’m not even going to bother writing a full review of this movie. The explanations that the movie gave for a lot of the stuff was just plain stupid. If it wasn’t for the drunk references at the beginning this movie would have been a total flop, instead of just bad.
Score: 4/10
Movie: Mr.Woodcock (Review)
Posted By Jeff On October 10, 2007 @ 10:24 am
Title: Mr.Woodcock
Genre: Comedy
I have to say before the movie even started I thought the movie was funny. I mean with a name like Woodcock and having a mind in the gutter how could you not? As for the movie itself Billy Bob Thornton continues to be a very entertaining man…and a total dick (thus Woodcock becomes even funnier!). Combine that with Seann William Scott (Stifler from American Pie <3) and this movie is pure gold. This is the story of an asshole gym teacher and a kid who grows up and writes a book about self-esteem and ‘letting go’ of the past then comes back to find out that the same gym teacher is back home nailing his mom. That’s just good writing.
This is the kind of movies that true comedy lovers live for, without having to sit through the “romantic-” parts of the movie. This is right up there with Badder Santa, and is great.
Final: 9/10 “You must like getting spanked, Farley. I guess it runs in the family”
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