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December 30, 2004
Blade: Trinity
Wesley Snipes .... Blade
Kris Kristofferson .... Abraham Whistler
Dominic Purcell .... Drake
Jessica Biel .... Abigail Whistler
Ryan Reynolds .... Hannibal King
Natasha Lyonne .... Sommerfield
Haili Page .... Zoe
Patton Oswalt .... Hedges
Ron Selmour .... Dex
Christopher Heyerdahl .... Caulder
Parker Posey .... Danica Talos
Mark Berry .... Chief Martin Vreede
John Michael Higgins .... Dr. Edgar Vance
Callum Keith Rennie .... Asher Talos
Paul Michael Levesque .... Jarko Grimwood (as Triple H)
Remember when Wesley Snipes was an actor and not an action star? Remember movies such as Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, New Jack City? Hell, even Minor League and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar?
Those were great movies that showcased the acting chops of Mr. Snipes. But then he did a couple of action movies and got a taste for it and then did a couple more and it quickly snowballed from there.
Now, I will concede that some of his action movies are pretty good. I mean, I enjoyed Passenger 57 and Demolition Man. I even enjoyed the first Blade movie.
But Blade 2 was crap and so was Blade: Trinity. The only thing stopping this movie from getting 5 pitchforks was the fact that the special effects and fight scenes were pretty quick ass.
Bad acting abounds in this movie. It's like Wesley Snipes is channelling William Shatner, Ahnuld, and his Demolition Man co-star Stallone all at the same time. And while Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds are very good looking, their acting also leaves something to be desired.
The plot is pretty thin and the bad guys aren't really so creepy or evil. Even the Big Bad is not so bad. The creepies in Blade 2 were worse than this guy.
I'd say, wait for the DVD to come out, but don't expect too much.
Posted by xinh at 03:05 AM
December 28, 2004
Ocean's Twelve
Brad Pitt .... Rusty Ryan
George Clooney .... Danny Ocean
Casey Affleck .... Virgil Malloy
Scott Caan .... Turk Malloy
Shaobo Qin .... Yen
Bernie Mac .... Frank Catton
Don Cheadle .... Basher Tarr
Matt Damon .... Linus Caldwell
Carl Reiner .... Saul Bloom
Eddie Jemison .... Livingston Dell
Elliott Gould .... Reuben Tishkoff
Catherine Zeta-Jones .... Isabel Lahiri
Julia Roberts .... Tess Ocean
Andy Garcia .... Terry Benedict
Robbie Coltrane .... Matsui
Vincent Cassel .... François Toulour
Eddie Izzard .... Roman Nagel
Albert Finney .... La Marque (uncredited)
Topher Grace .... Himself (uncredited)
Bruce Willis .... Himself (uncredited)
First, let me get the "2 pitchfork" issues out of the way.
The whole "celebrities playing themselves" schtick was dumb. I realize that it was integral to the plot but it was still dumb.
Also, because I had seen the first movie and knew to expect some twists and turns, I wasn't as surprised by some stuff and that sort of took the enjoyment out of it. In fact, I actually figured out some stuff before it happened.
And the ending was just a big set up for another sequel. Can't Hollywood leave well enough alone?
Now, having said that, let me tell you, I enjoyed this movie. It brought out the funny many times (it even made my mom laugh out loud and she rarely does that). The plot was sharp, the dialogue snappy, all the in-jokes (like Brad Pitt's character always eating) were there, and the pacing was great. And the movie passed my dad's test: not once did he get up to go to the restroom during the movie. He actually waited until it was over. That's how into it he was.
I don't want to say more since I don't want to give anything away but I recommend seeing this movie maybe at a matinee. You could wait for it to come on video, but I think it's worth a trip to the theatre.
Posted by xinh at 03:11 PM
December 25, 2004
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Digital Fortress is a code. A disgruntled ex-NSA employee unleashes it on the NSA's super decoder computer and it's up to the heroine, Susan Fletcher, to figure out how to stop it.
The idea of this book is a good one. The right to privacy versus the right of the government to be able to protect its citizens is a great debate. Unfortunately, this book doesn't execute the idea all that well.
The characters are all a bit too perfect.
Susan is not only brilliant, she's beautiful. All the men love her. She can figure out almost any code or puzzle before anyone else (except at the end, when it was convienent for someone else to remind her of something).
Susan's boyfriend, David, is a professor who speaks 5 different languages. He becomes "super secret agent man" overnight and gets to use his eidetic memory to help the NSA solve the code.
The bad guy is a trained killer yet he manages to get outmaneuvered by a Spanish professor.
The other bad guy isn't really a bad guy, he just believes in his cause and wants to teach the government a lesson.
When they're all sitting around at the end trying to figure out the pass key to the code (which the "bad guy" gave to them), I wanted to scream because I understood the clue the minute I read it, yet the characters were all stumped. A roomful of genius IQ people and they couldn't get it? Whatever.
The only thing that I did like about this book was the explanation of a phrase David used to sign all his notes to Susan (but even that irk me a bit). Susan would beg him to explain it and he wouldn't, telling her "You're the cryptologist, you figure it out" but she never did.
Ready? The phrase was "without wax." Like he would send her flowers and say, "Susan, I love you. Without wax, David."
Here's the explanation:
During the Renaissance, Spanish sculptors who made mistakes while carving expensive marble often patched their flaws with cera--"wax." A statue that had no flaws and required no patching wax was hailed as a sculpture sin cera--"without wax." The phrase eventually came to mean anything honest or true. The English word "sincere" came from the Spanish sin cera.
Ok. That's cute, but I ask you, how on earth would she be able to figure that out? She was a cryptographer, not an etymologist. She breaks codes, she doesn't study the origin of words.
Posted by xinh at 09:11 PM
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore
The Stupidest Angel is Archangel Raziel, an angel who gets a special assignment: He gets to grant one child a very special Christmas miracle. Only Raziel isn't the brightest angel in Heaven (he is a blonde after all) and he manages to mess up the miracle.
An easy read (I was done in 2 hours), this book is funny and entertaining. It's not your typical Christmas Miracle story. In fact, it's far from it.
Christopher Moore uses several characters from his other books and puts them all into one setting for this Holiday horror story but you don't need to have read those books in order to understand this one.
My only problem with this book is that some of the characters are a bit too kooky and their oddities take away from the story a bit.
Posted by xinh at 08:23 PM
December 21, 2004
The Time Traveller's Wife
This is the story of Clare and Henry. Clare is an artist and Henry is her husband, a librarian who will, in the future, be diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder. It's a genetic disorder that misplaces time in certain people, whisking them in and out of different times in their lives.
But now, in the present, Henry has this problem and no one knows about it except Clare and a few friends who've happened to stumble upon it.
The narrative, told from the point of view of Clare and Henry at various ages in their lives, seems a bit disjointed but it works because the whole idea of going back and forward in time within your own lifetime is disjointed.
The characters of Clare and Henry are very 3 dimensional. Things are not always rosy and happy between them. Clare tries to be understanding, but not having ever experienced the time displacement, sometimes feels alienated and alone. Henry, battling his own childhood demons, loves Clare almost too much, leaning on her too much when he can't handle things and expecting her to always be there for him.
While the book seems somewhat Sci-Fi in nature (I mean, come on, time travel? That screams science fiction), it is at heart a story about two people who love each other very much and are trying to make their lives as normal as possible.
Very poignant and sad at times, but also funny and happy as well, this is an easy and fast book to read (I read it in about 4 hours).
Posted by xinh at 04:12 AM
December 05, 2004
The Grudge
I love scary movies. Love them. Love them love them love them.
And I like the type that get into your head and mess about with the stringy bits in your psyche and make you all paranoid.
If this is your cup of tea, then The Grudge is definately for you.
However, this movie spends so much time scaring that it doesn't take the time to develop any of the characters.
Poor Sarah Michelle Gellar. She has nothing to do in this film but look pretty.
Great horror movies start off with one scene that grabs your heart, rips it out of your chest and stomps on it. While you're left gasping for air, it continues on, in a 'Oh I'm a nice movie, really' charade and lulls you back into that false sense of security.
If you've seen The Others, then you know what I'm talking about.
The Grudge also starts off this way. One minute you're riding along on your bicycle with the citizens of Tokyo, enjoying the view, the hustle and bustle of every day life, singing 'Oh what a beautiful moooooorrrrrniiiiiiiing!' and then
BAM!
...you get the wake up call, with the prim and proper young man on the other end of the phone who says, 'Good morning. This is your wake up call. You are watching a scary movie. Thank you. Good bye.'
Love it love it love it.
I had a bit of a hard time getting into this movie, simply becuase there were some very rude, obnoxious pre-pre-adolescents giggling and laughing in one of the front rows.
I must say that overall, I liked the movie. Moreso becuase I liked what it did to my head (in that psychological, 'Someone's after me!' sort of way).
So, the movie accomplished goal #1: Scare.
The movie could have been a bit better, I think, if the characters had been developed a bit more. It's a rather short film (or at least I thought so at the time), so I would tend to think that a bit more character development could have been squeezed in here and there.
Mainly, you get Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar, she's so pretty) and her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr, he's so cute) having just moved (I think) to Tokyo. I must say that for not having been in Tokyo for very long (3 months, was it?) SMG sure does know a lot of Japanese.
This is exactly what I'm talking about, as far as development goes: I have no idea why they're there (presumeably to attend uni) and for how long they've been there (I think 3 months).
If we had had a bit more background on these two, I might have felt a little more sympathy for Doug (he's so cute).
But mainly, what you get is a ghost story...traditional Japanese style, and lemme tell ya, I haven't seen The Ring yet, but the Japanese ghost story really knocks your socks off. They take it to that other level....in American movies, you kick some ass (yeah!), but in the Japanese, well...you're stuck with whatever it is.
Congratulations: You're doomed.
Love it love it love it.
But without characters, it's a bit flat. Good story, good plotline, helluva way to scare the shit out of some folks, but where, oh where did Buffy go?
Oh. There she is. Looking:
- pretty scared
- pretty happy
- pretty cool
- pretty pissed off
- pretty upset
- just damn pretty
Now, I thought: 'Oooo...SMG (she's so pretty), she'll come in and kick some ass and save the day. She's battled before. That women knows kung fu and karate and God knows what else. Those ghosties don't stand a chance!'
Hm.
They might have saved a few pennies and just gotten a life-sized cardboard cutout of SMG (she's so pretty) and attached it to a small person and walked it around the set.
Ok, yeah, that's harsh. But I was really expecting a lot here.
At any rate, the ghosties did a good job with The Scare Factor. Bill Pullman makes an appearance (and made me go 'awww....Lone Star...what are you doing in Japan? *kissy kissy noises*). SMG (she's so pretty) does as best she can with very little in the way of lines.
If you want scare, then see it.
But I will warn you...when it says 'Scary!' on the box, it means, 'Jam packed full of scary!'.
Sleeping with the lights on won't help.
That chain lock on your door? Nope.
Even getting into bed and snuggling under you duvet won't save you.
Oh! And don't get on the phone either.
Congratulations: You're doomed.
Posted by calima at 01:55 PM
December 02, 2004
Wilde
(1997)
Stephen Fry .... Oscar Wilde
Jude Law .... Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas
Vanessa Redgrave .... Lady Speranza Wilde
Jennifer Ehle .... Constance Lloyd Wilde
Gemma Jones .... Lady Queensberry
Judy Parfitt .... Lady Mount-Temple
Michael Sheen .... Robbie Ross
Zoë Wanamaker .... Ada Leverson
Tom Wilkinson .... Marquis of Queensberry
Ioan Gruffudd .... John Gray
Fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde's life.
Superb acting!
Stephen Fry is excellent (as usual) as Wilde. He is able to show both the tenderness and regret that Wilde had in his double life.
Jude Law shines as the petulant but desperate for affection Lord Douglas.
The only person who wasn't that great, oddly enough, was Tom Wilkinson. Not because he's not a great actor but because his character is only talked about so a picture is painted but then when he shows up, he's not nearly as reprehensible as he's made to seem.
The pacing and plot of the movie flowed beautifully. Never once did I look at the dispaly and think "Gah. [# of minutes] to go?" And not once was I confused or finding plot holes.
The best part of the movie was the use of Wilde's short story The Selfish Giant throughout the movie as a compliment to the movie itself.
Rent this movie if you get a chance.
Posted by xinh at 01:35 AM