Movie Review Time

I recently watched Warrior, starring Tom Hardy and Joel somethingsomethington. It was probably one of the best movies I’ve watched in the past year. It was so good that I went all over the internet reading about it, and found it compared to “The Fighter”, another movie featuring two brothers and ass-kicking.

So then I watched that. The Fighter has Mark Wahlberg and Skinny Batman in a more realistic movie, with less emphasis on the actual fighting and more emphasis on the backstory about their family and stuff.

I’m not sure if I like these movies so much because I’m male. *cue “that’s such a stereotype, women watch macho movies too!”*

I mean, I loved Cinderella Man too. It’s like the magical formula to please my movie sensibilities is a fighting flick with just enough “story” in it to not be Mortal Kombat in movie form. I’ve seen Tekken, and some other fighter movie about convicts slugging it out that I can’t even remember the name of, but they didn’t really make much of an impact.

Either way, watch these movies! Unless you’re the kind of person who only watches movies that synchronize your menses with the rest of your sorority sisters. Warrior is the kind of movie that will punch your uterus in the face and make it question its existence. There might also be a scene where Joel professes his love for Tom, whilst they’re wrangling around on the ground half naked, but you’re sufficiently distracted by the soundtrack by then.

Hey Bruh

Disarray at The Grand

So me and a friend who might have been Himal walk into the Cinnamon Grand. Use the entrance from the side, go in through the parking lot and come up through Cheers. Coffee Stop. Ahh.

Coffee Stop is yet another place where people who like spending ridiculous amounts on beverages go. This particular establishment, in the lobby of a hotel, is slightly less expensive than most of it’s siblings, while still costing enough to make you question why you’re there. I order lime juice.

Verily, I live the high life.

Friend orders some coffee concoction which looks like it was designed by Picasso. And executed by someone with an epileptic fit. The waiter grins, cheshire cat like. I don’t like cats.

We are seated, and start discussing what the true nature of the Statue of Liberty is. In the distance, a doorman scowls and picks up a walkie talkie device. The lobby is full of people. It is half full of white people. And a smattering of brown people from other countries too, but who cares about them?

In the discussion, it is suggested that the Statue of Liberty was really a Trojan Horse. Dismissive laughter emanates from a mouth hole. Dismissive. Somewhere below, a manager places the earpiece of his phone back on it’s cradle. He sighs.

After a thorough inspection of his spectacles, mostly because he could see his secretary’s legs in the reflection, he gets up and heads to the stairs.

It is discussed that Lady Liberty really is a Trojan Horse. Except the French forgot to build an exit for the troops. It moves on to whether it was Idle Hands that made God create the universe.

Before blasphemy could be committed, and scripture quoted, the manager walks up to us.

“Dear Sir your shorts are below regulation length and your shoes are below regulation coverage percentage.”

I stare at The Friend. Shorts and slippers. “Sir I am very sorry but I must ask you to leave, as the guests have complained that their children have been scarred by your hairy legs”, he continues.

“I must object my dear fellow, as I am yet to notice a soul even glancing in our direction.”

“Sir the gentleman next to you is wearing a gas mask and it certainly is not because he’s preparing for the holocaust.”

I look at TF’s feet. Egad. We stand up.” The man doth protest”. Slow motion. We push the manager back. The Friend kicks him in the midriff. He shouts,

“THIS. IS. BATAAAAAA!”

We bolt. Two guards rush through the guests, who have by now surrounded the scene and were waving and clapping in glee, like sausage dogs watching a movie about hot dogs. It was grotesque. We push through the crowd and end up in a large room with a raised section in the middle, corridor-like paths around it. There are orbs hanging from the ceiling. The orbs descend, and open up like flowers. Ninjas in white track suits step out, sharpening their blades on their teeth.

We stand there frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding 138. We turn to run back the way we came, and hear the sound of something breaking through the far wall. It’s a 138. We stick our hands out as it runs over the ninjas like so many vegetarians being mowed over by the knowledge that they’re eating the very environment we’re trying to save. We get on.

We have no money. Alas, we are kicked out of the moving bus, unable to reason with the conductor due to our failure to look him in the eyes while we pleaded, thanks to his eyes burning so bright with rage it made our eyeballs see black dots everywhere. As my feet tumble off the footboard, everything goes black.

And we find ourselves on a platform, apparently on some scaffolding maybe 40 feet tall. It’s dark around, salty. Windy. The scaffolding wobbles. The Motocross. Trail bike engines. The commentator. Galle Face!

“Let’s give a big hand to the riders and their big gloves here today shall we? Come on!” goes the commentator’s voice. “We are truly honoured to have you here today”. If that’s not an inferiority complex, I don’t know what is. What is it with Sri Lankans and making our country seem like that desperate kid in school who’d be worshiping the ground his current crush walks on and says “Thank you” each time she talks to him? I am disappoint.

The platform wobbles again and we look down. The ninjas are back, and are climbing the sides of the scaffolding. Quite inefficiently, as a matter of fact. They shake it so much a rapper would be proud to call them his bitches. The tower of scaffolding starts to fall over, and we tumble into the crowd. Black again.

I wake up in my bed. Get out of bed, put on my slippers, slip on the patch of water outside the bathroom door and land on my posterior near the exit to my room. Get up again, get online. IM friend.

“Dude, I just had the weirdest dream”

“Me too!”

“You saw the same thing?! DUDE! Inception! Movie!”

“Uh, what did you see?”

“Coffee stop, ninjas, motocross”

“Oh. *phew*. It’s not dude. Like the movie. I dreamed something completely different.”

—————–

And most people would. I’m surprised Inception didn’t have the creepiest things from each person’s mind in it. I mean, last time I dreamed, I came out of it feeling like I was about to be chased by a mob of angry villagers. Brilliant movie though.

—————–

Update/Note: None of this ever happened. We didn’t even go to Coffee Stop after the motocross thing and I doubt there are ninjas there either.

THe Wolfman: First Impressions

Fist of all, a note. This theme makes all post titles lowercase. I find this displeasing.

I watched approximately 30 minutes of The Wolfman this morning while eating breakfast. At first I was taken aback by the same hollywood rulebook stupidity displayed by the first character you see. Wandering off into a forest at night? In the mist? That’s just asking for a were-something to attack. A were-shark. A were-weasel! Those things are vicious!

But then I kind of warmed to it when I saw Anthony Hopkins. He wouldn’t turn up in a completely crappy movie would he? But then he turns out to be always dressed like a Royal Bengal Tiger going to a fancy dress ball. On top of that, we have the actual werewolf. Feared by all! Terrorizing your villages and snatching your children. The ultimate predator; the wolf with opposable thumbs!But then you see its face and you’re left rolling on the floor laughing your fake fur off. Teen wolf looked more intimidating. Even his opposable thumbs are rendered useless by nails which look like they’re some creepy old hobo lady’s. I mean, how does he walk around with those? His front paws would keep clinging to the ground when he runs.

Anyway, I shall be watching the rest of it later. Shall report if it is anything remarkable.

Also, watch Kick-Ass! It is brilliant. So is the soundtrack.

Wanting to Hit People

Was at a dog/people fashion show thing at odel yesterday. I was dragged there by indigenous-to-cricket-matches-music-boy because he wanted to see dogs in skirts.

Participants included @pavithri and the meant to be there-ness of Sabby. She said she would be there but instead went home like an old lady after completely forgetting the thing. Papareboy and his head of… hair was there too. Hisham unsuccessfully tried to do a long distance funny over twitter but failed, going all emo at it’s failure. He never was very good at the humor thing.

While at odel I ran into all kinds of people, those who went “…show everrrr” and the kind who go “st.fallen is my idol”. That’s the person I wanted to hit. I don’t know why, maybe I’m the designated terminator of all weaker beings. That skinny, hair over the eyes look had me clenching my fists for some reason. Hunching didn’t help either. You better have good posture around me or I’ll give you a wedgie. That oughta straighten your prematurely bendy spine.

–

Watched Angels and Demons too. It was pretty generic. The usual Dan Brown crap spoon fed to millions of seemingly adoring fans. It’s all the same for crying out loud! More or less all the books have some dude just suspicious enough to be bad, who turns out to be a good guy, some goodie two-shoes who turns out to be the bad guy, and Dr. Robert Douchebag Langdon. You’re a glorified crossword editor, not John Wayne. Then there’s the mandatory hot brunette who comes along with him for reasons on par with “My pencil might need sharpening, I need someone to carry a blade”. Tool. And I don’t mean like a screwdriver.

Big Robot Balls

Watched Transformers on Sunday. Tagging along were Gehan, Sabby, Fallen, Hijinx and Gehan’s brother. I can safely say that fallen causes more drama than that which is in the movie by just appearing somewhere. Which is exactly the way it should be. Whacko’s already written about the movie but I’ll pretend it doesn’t exist and say the same things over again.

Once settled in, we were treated to yet another explosive start, just like the first movie. The military, with the aid of our heroes, the autobots, were taking down some random decepticon which had turned itself into a gigantic bicycle. A bicycle? Really? All the others get cool things like F-16′s, batmobiles and hot chicks but this guy becomes a giant hulking bicycle. Probably had a little bell and a ribbon tied to the handle too. Maybe he missed out on the pointers saying what was cool and what was Mary Poppins from the first movie. Way to go, Mr. I-didn’t-get-the-last-memo.

After about an hour or so of robots beating up other robots, Fallen pointed out that this was a brilliant way to showcase all the violence you wanted in a movie. Since there’s no blood, and they’re just robots, they can do whatever they want to each other, and they did. Bumblebee tearing out that tiger thing’s spine or Optimus tearing some random bot a new one could not have been shown on anything less than rated R if it were in human. We also noted that gigantic robotic cojones were banging together jovially like a bad porno.

Some people were complaining about a plot or something. This is Transformers, not a generic-as-vanilla Dan Brown book. Remember the figures? The toys? Remember making up your own story as you go along? They usually just involved “That thing is evil. Let us go destroy that thing by banging you against it”. The ‘thing’ is usually another toy, an adult’s foot, a pet or your sister’s dolls. Who cares about the plot in the movie as long as they beat themselves up, in glorious CG? Call me shallow but I am easily entertained by giant robots blowing things up and Megan Fox just… being. She doesn’t need to act. She just has to be in the shot for it to be engrossing.

My brain conveniently ignored the walking talking slow motion explosion prop that is Sam. Michael Bay lost his sense of sanity for a bit while making this movie and actually wanted Shia LeDouche to talk. Maybe to offset the sheer awesomeness of giant robots killing each other.

The military units were also a mystery. Why they were there, what hey were doing, why were they so american? Nobody knows. Only thing we know for sure is that shooting at a decepticon is about as effective as blowing kisses at Godzilla. Most humans in the movie were just charcoal waiting to happen.

All in all, the movie was a brilliant watch. Optimus finally gets badass and grows some ba wings, and megatron lives to plot another day. Fallen also died, but only the onscreen one. The regular, not-of-any-particular-interest Fallen just kept snickering each time the fallen one was mentioned. Gehan kept looking at me each time Megan Fox came on, for reasons best known to him. Sabby was bored throughout, being female.

Also, I have now instituted a new insult – “Female”. All the negativity of sexism, and minus all the coolness of being male rolled up into one word.

—–

Cast
Gehan – http://darksidedaily.blogspot.com/
Sabby – formerly of sabbyaz.blogspot.com, now merely twittering
Fallen – http://www.fallenfootwear.com/
Hijinx – http://dancingwithd.blogspot.com/
Gehan’s Brother – Of Kandy

Supporting Cast
The WhacksteR – http://thewhacksterslair.blogspot.com
Keyboard

Based on real life events that took place on the 5th of July, 2009.

Movie Review Time

Recently watched two movies. In my tradition of bringing you my opinion on the newest movies off the block, The Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian. Also Watchmen.

Fist up is Caspian, which I found lurking in my sister’s pen drive.  Was meh. Full of Spanish people running around yelling “Why are you talking about the rain in Spain?!”. Or maybe I got something mixed up with My Fair Lady. Doesn’t make a difference anyway.

Then suddenly the conquistadors are running after Jason Mraz. Or at least what I imagine Jason Mraz to look like. Spanishey and all ‘My kingdom must be saved from my evil uncle! But wait till I save this damsel first. Stand in line for autographs’. After a whole lot of running around and impossible phenomena such as a teenager actually acting rational, there’s a huge battle with a lot of centaurs that look like they’re running on a treadmill. While in stilettos.

There’s a huge battle scene which could have been easily improved with a few DC characters. Maybe throw in the Hulk. The people were too full of honour so they didn’t show off their fighting skills to their true potential. And then suddenly they’re all in a train station and I went to sleep.

As for Watchmen, we went to see it at the Majestic. Sabby, Hijinx, Whacko, Sabby’s cousin and two generic ‘dudes’ cam along to keep me entertained in case the movie sucked. It did. If not for all the fighting, the sheer monotony of the thing would have killed us. Well, made us leave, at least. Actually, we DID want to leave. But whacko wanted to stay to see if he could spot the Night Owl naked. Yes, the Night Owl is a guy.

It dragged on for two and a half hours, sporadically bursting into a cool fight scene, but filling the rest of the time with corny action movie plot. Maybe you have to read the graphic novel to get it. Maybe you need a lobotomy. I don’t know. It was a waste of a bit of life.

So We Watched Wolverine Again…

First, the tag from SI – Five that came in a tag -

1. Indifference
2. Indifference
3. Indifference
4. Indifference
5. Relief

And the post,

Papareboy, being his usual late self, said he hadn’t watched Wolverine yet. So off we went along with the guy who keeps falling in a plethora of ways(Always wanted to use plethora. Was just reminded of it at the last open mic. yay). Wolverine is so much more fun when you replace the characters on screen. Hugh Jackman also looses much of his appeal whe he just leaves Deli- Kaitlin to bleed to death. We also got to see Cyclops doing his thing and fumbling about blindly, just like in the other movies.

Oh, and we also discovered something else. Since we had a few minutes to waste before the movie started, we decided to call on a certain someone who’s been asking us to drop by in that area. But, try as we might, we couldn’t find anything remotely resembling what was described, no matter how far we walked. What truly put us in a conundrum was the fact that none of the area residents had ever even heard of the place. Surely we couldn’t have been fed lies?

Rant + Twilight

Bleeaarrrrggghhhhh.

I keep seeing guys in pink T-shirts. What’s wrong with you? Pink is just not a colour a regular guy can wear. Unless he’s on a catwalk. You do not, in fact, exude confidence or show any lack of insecurity in your sexuality. If you are secure in your sexuality then you wouldn’t have to wear a statement enforcing that point. Face it, even though everyone says ‘it’s just a colour’, it’s still a less than desirable colour for say… A sport scar. Unless you’re a woman. There. Would you drive a pink BMW, males? No? Oh But I thought you were all for the ‘confident and yet sensitive’ look. Bull. All that new age hogwash can go the way of political correctness and the abominable snowperson.

I watched Twilight. Well, about 40 minutes of it because I was getting late for work and my fingers were sticky from licking the chocolate off them. Anyway, the first thing that struck me was how pasty they all look. Even the mandatory black guy was white, even the girl from Arizona. Vampires, fine, but the others? I had to turn off auto-levels on Media Player Classic to make the thing watchable and not look like some weird arty pic. Then we come to the ‘main couple’. These two, when together look like the freakin Gilmore Girls. Actually, they’re a bit more tan methinks. Mr. bushy-eyebrows is the most emo one can get without wearing black. And considering he’s a vampire, I’ll bet he does that too. Maybe he bites his wrists every so often to blank out the pain. And god, could Bella ‘My face is botox’ed stiff’ Gilmore be more typically female*? She falls for the dude, for god knows what reason. Maybe she wants to roam around in the underbrush of his eyebrows. She then gets told that everything about him is made to attract, down to smell even, but no, she ‘trusts’ him. All this over the fact that he’s a vampire! Does she not know what they do? Did that book she brought not tell her that they suck blood and not raise kittens to take lolcat photos of?

Meh.

Yeah yeah, any movie has it’s oddities. The pale-faces were just too weird for me.

*Foolish.

Movies Post 2.0

Well, everyone from Microsoft to Apple to random movie makers use the 2.0 thing, so why not me? I think I deserve a 2.0 . Yes?

Anyway, been watching lots of movies and stuff these past few days. If you’re looking for a quick opinion on what movies to get, and which ones to avoid like the plague, look no further! This is the be-all end-all of movie lists for… the last week!

Taken – Awesomeness. Not by any particularly brilliant story or acting, but just the character Liam Neeson plays in it(Refer previous post). He’s an ex-CIA guy whose daughter gets kidnapped and is in the thick of a human trafficking network.

BABYLON A.D. – Sorta interesting, not too memorable though. And I have no idea what it is they’re implying. :/

Untraceable – Tech-Comedy. Takes a brave new approach to comedy movies by taking the “Scary Movie” like concept of emulating an actual thriller storyline, but minus all the exaggeration and laughing. Except in the fake tech department. Oh, yeah, it was in the “Tech Thriller” category for some reason… weird.

The Whole Nine Yards – Finally found this movie. Highly recommended! Matthew Perry is now my favourite “Friends” character.

Transformers:Animated – Not too great. It’s just a single episode of the cartoon stretched to movie length.

A Beautiful Mind – Second time I’m watching, but even so it was brilliant. A must watch. Story of John Nash. Schizophrenia is cool. Also, Russel Crowe’s “southern” accent is freakin amazing!

Tropic Thunder – A fun fest of a movie. Lots of big names. But they certainly deliver. Cast includes Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. No, he’s not in THAT suit this time. Set in the present, it’s about a bunch of actors shooting a Vietnam war movie out in Vietnam, and getting caught up in the middle of an actual battle. Pretty funny impression of Russel Crowe by Downey.

Heroes(se03) – Watched only the first two episodes for now, but it looks pretty good. Lots of new villains and different storylines mixing up. It’s turning into a comic book now, as opposed to the “Heroes:The Soap” type thing earlier.

How I met your mother(se03) – Watched through the entire season and it is awesome! Funny as hell but we still don’t see an ending. Must get se04. Marshall lets rip another slap on Barney.

You Know Who’s Kickass?

Liam Neeson in “Taken”.

Man, that guy kicked so many kinds of ass he could probably eat gravel.

…Yeah, been watching lotsa movies. Reviews will be posted, shortly.