In my life of movie watching, very few films get the coveted 10/10 rating (The Iron Giant and The Incredibles being the other two) and rarely is it on a movie I was barely looking forward to. Though Rotten Tomatoes has How to Train Your Dragon at 98%, I was still kind of 'meh' about it.
Pardon the horrible pun, but the only 'hiccup' in this film is the main character (because his name is "Hiccup"). This movie simply has it all; memorable characters, piles of action and a 'boy and his dragon' story.
Probably the most significant thing was that I brought Brooke along to see it as her first movie. More of a test than anything else, I didn't expect an 18-month-old to last 2 hours and was expecting to be forced to leave halfway through. Luckily, the pace of the film kept her attention, as well as the fact that I told her the main dragon was a "puppy", which seemed to work pretty good (judging by her "It's a puppy!" every 4 minutes). She slept through the last 15 minutes, which was too bad because it was pretty intense.
The movie begins right away with a ten minute action sequence that introduces all the main characters, including the village itself, with a casual but informative voiceover. From then on it takes you along for a wonderful weave of the life of a young boy who doesn't belong. It deals with his job/role in the village, his father/son relationship, his love for the village hottie and his desire for medieval 'street cred'. Mocked as the only viking who is forever unable to kill a dragon (the village's only calling) he soon finds he isn't necessarily unable, but unwilling.
By befriending a dragon, Hiccup gets torn between their growing relationship and following through with his viking training back at the village. His secret life gives the film some classic moments that we've seen many times before; their first flight with inspiring music and visuals, hiding the dragon/alien/monster from the family and the classic misunderstanding once everything is found out.
There is some great voicework, fantastic animation (in action sequences as well as simple body language) and plenty of hilarious throwaway lines. The characters are in awe when they should be in awe, they're scared when they should be scared and they run like hell when they think they might get killed.
The movie doesn't pull any punches despite being a fun family film and easily just shot itself up to one of my favourite movies of all time. Extremely highly recommended.
Oh yeah, I have a blog! Between working full time, a full time business and performing in improv shows while finding a little time for my family, I seem to have completely forgotten!
Well I like to review movies on here and I have seen a bunch so I'll do a quick review of as many as I can remember in absolutely no order whatsoever:
Sherlock Holmes: Elementary indeed. Though entertaining at face value, the film doesn't have any drive for a series. It didn't leave me wanting more which it felt like it was trying to do. The only odd twist seems to be that at the ripe age of his late fourties, Holmes is yet to even meet his arch-nemesis, Moriarty, yet. I did enjoy the innocent bromance going on between Holmes and Watson, however. It was subtly in your face the entire film and speaks very true to people my age losing their old selves and old lifestyles to love and family elsewhere.
Avatar: Amazing! Superb! Epic! Fantastic!......these are words that have been used to describe a fairly decent achievement in a CGI film. Though entertaining and action-packed, the story lost me when they named the element they are trying to mine "unobtanium"...I can only assume it's from the latin "difikult2getis". This, for me, laid the film in a cartoon-danger/character reality where everyone was a one dimensional character with one driving force. The general, for example, never once stopped to think about his actions and when the lead tycoon guy DID stop to think about his actions, he made all the wrong decisions after thinking about it! It's also improbable that nobody ever thought to attack the red flying creature from above before this new guy came along.
500 Days of Summer: Absolutely worth watching, an extremely charming comedy jumping back and forth within a 500-day span of a relationship. And Cobra Commander is in it! Speaking of which....
GI Joe: Did I already review this one? Oh well, stupid as expected but if I were 14 years old I'd have watched it ten times in the theatre. Lots of action but when ships explode little guys in parachutes didn't appear, it was weird.
Whip It: Not as amazing as I was expecting, but still a nice little movie. Drew Barrymore should have stayed behind the camera though because every time she was on screen I wanted to punch her character in the face.
Dora the Explorer Saves the Puppies: An interesting twist in where Dora and Boots need to save 100 puppies but need 100 keys and get the kids to count to 100 with them! Also good to see Swiper expanding his plans to Wile E Coyote-like extremes rather than just walking up and grabbing stuff out of Dora's hands.
What? I have a kid, I've seen this one twice now, it needed reviewing and now I've done it.
2012: I've never seen so many sequences where the lead characters JUST get away in time. Once or twice in a film is suspenseful, fifty times in one film is just irritating. Also, when communications go down globally in your story...you should keep the communications down globally in your story!! It makes it seem a little more real!
Anyway, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I'll be back soon with more reviews and news.
From the Kansas Star newspaper: For anyone who saw Joyce DeWitt in the recent New Theatre show "Hats!" or just always liked her from "Three's Company, here's some bad news (and an even worse mug shot): She was busted July 4 for suspicion of DUI in El Segundo, Calif.
Police Sgt. Dean Howard told E! that "an officer saw DeWitt drive a vehicle past a barricade intended to control vehicular traffic near a park. As the officer spoke with DeWitt, he observed signs and symptoms of alcohol intoxication."
DeWitt, 60, was arrested at about 4:30 p.m. after field sobriety tests.
I heard about this on News1130 yesterday. It was a breaking news alert! It wasn't even during the Entertainment portion or anything. Joyce DeWitt getting a DUI was nation-wide news!?! 99% of people don't even know who the hell she is! Pee Wee Herman masturbating in a public movie theatre, that's news. Janet from Three's Company driving drunk is just something I assumed has been happening anyway since 1989.
The last movie I saw with my dad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the live action one from some years ago. I really enjoyed it. He most likely didn't. Well, 19 years has passed since then (holy shit) and finally we got to go see a movie that we both loved!
I've been skeptical since the start on this one but man, did the geek in me like this movie. There is a 4-part comic book prequel to this film which I highly highly highly recommend reading before seeing the movie. It fleshes out lots of background story and also familiarizes you with Leonard Nimoy's Spock and his current political and social situation (any Next Generation fan will be pleased), as well as what the heck is going on in the 1st scene of the movie since the comic literally ends the moment the movie begins.
I'm a very casual Trek fan, I know enough to get by and could easily convince non-Trekkies that I am a Trekkie with my minimal knowledge of that universe. The best part of this film is the overall idea that it brings a new standard of rebooting a franchise for tv and film. It's nothing new to comic book readers, as reboots, retcons and revamps are just a part of everyday lore (and often, frustration).
A quick plot synopsis is that Old Spock was setting out to prevent the destruction of Romulus, having promised the Romulans he would do so. Nero, the captain of a simple mining ship was rushing home to save his pregnant wife, only to arrive just in time to see Old Spock fail as the planet is destroyed leaving them the only local survivors. Old Spock's attempt to quell a supernova blast was to inject it with 'red matter', creating a singularity (black hole) and eating the energy blast. Well, his timing was a little off because the planet died and a singularity ended up sucking up Nero and Old Spock into a time warp...and that's when the movie begins.
So, in a way, this movie takes place in Next Generation time because Old Spock and Nero are both from the current continuity we all know so far. The beautiful thing that happens in this movie is that Nero and Old Spock existing in the past creates a new timeline which we now follow...keeping the old Star Trek timeline fully intact! Everything that happened happened but now Nero and Old Spock are trapped in this new timeline they've created and everything we know and love still gets to exist but it all comes about in a different way in this new timeline! Confused? Then you don't read enough comic books!
This movie is a very in-your-face setup for a series of films and the characters can go anywhere from here. They're all aware the timeline was altered and they already lived an adventurous life and made their place in history, however, they're also aware that that history will co-exist along another timeline and they're now free to set a new destiny for themselves in this newly born timeline. If that's not kick-ass cool then I don't know what is. This is the first time this kind of mind-fucking continuity is being layed out on a major film franchise and I think it's awesome.
Just finished watching last week's "Lost" and last night's "Chuck", who knew they'd be connected!?
Sayid's father was played, ironically by Sayed Badrey. I said to Kim, "Hey, he's from "Iron Man"!" He was the first henchman bad guy he took out and left for the villagers to do what they wanted with ("He's all yours"). I thought that was neat.
Then we watched "Chuck" right after and holy shit, it's Shaun Toub and I said "Hey, he's from "Iron Man", too!". He played "Yinsen" who helped Tony Stark make the Mark 1 suit and now he's trying to kill Chuck! What a jerk!
Anyway, this concludes your lesson in synchronicity. Two seemingly unrelated events forming a common bond, in this case, the infection of the Iron Man movie on our television lives.
If you happen to be watching the Iron Man movie when you read this, that's just spooky.
From his garage observatory (technology doesn't just shrink laptops, people) in England, Mike Tyrell made a video of three passes of the International Space Station (ISS) over his humble home.
Why this is awesome!
It's the future, bitches! This is the home to 3-4 humans at any given time. The project is a global success and within decades, we're going to look up and see the ISS float by in plain view with our naked eyes. You can see it go by now if the light hits it just right, same with satellites. They just look like floating stars whizzing across the sky.
View the (probably boring to most people) video HERE.
Implications of seeing cool stuff like this!
Imagine cities on the moon that we can just watch through a telescope one day, watching moon-chicks take showers! With tweaking, if we find a habitable planet in the near future, we might be able to view city formations if we can adjust our telescopes with new technology. That would kick ass.
I'm excited about entering a new age of space exploration, people are getting more interested in the cosmos but a lot of education is needed because the #1 thing I realize when talking to people is that they have noo concept of just how god damn big the universe, our galaxy or even just the space between Earth and the Moon is. This is a video that tries to put it in perspective, though the narration is a little bland. Even so, the page will link you to other relevant material, too.
