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Top 100 Movies Based On Books

2009-11-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Well, today is the official opening day of “Twilight”. A very highly anticipated movie… not because of the marketing campaign (which has been average at best), but because of the rabid and loyal following that the book series has. With that in mind, I thought it would be an appropriate time to put together a top 100 movies list of movies that were based on books.

Whenever I hear of a new movie coming out based on a popular book or comic book or a sequel, I instantly hear naysayers complaining about a “lack of creativity in hollywood”. “Why not write something original” some will say. But I say thank goodness gifted screenwriters adapt novels into movies! As you can see from my list, some of the greatest movies in the history of film were adapted from books… films that I can’t even imagine what the world of film would look like today if they never came to be.

So I spent a couple of weeks putting together this list with three purposes in mind:

1) To highlight the important role books have played in the movie world

2) To draw attention to some fantastic movies that some of you may have never taken the time to watch before

3) To draw attention to the fact that these movies are indeed based on books, which may encourage you to try reading them (which I confess is a little hypocritical of me since I’ve only read a fraction of the books here.)

Now let me emphasize this next point very explicitly. THIS LIST IS NOT A LIST OF THE BEST BOOKS OR WHICH MOVIES DID THE BEST JOB ADAPTING FROM THE BOOK. It is a list of the best movies which happen to be BASED on books. Also, while I did not include Graphic Novels or Comic Books in this list, I do include short stories or novellas since they are usually a part of a single issue collection.

Like all movie lists, this one is subjective and in no way authoritative. The main purpose of which is to spark discussion and maybe interest in seeing some of these fantastic films again, or for the first time. So now I present to you The Movie Blog’s Top 100 Movies Based On Books:

#100 – THE JOY LUCK CLUB
Rottem Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: Through a series of flashbacks, four young chinese women born in America and their respective mothers born in feudal China, explore their past. This search will help them understand their difficult mother/daughter relationship.
John’s Thought: Yes, I am a heterosexual male… and I loved this movie.

#99 – THE MAMBO KINGS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 78%
Synopsis: Musician brothers Cesar and Nestor leave Cuba for America in the 1950s, hoping to hit the top of the Latin music scene. Cesar is the older brother, the business manager, and the ladies’ man. Nestor is the brooding songwriter, who cannot forget the woman in Cuba who broke his heart.
John’s Thought: No Antonio! Too sexy! Too Sexy!

#98 – STARDUST
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 76%
Synopsis: “Stardust,” based on the best-selling graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, takes audiences on an adventure that begins in a village in England and ends up in places that exist in an imaginary world. A young man named Tristan (Charlie Cox) tries to win the heart of Victoria (Sienna Miller), the beautiful but cold object of his desire, by going on a quest to retrieve a fallen star. His journey takes him to a mysterious and forbidden land beyond the walls of his village. On his odyssey, Tristan finds the star, which has transformed into a striking girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes).
John’s Thought: Easily the single most underrated and under appreciated film of 2007

#97 – FRIED GREEN TOMATOES
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 82%
Synopsis: A heartwarming tale of family, friendship and murder in rural Georgia. In a Southern nursing home, a feisty resident and old local fixture named Ninny Threadgoode (Tandy) befriends Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) a depressed housewife and stirs her to action with an inspirational tale. She tells the story of a transcendent friendship between two young women living in Georgia in the 1930s, Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Mary Louise Parker), who forge a powerful bond after witnessing a terrible tragedy together. The two women open a cafe (where fried green tomatoes are a house specialty) together in their small Southern town of Whistle Stop and manage to survive the hardships of life, despite racism, prejudice and the pressures of trying to live their lives as individuals in a strict and close-minded Southern society.
John’s Thought: Powerful cast, powerful story. An honestly moving film.

#96 – THE SHINING
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 86%
Synopsis: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future
John’s Thought: Iconic film with some of the most quoted one liners from a horror film in history.

#95 – PATRIOT GAMES
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 80%
Synopsis: Jack Ryan, the hero of Tom Clancy’s techno-thriller series, returns in the sequel to _The Hunt for Red October_. Ryan is on vacation in England when he spoils an assassination attempt on an important member of the Royal Family. Ryan gets drawn back into the CIA when the same splinter faction of the IRA targets him and his family.
John’s Thought: Once again proving you CAN change actors and still make the franchise work. Ford in his prime and my introduction to the brilliance of Sean Bean.

#94 – WAG THE DOG
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: When a Firefly Girl accuses the president of sexual misconduct in the Oval Office less than two weeks before the upcoming election, White House official Winifred Ames (Anne Heche) is told to bring in Conrad Bream (Robert De Niro) to fix the situation and save the president’s chances for reelection. This mysterious “fixer” fabricates a conflict with Albania in an effort to detract attention from the sex scandal, bringing in legendary Hollywood producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to “produce” the war. When the CIA foils the initial plot, the creative team turns to a new story line, creating the saga of a U.S. soldier left behind enemy lines whom the president vows to find and return to American soil.
John’s Thought: Especially funny watching this movie now after the events of the last 8 years. Hard to go wrong with Hoffman and DiNero before he started sucking.

#93 – CHARLOTTE’S WEB
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 74%
Synopsis: Wilbur the pig is scared of the end of the season, because he knows that come that time, he will end up on the dinner table. He hatches a plan with Charlotte, a spider that lives in his pen, to ensure that this will never happen.
John’s Thought: Loved this as a kid, still love it today and will leave it on whenever I stumble across it channel surfing. Much better than the Julia Roberts voiced one from a couple of years ago.

#92 – PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940)
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 88%
Synopsis: From the classic novel by Jane Austen about the morals and mores of the class system in early Georgian England. The intelligent and spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of 5 daughters — which, during that era, meant trouble: because women cannot inherit, upon her father’s death her family’s home will become the property of their nearest male relative. Only marriage, preferably to someone wealthy, can ensure her security. But the proud young lady instantly takes offense when Mr. Darcy, a promising newcomer in town, doesn’t seem quite admiring enough, and she spurns his advances. Slowly and painfully, Elizabeth realizes her error, but not before it seems she has lost him forever.
John’s Thought: Easily the best adaptation of this book ever done. Not taking away from any of the other ones… but Olivier rules.

#91 – THE NOTEBOOK
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 51%
Synopsis: The movie focuses on an old man reading a story to an old woman in a nursing home. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who meet one evening at a carnival. But they are separated by Allie’s parents who dissaprove of Noah’s unwealthy family, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her for several years, Allie meets and gets engaged to a handsome young soldier named Lon. Allie, then, with her love for Noah still alive, stops by Noah’s 200-year-old home that he restored for her, “to see if he’s okay”. It is evident that they still have feelings for each other, and Allie has to choose between her fiancé and her first love.
John’s Thought: I avoided seeing this for a couple of years because it had “chick flick” written all over it. My loss… turned out it’s an exceptional film.

#90 – FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 82%
Synopsis: A straight arrow coach leads his team to the 1988 Texas state semifinals in the west Texas city of Odessa, where high school football is king. Expectations of classmates, coaches, family, and community members exact a toll on the athletes central to the story. Economic and racial undertones pervade this adaptation of H.G. Bissinger’s book by the same name.
John’s Thought: My first thought is that we’ve seen this movie 100 times already. Wrong. This is a special film, and a reminder that despite taking a lot of junk roles, Billy Bob Thornton can act his ass off sometimes.

#89 – BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 80%
Synopsis: Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her many imperfections. As a New Year’s Resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget’s band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance who Bridget cannot seem to stop running into or help finding quietly attractive.
John’s Thought: I’ve yet to meet a woman who hasn’t seen this flick… and there’s a reason for that.

#88 – THE COLOR OF MONEY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Eddie “Fast Eddy” Felson, a former pool player forced into retirement by gangsters (as seen in “The Hustler”,) finds himself, self-respect, and finally, redemption when he enters a relationship with young pool player Tom Cruise very similar to his own early career. As they travel together, Fast Eddy realizes how much he had lost, and can see the inevitable finale of their relationship as history begins to repeat itself. In an effort to avert tragedy, Eddy severs their relationship, and returns to his first love, pool. Finally, in a big Atlantic City tournament, Cruise returns the favor, and teaches Eddy the final lesson that allows him to finish his quest of re-discovery.
John’s Thought: Hey, remember back when Tom Cruise wasn’t a raving lunatic? Yeah, those were good days.

#87 – MINORITY REPORT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 92%
Synopsis: Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Minority Report is about a cop in the future working in a division of the police department that arrests killers before they commit the crimes courtesy of some future viewing technology. John Anderton has the tables turned on him when he is accused of a future crime and must find out what brought it about and stop it before it can happen.
John’s Thought: Spielberg and Curise are an unlikely couple, but man it worked well for this flick.

#86 – APOLLO 13
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 95%
Synopsis: A movie based on what was to be the third lunar-landing mission. This film shows the trials and tribulations of the Apollo 13 crew, mission control, and families after a near-fatal accident cripples the space vehicle. A mission that couldn’t get TV airtime because space flights had become routine to the American public suddenly grabbed the national spotlight. This is a tale of averted tragedy, heroism and shows a testament to the creativity of the scientists who ran the early space missions.
John’s Thought: A solid cast highlighting yet another brilliant performance by Tom Hanks.

#85 – CAPOTE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: In 1959, Truman Capote, a popular writer for The New Yorker, learns about the horrific and senseless murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Inspired by the story material, Capote and his partner, Harper Lee, travel to the town to research for an article. However, as Capote digs deeper into the story, he is inspired to expand the project into what would be his greatest work, In Cold Blood. To that end, he arranges extensive interviews with the prisoners, especially with Perry Smith, a quiet and articulate man with a troubled history. As he works on his book, Capote feels some compassion for Perry which in part prompts him to help the prisoners to some degree. However, that feeling deeply conflicts with his need for closure for his book which only an execution can provide. That conflict and the mixed motives for both interviewer and subject make for a troubling experience that would produce an literary account that would redefine modern non-fiction.
John’s Thought: Most avid film fans already knew Philip Seymour Hoffman was stupidly gifted… this film just sort of introduced him as an “A” lister to the rest of the world.

#84 – ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: After the death of his son, Macon Leary, a travel writer, seems to be sleep walking through life. Macon’s wife, seems to be having trouble too, and thinks it would be best if the two would just split up. After the break up, Macon meets a strange outgoing woman, who seems to bring him back down to earth. After starting a relationship with the outgoing woman, Macon’s wife seems to think that their marriage is still worth a try. Macon is then forced to deal many decisions.
John’s Thought: Nominated for best picture and best screenplay. Geena Davis actually won best supporting actress for this one.

#83 – TRAINSPOTTING
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 88%
Synopsis: A wild, freeform, Rabelaisian trip through the darkest recesses of Edinburgh low-life, focusing on Mark Renton and his attempt to give up his heroin habit, and how the latter affects his relationship with family and friends: Sean Connery wannabe Sick Boy, dimbulb Spud, psycho Begbie, 14-year-old girlfriend Diane, and clean-cut athlete Tommy, who’s never touched drugs but can’t help being curious about them.
John’s Thought: I still think this is Danny Boyle’s best film

#82 – THE VERDICT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Frank Galvin is a down-on-his luck lawyer, reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing. Former associate Mickey Morrissey reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit that he himself served to Galvin on a silver platter: all parties willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, he suddenly realizes that perhaps after all the case should go to court: to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients, and to restore his standing as a lawyer.
John’s Thought: One of the best courtroom dramas I’ve ever seen.

#81 – REMO WILLIAMS THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 55%
Synopsis: An NYPD cop is ‘killed’ in an accident. The death is faked, and he is inducted into the organization CURE, dedicated to preserving the constitution by working outside of it. Remo is to become the enforcement wing (assassin) of CURE, and learns an ancient Korean martial art from Chiun, the Master of Sinanju. Based on the popular pulp series “The Destroyer,” by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.
John’s Thought: Chiun is still one of my all time favorite supporting characters in any movie I’ve ever seen. His lines are some of the most quotable and hilarious I’ve ever heard. Probably only second to Bruce Campbell’s as Ash.

#80 – DRUGSTORE COWBOY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch play a heroin-driven Bonnie and Clyde, knocking over drugstores in the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, they must dispose of the body of one of their crew, sneaking it out from a motel where a sheriffs’ convention is being held.
John’s Thought: Remember back when Matt Dillon was relevant? I still don’t think he gets enough credit for how good he can be.

#79 – FULL METAL JACKET
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Full Metal Jacket begins by following the trials and tribulations of a platoon of fresh Marine Corps recruits focusing on the relationship between Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and Privates Pyle and Joker. We see Pyle grow into an instrument of death as Hartman has forseen of all of his recruits. Through Pyle’s torment and Joker’s unwillingness to stand up against it the climax of part one is achieved with all three main characters deciding their fates by their action or inaction. The second chapter of Full Metal Jacket delves into Joker’s psyche and the repeated referal to the fact that he joined the Corps to become a killer. When his mostly behind the scenes job as a combat correspondant is interfered with by the Tet offensive he is thrust into real combat and ultimately must choose if he really is a killer.
John’s Thought: Not many people agree with me, but I think this was easily Stanley Kubrick’s best movie.

#78 – 9 1/2 WEEKS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 62%
Synopsis: An erotic story about a woman, the assistant of an art gallery, who gets into an impersonal affaire with a man. She barely knows about his life, only about the sex games they play, so the relationship begins to complicate.
John’s Thought: As hard as it is to believe now, there was a time when Mikey Rourke was once considered a very handsome man.

#77 – RAGTIME
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: The story runs in the 1910’s New York. Coalhouse Walker Jr. is a black piano player. He has won fame and fortune playing with a jazz band. Some white men do not like this situation, and one day they assault him and spoil his brand new car. Walker tries by all means to get justice, without an answer.
John’s Thought: The strength of the film is in its characters that feel so authentic you can’t help but feel a part of this period piece that was a forerunner for the slew of social change movies that followed in.

#76 – BABE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 98%
Synopsis: Babe is a little pig who doesn’t quite know his place in the world. With a bunch of odd friends, like Ferdinand the duck who thinks he is a rooster and Fly the dog he calls mom, Babe realizes that he has the makings to become the greatest sheep pig of all time, and Farmer Hogget Knows it. With the help of the sheep dogs Babe learns that a pig can be anything that he wants to be.
John’s Thought: Whoopie, a movie about a talking pig. We’ve seen it before. I don’t care… this movie is frigging beautiful.

#75 – FORREST GUMP
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 72%
Synopsis: Forrest, Forrest Gump is a simple man with little brain activity but good intentions. He struggles through childhood with his best and only friend Jenny. His ‘mama’ teaches him the ways of life and leaves him to choose his destiny. Forrest joins the army for service in Vietnam, finding new friends called Dan and Bubba, he wins medals, starts a table tennis craze, creates a famous shrimp fishing fleet, inspires people to jog, create the smiley, write bumper stickers and songs, donating to people and meeting the president several times. However this is all irrelevant to Forrest who can only think of his childhood sweetheart Jenny. Who has messed up her life. Although in the end all he wants to prove is that anyone can love anyone
John’s Thought: A movie of a less than ordinary person who lives an extraordinary life. Great film, but no way in hell it should have beat out Shawshank Redemption for best picture that year.

#74 – DIGGSTOWN
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 50%
Synopsis: Gabriel Caine has just been released from prison when he sets up a bet with a business man. The business man owns most of a boxing-mad town called Diggstown. The bet is that Gabe can find a boxer that will knock out 10 Diggstown men, in a boxing ring, within 24 hours. “Honey” Roy Palmer is that man – although at 48, many say he is too old. A sub plot is thrown in about Charles Macum Diggs – the heavyweight champion that gave the town its name – and who is now confined to a wheel-chair.
John’s Thought: One of the best “I never saw that coming” endings to a movie of all time.

#73 – FIELD OF DREAMS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice in his corn field tell him, “If you build it, he will come.” He interprets this message as an instruction to build a baseball field on his farm, upon which appear the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. When the voices continue, Ray seeks out a reclusive author to help him understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose for his field.
John’s Thought: Listening to James Earl Jones talk about baseball in this film reminds me of why sports are so magical better than any other sports themed monologue in a movie I’ve ever heard.

#72 – PSYCHO
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 97%
Synopsis: Phoenix officeworker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam’s California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.
John’s Thought: I’ve never felt totally comfortable taking showers in hotels ever since.

#71 – THE FIRM
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 76%
Synopsis: Mitch McDeere is a young man with a promising future in Law. About to sit his Bar exam, he is approached by ‘The Firm’ and made an offer he doesn’t refuse. Seduced by the money and gifts showered on him, he is totally oblivious to the more sinister side of his company. Then, two Associates are murdered. The FBI contact him, asking him for information and suddenly his life is ruined. He has a choice – work with the FBI, or stay with the Firm. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it. Mitch figures the only way out is to follow his own plan.
John’s Thought: Wow, there’s a lot of Tom Cruise on this list

#70 – CASINO
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 83%
Synopsis: Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, a mob-connected casino operator in Las Vegas, attempts a civilized lifestyle with his money-conditional wife, Ginger. Nicky Santoro, a boyhood friend of Ace and now a Made-Man of the Mafia, arrives in town with an ambitious agenda of his own that soon disrupts Ace’s life. Before long, Ginger and her long-time leeching lover Lester, along with Nicky’s mistakes, causing problems.
John’s Thought: Sexy, violent and just plain cool

#69 – BLADE RUNNER
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Los Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LAPD’s Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & micro-chip jungle of the 21st century for assumed humanoids known as ‘replicants’. Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. Man’s obsession with creating a being equal to himself has back-fired.
John’s Thought: I don’t like this nearly as much as most people, but there is no denying its place in Sci-Fi history

#68 – THE ENGLISH PATIENT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: A burn victim, a nurse, a thief, and a sapper find themselves in each others company in an old Italian villa close to the end of World War II. Through flashbacks, we see the life of the burn victim, whose passionate love of a woman and choices he made for her ultimately change the lives of one other person in the villa. Not only is this film a search for the identity of the English patient, but a search for the identities of all the people in the quiet old villa.
John’s Thought: A lot of people found this dry and slow, but I thought it hit every note perfectly.

#67 – A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 78%
Synopsis: A true story about two boys, Norman and Paul, growing up in Montana. One is rebellious of his father, Rev. Maclean, while the other has his feet on the ground. The one love they both have is fly fishing.
John’s Thought: Who knew a movie about a love of Fly Fishing would be so good. To me, my favorite performance by Tom Skerritt of his career.

#66 – ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 93%
Synopsis: Epic, episodic, tale of the lives of a small group of New York City Jewish gangsters spanning over 40 years. Told mostly in flashbacks and flash-forwards, the movie centers on small-time hood David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson and his lifelong partners in crime; Max, Cockeye and Patsy and their friends from growing up in the rough Jewish neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side in the 1920s, to the last years of Prohibition in the early 1930s, and then to the late 1960s where an elderly Noodles returns to New York after many years in hiding to look into the past.
John’s Thought: If I ask you to name a gangster movie with Robert DiNero, would this one even be in the first 3 you’d name?

#65 – THE FLY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Seth Brundle is a scientist working on teleportation. Just when he thinks he’s ironed out the last bug in his system, the intervention of a common house fly turns Seth into a 6 foot insect. The transformation from man to fly is gradual but horrific, and is witnessed by Veronica; a reporter documenting Seth’s story. Seth has some time to try to find a cure, but is there enough time…?
John’s Thought: Just watched this movie again recently. So honestly freaky and yet really funny at some points too.

#64 – MUNICH
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 77%
Synopsis: During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
John’s Thought: If there was ever any question that Eric Bana possessed the tools to be a top notch A List movie start, this project settled those questions in my opinion.

#63 – THE NATURAL
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 83%
Synopsis: An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league in this magical sports fantasy. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier when, as a rising pitcher, he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.
John’s Thought: The scene near the end of the home run set to that incredible music with the sparks flying still gives me goose bumps.

#62 – TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 89%
Synopsis: Aurora and Emma are mother and daughter who march to different drummers. Beginning with Emma’s marriage, Aurora shows how difficult and loving she can be. The movie covers several years of their lives as each finds different reasons to go on living and find joy. Aurora’s interludes with Garrett Breedlove, retired astronaut and next door neighbor are quite striking. In the end, different people show their love in very different ways.
John’s Thought: A fantastic balance between funny and sad.

#61 – Dr. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper goes completely and utterly mad, and sends his bomber wing to destroy the U.S.S.R. He suspects that the communists are conspiring to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people. The U.S. president meets with his advisors, where the Soviet ambassador tells him that if the U.S.S.R. is hit by nuclear weapons, it will trigger a “Doomsday Machine” which will destroy all plant and animal life on Earth. Peter Sellers portrays the three men who might avert this tragedy: British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the only person with access to the demented Gen. Ripper; U.S. President Merkin Muffley, whose best attempts to divert disaster depend on placating a drunken Soviet Premier and the former Nazi genius Dr. Strangelove, who concludes that “such a device would not be a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious”. Will the bombers be stopped in time, or will General Jack Ripper succeed in destroying the world ?
John’s Thought: Hailed as one of the funniest films ever made… and yet the book didn’t really have any comedy elements in it at all.

#60 – THE GREEN MILE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 78%
Synopsis: Paul Edgecomb is a slightly cynical veteran prison guard on Death row in the 1930’s. His faith, and sanity, deteriorated by watching men live and die, Edgecomb is about to have a complete turn around in attitude. Enter John Coffey, He’s eight feet tall. He has hands the size of waffle irons. He’s been accused of the murder of two children… and he’s afraid to sleep in a cell without a night-light. And Edgecomb, as well as the other prison guards – Brutus, a sympathetic guard, and Percy, a stuck up, perverse, and violent person, are in for a strange experience that involves intelligent mice, brutal executions, and the revelation about Coffey’s innocence and his true identity.
John’s Thought: My second favorite Darabont movie behind another film on this list higher up and a performance of a lifetime for Michael Clarke Duncan that he’ll probably never equal.

#59 – GIRL INTERRUPTED
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 52%
Synopsis: Susanna is depressed and directionless after finishing high school in the late 1960’s. A suicide attempt lands her in Claymore, a mental institution. She befriends the band of troubled women in her ward (Georgina the pathological liar, the sexually abused Daisy, the burn victim Polly) but falls under the hypnotic sway of Lisa, the wildest and most hardened of the bunch. Will Susanna “drop anchor” at Claymore and perpetually act out like Lisa, or will she finally pull her mind together and leave institutional life behind?
John’s Thought: I still don’t rationally know why I like this movie so much… but I do.

#58 – QUIZ SHOW
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96
Synopsis: An idealistic young lawyer (Rob Morrow) working for a Congressional subcommittee in the late 1950s discovers that TV quiz shows are being fixed. His investigation focusses on two contestants on the show “Twenty-One”: Herbert Stempel (John Turturro), a brash working-class Jew from Queens, and Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), the patrician scion of one of America’s leading literary families. Based on a true story.
John’s Thought: Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro just rock the hell out of this movie. Far more intense and exciting than you’d think a movie about a game show would be.

#57 – ROMANCING THE STONE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 85%
Synopsis: The writer of romantic novels Joan Wilder travels to south America to look for and rescue her kidnapped sister. She finds herself stranded in the jungles and finds help in the form of the soldier of fortune Jack Colton. The two go through a number of adventures, deal with the bad villains Ralph and company, and end up falling in love.
John’s Thought: One of those great films that was just fine as it was they never should have made a sequel to.

#56 – THE COLOR PURPLE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: This film follows the life of Celie, a young black girl growing up in the early 1900’s. The first time we see Celie, she is 14 – and pregnant – by her father. We stay with her for the next 30 years of her tough life.
John’s Thought: One more reason why Steven Spielberg is simply the best director in the business in our lifetime.

#55 – THE DEAD ZONE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 89%
Synopsis: Johnny Smith is a young schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him. Unfortunately, after leaving his fiancee’s home one night, he is involved in a wreck with an 18-wheel tractor-trailer and is in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes up from it, he discovers he has an ability to see into other people’s lives, past, present and future, by coming into physical contact. But the visions he has are often frightening, and even apocalyptic.
John’s Thought: This is the first movie I ever saw Christopher Walken in (hey, I was 11 years old) and to this day I still get a little freaked out when I see him on screen.

#54 – FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 81%
Synopsis: Follows a group of high school students growing up in southern California, based on the real-life adventures chronicled by Cameron Crowe. Stacy Hamilton and Mark Ratner are looking for a love interest, and are helped along by their older classmates, Linda Barrett and Mike Damone, respectively. The center of the film is held by Jeff Spicoli, a perpetually stoned surfer dude who faces off with the resolute Mr. Hand, who is convinced that everyone is on dope.
John’s Thought: One of those movies I love now for totally different reasons then why I loved it as a kid. Back then it was just because of boobs and sex… today it’s because… oh wait… same reasons.

#53 – THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 75%
Synopsis: Based on the 2nd in the series of books by ‘CS Lewis’ , “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the film tells the story of 4 children who go to live with an old professor during the war. One day, while playing hide and seek, Lucy, the youngest of the children, finds a wardrobe which leads to a magical land called Narnia. However Narnia is being ruled by the evil White Witch who has made it snow for 100 years and according to an old prophecy, Edmund, Lucy, Peter and Susan are the “chosen ones” who will defeat the Witch. They are assisted by the true ruler of Narnia, the lion, Aslan. With the good Narnians on their side all 4 children must now defeat the witch using all their strength and fulfill their destinies to become the new kings and queens of Narnia.
John’s Thought: Loved this movie! Perfectly captured the sense of magic and wonder like a master storyteller around a campfire. Too bad the sequel was such a let down.

#52 – OUT OF SIGHT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 92%
Synopsis: A career bank robber busts out of jail (Clooney) with the help of his buddy (Rhames) and kidnaps a US Marshal (Lopez) in the process. When the two cons head for Detroit to pull off their final big scam, the Marshal is put on their case but she finds she is attracted to one of them and has second thoughts about bringing them in.
John’s Thought: Maybe it’s just because of the great cast and fantastic story surounding her… but J-Lo actually didn’t completely suck in this movie. Guess you gotta get lucky at least once right?

#51 – FIRST BLOOD
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 85%
Synopsis: Ex-Green Beret John Rambo wanders up north in search of a friend. Rambo was awarded with the medal of honor for his service in Vietnam but has not found solace in the States thereafter. And he certainly does escape prejudice when a small town’s tough, idealistic sheriff spots him entering. The sheriff believes Rambo would be something of a light disturbance to the town and tries to keep him out. When Rambo rebels and then escapes into the cold misty forests, the force embarks on a massive manhunt to subdue him flanked by his former superior officer Colonel Trautman who knows the odds and ends of Rambo’s cunning.
John’s Thought: This film was more than just the brainless blow-em-up action movie that the rest of the franchise became. It was actually a character film, and a damn good one at that.

#50 – IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 95%
Synopsis: Based on the true story of Gerry Conlon, a Belfast youth who – along with family members and friends – was wrongly convicted of bombing two pubs outside of London. A story about the relationship between a father and his son who fought for justice to clear his father’s name.
John’s Thought: This movie was basically a memo to mankind letting us know Lewis is one of the greatest actors alive.

#49 – MYSTIC RIVER
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 87%
Synopsis: During a summer in 1975, Dave Boyle and two friends, Jimmy and Sean, are playing on a sidewalk in Boston when Dave is abducted by two men and subjected to sexual abuse over a period of several days. Eventually escaping, but haunted into adulthood by his trauma, Dave becomes a primary suspect when Jimmy’s daughter, Katie, is found murdered. Sean, assigned to investigate the crime, finds himself facing both demons from the past and demons in the present as the circumstances surrounding Katie’s death are uncovered.
John’s Thought: This movie flat out haunted me for a while after I watched it. Tragic and poetic ending. Intense personal, moral and violent conflict. I basically laugh at people who dis on Eastwood as a director.

#48 – SOPHIE’S CHOICE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live in Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie’s narrator, a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions.
John’s Thought: First movie I ever saw Meryl Streep in. I still think she’s never been better (and that’s not a bad thing)

#47 – LORD OF THE FLIES (1963)
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: A group of boys are marooned on an island after their plane crashes. With no adult survivors, they create their own “micro-society”. Ralph is elected “chief”, and he organises shelter and fire. Jack, the head of the choir takes his boys hunting for food (wild pigs). A bitter rivalry develops between Jack and Ralph as both want to be in charge. The “hunters” become savage and primal, under Jack’s rule, while Ralph tries to keep his group civilised. The growing hostility between them leads to a bloody and frighting climax.
John’s Thought: When watching the film “Doomsday” earlier this year I was struck by how much of a rip off it was (in basic theme) of this film. Except this film did it… you know… in a not sucky way.

#46 – KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 88%
Synopsis: Luis Molina and Valentin Arregui are cell mates in a South American prison. Luis, a homosexual, is found guilty of immoral behaviour and Valentin is a political prisoner. To escape reality Luis invents romantic movies, while Valentin tries to keep his mind on the situation he’s in. During the time they spend together, the two men come to understand and respect one another.
John’s Thought: Have I ever mentioned that William Hurt just absolutely rules?

#45 – WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: The world is astounded when Willy Wonka, for years a recluse in his factory, announces that five lucky people will be given a tour of the factory, shown all the secrets of his amazing candy, and one will win a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate. Nobody wants the prize more than young Charlie, but as his family is so poor that buying even one bar of chocolate is a treat, buying enough bars to find one of the five golden tickets is unlikely in the extreme. But in movieland, magic can happen. Charlie, along with four somewhat odious other children, get the chance of a lifetime and a tour of the factory. Along the way, mild disasters befall each of the odious children, but can Charlie beat the odds and grab the brass ring?
John’s Thought: Unlike most people, I almost liked the Tim Burton version of this story as much as the original. ALMOST.

#44 – KISS KISS, BANG BANG
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 83%
Synopsis: A noir send-up. A narrator introduces himself at a Hollywood party: he’s Harry Lockhart, a thief from New York, in L.A. for a screen test. He meets Gay Perry, a glitzy private eye who’s to school him for his role; there’s Harmony Lane, a wannabe actress whose time has passed; the host is an aging actor who starred in detective movies, plus his daughter, with starlet looks and a choppy past. The next day, Gay and Harry stake out a house where Gay is to take surreptitious photographs for a client – what they find is a corpse. From there, twists and connections abound and bodies pile up. Who’s double-crossing whom? And, has Harry found Harmony too late to save himself from misery?
John’s Thought: This movie ranks right up there with Bubba Ho-Tep where the fact that it never got a wide release should be considered a crime against humanity. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer were both just amazing in this flick

#43 – OF MICE AND MEN
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: Based on John Steinbeck’s 1937 classic tale of two travelling companions, George and Lennie, who wander the country during the Depression, dreaming of a better life for themselves. Then, just as heaven is within their grasp, it is inevitably yanked away. The film follows Steinbeck’s novel closely, exploring questions of strength, weakness, usefulness, reality and utopia, bringing Steinbeck’s California vividly to life.
John’s Thought: So beautifully and tragically crafted. I’m always saddened by how many people have never watched this movie.

#42 – HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIREr
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year, where the Trizwizard tournament is becoming ready to begin. Students must be over 17 to enter, with the winner receiving eternal glory. Harry can’t enter it this year…or can he. When his name is read out from the Goblet of Fire, everyone assumes that Harry Potter has cheated. Harry insists that he never placed his name in there, with someone else behind it. But Who? Harry must now survive through dragons, sea creatures and a terrifying maze, all before coming face-to-face with a particular dark wizard.
John’s Thought: This one will be hotly debated, but to me it’s head and shoulders the best of the Potter films so far.

#41 – THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Guy Hamilton is a journalist on his first job as a foreign correspondent. His apparently humdrum assignment to Indonesia soon turns hot as President Sukarno electrifies the populace and frightens foreign powers. Guy soon is the hottest reporter on the story with the help of his photographer, half- Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan, who has gone native. Guy’s affair with diplomat Jill Bryant also helps. Eventually Guy must face some major moral choices and the relationship between Billy and him reaches a crisis at the same time the politics of Indonesia does.
John’s Thought: You’d think Mel Gibson thought 2007 was the year to live danerously by shooting off his stupid drunk ass mouth about the Jews

#40 – ORDINARY PEOPLE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are living in the aftermath of the death of the other son. Conrad is overcome by grief and misplaced guilt to the extent of a suicide attempt. He is in therapy. Beth had always preferred his brother and is having difficulty being supportive to Conrad. Calvin is trapped between the two trying to hold the family together.
John’s Thought: One of those films that leaves you speechless after seeing it. For my money the best job Robert Redford ever did as a director.

#39 – THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 93%
Synopsis: Bourne is once again brought out of hiding, Jason Bourne is now hunted by the people who made him what he is–legendary assassin. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.
John’s Thought: I was never all that impressed with either of the first two Bourne movies (they were ok), but this one was flat out brilliant.

#38 – THE THING
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 77%
Synopsis: An American scientific expedition to the frozen wastes of the Antarctic is interrupted by a group of seemingly mad Norwegians pursuing and shooting a dog. The helicopter pursuing the dog crashes leaving no explanation for the chase. During the night, the dog mutates and attacks other dogs in the cage and members of the team that investigate. The team soon realises that an alien life-form with the ability to take over other bodies is on the loose and they don’t know who may already have been taken over.
John’s Thought: One of my favorite openings to a film, especially as the movie goes on and you understand the significance of it more and more.

#37 – L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 99%
Synopsis: 1950’s Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley, the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White, ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes, always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the dark world of L.A. crime.
John’s Thought: It’s only years after it was made that you realise just how stacked this cast was. Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce were hardly the recognizable names that they are today.

#36 – THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Clarice Starling, a young intelligent FBI trainee, has been sent to the Batlimore state hospital for the Criminally insane to interview an inmate Dr. Hannibal-the cannibal- Lecter. A Brilliant renowned psychiatrist turned infamous Psychopathic Serial killer. She must match wits with Lecter -who has the darkest of all minds- and trust him to give her clues in the search for “Buffalo Bill”. a nick name for a loose,unknown, unstoppable Pyschopathic Serial killer.
John’s Thought: Who knew that a cannibalistic serial killer could become a pop culture hero?

#35 – PLANET OF THE APES
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 88%
Synopsis: In the year 3978A.D. a spaceship with a crew of 4 crashes down on a distant planet. One of the crew members had died in space and the other 3 head out to explore the planet. They soon learn that the planet is much like their own. They then find the planet is inhabited by intelligent apes. One of the men is shot and killed and the others are taken to the apes’ city. There, one undergoes brain surgery and is put into a state of living death. The other befriends some of the apes but is feared by most. After being put through ape trial he escapes with a female human native to the planet. After helping his ape friends escape a religious heresy trial he escapes out into the wilderness with the female. There he learns the planet might not be so distant after all.
John’s Thought: I lost count of how many sequels they made of this amazing films. I think they stopped just short of having “The Apes Do Disco”.

#34 – THE SECRET OF NIMH
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: A fieldmouse named Mrs. Brisby must move her family to a safe location before the farmer plows the field where they live, but her invalid son Timmy cannot go outside due to his pneumonia. She enlists the aid of some highly intelligent, escaped lab rats that have built a subterranean society inside a rose bush near the farmer’s garden. The rats, led by the wise Nicodemus, decide to help her physically move her house to repay a debt of gratitude to her late husband, who made possible the rats’ escape from the laboratory. But things become complicated when some of the rats decide to use the situation to kill Nicodemus and make it appear to be accidental.
John’s Thought: I often forget about this magnificent animated film. Truly one of best films that captures your imagination.

#33 – SIDEWAYS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: A week before the marriage of his great friend, the decadent actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church), the bitter frustrated writer divorced oenologist English teacher Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) travels with him to the wine country of California to spend a week together. While Miles intends to drink wine and play golf, Jack indeed intends to score and get laid with as many women as possible. While hosted in the Windmill Inn, they meet the waitress Maya (Virginia Madsen) and the attendant Stephanie (Sandra Oh), and they spend some time together, visiting different wine makers and and Miles and Maya disclosing their inner secrets and falling in love for each other.
John’s Thought: I still don’t really understand how Paul Giamatti didn’t get nominated for his performance in this.

#32 – CHILDREN OF MEN
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 92%
Synopsis: “Children of Men” envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into chaos on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world’s youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set against a backdrop of London torn apart by violence and warring nationalistic sects, “Children of Men” follows an unlikely champion of Earth’s survival: Theo, a disillusioned ex-activist turned bureaucrat, who is forced to face his own demons and protect the planet’s last remaining hope.
John’s Thought: Some of the scenes in this flick have the most amazing cinematography and continuous shots.

#31 – STAND BY ME
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Based on Stephen King’s Short story “The Body”, “Stand By Me” tells the tale of Gordie Lachance, a writer who looks back on his preteen days when he and three close friends went on their own adventure to find the body of a kid their age who had gone missing and presumed dead. The stakes are upped when the bad kids in town are closely tailing – and it becomes a race to see who’ll be able to recover the body first.
John’s Thought: Hey everybody look… it’s Wesley Crusher

#30 – 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: This movie is concerned with intelligence as the division between animal and human, then asks a question; what is the next division? Technology is treated as irrelevant to the quest – literally serving as mere vehicles for the human crew, and as a shell for the immature HAL entity. Story told as a montage of impressions, music and impressive and careful attention to subliminal detail. A very influential film and still a class act, even after 25 years.
John’s Thought: There are parts of this film that still confuse the hell out of me.

#29 – MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 84%
Synopsis: The year is 1805. Europe has fallen to Napoleon, and only the Royal Navy stands in his way to total victory. Off the cost of South America, a new conflict is brewing. Captain Jack “Lucky Jack” Aubrey (Russel Crowe) of the Man-of-War HMS Surprise is under orders to sink or capture the French privateer Acheron, which has been deployed to the region. After seven weeks of uneventful sailing, the Acheron strikes first, all but crippling the Surprise in an engagement in which Aubrey realizes his enemy’s ship is nautically superior to his own. Along with his close friend and confidant Stephan Maturin (Paul Bettany) who also happens to be the ship’s surgeon, Aubrey is now faced with the choice of retreating to England and admitting defeat or remaining at the Acheron’s mercy. Aubrey must now do the impossible if he is to survive, repair his ship, catch up to his enemy and defeat the Acheron–somehow.
John’s Thought: Tragically overlooked film. The young kids in the cast actually add to the film

#28 – MEMENTO
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: Point blank in the head a man shoots another. In flashbacks, each one earlier in time than what we’ve just seen, the two men’s pasts unfold. Leonard, as a result of a blow to the head during an assault on his wife, has no short-term memory. He’s looking for his wife’s killer, compensating for his disability by taking Polaroids, annotating them and tattooing important facts on his body. We meet the loquacious Teddy and the seductive Natalie (a barmaid who promises to help) and we glimpse Leonard’s wife through memories from before the assault. Leonard also talks about Sammy Jankis, a man he knew with a similar condition. Has Leonard found the killer? Who’s manipulating whom?
John’s Thought: Such a unique way to tell a story and the movie that put Christopher Nolan (director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) on the map for people.

#27 – DANCES WITH WOLVES
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 77%
Synopsis: Lt. John Dunbar is dubbed a hero after he accidentally leads Union troops to a victory during the Civil War. He requests a position on the western frontier, but finds it deserted. He soon finds out he is not alone, but meets a wolf he dubs “Two-socks” and a curious Indian tribe. Dunbar quickly makes friends with the tribe, and discovers a white woman who was raised by the Indians. He gradually earns the respect of these native people, and sheds his white-man’s ways.
John’s Thought: Yeah people got sick of Costner, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is one hell of a movie.

#26 – THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 75%
Synopsis: The last months of Jesse James’s life, from meeting Robert Ford, a 19-year-old who idolizes Jesse, to the day Ford shoots him. Jesse’s a wanted man, living under a pseudonym, carrying out a train robbery, disappearing to Kentucky, and reappearing to plan a bank holdup with Robert and Robert’s brother as his team. The rest of the gang is dead, arrested, or gone from Missouri. Whenever Jesse’s around, there’s tension: he’s murderous, quixotic, depressed, and cautious. Ford wants to be somebody and wants the reward. On April 3, 1882, things come to a head: Jesse is 34, Robert 20. Ford becomes famous, reenacting the shooting on stage, facing down the label “coward,” shot dead in 1892.
John’s Thought: Deliberately paced, beautifully told with a couple of stunning performances to boot.

#25 – DAS BOOT
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: A detailed look into the claustrophobic and terrifying world of a German U-boat crew hunting ships from undersea. Gritty, realistic, and peppered with black humour, this is one of the few sympathetic portrayals of the war from the German side to be released in western distribution.
John’s Thought: I think this might have been the first foreign film I ever saw… it still might be the best.

#24 – RAGING BULL
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 98%
Synopsis: When Jake LaMotta steps into a boxing ring and obliterates his opponent, he’s a prizefighter. But when he treats his family and friends the same way, he’s a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment. Though LaMotta wants his family’s love, something always seems to come between them. Perhaps it’s his violent bouts of paranoia and jealousy. This kind of rage helped make him a champ, but in real life, he winds up in the ring alone.
John’s Thought: A different kind of sports movies and one of DiNero’s best performances.

#23 – THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 97%
Synopsis: As the English and French soldiers battle for control of the North American colonies in the 18th century, the settlers and native Americans are forced to take sides. Cora and her sister Alice unwittingly walk into trouble but are saved by Hawkeye, an orphaned settler adopted by the last of the Mohicans.
John’s Thought: STAY ALIVE! Man, the scene where he kills the guy who was about to get tortured… yikes

#22 – THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating –
Synopsis: This remake of the 1946 movie of the same name accounts an affair between a seedy drifter and a seductive wife of a roadside cafe owner. This begins a chain of events that culminates in murder. Based on a novel by James M. Cain.
John’s Thought: A lot of the so called “all time classics” don’t end up living up to the hype. This one does.

#21 – THE UNTOUCHABLES
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 82%
Synopsis: Young Treasury Agent Elliot Ness arrives in Chicago and is deternimed to take down Al Capone but he learns that it’s not going to be easy, because Capone has the police in his pocket. But Ness meets Jimmy Malone a veteran patrolman and probably the most honorable one in the force. He asks Malone to help him get Capone but Malone warns him that if he goes after Capone, he is going to war. They recruit academy cadet, George Stone and Treasury agent Oscar Wallace, who is also an accountant, who wants to prosecute Capone for tax evasion. When they make headway, Capone tries to get them but they are untouchable.
John’s Thought: Leave it to a wop to bring a knife to a gun fight. Yeah, we tend to do that.

#20 – 3:10 TO YUMA
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 88%
Synopsis: The rancher Daniel Evans, who lost part of his leg in the Civil War, is broken and owing a large amount to a powerful man in Bisbee. When the outlaw Ben Wade is captured after the heist of a stagecoach, Dan offers to escort the cold blood killer to the city of Contention to take the 3:10 PM train to Yuma to be sent to trial. In return, he would receive US$ 200,00, enough to save his land and give a better life to his family. During their journey, Ben gets closer to Dan while his gang of criminals follows the group to rescue their boss.
John’s Thought: I honestly don’t know why this movie didn’t get better received because I thought it was flat out amazing and my favorite western since Unforgiven.

#19 – DIE HARD
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Tough New York cop John McClane finds himself in a tight situation when an office building in Los Angeles is taken over by terrorists. Apart from himself, everyone else in the building – including his wife – is held at gunpoint while their captors spell out their demands. The F.B.I. are called in to survey the situation, but John McClane has other plans for the terrorists…
John’s Thought: Betcha didn’t know this was based on a book. Yeah neither did I at first.

#18 – A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 78%
Synopsis: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally – late in life – received the Nobel Prize.
John’s Thought: Russell Crowe is hands down the best all around actor alive today. This film is just exhibit 4 on the list that proves that point.

#17 – CASINO ROYALE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: Recently promoted to 00 status, James Bond takes over his first mission, in which he faces a mysterious private banker to world terrorism and poker player, Le Chiffre. Along with a beautiful Treasury agent and the MI6 man in Montenegro, Bond takes part in a high stakes poker game set up by Le Chiffre in order to recover a huge sum of his clients’ money he lost in a failed plot that the British spy took down. 007 will not only discover the threatening organization behind his enemy, but the worst of all truths: to not trust on anyone.
John’s Thought: Daniel Craig because my all time favorite James Bond, and Casino Royale became my favorite Bond film. Too bad Quantum of Solace didn’t live up to Royale’s level.

#16 – MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 91%
Synopsis: Maggie Fitzgerald, a poor thirty-one year old waitress from the very lower classes and with a dysfunctional loser family, decides to make a difference through boxing. She convinces the experienced hardened boxing trainer Frankie Dunn to coach her and be her manager, with the support of his old partner Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris, who sees her potential as a boxer. Frankie has a problematical relationship with his daughter, and practically adopts Maggie along her career.
John’s Thought: Holy crap this movie twisted my emotions into a thousand knots and inside out. Love this movie. Eastwood is indeed one of the premiere directors in the business.

#15 – MISERY
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 90%
Synopsis: Novelist Paul Sheldon crashes his car on a snowy Colorado road. He is found by Annie Wilkes, the “number one fan” of Paul’s heroine Misery Chastaine. Annie is also somewhat unstable, and Paul finds himself crippled, drugged and at her mercy.
John’s Thought: All of today’s torture porn movies can kiss my ass. The stuff poor James Caan goes through in this flick still makes me squirm.

#14 – SHADOWLANDS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: CS Lewis is the author of the Narnia books – The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Known as Jack, he teaches at an Oxford College, during the 1930’s. An American fan, Joy Gresham, arrives to meet him for tea in Oxford. It is the beginning of a love affair. Tragically Joy becomes terminally unwell and their lives become complicated.
John’s Thought: Touching and deep at the same time. Dealing with the issues of faith and suffering isn’t not an easy theme to navigate, but Shadowlands does beautifully.

#13 – NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: After stumbling across a case of money among dead bodies, Llewelyn Moss thinks he can keep it quiet, but when silent killer Anton Chigurh locates Moss and his money, Vietnam veteran Moss makes a run for it. With bodies falling everywhere Anton goes, it’s only a matter of time before he catches up with Llewelyn. Whilst all this is going on, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is overseeing the investigation and begins to see the country in a different light than it once was.
John’s Thought: What can be said about this flick that hasn’t been said this year already?

#12 – GOODFELLAS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: Henry Hill is a small time gangster, who takes part in a robbery with Jimmy Conway and Tommy De Vito, two other gangsters who have set their sights a bit higher. His two partners kill off everyone else involved in the robbery, and slowly start to climb up through the hierarchy of the Mob. Henry, however, is badly affected by his partners success, but will he stoop low enough to bring about the downfall of Jimmy and Tommy?
John’s Thought: An absolutely stacked cast with some of the most memorable and quoted lines in mobster movie history.

#11 – SCARFACE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 87%
Synopsis: A remake of the 1932 classic, the 1983 version follows cuban refugee, Tony Montana and his close friend Manny Ray, and together they build a strong drug empire in Miami. Of course Montana must deal with the hardships of this type of buisness. And as Montana’s power begins to grow so does his ego and his paranoia.
John’s Thought: Which line was better? “Say hello to my little friend” or “first, you get the money…”?

#10 – WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: The Earnshaws are Yorkshire farmers during the early 19th Century. One day, Mr. Earnshaw returns from a trip to the city, bringing with him a ragged little boy called Heathcliff. Earnshaw’s son, Hindley, resents the child, but Heathcliff becomes companion and soulmate to Hindley’s sister, Catherine. After her parents die, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up wild and free on the Moors and despite the continued enmity between Hindley and Heathcliff they’re happy– until Cathy meets Edgar Linton, the son of a wealthy neighbor.
John’s Thought: so many versions of this story, but this one will always be the measure.

#9 – THE PRINCESS BRIDE
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 95%
Synopsis: When the lovely Buttercup is kidnapped by a ghastly gang intent on fermenting an international incident they find they are pursued by the Dread Pirate Roberts who just might be Westley, her one true love. Also after everyone is nasty Prince Humperdinck to whom Buttercup is now betrothed but who seems to care little for her continued survival. The stage is set for swordfights, monsters, and tortures – but will Grandpa be allowed to finish telling the story with all these kissy bits?
John’s Thought: One of the most special movies ever made that is nothing short of pure magic. Holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of people.

#8 – THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 95%
Synopsis: The film deals with the situation of British prisoners of war during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge to accommodate the Burma-Siam railway. Their instinct is to sabotage the bridge but, under the leadership of Colonel Nicholson, they are persuaded that the bridge should be constructed as a symbol of British morale, spirit and dignity in adverse circumstances. At first, the prisoners admire Nicholson when he bravely endures torture rather than compromise his principles for the benefit of the Japanese commandant Saito. He is an honorable but arrogant man, who is slowly revealed to be a deluded obsessive. He convinces himself that the bridge is a monument to British character, but actually is a monument to himself, and his insistence on its construction becomes a subtle form of collaboration with the enemy. Unknown to him, the Allies have sent a mission into the jungle, led by Warden and an American, Shears, to blow up the bridge.
John’s Thought: I was pretty young the first time I saw this movie, and it confused me how Obi Wan Kenobi was suddenly a british soldier.

#7 – THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 95%
Synopsis: This film tells the story of Captain Marko Ramius, the skipper of the Soviet Union’s newest nuclear sub. Jack Ryan of the CIA gets involved in a tense, tangled hunt for this sub, when Ramius defects, taking the “Red October” with him. The story is an action packed techno-thriller.
John’s Thought: This is probably the one in my top 10 that will make most people scratch their heads. So freaking brilliant. I really liked the way they transitioned between russian to english.

#6 – SCHINDLER’S LIST
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: The true story of Oscar Schindler, a German businessman who owns a factory. He witnesses the horrifying visions of the Holocaust and the toll it takes on the Jewish people. Eventually, he creates a list of over 1100 Jews whom he saves from death.
John’s Thought: Funniest movie since Slapshot! Just kidding… sort of a Seinfeld reference.

#5 – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 96%
Synopsis: Sauron’s forces increase. His allies grow. The Ringwraiths return in an even more frightening form. Saruman’s army of Uruk Hai is ready to launch an assault against Aragorn and the people of Rohan. Yet, the Fellowship is broken and Boromir is dead. For the little hope that is left, Frodo and Sam march on into Mordor, unprotected. A number of new allies join with Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Pippin and Merry. And they must defend Rohan and attack Isengard. Yet, while all this is going on, Sauron’s troops mass toward the City of Gondor, for the War of the Ring is about to begin.
John’s Thought: The big question in a lot of people’s mind’s was “Was the first LOTR movie just a fluke?” Nope.

#4 – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 92%
Synopsis: An ancient Ring thought lost for centuries has been found, and through a strange twist in fate has been given to a small Hobbit named Frodo. When Gandalf discovers the Ring is in fact the One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, Frodo must make an epic quest to the Cracks of Doom in order to destroy it! However he does not go alone. He is joined by Gandalf, Legolas the elf, Gimli the Dwarf, Aragorn, Boromir and his three Hobbit friends Merry, Pippin and Samwise. Through mountains, snow, darkness, forests, rivers and plains, facing evil and danger at every corner the Fellowship of the Ring must go. Their quest to destroy the One Ring is the only hope for the end of the Dark Lords reign!
John’s Thought: The masterpiece that started the trilogy. A lot of people (me included) didn’t think they’d be able to properly capture the novel. They went far beyond anyone’s expectations.

#3 – THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 89%
Synopsis: After the murder of his wife, hotshot banker Andrew Dufresne is sent to Shawshank Prison, where the usual unpleasantness occurs. Over the years, he retains hope and eventually gains the respect of his fellow inmates, especially longtime convict “Red” Redding, a black marketeer, and becomes influential within the prison. Eventually, Andrew achieves his ends on his own terms.
John’s Thought: As we get into the top 3, I also have all these films on my all time top 3 (not just for movies based on books). Shawshank never won best picture… one of the greatest crimes at the Oscars in History.

#2 – THE GODFATHER
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 100%
Synopsis: Vito Corleone is the aging don (head) of the Corleone Mafia Family. His youngest son Michael has returned from WWII just in time to see the wedding of Connie Corleone (Michael’s sister) to Carlo Rizzi. All of Michael’s family is involved with the Mafia, but Michael just wants to live a normal life. Drug dealer Virgil Sollozzo is looking for Mafia Families to offer him protection in exchange for a profit of the drug money. He approaches Don Corleone about it, but, much against the advice of the Don’s lawyer Tom Hagen, the Don is morally against the use of drugs, and turns down the offer. This does not please Sollozzo, who has the Don shot down by some of his hit men. The Don barely survives, which leads his son Michael to begin a violent mob war against Sollozzo and tears the Corleone family apart.
John’s Thought: Probably the single most important and influential film ever made. I still can’t believe how many people have never seen this movie. GO SEE IT.

#1 – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
Rotten Tomatoes Rating – 94%
Synopsis: Gondor is overrun by the orcs of Mordor, and Gandalf rides to Minas Tirith to aid the humans in the war that is ahead. Aragorn must realize his true identity and purpose as the King of Men, and journey with Gimli and Legolas to summon the Army of the Dead so that the battle against evil can be won. Meanwhile, paranoia and suspicion rises between Frodo, Sam and Gollum as they continue their increasingly dark and dangerous travel to Mount Doom, the one place where The Ring can be destroyed once and for all.
John’s Thought: It only makes sense for this film to be on the top of the list considering I call it the greatest all around achievement in film history (when you take all the elements of effects, cinematography, direction, acting, writing, etc, etc, etc.

So there you have it folks… the top 100. Now, I’m sure in all the time I spent putting this list together that there are probably 2 or 3 that I left out or forgot about that I’ll slap my head about later. That’s to be expected. But for now, what are some of your favorites? Which ones did I leave off this list that you think should have been included and why? What would you bump off the list?

What other little gems should be all know about?

*UPDATE* – LIke I said in the paragraph above, after spending weeks going through literally thousands of movies, a few obvious ones slipped through the cracks. So here is an update on films I SHOULD have included on the list:

– To Kill A Mocking Bird
– Jaws

Many people are asking why Gone with the Wind isn’t on the list. It’s a great movie, but I sometimes use the “Buddy with DVDs” test. If a buddy showed up with 2 DVDs, Gone with the Wind and any movie on this list… which movie would I chose to watch? Answer: Any movie on this list, thus Gone with the Wind doesn’t make the list. source

Best Buy to Deliver Streaming Movies via CinemaNow

2009-11-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

by Chloe Albanesius
Best Buy is teaming up with Sonic Solutions to provide customers on-demand access to streaming movies and TV shows.

Best Buy will embed Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow technology on a number of devices, like web-connected TVs, portable media players, PCs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and mobile phones. This will include a variety of manufacturers, Best Buy said, but the store did not reveal any specific companies at this time.

The multi-year agreement allows Best Buy to license Sonic's technology to make its on-demand digital content delivery a standard feature on connected devices. As part of the deal, Best Buy purchased an undisclosed number of Sonic common stock.

When the service is in place, Best Buy customers can buy or rent from the CinemaNow catalogue, which includes access to new movies, TV shows, independent films, and older catalogue films. Some of those movies will likely be available on the same day as their DVD release, Best Buy said.

Both companies said they also plan to work with movie studios on "new service and content offerings" but did not elaborate.

"Our relationship with Sonic Solutions allows Best Buy to quickly establish a strong position in the digital delivery of video entertainment," Brian Dunn, chief executive of Best Buy, said in a statement. "It also enables us to make deeper and more meaningful connections with our customers and expand our relationships with content owners and hardware vendors to create compelling new home entertainment solutions."

"With Best Buy's focus, we expect on-demand entertainment to quickly grow into a mass market activity, with digital sell-through and rental becoming a significant new revenue stream for content owners," said Dave Habiger, president and chief executive of Sonic Solutions, in a statement.

In July, TiVo announced that it was teaming up with Best Buy to offer TiVo-brand digital video recorders that integrate Best Buy content. source

The history of making movies. Raucous new‘literary’ history ventures into surprising territory.

2009-09-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

You have to read the title very closely — every major word — as if it were a phrase in a poem by John Donne. This book is NEW. It’s literary. And it’s a history of America.

It is NOT the history of literature in America which you might take it to be if you read the title too quickly. There’s a megaton of American literary history within, but you won’t find, for instance, Harper Lee, Henry Miller, William Gaddis or Donald Barthelme at all, just to mention four of the most wildly disparate and significant 20th century American writers I can think of off the top of my head.

Bernard Malamud is kissed off in one reference on the fly in Clark Blaise’s essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Among feminist poets, Adrienne Rich is given the nod over Sylvia Plath (four very lonely, very brief and very miscellaneous references in the index). Robert Creeley, though, is entirely absent, as is his onetime friend and subsequent nemesis Kenneth Rexroth. Don’t even think about Robert Duncan.

Ambrose Bierce, that bitter and black-hearted master of American gallows comedy, is mentioned wanly only three times—once among those who “sought refuge in Mexico,” once in a generic reference to Ben Franklin’s brother James inaugurating a tradition “of American journalistic satire that would run through Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce,” and once, in a piece on Sinclair Lewis, naming Lewis as part of a group of ’20s writers who “constituted a Golden Age of serious literary mockery in the tradition of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.”

The editors themselves brag in their opening paragraph that those “leafing through these pages” will find entries on Anne Bradstreet, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison and others “but also on Stephen Foster, the invention of the telephone, the Winchester rifle, ‘Steamboat Willie,’ Alcoholics Anonymous, ‘Porgy and Bess,’ the first issue of Life [magazine], the atomic bomb, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho,’ and Ronald Reagan’s 1964 campaign speech for Barry Goldwater.”

It all started, admittedly, in 1989 when Harvard University Press published Denis Hollier’s “A New History of French Literature,” and in 2004 with David Wellberry’s “A New History of German Literature.” But when you’re dealing with America, “a place made up out of nothing” as editors Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors call it, you’re dealing with a place whose “literature was not inherited but invented, as if it were a tool or a machine, and discovered, as if it were a gold strike or the next wonder of the Louisiana Purchase.”

“No tradition has ever ruled; no form has ever been fixed,” they claim, so “this book is a re-examination of the American experience as seen through a literary glass, where what is at issue is speech in many forms.” It’s a “broadly cultural history” then, “a history of America in which literary means not only what is written but what is voiced, what is expressed, what is invented, in whatever form.”

Talk about “lighting out for the territory.”

Marcus is one of the greatest of all rock critics (“Mystery Train,” “Dead Elvis”), who long ago expanded all the way out to the very edge of culture’s continental shelf. Sollors is a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard. Theirs, as Madison Avenue would have put it, is not your father’s idea of what’s “literary.”

It was a vast undertaking. It’s a wildly informative, hugely entertaining and sometimes even revelatory book.

Hitchcock’s “Psycho” is here with an entry of its own (wait until you read David Thomson’s treatment of that in a book to come in a couple months). And Maya Lin’s wall commemorating the 58,000 U. S. soldiers “who died or went missing in the Vietnam War.” And Billie Holiday, bebop and the blues. And Walt Disney’s seminal cartoon “Steamboat Willie” as well as Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic” and the moments that Nevada legalized gambling and, on Harry Truman’s orders, the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. (“Nobody in Congress really liked Senator Truman,” writes Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi. “He was a boor, mirthless and thin-skinned. He had been a failure as a farmer, a bankrupted clothing salesman, he never finished law school and he owed his career to the ballot-stuffing pols of the Kansas City Pendergast machine. In the 1944 election, he was the worst kind of compromise candidate, a mousy fourth choice for vice president.”)

With such a radical new understanding of the word “literary,” then, it just wouldn’t do to dispense entirely with wise guys in the back of the lecture hall spritzing Marcus, Sollors and their writers with embarrassing questions.

My hand, accordingly, is raised. Here are a few:

• How can you deal with Disney and “Steamboat Willie” and not their brazen and brash countervoices over at the Warner Brothers’ cartoon factory, especially Chuck Jones and Tex Avery? There’s an American polarity if ever there was one. Where is television in all this, most specifically that incredible Sid Caesar writers’ room that disgorged the next half century of American comedy — Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Larry Gelbart, who wandered in and out in as bursting and influential an assemblage of comic profligacy as we’re seen since the Algonquin Round Table?

• Why so much on Chuck Berry and so little on Elvis Presley, one of the archetypal American stories, especially when you consider that coeditor Marcus wrote two of the greatest books on Elvis? And as long as we’re talking about rock, why nothing about Charles White’s “authorized biography” of Little Richard, one of the rock ’n’ roll books truly apt for its subject? And, on another musical plane altogether, why nothing about the writings of John Cage, some of the most graceful and radical philosophical prose ever written in this country?

• And a whole entry on movie critic Manny Farber, rather than Pauline Kael? Huh? (Not only that, Farber is about to get a whole deifying Library of America volume all to himself.) And why, within that piece, is Susan Sontag only listed that one time as being among those upholding “the upper end of that socio-aesthetic spectrum” in movie criticism?

• How about the tabloid photographic art of Weegee as inimitable American “expression?”

• And, as long as we’re telling the epic tale of American culture in the broadest way—as befitting post-’60s academe — why not have some bruising intramural Ivy League fun in this Harvard University Press product and give us an entry on the Yale Deconstructionists, especially the Belgian-born Paul DeMan, who was revealed to have collaborated, as a writer, with the Nazis up to and including anti-Semitic prose?

It is, of course, among the glories of this encyclopedically radical post-’60s way of telling the American cultural tale that it’s as readable as it is. That will happen when you’ve got contributions by Walter Mosely, Ishmael Reed, Robert Gottlieb, Steve Erickson, Michael Lesy, Sean Wilentz, Andrei Codrescu, Jonathan Lethem, Gerald Early, John Edgar Wideman, Luc Sante, Richard Schickel, Michael Tolkin and John Rockwell, among many others. (Former Courier-Express music critic R. J. Smith, by the way, writes about speaking in tongues, and University at Buffalo professor Carrie Tirado Bramen writes about Leslie Fiedler’s migration from New Jersey to Montana.)

What we wiseacres need to heed, though, is probably this rule: Ask not what you can do for this book, only what it can do for you.

There are so many great things here — screenwriter Michael Tolkin, for instance, on Alcoholics Anonymous; Robert Gottlieb on the ascension of American “talk” on radio, in movies etc., Luc Sante on “the invention of the blues”; Paul Muldoon on “Carl Sandburg and the American Songbag” (bless any literary history that refuses anonymity for Sandburg while valorizing Robert Frost), Douglas McGrath on Preston Sturges making seven movies in four years.

It’s a cavalcade of native wonders. “Informative” is where it starts. “Revelatory” isn’t even where it stops. read more

MTV Sets TV Movie Slate

2009-08-26T11:03:00.001-07:00

Develops original moves to compliment scripted and unscripted series
By Alex Weprin
MTV is developing a slate of made-for-TV movies, designed to compliment the network's unscripted and scripted programming lineup.

Some of the movies are a riff on existing programs, while others are set in worlds that tie into specific MTV shows.

The movies announcement comes as the network looks to boost its scripted programming. It has already greenlit comedy Hard Times, with more scripted comedies and dramas expected to move forward in the coming months.

The last time the network made this large a push for made-for-TV movies was in 1999. Unlike the current effort, those movies were all musically themed, and not necessarily tied into MTV programming.

The three projects announced by MTV are:

My Super Psycho Sweet Sixteen, which is set at a sweet 16 party at a rollerdome that had been plagued by murders. The name is derivative of the long running MTV docu-series My Super Sweet 16, which chronicles sweet 16 parties of children of the rich and famous. The movie will premiere on MTV in October following a theatrical run.

Turn The Beat Around, which is set in the competitive L.A. dance scene. The movie follows a struggling young dancer who convinces a club owner to open a disco that features disco hits remixed with modern music and dance. The movie would fit well with Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew, which is an American Idol-style competition for dance groups, and one of the network's top hits.

Made, based on the now 7+ year-old docu-series of the same name, the Made movie will be a scripted comedy in the vein of Clueless and Bring It On, and is about a cheerleader helping a band nerd make the squad. It is still in development. http://www.broadcastingcable.com

MTV Sets TV Movie Slate

2009-08-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

LG to Embed Vudu’s On-Demand Movie Service Into TVs

2009-08-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Streaming media provider Vudu has partnered with LG to include its software into upcoming LG high-definition TVs. The move will get rid of the intermediary set-top box and allows consumers to directly watch on-demand content from the internet on their TVs.

“Smart TV’s are part of an exciting new industry trend,” says Alain Rossmann, CEO of Vudu. “Vudu is partnering with leading consumer electronics vendors to embed the new Vudu service directly into the TV, eliminating the expense and hassle of purchasing, installing or connecting another device to the TV.”

The new Vudu service delivered through LG TVs allows consumers to discover and watch high definition movies on-demand. The service will be available on upcoming models of LG’s broadband TVs later this fall.

Licensing Vudu’s software to consumer electronics makers such as LG though is a strategy that allows Vudu to go out of the box and focus on delivering the service. It’s a strategy similar to what GPS-navigation devices maker Dash had adopted. Dash started out by producing standalone GPS boxes with its software that offered services such as local search. But the company soon abandoned the hardware-based GPS systems and instead focused on licensing its applications and services to run on other products. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion acquired Dash earlier this year.

In the last two years, streaming media boxes that bring online movies, TV shows and content to the TV have become popular with consumers, though they are still a small fraction of audience that rents movies. Apple launched its Apple TV in 2007. Meanwhile, Roku, a company that started by offering $100 boxes in partnership with Netflix included access to content from Amazon.com earlier this year. Netflix rival BlockBuster also has a streaming video box available read more

The Time Machine - 60

2009-07-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

This is my pick for the greatest movie I've ever seen in my lifetime so far. I will explain why in further detail. I watched this movie when I was a teenager, at first I saw only part of it, I was with my father inside of an electronics store, and they had it playing on one of the televisions there. I was only able to catch part of it, and thought it was really awesome when I first looked at it. I saw these blue-skinned Morlocks fighting this guy in what appeared to be a cave. They had big glowing eyes, and looked like real big bad monsters. I was impressed to say the least, immediately I wanted to see the movie from the start, to my greatest joy I later that week was able to see it on a VHS video rental from one of the local video stores.

I enjoy science fiction films, but I like all genres this one stands out to me very much so. Director George Pal brings great life into this novel adaptation from legendary author Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells). The special effects are a bit dated, but hey it was done way back in the year 1960. The lead character slyly named H. George Wells is played by actor Rod Taylor who starred in the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds (1963)". I would compare him to future legend Harrison Ford from our time.

The story goes as this, an Englishman from the turn of the century builds a time machine that allows him to observe everything around him in a glance. He decides to adventure out as time passes by and what he finds he decides from that point on that there is no turning back. He befriends the vulnerable Eloi and decides to help them out seeing as how their world has turned into a peaceful yet frightful one. This movie would be wonderful to watch with your children or other family and friends. I think it is a must see for anyone! This is truly classic superb film making and the cast and crew especially for that time period did a most excellent job putting this together.

There was a remake of this film starring Guy Pierce called The Time Machine (2002), I enjoyed it also, but it doesn't compare to the original by any means. See what happens to humanity in this future adventure.

Written By: Terry Larch

Author's Site: http://chewypopcorn.com/ and http://twitter.com/chewypopcorn

Transformers 2

2009-07-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

Transformers 2 and the Fallen Morals of Society.

Many reviewers have already commented on how weak the plot is for Transformers 2 and the bad storytelling abilities of Michael Bay. Roger Ebert did not give the movie his blessings and the crew on the RottenTomatoes website gave it a very low 21% rating.

The movie was actually not that bad regardless of the story and less than superb acting. There are some spectacular special effects during the fight scenes and if this movie was to be rated solely on action sequences, it would be among the best ever. The thing that every reviewer seems to have ignored is the unnecessary immoral and decadent behavior that is littered throughout the movie.

We get a taste of things to come in the opening scene of Sam, played by Shia LeBeof, leaving to go to college. Shortly after Sam's Father slaps his Mother on her behind, he tells his son about how college life will be different. Sam tells his Dad that he is a one woman man but the Father responds by telling his son about how he needs to "discover" and explore his sexuality while in college. In other words, he needs to sleep around with many girls and does not need to be faithful. What a great message to send to teenagers around the country.

We are soon visited upon a scene of Michaela, played by Megan Fox, who is spread out on a motorcycle with her rear end out so that everyone can examine it. A few scenes later, she is ripping off her clothes and surprising Sam with a very short and revealing dress that shows us her underwear. The purpose of this scene is something we will never know. Speaking of underwear, there is a scene with John Torturro which has him showing us more of his backside than most movie goers would ever want to see. The purpose of the scene is shock value because wearing a normal underwear does not entertain people enough.

Then we have the college girl who tempts Sam and is ridiculously over the top as the slut of the movie. The Autobot radio appropriately plays "She's a SuperFreak" when she is in the car, but this does nothing to erase the uncomfortableness that parents will feel from the sexual encounters when she is on the screen. The sexual scenes are complimented by the curse words that are used by the Transformers. There are two new Autobots who use foul language in numerous scenes. The audience chuckled a few times after hearing the obscenities, but I am sure they looked around afterwards to see how many kids heard those foul words.

The rating of this movie was PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material. While the rating is accurate, I do not think that many parents pay attention to the full rating of the movie. I saw the movie in the theater and found more than a third of the audience were kids who were 10 years old or younger. One kid appeared to be around 5 years old and was so small; he had to sit in his Fathers lap during the movie. Mr. Himed analyzes current event issues like no other person. You can email him at Marvel451@aol.com

Channel 4 big brother UK

2009-06-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

Are we just unashamed voyeurs? Also we can ask if shows like Temptation Island, etc reflect actual reality? Another question is, are we just wasting our precious leisure time watching rubbish, or is there something to be gained from such shows. In this article I will attempt to answer these questions. There are many studies and articles written on this subject, so these questions must be relevant.

Are Reality Shows 'Real'? - No, not really. They are actually very controlled and contrived. In Big Brother the contestants are virtually imprisoned and live totally under the rules if they want to stay in the house. Once they are in the house they are continually manipulated and often provoked to produce some kind of reaction.This for most of us is very far from real life.

This Years Channel4 Big Brother (uk) has put sixteen people together, who had assumed they were to be housemates from the start. It came as a shock for them to discover they had to earn housemate status, by performing different tasks. From the off then, both the contestant and the viewer have their expectations of the show shattered. The 'reality' they had come to expect was reconstructed to give an interesting twist..

The Myths - About Why People Watch Reality TV Shows - There are several myths as to why people love to view television shows that take ordinary people, and pit them against each other in front of the camera:

* One myth is that the viewers are less intelligent than other people and are easily pleased. However a survey carried out by Dr Steven Reiss and Jane Witz showed that people who are devoted to shows like Channel4 Big Brother uk are just as interested in intellectual pursuits as non-fans.*
* Another myth is that people watch reality tv, so they have a shared interest with their friends and family. The Weiss study showed that non-fans were just as sociable as fans.*
* With shows such as Temptation Island where couples cheated on each other, there is the myth that people switch on just to see illicit sex. However when the program turned out to be much tamer than promised, the ratings did not fall. *

The Reasons Why We Do Watch Reality TV -

* One drawing factor is the fact that such shows are usually competitive. The Reiss study showed that poeple do like to watch people competing, forming alliances, and see betrayal and revenge as valid attributes.*
* Status is another factor - people strive to achieve status or prestige in life, and the fact that someone ordinary can become a celebrity, is encouraging to viewers. They have a - 'If they can do it, then so can I' -mentality.*

Why Waste Your Precious Time - watching shows like Channel4 Big Brother? Do We Learn Anything?

* These days the emphasis seems to be on celebrity status, rather than possessing talent or skills. For our viewing purposes, this would seem to lower the quality of the shows we watch. So why do we watch?
* It seems that the fact that you dont really need any talent to get on the telly, is a plus for viewers! This is because we can identify with the contestants, and it provides a context to judge our own lives by.**
* Also these shows allow us to vote and show our approval or disapproval of certain behaviours. This gives us some control, and makes reality watching more interactive.**

References:
*Psychologytoday.com - article by Steven Reiss and Jane Witz
**MPRcenter.org - The Media Psychology Blog - Dr Pam Routledge

Is Watching Reality TV - Pure Voyeurism?

Personally for myself and probably lots of others, yes it is. I love to watch people being stupid, arguing, becoming friends or lovers. Watching interactions between contestants is good fun, and often very funny!

For the best contestant biopics for Channel4 Big Brother go to http://www.squidoo.com/channel4-big-brother

Top 7 Mob Movies. New Transformers Film. In Transformers 2.

2009-06-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

Used Movies For Sale - Top 7 Mob Movies

Why are there so many movies about gangsters? It's because they are so popular. Here is a list of arguably the top ten gangster movies of all time. Is your favorite among them?

1. The Godfather

This 1972 film was based on the bestselling book by Mario Puzo - is the story of an aging patriarch of a crime family who transfers control of his family to his son.

The film is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and features Marlon Brando, Al PAcino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton. This film won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Leading Actor (Brando) and Best Screenplay

2. The Godfather II

This 1974 classic is the sequel to The Godfather. Much of the original cast returns. Robert De Niro is cast as the young Vito Corleone. The film combines scenes from the 1920's, when Vito Corleone's career began, interspersed with scenes from the 1950's and 1960's with Michael Corleone leading the family's move to Nevada. The film won six Oscars including Best Picture.

3. Pulp Fiction

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, this 1994 film follows four intertwined stories: the lives of two mob hit men; a boxer, a gangster's wife; a couple who rob a diner. The film stars John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, and Uma Thurman. Tarantino won the Best Writing for a Screenplay Oscar for this film.

4. Goodfellas

This 1990 classic is directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Nicholas Pileggi. It's an adaptation of the true story of the people involved in the 1978 Lufthansa Heist at JFK. The film stars Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino. Joe Pesci won the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in this film.

5. The Departed

This 2006 film became an instant classic. It has an all-star cast including such notables as Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin. An Irish Mob boss places an informant within the Massachusetts State Police, while simultaneously, the police assign an undercover cop to infiltrate the mob. http://moviefree.org

The 5 Most Hated Transformers in the New Transformers Film

Everyone who knows something about Transformers has a distinct favourite character. Two fighter groups, the Autobots and Decepticons, are in the front line. People mostly love the Autobots and hate the Decepticons.

After viewing the reviews from people from all over the world, it is obvious that Megatron is the most hated Transformer. Hugo Weaving voiced this character, and Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons. He was destroyed and thrown away into the Laurentian Abyss in the first film.

He is brought back to life by other members of the Constructicons with dead 'robot' parts. He is now more powerful as an outcome of his reformation by getting the Allspark waste that initially murdered him. When revitalising Megatron, the writers decided not to change his name in order to avoid any confusion.

Then there is The Fallen, who is one of the actual thirteen Transformers. People hate him because he is the one who manipulated Megatron into creating the Decepticons. He is ensnared in a new dimension but continued exchanging words with the Decepticons by means of an inter-dimensional window. This window destroyed the Fallen's face. His misshaped face inspired the Decepticons to use it as a symbol.

People who made this movie selected the Fallen for this film because they too thought that he is the most loathsome villain ever.

Another hated name amongst the Transformers is 'Mixmaster', who is capable of transforming into a black and silver Mack concrete mixer truck. He makes the head of the Devastator; the ultimate evil. Its most hateful characteristic is that he can make acid, and that acid can destroy even steel doors. He also generates a smoke screen that is also very vicious and can destroy anything.

Like other Constructicons, Long Haul is also despised by many people around the world. They hate the fact that he takes part in the completion of Devastator. Without him, Devastator remains incomplete as it makes the right leg of this evil character in the film.

Another reason to hate this character is that it tried hard and brought Megatron back to life and opened a new chapter of destruction on the face of the earth. People were happy to know that Megatron is not alive anymore, and now the world and other parts of the universe can rest in peace. But with the selfish struggle of Long Haul, they were disappointed again. Transformers movie

In Transformers 2 - Who Are the Main Transformers?

Transformers became the biggest sensation when it was released in 2007, the older generation was reminded of their once favorite characters and the younger generation loved the super new form of the old robots.

Now, Michael Bay is back again with Transformer - Revenge of the Fallen. The movie stars all of the old transformers as well as some new ones. The two rivals Autobots and Decepticons are fighting a ferocious battle.

Optimus Prime is leading the Autobot troops. He is his brave and fearless. Peter Cullen has given his voice for the character. As before he disguises himself as a blue Peterbilt truck and it has red flame decals on it. He is the mightiest and wisest Autobot of all. In transformers-revenge of the fallen he fights for the welfare of human kind against his own kind.

Decepticons are being lead by Megatron once again. In transformers Megatron was destroyed by Sam but now he rises again. He was thrown into the Laurentian Abyss by the Autobots, now he is raised by the Constructicons with the help of Allspark and he disguises in the form of a Cybertronian tank. Some sources say that he is now a Triple Changer and transforms into a jet mode as well. However, he is stronger and crueler than before.

Decepticons have another secret weapon, The Fallen. As the name of the movie suggests The Fallen has a lot of significance in the movie. The Fallen was one of the first thirteen original transformers, but he had evil plans and corrupted Megatron and urged him to form the Decepticons. Now, he is again woken up from the bottom of the sea by the Constructicons, where he had been laying for thousand of years. This time he will also join hands with the Decepticons and come to fight against the Autobots and humans. Rumors have it that Leonard Nimoy is voicing the character of The Fallen. Transformers movie

The Reader

2009-06-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

"The Reader" - A Film Reflection

I have been haunted by my memories of "The Reader" since viewing it recently. There is very good reason that Kate Winslet ran away with a 2009 Academy Award for her role as Hanna Schmitz, a woman harboring a secret Nazi past while conducting a summer love affair with a fifteen-year-old boy. Winslet is enthralling in this role. While on the surface, one could condemn Schmitz's actions, there are too many layers in this emotional human drama to make it merely black and white.

David Kross plays the young man with almost equal agility as Winslet; his character, Michael Berg, never really has the chance to peel those layers away. Flashbacks with the incomparable Ralph Fiennes as the adult Michael, show that he has struggled throughout his lifetime with how his summer tryst defined him, with no clear resolution, as Hanna simply vanished at summer's end.

Water plays a big role in this film. It is storming on the first day the boy meets the woman, as he cowers, retching from an oncoming bout with Scarlet Fever, in the alcove of her building. She comes to his aid, washing his vomit from the ground with a pail of water. Several weeks later when his illness has ebbed, he brings her a bouquet to thank her for her help. She tells him to fetch some coal for her in the basement; when he returns, covered in coal dust, she runs him a bath. Their affair has now been set inextricably in motion.

He is a bright young man who gains confidence from his dalliance with the woman. One does not think of him as "under age" except during a two-day bicycle excursion on which he has convinced her to join him, when the two of them order lunch. In the naked light of the day, it seems to their waitress that they are mother and son. When she comments as he is paying that "I hope your mother enjoyed her meal," he says "Yes, very much" (out of earshot of Hanna). Then he goes to Hanna and kisses her on the lips.

Perhaps Hanna would have sent Michael away after their first sexual encounter, but once he starts reading to her, she is addicted. He has no idea she does not know how to read, or much else about her for that matter. It is when he begins to study law, years after the summer affair, when sitting in on a trial, that he discovers the truth about Hanna.

Where it would take the typical actor 20 minutes of soliloquy, Winslet and Fiennes can each portray thoughts and feelings in a gesture or facial expression. Also, the make-up people on this film are to be commended for aging them so impeccably, as the story begins in 1958 and finishes in 1995. A haunting glimpse into the the psyches of two people in post-war Germany, that makes "Summer of '42" seem flippant in comparison.

Fiennes, Winslet and Kross work wonderfully together.

Patty Mooney has been writing since the age of 16. Her favorite topics include women's issues, homelessness, homeless veterans, the arts, cinema, biographies, nature and video production. Her work has appeared in many publications around the world, including the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Reader, Create Magazine, Post Magazine, Women's Sports & Fitness, Yoga Journal and others. You can read her blog, "A Diary Left Open" at http://www.sandiegovideoproduction.blogspot.com

Oprah Winfrey's Book Club

2009-06-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

Oprah Winfrey's Book Club - Worthy of More Than a Little Praise

I admit, I'm a snob. I mean, I'm not at the Frasier Crane level but I do have an unpleasant habit of turning my nose up at anything which has a whiff of populism about it. It's wrong, I know, and the whole point of this article is to redress the balance a little.

Oprah Winfrey. When it comes to popularity, there are very few who can compare. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a cliche, I know, but she scores an 11. Her show airs in over 140 countries internationally, and in the U.S. alone she is regularly viewed by an estimated 30 million people each week. Like I said, 11 out of 10.

It's that vast popularity which makes it difficult to take Oprah's Book Club seriously. At least, it does for people like me. Snobby people. Again, it's wrong, I know. So, I sat down with my negative, sneering thoughts, and made a conscious decision to banish them, forever. I took out a pen and a note pad and decided I was going to write a list of five things which were unarguably fantastic about Oprah's Book Club. And here it is. The astonishing thing is, even for a snob like me, it really wasn't that difficult.

1. Literacy is a good thing. Can't argue with that. Anything that compels someone who might not ordinarily be seen with a book in their hand to pop into their local bookstore and pick up some reading material... well, you just can't knock something like that.

2. If Oprah's Book Club limited itself to the author-of-the-minute, you could label it 'populist nonsense' and never give it another thought. Oprah does no such thing, however. She frequently reaches back through time and brings classic literature, East of Eden, for example, to the attention of the masses. Got anything sneery to say about that? Me neither.

3. Oprah isn't afraid to choose controversial or difficult books. It would be very easy for Oprah or her production team to look at a book like Sheri Reynold's 'The Rapture of Canaan', for example, and say, "No, no... we're not going there."

4. Without Oprah's Book Club some excellent authors may well have been marooned to this day in thoroughly-undeserved obscurity.

5. Whilst many in the literary establishment still view modern technology with a combination of disdain and distrust, Oprah has made full use of the power and reach of electronic media.

6. When Oprah says she loves a book, by golly, she means it. She's passionate about good literature. You may well disagree with her choice of book but there's nothing uniformed about those choices. When she loves a book she can hardly contain herself. You've got to admire that. I mean, would you rather have someone coldly and clinically dissecting a book or someone who's so excited by what they've read they bubble over with emotion? I know which I prefer.

Okay, I said 5 and I gave you 6. Like I said, it really wasn't difficult.

In fact I was so enthused, I decided to write a letter to Oprah Winfrey, thanking her for freeing me up from a lifetime of grim snobbery. You can get in touch with Oprah Winfrey here: Send a Letter to Oprah Winfrey

The History Of Making Movies

2009-05-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

What is the history of making movies?

The history of film spans over a hundred years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Motion pictures developed gradually from a carnival novelty to one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment, and mass media in the 20th century. Motion picture films have had a substantial impact on the arts, technology, and politics.

History in the Making

Some consider JR Writer to be the lyrical wonder of the Diplomats crew, and there's plenty of evidence why on History in the Making, an album overstuffed in the usual Dipset fashion but ultimately a rewarding effort. Sounding much like his mentor Cam'ron, Writer opens the album with the hypnotic and hungry anthem "To Be a Diplomat," a quick run through the man's past with that freestyle freedom he perfected during his mixtape and rap battle past. "Grill Em," "Byrd Call," and "That's a Bet" with Paul Wall are the club cuts and highlights, keeping the album from sounding like a volume of the man's Writer's Block mixtape series. The "Moments in Love"-sampling bedroom cut "Xtasy" has chart ambition, too, but most of the album is street level and Dipset chaotic, something best represented by the word-filled wonder "Zoolander." While it may not be worthy of such an ambitious title, History in the Making brings Writer from the background to the foreground in the world of Dipset and gives every reason why he deserves it. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide read more

Gossip Girl Downloads

2009-05-18T10:46:00.001-07:00

Gossip Girl is a very popular television series which is based on a novel written by Cecily von Ziegesar. It is a story of New York City high profile teenage life where they live together with friends. It is a story of scandals, jealousy, envy, love and hatred. The author has portrayed a world where everything is beautiful and gorgeous on the surface but what lies beneath all of it is jealousy and betrayal. It is a story of people who live in the materialistic world and all they care about is their status and reputation in the social chain. Owing to the popularity of the series, special sites were prepared to make Gossip Girl downloads easier. Such websites are known as internet databases and they contain all possible information a person would need. The online databases can be used to download previous and forthcoming episodes, wallpapers, music, novel, gag reels and so on.

Girls love to view the designer dresses and the latest accessories. They adore the dressing style of Blair Waldorf and the way she accessorizes any dress she wears. Teenagers love watching such series. The official website can also be used for but you need to register to become part of the community. There are forums where viewers discuss and share their opinion over what is going on in the show and latest trends. Such sites are the most often visited for songs, videos and gossip. The theme song which has become very popular can also be taken from these sites for absolutely free. These websites have so much to look out for that they certainly have become the best pastime for teenagers.

Click Read More If You Want To Know more About The Gossip Girls TV series?

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Cannes Films Bridge an Array of Financing and Foreign Partners

2009-05-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Cannes Film Festival is looking to the premiere of Disney-Pixar's latest animated movie, "Up," to boost spirits at its Cote d'Azur kick-off Wednesday night. Fewer attendees and lavish parties due to the global economic slowdown may make this year's preeminent world-cinema showcase more downbeat. But the international film industry is banding together more than ever to fight the financial crisis.

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In the absence of domestic funding from hedge funds and private investors, many of the festival's high-profile films -- including Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" and Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" -- had to scrape together a hodgepodge of support, including funding from foreign pockets and tax incentives. The growth of homegrown movies in overseas markets such as Italy and Japan has also helped upend the traditional financing model, displacing the need for American imports, along with the presale of distribution rights to foreign countries -- one of the key ways movies were financed (see Indie Films Suffer Drop-Off in Rights Sales).

"Now producers have to be more creative," says Mandate International president Helen Lee Kim. "They have to get their budgets contained and they have to bring in an equity partner, which you wouldn't have to do in the past, because the foreign sales pretty much covered you."

For Universal Pictures subsidiary Focus Features International, which is involved with five films in Cannes's official selection, the most of any U.S.-based company, that has meant playing nice with the overseas competition -- the studio turned to foreign partners to produce movies for both global and local audiences abroad. "Thirst," a Korean-language vampire thriller, was co-produced with Korea's CJ Entertainment, and Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" was co-financed with Spanish firm El Deseo. Both titles are showing at Cannes.

Focus International co-CEO Christian Grass says that ticket-buying trends in overseas countries reflect an increasing appetite among local audiences for their own indigenous cinema. Indeed, "Thirst" handily beat out "Wolverine" in South Korea when they both premiered April 30, garnering more than 1 million admissions in comparison to 622,500 for the 20th Century Fox "X-Men" film, according to the Korean Film Council. (20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal.)

Looking to foreign partners also alleviates risk, Mr. Grass says, because by partnering with those entities, they have access to local talents, which can help sell the film in local and neighboring international markets. The local companies may also qualify for government subsidy systems, which can contribute significant monies to a film's budget. And increasingly, film studios and filmmakers are looking to these "soft money" sources, or tax incentives offered by U.S. states and foreign countries which are enacted to lure film production and boost their economies.

"[Tax breaks] were a plus, in the past," says Ms. Kim, who will be selling "Season of the Witch," starring Nicholas Cage, and "The Spy Next Door," starring Jackie Chan, among others, at Cannes. "Now it's an integral part of the model."

American director Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited WWII film, "Inglourious Basterds" -- a Cannes competition selection co-financed by Universal and the Weinstein Co., and produced by Zehnte Babelsberg Film, a subsidiary of Studio Babelsberg AG -- took advantage of federal and regional tax subsidies by shooting in Germany. They initially received a €300,000 grant from the state of Bradenburg because it was filmed in the region's Babelsberg Studios. The overall tax giveback will amount to 20% of the film's budget, according to producer Lawrence Bender, who also produced Mr. Tarantino's 1994 Cannes Golden Palm winner, "Pulp Fiction."

"That financial incentive was definitely a big part of our decision to shoot in Germany," says Mr. Bender. "Any kind of rebate or subsidy is an absolute must for indie financing. At times likes this, it couldn't be more important."

"Basterds" isn't the only Cannes film that's benefited from Germany's Federal Film Fund. With an annual budget of €60 million to €70 million, the government program also offered rebates to titles such as Danish director Lars von Trier's English-language competition feature "Antichrist" and Roman Polanski's political thriller "The Ghost," which is still in production, but will be looking to close a deal for U.S. distribution.

Conversely, the festival is also host to a number of films whose foreign producers have turned to English-speaking talent and resources to penetrate the global marketplace. Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," starring the late Heath Ledger, was largely funded by French producer Samuel Hadida's Davis Films. "Agora," an English-language Spanish-produced historical epic set in ancient Egypt and starring Rachel Weisz, was financed by the film unit of Spanish TV giant Telecinco. It had a reported budget of $73 million. Both films are among the big-budget movies at the festival which are in search of a U.S. distributor.

This continues a Cannes trend of costly art-film projects, such as Steven Soderbergh's 2008 Cannes submission "Che," which might seem too risky for American studios, but are high-profile enough to turn a profit globally -- and thus attract overseas investors. Even if films don't seal significant U.S. sales -- buyers predict another cool market this year, with lowered prices all around -- they have potential to still do well internationally because of their American talent. Mr. Ledger and the actors who replaced him -- Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law -- have already helped "Parnassus" sell out across the world, when at home it is still seeking a distributor.

Veteran producer Nigel Sinclair, co-CEO of Exclusive Media Group, which will be selling several films at Cannes, including Peter Weir's "The Way Back," believes a "deconsolidation" of the studio system is currently taking place -- where major film studios, previously in control of all phases of a film's making, are "increasingly becoming the providers of a service: distribution, sometimes capital, and less often production advice."

"I think there is a systemic change in the way films are financed where risk is being pushed up and up, both by studios and foreign distributors, towards independent financiers and equity providers," he says. "The equity providers around the world are becoming the true partners and entrepreneurs in the film business." read more

Star Trek movies, Eastwood, more Bond lead Blu-ray bonanza

2009-05-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

The first six "Star Trek" movies, a Clint Eastwood Western classic and two more James Bond adventures are among a starship-load of impressive titles landing on Blu-ray this week.

"Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection" obviously is being released to coincide with the "Star Trek" prequel playing in theaters. It is a seven-disc set that not only includes the six films but also 2½ hours of new extras as well as "The Captain's Summit." The latter is a 70-minute piece that features William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and Whoopi Goldberg sharing their Trek memories.

The titles include:

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979): After 10 years, Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise crew reunite to investigate an alien object approaching Earth.

"Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" (1982): Ricardo Montalban reprises his role of superhuman Khan in this top-notch sequel to the original TV series' episode "Space Seed."

"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" (1984): A project known as Genesis might help bring Spock back to life after he sacrificed himself in film two.

"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986): Kirk, Spock and the crew travel back in time to rescue two humpback whales in hopes that they can save Earth's future. One of the best Trek films.

"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" (1989): This time the Enterprise makes what might

be the ultimate voyage — a supposed encounter with God.

"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" (1991): The Federation and the Klingon Empire are nearing a peace agreement but someone is out to stop it.

This is a terrific Blu-ray collection and is highly recommended.

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966) marked the finale of Clint Eastwood's trilogy of films for director Sergio Leone. In many ways the best of the three, it is set against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach are after gold buried in the grave of a dead soldier. Highly recommended.

Agent 007 is back in action in the person of Roger Moore in "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974). Bond squares off against horror legend Christopher Lee, who plays Francisco Scaramanga, an assassin who wants to add the British secret agent to his list of kills. Recommended.

Timothy Dalton plays Bond in "Licence to Kill" (1989), a grim, serious entry that has more in common with the current Daniel Craig films than the often tongue-in-cheek outings of Sean Connery and Moore. When a high-profile drug dealer has Bond's friend Felix Leiter maimed, 007 goes after the criminal with a vengeance.

Also new this week:

"Passengers": Anne Hathaway plays psychologist Claire Summers, who tries to help survivors of a plane crash cope with their experience. She is surprised when each survivor seems to have a different story about what happened during the accident. She's even more surprised when they start disappearing.

"Underworld Trilogy": An underworld exists right beneath us where a war rages between vampires and werewolves. Kate Beckinsale plays one of the bloodsuckers and Scott Speedman is one of the hairy folks. When the two fall in love, it makes for an unusual relationship. Set includes "Underworld" (2003), "Underworld: Evolution" (2006) and "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" (2009), the prequel. Also on DVD.

"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The First Season" (2000-01): This show, now in its ninth season, is the one that made forensics such a popular subject. William Peterson stars as Gil Grissom, who leads his expert investigation team on various cases in and around Las Vegas. First-rate series so much better without commercials. Includes 23 episodes on five discs. Recommended.

"Fargo": Frances McDormand won an Oscar for her role as the pregnant police chief of a small Minnesota town. In the dead of winter, she investigates three murders that are the result of a kidnapping. William H. Macy is the nervous, bumbling guy behind the crime. Recommended.

"Major League": One of the funniest and most enjoyable baseball movies ever made. Margaret Whitton plays the new owner of the Cleveland Indians and she wants to move the team to Florida. Figuring losing will help make that happen, she puts a bunch of misfits on the team. The players cross her up by winning the division title. The cast includes Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Wesley Snipes and Dennis Haysbert. Recommended.

"Black Sheep": Chris Farley plays doofus Mike Donnelly, who tries to help his brother Al (Tim Matheson) win the race for Washington state governor. "Wayne's World": Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) get a chance to host their own late-night cable-access TV show. Funny mishaps follow.

where's barry?
Barry Caine's DVD column will return May 22.

Vivien Leigh Biography

2009-04-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

Vivien Leigh - An Actress Whose Life Was Affected by Bipolar Disorder

Vivien Leigh was born Vivien Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India. At a very early age, she showed an aptitude for acting but she could only indulge into it at the age of 18 when she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

At the age of 19, she married Leigh Holman, who was a barrister and it was his name that she used to make up her stage name. A year after the marriage, Vivien was still studying and she had a daughter named Suzanne.

Then in mid-1930s, Vivien happen to meet Laurence Olivier and thus began one of the most passionate affairs of that time. Olivier was married during this period to Jill Osmond but it did not stop Vivien and Olivier from publicizing their affair.

During this period, both lovers acted frequently together on stage and screen and by this time they had left their spouses to be together. Then Olivier signed up for Wuthering Heights and Leigh requested to be cast as Cathy in the film. However, her demand was rejected because she was not well-known in America.

Leigh ended up getting her most famous role -- Scarlett O'Hara -- in the film Gone With The Wind and the film was released the same year as Wuthering Heights. Leigh's movie was a box office success and this little unknown actress ended up winning the Best Actress Award in 1939.

In 1940, Olivier and Leigh got married finally. Then World War II happened and Vivien worked mostly on plays staged in and around London. During this period she became an insomniac and her stepson Tarquin Olivier had to stay up the nights with her.

In 1994, during the shooting of Caesar and Cleopatra, Vivien realized that she was pregnant but unfortunately she miscarried after having a fall on the set of the film. Her stepson attributes her manic depression to the loss of the baby. In 1945, Leigh was also diagnosed with tuberculosis, which did not help the situation.

During this period, manic depression was not understood and as result Leigh received shock therapy for her disorder. Her mental condition coupled with physical illness started playing havoc in her personal life and this affected her marriage; leading to a divorce in 1960. In addition, she has also started drinking heavily.

Although Leigh had bipolar disorder and tuberculosis, she continued acting and won her second Oscar for her role in the film A Streetcar Named Desire.

In 1967, Leigh died due to tuberculosis.

About Author:
Pauline Go is an online leading expert in the medical industry. She also offers top quality articles like :
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Bag of Bones Movie From Stephen King

2009-04-30T07:29:00.001-07:00

There is few master story tellers like Stephen King, and his upcoming movie based on his best selling novel Bag of Bones will be more proof of that. It will be an excellent film, and one certainly worth waiting for. If you've never read the novel Bag of Bones, then do yourself a favor and pick it up, you won't be disappointed. Certainly makes one excited for the movie adaptation! The actors should be well casted, with a good director. Any horror fans should look forward to the Bag of Bones movie. If you're not a Stephen King fan, you should still wait for it to come out and give it a look, we think you'll enjoy it. If you're a Stephen King fan, the more the merrier! Bring everyone you know and all your family, for it should be a fantastic film. hope you all enjoy it, and stay scared!

If you've never read the novel Bag of Bones, then do yourself a favor and pick it up, you won't be disappointed. Certainly makes one excited for the movie adaptation! The actors should be well casted, with a good director. Any horror fans should look forward to the Bag of Bones movie.

If you're not a Stephen King fan, you should still wait for it to come out and give it a look, we think you'll enjoy it. If you're a Stephen King fan, the more the merrier! Bring eveyrone you know and all your family, for it should be a fantastic film. hope you all enjoy it, and stay scared!

John Kinder
Dark Regions Press

Kambakkht Ishq to Be the First Bollywood Film Starring Hollywood Actors

2009-04-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Bollywood Hindi movie, directed, co-scripted by debutant Sabbir Khan, is all set to dazzle the international film fraternity on fire as, Kambakkht Ishq will be the first Bollywood movie ever, to have Hollywood biggies like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The movie, will be dubbed into English by the same cast into English, in the title Incredible Love, Kambakkht Ishq will mark the beginning of films, which will be cross-bred between Bollywood and Hollywood.

Though earlier, there were films which was cross bred, they weren't made with all parts of the cast and crew from different countries. Katrina Kaif is lead actress in the film, and will, feature, new fashion clothing, which will set a new trend in Bollywood.

The lead actor is Akshay Kumar, he plays the role of Viraj Shergill, who is a stuntman, who takes Hollywood by storm, with his amazing persona, but cannot find true love. Sylveser Stallone, will be back with his signature role as John Rambo.

And the former, super star and present california governor, will be in a cameo. The rest of the hollywood casts will be Carmen Electra Brandon Routh, Denise Richards, Diane Sellers, Raeann Giles, Tony Alameda, Sheridan Crist, Mikandrew Perdaris, Bayli Johnston.

While the rest of the Bollywood casts will be Aftab Shivdasani, Amrita Arora, Ashwin Mushran, Vindu Dara Singh. The movie will be premiered in Cannes film festival on May 15, 2009. Skeptics, of the producer, Sajid Nadiawala, say that the movie will turn out to be critical disappointment. Sylvester Stallone, to be seen in an dance sequence in the movie:

Rumours say, that Stallone, along with Carmen Electra, will be featured in a dance sequence in the movie. They both are taught the basics of Bollywood dance sequences, by the eminent bollywood choreographer Ajmal khan.

Since Bollywood rhythmical movements have gone through numerous modes and influences. This in addition connects to the sort of pictures and modifications that is effected by the new age directors. There is more to the nuances and groove in the rhythmical motion approach as it is reflective about refreshing steps and ideas.

Creating a sequence piece of music for a Bollywood picture is a very large contest for choreographer. Each rhythmical motion chief director draws close with a certain understanding that is demarcated but there over novelty is the variety of each film. This is why even in a cross bred cinema like Kambakkht Ishq, the dance is given very much importance

To learn more about the movie Kambakkht Ishq. Visit KambakkhtIshq Review, preview and trailers hub.

The Last House on the Left - Movie Review

2009-04-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a trailer is released for a film that is absolutely spellbinding. The most recent one was for the remake of Wes Craven's 1972 cult classic, The Last House on the Left. Bearing the same title the film was proud to boast that it was both sadistic and cruel. The talk of a small scale horror masterpiece began.

Directed by Dennis Iliadis - who also helmed a lesser known 2004 Greek film entitled Hardcore - so to American audiences, it was nothing more than another horror remake. If anyone here has ever had the chance of seeing Iliadis' Hardcore, then you would be in agreement that the film was going to be nothing like the typical horror remake.

What my primary concern with the film was is that Iliadis might butcher the original content like Marcus Nispel did with his The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. The original Tobe Hooper film (of the same title) was a perfect exercise in raw brutality and sadism.

The scene at the dinner table is one of the most chilling to ever grace the silver screen. What Nispel wound up doing could be labeled as "raping the source." Not only did he get rid of some of the original's pivotal moments, but he even altered some of the scenes to be more pleasing to the modern day audience. The original was clearly fine as it was if someone felt the need to re-invent it, so why bother messing with it? Iliadis took the hint and unlike Nispel, embraced the source material.

The Last House on the Left centers on a young woman named Mari (Sara Paxton) that is brutally raped and left for dead by a group of maniacal killers, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), Francis (Aaron Paul), Sadie (Riki Lindhome) and Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) . Although the premise may sound somewhat reminiscent of other horror films, the execution is unlike anything you have seen before. Within the film's opening moments a brutal murder is committed.

The scene is slightly disturbing and unrelenting in its vision of gritty realism. The film grabs hold of the viewer and refuses to let go until the end credits. When Mari arrives in a picturesque lakeside town with her father John (Tony Goldwyn) and her mother Emma (Monica Potter) the film focuses on the relationship the family has. A passed away son is hinted at giving the mother reasoning for her massive concern of Mari. As the film progresses, no light is shed on any other past events, no sub-plots are created; the only focus is on the brutality approaching.

To say that this film is non-enjoyable is an understatement. This truly is a film that if anyone were to find any sense of enjoyment out of it would need to have some sort of sickness. Not only do the characters toy with the characters in the film, but also the viewers in the theater. The film caused some of the most interesting reactions I have seen in a theater.

At the beginning of the film, the theater was nearly full, by the end credits, it was barely half full. People were appalled, disturbed, sickened, thrilled, intrigued and ultimately fully invested in the turn out of the film. There was cheering, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. It seemed as if the audience had just as much to lose as the characters did. For a film to have such an effect on its audience, it more than fulfilled its purpose. After the long and unflinching rape scene, the tension of the film only escalates. Your nails will dig into the seats as you hold yourself down anticipating what could possibly happen to the family or the killers.

One theme that I found to be interesting was the morality of man. As the film's tagline boasts, "If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?" Just like Gasper Noe's 2002 New French Extremity film, Irreversible, the idea of vengeance comes into play. Even though Krug raped the Mari, do the mother and father have the right to do whatever they wish to him? Should any human have that right? Just like Krug and his friends, the morality of the mother and father slowly fades away as they delve to the same depths that the aforementioned reside in. The film could be somewhat classified as an exhibition of transgressive art.

The shock value of the film is at times highly offensive and extremely unsettling. While most will leave the film seeing it as something terrible due to all of the content, hopefully a few will pick up the questions it raises. One of my friends even claimed to have sympathized for the killers when they receive their own fates. When I asked him why that was, he replied stating that, "It was just a natural reaction.

When you see something so horrid being done to another human, you can't help but feel bad." Do the killers even deserve sympathy after the numerous murders and rapes they had committed? It is arguable, but like my friend said, it will all depend on how you react. Some will condemn, some will cheer on.

Regardless of the film's debatable content and under the surface questions, it is an above average horror film. It resides as one of the better remakes of the decade and is able to provoke the audience in such ways that only a handful of other films have (See: Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom OR Funny Games).

It will easily push the audience into submission and make them beg for mercy. No one is left unscathed at The Last House on the Left.

Movie Rating: 7.5/10

Nano/Nello DeAngelis is a writer for http://www.emovieguide.net

About X-Men. Wolverine Origins.

2009-04-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

Everything You Need to Know About X-Men in Preparation For Wolverine Origins
In the first X-Men film we first meet the entire X-men crew. Wolverine is first introduced to Rogue. Rogue is a mutant who sucks the life out of people with the touch of her hands. This is both a curse and a superpower. Rogue must battle with the fact that she can never touch or really love anyone. After a short period Wolverine and Rogue find themselves caught in between the battle of Professor X and Magneto. The movie concludes with the victory of the X-Men over Magneto's evil forces.

Wolverine Origins is the newest action adventure coming out on May 1st. This movie is the story of the humble beginnings of the character Wolverine. To better understand Wolverine we will first take a look at the first three x-men movies.

In the last installment of the X-Men series the character Phoenix is introduced. Phoenix is the re-birth of Jean Grey that turns into a destroying machine. The movie also follows the plot line that a pharmaceutical company discovers a cure to take away abilities from mutants. The conflict arises to who should take the medicine and who should not. The movie comes to a climatic end when Phoenix kills her once love Cyclops. Wolverine then jumps in to save Phoenix from destroying everyone. The movie ends with the fact that Wolverine must contemplate joining the X-Men on a more permanent basis.

In the second installment of X-Men the crew must battle against the evil General Stryker. In this movie we discover that Professor X has a machine called Cerebro that can locate all mutants on the planet. Stryker learns about this machine and breaks into the X-Mansion. With the help of his mind controlling mutant they brainwash Xavier to find the mutants and eliminate them. The X-Men come together at the end of the movie to stop Stryker's evil plot. At the end of the movie Jean Grey sacrifices herself so that the plane carrying the X-Team can get away from the collapsing center where Stryker was stopped. This loss leads to Logan's disappearance.

Now that you are all caught up on the latest X-Men ideas you can go out and see the new X-Men origins and better understand the different story lines.

Fast and Furious Movie Review - Vin Diesel is Back

2009-04-13T17:08:00.001-07:00

Fast & Furious is the fourth installment of The Fast and The Furious series. It also brings back the casts from the original movie reuniting them for the first time since 2001 when the first movie was released. It is glaringly obvious that without Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto and Paul Walker as Brian O'Conner then the sequels are just not as good as the original.

Fast & Furious takes place somewhere between the 2nd (2 Fast 2 Furious) and the 3rd (Tokyo Drift) movies. In this movie, Dom and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are together in the Dominican Republic running heists on transport trucks. But the police are getting too close and Dom has to break up his new gang. Han from Tokyo Drift is part of this gang and will be heading to Japan as he and Dom part ways. Meanwhile, Dom also leaves Letty so that she may start a new life without him and the baggage that he brings.

Time passes by and Dom, living somewhere in South America, receives a telephone call from his sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), letting him know that Letty was murdered. Letty's death forces Dom back to the United States, still as a wanted fugitive. Because of his love for Letty, Dom vows revenge. His quest to discover the perpetrator leads him to, what else, a street race where the racers vie for a job as a driver for a known big-time drug dealer.

At the same time, his former racing mate and a recently reinstated FBI agent, Brian O'Conner, is investigating the same drug dealer with plans of his own to bring him to justice. O'Conner also enters the race.

And those are enough excuse to put these guys behind fast cars and begin entertaining the audience with racing action at breakneck speed. Director Justin Lin is excellent with car chases in urban streets (the best parts of Tokyo Drift). The one drawback in this movie is that there aren't enough car race scenes, but the story doesn't call for it. Nevertheless, action movies like these are enjoyed by viewers. It has a lot of action scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat and blow you away, making the impossible look possible.

The storyline is no doubt flimsy but it is enough to keep going. You don't buy tickets to a movie like Fast & Furious and expect dramatic story telling. You want action!

Now, the trailers lead us to believe that the whole gang is together again. But really, only Dom and O'Conner have the significant roles. And that's enough to rake in $72.5 million in the first weekend. The movie is built around fast cars, but no doubt that Vin Diesel as Dom is the main attraction. This is obvious when everyone got excited as he made a cameo in Tokyo Drift.

All in all, Fast & Furious is recommended. It's a highly entertaining movie. It is best to just head out, don't think about it, sit down, and enjoy a movie that will blow your mind.

The author is a web producer and writes freelance on various "geeky" topics including movies and Ikki Tousen Figures. He also writes on career and educational subjects such as finding the best massage therapy college.

What Do Western Movies Usually Depict?

2009-04-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Most western movies will usually depict a gunfighter against another gunfighter. One would usually be the good guy and one would usually be the bad guy. But, both of them would be very handy and quick with a gun and thus, it would often be exciting wondering which of them was going to end with the gunshot. In the early days, many times it would be the cowboys against the Indians or even the cavalry against the Indians. These were usually the cliché type of western movies that would follow a certain guideline that was the norm.

But, over the course of time, audiences would change and with them Hollywood too. This would bring on the western type of movies that would depict the wagon trail or the settler's trails and these would become a success at the time. Why, there was even a point when the most successful cowboy style of movies would feature a singing cowboy.

However, everything comes back around full circle and it has been the gunfighter genre that has been shown to withstand the test of time. For example, in nineteen thirty nine, the movie Stagecoach was considered to be a great western and to this day it still is in the film lover's views. But, by the nineteen sixties, the beautiful landscape that was such a very large part of the movie Stagecoach had given way to the gritty gun fighting movies such as The Magnificent Seven and the movies that were known as spaghetti westerns. This gun fighting regime would certainly hold its own and eventually come out as the top favorite version of the western style of movies.

This would lead to flicks such as Young Guns and Tombstone. These were harsh stories that would tell the story of some of the Wild West's most notorious characters such as Billy the Kid, Doc Holiday, and Wyatt Earp and usually feature many gunfights.

Then movies like Unforgiven and Lonesome Dove were introduced. These were not considered to be gunfighter movies although; this is certainly debatable with Unforgiven in particular. But, these were western character studies that would depict harsh life one the range and in the lawless towns that they would go through. It was Unforgiven that became not only an Oscar contender but, an Oscar winner as well.

Of course, there are also many of the timeless classic television shows such as The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, and Gunsmoke that helped to develop this genre into what it has become today.

Therefore, when western movies are in order and desired, there are certainly many to choose from that could include gunfighting, wagon trains, and singing cowboys if one likes. Fore, there are also many western movies and their sub-genres to choose from too. Find out more info about western movies at http://westernmovies.researchguidetips.com

Survivors 2008 BBCTV New Series

2009-04-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

I was taken by surprise by this series because I did not realize that it was on until the last episode but I had been able to catch up on the previous episodes on BBC i player.

The series follows a small plucky group of people who meet after a catastrophic virus wiped out over 99.9% of the world"s population. This happened in a matter of days so the government did not realize how serious it was until it was too late. Essential health, fire and police services quickly came to an end as well as TV and radio. So many people were lost that before they found each other, the remaining survivors did not know a living soul left alive. This was not just loved ones and friends but everybody they had ever met in local shops, through work or in the local bar etc.

Luckily, this small group of strangers met purely by chance and quickly banded together which is realistic considering how people behave in times of great loss:like in 9/11 for instance. They quickly discovered that it was not just essential services but civilization itself had simply ceased to exist. Food kept in fridges and freezers perished in a matter of hours after the power went off. Running water was cut off shortly after power because water has to be pumped using electricity. Towns and cities became unsafe because rats and unburied bodies would spread disease and would probably flood as well when drains became blocked. My town would definitely flood because it is so close to sea level that it relies on pumping stations to keep the water out.

The survivors do not seem to appreciate at first that most man made products will have been manufactured using the skills of people in a wide variety of professions and trades from all over the globe. Would anybody know how to make a candle for example? What about medical attention with hardly any doctors or nurses left. The survivors attempt to answer some of these questions by tackling every day problems head on with often amusing results, so it is not all gloom and doom.

This series is a re image of the original 70"s drama based on a book by Terry Nation

Tony Dunn is a designer and CIW student & publishes blogs on a range of topics including entertainment, dog training & true life stories For more cult TV & film reviews please visit http://tonysfilmtvreviews.blogspot.com/ Remember to include this link if you want to use this article in your web site thankyou.

Adventureland

2009-04-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

"Adventureland" (quality rating: 7 out of 10)
Director: Greg Mottola
Screenplay: Greg Mottola
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Kelsey Ford, Margarita Levieva
Time: 1 hr., 47 min.
Rating: R (vulgarity, drug use and sexual references)

What? What? A film about early-20 youth that does not make the boys look and sound like air-headed balls of libidinous ego preoccupied with fashioning obscenities into a monument to the generation? And guys actually have, wha'dya-call'em, "feelings? This, my friends, is a daring movie.

Oh, this is rare. And what a breath of fresh air. Greg Mottola, the director who made the admirably funny and decent quality "Superbad," now gives us the continuously amusing romance comedy "Adventureland" in which things happen because, in the ingenious way in which the situations unfold, they have to happen. They just grow naturally out of a virtual garden of fertile small conflicts.

Shrewd and smart, this is a well-spent ticket's-worth of solid modern filmmaking that shames the many schlock screenwriters now pandering to the market. You would not, of course, know that from the cheap appeal publicity currently running for this movie in which, in the cynical estimate of the American intelligence by the film studios' marketing agents, the film must advertise lots of empty laughs or die at the box office.

This film has guts and heart. Yep, even the guys. So it's so sad that writer-director Mottola just couldn't resist scattering some filth around. Yes, there's drunkenness, puking, stoned characters and the curious addition of a doofus who keeps socking his buddy in the groin. And oh, yes, there's plenty of racy talk. Still, what the film avoids is gratuitously raw zingers. The individuals actually talk to each other. . . as people, not as scripted targets for creative garbage.

So it's1987 and here's dorky-appearing but highly intelligent James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg), just graduated in 1987 Pittsburgh and looking to his summer break. He's anxiously facing his upcoming European trip as prelude to his fall term in graduate school at New York's Columbia U. But, uh oh, his alcoholic dad is fired and there go James' finances.

Instead of Europe, he's looking at work in a woebegone, rundown amusement park called Adventureland.

Actually, there may be something positive about this, like the girl over at another concession. She's Em (Kristen Stewart), an upfront, alienated type who shares his love of rock but who's got some heavy personal baggage involving exiting her life with her father and her obnoxious new stepmother. For one thing, she fails to advise James that she's in a romance with the park's mechanic, Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), a rock star, who's married. When James falls for Em madly, that's going to get emotionally hazardous when he also befriends Mike and confides in him. James being a virgin, this is salty stuff. For poor James is the kind of guy who readily reveals himself in a flow of words -- how uncool is that? Especially since he's talking about Mike's girl Em.

Also of intrigue is Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), one major hottie of a disco girl who maintains herself as inaccessible to her many pursuers.

There does appear to exist some question as to why Motola chose to set the story in 1987, other than the fact that in this way he doesn't have to deal with cell phones or expensive modern rock stars. He tries to make up for that by including more than 40 pop tunes to back up the action.

So if you're weary of youth romance comedies that treat real feelings with a shrug and integrity as box office poison, try this one. It may just point a new direction in the genre.

http://www.martymoviereviews.com Marty Meltz, 30-year former films critic for the Portland (Maine) Sunday Telegram. Offering right-to-the-point reviews that address directly the question of the film's entertainment value to you. Films have personalities. It doesn't matter who wrote it, who directs it, who stars in it, if it doesn't reach out to you with charisma. I examine its honesty and intelligence. Are you being respected, or are you being jerked around?

Miley Cyrus and High School Musical Are Among Winners in Kids' Choice Awards

2009-04-05T15:04:00.001-07:00

Once again, it's the annual event where kids in control!!

The 22nd annual slime-filled Nickelodeon spectacle held inside UCLA's Pauley Pavilion yesterday. The show started with host Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson zip-lining over the audience into a "slime temple."

The star of Disney's movie Race to Witch Mountain then did some spraying to the first row of screaming teens and tweens with gooey green slime. Singer Jesse McCartney joining in to squirt them with a fake microphone, while Will Ferrell slipping and sliding down a hill.

Like most of us predicted, High School Musical grabbed the orange Blimp as the favorite movie by audience votes. Zac Efron was thanking fans while accepting the award for the huge successful movie, "Lately, a lot of people have been taking credit for bringing back the musical. The truth is we've known who's been responsible for bringing back the musical all along. It was you guys!"

Teen princess, Miley Cyrus was brought to tears when she was announced as favorite female singer. "I really thought I was gonna lose, so thank you, guys," said Cyrus. Her fellow actress, the star of HSM3, Vanessa Hudgens was also selected as the favorite movie actress.

Phenomenal band, Jonas Brothers were chosen as the favorite for music group. Selena Gomez and her series, iCarly was chosen as Favorite TV Actress and Favorite TV show. Then, American Idol was chosen as the favorite reality show, while Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was selected as favorite animated movie.

Although green and slimy are always the theme for Kids' Choice Awards, this year, Leonardo DiCaprio change the definition of 'go green' a little bit. The Titanic star brought home the first-ever Big Green Help Award. He was selected to receive the green blimp trophy because of his contribution and promotion of environmental issues.

While receiving the award, DiCaprio shared a few insights about environment. As he said, "Right now, our mother - our mother - all of our mothers, Mother Earth is hurting. And she needs a generation of thoughtful, caring and active kids like all of you to protect her for the future. You can help us win the battle to clean up our air, our water, our land, to protect our forests, our oceans and our wildlife."

Johnson said over 90 million viewer votes were cast at Nick's Web site. He closed the show together with a troop of Polynesian dancers summoning the "slime temple" to spew the sticky stuff all over the audience. Out of nowhere, the Jonas Brothers emerged and sang a cappella, causing slime to cascade over the boy band, Johnson, the dancers and much of the audience.

Slimy Slimy Night!!

Here are the complete winners from the 22nd annual Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards:

Favorite Movie: "High School Musical 3: Senior Year."
Favorite Movie Actor: Will Smith, "Hancock."
Favorite Movie Actress: Vanessa Hudgens, "High School Musical 3: Senior Year."
Favorite Animated Movie: "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa."
Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie: Jack Black, "Kung Fu Panda."
Favorite Song: Beyonce, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)."
Favorite Male Singer: Jesse McCartney.
Favorite Female Singer: Miley Cyrus.
Favorite Music Group: Jonas Brothers.
Favorite TV Show: "iCarly."
Favorite Reality Show: "American Idol."
Favorite TV Actress: Selena Gomez, "Wizards of Waverly."
Favorite TV Actor: Cole Sprouse, "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody."
Favorite Cartoon: "SpongeBob SquarePants."
Favorite Male Athlete: Peyton Manning.
Favorite Female Athlete: Candace Parker.
Favorite Video Game: "Guitar Hero World Tour."
Favorite Book: "Twilight" series.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andra_Yogi

Seinfeld and Friends at Their Finest

2009-03-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most watched TV shows of the 1990's was Seinfeld. The show grew from the idea of "a show about nothing" into the most watched show. Seinfeld follows the life of Jerry Seinfeld who is a comedian in the show and the antics of his good, short, quirky friend, George Costanza played by Jason Alexander. Jerry has a neurotic friend Cosmo Kramer played by Michael Richards. Jerry's old girlfriend Elaine who is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. As the years of this show develop, they're joined by a interesting cast of characters including Newman and Frank and Estelle Costanza,Uncle Leo and others.

Elaine's character does not yet exist in the pilot episode and Kramer's character who at the time was named Feldman is is shown as a unemployed, recluse neighbor not the usual quirky and energetic Cosmo we know. Playing in the role of the wise cracking waitress named Claire who is played by Lee Garlington doesn't appear in later episodes .These opening episodes show the development of the show's four main characters with George's admission that he'd like to be an architect (episode 2) to Kramer's get rich quick schemes like a make-your-own-pizza pizza shop (episode 4).

Seinfeld DVD (Seasons 1 & 2) gives a glimpse into the world of Jerry Seinfeld, starting with episode 1 "The Pilot" in which the first scene involves Jerry making comments to George about a button that is on his shirt same From day one Seinfeld establishes itself as must see TV show. "The Stock Tip," "The Pony Remark," "The Deal," and "The Chinese Restaurant"are all memorable episodes.

The initial episode show flashes of brilliance that made Seinfeld a most watched series. The show which is essentially about nothing, shows Jerry and George do some laundry. Jerry and his neighbor watching some TV. George and Jerry having some coffee. During which, the conversation is about a girl that Jerry met while on the road with his comedy act. She wants to stay with him, but Jerry doesn't know if he should put out a mattress for her or not. Kramer, Jerry and George debate what should be done endlessly. The woman arrives and Jerry finds out that it's all for not because she's engaged.

Rick Williamson is the webmaster of Seinfeldboxset.net. I invite you to come see Jerry and his friends at Seinfeldboxset.net.

Femme Fatale Image in Cinema

2009-03-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

Some early scientists relegated women to a category somewhere above monkeys, yet below men, and the poet Milton observed that women are "a fair defect of nature"

However these were the pseudoscientific notions about female variability and vulnerability, and were used to justify sexism and discrimination in society. Perhaps out of such frustrations rose the concept of a woman who defied her stereotypical image and donned the garb of someone who is just the opposite of the popular concept, which was more or less forced upon her. The phrase femme fatale is French for 'deadly women' and was created to project a social democratic revolt against the oppressiveness of the Victorian age, where women were constricted in a corset and pushed into claustrophobic ideologies and a shrunken introverted world. She took an avatar of a female who has been created to break men's heart and to lead herself into a sunlight world. These femme fatales are allowed to have it all; power, sexuality, femininity and wealth, but they keep hankering for love and would often face a bad end because they defied the conventions. The astonished man, who had earlier created an ideal woman from his own wishful imagination, suddenly meets someone whom he cannot control or understand. He labels her as the 'bad woman'; the woman who must die or be banished because she is not the representative of his idealistic image.

Women in Hollywood- The femme fatale

Disillusioned with men and frustrated of a circumscribed life, this figure of a deadly femme fatale/ vamp- emerged as a central figure in the nineteenth century and became one of the most persistent personifications of modern female. "Who is she?" was the popular query. And the enigmatic answers would be: "She is the woman who never really is what she seem to be"

She is the black widow spider who eats her mate alive; she is ungovernable, threatening to male psyche, and a woman who challenges the patriarchal culture vehemently.

The femme fatale was a frequent character in 1940s films. Rita Hayworth as The lady from Shanghai (1948) is the most enigmatic example. She embodies the overpoweringly desirable, duplicitous and sexually insatiable femme fatale, who has been represented as a symptom of male anxieties about women. She is a creature who threatens to castrate and devour her male victim. This image of a sexual, dangerous woman is the psychological expression of a man's own internal fears of sexuality, and his need to control and repress it.

The femme fatale's appearance is always explicitly sexual with long dark or blonde hair worn loose on her back, long, sensuous legs, heavy make-up, sparkling jewelry and revealing clothes, as portrayed in Sunrise (1927). She is the 'woman of city', the urban female depicting the sexual pleasures of modern metropolitan life.

She represents an open challenge to the post war consensus of women feeling fulfilled only by their roles of wife and mothers.

Two of the most powerful screen portrayal, are Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944) and
Lana Turner's Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) in which both are frustrated wives married to dull and older men.

In Hollywood, the femme fatale's most characteristic role is a nightclub singer on the fringes of the underworld. She traps her victims through seductive dances and explicit display of sexual threat. Watch Ava Gardener in The Killers (1946) playing Kitty Collins as she is first glimpsed by her victim Swede (Burt Lancaster) singing " The more I know of Love" and you will see how she comes across as the apotheosis of a mythical femininity. She is sexy and feline, and has that dreamlike sensuality about her with her sloe-shaped eyes, curvaceous cheekbones, cleft chin, and full upturned mouth. All these features exude an open sexual invitation, and she is the ultimate femme fatale here.

The femme fatale often emerges from darkness into harsh light, or dissected by both to indicate certain instability.

The Good -Bad girl

However, Hollywood found a way to bring out the femme fatale from the narrow confines of the stereotype seductress who just doesn't resort to narcissism and duplicity to have her way. The femme fatale is also the beleaguered hero's helpmate sometimes. She is often shown as supporting him and believing in his innocence, or his ability to solve the problems. The figure of the good-bad girl combines the sexual stimulation of the femme fatale with the fundamental decency of a wife or a lover. She can appear to be cynical, wayward and obsessed with money, but this stems from disillusionment with men and the frustrations of a constrained life. read more

Skins - To Watch Or Not to Watch?

2009-03-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Such a question arises when you look through recent TV releases and there's nothing extreme enough to satisfy your demanding taste. Some of the critics give it awards, and some would gladly ban it and cross it out of the charts. But what causes such a disruptive reaction?

Today British filmmakers are considered the most stunning, shocking and direct all over the world. They make films that turn the TV-world upside-down, several times. Some of them mock governments, some laugh at global problems, some lead the way into the true reality. Guys from Company Pictures have gone even further, having released series of Skins, that are even more stunning, shocking and direct. So much for talking - you had better just watch Skins.

The first thing you have to bring to notice is that Skins have been given 18+ rating due to adult content - intemperate drug use and alcohol consumption propaganda, coarse language, sex and all the things people focus on when touching the matters of contemporary youth. These teen lifestyle features shown on the screen seem to be gaining popularity among the audience of viewers, for they truly represent what the life for some is like. The action takes place in Bristol, UK - and it is not strange, the creators of the series are Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain.

Both the comedy and the drama are mixed to make an explosively dangerous cocktail of events, emotions and thoughts, somewhat shifted by alcohol, drugs, sexual appetite and other consciousness-changing stuff. The focus lies upon a group of young people, all with their own characters and social issues, attending the college and having parties, supporting their existing relationships and starting new, spending time with their families and friends, living their lives.

Each episode has its central character under the looking glass, but some (like the Season 1 Final) focus on the whole group. As things happen, new episodes are released and the plot evolves, showing not only the particular somebody's in- and outside, but those of the whole social group - teenagers.

Things shown in Skins are to be taken seriously - and they are by the contemporaries, but also they can be misunderstood because of how it looks to people far from understanding all the sub-cultural attributes, way different from how they think life ought to be. That is why it is strongly advisable for one to get into the subject and expand one's life overview before judging. http://www.alltv.info/skins/

An Insider's View of the Popular Netflix Movie Rental Service

2009-03-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

If you are in the market for a DVD rental service in the U.S., chances are that you have already looked at a handful of leading choices, with the clear front runners being Netflix and Blockbuster. Both have their advantages, of course, but there are also a few characteristics that are not so evident at a glance.

Netflix is known for having a very fast turnaround time, meaning the time from when you return a DVD to the time when you receive the next DVD in your queue is very short. This often occurs within three mailing days, i.e. 1 day to mail, 1 day to process, and 1 day for the return trip. They are also known for their excellent customer service, easy to use rental system, and wide selection of new and old movies alike.

What you might not know, however, are a few negatives to using this online DVD rental service. The one cited most frequently is the issue of "throttling," which was settled via a class action suit several years ago. While the form of throttling described in that suit no longer exists, there is a new suspected form of throttling that affects long-term customers. The new throttling essentially limits the number of new releases you will receive if you are a frequent renter. Said another way, the more movies you see every month, the more likely it is that you'll see a slow down in the delivery of new releases. This has not been confirmed by the company, but in countless tests, this connection between number of rentals and new releases appears evident.

This in itself doesn't make Netflix a bad rental service, but it is one seldom reviewed additional factor that you should be aware of before making your final decision on whether to choose this movie subscription or one through Blockbuster Total Access.

Here are many of the other insider considerations you should be aware of in the Netflix vs. Blockbuster decision

Shaun runs a technology blog that features a detailed, side-by-side comparison of these online DVD rental giants. Many people visit his blog to learn more about these rental services, and dozens of visitors have provided their own detailed feedback and reviews of their experiences. Make your decision easier: Click Here Now!

Gossip Girl Actors

2009-03-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

Gossip Girl is a television series based on a book written by Cecil von Ziegesar. It talks about a bunch of youngsters from the elite society who attend private school at the Upper East Side of New York. These teenagers experience almost everything right from teenage problems, dangerous situations, drug addiction, to dealing with friends and family members. Each episode of Gossip Girl is narrated by an anonymous person voiced by Kristen Bell. The story revolves around twelve main characters out of which most popular are Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldrof, Dan Humphrey, Nate Archibald, Jenny Humphrey, Chuck Bass, and Vanessa Abrams.

The above mentioned characters of the series are played by young talented actors. Blake Lively plays Serena van der Woodsen who is a successful socialite and the most popular girl in the school. During the casting process Blake Lively was the first to be chosen to play the character of Serena van der Woodsen. Blake Lively has successfully risen to stardom in a short span of time. Before gracing the small screen she made a sensational debut on the big screen in her first movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants". She was nominated for the 2005 Teen Choice awards.

Leighton Meester plays the onscreen character Blair Waldrof, best friend to Serena van der Woodsen. Leighton Meester is perfect for this role and plays it with great panache. She has had a successful television career and has appeared in several other television series including "Entourage", "8 Simple Rules", "Numbers" and "CSI Miami". Her most recurring roles were in "24", "Veronica Mars", "House" and "Shark". Before starting her acting career she dabbled in modeling before sweeping the small screen.

Penn Badgley enacts the part of Dan Humphrey, a romantic character, who attends the private schools but does not fit into the elite circle financially. He starred in a television series called "The Mountain". After relocating to Los Angeles he was offered a guest role in "Will and Grace". There was no looking back and he soon played recurring roles on famous television series "The Young and the Restless", "The Brothers Garcia" followed by "Daddio". Penn was involved in Children's Theater in Seattle. The character of Nate Archibald is played by Chace Crawford. He has acted in the top box office opener movie of 2006 "The Covenant". Chace shuttles his time between Los Angeles where he is based and New York where Gossip Girl is being filmed.

Taylor Momsen plays the young Jenny Humphrey sister to Dan Humphrey and a budding fashion designer. Taylor Momsen is the youngest cast member of Gossip Girl. At only seventeen she has grabbed the limelight and become a successful actor. She acted in successful box office movies like "Spy Kids 2" and "We Were Soldiers". Ed Westwick is a British actor and plays the part of Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl. Chuck Bass is from a wealthy and sophisticated family. He loves all luxuries of life and makes no compromise. Ed Westwick plays this part to perfection. He has worked in Children of Men opposite Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. Westwick has movies lined up for release. When not filming for Gossip Girl, Ed lives at his house outside London. The character of Vanessa Abrams is played by Jessica Szhor. She has an ethnic background of both African-American and Caucasian. Jessica worked as a model before she was discovered and chosen to play the onscreen role of Vanessa Abrams.

I am John James from gossipgirlgallery.com and I am an expert on TV series
I hope this article gives you an impression on the actor Taylor Momsen, I have written a lot more articles on the series and Gossip Girls Actors and inside on famous TV series

Walmart movies tv

2009-03-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Wal-Mart launches movie, TV download service

By Nicole Maestri and Gina Keating

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Tuesday introduced a test version of its new video download service, making it the first major retailer to offer such a service with the backing of all of Hollywood's big studios.

The service, available on Wal-Mart's Web site, lets users download movies or television episodes that they can watch on their computers or portable media players, and pits the No. 1 retailer against other downloading sites, including Apple Inc.'s iTunes.

Wal-Mart said the service includes more than 3,000 titles from movie studios like 20th Century Fox, Disney, Lions Gate, MGM, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros., and television networks including Comedy Central, Fox, and Nickelodeon.

The Wal-Mart site is being launched with more titles than any other download service started, and the downloads are being priced from $1.96 for episodes of television shows to up to $19.88 for new movies.

"We've been working on this for almost a year now," said Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart's divisional merchandise manager for digital media. "It's been a lengthy process."

In launching its new service, Wal-Mart is entering a crowded market where it has no guarantee of success.

Amazon.com's Unbox already lets users download movies and TV shows from six Hollywood studios, while Apple's iTunes store offers TV shows and full-length films for download.

Since Wal-Mart accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. DVD sales each year, James McQuivey, principal analyst for Forrester Research said Wal-Mart is able to say to the studios: "We are going to do this and you are going to do it with us."

But he said the download market is still "very small" and "There are enough barriers in place that we don't see this being a big phenomenon by the end of the decade."

GOING DIGITAL

Hollywood movie studios have supplied content for several years to movie download services such as CinemaNow and Movielink, although the services have not achieved widespread adoption.

Retailers have been wary of the trend, worried that the downloads might crimp their DVD sales.

An announcement in September by the Walt Disney Co. that it would sell TV shows and movies on Apple Inc's iTunes prompted reports that Wal-Mart was concerned that digital distribution would cut into its DVD sales and had threatened to retaliate against the studios.

Wal-Mart denied the reports.

In launching its new service, Wal-Mart's Swint said the retailer should be able to draw consumers by offering a vast array of titles. read more

Free tv movies

2009-03-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

ZillionTV set-top box promises free movies, TV shows
Wish you could watch Hulu's free, ad-supported videos on the TV in your den? That's the idea behind ZillionTV, a new set-top box that's looking to deliver both pay-per-view and free, ad-supported TV shows and movies into the living room. The catch? You'll have to get it through your ISP.Slated to arrive this fall, the ZillionTV set-top box will be free with a one-time "activation" fee, according to execs for the secretive (until now) start-up. I got an eyes-on look at ZillionTV in a midtown Manhattan hotel last week, and so far, I'm pretty impressed—although if you're thinking you might just dump cable or satellite for the new service, well … think again.

Equipped with an HDMI port and Wi-Fi, and capable of outputting 1080i, 720p, and 480i images, the ZillionTV device actually looks more like a black rectangular bar than a box, and it's designed to sit along the top of your HDTV set.

The on-screen interface looks reminiscent of the displays you'd see on, say, Apple TV or Vudu, except with one key difference: the motion-controlled remote, which lets you select videos and other options with a wave of the wand. It's a little strange (and a tad jerky) at first, but I'd imagine you'd get the hang of it with practice.

Of course, the key to ZillionTV is the content, and the execs behind the service are promising 15,000 movie and TV titles by the end of 2009. Five of the big movie studios (Disney, Fox, Sony, NBC/Universal, and Warner Brothers—no Paramount yet) have signed on, according to ZillionTV SVP Patrick Gauthier, including agreements for their respective TV properties. That means (potentially) shows like "The Office" on NBC and "24" on Fox. Unsigned so far, though: Viacom, which owns networks such as CBS, MTV, and Comedy Central (Gauthier says talks are still underway).

So, how much will the videos cost? Well, nothing, as long as you're cool with non-skippable ads. Movies will come with three to four "pre-roll" commercials, but none during the feature itself (nice), while TV shows will have ads interspersed during their natural commercial breaks. And while you won't be able to skip the ads, you'll at least get the chance to pick the kinds of ads you'd like to see in the settings menu.

Of course, you'll still be able to pay for commercial-free movie and TV show rentals if you choose; prices haven't been set in stone yet, but I'm told we can expect something "consistent with that found in the marketplace for on-demand services" (such as the $3.99 movie rentals on Apple TV). Also planned: A "rewards" program for frequent viewers, which might include free movie rentals and/or sneak peeks at movies before their DVD release dates.

OK, so how do the videos look? Pretty good, actually; I got the chance to look at some SD movie rentals, and they looked surprisingly sharp, at least on a par with what you'd see on Netflix's "Watch Now" streaming service or Apple TV. I was also happy to see that widescreen aspect ratios (such as the "Scope" 2.35:1 frame on the original "Superman") were preserved. That said, I only saw a demo; we'll have to wait and see what real-world performance looks like once the service actually launched this fall.

Where will we be able to get ZillionTV? Through your ISP—and that, in a way, is the catch. As I've blogged about before, ISPs—be they cable, satellite, or otherwise—are looking for a way to make some money on this whole Internet video thing (and many speculate that "big cable" was behind the pulling of Hulu's video streams from Boxee, the unauthorized Apple TV plug-in). ZillionTV makes for a clever (if potentially attractive for viewers) new strategy.

It's not clear exactly how much revenue that, say, Time Warner Cable or Comcast (ZillionTV has yet to announce its ISP partners, by the way) might get from each movie rental or advertiser. Then again, the ISPs will certainly be able to use ZillionTV—which won't be available in stores—to attract (and keep) broadband subscribers. And here's a question: Will carriers only offer ZillionTV in a bundle with pricey digital channel tiers? Unknown, for now, although I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

So, what do you think? Willing to cough up the $50 activation fee—and keep your cable or satellite provider—for free TV shows and movies in the living room? source

Hostel Movie Review

2009-03-04T07:06:00.001-08:00

Tagged: hostel, hostel movie review, hostel review, hostel critics, movies, movie review
Two American backpackers in Amsterdam, Josh (Derek Richardson) and Paxton (Jay Hernandez), along with their Icelandic friend, Oli are lured into a hostel Slovakia where they are told the woman are eager to pleasure American men. They're travelling Europe for a last trip before they graduate from college, so there are no holds barred when it comes to sex, drugs and anything else that comes their way. Once they reach Slovaki, Josh and "Pax" hook up with 2 very accommodating and very beautiful women, Natalya and Svetlana, and things go a bit weird.

This was definitely a whirlwind 1 hour and 35 minutes. Any longer and things may have gone very, very wrong and very, very long. I went to see this movie with my friend, who was completely grossed out and freaked out...just as the hype said she should be. I'm not sure if I was expecting more or have just seen one too many horror films because I thought it was kind of tame.

Jay Hernandez was great as Paxton, as far as performances go...but my goodness, this guy made some pretty stupid decisions. I won't go into them here because you'll kill me for spoiling the movie. The movie was rather predictable, but in an enjoyable way, if you know what I mean. You knew what was coming up and it's kind of what you wanted to happen. Many people got their just desserts and that's all I'll say!

Final comment: If these guys had put Canadian flag patches on their backpacks, they may not have run into so many problems. It seems that Americans are very valuable in this grotesque game.

Director: Eli Roth
Producers: Boaz Yakin, Scott Spiegel, Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Jan Vlasák, Barbara Nedeljáková, Eythor Gudjonsson

Alice Flegel is a self-confessed movie fanatic that reveals exactly which movies are living up to they hype and which are better left for the DVD. Get more movie reviews and entertainment news at Schmoozins.com

SiCKO Movie Review

2009-03-04T07:05:00.001-08:00

After umming and arring I finally decided to go and see SiCKO the new film from the controversial Michael Moore. SiCKO attempts to highlight the huge problems with the American privatized health care and insurance system by showing a series of extreme examples pointing the fingers at the evil insurance companies.

This film is frightening and at times extremely funny. Michael Moore manages to expertly push the audience in shock and makes everyone feel like something needs to be done. I guess I feel this is a good idea, almost everyone knows of a health insurance nightmare and in many peoples opinions medical care is just too expensive but personally I had severe problems with certain aspects of Michael Moore's techniques.

I was cynical of this film as I have been with other Michael Moore offerings. To me it felt as though he was again making the argument extremely one sided and treated the average American like they did not know anything and should eat up his propaganda as quickly as he believes people eat up the propaganda given by the beloved government!

Being English the one sidedness that I had suspected was confirmed. When Mr Moore visited England to have a look at the NHS (our government run health system) he painted it in such an amazing light that I wouldn't be surprised if half of the US applies for UK immigration. The NHS is definitely a better system in my opinion than the US insurance system but he neglected to mention the money problems and waiting times problems and hospital cleanliness issues that are common place. I'd imagine that the French and Canadian that he painted in the same amazing light systems also suffer from their fair share of problems too.

I felt the pace of the movie became repetitive after a while too. Although the cases he highlighted were all shocking, I'm sure true, and highlighted the problem very well we all knew that the finally outcome would be bad even if he sarcastically tries to lead us away from thinking that.

One huge and amazing point to come out of the movie was the cost of drugs in neighboring Cuba. A $120 inhaler was found to cost around 5cents in Cuba which really is outrageous and I thank Mr Moore for highlighting this. The stunt he pulled taking ill Americans to Cuba for free treatment was extremely funny and seemed spontaneous and dangerous but I'm sure it was a very well planned activity that included needing to get Visas and using his contacts to pull strings to allow certain parts of the filming.

And the final insult from the self absorbed man was when he put in a kick to an anti Michael Moore web site owner by revealing that it was him that had donated an anomalous $12000 for the medical treatment of the site owners wife. In my opinion real generosity would have been achieved only if he did not reveal on tape that it was him that had given the money.

I think this movie should be seen. The problem is real and it does need highlighting. I just wish that it was a shorter film and that at least some reality had been brought to the other sides of the argument. Michael Moore needs to realize that people are big enough and clever enough to make up their own minds.

Like movies? Check out my blog for interesting movie related posts such as: Music From Pineapple Express and weekly updated Blockbuster New Releases

Slumdog Millionaire Film Review

2009-03-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

BOTTOM LINE: This classic rags-to-riches tale accomplishes the feat of not only telling a great story of triumph over adversity but manages to open your eyes to a part of the world that is hardly ever covered in a Hollywood film besides clichés; no wonder the Academy gave it the Best Picture Oscar.

THE GOOD: "Slumdog Millionaire" works on many levels, least of which being the theme of destiny. Juxtaposing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for lead character Jamal (Dev Patel) to play the game show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' with his tumultuous life story of where he grew up in the slums of Mumbai India is a rich and powerful tale of triumph over adversity. Jamal only wants to be with his true love Latika (Freida Pinto). To find her, he manages to get himself on to the game show for the sole purpose that she will see him and contact him. As fate would have it, Jamal knows the answers to all the questions through the random events that have occurred to him. Jamal does not know who is on the one thousand rupee note but he does know who is on the US hundred dollar bill because a blind boy who was made blind in order to become a beggar tells Jamal who it is, a fate Jamal barely escaped himself. Game show host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) calls in the police on suspicions that Jamal is cheating (after all, how can a slumdog know anything). As the police question him, Jamal tells his life story and in so doing, gives detailed accounts of specific incidents which directly relate to how he knew the answer to each and every question he was asked on the show. This story is harrowing, particularly in the telling of Jamal's life as a child. For example, he knows what the God Rama is holding in his hand because when anti-Muslim violence breaks out in his slum and his mother is violently killed, he sees a child dressed as Rama as he escapes. Watching all these incidents unfold through dramatic flashbacks and cross-cutting, we learn that Jamal's destiny was to succeed in winning the game show, thereby allowing him to rise up out of the slums and live the dream of riches, with the entire country watching on in awe. The film is inspiring, sometimes brutal and ultimately moving without ever becoming corny or sentimental, even when Jamal realises his destiny and gets the girl. Director Danny Boyle takes a classically archetypal storyline and transposes it in to a culture that is barely covered outside of stereotypes in Hollywood, crafting a brilliant piece of cinema that not only plays to the rags-to-riches story it tells but opens your eyes to another culture and world that many in Western nations may not necessarily have any understanding of. "Slumdog Millionaire" is perhaps deservedly the winner of the Best Picture Oscar, simply for working in metaphors, showing a different side of the world, and doing it on a very modest budget while delivering some powerful visuals and storytelling.

THE BAD: The world 'slumdog' is in the title for a reason; if you do not have an affinity for watching films set in desolate and third world conditions then this film is definitely not for you. The only other issue with the film is that the musical soundtrack at times feels like its belting you over the head with an incessant heavy drum beat and heavy overtones that are inspired by Indian music. What we are watching is dramatic enough; to have that music blast its way through the experience is almost too much, particularly in the harsher scenes.

For the original review, follow this link: http://www.allaboutmovies.net/filmreviewslumdogmillionaire.htm Todd Murphy is a staff reviewer at the film/DVD review web site, http://www.allaboutmovies.net - for all the latest reviews on the newest releases.

Hydrophobic - Lara Dutta

2009-03-04T07:01:00.000-08:00

I Was Hydrophobic - Lara Dutta

Tagged: Lara Dutta, Billu Barber, Bollywood, Irrfan Khan, AsianOutlook, Shah Rukh Khan, Eros International
Lara Dutta the talented Bollywood beauty with brains once was crowned Miss Universe back 2000 before entering the Hindi Film Industry. The glamorous actress who is holding a degree in Economics is known for her sense of humour and apart from acting has a talent for writing too. The author met her last Friday, while she was promoting her latest release 'Billu (Barber)' at a press junket in central London and chatted with her about her transformation from the glamorous Miss Universe to the plain village beauty Bindiya in 'Billu (Barber)' and also about what and who had turned her from being hydrophobic to become a deep-see diver.

Exclusive Interview with Larra Dutta:

Q: How do you feel after the release of Billu (Barber)?

Lara: It's great it's been my first release after a year, my last release was 'Partner' with Salman (Khan) and this is fabulous. I didn't think that Billu would be the first one to release. I think it's a good wholesome family entertainer and it's nice to begin the year with something like this.

Q: There have been comments before your role in Billu would just be minuscule but I didn't had the impression, I think yours was a very important role and you also had a lot of screen time in Billu. What is your take on that people are just coming up with things like that?

Lara: You know in India actresses, maybe also because your career span is much shorter then that of men, I think girls get scared of a role because they might get to look older then their age. I'm also not a mother of two children, but I'm an actor it does not mean you have to go through the whole experience to know how is it to be a mother. For me personally I never note in my career to say 'oh this I will not do that now I will do it when I'm 35' and things like that. As an actor you get the opportunity to grow with every role that you play and if you are able to portray it as real, when your audience can feel 'oh yes that is that kind of character' that's your job as an actor. For me to really do Billu was never a second thought. I never thought oh should I, should I not do it, I don't know why.

In terms of the role, the role did grow through the film and for this I really have to thank Shah Rukh because when he asked me to do it he said very clearly right from the beginning 'you know the role is not a Hindi film heroine role' but he would really make an effort to make sure the character wouldn't get lost in the narrative. While we where making the story we realised that Billu's story is really about the story of his family, so the husband, wife and the two kids became such an important part of the story. They became the centre of the story. So we have built scenes from there to enhance the character of Billu.

Q: So did you change the script while shooting?

Lara: No not the scenes in the film but the dialogues, the involvement of the character we developed.

Q: I also found it interesting that the characters of Billu and Bindiya are completely different.

Lara: Yes he is quite and intense and she is pushy. She is like every woman. We like it when we have the attention and everyone wants to be around us we like it.

It's also the first time Irrfan and I worked together and normally it's a very unlikely paring. I'm a more glamorous actress and Irrfan is an intense actor and so everybody was thinking how can they be husband and wife, but that's what also worked on screen.

And also the story is not about falling in love for the first time it is not that we are young married, we've got two grown up kids and the relationship is on a mature level. But there is still so much of love so there is a lot of give and take, she kind of dons him, sometimes pushes him, eggs him on and he loves her for all of that, it's really sweet.

Q: Do you have a favourite scene in Billu (Barber)?

Lara: I do and you know I really hope Shah Rukh will put it back into the movie, because actually the scene is not in the movie, they cut it out.

So it's a really sweet and simple scene, which both Irrfan and I really wanted to have in the film. The film is very simple and sweet and a film always needs to have strong and emotional moments in it. The comedy is something you laugh at but it's the emotional moments that are going to get you. There was a lovely scene where I, for to pay my kids school fees, sell my mangalsutre, so she takes it of and gives it to him and says 'loan on it for what ever money you get to pay the children school fees' and he says 'but it's the only thing that you have' and she says 'yes but its ok if we have money you bring it back and then you can put it back on me' and he says 'yes but that will mean we would be marrying twice' and she says 'yes but the first time wasn't so great so maybe the second time will'. It's a very sweet scene, but they took it out.

Q: Big parts of the movie have been shot in that village Pollachi, so it's quite a rural area...

Lara: Very rural!

Q: How did you accommodate yourself there?

Lara: It was very beautiful to shoot in Pollachi and it was very difficult to shoot in Pollachi, its so because there is really no infrastructure, there is really nothing. A lot of times it was even difficult to get to the location, we could not go by car we had to go by tractor. So just to get into the places with your sari and everything I think it was just like really difficult. Also the whole crew and the equipment it was really difficult.

It looks beautiful and I think the director of photography has done a fabulous job it looks great on screen but it was difficult to shoot there. And in a way it was really exciting because it was life imitating art while we were in this village it was exactly like the story of the movie so we had literally Shah Rukh Khan in that village. It was amazing. For these people it was the first time they had such a star there and then we showed that in the movie, so it was fantastic shooting there. I wouldn't do it in a hurry again though.

Q: So what are your further projects this year?

Lara: This year is a busy year for me. Last year I didn't had a release because I was making all those movies. So it started with Billu (Barber), then a comedy called 'Do not disturb' with director David Dhawan for the second time after 'Partner'. Then with Ravi Chopra another film called 'Band Yeh Bindaas Hain'.

Then I have India's first under water action adventure film called 'Blue' with Akshay Kumar and Sanjay Dutt (director Anthony D'Souza).
So there is a mixture of all, there is comedy, there is action and there is drama.

Q: Is it true you had to learn diving for 'Blue'?

Lara: Yes, I learned how to swim and to dive it was exhilarating! Unbelievable! I mean I cannot believe that I went so long in my live to do this.

Q: You've never dived before?

Lara: I didn't know how to swim. I learned to swim and then to dive for this movie. You can put it this way I was hydrophobic. I prepared for about 6 months before 'Blue'. Then it was amazing because we've shot in the Bahamas for a month and we shot in Pukhet for a month and now we will be shooting for another month and the movie will com out in August or September.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Billu (Barber) is out now in the theatres worldwide.

Produced by Gauri Khan
Directed by Priyadashan
Music Pritam

Lyrics Gulzar and Sayeed Quadri

Cast
Irrfan Khan as Billu Barber
Lara Dutta as Bindiya
Om Puri as Damchand
Raypal Yadav as Jhallan Kumar
Manoj Joshi as Damodar Dubey
Asrani as Nobat Chacha
Mitali Mayakar as Billu's daughter
Pratik Dalvi as Billu's son
Jagdish as Madan
Rasika Joshi as Mrs Gahalot
and
Shah Rukh Khan as Sahir Khan

Distributor
Eros International

Synopsis:
Billu Barber is a story of a simple ordinary man who led an extra ordinary life.

Bilas Rao Pardesi was living in his village with his wife Bindiya and two great kids. Life was bitter sweet...we can say more sweet than bitter. One day a superstar came into their lives and everything changed. Life changed, people changed, friends changed, the village changed but one man did not...Billu Barber.

Will this ordinary man redefine the words ordinary? Will the world see the greatness behind his small existence? And most of all, will life ever be the same for Billu Barber again?

Asianoutlook.com - The official Shah Rukh Khan Forum

At AsianOutlook.com you can find all news and pictures about Shah Rukh Khan and the other stars from Bollywood - Indian Cinema.

Come and join our community at: http://www.asianoutlook.com/aoforum/

Meet and discuss(in the forum) with all the other fans of Bollywood/ Hindi cinema and Shah Rukh Khan - The King of Bollywood from all over the world.

If you want to know and read more about AsianOutlook and its members just visit:

THE ASIANOUTLOOK SHOWCASE: http://www.asianoutlook.com/aoforum/forumdisplay.php?f=166

- our open access with our official AsianOutlook.com reports and pictures about events where our members got the chance to see and meet the King of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan.

What Happened to the Once Loved Richard and Judy?

2009-02-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

Richard and Judy have been on everyone's prime time screens for over two decades. Since there marriage to one another in 1986 they have built a lasting relationship both onscreen and off screen.

They first shot to fame as hosts on the newly formed This Morning way back in 1988. They built a brand name around there show that it was more known as Richard and Judy than This Morning. But in 2001 the couple had a great offer for a prime time spot on Channel 4 to create a show actually called Richard and Judy; the show was hugely popular pulling in an average of three million viewers. But in 2008 Channel 4 announced it would be the last in the series after Richard and Judy agreed to go to new channel Watch.

The channel did not help them at all as it's not available on most free views and has a lower followership the show started off abysmally and is set to get the axe from Watch after pulling in an abysmal eight thousand viewers.

Judy is now saying she wants to retire and spend time with the family but Richard insists he still has ambitions and would like to go solo and host a few shows on his own. Will it work for Richard? Who knows, but they have been a couple act for so long that I don't think the public would accept them as individuals. It would be like Ant and Dec splitting up and going their own ways which would just not work and will not get accepted by the public, which is the most crucial aspect..

Richard and Judy have had a great career they have been in the limelight for over 20 years. There is no doubt in my mind that they have enough money to retire and live comfortably. They have been great hosts in there heyday, but I cannot see them rescuing the show or coming back into prime time TV.

The guests are just not as good as they used to attract, an important aspect for any show is getting guests that are currently at the height of there fame. Richard and Judy used to be able to do this with the likes of Britney Spears and Tony Blair but its just not happening anymore. They have had a great career that has been rewarded to the maximum, now they should settle down and enjoy there hard work.

For great Family Holidays, UK Family Holidays and Bargain Family Holidays.

BRAVIA(TM) Goes Eco: Sony Debuts Greenest Ever TV Range

2009-02-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

BRAVIA new WE5 'ECO TV'

-- Full HD 1080p (40, 46-inch) LCD TV showcases Sony's eco-innovation -- World's first micro-tubular HCFL backlight cuts power consumption by more than 50%*

-- Smart Presence Sensor switches off picture when set is not being watched

-- Energy Saving Switch reduces power consumption to zero

MORE ECO FEATURES ACROSS BRAVIA 2009 RANGE:

-- Easily accessible, energy-saving 'Eco settings'

-- Reduced energy consumption

-- Space-saving design cuts transportation carbon emissions

*Compared with similar 2008 model (like the BRAVIA W4500 series)

Now you can cut your carbon footprint while enjoying your favourite TV shows in sparkling Sony Full HD.

For Spring 2009, Sony introduces the greenest ever BRAVIA LCD television line-up. Consuming an average of 20-30% less power than last year's BRAVIA range, the new line-up cuts household energy bills without compromising superlative Full HD picture performance.

BRAVIA WE5 'eco TV'

The new eco-friendly BRAVIA line-up is headed by the innovative WE5 series that sets new standards for energy efficiency. Packed with power-conserving features, the strikingly styled LCD TV consumes over 50% less power than its predecessor.

Available in two screen sizes (40-inch, 46-inch), the new BRAVIA WE5 series is one of the most energy-efficient HD televisions available.

Key to its remarkable energy saving performance is a new micro-tubular Hot Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (HCFL) backlight that boosts efficiency without compromising superb BRAVIA picture quality.

The WE5 marks the debut of other energy saving innovations. It's the first BRAVIA with an intelligent Presence Sensor that detects the body heat and movement of anyone sitting within normal range of the screen. If the viewer leaves the room -- to answer the door or during a commercial break -- the sensor activates an energy-saving 'picture off' mode, while leaving TV sound on. The picture turns back on as soon as the viewer re-enters the room. If no movement is detected in the room -- perhaps when you've fallen asleep in front of the screen -- the set automatically switches to standby after 30 minutes.

It's also the first BRAVIA with a new Energy Saving Switch that cuts electricity bills still further. Other televisions draw a small amount of power when they're in standby or even when switched off. Flipping a conveniently-placed switch on the WE5 turns the set off completely. Switch back on again and the TV returns immediately to its previous state. It's a smarter, more convenient alternative to manually unplugging the TV when it's not in use.

The WE5 includes a unique easy-to-use electronic on-screen operation manual that reduces the need for printed paper instructions.

Aside from its eco credentials, the WE5 series delivers effortless picture performance with your favourite movies, TV broadcasts and games. The Full HD 1080p LCD panel is complemented by Sony's new BRAVIA Engine 3 that cleans, filters and optimises image data to reduce picture noise while boosting contrast and colour range. Motionflow 100Hz technology with Image Blur Reduction doubles the displayed frame rate for smoother, sharper sports and fast-moving action scenes.

Greenest ever BRAVIA line-up

Alongside the WE5, the entire 2009 BRAVIA range delivers remarkable energy efficiency without sacrificing vibrant HD picture quality.

Most 2009 models carry the 'EU Flower', an Eco-label introduced by the European Commission to certify greener, more environmentally friendly products that comply with strict ecological and performance criteria.

Eco settings on all models are conveniently grouped together for easy access via the television's settings menu.

Reducing LCD panel power consumption, most 2009 BRAVIA models feature a Light Sensor that automatically adjusts backlight brightness depending on ambient room light. Complementing the auto Light Sensor, there's a selectable power saving mode that reduces backlight illumination levels for comfortable viewing in dim light.

An 'Idle TV' mode functions like a PC screensaver, switching off the TV picture to conserve energy if there's been no user activity for a preset time. It's complemented by a sleep/timer function that switches the set to standby after a preset time: it's a useful way of saving energy if you're inclined to drop off during late-night movies.

PC Power Management mode switches automatically to standby if no signal is received from a connected computer for 30 seconds. It's handy if you've connected the TV to your computer for some big-screen gaming action, and want to take a few minutes break without switching everything off.

What's more, the increasingly space-saving design of 2009 BRAVIA models requires fewer product packaging materials. This further reduces carbon emissions during transportation.

"Sony consistently leads the way in reducing the environmental impact of its televisions and other electronic products", says Hiroshi Sakamoto, Vice President, TV Marketing Europe. "As the remarkable WE5 demonstrates, this year's BRAVIA line-up doesn't just look and perform better than ever before. It's an emphatic statement that Sony is serious about cutting the environmental footprint of everybody's home entertainment experience."

About Sony:

Sony manufactures audio, video, communications and information technology products for the global consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, game and online businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be one of the world's leading digital entertainment brands. Sony recorded consolidated global annual sales of EUR 55.44 billion (yen 8,871 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, based on an average market exchange rate for the same period of yen 160.0 to the EUR. It employs approximately 180,500 people worldwide.

In Europe, the Sony Group recorded consolidated annual sales of EUR 12.73 billion (yen 2,328 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008. Sony Europe, headquartered at the Sony Center am Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, is responsible for the company's European electronics business and registered consolidated sales of EUR 9.55 billion for the same period.

For more information on Sony Europe, please visit http://www.sony-europe.com and http://www.sony-europe.com/presscenter

"Sony" and "BRAVIA" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Corporation. All other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Bridge to Terabithia - A DVD Review

2009-02-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

If you haven't had the chance to see this movie, go see it. Rent it. Buy it. Whatever. If you're not familiar with the book or the story, the twist will catch you offguard. The trailer, as I recall, seem to hint at a Narnia-esque story, but it was nothing of such at all.

Terabithia was about the growing pains of Leslie and Jesse, two middle schoolers who developed deep love between each other, and how they coped together with their pre-teen unrests. The story drew you into how their lives changed as soon as they met after encountering the school bullies. The story was told from Jesse's point of view, the talented introvert who's blossoming artistry was in danger of forever getting buried by the burdens of a young man's traditional familial responsibilities. His parents kept telling him to stop daydreaming and, instead, to focus in contributing to the family in practical ways since they had money problems. Jesse was constantly torn between his parents' needs and his growing passion for his art.

Enter Leslie into his life. A new girl in school and his new neighbor who was growing up unconventionally. Her family did not believe in television and many other conventional, perhaps unnecessary, home furnishings. As a result, Leslie used her deep imagination to entertain herself and to deal with adversity such as when being mocked by bullies. She showed Jesse the power of imagination as they explored the woods near their house. It was here that they made up a place they call Terabithia - their place, their magical kingdom complete with mystical warriors protecting them from nearby creatures of mayhem. Jesse succumbed to Leslie's lead and fully embroiled himself in a world that only existed between them.

By this time, I anticipated and hoped that Terabithia would become real and the two would be able to escape their troubles together. I was really pulling for a cheesy happy ending for these two. But something terrible happened. I won't give it out because it's such a big part of story. And it does make you cry. For now, let's finish this review by saying that in the end, our young artist with Leslie's help was able to free his mind and enlighten another with his imagination.

The acting was superb, not just from the leads Josh Hutcherson (Jesse) and AnnaSophia Robb (Leslie), but also from the supporting casts including Zooey Deschannel (Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2). The movie had plenty of sticky situations typical in middle school. It's a perfect setting on how two people can find each other from among the turmoil and how the right relationship can enrich a life forever.

The author is a web producer and writes freelance on various topics from lighthearted "geeky" subjects, i.e. Transformers movie action figures to business & career matters such as how to become a medical coder.

TV Ratings: ABC splits sluggish Sunday with CBS

2009-02-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

By Daniel Fienberg

Marcia Cross of 'Desperate Housewives'

Credit: Randee St. Nicholas/ABC

Fast National ratings for Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009.

CBS' dramas, plus the return of "The Amazing Race," had a sluggish Sunday and allowed ABC to grab the key ratings demo for the night.

ABC averaged a 3.3 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, beating FOX's 2.7 rating. CBS was third with a 2.3 rating, followed by the 1.3 rating for NBC and The CW's 0.5 rating.

Overall, though, CBS averaged an estimated 10.37 million viewers and a 6.4 rating/10 share. ABC was a close second with a 6.0/10, while NBC's 3.4/6 and FOX's 3.3/5 came next. The CW's 1.0/2 was fifth.

CBS started the night with a commanding lead thanks to an 8.3/14 for "60 Minutes" in the 7 p.m. hour. ABC's "America's Funniest Home Videos" was second with a 4.6/8. "Dateline NBC" took third, outdoing FOX's NASCAR post-race and the 0.7/1 for The CW's "Jericho."

The premiere of "The Amazing Race" barely held onto first at 8 p.m. with a 5.5/9. The second house of "Dateline NBC" was a close second with a 5.4/9. ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" repeat was third. FOX's "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" were second with a 3.4/5, but the animated comedies won the hour in the 18-49 demo. The CW's "GoldenEye" outperformed the netlet's usual Sunday movie draw.

At 9 p.m. ABC grabbed first with an 8.6/13 for "Desperate Housewives." CBS' "Cold Case" was second with a 6.6/10. FOX's "Family Guy" and "American Dad" averaged a 3.8/6, beating the second part of the NBC's telefilm "XIII," which had a 2.7/4 for the hour. The CW's movie trailed.

ABC stayed in first in the 10 p.m. hour with a 6.1/10 for "Brothers & Sisters." CBS' "The Unit" took second with a 5.1/9. NBC's telefilm dropped slightly and finished third.
source

The Slumdog World

2009-02-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

The movie Slumdog Millionaire is good, the cast has done a great job, and the director has been able to bring out the contrast in modern India. But there have been many Indian movies which have very cogently brought out stark realities of the modern capitalist society. These movies created a genre in the eighties and early nineties and were so appropriately termed "Art Movies". These movies portrayed India's grim realities; they portrayed the rich-poor divide; they portrayed the existence of man in horrid squalor but these movies never reached the pinnacle of box office.

Yes they won some awards but remained on the fringes of making it even or being somewhat profitable venture on the box-office. But why Slumdog Millionaire has turned out to be such a huge box office success? The reasons could be many. One obvious reason is the rags-to-riches story. And here the protagonist, a slum dweller strikes it rich in a contest of wits and brains. But there have been scores of movies on the battered rags-to-riches theme and none as successful as the Slumdog Millionaire. So the reason of its success lies elsewhere.

The year 2009 is the year battered by the worst financial crisis in the history of mankind. The worst crisis because of the gargantuan sums of money involved; the worst crisis because of many financial giants just melting away and the worst crisis because it has jeopardized lives of millions. Don't you think the world presents a reverse story from that of the Slumdog Millionaire? What would you call this... "Millionaire Turned Slumdog" or "MansionPooch Pauper"? And what an irony here too, the real Millionaires have been turned pauper by the subprime crisis or the Slumdogs of US who dreamed of becoming home owners. Or to say the Slumdogs who wanted to become Millionaires.

So who is watching the film, the Slumdogs who want to become millionaires or those millionaires who are facing the slumdog future because of the pink slips? Or all of us who have suddenly found so much of spare time because of no or less work pressures. The world today presents a bleak economic picture, everyone is looking for a miracle; be it Obama or Manmohan Singh.

The movie Slumdog Millionaire presents a miracle in the times of financial distress. Let the world learn from it, the Slumdog is the buzzword today. Let there be a slumdog revolution of sorts. Slumdogtravels, slumdogtours, slumdog greetings, slumdog cards.... This is not a gimmick; this is the reality of 2009. The big spenders are passé; thrift is the order of the day. Welcome to the Slumdog World of today.

Anu is a freelance mapping and GIS professional. She has been in creating maps for more than a decade and has done work for maps.com, designmaps.com, creativeforce.com, redgeographics.com and various other clients. She can be reached for a map work at info@mapsandlocations.com and promapper@gmail.com. Visit http://www.mapsandlocations.com for some samples.

Joss Wins Another One - Dr Horrible Sing Along Blog

2009-02-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Tagged: Dr. Horrible, Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris, blog, musical

An Ode To Joss...

I'm obsessed with Joss Whedon. I mean, most of you know I'm obsessed with a lot of things, but Joss Whedon takes the cake. He gave me my three favorite television shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and even Firefly. It's hard to isolate the key component that makes his shows better than others, but here are a few to start with: His witty dialogue is by far the wittiest, he never gives you what you want...never fearing a heart smushing ending, and all the problems the characters face, no matter how bizarre, can easily be related to by the audience. For example: sleeping with a boyfriend and having them turn evil. Yes, it's happened to most of us at some point, thankfully without the trying to rip out my friends' throats part of the story.

And he continues to delight me...

So, last summer when I read Joss was making a 43 minute musical to be posted online I was immediately interested. When I found out it was called Dr. horrible's sing along blog I was mega interested. And when I found out it was starring Niel Patrick Harris (Barney from How I Met Your Mother)....do I really need to throw out any more adjectives?

What's it about?

The project began as a response the the writer's strike. It stars Dr. Evil (played by Harris) in his quest to prove his evilosity and join the Evil League of Evil. Meanwhile, he has his eye on the lovely Penny (played by a Buffy alum, Felicia Day), his Laundromat crush. In his first evil act, he inadvertently puts Penny in danger and she is 'rescued' my Dr. Evil's arch nemesis, Captain Hammer, (played by Firefly and Buffy alum, Nathan Fillion) a character who is hilariously unaware and obsessed with himself. This spontaneous rescue inadvertently puts Hammer and Penny together, spurring more delightful and hilarious (and musical!) schemes from Dr. Evil.

Wait, did you say it was a musical?

Moreover, all the songs are beautifully well done. My favorite is the light and funny "Freeze Ray" that takes place in a laundromat where Dr. Evil awkwardly tried to summon up the courage to talk to his crush. But the songs range from the romantic (My Eyes) to the funny (So They Say) to the utterly bizarre (Bad Horse) to the captivating and chilling (Brand New Day, Slipping). Preview the songs for free here.

Now go see it!

In summary: funny, emotional, musical, Neil Patrick Harris, and touching. I recommend it with everything I have. Check out the links below and decide for yourself. This is one impulse purchase I definitely recommend. I'm personally holding out for DVD version (right-most link), so I can check out the musical commentary and other special features (I am obsessed after all...). Watch for free at Hulu.com.

Hello, I am currently finishing up a degree in bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I hope to begin a doctoral degree next year. Please check out my blog for more articles: http://karenwithak.typepad.com

2009 award show season - Oscar Movie Picks

2009-02-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

With the beginning of the 2009 award show season, the countdown to the Oscars begins. The list of Oscar nominees has been released, and if you and your family want to brush up on your Oscar movies, which ones are worth seeing and which ones should you skip? Since most of these movies are still in theatres, after checking the paper and hearing the phone movie trailers, take your family out for an afternoon of your own Oscar research, and make your own decisions on which should receive Best Picture.

Slumdog Millionaire: The story of an Indian boy who is picked off of the impoverished streets of his childhood to participate in a Who Wants to be a Millionaire type trivia show. It's a classic tale of the juxtaposition of rich versus poor and the problems that it can cause. See it with the whole family.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: This movie is about a boy who has a condition where he ages backwards, starting out as an old man and becoming younger over time. A great story about a person who is unable to stop time, like all of us, the adventures he encounters along the way are remarkable. See it.

Frost/Nixon: An historical picture that depicts the infamous interviews between Richard Nixon and journalist David Frost. A battle of wits ensued and we see Richard Nixon at his most vulnerable. However, skip it unless you are a serious politics or history buff, or were alive during this tumultuous time.

Mobile Previews LLC (http://mpviews.com/) offers phone movie trailers. Billings Farnsworth is a freelance writer

Top TEN Classic Movies

2009-02-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

A classic movie is quite simply a movie that has stood the test of time, regardless of genre, regardless of age. A classic transcends all its classifications and manages to hold your attention all over again. In reverse order here are my top 10...

Top10. Casablanca - 1942

In one of the most famous films of all time: Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, an American nightclub owner working in French Morocco. The high-stakes story is set against the backdrop of the Second World War and tells the story of Blaine, a disillusioned idealist, as he sacrifices love to join the fight against the Nazis.

Top9. Citizen Kane - 1941

Orson Welles' first feature film, acclaimed for its soundtrack, photography and innovative narrative structure, is considered by many to be the greatest film ever made. It traces the life of a newspaper tycoon from his humble beginnings and follows his ruthless ascent to power and back down again to his inevitable sad and lonely end.

Top8. The Godfather - 1972

Francis Ford Coppola took the outstanding novel by Mario Puzo and turned it into one of the all-time classic movies. Marlon Brando, in his startling Hollywood comeback, is Don Vito Corleone the head of a New York crime family and shares the screen with a handful of actors whose careers were launched on the strength of this film and their performances. The film tells the story of the hopes and dreams of an immigrant family in America and how the children raised, struggled to fill their fathers' shoes. Beautifully shot scenes are contrasted with graphic violence.

Top7. Psycho - 1960

In this classic suspense/thriller from Alfred Hitchcock, Marion Crane is on the run with stolen money and makes the mistake of checking into the Bates Motel - run by mama's boy Norman Bates and his mother. Bernard Herrmann's chilling violin score and the shower scene are now synonymous with horror.

Top6. Raging Bull - 1980

Based on the career of 1940's boxing champ Jake La Motta, Raging Bull marked the high point of director Martin Scorsese's and Robert De Niro's work together. A study on the nature of violence itself has produced one of the most poetic and brutal sports films ever made. De Niro's performance is a triumph of acting as he journeys from a young fighting machine to an overweight boxing has-been.

Top5. The Graduate - 1967

In this biting coming-of-age comedy set in the late 60's, Dustin Hoffman plays Benjamin Braddock a recent college graduate wondering what to do next with his life. Seduced by an older friend of the family, Mrs Robinson, Ben continues with the affair even while falling for her daughter. The Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack seals this movie classic.

Top4. Chinatown - 1974

Roman Polanski's Chinatown delves into the darker side of Los Angeles in the 1930's. Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes a private detective investigating what appears to be a routine case of infidelity. All is not what it seams as Jake is drawn into a world of water rights and land deals, greed and murder.

Top3. 2001: A Space Odyssey - 1968

Arguably the greatest science fiction film ever made, Stanley Kubrick's visionary epic begins on the plains of Africa and takes us all the way to the planet Saturn. Shot in 70mm, the film took four years to make. The attention to detail is incredible and the result is a movie that doesn't look dated even after forty years.

Top2. Apocalypse Now - 1979

Martin Sheen is a battle-weary captain journeying into the depths of the Vietnamese jungle to assassinate the renegade Colonel Kurtz, who has gone into a mystical state of insanity and started his own tribe. The movie is almost surreal in its depiction of incredible battle scenes and of course the famous helicopter raid set to the tune of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

Top1. Bonnie and Clyde - 1967

Set in the depressed 1930's, this film set a milestone for screen violence as it follows the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow from their first meeting, through shoot-outs and hold-ups, to becoming America's most feared and ruthless bank robbers.

Noel Byrne is a web developer and article author. For more classic movies visit http://www.pennydvds.com/uk-classic-movies.php.

Denny Crane and Alan Shore

2009-02-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

Tagged: Denny Crane, Alan Shore, David E. Kelley, Boston Legal, ABC TV, male bonding,

I'm a sucker for a good old-fashioned love story. From Romeo and Juliet , to Cleopatra and Julius Caesar and even Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Guinevere and Lancelot, to King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson and the list goes on.

Love, it's said, makes the world go 'round. Love is a many splendored thing as the movie of the same name so beautifully illustrates. Lara and Dr. Zhivago's doomed love affair still makes me weep. But there are other love affairs that many people would not understand.

Wait! Before you get ahead of me, I'm not referring to love between two gay men or two lesbians, although as Jerry Seinfeld's character on the hilarious Seinfeld TV show proclaimed, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." And indeed there isn't.

No, I'm referring to a fictional love affair between two heterosexual men, namely Denny Crane and Alan Shore as played by the enormously talented actors, William Shatner and James Spader, of the defunct TV show (dammit!) Boston Legal.

I've discussed this TV relationship with many people and have been quite surprised by the amount of negativity and downright disgust uttered by them over a beautiful heterosexual male bonding.

Ok, so it's just a TV show about two fictitious characters but let's stop to examine it in a little more depth. Their relationship is about love. Isn't this how we were brought up? To love one another? So what if it's two notorious womanizers? They are equal opportunity lovers. And they also love each other, without shame or embarrassment.

To see people unblushingly proclaim their love for each other gives me hope that one day the human race will become civilized. We are certainly a long way from attaining that goal, given all the war and strife in the world. The Beatles sang "All You Need is Love." That says it all.

People since time immemorial have been extolling the virtues of love. So why should we put restraints on people professing their love for each other just because their love doesn't fit into our own narrow concept of what love should be?

David E. Kelley, the creator of Boston Legal, among many other wonderful shows, is to be commended for his outstanding writing, in addition to his enormous courage in creating these two lovable characters - Denny Crain and Alan Shore.

Watching these two characters dancing on the balcony with each other, sharing cigars, a drink, charming stories, and showing their deep affection for each other kindles a warm glow within my heart and a hope for our future.

Yes, it's fiction indeed. But it needn't be. It's unabashed love for a fellow human without all the macho, phony butt slapping camaraderie that some men feel they must engage in to show their affection, lest they be mistaken for being gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Sheryl Letzgus McGinnis is the author of the books I Am Your Disease (The Many Faces of Addiction), Slaying the Addiction Monster - An All-Inclusive Look at Drug Addiction in America Today, and her first children's book, The Addiction Monster and the Square Cat. This book is consistently on Amazon.com's Best Sellers List in Substance Abuse. All 3 books are available for purchase at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders online and other sites in addition to the author's website, http://www.theaddictionmonster.com

Sheryl is a retired medical transcriptionist and radio DJ who also did voiceovers for TV. Married, with one living son, having lost her youngest son Scott, who was a paramedic and an RN to the disease of addiction. Happily married for 42 years to Jack, a retired 8th grade science teacher. Her oldest son Dale is a graduate student in Environmental Sciences and has his own band, New Gravity.

Sheryl and family live in Palm Bay, Florida. Sheryl is originally from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is a citizen of both Australia and the US. The McGinnis family is owned by one beautiful big black lab and four spoiled rotten cats.

V For Vendetta - Another Iconic Book From the Watchmen Creator

2009-02-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

Tagged: watchmen, alan moore, v for vendetta, comic book movies, comic books, graphic novels

While the WATCHMEN feature film adaptation is getting a hell of a lot of press for the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, we mustn't forget that there has been much more from the comics legend with the beard. Another of maverick author Alan Moore's fantastic pieces of graphic fiction, namely V For Vendetta, also came to our screens back in 2005.

Even though Moore disowned the project (As he has also done with Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN film), that film adaptation was remarkably faithful to the beloved and well respected source material, as well as being a very strong film in its own right.

Starring Natalie Portman as Evey and Hugo Weaving (as well as James Purefoy for some of the role) as the titular V, the film is as bleak and stark as the graphic novel it is based on, and the Watchowski Brothers had a relapse into directing things well, making the V For Vendetta movie something that is worth watching repeatedly. The dark, twisted vision of an England gone even or wrong is surprisingly believable, and a strong cast handles the script will dignity and respect.

The book's themes of revolution against a government that is woefully out of touch with its public is something that resonated with comics fans when the graphic novel was originally published a s strips and a limited series between 1982 and 1988.

The conviction of the masked, costumed V and the evolution of the Evey character are gripping reading, and the onscreen partnership of Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman served the characters well. Some fans of the graphic novel took issue with Portman's casting in the role, but she faces the role head on, giving us an Evey that is initially vulnerable, then eventually strong and defiant.

V for Vendetta and Watchmen are perfect companion pieces for one another. They represent an era when comic had started to get serious and started to garner a little respect as an art form in their own right. The books also work together as two aspects of the same world.

Where Watchmen is the dark underbelly of an alternate America, V For Vendetta is the story of an England that has grown tired of its ignorant government and makes the voice of the people heard with a display of unity and defiance that is both shocking and solemn.

A masterpiece of the graphic storytelling art form, with superb and atmospheric art by David Lloyd, V for Vendetta is an incredible, gripping and utterly compelling story that attempts to wake up the apathetic masses top the realities of a Big Brother state. In this regard, V for Vendetta is utterly peerless, and has more than earned its status as one of the greatest graphic novels ever published.

Andrew writes for the popular movie and pop culture memorabilia site STARSTORE and their many blogs as well as presenting their online show STARSTORECAST. He is also a globally published music journalist and SF author.

The Watchmen Superheroes

2009-02-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

Tagged: watchmen, superhero, show, entertainment, novel, graphic, hero, comic, alan, moore

The Watchmen are superheroes of a different breed. Very different from the ones most people are used to anyway. The reinvention of the superhero genre has finally reached the big screen with the advent of The Dark Knight. But now what is considered by many to be the best comic book of all time has reached the big screen.

Watchmen had only twelve issues. It was created by famed writer, part genius, part madman, Alan Moore. It's draw by Dave Gibbons and colored by John Higgins and was printed by DC. It circulated from 86' to 87' and was an instant classic. All issues have been repacked in graphic novel form. The project began with Alan more submitting a story to DC but the characters were existing DC characters. However, the story would have rewritten these characters in such a way that they won't be able to be used again for any new comics storyline. It's allegedly said that even batman was included in the original cast of characters. Moore was then swayed by the managing editor to rewrite the story using new, original characters instead.

The Watchmen comic is usually read as a social commentary on modern industrialist anxieties. The comic also takes an in depth look on the concept of superheroes. The story is set in an alternate world where the United States is nearing nuclear war with the USSR. Superheroes are all under the government. Costumed vigilantes must register or be faced with serious legal consequences. Those older generation superheroes are mostly in retirement. The story begins when a superhero working for the government is murdered. This serves as the impetus for the protagonists to come out of retirement and investigate the murder. Along the way, they discover a nefarious plot that involves one of their own planning to stage a doomsday scenario.

The focal point of Watchmen's style is structural in nature. The artist used a regular nine panels per page. There was also the recurring image or symbol especially of the blood spattered yellow smiley that's become the haunting iconography of a generation. There are also back stories that are juxtaposed to the main story line that create a stratum which enriches the whole experience.

The Watchmen garnered such widespread accolades and is undeniably popular both in the independent subculture as well as the popular culture. There are already been so many attempts at launching a movie adaptation of this seminal work. Finally, on March of this year 2009, director Zack Snyder's Watchmen will be showing in theaters worldwide.

A Computer Engineering student and loves to travel. Reading current news in the internet is one of his past times. Taking pictures of the things around him fully satisfies him. He loves to play badminton and his favorite pets are cats.

For more inquiries, you may visit The Watchmen

The Juicy Bits on The Battlestar Galactica Cast

2009-02-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

Tagged: battle, star, galactica, battlestar, television, movie, episode, entertainment, casts, characters

Edward James Olmos: Commander William Adama

Edward wanted to be a professional baseball player. But he ended up trying to be a rock star. Imagine that, commander William Adama, rocking it with his garage bands at the tender age of 15. My research tells me that he was really into it too. He had lots of experience, even though his band never made it big time. They played in the Sunset Strip All this was before he considered becoming an actor. As an actor, he was in the original Miami Vice. He was Lt. Martin Castillo. He is also a very active activist (however redundant that sounds). His favorite causes are those for that deal with children's rights. The man served as a UNICEF ambassador and was awarded several honors.

Mary McDonnell: Laura Roslin

The always beautiful Mary Mc Donnell plays Madam President in the Battlestar Galactica universe. Mary was first famous for her work in theater on the East Coast. But most of you Battlestar Galactica Casts fans should realize that she was that girl with Kevin Costner's movie "Dancing with Wolves". She was an Indian girl there. The role was a very riveting and it got her nominated for an Oscar. Mary's got two kids namely Micheal and Olivia. She's been teaching courses in acting, had a brief stint in the T.V. show "ER," and is a huge huge fan of the great English actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Katee Sackhoff: Lt. Kara Thrace a.k.a. "Starbuck"

Here's the juicy bits on Starbuck, Katee Sackhoff's tattoo. She's got a tattoo of the word choice spelled in Japanese characters. She's also got a nice crucifix tattooed to her shoulder with some inscriptions in Latin that read: public property. Those tattoos just add up to her hotness. She also does yoga and runs for around ten miles every weekend. That's probably why she's super toned. Her Battlestar Galactica casts mate Tricia Helfer is her real life best friend. Katee is s big Star Trek fan.

Jamie Bamber: Captain Lee Adama a.k.a "Apollo"

Jamie, or Bambini as his friends call him, is a married man with three kids. He's got some Irish blood in him from his mother and was raised in a family of seven brothers and sisters. The man plays a variety of sports, from swanky golf to rough rugby. He also dances, loves horseback-riding, skiing, and rap-music. He studied literature of the French and the Italian. The Bambino also graduated from Cambridge with a First Class Masters honors in Modern languages. That's the highest award; the man's a scholar as evidenced by his favorites: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri and Shakespeare's Hamlet. Someone once asked him about who would like to meet, he answered: Shakespeare, Garibaldi, Jesus Christ, and King Henry the fifth. He's also one of the most sought after of the Battlestar Galactica casts by female fans.

For more inquiries, you may visit Battlestar Galactica Cast

In Movies, Let Connecticut Be the Real Connecticut

2009-01-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

THE new film “Revolutionary Road” explores a phenomenon of the 1950s: the devastations of suburban conformity. It is set, as is the Richard Yates novel on which it is based, in Connecticut. So there they are, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the stars of “Titanic,” reunited all these years later and out of the water, strolling Sasco Beach in Fairfield. And there’s Leo, as Ms. Winslet refers to Mr. DiCaprio in real life, aboard another old mode of transportation: the Naugatuck Valley Railroad, meant here to represent the unfulfilling commuter life.

Then there’s the unfulfilling life in the woods. In the highly acclaimed recent drama “Rachel Getting Married,” Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger and other Hollywood luminaries show us exactly how, in a Fairfield County retreat, a family brings new meaning to the term dysfunctional. In “Mad Men,” the hit television series about the advertising business, Connecticut is the setting for empty marriage — a tone and message set a few years ago in “Far From Heaven,” a suburban drama starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid that offered the added dimensions of homophobia and racial discrimination.

These are among the prominent examples of how, in the new effort to feature ourselves in show business, we have filled out an image of our state that, presumably, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism may not have had precisely in mind when it pushed the idea of 30 percent tax breaks for production companies, a change that occurred in 2006 and that immediately attracted major producers.

You may argue that this celluloid darkness is a small collective price for instant local stardom, and for the chance for ordinary citizens to sit at the same table (#3) at Joseph’s Steakhouse in Bridgeport where Robert DiNiro and Al Pacino met in the cop thriller “Righteous Kill.”

'Slumdog Millionaire' continues its winning ways at SAG Awards

2009-01-26T15:28:00.000-08:00

There's just no stopping "Slumdog Millionaire."

The uplifting film about an impoverished Indian orphan who enjoys a remarkable run on a game show won the Screen Actors Guild award Sunday night for motion picture ensemble, continuing its incredible run this award season.

The movie itself has become known as a show-business Cinderella story. Soon after "Slumdog Millionaire" finished filming last year, its American distributor, Warner Independent Pictures, was shut down, putting its release in jeopardy. Then Fox Searchlight acquired the film's distribution rights. The film, set in Mumbai, swept the Golden Globes two weeks ago and was nominated last week for 10 Academy Awards. And Saturday, it won the top Producers Guild of America award.

Anil Kapoor, who plays the TV game show host in the movie, accepted on behalf of the cast and exclaimed that it was enough just to be nominated. "But to win this is unbelievable," he said.

The cast members of "Slumdog" weren't the only actors shocked by a win at the 15th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which was held at the Shrine Exposition Center. A clearly surprised Meryl Streep ran to the lectern, arms raised, and gave presenter Ralph Fiennes a kiss on the lips after she won for her lead performance as a stern nun in "Doubt."

"I didn't even buy a dress!" said Streep, showing the audience that she was wearing black pants and a black wrap top. "I'm really, really, really shocked."

Sean Penn was greeted with a standing ovation and cheers as he won for lead actor for playing slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk in "Milk." "This is a story about equal rights for human beings," he said when accepting his award.

The late Heath Ledger was honored for his turn as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." Gary Oldman, who costarred in the Batman film, accepted the supporting actor award on behalf of Ledger, who died last January at age 28 from a prescription drug overdose.

"I'm quite emotional," said Oldman. "It is a great honor to be asked to accept this on behalf of Heath. He was an extraordinary young man with an extraordinary talent." "The Dark Knight" also won for movie stunt ensemble, an award handed out before the show.

James Earl Jones was also honored Sunday night with SAG's life achievement award. Forest Whitaker presented the honor to the star of theater, film and television, lauding him as not only a great man but "a king amongst men" and one who could by turns be the voice of CNN, Darth Vader and Simba's warmhearted father in "The Lion King."

Jones received a hearty ovation. "I've got something to say here," he said, trying to quiet the crowd. "I want to thank my fellow actors for this honor. . . . Mainly, I want to thank all of you for all the work that you do. . . . It always makes me proud to be one of you."

Laura Linney won for female actor in a TV movie or miniseries for her work as Abigail Adams in the HBO miniseries "John Adams." "The joy of making that project is that I got to spend a lot of time with some wonderful, wonderful actors," Linney said. Likewise, her costar, Paul Giamatti, won for actor in a TV movie or miniseries for playing the title role.

Hugh Laurie picked up his second award for actor in a drama series for his acerbic turn as a brilliant, unconventional doctor in "House M.D." "This is amazing," he quipped. "I actually had $100 on [fellow nominee] James Spader. I guess it's just not my night."

Jon Hamm, star of the ratings-challenged cable series "Mad Men," also earned laughs while speaking for the rest of the cast as he picked up the statuette for ensemble in a drama. Among those he thanked: "our dozens of viewers."

Sally Field won for female actor in a drama series as the matriarch of a dysfunctional family in "Brothers & Sisters." "I have been an actor for 45 years," she said. "I am so proud to be an actor and so proud that my fellow actors would give me this."

Kate Winslet won for female actor in a supporting role for playing an ex-Nazi prison guard who enters into an affair with a teenage boy in "The Reader," which received a best picture Oscar nomination on Thursday.

"What a year it has been for movies," said the actress, who is having an extraordinary run. For years, she racked up nominations for her work in such films as "Titanic," "Little Children" and "Iris" but failed to win. This year has been different: She gained widespread acclaim for "The Reader" and "Revolutionary Road" and won Golden Globes two weeks ago in this category for "The Reader" and as best actress for "Revolutionary Road."
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The magic fades away at Sundance film fest

2009-01-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

PARK CITY, Utah - Two decades ago, a young, unknown filmmaker named Steven Soderbergh arrived in this mountain resort town with his first movie under his arm. The 1989 Sundance Film Festival transformed him into an overnight star of the American independent film movement; the critical and financial success of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" established Sundance as the the white-hot center of the alt-movie universe.

Twenty years later, the festival has cooled to an uncertain ember, reflecting a business model that is slowly but surely dying. Soderbergh arrived at Sundance 2009 with a rough cut of his latest film, "The Girlfriend Experience," which follows an upscale Manhattan call girl as she negotiates a bleak new economic era. Like the film's New York City, the Sundance that Soderbergh returned to was a chastened affair. Night may be falling on the land of "Little Miss Sunshine."

The economy is in tatters, and the indie film numbers aren't adding up. A number of specialty distributors closed shop in 2008, and the big buys of last year's Sundance - "Hamlet 2," "American Teen," "Choke" - proved a bust when they were released at lower altitudes. Park City lodging was down 10 percent during the 2009 festival; the corporations kept their tents and gift bags at home.

While some films sold this year, the action was muted and the figures didn't stagger the sensibilities.

As if mirroring this uncertain landscape, few of the movies at Sundance 2009, which wrapped yesterday, connected with audiences or the zeitgeist. There were films that were well received - the dark "Sin Nombre" and the rollicking "Rudy and Cursi" from Mexico, the blaxploitation goof "Black Dynamite," an inner-city melodrama called "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," which won both the Jury and Audience prizes for Dramatic Film when the awards were handed out Saturday night. There were more movies, however, that felt like business as usual, and business isn't what it used to be.

All of which begs the questions: Whither Sundance, and whither the American independent movie? In some senses, the festival returned to its roots this year. Hollywood star vehicles like the Richard Gere police drama "Brooklyn's Finest" and "I Love You Phillip Morris" (Jim Carrey playing a true-life gay con man as if he were Ace Ventura) were derisively received, while offbeat items like "Push" and the truly bizarre "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" (man gives birth to fish) prompted excitement and head-scratching. If you were seeking Big, you were disappointed. If you cherished the small, there were rewards.

Still, no film became the film - the one you just had to see at Sundance - even as, ironically, last year's festival was vindicated on Thursday when the 2008 entry "The Visitor" and Grand Jury Prize winner "Frozen River" received acting nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. By far the festival's most galvanizing onscreen moment was the inauguration of President Obama. On Tuesday morning, crowds clustered around TV sets; deals and panels came to a halt, and the screening rooms of Park City were mostly empty. How could mere movies compete with a reality this historically and emotionally resonant?
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Top 12 Highlights of Golden Globes awards

2009-01-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

I love to watch awards shows. Not all of them. I refuse to watch The People's Choice Awards and others that are pure popularity contests. However, I love and look forward to each year, The Golden Globes, The SAG awards, The Oscars and The Emmys. Here, in no particular order, are the highlights of last nights Golden Globes awards show:

1. Bruce Springsteen winning for Best Song for a motion picture. Great speech "This is the only time I'm going be in competition with Clint Eastwood. It feels pretty good." Bruce looked fantastic. He just keeps getting better looking.

2. John Adams sweeps the miniseries/TV movie category. I didn't see it but Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson are great actors and I have to mention a sweep.

3. Ricky Gervais continues his streak of being hysterically funny at award shows. Going out to present with a drink in hand and saying to Kate Winslet "I told you do a Holocaust movie and the awards would come" was priceless. It was even funnier in you saw the episode of Extras that Kate Winslet starred in.

4. Heath Ledger winning the award for Best Supporting Actor award posthumously. Although completely expected, director Christopher Nolan using the expression "A hole ripped in the future of cinema" brought to the forefront what a tragedy his death was.

5. 30 Rock sweep. It is a brilliant show and deserves every award it gets.

6. Tracy Morgan's speech for Best Comedy show win, "Tina Fey and I had a bet, If Barack Obama won the presidency, I would speak for the show from now on. I'm the face of post-racial America!"
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Eleven HDTV trends

2009-01-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

By Sunday, things here in Las Vegas things were winding down for the Consumer Electronics Show. That made it a good quiet-ish time to process the massive amount of tech-overload I've been inundated by this week.

Some of the biggest news this CES came from HDTV manufacturers and related companies. With that in mind here are eleven HDTV trends I spotted on the show floor that make it clear to me 2009 is going to be great year for HDTV technology. If the economy improves, it could be a good year for HDTV sales as well.

Design. We're seeing an increasing emphasis on design. That's evident in the models from LG and Samsung, for example. Samsung's Touch of Color accents, in particular, are eye-catching and meld well with the HDTV's sleek designs.

Connectivity. Manufacturers have dabbled with this idea before, but 2009 was the breakout year of the Internet-connected TV. Vizio, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, and LG all touted Internet TVs, with many of those using the Yahoo Connected TV widgets system. But connectivity isn't just about widgets and watching your 401K drop by half; nor is it just about connecting your TV to your home network to stream content to your PC. It's about accessing Internet-based services, too, such as Netflix for video streaming, or Pandora for audio streaming.

Price. Westinghouse says its 55-inch television will come in at $1500 in the second quarter. That's with 120Hz technology built-in. Clearly, prices will continue to push downward—a good thing given the current economy.

55 Is the New 52. Look for more 55-inch televisions. I hear 55-inch panels will be hitting more of a sweet spot than 52-inch, in terms of production efficiencies, so we will be seeing more of these large models in the future.

720p Fades Away. I don't expect 720p to disappear completely. This not-quite-Full-HD high-def resolution will always hit a super-low, entry-level price for the manufacturers aiming to provide ultra-affordable 42-inch displays. But many manufacturers are dropping 720p entirely, or limiting them to specific models in the below 30-inch category. Sony, for example, has just two 720p models left in its new arsenal: The 32-inch Bravia KDL-32L5000, and the 26-inch KDL-26L5000. Of its new models, Sharp only has 720p in 19-inch and 26-inch televisions.
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TV makers seek depth, adding a third dimension

2009-01-11T16:13:00.000-08:00

This year, superficial was out at the nation's largest electronics gala. Every exhibitor at the International Consumer Electronics Show, it seemed, wanted to show some depth. Depth as in 3-D, that is.

Home theaters, webcams, live TV and even iPhone-sized screens — nothing escaped the 3-D treatment.

"There's three or more times more 3-D than last year," said Richard Doherty, an analyst with Envisioneering Group.

But will consumers care? Three-dimensional movies have been around since the '50s, and now and then companies try to get people interested by broadening the use of the technology. This time, the breadth of the industry's push suggests that 3-D has a chance of leaving the gimmick stage and entering the entertainment mainstream.

When it comes to home viewing, the technology has cleared an important technical hurdle. Flat-panel TVs now can switch between images so quickly that they can be used with glasses that let each eye see only every other image. That means different images can be presented to the right and left eyes, the key to achieving stereoscopic vision, or 3-D.

Panasonic Corp. demonstrated a plasma screen at CES that showed animated movies and Olympics footage in high-definition 3-D to viewers wearing battery-powered glasses that imperceptibly blacked out the view for each eye in an alternating fashion. Yoshi Yamada, head of Panasonic Corp.'s North American unit, called it "a phase change that will have a major impact on Panasonic's business."

The rest of the top four makers of TVs for the U.S. market — Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Corp. and LG Electronics Inc. — also had 3-D TVs at their booths.

The reason, Doherty said, is that the industry's drive to make larger and larger screens has run up against the limits of what people are willing to buy. To keep people interested in new TVs, the manufacturers need something else.

But all the 3-D TVs on displays were prototypes with no firm launch date. That's because there's a step missing in the 3-D formula. It's not hard to shoot in 3-D, and it's no longer hard to display it at home. But there is no widely accepted way to get the footage from the studio to the home. There are no 3-D discs and no 3-D broadcasts.
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The Acting Life of Cillian Murphy

2008-12-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

Cillian Murphy was born in 1976 in Cork, Ireland. Along with his brother he formed a band named The Sons of Mr Greengenes, they were offered a five album deal by Acid Jazz Records but hey did not sign the contract.

He made his professional acting debut in Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs in 1996 with which he toured through Europe, Canada and Australia for two years, Subsequently he starred in a number of independent films and stage plays. In 2001 he reprised his Disco Pigs role for the 2001 film version by Kirsten Sheridan.

He first came to international attention in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, for which he won Breakthrough Male Performance at the 2004 MTV awards. In 2003, he starred in the independent Irish film Intermission alongside Colin Farrell, as well as supporting roles in his first Hollywood movies-Cold Mountain and Girl with a Pearl Earring.

In 2004, he toured Ireland playing the title role in Sean O'Casey's The Playboy of the Western World, directed by Garry Hynes. He starred in two blockbusters in 2005, Batman Begins and Red Eye in which he played villains. That same year he starred in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, playing the role of Patrick 'Kitten' Braden, a transgender Irish orphan, for which he won the Irish Film and Television Award for Best Actor.

In 2006 he starred in Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2007, he re-united with director, Danny Boyle in the film Sunshine. He starred alongside, Keira Knightly, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys in the 2008 Dylan Thomas biopic The Edge of Love.

Russell Shortt is a travel consultant with Exploring Ireland, the leading specialists in customised, private escorted tours, escorted coach tours and independent self drive tours of Ireland. Article source: Russell Shortt, http://www.exploringireland.net, http://www.visitscotlandtours.com

Vera Cruz (1954), starring veteran cowboy, Gary Cooper, and young Burt Lancaster

2008-12-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

Vera Cruz (1954) Gary Cooper & Burt Lancaster Team Up For Implausible Scenarios, Over-Acting

Vera Cruz (1954), starring veteran cowboy, Gary Cooper, and young Burt Lancaster, receives no less than a seven star rating from most every critic, and many others rank it in the "superb" category. Frankly, I think they'll all nuts! But, hang in there a moment while I first tell you a few good or interesting things about the film and a non-spoiler overview of the plot.

First, it's a historically significant film; Twentieth Century Fox owned the rights to CinemaScope, the first wide-screen format, so United Artists decided not to fork over the cash to buy this technology and, instead, put SuperScope on its maiden voyage. It is said that this film is the best example of SuperScope at its best, which is not saying very much, since this technology did not last long (though it did spur other, better wide-screen technology). The vistas shot, using SuperScope, such as the Mexican Pyramids, are VERY pleasing to the eye.

Next, the movie is remarkably fast-paced and, therefore, probably a must see for film school students. The average shot length is an amazingly short, five seconds. That equates to over 1100 film edits! You're eyes will get a work out here and the fast pace makes up for some of the places where there is either too much talking or boring dance scenes.

Next come some outstanding performances. Gary Cooper, the consummate good guy character is his usual, dependable, likeable self. Though Clark Gable advised him not to take the role, for fear that Coop would be upstaged by the young Lancaster, it doesn't take long to see that Gable's worries were unfounded; Coop's stoic style and character blows the relatively new Lancaster off the screen, scene after scene, and as I'll show you later, Lancaster's own attempts to steal the screen are probably one of the biggest reasons that Cooper commands the audience. Also giving an outstanding performance is Ernest Borgnine, playing one of Lancaster's lackeys. Borgnine, known for his rage-faced bad guy emotion on camera, is most believable when he smashes a glass bottle and prepares to gut Ben Trane (Cooper) like a fish...and that grill of his; I wouldn't want to have been one of Borgnine's kids when he was mad after being woken on a Sunday morning. Aside from these two actors, Charles Bronson and Jack Elam put in solid performances.

Now to the scenes worth mentioning.

You've got a lame horse in the beginning of the film; I'd like to know what they did to that horse to get him to do that weird walk; I've never seen another film get such a performance out of a beast. Short but well done.

Jumping over the precipitous ledge, onto the other ledge, was a great and exciting piece of film to see, as well as the stunning spin-and-shoot-behind-the-back gun slinging of Lancaster.

The beginning dialogue, between Cooper and Lancaster, is excellent and should be studied, but then the screen writer must have popped some pills and mentally checked out after fifteen pages, because the dialogue never matches its beginnings.

There is an exciting and splendidly captured ambush and wagon chase scene, one of the best I've seen from this genre. There is this great stone bridge shot worthy of being called "eye candy," and Bronson's rape attempt sequence does put you on the edge of your seat for a VERY brief but worthwhile moment.

Probably my favorite moment in this film is the marksmanship scene. If you see no other part of this film, fast-forward to this scene. You'll be able to tell the scene while speeding, at 16x light speed, because it is a longer scene. Be prepared to laugh out loud!

All right, enough of the good stuff, here comes the bad...

5 Reasons Vera Cruz is Sup Par

1. Burt Lancaster's Affect. His trade-mark smile just makes him look like the village idiot mugging for Mr. DeMille! I mean, come on, Burt, knock it off; we all know you love yourself at this point; we all know you want to make an impression on the silver screen. But you're constant mugging just proves what we know and that is you are intimidated by your fellow actor, Gary Cooper, and that's as it should be!

2. Burt Lancaster's Over-Acting. He moves around the scenes with his arms out, as if he's going to suddenly draw, but there's nobody around him to draw upon. He moves his arms in anything else he can get to move when he is onscreen with others, especially Cooper; that's the oldest actor's trick in the book. He is way to animated and punctuated when he eats chickens, which he does alot, in an obvious attempt to show us that his character is barbarian-like. He drinks like a drunk, when it is clear that his character is sober. And on and on and on. If you find more examples of his over-acting in this film email me; I'm making a list.

3. Implausible Situations and Scenarios. Our two boys are surrounded by hundreds of men, inside a fort courtyard, yet the leading general enemy, standing a mere three feet away, allows some of Erin's (Lancaster) lackeys, who are standing far away from a group of children, to walk over, after announcing they are walking over, and kidnap the children! Didn't any of the hundreds of men surrounding all four walls of the fort, rifles pointed down at the kidnappers, not know how to say, "Hey, don't you guys walk slowly and deliberately across the courtyard toward our children!" No wonder the Mexican government felt as though the studio made Mexicans look stupid! Then there's the unbelievable scene in which the enemy general has a guitar player at his side during the major confrontation, involving guns and killing (two dead upon the ground) and the general has him play a slow number. We all know that the only reason for this is so we, the audience, have something to listen to while the camera pans over the entire fort wall. You can't do a long, boring pan shot without music, I guess. And get a load of all the riflemen on the walls! That's ridiculous! The director, Robert Aldrich, must have been smoking something that day, or maybe he took a few of the screen writer's pills. One implausible situation after another. Again, write me an email when you find more, for there are many. Maybe you'll give me one I've not yet recorded and didn't have room to include here.

4. Too Much Back-and-Forth Plot. I'll just say it this, for heaven's sake, please trust somebody and stick with 'em! Trying to keep the audience off guard and confused isn't going to work here, unless you are a New York "Find-the-Lady" hustler. We get it already, guys; everybody trusts nobody. Now move along with the movie!

5. Predictable. If you don't know who dies and what happens, at least thirty minutes prior to the end of the film, you're probably an idiot and will thoroughly enjoy this film!

Richard Bowden is a writer and film critic. He can be found sippin' a smile, with all of his Western movie fan friends, amid audios, books, comics, movie reviews, internet talk shows and other fun stuff at http://www.Westerns2C.com

Indian Films at the London Film Festival

2008-11-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

The love of films becomes a celebration in London for two weeks, during 'The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival'. The capital city is buzzing with people who love films and filmmakers from all over the world. This festival gives a chance to view films, documentaries and provide opportunity to meet filmmakers and celebrity artists. It also promotes world films that may not be available for screening in the cinemas across the nation. The festival is an important venue for development and promotion of films from UK and abroad. Films from India are reviewed below:

'Frozen': Shivajee Chandrabhushan/India:

'Frozen' is a film that makes the audience transfixed to their seat till closing credits disappear! It is the brilliance of the black and white landscape and the directorial restrain in bringing the conflict between individuals and society. Frozen tells the story of an aging father Karma, his teenaged daughter Lasya and her 'little brother' Chomo and the story is told through Lasya's eyes. The action takes place in Ladakh, Indian side of Jammu-Kashmir border, 15000 feet above sea level in freezing conditions at 30 degree below. Lasya grows up watching her father making apricot jam and selling his product at the local market place. Unfortunately, he is unable to compete with others in the trade, as they use machines to make jam. Karma is in financial ruin, having to borrow from unscrupulous moneylenders.

Their simple lives are shattered by the arrival of the army that protects the frontier and sets up a camp close to their house. Karma is asked to take his children and leave his ancestral home, which brings him close to a breaking point. Amidst all this, Lasya is blossoming into a very attractive woman and she is encountered by a local boy Romeo. Karma is oblivious to his daughter growing up, till one of the moneylenders tells him that he is willing to forget the money in exchange for her! The turmoil of the financial ruin, worrying about his daughter's safety and having to move out of his safe haven play havoc on the aging Karma. Unexpected disaster sets in and Lasya runs away to escape from it all, only to be stopped by a barbed wire...

The title is quite apt for the film, as it reflects the terrain and the landscape. At the same time it reflects the slow pace and the almost frozen state of mind of its characters. Even the traditional festival of chimes and magic wheels appear frozen in time and stripped off their colour. It is not till the end that we understand that the little boy is not real. The images of black and white and the brilliant yellow-golden colour outside the barbed wire represent well the rawness and harshness of life, giving way to change and a better life.

It is Shivajee Chandrabhusan's debut film, which demonstrates how a simple story can be made into a powerful mesmerizing film. Cinematography by Shanker Raman is at its best and the ice-hockeyscene is perhaps the first in Indian cinema. Music by John P. Varkey from Kerala brings warmth to the frozen landscape. It's also Danny Denzongpa's 150th film and he has given his best performance. Gouri in her debut appearance has shown great acting ability and Angchuk as the little boy is a delight to watch. A must for all cinema lovers!

Mahek: K Kanade/India

The film tells the story of 12-yr old Mahek who spends most of her time daydreaming. In her dreams, she reaches the top at everything she wants to be, but in real life she is an under-achiever both at home and at school. She wants to be at the top but at the same time she also believes that she is incapable of achieving her goals, sort of an emotional lock! This leads to her dreaming of a 'fairy god mother' who helps her to analyze her strengths.

She goes into depression and finally the director shows how she overcomes this. This film is a lesson to both parents and children and more so, a warning to parents to be more watchful of their children to avoid situations like this. Delightful performance by Shreya Sharma as Mahek and a must for all children and parents!

The Last Lear: Rituparno Ghosh/India

'The Last Lear' tells the story of an old Shakespearean stage actor coming out of retirement to act in 'The Mask', a film in another film. And it definitely is a 'Bachan film', as there is not a lot left once Amitab Bachan is taken out of the equation! Bachan shows his mastery in acting till the very end and his compelling presence make the audience glued to the chair!

Only other actors doing justice to their characters are Vandana ( Shefali Shah) and Siddarth, 'a look alike of John Abraham' (Arjun Rampal). If there is any 'chemistry' in the film, it's between Harish (Amitab) and Siddarth during their first meeting! Amitab gives acting lessons to Shabanam (Preity Zinta) and I thought it was quite apt!

The film starts well. It's premiere night for 'The Mask' on Diwali day and Harish is absent as he is in a coma. Harish (Amitab), an old Shakespearean stage actor is forced to come out of retirement to act as a disfigured clown. Vandana is Harish's long term companion and Shabnam is his leading lady and its interesting to watch the conversation between the two women when Shabnam turns up at Harish's house while he is in coma and unable to recognize either of them. Shefali gives a brilliant performance and it's a shame that she was not the leading lady in the film; but her acting proved that she was!

Except for quotes from Shakespeare and the mention of Harish being an old Shakespearean stage actor who loves Shakespearean plays, one doesn't see much in the film to justify the title. Amitab Bachan is larger than life and magnificent with his long white hair and of course his captivating voice is amazing as always! Arjun Rampal and Shefali Shah show great promise. Amitab Bachan delighted the audience with his speech and a 'face to face' with the audience after the film. 'An Amitab Bachan film', for all the Bachan fans out there!

Four Women: Adoor Gopalakrishnan/India

Adoor Gopalakrishnan's latest film 'Four Women', focus on four women in four different stories with no continuuity except for the theme. The film is based on four stories by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (easily recognizable name in India just like Shakespeare or Wordsworth in the western world) and it's Adoor's journey through the lives of four women with different standing in the society spanning two decades from 1940: the prostitute, the virgin, the housewife and the spinster.

'The prostitute' tells the story of a woman who changes her profession to live with a man who loves her and then ends up in jail. Their defiance in telling the judge that they are husband and wife was quite touching and Adoor clearly shows the atrocities of the legal system at the time or perhaps, even now. 'The Virgin' is about an aging father getting his daughter married to a man who is unsuitable, without even consulting her.

The man has no interest in his bride and it's almost comical to see his passion in life, food! He leaves his wife at her house and never returns. Then there is gossip in the village blaming the girl for the break up. She then decides that she has had enough and tells everyone defiantly that there never was a marriage and walks away!

'The Housewife' is about a woman who looses her babies within days of their birth and refuses advances of an old classmate who tells her that her husband is to blame for her predicament; moral values of the women are upheld here. 'The spinster' tells the story of a long suffering submissive woman, who gets left behind while her brother and both her younger sisters get married.

Life becomes a real torture after the demise of her mother and she had to live with her sister, almost like a servant. Finally she decides to live on her own in her old house that was left to her when her mother died. The defiance in her voice was very clear when she told her sister that she does not wish to stay with anyone and would rather stay alone.

Adoor has raised moral and social issues in this 'poetry in motion' and succeeded in showing the power of women in the changing society. Though these stories take place more than 6o yrs ago the thematic conflict is still relevant, especially in small villages. Women are not willing to be subservient any more and they fight for what they believe in. All these women are caught up in their own battle of survival, submissive and passive in the beginning, but ultimately each one makes a choice, irrespective of the wishes of the society or rest of the family. A beautiful film that can change the attitude of people on various issues in our society: A must for all!

I am Dr Elizabeth Menon, working in the UK. I love writing and my articles have been published in the UK and abroad. My hobbies include reading, writing, gardening, cooking, watching films, listening to music, helping environmental causes, etc.

Visitors to my homepage get the unique opportunity to read my monthly write up,'Corner' and articles written by me on various topics in two languages, English and Malayalam--the language spoken in Kerala, otherwise known as 'God's own Country'!

Please visit my homepage at: http://omana.net/

The Five Best Things About Naruto

2008-11-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

The plot of the Anime tells about a Ninja called Uzumaki Naruto, who aspires to become Hokage, the leader and strongest ninja of the village.

The anime has been deemed first class, and I am going to tell you the five best things about Naruto.

1) The perseverance the main character, Naruto, shows during the series.

Though not born with exceptional abilities like some other ninjas in the village, and being considered the clumsiest ninja of the village, Naruto never shows any sign of discouragement. In fact it just motivates Naruto in order to pursue his dream and make the other villagers recognize his abilities.

2) The importance of friendship.

During the series Naruto gives special importance to the bonds he initially formed with his companion Uchiha Sasuke. Naruto never forgets his friend, even though Uchiha Sasuke appears to have forgotten about Naruto. Naruto will not ever give up on his dream of making his old friend Sasuke return to the village.

3) The amazing number of techniques the series presents.

Naruto presents a lot of original techniques called "Jutsus", which the ninjas use in order to fight each other. These "Jutsus" are invoked by performing certain hand seals, and most ninjas have at least two, or three original "Jutsus" in their repertory

4) The complexity of the story, which makes the series almost unpredictable.

Unlike most Animes, Naruto is almost unpredictable. Something that the series presented and you accepted as a reasonable piece of the story could be AMAZINGLY proved wrong later on the series, which adds emotion to the Anime.

5) The diversity of the characters.

In Naruto every character is unique, there are prodigies, lazy guys, typical teen girls, clumsy guys, silent characters, hardworking guys, and every one of them with an amazing unique personality, which binds them truly human-like.

The article was written by the webmaster of Naruto Online.

Britney Spears and All the Drama About Naked Pictures

2008-10-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

Britney was a hot babe in the 90's and in the early 2000's all men just couldn't wait for her to turn 18 hoping to get a chance to see her nude. She was a hot babe then and still is a hot babe now. The media is no longer excited about seeing her nude.

I remember when there were fake photos all over the net and people saying they had nude pictures of her. men waited patiently and also some women hoping to get a look at her naked body, but hopes were fading away because it came apparent that it was all a lie.

Then finally it happened Britney Spear got out of her car with nude. I missed it! I wish i could have been there to see that with my own eyes,but any way my luck is not so good. I guess no one cared but me because there was not a lot of talk about it. Come on Britney Spear nude should have been all over the news but no one cared.

No panties should have made her a Mega Star! But it didn't boost her career at all. Britney fans did not like it at all.They scorned her for showing at little something in the back seat of her car. I think that the public didn't care because their have been so many naked women on the internet that it seems normal. It gives a bad image to teenage girls around the the world.

I think that she looks good now that she has gained a little weight. I don't think you need to look like a stick figure be beautiful. I like a little meat on a woman's bones. I am turned off from the stick figure women. Hey women a little meat on your bones is not a bad thing so don't think you need to be a stick figure.

There are so many people who want to hate on Britney but she will always be a star in my eyes. She has many teenage fans all across the world who love her. I think that she will have a great come back as a grown adult woman. She has grown her fan base all across the world. She will make more money in 2008 since she has grown her fan base.

Britney just need to shake off the haters and do her thing. Hey Britney do your thing girl don't listen to the haters. Haters gonna hate and us men love your weight well maybe not the ones that are fake. Watch Britney's New Video.

Christian Marriage

Leonard Gaither is a known writer with ebooks and articles all over the net

Work in Movies and Commercials - Brenna McDonough, Author of "You Can Work on Camera" Tells You How

2008-10-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Camera Never Lies - How to Get Your Face Out There: An Interview with Brenna McDonough, Author of "You Can Work On Camera"

Q: What kind of and how much on-camera work is available in the Washington, D.C., Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia market?

A: There's a tremendous amount of work in this region in corporate training films and industrials. We have Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and Richmond, all within a three hour drive. We don't shoot as many commercials here as we once did, but that could change at any time. Many television shows shoot their B roles here, meaning the exterior shots of the Nation's Capitol. Washington is a government town so they're not looking for flash and dazzle, they're looking for real people who can communicate a message credibly. Big stars aren't necessarily broken out of this area, but there's a steady stream of work if one pursues it. You can work as an extra here and you can work as a principal and nobody thinks a thing of it. It's not a step down. I've never seen that in any other market.

Q: How does one go about getting on-camera work?

A: Throw yourself into the marketplace-get good training, a good headshot, put together your resume, and send it out. You're going to get hired to do small things first because people are going to test your ability. The good jobs will increase with your confidence level. The little things you do will build into bigger things.

Q: Is there a difference between the skills needed for theatre and those needed for on-camera work?

A: The skills are similar, all good performance requires honesty. It's about internalizing the character and conflict and creating an emotional life. Create in your head the surroundings for what you are about to do at your audition or for your role. It isn't physical, it's internal. The physical will follow the internal. It's about connecting with the camera.

Q: How does one connect with the camera?

A: The camera responds to a number of things when it sees you. Confidence and Personality are the two things it sees first. Some days you might not feel confident. This is an opportunity to remember something about yourself that makes you feel confident. Finishing a marathon, being a really great cook; it doesn't have to be show business related but it reminds you of a success and that translates. Remember the camera sees thoughts. Think the good ones!

Q: How do you approach copy for camera?

A: Just like you do for theatre. Who am I talking to? Where am I? Am I doing an activity? Am I just delivering straight to camera? What am I selling? What am I enthusiastic about? You'll get into the habit of asking yourself those questions quickly.

Q: How much control do actors have over their careers?

A: Actors have a great deal of control over their careers. It's not at the whim of who's going to call. It's getting out there and knowing what you want. Expect to do well in this industry, but don't expect anybody to hand it to you. You're going to have to work hard at it, and you're not going to get everything you go out on. But you can't get discouraged by that. People can work in this industry full- or part-time and be successful at any age.

If after a year you don't get any job other than the free ones you've invented for yourself, you need an objective assessment. Get a mentor, somebody in the business you know and like, and who knows and likes you and have a heart-to-heart talk about what's not working. Is it your headshot? Attitude? Haircut? Training? That ten or fifteen pounds? If your day job getting in the way of your dream, would you consider temping?

Q: How does one make an objective assessment of oneself?

A: I don't think people have a clear picture of what they really look like and I think that's why people are so surprised when they see themselves on-camera. In my classes, I stress the relationship with the camera, not how one looks on-camera. The relationship you have with camera determines your getting hired. It sounds so cliché, but it's true, you have to imagine talking to someone -you have to imagine the camera being the face of a friend or family member. Once hired to do a job, you'll be dolled up and look great, but that's unrelated to how you connect with the camera.

Q: You also teach classes on TelePrompTer and Ear-Prompters. How important are these skills and are they difficult to learn?

A: If you can read, you can use a TelePrompTer. It's eye-page coordination. You take in a few words at a time, look away, and come back to where you left off. It's not about locking onto the TelePrompTer and looking at every single word. You want to look natural. Looking natural comes with practice. If you took a TelePrompTer class with me, by the time you left that afternoon, you can list TelePrompTer on your resume.

Using an Ear-Prompter is not something you can learn on the job. It takes concentration and practice and is not something you can fake. If you list Ear-Prompter on your resume, you're expected to have your own equipment and be terrific. I tell students who take my Ear-Prompter class to not put this on their resume until they've practiced four hours on their own with their own equipment.

Q: What do you think about children in the business?

A: Children in the business need training too, but they're hired to be kids so they don't need much polishing. I tell parents who enroll a child in my class that kids need to enjoy the process. If a child doesn't feel like going to an audition that day, even though the parent said yes, we'll be there, don't make your child do it. Don't let your dreams be their dreams. There's no sense in dragging a screaming six-year-old to an audition. If she doesn't want to be there, she's going to make everybody miserable and she won't do well. Kids do well when it's their idea. They don't do well when it's just the parent's idea. On the other hand, kids reach an age where if they've committed to go to an audition that day, they've got to show up. If teenagers say they want to do this and make some money and you, as a parent, sense they have the discipline to stay with it, support that. Kids in the business can do well, but it's a lot of work and they should know that.

Q: What do you think about taking jobs for the experience?

A: Never work for nothing. That's a bad policy. Actors many times are underpaid because that's what they agree to. Nonunion actors need to set up their own pay schedule. In the beginning, you can do a few free things but you need to know when you've graduated from that category. When that person calls again, even though you may have worked for them in the past for a DVD copy, you need to charge them. They might say no, but they might say yes. You have to be willing to bite the bullet and maybe not get that job, but you also get to graduate yourself into another category.

ABOUT BRENNA MCDONOUGH

Brenna McDonough has worked in commercials and corporate videos in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles for over 25 years. She grew up in a theatrical family with nine brothers and sisters and is married to actor John Leslie Wolfe and they have two children - Kate and Aidan.

Brenna McDonough and John Leslie Wolfe offer On-Camera Training and classes in Ear-Prompter, TelePrompTer, and Narration. They also offer one-on-one coaching for actors and models, and other professionals whose jobs require them to appear on camera. "You Can Work On-Camera: Acting in Commercials and Corporate Films" (Heinemann) by Brenna and John, and John's new book, "Great Sex Notes" (Source Books) are available at your local bookstores.

http://www.oncameratraining.com

Batman 1989 Movie Review

2008-09-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

This movie gave the birth to the 'summer blockbuster' but even that can't save this movie. To judge this movie on today's standards is a bit unfair because of how good Batman Begins is, but that's the only way I can review this movie by today's standards.

Yes this movie does save the Batman franchise from the ridiculously camp TV series that was Batman and Robin, but after that it doesn't do a lot for is self. Other critics may have adored Batman 89' for it's moody, gothic art-deco Gotham City, and of course for Nicholson's performance as the Joker, but this movie is everything Batman shouldn't be and the same goes for the Joker.

There are two many flaws in this movie to be overlooked, and we are going to go through them. First of all the whole story is a mess, the love interest between Vicky Vale and Bruce Wayne has no chemistry at all. Bruce and his butler Alfred constantly reminds the viewers how special Vicky Vale is after only 1 date, which she ends up sleeping with him very special indeed. Also the whole Joker 'who do you trust' campaign is just a joke (no pun intended) it doesn't make sense once bit, the joker isn't running for mayor but for some reason has opened up a campaign of some sort.

Another problem I had with this movie is the fact that Michael Keaton makes no impression as Batman or Bruce Wayne for the matter and most of his acting his done by his bushy eyebrows. The biggest problem I had watching Batman 89' though is Batman's willingness to kill, there's a scene in the movie which shows Batman sitting in his Bat mobile surrounded by the jokers thugs, Batman then willingly drops a bomb outside his car killing them instantly. It seams like everyone connected with this movie has no idea what Batman is and what he stands for.

Critics have also celebrated the role of Nicholson in this movie over the years, but I for one think his performance doesn't work, for the most part is seams Nicholson has no idea who the joker is just as Keaton has no idea who the Batman is.

The only good thing that came out of this movie was the fact that it was the first Batman to hit the big screen which opened doors for Christopher Nolan's masterpiece Batman Begins. i rate Batman 1989 2/5 stars.

Top Movie Reviews - http://www.mytvtalk.com

Sarkar Raj Hindi Movie Review

2008-09-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Ram Gopal Varma has come up with a stunner of a sequel with Sarkar Raj, especially after being written off by many as a spent force has proved his mettle once again. RGV has been aptly woven the film right from the word go and more so in the last 20 minutes which really is gripping.

Sarkar Raj opens with Shankar Nagre (Abhishek Bachchan) at the helm of the affairs and the father Subhash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan) still the Sarkar, has left the son with decision making powers. Anita Rajan (Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan) the CEO of Shepperd Power Plant MNC wants to set up a power plant in rural Maharasthra brings up the proposal to the Nagres at the behest of middleman Hassan Kazi (Govind Namdeo).

Sarkar declines the proposal, but Shankar realizes the potential of the project and the associated benefits that the power plant could bring to the people of Maharasthra, ending the power woes in the state. Shankar along with Anita visits the rural countryside to garner the support of the villagers, only to be opposed by Somji (Rajesh Shingarpure) a social activist and the grandson of Rao Saheb (Dilip Prabhavalkar) who has given a go ahead nod for the project. Sarkar has been mentored in his early days by Rao Saheb.

The Deputy CM (Sayaji Shinde) and a Businessman Kantilal Vora (Upendra Limaye) alongwith Kazi want to bump off Shankar and wish to see a diminishing political clout of Sarkar. What happens to the Nagres? What happens to the project? Or is it the most intrigued politics with the series of happenings just being a deceptive maneuver?

Abhishek Bachchan and Amitabh Bachchan have worked out terrific father-son chemistry with a superlative performance complimenting each other, whilst retaining prominence of their individual efforts. Aishwarya Rai as a businesswoman is quite okay. Sayaji Shinde and Upendra Limaye are at their best. Govind Namdeo has done well. Ravi Kale has done a great job akin previous film. Not to be missing out Dilip Prabhavalkar, he has been awesome. Supriya Pathak and Rajesh Shingarpure have been good.

Worth a mention is the cinematography (Amit Roy) and the background 'Govinda' score (Amar Mohile) which creates an compelling effect for the scenes. The action (Allan Amin) does not go overboard. Dialogues (Prashant Pandey) have been crafted to a crisp perfection. Definitely Sarkar Raj is more effective and exceptional than Sarkar, unveiling myriad of deceptive goodness in a quest to gain POWER.

MovieJini writes on the latest movies and films, hindi movie reviews, film news, celebrity news related to Bollywood.

Phenomenon of Indie Movies

2008-08-12T14:57:00.002-07:00

Indie movies are gaining popularity especially in the 21st century for various reasons. The Internet perhaps is the biggest contributors to making indie movies popular as it is uploaded and made available to the public for viewing and some can be downloaded at zero cost. The movie downloads culture is a big factor in contributing to this particular industry as the public these days like to watch movies at their own comfort zone by downloading movies into their PC. There are a lot of websites that are dedicated in serving this purpose for indie movies where movie downloads sites give the public an opportunity in viewing a different genre of independent films.

The different themes that are explored in indie movies are another reason of its popularity. As indie movies are independent films, it gives the director or writer the freedom of exploring a lot themes that are often not produce into a big budget movie as it is viewed not profitable for the big studios. However, this does not mean that independent films are not popular; Quentin Tarratino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) gained a cult hit and became a classic for independent films when it was showed in the Sundance Film Festival and recently, other indie movies which gained a lot of popularity and good critics, Juno, where it explores the theme on teenage pregnancy and Requiem for a Dream explores on drug abuses and addiction.

However, not all indie movies have themes related to social issues as mentioned above but it can be the common genres such as thriller or horror like The Blair Witch Project, which also gained huge popularity due to its documentary format although it is a fiction movie.

Basically anyone who owns handy camcorders or any gadgets that can record film or video, such as a Nokia N95 mobile can be an indie director. This is helped by the fact that the equipments are now affordable to the consumer and film-editing software like Final Cut Pro or iMovie, making film editing easy to use. Big corporations like Nokia and BMW also helped in making the indie movies industry popular by organizing short film competitions to the general public and in some, the public have the option to download movies.

Hence, it is no doubt that indie movies are set to create a new wave of meaning to the film industry with its own phenomenon and unique aspects.

Stuart Mitchel is a member of HungryFlix. A website for Indie filmakers to distribute there movies easily and where movie fans can Download Movies to watch on many popular devices, including movies for iPod and PSP Movies

So You Think You Can Judge?

2008-08-12T14:57:00.001-07:00

I've been an avid fan of "So You Think You Can Dance" from the very first show, BUT this year has far surpassed any of the other shows with respect to the talent of both the men and the women. In the beginning (probably the first two seasons), I got so totally aggravated with "America" because they were so completely incapable of judging the talent before them. It was simply a popularity contest based upon seemingly everything but skill and talent. Yeah, you guessed it! All my favorites were eliminated prior to the final weeks. However, as SYTYCD has grown in popularity, so has the ability of "America" to judge talent.

I remember watching the final four last night and thinking that each one of them deserved to be there. Yes, there was comparable talent missing (Chelsie, Will and Mark could easily be substituted for some of those in the final four). But, overall, the right talent was there for the final review. "America" got it right.

· Chelsie was beautiful: a trained dancer with awesome delivery in the Latin genre. She worked just as hard as anyone else and could just have easily replaced Courtney - Chelsie got edged out last week but she has nothing to be sorry for - she has a wonderful career ahead of her. She has few, if any, weaknesses. She delivered.

· Will - A Debbie Allen protégée: an incredibly strong and charismatic dancer. I was surprised to see him go before Mark - it could have been his seriousness over Mark's outgoing personality. Close call - Well, except for the James Brown performance which was outrageously funny and a huge treat

· Mark - A trained contemporary performer who often gave strong performances and had a good capacity to adapt to other genres. He had some weak moments, not a lot, but they were there. I think of the two, Will was the stronger dancer.

· Comfort - A free spirit that from my perspective grew tremendously over her tenure with the show. Yes, she was an expert at Hip-Hop and popping, but she delivered in the other genres. She had my vote for the most improved dancer of the top 20. She, indeed, got a second life when she was brought back after Jessica's injury (at least I think it was Jessica). But she never reached the level of Katee, Courtney or Chelsie.

"America" got it RIGHT! Of the final four, two could just have easily been replaced by Chelsie, Will or Mark; the other two are in a league of their own.

Twitch and Joshua are two guys who have exceeded all expectations. They are both lacking in sustained formal training, but have delivered incredibly memorable performances that have just blown me away. Last night was no exception when watching Joshua's jumps: his height and his extensions were absolutely incredible. Joshua has done everything that has been asked of him with precision and finesse. His power as a performer is overwhelming. However, his final performance with Courtney was a disappointment - I think they were both exhausted by the time they had to perform and the results showed it. Twitch, as has become his norm, delivered on all of his dances. His outgoing personality, humor, and incredible body control have always delivered. Joshua gets the nod from this judge for the gentlemen.

Courtney and Katee were wonderful last night in their own right, BUT when it came to the two of them, there was only one dancer: Katee. She is my vote for America's favorite dancer. She has been absolutely breathtaking in her performances. She has simply gotten stronger and stronger each week and has shown no weaknesses across each genre. It really hasn't mattered as to who her partner was. She has consistently delivered with grace and beauty on every one of her performances. She has not "carried" anyone all season. What she has done is bring out the best performance from each of her partners. Together, she and Josh ruled the floor - in my opinion, no other couple came close to their chemistry.

One final comment about the professional judges: "Yo, Dawg, listen up! It just didn't do it for me!" "That was simply atrocious! This will clearly be your last week with us!" "It was just too pitchy for me!" "That was a green performance at best!" Oh, I'm sorry! This isn't American Idol??

I've managed people all my life. A key component of managing people is the periodic performance review. The most important part of the review is to focus on the performance, specifically highlighting what was good/bad about it, sighting areas of improvement, praising those items that were positive, while providing effective criticism and direction for those that were negative.

Compared to their sister shows, these folks delivered better than anyone else constructive criticism. I'll give them a solid B for their efforts. Which is clearly better than the D- I give A/I or the C+ I give DWTS. Those are my thoughts and I'm sticking with them.

UPDATE: Well quite the finale! Okay, so I was partially right. Katee was top performer for the ladies; Joshua was top performer for the guys and America's favorite dancer. It wasn't rocket science to understand who the Judges' favorite was. Katee dominated the favorite performances of the season, and rightly so. She was technologically superior to all dancers. However, Joshua deserves his crown - he was best of the guys and charismatically superb! Congratulations to everyone!

Chuck Hamlin is a Mortgage Loan Consultant serving NH, ME, MA, RI, CT and FL. Additionally, he is developing several home-based revenue streams to supplement his straight commissions. To learn how you too can supplement your income using the internet visit his web-site at http://chhamlin3.com

Is Singh is Kinng is Going to Be a Blockbuster?

2008-08-12T14:56:00.001-07:00

Anees Bazmee directed the most eagerly awaited romantic comedy movie 'Singh is Kinng' is going to be released on today 08.08.08. This film is not made for intellectual person; it's a fully entertaining film. Vipul Shah, Anees Bazmee, Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif four names for whom success has become a habit. That makes the mostly awaited film of this year 'Sing is Kinng'.

'Singh is Kinng' is a fully entertaining film with comedy, romance, action and drama. All these are well coordinated in such a way that audience will never think themselves as looser after watching the film. This is a big challenge for Akshay Kumar to prove himself as the no. 1 actor of Bollywood. 'Singh is Kinng' can really make a platform for Akshay Kumar to prove him as the King of Bollywood. So what about SRK fans? Are they also excited the same way? Here Akshay worked together with his another successful pair Katrina Kaif. After the big success of Namastey London and Welcome they're now pairing in 'Singh is Kinng'. Shots have been taken in Punjab, Australia and Egypt 'Singh is Kinng' is going to be another big budget movie of Vipul Shah and Anees Bazmee after Aankhen, Waqt, Namastey London, No Entry and Welcome.

The star casting is huge; Akshay Kumar, Sonu Sood, Katrina Kaif, Neha Dhupia, Javed Jaffrey, Om Puri, Kiron Kher. With plenty of romance, glamour, laugh-aloud moments and chartbusting music, the film 'Singh is Kinng' promises to be one of the most appealing and entertaining film of the year 2008.

Everything is there in the movie but still it's not a foolproof product. It has its share of flaws, turn of events aren't enchanting at times, but the film moves so fast and packs in so much, that there is no time to think or analyze it.

Obviously the main attraction, the big entertainer of Bollywood film industry Akshay Kumar (named Happy Singh in the movie). The success of the film in Box Office significantly depends on him. Let's see what the output is coming in future. After all audiences are the main evaluators.

References: http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood/reviews/2008/singh-is-kinng-review-070808.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2008/06/20/bollywood_previews_singh_kinng_feature.shtml

Amrit Desai is contributing the article for http://www.movietimes.in/

"Ironman" and the Destroying of Weapons of Mass Destruction

2008-08-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Tagged: movies, ironman, robert downey jr, super hero movies, cinematography, cgi, movie reviews
What a cinematic era society has coming on. The new catch seems to be the superhero movie. At a time in which our country is feeling deflated due to our trembling economy, everyone is looking for a hero. That is when they go to the movie theaters. The question is what super hero to choose from? From Batman to Hulk there are so many to choose from. Until you have watched "Ironman" that is. He is definitely a super hero for our times and this movie shows it with an ease and excitement that makes the story flow easily.

Most of the credit to the movie has to go to Robert Downey Jr. His uncanny humor and his emotional understanding of the complexity of his shallow turned humanitarian, character (Ironman himself) makes every scene a believable one. With his life changing event that takes place in Afghanistan, you witness the changes within "Howard Stark" (Downey's character) first hand, which is both enlightening and incredible to watch. His comedic moments are just as good. Sharp and sarcastic as only Downey could do, it expresses and enriches his performance even that much more.

Let's talk about the CGI, which is very well done by the way. CGI is an incredibly important part of super hero movies. It is what makes them believable. For a great example of CGI one should take a look at the scene in which Ironman is flying from the government jets. It is so well done that one forgets that they are watching a CGI sequence. The sequences don't get overwhelmed by the CGI, but are complimented by them. Good CGI should never be obvious. Unless in the case of a fantasy movie, but that's a whole different story.

In conjunction with the CGI is the incredible camera work. Without it the movie would not have been half as good if the camera work had been a typical cinematographer trying to make his money. Oh no, the camera work in this movie is often done in a documentary like style when Ironman is present. In this way the audience feels like they are in the scene. On top of that the jerky low to the ground camera movies help the CGI blend with the actors and scenery quite well making them successful scenes. For a great example take a look at the escape scene.

Under the surface of the super hero persona there is a message. The message is about what makes us humanitarians as opposed to human beings who are only out to serve themselves. Even when Stark changes he is still not a humanitarian as our society should see him, but he does good acts. There is a perfect balance and Stark found it. What changes are purely selfish motives into something more? From creating weapons that are being used against us to a superhero out to destroy those people that threaten to destroy human life and the weapons that enforce that ideal, Ironman discovers his life purpose and in that turn it serves others as well. This is definitely what makes Ironman a super hero of our time. It is a super hero who serves himself as well as the population. He is a super hero rescuing us from war and destruction.

If you are going to watch only one super hero movie this week, make it "Ironman." You won't be disappointed. It is a surprisingly good movie that you will be amazed to find is one of the best of the summer. So, buckle your jets and get ready for blast off. Oh, and stay for after the credits....you'll thank me later.

Rachael Rizzo has been acting since she was nine years old. She uses her experience to write about what the things she loves mean to her (mostly movies and baking). She is twenty-three years old and resides in beautiful Oregon.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachael_Rizzo