Tag Archives: movies

White House Down: It’s like Die Hard, but at a national monument

Posted on December 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

White House Down was a fun movie. Jamie Foxx as the president was interesting, most of the time he was pretty serious, but generally more playful than the president is portrayed in the movies (sometimes a little too playful).

white-house-down-poster.pngMaggie Gyllenhaal was excellent, I always see her in movies and think she’s great, but I never realize that it’s her. From Donnie Darko to Secretary to Stranger Than Fiction to a Secret Service agent in this movie is a bit of a wide range of characters.

Channing Tatum was the hero, he was there applying to be a Secret Service agent who was pretty much told he didn’t have the right stuff. He took his daughter on a tour after his interview and that’s when the terrorists attacked and they got separated.

Joey King played the daughter and she was amazing!!! At some point The President happens to walk by and she gets him to answer a question for her video blog (sorry, “YouTube Channel”) and se pretty much floors him with her question. She played the voice of the “china girl” in Oz the Great and Powerful and she was great in that too, I remember specifically looking up later to see who did the voice (but I had no idea at the time).

This movie is exactly what you would imaging. It’s Die Hard but at the White House. Too many bullets and missiles for the hero to survive, but they manage to do it (of course!).

I have to say it was way more fun than I expected. Lots of action, some good one-liners, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s misdirection made for a great movie. Also, it was 2:10 long and it sure didn’t seem it, sometimes even amazing movies start seeming long after a while. I enjoyed it but after yesterday’s weird movie review (Upstream Color) it was certainly a welcome relief!

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Upstream Color is the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen!

Posted on December 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m not sure why I watched Upstream Color in the first place, I read a good review, some actor I liked in it or exactly what it was. But once I started watching it, I couldn’t stop. There are some spoilers in here, I say “some” because it’s so strange of a movie I’m not sure if it’s actually revealing anything…

There is some new street drug and it’s got something to do with some kind of roly-poly bug that’s killing some plants. Plus, this woman, Kris (played by Amy Seimetz) gets kidnapped and manipulated (controlled) into giving away all her money. This is all in the first few minutes. Most of the story is her trying to get her life back, she remembers (mostly) nothing of what happened to her.

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Oh wait, I forgot about the pigs, (that’s really important) there’s some stuff transplanted from her that’s injected into some pigs and the guy who did all this watches the pig. Maybe he still watches her too, but it’s hard to tell if he’s watching her or the pig sometimes. Sometimes what your’e watching is what they’re experiencing in their heads and not what they are seeing with their eyes.

Then Kris meets a nice guy who seems like he’s dealt with some trauma in his life so he’s willing to be with her. I can’t write much more without giving everything away. I think I give away less than the synopsis’s do, but some give away too much.

The visuals are very interesting. Shot in a weird way that I liked. The dialog was reminiscent of (what I think of) as David Mamet dialog, except his is usually more overly dramatic and misleading (in a conversational confusing way), this is just as intense but it’s noir misdirecting, it’s just cRaZy.

It’s insane. Completely weird. But I was compelled to see how this was going to get get all wrapped up to make sense, I will say it gets wrapped up, but I’m not sure about the making sense. This wasn’t weird in a “eXistenZ” or “Brazil” kind of way, those movies made complete sense.

I’m sure I’m missing some of the symbolism or at least missing the recreational pharmaceuticals to help me understand everything.

FYI, there was no one in the cast that I remember from anywhere else, the same for producers/directors. But I know the few places I looked the movie up, it also recommended/suggested Moon and Primer, both weird but very interesting and/or excellent movies in my opinion.

It’s available to rent or buy at Amazon, iTunes, etc…

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Star Trek: Into Darkness – The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…

Posted on December 8, 2012 | 2 comments

Warning, this is from a EXTENDED teaser trailer. May be consider to have spoilers, but I’m not sure if spoilers involves previews (unless you don’t actually watch previews).

Lots of dark crazy destructive action until about one minute in.

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“Is there anything you would not do… for your family??”

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Look how the one hand looks behind plastic. Really really reminds me of the death of Spock in the (wait for it…) second Star Trek movie. Seems a little cheesy to steal this story-line, so we’ll see what they do with it. Who knows, I haven’t read much, maybe Benedict Cumbatch is playing Khan, except it’s a little to early in Kirk’s career (in this timeline) to have Khan as an enemy yet. From the slightly shorter version of the preview, Khan didn’t cross my mind, but for this extra few seconds, he did….


Link to Star Trek Into Darkness teaser incase the embedded version doesn’t show.

That part kind of flipped me out a bit and I don’t know why?

Maybe “Is there anything you would not do… for your family?” will replace “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” quote? Not. A. Chance.

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Take 90 seconds to plan a great night…

Posted on December 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Why don’t we connect with our friends enough? I had a close friend who lived in Europe for three years, when did I finally go visit him? One week before he moved (duh!). Why wait?

I’ve got friends that live close that I haven’t talked to in ages. Why not?!?

Tron Legacy [Blu-ray] Joseph KosinskiWe’ve all got friends close and far that we haven’t seen. Take a minute and make plans. A few months ago I got a message on Facebook.

Hey, what are you doing around Dec 17? 

I'm hoping to be in town. Want to see Tron 2? 

I think we saw Tron 1 at the theater.

That’s all it took, a couple of messages back and forth and I saw a friend I haven’t talked to in years and haven’t seen for over a decade who lives a 1,000 miles away. How easy was that?!?

Mark, David and I met up, had drinks and food, saw Tron Legacy at the IMAX in 3D (which was awesome!) and then went and had pizza afterwards. It was a great night. We talked a lot (lots of glory days kinda stuff) and caught up on life.

So take a minute, when you talk to someone over the holidays make a point to make plans with them and see them sometime soon…

Thanks for checking in David!

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – Review(?)

Posted on November 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

What to say about this movie? It’s not for everyone, but it’s probably got a little of something in it for everyone.

  • A strange movie. For sure!
  • A good movie? I’m not sure.
  • Seriously oddly compelling? Definitely!
  • s it a movie? A comic book? A video game? Yes, it’s all three at the same time…

Scott’s got a new girlfriend, but to move along in the relationship, he must defeat her seven ex-boyfriends exes. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy) Edgar WrightAlthough I’m not sure why he must defeat them, they’re just after him. She seems aware of it, but overall she doesn’t seem like “she” needs him to complete the task. You need to just accept this point and move along with the plot.

But it’s filled with many interesting scenes; I’m not saying they all make sense, but they’re interesting and have some cool effects.

In some bizarro way it made me think of what we leave in the wake of our old relationships… What perspective do the others have? What perspective do they have years later? Do they think “Gary who?” or “Gary, sigh…”? Hopefully somewhere in the middle and without too much anger or regret…

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Iron Man 2 Trailer

Posted on December 17, 2009 | 1 comment

Here’s the trailer for the new Iron Man 2 movie. I like the beginning and the end; the middle is just so so, maybe if you’re a fan of the villain (Whiplash?) you’ll like the middle…

Looks good to me. I thought the first Iron Man movie was excellent. I’m hoping for the same for this one…

Here’s the direct link to the preview. If you watch it in HD, be sure to pause it when it starts loading and let the whole preview load before starting it, it’ll play better.

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Free download of the Up soundtrack from Disney / Pixar

Posted on December 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Here’s a free download to the soundtrack of Disney’s and Pixar’s Up Up Walt Disney Recordsbe sure to use the code latimesdisney when it asks for it.

This promotion has expired.

The soundtrack was nominated for “Best Original Score” but I’m not sure which award (Oscar, Grammy, Academy?). It was done by Michael Giacchino who did Ratatouille, Lost, The Incredibles, Star Trek, Alias, Fringe and more.

This offer is only supposed to be good until the end of Thursday.

Please let me know in the comments if this works for you (or more importantly, when it stops working)…

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Aaron Sorkin and Brad Pitt are doing MoneyBall?

Posted on October 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

I really liked Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It’s the story of how Billy Beane turned the Oakland A’s Baseball team around by picking players with statistics.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis

The story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.

– Plot synopsis at IMDB.com

It’s a great read if you like baseball or numbers, I’m not a big sports fan, but I’d recommend the book if you’re interested in either. But the numbers part was really interested. I originally read it because my dentist talked me into reading it.

So it turns out that they’ve decided to turn it into a movie. They’ve got Aaron Sorkin (West Wing) to rewrite it into a movie and they’ve got Brad Pitt to play the team’s general manager. And it looks like they’ve got some of the baseball players to play themselves.

Oops, not to get you all interested in it, but it doesn’t come out until 2011. So read the book in the mean time and you’ll enjoy it again in another two years when the movie comes out…

And looking up Michael Lewis at Amazon.com I see that he also wrote Next: The Future Just Happened, I’m pretty sure I’ve got that on my shelf (unread), now I know why I got that book!

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