Tag Archives: movies

Bourne Hat Trick

Posted on by
Reply

Your final question is a 100 point bonus question that will count for one-half of your semester grade: name one movie trilogy in which the second and third movies were as good or better than the original. (Shitty movies that are all equally bad will not be accepted) When time is called, close your Blue Book and place your pencil on your desk.

Time!

The answer we were looking for was: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Identity was very good. Supremacy was even better. And Ultimatum the best yet. The action started about 10 seconds in and never let up. Chases? Bullit and French Connection were trips to the 7-11.

My two favorite lines were by David Strathain’s character:

"It won’t be over till we’ve won."

"That’s what makes us special." (We can kill anyone we want without getting permission from the politicians.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Posted on by
1

Just watch the extended trailer of The Bourne Ultimatum, the latest (and final?) installment in the series of spy thrillers starring Matt Damon. Goose bumps. Twice. If this flick is as good as the first two, it will make for one hell of a three-DVD set.

Those of us with EAG (Enhanced Anticipation Gene) are cursed and blessed. Cursed when we flip into Worry Mode… blessed when we have lots of stuff fun stuff just over the horizon. Like this movie, which opens August 3. And William Gibson’s Spook Country, a few days later. And a new version of the Mac operating system in October (Will somebody please turn off the nerd alarm?)

Rent movies on iTunes, watch on Apple TV

Posted on by
Reply

Apple is in talks with the Hollywood studios to make new movies available for rental on iTunes, with titles to rent for $2.99 for a set number of days before expiring. It is unclear which studios might participate. [WSJ.com]

I hope –and expect– this to come together. Netflix is great but there’s still some lag time. And I can’t recall the last time I bought a PPV movie from DirecTV. Selection pretty much sucks. As Barb and I have less and less time (or so it seems), the convenience and choice of on-demand becomes more and more important.

De Niro and Pacino reunite in $60M indie

Posted on by
Reply

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team on-screen for just the second time in “Righteous Kill,” a $60 million indie production in which they play cops chasing a serial killer. The script is by Russell Gewirtz, the guy that wrote “Inside Man.” De Niro and Pacino had just two scenes together in “Heat” but will be on-screen together pretty much throughout this new flick. With that budget… and these two movie greats… I have to wonder how you could make a shitty movie. Let’s hope they don’t.

The X-Files

Posted on by
Reply

The X Files Chemistry. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had it. Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd had it. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had it. Who has that kind of chemistry today?

Just watched the last half of the movie and was reminded how good Scully and Mulder were together. Where are Duchovny and Anderson now? Duchovny became something of a parody of himself but I don’t recall seeing much about Anderson. Good for her.

Gillian Anderson was white hot. She was put-a-sparkler-on-your-tounge hot. She wasn’t Victoria’s Secret beautiful…but she was leave-a-note-and-run-away-from-home sexy.

Taking the Imus story to the big screen

Posted on by
6

Aging white radio personality (Bill Murrary) gets fired for racist remark. His career appears to be over until he’s hired by the owner (Bernie Mac) of a struggling, urban (Detroit?) radio station. Seems the radio personality saved the station owner’s life in the jungles of Viet Nam.

The station manager (Queen Latifah) doesn’t like the idea at all but the program director (Jack Black) –a white man who longs to be black– sees big ratings.

The local minister/activist (Eddie Murphy) keeps the heat on to get rid of “this loud-mouthed saltine!”

The station sales manager (Regina King) sees nothing but angry advertisers but soon finds herself falling in love with the repentant Murray character.

As with all my movie ideas, I have no third act, but know Kay will come through as she always does. I guess I need a title, too. Maybe, “What’d I say?”

Zodiac: Where’ve we seen that guy?

Posted on by
Reply

David Fincher’s new film, Zodiac, runs 2 hours and 40 minutes and doesn’t have a chase scene or an explosion and only a couple of moments of violence and held my attention from start to finish.

Other films by Fincher: Panic Room (good); Fight Club (I was confused); The Game (very good); Se7en (very good); Alien3 (no so good).

Throughout Zodiac, I kept whispering to Barb, “Where have we seen him/her?”

Brian Cox –the original/best Hannibal Lector played Melvin Beli; John Carroll Lynch is the Zodiac and saw him on the HBO series Carnivale. Same for Clea Duvall (if you didn’t watch Carnivale, it doesn’t matter); If you’re old enough to remember Candy Clark from American Graffiti (’73), you might have spotter her brief appearance; John Mahoney –Frasier’s dad– had a small part; and Phillip Baker Hall plays a document expert. I remember him as Lt. Bookman, the library cop on Seinfeld.

Good movie.

Apple TV: node on the iTunes peer-to-peer video network?

Posted on by
Reply

I ordered one of the new Apple TV doo-dads right after they were announced. Didn’t/don’t fully understand it but it sounded like fun, so… Since then I’ve been hearing and reading all kinds of knocks on the gadget, usually from serious video-philes.

Then I came across an interesting theory about where Apple might be headed:

“Here is what I think is happening with the Apple TV hard drive. I think sometime this summer Apple will ship a firmware upgrade for the Apple TV and it will suddenly gain an important new capability. That’s when the Apple TV becomes a node on the iTunes peer-to-peer video network. ”

“Apple would have one or many content channels roughly equivalent to an HBO, Showtime, or perhaps Discovery. Yes, I think Apple will do direct content deals, buying programming that it will then either distribute to subscribers or support with Google ads, thanks to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s position on the Apple board. Apple’s network will give you the same content with or without ads, delivered from the same servers, one of which may be underneath your TV.”

Hmmm.

The Good Shepherd

Posted on by
5

I think a lot of movie goers will hate The Good Shepherd, a story about the early history of the Central Intelligence Agency, starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt and directed by Robert De Niro (I didn’t recognize Keir Dullea and Timothy Hutton).

I was lost and confused for much of this story. I found the plot very complicated and difficult to follow. But I really liked the movie. I came away with the sense that this is what this world is really like: you don’t know what’s really going on, whom to trust. This ain’t your standard Hollywood spy story. Skip it unless you willing work pretty hard for almost three hours.

I’m still searching for an explanation that will untangle the plot for me.