The Museum Of Modern Thinking

So, that’s what they got up to in The Phantom Zone: building a kitchen empire!

Found at The Movie Blog, well worth subscribing to.

At the weekend, I took my son (and myself) to see Kung Fu Panda, a film I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. In this Dreamworks animated tale, Jack Black voices a panda called Po serving up noodles in his dad’s noodle shack, but dreaming of joining the Furious Five - a group of highly-skilled martial artists. Obviously,with a name like Kung Fu Panda, every character’s an animal, so the Furious Five are actually named (and actually are) the animals their styles are based on, e.g. Mantis, Monkey, etc.

Through what appears to be an accident, Po is picked as the next Dragon Warrior, tasked with protecting the valley from the fearsome Tai Lung, voiced by (of all people) Ian McShane. Amazingly, old Lovejoy is superb in the role, really sinking his teeth (ho ho) into his Snow Leopard role. Tai Lung is, of course, held safely in a mountain fortress whilst Po begins his training - which basically consists of having the tar kicked out of him as the sifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the other Furious Five want him to leave.

They eventually warm to him (apart from sifu) just in time to Tai Lung to escape and head to the valley, seeking revenge on the sifu and his master for not declaring him the Dragon Warrior. Can Po unlock the awesome kung fu powers within him to rise to the challenge? Will the Furious Five survive their rop bridge battle with Tai Lung? Why is everyone an animal? Why the heck is Po’s dad a duck?!

Questions aside, the humour in the film was spot on, not too much, not too little, just right. Jack Black holds himself in check to deliver some quality lines, and it’s always nice to hear Jackie Chan. I didn’t even twig that Tigress was Angelina Jolie, but Viper was obviously Lucy Liu.

What I didn’t expect from the film was a small but welcome amount of philosophy. Sifu’s master Oogway talks about Panda’s destiny after Panda was named the Dragon Warrior and says, “A man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it”. Later, Oogway and Sifu are discussing the nature (or illusion) of control, as sifu feels he let down everyone by turning Tai Lung into a psycho - yep, that’s right, sify did it. Anyway, Oogway and sifu discuss the planting of a peach stone - sifu says he can control where he places it, how it grows, and Oogway counters that sifu can’t control what it grows into - it’s peach tree, always will be, can’t be anything else.

And it’s there that the simple message of the film lies, but hey, this film doesn’t really need a message. It’s funny, the animation is outstanding (rivalling Pixar, I would say), the martial arts choreography is exceptional (Tai Lung’s prison break-out is especially good), and the last twenty minutes or so of the film is the epic final battle - and I’ve not laughed harder in a cinema for ages

In all, it’s a worthy 9 out of 10, with a point deducted for not letting Jackie Chan speak more. I value this film so much, I’m buying it on DVD. Whilst that sounds obvious, I can pretty much remember a film after a couple of viewings, so a film has to be a bit special before I buy it.

I’m a big John Woo fan, but to be honest I do find his Hollywood films a bit overdone - I believe he was ruined slightly by Hollywood, and it took some of the nuttiness of his style, although Broken Arrow came close to his earlier films.

I much prefer his earlier work, films like God of Gamblers, The Killer and Hard Boiled. All three films star Chow Yun Fat, one of the largest Asian movie stars, and in Hard Boiled, he played an Inspector nick-named Tequila, working with an undercover cop to take down some gun-running mobsters.

Being a John Woo film, it is filled with slo-mo gunplay, slo-mo pigeons, unspeakably evil bad guys (although Mad Dog, though obviously Mad, had honour) and lots of two-gun leaps and rolls. I remember seeing Hard Boiled in a cinema in London’s Chinatown (the Prince Charles cinema, I think), and loving every minute of it’s hyper-kinetic balletic ballistics. Being young and impressionable, I guess some part of me wanted to be Chow Yun Fat…

Fifteen years later, thanks to next-gen consoles (and high-specced PCs), talented developers and the involvement of certain people, we have Midway publishing John Woo’s Stranglehold, where you take the role of Inspector Tequila and what can be best described as a sequel to Hard Boiled. I could give plot details, but what’s more fun is the gunplay, the dives, the totally outrageous action, Tequila-time (ok, ok, bullet time), the cutscenes, it’s all good Here’s the trailer via YouTube showing some great gameplay footage, as it will explain it much better than I can:

So, the demo was available last week sometime, so I downloaded it and had a go. Loved it. LOVED IT. Just total mayhem, jumping around, doing my best to take down the bad guys as I’m flying through the air / sliding on the floor / running up railings. The Tequila bombs are a lot of fun as well - the more stylish kills you get, the fuller the Tequila bomb gauge gets. When certain icons are highlighted, nifty abilities come into play: Health heals you, natch; Precision shot lets you target certain parts of enemies’ anatomy from a distance; Barrage just lets you cut loose for a period of time with unlimited; and the final bomb is sort of a smart bomb, sending Tequila spinning around with his guns blazing, taking out all the bad guys - with slo-mo pigeons in the background, of course.

Just a tip - you have to play through the demo twice (without powering off the console) to unlock the last two Tequila bombs and the extra difficulty levels. There’s also one-shot-kill pistols in the demo, along with some SMGs hidden in the last section behind a broken fence on the left-hand side.

In summation, I’ll be buying it - the demo has pulled me in good and proper, and the game’s a lot of bloody fun

So, about 10.30pm on Friday, my good wife said, “Are you going to see Spider-Man then?” A quick check of the film times saw me barrelling along the A52 towards the Derby Showcase, and I even resisted my usual small Coke and eat-until-I-feel-sick packet of M & Ms. Caught a few trailers, and then settled down to the main event.

I had read some reviews of Spider-Man 3, heard some negative buzz, heard some good points, so I kind of knew what to expect from the first half-hour of the film. Characters were introduced, their back stories briefly covered and I was brought up to speed with where they all were in their lives. The action then starts as Green Goblin (Peter’s friend Harry Osborne) goes after Peter Parker, still under the misapprehension that Spider-Man killed his father (side note: Green Goblin met his end in the film just like in the comic - good attention to detail). Suffice to say, Spider-Man survives and the good old Stan Lee / Marvel “Amnesia” card is played: Harry remembers nothing of his father’s death or Goblin-ness (he’s been dosing himself up, y’see), he and Peter are friends again, everything’s peachy.

Not so peachy for Flint Marko, an escaped murderer (of Peter’s Uncle Ben, no less) on the run to get money for his sick daughter (more Marvel magic). On the run, he stumbles into a big pit of sand and in An Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong, gets atomised / vapourised (/ digitised, for your Tron fans) and that’s that. Meanwhile, while MJ and PP are watching a meteor shower, a meteorite lands nearby and some black, er, stuff splodges out and attaches itself to Peter’s busted-ass moped.

Ok, who’s next? Right, Gwen Stacy, daughter of the police chief who informs Peter and Aunt May that Flint is on the run and responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. Eddie Brock is the new hot stuff (he thinks) photographer, who’s seeing Gwen perhaps, Dr Connors (yep, that Dr. Connors) is Peter’s tutor who examines the meteor “splodge”, etc. In the remainder of the film, Flint Marko is reborn as the Sandman, and dies (maybe), Venom is born via Peter Parker, someone remembers some stuff and opens a huge can of whoop ass, a love is lost, a friend is won and lost, Aunt May is stupendous, the snooty French waiter is hilarious, J. Jonah Jameson controls his blood pressure, Peter goes dark, and someone is forgiven.

As you can probably tell, there’s a lot going on, which has lead to critics calling the film “too busy” and “overlong”. Rather than talk you through the rest of the film, I’ll just give my thoughts on a few elements. First off, the players. Tobey Maguire has made the role of Peter Parker his own, and here he can do no wrong. Apart from the dancing. In the street. Good Grief. I really can’t add much to the following; Tobey Maguire is very comfortable in the role, and very believable in his emotions, especially when talking about his feelings on the love of the public for Spider-Man, or being dumped.

Next, Kirsten Dunst. I’ve read several reviews which sum up Kirsten’s performance as “meh”. This, I think, is unfair. I think the biggest problem is MJ does not get a lot of screen time, a victim perhaps of the squeezing in of two villains? In the scenes she is in, she works very well. Her vulnerabilities came across loud and clear, and her hurt in one jaw-dropping scene where I was thinking, “What is Peter thinking?” - you’ll know it when you see it. Plus, man, can she scream

James Franco: Really, really good. He played vengeful son and amnesiac friend brilliantly. A great character, well played. He easily went from happy-go-lucky billionaire to psychotic killing machine in a snap (yes, he gets his memory back, duh). He left a big impression on me, and he’s a Hell of an actor.

Topher Grace: Is this really the guy from That 70’s Show? He was great: mean, deluded, sarcastic, charming, vengeful, and having a bit of jealousy for Peter. Again, not a lot of screen time for him, but he was great in what he did (especially with those oddly-pointed teeth)

Thomas Haden Church: BORN TO PLAY SANDMAN. It’s that simple. He looks like Sandman, talks like Sandman, has excellent presence on screen. He was Sandman, simple as. Hope we see him again…

The rest of the cast: J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson was excellent - the scene with his heart pills was laugh out loud funny, and it was nice to see Ted Raimi still in the series, if only in a small part. Stan Lee pops up, but far more obvious this time, and even gets in a great Marvel catchphrase Aunt May, as previously mentioned, was stupendous - as with Tobey Maguire, Rosemary Harris has made that role her own: May is so earnest with her feelings regarding Peter and her late husband Ben, you really feel like she’s your own Aunt. Bruce Campbell (The Chin) was back as a French maitre’d, another good comedy part. Oh, there was thing called Venom as well, but hey, can’t give too much away…

 I’m not even going to touch on the action scenes: they were fast, well orchestrated, gripping but I did feel a couple of times that the camera work was a little too “swoopy”. However, the characters were well animated, it didn’t look like a bad videogame, and there were plenty of “whoa” moments, as Spidey swoops through a crane, or Green Goblin Jnr flings Peter towards the ground ON A WALL. Cool stuff. The special effects are obviously phenomenal, with the Sandman’s “birth” and continuing effects being way, way cool. The “splodge”’s stringy black tendrils will more than likely give me nightmares at some point, they were incredibly organic and creepy - good work on those.

Faults? Yeah, there were some - although the film was long, I think it could have been a bit longer to give more characters screen time (i.e. MJ), but seeing as we’ve already got the rapport between MJ and PP from the previous two films it doesn’t need explaining. Apart from the “swoopy” camera work previously mentioned, I found the “team up” at the end of the film a little cheesy, but I guess it all works as it should. I’ve read that Gwen Stacy should have been introduced in the last film, but the intro this film suffices, seeing as she makes it out alive. For the moment…

In all, Spider-Man 3 was a corker of a film, scoring at least a 9 out of 10. It’ll definitely be going into the collection, and if all the players want to return, I’ll gladly shell out another £6.50 to watch them.

Disclaimer: I grew up reading Spider-Man when I was a kid; he’s my hero.

I watched Zack Snyder’s take on Frank Miller’s 300 when it first came out, due to my wife passing out at 8.30pm. She gets up quite early but gets tired easily, especially when you use chloroform (she doesn’t half struggle tho’). Anyway, back to the film. I headed into Nottingham as it was a late showing (11.10pm), loads of people around as usual and no bother, which is always good.

I had, of course, seen a few trailers of the film, some behind the scenes footage and read a bit about the green screen tech used to make the film (i.e. virtual studios and what-not). Being a failed computer graphics geek, I was looking forward to seeing the end result. To be honest, about half-way through the movie I had to remind myself that it was all shot on a virtual set Don’t get me wrong, it was not hyper-realistic (or even realistic), but the film was so good I forgot all about it. The style of the film itself is not as comic book as you would expect being adapted from a graphic novel, although the end credits rock.

Winding it back a bit, 300 tells the story of 300 Spartan warriors holding off Xerxes invading army of slaves, numbering anywhere between 100,000 and a million, according to historians who very vague. The battle was fought at Thermopylae, at the Hot Gates, basically a sodding great big cliff with a narrow path through it. The Spartans used this to their advantage after guiding the invading army to them via a large wall made of stone and other people As with most films based on true stories, this does not have a happy ending, but with most things it’s about the journey not the destination.

The cast of (relative) unknowns played well, especially King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo; I especially liked the dialog between the two. The film also contained a small bit of humour, which was unexpected and black in places. The look of the film is fantastic, but happily not like Sin City - and no, I don’t mean that it’s not just in black and white, there’s quite a few different looks to the film in various places, it’s all rather good visually. Without going into too much detail, the action scenes were very impressive, especially the first clash between Spartan and Persian, the director certainly has an eye for a good scene.

Summing up (Dead Rising is calling), it’s hell of a film, I’d easily give it 9 / 10, and will be buying it when it’s out on DVD, not just to watch it again but to watch the “making of” features.

Incidentally, the guy narrating the film had the right voice for it… There’s a lot more I could say (e.g., “I brought more warriors than you”), but I really think you should see it for yourself

So, 300 opened this weekend in the US, garnering a huge take ($70 million) for its opening weekend; we’ll see how it holds up after next weekend. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out in the UK (March 22nd), should be a blast.

If you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the last couple of months, 300 tells the story of the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans (plus maybe some other helpers ;-)) held of Xerxes advancing army. How big an army? Well, let’s just say the odds weren’t even, as estimates for the attacking army range between 100,000 and one meeeellleeeeon. Shot Sin City style (blue screen, digital effects), the look of the film is very stylised.

Anyhoo, the point of this post is to direct you to a vid of the training regime followed by the actors to get in shape. It looks rather punishing, and probably is, but it’s rather inspirational I’m off for a run tomorrow morning, honest! The link takes you to Josh Hillis’ Fat Loss and Fitness Articles (something that’s just made it onto my del.icio.us links), I’ll be looking round the rest of the site later.

Edit: Josh has more on the “300 workout”, basically how to do it. Enjoy!

I’ve been watching the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Pride And Prejudice : 10th Anniversary Edition from Amazon) with Jacky. The production, even now, looks fantastic - the costumes, interior design, location - all great.

However, what really makes it is the excellent acting displayed by the main cast, and the witty dialogue between them. I’ve not read the novel (I’m a bloke, after all ;)), but I can only assume that the dialogue was lifted directly from the book as it is a welcome change to today’s “yeah but no but” art of conversation.

My favourite character is Mr. Bennett, Elizabeth’s father. Although he doesn’t have a lot to say, what he does say is very dry and witty. When saying goodbye to Elizabeth as she is off to Kent he says (from memory), “I will miss you Lizzie; when you are gone I will not hear two words of sense spoken together”. Or, saving people from Mary’s appalling turn at the piano, “That will do dear - you have delighted us long enough”

Anyway, I heartily recommend it - what do you think? Comment!

After Pierce Brosnan’s varied stint at Bond, there was a lot of feeling that a new direction was needed for the next Bond film.

 Boy, did we get it.

Gone were the superfluous gadgets (and for the life of me, I have no idea how Gustav Graves’ Mighty Morphin’ Battle Suit would have electrified him instead of his attacker [Die Another Day]), gone were the dodgy one liners (although I still love “I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir” from Moonraker), gone were the overcooked bad guys with improbable lairs (Goldeneye).

In their place stood a new Bond: witty, charming but without being full of himself, raw and, frankly, built like a brick poo-house. Daniel Craig obviously worked his backside off to get in shape, and fortunately his acting abilities were up to scratch as well; he does a great job of conveying Bond’s roughness, charisma, balls, and fear. Yes, fear, as we’re back to Dr. No territory, where Bond runs off and vomits after almost being killed by the spider.

 The film’s pace is good, although it does slow in the last third of the film. However, I feel that this is only due to the first two-thirds of the film going past at breakneck speed, including a fantastic free-running sequence that’ll induce vertigo in anyone.

 Also, I’ll never look at a chair with a wicker seat the same way again - ouch…

 In all, a cracking film and I’m looking forward to the next installment. Well done to all of those involved, it’s a thoroughly entertaining film - but comment and disagree with me if ya like…