Hi. The guys over at Universal just sent this on. It’s a piece of viral marketing for Battleship, the blockbuster that came out last week. It’s a nifty little tool that uses google maps to simulate a Battleship-style attack on a location of your choice. It’s not half bad, and a fairly clever use of google maps. Check it out here or click the image below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: battleship, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Decker, Google, peter berg, Rihanna, Sydney, Taylor Kitsch | Leave a comment »
I think there’s a serious argument to be made for Independence Dayas one of the truly exceptional summer blockbusters. It’s not exceptionally clever or insightful, its characters aren’t necessarily more than plot functions given life by a wonderful cast, but it has a high-octane energy and wonderful sense of tone that makes it a joy to watch. It’s cheesy enough that it never takes itself too seriously, and yet it’s efficient enough and effective enough that it never descends to the level of pure camp. It’s a deft balance, and I suspect that it might be a fluke, but I think that Independence Day remains a gleefully enjoyable guilty pleasure to this day.
Don't run! We are your friends!
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alien invasion, Area 51, Barack Obama, battleship, Brent Spiner, Emmerich, Executive Branch, film, Government, history, hollywood, id4, Independence Day, Interstellar war, James Rebhorn, jeff goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Leland Orser, liam neeson, Movie, Movies, non-review review, peter berg, president, Recreation, review, roland emmerich, Shopping, Smith, Taylor Kitsch, United States, War of the Worlds (2005 film), white house, will smith | 2 Comments »
April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” This doesn’t exactly feature the Avengers, but a similarly all-star cast of cosmic Marvel superheroes…
Read our review of The Avengers here.
I have to admit, I have really enjoyed the “cosmic” Marvel crossovers in the past few years, perhaps more than I’ve enjoyed the big Avengers-themed events that they’ve been churning out consistently. Being honest, I think part of the reason that the cosmic line balanced these events so well was because it was smaller, and thus easier to handle. You didn’t have to worry about splitting character beats between the main miniseries and the supporting titles, nor did you have to worry about a dozen other comics feeding into (and flowing out of) your miniseries. At its peak, the line – as helmed by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning – consisted of two titles (Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy), and nobody else was playing in the sandbox. Maybe I’m just a little bit selfish, but it’s always fun to watch a writer play with toys that he’s not being asked to share.
Five cosmic powerhouses walk into a bar...
Filed under: Comics | Tagged: andy lanning, annihilation, Comics, cosmic, dan abnett, Infinity Crusade, joss whedon, marvel comics, marvel cosmic, nova, review, richard ryder, Star Lord, starlord, thanos, the thanos imperative | Leave a comment »
I had the pleasure of catching Alice in Funderland at the Abbey Theatre on Friday night. An attempt to playfully recast Lewis Carroll’s iconic story against the backdrop of modern Dublin, it is – for most of its runtime – an enjoyable high-energy experience with a cheeky charm and a winning wit. It is, however, just a little bit uneven – especially in its first act. In fact, the play works much better indulging its delightful appetite for the insane and the surreal, instead of attempting to offer rather blunt commentary on the political and social character of modern Ireland.
Alice? Who the %@#! is Alice?
Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: abbey, abbey theatre, Alice, alice in funderland, alice in wonderland, Cork, Cork GAA, dubin, dublin, Ireland, Jack Phelan, lewis carroll, Mark O'Regan, Naomi Wilkinson, Sarah Greene, thisispopbaby | Leave a comment »
In many ways, Game of Thrones feels like a fitting successor to Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Undoubtedly fans of either work are getting a bit tired of the comparisons, understandably feeling that such a point of reference is a crutch for writers or reviews with little knowledge of the fantasy genre outside those tent poles. Still, it has been a while since an adaptation of such a well-received literary work has managed to make such an impact on popular culture. A decade after the release of the first film in Jackson’s trilogy, I think that G.R.R. Martin’s work builds upon the conventions Jackson taught us to embrace so easily. In fact, the celebrated HBO series works so very well because it so radically and gleefully subverts the audience expectations that were so firmly entrenched by Peter Jackson’s fantasy landmarks.
It’s really Throne me…
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Cersei, Dothraki language, eddard stark, Game of Throne, Game of Thrones, god, hbo, house lannister, house stark, Jon, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Ned, Ned Stark, peter jackson, politics, pragmatism, review, sean bean, sexposition, Television, Thrones, twyin lannister, viggo mortensen, Western World, westeros, World of A Song of Ice and Fire | 3 Comments »
April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”
Read our review of The Avengers here.
In many ways, to me, Kurt Busiek’s Avengers run represents comic book nostalgia given form. I can’t help but read it as an attempt to call back to the “good old days” of mainstream comic books, with all the illogical and insane twists and an old-school approach to dialogue and characterisation. On the best of days, I’ve found his approach giddy and enjoyable – it’s hard not to get caught up in his genuine enthusiasm for the material. However, when Marvel gave Busiek a twelve-issue Avengers miniseries, it seemed inevitable that the writer wouldn’t just seek to nostalgically emulate the past, but tie it all together as well. In this respect, as it weaves through decades of Avengers continuity, Avengers Forever feels almost like continuity porn. Hardcore continuity porn.
Avengers! Avenge!
Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Avenger, avengers, Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes, avengers forever, captain america, carlos pacheco, comic book, comic book continuity, Comics, continuity, Henry Pym, iron man, joss whedon, kurt busiek, lockout, marvel, Marvel Comic, marvel comics, retrospective, review | 1 Comment »
I really liked Peter Berg’s Battleship, and I think a part of that was the way that he tried to subtly bend some of the Michael Bay blockbuster conventions against themselves. So, for example, the hero doesn’t step up to the plate so much as realising he’s not the right person to step up to the plate. The heroes aren’t the bunch of hot pop-stars and would-be male models that make up the leading cast, but people who have actually experienced war and suffered for their patriotism. However, I really like how distinctively alien Battleship’s aliens were.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: battleship, Berg, Brooklyn Decker, Hopper, liam neeson, michael bay, Optimus Prime, peter berg, Stephen Hawkins, transformers, United States | 33 Comments »
Part of me wonders when it’s appropriate to start ranking the year’s films. I say that, because I’ve just had the pleasure of catching The Cabin in the Woods, which is easily one of the best films of the year so far, and the best horror movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. I know those sound like trite clichés, but Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s exploration of the horror genre just bristles with a raw energy that sweeps up the audience.
It’s a rare horror film that has you laughing when it wants you to laugh, while keeping you anticipating shocks that you know it knows you know are coming. In many ways, it seems like Cabin in the Woods comes from a very raw and personal place from both director and writer, one conflicted over the genre as a whole. From the outset it’s clear that Whedon and Goddard truly love the conventions and the thrills, while loathing the inherent voyeurism and nihilism that is almost inseparable from those aspects. It’s a weird dichotomy, and Cabin in the Woods is a weird film, but weird in that most brilliant of ways.
Who is afraid of the big bad wolf?
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, Bradley Whitford, Cabin in the Woods, chris hemsworth, criticism, deconstruction, Drew Goddard, film, Goddard, horror, Horror film, joss whedon, meta-fiction, Movie, review, Richard Jenkins, self-awareness, voyeurism, Whedon, Woods | 5 Comments »
April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”
Dark Avengers actually reads quite well as a self-contained volume. It’s relatively short, running sixteen issues (fourteen of which are collected here, with the other two collected in Utopia) and an annual. It sits between two gigantic crossovers, Secret Invasion and Siege, so it isn’t as frequently derailed as Bendis’ New Avengers was (or even Mighty Avengers was). Instead, it feels like a nice little self-contained chapter in the epic superhero saga that Bendis has been writing for quite some time, dating back to the first issue of New Avengers, an exploration of the modern superhero myth in this cynic world so keen to deconstruct our idols in the wake of classics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s a clever and succinct summary of the themes the author has been exploring, in a fun and dynamic sort of way.
Maybe it should be called “Moodily-lit Avengers”…
Filed under: Comics | Tagged: anti-heroes, Avenger, avengers, bendis, brian michael bendis, comic books, Comics, dark avengers, dark knight returns, green goblin, iron man, iron patriot, joss whedon, marvel, mighty avengers, Molecule Man, new avengers, nick fury, norman osborn, secret invasion, spider man, tony stark | 2 Comments »
No one cares about the man who disappears, the man who goes into the box. They care about the man who comes out the other side.
– Robert Angier
I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan. Anybody who regularly reads the blog will attest to that. I believe, genuinely, that he’s one of the best directors working today. However, my favourite Nolan film is a rather eclectic choice. I appreciate all his films, but I think that The Prestige stands as the pinnacle of the writer’s work to date. After all, in a career built around movies exploring the power of narrative, it’s hard to resist the film that compares cinema to magic. I think it’s a deftly-constructed and cerebral film, one of the few movies that still intrigues and confounds me when I stick it on. Of course, the narrative is relatively straight-forward once Nolan reveals the technique and the tricks in the final act, but I always find it rewarding to chew over the implications in the film, the story of two dueling magicians who take their rivalry as far as possible, and even beyond that.
Are you watching closely?
Note: By its nature, this post will include spoilers for the film. I have written a review of it, in case you are looking for a recommendation. It’s the most divisive of Christopher Nolan’s films, and I’d recommend seeing it at least once – love it or hate it, it’s a film that you won’t quite forget.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, batman begins, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Priest, film, magic, memento, Michael Caine, Movie, nolan, prestige | 10 Comments »
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