A.R. Van Halleorg

So last night at 7:10pm I got to sit down next to my trusty sidekick Beki and watch Legion. Firstly, the previews were pretty great.

The first one was about the Hot Tub Time Machine (see trailer), which looked really hilarious. I especially liked the bit where the black guy asks what colour Michael Jackson is to find out if they traveled back in time. Priceless. After that we saw one for Death at a Funeral (see trailer) with Chris Rock. Loved the bit where Chris Rock said something about their dead father being in a homosexual relationship with a small person, but Martin Lawrence’s character big hang-up is that the guy is white. It looks like funny stuff, so of course I’d like to see it.

Randomly there was this preview for Takers (see trailer), which has a pretty decent line-up. Paul Walker, Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, Zoe Saldana (who is in everything right now). All I could think at the end of the preview was…how grossed out was Zoe? I mean she had to be romantically involved with Chris Brown for the movie. Sounds absolutely heinous to me, but I guess the poor guy needs an acting career since he fubared the rest when he pummelled Rihanna.

FINALLY ABOUT THE MOVIE

I don’t even know how to put it all into words. I thought it was an absolutely fantastic film. The selection of Paul Bettany for Michael was perfect. I totally loved him in the role. The guy who played Gabriel not so much, but it’s probably because I liked the fact that Constantine had a gender-bending version of Gabriel as one of its angels (boy was she/he crazy or what). Dennis Quaid was cool too. Okay, everyone was pretty cool. I just liked it all.

Where was I?

This is a lot like the story of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus with a little dash of god being vengeful. I am just now realizing that I can’t really say much without giving something away. You’re just going to have to WATCH THE TRAILER and take my word for it that it’s worth going to see. It’s one of those things where you just need to see it and you’ll get it. I’m sure someone out there will hate it, but I really couldn’t care less. It was really interesting story, the time flew by.

9/10 Grade

Watched this movie last night; thought that it might be kind of good, but sadly it didn’t end up that way at all.

There were definitely moments of terror that actually seemed pretty great suspense-wise, but because of the utter failure to create a plot and actually make a decent movie; the director wasted those moments that we’ll never get back to put in another film. Thanks a lot.

Overall I was pretty disappointed with the film. As my wife pointed out, it had every cliché it could possibly get in at any moment and we would both like to know one thing…

WHAT IS THE POINT IN HIDING THE KILLERS FACES DURING THE ENTIRE MOVIE!?…They removed their masks at the end and we still didn’t see their faces! Sounds like a cheap cop-out version of the Halloween movies. Did Liv Tyler owe a favour to a filmmaker friend of hers? I sure hope so, cause it was a bad decision to make this film.

At least there wasn’t a ton of blood everywhere, I’ll at least give it that. And they barely used sound as a gimmic. Although, when they made the DVD they made sure the voices were lower so you had to turn up the sound to hear it and then made the rest of the sounds louder so when sound did show up, it surprised you. Cheap scares. Give me Saw anytime.

I saw Twilight : New Moon on Saturday and seriously contemplated the renaming of it to ‘Twilight : Sparkly Glittering Ball in the Daytime’.

Okay on a serious note I actually kind of enjoyed the film. The muscly guys weren’t really doing it for me, but it was dang awesome when they got all werewolf and combative and stuff. The beginning could have been cut a bit shorter. It felt like the first hour was about Bella and the Werewolf and then in  10 mins they said ‘oh my, we forgot the rest of the movie! quick!’ and splattered that all over the screen for us. And the vampire boy got all glittery. Am I the only one who wonders why his face only glitters when his chest is exposed? I mean doesn’t the sun strike his face anyways?

Anyways. Despite the discrepancies, it was worth the ticket to see it. I could have watched it for another 2 hours. But that’s probably to see more of the actual story instead of the … well whatever the beginning was.

I was a little disappointed that Dakota Fanning‘s role wasn’t a bit bigger, but it was interesting. I’d like to see her being more evil in the third movie.

Not much of a review, I know. I think I might go get the Twilight Saga Collection to read about this series instead.

Just go see the movie and judge for yourself. I’m not a fan of this style of movie and I enjoyed it anyways.

So we went to go see the movie Paranormal Activity which was getting quite the level of hype and earned over $100 million for a what.. 15-20k production?

I have to admit, it was a great movie. I was a little iffy about going to see it because I was told that it was an American version of the Japanese style horror films and we know how well that’s turned out so far…Suffice it to say it was fabulous. No gimmicks. The lack of sound, the anticipation of action, the feeling that the characters were actually gradually getting more and more frightened added to it all. I think the helplessness helps quite a bit and was VERY well captured from the Japanese style.

And I have to say…the tough guy sitting behind us screaming like a little girl was priceless. Not even his girlfriend was that afraid. Definitely worth watching.

If you don’t go see it in the cinema you’re missing out. It was great.

ALERT : IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS, AVOID THIS POST.

Note: This is my opinion and it’s not that of an expert.

I’m still not really sure what the heck Jennifer’s Body was exactly.

It was a vampire movie?…Zombie movie?…Demon movie?… It was kind of “All of the above”, really.

She was a demon who happened to need to feed on blood or she looked terrible. She could be out in daylight, but she was bound by a possession to a living human in order to stay in the world. Interesting concept.

So let’s face it. The truth is that the majority of people who went to watch this film were only doing it because “OMG Megan Fox is gonna make out with a girl on screen!”…even I did. I’m sorry, but it was just something I couldn’t miss. The woman is the new Angelina Jolie!…seriously. Anyways.

Now while that was undoubtedly the best part of the film. It isn’t because it’s girl-on-girl. In fact, there’s one thing that really kind of infuriates me and ruins the entire experience of watching a film that I have to talk about in this post. It’s when the people in charge of casting fail to do their job and manage to stereotype cast versus actually paying attention to the story and the dynamics of the characters they are trying to find a match for.

So the one thing I do appreciate more than anything, it’s when the Casting Powers That Be step out of their box and play with it a little.

I don’t know whether they did it intentionally and they’re just observant, or if it was by accident and it ended up right, but the casting people of Jennifer’s Body did the right job in my books. Instead of matching Megan Fox with an actor from one of the male roles, they gave her a match to her female counterpart, Needy (played by Amanda Seyfried). Considering the entire story revolves around their friendship despite all the rest that’s going on, it needed to be that way. We had to at least be able to spot some form of chemistry between the two to understand how Jennifer could stay tied to the living world through her link to Needy.

Let’s just say it worked. I mean Needy goes off with her boyfriend, they have their love scene, it flopped. I actually feel bad for him. It’s not his fault Needy and Jennifer had some sort of connection and Jennifer was in the middle of being murdered! But even so, the next scene with Needy and Jennifer (not when Jennifer first comes back covered in blood) was much better in the chemistry scale. I’m your typical ‘Oh, whatever.’ when they make straight girls kiss, but that was a pretty steamy scene. I was sure Jennifer was going to get slapped by Needy. Ahhh fun. Then Needy surprises you with her boldness, before she realizes what she’s doing. I’d like to note she didn’t stop cause it was Jennifer. She stopped cause Jennifer was a demon killing thing that just vomited blood all over her kitchen floor and went all psycho-look on her.

I’m so rambling. I apologize. Anyways, I’ll probably write an actual post on what I thought of the entire movie, but I was trying to have a little say on what I thought of her match first.

If you want, you can tell me what you thought of the film or leave your own thought on the Amanda being a good match to Megan as long as it’s not some homophobic rant that I will just end up deleting (ie: if you don’t like the match, say something constructive like “They didn’t look good together, Needy and boyfriend looked much better together” or something).

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!