Elf

A story about an adopted Elf who lives in the North Pole and one decides to come back to the states to find his real family. This is laugh out loud funny. I am a fan of Will Farrell but he does out do himself in this film.

One of the great parts is the drinking of soda...I won't say anymore.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I don't know if this actually qualifies as a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie but since it has Christmas in the title I will add it to my list. This stop motion animation is a great story about the leader of Halloween wanting to do a different holiday.

I know this movie has turned into a cult classic because not only does it have a good soundtrack along with a good movie but their are alternate soundtracks out there made by todays rock/metal bands.

Marilyn Manson, KoRN, Rise Against and Amy Lee all contribute to the Nightmare Revisited Soundtrack.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

A take off of the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas story/cartoon. It stays true to the original story while adding bits on story to fill in the blanks. This Ron Howard film is filled with all sorts of little jokes for young and old. There are lots of good lines in this movie from Jim Carrey like Seuss like rhyming of...

"...And they'll feast, feast, feast, feast. They'll eat their Who-Pudding and rare Who-Roast Beast. But there's something I just cannot stand in least... Oh
no. I'M SPEAKING IN RHYME! "

Each time I watch this movie I hear different little sayings that I missed before. Plus if you get the DVD there is all sorts of additional bonus material that I always find interesting, like how they built Who-ville and the make up they did for the Grinch and all of Whos.

Favorite Holiday Movie List

It has been a busy Holiday season and so I have not had a chance to write in a while. This would be a good time to discuss the Christmas movies that are always played at this time of year. I would like to talk about my three top movies that I could watch over and over. I am sure there are more so I have started a FAVORITE HOLIDAY MOVIE list to the right.

I will take all requests and add them to my list and try and rank the top ten. I have started with my three but willing and able to add more. Merry Christmas.

Quantum of Solace

The only thing I don't like about this film is the title. (I can never remember it) Other than that nothing to complain about. A lot of action from the very beginning to the very end. My one caution is that if you have not seen Casino Royale, I may suggest that one first because this story line is adjacent to the first Daniel Craig's 007 movie.

The Bond movies have definitely taken a turn for the better since the introduction of Craig as the famous British Secret Service Agent. They are more gritter than the Roger Moore days of the 80s. A lot more action packed into 2 hours than any of the films that I have seen.

My favorite bond memory is from the week of Spring Break in South Carolina. I was staying in a town house and the person who owned it had every James Bond movie up to that point. Everyday after waking up from a long night out on the town, beach, etc. I would wake up and watch my choice on Bond movies. I especially like the older Bonds with Roger Moore, like when a car would skid to the edge of a cliff and Bond would walk up to it and say something clever and kick the car. The next scene would have the car lunging off the cliff like it was doing 80 miles per hour. Good times... good times.

I can't say that Q of S isn't any more realistic (see the car chase scene) but it just as enjoyable.

Zodiac

So this is a running joke in my house. I was late on a weekend night and I got the urge to get a movie to watch from my local video store. Usually I spend an extraordinary amount of time choosing a proper movie for the time.

(I do the two scan method. Once I scan the outer wall of the store (new releases) once from Z to A to see if anything jumps out at me - movies that they have a large quantity of on the wall. I then go back from A to Z to see if there is a new release I missed and they may only have one or two of sitting there. Like a grocery store they are usually closer to the bottom shelves.)

I digress - so this particular night I knew what I wanted. I had heard this movie had gone to video and I was dead set on getting it. Now, I don't know what happened. Maybe it was too late for a movie, maybe I was tired but I know I wanted "Zodiac". Well I came home with what I recall as "The Curse of the Zodiac" (or something similar). I was so frustrated when I figured it out ...it didn't take but the first 5 minutes. I was so mad that I didn't even watch the movie. I think I too it back and got something else because the real "Zodiac" didn't come out for another week....Ugh. One of those moments that I will never live down. For a long time this has been a monkey on my back and I just needed to rent it so I actually got to see the actual movie.

Anyways, the movie...Based on the serial killer that rampaged San Francisco in the late 60s to early 70s. The killer would send letters to the local papers with puzzles for them to print in the newspaper. A political cartoonist, with a love a puzzles, gets involved and over the years becomes an obsession until he thinks he actually has figured it out. Now all he has to do is get the police to believe him before the real killer finds out. (ooh spooky).

Going into it I knew it was based on a true story and I knew that they never caught the person. I knew that it wouldn't be wrapped up in a pretty little bow in the end. However, it did a good job of leading you down a path that when they got you to the end you pretty much figured out who it could of have been.

I really expected Robert Downey Jr. to play a bigger role as the newspaper reporter who gets strung out on drugs and alcohol (what a stretch). Jake Gyllenhaal does a good job as the cartoonist but I was really looking for more of the puzzle part of the movie. They advertised that it was a bigger part of the movie. That is what I get for getting sucked into advertisement.

Overall it was a good movie that was interesting to hear about from a history perspective. The video didn't have any behind the scenes action, which I would like to see but did have a preview for a new version to come out in 2008 (original came out in 2007). Well I can only hope I get the correct version when I go to the video store.

Bolt

Ok, so I am going to break my first rule of this blog and talk not only a recent movie but a movie that opened this weekend. I went to see 'Bolt', you see it was kind of strange circumstances where my wife and sister took half the kids to see "Twilight" - a movie that you will never be reviewed here - and my brother-in-law took the other half to Bolt. (our half was the younger half).

So I am one who enjoys a good Disney movie every once in a while and that is what I thought about Bolt. It was good but not great. I was actually got excited about the previews (never a good sign to be more excited about a preview instead of the movie you are going to see) for the new Pixar movie called "UP".

The premise about Bolt is that he is a Jamacian track star that runs for his home country in the Olympics and ends up not only the gold medal but breaks a world record in the process. Wait, no...my mistake....

This Bolt is a movie action hero dog but he doesn't know it. The movie industry has kept him secluded so his scenes appear real to him. It is kind of 'Lassie' meets 'The Truman Show'( Jim Carrey). Then this movie star breaks away from his captures and ends up across the country and has to not only get back to the wonderful place of Hollywood but has to deal with the real world in between.

The best part of the movie was the hamster named Rhino. Rhino is a hamster that gets involved on the way and he is a Bolt fan and imagines himself a superhero too. He had a lot of good lines and there is something funny about a hamster.

The voice of Bolt was John Travolta, which was fine but by the end I couldn't see Bolt without imaging John Travolta, that is a problem. Miley Cyrus was good as the little kid., Penny, I think her accent helped her with this voice over. Over all not bad but I could have waited until it hit DVD.

Sniper

OK so how I think I would like this to work is that I review some not so recent movies. What I mean by that is they are not the highly anticipated top grossing release movies. They are movies that looked cool when they came out but not enough to go see them and then forgot about them by the time they hit the video store. Not to say I will never talk about the latest new release but for the most part I will stick to those unsung hero movies.

Now when I say review, I don't mean thumbs up, thumbs down or 2 out of 5 stars or anything like that. I will just tell you what I think, like talking to someone when you ask what did they do over the weekend. Just honest feedback from my point of view and then you can make your own decision to go see it or not.

Lets start with "Shooter", I will start by saying that I thought it was called "Sniper" because I remember it had something to do with a sniper but all I found was Tom Berenger movies (Sniper 1, 2 & 3) which I mistakenly pronounced to the clerk as Tom Bergeron (America's Funniest Home Videos) which of course got me no where except for some strange looks.

This one has Mark Wahlberg (Boston Native) is an ex-USMC sniper and is asked to help the government prevent a presidential assassination. I won't go into more detail than that but let me say I was pleasantly surprised. Going into it I thought it would be a conspiracy movie that had a lot of twists and turns but to my surprise it was much more violent than I thought it would be and thus more enjoyable. It kept moving and it threw in some twists as expected but caught you off guard at times. The ending was not unexpected but it wasn't your good guy wins and bad guy goes to jail...lets leave it at that, which I appreciated. I enjoyed the whole cast the bad guy you really hated. You felt for the supporting cast. The female lead was someone that I had not heard of before, Kate Mara, in her Jessica Simpson, Dukes of Hazard accent (sorry that is who I thought of every time she spoke). Over all pleasantly surprised, but now reading this you may go watch it and hate it because I stole the innocence of it all.

PS you have to watch out for movies that reference another movie on the cover. i.e. Shooter -"from the director of Training Day". Who cares? You must also watch out for films that rank it up there with other films. "in the tradition of Bourne Identity", normally the kiss of death because you know it will never be as good as they movies that they mention.

1st blog

Here I go into the unknown. I place to talk and discuss movies, games, etc. and share my opinion along the way. I don't know how long this will last but going on the adventure is half the fun.

I invite you to join me to discuss and share all areas of entertainment.

Lets go...