Comedy Reviews: Chuck/Larry and Simpsons Movie

Movie Title: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Dan Akyroyd, Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames.
Directed by: Dennis Dugan
Genre: Comedy
My Rating: 7.5/10

James and Sandler play two straight firefighters in NYC who decide to fake a marriage to benefit widower James' children as far as insurance etc goes. The marriage is real, the gayness is not. Don't ask. They're advised to do so by their lawyer, played but eye candy Jessica Biel. As Adam Sandler gets older, the heroines in his movies keep getting younger. Not a bad deal. Happens in other parts of the world, doesn't it?

The supporting cast is praiseworthy. Dan Akyroyd as their fire chief, Ving Rhames in a very unusual role, Steve Buscemi creepy as ever, and Sandler's entourage that appears in every movie of his all did a decent job. Only actor missing was Rob Schneider, but not terribly missed.

7.5/10. Funny movie, not for the terribly homophobic. It'll satisfy hard-core Adam Sandler fans, and moderately amuse King of Queens fans. Sandler is back to his old ways, less of a super goody goody smart ass and more of an apathetic clown. Chuck/Larry will make a good rental with some buddies on a Saturday evening when you don't feel like going out.

Movie Title: The Simpsons Movie
Directed by: David Silverman
Genre: Animation/Comedy/Family
My Rating: 8/10

Quick review. Great movie, amusing, watchable by all ages. I stopped watching Simspons almost a decade ago and still enjoyed this flick. It was much better than 2 hours of Simpsons episodes at a strectch. Also a group movie.

Movie Review: Live Free Or Die Hard

Movie Title: Live Free or Die Hard
Starring: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Cliff Curtis.
Directed by: Len Wiseman
Genre: Action/Thriller
My Rating: 8.5/10

Bravo! Who would have expected a part-4 (or a fourquel) would be this good? I mean, it wasn't as amazing as Die Hard 1 or 3, but better than 2 and good enough for a summer action entertainer.

Willis reprises his role as bad-ass NYPD cop John McLane, divorced and estranged from his kids. But still a cop, and not seen with the bottle this time around. For better or worse, none of the characters from the previous DH movies return, and Willis stands tall and alone around characters much younger to him. Assuming the last minute 2 AM job of escorting a hacker (Long - the "mac" guy) from NYC to DC as a favor to the feds is a one-off thing, turns out to be another save-the-day task for the aging and balded cop. Former Secret Service whiz Thomas Gabriel (Deadwood's Olyphant) decides to teach the US government a lesson by exposing all the open holes in the federal computer system and creating a fire sale as a whole.

The action is great! A good change from the sci-fi overdose these days, old school unrealistic stunts worked well in this movie. What I missed is the lack of swearing. Yes, this movie is rated PG-13, WTF? I understand it's releasing in the summer and would be nice to attract more teenage crowd, but still. A Die Hard movie is incomplete without the overdose of foul verbage. John McLane hasn't gone all that senile, has he? Hope the DVD is uncut. Oh, spoilers aside, he does say what he say at the end of every DH movie before killing the villain. Thank God for that least.

Willis excels in the role he knows best. The character and the actor both have aged well in this movie. Justin Long deserves praise as well, being the spokesperson for Apple's Macintosh computers on TV commercials establishes his image as a computer guy well. Timothy Olyphant, well this is not the first time he simply plays a baddie, and does ok. Maggie Q did a decent job as a kung-fu assistant of the villain. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Willis' daughter who gets kidnapped when the veteran cop gets too hard to handle.

8.5/10. Best actioneer of the summer so far. Enjoy this dude flick.

Velvet Revolver: Live performance on myspace.com

Velvet Revolver will be playing live on myspace.com on Tuesday, July 31st 2007 at 6PM Pacific Time/8PM Central/9PM Eastern.

Requests will be taken via myspace IM's, which I may just skip. But won't miss this show for the world!

If you can't watch this, but are still interested in seeing what VR is like when live, check this out:
    Velvet Revolver live at MSN Music in Concert

Update: 7/31/2007 10:30 PM, The e-concert was awesome! A very interesting novelty indeed. Looking forward to seeing VR in October.

Here's their bassist Duff McKagan promoting the e-concert.

Hey, Play This!

I'm going to hopefully see these guys live in October, with Alice in Chains.

Movie Trailer: The Darjeeling Limited

I may not have mentioned this before on blog; I happen to be a fan of Wes Anderson movies. His next film, The Darjeeling Limited is about three estranged American brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) travelling through northern and eastern India by train. Looks like an interesting and mellow comedy like other Anderson flicks.

Check out the trailer:

Trailer on Apple.com

If I were a Simpson's character

I'm not the biggest Simspsons' fan, but I found this to be hilarious!

Go to http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/avatar and make your own avatar. If I were a Simpson's character, I would be Apu's nemesis from back home, named Babu and this is what I'd look like:


Click Here to View Image!

Movie Review: Transformers

Movie Title: Transformers
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro and Jon Voigt
Directed by: Michael Bay
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Comic-based
My Rating: 7/10

Great special effects, clichéd storyline, strong supporting cast and 144 minutes in length would best summarize this movie. The love story starts when a high school geek (LeBeouf) tries to impress his class-mate hottie (Fox) and buys a car within his miserly daddy's budget, the car starts playing herbie for the first half of the movie at least. The action starts when a U.S. Military base in Qatar (which is in the Middle East for those who don't know, a U.S. friendly nation near Saudi Arabia) is attacked by a huge machine with a brain of its own and acquires intel from the servers there. Valiant survivors of this attack (Duhamel, Gibson) decide to take the probe of this attack into their own hands when they return home.

These brained-machines are a species from another galaxy's planet and are called auto-bots or transformers as humans like to call them. There are bad auto-bots on earth since their planet was destroyed, so the good ones arrive as well to protect human-kind, in good faith.

How does the kid get involved in this? His car is not just a love-bug, but also an auto-bot itself assigned to protect him and his family. His ancestor was one of the first to find an auto-bot on earth in the Arctic ice. So now it's more than just the car that impresses the hottie.. Hmm...

Despite the special effects, the fights between the good and bad auto-bots are sometimes too fast for live-action, and would have been better when animated. CGI can't always make everything real and visually appealing. The supporting cast carried the movie throughout. Rachael Taylor, the young Australian actress, impressed as a Department of Defense intern who finds the code and assesses the intent of the bots. The accent was definitely a plus.

Otherwise, I would have probably enjoyed the movie better if I was 15. I did enjoy the cartoons around that age and before. Despite the PG-13 rating, I felt too old to appreciate the movie too much, even thought I haven't hit 30 yet!

7/10. Maybe 8/10 on DVD, or if you take your kids/nephews/nieces.

Smashing Pumpkins' Tarantula Video: Re-edited by some Genius!

Smashing Pumpkins recently re-united, well... with only 2 of the old band-members and 3 new ones, and have just released their new album called Zeitgeist and it so far sounds awesome! Very typical 90's Alternative Rock brought back to life.

Their first music video from this "Tarantula" was re-edited with a different background by a genius on youtube, and now the video's theme is American foreground, European background. Kudos to Rev-24for the good work!



Watch it here.

In other news, I hope to be seeing the Pumpkins in concert on October 25th, but hope to see Velvet Revolver on Oct 9 first! WOOHOO!

The Best Fake Trailer Ever!

Watch this.

Is this real? I wish. My current favorite show Entourage (now that Sopranos has concluded) has their lead character Vincent Chase (played by Adrian Grenier) acting as drug lord Pablo Escobar in the biographical film Medellín. Basically, it's a film inside a TV-show, and unfortunately, it's not real.

Even casting Sofia Vergara in the fake movie was a great idea.

Maybe some day, Benicio del Torro will take up the role (even though he's already playing Che in Argentine).

Movie Review: Fantastic 4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer

Movie Title: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon.
Directed by: Tim Story
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Comic-Book Adaptation
My Rating: 6.5/10

Going by the rating I gave this movie, I think it would be wise to keep the review short as well. The movie wasn't horrible; Chiklis and McMahon acted rather well actually. Gruffud's a better actor and should go back to serious roles now that Hollywood has acknowledged the brit's acting prowess. Jessica Alba looked her worst that I've ever seen. Maybe it was the hair color or the tan, I'm not sure. I'm actually even half-hearted about taking out her Sin City poster that I have on my wall.

It's not a bad movie to watch with kids, teenagers. Not bad to wait for it to come on HBO either. The special effects were okay; the surfer character wasn't well personified. The return of Dr Doom was probably the mere saving grace of the movie, along with the Thing's wisecracks. The good thing about this movie is: you won't go in with high hopes like you may have had for spidey-3 or Shrek 3.

Movie Review: Ocean's Thirteen

Movie Title: Ocean's Thirteen
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Ellen Barkin, Eddie Izzard, Andy Garcia and Al Pacino.
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Genre: Comedy/Crime
My Rating: 8/10

So I'm finally back from a 4-week vacation and found some time to catch up with blogging movie reviews. O-13 was a good film, entertaining and consistently funny. Maybe not as many wisecracks as the first film, but as good as a "threequel" can get.

The movie summarizes as Danny Ocean's (Clooney) crew of crooks and grifters decide to take revenge on casino owner and millionaire Willie Banks (Pacino) for forcefully taking possession of a senior member of the crew's (Elliot Gould) share in a new casino at Las Vegas. Running short of funds, the crew takes a loan from their former (and possibly current) foe Terry Benedict (Garcia), who also conveniently has a personal grudge against Banks. In need of further technical assistance, they also recruit the brit computer genius Roman Nagel (Izzard) - to complete the thirteen.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt show their seniority and maturity, yet look much older than in the previous two movies. Matt Damon's character is given maturity too, with more responsibilities including playing decoy to distract Bank's right hand woman (Barkin). The others played their short but significant roles rather well. Bringing in French actor Vincent Cassel to continue playing Andy Garcia's acrobatic pawn was a waste, in my opinion. The biggest waste was probably of Mr. Pacino himself, playing a TV actor's role as a movie baddie.

Otherwise, setting that backdrop in Las Vegas again, and showing a different strategy in exploiting the new casino without exactly robbing it was interesting and well planned. This movie could make a dignified, non-disaster, end to the series.

8/10. Try not to expect too much. Especially with no Julia Roberts playing herself, nor Ms. Zeta Jones who distracted me too much from the story in O12.