Rambo

Rambo is a 2008 film and the fourth film in the Rambo Series staring Sylvester Stallone.

The film is set primarily in Burma (or what the military junta calls Union of Myanmar), with the plight of the Karen people up front and center. It's interesting as an aside that I was unfamiliar with the Karen people until just a few months ago.

The film stars Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, Julie Benz as Sarah, Paul Schulze as Michael Burnett, Graham McTavish as the Mercenary Lewis, and Tim Kang (the "Shell Gas" guy) as Mercenary En-Joo.

John Rambo is convinced to help a humanitarian group across the border into Berma to give supplies to the sick and wounded. When the group fails to return, Rambo is asked to lead a group of mercenaries into the area and rescue the humanitarians.

This film is brutal. Absolutely brutal. Body parts fly every which way, the action is outrageous, insane, and grisly. I remember right around the time this film came out there was an interview on a local radio station with Stallone where he talked about how they had made sure that they researched all the weapons, and how the weapons actually "worked." And by worked, I mean how exactly they blew things up. That is, with meticulous detail and precision, to the point where they were sure that a weapon would do this or that to a body.

I have no idea if that story is true, but this film takes current action movies to a different level, where at least they were trying to be a bit more "heartfelt" like the first film was.

*** out of *****

Dumplings (Gaau ji)

Oh the horror of Dumplings. The absolute horror.

Dumplings is a 2004 Hong Kong horror film, directed by Fruit Chan. The film is actually an expansion of a short segement from the compilation, Three... Extremes. I've had the honor of seeing both versions, and I must say that both are almost equally disturbing.

The plot revolves around Mrs. Lee, who believes she is less attractive than she once was and would like to rekindle her romantic relationship with her husband. A local chef, Mei, cooks her special dumplings which she says will revitalize her.

The film stars Bai Ling as Mei, Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as Mrs. Lee, Tony Leung Ka Fai as Mr. Lee, and Pauline Lau as the Masseuse.

Well, the movie is something to experience. The visuals are bizarre (not "The City of Lost Children" bizarre, just odd), and troughout the entire film there is an uneasy feeling that's provided thanks to the aforementioned visuals and due to the freakish audio used throughout the film. The sound really sets the mood and lets the viewer know that something is not right.

I guarantee that you'll sit there with your mouth wide open at least once during the film. And why am I hungry for gyoza?

*** out of *****

Ed McMahon dead at 86

Proposal beats Hangover

Box Office Mojo has estimated that the Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds comedy, "The Proposal" has earned itself the top spot for its debut weekend.

"The Hangover" has been bumped from first place to second in its third weekend in theaters. The drunk buddy comedy has earned roughly $150 million dollars at the box office since it's release on June 5th. It is now the number one grossing rated-R film of 2009, surpassing "Watchmen."

The animated movie Up earned $21 million over the weekend, placing it in the top 10 for fourth weekend box office take.

Coming up later this month is the sequel to The DaVinci Code, Angels & Demons; the next installment of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation; and for Memorial Day, the Pixar film, Up.

"Year One" earned itself 20 million dollars and came in 4th place in its first weekend.

Coming out next weekend is "Transformers 2." Again, I still haven't seen the first film in its entirety - and don't plan to.

Shows that never had a chance

I just finished re-watching the short lived Babylon 5 spin-off "Crusade" in its chronological order. This was a far better show than I had remembered it being. I say chronological order because when it originally aired on TNT back in 1999 they screwed up the order. Bad.

Episodes were aried out of order, where events that happened in one episode were referenced before they aired the episode that the events happened in. But this discussion is for another time and another post.


This exercise got me thinking though, about all the shows that had their lives cut short - but had a great amount of potential behind them.

I think in the end I'm more upset about Crusade's cancellation than just about any other show. This is especially true after reading up on the episodes that never got filmed from season one. What makes it even worse is that TNT canceled the series before the show EVEN AIRED! They weren't impressed by the ratings that Babylon 5 brought in (good ratings by the way). The fans of the show would tune in - TNT regulars would tune out. If the ratings didn't increase their numbers for wrestling or Law & Order repeats - they didn't want to have anything to do with it. So they sabotaged the series and let it die before it was even born.

Another show that had its candle put out early was Firefly. However, Firefly got its chance with a second "season" when Joss Whedon created the film sequel, Serenity. Not a bad film, but I just don't know how well the series could have sustained itself over the long haul, especially if he retained the knack of killing off main characters in just about every season.

A show that I barely remember - but remember fondly was the extremely short lived series, "Everything's Relative," which I enjoyed - and in many ways is the prototype of the fantastic series, "Arrested Development." Of course, similarities arise since it stars Jeffrey Tambor and was created by Mitchell Hurwitz.

"Kings" receives an honorable mention, but since I won't be able to see all the episodes until it's released on DVD in a few months.

Now, if they would only release the fantastic series "Journeyman" on DVD I'd be happy. Why Bionic Woman, which lasted about 3 or 4 episodes before being canned has a DVD release, but a 13 episode run with an adequate "ending" wrapping up the show hasn't been is beyond me.

Oh well.

Sometimes the business can be criminal.

Second straight weekend for "Hangover" - any end to the binge in sight?

Box Office Mojo has estimated that the comedy, "The Hangover" has earned itself the top spot for the second weekend in a row.

The drunk buddy comedy has earned roughly $105 million dollars at the box office since it's release on June 5th.

The animated movie Up earned $30.5 million over the weekend, placing it in the top 10 for third weekend box office takes.

Coming up later this month is the sequel to The DaVinci Code, Angels & Demons; the next installment of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation; and for Memorial Day, the Pixar film, Up.

The remake "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" earned $25 million.

"Year One" comes out next weekend and "Transformers 2" will be released in two weeks. On a side note, I still haven't seen the first film in its entirety. I have no obligation to the franchise. I think I saw what you could add up in minutes as a total of two episodes worth of Transformers in my entire life, and the film was just too painful to sit through. Megan Fox? If I want to sit through a nonsensical and silly film just to see an "attractive" female, I'll watch a Stormy Daniels porn film.

RIP Analog TV

Today we say goodnight to American analog television signals.

~1941 - June 12, 2009

X-Files? Not quite.

24 Season 8 News!

Fox has reported that the next season will premiere January 17th, as a two hour event, and the typical "four-hour" premiere split between that week's Sunday and Monday.

Joining the cast this coming season are Katee Sackhoff ("Battlestar Galactica"), Freddie Prinze Jr., Mykelti Williamson (Bubba from "Forrest Gump"), John Boyd, Jennifer Westfeldt ("Grey's Anatomy") and Chris Diamantopoulos ("The Starter Wife").

The location of the season will be New York City. Apparently CTU will make it's return, run by the character Brian Hastings (Williamson),

Cole Ortiz (Prinze Jr.) fills in the "Chase Edmunds" role, with Dana Walsh (Sackhoff) and Arlo Glass (Boyd) as other members of CTU. Rob Weiss (Diamantopoulos) will be President Allison Taylor's chief of staff. Meredith Reed (Westfeldt) is a journalist.

Kiefer Sutherland, Cherry Jones, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Annie Wersching return.


Lets see how they treat New York's geography. Knowing that everything between Las Angles and New York is just "flyover" I can't imagine that they'll get too much incorrect. I'm still trying to take the 355 to Highway 236 past Lambourne Marina and the Port of Alexandria located across the river from Georgetown. And then maybe next week I can drive by the Kennedy Memorial Hospital which is apparently directly behind the United States Botanic Garden.

The Hangover

I'm not one to normally go to comedies in theaters. I haven't regularly gone for years - mostly because they're never really that funny. Over the last 7 months I've been surprised twice. I went to see "Role Models" with my brother and his girlfriend when I we were driving across the country and this past Friday I saw "The Hangover."

Everything that I saw about The Hangover before I saw the film screamed "awful." While the comedy is pretty standard in regards to its peers of today, the character dynamic is really what set it apart from the wolf pack. It's a wolf that's part of its own pack. The character interaction is clever, and the plot is so over the top that there's no need to retain any semblance of believability like with "real" comedies that betray all logical sensibilities (such as the absurdities that happen in the American Pie sequels) of plotting and interpersonal situations.

The basic, and only, premise of the film is, "We were so screwed up last night we have no idea what we did," which results in, "where's our buddy, Doug?!?!" I'd have to say the weakest part of the film is everything that happens before that point - where far too much screen time is used setting up the eventual revelation when they wake up the next morning.

The film opens with a peak into their unfortunate situation, where they have called the bride to be that they have "lost" her future husband. Cutting immediately to two days before this scene, they then introduce the characters. They arrive in Las Vegas, and toast the bachelor. Immediately cue the next morning - where they (and the audience) have no idea what they did the night before. The film slowly unfolds, with the characters slowly piecing together the mystery. Anton Chekhov would be proud of the "gun" used in the film, if you even know what that references is - give yourself a pat on the back.

The weakest part of the film is probably the dialog. It's simplistic in many spots, and removes all subtlety from many situations. Some lines feel like they were shoehorned in because someone might not "understand" who someone is or what someone does "I do weddings!" - of course you do, you work in a wedding chapel. Well that and the "MONSTER" energy drink product placement, which took up the entire right half of the screen for a good 15 to 30 seconds.

I'm sure a whole lot of cultural references went over the heads of the core audience - the Three Men and a Baby line - "Its got Ted Danson, Magnum P.I., and that Jewish guy" and the multiple references to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. This made it clear that the writers weren't complete flake. You can sometimes get by with a few "obscure" references - but they're hardly ever clever.

While Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms certainly added to the film's enjoyability - the film was made with the inclusion of Zach Galifianakis. Stay seated when the credits start - that part was the icing on the cake and probably what really sealed the deal when I thought about the film when walking out to the car. Perhaps it was my low expectations going into the film, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I had expected to.

*** 1/2 out of *****

RIP David Carradine

Yahoo News reports that the "Kung Fu" actor was found dead in his Bangkok hotel room.

Based on reports, it appears it was a suicide.

Total Recall remake?

Say it ain't so....

The Hollywood Reporter has an article on an upcoming remake of the 1990 science fiction film, "Total Recall."

The original was directed by Paul Verhoeven and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, and Ronny Cox.

Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium and Ultraviolet) is set to write this remake, with Neal H. Moritz developing and producing. The article goes on to state that the studio is calling it a "contemporized adaptation," whatever that means.

Bad news is what that means.

Shut down the reactor. Shut down production.