Archive for July 2011

Home Archive for July 2011

There seems to be a continuous stream of super-hero movies at the moment and if I'm perfectly honest I'm getting a little bored. Yes, they're all different superheroes and they all have different powers but essentially the plot lines are all the same. Bad guy emerges. Ordinary man suddenly turned into superhero. Superhero saves world. Life goes on. This is why I was so surprised that I was actually really looking forward to the release of Captain America. I had no idea who Captain America was or what he could do but from the minute I watched the trailer I knew this was a movie I had to see. Admittedly I just wanted to see that one scene where Chris Evans steps out of the machine transformed from a puny, little guy into a tall, muscular, lean, mean, fighting machine. It truly was one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. I actually googled the movie to see if there was another actor portraying the skinnier Steve Rogers and I was stunned that there wasn't another actor or even a stunt double, it's all CGI! I was incredibly impressed by the smooth transition, but also the fact that the muscles are real. There are no effects used after the transformation so I think Chris Evans deserves a round and applause ladies and gentlemen, god knows how many hours he put into toning that physique!

The story revolves around Steve Rogers, a man desperately wants to do his bit for the country by fighting in the war, the only problem is, he was born into a body that simply wasn't made for fighting. Although his body is frail and weak, his mind and his heart are determined and thankfully for Steve the right people see this in him. Thus begins his transformation from Steve Rogers to Captain America. Some say that when this movie starts to go downhill when the action begins, but I don't think this is true. There are enough high powered leaps and shots fired without going over the top and they make your heart beat just that little bit faster.

The accents in this movie are superb. I've often found that a really good movie can be spoiled when just one character speaks with a terrible accent, thankfully, that is not a problem here. Hugo Weaving and Toby Jones do a particularly good German-English accent and I thought it was very convincing. There are some British actors used in this movie which was good to see, not only because it meant diversity in the cast but also because it showed that the US and the UK were united in the war.

On the whole I found this movie quite believable, many a time I have found myself chuckling throughout a superhero movie because it's just so ridiculous, perhaps it is because Captain America is set in the 1940s during the war which was an actual historical event as opposed to a completely made up story. Also there was nothing silly like a spider bite involved, instead he was injected with what were essentially super steroids, which I'm sure will be invented at some point in the future. One thing that annoyed me a little was that when Schmidt's (arrogant bad guy trying to destroy the world) troops saluted him they said 'Hail Schmidt!' and proceeded to raise both arms in the air, presumably to mimic Hitler's Nazis; however, the effect was rather melodramatic and silly (why on earth would you raise both arms?!).

I was quite impressed by the bunch of actors used in this movie, most of them are not only quite high profile actors but are very talented too. In fact, I think all of the actors are fairly famous. Here are a couple names: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Richard Armitage, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones and Neal McDonough. If you haven't heard of any of those people then you need to watch more movies! ... Or maybe I need to get out more...

Towards the end of the movie as the action dies down the romance is dialled up. Well, every superhero needs a lady! The thing that bothers me about the romance between Captain America and Peggy Carter is that they don't spend a lot of time in each others company, they never go out on a date, but they're completely smitten. I did; however, still think that the ending was incredibly heartbreaking. Speaking of the ending, it was terrible. The ending made me extremely angry and it was very unexpected, but not in a good way. I guess you could praise the script writer for creating such an unanticipated end to the movie; however, I feel that it left many loose ends, there wasn't enough detail, and things simply did not turn out how I wanted them to!

Overall, I thought that this was a very good movie with plenty of action and there's a good plot. It's quite fast paced, but not so fast that you get left behind; the romantic aspects generated a few 'aww's so I guess that was a job well done and there are even a couple of funny moments which make the movie lighter and more enjoyable. Apart from the ending, which I was very disappointed with, this was an excellent movie and I highly recommend it - to boys and girls.

IN CINEMAS NOW.

Bad Teacher.

After several weeks of continuous bugging from my friend I finally agreed to accompany her to see 'Bad Teacher'. She thought that the advertisements looked 'hilarious' and that Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz together would make it an excellent movie. I; however, approached this movie with trepidation, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of and I really should have gone with my gut and saved myself an entire weeks pocket money and an hour and half of my time because this movie is rubbish.

Whilst the concept and the advertisement make this movie seem very attractive and comic the film does not live up to expectations. I'm guessing the point of this movie was to see Elizabeth (Diaz) develop as a character and transform from a superficial gold digger to an honest, down-to-earth role model for her students, but I did not see this. There is no development of Elizabeth's character, she seems to just change from one person to another, but even at the end of the movie Elizabeth does not seem like a very good teacher or someone with particularly good morals.

There are some sexual scenes in this movie and they are probably the funniest things about this movie because they're just so god-damn ridiculous. (Yes, Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake dry-humping is hilarious.) They scenes don't add anything to the plot at all. In fact, I'm not even sure why they were included seeing as movies about 'bad' teachers should be aimed at children and teenagers who actually attend school and have bad teachers therefore making this movie extremely inappropriate. Watching Diaz throw her wet body at a car just reminded me of a fish out of water, flopping around. Of course, she did look sexy whilst doing it in as little clothing as possible, but still, she looked ridiculous.

I found the plot line very boring throughout the movie, not a lot seemed to happen. The main focus seemed to be on Elizabeth trying to earn money for a boob-job, which she doesn't even get in the end. Supposedly this shows her epic change in character proving that you don't need to change yourself and blahblahblah but it doesn't. Curiously, Scott (Timberlake) agrees that Elizabeth should get a boob job because he believes that it's okay to want to improve yourself; however, I got the impression that he was supposed to be the character with the greatest morals in this movie, so whoever developed his character didn't think that one very well through.

At the end of the movie Elizabeth starts to date Russel (Jason Segel), the gym teacher, this also is presumably to show that she is no-longer a gold digger, but it doesn't. She even asks him if agreeing to go out with him means that she's consciously making the decision to be with a low-paid gym teacher. Their relationship also appears to be mainly sexual as the pair don't really interact that much throughout the film.

All in all this is a movie about a gold-digger who's extremely lazy and bad at teaching, in the end she is not so much of a gold-digger, she's slightly less lazy, and slightly better at teaching, but to be honest, there isn't much of an improvement. Don't bother wasting your money on this movie.

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick.

Crescendo is the sequel to the very successful novel 'Hush Hush'. Patch and Nora's story continues but there are many unexpected twists and turns right from the onset. The plot line of Crescendo is completely different to that of Hush Hush which is good as many authors run dry after one really good novel and fair to come up with more interesting material.

Crescendo draws out some threads from Hush Hush and expands and develops them, the most prominent of which being the death of Nora's father. Was it really under 'normal' and 'human' circumstances? Was it possible that Patch was involved? Nora's quest to find out what happened to her dad and who killed him drives the plot of this novel. Unsurprisingly the fallen angels and the nephilim are heavily involved and we see the introduction of a new character: Scott. He's the loser childhood friend that Nora had forgotten about, but now he's transformed into a muscular, mysterious hunk. Ordinarily Nora would probably ignore Scott and his type, but the fact that Patch is telling her to stay away from him and that he seems to have so many secrets draws her to him. As Patch seems to draw closer to Nora's arch enemy Marcie Miller, things begin to hot up. People's relationships come under scrutiny and there are quite a lot of shocking moments when the truth is revealed. This book is easy to read and with the very exciting plot you'll just want to keep reading on and on.

There is only one thing about this book that I dislike and that is that Patch and Nora don't spend a lot of this novel together as a couple. In fact Patch isn't present in a lot of the novel, not physically at least, of course he's still on Nora's mind for nearly every second of the day. However, we are rewarded with many scenes of sexual tension between the pair some of which are better than those of the previous book.

This book is excellent in driving the plot of the series forwards and it progresses much. This book was indeed worth the wait and I sincerely hope that 'Silence' does the same. I highly recommend this book for all paranormal lovers, don't think that this is a book about 'silly little angels'. These are hardcore, bad-boy angels that have fallen from Heaven.

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

FILM REVEIW: Captain America: The First Avenger

Whats Hot? Technology.

Whats Hot? Anime.

Whats Hot? DVD.

Whats Hot? Movies.

Transformers: The Dark of the Moon.

Whats Hot? Music.

One Direction.

Whats Hot? Music.

Whats Hot? Competitions.

FILM REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Whats Hot? Movies.

Whats Hot? Music.

Whats Hot? Movies.

Whats Hot? Books.