Movie Star Blog

Good review of Syriana.

I’ve never been a fan of Matt Damon and after seeing Team America: World Police, I can’t watch him act without seeing his caricature from the film. But he was tolerable here. Clooney, who for so many of his films plays a character like his Dr. Ross character on ER, turns in a good performance here too. The rest of the cast turn in good performances.

The Island didn't stay in theaters very long, but this blogger thinks it's worth getting the DVD.

The story itself is pretty standard in regards to a sci-fi film. It is in the future (2019), and focuses on science that has gone bad. The world is contaminated. You live in this bubble. You can get out by winning a lottery to THE ISLAND, the only non contaminated landscape left in the outside world. The movie starts out with men and women who live in this utopian society. It kinda reminds me of the book “A Brave New World”. As the plot thickens however, some of the members of this society begin to question their life and their reason for living. In their quest to find themselves, they discover many things that cause them concern.

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Does playing the part of a real person improve Oscar chances for Phoenix River in Walk The Line?

Looking at some of the early Oscar favorites, it seems that portraying a real life person is a surefire way to garner yourself a nomination. I still haven’t seen 2004’s Ray, but one of the things I’ve heard most about Jamie Foxx’s performance is how uncanny his portrayal of Ray Charles is. In Walk The Line, Phoenix’s performance is a different style altogether. What’s impressive to me is that he doesn’t “channel” Johnny Cash. He doesn’t look like him. He gets the raw energy of the voice right, even if he doesn’t quite match Cash’s barrel-chested bass. But he definitely nails Cash’s swagger. His Cash is less of an impersonation and more of a fully fleshed-out character. If viewers walk into a theater unaware of Johnny Cash and his life story, they will still be mesmerized by the Man in Black. Phoenix creates a character while still doing justice to the real man.

I completely missed Man on Fire.

What a fantastic movie this is. I hadn’t heard of this movie at all until suddenly it showed up in my Netflix Cue. Move is about John Creasy (played by Denzel Washington), a retired assassin with 16 years of miltary experience and extensive counter-terrorism work, who heads off to Mexico to meet his friend Rayburn (played by Christopher Walken) who recommends that Creasy get a job. Through his associates, he finds Creasy a job as a body guard protecting Pita Ramone (played by Dakota Fanning). As in a typical Hollywood movie build-up, she ends up getting kidnapped and the story takes off from there.

Check out the article in the L.A. Times this weekend about Tom Cruise and Scientology.

Apparently Tom “mad as a bag of hammers” Cruise has told recovering fire fighters that they should come off of the medicine that’s keeping them alive (or at least stopping them from wheezing all the time.) because his made up religion told him so.

Syriana didn't score too well at the box office.

This is fundementally flawed because of the mindnumbingly boring subject matter. Oil politics and corruption law. Zzzz. It probably would have made a better documentary(if you could pin down any of these stories or similar ones to make the connections about). Matt Damon’s character is a complete conundrum to me. I just don’t understand most of the choices they made with him, especially the stuff with his family(actually, the oddest choice of that is the only one I understood, the thing with his kid). Clooney’s storyline was probably the best, because it dealt with intrigue, torture, set ups and deals, and shady spy action in Lebanon as well as being fucked in the ass by the CIA and having clandestine meetings with threats being thrown around between the waitress dropping things off. The rest, I don’t know. It’s a terribly important subject matter, but much like Crash it bit off more than it could chew in the space of 2 hours. Maybe an ongoing HBO series you could have covered it all, but you only scratch the surface in 2 hours and bore the audience while you do it.

R.I.P.

Then his big break: playing Harrison Ford’s detective sidekick in the 1990 courtroom thriller “Presumed Innocent.” That role led to his hiring for the final four years of “L.A. Law.”

Haven't seen either Kippur or Free Zone.

Anyway, last night we finished seeing the movie Kippur directed by Amos Gitai. This is the second Gitai movie we’ve seen (Alila was the previous one we saw), and it seems to follow the same style that Alila has. According to what I read about his latest movie Free Zone it seems all his movies use the same techniques. The movie uses very long takes, like a 7 minute scene where four soldiers try to pick up a wounded soldier from the mud. This film (and Alila) too are filled with long pointless scenes that mid-way through them you ask yourself “why does he need to have them this long?”. Even “Free Zone” starts with a 6 minute closeup of Natalie Portman’s crying.

Lots of Hollywood actors supporting clemency for one of the founders of the Crips gang who's sentenced to die.

There has been talk in the media about how he is an angelic god-like person now who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I guess Saddam was busy this year. Seriously, the talk about the Nobel Prize nomination is pure 100% bunk. The only people that can nominate somebody are the members of the Nobel committee, that doesn't include Snoop Dog or Jamie Foxx.

Try imdb.com.

I watched The Brothers Grimm today at the cinemas at Burwood. The movie was good, but Burwood is a hole. The movie has spunky Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in it, oh la la. Mark’s in love with Matt Damon now instead of the other dude, whatshisface…..can’t remember his name. I could google for it, but I’m not that interested in finding out.

Jake Gyllenhaal was terrific in Donnie Darko.

Jake Gyllenhaal is also simply terrific as Donnie. His nails his character perfectly as the weird, mysterious, but rebellious (and therefore, kinda cool) kid in class.

Of course they are.

Except I've never worn platform anything (or had a pedicure) and (this may come as a shock to your tender sensibilities, straight people) hot guys have been kissing in my life for about 20 years. So, yeah, thank you Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger for risking the raw edge of career suicide to play two monosyllabic tough guys who kiss. While loudly proclaiming that YOU ARE OF COURSE COMPLETELY STRAIGHT and that you Deserve an Oscar for pretending to be attracted to Heath Ledger. (I'm sorry, I never say this, but...) Whatever!

Brokeback Mountain is testing a lot nerves.

I never expected to feel that way about Heath Ledger. “Oh, cool a gay cowboy story…Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal…uh-huh…Well, we’ll see how it turns out.”

I'm right there with you on the two handed soft drinks.

When you put movie reviews up against their subject matter, I’d bet the reviews are more interesting than 9 out of 10 movies. I try and read reviews from both sides of the camp before I shell out $35 on two tickets, an endless bag of popcorn, and a fucking water cooler sized coke (seriously, must they insist on pushing soft drinks that require two hands to hoof back to your seats?). Unless, of course, the movie stars Ben Affleck, in which case I don’t need to read the reviews because they’ve all temporarily set aside creative differences and pitched tents at the BOSTON USED TO BE COOL UNTIL WE HEARD BEN AFFLECK GREW UP THERE camp.

I think Jim Carrey has a little more range than Ashton Kutcher.

I had borrowed all three Harry Potter DVDs from my mom, so I watched those that night. I had thought about decorating for Christmas, but couldn’t get into the mood. Friday I didn’t do too much. I knew I didn’t want to be out near any place where there would be shopping because I knew it would be crazy. So I just stayed in and watched more movies. I watched Just Married and Kilometer Zero, both were ok. I really don’t like Ashton Kutcher, but I do like Brittany Murphy. It just seems like Ashton Kutcher plays the same character in just about every movie. He’s like Jim Carrey, not much range.

Hate those shallow places where all anyone wants is Orlando Bloom.

Well, still single. I might turn gay, I mean hey i'm camp anyway. Think i'd rather be gay and single than straight and single, not cos I like men or owt, but cos the lack of gay men in worcester would be a better excuse to be single than, well there are a lot of single girls but none of them match my standards. Or I don't match the one single standard of all girls here, which is that I must look like Orlando Bloom and have his wallet because personality doesn't count for anything these days. Yes worcester is a very shallow place, apart from being a deep pile of shit.