Avatar is not the game changer that is hyped up to be

Avatar is the first movie I've watched in 3D. The hype is that it is made to be watched in 3D, and the 3D is not some afterthought tacked onto the movie like some other 3D movies. But being this is my first 3D experience, I'm unable compare Avatar's 3D to other movie's 3D, but from what I've seen, it gives a different experience, but not really essential. I have to admit that 3D does add something to the experience of watching the movie, but what it adds just isn't enough for it to be something that will change how people go watch a movie altogether.

Apart from adding something, 3D also takes something away. If you're not used to wearing glasses, then wearing those 3D glasses while watching the movie isn't really "comfortable". You never really forget that you're wearing glasses. The feel of it on your face, and the glass itself gives you a feeling like you're watching a movie through a window. And wearing glasses also makes the movie darker than normal. Some dark scenes become just too dark to see what's happening.

But the CG in Avatar really does push the boundaries of what has been done before. What they've really nailed is the facial expressions on virtual characters. That, they got it almost perfect. But as for the human/humanoid body movement, they've got most of it right, but some if it just isn't that good. But one GC element that they made "their's" bio-luminescence. Nobody has done it, and if they have it was never as good as what is seen here. The CG of mechanical things like vehicles isn't the best of what we've seen. Transformers 2 did a way better job of it than Avatar. And the vehicle and mech designs in the movie seems as if James Cameron is stuck in the 90s. They seem dated.

In the end, what makes a movie isn't the CG, it's the story. And the story in Avatar isn't a very original story. It is about humans trying to exploit the riches of a foreign planet at the expense of the aliens living there. Sure James Cameron did a great job of fleshing out the environment of Pandora, the alien planet, but as to what takes place on the planet, he could've done better. The dialog is very simplistic, but it's not as Star Wars prequel bad. There's nothing "edgy" to the story. It's very straight forward ,feels like it's a story made for a kids movie. There isn't any plot twists that turn things upside down.

So it has beautiful CG, but has a mediocre story. It still can be enjoyable if it has great action. But I'm sad to say that the action does not redeem the movie to enter the "enjoyably fun" category. The final battle is a big one, but I never really got into it. Maybe it's the 3D glasses, maybe it's just the direction, but it didn't work for me. What makes an action scene work is choreography and damage. As for the choreography, there isn't really much opportunity to implement cool choreography in the action scenes as most of the action is organism vs. machine. It's organism vs. orgasm is where choreography can shine. And as for damage, in their effort to keep the movie PG, there is very minimal blood splatter, and the vehicular damage wasn't very dramatic.

So there it is. Avatar. A movie that wanted to change things, and change may very well come if enough studios jump on the bandwagon, but if seen as what it is, a movie, it's just mediocre.

Transformers 2 Is Way Better Than The First One

I hated the first Transformers movie. The reason I hated it was because I had very high expectations for the movie. Being a fan of the cartoon series, I expected it to have a serious tone and a coherent story. The movie could have been so much better in the right hands. I couldn't understand at that time why anyone would enjoy the shitty juvenile excuse of a movie. After experiencing the first movie, naturally I decided not to spend money to see the sequel and waited the for dvdrip to be released. The first movie also lowered my expectations for the sequel, and the all round bad reviews that the second movie got when it was released in theaters didn't help either.

Yesterday, the dvdrip was released and after watching it, I am surprised to say that I enjoyed the movie a lot. The silly jokes somehow worked for me this time, and the nonsensical story actually made sense to me. Now it's the opposite, I can't understand why people hate this movie so passionately. It's not the greatest movie of all time, but it's a summer action movie that delivers what it advertises.

If you are going to watch this movie, make sure you watch it in HD. One regret I had while watching the movie was not waiting for the HD version of it to be available. I did watch the 3 cd version of the dvdrip, but it just wasn't comparable to the 720p version I saw from the sample I downloaded. This movie is made to be watched in HD. The action and and special effects are what I enjoyed most about the movie and it needs to be seen in all their HD glory. They have toned down the use of the "shaky cam" technique compared to the first movie and as a result, the action was more discernable this time. You actually know who's fighting whom most of the time and which limb they are using to beat each other up. Plus, the use of slow motion for "cool" action set pieces helped too.

My advice for anybody that's going to watch Transformers 2 is to turn off your brain, get in mood to see lots of explosions and huge robots fighting each other with some juvenile jokes sprinkled in between. You'll be rewarded with two and a half hours of pure unadulterated fun.

District 9 Is The Best Movie Of 2009 So Far

Saying this movie is good would be an understatement. The movie has it all, a very intriguing deep plot, good acting and great action. If I was to find a flaw in this movie, it would be the shaky cam technique employed at the beginning part of the movie and also at the very end. The shaky parts are supposedly documentary clips telling the story of Wikus, the protagonist. But rather than add to the feel of it, the shakiness is just nauseating. They just over did it. But after a while into the movie, they got out of the documentary mode and things couldn't be any better. And the special effects in his movie will have you believing that these aliens are real.

It's better that you go into this movie not knowing the deeper plot as a big part of the movie's entertainment value for me is the parts when things look hopeless and you really feel the despair and hopelessness of the characters. The only thing you need to know going in is that there are aliens stranded on earth and they are put in slums.

This is one of those movies that teases you that it's nearing its end, but inside, you go "No, I want more. It can't end like this", and the movie hears you and gives you more. And it's primed for a great sequel. The potential that this franchise has is just enormous. The way they can expand the story is just limitless and all of them can add to it's lore. This is a classic franchise in the making.

Slumdog Millionaire Is A Masterpiece

The latest product from Danny Boyle, the guy the brought us Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Sunshine but Slumdog Millionaire must be his best work yet.

It's not one of those movies that gets critical acclaim for it's great acting, or eyeball exploding special effects, or any of those award show categories. It is great because it does what movies do, and does it in an almost perfect way. It takes the everyday Joe's fantasy, put it in film form, and make anybody who watches it live the fantasy, even if just for 2 hours.

This movie is for the everyday Joe, what Twilight is for unpopular school girls, and Danny Boyle does it without the involvement of sparkling vampires.

Right from the get go the movie pulls you in. It's not one of those slow burning movies. The movie tells about this kid from the slums of India, who goes on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire gameshow and reaches the final question. They ran out of time before the final question is asked so they have to continue the next day. The police find it hard to believe a slum kid can answer all those questions so they interrogate him and he tells how he got to know the answers. In telling it, he practically tells his life story. And he has been through a lot. However, it is rather convenient that in the movie, the events that lead to him knowing the answers to each question in the gameshow is in the same chronological order to the chronology of the questions that are asked on the gameshow. But hey, it's a movie and I'm not complaining. So it shows how he knows the answer to the first question from events from he was a kid, up to the answer to the penultimate question from events just moments before being asked the question.

One of the things that sets this movie apart is how it shows India. This ain't your Bollywood India. It's the slums and how people go about their lives living there. Some scenes are harsh but at the same time, this is not one of those dark and gritty movies either. It actually is a feel good movie. Sure there are some hard reality shown in the movie but overall the movie is overwhelmingly feel good. It's so feel good that you can consider it to be Bollywood in a way. And that's why this movie is almost perfect. Everything was going perfectly in the movie, but how they wrapped it all up in the end seemed too Bollywood for me. Sure it's feel good, and I admit I did feel good, but I prefer my feel good endings have a bit more believability.

But why am I arguing about believability when I'm an everyday Joe and I had an excellent 2 hours. Plus, the music is great too. A.R. Rahman.'Nuff said.

The Love Guru Is Surprisingly Funny

Even before the movie was released, this movie had bad reviews. I myself thought this was going to be a shitty movie. From the trailer, it looks as if Mike Myers is recycling his old jokes for this movie. The last fairly good movie of his was the first Austin Powers, and every movie after that was terrible. The first Mike Myers movie i saw was Wayne's World 2, and loved it.

So after The Love Guru was released, the critics ripped the movie apart, saying Mike Myers is a "has been" and has lost his magical touch. It currently has a 3.2 rating on IMDB. They complained that he keeps doing the some jokes over and over again in his movies, and they have a point there.

Then yesterday, a screener of the movie appeared on the internets, and being that there has not been any good movies released on the net lately, I figured I'd give this one a shot. So after watching it, I was surprised at how funny I found it. Sure he rehashes some of his old jokes, but the rehashes worked well in the movie. These jokes worked better in this movie than in his Austin Powers movies. In his Austin Powers movies, he kinds of over-do it with his jokes, it's like "yeah, I get the joke already", but he keeps banging the joke on your head until it loses its funniness. It seems that he's learned from his mistakes and the jokes are done very well in this movie. He has learned when to stop.

Plus, compared to his previous movies, this movie is heavier on word-play jokes than physical jokes. And I like it like that.

Definitely, Maybe Is A Recommended Watch

Definitely, Maybe is one of the better romantic comedies in recent times. Just like the poster says, it's from the makers of Love Actually, another recommended romantic comedy. The story is set in the 90s, so there's Nirvana and Bill Clinton references, but they are more than just references, they are an integral part of the story. Instead of a story about one guy with one woman, or 3 guys with 3 women, it's about 1 guy with 3 women.

The story is told through flashbacks, the guy is telling this story to his daughter. The daughter wants to know about how the guy met her mother, so he tells her about the relationships he has had, and the daughter needs to guess which one is her mother. The story is heavier on the romantic side than the comedy side compared to Love Actually, but it's good. A highly recommended watch. And Elizabeth Banks is hot.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Trailer

First trailer for Indy 4. Looks good.

The only iffy thing about the movie is that Shia LeBeouf is in the movie. I hated him in Transformers, and I'm afraid he will spoil this movie too.

A Perfect End To Rambo

I decided to see this in theaters after hearing that it wasn't butchered by the censors. Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie. Over-the-top violence and gore as expected. But the best thing about it was how it ended. John Rambo finally finds peace with himself and returns home. A great way to end the series. After all that he's been through, I'm happy to see him at peace. Good for him.

Bandoleros Fixed Audio Sync Download Link

Well, I've just finished uploading Bandoleros aka Ladrón que roba a ladrón, a movie I mentioned about in my previous post. The movie, originally released by VoMiT had audio sync problems. I decided to fix it myself, and share it with everyone. I re-encoded the original source, so there's a slight dip in video quality, but not much.

Here's the link:
http://www.yaStorage.com/download.php?id=186014&key=da81aa885gndf676f1gg8aaa6c582ffg

The way to use the yaStorage link is to click on the word "Request" from "Request Download Link". Then after that, click on the letter "F" from "Downloading File".

Here's a sample video of the movie for you to check the quality:
http://rapidshare.com/files/85796986/bandoleros_fixedaudio_sample.avi

Enjoy.

Cloverfield Sucks For Others Too

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An updated version is below. The jump goes higher than I thought it would be.

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It seems that I'm not the only one who thinks Cloverfield sucks, and I've got the stats to prove it. After my previous post titled "Cloverfield Sucks", my blog got a big jump in the number of visits. Most of it is referred from Google with the search term "cloverfield sucks". Apparently I am not alone with this sentiment.

Click image for larger version

After further analysis of the movie, I think the problem was the movie didn't make me want to care enough about those yuppie characters. There are a lot of other movies that made me feel very attached to its characters, but this one didn't do it well enough. Maybe it's the unconvincing acting, or the maybe it's the script itself that didn't make me believe these characters were real enough to invest my emotions in them.

But the it's not like I didn't enjoy it at all. My main disappointment was with the ending. It ended at a point where I felt that things were only starting to get good and looked forward for it to get better. I wanted to see more of the monster.

I expected a different kind of movie. But my expectations are from the promotions and hype that the movie itself has generated. If I didn't know anything about the movie, if I didn't know that it's about a monster, and my only knowledge of the movie is from the movie poster only, then, maybe I'll truly enjoy it. But after so much focus on the monster from the media hype, I expect it to be monster-centric, not yuppie-centric.

Cloverfield Sucks

Cloverfield doesn't live up to the hype. They clearly had a sequel in mind when they made this movie. At the end of the movie, I went "That's it?".

It's a love story with the monster as a sideshow. Yes you get to see the monster, but it doesn't even touch on what the monster is, where did it come from, why is it attacking Manhattan, etc. I didn't go to see the movie just to see a monster being hit by missiles, but that's what the movie really is. Who gives a shit about the love story, I want the monster to be the star of the movie, not a bunch of yuppies with relationship problems. I have nothing against sequels but at least make the first movie a complete movie, and not just a jumping point for the real movie. And the camcorder style thing, was okay, it didn't bother me that much, but I prefer normal traditional camera style.

A real disappointment. Not worth my 10 bucks. I hope the movie doesn't do well, so they won't have to make a lame sequel.

American Gangster

American Gangster is a true story about Frank Lucas, a black gangster honcho who was bigger than the mafia during his peak. It's a really good movie.

Enough about the movie, while looking around for pictures of Lymari Nadal, who the lady plays Frank's wife in the movie, another person always crops up beside her in her pictures. That person is Edward James Olmos, the guy who plays Admiral Adama on BattleStar Galactica, and Lt. Martin Castillo (the boss cop) on Miami Vice. It turns out that this old guy is the babes' husband. WTF! Nice.

Lymari Nadal

Edward James Olmos

Married

Other than that, American Gangster is a very good movie, it was really easy for me to "get into" it. It feels long, but in good way. There's hardly a boring moment in the movie. Good editing.

Stardust is a *****/***** (5/5)

Stardust is superb. It's a fairy tale, but unlike most fairy tales, it's not written by some old hack who has died half a century ago, but written in modern times (1998) by the famed writer Neil Gaiman. I admit I'm not much of a novel reader, and I've never read the novel itself, but the movie really is excellent.

It has all the good things you expect from a fairy tale, without the pitfalls of a fairy tale created in olden times. Old fairy tales were made for people of that time. The way its told, the kinds of magic and stuff that are in it, the story elements, all are conceived by by old day mentality and experiences. That's why though some of those stories are good, they never really "clicked" perfectly (for me, at least). You have to condition your mindset to the way the story's needs it to be. But with Stardust, there's no need for that. There aren't any of those little quirky things in the story that you never really "get" just because "that's what people back then used to do". It flows effortlessly without interrupting your enjoyment of the movie.

This Neil Gaiman guy must be really good. I look up for more of his work on IMDB, and found out that he is one the the screenplay writers for Beowulf. I wasn't really interested Beowulf when it came out, but after seeing Stardust, I'll surely make an effort to download it when a DVDRip of it emerges.

Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a mixed bag. Death Proof, the Tarantino half of the movie is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. You can literally fall asleep watching the movie. The dialog is filled so much with "inside" reference, if you're not into the "Tarantino" state of mind, you wouldn't give a shit about what they're talking about. By "Tarantino" state of mind, I mean you're into old vintage cars, and 70s pop culture, and stunts and stuff. I'm not into that stuff, so the only good part of the movie was the lap dance scene by Vanessa Ferlito. Other than that, it just stretches itself with pointless rambling about car stunts. Even the violence isn't that heavy compared to the other half. I'll save you the hassle of watching the whole movie by embedding the only good part of the movie, the lap dance scene, here. Enjoy.




The other half of Grindhouse, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, on the other hand, is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's one of those over-the-top ultra violent zombie movies that is fun to watch, and at the same time, it doesn't feel old. They've put new ideas into it to make it feel different from the other similar movies that have been made. I can't even begin to tell how much I enjoyed this movie. A must watch.

If you're going to catch this one on DVD or download it, I recommend Planet Terror and give Death Proof a pass.

Chain Of Events That Led To Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain and Beyond

It all started with a Digg post about a horse breaking free and joining cyclists on the Tour De France. One of the comments of the post pointed out that the story has already been submitted before and got frontpaged on Digg in this original post. A comment on that original post pointed out that this footage was from a movie called Amelie. Replies to the comment and other comments were in praise of the movie. I became intrigued, and did a search on this Amelie movie that I've never heard of before. IMDB gave it an 8.6, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 90%.

So, I search mininova for amelie, and the torrent of the movie with the highest number of seeds is one with around 70 seeds and 40 leechers. That's a good enough number of peers for a non-mainstream movie. However, none of the torrents from the search results had English subtitles in them. The one with the highest number of seeders only gave a link to an .srt file of the subtitles.

I've never watched a movie with separate subtitles before, so I didn't know what player to use to view it. My google search on this showed VLC can load .srt files with movies, and I tried it, it works, but another player that cropped up in my search was Crystal Player, and there was high praise for this player. I decided to check it out, and managed to find a link for it on IT Hot News. And to my surprise, it is actually a very good media player. Not only can it load subtitle files, but the killer feature of this player is its ability to control the brightness/contrast of the video being played. I've been looking for this feature in a media player for so long, and I finally found a player that can do it. It is very convenient to have this feature, because more often than not, videos that I download, especially tv series like Lost and 24 have very dark scenes where it's very hard to tell whats happening. Couple that with my crappy monitor's low max brightness, it's unbearable.

Now, for the movie review itself. The title Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain more or less translates to The Fabulous Life of Amélie Poulain, at least that's what the subtitles I downloaded said. This film is touted as a masterpiece, as one of the best romantic comedies ever, but for me, it doesn't deserve that kind of critical acclaim. It's good, but not THAT good. It's not a romantic comedy in it's traditional form, because the romance part of the romantic comedy doesn't start until about half way through the movie. Even the guy she's supposed to be romantically involved with appears late in the movie, so I don't think this movie set out to be a romantic comedy.

First and foremost, this movie is about Amelie, and Amelie alone. Even though the other main characters of the movie have their own littles stories in the movie, but the main reason for their character's existence in this movie is to illustrate who Amelie is, what kind of a person she is, and what she is going through.

The movie has an artsy feel to it. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and the camera work complements this approach. And the use of special effects to convey Amelie's emotion was done well too. Audrey Tautou, who plays Amelie is cute. She's the chick who plays opposite Tom Hanks in The DaVinci Code. She looks a lot younger than she did in the Da Vinci movie.

Overall, I feel like the movie lacked focus. There was no pre-destined endpoint to get to. The movie doesn't start out with "Amelie is a lonely woman who's looking for a guy". This is more of a slice of life / coming of age movie. It shows a series of events in Amelie's life that leads her to becoming a new person, and the other characters in the movie are there just to facilitate her (albeit indirectly) to get to that point. The movie itself doesn't stick to me, but the character of Amelie, for some reason, still lingers in my mind.

So, there it is. From a lame story on Digg, to a fairly good movie, to a very good media player.

The Simpsons Movie

I went to see The Simpsons Movie today after finding out that the movie is being shown without any cuts. And the verdict? It was great. It's like a simpsons espisode, only longer, with better animation, and no boring parts whatsoever. The movie is packed with funny bits. Watching this movie, I can see why it took such a long time to make. The time they took certainly was not due to rendering the animation. This a 2-D movie, there's nothing to render. I feel like during all those years of production, they threw in hundreds of thousands of ideas for the film, and finally they filtered it out to only the few best ones to put into the movie, and result was a Simpsons fan heaven.

It's starts off insulting the viewers of the movie, saying they are stupid for paying for something that they watch on tv for free. And in the opening sequence where Bart writes something on the blackboard, He writes, "I will not download this movie". Yeah, like THAT's gonna work. Tom Hanks and Greenday make a cameo, and there's too many funny things to mention, or even to take in for that matter. It warrants a rewatch to get everything.

A Simpsons fan needs to watch it more than once, so for me, I ain't wasting another 7 bucks on it, I'll just wait for the DVDRip and download it. Watching it in the theater kind of spoilt the experience a bit for me.

You see, different people have different kinds of sense of humor. I had the unfortunate luck of sitting beside a girl who thinks every little funny thing warrants a laugh. However, I also have the feeling that her overzealous laughter is because she wants to show her boyfriend that she's having a good time watching this movie with him, while the fact is that she couldn't care less about it. Oh, the things people do for love. And apart from her, the other members of the audience laugh at different times, so throughout the movie, there's constant laughter, and its hard to concentrate on what they're saying in the movie over the laughs. So, I'll definitely need to watch this movie again, alone.

Pink Panther Surprisingly Good

I saw the first few minutes of Pink Panther on a HBO or Star Movies, I can't remeber which channel, but I was surprised that I enjoyed the portion of the movie that I watched. I didn't finish watching it on tv, so I downloaded it, and watched it, and liked it.

I don't usually find these kinds of goofy physical comedies, like Naked Gun, National Lampoon etc. that funny as I mainly watch them for the sometimes-funny parodies that they have. But Pink Panther is not a parody movie.

When it was first shown in the theaters, I wasn't even remotely interested in it, and the trailers and promos that they showed didn't help either. They marketed it as a physical comedy for kids with Beyonce thrown in to bring in the cool factor. I am not one of their target audience.

Sure the movie has some physical gags and fart jokes and genitalia jokes and stuff, but there is something different to it that makes it funnier than usual. And that something different is Steve Martin. The single most outstanding thing that made me enjoy this movie was Steve Martin's silly French accent. From that French accent alone, numerous hysterical jokes is derived. He portrays Inspector Jacques Clouseau excellently. I'm not saying his accent is good, I'm saying it's funny. And he's the only one form the cast that maintains a French accent throughout the movie, apart from Jean Reno of course. The other casts slip in and out of their accents.

Maybe it's just me having a French accent fetish, but this is one of the better comedies I have watched. Almost everybody else hates it, but like it. IMDB gave it a 5/10, and Rotten Tomatoes gave it 24%. If I have to rate it, I'd give it a 7/10.

I've compiled some of the funny moments from the movie to give you a taste of my sense of humor:

Innocent Voices - Good Movie

Innocent Voices

Smack in-your-face reality of the civil war in El Salvador. Though the acting wasn't that good, everything else was perfect, and more than made up for the poor acting. I found it really easy to immerse myself into the story. I think it has to do with setting. The school uniforms, the shanty houses in the village, the mango trees, the communal and family relationships portrayed are all very similar to that of what you will find here in Malaysia. Really good stuff.

Potter and Messi

Just watched the new Harry Potter movie, and I think it's a solid continuation of the last one. It's more focused this time around. Right off the bat, it's about Voldermort, with the lighter macigky stuff being put as a side story. And some cool new characters were introduced too, like Nymphadora Tonks played by the newcomer Natalia Tena, who is hot, by the way (why else would I mention her out of the all other new characters). And like most movies, the fight scene at the end of the movie was awesome. It looks as if they put most their special effects money on that fight scene, because there are some parts of the movie where the special effects looked cheap, but still better than the effects from the first movie. Harry Potter movies ain't all about special effects, the movie is mainly for kids, but there's enough depth to the story that adults can actually enjoy it without the need to turn off their brains.

Messi's goal
Uploaded by charlatecnica

Apart from the movie itself, another awesome thing that I saw today was Loinel Messi's goal against Mexico today. After watching that goal I had to clean the walls because it blew my brains out. The moment he chipped that ball, my brain went, "no way... No Way", then it happened, the ball went in, and my brain exploded. Argentina meet Brazil in the finals, my bet is on Argentina.

Cloverfield Trailer

Apple HD 1-18-08 (Cloverfield) Trailer

JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost, is working on a movie called Cloverfield, or at least that's what people are calling it. The title of the movie is still a mystery, but the trailer gives an idea of what the movie is about, and it looks awesome. Some say it's Godzilla, but whatever it is, it's good. At first, the Blair Witch style camcorder camera work made me assume that it was going to be a low budget indie thing, but then, at the end of the trailer, you'll see how kick ass this movie is going to be.