As regular readers here will know, I’m a huge Disney fan. I love the “golden era” Disney movies; I’m not sure whether I should admit this, but I can sing along to a scary amount of Disney songs. I’ve been so excited since Disney returned to doing musicals. For me, it hasn’t really mattered whether it’s CGI vs hand-drawn (or even live action, to be honest), or fairytale vs non-fairytale; what I want are sing-alongable songs and pretty scores.

While I loved Enchanted, I wasn’t that impressed with The Princess and The Frog, mainly because I didn’t like the music. So I had been curious to see how that would turn out with Tangled; which way would it go?

Tangled takes the tale of Rapunzel, but adds a whole new extra back story, new characters and magical hair. As a child Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is kidnapped by an old woman (Donna Murphy) who needs Rapunzel’s magical healing hair to keep her young and immortal. Her “mother” keeps her locked away in a tower, telling her it’s for her own good and that the world is too scary and dangerous a place for someone like her. But when a dashing bandit, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), discovers Rapunzel and her tower, she demands to be shown the outside world.

I got to see Tangled two months ago, and ever since seeing it I can’t stop listening to the soundtrack! You’ve got all the usual suspects: the cheerful opening song (When Will My Life Begin), the evil villain song (Mother Knows Best), the side character song (I’ve Got A Dream) and the love song (I See The Light). I was initially a bit underwhelmed by When Will My Life Begin and Mother Knows Best, but after listening to them more, I actually really like them. The other two (I’ve Got A Dream and I See The Light) I loved the moment I heard/saw them in the cinema. Although the scene for I See The Light with its lanterns makes it difficult not to love that song; it’s just so fitting and romantic.

And that brings us to the CGI and the 3D. The lantern scene is gorgeous, and the prettiest use of 3D I’ve seen so far. I was expecting to miss the hand drawn animation, but the CGI in Tangled is great. It somehow was very reminiscent of hand drawn animation, with the characters having the same vibe as hand drawn ones (read Bleeding Cool’s interview with Glen Keane, he’s had a lot to do with that).

I also love the relationship between the two main characters. In most Disney movies you’ll find a strong lead character and a weaker less-prominent love interest. With Tangled, both Rapunzel and Flynn get time to grow and they’re both equally strong characters. Rapunzel is sweet, yet one of the feistiest Disney princesses. I think she’s my second favourite princess so far (with bookworm Belle being still #1). Flynn is great as the swashbuckling rogue, although I can’t really say much more about this character without spoiling the story.

Mother Gothel isn’t the scariest villain, but definitely the most manipulative one (although Jafar comes close behind). Pretending to be Rapunzel’s mother and basically guilt-tripping her into staying in a locked tower, Gothel is a twisted portayal of the over-protective mother. Finally I’ve got to mention the horse Maximus. Maximus has some of the funniest moments in the movie, even though he acts more like a dog than a horse.

Tangled was everything I was hoping it would be. It’s got a sweet story, two strong main characters, adorable and funny sidekicks, catchy songs and gorgeous visuals. I really want Disney to do more musicals, cause they’re just so much fun!

Last weekend I started a little side project visualizing the UK box office. I was at Culture Hack Day and the UK Film Council had provided some cool data to play around. It contained info on movie screenings over the UK, not only “real” cinemas, but also screenings held in universities, galleries, etc. And it would have screening times, ticket prices, geolocation and more cool stuff. Only… that data wasn’t actually completely available yet. So instead I started looking at the box office data from the UK Film Council site, and whether or not I could do something with that. Eventually I want to use that advanced data though and merge that into what I’ve created now.

I started off with a ‘simple’ overview of 2010 (see here for the actual version):

It shows the weekend gross per weekend for the 50 highest grossing movies of 2010. It’s interesting to see how well some movies perform in comparison to others. I also made a larger version with 100 movies where you see in a bit more detail how the movies are doing.

I then had a look at the highest grossing movies of 2010 (see the full version here):

Not much surprise there, although it’s a bit depressing to see how much money bad movies can make (Twilight, Clash of the Titans, Valentine’s Day…).

The next step was making a similar graph as the first one, but only for the last couple of weeks (see here for the full version):

The current week is still missing (waiting for the UKFC to update their website), but it’s great to see the jump The King’s Speech made last week.

Finally I made charts for every week I had, showing the percentage of the box office each movie took (see the full version here):

I really like these and the different patterns you discover. Like Valentine’s Day was the highest grossing movie in the week of Valentine’s Day, but only by 2% (with Avatar beating it the next week).

This is only the first step in this project; I really want to do more with the data I have. The next things I’m focusing on are making the graphs embeddable, adding notes and interesting dates to each graph (like when bank holidays were, or important events that might influence movie-goers etc), grabbing more data about the movies (like director, actors, writer, etc) and being able to show that data when you click on a movie.

I’d love to hear though what you all think of the graphs, and what type of stuff you’d like to see. It’s been fun working on this and I’m hoping I can do more with it!

I’ve been really slack the past couple of months with writing up reviews of all the movies I’ve seen. One of my New Years resolutions is to blog more regularly about the movies I have seen, but I thought I should catch up with writing up some of the stuff from last year. I was shocked to realize my last proper review was back in August (seriously?!? How did that happen?), that’s too many movies I’ve seen that I didn’t end up writing about!

There are at least 20 movies I hadn’t written about yet, so I’ve split it up into two posts. Ten reviews today, and 10 more in a couple of days.

Tron: Legacy

As I’ve said in previous blog posts, I enjoyed Tron Legacy. There’s a lot about the movie that’s not good (especially the plot), but it’s still a lot of fun. Seeing it at the IMAX was really worth it; the visual effects and the 3D are gorgeous. And the score by Daft Punk? AWESOME. The story though was very disappointing and I wish they’d have come up with something better. There are just too many plot holes and inconsistencies for me to really love this film.

Inception

I know, I know, it’s really bad of me that I haven’t even written about Inception here! I love Christopher Nolan’s movies, so I was really expecting a lot from Inception. I know so many people who adore this movie, but I didn’t like it as much as I was hoping to. It is a good movie, but I was hoping for something a bit… smarter. Yes, Inception is a confusing and complex movie, but I wish it was less straightforward, and made use of the dream element much much more. Nolan introduces rules to the world of dreaming, while in reality anything is possible in dreams…

The Social Network

I wanted to like The Social Network and I sort of did. It’s one of those movies of which I wonder if I’m maybe to close to the “real” world (like how CSI would be for actual crime scene analysts). Some stuff in The Social Network just feels over the top (the hiring-interns scene… yeah, it’s exactly like that in real life… “take a shot for every 10 lines of code you write”). Maybe I should rewatch it again, but first time around I didn’t find it amazing.

Megamind

I wasn’t expecting much of this movie, but it turned out to be quite funny. It “stars” Will Ferrell as Megamind, an evil villain who tries everything to bring down his arch enemy Metroman (Brad Pitt). Once he does though, he realizes that without his arch enemy his life is empty. The story is a bit predictable, but it’s still sweet to see the transformation Megamind goes through.

RED

This movie was a lot of fun. Take a bunch of old actors, throw in some action and a touch of romance, and you’ve got yourself a cheesy yet romantic over-the-top action flick.

Scott Pilgrim

Again another movie I liked, but didn’t find as fantastic/awesome/phenomenal as most people seemed to think it was. Yeah, it did look sort of cool, but I just didn’t like most of the characters. Neither Scott or Ramona were particularly likable (although Knives was awesome!). I did like the video game references, but the movie came nowhere near my favourites list of this year.

The Next 3 Days

This movie starred Russell Crowe as a teacher whose wife (Elizabeth Banks) gets convicted for a crime she says she didn’t commit. Crowe becomes obsessed with figuring out how to help her escape from prison. It was an okay movie, nothing spectacular, but great for a quiet night in. Crowe is great as the husband afraid of losing his wife forever, and will do anything to get her back.

Easy A

I loved this movie! It stars Emma Stone as Olive, a teenager who lies about losing her virginity. Before she can admit it’s a lie, it spreads through the rumour mill at her high school and Olive is branded a slut. Instead of denying it though, Olive decides to embrace her new identity and tries to take advantage of it. The dialogue in this movie was awesome with some of the snappiest oneliners of the year. Plus even though it’s about sex and losing your virginity, the movie is really sweet.

Salt

Angelina Jolie as a spy? That should be awesome, right? It sort of was. On one hand I really liked that they attempted to make a smart movie: barely anything was explained with unnecessary over-expository dialogue, allowing the viewers to make their conclusions. On the other side… it was predictable.

Despicable Me

“It’s so FLUFFY!” Not sure I can add more than that. The movie is okay, but that one line is just brilliant.

As I said in the previous post, I really liked the new Tron movie. It’s turning into one of those movies though, of which opinions are very divided. I didn’t think it was perfect: it’s got a very weak plot (even more annoyingly weak the second time around), but the visuals are gorgeous, the music is great and it’s still a lot of fun.

I’m not sure how it started, but tomorrow there will be a Tron flashmob! Here’s the description from the Facebook page:

To celebrate the new Tron:Legacy film we are inviting you to come down and be part of TRON OFF, a game of Ultimate Frisbee Dodgeball with one team playing for the new film and one team playing for the original Tron film.

Team Captains are: Craig from The Establishing Shot playing for Tron Legacy and Andrew from Nonsense Film playing for the original Tron film.

We shall be filming this for YouTube so if you have a costume – BRING IT! Otherwise if you are playing for the original film please wear something white, and if you are playing for Tron:Legacy then please wear something black. This is so we can distinguish between the 2 teams.

We shall be giving out prizes for the best dressed and also for the best and worst throw of the day as well. Prizes have been donated by Disney and will include official Tron YoYo’s, gloves and Flynn Lives T-Shirts.

I’ll be there! Playing for the new Tron. I’m still trying to figure out if I can manage to pull a Quorra costume together. Olivia Wilde was awesome in the movie, and I’m so in love with her haircut (I don’t want to cut my hair that short again though, wondering if I can do the asymmetrical bangs with longer hair?).  So: if you’ve already seen Tron, will you be there tomorrow? And fighting for which team?

It’s going to be Tron Weekend the next few days here on MissGeeky! Tron was finally released today, and I’ve already managed to see it twice (not twice today though, that would be just weird). I really enjoyed the movie, despite some major flaws.

I’ve got some cool Tron related blog posts for the next couple of days, including my review and an awesome giveaway!

You remind me of the babe (What babe?)
The babe with the power (What power?)
The power of voodoo (who do?)
You do (do what?) remind me of the babe…

Do I really need to explain this tee after those lyrics? Me really wantz this one:

The T-shirt is available on ThinkGeek for $18.99.

I really love the all-nighter events that IMAX hold throughout the year. I got to go to the Batman one last year and it was awesome watching those movies all behind each other This time around they’re doing a Terminator all-nighter, showing all 4 movies.

That’s over 8 hours of Terminator! It will be on the night of October 1, starting at 23:59. There are still lots of tickets available with tickets ranging from £19 to £29.50.

I won’t be able to make it (I’m in the Netherlands that weekend), but it looks like it could be a fun event!

I’ve already posted a couple of trailers for this movie, but I can’t wait to see it! It’s already out in the US, but we’ll have to wait one more week for it. The trailer does show a lot, so if you’ve already decided to see this movie, I’d avoid watching it.

This isn’t really a proper post; you won’t find an entire review here. But… I got to see The Last Airbender a couple of weeks ago, and wrote up a review for Bleeding Cool. They are one of my favourite sites, with news, reviews and more on comics and movies. So head on over to Bleeding Cool for my review of The Last Airbender!

Yet another remake based on a beloved childhood movie. Will Hollywood ever get enough of remaking stuff? Anyhow, when I first heard there’d be a Karate Kid remake, I thought there was no way in hell it could ever be as good as the original. Turns out I was wrong.

The Karate Kid stars Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith) as Dre Parker, a 12 year old boy who moves to Beijing with his mother (Taraji P. Henson). Dre falls for his classmate Mei Ying, but in the process makes an enemy out of Cheng, a kung fu prodigy. After getting beat up by them, Dre turns to the maintenance man Mr Han, who agrees to teach him kung fu.

The thing with remakes always is “why remake it?”. In the case of Karate Kid, I have to admit the original is pretty outdated, and if you ask anybody under the age of 16, chances are most haven’t seen it or at least aren’t as attached to it as my generation. The remake does a great job of modernizing the story, and recreating what we loved in the original for new audiences.

The story is pretty much the same: kid gets bullied, kid meets crazy old guy, kid learns martial arts, etc. But there are a couple of changes which work out right. For starters, the main character is younger; I saw the original when I was 11/12ish and would have loved it if the main character was the same age as me. Next to that the movie takes place in China; besides the gorgeous scenery, it gives the story a nice added backdrop.

Jaden Smith is great as Dre, and I do see quite a bit of his father in him. His character starts out as a tad annoying, but you slowly start liking him. I was scared that Jackie Chan’s portrayal as the martial arts teacher would be silly, but he plays the character straight without any goofyness.

I still find it weird that they just didn’t rename the movie to The Kung Fu Kid (I’m guessing the studio liked the name recognition of the original), cause there’s no karate in this movie at all. This does mean that the lessons (Wax on, wax off, etc) are given a new kung fu spin and it’s fun to watch Dre learn kung fu.

The Karate Kid is a fun movie and if you have kids a must see for this summer. It’s the good type of remake, taking what worked in the original and recreating it for modern audiences.