I’m not exactly a Martin Scorsese fan; I still have to see a lot of his older films and I fell asleep during both The Aviator and The Departed. This trailer of Shutter Island seems great though and much more my type of movie than what he has previously made. 

Shutter Island is based on the like-wise named book by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the books Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River. It features Leonardo DiCaprio as a federal marshall investigating the mysterious disappearance of a murderess who escaped from the island’s hospital for the criminally insane. Also stars Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley.

[Watch on MissGeeky]

I really like the look of this movie, even though most of the time I can’t stand Leonardo DiCaprio. But it looks like there’s more to the story than just a “find the bad guy” plot, and my mind is already coming up with possible explanations, twists and theories.

Shutter Island – Release Date: October 2009

I should have blogged about this two weeks ago when it came out, but I was in the Netherlands then and since I’ve been back it just slipped my mind completely. Maybe you’ve seen it already, but if you haven’t it’s a lot of fun (especially if you’re into movies). Empire has created this wicked Cryptic Canvas, a painting that contains references to 50 movies.

My brother showed the game to me, challenging me to find as many movies as I could. He and a friend of his had solved all the clues, so of course I had to try and do that too. Some of them are pretty easy to figure out. Just mentioning the object alone already gives you the answer. Some are slightly trickier; it helps saying out loud what you see. And some are just plain evil. 

I think I got to about 30 when I started struggling, so my brother started giving little tips. Not so much tips as in clues about the movies, but more where in the canvas you had to look and what belongs together. For instance, the bird and the flower in the top right corner? Two separate movies. The family with kids (in front of the huge baby)? Also two separate movies (the three mini kids are 1 movie, the rest another). And did you see there are four movies in the bottom right hand corner?

I really struggled with a couple of the obvious ones, especially “CCC”; I am truly kicking myself over that one (also because in the end I didn’t figure that one out, my mum did). There are a couple that I love though: the gravestone with the little flag, the two musical instruments, the towers with the hanging guy, and the guy near the train.

In the end I had to give up at 45, the final 5 I just couldn’t figure out (the family with kids, the flower in the top right, the man on the red line, the fighting cheerleaders, and the book destroyer). Looking at those though, I should have at least figured two of them out; one I hadn’t heard of and the other two were just a bit too difficult.

So how many movie references can you figure out?

I can get pretty addicted to online flash games, and this latest one promoting Ice Age 3 is pretty cute:

I just suck at it horribly though! The highest score I got was 6100 🙁

From AddictingGames.com

I wouldn’t actually buy these myself, but they do look pretty:

They are part of a series of paintings from Christian Waggoner, featuring close-ups of famous helmets in the Star Wars universe. Don’t you just love the reflections?

The paintings are all available in limited edition paper and canvas prints on the Acme Archives website.

Via /Film

I adore the first two Terminator movies. I was born in the year the first one came out and was only 7 when the second one came out, but I do feel as if I’ve grown up with these stories. These are the movies that made me think and dream about time travel and timelines, and I still enjoy theorizing about these type of plots. I was really looking forward to this latest installment of the Terminator series, and while it’s not everything I hoped it would be, it’s still a great action flick.

Terminator Salvation focuses on Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a man who wakes up in 2018 with no recollection of how he got there. Judgment Day has come and passed, and the human survivors are struggling in their war against the machines. John Connor (Christian Bale) is part of the resistance and knows he has to find his “father” Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), still a civilian trying to survive.

The main problem with Terminator Salvation is that this isn’t the movie every Terminator fan has been waiting for. Anybody who has seen the other movies wants to see one thing: the final battle between the machines and the resistance. What happens after they’ve sent back Kyle Reese and the terminators? Does John Connor and the resistance finally win the war? When does everything finally come full circle? This isn’t that movie. This movie is but a chapter in the whole saga, where Kyle Reese and John Connor meet. And that would have been fine, if they were the main two characters. If this movie was truly about the birth of their friendship. But it isn’t. Instead Terminator Salvation revolves around Marcus Wright, a new mysterious character, whose story line you see coming from a mile away. 

It kind of works. I mean I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I came out of the theatre thinking it was awesome. But reflecting on it, I just think it could have been better. I mean, you’ve got these characters that the fans love and whose stories they want to hear, but instead we get a movie about this Marcus Wright. I don’t see why they needed this new character; why couldn’t they have focused more on Kyle Reese and John Connor? Or Connor and his wife? Or the rise of Connor in the resistance? It just didn’t feel necessary to have this movie revolving around this character whose story we’re not really interested in.

Sam Worthington is okay as Marcus Wright, and by the end of the movie you are rooting for him. There’s nothing wrong with his acting (although at times his Australian accent slips through), it’s just you’re not as invested in his character as some of the others. Christian Bale is a bit of a disappointment as John Connor. When I heard he was cast, it just seemed perfect; who else could play the fierce, yet tortured resistance leader? And yet, it didn’t really work. There’s just something in him that doesn’t make you truly believe that this is a continuation of the same John Connor, although that may be due more to the way his character was written than Bale’s performance. The highlight of this movie for me had to be Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. After seeing him in Star Trek as Chekov, I didn’t think he could pull this character off (he just looks too baby faced there and not at all like Reese). But you get the feeling he must have watched and studied Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese in The Terminator for hours, cause he’s spot on with his performance. 

The other characters don’t add much to the movie. Bryce Dallas Howard is fine as Kate Connor, but she doesn’t get that much to work with. She has this whole back story and history with John Connor and she’s pregnant with his child, but all she gets to do is stand on the sidelines and be a sounding board to his worries. Moon Bloodgood is introduced as a love interest for Marcus Wright, but it feels rushed and very unbelievable. 

I did really like the look of Terminator Salvation. After Judgment Day, the world is practically a bleak, deserted wasteland and visually they’ve managed to capture that. It’s gritty and barren, and exactly what you’d expect the world to look like after a nuclear winter. The action and special effects in this movie are also superb, with enough explosions and fights to do justice to the previous films. I loved the design of some of the new robots, even though some seemed a bit more advance than what you’d expect at this point in time.

Terminator Salvation is a great summer action flick. Story wise it’s not fantastic, but for most people I guess it doesn’t have to be. Unlike some, I didn’t hate this movie, and I think McG managed to deliver a fun enjoyable film. I’m just disappointed it’s not the Terminator movie I was hoping for, but if it does well at the box office, we might see one in the near future.

I had seen the trailer of Gran Torino a while back and remembered thinking “Oscar Movie. Pass.”. But then my brother went to see it and said it would be a film our entire family would enjoy. I didn’t really believe him, but it seemed like the right movie to see when my parents were in town.

Gran Torino stars Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet who has just lost his wife. He’s grumpy, tough, and can’t get along with his kids or his neighbours. All he cares about is his dog, Daisy, and his prized car, a 1972 Gran Torino. When his teenage Hmong neighbours, Thao and Sue, get into trouble with the local gang, Walt steps in to help them out. Before he knows it, that gets Walt deeper embroiled into the life of his neighbours.

‘Everybody’s a little bit racist sometimes, Doesn’t mean we’re all out committing hate crimes’ (from one of the songs of Avenue Q, but more about that in a later post). Gran Torino’s main character  Walt seems to fit that bill exactly; his remarks about his neighbours are cringeworthy at times, but you know that he doesn’t really mean it. I don’t think anybody but Clint Eastwood could have pulled that character off; Walt is tough and scary, not two attributes you’d associate with a 78-year old. Eastwood delivers lines that could have turned out silly, but hearing him say them you know he means it. Even that old, Eastwood is still believable as a tough no-nonsense guy.

The story takes a bit slow to unravel, but halfway through it speeds up. Don’t come into this movie expecting a lot of action; it isn’t an action movie. There are a couple of “action”-y scenes (Clint being tough), but nothing too spectacular. Gran Torino also isn’t really a drama; most of the movie is pretty upbeat and I found myself laughing during a couple of scenes. 

Gran Torino is an interesting movie, and I’m surprised it wasn’t nominated for more Oscars this year. Having seen most of the contenders, I truly think Gran Torino was better than most of those and Clint Eastwood deserved at least to be nominated for Best Actor.

I’m not sure how I managed to miss these videos. The Cars Toons are a animated short series by Pixar featuring the characters Mater and Lightning McQueen from the 2006 animation Cars. The first three all aired last October on the Disney Channel and ABC Family, while the fourth one was shown before the theatrical release of Bolt.

All the toons follow the same formule: Mater tells some tall story about something he did in the past. The fourth is the funniest (and also the one with the largest budget), so I’ll start with that one:

Tokyo Mater

[Watch the videos on MissGeeky.com]

Rescue Squad Mater

El Materdor

There’s also a third toon called Mater the Greater, but the embedding of that video was disabled. In my opinion it’s the least funniest of the four, check it out on YouTube to see it for yourself.

I love the Tokyo video; the setting is just spot on! (while I liked Tokyo Drift, it’s fun to see a parody of it) The appearance of the Cars characters are great too; Mia and Tia are adorable in their outfits, and the pit crew cars remain hilarious. You can see that the other three videos have less of a budget (and effort) behind it; while kind of funny, they aren’t as rememberable as the Tokyo one. I do hope we see more of sequels to these though; can you imagine what other stuff they might put Mater in?

I’m on “holiday” (it’s not really a holiday when you’ve got appointments with dentist, doctor, optician, etc and a whole load of other stuff to sort out) to the Netherlands this week, so I thought I’d re-blog a couple of my older blog posts. This post was written in July 2007  and was actually the first review I ever wrote (for MissGeeky and just in general). If you haven’t seen The Fountain yet, go and watch it! It remains one of my favourite movies.

A couple of weeks ago I finally saw The Fountain. It’s written and directed by Darren Aranofsky, who did Requiem for a Dream and Pi (two films on my very long “still to watch” list) and stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Prestige) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Mummy).

I’m not sure how to describe the movie without giving too much away of the plot, but I’m going to give it a try. As the title suggests, the movie’s about the Fountain of Youth, the Tree of Life, in short the quest for being able to live forever. The story spans a 1000 years merging three storylines. The first is in the present with a doctor, trying to find a cure for his dying wife. The second is in the 16th century with a conquistador who is given the mission by his queen to search for the Tree of Life. The third… well… I think you have to see the third to actually believe me, but it’s about 500 years in the future about a space traveler traveling through space (duh) in a giant bubble (not so much duh).

It somehow sounds too weird, but it actually works all great together. The movie is beautifully filmed, although some may say the special effects and lighting make it too fake. I actually thought they were used just right, giving the movie this surreal, magical feel. What I really love about The Fountain though is that it’s open to your own interpretation. I love movies which get you thinking and in this case the plot, the settings, the characters all stimulate you in constructing an explanation in which you believe in. It’s gives the same fulfillment as solving a difficult puzzle.

The movie didn’t do that well in the box office and I do see why. It’s different then the normal mainstream movies and for the regular movie-goer it might be a bit too slow and confusing. I’d recommend this film to anyone who wants something fresh, romantic and doesn’t get too confounded with a movie that puts your mind to work.

I’m on “holiday” (it’s not really a holiday when you’ve got appointments with dentist, doctor, optician, etc and a whole load of other stuff to sort out) to the Netherlands this week, so I thought I’d re-blog a couple of my older blog posts. This post was originally from January 2008.

I’m a big movie fan, so you’d think I would enjoy going to the cinema. To be honest, I kind of still do. Where else can you see the newest movies on a nice big screen with great sound? But a part of me sees the actual experience as a chore. Yes, I want to see movies in the cinema, but there are so many things wrong with the cinema experience that I wonder if it is actually worth it. If you have a big enough TV set at home, what is the added value of going to the cinema? The traditional concept of the movie-going experience desperately needs a complete reinvention (FourStarters did a post about this a while back).

Photo from Flickr by rpb1001

This is the first in a series of posts where I want to focus on how cinemas should be (and in some cases are) adapting to the altered demands of cinema visitors. Before we actually come to that though, I want to identify the common problems that occur with today’s cinemas. Keep in mind that these are 10 general problems; it doesn’t mean that all cinemas have each of these problems, although most of them will have more than one problem. Some of these problems also have very simple solutions, but none the less they keep occurring.

1. Poor Projection Quality

Raise your hands if you’ve ever been to a cinema where the movie was out of focus or had too many scratches on it. I’m hoping a lot of you just raised your hands (or at least nodded in agreement) and are annoyed by the fact that this happens so often, but the truth is most movie audiences don’t care about the projection quality. Poor projection quality is purely caused by incompetent projectionists, who mishandle the reels and don’t adjust them properly [FirstShowing]. If movie goers would complain about this, something might be actually done, but the fact is most people don’t complain.

I’ve had a couple of times that we were the only ones during a crappy showing that stood up, left to find an employee and complain about the quality. Some people might just be plain lazy or don’t think it’s something worth complaining about (which I find ridiculous, you’re paying to see this movie here, right?), but most people just don’t know what good projection quality is [FirstShowing]. They’ve never experienced how it should be done the right way; this bad projection quality is all they’ve ever known. It’s a problem, which has a simple solution (train/force the projectionists to set-up the movie properly), but if people don’t see it as a problem nothing will be done about it.

2. Bad Volume

With bad volume I mean that the movies in cinemas are too loud or too soft, or something a bit in between, where in the same movie the action sequences are too loud and the dialogue is too soft. I always thought this was again simply a problem with cinemas, but after doing some reading, I found out it’s a bit more complex than that and not always the cinema’s fault.

Some times the cinema does turn up the volume way too loud, but that’s not always the case. Nowadays a lot of movies are actually made too loud (as in containing segments above 90 db) and cinemas show them as they are meant to be shown, meaning it is often the fault of the studio that produced the movie. Other times the cinema chooses to lower the volume, so that too loud parts are under the allowed limit, but which causes the rest of the film to be too soft. This same thing can occur when the sound is adjusted for trailers in front of the film. This article gives a good example of an action movie trailer in front of a romantic comedy. The volume is turned down, because the trailer is too loud and the volume stays this way for the entire movie.

3. Screen Size

People often complain that some cinema screens are too small and that a bigger screen means a better experience. I disagree. In my eyes it’s all about the relative screen size (I’ve touched on this before in Why Expensive Cinemas Are Not Necessarily Better). It doesn’t matter how big the screen is, if you’re sitting far away from it. I’ve been to the Empire and the Odeon cinemas at Leicester Square and both screens (and auditoriums) are huge. The seats though, are placed on a not so very steep slope, so you’re sitting either A) quite far from the screen, or B) too low and have to stare upwards. Compare that to the Vue at Shepherd’s Bush or the Pathe Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam. Those are smaller auditoriums with smaller screens, but the seats are placed on a much steeper slope, so it feels like the screen is much bigger. Cinema auditoriums should be designed to give the movie goer the best view, preferably no matter where you sit.

Photo from Flickr by adpowers

4. Bad Seats

Auditoriums are filled with as many seats as possible, not thinking at all of giving the optimal experience to the movie goer. Most of the time the seats are uncomfortable and small with not enough leg space. Then you have the theaters where all the rows are on the same level (no slope); if it’s busy, chances are somebody is going to sit in front of you and block your view. Of course this is all because they want as many seats as they can in one auditorium.

This is completely silly though, cause more often than not most of the seats will be empty. Yes, Friday and Saturday night might be packed, but the rest of week? It’s never, ever busy. Cinemas should discard the idea of filling as much seats as possible and try to cater to the ultimate movie experience. Get nice big comfortable seats and place them in such a way that from every seat you have a good view.

5. Coat and Bag Space

Question: you’re already stuck in a crappy seat with no leg space, so what do you with your coat and bags? Answer: you put it on the chair next to you. Nobody really wants to admit it, but everybody does it. If you’re with the two of you, you’re most probably taking up at least 3 seats (maybe even 4 sometimes). Doesn’t matter that you haven’t actually payed for those chairs, you’re going to put your stuff there. And if it’s busy? Well, then you’re forced to sit on your coat in your already uncomfortable seat and put your bags amid your already limited leg space. Why, oh, why can’t they find a solution for something as obvious as this?

Photo from Flickr by emdot

6. Air Conditioning

Cinemas are always ice freakingly cold. Now I understand why they do this; they’d rather have cold people, then sweaty, smelly people, right? But does it really have to be that chilly in there? It also wouldn’t be too bad, if you could snuggle up to your significant other. But no, the seats are too crappy to be able to do that (btw why are love seats always right on the back?). Turn down that air conditioner, please, we’re not popsicles.

7. Seat Selection

Okay, now I know this point really depends on the cinema; some cinemas handle it pretty well. I’m just ticked off by a couple of irritating past experiences. With seat selection I mean how the cinema deals with people picking their seats. A lot of cinemas still gives tickets with specified seat numbers, but you never really know if they’re going to abide to these seat numbers or not. I’ve had a couple of times that I reserved certain seats on opening night, only to show up and find out you can sit anywhere you want (one time for 13 people). Other times I’ve had it the other way around and you’re forced to give up your seats. While I really don’t mind one option over the other, I want to know before hand which of these rules to abide by. What always seems to work is tickets with no specified places. You just show up and claim your seats, first come, first serve, no hassle.

Photo from Flickr by ninjapoodles

8. No Decent Waiting Area

Again this depends per cinema, but most don’t have a proper waiting area. Some of you might argue that it’s also completely unnecessary, but again I think it would add value to the whole cinema experience. Nobody ever arrives right on time when the movie’s about to start and most of the time you can’t go into the theater right away. There should be some area where you can sit down, get a drink and wait. I also see such an area not only being used before the movie starts, but also after it, a place where you can sit down for a moment and talk about the movie.

9. Queues

While some cinemas have solved the problem of queues by using terminals, there a still a lot of them that don’t use them yet. Almost all cinemas I’ve been to here in London have terminals and this significantly cuts down the queues. But even without terminals, there’s a way to do smarter queue management. One particular cinema springs to mind, where even though you had reserved for a movie, you still had to pick up your reserved tickets in the same queue as all the people trying to buy a ticket for the same show. I hated this because all they had to do was scan my reservation and my discount card (you could buy a set of 6 tickets in one go on one card). Instead I had to stand in line with these people who hadn’t taken the time to reserve tickets. On busy nights these people often had a slim chance of getting in anyway, so they were wasting my and their precious time. You would think there would be a way to process reservations separately?

Then you also have the horrible queues at the concession stands, prompting me never to get anything cause it just takes too long (plus side: it’s cheaper and healthier). What I find the most exasperating innovation: the combined tickets and concessions booth? Yes, let’s make people wait even longer in line!

Photo from Flickr by lorch

10. Movie Showing Duration

Problem number 10 is just a minor problem, but honestly “9 problems” doesn’t seem as catchy as 10. So my last problem with cinemas is that in some it is very unclear for what (often very short) period of time a movie runs in the cinema. This problem really depends on where you live and how big your town/city is. I understand the “why” behind it: for smaller cinemas it is sometimes not worthwhile to have a movie play for a longer amount of time. This doesn’t lessen the irritation though when you come to the realization that a movie was only playing for 1 week in the cinema and you missed it.

I’m a sucker for the old musical Disney movies, so I’ve been looking forward to The Princess and The Frog ever since I heard about it two years ago. And now we finally have a trailer!

Like most of the other Disney movies, this movie is based on a fairy tale, with one key difference. Here the setting has been uprooted and moved to another location and time: The Princess and The Frog is set in New Orleans’ French Quarter during the Jazz age (1920s). Take a look at the trailer:

[Watch the trailer on MissGeeky.com]

I’m not too sure about the change of setting, but with both main characters as frog and the New Orleans swamp as a backdrop, I can see what the writers were thinking. I’m really curious to see/hear a bit of the music; in my eyes, it’s always been the songs that have made me love/hate a Disney movie.

The Princess and The Frog – Release Date: December 2009 (US), February 2010 (UK)