FAMILY GUY PRESENTS: STEWIE GRIFFIN - THE UNTOLD STORY
(First Viewing)

The major sub-plot circles around the youngest Griffin, Stewie, has a near death experience at a pool when a lifeguard chair falls on him, but survive. After having a vision of being in Hell, he decided to change his ways, but didn't last long. When watching TV, he and Brian spots a man that looks like Stewie, who is convinced that he is Stewie's actually father, until Stewie learns that the man is actually Stewie in his adult state and has been vacationing from his own time. Stewie visits thirty some years later realizing that his adult self, going by the name Stu, is blue-collar middle-age virgin who is working at a Circuit City-type store and is not seeing anyone. Meanwhile, Peter and Lois are trying to teach their two older kids, Meg and Chris to date. In the future, Chris, who hasn't changed a lot, is working as a cop and is married to a foulmouth hustler named Vanessa, and Meg is now going under the name "Ron", which she had a sex-change after college.

It didn't go the SOUTH PARK route (i.e. musical or obsene language) which I respected. It still maintained it's TV audience without overstepping the bounds. The first half of the film was rather enjoyable and quite humorous but the second half really just finished out the story without much flare. I'm curious to see how THE SIMPSONS movie compares to this and the SOUTH PARK film.

NORBIT 1/2
(First Viewing)

A mild-mannered guy (Murphy) who is engaged to a monstrous woman (Murphy) meets the woman of his dreams (Newton), and schemes to find a way to be with her.

This is without a doubt the worst Eddie Murphy movie I have ever seen! I wouldn't be surprised if this turd single handly helped the Academy in voting against Eddie for Best Supporting Actor for DREAMGIRLS. Likewise, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s career continues to spiral downwards.

You know, I should feel awful that you sat through NORBIT...but I don't, nor I won't.

I called crap on Eddie with GOLDEN CHILD, the lousy VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, and other losers (HARLEM NIGHTS?), but you stuck with your "Uncle Eddie", even when he slaped you across the jaw, you asked for seconds.

The Onion was right.

"Eddie Murphy Fucks Self for $20 million"

CATCH AND RELEASE 1/2
(First Viewing)

After the sudden death of her fiancé, Gray Wheeler finds comfort in the company of his friends: lighthearted and comic Sam, hyper-responsible Dennis, and, oddly enough, his old childhood buddy Fritz, an irresponsible playboy whom she’d previously pegged as one of the least reliable people in the world. As secrets about her supposedly perfect fiancé emerge, Gray comes to see new sides of the man she thought she knew, and at the same time, finds herself drawn to the last man she ever expected to fall for.

I'd like to see Kevin Smith act more and have more than 1 line of dialogue like he does in his Jay & Silent Bob movies. The man is a comic genius and wish he would portray that more himself on screen.

Yeah THE GOLDEN CHILD I've always liked. I've never seen A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, HARLEM NIGHTS, DADDY DAY CARE, THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH, etc. That's why I said on NORBIT that it was the worst Eddie Murphy movie I had seen (not the worst one ever made).

But that's part of the charm of the South Park film, which is wonderful.

I won't lie, the tunes are catchy. Just when I went into the theaters, I wasn't expecting a musical

I just watched Thank You For Smoking. Very entertaining movie. I'm not sure how accurate it is when it comes to the tobacco industry and the "war" against it, but it was very believable with a lot of humor. The whole idea of the "M.O.D. (Merchants Of Death) Squad" was very funny to me!

Great movie Blibble! I loved it when I saw it in theaters. I need to own it on DVD but I'm waiting to see if Fox releases a special edition (since they and Universal are the "kings" of double-dipping DVDs)

THE FIRM (1993) ***

Mostly faithful adaptation (ending notwithstanding) of the novel of the same name that put John Grisham on the map.

Tom Cruise stars as Mitch McDeere, an idealist lawyer fresh out of Harvard Law School and new to the Memphis law firm of Bandini, Lambert and Locke. A job that affords he and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) an affluent lifestyle beyond his wildest dreams. But when the Feds confront him with evidence of corruption and murder at The Firm, Mitch sets out to find the truth in a deadly crossfire between the FBI, the mob and The Firm.

Directed by Sydney Pollack and co-starring Gene Hackman as a shady law partner and Ed Harris as an even shadier FBI agent, the acting was top notch. Gary Busey and Paul Sorvino added memorable cameos. I enjoyed it.

Okay Ronnie, this one was made in Tennessee, just like you. So, I'm waiting...

Great movie.

Yeah well, Cruise's scientology sacrificial rituals are still felt.

The only Grisham movie I ever liked was Coppola's THE RAINMAKER adaptation (hell, the author thinks its the best of the Hollywood movies based on his books).

As for THE FIRM, I like Sydney Pollack, but my problem with him is that a good large chunk of his career is fluff commercial movies like THE FIRM. Pollack is a better actor than director anyway.

RRA, what is your rating for Rainmaker?

I read The Firm, The Rainmaker, and A Time to Kill. Going by the novels, The Rainmaker was the best adaptation and in my opinion the best movie without comparison to the book. I also enjoyed A Time to Kill in both formats.

I never liked The Firm. The only reason it put Grisham on the map is because he took a common formula of a thriller and added the whole law firm aspect. So it seemed new to people, but it really wasn't. A Time to Kill and The Rainmaker actually had heart which set them above The Firm.

I'll go along with that. My favorite Grisham novel is THE PARTNER, which has never been adapted for the big screen. There are some wonderful chapters set in Portugal and with the right direction it would make a great movie.

Personally, my favorite Grisham novel is A Time to Kill. I would have to say that The Street Lawyer is my second favorite. He's fun "hanging around the pool" reading. And, sorry, PB, but The Partner is my LEAST favorite of his books.

I was never thrilled with any of the film adaptations, A Time to Kill least of all, considering that they gave that great monologue to Matthew M. (abbreviated to avoid spelling errors) instead of to the jury foreperson.

THE STREET LAWYER was okay, a little too idealistic for my taste but the rights of the homeless are important, and too often, overlooked.

THE BRETHREN was pretty good, too. Corrupt judges doing time together in federal lock-up. What a concept!

The main problem with Grisham is that after awhile, all of his books seemed pretty much the same.

Grisham does do great courtroom, though. I think that, after QBVII, A Time to Kill is one of my favorite courtroom dramas. Although some may say that QBVII cannot be dismissed as merely a courtroom drama, Leon Uris wrote about the trial superbly.

And so that this doesn't wander into a Books We Just Read thread, QBVII was also one of the best miniseries ever made.

THE RAINMAKER (1997) - *** (Good)

You know, as a book, the only Grisham novel I think I would enjoy adapting would have been his THE TESTAMENT. An odyssey of a journey for an alcoholic lawyer. Redemptive without being moralisticly cheesy and cheap.

As for A TIME TO KILL, the movie is an example of how in Hollywood, you can have an impressive cast of great actors stuck in a melodramatic movie.

I mean, the scene of the Deep South Rednecks(a term I give since surely such white trash are far, if they exist this sharply, away from Tennessee) meeting up the Klan is like COBRA soldiers meeting up with Cobra Commander...just like from a saturday morning cartoon.

Of course, its Mississippi....

A TIME TO KILL (1996) - **1/2

CQ
(First Viewing)

Paris, 1969. The filming of a sci-fi movie set in the distant year 2000 is in trouble. The director's obsession with the actress who plays the sexy secret agent Dragonfly (Angela Lindvall) has clouded his judgement and the film has no ending. A young American (Jeremy Davies), in Paris to document his life on film with total honesty, is brought in to finish the movie with a bang. This proves to be difficult when the line between his fantasy life and reality becomes blurred, and he finds himself seduced by the charms of Dragonfly.

A nice homeage to BARBARELLA and some of the other sexy Sci-Fi movies from the 1960s and 1970s.

HOSTEL
(Nthing Viewing)

While backpacking through Europe, college students Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) seek the ultimate vacation through sex, drugs and unforgettable experiences. When a friendly stranger informs the two of a hostel in Bratislava that offers the most beautiful and promiscuous women in all of Europe, Paxton and Derek trek with their new Icelandic friend Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) to find the hostel that sounds too good to be true. When arriving to Bratislava, the trio found that the hostel was everything and more of what they expected. The events that follow are sure to deliver the unforgettable vacation that the two were looking for. Mystery, suspense and fear direct this film to its bloody ending.

I'm glad Hollywood seems to be doing more gory films as I've really gotten into the horror genre more with the likes of SAW, HIGH TENSION, HOSTEL, etc. I think trying to scare people stricly is becoming harder in Hollywood because nowadays it's too predictable. Gore on the other hand adds that shock value to see how far they'll push the envelope. Looking forward to HOSTEL: PART II.

Golden Eye (Zero Stars)
I have to confess that I haven't seen any bond movies before except for the recently released prequel, which I sorta liked. I was somehow reluctant to watch these just based on people's description. But it turned out exactly to be what I feared - total brainless affair. Perhaps because I have seen similar movies like Entrapment and Miami Vice, the process of watching this one was painful. Somewhere near the last half hour, I thought the movie should have ended, with no story left. But they had to show all the cool(yawn yawn) stunt scenes they had filmed nevertheless. If you are not a fan of the bond series, skip this safely.

I like the Bond series for their endless inventive set-pieces, blend of crude eroticism and one-liners which would sink any other film bar the one it appears in. Go for early Connery (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball) and the sole George Lazenby effort, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, to see how brilliant they are. I don't care much for the Moore films; Dalton had something about him which I liked, and the Brosnan films became tame and undisciplined after Tomorrow Never Dies. Die Another Day is one big bloated, fat, grandiose film which doesn't come close to the ice-cool appeal of the Lazenby film or the melting pot of the Connery films.

I like GoldenEye, though.

GOLDENEYE and GOLDFINGER are my 2 favorite Bonds. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE was probably my least favorite.

Pre DICK table!

Mate, GOLDENEYE is HAMLET compared to Michael Bay's garbage (which I'm sure Irish will then try and fail to defend) in the "brainless thrills" department.

Anyway, the Roger Moore-era really honestly killed Bond. Oh sure all those movies in the 70s and 80s made a profit, but did anyone really care? Timothy Dalton could have been the ruthless bastard Bond, if EON were fully behind it, instead of trying to shoehorn him still as a Moore-charmer.

In a way, Craig is getting to do what Dalton wanted to do, except Craig has the keys to the kingdom now.

As for GOLDENEYE, it was a nice breath of fresh air for the Bond franchise. Plus, take away the Bond universe....and you have a decent spy action-thriller.

Plus, I think I liked GOLDENEYE back in the day because it offered us a new Bond...one that is aging, very mortal to the fact that the Cold War is over, and that he's failed many of his friends and loves in the past. I mean, you could milk that texture for any action template tale.

Instead, TOMORROW NEVER DIES And the subsequent Brosnan 007 entries don't bother with this and simply went on with business like the Moore-regime...nothing mortal or interesting Bond, just an archetype male that people picture themselves as. Pity.

Still, TND as a movie is actually a nice action movie until it jumps the boat(literally) in the 3rd with the stealth warship. Beforehand, you had Jonathan Pryce being the new non-ideological, self-profit wanting GOLDFINGER of the 1990s...but once we get on the ship, it becomes a bad John Woo movie.

I didn't know it was pierce Brosnan's first bond movie. He is pretty decent in his role. Any suggestions for a good Dalton bond movie?

I guess THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (which back in the day actually did better financially than Moore's last few 007 offings) as default.

LICENSE TO KILL is a movie that should have been a contender, but, the devil is in the details.

Instead of some wanna-be world conqueror or some laserbeam weapon from space, simply Bond going to war with a Latin American drug lord out of revenge...its a nice change of pace.

However, it would have been effective if the person Bond was avenging (Felix) had died, instead of simply maimed and his wife dead. Seriously, the ending is so happy go-happy, when its nuts. Why so happy? What revenge did Bond get? So he defeats the baddie, so what? Felix is still a cripple and his wife is under ground permanently.

Again, thats why I wrote as I did about the Dalton-Regime. The EON producers wouldn't let go of the Moore-spectre, and wanted to be different at the same time. You can't have it both ways.

I forget what people thought of it, but I saw Zodiac today. My thoughts...

Zodiac
David Fincher 2007 USA
A serial killer terrorises California in the 60s and 70s, teasing both the police department and the Media.
Nothing short of impressive, in concept and in execution. Fincher seems to have a wide vocabulary of filmmaking tools, and, perhaps more importantly, the confidence to employ them, for various means. This is a deep, intelligent and convincing delve into subjective verisimilitude, with not only shifting character identities, but a self-conscious nod to how the film has come to be made: the author of the book from which it is adapted remarks at one point, "I'm thinking of writing a book", and, years later, we see it as a bestseller on shelves at an airport. The viewer, like everyone else inside the film, has, at the end of it all, no real concrete idea of who the Zodiac killer is. The one difference, however, is that we're viewing events not as victims, but as viewers to a manipulated narration of events. Fincher knows this; the opening is incredibly tense, frightening and finally shocking, as we see it through the eyes of the boy, the killer's first victim (in the film if not real life); later, when we revisit this first murder, we "watch" it again (mentally, because we're not shown it) through the girl's eyes, since it is revealed or supposed that she knew who the killer was. To go through the film scene-by-scene identifying all the different gazes through which we identify with the film's meaning would take far too long (though it would surely be beneficial to the appreciation of how immensely intelligent it is), but a few points to note: the point at which Gyllenhall's obsessed cartoonist has come to the foray of investigations is the point at which the actual killings are far in the past (both in story time, which is years, and narrative time, which is hours) and the identity of the killer is at its most obscure and elusive (because of all the endless details and clues cluttering up the narrative, and the emphasis on basic demarcations such as handwriting and fingerprints). There's one scene, in which he is persuaded down into the basement of an elderly man's home, who began the scene as a possible witness and before descending rapidly into prime suspect - he hasn't really, of course, but it's constructed, like the rest of the film, so that we view the film through a certain character's psychological state, and so when he turns off the basement light, all sorts of things are suggested. Soon after, alone at home, Gyllenhall hears his back door open, and the moving shadow on the wall takes on an almost expressionistic effect in creating meaning, in this case the absurd paranoia of his character - but for a title at the end, we might even doubt whether he received anonymous, heavy-breathing phone calls at all. There's one moment, too, early on, which shows somebody who we assume to be the killer, shown with the non-diegetic phone call of him informing the police of another killing - it seems out-of-place in a film about an unsolved murder spree, but it's decidedly clever, in further mystifying the entire case in (fictional) retrospect. Fincher employs his usually smooth pans, tracks and shot-to-shot transitions as well as proving how far ahead of most others he is at CGI - some of the period reconstructions are flawless and beautiful, including a birdseye-view tracking shot of a taxicab on its way to murder, and a gorgeous establishing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge - again, even if this time the city is specific and not anonymous (like in Seven), he is very, very effective in evoking location. At 160 minutes, its duration belies the discipline with which it has been made: every direction it takes, be it a cut, shift in gaze or narrative thread, a pan or a track, seems motivated.

...which amounts, by the way, to the best film of 2007 so far.