Gold, Jerry!

Oh and the simpsons,never be able to watch South Park..

HOT FUZZ 1/2
(First Viewing)

Nicholas Angel is the finest cop London has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. He's so good, he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel's superiors send him to a place where his talents won't be quite so embarrassing - the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford. Once there, he is partnered with the well-meaning but overeager police officer Danny Butterman. The son of amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman, Danny is a huge action movie fan and believes his new big-city partner might just be a real-life "bad boy," and his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he so longs for. Angel is quick to dismiss this as childish fantasy and Danny's puppy-like enthusiasm only adds to Angel's growing frustration. However, as a series of grisly accidents rocks the village, Angel is convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and as the intrigue deepens, Danny's dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gunfighting, all-out action seem more and more like a reality. It's time for these small-town cops to break out some big-city justice.

Well I decided to give these 2 gents the once over and I wasn't as disappointed. I still don't understand the huge following SHAUN OF THE DEAD and this film have. Different strokes I suppose. This was definitely funnier and had more lasting laughs with me, especially the BAD BOYS II and POINT BREAK spoofs However, I will give the film some respect that they didn't try to just make a funny movie, they actually had a decent and twisting plot to the film. So on that point, they get points for ambition. Although, I don't think I'll have a desire to revisit these films anytime soon.

To be fair, I don't think you've seen many.

Vercetti might be pleased to know I finally watched High Fidelity last night. Great, great film.

Awesome Capo.

Anyway, the one thing about British TV films I absolutely is how many are shot with shoe-string budgets, but look as epic and beautiful as the expensive Hollywood movies.

Hell, look at the 5th POTTER picture shot by Yates, who's only previous works, I believe, were British TV pictures.

Better yet, its also where Paul Greengrass also started.

So I respect directors who work British Television. Not all their works are good (ARCHANGEL from back in 2005 was mediocre-muck) but still, they impress me.

Extras and The Office are a must. Ricky Gervais = awesomeness.

I havn't seen extras yet..

I'll give you that, but from those I have seen, they haven't impressed me in the least

Seventh Seal ***
I don't know what to take from it. It is an abstract and personalview of Bergman about several things, but mainly Death and God. I am too sleepy right now, but will comment more soon. In short, I liked it.

Extras is good DE Niro but no where near as good as the office did you ever used to watch im alan partridge that is the best comedy ever!!

I few a few of the shows..

Only fools and horses is the best british programme..

of Course i can watch them every day of the week i must have seen each episode over 5o times each if not more.

Yeah me too..

"Michel Serrault, the French actor who is best remembered for his role as the flamboyant transvestite in La Cage aux Folles (1978) and its sequels, died on July 29 of cancer at his home in Honfleur, France. He was 79. "


http://www.tcm.com/movienews/index/?cid=179293&rss=press

TMNT
(First Viewing)

After the defeat of their old arch nemesis, The Shredder, the Turtles have grown apart as a family. Struggling to keep them together, their sensei, Master Splinter, becomes worried when strange things brewing in New York City. Tech-industrialist tycoon Max Winters revives four ancient stone warriors and enlists the help of the foot clan to help capture ancient monsters.

These aren't my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've never seen the new show, but wanted to give the film a chance. It's just not the same without Shredder, or the giant turtle costumes, or Michelan Sisti for that matter lending his voice as Michaelangelo. I will give Ziyi Zhang mucho respect, she's really doing a better job with her pronunciation of the English language that I know she's been working on.

RUSH HOUR 3 got panned in today's papers.

I'm gonna see it anyway.

BROKEN ARROW (1996) - **1/2

Back in Hong Kong, John Woo was the Martin Scorsese of Asian Cinema. Since he's come to Hollywood with HARD TARGET, he's been a glorified action-jobber director. it almost makes one want to use the "O" word on John Woo......Overrated.

In this otherwise by-the-numbers cliche action meal ticket, the only innovative or actually interesting execution was that of the opening with the overhead shot of a boxing ring, surrounded by darkness as the combatants duke it out with their gloves.

Maybe its just me, but when a movie's sole cool grace is used in the opening credits, we're in trouble.

But I can't blame BROKEN ARROW's dull tip totally on Woo.

I love action movies, but there is always trouble when I'm totally rewriting the film's story within my head.

Take the mine sequence. I mean, why not simply have that John Travolta the bad guy had his goons plant explosives at every cavern-entrance to the mine, so to contain the nuclear bomb's explosion (remember, they just want to send a message to D.C.) and keep any government troops from disarming the bomb in time. But with Christian Slater and his Useless Love Interest, Travolta does this to trap them in a nuclear holocaust, and his gang runs off to avoid radiation. Then the Useless Love Interest knows something the bad guys and their mine-maps didn't know: There is a little-known river flowing under the caverns, which the heroes use to escape just in time.

BUT NOOOOOOO!

Instead, the movie has Travolta arming the bomb at 13 minutes, and does the most logical thing in his position...he chases after the heroes and continues their gunfight, then he has the mine's only entrance to the surface blocked off.

Or better yet, how Travolta's character goes from being rather-smart and prepared disgruntled employee going the DIE HARD profit route to, and then turn into a psychopath in the finale* for no reasonable explanation except to explain why the second bomb is ticking away, and an excuse for an 1980s-esque gay-as-hell bitch muscle fist fight between Slater and Travolta this side of COMMANDO.

BROKEN ARROW isn't a bad movie despite my whining. I got my forgettable thrills, gunfights, Useless Female Star, Dispensable jobber-troops, and Woo's trademark goofy slow-motion cinematography, but like DIE HARD 2 or any Michael Bay movie, it acts moronic just for the sake of its insepid plot.

[

Well, you know what you're getting with a RUSH HOUR movie.

Chris Tucker being loud(and way overpaid)

Jokes about Black people not shutting up.

Jokes about Asian people not speaking English or for being short.

Jackie Chan doing some nifty physical stunts(for his age) that at least earns him his massive paycheck.

Brett Ratner still jobbing as the poor man hack's Richard Donner.

Some generic-forgettable villain.

Jokes about the country/location of each movie.

Brett Ratner getting piad $5 million for something that any
other serviceble-jobber could do equally well for 20x less money.

GET SHORTY (1995) was the best of Travolta's mid-nineties, "comeback" roles.

PULP FICTION may have been the superior film, but I think Travolta's Chili Palmer was his best character.

Both are great characters, but his Chili Palmer in GET SHORTY was allowed to dominate and own the movie.

PULP FICTION owns GET SHORTY, but damn Travolta is so much fun in GET SHORTY, its a shame that BE COOL wasn't cool.

GET SHORTY (1995) - ***1/2

Excellent points, Ronnie.

He was soooo much fun as Chili, that Elmore Leonard actually wrote the sequel with him in mind. The book was fair, as far as the movie, meh, I thought Vince Vaughn and The Rock stole whatever funny moments were in it.

Put it another way, Chili Palmer is who all of us wish we can be. Vincent Vega, sans the hitman profession, is who we really are.

Anyway, I also quite enjoyed the hell out of the third good Leonard-adaptation in the 1990s: Steven Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT. Seen that?

Loved it!!

I thought it was in the top 5 of 1998.

I'm partial to Elmore Leonard, I've been reading him for more than 20 years. His books are just so damn hart to adapt, though.

Its probably because of Leonard's wit and style thats pretty much to mis-adapt. I still laugh at the idea that QT always thought the heroin in RUM PUNCH was a white woman. The same guy that can quote obscure-as-fuck Z movies from the 1940s, but not realize a certain little mistake like that? (or maybe he conciously changed it to just suit Pam Grier, and invented that story to excuse it. I wouldn't put it past QT.)

I tell you what was good, KAREN SISCO. Carla Gugino took over from Jennifer Lopez, and Carl is BETTER. She's legitimately tough and can handle herself quite well (which I can't say the same for J-Ho). Of course it was such a good TV show, it was cancelled by ABC.

But if it had aired on USA network, it would still be on TV. Hell, any awesome show these days are only on cable TV.

THE THIRD SOLUTION (1988) - *1/2

"...overbaked spy melodrama..." - Leonard Maltin

Treat Williams, F. Murray Abraham, & Danny Aiello can be great actors who can make a movie worthwhile. However, the problem with the trio is that they take any movie-job, indiscriminate of quality, to pay for lunch, which means picking up any movie featuring any of them is amount to picking up a gun you find on the street, press it against your temple and pulling the trigger.

You have a 50/50 chance of hearing a *CLICK* or wondering why your brains are splattered on the street.

Unfortunately, with the Italian-produced THE THIRD SOLUTION, this gun chamber was loaded.

The film's biggest failure is that it never makes clear why exactly both the CIA and KGB are fighting their shadow war over the fact that the Vatican is negotiating a concordat with the Soviet Union. The best I could understand is that, I think, was that the Pope was to abandon Ukranian Orthodox Church from his realm in exchange for religious freedom to the Catholic Poland and the Baltics.

At least thats what I got from this this muddled train wreck of a movie.

Thing is, with Catholic theology at centre of this murder-mystery, if made clear and very much its consequences at severe stake, THE THIRD SOLUTION could have been as fun and enticing as Michael Apted's adaptation of GORKY PARK, except instead of a Soviet cop drama, its involves the Vatican.

I mean, the central idea could have worked as a nice detective story. In 1933 the Vatican contracted the infamous Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany that basically traded away the political rights of German Catholics in exchange for non-state inteference of Catholic private schools (an agreement that Hitler of course broke immediately).

But instead, THE THIRD SOLUTION is about Treat Williams running around and F. Murray Abraham scheming himself into a plot twist that is supposed to be shocking, but instead I kept trying, and failing, to understand the logic of it.

Maybe the fourth solution I should have picked was never rent this stinker in the first place.

P.S. - Just because this movie sucks and annoyed me, the spoiler is that Abraham's Vatican priest character is a KGB operative.

THE NEST (2002) - ****

Now THIS is how you make a proper remake of a John Carpenter picture. In fact, it might be the best John Carpenter movie that JC never shot.

John Carpenter is a God to the French cinema-buffs, and how finely crafted this ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13-influenced picture is, it makes the previous remakes of Carpenter's movies, including the surefire-suck ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake, what they are: Shit stains.

THE NEST is really 3 stories, with 3 destinies intertwined at this one warehouse. A criminal crew trying to rob a truckload of electronics from the warehouse, some bored guards of the warehouse, and an armored police van transporting the most vicious Albanian gangster alive who are forced to make safe-haven at the same warehouse.

They are all beseieged by the gangster's army of endless-number of mercs trying to free him, and kill everyone else inside.

Really, unlike the "official" remake, THE NEST works so insanely well because of the same narrative-lessons that had worked for Carpenter's original AOP13.

Such lessons include the slow build-up that gives the heroes a chance to be fleshed out, so that when the war does begin, we care about the fates of our heroes. Hell, if my clock is right, for the 107 minute action movie, the "action" doesn't start until 40 minutes into the film. Its a testament to the skill of the filmmakers behind THE NEST that those 67 other minutes are intense as fuck.

Plus, I give absolute credit to them for actually making me guess who would ultimately survive.

Hell, even care for those that don't make it, they get proper endings. While that "official" remake had people dropping like flies and you the audience not giving a damn, THE NEST even made the required "chicken shit" character of such siege tales not job out.

I think its most Carpenter-esque quality is that the villains resemble the faceless evils that wrecked terror in Carpenter's early movies. Like Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN, the street gang in the original AOP13, the ghost pirates in THE FOG, and the monster in THE THING, these villains for THE NEST resemble more like giant killer insects with their nightvision goggles than people (which is quite deliberate).

Maybe the best telling of why this movie rocks is that there is a split-second decision for the security guard who gets beaten up by the robbers, but then hours later forced to fight with them to the bitter end. No nonsense scenes of him complaining about helping criminals or being "recruited" by the heroes. None of that bullshit. He makes his decision when he sees the mercs outside on the security monitors. That alone was enough to convert him.

Hardly anything to argue with you about here, Ronnie.

You're right on about Gugino. And in fairness to Tarantino, Soderbergh made the same mistake. In OUT OF SIGHT, the novel, Karen was tall, blonde and "WASP-ish."

The reason that Elmore's novels are tough to adapt is because they're largely satirical. In satire the biggest laughs come from the narrative, not from the character dialogue.

I think you're right about Leonard's writings.

I think another reason that Carla is better than J-Lo is because with J-Lo, you expect Clooney to tap that ass. With Carla, if Clooney did tap her ass, it would mean that he really did seduce her (and more impressive) but whatever.

Then again, OUT OF SIGHT was the only movie that J-Lo did where she acted. A pity I guess that she squandered any goodwill from it and became the prima-donna bitch of Hollywood.

Jamie Foxx: "I've known J-lo since she was Hey-Ho."