Sports and Entertainment

Tim Falletti

I’m going to be honest.  I am not sure how to review this movie.  It’s difficult because I am not quite sure I saw an actually movie last night.  I am pretty sure I just saw a bunch of nonsense on the screen that didn’t make any sort of sense.  I am going to try my hardest to get through this review but honestly, I just want to forget I even saw whatever garbage I saw last night on a big movie screen.

Here are the facts:  Fact 1 -The first Transformers was decent.  It was an action movie with big robots fighting each other.  It was mindless, it was fun at times, and it didn’t make me want to punch puppies. Fact 2 - Megan Fox is gorgeous.

Having said that, Transformers 2 has these facts:  It takes everything that was fun and decent from Transformers 1 and makes a mockery of it.  It amps it up a thousand million trillion times and makes it completely unwatchable. Fact 2 - Megan Fox is still pretty gorgeous.

Let me try to explain this “plot”.  Shia La-beef is still Sam.  He still talks the same way and acts the same way he does in every other movie he has been in.  He finds a sliver of the cube thing from the first movie and starts seeing visions.  The bad robots want to know exactly what is going on in those visions, and the good robots don’t want them to find out.  Explosions ensue.  A lot of them.

That’s the plot.  I think.  I can’t remember because I was in shock watching some of the really horrible cliches in this movie.  The slow mo walks, the horrible dialogue, the “Michael Bay” stock shots.  All of them are in here in abundance.  The thing that really gets me though…ugh.  The thing that really gets me is the blatent and offensive stereotypes that Michael Bay has reduced the robots to.  It’s so bad, I don’t really want to explain it in this review.  I don’t think it deserves any kind of explaination besides “Don’t see this movie”.

So in other words, I really really recommend you don’t waste your hard earned money on this movie.  If you want to rent it on DVD fine.  But it’s a complete and total waste of time.  It’s not fun.  It’s painful.  But hey, it has Megan Fox.

Tim Falletti

When it comes down to it, marriage is one of the scariest, important, frightening, beautiful days of a man’s life.  But before that day happens, you have to have one last night of pure debauchery.  Enter:  The Hangover.  If I have a bachelor party one sixteenth as crazy and funny and life altering as the one in this movie, I will die a happy man.

The story of four guys going to Vegas for a bachelor party might sound stale.  But what they do here in The Hangover is different.  We never experience the night with the guys.  We wake up in the same Vegas hotel room hungover, missing a friend.  We are detectives that are trying to piece together the night with these guys because they can’t remember their night of debauchery. That little twist makes the experience that much funnier.
Think of the first time you really knew about Will Ferrell.  My guess is that it was probably in Old School.  That role brought us such comedies as Anchorman, Ricky Bobby, and Step Brothers.  Without Old School, Will Ferrell would not be the star he is today.  Without Old School we wouldn’t have the whole Apatow clan.  The Hangover is to Old School as Ed Helms and Zack Galifianakis is to Will Ferrell.  This movie is going to make those two complete and total stars.  10 years from now when Galifianakis is on his fifth summer blockbuster sequel, you will think back to The Hangover as the movie that started it all.  And just like Old School, The Hangover will be played over and over again in dorm rooms for years to come.

I am not getting into hyperbole when I say that The Hangover is the funniest film of the year…and quite frankly, it’s probably the funniest movie in about five years.  Its raunchy, it’s sarcastic, it’s physical, it’s psychological.  It will make you laugh hard, it will make you chuckle, and it will make you start laughing out loud two hours after you have gotten home and finally got the joke.  It’s funny.  There I said it.

I have two rules in my house.  1.  Take off your shoes before stepping on the carpet.  2. No television in the bedroom.  I know the first rule is common in this country, but the second is not nearly as accepted.  You see, in my opinion, the bedroom is for two things;  sleep and well you know the other one.

Last night Conan O’Brien took over The Tonight Show and I am finding it harder and harder to follow that second rule.  I never watched The Tonight Show when Leno hosted.  I didn’t watch Letterman either.  I stuck with Stewart and Colbert.  I’m 27 years old and those two guys along with Conan just seem to speak with me more than the older gents that previously filled that time slot.

Last night was Conan’s inaugural Tonight Show and to my delight, he hasn’t lost one step.  The opening gag of Conan running cross country through Chicago, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Arizona…..classic Conan.  It also symbolized that Conan is faster and edgier than Leno is, and that a new regime is in town… literally busting down the walls that so many have become accustomed to.

Conan’s first guest were Will Ferrell who is always funny and Pearl Jam who were good in my opinion last night.  There may have been one too many video gags and the Hollywood D gag fell short, but  the story is not there.  Conan is back.  And better than ever.

So all in unison:  Circle!  Circle!  Circle!

 So we kind of already know the plot for the new Ghostbusters film that is or isn’t already close to being in development.  All the original Ghostbusters run mini-Ghostbuster camps and train new Ghostbusters ala basic training in the Army.  Well rumor has it that Eliza Dushku is one of those trainees.

I am just going to squash this rumor now.  According to Eliza herself, it’s a rumor.  As is the Allysa Milano rumor too.  Here it is straight from Eliza’s mouth via Twitter:

Ghost-rumor-buster in a big way @Alyssa_milano (hey girlene) it’s nuthin’ I know of.

So there you have it.  Is there a chance this rumor could actually have some water down the line?  Maybe.  But for right now, this Eliza Dushku Ghostbuster rumor is busted.

And my girlfriend and every female I know goes wild…..  God did Twilight suck… Ugh.

 Yeah the title of this article says it all.  I cannot wait for this flick to hit theatres.  Check out the trailer and tell me what you think.  Me thinks Robert Downey Jr. has another hit on his hands.

Sorry I know this news is sort of old, but I have been away on road trippy goodness the past few days.  Plus, I kind of want to give up on this site because I was averaging over 1500 hits a day and all of a sudden some of the pictures that have been drawing in the hits all of a sudden aren’t drawing them in.. Conspiracy I tells ya.  Anywho….

Chris Hemsworth (The new Star Trek movie)  has been cast as Thor

And Tom Hiddleston is Loki

I don’t know how I feel on this casting just yet.  I was kind of hoping Marvel would have went with an unknown body builder ala Conan in the 80’s.  But beggars can’t be choosers.

Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures have signed Marin Scorsese to direct the upcoming biopic based on the life of Frank Sinatra.  I cannot think of a better director to take on this film.  I simply cannot.

Phil Alden Robinson is writing the screenplay. You may remember another one of his screenplays…..Field of Dreams.

Also, Frank’s youngest daughter Tina will be an executive producer and all the music rights have been secured.   Tina has told journalists in the past that she would “trust Scorsese implicitly” to “present the truth” about her father.

Man oh man.  A Scorsese Sinatra picture.  I simply cannot wait.  It will be incredible.  Now, who to cast as Frank?  DiCaprio?  They have a long past…..who do you think should play Frankie?

So I am hoping to start a new weekly column here as long as I keep a constant flow of money coming in so stay tuned on Wednesdays for a new Blu-Ray review each week.  This week though, I am starting off with a flick that will surprise everyone who has not seen it.  Taken.

And the end of the year when I do my Top Ten Movies of the Year list, you can fully anticipate that Taken will be in the top ten, if not number one.  I am a complete sucker for a good action flick.  It seems we are teased with four or five a year and they just don’t follow through on the promise.  If you can recall, I put Rambo on my list last year just because it delivered on the promise of hell raising.  Taken starring Liam Neeson and directed by Pierre Morel also delivers ten fold.

Taken starts off with a little back story just like any action flick, but the second Neeson starts punching throats, the action rarely ceases. (And my God does he punch throats)  I found myself cringing and laughing and swearing throughout the movie with the great ways Neeson punishes those who kidnapped his daughter.  Liam Neeson delivers a fantasticly believable performance as a father who is hell bent on justice.  Maggie Grace plays said daughter and while annoying, she rarely gets screen time so it’s just enough not to bother you completely.  This movie is about Liam Neeson punching throats.  That’s it.

The Blu-Ray looks fantastic.  The disc contains both the theatrical cut (and seriously who will watch it?) and the unrated cut.  It has 1080p picture with a 2.35:1 Aspect ratio.  The sound is brilliant in its  DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio.   The Blu-Ray also comes with a digital copy for your i-Pod so that is yet another bonus.

Taken on Blu-Ray is a must have for an action junky.  If you don’t pick this up, you probably deserve to get punched in the throat.

This is great news in my opinion.  I know Jumper had its flaws, but I really found it one of the most entertaining movies of last year.  Nos, Steven Gould, author of “Jumper” , tells io9 that there might be a movie sequel. ”[Director] Doug Liman has expressed a particular interest in an unspecified moment in the sequel Reflex, and I suspect it’s this twinning thing that Davy does, where he’s jumping to a place and back and forth to the point where he’s in both places at once, and a hole opens connecting the two places. So when he’s chained to a wall, he jumps back and forth to the ocean and all this water floods out of the hole. If ever there was a cinematic moment, that’s it. And then there’s this thing from Reflex where you have a very shadow-y Illuminati sort of government agency and they very much want to control jumpers. And that organization showed up in the scripts, but they ended up having to cut it because of budget. So that thread might show up.”

Sounds good.  I went out after Jumper and picked up the books and can say that the Jumper story line is definitely made for the big screen.  I hope they follow more closely to the books than they did with Jumper.  Also, any movie with Rachel Bilson in it should be seen by the masses.