Category Archives: Personal

The Last Airbender (Trailer)

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For as long as my son, my husband, and I have been huge fans of the animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, we’ve been long-awaiting M. Night Shyamalan’s latest Film, “The Last Airbender.” And as long as the trailer is as promising as the animated series, the entire family is bound to enjoy this film–especially in 3D.

The only thing that disappoints me is that my favorite character, “Toph,” doesn’t seem to be anywhere in the cast of characters listed for the movie, but not even that will stop me from making it a point to watch this!

Synopsis

Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Four nations tied by destiny when the Fire Nation launches a brutal war against the others. A century has passed with no hope in sight to change the path of this destruction. Caught between combat and courage, Aang (Noah Ringer) discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang teams with Katara (Nicole Peltz), a Waterbender, and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), to restore balance to their war-torn world. Based on the hugely successful Nickelodeon animated TV series, the live-action feature film “The Last Airbender” is the opening chapter in Aang’s struggle to survive.

Clash of the Titans 3D (Theaters)

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To be honest with everyone, I was quite against this remake since they day I found out it was in production. Yet is was the lure of the original that brought me into the theaters today. As a child, Desmond Davis’s Clash of the Titans was nothing short of magical for me. Regardless of how cheesy it may have been, it brought to life a universe of Greek mythology which previously could only be retold though books and oral tradition. Over the last couple decades, I will proudly admit to watching the original at least fifty times over, and prior to this screening, I did spend a lazy afternoon reliving the 1981 cult classic on my living room sofa in all its glory.

I think the biggest disappointment I had with Clash of the Titans was the huge alterations to the storyline. When you remake a movie such as this one, it needs to stay true to its roots. Remakes are created to enhance the experience and retell a story using updated technology and special effects. Not ruin it by changing the very fabric of the story itself. Okay, so the basic plot of the story remained the same, (Perseus defeating the Kraken) but the storytelling and development were so foreign to me. They changed so much in the screenplay, that with a few adjustments here and there, it could have possibly been made into another film altogether.

Putting Bias and nostalgia aside, this film was still quite horrible. Besides the updated CGI monsters and action sequences, this film lacked any kind of substance whatsoever. The storyline in the original was definitely not academy award winning, but at least it had one. This film seemed to jump from idea to idea with little to no explanation. There was hardly any background info on any of the characters or development for that matter and the dialogue between the actors was just grotesque. It was really hard for me to appreciate anything in this film.

Yet despite all its flaws, I believe there will be some out there who will come out of the theaters with some sort of satisfaction. After all, the sound was great, the monsters were pretty cool, and the film maintained a nice pace. Enough to keep the average moviegoer entertained.

My suggestion? If you enjoyed the original, I’d wait till this one is released on Blu-Ray and DVD. Everything that made the original a magical experience is gone. Save yourself the time and money and rent it. If you’ve never seen Clash of the Titans, pay for the 2D version of the film. The movie was shot with 2D in mind and during its post production some genius thought it was a good idea to make it 3D. The 3D glasses didn’t enhance the story or effects one bit.

Pandorum (DVD)

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To say that I was hyped to watch Pandorum is a bit of an understatement. The premise set up in the trailers, although a bit familiar, also seemed eerily original at the same time. I never got the chance to check it out on the big screen, but when I saw it on the video store shelf I snatched it up immediately. I figured even if the movie wasn’t very original, it had this ultra creepy vibe to it that would at least prove entertaining.

The movie’s title “Pandorum” is the word used to describe the condition when a human develop extreme paranoia and dementia from prolonged deep space travel. In other words, when someone is in space so long that they lose their mind. In the future, Earth’s resources have all but dried up due to overpopulation. A large ship called the Elysium is created to be a futuristic Noah’s Ark, ushering tens of thousands of humans and select species into space with the hopes of finding a new home. As the voyage is extensively long and involves light speed travel, there are 6 different crews all taking different rotations between manning the ship and being preserved in cryo sleep.

When Crewman Bower (Ben Foster) is awakened via timed release, he finds that the ship is empty with the exception of fellow crewmember Lt Cooper (Dennis Quaid).The entire ship is badly damaged and most of the systems are offline. It is up to Bower and Cooper to discover what happened to the passengers and the rest of the crews. Along the way they discover that the ship is inhabited by ravenous blood thirsty mutant creatures. The two must find a way to survive these predators as well as battling the symptoms of pandorum, while finding a way to save the ship.

The film has quite a few revealing plot twists along the way, with some being more believable than others. For the most part, the story is fairly good and remained entertaining throughout. I didn’t particularly like the ending, whcih seemed like a last minute addition to the story, but overall the plot is pretty good.

The acting is fairly good overall. I really like Ben Foster’s work. He is an excellent at portraying these unconventional, oddball characters as his work as Russell Crowe’s right hand man Charlie Prince in ’3:10 to Yuma’ and his turn as the mysterious Stranger in ’30 Days of Night’ clearly demonstrate. In this film I feel he is a bit miscast. While I like Foster, he doesn’t really have the charm or authoritative screen presence to succesfully carry the movie, at least not in this role. Dennis Quaid does an excellent job as Lt. Cooper. It seems like just another Dennis Quaid portrayal until about midpoint in the film when another character is introduced that exposes some of Cooper’s darkest secrets.

Overall the movie was good, but it had the potential to be incredible. I had a ton of hope for this film and while it didn’t exactly dissapoint me, it didn’t really impress me in the way that I was expecting. The movie is definitely worth a rental, but when watching it one can’t help but feel that the movie could have been so much more than what it is.