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Steve Alten’s book, MEG, finally becoming a movie

Posted in books, movies with tags , on April 18, 2006 by Paxton

The above pic is pre-production art from an upcoming movie called Meg. Click here to read the original story on CHUD’s website. Meg, the movie, is based on the novel, Meg by Steve Alten. I ask you, how ridiculously bad-ass is the above pic? I’ll answer that it’s so bad ass I almost wouldn’t care what the name of the movie was, I’d go see it. Not only that, just take a look at the cover for the book. A giant pre-historic shark chomping down on a T-Rex?! Where do I sign up? Well, actually, I already did sign up. I read Meg several years ago along with the followup sequel, The Trench (with a not as exciting cover…or story). I really enjoyed Meg which is about a long thought extinct pre-historic shark, Megalodon, that is brought up from the Marianas Trench by accident. And, of course, it goes on a killing spree. It’s like Jaws on steroids. The sequel has a little less excitement and focuses on the original Meg’s offspring, but the first book is a thrilling read and I highly recommend it.

The movie Meg has been in development for a while. You can see it’s IMDB page here. I’ve been waiting for it to come out but there were several things deemed too expensive effects-wise that caused the delay. On the IMDB page you can see a pic of the Megalodon jumping out of the water to attack a helicopter. Definately one of the money shots of the book. This was one scene deemed too difficult or expensive to shoot. I guess the technology is now there to build the shark. I for one, can’t wait to see it.

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Movie Reviews: Lucky Number Slevin & Dog Day Afternoon

Posted in movies, reviews with tags , on April 13, 2006 by Paxton

FINALLY, after several weeks of a movie theater-less existence, Steph and I went to our local AMC last night. Still not much out that excites me, but Lucky Number Slevin looked pretty good. It looked like a clever, funny crime movie and it had plenty of good actors in it, so we took a chance.

First of all, lots of people die in this movie. In the first 15 minutes we were up to like 10 individual deaths you actually witness. Took me by surprise. But then you settle in for the quick and clever dialogue and the movie becomes fun. The movie is written well, and the dialogue is funny, but for a while it gets confusing. I was struggling to keep up with the fast pace halfway through, but then I caught up and it flowed perfectly right through to the end. All the characters are fun and interesting, and there are a lot of them.

Let me say first, that I am NOT a fan of Josh Hartnett. I can’t even think of a movie I liked him in. I liked the movie Sin City, but he was dead in the first 5 minutes of that movie. I hated him in The Faculty, Halloween H20, 40 Days 40 Nights, Pearl Harbor, Virgin Suicides……you get the idea. In all of these movies he acts like a wooden chair. He doesn’t show any emotion like his face is full of novacaine. He changed my mind in this movie. He showed emotion and was a generally likeable character throughout the movie. If he continues performing like this from here on out, I’ll start liking him.

As for the other actors, they were a joy. I used to not like Morgan Freeman. I know, I know, I’m in the minority, but it seemed to me he played the same riff on the same character forever. I have since changed my mind. His latest string of movies including Sum of all Fears, Bruce Almighty, Unleashed, Batman Begins and Million Dollar Baby have absolutely brought me into the “loving Morgan Freeman” crowd. Freeman delivers in this as well. He plays “The Boss”, the arch-rival of Ben Kingsley’s character. He plays it menacing and cool, but you still like him. Bruce Willis continues being a pretty cool customer. He plays cold-as-ice assassin Mr. Goodkat, which, truthfully, is a variation on his characters Jimmy “The Tulip” from Whole Nine Yards and Jackal from The Jackal. Despite the character being a slight retread for Willis, I still very much enjoyed him in this. Another very good actor and a surprise in this movie was Lucy Liu. I really like her. She’s had only a few roles but they’ve been good. I forget just how gorgeous she is. I look forward to her future roles.

This brings me to Sir Ben Kingsley. What the hell has happened to this guy? He used to be a phenomenal actor; Ghandi, Schindler’s List and Searching for Bobby Fisher. His latest run of movies is mind-boggingly bad; Thunderbirds, Suspect Zero and A Sound of Thunder?! Is he slumming? I don’t get it. Well, in Slevin, for me, he’s the weak link. Going for the Kevin Spacey/Lex Luthor look of shaved head and goatee, he portrays The Rabbi. A little cheesy and over the top, he really doesn’t have that much to do and seems to try to over-compensate. In his scenes he looks like a dying fish. His eyes are wide open and his mouth is moving. I don’t think he ever blinked. Weird.

Sir Ben’s fishy acting aside, it’s a small issue I have, the movie is, top to bottom, really very good. All the characters are fun and the dialogue is crisp. You get a lot of Tarantino-like camera pans and dissolves; things jump back and forth in time, but it’s fairly easy to keep up and the ending took me by surprise. I would recommend it. If you enjoyed Pulp Fiction or Usual Suspects, you’ll probably enjoy this movie.

I saw another crime based movie recently. Knowing my predilection for heist movies, you’d be surprised to know that I never saw Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino. I rectified that situation last week. The movie is based on a true story about two guys who try to rob a bank in Brooklyn. The two robbers are portrayed by Michael and Fredo Corleone; Al Pacino and John Cazale. Dog Day was filmed a year after Godfather Part II, which surprised me because I thought it was filmed before. The two try to rob the bank and everything goes wrong. Pretty soon they are holed up in the bank with a dozen or so hostages surrounded by the police. It’s a gritty and intense drama with really good acting by Al Pacino, Charles Durning and Chris Sarandon as Al Pacino’s male lover (yes, you read that right). It was a good movie, and I see why it’s a classic, but I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it anytime soon as it’s somewhat of a downer. Check it out if you enjoy watching classic cinema, but be prepared for it’s dark and gritty storyline.

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Movie Novelizations #1: Back to the Future Trilogy

Posted in Back to the Future, books, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags , , , , on April 6, 2006 by Paxton

By the mid ’80s I was 10 years old and I loved to read. Now, I wasn’t reading Tolstoy or Shakespeare, but I was reading nonetheless. Movie novelizations were one thing that really got me interested in reading. I’m not talking about books that “inspired” a movie, or the novel a movie was based on. I’m talking about a novel written AFTER the movie script was written or based on the script of an in-development movie. In the ’80s and ’90s, movie novelizations were everywhere, yet today, they are rare if the movie isn’t based on a comic book. Every awesome genre movie got one. Demolition Man, War Games, the Back to the Future trilogy, the Batman movies, even more recent movies like the 1996 Mission Impossible remake had a movie novel based on its script. There was a WaldenBooks in the Riverchase Galleria many years ago (it’s a clothing store now) that had an entire section of movie novelizations. That’s where I spent most of my time at the mall (when I wasn’t in the mall arcade, Diamond Jim’s). Any movie that I enjoyed at the theater, I’d go pick up the movie novelization. For the most part, I still do it. One thing movie novelizations have going for them is that they are, for the most part, only released in paperback. This makes it extremely portable and easy to read anywhere.

In these books, the movie story was basically the same, but since the book was usually written on an earlier draft of the script, scenes that were cut out of the movie are still in the book. In some of the better novels, you also get inner monologue of the main characters. It gave an entirely new dimension to the story.

Being a pack rat, I still have most of these books. I thought it would be interesting to review some of these novels for you and let you know the good ones and the bad ones and how they compare to the movie they represent. Since I have so many of these books, I’ll only do a few at a time and make this an ongoing series. For a preview of some of the books, see the pic above. I have more, but I need to find them as they are hidden away in cardboard boxes after my move from Birmingham, AL to Jacksonville, FL. The first series of books today will be the books based on one of my favorite series of movies…the Back to the Future trilogy.

These were 3 of my favorite movies when I was a kid. When the first was released in 1985, I saw it in the theater at least 10 times. I was a freak for this movie. I almost died when it took 4 years to release the sequel, Back to the Future Part II. Part II was the first novel I bought of this series (at the aforementioned WaldenBooks). I had no idea the first movie had been released in novel form also. Many years later, after all the Back to the Future movies had been released on video, a “garage sale” store opened up about 20 minutes from my house. Now these places are called antique shops, but originally it was a garage sale store. This place was a goldmine for old books as it had an entire room dedicated to selling them. I can’t even tell you how many books I’ve found in this store. It was here that I stumbled across the paperback for the original Back to the Future. It even had the original sales receipt dated 1985. I was dumbstruck. I read it immediately. I began wondering if Part III had a movie novelization. I searched high and low. This was before the proliferation of the internet and Amazon.com or eBay. If it wasn’t at a local bookstore or at a garage sale or second hand store, you weren’t finding it, my friend.

After over a year of going back to the garage sale store, it finally appeared, like a great desert oasis, Back to the Future Part III: The Novel. It was my Holy Grail and I had found it. Giddy as a schoolgirl, I bought it and began reading it that night.

The books in this series are very true to the movies. You’ll find little tidbits here and there that weren’t in the movie. For instance, the original Back to the Future novel starts with Marty in school instead of in Doc’s lab. Some scenes are longer and some dialogue is slightly different, but overall it’s a really good adaptation of the movies.

Years later, before the garage sale store closed, I did find an alternate cover for Back to the Future Part II, it was white instead of blue, but I thought enough is enough. I believe you can find these on Amazon right now from third party sellers, but I’ll always cherish these books because it took me years to complete the set.

Coming up I’ll have looks at the novels for Clue: The Movie, The original Batman movies, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and the X-men movies. If I find my old stash of books, maybe I’ll have some more suprises.

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Movie Review: Inside Man; Heist TV Show & Ocean’s 13

Posted in movies, reviews, TV, TV shows with tags , , , on March 28, 2006 by Paxton

For the wife’s birthday, went to see Inside Man with Clive Owen, Denzel Washington and Jodi Foster. As you can tell from my earlier post about heist movies, I LOVE this sub-genre. Heist movies, for the most part are so much fun. I love seeing new entries. I was underwhelmed recently by the movie Firewall with Harrison Ford. A limp, home/invasion, bank heist movie that really went nowhere for me. Paul Bettany as the robber was the only thing to save the movie. Harrison Ford continues on his rapid decent into mediocrity. But I digress. Inside Man is everything I ever wanted. Cool, smart mastermind, clever plan and interesting backstory. There is a lot going on, but it’s unbelievable how Clive Owen’s character is one step ahead of the police. The backstory and the ending are very cool and interesting also.

The performances also add to the wonderful script. Clive Owen is perfect as Dalton, the mastermind behind the bank robbery. He continues to impress me with his roles. Jodie Foster is great as usual with the hauty, smugness of her character Madeline, someone used to getting things done…discreetly. Denzel disappoints a little bit, but I fully confess to not really being a fan of him anyway. His character complements Owens’ Dalton nicely.

I was very suprised this is a Spke Lee movie. There’s lots of smart humor and really good action in this script. The ads and trailers I’ve seen do not play up the fact that he directed it, nor does it seem like his usual fair (of which I am also not really a fan). If this is how Spike can perform when not preaching about the ghetto, then consider me interested from now on. This movie had me entertained and out-guessed from the beginning and I applaud Spike and the other actors for finally putting a good movie out in a so far slow movie season.

Speaking of the heist sub-genre of movies, Steph and I watched the TV show Heist on NBC Sunday night (I had TiVo’d it. It actually aired last Wednesday).


It wasn’t bad. It had elements of Ocean’s 11 mixed with Out of Sight. Some of the dialogue I thought was trying too hard. The two main characters, Mickey and James, are having a discussion and they talk about topics no one on Earth would have regular conversations about like Mother Teresa and famous historical dates. For me, it was trying a tad too hard to be smart. You can have witty banter without having the characters off-handedly discuss the content of Mother Teresa’s letters and the date of the last Mongol invasion. Unnecessary.

Other than that, the show was very slick and executed itself very well. The heist in this episode was just the initial job to raise some money for the big heist to be executed later. After this first heist, I am definately interested in how they pull off the next heist.

Reading reviews of this show, I saw some online criticism that the heist depicted in the episode would have had to have too many things go right to realistically pull off. I say, if you watch and enjoy heist movies, you have to realize going in that timing and execution is everything. Of course everything has to happen with an insane, supernatural sense of execution and timing, otherwise it would be boring. But that’s just me.

I was not a fan of the lead, Dougray Scott, going into this (he was originally cast to play Wolverine in X-men but had to decline when filming on Mission Impossible II ran long), but he performs admirably here. As does the rest of his team. Check out pics from this series here.
The female member of the heist team, Lola, is HOOOOOOOOOT. I’ll definately tune in (with my TiVo at least) next Wednesday to see where this goes.

I’m in a heist state of mind, so, here is some news about Ocean’s 13. Filming starts by the end of the year and all the boys are back. The girls, however, will not be returning. I say yeah! for no Julia Roberts, but NO! for Catherine Zeta-Jones. Oh well. This is one of my favorite franchises so I’ll be there regardless.

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Movie Reviews: Mission: Impossible franchise

Posted in movies, pop culture, reviews with tags , , on March 23, 2006 by Paxton

Our mission, and we chose to accept it, was to watch the Mission Impossible movie.

The wife and I had watched our Blockbuster movies the night before and nothing was on TV, so Steph was tasked with picking a movie. She perused the Holley DVD Vaults, felt like an action movie, and came up with Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise. Now, as of late, Tom Cruise has been acting like a first rate asshat. He used to be the cool, aloof Mr. Cruise. Now he’s the outspoken, cradle-robbing asshat. And I emphasize the words ASSHAT. I’ve been able to separate the off screen Cruise psychopath and still enjoy him onscreen, that is, until he made War of the Worlds. But I loved Mission Impossible and was eager to see it again to rekindle my fondness for a good Cruise action movie.

Mission Impossible is how a good action movie should be done. It’s fast, action packed and has very cool gadgets and characters. This was a big, action movie, but the director kept the atmosphere close and tight. You could tell this movie’s tone and atmosphere was used later for Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremecy. When I first saw it I remember being completely shocked when Cruise’s entire IMF team is killed in the beginning. Emilio Estevez as the hacker, Jack, was a surprise to me when he was introduced in the beginning. Needless to say, I was sad to see him go so soon. Cruise played Ethan Hunt perfectly and the effects were awesome. Jon Voight played a convincing character, but the chick who played his wife was AWFUL. I don’t know who she is, but I’m glad I don’t see her in any other movies. AWFUL. This movie was definately a must see. Needless to say, I was excited to see the sequel but dismayed when it took 4 years to come out.

After watching Mission Impossible (MI), Steph and I felt like watching the second one. We both saw it theatrically, apparently together (I had forgotten) and memories of it had faded. I remember not really liking it, but I was willing to give it another chance. So off to Blockbuster we went the next night and rented it. I’d have to say, on this second viewing, I was much more entertained, but the movie was WAY overproduced. Seriously. I don’t know what John Woo was thinking, but it bordered on the ridiculous. I applaud the addition of Sir Anthony Hopkins as Ethan Hunt’s boss, but I jeer the leading lady, Thandie Newton, and the main villain, Dougray Scott. Thandie Newton couldn’t hold her own against the toddlers in Daddy Day Care much less Tom Cruise or Anthony Hopkins. I was glad they brought back Ving Rhames for a small appearance. The action set pieces were cool, if bordering on complete foolishness. I enjoyed the pretty lights and colors, but would not really want to see it again. The script may have been complete ass, but John Woo can really photograph some violence. I mean, it’s like he’s in love with graphic violence. The slow motion, the close ups, the doves. It’s almost violence pornography. You don’t believe me? See this movie or the movie Face/Off. Unbelievable. More faceless characters are killed in John Woo movies than in WWII and Vietnam combined.

I really love the concept of these movies, and the character of Ethan Hunt, particularly.

The next day we went to see Failure to Launch and the Mission Impossible 3 trailer came up. This was the second time I’ve seen it and I was much more excited to see it now that we had watched the first two. JJ Abrams, the writer/creator of Alias and Lost, is writing/directing this installment. He is bringing back Ving Rhames (hopefully in a bigger part) and they have Phillip Seymore Hoffman as the main villain. If you ask me, this is shaping up to be a really good action movie. I will definately choose to accept this Mission……. 🙂

Update 1/31/2007 – Click here to see the full review of Mission: Impossible 3

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