What Have We Missed In The News

So it has been and interesting few weeks in movie news with various ups and downs, with new movie confirmations and new actors being signed to existing ideas.

The Smurfs Sequel ... & Threequel.
That's right, you read it right. After the original Smurfs movie racked in a massive $563 Million worldwide, Sony Pictures Animation quickly announced a sequel only 12 days after the movie was released. Unfortunately now Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures are confident to release a third instalment for The Smurfs with a script already being written. The Smurfs Sequel will again be directed by Raja Gosnell and will feature most of the original films actors and actresses including the same voice actors.

This news makes me annoyed, sure Smurfs may be great for little kids and sure it's going to be bringing LOTS of money, but with ratings like 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.3 on IMDb, I dont see how a number of these respectable actors can be ok with signing up for this poor movie three times. I don't see how they are comfortable losing their credibility as actors, but the most likely answer to that is they see a pile of money infront of them grow and grow, the more they help put together poorly made movies.

Kickass 2 
That's right, The comic book writer and creator of Kickass, Mark Millar, has been talking about a sequel for his semi-popular joke superhero movie for some time now, and after the Avengers exploded into the box office, racking in over $700 Million worldwide so far, Universal gave Kickass 2 the green light. Good news? Tell me what you think about this.

Alec Baldwin Lines Up His Next Appearances
During the week, the hit TV show 30 Rock announced that it will be finishing up with a final, 13 episode 7th Seaoson, Alec Baldwin has been lining up his nest movie jobs, starting off with signing up with Director/Writer Woody Allen for his next unknown project, along with that, it has been confirmed that he will be teaming up alongside Russel Brand for a project called 'The Man Who Rocks the Cradle.' The movie is about an overworked man who is has to take care of a young child, alongside his busy day job, to take some of the pressure off, this overworked man hires a "super nanny" to solve all of the problems, but it turns out that this nanny is actually a man. Interesting concept, and it will be interesting to see how that turns out, wether it will be a comedy or will have a much deeper meaning.

Margin Call - We're Back!

I first heard of Margin Call when I was in the movie cinema about to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I distinctly remember the trailer capturing my attention as a movie I had to see. I finally got the chance to see it the other day and and I was rather impressed.

Despite what the trailer made the movie out to be, with its action noises and loud, epic music, The whole storyline was composed mostly of dialogue. Margin Call follows a New York Banking firm, 24 hours before the market crash on the New York Stock Exchange happened. As times were tough. Many workers were being let go from the banking firm, One of these workers includes Eric Dale who happened to be halfway through working on some important statistical data before he was fired. Eric manages to give the research to one of his friends, Peter who was still in the company with the instructions to “be careful” whilst looking at them. Peter fills in some of the blanks that were left out of Eric’s original findings and realizes that the company is in trouble. Big trouble. Peter takes his information to the executive team to decide what to do, and after numerous meetings, explaining the situation to everyone the final agreement is to have a fire sale of the shares, knowing that after the following days trading is over, that will be it for the company,

I thought that Margin Call was an interesting movie. In some ways it seemed like quite a complex job but looking at the big picture it comes off as simple and effective.  The story was told through the dialogue. Lots of talking, lots of conversation. The talking was fast moving and despite what the movie was about, it didn’t dive too far into the technical terms of the business world. The music built up the climaxes and the silences carried across emotion really effectively. I noticed a lot of this happening when the executive team are panicking so they are yelling at each other. The Characters were another part that was interesting, there were only two actors I had seen before, so it was definitely a fresh cast. Simon Baker from the Mentalist and the Actor who plays the Boss from the corporate job in Horrible Bosses. The acting was no standout performance but it wasn’t terrible. It seemed they were the right guys to play business characters and they got the job done.

Some things I didn’t like about Margin Call. The ending. The whole movie is the buildup to the fire sale of stocks and after the big sale, nothing much after that happens. I would of like to see the next few days or months too see what happened to the company. Another down point was the lack of explain what exactly went wrong or was going wrong in the movies case. There were plenty of opportunities for the script to spell out in black and white what the problem was but it always seemed that the characters knew what was going on without anyone having to go into to much depth.

I fount Margin Call a relieving break from my past streak of big action movies that seem to be screaming in my face to watch and be amazed at how good they are, it was a relaxing step back but it still told a great story. The time seemed to fly by as I watched it and for all the reasons above I am going to give Margin Call a three out of five.

Safe House

As 2012 has come I have felt a huge weight lift off my chest. This old weight was the agony of having to watch sequels and movies that were part of a franchise, throughout all of last year. Here's a quick fact for you. 13 out of the 14 big blockbusters last year were part of a franchise, meaning they were all additional movies in a series, or were adapted from well known comics or TV shows. So starting the year with great things like Hugo, Chronicle and now Safe House, makes me so much happier.

The movie is set up and appears to be a standard spy movie. There are good guys and bad guys, going after one thing and theres lots of fighting and gunfire throughout it. Safe House had ties with this standard storyline, but it was so different in its own way again. Safe House follows Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), a rookie CIA agent who is a "housekeeper" of a CIA safe-house in Capetown. While Matt is boring himself to death at this safe-house each day, a highly wanted fugitive called Tobin Frost, (Denzel Washington) is found and is being brought to the safe-house for questioning. While the CIA agents are interrogating Frost, the house is breached by a crew of thug type hitmen who are after Frost too. The CIA agents are overwhelmed and before you know the only people left are Weston, Frost and the thugs. 

Because Weston wants to prove himself as a good agent,  he takes Frost and there are numerous car chases and shootouts, with Frost changing hands between the thugs and Weston. While all of this is happening in Capetown, the CIA officials at the American Headquarters are tossing up weather or not Weston is a fugitive like Frost or if he is trying to do the right thing and turn Frost in. The story is told a lot through the CIA Headquarters discussions and I think that was quite a good technique because it didn't take you out of the story at all and was a good addition of suspense wondering who Weston really was. The end ties all the loose ends together and exposes all of the characters true beings, which totally went against what I thought of them the whole story. 

The script for Safe House was brilliant, there wasn't too much dialoge but just enough to keep it a good thriller/action film. The camera shots were complex and took me back to the days of Jason Bourne with the high amounts of camera shake, something we don't see to much these days. The sound was loud and broke and added suspense very well and the acting was pulled of well, with the big name star, Washington as the main antagonist and Reynolds as the underdog, "goog guy" who you are willing on. 

Safe House was a fantastic movie, I highly recommend it. It was high action and never had moments without different emotions being conveyed. The thing I liked most about it was the originality and they way you were always guessing what was coming and trying to piece everything together. Safe House was one of the best movies I have seen this year and for that I am giving it 4 and a half out of 5 stars. 

See the Trailer for Safe House here. 

The Oscars

It's that time of year for every movie lover to get excited and prepare themselves for the Oscars! The 84th Academy Awards will be held on the 26th of February at the Kodak Theater, or the Highland Center due to Kodaks recent bankruptcy in Hollywood California. As  most of you would probably know, there are 24 awards on this night of nights, spanning from best picture, to actors, cinematography and visual effects. I don't really know a heck of a lot about the Academy Awards but as I find out to write this post we are all learning! Heres what i've discovered so far...

- The most nominated actor/actress EVER is Meryl Streep, gaining her 17th nomination this year with  "The Iron Lady"

- John Williams has a total of 47 nominations including two this year.

- Walt Disney had the record for the most nominations and most awards with a huge 59 Nominations and 22 Awards received.

- "Silence is Golden" well, The Artist, could actually could win the golden Oscar for best picture, if it does win it will be the first black and white film in over 80 years.

- Each Oscar statue costs around $800 to make and weighs around 8.5 pounds (3.8 kilograms). They are made of gold platen britannium an have a black metal base.

- The Ceremony is a huge cost in itself. With over $42,000 spent on champagne, $25,000 on just the truffles for the food and get this, the morning after the show, win or lose, and LA Marketing company is sending each nominee a "gift bag" filled with vouchers and things totalling up to $75,000! Some of the more notable presents you could find in a bag would be a holiday to the maldives and six month gym membership.

- The red carpet for the Oscars is 500 feet long (154m) which turns out to be 5,000 square meters!

OK now putting aside my little facts there is one huge trojan horse slipping into the Oscars this year in the form of a small orphan boy living in a train station in Paris. Thats right, Hugo, that has only pulled in $66 Million in the American box office over seven weeks, has been nominated for 11 awards! Hugo will be going up against some of the other biggest movies of the year for the awards for; Best Picture, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Music, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects and Writing. I am confident that Hugo will win quite a few Oscars at tomorrows ceremony and it will really surprise you, like being surprised by a big model horse filled with soldiers. Hugo really was a great movie, even if it wasn't bright enough for kids, wasn't romantic enough for a valentines day movie and wasn't quite epic enough to be a huge blockbuster.

Every year at the Oscars the award for visual effects is discussed and lots of opinions are different as to who the award will go to. I think out of the five nominees, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Real Steel, Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Transformers Dark of the Moon, it will come down to Hugo and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the other movies were great with there VFX but they just the emotion and how realistic the apes were in Rise of the Plannet of the Apes was a class above the other nominees. I give an honorable mention the the scene in Transformers: Dark of the Moon when the Deceptacon, Shockwave, tore down the building that the main characters were on. Those VFX were amazingly well done and that was one of the best sequences of effects I saw last year.

I am sure that the Oscars will be very interesting tomorrow, I am sure there will be no disappointments, as all of the nominees are great films and great actors, unlike back in 1994 when Babe stole the Oscar for best picture off Apollo 13, but leaving that in the past I can't wait to see how the ceremony goes. For all the oscar nominees click here, you can like us on Facebook by clicking the logo on the right. Check back in for movie rumours, reviews on new titles, reviews on old classics and games.