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Posts Tagged ‘Gary Oldman’
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
PLANET 51 has a unique premise of humans switching places with the aliens. The idea that humans are aliens invading a less advanced species, whose one fear is monsters like us taking over their world is a fun little twist. It’s a planet much like earth but with green people and they are living a lifestyle similar to earth’s 1950’s. They somehow even have the exact same songs as we did. The only real difference is that all the vehicles hover.
Out of nowhere an alien, or humanoid, ship lands from the sky. American astronaut, Captain Charles “Chuck” T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson without “the Rock” in between his name) believing he is alone, immediately emerges from the ship, prepared for a moon like atmosphere and sticks an American flag into the ground. After stepping on a dog’s squeaky toy, he looks around to see that he has landed in white picket fenced suburbia full of green people. With the help of a local, Lem (Justin Long) Chuck must navigate his way back to his ship to get home before General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and zombie predicting obsessive, Professor Kipple (John Cleese) catch him and distract his brain.
The voice actors all did a fair job but no one was necessarily exceptional. This is one of those cases where the studio is paying for a few famous names to put on their poster rather than finding great voice talent. Jessica Biel is barely used as Neera, a neighbor girl and love interest of Lem. Seann William Scott is probably working the hardest as Skiff, the high energy, dim-witted friend. Ironically, the best character is a silent WALL-E esque robotic dog name Rover working for NASA. Rover has his own little adventures with a fetish for rocks avoiding capturing any living specimen. Thus, ill preparing the humans for life on Planet 51.
PLANET 51 is a super cutesy, sweet animated film. But with today’s complex animated story lines, clever and fun for kids and adults alike, PLANET 51 comes off a little flat and boring. Containing a few funny scenes with a pretty neat premise, it’s definitely more for kids but I kind of think that it may not be able to even hold their attention fully.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: The 2.35:1 transfer looked real nice. The animation pops right off the screen.
Audio: The 5.1 DTS-HD track sounds clean with the soundtrack being really the only sound to showcase.
Target 51 Game: This is like the old Atari games but with less fluidity. You’re the ship, you move left to right and shoot other ships. The last round is a bit like Asteroids but again worse.
Extended Scenes (2:49): These are 3 scenes that added about 30 seconds each. They didn’t really make much of a difference. The first two are longer versions of Chuck in Lem’s bedroom and the third are the two doofy soldiers trying to be better zombies.
The World Of Planet 51 (2:54): Basically a virtual tour through the town and every location within the movie, really showing off the fantastic art direction.
Life On Planet 51 (12:04): This is the only feature worth anything. The first half showcases the voice actors talking about how they came up with the sound of their character and the difficulties of working by themselves. The second half showcases the writers and animators coming up with their ideas for the movie. Grabbing a small camcorder video taping themselves during certain movements so they might animate more authentically. It was quite funny. I would equate it to a garage band making it big.
Planetariu- The Voice Stars of Planet 51 (3:17): A typical fluff piece featurette with the actors talking about how great the movie is as clips from the film are shown.
Music Video Montage (2:11): This is lots of clips of the movie put to music. More like an extended preview set to music.
Animation Progression Reels (15:45): 6 animation progression scenes with 4 boxes of the same scene, each containing a different stage during the animation process. For the most part the scenes chosen were the best scenes in the film.
Tags: dwayne johnson, Gary Oldman, Javier Abad, Jorge Blanco, justin long
Posted in Reviews |
Monday, January 18th, 2010
Denzel Washington brings depth to any character he plays, evidenced by his two Oscar statuettes. However, due to the weight he brings to the roles he’s received Oscar attention for, and his overall dramatic prowess, it is often overlooked that he has starred in many what would be considered action films. It is still odd, though, to see him in the trailers of THE BOOK OF ELI, slashing and flipping a roomful of foes around like an old school Steven Seagal (not the current “Steven Seagal:Lawman”). But the beauty of The Hughes Brothers’ film is the marriage of Washington’s gravitas in the dramatic scenes with the calm, fluid movement the action sequences require for the film. He is just as badass here as he was delivering the throat punch in HE GOT GAME, throwing around poor little Ethan Hawke in TRAINING DAY, or delivering the right hooks in THE HURRICANE.
ELI starts with our lone traveler traversing the landscape of a post-apocalyptic America. Armed with guns, a bow and arrow, and a trusty blade (what Crocodile Dundee would even consider a knife), our unnamed hero walks with a pack on his back which no one is allowed to touch. We learn this in the first action sequence, excellently shot in silhouette, as Denzel wields his blade like a sushi chef through a gang of hijackers – a common problem on the road in this desolate landscape. His pack contains a copy of the King James Bible, extinct after “The War,” which he reads every night, and readers are scarce at this time. He comes across a town run by an educated man in Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman, who has a design to rule more towns, and believes a Bible would be his avenue to bending people to his will. Carnegie has a blind girlfriend in Claudia (Jennifer Beals) whose daughter, Solara, (Mila Kunis) is intrigued by the traveler and wishes to learn from him. When Carnegie learns this traveler has the last existing Bible the chase begins, led by Carnegie’s chief tough guy, Redridge, played by Ray Stevenson.
As our traveler (his name is not revealed until the last third of the film, and not said until the last tenth) works his way west, he carries himself with the stoic cool that only Denzel could deliver. His scenes reciting biblical verse are reserved yet affective, and he does the action scenes well because they don’t ask too much of him – he’s not trying to be Jackie Chan. Gary Oldman plays great bad guys, and his work here is no exception. The Hughes Brothers reigned him in a bit from such performances as the villain in LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL, but he is still nasty when he needs to be. Ray Stevenson is underused, as is Jennifer Beals (but I’ve loved her since FLASHDANCE) but the problem of casting here is Mila Kunis. She’s too pretty for a post-apocalyptic landscape, too well groomed, and I kept hearing Meg Griffin from “Family Guy” trying to hold her own in scenes with an Oscar winner. As an eccentric wild card, Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour play a small but vital role in a bombastic shootout as eccentric, cannibalistic survivalists.
My biggest problem with this film is based on its veering away from what it could have been. Ray Stevenson as Carnegie’s head of security deserved a better ending than he got, and more lines… as anyone would attest to who saw Stevenson in “Rome.” Also, a climactic final scene between Carnegie and Eli would have been incredible, two educated men fighting for their prize with dialogue to match their abilities. They could have blown the doors off the theater. The film has good action, good performances by its leads, and does well to toe the line on commenting on both the importance of faith and the corruption of organized religion without preaching on either side. However, the lack of a climactic end sequence takes this down a few points from what it could be. And that is a shame considering the talent it brought to the table.
Tags: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, denzel washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis
Posted in Reviews |
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
A CHRISTMAS CAROL shares the familiar story that we have all grown to love. Ebenezer Scrooge is a grouchy, angry old man who has worked very hard and sacrificed much for his money, mostly friendship and happiness. He thinks people and their kindness are fools. He is particularly more upset during Christmas when people show the most cheer. Scrooge is haunted by the ghost of his dead business partner, Marley, who tells him that three ghosts, representing his past, present and future, will visit him. Scrooge learns of himself in all three of theses stages of life and he must have a change of heart on how he lives and treats others or it will end soon for him, unkindly.
We all know Charles Dickens classic story and have seen dozens of variations on it. The variation here is the visuals but the story seemed to somehow get worse. Maybe I’m jaded because I’ve heard it too many times but I didn’t feel like it had any new take on the subject matter. The pacing crept along like a snail. I kept looking at the clock wondering when things were gonna get a move on. It took forever to get Scrooge home to be haunted by the ghosts. To put it frank, I was bored out of my mind!
Like Tom Hanks in Polar Express, Jim Carrey plays most of the characters. He does a great job playing Scrooge, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to
Come. However, with these weird visual characters that Zemeckis does, Carrey’s face was distracting. Carrey might act different but I keep seeing his face in an odd altercation. Gary Oldman takes care of the other main characters quite well as, Cratchet, Tiny Tim and Scrooges old boss, the Ghost of Jacob Marley. He is a little more difficult to identify but like explained in our Driver’s EDitorial they all still look creepy.
There is no doubt that Robert Zemeckis is a talented man. This picture is visually dazzling. The cinematography is beautiful. The angles he chooses to shoot and the way he decides to move through the scene are nothing short of brilliant. He has come close to perfecting the 3D vision. This is a movie that is definitely meant to be seen in 3D. However therein lies the problem, because without that gimmick there is nothing new here worth watching. The visuals are not enough to carry the film, even in 3D. A CHRISTMAS CAROL sits in a weird no man’s land zone with its appeal. It’s visually stunning but as animation or motion capture, is no more kid friendly than the countless live action renditions that have been done before and better. In fact, this version is definitely more boring and may be slightly scarier with the weird human visuals. One scene in particular is of a small boy staring out a window with these lifeless eyes singing a Christmas song in a slow eerily quiet fashion. It was meant to be sad but I almost cried of fear. Kids will not know what they’re getting into. My opinion of checking out A CHRISTMAS CAROL… Bah Humbug.
Tags: Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Jim Carrey, Robert Zemeckis
Posted in Reviews |
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