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Our Aussie friend may be offended. But I really felt about the same.

Watched "Burn After Reading (2008)"...quite entertaining movie made by Coen brothers.

Hi there Gents. Not offended at all. I guess the movie holds a special place with Aussies as it details a really important battle in our history. Much like the Alamo and San Jacinto battles to Texans and Americans. I rewatched the film a couple of months ago and although I can understand the film not drawing people in, I still really like it. I guess it's our heritage and whilst it depicts the utter futility of war it is a pretty personal story of our boys going off to a war that was really not ours to fight, led by men who were prepared to incur massive losses with the best and brightest of ours early last century. You would think that things had changed since 1914.....
The score by Jean Michelle Jarre stands up well IMHO. Great to see Mel before he went off the skids!

Not a bad list. A couple I'd remove, but a lot of favourites.

I knew you wouldn't be. My touts on the movie don't reflect my respect for the historical occasion.

Oooh in that case its definitely on my list

Result of a wet afternoon on holidays.... Bought Open Season 3 on bluray. First off, animation is great. Other positive is that I only paid 8 bucks at KMart for the disc. I have little else to say except this will be my 'get kid to sleep' disc from now on. We are half an hour into the film and Tom is already half asleep! I think this movie went straight to DVD. I understand why. 0.5/5

Oxygene IV in all it's glory Brad!

Watched "The Big Year" last night (linky here). It was one of those semi funny with a moral story. The family liked it (14 year old, 16 year old and two of us 45 year olds). It had a good story, and was acted fairly well. It had the right blend of a good story with a good dose of humor. Steve Martin and Owen Wilson were pretty good in it too. 4.0/5.0

watched reruns of Grimm and The Mentalist last night - also some Nat'l Geographic HD stuff on the Porsche factory in Stuttgart - pretty good viewing overall. Got lot's of questions about Grimm, which I direct to the thread of the same subject.

Softball weekend out of town, was too fried to watch The Avengers, did watch MI: IV again, (my Niece had it and had not watched) still enjoyable.

Had an "Austin Powers Movie Marathon" last night. Yeah Baby Yeah! Do I make you randy? Well do I? Grrrrr baby, very grrrrrr!

One of the few trilogy's that are pretty uniform over the lot of them. Really don't have a favorite of the bunch although I have my favorite scenes from each of the movies. I still enjoy them even though I have seen each one multiple times. Yeah they are high school fart and sex humor, but sometimes I just need a break from reality. These movies seem to give me that. A solid 3.75 for all of em'.

Regards,

RTROSE

RT, I love those films. Really good bluray transfer as well. Captures the Fat Bastards Stool Sample scene in all it's glory. Not sure what's more disturbing... The coffee pot scene or heather graham planting the homing beacon. These movies IMHO are when Mike Myers was at his best.

Underworld Awakening 3D, 4.7 out of 5, Good effects, excellent AQ and just good to see Selene again also had 3D trailers for Ghost Rider 2, The Amazing Spiderman and an upcoming new RE movie...

Two old films, seen a few times before.

Watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
4/5 (amazon 4.6/5, imdb 7.9/10, rotten tomatoes 84%)
This was surprisingly well done, with little touching bits every once in a while.
Twist And Shout is always fun.
Good video quality on BluRay.



Watched Project X (1987)
2.7/5 (amazon 4.2/5, imdb 5.9/10, rotten tomatoes 78%)
This is the old one, with Matthew Broderick.
Fuzzy video quality on BluRay -- not a stellar transfer.

I presume RE is Resident Evil Retribution.

Yes that was the name of it ... coming late summer, early fall.

The Three Musketeers (2011) - Netflix DVD - Well I went into this with ZERO info or expectations. I was very pleasantly surprised actually. There are some parts of the movie that are somewhat cheesy and far fetched for the time period, but overall I found the movie to be very entertaining. The sword fighting scenes IMO were very well done and top notch. I found those scenes stole the movie for sure. While I am in no rush to go out and buy the movie, it was a solid rental for sure. Overall score 3.25/5 The sword fight scenes 4.25/5

Regards,

RTROSE

Thank you for reminding me about that. It slipped off my radar.

Some of my relatives refuse to watch films where a tiny woman does victorius battle with large men, particularly when the tiny woman is wearing a hoop skirt or similar combat inhibiting accoutrements. I seem to recall such a scene from the television trailer. One such relative is currently enjoying Sea Patrol, because in alternate episodes the little XO wins or looses such.

Great bass in the movie. Although I must say I really didn't care for it. Just seemed too cheesy for me.

^^^Well I would not know about the bass........

I have my theater and then I have a 42" plasma in the family room. I watched this one on the 42" without the benefit of surround sound. Sometimes unfortunately it is just a constraint of time. That and it was DVD not BluRay.

Still really like the sword fighting though.

Regards,

RTROSE

Watched Haywire (2011)
2.4/5 (amazon 2.8/5, imdb 6.0/10, rotten tomatoes 80%)
I remember the trailers on television about six months ago.
This is the one with the woman private duty soldier (a black-ops agent for a government security contractor) who's betrayed and goes after her betrayers.
The first half is 1.9/5, at the 20 minute mark I checked to see how much of this film was left (not a good sign), but the second half picks up a little. It never really gets into a perfect stage, but you get used to it.
It had a bit of a realistic feel, outside the fights. Within the fights, people get thrown into solid coffee tables, and the solid coffee table's do not break! (but some of the glass shelves were way to candy glass)
Gina Carano, the lead actress is in real life 155 pounds, which is the starting weight for male fighters. She's a natural beauty and she beats people into pulp in a cage (UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship MMA Mixed Martial Arts, Muay Thai, cage fighter, knocks people out with hands and/or feet, 7 wins, 1 loss, 0 ties).
She runs slower than Tom Cruise, and there's more hand to hand combat than there should be given the situations, and some of the fights are slowed down and dance coreographed, but a lot of her punches and kicks look like she could easily stun anyone and she uses her whole body when throwing a punch or a kick, and bends like a leaf lessening impacts when she's thrown at a corner. Her acting is a little wooden, but acceptable.
The video quality is dark, so run with your room lights off.
A few famous co-stars, but none of them do anything particularly special.
In otherwords, a so so action film, with no other qualities.

Watched Let the Bullets Fly (2010)
1.9/5 (amazon 3.7/5, imdb 7.1/10, rotten tomatoes 84%)
A subtitled film, combined with fast dialog and editing/cutting. It won several awards, but I found it a chore to sit through. Easily the worst thing I've seen Chow Yun-Fat in.
Really bad physics. Unrealistic CGI. There's a train car being pulled by horses that make steam engine sounds.
The title is expressed by two instances of standing rifle shooting at just 250m, yet hitting 10 one inch sized moving targets (e.g. the yoke hitch straps of running horses), with a bullet flight time of 15+ seconds -- long enough to have short conversations ending with "let the bullets fly".
Comedic violence, but ultimately violent.
The plot device is multiple political battles attempted and lost, on both sides, until the war is won.
YMMV





Played Chaos (2005)
2.5/5 (amazon 3.9/5, imdb 6.4/10, rotten tomatoes 62%)
A good cop suspended cop chase bank robber movie, with a liter of Elmer's Glue of chaos theory philosophy pushed into the plot so hard it spills out.
Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Keegan Connor Tracy
Worth the $7 I paid for it.
Serious action violence.

Watched The Three Musketeers (2011)
2.5/5 (amazon 3.0/5, imdb 5.8/10, rotten tomatoes 26%)
The sword fights were silly.
The air battle I think I despised, reminded me of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).
You have to pity Alexandre Dumas. Just because he has been dead for about 150 years, movie people seem to think that it is OK to completely, thoroughly and decisively ruin his brilliant novels.
The Duke of Buckingham was just so wrong. Orlando Bloom has deviated from Kingdom Of Heaven quite a bit there.
Mads Mikkelsen's Rochefort was quite acceptable.
Milla Jovovich's Milady de Winter was miscast given the way the others played it, and she's not really suited to the role. Jovovich seems overstimulated, pushing the role into straight B-movie grindhouse camp.
Juno Temple as Queen? She was more entertaining in Year One.
Constance was annoying.
The 17th-century version of the scene where a character enters a high-security vault and must evade the laser beams criss-crossing through the air, guarding a treasure. In this case, they're very thin, razor-sharp wires. Must the character blow powder into the air to see them? Silly question.

Watched The Three Musketeers (1948)
4/5 (amazon 4.4/5, imdb 7.8/10)
By far the best of them. Longer too.
Cardinal Richelieu and DeWinter were perfect characters, each with both depth and reach.
The swordplay was amazing. Gene Kelly was A LOT more fit than I am.
Constance was an angel, but no match for soldiers.

Watched The Three Musketeers (1973)
3/5 (amazon 4/5 , imdb 6.1/10)
Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Oliver Reed, Michael York, and the amusing Roy Kinnear as the comic relief.
Charlton Heston plays a well scripted Cardinal Richelieu.
But by far the reason for watching this one is the subplot around Constance. Constance's character is inept in every scene and played perfectly by Raquel Welch, yet her ineptness allows her to defeat four of the Caridinal's guards, and save the day as often as she fails. And her relationship with her husband is entertaining.

Watched The Three Musketeers (1993)
2.9/5 (amazon 4/5 , imdb 6.1/10)
The Disney version. Porthos's fictional love life is entertaining script.
Madam D'Winter played by Rebecca De Mornay ten years after Risky Business.
Hearing Charlie Sheen say, so perfectly, "You're married!", was priceless.
Tim Curry is too simplistically evil and power hungry for Cardinal Richelieu.
Chris O'Donnell doing his Robin (bat boy) impression.
Constance is boring.

Didn't watch: The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
Excellent Musketteer's movie as I recall.

Didn't watch: the others

Watched Underworld: Awakening (2011)
2.7/5 (amazon 3.7/5, imdb 6.4/5, rotten tomatoes 29%)
Put your brain on hold and watch, it doesn't really bother with a plot, dispite J. Michael Straczynski being one of several writers.
It is the fourth installment in the Underworld film series, with Kate Beckinsale reprising her role as Selene.
There is almost no development of character or narrative (just a lot of fight sequences), no thematic arcs, and a lot of the plot contrivances are so weak that it's impossible to take the movie seriously. The door is purposefully left wide open for another sequel.
Considered as just action/adventure it's not bad.
Kris Holden-Ried from Lost Girl plays one of the bad guys -- similar role.
Charles Dance, recently appearing as Lord Tywin Lannister in HBO's Game of Thrones, played the lord of the vampire's coven -- similar role.
A stand-in with a digitized likeness of Scott Speedman portrayed Michael Corvin.
My blu-ray player required an update to play the disk.

Watched Men In Black II

There's a moment in there where they have to find a Deneuralyzer when the one they usually use isn't available. Plans were leaked on the internet, and for sale on ebay.

Still for sale today. From Australia.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Men-In-Black...item2ebe66a389
Qualifies for the eBay Buyer Protection plan.

been watching a lot of Fringe re runs lately. Just started Season 2

Been trying to catch up on dvr content along with end of school year activity's etc... did make time for Ep. 1 of Hell on Wheels (BD released yesterday) PQ 4.5 / 5, this was filmed in a certain way.
AQ 4.5/5, for a TV series has great audio and decent LFE.
Content 5/5, I love this series ...

Watched Red Tails (2012)
2.9/5 (amazon 3.7/5, imdb 5.7/10, rotten tomatoes 35%)
The aerial scenes bring the film up, and the story attempts too much and never really delivers on any one point. Watchable though.
One good thing is almost all of it centers around their performance in Europe, rather than the training which was covered well in the 1995 The Tuskegee Airmen with Laurence Fishburne (which is a better story, but smaller air battles), so Red Tails acts in a way as a continuation of the prior film.

Opening two aerial scenes' CGI similar to 2004's "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
nonetheless it's pretty good, from a scale of action point of view.
Another visually appealing bit around the 30 minute mark.
The use of relatively cheap Canon 5DmkII (DSLRs) to shoot the in cockpit shots really showed.

B-17 Flying Fortress: 245 mph
P51 Mustang: 382 mph, endurance with drop tanks was 8.7 hours
Messerschmitt Me 262: 530 mph, endurance 1 hour

^^^^Regarding Red Tails, I must say I'm a little disappointed (not in your review, but the film) as I was hoping it would would be "over the top". I had considered a blind buy for this one, but I think I'll rent first to test the waters.

The trailers looked really good, they must have been the best part.

Regards,

RTROSE