Today’s DVD acquisition is The Best of the Thunderbirds. This year both the Thunderbirds and myself are celebrating our 40th birthdays. I’m not your traditional geek fan, but I do admit to a certain admiration fo the high quality of the SuperMarionation techniques and the nostalgic sixties/space race enthusiasm for technology that seemed to die out in the seventies.

The DVD itself has the six most highly rated episodes as voted on by viewers. The quality of the two DVD set is remarkably good. I’m having a fun time this Sunday afternoon just watching the first couple episodes. Fun!

For those who may not have heard of this classic television show, you read up here. The creator, Gerry Anderson, also was the creative force behind SuperCar, UFO, and Space 1999.

Since I was frustrated by server problems this weekend, this weekend was a double movie weekend: I went out to see both The Bourne Supremacy and Catwoman. So today you get two brief reviews for the price of one.

Matt Damon returns in his role as Jason Bourne, a government assassin who is suffering from amnesia. There probably is more back story, but since most of the movie is about the revelation of a small part of the back story, it hardly matters. Bourne was hiding in India, and his cover has been blown. He needs to found out who blew his cover and why. And, to use a tired cliche, this time it’s personal.

The plot is actually rather thin in my opinion, but it’s pretty well done. There were a couple of things that bothered me: the intelligence operatives move between Moscow, Naples and Berlin seemingly instantaneously and with little rationale, and the entire Russian connection is pretty thin. The plot ultimately reveals very little about Bourne and why he became what he is.

But what the film does have is slickly photographed action and stunt work. While Carmen found the heavy use of hand held cameras to be nauseating, I thought they added a certain gritty realism. In thinking back, it actually probably resembles the kind of imagery you’d expect from high speed video games. I couldn’t help thinking that they had a pretty high budget for wrecking Mercedes though. Maybe they should be my next car: if this movie is any indication, they can really take a licking and keep on ticking.

I’d give this movie a solid 7/10 rating. If the plot were a bit more engaging, it could have been quite a bit higher. It generates excitement but not any real tension, which I think is an essential part of the thriller/spy genre, at least when they are at their best.

The always lovely Oscar Winner Halle Berry stars in Catwoman: another summer superhero adventure. Berry plays Patience Prince, a young artist working for an advertising agency who stumbles upon (surprise, suprise) an evil plot. She is killed, but is magically resurrected by a cat, and afterwards suffers a kind of split personality: half the time she is the meek Patience, the other half, Catwoman.

While other reviews have been pretty harsh on this movie, I found lots to like about it. First, Halle shows off considerable skill (we’ll get to what else she shows off later) in her feline portrayal. She really does act like a feline: in the way she stretches, moves and walks. I think she does a great job with a rather thin premise.

Ironically, all that grinds to a halt when she dons her final Catwoman costume. First of all, it is just a terrible design. It looks like something a prostitute might wear if you gave her enough money, but most of them would have better sense. Combined with a comical rather than sexy “lead with the pelvis” walk, it makes you lose all sense that she is either a cat or dangerous. It’s simply too over the top.

Sadly, it also suffers from a certain amount of computer-generated silliness: later scenes have a great deal of CG, and most of it has her running, jumping and stretching in a very unconvincing fashion. It looks too rubbery. Spiderman suffers a bit from this malady, but they were obviously trying to play this up even more. I hesitate to say this, but while computer generated imagery is fashionable (and probably cost effective) they do not often help the overall believability when pushed to these extremes.

Despite these shortcomings, I still enjoyed the movie. I’ll give it a 6/10. It’s fluff, it’s not really great, but it’s fun enough. If you must see it, catch it in a matinee.

I must admit, I had low expectations from I, Robot. Perhaps it’s just that I see a lot of decent science fiction which is turned into utter dreck when adapted for the screen, but I steeled myself for the worst, plunked down my $8.75, and went to see it anyway, without reading a review.

The short of it: it rocks.

Will Smith plays a cop with a paranoid fear of robots. The chief scientist of USR has plunged to his death, an apparent suicide, on the eve of the world wide deployment of Nestor 5 robots: the latest in robotic technology. Smith suspects that a Nestor 5 may have murdered the scientist, and so begins the story.

This movie literally has everything: decent performances, a reasonable plot, scary scenes, uncertain motives, a mystery, and lots of kick ass action and effects. It is by far the best of the summer movie crop, and I give it 9/10 (I rarely give movies a 10/10, just on principle, so this is very nearly my highest rating). It doesn’t linger or languish like AI, nor is it just a disjoint collection of robotic special effects. See it. It’s fun. You’ll like it.

There was nothing on television worth watching last night, so I took the missus out to see King Arthur, the latest in a sequence of “great hero” movies that appear to be popular this year. beginning with Troy and will presumably end with Alexander later this year.

King Arthur isn’t the middle ages, Arthur in Camelot story that we are all familiar with. Arthur (or Artorius) is a knight of Rome serving in Britain, leading a bad of misfit knights, and preaching a philosophy of equality for all men while fighting for a Rome which has become increasingly decadent. He is asked to save the son of Roman citizen who is being threatened by an army of invading Saxons, and then the Romans will retreat from Britain, leaving it to whatever pagan rabble get the upper hand.

The theme sounds fairly familiar. You can draw similarities between this and the much better movies Gladiator or Braveheart. The movie simply doesn’t have much in the way of character development. Other than Arthur and Lancelot, it’s hard to remember the names of any of his other companions. (Which one was Galahad?) Merlin makes an appearance, initially as a foe to Arthur, but to be honest, fufills no real purpose in advancing the story. Similarly Guinevere makes a similar appearance, but with little emotional impact, although Ms. Knightley does look fetching in body paint.

The quality overall is quite good, with capable camera work, reasonable performances (if somewhat lacking in any depth), and some nice battle sequences. There is nothing to suggest that this movie is close to the top of the genre, but I enjoyed it overall, and give it a rating of 7/10.

The other part of my weekend was spent donating my dollars to the latest summer movie extravaganza: Spiderman 2. All the principles are back: Toby McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, Rosemary Harris and even a brief appearance by Willem Dafoe. The plot follows two rather different paths: one, following the creation of a new super-villain: Doctor Octopus; the other following Parker’s desire to abandon his role as the webslinger so that he can pursue a quiet life with Mary Jane.

Most movie reviewers are saying that this movie is better than the first. While I recommend this movie, I’m not certain that I would agree. Director Sam Raimi has done a good job, and certainly Spiderman 2 is a step above most sequels, it doesn’t seem to me that you find Doctor Octopus to be as richly evil as the Green Goblin. He simply is a one dimensional villain: driven to his path by a freakish accident of electricity.

Emotionally, the movie appears to be a step back from the intensity of the first one as well. You simply don’t have any scenes with the emotional intensity of the first movie: no scene to compare to Uncle Ben’s death scene or the frustrated insanity of the Green Goblin.

The original scores only 7.4 out of 10 for the first one, while the second is so far rated about 8.3. I’d give this movie about 8/10, while I probably would have scored the original as about 9/10.

Total gross through 7/5 is predicted to be $152 million dollars. Cha-ching!

Fahrenheit 9/11 has done $52.5 million to date.

I must admit, I’m a bit of a fluff movie-goer. I go to movies to be entertained, not to learn. When I wish to learn, I read books, news, or even the Internet. I don’t see many documentary or independent films.

I’m also not an enormous Michael Moore fan. I find some of his work to be heavy handed and manipulative. He’s does have an agenda, and it’s usually good to not forget that.

Tonight, I took my wife and my son to see Fahrenheight 9/11. If you haven’t heard about this movie, I can only ask what hole you’ve been living in, but I’ll merely say that it is Moore’s documentary on how the Bush White House has manipulated the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy and continues to market the war in Iraq as a necessary step to fight global terrorism.

Make no mistake: Moore isn’t unbiased. He’s not trying to portray both sides of the issues as regards Bush or Iraq. It would be false to claim otherwise. Moore makes no serious attempt to interview people of an opposing viewpoint or to explain the situation in Iraq through their eyes. If you are a staunch Bush supporter, you’re probably not going to like this movie.

But in most respects I think Moore is even handed in his criticism. While there are scenes which are undoubtably designed to evoke visceral, emotional responses, I think overall he reins in the desire to score only cheap shots and focuses on a number of problems which cannot be easily brushed aside.

Anything I could say about this movie would be weaker and redundant to actually seeing the film. I’ll say this: it’s good, and it’s important. Go see it. Think about it. Talk about it.

When it comes to television, I’m about as jaded as they come. Let’s face it, it’s mostly crap. That’s what makes it so difficult when genuinely great shows are cancelled. Such a show was Fox’s Firefly.

I must admit: I was skeptical of the premise. A mixture of space and Wild West? What’s up with that? But creator Joss Whedon really outdid himself, piecing together 14 excellent episodes (now available on DVD) that were well done, thought provoking, funny, warm, exciting and chilling, all at intervals frequent enough to suck in the viewer. It is quite simply one of the best shows I’ve seen in decades, and it was a great tragedy that Fox chose to cancel it while preserving so much utter crap.

Luckily, there is some life beyond the grave. Universal is producing a Firefly movie, and principle photography has just begun. There is even an official fan site with a weblog for the production. I can’t wait.

Today’s weekend movie was Dodgeball, starring Ben Stiller, and featuring a large list of cameo appearances from some fun celebrities. Ben Stiller plays White Goodman, evil head of the Globo Gym, who is trying to buy out Peter La Fluer, played by Vince Vaughn, who owns Average Joes Gym. As one might imagine, Globo Gym is an evil corporate body beautiful kind of place, and Average Joe’s is the kind of place where I might show up and run on the treadmill. It’s a tired plot; David v. Goliath, we’ve seen it before a hundred times.

And yet, I found it funny. Really funny. I admit it with some embarassment, but it’s actually one of the funnier movies I’ve seen in quite some time. Perhaps it was the fact that I attended with a bunch of the younger crew from work, perhaps the stress of grinding out frames for Incredibles while worrying that my wife’s job is being outsourced to India is making me loopy, perhaps its just that I haven’t seen dorky guys hit in the head with wrenches enough this year, but I laughed a great deal. It’s not complicated, or deep, or even innovative. Stiller has turned out better performances, but perhaps none so over the top as this one, and it clearly works.

If you are looking for something cerebral, this isn’t it. If you want to see an absurd farce with lots of celebrity cameos, this is probably a good one to see. Aside: Lance Armstrong, you slay me.

A couple of caveats: Vince Vaughn looked like he slept through the whole production. Honestly guy, you are stealing the studios money when you sleepwalk through scenes. I don’t know what emotions you may have been trying for, but sheesh. The movie also leverages a few tired stereotypes: that people who are overweight are lazy, stupid or generally defective in character. It’s a common enough stereotype, and people continue to laugh at fat people when they fall down, and chortle when they think of fat people having sex. Heck, even I do occasionally, but the joke is just a bit too easy, isn’t it? C’mon.

Lecture over: even with the warts, this is a pretty damned funny movie. If you take yourself or your comedy seriously, you may not appreciate it’s finer qualities, but then you probably don’t go to see this one anyway. If you thrive on SouthPark and liked Baseketball, you’ll probably have a good time.

Ah, this time, a Saturday evening saw my wife and I attending a late showing of The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel to Pitch Black, starring Vin Diesel as Riddick, an escaped convict with an uncanny ability to see in the dark and to kill.

I must admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of Pitch Black. It had some good points, and had a look which I found compelling, but ultimately I found it to be a bit predictable. You knew that the action would center around the escape, and that ultimately just about everyone would die. That’s what happens in this genre.

The Chronicles of Riddick suffers a bit from this basic flaw, but it is all-in-all a more well rounded story. It is a story with villains and heros, with battles and treachery, and lots and lots of really nice special effects. Riddick is being hunted by mercenaries, and traces the money back to Helios Prime, a planet which is about to be overrun by the Necromongers, a fierce race of conquerers who go from planet to planet, assimilating all those who will join them and then destroying the planet and all that remain. Aereon, a mysterious Elemental has summoned Riddick to battle against the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, as prophecies have fortold.

So the story begins.

Overall, I found it beautfully rendered, exciting and well paced. It’s a classic summer action movie, perhaps a bit darker than some, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The look has some of what you might have expected from Dune, but delivers it with greater impact and panache. I don’t really think of Vin Diesel as a good actor, but he does have a certain rugged style and his delivery is dead on. Dame Judy Dench turns in a good appearance, but it’s over quickly and actually has very little to do with the plot. Alexa Davalos plays the grown up Jack from Pitch Black, people who watch the same programs as I do will recognize her as the electrical temptress Gwen Raiden on TV’s Angel. I immediately wondered if she was actually the same actress in Pitch Black (I might not have recognized her with a shaved head) but she was played by Rhiana Griffith.

I rate the movie as a good solid 8 out of 10. If you like action packed science fiction movies, or just good special effects and costuming, you’ll probably enjoy it too.

The summer movie season is upon us, which means that Saturdays are the day for seeing the latest release of the week. Today’s movie was the latest in the immensely popular Harry Potter series.

The franchise is already well established, so you probably know what to expect: young Harry, Hermione and Ron are back at Hogwarts. As Harry returns, he is confronted by the news that Sirius Black (played by Gary Oldman), a dangerous criminal has escaped from Azkaban prison. Apparently Azkaban is not your typical prison. Instead of ordinary guards, it is protected by Dementors, nasty wraiths who suck all happiness out of you.

We’ve all known a few people like that.

I’m told that the movie is somewhat different and compressed from the book: I can’t tell you, I haven’t read it. I found it to be competently constructed and fairly engaging. The effects and scenery is beautiful, the young actors turn in very solid performances, and I thought it was pretty good fun for a Saturday matinee. If you enjoyed the first two movies, I have no doubt that you will enjoy this one. Overall though, I haven’t found any of these movies to be especially memorable, so I will give it an eight out of ten: worthy of viewing, but unlikely to change your life in any significant way.

Well, this weekend’s movie extravaganza was The Day After Tomorrow, a classic global catastrophe film. Dennis Quaid stars as a paleoclimatologist who is the first to recognize that global warming can cause (and in the short span of the movie actually does cause) a global ice age.

I could tell you that the science of this movie is only slightly better than The Core, but let’s face it: if you go to this movie, you aren’t trying to learn more about climatology. You want to see huge tidal waves, tornados, hail and freezing snow, and lots of mayhem and destruction. This movie delivers pretty good doses of those, including multiple tornados in Los Angeles and tidal waves which devastate Manhattan. This movie is brought to you by the same people who produced Independence Day, so you might expect that they know how to show the audience big catastrophes, and you’d be right.

But ultimately the movie falls a little short of the standard. (If you didn’t like Independence Day, then why are you going to this movie anyway?) Ultimately there is something just a bit more satisfying about having huge alien spacecraft wiping out New York and Washington than just a spate of bad (okay, really bad) weather. There are also a few puzzling features about the cut (the President of the United States is killed off screen, but they do spend time to show him evacuating the Capitol building, a couple of other characters disappear from the plotline without mention), and overall there is just relatively little genuine panic despite the devastation of the entire Northern Hemisphere. The characters are all pretty poorly developed, despite a natural performance by Dennis Quaid.

I’d give it about a 7 out of 10 rating. Get some popcorn and a soda and revel in the special effects work, but don’t think too hard about the plot or bother to get involved in the characters.

You can read this article about the science (and lack thereof) of Day After Tomorrow.

It’s rare that a sequel film surpasses a good original film, but I must say: Shrek 2 must be judged as one of those rare films. It builds on everything that was good about the original: the look, the story, and the vocal talent and delivers a new movie which is familar but not predictable and which looks great.

You can review how it compares against Finding Nemo on boxofficemojo.com, but I suspect it’s going to do very well. Congratulations to everyone at Dreamworks and PDI. I suspect you’ve hit one out of the park.

This weekend’s block buster is Troy, the classic tale of the Iliad. Brad Pitt stars as Achilles, the moody and reluctant (if somewhat bloodthirsty) Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, hero of Troy, and Orlando Bloom as Paris, who steals the lovely Helen from King Menelaus and provokes a tizzy that ultimately results in a war between Greece and Troy.

I came to this movie expecting a panorama of Pitt’s golden locks, battle scenes, and thin romance, and that’s almost precisely what this movie delivers. The problem is that it doesn’t really deliver it very well. The basic formula is pretty common: the clash between two great heros. Hector is the good prince, the noble warrior and father. Achilles is the talented but brutal warrior, concerned only with his own immortality as a hero. Unfortunately, the movie never really gets beyond the formula. It isn’t a bad formula, nor is it a bad movie, but it never really becomes great. I couldn’t help thinking that Ridley Scott did this movie better in the 2000 release of Gladiator. The battle sequence between Achilles and Hector is good, but virtually all the battle sequences in Gladiator were better.

On the plus side, Pitt certainly isn’t hard for the ladies to look at, and my wife informs me that Bana and Bloom aren’t far behind. There are some good supporting performances, probably the best of which is the immortal (we wish) Peter O’Toole as Priam, King of Troy. Diane Kruger plays Helen, whose beauty was so great it was said to launch a thousand ships. Diane may be able to launch a dinghy or two, but I don’t think she’s worthy of a regatta. She seems to have the same placid, vacant quality that always reminds me of Bo Derek.

Overall I give it about a seven out of ten. Certainly not a snoozefest, but neither does it make you jump out of your seat. Try renting Gladiator afterwards and compare.

I’m a huge fan of what reasonably called "bad cinema". I go to see the terrible comedies, the action films, horror movies, what most serious students of film would call the bottom of the barrel. I prefer movies with guns, and hookers and firetrucks (can anyone name that movie) or scantilly clad Kung Fu fighting lady vampires (or this TV show?).

My wife, bless her heart, is mostly patient with me. I know I get to pick a lot of the films we go see, and after seeing Terminator 3, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and The Hulk, she was certainly long
overdue for picking a movie. Like most women on the planet, she seems to
think that Ben Affleck is easy on the eyes, so she selected Gigli for
our Saturday movie extravaganza. Costar Jennifer Lopez is pretty easy on the eyes, and the overall plot (if trailers are to be believed) was a sort of "two
thugs meet each other and fall in love comedy&quot. Off we went.

I remember seeing Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise together in a truly forgettable movie Far and Away.and later the unforgettably bad Eyes
Wide Shut. I should have known that actors who are romantically linked
seemingly have a knack for selecting very bad vehicles to star in together.

This movie will not be the counterexample that proves the rule.

It’s bad. Really bad. I’m going to give away spoilers, but frankly it’s the poor
writing and direction that are the real spoilers of this movie. It is as if the
" writers" and "directors" simply didn’t know what kind
of a movie they wanted to make. The resulting mish-mash is 90 minutes of painfully paced drek which seems more like 900 minutes.

Gigli is the story of New Jersy Gangster Larry Gigli, played by Mr. Affleck. He’s asked by mobster boss Louis to kidnap Brian, the retarded younger brother of a federal prosecutor, to keep the prosecutor from filing charges against a New York mob boss. Because of the monumental importance of this task, Louis also retains the services of Ricki, played by Ms. Lopez. She’s in a similar line of work, and while displays a bit more intelligent than the rather dull Gigli, seems to be without any qualifications for her rather brutal career. She’s also a lesbian. Bless those mobsters for not sexually dsiscriminating when granting contracts.

Let’s recap: New Jersey gangster, lesbian thug, and retarded young man. Woohoo! Let the hilarity ensue.

It tries to be funny. It has some sexy dialogue, which occasionally actually titillates. It’s got some faintly amusing bits. But it also taks some startlingly bad turns.

Turn number one: Ricki’s lesbian lover shows up at Gigli’s apartment, looking for her. She’s obviously brash and unpleasant, and wonders why Ricki has gone over to the other side and is now sampling men. When Ricki tells her it’s over, but has nothing to do with him, she then offers to have a threesome to help Ricki "get it out of her system&quot. When rebuffed again, she wanders into the kitchen, slits her wrists, and is treated to a quick trip to the emergency room.

Never to be seen again during the movie. Total screen time, maybe three minutes.

I’m sure it’s a great break for Missy Crider to star in a movie with Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Al Pacino and Christopher Walken: but it absolutely baffles me what
this particular sequence is supposed to reveal to us. Up until then, Ricki is portrayed as a cool, unflappable, mentally tough woman. With this scene, we are instead treated to the view of a woman who picks her sexual partners very badly, and is completely out of control. Besides taking the story off the rails, it just isn’t very much fun to watch. It isn’t exciting, even in a morbid way. It’s just another stereotypical portrayal of lesbians-who-can’t-find-happiness-without-men. Bleh.

Actors Christopher Walken and Al Pacino make almost cameo-like appearances, Walken as a slightly insane cop and Pacino as a gangster. Boy. I never saw
that coming. Who would have thought: casting Walken as a crazy cop, or Pacino as a mobster. Such bold innovation.

This movie isn’t romantic. It isn’t very funny. It doesn’t have a lot of action. It does have some pretty graphic sexual dialog (although no nudity). It does have some rather nasty violence. Ultimately, there is just not very much interesting at all, and when the plot of a movie is so bad that it makes you forget about J-Lo’s body, you know that something has gone seriously off track.

A word of advice to Ms. Lopez: stick to well written scripts, like Anaconda, otherwise you’ll have to rely on your music to stay in the public eye, and well, that doesn’t seem like a good bet either.

Update: Gigli opened in the number eight position, just below finding Nemo (now in its 10th week). Gigli made $3.8 million dollars in its opening weekend, only half as much as the underperforming Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. That movie only spend four weeks in theaters before they pulled the plug. Bets for Gigli?