I loved the first two seasons of Family Guy. I told people about it when it was canceled and purchased the DVD. I thought it was brilliant, subversive and funny as hell. When it was resurrected, I was excited, but ended up lukewarm about the newer episodes. There are some funny bits, but overall it’s not quite as funny/exciting as the show was in its initial run. So, it was with some trepidation, that I approached the movie Ted. I saw some funny scenes in the trailer, but worried that the concept wouldn’t carry for a full movie. Well, yes and no. The movie is fairly consistently funny for the entire movie, but there are some places where it limps along on a weak kidnapping storyline that looks like it was shoehorned in to make the picture long enough. Let’s check out what happened to Ted.
Category Archives: movies
Running Scared movie review
This review is for the 1986 Billy Crystal/Gregory Hines movie Running Scared, not the 2006 Chazz Palminteri/Paul Walker Running Scared.When this movie came out in 1986, Billy Crystal was coming off a successful year on Saturday Night Live and Gregory Hines was coming off a dance movie with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Neither had done an action movie before and the basic idea of the two of them as badass cops is lubricious on the surface. But Crystal and Hines make it work by throwing in enough laughs and fun to make it worthwhile. So, let’s take a look and see what’s it happened.
Continue reading
Brave movie review
The Pixar brand has lost some of it’s luster recently. Mostly due to it’s last movie, the mediocre at best Cars 2. That movie wasn’t the worst kids movie ever, that distinction probably belongs to The Stupids, but it seemed like a movie made for toy reasons rather than the story-driven approach that Pixar has become famous for. Their latest release, Brave, isn’t going to restore Pixar to the artistic pedestal they were once on, but it does stop the bleeding. Pixar’s first movie featuring female protagonists does pass the Bechdel Test, while still being a movie about Princesses and getting married to a Prince. So, let’s see who’s being brave.
Prometheus review
Prometheus is the science fiction movie event of the summer. Directed by Ridley Scott and suggested to be a prequel to Alien, the expectations were set very high from the beginning. The viral marketing was well done and included Guy Pearce as Peter Weyland giving a Ted talk in 2023. I finally got a chance to see it this past weekend and enjoyed it. I had a ton of questions afterwards (most of them have already been asked), but would willingly see it again. Let’s see why.
Avengers review
Well, that was something. I’ll briefly touch on the plot of the movie, since judging by the box office everyone’s already seen the movie. After this weekend’s box office, I’m pretty sure Whedon could name any project and any budget and he’ll get it. The only director who has more power than Whedon right now is probably James Cameron (a $2 BILLION movie get’s you a lot of respect). So, I’m pretty curious what Whedon will want to do next. So, Avengers Assemble, I mean let’s get to the review.
Joss Whedon GQ Interview
Joss Whedon is kinda busy right now. He just had a horror film (The Cabin in the Woods) released and is premiering (today in the US) THE tent pole movie of 2012, The Avengers. To go along with all his work, there is a bunch of media about him, the best of which is this GQ article. It goes into detail about his career. From Buffy (the movie) to script doctor to Buffy (the show) and Angel. Then two canceled Fox shows and a web success and a well-received (but mediocre box office) movie. This doesn’t exactly look like the profile of someone that would be handed the reins to The Avengers. But the article talks about this in detail. Go read it.
Sean Young’s home movies of Dune
Sean Young played Paul’s love interest Chani in David Lynch’s Dune and she’s posted on Youtube a video diary (with her narration and music by Scott Joplin) of the movie. It looks like it only covers the pre-production and start of filming. Hopefully she has more home movies from this era that she could share with everyone.After the jump for the video
In Time Movie Review
I wasn’t that interested in the movie In Time when I saw the commercials and previews. Strangely enough, it took a lawsuit by Harlan Ellison to get me interested. Ellison claimed that it was based off his classic story Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman. But the lawsuit was dropped after Ellison saw the movie. After watching the movie over the weekend, my guess is that he didn’t want his name on this soulless disappointing movie regardless if it was ripping him off. So, let’s see what went wrong with the movie.
Green Lantern movie review
I’m not saying Green Lantern was a horrible movie, but I’m not saying that you should actually watch it either. The movie takes the basic ideas of Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, ring, green and lantern) and mixes them together in a weird way that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The movie, which should be ripe for special effects with the ring creating all kinds of crazy stuff, gets bogged down in the need to setup the special effects and the story and characters get lost in the shuffle. So, what went wrong?
Hanna Movie Review
It looked vaguely interesting when it came out in theaters last summer, but I never got around to going and seeing Hanna. The movie looked like a bad rehash of La Femme Nikita without any of the messy things (like a plot or character development) and I was pretty much right. But if you’re looking for a decent action flick, it’s not horrible. Let’s check it out.