Grade Scale
- A+: Never say never
- A: A masterpiece
- A-: A near-masterpiece
- B+: Very good movie
- B: Good movie but some minor flaws
- B-: Pretty good but some flaws
- C+: Slightly above average
- C: Average
- C-: Mediocre
- D: Bad movie!!!
- F: Atrocious, avoid at all cost!
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|  By Castor | 
I hope everyone enjoyed my post about the worst looking gals on Oscars’ Night yesterday. Now let’s move on to the best looking ladies on Oscars’ night. Last I said previously, I thought that every actress looked at least semi-decent. No one attempted to pull off looking like an exotic bird or a cosmopolitan alien. No reports of anyone faceplanting or having a “wardrobe malfunction” either. Pretty miraculous, looking at some of those dresses. As you can see, I have never understood the fascination with really fancy and overly bold dresses. Call me boring but to me, elegant and understated is always the way to go and it’s nice to see that most of the ladies went that way on Sunday.
Cream of the Crop:
 Some said it's too simple and boring. Well it's better to look like Kate Winslet rather than look like an ostrich that fell into a can of paint!  Anna Kendrick and her flesh tone dress. Delicious.  The perennially elegant Elizabeth Banks was absolutely stunning and she is funny to boot!  Unlike some, I thought Carey Mulligan looked fine. It helps that she is as cute as a pie.  Lovely Rachel McAdams was the stunner of the night in a really simple, classy and low key way as usual. That's how it's done people!  Penelope Cruz because Jose will hunt me down and axe me if I don't mention her. The blogosphere still can't grasp the fact that you didn't rank her #1 on your list, Jose!  Yes, Kristen Stewart is on both Best and Worst Looking lists. See here, she is forcing almost a ... smile. Why so constipated? Relax and enjoy the good time, who knows how long it will last!
So what do you guys, gals think? Who were the best looking actresses at the Oscars?
| By Castor |
 Movie News:
Casting News:
- Robert DeNiro cast in Neil Burger’s The Dark Fields (Variety)
- Hugh Jackman cast in civil rights movie Selma (USA Today)
- Jonah Hill replaces Demetri Martin in Moneyball (The Playlist)
   
- Rachel McAdams joins Owen Wilson, Marion Cottilard in Woody Allen’s next film (THR): A few weeks ago, I wrote about Owen Wilson teaming up with Red’s beloved Marion Cottilard in this Woody Allen flick and look who is joining them! First Terrence Malick’s movie a few weeks ago, now Woody Allen’s, great to see Rachel get to work with some legendary directors.
- Benicio Del Toro cast in crime drama Making Jack Falcone (Deadline)
- Rachel Nichols cast in Marcus Nispel’s Conan (Latino Review): Rachel Nichols was the only reason to watch GI Joe and probably the only reason to see Conan and I’m not speaking in terms of acting chops here…
- Lenny Kravitz cast in Lee Daniels’ Selma (The Playlist)
- Liam Hemsworth cast in Arabian Nights (Heat Vision)
- Anna Faris cast in comedy What’s your Number? (Variety)
- Jessica Lucas cast in Big Momma’s House 3 (Variety)
   
- Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard, Charlie Hunnam join suspense film The Ledge (THR): This sounds like a promising movie with a decent cast. Charlie Hunnam will play a suicidal man ready to jump off a building before noon while Terrence Howard will play the cop trying to convince him that life doesn’t suck!
- Ryan Gosling join Steve Carrell in new untitled comedy by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Variety)
- Viggo Mortensen joins David Cronenberg again in Talking Cure (Deadline)
- Mike Vogel and Garrett Hedlund top candidates for Captain America, not Krasinski as reported earlier (Deadline): Does anyone actually have any idea what the hell is going on?
Trailers:
- Zombie flick Survival of the Dead (First Showing)
- Legend of the Guardians teaser (Yahoo)
- The Runaways with Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart (Yahoo)
- Harry Brown with Michael Caine: This is like Taken, check out the trailer! (First Showing)
- New trailer for Iron Man 2: This almost seem too… full of excess? (Apple)
- MUST WATCH: Tron Legacy first teaser trailer (First Showing)
Links: Is this a slow week or what?
| By Castor |
Directed by Greg Mottola, Adventureland is an amiable indie romantic comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. James Brennan’s (Eisenberg) hopes to visit Europe after graduating from college are dashed when his parents suffer a career setback. He must now work at Adventureland, a local amusement park, to help pay for his upcoming grad school tuition. This is where he meets Emily Lewin (Stewart) whom he quickly in falls in love with and you guessed it, summer romance ensues with your usual mix of bliss, pain, betrayals, misunderstandings and what not. Enough said…
There isn’t much technically wrong with Adventureland, Mottola choose to distance the movie from Superbad which he directed a couple years ago by using significantly less repetitive gross-out comedy or other easy gags that we are all so familiar with by now. The movie is slow-building and more sentimental than what you would expect from the trailer. However, by taking all the cheap comedy out, the movie felt a bit empty and bland and didn’t get me as emotionally involved as it should. This is by no means the actors’ fault who acquit themselves with solid performances. Eisenberg plays his usual awkward self and does it well enough while Kristen Stewart shows some acting chops which were sorely missing in Twilight. Stewart desperately needs to expand her range outside the disillusioned girl with a problem she has typecast herself in. Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig provide most of the easy laughs, playing the unhinged park owners while Ryan Reynolds appears in the movie as the married park’s repairman whom all the girls swoon over and is likeable enough in a thankless role. The movie features effective use of music from the 80’s to set the mood of certain scenes. At the end of the day though, the movie feels rushed even though it feels slow. The movie doesn’t focus enough on the two main characters and waste screen time on too many side characters that are just not that interesting.
Adventureland is a gentle but fairly average coming-of-age teen movie with a restrained amount of comedy only. Nevertheless, the movie is elevated by a solid cast and a nice soundtrack so there it is:
C+
Note: R-Rated (I don’t know why?) , 107 min
VN:F [1.8.5_1061] Rating: 7.3/10 (3 votes cast)
| By Castor |
 Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild is a movie based on the non-fiction book on the same title by Jon Krakauer which tells the adventures of Christopher McCandless. McCandless (Emile Hirsch) graduated from Emory University in 1990 and abandoned everything to travel across the country and live in the wilderness. He stopped communicating with his parents, gave away $24,000 in savings to Oxfam, changed his name to Alexander Supertramp and later abandoned his car and the little cash that he had left. Along the way to his ultimate goal of going to Alaska, he meets interesting people who admire his open heartedness and want him to stay. He never does though, as the free spirit that he was.
Whether you think McCandless is some sort of a modern-era romantic hero or a senseless spoiled fool who ran away at the expense of his dead-worried family, the movie does have two strong things going for it: the actors and the cinematography. Emile Hirsch performs admirably, capturing the spirit of McCandless and carrying the movie on his increasingly skinny shoulders. He shed over 40 lbs to demonstrate McCandless starvation and impending fate. Into the Wild also features great performances from the supporting cast which has many recognizable names such as Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook, and Kristen Stewart among others. The cinematography is beautiful with the movie shot in dozens of stunning locations. The musical score is omnipresent which gives the movie a bit of a long “music video” feel.
A sympathetic character study of McCandless with great performances and beautiful locations. The film does suffer from uneven pacing and from being overly long at nearly two hours and a half.
B
VN:F [1.8.5_1061] Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
| By Castor |
Twilight is a vampire romance directed by Catherine Hardwicke which came out last year and was very well received at the box office grossing nearly $382 million worldwide on a $37 million budget. I haven’t read the ultra-popular books by Stephenie Meyer but I guess I had to see what the fuss is all about as the second Twilight movie just had the third highest grossing opening weekend ever.
Twilight tells the story of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) who just moved from sunny Arizona to a rainy small-town in Washington State. See, Bella thinks she is some kind of loner but she actually is a hottie so every kid in the small town welcomes her with open arms and soon enough, she has dudes lining up to ask her to the prom. Everyone except that weird pale emo kid Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who is literally rude to her when she initially sits next to him in biology class. Of course, Bella starts to become attracted to Edward because that’s what happens in real life when people are mean to you. After Edward keeps Bella from becoming one with a skidding $500 van and saves her from rednecks trying to rape her using his supernatural speed and strength, Bella starts to ask herself what he is hiding from her. Combining that to the facts that Edward does not eat or drink and his skin feels cold to the touch and Bella adds up 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 He. Must. Be. A. Vampire (using voice over no less). Then we see Bella looking up “cold one” vampires in Google (I’m not making this up) and she decides to confront Edward. So begins the Twilight sweeping love story…
Before I eventually get spammed by hordes of internet marauding teens, I’d like to state that I came into this movie objectively and I have no negative bias with movies of the romance type which I happen to enjoy just as much as any other movie genre. This review is NOT for the hordes of fanatical Twilight fans who will absolutely love this movie no matter what is put on screen. Rather, I am addressing people with little knowledge of the novel who are only interested in finding a decent movie to watch, or looking for a scary vampire flick or a star-crossed romance that will sweep them off their feet.
Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with no ass-kicking action and almost no vampire action, add in copious amount of brooding and sullenness, cast some English wannabee actor as the lead and ask him to act emo and repress his English accent, add even more brooding and sullenness then rename the movie “Twilight”, there you have it folks! For a vampire movie, Twilight has almost no action of any type whatsoever and yet it is 121 minutes long. Edward could easily have been an elf, a troll or a goddamn unicorn, it would not have mattered at all in the grand scheme of the movie. Now I get it that this is supposed to be a romance movie between a human and a vampire and the relationship between the two leads is supposed to keep the viewer engaged. Problem is the romance fails to translate on the movie screen. Let’s see… for a romance to work, the very first two things you absolutely need are: An actor with some acting chops and an actress with some acting chops. To be fair, Kristen Stewart on one hand is serviceable. Serviceable meaning that you didn’t burst out laughing every time she said her lines. Bella is sullen and she stays sullen and you wait for her to break out of her shell but it never materializes. You have to wonder what Edward is seeing in her because her personality is completely flat. It seems to me that she has merely become infatuated with Edward and Stewart is not talented enough (or not given the liberty?) to make me think otherwise. On the other hand, Robert Pattinson is downright heinous. I will put it down in an easy way to understand: the guy has no business being an actor. I initially thought at the start of the movie that he was a non-English speaking actor because he had a strange way of saying his lines early in the movie but this quickly gave way to nervous laughter and then a strong urge to repeatedly smash my head against a telephone pole. Worst lead performance I have seen. Ever. Combined together, the leads have as much chemistry as two brick walls facing each other. Literally, the entire romance consist of both actors gazing at each other. The characters are not developed beyond what we know within the first 5 minutes of the movie. They don’t small talk like normal couples do or ask each other questions. No, nothing! It is quite apparent that no one attached to this movie trusted the two leads actors to convey whatever they were supposed to convey through their acting so they made sure to give the movie a voice-over explaining scene by scene what was supposed to happen on-screen as if the audience was composed of 10-yr old girl who can’t make the most basic deductions (wait a moment…)
The script is extremely clumsy and nowhere is it more obvious that the last part of the movie which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and seems like it was affixed out of nowhere because Hardwicke felt compelled to add some type of action scene in the movie. Basically and I’m not making this up: Some blond vampire appears at a vampire baseball game and suddenly wants to eat Bella because she smells good. Not just a spur of the moment thing, he absolutely wants to eat Bella and no other human now! Why would one vampire suddenly get obsessed with Bella and want to take a bite out of her while all the other vampire are acting all civilized? Additionally, if some of the vampires can read minds from miles away, why can’t they detect that Bella is thinking about running away while she is standing 10 feet from them? No, it doesn’t make any sense at all but I can’t even blame the movie because I was just looking for some action, anything by that point. Nevertheless, when the action came, it was completely disappointing with Edward and evil blond vampire in-heat shoving each other a couple of times with nasty CGI to boot. Then… the movie kept going and going for 15 more minutes after the climax. WTF?
I believe I can fly!!
The cinematography is adequate with the movie shot in some truly gorgeous locations but negated by some truly amateurish camera work such as rotating a camera around the set to detract attention from the subpar acting. The movie was apparently shot through some type of light blue filter, giving the movie a constant sullen and somber atmosphere (see a theme there?). The little CGI that is seen in the movie is horribly cheap and looked like it was put together at least 20 years ago. The makeup job is terrible and it is obvious the actors playing the vampires are just caked in some white powder.
Twilight may be an entertaining movie for people who have read the books because they already have knowledge of the characters and the ins and outs of the plot which they can substitute over what’s missing in the movie. However, as a vehicle of its own, Twilight is a bore fest brought down by cringe-worthy acting and atrocious inarticulate dialogue. You have been warned…
Watchable and not a total disaster:
D+
The Twilight Conversion Table:
- If you are a girl and below the age of 15, I would estimate the grade to be around B+
- If you have read the book, I would estimate this movie to be in the C+ range
- If you have read the book AND are a girl below the age of 15, I estimate the grade to be in the A range
- Replace Robert Pattinson with a solid actor and the grade would probably jump to a C+ automatically
VN:F [1.8.5_1061] Rating: 4.0/10 (8 votes cast)
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