Went to see Men in Black 3 the other night. Not brilliant by any stretch, but breezily entertaining provided you don't think too hard about the timey-wimey aspect (or indeed much of the plot...or indeed some of the special effects!). Josh Brolin was decent as the young Agent K, there was a priceless moment with Andy Warhol, a couple of decent action scenes.

 

Robot and Frank trailer.

Seems like it may be a great and surprisingly realistic in its s-f parts film (well, compared to other similar movies at least).

 

"You're starting to grow on me."

"Thank you, Frank. It's time for your enema."

...

Cleverbot movie?

 

I like the concept and Frank seems like a grouchy bastard, which I'm fine with. But teaching the robot to steal? A slippery slope sliding all the way down to Skynet.

Or Bender.

 

....Well suddenly I'm a bit less happy about the fact that Im going to see Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter tonight. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece by any stretch but its thats bad?

 

The movie is great if you want to be distracted by flashing lights and movement.

 

Saw 'Rock of Ages' on Saturday, and to avoid me posting a long, rambling review talking about the film specifically and hair metal in general, I'll say this: it was easily one of the stupidest movies I'm going to see this year, but there were moments that were so WTF!awesome that I still managed to have a blast with it. I'm familiar enough with the musical to realize the half-parody, half-straight line the movie walked, but the three biggest problems to me were deviations from the original musical script (and lack of some of the better numbers), the general lack of '80s-ish', hard-R debauchery in both the music and setting, and the two main leads having less personality than a good sticky note.

Also, Tom Cruise's performance in this movie is kind of amazing, and there are moments involving his character you won't quite believe, but man oh man, the guy just can't sing.

 

I'm sold on Rock of Ages now... I generally trust you on musicals <_<

 

The following isn't too spoilerish but I'll put it in spoilers anyway

Spoiler

I was expecting a stupid action movie. What I got was a beyond belief stupid semi-action movie. I hadn't read the book (nor was I aware it was based on a book) but I thought that it would deal with Lincoln's pre-presidential days. It started there, but then started being a stupid half politics/half sparse action scenes piece of turd that just dragged on. The fights weren't that great, the special effects were subpar, and the plot was even worse than you would expect. Plus there are like 3 different vampire bite effects and it doesn't really explain the difference, which was annoying.

Just hated it so much, and I was perfectly entertained by Priest of all things.

 

Technically, there aren't three types of bites. The bite itself is toxic, unless the vampire gives them their blood, which, obviously, turns them. Which covers two, what was the third?

To be fair, to both the book and the movie (which I still haven't seen yet), Lincoln stopped hunting vampires almost entirely when he campaigned for his position as a Representative, and then when he campaigned for President. When he entered the presidential office, I think he hunted only one more time during the entirety of his presidency.

Just as an aside, the musket-built-into-axe thing never even showed up in the book.

 

The film does a lot things right with imho the best end sequences of any MIB film as it had a real emotional impact. The humor is more low key and subtile compared to its predecessors. But the film is far too straight forward. It lacked real quirky side character and situation which created the charm of the first MIB. I at least think the film had the potential to be really good instead of just above average.

 

In the scene where he turned Henry, it didn't show him giving any of his blood. I was watching for it to happen and it's possible that I missed it but it just was a bite and then bam Henry is a vampire.
Then there are the poison bites and then the third was just the instakill bite. It's just that they didn't explain any of it. There's a lot of vampire myth out there and every shitty vampire movie (even twilight for fuck's sake) explains things like that.

 

Depends on the placement. Someone would die very quickly if you punctured their jugular, for example.

As far as Henry, do you mean there was a scene where he was bitten? That wasn't shown by the book.

Spoiler

Or was there a scene where Henry bit Abe? I know that happened in the book, though they gloss over it.

I intend to see the movie this weekend at the latest, so I'll tell you my own findings on that particular scene if and when it shows up.

Then again, we are talking about Hollywood, where implied stuff, though rare, does happen.

 

Spoiler

The scene where Henry was bitten. I'm pretty sure he ingests no blood, just staggers then becomes a vampire in like 15 seconds flat. Also there was no Abe bite scene.

It just wasn't entertaining. I wasn't expecting anything great going in. I was looking for something stupid but mildly entertaining with some explosions and neokarate fights. I stopped being entertained at about 10 minutes in. Then it was a fight between the desire to walk out and the hope that it would somehow improve. At around 1:30, I was determined to stick it out just because I had already sat through 1:30. As we walked out my girlfriend said, "Let's just stop going to movies."

 

Went and watched it this afternoon, and, surprisingly, I got more out of it than you guys did. Probably because I read the book, but I digress.

Churchey, to address the scene with Henry being bitten, it wasn't in the book, but I can understand why they put it there (for exposition purposes). Him being bitten like that was probably simply a hand-wave, because they have to cram a 400 page book into 2 hours.

The epilogue for the book was much better.

Spoiler

Lincoln, now a vampire, is standing with Henry under an umbrella and watching Martin Luther King Jr. give his "I Have A Dream" speech.

 

The Amazing Spiderman... I just watched it last night, and it exceeded my expectations. I think it's even better than the Avengers.

 

I actually just heard that they cut out the thing I was most annoyed with a few hours ago:

Spoiler

how Peter's powers weren't going to be given by the spider-bite, but how that bite just activated something his parents put in him when he was a kid, like what they did with Bruce Banner in the 2003 Hulk movie.

There are other things that bother me with it from what I've seen so far (namely how they've made Peter look "geek style" with Edward Cullen hair and a skateboard rather than "awkward nerd"), but if what I mentioned above is gone and the rest is good, those can probably be swept under the rug.

 

Nerdy!Pete worked in the comics because most people who read comic books are nerdy guys. Granted, there are some of us who aren't nerdy, but they're in the minority.

They've made Pete into more of a geek, now, because that appeals to more people. The core stuff is still going to happen, like Pete getting bullied and all that.

Also, Emma Stone.

 

No good excuse, because I like vampire hunters more than gamma-ray specialists and yet I still enjoyed The Incredible Hulk. That change is actually really disappointing, for some reason.

 

Ted was really funny. It appealed to a very base sense of comedy that I haven't tapped into in a long time.