It’s hard to imagine that any remake could out-shine the original Footloose featuring Kevin Bacon however I love watching any sort of modern dance movie. The fact that this movie was also free was just an added bonus. For a remake this wasn’t actually too bad. Interestingly the 2011 remake is garnering a better rating than it’s 1984 counterpart on famed review website Rotten Tomatoes.

The story lines are fairly similar – city boy moves to country town where a the Council and the Reverend has banned loud music and dancing. I can’t remember why he decided to ban it in the 1984 movie but the reason given in the updated version was that five kids had been killed in an accident a few years back after a night out. Of course city boy, whose only escape is dance, seeks to rebel and overturn this whilst at the same time falling for, course, the Reverend’s daughter.

Entertaining and heart-warming – who doesn’t love a good old fashioned love story – the dancing was very alright as well featuring actual professional dancers Kenny Wormald (as the lead) opposite Julianne Hough.

Tonight Sandra and I were pretty lucky to be amongst the first to be checking out the newly renovated cinema (renos costing around £3m) at Swiss Cottage. The cinema itself doesn’t actually re-open until tomorrow so the guy who met us at the door was pretty excited that we were getting this sneak preview. As we had some spare time before our movie he offered to give us a tour of the new cinema to show where the £3m went – don’t think Sandra was particularly interested in this but I couldn’t help but be infected by our host’s excitement and didn’t see it hurting any.

The organisation tonight was a little bit lacking. We were supposed to be seeing the 7.30 screening but apparently there were two screenings tonight and no one had though to really sort us out into the right screenings. We were all kind of herded up into the new bar (admittedly very flashy and with a very extensive drinks list) and told to wait to be summoned. Drinks were offered to us but seeing as we were all here on a freebie – we didn’t want to take a drink in case we had to pay for it! Ha – we are so cheap! 😉

In fact none of us were actually watching the movie on the Imax screen, instead we were checking out the new Club screens. These new cinemas offer a more premium experience for a more intimate crowd (60+ seats as opposed to the Imax’s 300+). After waiting and waiting and seeing some people leaving we decided to take it upon ourselves to just head down to one of the screening rooms to seat ourselves! This was a good decision in te end as we managed to nab some decent seats. The club cinema offers some very comfortable seats (the only way they might have been more comfortable would have been having the legs left up so you could almost lay down) with the promise that food and drinks would be brought to you. Tonight at the premiere they offered up bottles of water and popcorn – unexpected so gratefully accepted.

As for the movie itself – well, Drive was certainly indescriable. For a start I don’t think there could have been more than three or four pages of dialogue in the entire movie! Drive is shot in an olden-day-style – including the font used to show the credits, the music (oh the music!) and some of the stills. It felt awkward at times as there wasn’t a lot of speaking with lots of long silent pauses between characters – sometimes fitting but on other occasions I felt I’d wandered on to the set of the Bold and the Beautiful (or any day-time soap opera where they have those long giant pauses.) It was very odd but … yet … I found myself paying extra attention when characters did speak as you knew it had to be important. This is truly the oddest and weirdest romance you’ll ever watch. Startlingly it’s also very gory in parts starting about half-way through the movie, and when I say gory I mean blood and guts and all sorts of violence on the screen. *Spoiler ahead* A guy actually gets his head kicked in and its literally stomped and flattened in front of you.

Oh and by the by – plot summary: Ryan Gosling plays a driver for hire: stunt driving for movies during the day and driving getaway vehicles at night. He falls for his neighbour, who is still tangled in her husband’s criminal life. There is a robbery gone wrong, lots of people die and lose body parts. It’s a total mess.

Don’t really know what to think of the movie but it is certainly one of the most interesting I’ve seen in a while, and certainly a most original screenplay.

On the day of the Oscar’s, where Sandra Bullock is nominated for a best actress award, Pat and I went to see The Blind Side in which she stars and was nominated for. Everyone who knows me knows that it doesn’t take much to get me balling and The Blind Side had me doing it in spades!

Michael Oher is a big star NFL player. The Blind Side follows him from his deprived beginnings, to starting Christian school, to his adoption by an affluent family (Sandra Bullock plays the mother), to his spectacular rise in the school football team to his draft pick into the NFL.

The story is uplifting, moving and inspirational. Although there are some very bleak and heart-breaking moments for the most part the story focuses on the positives in Michael’s life. To be fair this movie is not any different from any other poor kid makes good except that there is a greater focus on Sandra Bullock’s character which is unusual – normally the focus is on the athlete.

The movie is a little cliché and does play a little on stereotypes (like the black kid who can only be helped by a rich white woman) but you know what sometimes you just need to watch something that makes you feel good and this movie did.

Film is released in the UK on Friday.

I applied to get free tickets to something that read like this “Free Screening: Avatar – Exclusive Free Footage.” I didn’t even think of what exactly I was applying for presuming it would be a preview screening of some new movie. To my surprise I’d applied for free tickets to go see a … wait for it …. trailer! You like me are probably wondering what the big fuss was – wouldn’t you just see the trailer as part of the next movie that you saw? Well, apparently not quite. This was an extended 15 minute trailer, in 3D and with an introduction by the director himself, James Cameron. I would have happily gone to see it myself but since I had two tickets I dragged Rita along as well.

When we got to Wimbledon Odeon we were surprised to see a giant queue of people waiting get into our screening. There were some serious hard core geeks in the line I tell you. Very defensive of their position in the queue as well! It was all rather amusing and almost worth turning up just to observe the actions and reactions of the people in the queue, and that was even before we got into the cinema.

There was quite some excitement in the air in the cinema as we all sat and waited for the preview to begin. Rita and I couldn’t help giggling at the audience.

Finally, after a quick introduction by some production manager the preview started …

… and exactly 15 minutes later finished!

Avatar, just in case you’re wondering, is a very weird story. Its set a couple of centuries into the future and a group of marines land on a very strange jungle planet called Pandora with all sort of weird and wonderful, and truly scary at times creatures, and sentinent beings. Somehow the minds of the marines are transported into the sentinent beings though its not entirely clear why they are set to occupy the planet.

I was quite impressed with the excerpts we saw. The 3D technology was very impressive. I would say almost seamless though characters on the screen still had a sort of stilted not quite real feel to them. I’m looking forward to seeing the full thing … though I was clearly not as keen as one diehard fan who actually started clapping at the end. No one joined him though …

To my surprise I totally enjoyed tonight’s screening of In Bruge. I didn’t even know much about this movie going into tonight’s preview screening – just the basics of two hit men being told by their boss to go hide out in Bruge.

The hit men are played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, their boss Ralph Fiennes. All three deliver superb performance. I actually even came to like and admire Colin’s skills by the end of the movie – not something that I expected at all.

As Colin and Brendan bide their time in Bruge waiting for further instruction from Ralph we slowly find out why they have been told to flee England and its not a happy story. In the meantime the days are filled with the guys playing tourist and the night boozing it up … to an extent. Colin’s character hates Bruge whereas Brendan, who kind of plays a father-figure, finds his soul soothed and mind calmed by the beauty that is this medieval city.

Soon though the movie erupts into utter surrealism as they encounter a dwarf (quite possibly one of the highlights of the movie – everyone knows I have a soft-spot for the little people) filming some random Dutch movie, a romantic interest for Colin and some other odd ball characters including an arms dealer. Violence too erupts when Ralph Fiennes enters the picture. Be warned there are some gruesome scenes towards the back end of the movie.

This movie is a great mix of black comedy and emotion and, surprisingly, chemistry between the two leading men – Colin and Brendan. Although you will find yourself wondering where it is all heading, in the end you take it for the ride that it is – a fun, endearing, fresh look at life’s challenges.

A non-food post at last! ha ha.

Sandra managed scored free tickets to a preview screening (once again.) Tonight’s movie was The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. I had the very vaguest of ideas of what it was about – two old dudes in hospital facing mortality who go on a road trip of sorts – and that’s pretty much what we got. There were actually two “road” trips taken in this movie – the outward physical road trip and the inner reach inside your soul trip. This formula delivered a basically sappy movie (and I have to admit, as embarrassing as it is to, that I got teary in at least two spots during the movie!) that, whilst its not going to win any sorts of awards or is not at all challenging in any way, is fairly watchable and who doesn’t need a feel good movie now and again, especially at the start of a work week.

The Bucket List referred to in the movie is a list that Morgan Freeman’s character creates which lists all the things he wants to do before he kicks the bucket. Jack Nicholson’s character thinks the list is lame but with a few additions here and there comes up with a fairly cool list. In fact, its kind of weird but the list they ended up with kind of mirrors either the things I’ve done or the things I want to do including:
– skydiving
– seeing something truly majestic
– drive a hot racing car
– get a tattoo
– kiss the most beautiful girl in the world …

In the end Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as top class actors did what they could to salvage a movie based on fairly weak script. You’ll laugh, you may cry (if you’re a sap like me) and if you’re a half glass full kind of person maybe it’ll inspire you to get out there and get started on your own Bucket List.

I’ve had a translation of Beowulf on my PDA that I’ve been trying to read for what must have been the last year now but somehow I’ve never managed to even get past the first few stanzas. Not only is the translation written in prose, which has always been a challenge for me to read and understand, it is also written in some weird old language. Beowulf is some Anglo Saxon poem apparently written over 1,300 years ago and tells of Beowulf, a hero of gigantic proportions, who battles three monsters: Grendel, Grendel’s mother and a vicious dragon.

Tonight I managed to score some free tickets to a preview screening of the latest movie adaptation of Beowulf so it looks like I don’t have to make the effort to read the poem after all 🙂 With the actual release date in London being on Thursday I received a few notifications that security would be pretty strict for the screening with promises that any mobile phones and other products cable of recording would be confiscated at the beginning of the movie (to be returned at the conclusion.) It was a lot of hype for nothing though as there was no security of any sort at our screening.

This adaptation brings a bit of a spin to the old tale though the basics of it, that of a hero slaying three monsters, remains the same. The difference is in the particular relationships that exist in the kingdom he “rescues” and with the monsters involved. The movie is no doubt targeted at the fantasy-action-saga-lord-of-the-rings-300-epic-loving audience bringing with it a gigantic budget, a stellar cast (Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover and of course how could one possibly miss that it also features one Angelina Jolie), the latest in CGI technology and for those lucky enough to see it – 3D vision.

I must say that I was very impressed with the final product. Somehow the simple story in this poem became this wonderful story full of emotion and action that just simply entertained. That’s not to say there weren’t any weaknesses – such as questioning why, for something that was attempting to be so realistic, it needed to be shot in full CGI in the first place, the CGI causing characters to get a slightly cross-eyed look, and sometimes it being difficult to understand what was being said.

What surprised me most about Beowulf was that it was not just about the big budget special effects – there was actually a genuine story line filled with emotion and drama and well worth paying attention too. Be warned though that this is not necessarily for the squeamish – there is quite a bit of violence and gore in this one and even though you can disassociate from it to some extent (thanks to the CGI) it is still pretty confrontational. Catch it on the big screen and you might as well IMAX it while you’re spending the dough anyway.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this movie because it was so … bleh. George Clooney plays a “fixer” at a large corporate law firm in New York. This means he is the go to man when something a little beyond legal advice and representation is required. The baddie in this movie is a big corporate giant U-North, whom the law firm is representing, who is involved in a class action suit for releasing cancer causing chemicals. When the lead counsel for defence goes just a little mental and awol Clooney is sent in to save the day.

This movie just didn’t do it for me. Yes it was superbly acted by Clooney and Tom Wilkinson who plays the lead counsel gone cuckoo, in contrast to Tilda Swinton as U-North’s in house big wig lawyer who was a wet fish and pathetic, but otherwise I felt that there was nothing surprising or dramatic in the story-line. All the cards seemed to be shown to the audience at once so I was constantly waiting for the shoe to drop and right to the end it never did. The movie showed you exactly where it was going at all times and that is exactly where you arrived.

As I said in the intro, bleh.

Tonight was the second night of our “Movie Previews”. We were supposed to be seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof but for some reason it wasn’t being shown so we had our pick of movies. The best offering seemed to be Shoot Em Up – a crazy action movie featuring Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci and one of the silliest story-lines I’ve seen in a while. Strangely enough the movie has totally restored my faith in Clive Owen. He first came to my attention as King Arthur, a movie in which I totally loved him. But then I was totally turned off by him in Closer (though Jenny says that just shows how good an actor he was) and now I’m back to the loving him side.

Shoot Em Up is over the top, ludicrously violent, absurd, campy and just plain good fun. The movie opens with Clive Owen as a supposed bum minding his own business sitting at a bus stop drinking coffee and eating a carrot. A pregnant woman soon runs past him screaming and she is followed by a man threatening her menacingly with a gun. Damsel in distress? Clive Owen is soon on the job. The first sign of just how crazy this movie is, is the method of Clive Owen’s first kill – drilling the carrot through the back of the man’s head. Brutal and bloody much? During this opening action sequence the woman goes into labour and so with Clive Owen both coolly directing her to push and massacring the rest of the evil dudes, lead by villain Paul Giamatti, in interesting and imaginative ways a baby is born. The mother subsequently dies but Clive Owen’s conscience does not allow him to leave the baby behind. The rest of the movie tells of his baby-sitting experience, assisted along the way by a bunch of carrots and his, to be girlfriend, prostitute Monica Bellucci, and of his quest to find out exactly why the baby is being targeted for assassination.

The movie is almost cartoon like in both the number of deaths and in the way the lead characters, Clive Owen (good guy) and Giamatii (bad guy), never die despite all sorts of pain and kill shots being inflicted on them. The way Clive Owen somehow defies the laws of physics to escape Giamatii’s evil clutches time and time again add to this feeling.

There’s no true plot or logic to this movie but the story line serves its purpose of giving Clive Owen a vehicle to kick butt and that’s all I cared about. It is a surprisingly funny movie with witty one-liners from both Clive Owen and Giamatii though often you’ll find yourself laughing more at just how waaaay over the top the action scenes are. This is one of those movies that actually had the audience clapping at the end and for that I would definitely recommend it though you’ll have to put your brain in park first.

Lately Sandra has been able to get free tickets to screenings of yet to be released movies. This one is the first one I’ve gone to. I’m not sure how they select which movies come up on offer but I’m not gonna say no to a free movie despite how little I know about it! Tonight’s movie was A Mighty Heart.

Daniel Pearl was a Wall Street journalist who was kidnapped and brutally executed by Islamic fundamentalists in Karachi, Pakiston. A Mighty Heart is an adaptation of a memoir by his widow Mariane Pearl and takes us through her nightmare of the weeks leading up to his execution. Throughout the movie Mariane, who is nearly full term pregnant, stoically maintains her composure while assembling a group of friends and colleagues to find him. The only moment that she totally looses it is when she finally finds out her husband is dead. And not just dead but beheaded and chopped into ten pieces. This is not a happy story kids.

Angelina Jolie as Mariane is simply amazing as Mariane Pearl. Its easy to put aside all the recent press about Jolie’s personal life and remember that actually she is a decent actress. She totally embraces and becomes Mariane. Truly compelling.

Interestingly the film does not paint the evils of the terrorists themselves although clearly they are bad guys in the film. Instead the focus seems to be on the chaos and confusion of international communication lines from the respective government perspectives to the media reporting and also the importance of hope, however futile, in the face of such loss.

The movie’s only downfall I think is in living up to the title – A Mighty Heart. Sure Jolie’s character is generally a pillar of strength throughout the film but because the movie is for the most part emotion-less you don’t get the true sense of how much pain Mariane Pearl had to work through to overcome what would ordinarily be the automatic feeling of total hatred of her husband’s executioners.