Mad Men Creator Inks Long-term Deal, Show Renewed Through Season 6, Cast Cuts

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The best news I’ve had all day. Now for the big worry; who gets the chop? According to the deal just signed by Weiner, the show’s creator, he has to cut 2 series cast members leaving 4 from the original 6. This is of course to save some actors from being typecast… I mean to save money.

Vote for who you want to go from the regular lineup. My choice, hmmm (no not Hamm) I’d send Lane Pryce back to Britain and give Bertram Cooper the heart attack he’s only one martini away from.

Mad Men Creator Inks Long-term Deal, Show Renewed Through Season 6, Cast Cuts Averted.

Limitless

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“What if a pill could make you rich and powerful?” asks the tagline to Limitless. Well eventually you might end up rich and powerful but not in the beginning. Limitless is limited – in many ways. Of course you have to suspend reality with this kind of pseudo sci-fi flick. In a nut shell, a loser wannabe author runs into his ex-brother-in-law who has access to a new drug that allows him to access the other 80% of his brain which we just don’t use.

I think the pitch to the studio guy who greenlighted this movie would have been something like; “Imagine the genie in the bottle story, where you rub the bottle and the genie gives you three wishes, now bring that into the 21st century but instead of a genie, it’s a new secret drug from a top secret lab that may or may not be linked to the military.”

Someone also thought it would be a good idea to cast Bradley Cooper in the lead. The back story is that this film is supposed to launch Mr Cooper as a serious actor. Fail! He shows little more talent if any than The A-Team. Then someone, somehow convinced Robert De Niro to get involved in this project. I’m not sure what’s happened to Mr De Niro in recent years. IMHO he has made some very bad choices in what movies to make. The Focker trilogy to wit. Of course he has also played great roles including Captain Shakespeare in Stardust and Neil McCauley in Heat to name just a few. Plus he currently has five movies in production and two rumoured. This isn’t a bad choice for Mr De Niro, but he is certainly cast to get fans to part with their hard earned cash and buy a ticket. He also certainly is under utilised or director Neil Burger wasn’t able to extract Mr De Niro’s immense acting talent. The Abbie Cornish role could have been played by any sexy blonde. Or brunette. Or redhead.

There isn’t anything special about the majority of the cinematography with the exception of two very long zoom sequences that seem to go on forever. One starts at the southern end of Manhattan Island and finishes up near Central Park. Very clever technically and visually stunning. There are two scenes where what is going on in Cooper’s head plays out in his apartment. These are lame. Nowhere near as good as similar scenes in A Beautiful Mind.

I’ve always thought, if I ever came across a genie willing to give me three wishes, the first thing I’d ask for is many more wishes. It’s a no brainer. In Limitless Cooper seems to wait until his very limited supply of pills is almost exhausted before asking a chemist is make some more for him.

Limitless is not a bad film but it could have been so much better.

3.5 little clear pills out of 5

World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles or Battle: Los Angeles

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The marketing department couldn’t make their minds up what to call this flick and knowing that it was never going to win an award for anything they just gave it two names. Perhaps they were thinking that people might get confused, think World Invasion: Battle LA and Battle: Los Angeles are two different movies and see it twice?

Whatever you call it, if you love your plots thin, alien critters large, destruction monumental and SFX better than the last thin plotted, large alien critter, monument disaster flick this movie is for you. Also, you need to be a US citizen, have little or no education, massive nationalistic stripe and still think the US is winning the war in both theatres of active operation because this film is nothing more than a US Marine Corp (USMC) recruitment film. If I designed the poster for this movie it would have the classic Uncle Sam poster with an alien’s hand resting on the shoulder and a eyeball hanging out of the skull. Which is one reaosn I don’t design movie posters.

With the average US teenager leaving high school and having little more choice than a McDonald’s uniform or a Marine uniform, the USMC thought they better make their ocupation more attractive than flipping burgers and asking, ‘would you like fries with that’? Hooha*! But that’s enough social commentary and geo-political analysis from me.

Don’t think for a second I didn’t enjoy this movie. Sometimes I enjoy not having to think about plot and just love watching the bad guys get splattered. Again and again and again.

While World Invasion: Battle LA/Battle: Los Angeles is not a thinking movie, it does throw up every now and then elements from other movies. I wouldn’t say the writer/s read every other earth invasion, ageing marine, trapped civilians, father/son, last man standing, dishonoured marine and escape movie script before cobbling them altogether in to this one, but I just did.

3 dead fucking aliens out of 5. U. S. A! U. S. A!

*Hooha is phonetic pronunciation of H.U.A which is the acronym used by many military forces as the signal for Heard. Understood. Acknowledged. It is used after receiving orders in the field, at award ceremonies, military funerals and other appropriate events. US Marine Corp, which is actually an element of the US Navy, and US Army soliders use the term in their everyday vernacular.

Rango

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Rango is the first animated feature from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), George Lucas‘ company. ILM is a primarily a SFX shop specialising in making certain parts of other movies look amazing. What they don’t do is tell stories, and that’s what movies are; stories on film.

The plot of Rango is unoriginal in every way; loner near death finds struggling town which needs a sheriff to save their blah blah blah. It’s been done a hundred times before and poor film makers will continue to vary the key components and call it ‘original’.

Rated PG Rango is made for kids. But the kids in the audience when I saw this piece of crap were fidgeting and only paying attention when told by their equally bored parents.

There are plenty of references to Star Wars just in case Mr Lucas thought we all forgot he made that movie and it’s 2 subsequent features and 3 followig cartoons, or pre-cartoons or whatever the fuck he calls them. I think these references are also there in the same way that pantomime producers add some adult jokes to keep parents amused while their kids yell “he’s behind you”! There’s also a hat tip to Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas, which starred Johnny Depp, the voice of Rango.

Rango features every kind of personified critter from birds to snakes and turtles to moles. But as I sat and watched, and waited, (I’ve never experienced 107 minutes to take sooooooo loooooong), it occurred to my that the audience are actually lab rats. Rango is nothing more than a test of what ILM can do in feature animation. And in my not so humble opinion they have a long way to go; the feather and water FX are far short of the 2010 animated feature from Animal Logic, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. This is the second time I’ve been a guinea pig for a producer – see my review of Sanctum 3D (Coming soon)

Essentially they have produced an animated feature with a crap story as a test of their abilities and made us pay for the privilege.

Well guess what Mr Lucas, if you think I’m going to shell out my hard earned to see Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace with Jar Jar Binks in 3D next March you are sadly mistaken.

Rango: 0 grains of dirt from 5 (Seriously, would a good story cost so much more to make?)

Paul

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Paul premiered at the St George Open Air Cinema which if you have never attended I highly recommend you do. It runs through the latter half of summer in Sydney. The screen is mounted on pylons in the water of Farm Cove. Often the scene behind the screen of the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge and CBD can over shadow what’s on the screen. And that was pretty easy with Paul.

As the ad above says, with half hope and half desperation, Paul is from the producers of Hot Fuzz – a movie I believe didn’t have an editor. You can imagine the pitch to a studio for this movie. Remembering that studio suits think only in dollars it would have been something like; “Hey remember ET? Of course you do, biggest box office take record stood for 17 years. Imagine ET, escapes from Area 51, get chased by Men in Black, but not the Will Smith kind of men in black, more, Keystone Cops men in black, but our ET gets a ride from two guys on holidays to the US for ComicCon, I’ll explain that later, just think Über geeks and here’s the kicker….they’re from Britain.”

However, it’s better than it sounds. There are lots of great sc-fi references. In fact Paul pretty much has a reference to every great, and not so great, science fiction movie even made with a superb cameo at the end. And a twist.

The biggest problem in my not so humble opinion is the voice of Paul is Seth Rogen. He brings nothing to the performance and could have phoned it in. Actually, he probably did being that you don’t see him. For my money, Paul needed a voice like Roger the alien from American Dad; comical human, but not ET either.

3 little green men out of 5

I’m sorry, but…

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I really wish I had time to fix up and fine tune this blog. All the ideas are worked out and strategy is finalised. But like the painter with the un-painted house, builder with the un-finished house or the sex starved prostitute I am too damn busy writing stuff for clients, photographing stuff for clients, being social – for clients, to do any kind of self promotion. There hasn’t even been much swashbuckling going on.