movies

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Ain’t It Cool News has over three minutes of footage – the first footage released anywhere – from John Rambo. Three things to keep in mind:

1. The plot of this movie centers on Christian missionaries.

2. The footage (in Quicktime format) will only be up for about two days or so. If you want to watch it, do so now.

3. This is EXTREMELY violent! In fact I think it’s safe to say that there is more bloodshed in this one 3-minute clip from John Rambo than there was in the previous Rambo movies… all put together! Not kidding folks: if you want to watch this, be prepared for some unholy nasty things to enter your gray matter through your forward peepers.

Violent as it is though, it does seem like it’s going to be a good entry in the Rambo series. I’d had doubts for the last ...

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The 2007 summer movie season “officially” kicks off next weekend, but I’m already looking forward to next year… and no movie more so than The Dark Knight, the follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins. That has become one of the very rare movies that the more times I’ve watched it, it just keeps getting better and better. Christopher Nolan’s vision was the best on-screen portrayal of Batman and his world by far: this guy gets Batman. Nolan’s Batman is realistic and not comic-booky or “superheroic”… which ironically helped make Batman Begins the finest superhero movie ever, in my opinion. I just hope that nobody drops the ball with future installments of this series, ‘cuz the first really was the best way to kick off a potential movie franchise that I’ve ever seen.

Well, this past week saw quite a few good bits of material coming out of The Dark ...

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Don’t have Quicktime handily installed on whatever ‘puter you’re on? Here’s the new Transformers trailer (found on Michael Bay’s website):

And here’s the original link to the Quicktime version on Yahoo!

The more I watch this trailer, the more stoked I’m getting to see this movie. I keep thinking about how much I started looking forward to Independence Day after that now-legendary commercial during the 1996 Super Bowl. Transformers is going to be that kind of outrageous good fun too, I hope.

Something also that I first realized with the movie’s teaser, and this trailer reinforces the notion for me, that I hadn’t thought of ever since the Transformers hit the scene in 1984: the Transformers are not “robots”. They are living alien organisms from a world far removed from Earth. They just happen to be living organisms that are composed of metal and not carbon molecules. And ...

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In spite of the problems that I’ve heard this movie has had/will have, I must say that this trailer rocks the house. ‘Course, I’ve seen plenty of awesome trailers for movies that when they finally arrived in theaters, were total letdowns (I would even say that the “teaser” a year ago for Spider-Man 3 promised a lot more than what that movie actually yielded). So this could go either way… but for what it’s worth, I really am hoping to be more than pleasantly surprised with Transformers. Watching this tidbit of it does give me a feeling of some optimism (or should that be “Optimus”? :-).

Mash down here for the exclusive trailer at Yahoo!...

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Indiana Jones and the Staff of Moses?

I doubt it (but hey, I’ve been wrong before). It’s a title that’s been bandied about at least once in the past decade (click here for an EXCELLENT synopsis of the long, strange trip to the fourth Indy film, including Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars).

Personally – and I’m probably one of the darned few who will ever admit to saying this – I’ve always thought that Indiana Jones and the Sons of Darkness would have been a great movie. Too bad that script turned out to be totally fake 🙁...

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This does not need to happen. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines did not need to happen either (although I will admit there were some pretty good sequences in that movie). For me, the Terminator story neatly tied itself up at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But I guess Hollywood is running on fumes so far as new ideas for movies go, hence this whole new “Terminator trilogy” that will almost certainly tank at the box office....

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Jae Solina is a student at Randolph High School. Each senior there has to do a project as a graduation requirement. Well, Jae decided that he had to do things a little different and that he was going to shoot the works for his project. He opted to make a short film. So far as I know, this is the very first film he’s ever worked on. Jae needed a “professional” mentor to help him with it and sign off on the requirements, so I’ve been helping him a bit for the past few months.

You’re going to see “KWerky Productions” flash briefly during this. Well, this film is all Jae’s doing. He deserves all the credit for it. Because he does stuff in this very first time out that outshines work I’ve seen from a lot of veteran filmmakers. Jae did some things that I haven’t even attempted in ...

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My lovely “spousal overunit” Lisa chimes in with her thoughts about Spider-Man 3 over on her own blog. Here’s something she said that I think especially needs to be said of the movie…

This movie provided what America has need for a long time, a lesson in humility and forgiveness. Revenge, power, and arrogance can and will destroy. Spider-Man cannot serve the people if he is self-absorbed; neither can the leader of a country. America has become so materialistic and self absorbed, that we have failed to be a great people anymore. We have become so selfish, that we have lost focus of the rising struggles within and around us. We must learn to put our neighbors before ourselves, before we can find happiness and success. Even Spider-Man had to learn this the hard way. He had to forgive himself and his enemies to be a free and happy man.

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I enjoyed Spider-Man 3. There, I said it.

Spider-Man 3 is a good entry into the series and an all-around entertaining superhero “popcorn” flick. And with just a little bit more thought, it could have been an all-time truly classic movie.

There was simply way too much that was shoehorned into this one movie to make it overwhelmingly superb. I worried a year ago that Sam Raimi and gang were trying to put so many elements of the Spider-Man comics into this third film, that it couldn’t be anything but unwieldy. Unfortunately, those fears were well-grounded.

But in spite of whatever problems this movie has… and they are myriad… I just can’t bring myself to do anything but love Spider-Man 3. I had too good a time watching it. Yes, there are things that could have been better. But those are out-shined by what does work in this ...

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If this is The Ronfather, does that mean its central character is “Ron” Corleone?

Someone called here yesterday to ask me about the Ron Price situation and I told this person that at no time have I “hated” the guy. Been disgusted with him? Certainly. But that’s a far cry from outright loathing his guts. At the same time, he’s doing wrong: both by staying on the Rockingham County Board of Education (in spite of being an admitted thief) and by this lawsuit against the Moores… which many here believe will be only the first in a series of retaliatory strikes against those on Price’s “enemies list”.

Bear in mind that at one point I was one of Price’s strongest supporters. I even offered to make a TV commercial for his campaign back during the election season… for free. You don’t do that for someone unless they’ve ...

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