Avatar and Sherlock Holmes

2 new movies that I watched. My review, and the obvious precaution of spoiler alert.

1. Avatar
I watched this movie in 3D (alas, the IMAX 3D tickets were quickly sold out, so the standard 3D would have to do). Pretty impressive visuals. This movie is a showcase of how far CGI technology in cinema has become. It's just amazing the way they portrayed Pandora's colorful and lush jungle environment. The 3D effects are not being overdone either (although there are few obvious scenes that are there simply for the 3D effects). It's definitely a visual treat.

As for the story, well, if you saw the trailer, you already know the story. It's the typical "soldier went undercover to gain information on the opposing party, fell in love with a girl of the opposing party, and decided to defend them" story with a scifi background. It's also portrayed the action of invading another culture/country (or in this case, planet) to gain their resources for profit (sounds familiar?). It's a very interesting portrayal of current world issues with a sci-fi twist. Other than that, nothing special. Guy falls in love with the girl, girl falls in love with the guy, girl thinks guy betrayed her, guy makes a com-back, war, the good guys won, the end. The movie itself is pretty long, a bit more than 2 and 1/2 hour. It pays though, as the pacing of the movie seems pretty good, not overly rushed.

The sci-fi part itself is, unfortunately, not well explored. Pandora planet is apparently a giant mesh network, where information can be transferred to and from, this includes brain signals. Heck, how did they make the avatars to begin with? What happened to earth? (Jake said that the "sky people's" home were no longer green or something). When Jake found out that Na'vi can transfer a mind into another body, why didn't he do it right away, thus not having to worry the enemy getting into his real body? And wasn't that chick turned into a zombie in Resident Evil? LOL.

Anyway, impressive visuals, pretty cool watching it in 3D, so so story and acting, surprised to see Sigourney Weaver in it. Pretty entertaining, but nothing to write about the story. To be honest, I'm tired of sci-fi movies that portrays the future and/or technology as bad. This is why I like Star Trek, which seems to be the only sci-fi franchise that portrays us, humans on earth, turning for the better in the future (watch any Start Trek episode/movie, and you won't see a muscly jock military soldier gungho with machine guns).

2. Sherlock Holmes
This movie was a quite a surprise for me. I like detective stories. When I saw the trailer, I was prepared to be disappointed as the trailer seems to show this new Sherlock Holmes as an action movie filled with Holmes fighting, not the image I have with Sherlock Holmes the great detective. In short, I'm afraid for a too dumbed down "Sherlock Holmes" movie. Well, the movie turned out to be very good. Sure, the fightings are in there, but Sherlock Holmes is still Sherlock Holmes, paying attention to details and deducing things from observations. Also, during his fights, he fought using his brain, planning his attacks from a science/medical point of view. Not too shabby. I'm sure the action and jokes are there to appease the mainstream audience, but they don't dumb down Holmes' detective skills. However, they also seems to hope the audience already know about Sherlock Holmes stories/characters (I have no idea who Irene Adler was), which may be a good thing so no time is wasted in the movie explaining the back story or whatnot.

In short, an extremely entertaining movie. This movie also setup for sequels as it introduces Professor Moriarty in the end, Holmes' well-known nemesis. My only gripe with this movie is that the person sitting next to me in the theater smelled awful.

Rewatching Iron Man movie

Just finished watching Iron Man movie on blu-ray. It is still a great movie, fun to watch again. Iron Man is one of the few American super heroes that I like, mainly because unlike most other super heroes, Tony Stark becomes Iron Man due to his intelligence and technology. None of those gamma ray/radioactive spider/mutation crap. Also, unlike the comic, the movie follows a more robotic Iron Man instead of the corny muscly suit.

Unlike some other super hero movies, what I like about Iron Man is that they show plenty of Iron Man himself. A lot of Hollywood adaptations used to not giving enough fan service (no "super moves," not enough of the main hero screen time, etc). Luckily they're getting better at recent franchises. Iron Man did a pretty good job in keeping fans happy, by simply showing how cool Iron Man is. It also helps that there are plenty of gadgets and funny scenes.

I still find the final fight scene with Iron Monger is a bit anti-climatic, and somewhat disappointing. This is one of the many typical Hollywood disappointing formula. They built up excitement during like 80% of the movie, and then brought everything down at the end. Iron Man followed the same formula. The problem started when the bad guy stole Tony's new and upgraded power source, and Tony had to resort to his first generation version of the miniature arc reactor. And then Iron Man got beat up, and the girl came to the rescue. If this was a Japanese tokusatsu, the enemy might have stolen the new power source, but Tony Stark would've already created a more powerful/better/3rd gen arc reactor, ideally prepared for such situation. And when Iron Man gotten beat up by Iron Monger, instead of almost dying and relying on the girl, Tony would've actually used an upgraded Iron Man suit, and maybe transformed into "Hyper/Rising" Iron Man or something with extra weapons or shoot higher output energy from the newer arc reactor and blow up Iron Monger to pieces. Or Tony would've made one of his robots as an independent AI robot, and combined with Iron Man to deliver an ultimate blast to defeat Iron Monger. LOL. That would be more fun, and maintain the excitement of the good guy kicking ass.

As for the blu-ray, Iron Man uses plenty of CGI, so watching it in HD is really nice with a lot of the sharpness and details of the gadgets and CG. The extras are okay, plenty of behind the scenes on both discs. The BD-Live feature is a joke, just a quiz of trivia questions, something they could've included on the disc in the first place.

Iron Man is still one of the better recent super hero movies. Hopefully they keep things up throughout the sequels (unlike X-Men and Spiderman).

V6 - Light in Your Heart

The MV for V6's upcoming new single, the theme song of the new Ultraman movie (obviously Hiroshi Nagano is in the movie, as Daigo/Ultraman Tiga).

Watch V6-Light in your Heart PV in Entertainment Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Here's the trailer of the movie:

TIGA!!! LOL

Tropic Thunder Viral Video Promo

Everybody seems to like Tropic Thunder. I've seen the regular trailer, but this one is funnier, although it got "urrgh" in the end. So warning, the first half or so is pretty funny, but beware of the end.

Momotaros-tachi funny scene

The 4 hilarious imajins from Kamen Rider Den-O will be coming back in the summer crossover movie between Kamen Rider Kiva and Den-O. For the last couple episodes of Kamen Rider Kiva, they are showing Momotaros-tachi promoting the new movie. The funny part is that they also did a crossover with Go-Onger. this time, from Kamen Rider Kiva Ep27, Momotaros-tachi are copying Go-Onger poses. Hilarious!

Speed Racer 2008

When I found out they're going to make a Speed Racer movie, I know it's going to suck. Why? It's a movie based on a cartoon that was a localized version of an old Japanese anime. The least they could do was to use the original material, but nope, it has to be the US version. Oh well, at least there's a reference for Mach Go Go Go (the original Japanese title) in the hip-hop Speed Racer theme song for the movie.

In any case, many girls are looking forward for the movie, not because of Speed Racer, but because of Rain, as shown in the poster:

LOL Yeah, I don't think I see this poster around here. Different targeted demographic.

Iron Man Movie

Very fun movie with tons of gadgets and technology. Stark's basement itself is a geek's dream. Robert Downey Jr seems to be a perfect fit for Tony Stark. One great thing about the movie is that the director didn't waste the time introducing the story/characters. The movie started right at the moment Stark being ambushed in Afghanistan. No time wasted in introducing Iron Man either. The mark 2 only had a brief appearance before the final red/gold suit is out. Very fast paced as Tony juggles his time between business and developing the suit. My favorite scenes are when Tony is recording his tests of the suit's flight components. Those scenes were hilarious.

The final fight with Iron Monger was not that great though. Not enough oomph. It's the usual hero-almost-got-beaten-girl-saves-hero kind of fight. I wanted Iron Man to totally kick ass from the start to the finish. Maybe on the 2nd or 3rd movie.

The CG is simply awesome, especially Tony's garage/basement. Alas, the high tech stuff is frequently contrasted with today's "meh" techs like Tony's LG cellphone and the Dell XPS M2010 "laptop." Still, there is plenty of CG showcase, like the scene where Tony is putting on the mark 3 suit.

On another topic, the theater I went to sucked. The movie was out of focus! Terrible! Plus there was a bunch of asshole teenagers on the side that were yapping all the time. Another reason why I prefer watching movies at home. Can't wait for the blu-ray release of the movie.