Tag: movie
Video + Photos: Tronorail debuts on Walt Disney World’s monorail tracks
This morning marked the debut on the “Tronorail,” one of Walt Disney World’s monorails wrapped in artwork promoting the upcoming Disney film, “Tron: Legacy.” The artwork features the iconic light cycles from the film (and the original “Tron”), leaving painted light trails behind.
The repainted monorail is making its way around the Epcot monorail track, which runs back and forth between Epcot and the Transportation and Ticket Center.
Here is a video of the Tronorail approaching Epcot, making its way through the theme park, pulling into the monorail station, and exiting to head back to the TTC:
And a photo gallery of Tronorail photos I snapped today:
If you want to catch a glimpse of the Tronorail in action, be prepared to wait. The Epcot line was running 3 monorails today, so the above 3-minute video took me nearly 2 hours to shoot, waiting 15-20 minutesbetween each appearance of the Tron monorail. But it was totally worth it.
TweetBecome a member of the Foot Clan – Audition for new Ninja Turtles movie
It’s times like this when I wish I lived in California and had some martial arts skills…
From tmnt25.com:
TweetThe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in association with Mirage Studios, 4Kids Entertainment and TMNT Productions will host an open casting call for martial arts experts to audition for the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, hitting theatres in 2011. We will select the best from the auditions to be a part of the stealth TMNT nemesis, the Foot Clan.
The casting call is part of the 25th Anniversary Shell-ebration of the “Heroes on a Half Shell” in 2009, and a great way to bring together all schools of martial arts to become part of the new generation of TMNT.
We’re reaching out to ask for your participation in spreading the word to your associates, friends and family within the martial arts community. Details of the event are below, and final rules/regulations will be posted shortly.
When: Saturday, July 18, 2009 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Where: Hollywood & Highland
6801 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028
*At Grand Staircase
Who: Judges to include actor and martial arts expert Ernie Reyes, Jr., Jason Morgan from the American Taekwondo Association, and 2011 TMNT movie producers Scott Mednick and Galen Walker.
Audition: 30-Second Martial Arts Demo (Single Person Only)
No metal, sharp or bladed weapons of any kind allowed
Photo and updated resume with contact information
Fourteen years or older (under 18 must have adult permission for audition)
Review – Transformers 2: Revenge of Michael Bay
From toys to the original cartoon, I’ve been a fan of the Transformers for almost as long as I’ve been alive. When the live-action Transformers film hit theaters in 2007, I was one of the first to see it, hoping for an amazing update to a classic animated television show.
Unfortunately, director Michael Bay was the one picked to put the film together and it was painfully obvious that he was involved. While the movie wasn’t terrible, it was definitely filled with Bay’s trademark Hollywood schlock, including bad acting, cheesy dialogue, over-saturated lighting, and gratuitous everything else. But at least the Transformers themselves resembled those found in the cartoon and toy series. Yes they were redesigned as twisted masses of sharp, pointy metal, but the designs were unique and each robot did carry over its distinct personality. So I was mostly happy with the first film.
Two years later, Michael Bay returns with a sequel to his live-action Transformers film called Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Before I had a chance to see this new movie, I heard many rumblings from critics and average movie-goers alike that the film was bad. Really bad. I figured that it was just a standard reaction to more Michael Bay schlock and it couldn’t possibly be as bad as everyone thought. I was wrong, they were right.
Transformers 2 clocks in at a whopping two hours and 30 minutes long. That’s six minutes longer than the first film, though it felt more like it was five hours longer. Out of the 150 minute duration, I enjoyed -at most- 30 minutes of the film. The rest was filled with absurd scenes that seemed like something out of The Hangover rather than the Transformers universe. Filled with inappropriate dialogue and moronic new characters (including many of the robots), Transformers 2 is a must-skip, even for hardcore Transformers fans.
The only good thing I can say about Transformers 2 is that some of the action scenes were somewhat enjoyable. Those made up the 30 minutes that I would want to see again. In the first Transformers film, the camera was placed so close to the action that all viewers could see was random shiny bits of painted metal moving around the screen. For this film, cameras were pulled back wide enough to actually see what was going on, often surprisingly staying on shots for more than a second or two, allowing the action to unfold clearly. Slow motion was appropriately used throughout the movie, allowing an excellent view of the robot battles.
Unfortunately, any time a character, robot or human, opened his or her mouth, it ruined the scene. One new character was present almost throughout the entire movie, tagging along with Sam (Shia Labeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox) and ultimately serving no purpose whatsoever. I think he was supposed to be comic relief, minus the comedy and the relief. Add to the mix far too many scenes prominently featuring Sam’s obnoxious and idiotic caricatures of parents and it’s one disaster after another. And that’s without even factoring in the unnecessary robot swearing and recurring inappropriate sexual themes.
I know I’m not alone in thinking that Transformers 2 was really, really bad. And yet, somehow, most of the audience in the Downtown Disney movie theater in which I saw the film seemed to enjoy it. I was surrounded by viewers who were cracking up at the gross-out comedy and didn’t seem to really care about the robot battle scenes. Now I can’t stand most stupid comedy films, so perhaps I wasn’t the intended audience for this film. Perhaps all of the other movie-goers somehow knew that buying a ticket to Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen actually meant buying a ticket to a movie of the same style as American Pie, Dude, Where’s My Car?, and Van Wilder. I guess that’s just not what I was expecting out of a movie that was based on a children’s television show and line of toys. The real stars of Transformers 2, apparently, are not the Transformers. Silly me.
To wrap up, if you’re a fan of stupid comedy, perhaps you’ll enjoy Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Transformers fans shouldn’t bother.
TweetFRIDAY FLASHBACK: Terminator 2 Madness
Being a huge Terminator series fan, I am extremely excited about the upcoming Terminator Salvation movie coming out this week. But since today is Friday, I won’t be posting about the new film, but rather looking to the past with some…
Terminator 2 Madness
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is easily the best of the franchise and one of my favorite movies of all time. You can just feel the excitement building with this 1990 teaser for the film:
I remember going to see Terminator 2 in a movie theater when I was just 10 or 11 years old. What a fantastic experience. It’s amazing how the film’s computer-generated effects for the T-1000 “liquid metal” Terminator, groundbreaking at the time, still hold up very well today and even look better than some recent Hollywood films.
Despite the fact that the film is rated R, it was clearly marketed toward children as well as adults and it obviously worked on me, since I saw it at such a young age. While there is plenty of violence to be found throughout the movie, it’s fairly tame as R-ratings go. I’ve seen some recent PG-13 movies that were more inappropriate for kids than Terminator 2 is.
A huge part of marketing any film toward children is the toys that are released:
I had several of the action figures but never got the bio-flesh regenerator, even though I definitely wanted it. Best part of the commercial: “Battle… damage… must return to… bio-flesh regenerator…”
Terminator 2 also holds the title of being the theme behind what is quite possibly my favorite pinball machine of all time. Here’s a very long promo video (in two parts) showing all the details of this excellent game:
From the shotgun trigger to launch balls into play to the interactive games on-screen, Terminator 2 pinball was the most advanced pinball game I had played at the time and I jumped at every chance I had to play it. I mean, how can you not like a pinball table that has an endoskeleton head with glowing red eyes?
In addition to seeing the movie, buying the toys, and playing the pinball game, I also loaded up my Windows 3.1-running 486 33mhz computer with a couple Terminator 2 screen savers, one of which is available for download here, called “Termo Vision,” which emulates what a Terminator sees. The other screen saver I had (which I can’t seem to find online) was a Skynet factory that filled the screen with different stages of endoskeleton production.
The coolest collectible to ever be released for the Terminator series is the life-size endoskeleton from Sideshow Collectibles:
I remember seeing one of these in the now-defunct Sharper Image store in a mall when Terminator 2 first hit theaters and I’ve wanted one ever since. It’s over 6 feet tall and costs nearly $6,000, so it’s obvious why I don’t have one. But if I ever hit the lottery, it will be one of the first things I buy. Here’s a video from Sideshow talking all about it.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is so much more than just a big-budget, sci-fi/action film. On top of all of that, it has a great story, interesting characters, and, most importantly, some big themes to think about. While on the surface it is a story about super-intelligent machines taking over the world, the underlying message is all about what it means to be human. The film features the interesting split between John Connor teaching the T-800 how to act more human and Sarah Connor trying to act more like a machine in an effort to protect John. While one character is learning to have emotion and feeling, the other is trying to rid herself of any feelings that might get in her way, though all the while caring for her son.
I could go on and on about why Terminator 2 is such a great film, but I’ll leave it at that. After all, this isn’t a film study post but rather a Friday Flashback. I’m just happy I didn’t have to end up naked in a glowing lightning ball for this trip to the past.
TweetWall Street 2 with Michael Douglas May Be Coming Soon
From slashfilm.com:
TweetOliver Stone has officially signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to direct a sequel to the 1987 film Wall Street, according to Entertainment Weekly. Wall Street 2 is the tentative working title for the project, which had been under the working title of Money Never Sleeps.
21 and Things We Lost in the Fire scribe Allan Loeb turned a rewrite on Stephen Schiff’s long developing sequel script. Apparently the latest draft was strong enough to convince Stone to return. I would have liked to see Aaron Sorkin’s take on a sequel, but rumor has it that he turned down the project.
Michael Douglas is also set to return as Gordon Gekko, a role which earned him an Academy Award. Shia LaBeouf is in talks to play a young wall street trader who, much like Charlie Sheen’s character in the original film, comes under Gekko’s mentor-ship. As much as some people don’t like LaBeouf, it’s hard to disagree that he makes a perfect 2009 stand-in for Sheen.
According to Latino Review, the film is set nearly two decades after the first film, with Gekko, having spent 14-years in prison for insider trading and security fraud, now making the lecture circuit as a published financial author. He mentors a young trader named Jacob (likely the character LaBeouf is playing) in hopes to reconnect with his daughter Winnie, Jacob’s wife.
Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, a revenge story set in the topical world of hedge fund managers, and global locals like London and Dubai. The financial word is a much different place than it was 20 years ago, and it looks like the current climate will make for an interesting setting for a sequel.
