Cuppacafe

OK kids, here are just a few of the flicks I've taken in over the past several weeks. (Yes, just a few, there are more, but I haven't written their reviews yet, as I'm doing other things, so don't get yer panties in a bunch, I'll post them too, eventually).

There are four this time around, starting with:

The Karate Kid: Rated “PG” (140 Minutes)
Starring: Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson
Directed by: Harald Zwart

In 1984 we met Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio), and his single mom, Lucille (Randee Heller) who relocated to California from the Midwest only to discover Martial Art bullies, the ever lovely Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue) and the ever inscrutable Mr. Kesuke Miyagi (Pat Morita), well, it is just over a quarter century later and (courtesy of Will Smith’s personal fortune) this classic film has been given a new lease on life, and no, it is not yet another sequel to this flick, but a remake from the ground up.

Well, it is 26 years later, and we get to do it all over again, only this time, So instead of white-bread middle-American High-schooler heading to Cali, we have a 12-year-old African American from Detroit named Dre Parker (Smith), and his single mom (Taraji P. Henson). Now 12-year-old Dre could've been the most popular kid in Detroit, but his mother's latest career move has landed him in China. Talk about your fish out of water.

You can read the rest of this review, here.

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Killers: Rated “PG-13” (100 Minutes)
Starring: Katherine Heigl, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara, Katheryn Winnick
Directed by: Robert Luketic

Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl) is something of a neurotic, she is eternally beset upon by her overbearing father (Selleck) and her alcoholic mother (O’Hara). Faces with a fiancée that abandoned her, she is forced to endure a trip to Europe (on what should have been her honeymoon), she now has to but up with being in the company of these two loony birds. It is there that she meet and falls in love with the dashing, handsome Spencer Aimes (Kutcher), who just happens to be a professional killer for some unnamed U.S. governmental agency.

Three years later, she and Spencer are still newlyweds living the ideal suburban life — that is, until the morning after Spencer's 30th birthday when bullets start literally flying. It is then out Spencer never bothered to tell Jen he's also an international super-spy, and now Jen's perfect world has been turned upside down. Faced with the fact that her husband is a hit man, Jen is determined to discover what other secrets Spencer might be keeping.

You can read the rest of this review, here.

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Splice: Rated “R” (104 Minutes)
Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, David Hewlett, Delphine Chanéac
Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Clive and Elsa (Brody and Polley) are both superstar genetic engineers doing bleeding-edge work specialize in splicing DNA from different animals together in order to create incredible hybrids that can then be harvested for their incredibly high-end pharmaceutical dollar value. Now they with them right at the precipice of a new discovery, and the corporate suites breathing down their necks to come up with that new “it” drug, they risk it all and choose to utilize human DNA in a hybrid that will risk their professional careers, but could just very well revolutionize all science and medicine in the process.

You can read the rest of this review, here.

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And now the one everyone is waiting for...

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: Rated “PG-13” (120 Minutes)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser
Directed by: David Slade

OK, I don’t have to tell you what Twilight is the hottest film series on the planet amongst teen-aged girls and their dreamy-eyed mothers. Too bad it is also a poorly-written, badly-acted, piece of fluff that, violates it’s very own premise, that is to say, it quite simply does not take itself seriously.

The actors all practice what I like to call the David Carusso style of acting, that is to say, they don’t deliver their lines, they done emote or act them (Hell, it is pretty clear that they don’t even believe their lines), what they do is strike a pose, and pontificate them. Needless to say, they are simply not as interesting to watch, or as multi-faceted as Carusso. Hence, they are merely cardboard cutouts, not worthy of our attention.

Having said all of that, this film actually is better than its two predecessors, because in this film, the primary characters are actually given some (albeit shallow) depths of character, some thin sliver of background onto which they can pin their performance, and our potential suspension of belief. Also working for this film are a number of better action sequences with wolves vampires and, well, bad vampires who have come to town stalking Bella (what with teen vampires and werewolves pining over this girl, and “bad” vampires looking to kill her you have to wonder what all the hubbub is, as she is hardly more than a cipher on-screen). Needless to say, as this reviewer’s son commented, calling this film “better” is sort of like saying Darfur isn’t quite as bad as the Holocaust.

...unfortunately it isn't the version that's coming into theaters shortly, it is the one that first appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and is now playing here...

(more...)

So, by now I'm guessing that everyone has heard that Robert Pattinson is (apparently) the descendant from a "real" vampire. Yeah, you read that right, it has just been revealed that Pattinson (who plays the the effeminate, whiny, sparkly vampire "Edward" from Twilight.

"Without any myth or magic, we find royalty and vampires lurking in Pattinson's life—making his story just as supernatural as the one he's playing on screen," said genealogist Anastasia Tyler.

The link was apparently made through both Pattinson's and ol' Vlad's relation to the British royal family: R.Pattz is distant cousins with Princes William and Harry, while Vlad is a distant uncle.

The Perfessor

I was going to make a joke here, but then I figured, why bother?

The Perfessor

Walt and I have had this discussion numerous times since the first film was released. Here is a short version of what the Twilight phenomenon is all about.

Got it now?

The Perfessor

Don't you just hate it when some johnny-come-lately comes along and totally rips off a much superior product? Yeah, we do here at the Cafe as well. So you can imagine how enraged we became when we came across this news! Apparently some Twilight fan went to see Universal's cheap knockoff film, Wolfman, and well, she just had to give those hacks over at Universal a pies of her mind.

To whom this may concern:

This movie was a complete waste and I feel that it offends ALL Twilight Fans around the world, that including myself. For one, it was a COMPLETE remaking of the Wolf Pack from the Twilight Saga: New Moon. It gives the werewolves a bad name and makes them look like some deformed mutation of a rabid dog. I actually started to like werewolves after seeing Jacob Black and all his awesomeness on the big screen at the movies. That was until I saw your crappy remake of what you call to be a "were wolf". I don't see how you live with yourself for making it the way you did. If I made this movie, I would be ashamed to even admit that I owned it. How can a werewolf be killed with a silver bullet? Better yet, have you saw the transformation of the man that is "supposed" to be the wolf? He sits in some chair and his entire body turns in to some mutated freak. If you would watch the transformation of Jacob Black, (Taylor Lautner) he doesn't come close to looking as fake, cheap and or mutated as the wolf man. You tell me, who looks to be the better werewolf. Your stupid Wolf Movie didn't even make the top Movie for the charts; Valentines Day WITH TAYLOR Lautner! Get that this is MY oppinion and I felt I wanted to express it because I saw that your email was on your site. I wanted to let you know this is what i thought of the wolf man that sucks.
FREAKIN LAUTNER DID!

(sic)

Yea, we're with you sweetie, we just hate it when someone tries to pass off a much inferior, watered-down POS product off as an original work of fiction.

The Perfessor