BATTLE: LOS ANGELES... I finally saw the alien-invasion film today, and needless to say, it was the sci-fi version of Black Hawk Down. Which means...I thought it was pretty cool! Non-stop action was waged throughout B:LA, much like in Ridley Scott’s 2002 war flick about the 1993 conflict in Somalia. Aaron Eckhart was awesome as Staff Sergeant Nantz; while compared to her gung-ho attitude in Avatar, Machete and the Fast and the Furious films, Michelle Rodriguez was somewhat tame as Tech Sgt. Elena Santos in B:LA. As Santos, Rodriguez didn't have the usual sarcastic quips that she had playing previous movie characters. Not that that's a bad thing. Nothing exceptionally noteworthy about the civilians played by Bridget Moynahan and Michael Peña, but I’ll give them props since my review about this flick is supposed to be a positive one. I just found out through IMDb.com that 2nd Lt. William Martinez, who was in charge of the Marine platoon before handing command over to Eckhart's Nantz and then sacrificing himself later in the film, was played by Ramon Rodriguez. In case you’re wondering who this is, Rodriguez played the wacky college roommate of Shia LaBeouf in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But back to B:LA.



Battle: Los Angeles didn’t exactly have a deep message like 2009’s District 9 (which B:LA also borrowed elements from...namely weapons that cause explosions surrounded by bolts of lightning) did, but it was still a lot better than last year’s Skyline. B:LA didn’t have a "WTF??" moment at the very end of the movie like Skyline did...though as I said at the beginning of this journal entry, B:LA was obviously inspired by Black Hawk Down in that Eckhart and Co. go back into the battlefield at the film's conclusion to take care of unfinished business. Also, the battle in Los Angeles lasted for one day...while the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia lasted a day as well. Nothing wrong with that. My personal gripe about B:LA is that, like the Bourne movies (as in The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum), it overdid it with the shaky cam. By now using this camera technique in war films has become a cliché, and unfortunately B:LA suffers from this tired method. It was cool in Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down...but try spending more time setting the camera up on a tripod or at least a Steadicam, folks—if there’s a sequel (Battle: San Diego, anyone?). Thanks. Another gripe is that the trippy song used in B:LA's theatrical trailers, "The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky Turned Black" by Icelandic musician Johann Johannsson, wasn't featured in the movie. Oh well.



Special effects-wise, the aliens in B:LA looked interesting...though were they using projectile weapons (RE: bullets) just like the humans were? I guess having the invaders shoot laser beams at the Marines would’ve ruined the gritty, realistic tone of the film. After all, this ain’t Star Wars. Or Star Trek. Or Independence Day. Or Transformers. Or Terminator. The same people who did the visual FX on Skyline also did the FX work on B:LA. The FX work was what saved Skyline since its CW Network-quality cast of actors wasn’t exactly the saving grace of that movie. That is all.

DISTRICT 10... Check out this awesome fan-made illustration, created by artist Andrée Wallin, for the hit film's would-be sequel...


© 2009 Andrée Wallin

THE KARATE KID... Two days ago, I saw the new remake of the classic 1984 film. Needless to say, this is one of those rare occurrences where the remake actually makes a lot more sense than the original movie. In the classic version, Ralph Macchio’s character has to deal with bullies (Caucasian bullies, that is) in his new hometown of Reseda in the San Fernando Valley. For those of you who have been to this part of Southern California, you’d know that it’s kinda odd (but obviously not uncommon) that white dudes in this area would be proficient in karate. In this latest incarnation, Jaden Smith’s character needs to confront bullies near his new residency in Beijing, China. Let’s see... Chinese kids who know karate? Or at least kung-fu? That sounds just about right. Stereotypical, but right.

What the new Karate Kid has going for it is that Will Smith’s kid is apparently more acrobatic than Ralph Macchio was in the original flick. It also doesn’t hurt that the training scenes for Smith’s character took place in beautiful Chinese backdrops. I have the sudden urge to travel to China (if I had the dinero) after watching this film, and am in the mood to get into a staring match with a cobra at a mountaintop temple if I went. If you saw the movie, then you’d know what I’m talking about. This particular scene also ties in with the kung-fu move—which nicely replaced the 'crane kick' that Macchio did in the original movie—that Smith does at the climax of the new film. Overall, the Karate Kid was a good movie. A bit long...but not long enough to prevent the audience from clapping and cheering loudly after the film ended at the screening I went to.

I also watched The A-Team this weekend. It was a fun film...though not as fun as the TV ads made it out to be. The cast was awesome (District 9’s Sharlto Copley was cool as Murdock)...though there were times when I couldn’t understand what they were saying because of their rapid-fire delivery with some of the dialogue. I give FOX props for not revealing any part of the climax (which takes place at the Port of Los Angeles) in the trailers or TV commercials. In terms of who won the battle of the 80s remakes (for me, that is), The A-Team was entertaining, but The Karate Kid was waaay better.

82nd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS... Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and the rest of the crew behind The Hurt Locker for tonight’s 6 Oscar wins, including one for Best Picture (duh)! Pretty much the only Academy Award that Avatar truly deserved was for Best Visual FX...which it received. And props to Christoph Waltz on winning the Best Supporting Actor award for Inglourious Basterds, and Sandra Bullock on winning an Oscar for The Blind Side. She won a Razzie Award (for All About Steve) AND an Academy Award on the same weekend. Good for her.



Did District 9 win anything tonight? No? Oh well. It’s still kewl in my book.

82nd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS... Avatar, The Hurt Locker (both unsurprisingly) and District 9 all received Oscar nominations for Best Picture this morning. Nice. Good to see that the Academy didn't drop the ball this time around. Actually, I take that back. Star Trek should've gotten a nom as well. Sorry Trekkies.

And glad to see that Hans Zimmer got a Best Original Score nomination for Sherlock Holmes. I was surprised to see that it was Zimmer who did the fantastic music (since the score sounded very un-Zimmerish) for the Robert Downey Jr. film when I watched the end credits. Word.

AVATAR... Last Sunday, I watched James Cameron’s newest film on IMAX 3-D...and not surprisingly, it looked awesome! Cameron did an awesome job portraying an intriguing alien planet and species whose appearance popped right out through the wonders of 3-D. Floating mountains, exotic-looking plants and even an alien language that in real life was completely made up by a linguist who was enlisted from the University of Southern California... Cameron was very thorough in fleshing out the world of Pandora that was locked in his head for the past dozen or so years (as Cameron waited for special effects and camera technology to advance to the point where making Avatar would be possible...and also basking in the glory of making $1 billion at the worldwide box office and winning umpteenth Oscars for Titanic back in 1998).



Of course, some of you are probably wondering why I said that Avatar looked awesome...as opposed to being awesome. That’s because the film—as a couple of folks pointed out online in the months leading up to the movie’s release—had a storyline that wasn’t very original and was indeed derivative from other (Oscar-winning) films. Much as how some people pointed out that Titanic was similar to the 1939 Best Picture winner Gone with the Wind (both films had a love triangle set during a major historical event), Avatar was reminiscent of Dances with Wolves and Braveheart. It was also reminiscent of this year’s earlier well-reviewed sci-fi film District 9...in that the protagonist in that movie, Wikus van de Merwe (unintentionally) sheds his human skin to become just like the alien creatures he reluctantly has to protect in South Africa. In Avatar, Sam Worthington’s character Jake Sully (intentionally and permanently) sheds his human body to become one with the alien natives, the Na’vi, which he’s sworn to protect at the end of the film. If you haven’t seen Avatar yet, then ignore that last sentence (though I'm pretty sure you can guess this by watching the trailers). And yes, I’m 100% sure that the comparison to District 9 was definitely unintentional on Cameron’s part. I myself just found the fate of the main heroes in both flicks to be very similar.



In terms of the music, Avatar had a terrific film score by James Horner. However, I didn’t find the music as memorable as that in Titanic...or Apollo 13. Horner composed the score for those movies as well. Unlike Titanic’s music, which was on a CD album that was the bestselling film score since John Williams’ work on Star Wars in the late 70’s, I doubt Avatar will have any kind of presence on the Billboard music chart anytime soon. Oh well.



Lastly, will I watch Avatar at the movie theaters again? You betcha’! I saw it on a "fake" IMAX screen (which is nearly the same size as a regular movie screen but has an IMAX-quality sound system complementing it in the auditorium, and a digital print that has the same visual quality as an actual IMAX 70mm film reel) at an AMC theater on opening weekend, so I can assure you that I will be driving 20-30 miles to a "real" IMAX theater (specifically the one at the Irvine Spectrum’s Edwards 21 in Orange County) to watch James Cameron’s visionary work on the big screen again. Later.



Images courtesy of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

2012... So I saw the film after work yesterday, and it was entertaining—in the typical Roland-Emmerich-blows-up-national-landmarks-and-other-things kinda way. If you’re expecting a sci-fi film that is as thought-provoking as say, District 9, then you’re watching the wrong film. If you’re expecting a standard Hollywood blockbuster with lots of great visual effects and (extremely) ridiculous action sequences, then this is the movie for you.



I can’t recall any memorable scenes from The Day After Tomorrow, but I will point out that 2012 had a lot more emotional moments in it than Independence Day did (don’t get me started on Godzilla). But unlike 2012, Independence Day (or ID4) had a lot more scenes that made the crowd gasp and cheer...at least at the screening I went to back in July of ‘96. Of course, back then the shots of the White House and other (American) landmarks getting destroyed by giant alien ships in ID4 were fairly new...and the scenes showing F/A-18 Hornet jets engaging in aerial battle with small alien fighters (a la Star Wars, DUH) were awesome. What 2012 has going for it are repetitive shots of airplanes trying to lift off of runways that were breaking apart below them...and a kick-ass scene of Yellowstone National Park going BOOM as the supervolcano beneath it (yes, this volcano is REAL) erupts.



I’d say more about the movie, but I don’t feel like it. I’ll point out one more thing though: I find it interesting and fortunate (ahem, sarcasm) that the computers onboard Air Force One could show real-time images of what’s going on beneath the Earth’s crust, as well as what was happening to the planet's magnetic field as s**t was hittin' the fan across the globe. I guess these comps were modified by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey at the White House's request between 2009 and 2012...the time period during which the movie takes place.


That is all.

DISTRICT 9: The Review... I saw the critically-acclaimed sci-fi film twice this weekend (the first time I watched it was during a midnight screening on opening day last Friday. The second viewing was yesterday), so I think you can guess where this review is going. The movie was AWESOME. First-time feature film director Neill Blomkamp (with the help of Oscar-winning producer Peter Jackson) did a masterful job making a flick that was not only action-packed, but also carried a serious, intelligent message: If living beings from another world came to our planet one day, would we treat them the same way we occasionally treat fellow Earthlings who are completely different from us? With violence and extreme prejudice? District 9 handles this topic with intense and gory results. And I mean that in a positive way.



I’m not gonna do a full synopsis on District 9...since you can just read about the story online (or, um, watch the movie?). The main character, Wikus Van De Merwe, was superbly played by Sharlto Copley...a South African director/producer who made his debut acting performance in a feature film with this flick. If anyone accuses this movie of not having any character development, then that person is, how should I say politely, a friggin’ idiot? Not to spoil anything, but Van De Merwe goes from a bumbling pencil pusher at a shady security organization called MNU (for Multi-National United) to a figure who most decisively has a good reason to relate with the alien creatures—known derisively as prawns for their lobster-like appearances in the movie—whose ship settled over Wikus’ hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa 20 years earlier. Van De Merwe just wants to be a normal person and go home to his hot-ass wife Tania (played by Vanessa Haywood) at the end of the day, but fate has something else in store for him. Van De Merwe eventually has to team up with a prawn that goes by the name of Christopher Johnson, who along with his young son (Little C.J.?) has to recover a mysterious fluid that was responsible for Wikus’turn of fate, and is vital to Johnson saving his people after learning how they were treated by MNU outside the walls of District 9.



For a movie with a ‘mere’ $30 million budget, District 9 looked phenomenal. The FX work done on the prawns was well-done, and I just totally dug the scenes where you see the massive alien mothership hovering silently and ominously over the city of Johannesburg. I don’t want this to sound awkward, but am I the only one here who thought Little C.J. was, um...adorable? If you thought like I did, then you would feel more sympathy for Christopher Johnson (I’ll call him C.J. from this point on) because of his smart and heroic son who helped him on his plan to reactivate the mothership and start the process of freeing his people from their current predicament outside of Johannesburg. The rich characterization by C.J. and Little C.J. is testimony to the hard work done by several FX houses, including Peter Jackson’s own company Weta Digital...which also did the epic special effects for Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If I would have to take a wild guess for the Oscars next year, I would have to say that District 9 should be vying for the Best Visual FX award...along with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and, um, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? HAHAHAHA! Just kidding about that last one.



Besides the alien creatures and the mothership, I also dug the FX work done on (Spoilers ahead) that robotic exosuit that Van De Merwe dons during the climax of the film...when he has to protect C.J. as he makes his way to his son and that alien shuttle that will take them up to the mothership. That suit reminded me of ED-209 from the first Robocop film, and the mech suits used during the 'Battle of Zion' sequence in The Matrix Revolutions. Speaking of Robocop, and Paul Verhoeven’s other smart action satire, Starship Troopers, District 9 had a lot of gory scenes like these two films. Most of that is attributed to the numerous shots of humans exploding whenever they were blasted by alien weaponry. The prawns are made to look pathetic as they wander around their squalid home in District 9, but me thinks that if they were in their home environment, with each of them armed with those large cannons that they casually exchanged for cat food during the film, then they would be to the humans what U.S. forces were to the Taliban in 2001. I’m talking about the war in Afghanistan, of course.



One last note before I end this review, the music in District 9 was pretty cool. But I think the African chant used by Hans Zimmer in Black Hawk Down (which you can clearly compare Neill Blomkamp’s film to, in a complimentary way) sounded a lot more unique. That is all. Along with The Hurt Locker, District 9 is the second best film I’ve seen this year...so far.

DISTRICT 9... This Friday, Peter Jackson’s sci-fi sleeper hit of the summer will be released in theaters. I’m totally lookin’ forward to watching it. In case you’re wondering why I’m already labeling District 9 as a hit, it’s because it was made for 'only' $30 million, and it’s rated R. Considering the positive reviews that it has been getting (one reviewer said that it's Alien Nation meets Black Hawk Down... SWEEET), plus how awesome it looks in the movie trailers and TV ads (I know, I know— G.I. Joe also looked...fun in its TV commercials), I’m sure District 9 will easily make its money back. In terms of its rating, I’ve read online that the aliens have many interesting weaponry to blow the humans up with—so that’s an even more compelling reason to check out this flick. I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘sadist’... Haha. Anyways, I have 4 words and a digit before I end this journal entry: Neill Blomkamp for Transformers 3.

VANESSA HUDGENS is at it again... So a few days ago, new nude pics that the High School Musical star apparently took with her camera phone for her, um, boyfriend Zac Efron leaked out onto the Web. Since that time, Hudgens’ lawyers have frantically been browsing the Net to have every blog and news site remove the photos (or else)—since they were allegedly taken when Hudgens was 17. Which means, of course, you’re a sick perverted pedophile if you bothered to search for the pics on Google. Despite the fact that if you did see the pics, you’ll realize that Hudgens looks a lot hotter in those images than she does in the ones (which she took when she was 18) that were leaked out in 2007. Ironically, she seemed to have lost interest in mowing the lawn (which I referred to in the link provided at the start of this entry) since it's trimmed in the recent photos but not in the ones shown 2 years ago. Um, I probably shouldn’t have typed that last part.



Anyways... It seems like this incident is more of a publicity stunt this time around...seeing as how Hudgens’ new movie Bandslam comes out in theaters next Friday (To Summit Entertainment and/or Walden Media: PAY ME, b*****s. I was kind enough to show the poster above). Which is the same day District 9 gets released. Darn you, Hudgens. So not only did she supposedly freak out when she discovered that Efron was hangin’ out with Megan Fox (Don’t worry Vanessa— They were probably chattin' and swoonin' over Brian Austin Green), but Hudgens is presumably worried that her next flick isn’t gonna do well at the box office. For someone who apparently enjoys being a nudist, Hudgens sure has confidence issues.

DISTRICT 9... When I saw the trailer for this in front of X-Men Origins: Wolverine last weekend (no, I’m not gonna review that film), I thought it was for another Blood Diamond-type movie. Of course, with Peter Jackson as one of the producers, that was not the case. District 9 looks interesting... Might watch it when it comes out on August 14. Though one misgiving I have of this flick is of the aliens. That creature (despite its face being blurred out) resembles something you would see in a Men in Black film. Is Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones gonna make a cameo in this movie? Probably not.