Red Dawn remake (2010), a few of the cast and crew members

There has been a lot of talk about MGM's plans to remake the classic cult action movie Red Dawn (1984), that starred Patrick Swayze, Lea Thompson, and Charlie Sheen. MGM's idea for this new remake is to make it more gritty and realistic, using more shaky cam's and other things like that. The studio has hired Carl Ellsworth to write the script; the writer of Disturbia (2007) and The Last House on the Left (2009). They've also hired Dan Bradley to the direct the film, who has been the assistant director of many films, including Quantum of Solace, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Spiderman 2 & 3. It is a pretty impressive combination, and it gives me high hopes for Red Dawn (2010).  I personally only saw the old movie just recently and thought it was really powerful and well made but lacked the epic scale I was looking for in a movie like that. In the new film I'm looking forward to a more believable and better action. Let's just hope MGM works wonders with this remake, or people start asking why it was even made at all. 

Some of the cast members have already been chosen as well. Apparently 

Chris Hemsworth will be playing the role of Jed Eckhert, Patrick Swayze's character

in the original film.  Hemsworth is also said to be

playing the part of Thor in the upcoming comic book adaptation, Thor. If you don't know who Chris Hemsworth is, if you saw the new movie Star Trek, he was Captain Kirk's father who died in the first 10 minutes 

of the film. The brother of Jed Eckhert, Matt Eckhert (Charlie Sheen in the original), will be played by Josh Peck. Adrianne Palicki will play Jennifer Grey's character, Toni Mason. 

Michael Jackson Movie: it's only a matter of time before they screw it up.

After Michael Jackson's death people have been absolutely loving him, and rightly so. All of his somgs to me are absolutely fantastic, and there is no doubt in anyones mind as to whether or not he is a pop god. His legacy will most certainly carry on forever, and thats why people are already talking about making a movie about his life. When you think about it, it was always going to happen. The guy led an amazing and yet troubled life. This movie was inevitable. In the couple days following his death, TV stations all over were frantically trying to get something on the air related to him. Also, if anyone has checked iTunes lately, they will know that his hit songs have taken up over 30 of the top 100 songs, and almost all the top 10.
What I don't get is, how can they make a movie about his life without semi-insulting him. They can't. Either they sort of tip-toe around how weird he was toward the end of his life, and focus on his prime years, or they include it and the movie gets wierd and everyone feels uncomfortable. Either way, people will walk out of the theater and feel like it didn't do him justice. Let's just pray they nail it.

Who will they get to play him? Will they use one actor? Use one for his prime and a different one near the end? Or will they just use a whole bunch of different actors like the Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There which I think I speak for everyone when I say what in the hell happened in that movie. Anyway, my feeling is, there really is no right way to do this movie, so leave the tributes to his life to the E! True Hollywood Stories and the old TV Land movie about his life. Please Hollywood, just back off of this one, for once. Check out another story on this topic at http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Fantasy-Casting-The-Inevitable-Michael-Jackson-Movie-13739.html 

Movie Review: Memento (2000)

Memento is a film by Christopher Nolan that was released on October 11, 2000. In my opinion it is one of his best works to date, and it is one of my favorite films. This movie was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Editing, and Best Writing-Screenplay written directly for the screen. It is the story of a man with a condition that keeps him from making new memories, i.e. he has short term memory loss. He cannot remember anything after his accident, but still remembers everything before it. In order to keep living his life, he takes pictures and writes notes to remind himself, and tatoos messages for himself to read all over his body. I'm not ruining anything, but the beginning starts with him murdering his friend Teddy (played by Joe Pantoliano). From then on, the movie goes in backwards chronological order; each scene starting in a random place and ending the same way the scene before it began. You'll understand it when you watch the movie. It is really the editing and the way that it is presented to the audience, that makes this film really unique, and also much more tense. Each scene in this movie makes you really think deeply about what you would do in his situation, and any movie that can do that is a movie worth seeing. It is probably the best mystery movie I have seen, and it can be watched again and again, and so I recommend that anybody own it. This is definatly a 5 out of 5 stars for me, for story, screenwriting, and editing. Go out and get it and enjoy this truly amazing modern classic.

2012 New Theatrical Trailer

This is a very recent trailer for the upcoming move 2012 directed by Roland Emmerich written by Harald Kloser and staring John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Amanda Peet, and Oliver Platt. This trailer makes the movie look insanely good, however, Roland Emmerich's last film was 10,000 B.C. and before that came The Day After Tommorrow, two films that were generally huge disappointments. I will hand it to him though, even though The Day After Tommorrow had a completely ridiculous plot and basically made up laws of nature and science to fit an ice age into 2 whole hours, I was still completely immersed into the film while I was watching it; he can tell a human story. This next film looks like just that, a story about everyday people fighting to survive a global catastrophe. As long as he doesn't make the story the exact same again, it has potential. This is also a movie that may not require any scientific explanation for the events except for the Mayan prediction, which can give him ultimate freedom to just beat the crap out of the planet however he wants. I'm looking forward to seeing it just out of curiosity, but I have no real high hopes. This film is set to release on November 13, 2009.

Daybreakers (2010) Trailer

I saw this trailer online and thought that this movie has a lot of potential. It is a vampire movie, but instead  of being post apocalyptic, like I Am Legend, people are continuing to live their normal lives, except everyone is a vampire. They all look normal except for their pointy teeth and slightly orange eyes. Because everyone lives on blood, an ongoing search is taking place to find the remaining humans and harvest their blood to survive. The movie follows a vampire scientist who is hired by humans to develop a cure in order to save the human race.  The movie stars Ethan Hawke (the vampire scientist), William Dafoe, Isabel Lucas, and Sam Neill, and is directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, the directors of Undead. It is set to release into US theaters on January 8, 2010. 

Movie Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the battle scenes from the first movie and puts them on steroids. Not only are the battle scenes bigger, more exciting, and easier to follow, they include an variety of robots that haven't been seen before. But what it gains in special effects, it lacks in storytelling. The story ten times more complicated, and because of it I found myself losing interest in the plot, and just wanting to see more robots blow stuff up and kill each other. 

Unlike the first film, this one does not dive right into the story and the action. Instead the viewer sits through Sam Witwicky's first college experiences (which include his mom accidentally getting high off "special brownies," encounters with the student body which happens to be full of stereotypical fratguys and supermodels, and his occasional mental breakdown in front of an entire class). There is also a scene including a female robot that is straight out of a horror movie. Director Michael Bay has certainly created his own alternate reality in this movie that is anything but normal; and after the first two hours, you will wish they had just gotten straight to the point. 

There is also a major lull in the second act of the movie, where occasional relevant things are glued together with weak comic relief and some bad acting on the part of the female lead, Megan Fox, who I actually cannot complain about because I just like watching her run in slow motion (which she does at least a dozen times). This part also has interactions between Decepticon leader Megatron and his inferior servant Starscream, who has the voice of the typical cliche evil servant. Also, the twin bickering Autobots following Witwicky and the whole crew basically epitomize the offensive ethnic stereotype, and are really just an embarrassment to the entire film. 

Okay, I feel like I'm being a downer on this movie, but, personally, I really liked it. I came into the theater expecting a long movie with incredible action and I walked out of the theater satisfied and then some. The editing is much more comprehensible, and some of the scenes shot in IMAX cameras are just breathtaking. It is flawed, but if you ignore the flaws in the movie that I mentioned, it is a great summer action film that I recommend anyone seeing in the theater as long as they use the bathroom three times before. Give it 3 out of 5 stars.

Final Cut: the greatest digital editing tool ever

Final Cut Express is incredible, simple as that. When you start taking classes for film, this is the program that is used almost all the time. Final Cut Pro is a step above Express, but it is basically the same thing, and it cost a lot less. I love this program, it has everything I need to put together a movie and it's pretty easy to use. I put a screen shot up just to show what it looks like when you are cutting a movie together. Some people get confused because of the two screens, but basically you have on screen for viewing the clips you uploaded, and another screen to play your movie as it is cut together down below. It will upload DV, MiniDV, and Hard Drive cameras. Simple uploading needs a firewire cable. If you have a hard drive camera, like the JVC Everio shown below, you connect using a USB cable, and select Log and Transfer, which allows you to pick and choose which files to upload. As I said, awesome program, and if you are willing to make the commitment to getting this program, you will find that you can basically do anything you want with video.

Sony MiniDV Camcorder: what to get to start out on or just to film anything with

This is basically what the first camera I owned looked like. This camera is really easy to use and it works really well. I created tons of movies using this thing, but I also used it to film everyday events and stuff as well. My parents used it and actually understood it, and believe me, that is saying something. Making it easier for them is this Easy button on the side, which basically makes the buttons on the touch screen bigger and less clustered. 

This camera is basically all automatic, meaning that it has auto zoom, focus, and lighting. When you are shooting a real movie of your own you probably don't want to use this camera, because it is important that you can at least adjust the focus manually and control the brightness. Being able to rack-focus between objects at different distances at will, and making sure the light is constant throughout your entire shot, are just two of the things that add more of a professional look to your movie. On this camera, neither of those things are possible on the fly, it makes you navigate to a whole different screen, and it's near impossible to control. But, if all that is not for you, don't worry about it because this camera works great and gets the job done. 

JVC Everio HD Camcorder: what to get if you are serious about making your own movies at home

This is the camera I bought a couple of months ago, and is by no means a starting camera. This this is ridiculous; the image is damn near perfect and it has a ton of memory on it, about 80 Gigabytes worth. It shoots in full HD, which means the images you capture are huge. Okay, they are Enormous, seriously. This is good for obvious reasons, but this takes up lots of memory on your computer when you upload your image files. That's another thing, there is no tape, just a hard drive, so when you start and stop recording, that section of movie saves as a file; you can scroll through files on the camera instead of rewinding and finding what you want that's hidden god knows where on a tape you don't even know is the right one in the first place. This is actually really useful, and it saves memory; you can delete the file you just shot if you didn't like it, and you can preview files on your computer before you upload them and say goodbye to a crap load of memory. In short, this camera is worth it if you are into this stuff.