A Lot About Nothing

Superbad was supergood. The film follows a pair of not-so-popular best friends, foul-mouthed Seth and sweet-natured Evan, who goal is to de-virginize themselves before they graduate high school and go on their separate ways before college. The interaction between Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) is fun to watch as they tackle their way through the challenge of scoring alcohol for a graduation party that’s hosted by Seth’s dream girl.

Enter McLovin, aka geek icon Fogell (played by newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse). With his fake ID, McLovin is the third wheel to this enjoyable duo, and adds lots of laughs to the film. When two wacky cops (played by the Seth Rogen and Bill Hader) take McLovin under their wing a long, wild night ensues.

Real life friends Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg actually wrote the script when they were back in high school (hence the names of the title characters). Judd Apatow co-produces the film alongside Shauna Robertson (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and the aforementioned duo. Greg Mottola directs.

A witty script, Superbad certainly has it share of R-rated dialogue (including a rather graphic recollection of one of the character’s former penis-drawing addiction). The jokes are constant and each member of the cast plays off each other well and with ease.  At the times in the film where it looks like the jokes have gone too far or have been overplayed, it’s made up by the heart of the story and the likable characters.  You’ll definitely have fun watching this movie.  I superdid.

It’s very rarely that I’ll watch a sequel and say, “Wow… now that was a great sequel”. Okay, I don’t actually say that, but The Bourne Ultimatum certainly lived up to, if not surpassed, the success of it’s predecessors.

The film follows amnesiac Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), who is struggling to fit together the pieces of his violent missing past, as well as stay one step ahead of the agency that wants him terminated. Now I never pegged Matt Damon as the action type, but after the Bourne Identity he’s proven to audiences that he’s a well rounded actor. The film is complemented with strong performances by David Strathairn, Joan Allen and even Julia Stiles.

Not only is the acting superb, but the cinematography is well-executed. The camera-work actually makes you feel like your there on the run with Bourne, and the scenes of the many international locals adds to the rush.

The action sequences will have you hooked with excitement. If you stick around for the end credits you’ll realize how much choreography and stunt-work actually went into making this film one filled with incredible chase sequences and fight scenes. The amount of international stunt people involved is probably 6x the amount of the actual cast.

If you enjoyed the first two Bourne flicks, you’ll definitely enjoy this one. It leaves the trilogy with a sense of closure, yet open-endedness that will leave the audience wondering if another successor will rise to the surface.

Today is the final day of Harbourfront’s Global Hip Hop: The Four Elements festival, part of their free summer weekend festival World Routes. I had the privilege of watching one of the best classic Hip Hop films ever made, Wild Style.

Okay, so I had to leave an hour into to the film because I promised my friends that I would head down to watch Russell Peters‘ free performance at Yonge-Dundas Square, but that was worth it. The place was packed. I heard there was an estimated crowd of at least 15,000 that packed the Square. I was in the back b/c I got there around 7:30, but the speaker system was pretty good. Russell Peters had the large crowd in hysterics as he performed snippets of his well-known cultural routines. Filipino-American Jo Koy was also up from L.A. to perform. This guy his hilarious… I’m glad I got a chance to catch him live. Italian-Canadian musical duo The Doo-Wops also performed that evening.

After that I went off with my friends to add more clothes to my very large wardrobe: H&M had a big clearance sale (50% off all red ticketed items). I was shook by what I thought was some sort of terrorist attack (along with some other jumpy spectators), but I realized it was just the beginning of the pyrotechnic performance by the Bängditos.

I then rejoined my other friend at Harbourfront to catch one of the most amazing live shows I’ve seen in a while: The Wild Style 25 Concert featuring Grand Wizard Theodore, Busy Bee and Fantastic Five. Now this is what real Hip Hop is. Theadore (the inventor of the ’scratch’) was phenomenal with his sets. And when the Fantastic Five and Busy Bee came on stage, they had the crowd go wild. I really wish more young people would listen to the roots of Hip Hop, and stop falling into the superficial traps of the ‘bling’, the money, the cars and the ‘hoes’. Hip Hop isn’t about guns, violence or how many years you’ve spent in prison. Hip Hop is about peace, love, unity and having fun.

Here’s a clip from one of the famous scenes from Wild Style:

Yesterday I also had to chance to see two interestings screenings at the festival: From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale, and Remixed in Japan. Henry Chalfant’s From Mambo to Hip Hop examines the rhythms that blossomed in the Bronx in the late 1940s with mambo, through the birth of Hip Hop in the 70s, and it’s connections. Melody Weinstein’s Remixed in Japan shows the explosion of Hip Hop in Japan, it’s meaning, it’s form of self-expression, and follows some very intriguing Japanese people immersed in the Hip Hop culture.

Here’s a trailer for From Mambo to Hip Hop:

Meh!

That pretty much sums up my review of The Simpsons Movie. It wasn’t bad, per se, but for a big screen movie I felt it was missing something new to be discovered about the town of Springfield or one of it’s characters. If this was an 87 minute epsisode airing on Fox, then sure, I would think it was a pretty good episode.

In the movie, catastrophe-prone Homer, polluts Lake Springfield after a strong attempt by the town to clean up their act. This leads to some political action that has major consequences for everyone who lives there. And yes, a pig is involved.

The movie has a steady flow of laughs (especially Bart’s skateboarding sequence), a great three-dimensional feel from some of the scenes that used digital tracking shots, and a peppering of famous scenes from cinematic history peppered throughout the script.

If you’re a fan of the television show, then, you’ll enjoy it. But I would probably save it for one of those discount days at the movie theatre. Like Homer said in the beginning of the film, “What kind of idiot would pay for something we can get for free, on TV?”

I must admit though, the official site for the movie is amazing. Check out my Simpsons avatar!

I’m sure most of you have seen, or at least heard of, J.J. Abrams’ much-talked-about trailer for the untitled movie that was aired before Transformers last week. The web is swimming with gossip and conspiracy theories on what the film is about.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, you can check out the hi-def version on Apple’s trailer site (so forget about trying to search YouTube for those short-lived, cell phone video uploads that were posted the first week of Transformer’s release). Watch it yet? Good. Now tell me that isn’t one of the most intruiging trailers you ever seen. My mouth was agape when I saw that Statue of Liberty head come hurtling at the mob of people in the street (it looked an awful lot larger, proportion-wise, on the big screen though… but, meh!).

The site EthanHaasWasRight.com has been loosely linked to the J.J. Abrams flick, but in an email to Harry from Ain’t It Cool News he denied it:

Regarding the online stuff you posted: yeah, we’re doing some fun stuff on the web. But, obviously, if the movie doesn’t kick some massive ASS, who gives a rat’s about what’s online? So as you can imagine, we’re focusing mostly on THAT. For what it’s worth, the only site of ours that people have even FOUND is the 1-18-08.com site. The others (like the Ethan Haas sites) have nothing to do with us.

Why wouldn’t he deny it? It might all be part of his plan to mind boggle us all! Wait a minute. He said “the only site of ours that people have even found”. That means there’s more 1-18-08-related official sites out there! OMG… why won’t he just tell us what they are!? Ah… you gotta love viral internet marketing. I haven’t seen things like this since Snakes On A Plane. Oh, and if you’re trying to figure out how to crack the Ethan site, but too lazy to follow the instructions, YoPress.com has got all the info on that.

1-18-08.com is the official home of the yet-to-be-released film. The site itself is an enigma: Presently, it’s content is simply three stills from the movie. Now, on the surface they don’t look like anything much, but if you were to look a lot closer (like thousands of new fans are trying to do) you’ll begin to pick away at the visuals, and find clues as to what the film may be about.

Try that one image of the two, scared women staring up at the sky: WHAT DI RASS IS DAT BETWEEN DEM?!?! I swear, that looks a lot like some type of demon to me! Is J.J. Abrams’ film (also going by the name “Cloverfield” and “Slusho” on the web) an apocalypse movie perhaps? In the trailer, the video camera panned up from some sushi before interviewing an Asian guy about Rob’s departure… then came the ‘roar’. Could it be GODZILLA?!!? There’s lots of speculation… but I guess we’ll just have to wait until we get closer to 01-18-08 to find out.