“Batman Begins” Sequel- “The Dark Knight” in 2008

More information

Slated for a July 2008 release will be the sequel to the successful and franchise-reviving “Batman Begins” entitled, “The Dark Knight” bringing back Christian Bale reprising his role as “Bruce Wayne”/”Batman” and Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain) as the infamous “Joker.” This is an excellent continuation seeing as how “Batman Begins” ended describing the Joker as being an individual with a “taste for theatrics.” Also returning will be Morgan Freeman as Luscius, who is now the CEO of Wayne Enterprises.

Can’t Wait…caaan’t wait!!!

~Thesis

P.S: Thanks for catchin the err. Fixed!

Transformers- Movie Review *spolier*

What can I say? This is a MUST SEE movie.  I’ve been waiting more than a decade and a half for this kind of movie to hit the screen and it did.  For those of us 80s babies who grew up watching Voltron (movie coming soon), Thundercats (yo, can we get a movie out of this?), Care Bears (no Pharrell), and Thundercats, this was a movie that definitely hit that special part of each of our hearts.  You see not only did I watch the cartoon, but I had the toys too.  I entered the theatre with much anticipation and glee…the same feelings I had upon watching Superman Returns. 

So what did I think? Let’s just say that this movie is probably the most visually appealing flic since Matrix.  Spielberg is a beast and definitely made it do what it do like he does with any movie he lays his hands on.  From the nostalgic morph sounds when they transform to Mr. Optimus Prime himself to Bumble Bee (beeee-otch. lol) to Megatron, this was a movie that hit it right on the head as far as movie/cartoon likeness.

So the movie starts with explaining the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons and their fight to possess the powerful cube, which disappeared and landed on earth around/during the Hoover presidency in the late 30s. Along with that, the grandfather of the main character, Sam Witwicky, discovered a frozen and inactive Megatron in the depths of some polar ice cap status during that period.  Upon accidentally activating Megatron during his discovery, instructions on the location of the cube were micro-digitally implanted in the lens of the grandfathers glasses, which will inevitably serve as a map for the Autobots to find the cube and keep it out of the hands of the Decepticons before they wield it for disastrous purposes.

In the present day, Sam Witwicky, a normal yet eccentric and sarcastic teenager, tries to pawn his grandfather’s possessions on Ebay, including the spectacles, which he did not know contained vital information about the whereabouts of the cube.  Yada yada yada….It’s later learned that the autobots left their planet to search for Sam and the glasses.  They learned of his location and human culture/language due to studying the world wide web (go figure!!!).  Sam first discovers the Autobots when he purchases his first decrepit yello Camaro, which apparently has a mind of its own, from Bernie Mac aka Uncle Bobby B Bebe(lol).  After the car races off on its own, Sam follows it to an abandoned lot only to see it transform into Bumblee-bee. COOOOOOOOL!!!

Yada yada yada, the Decepticons make attempts to find the location of the cube by utilizing of its drones to steal top secret information from government computers.  Through this process, it’s learned that the American government found the cube when it had fallen in the 30s and that President Hoover sanctioned the creation of the Hoover Dam to hide not only the cube but to also keep Megatron in a Cryogenic environment.  It is from experimenting on Megatron that America got all of its current technology from: cars, weapons, etc….

Yada yada yada….The Decepticons free Megatron, the war b/w the Autobots and Decepticons over the cube continue on Earth with a lot….a whooooole lot of ass kicking and property damage…For one, I wasn’t feelin the fact that THE Optimus Prime was made to look weak….Megatron served him 3 cans of whoop-ass, a side dish of hado-kens, and 3 spinning kicks.  Optimus Prime did do some damage during a battle scene with another Decepticon where he shanked him up!!! Bumblebee got his legs cut off but was assisted by fine-ass Mikaela in a pick up truck to help him shoot while she drove….Jazz, a popular Autobot got got!!!  The fighting scenes were absolutely ridiculous…You could almost shed a tear at the beauty when Starscream, Decepticon 2nd-in-command, transformed from fighter jet to Decepticon in mid-air….Uuuuugh, freakin’ GREEEAT!!!

Yada yada yada, Sam Witwicky saves the day by inserting the cube in Megatron’s chest thus destroying him…. Sam gets the girl and lip-locks on top of Bumblee-bee by the end of the movie…Good shyt Sam….

 The movie ends with the military dumping dead Megatron and other Decepticons into the sea for them to be frozen and destroyed for all time.  Because the cube is destroyed, the Autobots can’t return home and they stay on Earth with Bumbleebee staying with Sam.  Perhaps a cliff-hanger of sorts but during the movie credits, Starscream was shown flying off into space!!!! HMMMM……… Part 2 maybe?

GREAT MOVIE….comedy aspects of the movie were a lil lacking but everything else makes up for it!!!! MUST COP THE DVD WHEN IT COMES OUT….. So far Transformers set a new Tuesday selling record of $27.4 mil beating out “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”.  Read more here.

Shout outs to Anthony Anderson for doin his thang in the movie and for Megan Fox for lookin’ great on top of the Camaro. lol.

~Thesis

P.S: No doubt Drumz! lmao…But by this this time, i’m thinkin EVERYONE saw it already. lol.

The Sex & The City Movie Has the Greenlight!

Millions of folks around the world, including me, were so sad to see one of the best shows ever Sex & The City come to end. We all held out hope the ladies of NYC would one day reunite on screen and now our wishes are coming true. It’s finally official, the Sex & The City Movie will be coming to big screen to follow the exciting (sex) lives of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda! I couldn’t be more ecstatic about this news, since I feel like the series came to an end way too soon. There is no word yet on what the movie will be about, but I suspect (hope) that there will be a wedding for Carrie and/or Samantha.

Sex & The City fans…what do you hope/predict the movie will be about? Do you think Samantha will still be remission from her cancer? Will the hot model/actor she made a star make an honest woman out her? What is going to happen with the Carrie/Big love affair? Will Charlotte be the mother of a child that is biologically hers? Will Miranda be in marital/motherly bliss?

Posted by Reecie

“Knocked Up” Movie Review *spoilers*

 Over the weekend, I went to the picture show to go peep “Knocked Up.” I heard about it some time ago but felt it was another wack ass, crazy teeny bopper type movie so I disregarded it.  Then I started talkin’ to my peoples who vouched for the movie and everyone was sayin’ it was worth the watch.  After watching it, I must say that it was very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 The movie does a great job of illustrating real-to-life situations that can and have taken place when you combine alcohol, club scene, and f%^$ing.  The two main characters Ben and Alison meet at a club, get drunk and inevitably do the “do” @ Alison’s house.  Apparently immature and aloof Ben didn’t use protection and well, you know what happens.  The movie illustrates how two random people can meet and out of no where conceive a child.  Ben, 23, has no reasonable source of income while Alison is a reporter for E! News. The story line develops into how both of these strangers deal with having a child amidst all of the adversity that surrounds them: Ben’s broke, Ben’s living situation with his roommates is borderline insane, yet comical, and Alison struggling to maintain her career in Hollywood even though she’s about to have a baby.

Ben, played by Seth Roger, is a stoner by admission and doesn’t know anything about personal responsibility.  Yet, through the realization of him becoming a father, he slowly grows up and accepts his situation and wants to be there to support Alison through her pregnancy.  Although this is a comedy, a lot of key issues arise from this movie: Abortion, Male/female responsibility in child rearing, safe sex, et. al.  I like the fact that although Ben is a wash-up, he was still a really good guy who wanted to “be there” despite all the odds.

I could go on and on but at the end of the day, I enjoyed the movie and would definitely get it on dvd…..Go watch with ya girl or ya boys…I’m sure you’ll get a laugh, especially in the pink eye scene. lol.

~Thesis

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer *review*

 Perhaps a tad late in the review on this movie but it goes without saying that Part 2 was DEFINITELY better than the first one.  One reason: Silver Surfer, perhaps 2nd reason: Jessica Alba lookin betta than eva…Wasn’t really feelin the blue eyes but eh….it’ll do.  But anyway, the movie did a good job of tying in what transpired in the last movie to Part 2.

As a result of their success of being the family superhero team, the fame and attention that the Fantastic 4 has been receiving is affecting them in various ways.  Reed and Susan have tried getting married various times but things have always interrupted the wedding. Johnny as always loves the attention but his ego causes him to do reckless and childish things which distance him from the team, at times. Johnny also realizes in this movie the importance of real love through the relationship between Ben and his girlfriend.  All in all they, as a family, battle society and the attention as well as a hailing adversity from the infamous Doctor Doom and Silver Surfer. 

Doctor Doom, in his sinister fashion attempts to help the army and Fantastic 4 catch the Silver Surfer but in turn steals the Surfer’s cosmic board to wreak his own havoc on his enemies.  The Fantastic 4, through Susan’s intervention, learn that the Silver Surfer is more friend than foe and  they align forces to stop Doom and bring down Galactus, who must consume planets to survive.  At the end, of course, the Silver Surfer sacrifices himself to protect Earth and its inhabitants to destroy his old master, Galactus. 

 The graphics in the movie were great.  The comedy wasn’t bad and it was indeed a worthy watch.  The only part that got me annoyed was Stan Lee’s cameo.  He really needs to not say a damn thing in movies cause his acting is horrible.  Vis a Vis, great movie and i highly recommend getting the DVD when it comes out!!! I also thought it would have been cool if they were able to show what Galactus actually looked like rather than showing a huge cloud….that woulda been better, I think….all in all, great movie and excellent portrayal of the Silver Surfer.

Oh yeah, did I mentioned Jessica Alba was doin her thang?

~Thesis

SpiderMan 3- Movie Review *spoiler*

Hmmph….I don’t know how to feel at all about this movie. Actually I do know how to feel but just finding it hard to come up with the right words. Well, let’s just start it this way.  Numbers have come in and Spiderman 3’s weekend sales in North America grossed over $148 million. Very very good indeed. In fact, some other figures put Spiderman 3 as the widest opening movie of all time having opened in over 4200 theatres; having set an opening record of $4.8 million in over 80 IMAXs; and having sold the most online tickets on Fandango.com and Movietickets.com in a single day.  Hooray for Spiderman 3 with respect to the numbers. Everyone knew it would do well.  We all knew it would do very very well so I don’t find the numbers overly surprising….I mean for the comic book fans, they were getting a lot: Venom!!!! The black suit…sandman, VENOM……VENOM.. lol….that in itself is insane…..Now…on to the review.

For someone who did read the comic books (yep, was/still a nerd), I was quite disappointed in Spiderman 3 for a myriad of reasons.  The movie did an awful job in explaining just where the hell the symbiote came from.  It just fell from the sky and that’s it.  This was somewhat of a deviation from the comic books..Well, not a total deviation, just not a thorough explanation. The writers made some assumptions on the audience’s knowledge of the history of the symbiote/black suit and they failed to explain how the symbiote got to Earth. From the comic book perspective, that’s the major thing that bothered me….On to the acting:

I think the acting in “Spiderman 3″ was uncharacteristicly weird and borderline cheesy.  It seemed the movie was really trying to target the younger crowd (like 14 and below) as opposed to trying to keep it serious or as true to the comics as possible. There were various scenes that were sooo hard to watch:

1. Peter’s dancing scene with blonde haired gyrl (i was like WTF?)

2. Peter’s diddy bop on the streets of Manhattan, entering in the clothing store, and doing a silly lil jig (i was like, “are you serious?”)

3. The lil kids at the end of the movie saying, “Aweeesome”, “that’s wicked cool”- Totally lost my mind when i heard that.

4. The scene b/w Jonah Jameson and the young girl over the camera…The worst line in the whole movie was “Why would I need a camera, I’m just a kid” or something like that…I was absolutely flabbergasted at this point.

5. The fact that sandman wouldnt stop growing and looked like some entity out of Ghost Busters….that was just a reach

6. Venom’s lines “My spider sense is tingling.” boooooooooo

7. The no-name wanna be Alfred butler who gave Harry a light-bulb that Spiderman didnt kill his father. I’m like dude, where were you in Spiderman 2?

I felt the movie was reaching in soooooo many scenes to try and piece together a formidable story-line and plot and i think they just lost it! I think the writers tried to please everyone by adding maaad characters and plots that it just seemed convoluted. Yooo, the movie was maaaaaad long. lol. It was almost Titanic numbers….

I do like the duality in Peter Parker in this movie and you could see why he was susceptible to the evil suit.  But i think it was a reach when they said Sandman killed his father.  I mean, who really killed Uncle Ben……I can see it now in Spiderman 4, “Peter, we have reason to believe that Marko was present when your Uncle died and bought the bullets but he didnt actually shoot the gun.”

I dunno….I was very disappointed in the story-line in the movie.  There were various highlights here and there but overall, just disappointed……The most gangsta scene was when Peter smacked the hell outta Mary Jane…i screamed in the theatre, “saaaay word!” Everyone started laughin…..

 Well, you should definitely watch it. It’s entertaining. But not better than Spiderman 2.

~Thesis

Will Ferrell and Adam McKay - The Landlord

LMAO!!!

Will Smith: The World’s Most Powerful Actor? I Think So.

Check out this article on MSNBC titled “Will Smith: Hollywood’s Most Powerful Actor” written by Sean Smith.

Here goes an excerpt:

Black actors have had a tough time appealing to foreign audiences, because the films they’re often cast in are specific to African-American culture or history—they are films about African-Americans, as opposed to films that happen to have African-Americans in them. But the roles Smith chooses are rarely race-specific. He plays men faced with obstacles, and moral choices. “Will doesn’t do movies because he ’should,’ but because they speak to him,” says Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures, which has released most of Smith’s films. “He understands that these stories are global. He caught on to that before a lot of other people did.” Starting with “Bad Boys,” in 1995, Smith and Lassiter aggressively promoted Smith’s movies overseas. Since then, Smith has shattered the ceiling for black actors. His foreign box office is now more than double Denzel Washington’s.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Will Smith as an actor since the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air days. While I enjoy Denzel, I think he may be limited as an actor because he plays the same roles. However, Will Smith has accomplished a wide spectrum of characters and each character is something that we can all relate to, whether its being goofy like Fresh Prince of Bel Air or over-confident like Mike Larry in Bad Boys or being a warrior like Ali…

The quote above captures the essence of Will Smith’s choke hold on Hollywood and our hearts. I also agree with the writer - when are African-Americans are going to STOP making this horrible movies with limited scope and bad plots that continues to deepen the stereotypical wound of our culture? Even films like “Brown Sugar” and “Love and Basketball” are limiting…

What do you think about this article? Has Will Smith replaced Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks as the “go-to” guy for a guareenteed blockbuster? Do you think Will Smith will surpass Denzel and Sidney Potier’s legacy? (He may need an Oscar first, but 2 nominations for Best Actor ain’t bad at all). Please share your opinion on this article…

I Think I Love My Wife Movie Review

 

Chris Rock’s new movie, “I Think I Love My Wife”, is a very adult dramedy which basically played out like a disgruntled married man’s diary. Chris Rock fans will find quite a bit of the marital material familiar, yet slightly less humorous on screen. Chris Rock plays Richard  Cooper, a husband of eight years to the beautiful and intelligent Brenda Cooper (played by Gina Torres), father of two, and investment banker who needs some a$$ and adventure. Being bored out of his skull and undersexed makes him easily susceptible to the wiles of his old friend, the free-spirited (read: barely employed so has plenty of time to gallop around town and provide entertainment) and sexy Nikki (played by Kerry Washington). For much of the movie Richard and Nikki’s friendship has a strong undercurrent of tension and teeters on the line of being inappropriate.

Without spoiling the movie, there are several observations I made from the movie:

1) There was an obvious difference in how Nikki (the single woman) was portrayed versus Brenda (the dutiful wife and mother) was portrayed. Nikki was always scantily clad, had no couth/class, was very unreliable, and just came off as kind of lost and in need of rescuing. On the bright side (I guess), she was also portrayed as very desirable (i.e. scantily clad), adventurous, unbridled (i.e. no couth), and passionate. Brenda on the other hand was always slightly conservatively dressed, dignified, practical, and proper (with respect to behavior and language). It kind of made me wonder, is this a subtle or not so subtle commentary on how a woman is supposed to conduct herself in order to be taken seriously?

2) Is it always inappropriate for a person in a relationship to have a friendship with a single person of the opposite sex? The one thing that was interesting about the movie is that it really does beg the question, at what point is a friendship crossing the line? Is a lunch with two people sitting across the table from each other harmless? Is it okay to be friends with someone as long as there is no physical/sexual interaction? What if the person makes disparaging comments about your mate…is it harmless then? All questions that I’m sure every person will have to answer in their relationship.

3) One final point is that, the movie showed just how EASY it is to come off as fun and adventurous and exciting when you don’t have to deal with the day to day pressures of a relationship and family. Of course Nikki was exciting, she had no responsibilities! Brenda on the other hand had to juggle her career as a teacher, with being a mother, and being a wife…so of course she doesn’t have the time on her hands to be a bundle of spunky energy. It seems like sometimes people take the energy a person invests into all aspects of a relationship for granted, while idolizing the energy the person outside the relationship puts in that pales in comparison.

So anyways…what is the moral of the movie? Wives: F*%k your husbands, Husbands: be responsible, don’t play with fire, and don’t cheat! Overall, “I Think I Love My Wife” is a pretty good movie. Perhaps the theme of marital infidelity makes me take it more seriously than the movie intends, but it’s still a funny movie. This is definitely a great water cooler movie, so it’s a must see if for no other reason than to be able to participate in the lively debates surrounding it.

So HM readers let’s have a discussion.

Have you checked out the movie? What did you think about it? What exactly constitutes cheating? Would you be okay with your partner hanging out with a single person of the opposite sex? Have you had an experience similar to the movie (whether you were the single person, the person in the relationship, etc.)? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts…so don’t be shy!

Posted by Reecie

“A Star is Born”-Movie Review (throwback)

Okay, I will be revealing a whole lot about myself in this review but you know what, i’m comfortable with my masculinity. lol. I think it takes a strong man to be in tune with his emotional side. So umm….<ahem>…Real talk, “A Star is Born” (1976) starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand, is, in my opinion, one of the best love stories of all time.  This is a remake of Judy Garland and James Mason’s original version, “A Star is Born” (1954). I first watched this movie in the mid 80s when i lived in Nigeria (my fam used to have a huuuuuuuuge movie collection/library) . Watching this movie then, even though I was much younger, I appreciated the plot and the over all story line.  I felt that it was a great movie then….19 years later, the movie I grew up with is FINALLY on DVD and i make it a point to cop it! I won’t spoil it for you guys but take my word for it….it’s a GREAT MOVIE!!! Don’t rent it! Go buy it and add it to your collection.

I’ll give you a spoiler: syke!

Click here to learn more…

~Thesis