Category — Movies-TV

Watched The Pacifier with Vin Diesel last night, and it was an enjoyable film – not GREAT, but still enjoyable.

It’s a Disney film, and it shows. The beginning action scenes that kick off the plot and are used to establish that Diesel is a “tough dude”, are almost laughable. But, you get the impression that they’re supposed to be laughable – again, it’s a Disney film! If you put yourself in the mindset of a 7 yr old (which, is very easy for me to do! ) you’d probably enjoy them too.

The story is good, a bit predictable, but good, and you know you can count on a happy ending.

Plot is straight forward, with a few of what were meant to be “twists” being pretty obvious if you were thinking about it. But, most kids wouldn’t, and they would probably be appropriately surprised.

Diesel does a good job of being tough but likeable, and his growing attachment to the kids is believable. A lot of times in movies like this, they don’t show enough character interaction or allow enough time for you to actually believe that the tough guy has gone from drill sergeant to softie. But, not so here – well done Vin.

Lauren Graham, Diesel’s love interest, is well cast. It’s Lorelai Gilmore as a Principal – same character different job. But, it works well nonetheless.

Brad Garrett plays comedic relief in his role as VP Murney, and he IS funny. But, sometimes its pretty painful to watch. As my wife said during the film – “Gosh, I hope they paid him a lot of money to do this…” Again, not surprisingly, its Robert Barone as a VP. Same goofy character, but somehow it works.

Overall, an enjoyable film that yer kids will probably love. I bought it (before I saw it), but you can probably get away with Netflixing it.

Favorite quote – “This is going to be done MY WAY! No highway option!”

So, sucked in by a 3 fer $25 previously viewed deal at BB or Hollywood, I dont remember which, I bought Kingdom of Heaven.

I must say, I really loved this movie… Great story, great acting, great action and a “hot” topic as well. Being a devout Christian, I was a bit wary of how it would portray those of my faith, but I think it was very fair.

To quote Hospitaler in the movie – “I’ve seen fanatics of all faiths do horrendous things, calling it God’s Will…”

Anyway, I think it was very well done, and showed that people will sometimes use religion as a mask to cover their own ambition or greed. But, one who has true faith in God, cannot help but have his actions reflect it.

“It is a Kingdom of Conscience or it is Nothing”.

Bloom was great, Niesen, though brief, was as good as ever.

The extras were good too – there’s like a 1.5-2 hour “Making Of” from all points and perspectives, pre-during-post production from the POV of Director, Producers, Actors, etc. The sets, etc. were amazing too – again, watch the extras to point out JUST how cool they were…

This is among my Fav’s. Great movie!

Here’s my 2 cents (well, judging by the size of this, maybe my 20 cents!) on the potential of a new Star Trek movie, and on the franchise in general:

The hardcore Star Trek fans are waaaayy harder on the standards than Paramount will be, or should be.

I think that a good WIDE appeal movie is what is necessary to breathe life back into the franchise. To do that, I agree with many who have written on the subject, that a prequel is a bad idea. There is too much history to line up with and get right without it sucking. AND, it is only interesting to those who already care and know about the existing body of work. That’s the crux with the prequel – it is of interest to less people, and the people that it is of interest to will be the harshest of critics.

I say fast forward to the future. Show us some advanced weaponry – show us massive political upheaval. Show us a trilogy that has the death and resurrection of Starfleet, or the death and evolution of Starfleet. Heck, show us the Starfleet that kept fuxing with the Enterprise crew by jumping back in time (but PLEASE, leave the time travel out of it – to easy to step on your own foot). Well, OK – you can jump back in time to get T’Pol so she can be in whatever movie they do next, but THAT’S IT on the time travel. Maybe she’ll finally figure out that the Vulcan Science Directorate doesn’t have it all figured out…

The fact is that a Trek movie or show is expensive to make, so it has to be widely appealing to make it to general distribution. If the franchise becomes widely popular again, maybe some of the stuff that we as fans want to see will come out direct to DVD for those of us that care, but that is a long shot.

People get old, and new people have to replace them to keep it interesting. I don’t want to see Sisko looking fat, old and droopy – like they did with Frakes and Sirtis in the final episode of Enterprise which was entitled These Are the Voyages… We ALL get that way, but its depressing and people don’t want to see it. It’s the Bond phenomenon, but in space…

I think that today’s movie culture is more about EPIC than it is about straight character. Star Trek was always more “focused” in its scope – two ships off in some sector battling with wits and phasers. I think that is a major contributing factor to why something like Enterprise or even Nemesis did so poorly, yet the new Star Wars films, being equally flawed, are in the top tier in earnings. They were epic!

Lord OT Rings was epic too, but they were very well done, so that you still cared about the individual characters (even after just the first film…) so it is certainly doable. Also, to be widely appealing, it has to appeal to kids. Kids loved Starwars (crap, there was – count them – TWELVE Darth Vaders at our Halloween party this year – out of 20 kids!!!). They also loved LOTR…

I say take the Trek universe and make it epic, give us some heartfelt characters, add in a few characters that the kids will dig, and mix it up with some wild imagination on technology. You’ll have a surefire winner that would breathe life into the franchise. THEN maybe Paramount will have open ears to another movie like Wrath of Kahn.