I’m not sure if a documentary about guys riding around the world is really something that can be spoiled (after all they are still alive, obviously didn’t die as part of it), but if you feel it could be spoiled, then be advised this will contain spoilers.

In Long Way Round, Ewan and Charlie start out in London and then drive east… all the way around the world on motorcycles. During the first part of the series they are discussing what bikes to use; Ewan wants to use BMWs, while Charlie wants KTM (a brand I knew nothing about, apparently they are an Austrian company that makes motocross/off-road bikes). Ewan acquiesces to Charlie’s request and the Long Way Round team goes and talks with KTM. KTM after learning what they are trying to do opts to NOT provide bikes to them as they think they will fail and it would look very bad for the brand. Charlie gets super pissed (which is of course part of the show), but then agrees that they should instead get BMWs. The bikes are the very beautiful BMW R1150GS Adventure.

Their is a third biker with them, Claudio, who is their cameraman and rides with them. They also have 2 SUVs filled with support personnel (including the director and a doctor). Throughout the show they encounter a variety of people and situations, the former are in general very welcoming and more often than not they ended up spending the night in someone’s house, rather than at a hotel. The situations (specifically the off-roading) do get very trying for everyone, but thanks to the technical expertise they gained before the trip, they are able to surmount all the obstacles they are presented with.

Toward the last part of the trip, they get a few other bikers joining them, forming a small gang, if you will. The last episode has some teasing about them wanting to do this again, which is what lead to the Long Way Down.

Long Way Down once more sees Ewan and Charlie on BMWs, though this time they are riding BMW R1200GS Adventures (the successor to their previous bike). This time the journey is from John O’Groats, Scotland to Cape Agulhas in South Africa.

The situations in this series were a bit more problematic, specifically, trying to organize so many border crossings (which required delays of up to 12 hours). Additionally, at the start of the series, Charlie decided “to use the ‘bomb’ word” in the airport while leaving England, which of course caused a major ruckus. Most of the crew went on without him and he was eventually released without charge. It doesn’t happen very often, but throughout this show and the last you see Charlie acting like the big time movie star, demanding various things and causing various problems (such as accidentally splashing petrol in Ewan’s eyes, repeatedly), whereas Ewan acts so congenially that he really comes off as just an incredibly nice person, a real everyman.

Partway through the journey, Ewan’s wife, Eve, meets up with them and rides with them for a bit. Her personality is similar to Ewan’s and I think she really helps us all to understand how we would react in that situation (riding for hours and spending the night in a random village by the side of the road, for instance).

In the final bit of the show, as Ewan and Charlie arrive in South Africa they are followed by a very large number of motorcycles. Some of the shots they show… you can’t see the end of the line. This is a gang of motorcycles.

In summary: 2 guys riding BMW Bikes show us an adventure. These guys did not ride alone and they did have support personnel and vehicles with them. This means it isn’t something you or I could do by ourselves. As much as Jon and I like riding our bikes (and we are fairly decent at it), we would not be able to attempt this journey. I’d say the most we could do is cross country. Personally, I’m fine with that.

Lastly, if you’d like more info about these trips, I invite you to take a look at the movies or read the books: Long Way Round and Long Way Down.

(Note: Added to Category: Stupid Companies, because KTM lost out on a lot of business and publicity when they shot down Ewan and Charlie)

There will be minor spoilers, but nothing terrible unpredictable.

The film starts with people falling out of the sky and parachutes deploying in order to see them (more or less) safely to the ground. We gradually meet the full lineup of characters and find out more about all of them. Basically, everyone is armed (from a Shiv to a Minigun) and trying to figure out just what is going on, and it takes them a little while to figure out that they are in fact on another planet. The hero is played by Adrien Brody and he is packing an AA-12 with a Drum Magazine. The first guy he meets is a Mexican (played by Danny Trejo) carrying a pair of pistols and SMGs (MP5s IIRC). They are interrupted by a Russian with the aforementioned minigun. While they are talking, the woman of the film shows up with a sniper rifle pointed at them. Then they wander over and meet someone who was on the FBI’s most wanted list (complete with orange jump suit and shiv) and a member of the RUF (who gets an AK-47). Finally, they find Topher Grace in what appears to be yet another role he really shouldn’t have. Seriously, which genius thought he would have been a good Eddie Brock/Venom in Spider-man 3? This time he is a doctor and only has a scalpel with him.
Anyway, eventually they meet up with a member of the Yakuza (complete with pistol), and that completes our merry band of adventurers.

There are numerous homages to the previous films. Including Brody getting covered in mud and shouting “Kill me! Kill me now!” Also, at one point it looked like one of the corpses that the group came across had had an Alien inside him, specifically, it looks like something had burst out of his chest, rather than someone caving it in to rip out his heart. In Predator 2, when Danny Glover goes onto their ship, we see an Alien skull mounted near the rest of the trophies, so maybe this was their subtler way of showing off that relationship, as the killing of an Alien (and taking a trophy) was the highest honor in the Predator society (or so the comics have shown).

Oh, my God. You’re a wicked-cool covert operative masquerading as a sex-toy tycoon?

Yes.  Just brilliant…  but I will give you more reasons not to watch this movie.  As I hope you never see it, I’m going to explain how the movie ends (several times) and generally give away plot points.  So without further adieu… Warning: Spoilers and strong language (as the title of the “film” portends)

Bitch Slap is a B quality movie (at best) that revolves around three buxom ladies:  Hel (Played by Erin Cummings), Trixie (Played by Julia Voth) and Camero (Played by America Olivo).  Yes, they are all hot, yes this movie covers that aspect repeatedly, yes, they are all lesbians and yes, the movie covers that repeatedly also.  There are also numerous other female characters, but really only 3 male characters.  Cage, who gets shot in the head by Camero.  “Phoenix”, better known as Hercules or Kevin Sorbo, who shows up as some secret agent dude (and apparently dies at some point).  Lastly, the Deputy, who ends up dead (repeatedly).

One of the first things I noticed in this movie is that large portions of it are essentially soft-core porn, sans porn.  No one actually gets naked, but that doesn’t stop them from getting it on and ripping away their already tiny outfits.  The second bit is that the camera works is only good in said soft-core porn scenes, or any time basically they are trying to be seductive/sexy (see also water fight scene).  The rest of the time, the camera work sucks – and don’t get me started on their terribly shitty blue/green screening.  I’ve seen film school student demo reels that have had much more convincing blue screening.

The next issue is the story line.  It is… so screwed up and contrived I’m not even sure if I can describe it.  Basically these 3 chicks are trying to find 200 mil in diamonds.  Camero is just in it for the money, but she’s a junkie who is tweaking the hell out.  Hel turns out to be the “wicked-cool covert operative masquerading as a sex-toy tycoon” which is basically played to be a female James Bond – all the way down to the “down barrel” camera shot.  She’s not in it for the money but to recover some weapon, and happens to work for Hercules.  Trixi, who plays all helpless and useless (and gets it on with Hel) turns out to be “Pinky”, a notorious figure in the underground whom no one has ever seen because she’s so bad ass she kills EVERYONE.  She also apparently keeps throwing stars in her vagina.  I wish I were making this up, but she puts her hands in her crotch and pulls a throwing start out from… well… nowhere.  Due to the camera angle… you know exactly where her hands are going because why would they miss that great soft-core porn moment.  Turns out Trixi/Pinky actually orchestrated this entire “event” because Cage stole her “Naginata“.  Except that what she recovers is a Katana – not anywhere REMOTELY the same as a Naginata.

So the entire movie is about getting a sword back.  Okay…  That makes just about as much sense as anything else in this movie.  After all, a number of scenes and characters are homages of Kill Bill, and isn’t one of Uma Thurman’s big deals in the movie to get the good sword? Really though, you know the writers didn’t put a lot of work into this script because the dialogue is ATROCIOUS.  I’m… at a loss for words to explain how bad… so how about some examples:

I’m gonna booty-bang bitch slap your fucking ass until you’re just this side of salvage. Then I’m gonna ram-ride girly’s show tits asunder before I plow both of you bitches under!

Lube my boob skank twat.

… you’re decent and pure, and I love you. Now why don’t we tie a knot, bump uglies, and ride the pork bus to Tuna City?

Ram *this* in your clam bake, bitch cake!

That last line… that’s a particular favorite of mine. It just goes up to an entire new level of “This is a massive failure of a movie”.  Add on to that the fact that I was surprised the movie was only 1 hr 44mn long!  By the end it had dragged on for way too long, with multiple “endings”, I fully expected it to have been at least 2.5 hours.  In the end, the only reason to watch this movie is if chicks beating the living daylights out of everyone and each other really kicks your ticker into high gear.  Otherwise, please, save yourself 2 hours and watch the Discovery Channel instead.  That way you won’t feel like your brain cells have been burned out by a massive dose of “stupid”.

Ok, so lets start off with the movie itself.  It was good, not “great”, not “the best movie ever”, but it was damn good.  It was exactly what you’d expect from an updated A-Team.  It was fun and over the top, especially with the tank/plane scene.  They got a bunch of really good lines in and the entire thing was damn hilarious.  Nothing is funnier to me than Murdock hanging (spinning) on a a helicopter rotor blade singing “You Spin Me Round“.

As for the characters.  Liam Neeson does a FANTASTIC Hannibal, he sounds spot on.  Faceman, BA, and Murdock are also all right where you’d expect them to be.  The actors all did a fine job integrating the pre-established characters, and making them their own.  Also, if you stay past the credits, you get a little cameo from the original Faceman and Murdock. I’ve also got to say, Pike was a great bad guy.  He isn’t like a lot of the “evil mastermind” bad guys you see in movies that are essentially useless without their bodyguards.  Pike is fully tactically capable.  At one point in the movie he uses his suit coat to grab onto a rope line, repel down a building (probably 20 stories), while firing his (IIRC) H&K G36 across to another building at a moving target.  Of course the moving target is one of our heroes, so Pike isn’t allowed to actually hit him, but still damn bad ass.

This being a blockbuster movie, there is a lot of explosions and things getting destroyed.  This being the A-Team, they take it up a notch.  Partially because of both, they do some totally unrealistic stuff.  They do what essentially boils down to a stall & roll in a helicopter.  Evade heat seeking missiles simply by temporarily shutting down the engines.  Stuff like that.  Since it is the A-Team, you must turn your “Suspension of disbelief” up to 11. If you can do that, you’ll enjoy the hell out of this movie.  If you haven’t seen it and have some time this weekend, go and see it.  While you’re there, remember this important idiom:

Alpha Mike Foxtrot — Audios Mother Fucker.

Ok, I might be a weeee bit over the top angry, but tell me you don’t feel exactly the same? We all know exactly what I’m talking about, ever since the DVD was invented. I know lots of DVDs & Blu-Rays that put their previews in and disable the menu button. Ok, you want to force me into your commercials… fine. I’ve even seen a few disks that prevent you from skipping to the next chapter (and thereby the next commercial). Those really irritate me. But this street fighter movie? Ohhhh, it takes the cake. You literally cannot do SHIT during the previews/commercials. I swear to god I pressed EVERY FUCKING BUTTON on my remove and nothing worked, except stop of course. Then when I hit play again, and I got to watch the previews all over again. In my attempts to skip this crap, I ended up watching the first half of the preview for Wolverine three times. First time I thought “Hey, I should get this movie”. By the third I was thinking “Hey, fuck you”.

Commercials on TV are fine, you didn’t buy the show after all. But on a DVD/BD… I either BOUGHT it or rented it. In either case I shelled out cash specifically for this video. I did not shell out money just to watch your god damn commercials. Media companies wonder why piracy and TiVos run rampant? This is fucking why. There is an infographic that demonstrates this very clearly. If I had paid $20+ for this movie and had to watch 5 solid minutes of ads every time I put the disk in (yes, I clocked it) PLUS the time it takes for the damn BluRay to get going in the first place… I’d be even more pissed than I am now. So, to all the studios that think this is a “Good Idea”, and specifically my current favorite…

Hey 20th Century Fox. FUCK YOU.

This will be rife with spoilers, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read.
I was quite pleased with the little minor bits of what I’m going to refer to as “cute references” to Greek Mythology, my favorite being Auntie Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium. Auntie Em being of course, Medusa (well played by Uma Thurman). The star of the flick is Percy (think Perseus ala Clash of the Titans) Jackson who doesn’t know he is a demigod, because his dad left when he was still a baby and apparently mom never figured out how to bring up that particular topic. His best friend turns out to also be a fae creature (a satyr) and also his protector, neither of which Percy realizes until later in the story.
Since the story wouldn’t be terribly interesting without some conflict, or if it was only Percy going to school, something tragic happens, Zeus’ lightning bolt is stolen. Percy is fingered as the culprit (for a reason that is never satisfactorily explained), and so his life (and his mother’s by extension) is in jeopardy.

Kid gets to Camp Half Blood where all the other demigods hang out, along with satyrs and centaurs (I use the plural even though one of each is generally all we see in the film). Percy trains for a good day or so before figuring he is ready to travel to Hades and get his mother back (who was sent there by a minotaur – right before Percy stabs it with its own horn and then passes out for a few days). Of course getting into Hades is the easy part, so before they go they go after various Pearls of Persephone, which can transport anyone anywhere they can think of. They collect 3 of these and head down to Hades to go get Percy’s mom back.

Mom saved (and in the process the lightning bolt is found), satyr left behind (they only had 3 pearls and so someone had to stay behind with Persephone), they head to Olympus, which the doorway to is located on top of the Empire State Building. There they are confronted by the actual Lightning Thief, Percy fights him and realizes some more of his Poseidon-given powers to defeat the dastardly thief, eventually creating a trident of water to slam him into the ocean – yeah, I’m sure he’s gone for good too. Quickly they all get to Olympus (mom stays in the elevator as she is mortal) and return the lightning bolt averting a war between the gods. Hurray.

The only major gripe I had about the film is that they showed Hades as if it were in fact Hell. In Greek Mythology, Hades was the afterlife, EVERYONE wound up there, so it wasn’t Hell. There was a good bit of suffering there for those that were damned, however those that were not enjoyed the paradise of the Elysium Fields.

All in all, quite worth the time and I’m now intrigued enough that I’ll probably order the Kindle Edition.

I had watched the movie a while back and remembered it fondly, so I decided to read it on my Kindle.

After reading the book, I thought it seemed a bit different than what I recalled form the movie, so I netflixed it and watched it on Wednesday.

Warning: Potential Spoilers Abound – I’m comparing a book and a movie so that should be fairly obvious.First off, the film and book start off with the top 5 all time breakups of Rob (played by John Cusack in the film). In the film, he only does 4, the 5th was “just to edge Laura out”, but he eventually changes his mind and puts her in the top 5. The one they take out is the girl from a relationship he sabotaged, stealing her from “the perfect couple” – they had later gotten back together and when he met up with the two of them.

The location is moved from London to Chicago, which is probably why they downplayed the interaction between Rob and Marie De Salle as she was supposed to be an American Singer in jolly olde.

They deleted a scene (as in it is in the deleted scenes) of Rob finding the most impressive record collection of his lifetime and him turning it down because of his morals.

Also in the deleted scenes is a longer version of the interview where he agonizes over his All Time Top 5 Records.

The filmmakers added a couple scenes where Rob sets up his own record label for two young kids, which seemed really odd and pointless.

Lastly, they changed the ending around. The marriage talk was the end of the book and it happened after the DJing, rather than before as it did in the movie.

Verdict: Read the book if you want a character filled with a bit more self-loathing who doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending; watch the movie if you want a lovable screw up that everything works out for in the end.

That being said, it really isn’t a problem in the movie because they really don’t go into that much depth about it. The movie shows the planetary alignment, but doesn’t talk about it that much. They show mass suicide at a Mayan temple, briefly. Mostly the destruction of the Earth is due to elevated solar flare activity which throws off “lots” more neutrinos which go about “microwaving” the core of the Earth. The core gets hotter, the shell gets hotter, things start to break apart… and California sinks into the ocean, which was John’s favorite part of the movie.

I could spend the next 30 minutes picking apart all the horrible flaws in the science and glaring issues with the movie, like say a plane flying through an ash cloud… but I’ll spare you. Instead why don’t you take a peak a this Real Life Comic which does a fantastic job summarizing it.

What do I think? Yes, go see it. It is a decent flick where things get blown and the Earth is destroyed. The special effects are fairly good too.

I originally came down thinking that we might go see 2012 (I’m a sucker for a good disaster flick). What I was not expecting was to find out that Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day was playing.

This review will be spoiler free, partly because this movie is not in wide release. However, there are spoilers if you haven’t seen the first film.

Boondock Saints 2 was AWESOME. The movie opens with Rocko talking about the difference between talkers and doers. Now at first, I wasn’t sure the movie had started as I knew he had died in the first film, but then it cuts to two unshaven men sitting on horses watching a flock of sheep with double-barreled shotguns strapped behind their backs.

They share a cigarette before herding their flock a bit more, eventually heading home where we see their father, who starts narrating. He explains that he could see that they were going to need to get back to work soon; that it had been 8 years since they executed Yakavetta in that courtroom.
A priest suddenly bursts in and tells them that something has happened, whereupon they learn that a priest has been killed in a church and pennies placed on the scene, to make it look like them.
The boys immediately leave the house and go into the barn and start digging, cue montage of digging, hair cutting, shaving, gun checking, and pops telling the priest that while the killer is clearly trying to bring the boys back, they don’t truly appreciate what that means.

The montage ends with the boys coming back in and saying that they will kill anyone and everyone who had anything to do with killing the priest.

Their scene ends and we see three familiar detectives; in a nice nod to the previous film, we meet the FBI Special Agent Eunice Bloom, a red-headed southern belle with a slightly charming drawl, who upon inspecting the body informs them that the boys were not responsible.

Later we (the viewers and the saints) meet the new sidekick, a Mexican by the name of Romeo, who is wiry.

Eventually, the boys make their way back to Boston and all kinds of wacky hi-jinks ensue.

Jon and I both agree that our favorite line occurred when the boys and Romeo meet back up with the supplier from the first film, who explains that he has enjoyed a very nice bit of business after word got out that he was the one who had supplied the boys.
He presents the boys with two silenced Desert Eagles each. Note: these things look like Breaching Shotguns.
Romeo comes over, sets an ornate wooden box on the table and says, “Those things are queer, how much for this?” Showing us two chromed Berreta 92Fs with the Mexican flag on the handle and golden silencers. The boys, in typical fashion, respond by telling him that they look gay. Romeo, offended turns to the gun dealer and asks, “You don’t know me, does this make me look gay?”
The dealer pauses, looks at him and says, “yeah,” pause, “you look like you might have seen one up close.”

Cue laughter.

The Maiden Heist stars Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, and William H. Macy. All three actors are guards at a museum, each of them have a favorite work of art, and each of them are crushed to learn that the exhibit is being moved to Copenhagen, Denmark (which is “really far away” and “a really hard language”). Morgan Freeman comes up with the idea to steal the art, but they don’t quite know how to do it, thus they enlist Macy.
Macy plays an ex-military character, though it shifts a couple times as to which branch and what “action” he was involved in during his service. He provides the gear and continually offers words of encouragement, until a certain part during the climax. He also enjoys appearing in the buff with his particular art piece (The Bronze Warrior). ARTnews has a great piece about each of the works, take a gander if you’d care to know more.

I can’t really say much more without giving away the movie, so I’ll just close with my recommendation. This is a rent, if you like the actors. I don’t see much reason to buy this one, maybe if you are a big art fan and want to gush over some of the other works shown in the film you might like it or see it as wish fulfillment… but I doubt it.

One question that I wondered after watching the film: was William H. Macy’s nudity inspired by his bare bottom in The Cooler?