Comedies in which the characters are high for the majority of the film are often funny. Action comedies can also be quite hysterical. However, when you put the two of them together, it just doesn’t seem to work. Not many studios have attempted this mix over the years. The only one that comes to mind is Pineapple Express, starring James Franco and Seth Rogan as a couple of stoners who cross a criminal gang. American Ultra continues the tradition started by Pineapple Express: neither is as funny as they aspire to be.
In American Ultra, which comes out this Friday, Mike Howell (Jessie Eisenberg) is a stoner convenience store clerk who finds out he is a CIA-trained assassin. Topher Grace plays a recently promoted CIA boss who wants to get rid of Mike and sends a tactical team to do that. Connie Britton, as the former CIA boss who headed up the program that recruited Mike, does the only thing she knows to do and activates Mike so that he can defend himself.
American Ultra is supposed to be a stoner comedy meets a violent action flick but it reality it’s even more all over the map. The picture oscillates from laughter, to love, to massive explosions to gruesome Chuck Norris-style killings. This may sound very appealing, but trust me, it’s not. It’s as if the movie itself is high and is just spouting off irrational moments in the plot … “Hey man … I love you … I love you (splat) that I cut that guy’s head off… I’m hungry!”
American Ultra exhibited potential in the beginning of the film. I thought that casting Kristen Stewart and Jessie Eisenberg who have natural chemistry from previous films like Adventureland was a great move. However, the biggest downfall of this film may actually have been casting Kristen Stewart and Jessie Eisenberg. Jessie Eisenberg is as incontrovertible in the role of CIA assassin as I would be as a cover model for a Harlequin Romance novel. Kristen Stewart injects a rigor mortis like energy to the film that indicates to the audience that maybe they should just head for the exits.
The violence in the film is too over the top to be funny. I may not be an expert but hammers to the temple don’t lend themselves to comedy. Directed by Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) and written poorly by Max Landis, American Ultra seems distracted from the start, confused throughout, emotionally irrational until the very end. Maybe I needed to be high to enjoy this movie.
Have you ever looked at something related to Anime and been at least a little bit curious? I mean compared to western animation, Anime can be vastly different. And when you stop with all the ironic jokes and left field misconceptions, does it ever peek your interest? I have a slight guess that it has otherwise you most likely wouldn’t be reading this article.
The concept of Anime can be scary and bizarre to someone looking from the outside, puttering around its door, contemplating on whether or not to enter. And don’t get me wrong, to some extent this is warranted. Anime certainly has its fair shares of land mines, that if seen by the wrong person can instantly shut down any further interest in the subject. And if you have experienced something like this before, don’t be discouraged. Let me assure you that Anime is just like Music or Live-Action TV, there’s good and there’s bad. And whats good or bad can vary from person to person. So in there lies the ultimate key to finally making your way through the golden doors into Anime.
Taking Recommendations
Having someone suggest shows for you can be both a good thing and something you may need to avoid, depending on the person. For one, I think its obvious but for some reason most people forget, that some people have different interests when it comes to certain mediums of entertainment. So if you do intend to ask someone you know to recommend Anime (and trust me when I say that one is probably closer than you think) make sure that your interests align at least somewhat, otherwise you may be thrown into the wrong direction and your Anime experience will be ruined even though it could have flourished.
Also if you don’t have really anyone to ask about anime recommendations, just go online. There you should be able to find people who have similar interest with you who also enjoy Anime. Usually their recommendations should hit home for you.
As for just general suggestions (like a top 10 lists for beginners or something) I don’t really think these are good for someone trying to get into Anime. The main reason is that these lists are compiled by Anime fans who have been watching for quite a bit of time and have concretely established what they think good Anime is. And mostly it relates to things that are general audience. Nothing really genre heavy, so while your probably sure to get something high in quality, it might not be quite your thing and establish enough of a hold to keep you interested. And that’s what you want isn’t it? To get excited about something so much that it makes you seek out more things like it. I personally think that general audience appeal stuff doesn’t do the trick if that’s the case.
So I think I made it pretty clear but let me try to get it down one more time. Anime is just like something like Music and Live-Action. There are many genres inside its contents and finding the right ones you enjoy will be crucial to whether you stay or flee the Anime scene. Having said that, there still is a few minor details I think you should take before delving into the genres you’ve decided on.
The Old vs. the New
Now that you have your genre you still need a starting point. There has been a lot of Anime produced up till this point and even if you have an idea on what you might like, finding the show can still be difficult. Personally for me I think anything in the last five years is the place to start. And if you need help looking up dates and genres, Anime News Network and MyAnimeList have easy search engines to help out with that. MyAnimeList also has recommendations under every show, so if you do find something you like it’ll be easier to find the next thing.
Now I know that there are a slew of good shows that have been made before 2008 or so, but a lot of Anime is a product of its time. So I feel that if you watch newer shows instead of older shows your tastes will fit better with what you watch. Another reason is that Anime hasn’t always been produced with the same quality throughout all series’. So if you watch more current shows there’s a better chance that the aesthetic will be more appealing, certainly as a newcomer. Once you dabble around in newer shows and get a feel for Anime and what genres you enjoy, then that’ll be the time to go back and look into older shows.
Don’t be afraid to jump around with shows
Anime, especially today, is seeing more product being dumped out that ever before. There are at least forty shows coming out every season. So if you end up picking a show and you’re not quite feeling it halfway through, quit it and move on. With the sheer volume of shows out there is no reason for you to continue a show that you are not enjoying. Odds are there is another show that will be exactly what you’re looking for. One way to deal with this efficiently is the “three episode rule”. Basically if a show isn’t good in the first three episodes it’s probably not worth your time. Now there are always exceptions to this rule and if you are unsure, or on the fence about a show, its easy to look up a review and see what someone else thought about it and see if its worth sticking with. But there are a lot of Anime so don’t feel like you have to watch everything, or even everything you start.
Just Do it!
So if you ever have been even the slightest bit interested in Anime, you would be doing yourself a disservice to not at least give it a fair chance. Like I said before, Anime is literally limitless in its content, and I personally believe that there is a show for everyone is the vast Anime library. It’s only a matter of finding it. And hopefully I have given you some good insight on how to find that show for you. And hopefully once you find that show, you will continue to find other shows and have successfully broken Animes barrier of Entry.
But if you don’t feel like searching for a certain show that will most likely adhere to your tastes specifically and don’t plan on making Anime a thing that you’re into, Jennifer Valure has done a good list of general audience Anime classics that you can check out here.
Christian Bale is teaming up with Michael Mann to portray Enzo Ferrari for Mann’s upcoming biopic, Ferrari.
According to the report in Deadline, Bale will play the Italian car designer and Mann, who has been circling this project for more than a decade, a project that once was set for Sydney Pollock before his untimely passing, will finally begin shooting some time next summer. As the report in Deadline details, “The film takes place in 1957, a year where passion, failure, success and death and life all collided. Several actresses circling the female lead as a love story is a big part of the picture.”
Ferrari will mark the second teaming between Bale and Mann, who first worked together in the uneven but stylish Public Enemies in 2009. Mann has been struggling to find the magic from his earlier work as of late, with this year’s Blackhat missing the mark entirely. Having Bale on board for Ferrari should help improve his odds.
Hitman – Agent 47 looks and feels like exactly what it is: a film adaptation of a video game. That said, it’s one of the better adaptations that’s come from Hollywood in recent years thanks to some relatively innovative and engaging action choreography, well-conceived set pieces, and some truly impressive cinematography that takes full advantage of the film’s exotic locales. Sure, there’s not depth to it, but what you do get certainly looks great and is never boring.
As we learn in the film’s admittedly heavy-handed opening exposition, during the Cold War a program to develop genetically-modified humans for the purpose of creating virtually unstoppable “agents” found success thanks to the work of one brilliant scientist, Dr. Litvenko (Ciarán Hinds), who shortly thereafter used his considerable genius to disappear off the radar of the world’s governments in order to keep the secrets of his process just that: secret.
In the present day, one particular product of the program, whose only name is “47” (Rupert Friend), is on a mission to find a young woman who may be the link to finding Litvenko and potentially restarting the “Agent” program. He’s not alone in his search — a powerful biotech corporation, Syndicate International, has its own operatives out looking for Litvenko and the woman, operatives which 47 calmly and methodically mows down in order to stay one step ahead of their efforts.
The object of their search, Katia (Hannah Ware), is herself searching for Litvenko, only she has no idea who he is or what he’s done — she only knows him from fragmented memories, and hopes that he can answer questions about why she’s always in survival mode, why she seems to have an extrasensory ability to perceive threats to her life moments before they actually happen. She finds unexpected help from a stranger calling himself “John Smith” (Zachary Quinto), who shows up just in time to whisk Katia away from 47 and provide key pieces of information to aid Katia in her quest. But just who is Smith, really, and is she really a target of 47, or does he have other plans for her? The answers to these questions and more all come as the principals exchanges gunfire and fisticuffs, change sides and reveal true natures and agendas, and eventually fight for their lives within the walls of the Syndicate’s vast and über-modern headquarters, their own futures as well as the future of the Agent program all hanging in the balance.
This is the second time that film makers have attempted to translate the success of the Hitman video game series to the big screen. The first, 2007’s Hitman, starring Timothy Olyphant and Olga Kurylenko, was a drab, uninspired and cheap-looking affair which was anything but memorable, but still apparently was successful enough at the box office to merit a second go-around. Though the previous film and this new one share the same titular character, Agent 47, and the same screenwriter, Skip Woods (The A-Team, Swordfish), that’s truly all they have in common, and that’s a very good thing.
Director Aleksander Bach, making his feature film debut here, brings an entirely different and relatively fresh vision to how this particular Agent 47 mission plays out, one built around slick, eye-popping visuals, fast-moving and visceral fight scenes and chases, and a strong sense of location, as the two primary locations for the film, Berlin and Singapore, each are fully utilized in terms of their particular character and flavor. Bach seems to approach the staging of each of the film’s set pieces with a video game in mind, creating challenges that escalate in difficulty as the film progresses in order for the characters to further explore and display their unique gifts, an approach that makes complete sense considering the film’s source material. In addition, in order to best bring to life Bach’s ideas for the film’s many gun battles and fights, the production utilizes the talents of 87-11 Action Design, the stunt production company primarily responsible for the stylish action audiences enjoyed in last summer’s sleeper hit John Wick. Though what audiences get here in Hitman – Agent 47 doesn’t quite deliver the same heights of fun that Wick does, it’s pretty close; John Wick fans and fans of action films in general should walk away from this film relatively pleased, or at least not regretting the price of admission.
Where Hitman: Agent 47 fails to deliver is, of course, in the area of plot and character depth, though there is a clear effort in the script by Woods and fellow screenwriter Michael Finch (Predators) to give each character some scenery to chew on, some mystery to add nuance to their characters and fuel on-screen tension between the action scenes. Their script is full of well-worn action thriller tropes and predictable outcomes, but one very good choice they make in terms of the film’s dramatic focus is to make Katia the film’s true protagonist, rather than 47, who for all that style and lethal skill is a bland character even when played with conviction by talented actors like Olyphant in the first film and Rupert Friend (Showtime’s “Homeland“) here. English actress Hannah Ware (Starz’s “Boss“) brings weight and credibility to Katia’s emotional arc through the film; she makes things fun to watch as she learns more about herself and grows more formidable as an adversary. Her vulnerability and volatile emotions play well off of Friend’s unflappable, stone-faced portrayal of 47, as does the work turned in by Zachary Quinto, who just seems to be having a grand old time not having to wear Spock ears and a Starfleet uniform.
All that said, there’s just not a whole lot to this story and these characters for the performers to work with, which will, no doubt, be a turn-off to anyone not impressed by slick action choreography and stylized gunplay, and so Hitman – Agent 47 isn’t likely to make much of an impression outside of pure action movie fans. Without a doubt, it lacks the subversive humor of Kingsman: The Secret Service and the sophistication of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation that helped those two be breakout hits outside of the action genre, and so the fact that its coming to theaters with two films in recent memory doesn’t do this production any favors. But in and of itself, within the boundaries of its genre and the expectations one might have for a movie based on a game franchise, there’s a lot to enjoy here, and if you’re fan of this sort of material, it’s worth your while to give it a shot.
Hitman – Agent 47
Starring Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciarán Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann, Angelababy. Directed by Aleksander Bach.
Running Time: 96 minutes
Rated R for sequences of strong violence, and some language.
Paramount Pictures just released the trailer for Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Thursday afternoon and I want to say it’s probably the first time I’ve ever seen zombie boobs…
Three scouts, on the eve of their last camp-out, discover the true meaning of friendship when they attempt to save their town from a zombie outbreak. But they left out that there are stripper zombies in this film!
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse will be in theaters on October 30.
Yeah! That’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son getting ready to kill some zombies!
Waterworld turned 20-years old this summer. The post-apocalyptic high-seas adventure is one of the most notorious films in cinematic history, popularized for the troubled production, warring cast and crew, and a budget that spiraled out of control more than anything on the screen. The $175 million-plus budget made Waterworld the most expensive film of all time in 1995, seemingly setting it up for failure weeks and months before it hit theaters. The middling reviews upon is release didn’t help the cause, and before long the film came known as either Fishtar! (a reference to the Warren Beatty-Dustin Hoffman desert bomb Ishtar!), or Kevin’s Gate (referring to Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s bloated epic disaster in the early 80s).
Now, however, with 20 years of perspective, has Waterworld somehow improved? Kevin Costner, star of the film and responsible for a great deal of the strife on set, seems to think so. In a recent statement, Costner claimed the film was “beloved around the world,” and “the movie with all its imperfections was a joy for me … a joy to look back upon and to have participated in.” While Costner’s semi-delusional hindsight regarding his “Mad Max on Water” may be a bit out of whack for the masses who still enjoy heaping snark upon the watery grave of the 1995 debacle, Waterworld is not as bad as everyone remembers.
It isn’t perfect, not even close, but predispositions doomed the film regardless of its merits. Controversy aside, the finished product has plenty to offer fans of the genre. The Universal logo begins the narrative, as we zoom into the globe within the logo and watch as the continents disappear into a world of, well, of water. The planet is covered in sea, leaving a fractured, nomadic society. Costner plays The Mariner, a cynical loner and a hybrid with gills behind his ears. His story unfolds as almost a carbon copy of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, as The Mariner visits a floating city to trade goods and move on. He has dirt, dry land which has become mythological in this futuristic wasteland. Before he can go about his business, however, he is embroiled in an assault on the floating city from The Smokers.
The Smokers are, again, direct ripoffs of the villainous nomads in the Mad Max films, only here they are led by the 90s favorite villain, Dennis Hopper. Wearing an eyepatch to cover a shockingly buggy glass eye and spitting fire, Hopper’s Deacon is after a young girl, Enola (Tina Majorino), who has a map to dry land tattooed on her back. Hopper’s fiery venom sends the story into admirable camp at times. The Mariner takes with him, in his escape from the atoll, Enola and Helen, a bartender played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, who is along for the ride for one reason and one reason only: to develop a relationship with The Mariner.
Waterworld then settles into an action-adventure groove, with predictable outcomes. The Mariner is standoffish with Helen and Enola at first, but of course comes to love and appreciate them both. Meanwhile, Deacon is hot on their tale in his ship, which is revealed to be the Exxon Valdez in a clever wink to one of the biggest environmental disasters of the 20th century. While it may follow the company line as far as story is concerned, visually, Waterworld has some serene action set pieces and some thrilling adventure. There is a moment in the middle where The Mariner takes Helen on a tour of an underground city that still holds up after two decades of CGI improvement. You can see where the money was spent, and subsequently blown thanks to poor weather, poor planning, and a feud between Costner and his hand-picked director and friend, Kevin Reynolds, who walked (or, perhaps, swam) off the set.
Taken at face value, ignoring the controversial backstory, Waterworld has aged well. Not like fine wine, per se, but at least a middle-of-the-road Bordeaux. It has charm, and perhaps some of the attractiveness of the film in 2015 is due to the unfair shake it received in 1995. Had the publicity machine not spiraled out of control back in the day, the film may have been a moderately-received success. It deserves a second look.
AMC has released the first three minutes of Fear The Walking Dead, the prequel spinoff of The Walking Dead.
What did the world look like as it was transforming into the horrifying apocalypse depicted in “The Walking Dead”? This spin-off set in Los Angeles, following new characters as they face the beginning of the end of the world, will answer that question.
The AMC series is six episodes and stars Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam Carey, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Lorenzo James Henri, Mercedes Mason, and Ruben Blades.
Fear The Walking Dead premieres this Sunday on AMC.
WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVE: #FearBeginsHere this Sunday at 9/8c.
It appears that that Netflix is in damage control mode after the new Daredevil costume for season two was leaked on the internet. Wednesday evening, Netflix countered with an official look at the new suit with the tagline “The suit makes the man.”
Daredevil is Executive Produced by Doug Petrie, Marco Ramirez and Drew Goddard, along with Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb.The second season of Daredevil is currently filming and will return to Netflix in 2016.
Sony Pictures and Escape Artists have hired Christopher Yost to rewrite the He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe, according to Variety.
Yost has worked on Thor: The Dark World, X-Men: Evolution, The Batman, Wolverine and the X-Men, and most recently announced Thor: Ragnarok.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ran for 130 episodes from 1983 to 1985. The most powerful man in the universe, He-Man, goes against the evil forces of Skeletor to save the planet Eternia and to protect the secrets of Castle Grayskull. Courtney Cox and Dolph Lundgren brought He-Man to the big screen in 1987 with Masters of the Universe. The film was in theaters for only three weeks making $17,336,370, and is perhaps more famous for taking some of the budget for Superman IV – but has lived on as a cult classic.
According to a report by Deadline, Clive Owen cast as Commander Arün Filitt in Valerian.
Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) directs the $180 million budget sci-fi film based the French graphic novel series from Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delavingne have also been cast for the film.
Valerian is schedule to start filming in early 2016 and will get a worldwide release on July 21, 2017.
VALERIAN is a saga that every fan of Star Wars and Star Trek will identify with and love. Valerian and his beautiful, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued partner, Laureline, live adventures set against visually stunning backgrounds: complex architectural inventions, futuristic machines, otherworldly landscapes, and odd-looking aliens that are staples of artist Mezieres’s seemingly boundless visual inventiveness. The stories are gripping and of epic proportion, sweeping along in trilling, hyper-space speed.
