Kim Kardashian butt shakes in Hollywood

Kim Kardashian and her derriere got booted off Dancing with the Stars last night, proving that Kardashian really isn’t very talented at anything. She was the third celebrity voted off this season, which is sad because the only reason to watch this show was to see Kardashian shake her money maker.

The highlight of this season was Kardashian’s dance to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s I Like Big Butts. It was daring. It was self-deprecating. It was kind of crappy. Oh well. She’ll always have her fat ass and we’ll never get tired of looking at it.

Star Dust (2007)

From the imaginations of best-selling author Neil Gaiman and director Matthew Vaughn comes “Stardust,” this summer’s one totally original fantasy epic that is destined to enchant and excite audiences of all ages. Following the adventures of a young man who sets out on a quest to prove his love, and finds far more than he bargained for, “Stardust” takes on every fairy tale in which anyone ever wanted to believe. From wicked witches to dashing princes, flying pirates to dueling swordsmen, magical spells to mystical destinies, it all adds up to a funny, romantic tale of true love and high adventure unlike any other.

“Stardust” begins in the sleepy English village of Wall, so named for the cobblestone wall that has, for hundreds of years, kept the villagers safely apart form the strange, supernatural realm that lies just on the other side. It is here that young Tristan Thorne (CHARLIE COX) makes a wild-eyed promise to the prettiest girl in the village (SIENNA MILLER), whose heart he hopes to win: that he will bring her back a fallen star. But in order to make good on his promise, Tristan will have to cross the forbidden wall, and enter a mysterious kingdom lit by unending magic and unfolding legends of which he will quickly become a part.

In this fantastical realm known as Stormhold, Tristan discovers that the fallen star is not the meteorite he expected, but a beautiful, spirited young woman (CLAIRE DANES) injured by her cosmic tumble. Now, she is in terrible danger - sought after by the King's (PETER O'TOOLE) scheming sons for whom only her secret powers can secure the throne; and hunted by a chillingly powerful witch (MICHELLE PFEIFFER) desperate to use the star to achieve eternal youth and beauty.

As Tristan sets out to protect the star and bring her back to his beloved on the other side of the wall, his journey will bring unforeseen romance, high-flying adventure, and incredible encounters with a pirate captain (ROBERT DE NIRO), a shady trader (RICKY GERVAIS), and an enchanted unicorn among other surprises. But if he can survive on his wits and the strength of his newfound love, Tristan will also uncover the secret to his own identity and a fate beyond his wildest dreams.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Rating: 9/10

Release Date: 3 August 2007 (USA)
Length: 111 min
Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez Directed by :Paul Greengrass

Summary :

The Bourne movies have been a surprise at every turn. The first one showed up in theaters out of nowhere packed with balls to the wall action, courtesy of an actor once thought of as momma’s boy Oscar winner convincingly playing the biggest super-spy badass since James Bond. By the second film audiences came prepared, assuming they knew what they were in for; but new director Paul Greengrass took Bourne’s story to an entirely new level and left just about everyone picking themselves up off the floor. Now Bourne is back for a third and final adventure in The Bourne Ultimatum, and nothing has changed even though nothing is the same. Get ready to have your ass blown out of the theater because once again Greengrass and Damon deliver on a movie packed with more “holy shit did that just happen” moments than you can shake a sub-machine gun at.

Greengrass hasn’t just topped the previous Bourne movies in every way, he’s raised the bar for the spy and action genres for years to come, and he’s done it in a movie without very little dialogue. This is Matt Damon’s Cast Away except without a volley ball sidekick and with minute after minute of pulse pounding peril and violence instead of slow starvation. Damon plows through The Bourne Ultimatum like a force of nature; a silent, a living weapon on a mission of determined, unstoppable discovery. That’s right, discovery. In The Bourne Supremacy Bourne made the bad guys pay. This time he’s had enough and wants to know who he is. Bourne simply wants to be done with everything and he’s not the kind of guy that takes no for an answer.

The action is absolutely unbelievable, eye-popping stuff. I’m not just talking about one or two big action sequences here. Every second, every moment of The Bourne Ultimatum is jammed with danger, pounding and pounding against the screen in unstoppable waves of energy and intensity. Greengrass never lets up, not even for a second. His cameras keep rolling and Matt Damon keeps moving, putting plans together on the fly and eliminating obstacles one by one as he moves in a steady, straight line towards his final goal in a complicated, rhythmic dance of controlled destruction. We’re swept right along with him, and if you’re like me your nails will be firmly buried in the arm of your chair the film’s entire 111 minutes.

What is perhaps even more amazing than the movie’s ability to do things that’ll make your jaw drop, is the way it manages to do character development in the middle of all those car crashes and explosions, and does it without words. So much of the credit for that has to go to Damon, who even though he’s not talking says volumes with what’s going on behind that stoic, no-nonsense expression Bourne keeps wearing. Without saying a word, Damon puts together a complete picture of what his now familiar character is going through, not just externally but internally as well. Bourne is a living weapon, but a suffering, breathing, feeling weapon who, more than ever you’ll find yourself rooting for.

If there’s anything to be disappointed in here it’s that The Bourne Ultimatum is almost certainly the last one. Every movie has improved on the last, culminating in a third film which is easily the best movie of the summer and probably the best action movie of the year. Imagine where they might have taken it for a fourth movie. Jason Bourne is going out on top, don’t forget to duck the shrapnel that comes flying out of the screen.

Underdog

Rating: 6.5/10

Release Date: 3 August 2007

Length: 84 min

Starring: Jim Belushi, Peter Dinklage, John Slattery, Patrick Warburton, Brad Garrett, with Amy Adams, and Jason Lee as the voice of Underdog

Directed by :Frederik Du Chau


Summary :

Thinking of a live action Underdog made me sad,
But the truth about this movie is: it is not half bad

Let’s be honest. Underdog is probably one of the least likely candidates for a movie adaptation. The cartoon super-hero is thirty years past his prime, existing over that time in just over 100 episodes that represent what animation has to look like when it’s churned out on a weekly basis. Yet, strangely, somehow the canine crusader has been targeted for a live-action summer blockbuster movie. Even stranger is the fact that the resulting picture is an enjoyable family picture that has something to offer to both Underdog newcomers and fans who have stuck with the show over the course of its life.

Clearly crediting its origins, Underdog opens with a montage of classic cartoon clips showing the dog hero saving the day against his villains, most specifically Simon Barsinister, the evil genius mastermind. Underdog himself (voiced by Jason Lee) tells us this is his story, but that the cartoon clips are getting ahead of the rest of the story. Transition to the live action picture which serves as an origin story for the super hero.

Originally a failed-police dog, the hero who would be Underdog is captured for experimentation by one of Doctor Barsinister’s henchmen. Before the genius can inject our hero with DNA, the dog attempts to escape, resulting in a lab accident that renders the dog with super powers and disfigures Barsinister (Peter Dinklage). Yes, it’s one of those stories where the hero and villain are born from the same incident, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t detract from the story, particularly because Barsinister isn’t exactly a nice guy to begin with.

The dog is picked up by Dan Unger (James Belushi), a former police officer who quit the force when his wife died. He tries to give the dog to his son, Jack (Alex Neuberger), as yet another gesture in their strained relationship, naming the dog Shoeshine because he constantly licks their shoes. Slowly Jack and Shoeshine form a strong relationship, made even stronger when Jack discovers his dog’s secret powers. Jack urges Shoeshine to become a hero, but all the dog wants is a steady home where he doesn’t feel like a reject. When Simon Barsinister rears his ugly head again, there’s no choice to but to save the day as Underdog!

Although this is a super hero origin story, there’s quite a bit more to the movie than just that. It’s also the story of a boy and his dog, the story of a dysfunctional family looking to rebuild, and a story of underdogs on a more literal level, between the police dog who failed, to the police dad who quit, to Jack who is an underdog in school. Each of the stories gets a fair amount of time in the spotlight without feeling like any of them are robbing the movie of its super hero basis. It’s a well crafted story that deserves praise for writers Adam Rifkin, Joe Piscatella, and Craig A. Williams.

On a performance level the movie is a bit varied. Jason Lee provides that deep, insightful narrative voice over that has worked so well on “My Name is Earl,” only without the Southern twang (and, frankly, for a more insightful character). Patrick Warburton gives a typical Warbutonish performance as evil sidekick Cad. Most of the digitally enhanced animal performances are pretty good, although for some reason Polly Pureheart’s dog-talk movements felt very wrong compared to others. Only Peter Dinklage truly rises above with a performance that begins very subdued and builds like a volcano. Regardless of the situation, Dinklage sells his character, making it clear that he took this just as serious as any of his other roles. On the flip side, just the appearance of James Belushi makes it hard to believe he’s supposed to have been this well decorated cop. He looks older and very, very tired (the bags under his eyes could have gotten separate billing they are so dominant). Alex Neuberger is a fairly new performer and that inexperience shows, although it’s easy to write that off to his youth.

For real Underdog fans this movie is chock-full of goodies. From the massive collateral damage created by Underdog, especially with his inability to land, to his rhyming couplets and his signature phrase (“There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!”) there are lots of things to look for. Even the original source of Underdog’s powers, the secret energy pill, is there in a fashion. None of it is done in a demeaning manner or played tongue-in-cheek like so many other adaptations. It’s just there for you to catch if you are familiar with the franchise, and the way they are played left me grinning. If you aren’t as much a fan, there are still some fun allusions to other origin stories like Spider-Man and Superman, and even a totally clever nod to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.

As is sadly becoming standard for family movies, there are a few minor issues common to the genre. There are probably more references to dogs eating crap than there really need to be, and the climax of the movie comes to a screeching halt so the family can have a tender moment that solves all of their problems. As a super hero movie, however, this picture is actually a lot better than I expected and surpasses some of the more mundane origin stories out there. As a movie, Underdog is as unlikely, and as surprisingly successful, as the hero himself.

Transformers

Rating: 8/10

Release Date: 17 August 2007

Length: 140 min

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Tyrese Gibson, Anthony Anderson, Rachel Taylor

Directed by :Michael Bay

Summary :

There are two ways to review this movie. The right way is to look at it objectively, examining how the film is put together and picking apart the script by pointing out the gaping logical gaps present in it. I’ll be reviewing the film the wrong way, as a man who was once a little boy crying because Optimus Prime was dead. Now whatever is left of that kid inside me has had a wakeup call. The movie he’s been waiting twenty years to see is finally here; Optimus Prime is back from the grave and he needs my help.

Transformers director Michael Bay has done the impossible. He’s created a wholly modern, action extravaganza while staying completely true to all the things that have ever been good about the Transformers. Alright maybe Optimus Prime didn’t need to have flames painted on him, but that’s such a minor detail in a movie with characters that are quite literally so big. Otherwise, Transformers is so much like the 80s cartoon many of us loved that it nearly forgets to be cinematic and becomes almost silly. Transformers is astoundingly goofy, but it knows it’s goofy and simply doesn’t care, which is why Bay’s film is so much giant freakin robot fun. There’s no attempt to be serious. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t try to be as real as it can be, after all the goal here is to take giant transforming robots and put them believably in our world. It attempts to seem real, but never at the expense of the essence of what the Transformers have always been. Because of that, Transformers isn’t just dorky, it’s gloriously dorky. The film absolutely revels in how completely looney this premise is, and is all the better for it.

Transformers wastes no time getting right to the incredible robot action we’re all hungering for, and rushes directly from the credits to eye-popping, rampant robot destruction. What really holds the film together though is that even when it’s knee deep in save the world, all out, brawling in the streets, giant freakin robot war, at the core of everything is the simple story of a boy and his first car. For a man, there are few things more powerful than the relationship he has with his first automobile, and it’s no different for Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf).

Once Bay wisely satiates our lust for effects sequences, he gets right to the heart of his story by taking us along with Sam and his dad as they go car shopping. Sam has worked and saved to afford a car, and is disappointed to discover that he can’t afford any better than a clunker. However, his clunker is no ordinary POS, it’s more than meets the eye. Sam’s relationship with his car, the Autobot Bumblebee is what connects this movie to the audience. The film takes the same formula that has worked so well in other car movies, and applies it to Sam and Bumbelee. In many ways, Bumblebee ends up being a lot like Herbie the Love Bug crossed with shades of Steven Spielberg’s E.T.. Sam develops a strong attachment to his beat up little Camaro, long before he discovers it’s more than four tires and a radio. When he does, because of an old war injury Bumblebee can only speak using beeps and by changing radio stations. That too works wonderfully, only deepening their relationship as Bumblebee stands up to protect Sam and the two struggle to communicate with one another. Sam’s relationship with his car is brilliantly written, even better directed, and it’s the super glue that holds this gigantic summer blockbuster tightly together when things go mad in a flurry of one-liners and special effects.

Because this is a Michael Bay film, Transformers mixes in the parallel storylines of other characters embroiled in Earth’s sudden alien robot problem. The film cuts between stories, one minute we’re following Sam as his car gets him caught up in a battle that’s way over his head, the next it’s a group of government geeks trying to decode a strange alien signal, the next a group of soldiers under attack from an unknown and evil, alien force of mechanical beings with the ability to disguise themselves as everyday items. Eventually everything collides together and the film’s three separate factions join up with the Autobots, an alien robot force for good, to kick some Decepticon butt. Still, the film is smart enough to ensure thatl Sam’s story remains at the center and heart of the film no matter how big it gets.

Just because this is a movie about a boy and his car doesn’t mean it skimps on robot action. In that way, the film plays out almost exactly like the old cartoon series. Sam, for all intents and purposes is just like the humans in the cartoon, a guy who befriends a group of alien beings known as Autobots and helps them fight the good fight against their enemies the Decepticons. One the film gets going there’s barely a frame that doesn’t have some sort of Transformer in it. That might seem like a given, but so many movies of this ilk end up going cheap on the big effects pieces, either to save on budget or in some misguided attempt to heighten the reality of what’s happening. Transformers says screw that and gives you Optimus Prime and his friends hanging out, talking, and fighting the good fight to defend mankind. Occasionally fight sequences suffer but Transformers knows you’re here to see robots thrash the hell out of each other and never shies away from laying that on thick. Bay shows his robots in perfect hero poses with blinding sunlight streaming over their shoulders and Optimus talks about loyalty, duty, and freedom like he’s just stepped off an Autobot recruiting poster. In another movie it would be ridiculous, in Transformers it’s the sort of thing you’ll feel welling up in the pit of your stomach.

If there’s any problem with the film, it’s that at 140 minutes it runs slightly long. I’m not proposing that they should have cut back on robots, but some of the movie’s more irrelevant moments involving characters other than Sam could have been truncated without much negative impact. That’s not to say they aren’t entertaining, when the movie’s not wowing you with spectacle it’s pretty good at being flat out funny. At 140 minutes though, Bay could have dropped a few things. Jon Voight has far too many lines, Anthony Anderson seems to serve no real purpose, and though John Turturro is hilarious as the head of a secret government organization, it wouldn’t have hurt the film to have less of him.

Minor length issues aside, Transformers is a truly great summer blockbuster. As an action movie it’s a huge success; with awe-inspiring effects, tremendous set pieces, a sexy style, and jaw-dropping things which you have absolutely never seen before in any other movie. As a nostalgia trip for the kids who were sitting next to me in 1986 the last time these characters were in theaters, it’s an even bigger hit. Like many old school Transformers fans I was incredibly skeptical about what Bay was doing. Much of the early information leaked out about the film just didn’t seem right. We were wrong to doubt. For you adults and the kid inside who was there back in the 80s cheering Prime on, this movie is like a rallying cry to your inner child. You’ll want to leap through the screen to stand at Optimus Prime’s side to fight the good fight against Megatron. For your kids, to whom the Transformers are now entirely new, this will be without a doubt the greatest movie they have ever seen. Don’t let them miss it.

Hot Rod

Rating: 6.3/10

Release Date: 3 August 2007 (USA)

Length: 88 min

Starring: Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Jorma Taccone, Bill Hader, with Sissy Spacek and Ian McShane

Directed by :Akiva Schaffer

Summary :

Hot Rod stars the best thing modern ‘Saturday Night Live’ has going in Any Samberg, in another one of those awful Lorne Michaels produced scripts. Though it’s not directly based on any specific ‘SNL’ sketch, Hot Rod is more in the vein of The Ladies Man or Night at the Roxbury than Mean Girls, the last time Michaels did anything good.

Samberg stars as Rod, a wannabe stuntman and I suspect, Napoleon Dynamite’s older brother. Like Napoleon Dynamite, the movie is more about laughing at Rod than laughing with him, and there’s plenty to make fun of him for, even if it’s not necessarily funny. Rod’s a pretty pathetic figure, a loser who lives at home with his parents and doesn’t seem to realize he’s an adult. The guy has nothing going for him, and walks through life in a perpetual fog, failing at stunts and crashing in to things. Rod has only two dreams: The first is to become a world famous stuntman. The second is to kick his step-father’s ass. Unfortunately, his second dream is put in jeopardy when he discovers his step-father will die unless someone raises $50,000 for a heart transplant his insurance won’t cover. Rather than calling Michael Moore, Rod decides to jump over 15 buses to raise the money necessary to save his step-dad, so he can beat him to death.

Unfortunately even though the idea of a guy trying to save his father’s life so he can punch him in the face is kind of a funny, Hot Rod doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. The movie resorts to ripping off gags and jokes from other people and doesn’t seem to be able to come up with anything on its own. Rod’s failed stunts are a direct descendent of the stuff Super Dave Osborne was doing on his TV show twenty years ago, and they haven’t gotten funnier with age. The movie rips off dialogue jokes from other sources, for instance there’s a bit in which Samberg riffs with one of his friends on words that start with “wh” which I watched done on ‘Family Guy’ rerun the night before. There’s no way they came up with that on their own. It’s literally just copied from Seth MacFarlane’s show and pasted into the movie. They don’t even try to put their own spin on it.

There are a few laughs in the film, but even those are usually weird homage’s to 80s music videos or bizarre, random rehashes of techniques used in Samberg’s SNL Digital Shorts. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that they didn’t try to work a “Dick in a Box” remix in. Actually, scratch that. That might have helped. That song’s just funny, no matter how many times you hear it.

The supporting cast is even more lost than Samberg. Isla Fisher, who was brilliant earlier this year in The Lookout, doesn’t even seem to know that she’s in a movie. It’s never clear why her character is hanging around with a loser like Rod, and she seems just as confused on that subject as we are. Fisher mostly stands around and gives Samberg blank stares, as if she’s forgotten all of her lines and is hoping that if she’s really still no one will notice.

As a comedy, Hot Rod is a big waste of time. Most of the problem is Pam Bady’s script, which sucks and Samberg, who really doesn’t belong in this script even if it was any good. Though there’s not much to work with here, director Akiva Schaffer does a great job shooting the film and uses his camera to find occasional comedy using some great visual cues, even when there probably is nothing to laugh at. Despite his best efforts, there’s really nothing he or anyone else could have done to make Hot Rod good, except to light the whole thing on fire and put it in a paper shredder.

Bratz

Rating: 4/10

Length: 110 min

Release Date: 3 August 2007 (USA)

Genre :Musical/Animation/Fantasy

Summary :

This is not a review for the 8 to 14 year old girls Lionsgate is hoping will be in the audience for Bratz: The Movie. This is a review for the 30 to 50 year old parents, debating whether or not to let their kids see it or worse, trying to decide whether or not they should accompany them. Don’t. To teenage girls Bratz will probably be the greatest thing they’ve ever seen, but then so would any movie which uses abbreviations like OMG and BFF with spastic frequency. For everyone else, Bratz is like being raped by MySpace.

The movie begins pounding away by taking the term “morning person” to an entirely new, dizzying level. Four perfectly cute girls of perfectly diverse (but not too dark!) ethnicities wake up in their respective bedrooms, leap out of bed, and begin dancing in their PJs. Who needs coffee when you’re young, super cool, and have closets full of expensive clothes! After a quick video conference while they decide on outfits, the girls meet up for their first day of high school looking even more super cool than they did in the last scene! Unfortunately, all is not well at their new high school. The place is run by an uber-nasty mean girl who has divided the cafeteria up into cliques. Unable to escape established school hierarchy the girls are separated. Flash two years later and they are no longer friends, but chance circumstances bring them back together so they can be super cool again and show everyone else how awesome and super cool it is to be like them and wear totally awesome outfits and spend all your time obsessing over fashion and stuff.

Bratz is basically a cross-pollinated knockoff of Mean Girls and Clueless, except without any of the stuff that made those movies good. For starters, it just doesn’t go anywhere. The movie has no real purpose other than to follow four girls around on various shopping excursions and watch them wax poetic about how important your friends are. It’s like pop culture-porn, a script written primarily to shove on screen whatever it is that a bunch of marketing nerds think is hot with teenage girls. Oh the film makes some half-hearted attempt to say something about being yourself, but when it says it, the words come out more like: “If you’re super cool and super good looking then you should totally be yourself because everyone will like you and it will be awesome and oh yeah your friends are so more important than anything in the whole world and don’t forget to buy lots of hot clothes and use You Tube!” As life lessons go, I can’t imagine anything more meaningless.

The script is bad enough all by itself, but they’ve actually managed to cast a group of young actresses who make it even worse. The four leads are played by unknowns, and I submit that they may have been unknown for a reason. Not one of them can act. Their performances are about on par with that of your average 6-year-old kid in a milk commercial, except most of them are nearly 20 and theoretically smart enough to understand that acting is more than just a session of “lets pretend”. Special note must be made of Jon Voight who shows up as the world’s richest high school principle. Teachers may make a lousy salary, but apparently that principle gig buys at least one mansion. Dear Mr. Voight, wearing a prosthetic nose is no substitute for acting. It’s just a fake nose. It doesn’t make your performance better. Stop it.

Bratz is an awful movie, but it’s probably not a harmful one. I mean it’s not going to make your daughters run out and start selling themselves for sex the way buying slutty dolls the movie is based on will. At worst Bratz: The Movie may make your daughters dumber or teach them that if they aren’t super good looking they have no hope of ever being popular. The first will probably happen anyway if they watch MTV, and the second, well it’s probably true. It’s a shallow world we live in and Bratz: The Movie does its best to make it even more shallower than ever!