Reviews

With all my free time I have been catching up on some things. Movies, TY shows, Video Games, comic books. I’ll get more into what I have been watching/listening to/reading etc later. But for now, I am watching the movie Zombieland.

It’s a great movie. It’s got two of my favorite actors. Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network and Emma Stone from a number of movies of the last few years(The Help, Easy A, The Amazing Spiderman, Crazy, Stupid Love). The only other zombie movie I have seen is Shaun of the dead. That was a good movie but for some reason I seem to like Zombieland better. I really like the writing in Zombieland. It’s funny and the actors deliver some ‘Classic lines’ really well. Lines like “First time I let a girl into my life and she tries to eat me.” or when Little Rock says “Who is Bill Murray” to which Tallahassee replies “Now, I’ve never hit a kid…”.

One of my favorite moments is when they crash Bill Murray’s house for shelter next to the moment when the man shows up in the movie and they recreate the “Don’t cross the streams” line of Ghostbusters. I also like the scene where Jesse Eisenberg says “Best thing about Zombieland, no Facebook status updates…Seriously. Who cares”. I like those actor…whatever you call it moments.

So with about 20 minutes left on the movie, I like it. It’s a fun movie with some great actors and some great lines.

‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ Directed by Joe Johnston. The movie starts off in present day, with a team of men discovering Captain America’s shield in the Arctic.

70 years earlier, we are introduced to Johann Schmidt(Hugo Weaving), later introduced as The Red Skull, head of HYDRA. He and his men invade a castle and steal a powerful artefact in the form of a mystical cube.

We are then taken to Steve Rogers, played by a very well done 90lb Chris Evans. He is trying out for the armed forces for the 5th time, and again getting rejected due to his weak physical state. Eventually, under the recommendation from Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), he gets into the forces. There, under Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and badass officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), he is chosen to be the first in the “Super-Soldier” experiment.

Throughout the film we are shown ways The Red Skull uses the power of the Cosmic Cube to make powerful weapons and eventually take over the world with his large team, HYDRA. We also see a buff and powerful Captain America become a renown icon for America and how he tries to take down The Red Skull and his team.

The movie is incredible. The actors do a great job. While for the first part of the movie I was distracted abit by both the normal Chris Evans voice on the body he had, I felt like the voice could have been more…weak to fit the character. But that’s just me. Also thinking “Hey, The Human Torch is Captain America!” Surely I wasn’t the only one thinking that. It was great seeing Tommy Lee Jones again even though he looks somewhat different since I saw him in a movie last. He made a great Colonel and where they tried to use humour around most of the characters, he is one of them where the humour moments worked great.

I loved Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark. His moments were also enjoyable and he was also someone the humour moments worked for. Haley Atwell does a great job as the tough officer, doing well at being the love interest while needing to hide it to be all official.

The action scenes were incredible. From the montage of action in the middle of the film to the explosive battles with HYDRA, the action scenes will always leave you satisfied and entertained there. Especially watching the captain wield the shield the way he does, it is always enjoyable.

Now I don’t usually notice movie soundtracks. I have been lately though and I really enjoyed the music work done for this film, done by Alan Silvestri, who I enjoyed the work of on the ‘Back to the Future’ movies, among others.
The movie is great fun, entertaining and satisfying as an action packed superhero movie. Probably one of my favourite superhero movies released recently. I recommend anyone see it, especially if you are excited for ‘The Avengers’.

Now if you wait til after the credits, you will see a scene of Steve Rogers training at a gym and getting offered a position on The Avengers by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). You then see a teaser for ‘The Avengers’ with some scenes of the characters that will be in the upcoming movie and then depicting the team(Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton and Bruce Banner) in a debriefing with the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, upon then being given a teaser logo that says “The Avengers, May 2012”.

The teaser is really that. A massive teaser for a big movie event I am almost too keen for. It was very enjoyable to watch and has me excited. Cannot wait for what Joss Whedon has for us next year.
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Click here to read what the director of ‘Captain America’, Joe Johnston(Well known for his work ‘The Rocketeer’) had to say about making Chris Evans a 90lb weakling for the movie.

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What did you think of the movie?

“If you could be on any TV show what would it be?”.

There is a few answers I could give to this question but most likely at the moment it would be the show ‘Community’, among others.

Community is a sitcom about a study group set in a community college named Greendale. The study group includes Jeff Winger(Joel McHale, Host of ‘The Soup’), Britta Perry(Gillian Jacobs), Abed Nadir(Danny Pudi, who has had minor roles on TV shows such as ‘Greek’, ‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘The West Wing’), Annie Edison(Alison Brie, ‘Mad Men’), Shirley Bennett(Yvette Nicole Brown, who as I grew up, I enjoyed the performance of on TV show ‘Drake and Josh’) and Pierce Hawthorne(Chevy Chase, ‘Caddyshack, ‘Spies Like Us’ and most recently ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’).

The first season is full of various antics about the group with some romance and intrigue sprinkled through, all the while studying for Spanish class. I loved the first season. From the ‘Breakfast Club’ references in the pilot(done more in the episode ‘Communication Studies’, I note this because I am a great fan of that movie) to the awesome paintball episode at the end. I even found myself relating to a few of the characters, but mainly Abed, with his crazy love for movies and film.

The second season was just as good as the first, quite possibly better. It started off with us getting a dose of Betty White guest staring as Professor June Bauer, their new Anthropology 101 teacher(who eventually went crazy so was only on for one episode). After which, Professor Ian Duncan, a Psychology professor played by John Oliver of ‘The Daily Show’, starts to “Teach” the students with sleep and youtube videos.

All the while, Dean Pelton(Jim Rash) with his…interesting costumes and crazy events and school dances creates his own fun around the school and ex-teacher Ben Chang(Ken Jeong, ‘The Hangover’, ‘Transformers 3’) tries to get into the study group even though they all have a distinct dislike for him for various reasons, mainly because of what a bad teacher he was in Spanish class.

This season had many different pushes of the creative boundries making it more fun to watch and with some interest. The Christmas episode was done in all stop-motion animation, both fun to watch and great from a creative standpoint. They also go to trying out different genres and spoofs such as a zombie episode, a Dungeons & Dragons episode and two paintball episodes(sending up both the Wild West genre and ‘Star Wars’) The difference between seasons 1 and 2 is less romantic sub-plots and the extra antics and fun-for-all.

Between all that, Pierce, who is usually a somewhat ‘bad’ guy, is the ‘villain’ of this season, shown best in episodes “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”. The idea behind Pierce being a ‘Villain’ is that the group had all this fun and did all these activities(such as a secret trampoline and a Dungeons & Dragons game which he crashes eventually as the ‘Villain’.

Now the one reason why I feel the ‘Villain Pierce’ is useless is because when the series starts off you get the feeling that Chang will be the villain, where in the first episode of the season he remarks he will get into the group with a maniacal laugh. Chang would have made a better villain mainly because he is what we are used to in that context. It almost felt as is the two characters swapped roles (while still maintaining their personalities) after about the first 5 episodes.

So now to the season finale two-part episode. The gang take part in a painball game(clearly not learning the lesson from last season’s one) and are pit against each other in order to win a great prize. The game is as fun and exciting as last season’s paintball game. There are spoofs, meta-humor and pop-culture references to make a great double episode finale. They re-visit the topic of the group excluding pierce where he eventually tries to beat the group and is the villain again.

In the end of the episode Pierce gives an interesting reveal about himself and explains why he has been acting the way he has ending with announcing he won’t be in the study group anymore.
Now this means one of 3 things: Chevy leaves the show(Hope to all heck he doesn’t), he stays and is a random villain character like Chang OR this is a mean old cliffhanger used to tease the audience and he eventually goes back. Either way, I can’t wait for the third season and what is in store for us at Greendale next year.