PREDATORS SCRIPT OVERVIEW

Finally, something from Fox I am for now, getting behind. Lation Review got a chance to look at Robert Rodriguez's script for Predators which is set to be released next summer. They did not give away any spoilers, but did give a pretty good description of what the film will be like.

The movie starts with a police officer chasing down and ultimately killing the criminal he is chasing while a predator watches from a rooftop. The predator then kidnaps the cop taking him to the predator's home planet. He is then dropped off into the jungle, where he meets seven other humans who have all been kidnapped by the predator. What's cool is that they all are from different ethnic backgrounds and all have different high powered weaponry.

From here they are hunted by different predators including a super predator who is orchestrating the entire hunt. At some point they meet up with another human on the planet who has been able to hide from the super predator for several years. The script is not only being said to be great, but also supposed to be a hard "R" with a lot of blood and violence similar to the original. Remember, this is coming from a movie site who hated the Alien vs. Predator films, so if they are saying its awesome, I'm trusting them. Also, today Danny Trejo may have given away that he is set to star as the mexican drug cartel hitman character.

And here is the best part......there is a cameo written in for.......you guessed it, SCHWARZENEGGER!!!!!!!!! Yes, Scwarzenegger has a cameo written in for him if his schedule will allow him to do so. Hopefully he can help the survivors "GET TO DA CHOPPER!!!!!!".

MOVIE REVIEW: PANDORUM

I think the sci-fi/horror genre is one that needs a major boost. We only get a good one once every few years. My problem with the genre is not only is there not enough of them, but most the time they have cool parts or ideas, but the movie as a whole falls short. I wouldn't say Pandorum falls short, but it certainly could have been better.

In the year 2174, the Earth's resources are close to being depleted. The spaceship Elysium is sent to colonize the planet Tanis.

When Corporal Bower (BEN FOSTER) and then an hour later Lieutenant Payton (DENNIS QUAID) awaken from their hyper-sleep, many years have passed and they seem to be the only two people left on the ship. They go on to find the ship's power reactor is in flux and not getting any better. They are stuck in the hyper chamber and cannot get through the door to reach the ships bridge without restarting the reactor.

Payton has Bower climb up through a vent shaft to see if he can find his way back to the other side of the door so that they can get out and figure out what's happened. But Bower discovers something that only worsens their situation, some sort of humanoid mutant hunters that are extraordinarily fast and strong and have apparently been feeding on other humans on board.

He discovers there are other survivors, genetics team member Nadia and agriculture worker Manh who've managed to avoid the hunters, much like the crazed Leland who's gone to extreme measures to keep himself fed.

Back in the hyper chamber, Lt. Payton discovers another survivor, Gallo, in the vents. Once he is helped out, Payton realizes that Gallo is suffering from Pandorum, which is a severe psychological condition brought on by being in deep space for an extended period of time. Pandorum causes sever paranoia and vivid hallucinations. As Bower makes his way toward the reactor, and Payton deals with his new company, everyone's sanity comes into question...

Parts of this movie were absolutely awesome. I loved the beginning and I loved the ending, but the middle seemed a little over the top in parts. I liked the idea and the explanation of the humanoids, but I think they really missed on how they made them appear on screen. Pandorum was on the right track eighty percent of the movie, but jumped off the tracks a few times. Three and a half out of five.

FALL TELEVISION REVIEWS PART 1

With summer movie season over, this means crappier movies. This also means great or hopefully great television. So I'm going to go over what I have seen so far and share my thoughts on the new shows and old.



FLASHFORWARD (ABC)
I'll start off with my most anticipated show of the year. With Lost coming to a end this year, I was wondering what would or could take its place. The premiere for this had a lot of similarities with the Lost pilot episode, without coping it.

It takes place in Los Angeles after the entire world blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. While blacked out everyone sees a glimpse of their future six months into the future. Once everyone comes back to consciousness the entire city is in shambles and F.B.I. agent Benford begins trying to make sense of what happened and why. Normally there is always one person out of a cast that I can't stand or under performs, but I have to say that the cast for this show seems to be very good. The ending was awesome and is sure to bring audiences back next week. David S. Goyer who is behind the past two Batman films is a writer for this and I really believe this is going to turn out to be a great show. I give it a five out of five.



MODERN FAMILY (ABC)
Ed O'Neil stars in this comedy about the Pritchett's and their different individual family lives. Ed O'Neil is the father of the family with a much younger Latino wife and her son. His daughter Claire is the mother of her household and is married to the "cool" dad. His son Michell is gay and him and his husband have just adopted a baby girl.

This show had a very funny pilot and has a lot of potential to be a great comedy, if the writers can keep up. The show is shot in documentary style like the office. My complaint on the show is the "cool" dad, played by Ty Burrell. I felt he over did his scenes and his character felt a little forced. My surprise of the show was how funny Cameron, Mitchell's husband was. This show will be great like I said as long as the writers can keep up good storylines for it. I give it a four out of five.



NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS)
I have never watched the original NCIS, but I thought Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J, while great actors, could pull this show off. The previews looked pretty good and I knew that NCIS was well liked. The show is about another branch of Navy Crime Investigators who help solve murders, kidnappings, and prevents terrorist attacks.

The writing for this was terrible. It had the stupid "cool guy" dialogue between LL and O'Donnell that I hate watching. It seemed like a show that had been done time and time again and had no originality. The other cast members were all as bad. I think this show will have high ratings at first, but drop off quick. I give it a two out of five.



COUGAR TOWN (ABC)
This comedy from Bill Lawrence, the creator of Scrubs, is about a recently divorced forty year old mother, played by Courtney Cox, who is forced to get back out into the dating world. I like Courtney Cox, but I wasn't expecting much from this show. However, it really surprised me in how funny it was. I has the quirky comedy that Scrubs had to it, but in another way. Things I liked about the show were the supporting actors, especially the neighbor Grayson, who is a mid aged, recently divorced man himself and her son Travis. I did not like her younger best friend Laurie. She was very annoying and not a very good actress. If the writers can keep up and not make every episode about a middle aged woman trying to have sex with younger guys this too will be a good comedy. I give it a four out of five.



FRINGE (FOX)
I want so bad for this show to be good, and it almost is. It has the concept of The X-Files except the cast is not as strong as The X-Files. I gave up on it last season and picked it back up this year and I really think it's the cast. Joshua Jackson should never be the lead in a sci-fi series and the show's lead Anna Torv has never had any acting credits prior to Fringe. Unfortunately, I don't think this show will ever be on the level of The X-Files or Lost, but I might keep watching with hope. I give this a three out of five.



EASTWICK (ABC)
I hadn't planned on watching this, but it came on after Cougar Town so I just decided to watch the first five minutes to see how bad it was going to be. Well it turned out to not be half bad so I watched the whole thing. It's loosely based off the Jack Nicholson film "Witches of Eastwick", and follows the lives of three different women who develop special abilities when a mysterious billionaire moves into town. It is a lot like Desperate Housewives, but with magic. I myself use to watch Hosewives until it just became ridiculous much like Grey's Anatomy became. The cast has a lot of below the radar star besides Rebeca Romijn, but they do a fine job. The show isn't sensational, but it has a good mystery at least to get me back next week. I give it a three and a half out of five.




COMMUNITY (NBC)
I'm a big Joel McHale fan and I was bummed to hear the IT Crowd he was set to star in got scrapped, but was glad him and NBC came together for this show. Joel McHale stars as Jeff Winger, a lawyer who loses his license after he is caught in not having his degree from the U.S. and is forced to go back to community college.

The pilot was funny and I really enjoyed it and the ensemble cast which includes Chevy Chase. However, after watching the second episode I got the feeling that the show might not be able to go anywhere. Now I'm no writer, but it seems like it might be hard to keep a story about a guy going back to community college who is after a girl and starts a study group going for multiple seasons and it staying good. I want this show to do well, but it is on my watch list and I may be judging to quickly since there has only been two episodes. Right now it gets a three out of five.



GLEE (FOX)
Ahh Glee. What can I say about this show? I love it. Yes, I love Glee and I'm not afraid to admit it. If you really break the show down, it's kind of a dark comedy. On one hand you have a show about a high school show choir club. On the other hand you have a high school dramedy dealing with real "high school issues". The cast is great and the musical numbers are hilarious. I do hate one storyline dealing with the glee club directors wife faking a pregnancy. I don't like her or the story line and for that and that reason alone it gets a four and a half out of five.



THE OFFICE (NBC)
The Office seems to be better than last years horrible season. I still love the show, and I still think they should take Michael down a notch but I still love it and am looking forward to seeing where they take it this season. Last year it was like a two and half out of five, as of right now I'll give it a four out of five.



HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (CBS)
I like this show, but I'm ready to see it come to an end. You can only stretch it so far and if they go past this season it will be like beating a dead horse. Some shows just aren't meant to last forever and that's ok. It's certainly better than "jumping the shark". I like the premiere and the series itself is at a three and a half out of five.

More shows premiere next week and if I haven't died from sitting on the couch watching so much TV, I'll review the other fifteen shows that I have interest in.

HEADLINES

FINCHER'S FACEBOOK BEGINS CASTING
Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg have all signed on to star in David Fincher's Facebook movie. Timberlake will play Napster creator and Facebook president Sean Parker. Jesse Eisenberg will play Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield will play Eduardo Saverin who was friends with the two, but once Facebook took off had a falling out with them. This sounds a lot like the Pirates of Silicon Valley film which was the story of Bill Gates. This is an odd choice of movie for Fincher, especially with the cast he has, but if anyone can make a Facebook movie work, I'm sure he can.




THOR ADDS TWO
Jaimie Alexander and Colm Feore have joined the cast of Thor. Neither have very big backgrounds, Alexander's being Kyle XY and Feore most recently playing the First Man in the last season of 24. Alexander will play Sif, an Asgardian warrior and Feore will play a villain who is unnamed at the moment. I am really looking forward to seeing how this looks. I don't know much about Thor and his storylines, so hopefully this will turn out to be as good as Iron Man and will make the anticipation for the Avengers movie go up even more.



ADAM MCAY'S NEW FILM COMES TOGETHER
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson and Steve Coogan have joined the list of big names for Mcay's new film The Other Guys. Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton and Damon Wayans Jr. are also starring. I'm getting tired of Ferrell and his repetitive movies, but with a diverse cast like this and with Mcay directing it has the potential to be one of Ferrell's better films.



PEOPLE REMAKING THEIR OWN REMAKES NOW?
David Cronenberg was behind the remake of The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum which was better than the original. I figured this movie would get remade like everything else in Hollywood but I didn't expect for Cronenberg to remake his own remake. Rumor has it that Cronenberg has great interest in doing an up to date version for Fox. I'm down with this only if Goldblum has a role in it. And if its not done by Fox.



HE-MAN LANDS AT SONY
Last month the rights to He-Man left Warner Bros. and now has found a home with Sony. If they could do a He-Man movie and make it with a Lord of the Rings type fill to it, this movie could be awesome. I loved the cartoons and toys when I was a kid and even the 80's movie pretty fun when I was a kid but I haven't seen it since then so who knows.



GHOST RIDER 2 MOVING FORWARD......UNFORTUNATELY
Yes, unfortunately Nicholas Cage is returning as Ghost Rider. A bit of good news is David S. Goyer, who is behind Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is rumored to be writting it. This movie does not need to happen. The character is so so but his villains are stupid. Throw him in as a cameo somewhere in another movie but please, leave these movies alone.



GEOFFREY RUSH BACK AS BARBOSSA
Rush has signed to come back as Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Hopefully Depp won't bail out due to Disney's Chairman Dick Cook being asked to step down. The two became very close over the three film course and Cook hiimself was the one who convinced Deep to take the role as Sparrow. I think taking the franchise in a new direction will be a great idea because the plots and storyline became way to complicated for what were supposed to be fun, action films.

HORRIBLE 20TH CENTURY FOX FILMS

Well the past few days have been really slow as far as movie news goes. I was on a website today, and it was bashing all of FOX's ideas for upcoming projects and that got me excited, so I thought I would make up a list of horrible FOX movies.

Date Movie
Grandma's Boy
Epic Movie
In the Mix
Meet the Spartans
The Ringer
Disaster Movie
Trust the Man
Miss March
Elektra
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Daredevil
The Rocker
Taxi
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Flight of the Phoneix
John Tucker Must Die
The Order
Garfield
Big Momma's House 2
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties
Babylon A.D.
Phat Girlz
Mirrors
Aquamarine
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
I Love You Beth Cooper
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Happening
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde
Street Kings
The Marine
Shutter
Jennifer's Body
Jumper
Aliens In the Attic
Alien vs. Predator
Post Grad
Alien vs. Predator Requiem
Meet Dave
Just My Luck
Into the Blue
The Pink Panther
Fever Pitch
The Pink Panther 2
Deck the Halls

All of these have been released in the past five years. If you go back and look past five years ago, the movies are not nearly as bad. Someone at FOX should be killed. I'm just simply trying to make a point and please feel free to add to the list.

MOVIE REVIEW: JENNIFER'S BODY

I did not know that FOX made this film going into it. As soon as the film started and the big 20th Century Fox logo came up I knew it was going to be rough. So what is worse than a movie made by FOX??? A movie made by FOX starring Megan Fox.

Jennifer's Body centers around the two characters Jennifer and Needy. Jennifer of course is the slutty girl who all the guys want, and Needy is the nerdy best friend. The two go to a local bar to see a band play, and after a fire breaks out the band leader, played by the O.C.'s Adam Brody, gets Jennifer to leave with them. The band does a spell that will make them rich and famous that is supposed to performed on a virgin, of course Jennifer is far from that. Since the spell was tainted, it turns Jennifer into a demon possesed killer.

There are so many bad things with this film, I'm not sure where I want to begin. Let's start with Megan Fox. We all know Transformers is bad, she herself said that that was not a movie that she had to act in and she hit the nail on the head because she certainly did not. So I was thinking maybe she would be better in a movie where she was the star. I was wrong. Megan Fox is one of the worst actresses I have seen in a long, long time. I would rather watch these B and C list actors they get for horror movies instead of her. The lead actress in Final Destination 4 had better acting than Fox.

Next we have the writting. Diablo Cody wrote this film and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Juno. Apparently she got very, very, lucky because the writting for this film was horrible. It was almost like she was trying to get some catch phrases going like Mean Girls did when it came out. Cody completly missed the whole high school dialouge in this one. I have never rolled my eyes more during a movie than I did listening to these characters speak.

Finally the story itself. I mean ok, there is a demon possesed girl killing guys, thats fine. But she only kills four people and only two of them are cool. There was a lot of wasted scenes in the film. Then once the ending comes it is so anticlimatic. It's just BAM, done. No cool, special ending, not that I was expecting there to be one.

There was one really cool part to the film that they set up like it was going to end up being a big part of the story, but then they did nothing with. The town they live in is called Devil's Kettle named after a waterfall in the town. They spent a whole scene talking about the waterfall and how it just circles down into this hole and no one knows where the water goes. It shows scientists dropping a box full of red rubber balls in and them going down, but that is it. I comes up one more time in the movie but has no real significance. I thought that part was very interesting and it turns out to be a real waterfall that scientists really have done experiments with.

Overall this movie was horrible and I give it a 0 out of 5. Fox does it again.

HEADLINES

X-MEN:FIRST CLASS TO BEGIN IN 2010
Tim Pocock who played the young Cyclops in Wolverine said on his Twitter account that X-Men: First Class would begin filming in 2010. This is sad news. Instead of making another X-Men movie, we are going to get a teenage love story drama with a bunch of young teenagers who can't act, and a crappy story. How hard is it for FOX to do something good? Do all the executives of the company wake up every morning and say "Hmmm.....I wonder what kind of shit film we could make today?". I think they do. Halle Berry has said she would return, we know Hugh Jackman would. I'm pretty sure that Famke Jennsen and James Marsden would return as well as Patrick Stewart since he had a cameo in Wolverine. Plus Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Aron Stanford and Kelsey Grammer have all signed on for more sequels. So there you go, at worst Famke Jennsen and James Marsden wouldn't return, but stupid Brett Ratner killed them off stupidly in third anyway. There are so many unexplored story lines that can be done. The Age of Apocalypse, The Sinister, Onslaught. What Marvel needs to do is take that four BILLION dollars they got for selling to Disney and go to FOX and buy back the rights to X-Men.

One more thing and then I'll be done. X-Men: First Class consisted of these characters; Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast, Professor X, and Angel who later becomes Archangel. So if in the original trilogy Iceman and Angel are just teenagers, how are they going to work around that? How they are going to work around that is, they are going to put in new characters to fill their spots and mess up the whole storyline of the comics. This is not a hard thing to get right FOX.



LEBRON JAMES HEADED TO THE BIG SCREEN
Lebron James will be playing himself in the upcoming comedy, Fantasy Basketball Camp. The movie is about five guys from different backgrounds who go to Vegas to attend James's adult basketball camp. This sounds just like a storyline from the show My Wife and Kids. Hopefully the film will also have a cameo by my main man and Lebron's new partner, Shaq. We all know he can act.

HEADLINES

THE RING 3D
There is news that a new Ring film could be in the works and with all the success the 3D horror films are having, it is looked at being done in 3D. I loved the first one. It was original, it was scary, and most importantly it was good. Then they said that they would not make a sequel because they didn't want to ruin what they had done. That lasted for two years until finally as I figured they made a sequel which was one of the worst sequels I have ever seen. If they do a third one, they need to shell out the money and have Gore Verbinski return to direct and start a new story without Naomi Watts.





MORGAN WANTS TO BE LOBO
I'm not sure why Warner Bros. is looking at doing Lobo before oh I don't know Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash or Aquman, but Lobo is a pretty cool character so I'm looking forward to it. When I heard about it, I thought Jeffrey Dean Morgan would be perfect. Apparently he does as well, because he has expressed interest in playing the character. I think he could pull it off.



INDIANA JONES 5 MOVING FORWARD
Harrison Ford has stated that him, Spielberg and Lucas have all agreed on what the next Indy story is going to be. Ford said that if the script is good, he would be glad to put the suit on again. Spielberg also said that Shia's character Mutt has only cracked the story, which means were stuck with more of him. Here is my question. Why in the world did it take so long to make a fourth film? Ford will be seventy years old in three years and I feel that we could have had many more great Indy films if they hadn't waited so long to do it. George Lucas sucks and will ruin the fifth if they let him have too much control over it.



BERG DIRECTING BATTLESHIP
Peter Berg will be directing Battleship, based of the board game. I think Berg is a promising director, but what can really be done with a movie about a five ship fleet stuck in a big battle that is family friendly? Even the premise sounds stupid.



SILENT HILL 2 MOVING FORWARD
As a huge fan of the Silent Hill games, the movie was one of my most anticipated films I was looking forward to. Once I got in the theatre, I quickly realized that it was going to be a big disappointment. The movie performed well and talk of a sequel quickly came and then the film just disappeared. Now Roger Avary who wrote the first film is coming back to not only write but also direct. I don't understand why video game movies don't stick with the game's story. If Silent Hill had just done the story of the first game instead of borrowing themes from the three that had been done at the time, it would have been so much better. I really liked the characters of Silent Hill, but the story was just horrible. The first movie really could have been great.

MOVIE REVIEW: SORORITY ROW

No intelligent person is ever going to leave a horror film saying "Ah, that was the best movie ever". Horror/slasher films are what they are, cash cows that bring in a huge audience to see the same movie they have seen a thousand times but with a different cast. There is however a difference between a fun horror flick like the Scream movies and a god awful movie like The Final Destination. Sorority Row falls in the middle of the two. I enjoyed the film in parts, but at the same time it was the same crap I've seen a thousand times. I mean after three of the girls are killed because they decided to run off by themself, you would think they would get a clue to stick together.

Sorority Row is yet another 80's remake about a group of sorority sisters who decide to play a prank on one of their boyfriends who cheated on them. The prank goes horribly wrong when the boyfriend thinks she really is dead and impales her with a tire iron. The sisters and boyfriend decide just to ditch the body and move on with their lives. Months later on graduation night a killer starts picking off anyone who knows about the secret one by one.

The movie has no set up, it jumps straight into the plot. The dialogue is completely unbelievable, although I have no doubt that some stuck up sorority girls talk that way. That was one of my problems with the film was that the whole "sorority" take was forced and overdone. I really don't think that is how they act and talk,I may be wrong. My other problem with the film was that the deaths were kind of repetitive. I mean how many times can you stick a tire iron.

Overall, it wasn't a horrible movie. It was definitely tolerable and fun in parts. I give it a 3 out of 5.

HEADLINES

FOX REBOOTING FANTASTIC FOUR
So now it is to the point where we are already rebooting movies that aren't five years old yet. Wow. I didn't hate the first two films, but they were definitely less than par. I think Tim Story was the main blame for that, well that and the fact FOX did them. I am for this however even if it does have FOX's name attached to it. I never liked the cast for either of these films. I hope they keep the Silver Surfer and bring in Galactus cause he was always my favorite villain.

ROB ZOMBIE REMAKING THE BLOB
I'm not apposed to the idea of a remake to this even though its already been done a few times, but who thought it would be a good idea to let Rob Zombie take a stab at it? Here is his quote regarding the film, "My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing -- that's the first thing I want to change,". "I intend to make it scary, and the great thing is I have the freedom once again to take it in any crazy direction I want to." So let me get this straight Zombie, you are going to remake The Blob, but yet you are going to NOT have the blob in it? Your an idiot.

GREEN HORNET PUSHED BACK 5 MONTHS
To give the film more post production time The Green Hornet has been pushed back to December 2010. I don't care about this movie, because the character was always boring to me and I just don't know how Seth Rogen is going to pull off a super hero. Plus Nicolas Cage is involved which is never good. If I see some stuff that I like from this, then I will apologize and admit my mistake, but as for now I could care less about this film.

SWAMP THING COMING IN 3D
Now here is a character I loved as a child, and then forgot all about. I hope they do this right though, because this could be a really great film if they don't just go out and get some nobody director. Someone with an imagination like Guiermo Del Toro needs to be doing this.