Thor, The Dark World

Want to know what a movie would look like if you crossed Star Wars with Lord of the Rings?

Go see the new movie from Marvel, Thor, The Dark World.  This movie brings a lot to the big screen.

Chris Hemsworth once again dons the red cape and swings the mighty MJOLNIR .  Competent performances from Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, and Rene Russo.  The biggest thrill came from Tom Hiddleston once again portraying Thor's half brother LOKI.  He steals scene after scene and I loved it.  The big baddie is played by Christopher Eccleston he is ok but his part is muddied by some unclear motives.  Just understand that he wants to destroy everything including the 9 known universes.  Never clear where he plans to live after destroying everything either.

There are some good jokes tossed around and the special effects are nice.  I saw this movie in 3 D but found that sloppy.  See the movie in  IMAX and 2D if possible.

Lots of Asguardians die in this.  For such a great race they are suspectable to the sword.  Stay through the credits there are 2 extra scenes, one right after the start of credits and one at the very end of credits.

Review; HER CRY, LA LLORONA INVESTIGATIONS

The first movie from  the production company Dark Lightning Films is called HER CRY, LA LLORONA INVESTIGATIONS.  Not only the first movie of DLF but also of the Director, Damir Catic and Executive Producer, Ron Gelner.  With these new comers to the business and a cast of untested actors they banded together and created a gripping and scary movie.  The tale is based on the Mexican Folklore tale of La Llorona, other Hollywood tales with this similar story line have been "The Woman in Black" starring Daniel Radcliff and the recent "MAMA".
The movie revolves around 17 hours of found footage from a reality television show called, "Paranormal Investigations".  A Father of a missing teen contacts the creators of the reality show.   He thinks one of their past episodes deals with his daughters disappearance and wants them to reopen their investigation of the crying woman.  The show decides to help him.  They are never heard from again and the police turn up the tapes.
Catic is an able director, keeping his cast of new talent in the moment and the action moving.  The filming is good also.  You are told you are watching already shot unedited video so mistakes and goofs are expected.
The only flaws I had trouble with was the lighting which at times I found distracting.  There are amply scare scenes and even I jumped a couple of times getting caught up in the action and suspense of the film.
Gelner and Catic made HER CRY on a barebone budget.  Money for equipment and production cost came first.  None of the crew or cast were paid.
Hollywood should give Dark Lightning Films $750,000 to film and cast the remake.  Catic will give them a winner with enough tools and cash at his disposal.  He did well with very little and his star is on the horizon.

Despicable Me 2 Blimp Fun Facts

Before you take the kids out to see the new release of Despicable Me 2 in July of 2013, check out and even print this fun fact poster about the Despicable Me 2 Blimp.

http://www.despicablimp.com/funfacts/


Mark

You can also check out SalsaTV and The SET's visit to the Despictable Me 2 blimp here....

http://www.setmovieclub.com/2013/04/despicablimp.html

R.I.P.D. Trailer

This movie will have everything I love working for it, guns, undead, Beau Bridges, hot girls.

Check out the trailer here  www.ripd.com  The trailer is AWESOME!!!!

Follow SalsaTV on Facebook and salsatv_mark on Twitter so you might win free screening passes when they are released.

HER CRY - Rough Cut

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a private preview screening of a hot new Director from Central Europe.  I was able to see the final rough cut version of his March 2013 release. 
The movie is  titled HER CRY and it is from DARK LIGHTNING FILMS.
The movie is about found video from a defunct television show called Paranormal Legends.  The videos show the actions of three paranormal investigators while checking out a lead on the Spanish legend of LA LLORONA.
The movie has a couple of slow spots but the version I saw was 1 hour and 50 minutes long.  It passed quickly, always a good sign.  The producers of Cloud Atlas could learn from this guy.
I will not say much more because there are more scenes to work on.  I will tell you this the ending was good and there are a couple of extra scenes after credits that fill in some blanks and leave open sequel possibilities.

Trailer is here..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q0vjNjZ-O8&feature=plcp

CLOUD ATLAS

Leaving the theater scratching my head I was told this movie reminded one of the story of a man showing a card trick to a chicken.  The chicken knows that it has seen a card trick but it can not explain any of it.  David Mitchell's novel of the same name, Cloud Atlas refers to a "sextet with overlapping soloists," a musical composition of fetching beauty whose sheet music contains notes that convey the movement of clouds soaring, gliding, tumbling across skies. Now an epic film,(by time length standards) by Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski, Cloud Atlas is embraced from a series of plot strands: Its ideas are paralleled, its themes twinned, into what may be described as 164-minutes of visually stunningnesseeminglyness.  Yes that is word I came up with, and as I expected, it soared as often as it thuded.

The film is opened by an old tribesman, Zachry (Tom Hanks), who sits by a fire and speaks of "all the voices tied up into one," turning his face to reveal a scar whose origins we'll understand, like the birthmarks and familiar traumas that unite characters across each of the film's six stories, as an inheritance. Each story engages with unique social conditions from our human history and foreseeable future, though all are connected by the idea that the lives of its characters, citizens of places as far-flung as late-19th-century San Francisco and a primitive, post-apocalyptic Hawaii, aren't their own.
 Cloud Atlas is a series of six stories intertwinned to tell one story.  The major actors have roles in all six stories Hanks does a marvellous job as expected as does Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon and Hugo Weaving fill out their duplicate roles well.
I found an overstated theme of THE STRONG EAT,THE WEAK MEAT a bit too much as the film addresses its obsession with humanity's struggle to suppress the cannibal within.
Throughout Cloud Atlas, a star here becomes a supporting player there, a means of superficially drawing links between the film's six stories.  But sometimes the faces and voices that carry between the film's intertwined stories are haunting, as when Doona Bae, playing a clone hungry for self-actualization in the Wachowskis' perfectly chilly, often dazzling "An Orison of Sonmi~451," meets her doom and crops up, in "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing," as the notary's wife, looking toward enlightenment with eyes that have literally seen the future.

Cloud Atlas is a film that could of been shorter and that might have helped.   I feel like a chicken.

ARGO

I have the reputation of not liking a lot of movies.   I quite disagree with this or I would not do what I do.  I love movies and what they can represent of our culture.  Maybe that is what terrifies me the most.
ARGO is a great movie.  It will not be a classic in the sense of GONE WITH THE WIND or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.  It is well crafted and well acted and that makes it good.
The story is well know for anyone over 40 years old and those under if they stayed awake in history class know of the Iranian hostage crisis.  This is a mostly true story of the escape of 6 United States embassy workers from Iran.

The movie opens giving details of the 1979 Iranian Revolution for the uninitiated, where Tehran’s U.S. embassy is besieged in retaliation for the country’s support of a deposed Shah. Six employees evading capture and holing up at a Canadian ambassador’s residence, American intelligence in Washington, DC enlist CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) to help plot a cover that would explain their presence in Tehran.
Mendez eventually devises the ingeniously demented deception; to have the six pose as members of a film crew, with Mendez purporting to fly out there to scout a location, and return with them in tow. Aiding him in his prep are Academy Award-winning make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman), and film producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), who will help establish the apparent legitimacy of their production – an epic Star Wars knock-off called Argo – with the Iranian government.

The movie passes the history as I remember it test.  The Hollywood parts would seem to have no part of a drama happening on the other side of the planet, but it does.  Arkin plays himself well as he plays his character.  I say this as one who has met the man and know what a pompous actor he can be.  Bryan Cranston plays Mendezs' boss in Washington, DC and is marvelous.
Two things I know about this movie that is not seen is that while they all escape safely, it was not like on the big screen.  The plane they were leaving in had electrical problems and sat on the tarmac for 2 hours while it was investigated and repaired.  I can imagine the thoughts going through their heads during that time.  The other is that this movie ARGO was actually taken form a script called SCIENCE FICTION LAND.
Tony Mendez presented the government of Iran with a science fiction film called Argo, the materials he was presenting them with started out as a very real adaptation of a Roger Zelazny novel called “Lord of Light.” Adapted for the screen by Barry Ira Gellar, Lord of Light boasted names like Buckminster Fuller and Ray Bradbury on its staff as consultants, it was going to use design work by comic book legend Jack Kirby, it had an unheard-of-at-the-time budget of $50 million, and it was planned to eventually spawn a huge theme park complete with jet packed security guards and a holographic zoo.  It either died from fraud or government conspiracy, you research it and decide.  I just added it to fill out the history of the movie.
Rated R for profanity, violence, adult themes.