BuddyTV

I remember having a couple of those GI Joe toys as a kid.  Of course, I was a kid, and a slightly brutal kid, so either they had their legs ripped off—can’t remember, my apologies—or they’re still up there, in that cabinet in the bedroom I’ve been sleeping in for the past two decades or so, still wrapped up and unopened.  Or maybe I got that mixed up.  Maybe it was my uncle’s toys I was talking about.  He was a collector of sorts, after all.

Fast forward to 2009: I write for a living, I don’t play with toys—err, action figures—and there’s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  It’s Dennis Quaid and Channing Tatum fighting Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Sienna Miller, seeing that elite group of soldiers come out because of a need to stop that green smoke whatever that’s poised to destroy the Eiffel Tower, which is a shame because it’s been there longer than the creators intended to.   And maybe it’s because of the fifteen years in between my toys and this film, but I was not excited for it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince picks up right where Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix left off. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), devastated over the loss of his godfather Sirius Black, and Dumbledore (Micahel Gambon), who just had an epic battle with Voldemort within the Ministry of Magic, face the media. All the lies and coverups within the Ministry have vanished with one universal realization: the greatest dark wizard of all time has returned. That doleful and ominous idea drives the movie forth for the next hour and twenty minutes, leaving our beloved characters with nothing more than devastation and heartbreak at the movie's end.

Thus, one of the biggest conundrums I've seen in a while: How can the darkest book of the series become a PG movie? That question alone almost sent me running in the opposite direction of the theatre. Well, that, and the knowledge that the ending of the movie would be nothing like what Rowling had written. As a die-hard Potter fan, I was scared. I braced myself for utter disappointment as I walked into the theatre last night. I left feeling equal parts relief, joy, and embarrassment at how wrong my initial perceptions turned out to be.

I’ll admit it; I haven’t seen a single Terminator movie until now, and I sat down in the theater Monday night with only a basic knowledge of the Terminator lore: John Connor is prophesied to save the world from machines. Although I wasn’t a fangirl nerding out, I was excited to see this summer’s first guns-to-metal, dirty, muscled action movie. Sadly, I was severely disappointed.

The movie kicks off without any exposition or structure. A death row inmate named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) signs away the rights to his body for medical or technological experimentation. Skip forward to 2018 where John Connor (Christian Bale) and his team of men are trying to infiltrate a Skynet research facility that seems to be abandoned. If the jump seems random, that’s because it is. The entire movie continues moving from one action sequence to another, never relenting for a breath of plot or character development.

Cardinals from around the world have gathered at Vatican City to choose a new Pope, and a massive crowd has gathered outside the gates. Reporters from every news outlet in the world are standing by. But there's a bomb hidden somewhere inside the city which threatens to kill thousands. The Catholic leader declares that the event will not be postponed. Only Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) can uncover the clues, hidden in ancient texts and the marks branded into the chests of a serial killers' victims. Will the Vatican explode?

You can find out. Ron Howard's Angels & Demons opens across America on May 15.

The fantasy adventure film Percy Jackson is getting its list of Greek gods.  Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan have been tasked to play Medusa and Chiron, respectively.   Also on the list are Sean Bean, as Zeus; Kevin McKidd as Poseidon; and Melina Kanakaredes as Athena.

The film, which will be directed by Chris Columbus, centers on Poseidon’s half-human teen son (Logan Lerman) who goes across modern-day America to save his mother, return Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt and stop a war between the gods.  The film is set for a February 2010 release.

-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Variety
(Images courtesy of TheCinemaSource.com and Village Voice)

Orlando Bloom is setting up for a role in the ensemble drama Main Street, the last screenplay made by the recently diseased To Kill A Mockingbird writer Horton Foote.

The film, which will be directed by Tony winner John Doyle, centers on a group of people in a small North Carolina town whose lives are rattled when a stranger arrives.  Bloom will star as a policeman in the said town.

Also joining the cast are Andrew McCarthy, who appears as a business manager, and Amber Tamblyn, who’s in talks to play the lead role.   They join a cast that consists of Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson and Colin Firth.

-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
(Image courtesy of The CinemaSource.com)

Here’s one for clarification: Emily Blunt isn’t part of the Forgetting Sarah Marshall spin-off flick, Get Him to the Greek.  The actress’ representatives have explained that she is not involved in any way to the film, despite earlier statements from the new film’s star Russell Brand that she is.

Brand earlier said, through a radio station somewhere in Australia, that The Devil Wears Prada’s Blunt will appear alongside him as a pop musician who will get entangled in the adventures of Brand’s Aldous Snow.  Since then, those statements have gone around the Internet, until both the actress and Universal Studios, the folks behind the first film, denied the news.  Her publicist simply called it “untrue”.

-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: Entertainment Weekly, Moviehole
(Image courtesy of Entertainment Weekly)