Tag: movie

an idea to improve the A-Team movie

If you haven’t heard, there’s a new A-Team movie coming out soon.  In a way, that’s exciting, because the original TV series in the 1980’s was great.  It had many memorable characters, most notably Mr. T playing B.A. Baracus.  (Do you remember what B.A. stood for?   Bad Attitude.)   B.A. was like MacGyver in that he could take anything and find a use for it, except he usually made weapons.  And he could beat people up.

Before I get to my point, let’s have a flashback.  Here’s a video of the intro to the TV series.

The new movie doesn’t feature any of the original actors, which often doesn’t bode well when they’re so well-defined and liked.  Some of them are just about impossible to replace, like Mr. T.  If someone tries to act like him, it’ll be obvious that the new guy is an impostor.   I just don’t see how anyone could recreate the part without being generic.   A possible solution to this dilemma is to drastically change the main characters.  Normally this sucks, and long-time fans will gripe incessantly about how the franchise was ruined.  This has been attempted in many movies, typically with disastrous results.  But there is a method that hasn’t been tried yet, which might could actually work:

The main characters in the new A-Team movie could be midgets!

That way, it’s not pretending to be authentic, so there’s no comparisons to the ’80s TV series.  And think of the potential of having midgets play those characters…  🙂

How long was Bill Murray stuck in Groundhog Day?

Groundhog Day
"Don't drive angry."

If you’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day, perhaps you’ve wondered at some point how long Bill Murray’s character Phil Connors actually stayed there.  I came across a website that is about geeking out (or nerding up) pop culture.  And they tried to figure out how long Phil Connors actually spent living the same day in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day.

If this will hinder your future viewings of the movie, then don’t continue reading.  If you do keep reading, don’t blame me!

Here’s the link: How long does Bill Murray spend in Groundhog Day?

On the DVD, there’s an estimate of 10 years.   According to that website’s calculations, he was there at least 3,176 Groundhog Days, or 8.7 years, or 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days.  The director actually replied to that blog (in a round-about way), and said it would be at least that long, at a minimum, but probably longer.

Of course, this is open for debate, and, in the end, pointless.  So I won’t keep rambling on about it.

P.S., there is no refund available for the time you wasted on this.  🙂

Impact – Will the Moon destroy the Earth?

Last Sunday night I happened to catch a few minutes of a made-for-TV movie on ABC called “Impact“.   It was about a meteor shower that hid “a rogue asteroid” which hit the Moon and pushed it closer to Earth.  This new elliptical orbit caused all kinds of problems, and it looked neat to see the Moon up close to the Earth.

The tagline of the movie is: “Get ready to experience the dark side of the moon!”  Obviously that can be taken as a pun, but perhaps the movie also means to portray the Moon as evil.  The plot twist is that the Moon is going to crash into the Earth in 39 days, and unless man can stop it, all life on the planet will be destroyed.

I didn’t see a lot of the movie, but even what I saw had some difficult-to-believe moments (and I like science fiction movies).  The main problem I had with it was that people and objects (as heavy as trains) would sometimes float into the air.   They could’ve explained that as the Moon’s gravity competing with the Earth’s, but they said it was due to some electromagnetic effect resulting from the meteors / asteroids.   I’m not sure how electromagnetism makes people float away, but that’s what happens in the movie.

There were also numerous cliché-type moments in the movie, which can get old.   But what kept my interest was when the scientists / astronomers said the Moon was going to crash into the Earth.  What will they do about that?  The obvious answer is to blow it up.   Once the plot thickened to this consistency, I started watching more.   Unfortunately, it was “to be continued”, and will finish this next Sunday at 8pm CST.  I figure they won’t blow it up, but it is an interesting idea.

The idea of blowing up the Moon is not my idea — I remember seeing an online petition to blow up the Moon.   (I wonder who started that, and why.)  But I have explained on numerous occasions that the Moon is broken, and something needs to be done to fix it.  (Follow that link for a full explanation, and there are several trackbacks in the comments leading to further discussion on this subject.)

FYI, there are two links at the IMDb page for watching the movie, but I haven’t tried using them.

Superman and Spiderwoman have joined forces

I found another crazy awesome-because-it’s-so-bad video.   This video clip is from an Indian movie featuring Superman and Spiderman.  (Yes, they have joined forces, for whatever reason.)  Although, you will quickly notice that Spiderman is a woman.  So I reckon that makes her Spiderwoman.  That’s kinda weird.  And they appear to be romantically-inclined.

In this video, they’re flying together, then apart (and since when could Spiderman, er, Spiderwoman, fly?), and then they do some bad dancing together.  But keep watching, because they spot some criminals who need a superhero-style beatdown.  You will laugh at that part.  The special effects we’re used to in America apparently don’t translate well.  And then after the criminals’ nefarious plans are thwarted, Superman and Spiderwoman dance some more.  This dancing will probably make you laugh, too (unless you vomit — don’t take it too seriously, okay?).

By now, you’ve probably realized this isn’t a direct port from an American Superman film.  He’s never appeared with Spiderman nor his long-lost sister.  And he doesn’t dance (thankfully!).  So yes, this is a generic-brand Superman.  And it shows…

BTW, if the music gets annoying during the dance scenes, just mute it.  I think it’s even funnier when muted.  But listen to the music during the fight scene — it’s amusing.

It was also funny when they were flying around and saw a group of people dancing, so they decided to bust a move in the sky, then join the people on the ground to get their dance on.

I also noticed that Superman doesn’t look very muscular.  I reckon that didn’t translate too well, either…

I wonder if the movie labels here in America have sued anyone over these types of films.  Because at first glance, it looks to be a rip-off of copyrighted superheroes.  Although, when you look closer, you see that they didn’t copy very much at all…

If there’s one thing I learned from this video, it’s that when I start releasing movies, I’m going to release them overseas, because obviously the bar is set much lower in other parts of the world…