Cost of Living with Brandon Routh and Bret Harrison

A new short film has hit the internet in the past couple of days and this one is a little different.  A first time film from director BenDavid Grabinski, it has a couple of recognizable names in it and looks more polished than the usual amateur short.

The flick is very obviously inspired by James Cameron's Aliens and is about a couple of security guards who work for a corporation that deals in making monsters.  Their job is simple, when the monsters escape, hunt them down and stop them.  Silas and Jerry are played by Brandon Routh, who you may know as Superman from Superman Returns and Bret Harrison of the TV show Reaper.

It's about 10 minutes long and is an effective throwback to the action/horror movies of Cameron's heyday that relies on suspense and lighthearted character work.  It will probably disappoint monster movie fans looking to see some cool creatures, as these guys are left to our imagination.  The director does an effective job in using camera work, the reactions of our heroes and the female voice of the computer to build suspense.

It's a neat little way to spend a few minutes of your afternoon with some nice one liners with an almost Ghostbuster-esqu blending of blue collar work with the supernatural to ground the far fetched premise.  I enjoyed it, as I did Routh's play on the stereotypical gruff voiced hero who throws out his one-liners as if he doesn't care how they land.

Couple of Geek Notes for the film:  Not only is the doomed voice we hear over the transmitter basically quoting Bill Paxton from Aliens, it is played by Michael Rosenbaum who was the most multi layered of live action Lex Luthors in Smallville.  Kind of a worlds colliding thing with Routh being the big screen Man of Steel.  Worlds also collide in a smaller way with the voice of the computer being portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who starred with Routh in Scott Pilgrim as his ex-girlfriend.

You can watch the movie here: http://www.foindustries.com/

PS for those with sensitive ears, it is R rated.

UFO Found Underwater!

I think they've finally cracked it.  They've found proof of a spaceship and they found it underwater.

Peter Lindberg was out searching for a sunken ship looking for that greatest of treasure, rare bottles of Champaign.

Funded by The Continental

Taking sonar of the bottom of the Gulf of Bothnia, his team came across an image of something round.  Something... unworldly.  Something that looks like it might be more at home in the night sky than sitting on the bottom of the sea.  That's right, a lot of people are assuming that it is an actual UFO.  While I do agree that something is amiss here and something is not quite right about a big circular object on the sea floor, I would have to disagree that it is a UFO.  A UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. In fact, looking at the image, I can safely identify what kind of object we are dealing with.

Many Bothnians died to bring us this information.

That's right, it's the Millennium Falcon.  As everyone knows, the Millennium Falcon is definitely a spacecraft and also easily identified.  Every nerd and his mother knows that ship just by looking at the outline or hearing the sound of it's perpetually malfunctioning hyper drive ramping up to make the jump to light speed, so to call it an Unidentified Flying Object is a falsity.

I can only hope that both it's captain and it's co-pilot, Han Solo and Chewbacca, managed to evacuate to safety before the ship crash landed in the ocean.  Sadly, it looks as though it's hyperdrive finally malfunctioned one too many times.

Looks like George Lucas has some 'splaining to do.

Original Story Here

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol May Be The Best One Yet

Went to check out Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol last weekend. My first thought is that I really wish I could have caught it when it first came out in IMAX. Life being what it is, it's hard to get to the theater with any regularity nowadays, so I missed that opportunity, but at least I didn't miss the movie itself. It was definitely a thrill ride from start to finish.

After sitting through it, I didn't know how I would stack it up with the others in the franchise. What I think is cool about this particular movie series is the fact that you have different distinctive directors having a go at each one, so each movie feels different than the last. After seeing Mission: Impossible III, I really loved the fact that they made it a little more personal for Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt character. The stakes felt real and you felt like you had an emotional investment in what was going on. When I saw that one, I knew it was my favorite.

After a few years, I think I lean more towards the first one being my favorite again, just because I felt the twists and turns are handled better and the action sequences were more suspenseful. And after giving it a couple of days thought, I feel Ghost Protocol is up there with it. Like the previous installments before it, this one has a bit of a different feel to it.

The action sequences were top notch through and through. Not once do you feel disoriented from what's going on and in the vein of great action masters like Spielberg, Brad Bird builds each sequence like a roller coaster ride, with one thing leading logically to the next more daring moment of the stunt. Seriously, we're watching the birth of a master live action craftsman here (Yes, I realize Bird's been doing this awhile in animation with "The Iron Giant" and "The Incredibles"). This is the Mission: Impossible movie that finally gives us a sequence that is right up there with the CIA break-in in the original flick. Yes, I'm talking about the window climbing on the hotel in Dubai. Holy crap, that was breathtaking. And like all good action sequence, every scene ups the stakes from the previous scene. You know nothing really bad is probably going to happen to Hunt during the stunt, but it's staged in such a way to really notch the suspense factor up to 11. That's just the beginning of the Dubai sequence that ends with a pretty neat chase through a sandstorm featuring Tom Cruise doing that Tom Cruise run that only he can pull off.

Another thing this movie does a little differently is that it simplifies the main story. This is not a bad thing. Whereas the other movies weave a tangled web of intrigue and who-done-it, this one is fairly straightforward. Bad guy wants to start a nuclear war, Ethan Hunt and his team have to stop him. I would compare this movie to Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones and his friends are doing everything in their power to get the Ark and keep getting blindsided at every turn. This is not an easy mission for our heroes. Virtual nothing goes right or to plan. A lot of improvising is done and the joy of the movie is watching them have to struggle to overcome the hiccups that impede their progress. Yes, I said "Them." This movie is not about Ethan Hunt alone, even though he is the main focus. This is about the team having to come together, cut off from their government, and use each other's strengths to get the job done. Jeremy Renner is good as the analyst that is forced to join the team when things really go south, Simon Pegg brings his usual brand of humor as the tech guy turned field agent and Paula Patton is the agent who has something to prove after her last operation ended badly for her lover. Ethan Hunt is still in the midst of all the action, but this time we see him start to become more of a team leader than he has been before in a scene where everyone else is doing the heavy lifting and he has to direct as he flows through the room.

Another thing about this movie that I found interesting was despite all the intense action scenes and the heavy nature of the story, it probably has more humor than any of the other movies in the franchise. A lot of that has to do with Simon Pegg, but they also managed to incorporate a lot of humor into the action to break up the suspense a little bit. I enjoyed it and thought it worked well for the flick. Say what you want to about the craziness that is Tom Cruise, but the man knows how to work his Tom Cruise magic into a movie and make it an enjoyable ride, and he was finally able to do so again with this, probably one of the two best Mission: Impossible movies out there.