The Inbetweeners 2 – Movie Review

The Inbetweeners 2 – Movie Review
Stars: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas
IMDB Rating: 7.1
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Plot: Neil, Will and Simon receive an invite from Jay to join him in Australia whilst on his gap year, who promises them it’s ”the sex capital of the world”. With their lives now rather dull compared to their hedonistic school days and legendary lads holiday, it’s an offer they can’t refuse. Once again, they put growing up temporarily on-hold, and embark on a backpacking holiday of a lifetime in an awful car, inspired by Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’. Will soon finds himself battling with the lads to do something cultural, whilst they focus their attention on drinking, girls, and annoying fellow travelers.

My Tagline: The eternal quest of teenage boys… To get laid.

My Review: The films starts with Will, Simon & Neil stuck at home in jolly ol’ England, while Jay is living it up in Australia as a DJ “DJ Big Penis”, and scoring with a different Aussie girl every night (Or so he proclaims to his mates).

So what are three hapless guys to do when their best mate has all the “sheilas” and all the fun? Go Downunder of course! When they find their mate, however, they discover that he is not the DJ he boasted to be, but working in the nightclub toilet.

Will happens to meet an old flame, and the lads are dragged off the Byron Bay with Will’s only focus to hook up with his lost flame, Katie, who is a very free-spirited young woman indeed 🙂

There were quite a lot of Aussie stereotyping in this film that was absolutely hilarious (the randy Aussie girls did remind me of my own escapades in my younger years 🙂 )

The Inbetweeners 2 certainly had it moments of laughter, and some scenes that were outright disgusting. Apart from the waterpark scene (which wasn’t necessary), I did get a few laughs from this, and would recommend to anyone who wants to veg out and be entertained by a troupe of loveless saps for 90 minutes.

Verdict: Surf, Tons of Sun, and… Aussie Girls 🙂
My Rating: 7 out of 10.

The Congress – Movie Review

The Congress
Stars: Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Jon Hamm, Danny Huston, Paul Giamatti
IMDB Rating: 6.7
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Plot: An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn’t consider.

Review: For the most part, this film was hard to follow. On one hand you have an aging actress (Robin Wright playing herself) who has made quite a number of bad choices in life, and now in her 40’s, she finds that she has very little options left, especially in acting. While she may have the talent and experience, the ones who “rule the movie industry” want fresh, youthful actresses.

With little choices she has, she is given one option. Sign away her image to a film studio for them to “avatar” her likeness to be in any film they want her to be in. The catch? She herself needs to vanish from existence (so to speak). Acting is her passion, so giving up her image to be in films she otherwise would abhor, Robin makes the decision to give up the life of her alter-ego and live a somewhat normal life.

That is until 20 years later. We see her arrive at the entrance of Miramount studios (in the middle of the desert, mind you), where she takes a hallucinogen drug, and thus starts her 20-odd year journey as an animated character of herself.

The film had some interesting concepts, but the whole “reality meets cartoon land” has been done many times before “Cool World”, “Roger Rabbit”).

There were a few things which didn’t line up in this movie (such as when the film starts, she is 40-something, then 20 years pass before she returns to the studio. She spends another 20 years living as a cartoon character, then she decides to get it on with the avatar version of a guy who has been obsessed with her for 20 years (animated granny porn). When she decides to rejoin the real world, she looks no older than a woman in her 60’s.)

The film was interesting to a point. It wont win any awards, and as weird as I found the “this drug will make you trip out for a few decades” (that is one strong drug), the film itself did present a concept that may not be as far fetched as one may think. With technology advancing so rapidly, how long will it be until human actors are replaced with CGI perfect likenesses of themselves?

Think about that for a moment or two, while I drift off and imagine that I am a cartoon character living in Homer’s version of The Land of Chocolate 🙂

Verdict: Trippy!
My Rating: 6.8

 

 

 

The Road To Damari

The Road To Damari
by Marc Douglas

 

Available September 1st in paperback and Ebook from Amazon and all good book retailers (Order by ISBN at your local bookstore)
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9925982-0-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9925982-1-1

Pre-order now

Meet My Character: Alex Manning from The Chosen Series

Welcome to the Meet My Character blog tour! Emmy Z. Madrigal invited me to this blog tour, and she is an amazing author. Go check her out here: SweetDreamsNovel.com

Alex Manning

Is he/she fictional or a historic person? Fictional

When and where is the story set? This story is set in the very not to distant future

What should we know about him/her? For those who has read previous books in The Chosen series, you will know that Alex has a very hard time dealing with anything that he cannot control (Yes, he’s a bit of a control freak). He hates conflict. He hates what lays in the darkness. He despises that he was “chosen” to put an end to the oncoming Apocalypse. He would rather spend his Saturday afternoon watching the football and have a few beers with his mates, or hitting the clubs and picking up girls.

What is the main conflict? Alex has been Chosen to make a stand and stop an oncoming Apocalypse before it starts. At the start of the series, he is an ordinary bloke, with a 9 to 5 job, and a real shitty life. A real underdog. Before he really knows what is going on, he in thrust into a world of one supernatural incidents after another and soon discovers that he is the “one” pre-destined to save humanity. From that point on, he must face demons, fight imaginations, and loose his life in order to regain it. What really messes him up is, not only is he fighting demonic forces that make the Antichrist look like a Sunday School picnic, but is his own fold he has people who set out to betray him. There are 2 main characters in Alex’s life. Karen, who decides to hook up with Alex for her own best interests, and ends up staying with him for years, and Jamiesonn.. A supernatural being who has a personal vendetta against everyone.

There are other characters along the way in the main three books (Rise Of The Darkness, Bloodline Of Darknesss and Prophecy’s End), such as the fallen angel Tanzac (Who was one of the angels cast out of paradise at the beginning of time). Tanzac is a supernatural being who has the notion that if he can destroy the Chosen One, maybe.. just maybe, he can unleash Hell on Earth and make humanity suffer an eternity of torment.

So not only does Alex have Jamiesonn to content with, but also Tanzac and his horde of demons.

What is the personal goal of the character? His personal goal – or hope – is that this is just a bad dream and someday he will wake up. Failing that, then he hopes that one day the Apocalypse will be stopped and he can get back to a somewhat normal life.

Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it? Prophecy’s End is the title. Snippets here and there are released on my blog from time to time.

When can we expect the book to be published? The first three books are available now in Print and Ebook. I would hope that this final chapter in Alex’s life will be released in 2015. Then again, it is a matter of when I can get my own thinking in line and get my focus back on finishing this story 🙂

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Maleficent (2014) – Movie Review

Maleficent (2014)
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley
IMDB Rating: 7.4
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Plot: A vengeful fairy is driven to curse an infant princess, only to discover that the child may be the one person who can restore peace to their troubled land.

Tagline: Don’t believe the fairytale
My Tagline: You got that right!

Review: Maleficent. A name that stirs dread and fear. The self-proclaimed Mistress Of All Evil. In the 1959 original version, the stage is set with Maleficent placing a curse on Aurora so that before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. This curse is weakened by Merryweather, who reduces it to an eternal sleep and the curse can be broken by the first kiss from her true love (Prince Phillip).

That is about as far as to the original story this film was. In this adaptation, Maleficent is downgraded to a fairy who was scorned by her own “true love” (King Stefan), who betrayed her twice (Once when he is a teenager, the second when he’s an adult and he gets her drunk then cuts off her wings).

Maleficent is woman scorned. Fueled by jealousy and bitterness, she sets out to destroy King Stefan by doing the only thing she can…. Sealing herself off from the outside world with a wall of thorns, then later decides to rock up at the Christening of King Stefan’s daughter, Aurora. Hmmmm.

In the original tale, Maleficent could not find the young princess. In this version.. If you guessed what I am going to say, then you score extra brownie points… Yep, Maleficent manages to find Aurora in under 5 minutes flat, and then, for the next 16 years, she “watches” over her, to the point of becoming her motherly-figure. (how sweet)

Maleficent, in her own way, discovers that she has a shred of humanity, and regrets the curse she placed on the girl, and try as she may, she cannot lift the curse (but hang on, if she put the curse on to begin with, shouldn’t she be able to remove it just as easily?).

True Love’s Kiss scene. (SPOILERS). The young Prince Phillip kisses Aurora, and voila!….. Nothing happens…. (oops!) Maybe he wasn’t Aurora’s first love after all! (Going by how they briefly meet in an earlier scene, I’m not surprised).

The film, for the grand fee of close to $200 Million, was good to the point of the special effects. But the storyline was very different than the original version. I can understand the fact that movies sometimes need to be remade to fit the “new idealisms” of the modern thinking, and to be P.C., but when you take a timeless villain and downgrade her so that she’s nothing more than a spiteful individual, then that’s when you loose the plot.

The acting by Jolie, Fanning and Copley were good, but not spectacular, and I did expect more from this.

Just a few spoilers.

Does she teleport? No
Does she transform into a dragon? Sadly not.
Is she Evil? Yeah… right….

If you like the Disney classics, then  go watch the original, then you can compare that to this version.

Verdict: Oh Maleficent. Your maternal instincts just shine and make you “mother of the millennium”!
My Rating: 6.5 out of 10 (Mostly for the SPX, and the characters borrowed from LOTR and Labyrinth (David Bowie version))

Flight (2012) – Movie Review

Flight (2012)
Stars: Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood
IMDB Rating: 7.3
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Plot: An airline pilot saves almost all his passengers on his malfunctioning airliner which eventually crashed, but an investigation into the accident reveals something troubling.

Review: On a routine flight from Orlando to Atlanta, something goes wrong with the plane and it begins to fly erratically. With little choice, the pilot (Whip Whitaker – played by Denzel Washington) must crash land in order to save the passengers onboard.

When he comes to in the hospital, he soon finds out that all but 6 of the crew and passengers survived the crash, thanks to his daring flight maneuvers. However, rather being heralded as the hero he was, his life comes under scrutiny, as it is revealed that Whip has a drug and alcohol dependency.

A strong film with a great cast, that focuses on just how much destruction drugs and alcohol can have on a person, and just when you think that Whip gets his act together, he again falls by the way-side and drinks to the point of being unbearable to everyone around him. The only hope that he has, of walking away from the investigation, is to clean himself up and remain sober.

“Flight” is a powerful, dark film that is is about a man who has fallen into his own darkness and how salvation comes in the most unexpected form.

Denzel Washington is, without a doubt, in my Top 5 List of best actors of the modern era, and in this film he shows that once again his performance is powerful and moving.

Verdict: Flying is still the safest way to travel 🙂
My Rating: 9 out of 10

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