Movie Night: Central Intelligence

Tagline: Saving the world takes a little Hart and a big Johnson

IMBD Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1489889/

Rating: PG-13

Synopsis: Calvin Joyner was voted Most Likely To Succeed, but twenty years later, he’s an accountant in a mundane job. Worried about how people will perceive him at his upcoming high school reunion, he connects with an old classmate Robbie Weirdicht who goes by the name Bob Stone now. Calvin agrees to meet him and is surprised by how much Robbie/
Bob has changed. They become friends but Bob has a dangerous secret; he’s in trouble with the CIA and Calvin is torn between doing right by his new friend, or doing what’s right for the CIA.

~~~~~~~~~~

Review: I love Dwayne Johnson movies. He and Vin Diesel are my guilty pleasures.

Central Intelligence is a nice bit of foolery with some truly funny moments. It’s one of those movies that probably won’t be remembered for anything special – except maybe the ending at the school dance. It was more entertaining than I thought it would be, which was a surprise in itself. I kept waiting for Mr. Johnson’s character to become ‘ungoofy’, but I guess that is the way the character is meant to be.
Over all, a nice flick for a Saturday afternoon.

4 out of 5.

Scifi Sunday; To remake, or not to remake.

Hollywood has found a new cashcow; remaking old movies. There’s been a surge of remakes over the last couple of decades and the majority of them have been old scifi movies. Some movies like THE INVASION and I AM LEGEND, are on their third or fourth remake, with all of them having A List actors pushing the box office numbers and hoping for a big payoff.

Or so someone in Hollywood hopes. Check out the stats below. These are the numbers for the scifi remakes since 1997.

1. War of the Worlds (2005): $591.8 million gross vs. $195 million combined budget
2. I Am Legend (2007): $585.4m gross vs. $200m budget
3. Planet of the Apes (2001): $362.2m gross vs. $150m budget
4. Godzilla (1998): $379m gross vs. $190m budget
4. Vanilla Sky (2001): $203.4m gross vs. $102m budget
6. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008): $230.8m gross vs. $125m budget
7. The Time Machine (2002): $123.7m gross vs. $118m budget
8. Total Recall (2012) (projected): $120m gross vs. $175m budget
9. Solaris (2002): $30m gross vs. $70m budget
10. The Thing (2011): $28.1m gross vs. $65m budget
11. The Invasion (2007): $40.2m gross vs. $95m budget
12. Rollerball (2002): $25.9m gross vs. $100m budget

Now I’ve seen seven of these, with War of the Worlds and Total Recall at the top of my *like* list. I haven’t seen 4, 6, or 9; 10 and 11 I consider horror, and I wasn’t thrilled with the original #12.

Here’s another list of scifi remakes since 1977.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=scifiremake.htm

Like I said I really liked War of the Worlds and even though it was a modern take on the story, I felt it stay true to the original. Same with Total Recall. I’ve seen three remakes of I Am Legend, and didn’t really care for any of them. Same for Planet of the Apes, and The Time Machine. I was REALLY disappointed with Godzilla, and have yet to see the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

In the last few years I’ve seen very few original scifi anything (movie or television) that really grabbed me, and considering the numbers, is it any wonder Hollywood is turning to oldies? BATTLE LOS ANGELES was good, SKYLINE could have been better and BATTLESHIP….I’m not too sure yet.

What about you? What remakes have you seen? Did you like them? If not, what didn’t you like?

The video below is a song called Forever Autumn from the musical War of the Worlds. It’s a beautiful and haunting song.

Sci-fi Sunday; Where has all the Sci-fi gone?

I’ve been a scifi fan all my life (as have many fans) and I’ve seen over the years how movie and television have accepted it. Or have they? Movies, definitely. Apart from books, movies are the next popular medium for scifi, but television has yet to fully grasp or understand it. I hear some of you saying “What about Star Trek series? Or Battlestar Galactica (remake), or one of the other scifi shows? Okay, yes, to some extent, but when was the last time you saw a new scifi series that was picked up after the initial first thirteen episodes? They are few and far between, my friend.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed this either. Check out this list:

http://allgeek2me.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/10-science-fiction-shows-with-under-80-episodes/

I watched a lot of these shows and it was heartbreaking to see them cancelled. This article I found answers a lot of those nagging questions as to why.

http://www.scifiheaven.net/2012/03/why-the-decline/

Now with more people streaming shows online I have a feeling we will see fewer and fewer scifi shows on television. Right now, if I want to see a good science fiction show, I have to watch SPACE, but even then, they just replay the golden oldies. I have yet to see any of the cancelled shows on this station. Maybe we should start a petition.

What do you think? What were the scifi shows you liked to watch?