Kago too?

Yesterday, I posted about Gackt acting in a Hollywood movie. Well, today it has come out that former-Morning Musume/Mini Moni/W girl, Ai Kago, will be acting in a Hong Kong movie. For those of you that forget, Aibon was at the center of a lot of scandals a few years ago. First it was underage smoking then it was dating a man a lot older than her then it was smoking again. It got her booted out of the Hello!Project world and she's been very quiet since. Earlier this month, she reappeared with a new, more mature look saying that she wanted to return to show business, specifically acting. I've always really liked Aibon so I'm very hopeful that she will do well in her new path in life.

Movie review: Hitman

My husband and I finally sat down to watch Hitman last night. While it is based on a video game, neither of us have played it. So we're familiar with the basic premise but not the actual storyline of the game. Basically, 47 is a hitman who, as a child, was trained to obey and assasinate. He doesn't know how to do anything else. In the movie, he is hired to kill the Russian president. After he successfully completes his mission, he is told that his shot missed and the president is still alive. As he tries to figure out what is going on, he is chased by the Russian police and two INTERPOL agents. He also finds out that someone has put a hit out on him so there are other Agents chasing him as well.

Overall, the movie wasn't all that bad. The storyline was fairly believable. I had two problems with the movie: his bald, tattooed head and the boring fight scenes. See, 47 is very bald and has a bar scan tattoo on the back of his head, as does every Agent. However, this makes him extremely noticeable in large crowds. Why doesn't he buy a wig or a hat or some cover-up makeup to hide it? You would think that whoever trained the Agents would train them in hiding themselves.

As for the fight scenes, they would have been good for a Bond movie or something along those lines. However, we're talking about hired killers who have been trained since childhood for this sort of thing. There should be a little more 'oomph' to their fights. The scene where the four Agents fight each other was OK but nothing spectacular.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. I expected it to be terrible but I actually found it somewhat compelling. I truly wanted to know what happened next. Of course, the ending left an opening for a sequel. Though I'm not sure this one was a big enough hit to warrant a second one. It would be nice to have a prequel though. Give us some more information on who trained the Agents and who it is that sends them out on their missions. Background information is a good thing. Seriously.

Movie review: Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3D

Yesterday, I took my daughter to the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert movie. For those of you that don't follow the Hannah Montana news, this tour is the biggest ticket of the year. Some sites are claiming it is bigger than The Police reunion tour. Tickets are selling out within seconds and scalpers are taking in a cool $500+ from parents who weren't able to buy them from legitimate sources. So Disney decided that they would film a couple of the live concerts and release it for one week in February as a 3D theatrical movie. Tickets for the movie? $15 a piece. Overall, the movie was not bad. None of the songs offend my ears and, actually, some of the songs are really quite good. People just write them off because they come from a Disney channel show.

The movie started off with some backstage scenes. It was basically a "how the tour got started" type of mini-documentary. Then the concert started with Hannah Montana (which would be Miley Cyrus in a blonde wig) singing a couple of songs. There was a lot of dancing and running around. It was obvious she was having fun on stage. In between the songs, there was more of the behind-the-scenes stuff with Miley talking about some of the mistakes on tour (in one song, she's carried by four male dancers...in one show, they dropped her) or working on dance moves. It was nice to see what goes on backstage but I felt it really detracted from the concert. People go to see Hannah/Miley sing, not to see how long it takes her (and her assistants) to do a costume change. It takes away the magical feel of a concert.

After Hannah sang, she brought out the Jonas Brothers to sing "Party With Us" before she left to change into Miley. While she was changing, the Jonas Brothers sang two songs. Unfortunately, they picked the two worst Jonas Brothers songs to put in the movie. It was also a little difficult to understand what they were singing because the instrumentals were turned up too high. Luckily, the boys told us the name of each song before they sang it. I don't know that the audience would have been able to identify it otherwise.

Finally, Miley came out to sing. In my opinion, the Miley songs are much better than the Hannah songs. Even the dancing was livelier. Again, there were problems with the vocals being too low to be understood. You would have thought that the sound guy would have picked up on this by now. More backstage documentary pieces told us why she wrote some songs and how her mother helps her out on tour. The concert ended with Miley and a pre-recorded Hannah singing "Best of Both Worlds" together.

Luckily, my daughter really enjoyed the concert movie. It was her opinion I wanted. The concert isn't really geared for us parents. It's for the kids. However, I still think it would have been better if they left out the documentary parts. The Hannah/Miley fanbase is mostly made up of younger kids - ages 4-10 or so. I'm not sure that they are particularly interested in watching Miley rehearse or see her hiding under the stage before an entrance. I also think it might have been better if they had just filmed one concert instead of filming multiple performances then splicing them together to make it look like it was one performance. If you pay attention, you can see props moving around the stage without being touched or the number of guitar picks in a microphone stand changing mid-song. Again, it's nothing big. It's just one of many little things that takes you out of the concert experience.

So, if you or your kids are a Hannah/Miley fan, you would enjoy the movie. But if you are looking to see the movie in place of going to the concert, it just won't work. Maybe, one day, those of us who aren't willing to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a children's concert will be able to have our kids experience an actual concert.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I just realized that I completely forgot to talk about this movie. My husband and I had been looking forward to seeing this movie since we saw the first preview. Now neither of us are particularly big Johnny Depp fans but we are fairly big fans of Tim Burton. So on December 31, the three of us (my husband, my daughter and myself) went to the only movie theater in our area that was showing the film, purchased our tickets and snacks and had a wonderful time at the movies. There are probably a few of you out there that aren't familiar with Sweeney Todd. I shall give you a quick run-down of the plot. Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) was a successful barber on Fleet Street in London. He had a beautiful wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and a cute baby daughter, Johanna. However, evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) coveted all that Barker had. So he had Barker arrested and sent to prison in Australia. Turpin then raped Lucy, causing her to commit suicide, and took Johanna as a ward. However, our story really starts when Barker comes back to London as Sweeney Todd, bent taking his revenge against the man who destroyed his life. Todd finds a friend in Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), his former landlord who currently sells the worst meat pies in London. The two find a way for Todd to take revenge against those who have wronged him while making Mrs. Lovett's pie business boom. Yes, Sweeney Todd kills the people and Mrs. Lovett bakes them into pies.

The original stageplay had Angela Lansbury (yes, that would be Mrs. Potts from Disney's Beauty and The Beast) as Mrs. Lovett and Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd. It really was a magical performance that made me realize just how talented Angela Lansbury is. It also made me sad to have been born too late to see her perform on stage in person. If you enjoy musical theater, I recommend that you add this to your collection. You won't regret it.

Anyway, back to the movie version. While the plot is rather dark, there is a bit of comedy underneath. I'm not sure that the comedy came through all that well with Burton's style. The darkness of London and Sweeney Todd's personality came through magnificently but Mrs. Lovett didn't come off nearly as daft as she is supposed to be. In my opinion, it really was Mrs. Lovett that orchestrated most of the evil plots in this version. As for the music, the singing wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. However, there wasn't a lot of movement while the songs were performed. Considering that the actors were lip-synching during the filming, it shouldn't have been too difficult to have them move a little bit more.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie. I'm probably going to buy the DVD when it comes out too. But it's not going to replace the Angela Lansbury version in my heart.

Movie review: Stardust

I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Stardust, a movie based on a Neil Gaiman novel. Starring Claire Danes and Charlie Cox, Stardust is the story of a young man, Tristan (Cox), who crosses a wall from his mundane world into a magical one to find a fallen star. Tristan expects to find a lump of rock. However, he finds that the star is, instead, a beautiful woman, Yvaine (Danes). Of course, Tristan is not the only person that noticed the falling star. A trio of wicked witch sisters, led by Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), are after the heart of the star so they can obtain eternal life and beauty. Meanwhile, three princely brothers search for their father's stone to determine which of them will take the now-vacant throne. While all my friends gave this movie raving reviews, I wasn't sure what to expect from it. Little did I know that there would be an absolutely amazing story mixed with beautiful visuals. I don't want to give away too many things but I loved the way Yvaine's glow and the witches' magic was handled. They both added a little more pizzaz to an already amazing world. I would recommend that everyone give Stardust a try.

Johnny Depp

I've never considered myself a Johnny Depp fan. I guess, on some level, I still picture him starring in 21 Jump Street. Man, I just aged myself. Anyway, I've found myself enjoying a lot of his recent movies. I absolutely loved him in as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, of course, Captain Jack in Pirates of the Caribbean.

While he has so many great moments in Charlie, I think my favorite was when the children first enter the chocolate factory. Willy has a whole animatronic puppet show to introduce him and he's not even up there! He's busy watching the show with the kids! I must have watched the movie dozens of times and that scene still makes me laugh.

I think my favorite scene from the Pirates series is when Captain Jack was running away from the island natives. Something about Johnny Depp in all the wacky makeup running on top of a huge wheel makes me smile. That reminds me, I still need to watch At World's End. I may find a new favorite scene.

In my opinion, Willy Wonka definitely beats out Captain Jack as my favorite Johnny Depp character. Then again, I am really looking forward to his performance in Sweeney Todd What? You haven't heard about it? Go visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site and watch the trailer. Right now. I'll wait.

All done? Good. Doesn't that look like an amazing movie? Tim Burton directing Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman. I predict much awesomeness. I wonder if I can convince my family to have Christmas at the movie theater this year. If you need more information, visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.

The Mist

My husband is a big fan of Stephen King's novels. Thanks to him, I've watched quite a few King movies. (I'm a big scaredy cat so I never tried to watch his movies on my own.) One of our favorite King films is The Stand. OK, OK, that's a television mini-series and not a feature film but it was still really good. The pacing of the story and the characterizations came together to produce a chilling story. My husband also liked the science behind the virus. He was a biology major in college after all. A couple of days ago, we saw the trailer for The Mist by Stephen King. At first, we weren't sure if this was a King movie or not. However, once the title card crossed the screen, my husband started shouting with joy. It turns out that The Mist was his very favorite novel and now he can't wait to see the film adaptation.

You really do have to watch the trailer. I was a little confused since I haven't read the book but after talking to my husband a bit, it turned out that I saw what I thought I saw. Creepy things come out of The Mist! I have to admit that even though I don't like scary movies, I am looking forward to this one. It must be a side-effect of being married to a horror fan.

Simpsons movie opens this weekend

In case you are living under a rock, The Simpsons movie opens this Friday. With all of the marketing surrounding this, you'd think it was the biggest movie ever. A handful of 7-11s turned into Kwik-E-Marts, commercials have been blaring across the TV every 10-15 minutes and it is mentioned on almost every entertainment website out there. Personally, I'm not too excited about this. I haven't watched the Simpsons in years. It's gotten boring. I remember when it was nothing but 30-second shorts on the Tracy Ullman Show. Back then it was edgy. Now it's overdone. You figure, the show has been on the air for 18 years. Maybe it's time the show was retired. On the plus side, I will say that some of the commercials are funny. Though I don't know how that will translate to an hour and a half movie. The clip where Homer is holding the pig up to the ceiling while singing "Spider Pig, Spider Pig, does whatever a Spider Pig does" is funny but I can see the writers taking that too far and letting it go on for 10 minutes instead of ending the joke there.

There aren't any movies opening this weekend that would be good competition for The Simpsons so I imagine it will take the box office. I'll be waiting until next weekend when The Bourne Ultimatum opens.