Barry Levinson‘s career has been pretty spotty for a director of his stature, but he never seems to falter when he sticks to painting on the pallette he knows best: Baltimore in the 50’s and early 60’s, the city he grew up in during the era of his youth. From his debut, 1982’s Diner, to 1999’s Liberty Heights, it’s a subject he keeps returning to. Where those flicks carried sentimental, autobiographical touches and centered on young guys, roughly the same age Levinson was at the time, Tin Men is about two middle-aged aluminum siding salesmen, played by Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito, who never knew each other professionally until a fender bender set off a venemous personal feud.

DeVito doesn’t play against type, as essentially a more sympathetic variation on Louie DePalma, but Dreyfuss manages to cut a dashing figure in contrast to his usual anxious, nasal screen presence as the younger, single tin man. Eventually, their comic back-and-forth of revenge and oneupsmanship escalates to the point that he steals DeVito’s wife and the story takes a slightly more serious, emotional turn, although the transition feels natural and not jarring or an unwelcome downer. As the battle of wills becomes a love triangle, the laughs come more from the supporting cast, including John Mahoney. In a way, movies like this (and Barton Fink and Say Anything) are a cruel reminder of the streak of great supporting roles Mahoney had before sinking a decade into one monotonous role on “Frasier” brought him to greater fame but effectively stalled his big screen career.

As a Baltimore resident, I’ll always watch these movies partly just for the scenery and how it’s used. And the thing about Baltimore that Levinson’s period films always underline for me is that in a lot of neighborhoods on the North side, all you have to do to convincingly set the clock back 20-50 years is park a bunch of classic cars on the street. Nothing else has really changed on a lot of those blocks lined with rowhouses. Really, the only thing that takes me a little out of the story and jolts me back to 1987 is the presence of the Fine Young Cannibals in multiple club scenes. “Good Thing” was a jam, though.

Latino Review has handed down a Five Star Rating to the Halo Movie Script!
This comes directly from a critic who has not played the games, but did enough research on the back story to see if the movie fits. Obviously, it looks like we’re in for a fast paced Covenant War unlike anything we’ve ever seen in film or games if this review is to be beleived.

I’ll admit that even though I like the Halo story, its second to the action. Garland (28 Days Later) was hand picked for this project because the Covenant are religious radicals not far off in behavior from the rage zombies. And without having to factor in stuff like player difficulty and whether the processor can handle “X” many troops on screen at once, the Halo flick will likely amp up every major event from the first game. We’re even going to be given battle scene with an entire Spartan army (I’m sure we’ll all be looking for Spartan 458)! And thats the first scene in the movie!
Obviously, even though it’ll be taking the game’s story and the review only covers the first act, spoilers follow so read at your own risk.

Jodie Foster is a newly single mom trapped in a confined space trying to protect her daughter from an unseen madman.
I’m talking about Flight Plan not Panic Room! This one is totally on a plane!
It wasn’t a terrible movie, but if Foster is only going to do one script every 3 years, she could’ve picked one that wasn’t so like the last. It was worth watching for a moment when the oxygen masks dropped in the plane and a random woman screamed as she realized that the rubber band on hers was broken and she couldn’t put it on. Can’t be sure if that was funny on purpose, but I laughed hard.
I don’t think its any kind of spoiler if I say that the villain on the flight is not one of the Arabs. Honestly, Hollywood can’t make an Arab bad guy on a plane now. I was kept guessing until the story revealed itself, which I’ll give them credit for. I don’t usually figure stuff out early but given Foster was set up as delusional early on, any clues from her perspective were kinda written off as bogus.

“That indian guy looks suspiciously like Frank Stallone,” My fiance noted quite accurately upon Armand Assante’s introduction. As you can infer, he’s quite italian looking, not in the least native.
And so it was that I was witness to Prophecy, which was not The Prophecy as I’d hoped, but one of the most horribly hilarous movies I’ve ever seen.
So yeah, with the Halloween holiday coming up, I set my DVR to record a ton of classics off Turner Classic Movies, and the decidedly less prestigious AMC. As a standard of comparison, TCM was running Hitchcock’s silent film “The Lodger” while AMC ran “Species II”
Now I don’t consider “Species” to be a classic, and the sequel you can probably infer is several magnitudes worse.
Anyway, This “Prophecy” doesn’t star Christopher Walken, but instead some weird beared guy, who works as an inner city doctor. He’s then called upon to help settle land dispute between some lumberjacks and native americans. So while this is I guess supposed to be a fish out of water story, he looks more out of place in the city than in the woods because of his odd Mountain Man looks.
At about the half hour mark I finally realize that “hey, this is the wrong damn movie” but we’re too far into it to turn back now, so we kept going.
Turns out the lumber company is poisoning the water with mercury. Mercury, which doesn’t make any sense to have in the water to assist in paper production. Mercury, which causes autism in infants but apparently gigantism in tadpoles and mutant horror in bears.
Bad Movies can take it from here. You especially want to see the exploding sleeping bag.
“Prophecy” is directed by John Frankenheimer, who helmed the political classic “The Manchurian Candidate” and the Ben Affleck bomb “Reindeer Games”
I’d have to say the mutant bear ranks somewhere below Affleck.

I totally stole the idea from Will at our game site. The basic Idea is we will focus on a movie that might have slipped through the cracks.

Our first movie is Requiem for a Dream. Directed by Darren Aronofsky (PI) and staring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans. The movie follows the four stars in a chaotic downward spiral of addiction. Not only chemical but also mental(television). Harry (Leto) and girlfriend Marion(Connelly) and Harry’s friend Tyrone(Wayans) are all Heroin junkies with the dream of a big score so they’ll become rich. Sara Goldfarb(Burstyn) is the films most sympathetic figure. Widowed and dealing with her son taking her television weekly to pawn for drug money. She becomes delusional and starts to believe she is going on a TV game show. After figuring out she can’t fit in her favorite red dress her television addiction leads her to taking speed pills to keep from eating and lose weight.
The movie is the most intense hour and forty minutes one is bound to experience. At almost ever turn you can’t wait for it to end but like a car accident you can’t look away. While requiem isn’t for everyone it is a roller coaster of emotion that must be seen to believe.

One would be remiss not to mention the wonderful score composed by Clint Mansell with the Kronos Quartet.

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Reports coming out of Botcon say there is a Transformers game in development to go with the movie, which is due July 4, 2007. Since this is well past the launch of the 360, PS3, or Rev, its safe to assume we’re looking at a next-gen title.
Hasbro isn’t ready to announce who is working on it, only that they are working on it. The bad news is that it won’t be done by melbourne house, who did an excellent job with Transformers on PS2 last May. The good news is, its unlikely we’ll get a repeat of the abomination
Transformers Tatakai, which only came on in Japan.
And for the un-initiated, the new movie IS based on the original Generation One characters. But if you dodged Transformers on PS2 because it features the Armada cast, you’re missing a hell of a shooter.

In less than an hour aircraft from here will join others from around the world and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the fourth of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression or persecution but from annihilation. We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist and should we win the day, the fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday but as the day when the world declared in one voice “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today, we celebrate our independence day!”

President Thomas J. Whitmore � 1996/07/04