The Martial Arts Kid

So, they remade The Karate Kid, with a few minor tweaks. The one that probably got the most coverage was the part where this movie really doesn’t involve karate. At all. I don’t think they ever even utter the word. The movie apparently just wouldn’t have been the same if they called it “The Kung Fu Kid”.

“Who cares,” you say. Indeed. Had he been doing Taekwondo, Tai Chi, or Stir Fry, it would’ve been the same overall story (though to be fair, if the tagline had been “Will he be able to out-wok the rest and win honor?”, that would’ve been a really fresh take on things).

How’s the movie though?! Well, it’s pretty much what you’d expect, and not a lot of surprises. A young kid, freshly moved to a new part of the world encounters bullies, and those bullies really kinda like beating him up and generally making trouble for him. He finds a love interest as well. The final ingredient is a reluctant figure battling his own demons who eventually agrees to help our young aspiring hero out.

In this installment we have Dre (Jaden Smith) moving to China, and ultimately befriending handyman Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). The acting’s decent, the script’s predictable (spoiler: he wins), and overall it’s good family fare. The kids enjoyed it, and serious props to young Mr. Smith. He’s a pretty flexible guy and he’s got the moves. Most entertaining in my opinion are those occasional looks he gets on his face that look A LOT like Dad. They also cover some pretty spectacular scenery in China. Worth a rent if you like a good underdog flick.

Some fresh viewage

I haven’t updated in awhile, but rest assured, I still waste plenty of time watching mindless drivel. Here’s the latest round for your reading enjoyment.

Astroboy was somewhat entertaining for the kids. I think. It was depressing on many levels, and this wasn’t really balanced very well with light moments.

The plot is like so, and I’ll likely spoil parts of it, so I guess you’re warned, but with any luck ya won’t watch it anyway. Earth has been thoroughly ravaged by humans, so science creates a floating city upon which the worthy humans live. Some remain on the surface for varying reasons. This floating paradise is kept nice and orderly as all the refuse is dumped over the side. But wait, it gets better! Brilliant robotics scientist Dr. Tenma (Nicholas Cage) is a genius who can’t be bothered to spend much time with his equally brilliant child Toby. Tenma convinces himself that for the advancement of science, he needs to play ball with the not very nice militant President Stone (Donald Sutherland), and through the course of events, Toby is accidentally…er…liberated from his mortal coil. The distraught Tenma, who blames himself (and rightfully so), creates a robotic clone of his son, complete with memories, but can’t bring himself to love the clone (who up to this point doesn’t even know he’s a robot), and Toby ends up (through depressing events) on the surface. There, he meets a kind hearted robot repairman Hamegg (Nathan Lane) and a rag-tag bunch of orphans. Hamegg of course doesn’t really love robots, so much as he loves fixing them up to make them fight to the death for his amusement and profit. Ultimately the plot gets to such a point that it’s up to Toby to save the world from the evil President Stone, who’s bent on drumming up a military crisis in his bid for re-election.

It does have a few engaging and entertaining moments, but it’s largely a heavy-handed tale of the evils of war and planetary destruction, told in one of the most depressing ways possible for a cartoon. Rent Iron Giant instead.

In stark contrast, Despicable Me was thoroughly engaging and seemed to have all of its own fun, plus the extra fun that’s left out of movies like Astroboy. I’ll try and give away less of the plot here.

Gru (Steve Carell) is a super villain whose track record of late has been less than impressive, but he has a grand plan of stealing the moon. He’s assisted to hilarious and adorable ends by his minions (the little yellow dudes) and his evil assistant Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand in one of his tolerable performances). His arch nemesis, the younger up-and-coming villain Vector (Jason Segel) provides the competition, and through the course of events three orphan girls come into the picture to turn Gru’s life upside down.

Voice casting was superb, the dialog was great, and the story was often times funny with touches of sweetness. Really well put together, and enjoyable for the whole family. I’d highly recommend this one.

RED, short for Retired, Extremely Dangerous, is the tag stamped on the files of Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman). They’re all ex-CIA operatives who’re past their prime.

They’re largely left alone, suffering the boredom of retirement, until their collective involvement in an incident from their past results in them being put on a cleanup list by some rather high-ranking forces within government, at which point William Cooper (Karl Urban) steps in to “eliminate the assets” as it were. Pulled into this mess is Sarah Ross (Mary Louise-Parker) who is a gov’t pension officer who has developed a long-distance phone relationship with Willis over some years of retirement boredom, equally retired ex-Russian spy Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox), and a brief turn by Ernest Borgnine as Henry, the records keeper.

The resulting story was often amusing, well acted, and for the whole “ex-assassins, people being killed” plot, it’s not a bloody movie, and I think it’s the better for it. I quite enjoyed the action, humor, and overall pacing of the movie and would recommend this one.

On the TV side of the fence, I’ve been watching True Blood (so far through the end of Season 2).

This is the decidedly HBO adult version of vampires, not to be mistaken for the more broadly viewable Buffy series (see: way more blood, nudity, swearing, etc.)

The series centers primarily around Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a local waitress, and her vampire love Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). Over time we also get a well developed set of secondary characters in Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell), owner of the bar/café where Sookie works, Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley), bartender and Sookie’s best friend, Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten), the brother, and a host of others as well.

In the storyline here, vampires have come out (so to speak) and are going through what could probably be described as their civil rights movement, raising awareness of their kind, trying with limited success to shake off their history of not-so-nice-to-humans behavior, etc. This of course presents several dynamics to the respective populations. The vampires who want to truly live in harmony with the humans, and those that thinks puny humans should bow to their superiority. We have humans who think vampires should be hunted down and eradicated, those who think we should all be friends, and some kinks who get off on vampire encounters (ie. having their own blood drank and/or consuming vampire blood which heightens their own senses and such).

It’s quite the storyline so far, and just when ya think ya know what they’re going to get into next, then tend to still bring the surprise. Personally, Season 2 went a bit bizarre. They had a story arc that they did follow to the end, but I kinda wish they could’ve sped that up a bit. Talking to other people, it sounds like Season 2 was a bit whacked and they reeled it back in a bit again in Season 3. I’ll keep you posted. Overall I’ve found it entertaining so far, and the end of an episode is usually followed with a “What???”, and the desire to watch the next one despite the late hour. If you enjoy vampire stories, this may be worth a look. I won’t pretend that it’s for everyone though.