Arterial Spray

According to impressions read online, I thought this was supposed to be better than Casino Royale? It’s not. This isn’t even the best Bourne film, the first two are much better as “film”. This serves as acceptable fan service, giving us some more insight into Bourne’s past, however this comes at the end of the movie and it’s filled with too much of things we’ve already seen from the previous films. I liked it, but overall The Bourne Ultimatum is “meh”.

Being on Blu-ray it looked pretty good in HD and sounded excellent, though it’s not as high quality as other HD transfers I have seen. I imagine it being filmed in the 80’s and not much care taken with the source material over the years and probably not much money put into doing a really high quality transfer.

The good thing is that the film is still great to me, a lot of action and pretty funny. It’s hard not to imagine a bearded Snape when watching Hans Gruber though. :p

Here’s another that looks and sounds good being on Blu-ray, but the image quality is really hit and miss. Some scenes look good while others show a lot of “noise” and don’t look very good. One positive however, is that this is the uncut version of the film, basically what is on the Criterion cut of it.

Robocop is another favorite of mine, and the themes used have held up over the years with privatezed services and over commercialization. Also, seeing “Red” from That 70’s Show play the bad guy is a treat.

So instead of Lost and The Nine we had Day Break, the new show starring Taye (real name Scott) Diggs about a guy stuck in a Groundhog Day / Déjà vu setup. It’s basically a sci-fi show with him trying to figure out why he’s being framed for murder and why he’s stuck in this daily loop.
I decided to give the two hour premiere a watch and see how things work out and I must say it held my attention and I did enjoy it.  I’ll be watching it while Lost is on hiatus until next year.

I finally got to see The Departed at the theatre and I enjoyed it, but in my own honest opinion, I believe Infernal Affairs to be the better film. It made me feel for the characters more, contained the same impressive story, and did it all in a shorter running time. Not that I dislike movies that are long, but The Departed did feel kind of long to me, and admittedly that could have been because I had already seen Infernal Affairs and I basically knew what was coming up.
I also felt that Infernal Affairs had some better dialogue, but how much of that is from the translation or the original HK script, I don’t know.

I saw this last weekend but didn’t give my impressions, so I will now!

I’d like to say that this was an excellent film, both well directed and well acted. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman give amazing performances. It honestly took me a few days to shake off the film, it really stuck with me.

I doubt that I need to mention what the film is about, at least if you don’t know check out a trailer.

I honestly didn’t care too much for the episode; it was okay to me.

With showing the world series, they prove they can get tv, but that doesn’t really prove any kind of substantial contact with the outside world in my opinion.

And I think they may have ruined any kind of surprise of showing Desmond, Locke and Ecko next episode with that preview they showed.

Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to see The Departed this weekend, I had to fix my Scorcese mood somehow so I decided to check out one of his classic films I haven’t seen before. Raging Bull fit the bill.

This is not your typical film, which is a good thing. It’s a work of cinematic art and a true collaboration of genius minds. It’s every bit of a DeNiro film as it is a Scorcese film when you consider how much input and dedication DeNiro put into it.

The rise and fall of Jake LaMotta, middle-weight boxer of the 40’s and 50’s, was a crazy ride to experience. It was interesting to hear that the real life LaMotta felt DeNiro could have boxed professionally after his year of training. The guy was indeed tough for this role. And then to see him gain all of that weight. I thought he was wearing a fat suit but in the special features they said it was a real. Holy **** that is some dedication.

This film really pumped me up, a couple of times I jumped out of my seat almost swinging. The boxing was very dramatic and so were the performances, from everbody. DeNiro won an Oscar, but damn Joe Pesci should have won something. I think he damn near stole the freaking show. His performances were amazing and were a bit shocking at times, especially whenever he goes ape over Sal and nearly beats him to death, smashing his head in the taxi cab door.

I also applaud the decision to go black and white for this film. It really made it feel like an older epic, and gave a certain grit to it.

I loved it whenever Jake, after letting himself be beaten to a bloody mess, goes over to his rival Sugar Ray and tells him that he never got him down. That was the moment the film really came together for me.

Another reason Scorcese is a genius. See this film if you haven’t.