If you’re sporting Android 4.1 Jelly Bean then one of its most notable features just got better, as an update for the Google Search update is enhancing Google Now (still getting adjusted? check the guide book for a list of commands) functionality in a few key ways. The new version brings public alerts to your Now page, with emergency messages like storm warnings or earthquake alerts, so if you’re in range of Hurricane Isaac, it may be worth grabbing sooner rather than later. A more trivial change lets sports fans manually select their favorite teams from 140 pro soccer, baseball, basketball and hockey clubs — we tried to find our college favorites and were denied, for now. While trying to automatically decipher our preferred squads from searches is nice, it might not be practical when we’re just looking up information on our fantasy football players so this should be a help.
It has also added support for movie listings as seen above. Search for a flick that’s in theaters and you will not only receive relevant information, but also when and where it’s playing in your area. If that’s not enough, it can be set to pop up on your “movie days” or when you just happen to be loitering outside a theater. Finally, in a move that should please many prospective Galaxy Note II owners it is ready to work in Korea — grab the new version of the app at the link below.
The first-ever full length theatrical Lego movie is still happening! Slated for a release in February 2014, the movie has just landed a star studded cast: Morgan Freeman, who will presumably play a God in Lego world (joke), Elizabeth Banks, Chris Pratt and Will Arnett, who will voice a Lego Batman (not a joke). More »
Glasses-free 3D: eventually someone is going to get this right, and researchers in South Korea are well on their way, which means eventually we might be able to go to a 3D movie without having to wear those dorky, uncomfortable glasses. More »
It may not have quite the catalog of Netflix (or the same HD quality), but Sony Pictures’ Crackle streaming service does have one big thing going for it: it’s completely free. It’s also found its way onto plenty of different platforms (most recently Windows Phone), and that run has now continued with its expansion onto Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet (but not the Nook Color). What’s more, while there’s no release date confirmed just yet, Crackle says that the app is “coming soon” to the Kindle Fire as well. It’s also revealed that the app has now seen 11 million downloads across all mobile platforms — a figure that may now see a boost not only from the new Nook app, but from the just-updated Android and iOS apps, which each boast a redesigned interface and support for TV playback via AirPlay or HDMI.
By far the best scene in Expendables 2 is when Dolph Lundgren kicks a bad guy in the face off a balcony, casually shouting “Goodbye!” in the process. It’s an utterly ridiculous and over the top moment that caused me to burst out laughing, and it’s exactly what the movie needed more of.
The intentions of the movie are relatively clear: to be the ultimate action flick by cramming in all those actors you used to like in all those movies you used to like decades ago, mixed in with a dash of more recent talent for good measure. The posters and marketing for the movie boldly proclaims who to expect (Willis! Schwarzenegger! Li!) and yet not a single frame of the movie shows all the actors together.
This movie does have a very loose and tired plot, but the plot is irrelevant, because you’re here to watch old people mow down entire armies with very large guns. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really work. There are only really two big action set pieces in the movie – one at the beginning and one at the end, with brief flirtations in between – and thanks to janky editing and pacing, they feel rushed. The director is so intent to make sure he fits all his eye candy moments in that he doesn’t give the audience any time to savour the action, and the use of bad CGI ultimately that nothing has any impact.
Characters disappear and reappear at random. Jet Li is in the film for approximately four minutes at the beginning before leaving and never coming back, yet has third billing, according to IMDB. Chris Liam Hemsworth is set up to be a disgustingly likeable hero: he left the Army because they shot his dog (seriously), he can run up hills really fast, and he’s a pretty good sniper to boot. He’s dispatched during the first act in order to set up some sort of half baked revenge plot for Stallone. Some terrible dialogue is muttered at his funeral (“Why is it that the good people who deserve to live die, but the bad people who deserve to die live?”, or words to that effect.)
Crews and Couture have maybe one or two lines in the movie. They’re mainly there to shoot people. Chuck Norris shows up for around three minutes to shoot people too. He makes a Chuck Norris joke because he’s Chuck Norris, and we’re supposed to laugh, but we don’t, because that meme died years ago. Bruce and Arnold share a particularly cringe worthy exchange. At least they get to shoot people out of a moving SMART car for a couple of seconds.
The only two people who are having any fun in the movie are Lundgren and Van Damme. Van Damme is clearly enjoying playing the bad guy, hamming it up with insane body language and gestures while wearing wraparound sunglasses and a leather coat in just about every scene. Lundgren clearly realizes that this isn’t a movie to be taken seriously, and also recognizes that people think he’s a bit weird, playing to his strengths and getting a few laughs in the process.
All the other actors in the movie are unsure of how to play things out, resulting in a tone that’s neither worthy of a good or bad-good action movie. Stallone in particular looks fairly bored throughout the whole affair. His extremely dodgy mustache gives a great performance, at least. The only time he really lights up is during his exchanges with Statham, but let’s face it: they’re both going through the motions.
My expectations for the Expendables 2 were low, and yet I still left disappointed. Ultimately, the problem is that it has no charm. It’s a movie designed to tick all the boxes on a financial sheet (famous action stars, explosions, more explosions), without any passion involved in the film making process by just about… well, anyone. I don’t want something of this calibre to be a good movie, but I do want it to be entertaining, and the film just doesn’t provide nearly enough entertainment.
Just in case you only thought Amazon, Netflix and Redbox were working the studio deals, HBO announced today it’s worked out an extension of its agreement with 20th Century Fox. Already the “premium network home” of Fox flicks for more than 30 years, this deal is long enough to keep it going into the next decade. The LA Times reports from its sources the the original deal would have expired in 2015, while the extension pushes it out to 2022 at a price of over $200 million per year. One key adjustment that’s been made for the digital age gives Fox the ability to continue to sell its movies over digital stores even while they’re airing on HBO unlike the previous deal, although we’re told this provision does not extend to rentals during that time. That’s on top of a previous tweak negotiated months ago that let Fox and other HBO partners provide digital copies of their movies on services like iTunes from the Cloud and Ultraviolet during the HBO pay window. One other note is that on the same day Netflix revealed its service is coming to several Scandinavian locales, HBO announced it’s doing the same, launching HBO Nordic in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
Do you know why people hate movie studios? Why, increasingly, they’re driven to download content illegally, even though they’re perfectly willing to pay for it? Because of crap like this: More »
When we saw the subtitles of a bootleg copy of The Avengers, we couldn’t believe how outrageous they were. The subtitles butchered the English language to the point that it felt like a whole different movie. Turns out, a lot of bootleg movies have subtitles that bad. Just check these out. More »
Popular video app Crackle has wormed its way on to an impressivenumber of platforms, and now we can add Windows Phone to that list. The ad-supported streaming service offers access to films such as Pineapple Express, Layer Cake as well as popular TV series’ like Seinfeld. As always the app is free, and it’s available from the Market Place, like, now. Point your phone at the source and as Crackle would say, “It’s on.”
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