Weblog

Watchmen

I found this film to be good, but certainly not great. I did greatly enjoy many aspects of it, especially the backstories. I really enjoyed Rorschach and also Dr. Manhattan, but I felt that the other characters could use more work. I liked the Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (daughter) characters, but they needed more development. Silk Spectre (mother), though, was terrible, from her makeup to her acting. I also didn't really care much for the ending either; it felt very forced.

I went into the movie with no expectations, having not read the comic, but I have to say that I didn't leave the movie wanting to go pick up the comic. I also left the movie wondering why the couple in front of me thought it would be a good idea to bring their two young children of perhaps 5 and 7 to see this very, very R-rated movie.

Taken

I saw the movie Taken today with my dad, and we both really enjoyed it. It was one of those very few movies that you go into it knowing exactly how it will progress, but still manages to be entertaining. Liam Neeson delivers a great performance, as usual, and he manages to show a much darker side than I have seen from him before. No punches are held in taking down the bad guys.

The last month and a half has not been good to the HD-DVD format. On January 4, Warner announced that it would support Blu-ray exclusively beginning June. Its sister companies, New Line and HBO, soon followed suit. Despite reports to the contrary, Paramount and Universal, the last two major studios supporting HD-DVD, held fast, or at least did very well at keeping their lips sealed. However, problems have only continued to snowball. Since then, minor film studios in Europe have been dropping like flies. This week, the issue seems to have come to a head. On Monday, Netflix announced it too would support Blu-ray exclusively, and Best Buy, the nation's premier consumer electronics retailer, announced it would be promoting Blu-ray over HD-DVD. Finally, today Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the country, announced that it will drop HD-DVD as well.

There are also many rumors floating around. One rumor says that Toshiba, basically the only producer of HD-DVD players and the number one supporter of the format, will drop it as well. Other rumors say that Paramount and Universal will drop the format before the beginning of April. In light of this week's news, however, it would not be at all surprising if the studios jumped ship before then.

Before November, I could have cared less which format survived. In the end, I am very glad that I picked Blu-ray in November. It already looked like the winner then, and things have only gotten better from there. I'm just hoping that I will be able to pick up There Will Be Blood, a movie distributed by Paramount in the U.S., on Blu-ray before long. I'm already signed up for the Amazon pre-order of No Country for Old Men.

I went to see The Brothers Grimm today, and I was unimpressed. It wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't what I would call good either. The plot was creative, but the acting was sub-par, and clichés were abundant. I don't really think the producers had any specific target audience in mind, and it shows - I don't think any demographic would get much out of it.