Author: Matt Raub

Back in gray?

Back in gray?

  • News
  • April 12, 2007

The first glimpse of the titular main character from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man was recently posted thanks to our friends over at IGN.com.

Keep in mind – this is the very first suit built our hero, as first seen in the comics. So don’t expect the shiny red and gold suit we see today. The film stars Robert Downy Jr. as the billionaire alter ego of Iron Man, Tony Stark, playing along side Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) Jim "War Machine" Rhodes (Terrence Howard) and the evil Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

Those of you may remember the director Jon Favreau for playing Foggy Nelson in 2003’s Daredevil, or for Dinner For Five, his movie-talk television series that appeared on IFC between 2001 and 2005.

MATT RAUB: Who Are Two?

MATT RAUB: Who Are Two?

  • News
  • April 11, 2007

So we’re into week two of the Doctor’s new adventures with his shiny new companion in “The Shakespeare Code,” and much as I was last week, I’m still giddy with excitement. Last week we were introduced to Martha Jones, a med student from the present time. And in this week, the Doctor takes Jones on her first trip inside the T.A.R.D.I.S. to the late 1500s, where they meet one of the Doctor’s personal heroes, William Shakespeare.

While this episode got to play a lot with what I like to call the Shanghai Knights jokes. To explain, in the film Shanghai Knights the two main characters would run into famous names in history that only we the audience would know, and reference their lives through punn-ish dialogue, such as telling a adolescent Charlie Chaplin that he talks too much. Either way, the same thing stood for this episode, in which the Doctor is constantly using lines from Shakespeare’s unwritten plays. To which the playwright responds “I should use that!” Cute little dialogue, but lets move onto the nitty-gritty.

Going along with my last review, when I mentioned that the first episode resembled the season one’s episode “Rose,” this episode was very much like season one’s “The Unquiet Dead.” In that episode, a very green Rose tags along with the Doctor to the 1800s where they meet Charles Dickens and solve yet another perplexing mystery. That episode dealt with alien entities possessing corpses making them look like “zombies” to the anybody else but our Doctor, while this week’s episode dealt with ancient aliens who pose as “witches” and get Shakespeare to use his “new words” to open a portal to their home world. Very similar episodes indeed.

With that theory in place, there should be hints of this season’s overall arch. In episode three of season one, they started mentioning “Bad Wolf” and how it was a harbinger of things to come. Now, before the re-launched series, I was never a huge Doctor Who fan, but with the writing and pure concept of continuity that thick over an entire season, I was hooked. I’m only hoping that this episode can keep with that formula.

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MATT RAUB reveals: Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

MATT RAUB reveals: Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

  • News
  • April 5, 2007

So it’s been about two weeks since the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica. “Crossroads Part 2” has aired, and I’m tired of sitting on what I have to say about it. If you’re one of the unfortunate one’s who have still yet to see the show, here’s the spoilers: Basically we learned: who the final four Cylons turn out to be, how everyone copes with the recently deceased Starbuck, the outcome of the Gaius Baltar trial, that President Rosaline’s cancer has returned and she’s back on the wacky drug that made her see snakes, and finally, that Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

Don’t worry; I know there is a lot here, so I’m going to break it down for those playing along at home.

Those of you who remember the set-up in “Crossroads Part 1” know that throughout the episode, Colonel Tigh, Sam, Chief Tyrol, and Press Secretary Tory Foster (played by Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Michael Trucco, and Rheka Sharma, respectively) hear strange sitar music that draws them toward the center of the ship. We don’t know where it comes from, only that these four are the only ones that can hear this music. We find out in the finale that mysterious music is a cover of the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower” – and not Jimi Hendrix’s, either! Now, those of you who read my review for the film 300 know my feelings about switching from orchestral beats to heavy modern guitar, but that goes full force when it’s a sci-fi show that uses an actual song when the show takes place millions of years ago and/or galaxies away!

Either way, we discover that these people hearing the music are drawn together and discover that they are all Cylon sleeper agents. This is probably one of the biggest moments in the season, and I feel likeit  didn’t get the respect it deserved by clumping all of the Cylon-outings in one scene.

Moving on, we also get the verdict of the excruciatingly long trial of Giaus Baltar. The arc basically consisted of a whole lot of father/son Adama melodrama, cranky Rosaline explains how her cancer has returned (which should be a non-issue because we know that the bastard Cylon-baby is the cure) and some more mystifying lines from Batlar’s lawyer, Matt Murdock-lite Romo Lampkin (played by 24’s Mark Sheppard). After some deep prodding from the prosecution, a recently de-commissioned Apollo takes the stand and gives this entire speech on what he’s been feeling from day one. This was a great little monologue, because he talks about how the fleet has forgiven all of its past “crimes against humanity,” referencing a lot of the back story along the way. Essentially this is what persuades the tribunal of judges to give Baltar a verdict of not guilty.

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Warner Bros. loves men….Metal Men!

Warner Bros. loves men….Metal Men!

  • News
  • April 4, 2007

It looks like Warner Bros. Pictures  has greenlit Metal Men and looking to get the final pieces in place. So far, Eric Champnella is slated to write the script. You may or may not remember Champnella’s last picture about Bernie Mac attempting to break his own baseball record while wise-cracking at a bunch of "nuckle-headed kids" in Mr. 3000. I personally can’t wait for a jive talking Iron slapping around the rest of the Metals and calling Platinum his "beeyotch," but they might be going for a different approach.

Slated to produce the picture is Lauren Shuler Donner, who was responsible for bringing X-Men to the big screen as well as the Keanu Reeves movie Constantine. Fingers crossed on this one!

MATT RAUB loved 1/2 of Grindhouse!

MATT RAUB loved 1/2 of Grindhouse!

  • News
  • April 3, 2007

Matt Raub, back again with more faux knowledge about moving pictures and the land that makes them. I wish this visit could be more joyful, seeing as how I my summer was based around seeing Grindhouse, but sadly, I’m only half as excited as I had hoped to be.

Before we start, a little background on what the grindhouse is really all about. I’ve come across too many people in the past few months that haven’t a clue about the title, and I only fear the punch line will only go over those peoples’ heads. The idea of a grindhouse is when local theaters would screen cheap B movie pictures or exploitation films together in order to gain a larger audience. Such films had low-budget special effects, lack of plot, and amateur acting all summed up with a catchy, yet impressively bad title. Titles like Assault of the Killer Bimbos, Lobster Man from Mars, and I Dismember Mama.

Now Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, two modern cult-cinema directors decided to take sort of a low blow at exploitation movies. Taking $50 million, they both wrote and directed two 90-minute exploitation films: Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof. They slapped them both together in a big chunk, including a handful of fake b-movie trailers by guest directors Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, and Edgar Wright.

Now because this is essentially two films, I will give them both the respect they demand and review them separately, starting with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. This film held everything I wanted it to. The emotion, the cheesiness, and the random, unnecessary deaths. From titles to credits, I was either laughing, cringing in a good way, or both.

The premise of the film is that an evil army general (Bruce Willis) and a nutty biochemist (are there any other kind?) unleash a toxic gas on an unsuspecting Texas town, killing some and turning the rest into crazed infected cannibals, not zombies! There are only a few who are immune to the gas: a one-legged stripper (Rose McGowan) and her ex-boyfriend with a mysterious past (Freddy Rodriguez) and a handful of others.

The film is action packed with random explosions and ultra violence. But while it keeps the content very similar to classic exploitation films, the most important element is that the style is done to replicate the gritty, cheap, film stock that was what gave original grindhouse movies their flavor. This includes but is not limited to: poor voice dubbing, gritty, unfocused shots, missing frames, and even entire missing reels. By far, this was the one thing that kept the film together and kept the audience entertained.

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Downey’s looking pretty Stark these days

Downey’s looking pretty Stark these days

  • News
  • April 2, 2007

 

Robert Downy Jr as Tony Stark (right) and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Pottson the set of the now-filming Iron Man movie. Set for release on May 2nd, 2008 and directed by Jon Favereau (who played Foggy Nelson in Daredevil), the movie also stars Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges.

MATT RAUB Reviews Doctor Who season 3 premiere

MATT RAUB Reviews Doctor Who season 3 premiere

  • News
  • April 1, 2007

The Doctor is back, and not only does he get a new companion but a new Sonic Screwdriver to boot! I just set my peepers on a back-to-back marathon of last year’s “The Runaway Bride” and the brand-spanking-new season 3 premiere, “Smith and Jones”, and I figured I’d drop in to throw down my two cents on the episode. Be forewarned, there are some spoilerific parts to this review, so if you decide you want to wait until Sci-Fi finally airs the show in 2023, then I’d turn away now.

From the first episode in season 1, I was a huge fan of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, I thought she was gorgeous, and had incredible range. Though there were a good 12 episodes or so where she cried through the majority of the program, I still couldn’t dislike her. With that said, I was pretty hesitant to like this new companion, the intelligent and attractive medical student Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman. We first get a taste of Agyeman in last season’s “Army of Ghosts” as she was one of first victim of the Cybermen. We now find out she was the cousin of Martha Jones, and that’s a clever touch.

Looking back, this episode can very easily be put in stark comparison to season 1’s opener, “Rose.” Much like in that episode, the majority of this episode is exposition on our new companion’s life, an unexpected conflict, and the random entrance of the Doctor to save the day. Also, there is a scene very reminiscent of “Rose” where the Doctor grabs Martha’s hand and tells her to run…sound familiar? Of course, the doctor is still pining over the loss of Rose, but as established in “Runaway Bride,” it was time to find someone new.

The concept: the hospital where Martha Jones works gets transported to the moon. The Doctor, posing as the meandering patient John Smith, discovers that the transportation as by an intergalactic rhino-police (that’s intergalactic police that look like rhinos, not intergalactic police that only police the rhino population). The transportation was to single out a fugitive that they believe is hiding out in the hospital. The Doctor and Martha jump on the case to find the criminal and get the inhabitants back to Earth before they all lose oxygen.

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Spider-Man 2.1 extended cut DVD

Spider-Man 2.1 extended cut DVD

  • News
  • March 29, 2007

On the heels of Fantastic Four 1 getting its extended cut, DVD release, it now looks like Spidey 2 is getting the same special treatment.

The two-DVD Spider-Man Extended Cut includes eight minutes of never-before-seen footage – including extended fight sequences, a big ol’ sneak peak into Spider-Man 3 including an exclusive Spider-Man 3 video game trailer, commentary by Kirsten (Mary Jane) Dunst and producer Luara Ziskin (big whoop), a trivia track with all-new branched video pieces, and, of course, plenty more!

The Spider-Man Extended Cut comes out April 17, two and one-half weeks prior to the opening of Spider-Man 3.

MATT RAUB loves being a Turtle

MATT RAUB loves being a Turtle

  • News
  • March 26, 2007

Cowabunga, Dudes! Matt Raub here, back once again for my review of my pick for “Best Flick of 2007” – TMNT!

Now, before I do my business, a little history. I’m a 100% freak when it comes to anything and everything 80’s. From the music to the wacky neon fashion to the movies, and most important, the TV shows. From The Real Ghostbusters to M.A.S.K., I knew just about everything that needed to be known about cartoons in the 80’s. With that said, I was going into TMNT with roughly 50% excitement and 50% skepticism that we would get a repeat of the first three Turtles movies, which included (in no particular order): Vanilla Ice, time travel, and freckles.

With that said, I was nothing short of blown away by this flick. I caught myself jumping with excitement during the actions scenes and cackling obnoxiously at Michelangelo’s quips. Now, there aren’t a whole lot of CGI films that take my breath away, the exception being The Incredibles of course, mostly due to the need to dumb down the script to appeal to the legion of drooling nine-year-olds. But that wasn’t the case with TMNT. Instead of being a comedy with some action, this flick was all action with some comedy, and I loved it. While it did have some slapstick comedy to keep the toddlers at bay, there were so many more serious elements that I know had to have gone over the heads of the younger audience.

For those of you who aren’t sure where this film stands in comparison to the previous three, I’ll spell it out. This movie pulls a Superman Returns formula, but does it right. The story takes place about a year after the second film, erasing the Turtles in Time escapade completely from continuity (thanks!). With this continuity, we still get Casey Jones, April O’Neil, and a dead Shredder, but the characters all get a revamp, some for better and some not so much: April O’Neil is no longer a reporter, but a glorified Indiana Jones-archeologist type. What?? But like I said, this took the Superman formula and made it work. And no, April doesn’t end up having a half-turtle baby with Leonardo.

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MATT RAUB: The Last Mimzy

MATT RAUB: The Last Mimzy

  • News
  • March 23, 2007

Greetings, movie geeks! Last we spoke, you were all on the receiving end of my 300 bash, and after a handful of death threats from the “Frank Miller is God Fan Club,” I’ve digressed. We’re moving on this week to a flick that I can relate to, in Robert Shaye’s The Last Mimzy.

Now for those of you who aren’t in the know on this latest adolescent epic, the premise is that a brother and sister come across a mysterious box on the beach. It’s explained to us that the box is from the future and is filled with all kinds of equally mysterious sci-fi gadgets, or as the kids so affectionately called them “toys.” Once they start to play with these toys, both the boy and girl begin to gain special powers. Now fans of the USA show The 4400 may be saying “hey, this sounds a little familiar.” And I agree with you. The concept of the future sending technology back in time to save the human existence does sound a bit familiar, but this is done entirely through the perspective of the two kids.

By doing the entire film through the point of view of our two tiny heroes, this flick brought me back to what it was like to be a geeky kid with superpowers given to me from the future… or something. The perspective stayed so far on course that we (the audience) begin to hate the parents of the main characters when they become frightened and angry with these new found “toys” and what they are doing to their children. This can best be described by remembering the point of view from a little movie from the 80s called E.T. Much like that film, we all felt like we were keeping the secret from kids’ parents as much as they were, and that was exciting.

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