This upcoming June 2012 release - still a year away - had been off my radar, until I saw the picture of Tom Cruise in character as singer Stacee Jaxx today. Mr. Cruise occasionally jettisons the 'Tom Cruise' persona and really gets into the skin of his characters - think Brian Flanagan in Cocktail, Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia, Vincent in Collateral and most memorably Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. Well, this looks like another one of those performances, at least on the evidence from that one posted twitpic; check this out...http://www.tomcruise.com/blog/2011/06/17/tom-cruise-stacee-jaxx-rock-of-ages/.

Adam Shankman, who did a pretty good job with the remake of the musical Hairspray a few years ago, directs Rock of Ages. It has a powerhouse cast, featuring Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin, Paul Giamatti and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The songlist naturally features some famous rock anthems, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Wanted Dead or Alive, Here I Go Again, The Final Countdown, etc.

The release date is June 1st, 2012 in the US.

The powerhouse producer-director combo of Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn have delivered a superb cold war thriller with X-Men: First Class. We get all the best parts of the '60's Bond films - the sexy vamps and the henchmen and even a submarine, but we are spared the sexual innuendo and slapstick aspects of the action which have not aged well in later decades (and which were so well spoofed in the Austin Powers movies).

The film starts with the WWII concentration camp scene familiar to those who have seen the original X-Men. It seems to be shot-by-shot recreation until we see someone observing the scene from a upper floor window. This someone turns out to be a Nazi played superbly by Kevin Bacon who is determined to unlock the powers of the young Erik Lehnsherr, at any cost. In fact, I thought Bacon's performance as the Nazi doctor was more compelling than when this character subsequently reappears later in the film with a different identity.

Meanwhile in a mansion in New York, young Charles Xavier has his first encounter with another mutant. 

Fast-forward to the early 60's and we see a very different Charles Xavier from the intense, grim Dr. X we have seen in the earlier X-Men movies. Young Charles behaves like any young university student, hitting the pubs and picking up girls while developing his theories on human gene mutations. Elsewhere, Erik is busy hunting down the Nazis who tortured him and his parents at the concentration camp.

Other characters are introduced one by one and at this point, the movie really gets into "cold war spy film" mode. With a production of this size, no surprises that the sets and the costumes all impeccably evoke the feel of both the real '60s as well as the cinematic 'James Bond '60s.

Erik and Charles eventually meet each other and join forces to recruit the 'First class' of what will eventually become the X-Men (a nicely scripted couple of lines at the end of the film set up the term "X-Men" for Charles Xavier's team of mutants). The scenes showing the recruitment of X-Men and their subsequent training are really enjoyable and form a very believable human core for the entire film.

James McAvoy I felt was mis-cast as Charles Xavier, partly because he looks nothing like a young Patrick Stewart. He looks and acts like a bit of milksop and no matter how much we know that people change as they grow older, it is really tough to imagine this Charles Xavier becoming the older Dr. Xavier we know from the earlier films. Michael Fassbender on the other hand is perfect as Erik Lehnsherr and he deserves every bit of the publicity he has got as the 'next big movie star'. Fassbender has a very 'old world' movie star personality in the same vein as George Clooney (I can imagine Fassbender and Clooney rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cary Grant and Gregory Peck) and I can't wait to see what else Fassbender is going to do with the rest of his career. 

Back to the movie - there is a bit towards the 2nd half when the film drags a bit...perhaps more for the regular viewer than for the fanboy, who will enjoy catching all the little references to X-Men lore. But eventually we get to the Cuban Missile Crisis situation everyone has seen in the trailers and we get to see the X-Men in combat for the first time.

I really enjoyed this entry in the franchise. I would rank it along with the first X-Men in terms of quality and watchability (bring on the TV re-runs!). I really hope there is a sequel coming along.

I have watched Battle: Lost Angeles, Kung Fu Panda 2, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Rio and Thor.
Of these 5, the worst is definitely Pirates of the Caribbean. The most enjoyable was Thor. Kung Fu Panda 2 and Rio were about equally enjoyable, but I would score Panda a bit higher because of Jack Black and the characters being a bit more likeable; also Rio had horrendous songs. Fox Animation guys, please just make good movies and leave the song and dance stuff to Disney. Battle: LA was not bad at all; it's the sort of movie I wouldn't mind being spun off into a TV series.
So, that's the score so far. Tomorrow I go to watch X-Men: First Class with great expectations. And the weekend after will be Super 8.
I still have to watch Rango, Sucker Punch, Source Code, Priest, Midnight in Paris, Jane Eyre, Gnomeo & Juliet, 13 Assassins and Bridesmaids. And of course, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. Not so sure if I want to watch Hanna featuring Saoirse Ronan as a teenage assassin or Water for Elephants.

I just finished watching the 1924 silent movie classic starring Douglas Fairbanks. Really cool special effects and massive sets, amazing achievement considering it was made nearly 90 years ago!
I have also watched the 1940 version, but I found the original 1924 version to be more engaging and of course, by virtue of having been made first, it scores in terms of originality. 
The 1940s version however, was the influence for Disney's animated classic Aladdin.
The 2 films have somewhat different plots and different characters. Between the two of them, they account for nearly every single Arabian Nights story stereotype...the princess, the handsome swashbuckling thief, the genie, the magic carpet, etc. 
Interestingly, William Cameron Menzies, the acclaimed production designer who won an Oscar for his work on Gone with the Wind, was the production designer for the 1924 version of Thief of Bagdad and was one of the producers of the 1940 version.
Another bit of trivia - star and producer Douglas Fairbanks was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Academy and hosted the first Oscar ceremony in 1929. He was also one of the founders of United Artists, the first studio owned by actors, along with Charlie Chaplin. Fairbanks was synonymous with swashbuckling roles, having also been the lead in the original versions of Robin Hood, Zorro and The Three Musketeers.

I have just finished reading Justin Cronin's The Passage, the book which sparked a bidding war among Publishers and Hollywood producers in 2007, when it was a half-written novel still two years away from its publishing date. Not since the Millenium Trilogy, have I read a page-turner like this; I finished the nearly 800 page book in a week, which is quite a record for me these days.


The story is not original by any means; it is a pastiche of many dystopian/ post-apocalyptic storylines and it most closely resembles Stephen King's The Stand in terms of the overall plot and epic scope...in fact, Stephen King has declared himself a fan of the book. The other storyline it most reminded me of is I Am Legend...not the Richard Matheson original, but the Will Smith blockbuster film from 2007. In fact, the I Am Legend plot would very neatly fit in as a sub-plot in the world created by Cronin in The Passage. It is the story of a government experiment gone wrong (don't they always), resulting in the spread of a virus which turns humans into nearly indestructible, telepathic, vampire-like creatures. 


So, if it's not the originality of the story, then what has made the book so popular? I have to say it is Justin Cronin's writing style, his patience in delving into a character's back-story, his clever use of 'real world evidence' at key points in the story (emails, newspaper articles, journal entries) and his easy use of the English language which makes the reading effortless. Of course, this approach is not without its flaws. In the much criticized central act of the novel, Cronin sacrifices plot progression for character building, leading the reader to fret and fume at the seemingly never-ending succession of character back-stories.

The Passage is the first of a trilogy and the opening line implies that the story will span a 1000 years...that's epic enough, isn't it?