TeamBlood

Origin Stories: X-Men First Class & Cave of Forgotten Dreams

On a hot summer day, we saw X-Men: First Class. I really enjoyed the X-Men franchise, with the exception of the the third movie, which was awful. Wisely, Brian Singer is back at the helm for this one, and they’ve finally decided to focus on the history between Professor X and Magneto. The movie was at its best when it delves into the the storyline of young (mobile) Charles Xavier and young (tortured) Erik Lensherr. The script for their

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Is it written?: Slumdog Millionaire vs. Azur & Asmar

When two movies are watched at random and then reviewed in tandem, one might expect some awkward, disparate sutures. But this time, without apparent design, I watched two rather similar movies back to back: Slumdog Millionaire and Azur & Asmar.

Slumdog (which just won the Oscars’ Best Picture, so it should be everywhere) is a high-octane, faux-Bollywood modern fairy tale about a young ghetto lad named Jamal, who must explain his uncanny accuracy on a game show, or face imprisonment and
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As The Wrestler Likes It

Movies mashed: The Wrestler (2009) and As You Like It (2007)

So, what does Mickey Rourke have to do with Shakespeare? About as much as ninjas have to do with Shakespeare, and that didn’t stop Kenneth Branagh from putting them in his movie!

I guess you could say The Wrestler is a tragedy, and that’s like Shakespeare with his kings and such. But The Wrestler details the rise and fall of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a professional wrestler

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Frost/Nixon/Hancock

Movies mashed: Frost/Nixon, the fictionalized account of David Frost’s seminal interviews with former president Richard Nixon, and Hancock, a film about a cranky, strangely powerful superhero.

Both films feature a larger-than-life character (President/Superhero) who is still fundamentally flawed, and needs to rely on the efforts of their dramatic foil (the softball interviewer, or the unsuccessful PR guy) to redeem his reputation and help him regain his perceived place in the universe.

Of course, one of these movies

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Thunder in Paris


Movies Mashed: Tropic Thunder (2008) and An American in Paris (1951)

So, we’ve got two movies here about Americans and their adventures in foreign lands. The earlier of the two, 1951’s An American in Paris, tells the take of an ex-soldier in postwar Paris. Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is a starving artist hoping to eventually make a living off his painting. The movie goes out of its way to make Kelly a painter rather than another kind of

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Twilight Dream

I have a Dream, that one day vampires and humans will live together….

Oooookaaaayyyy.  Twilight.  Saw it on the same day I happened to visit the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Site when I was down Atlanta way, so that’s what’s gettin’ mashed today.  I don’t care that one of them isn’t a movie, but rather a National Park Service historic site.  Bite me.


Speaking of biting me, there’s this movie called Twilight.  It’s

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