The Flickcast

Movie Review: ‘Life of Pi’

Posted on November 25, 2012

It’ll be interesting to see how audiences who haven’t read Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s 2001 novel respond to director Ang Lee’s vision of the colorful tale. Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel is a twice-strangely-monikered, religiously insatiable 16-year-old Indian boy immigrating by freighter from Pondicherry to Canada with his parents, brother and the animal inhabitants of their family zoo who finds himself the sole human survivor of a shipwreck at sea.

The book is a rare hybrid: gripping survival thriller crossed with metaphysics and theology. That hybrid paid off in spades: it was both a runaway best-selling and massive award winner, starting with the Man Booker Prize in the UK. The story is bold and fantastical, yet as I remember it also dwelled for long, engaging stretches on the tedium and loneliness of sole survival at sea, with the world narrowed to Pi’s all-consuming counting of the cans of potable water and the packets of sea biscuits.

Movie Review: ‘Red Dawn’

Posted on November 25, 2012

I feel like I’ve been writing the sentence, “I’m not sure whether the world was clamoring for a x remake…” and that’s probably more due to my utter lack of creativity than anything else. I’m sure most people in my generation, who have seen the original Red Dawn, already dislike the movie, so I feel the need to defend it somewhat, or at least point out some good things it does well. Though I’m more interested in whether John Milius, the writer/director of the original film, will hunt down and kill the makers of this film, not because it doesn’t do the original justice, but because his keen, feral senses no doubt have recognized them as competition, and to protect his domain, he must slaughter and eat any trespassers. And that would be an awesome movie. I already know who would play John Milius.

Anyway, Red Dawn. I’m not sure whether the world was clamoring for a Red Dawn remake, but this one is pretty entertaining. The Red Scare is all but over, and with Albania being the only place left to get furious communist thought, the baddies are transformed from the Russians into the North Koreans, which strangely works, as the higher-ups in North Korea seem like just the right kind of nuts to try something like invading the US.

Game Review: ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ for XBox 360

Posted on November 23, 2012

The Call of Duty series is the gaming industry’s equivelent of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster film. While the story might be slightly convoluted, millions of people flock to it and spend their hard earned money on a explosion filled, high octane, testosterone laced good time. In addition to the campaign, Call of Duty: Black Ops II includes both the standard mutliplayer and the Zombie mode from Treyarch which has given the studio something for people to remember them by.

It’s no surprise that Black Ops II had huge midnight launches at over a thousand locations across the country but lines of people don’t necessarily ensure a game will live up to the hype. But, Treyarch continues to prove why they are trusted with such a franchise.

The Long

First and foremost, regardless of anything else in the game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II captures shooter gameplay and control on a console at its finest. Everything from movement to aiming and shooting to damage detection all feel perfect in Black Ops II. The default control scheme is perfect for the genre and everything really just fits perfectly into place (at least on the XBox 360 controller) for the FPS experience. If you stripped down the graphics and setting, the engine behind Call of Duty: Black Ops II would still be an ideal shooter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 21, 2012

The crew are taking a much needed break over the Thanksgiving holiday. We’ll be back next week with our regularly scheduled programming. Of course, if something big breaks, we’ll bring it to you.

Otherwise, if you’re in the US of A (or just like to celebrate our holidays) Happy Thanksgiving! If not, enjoy your Thursday and Friday.

See you on the other side.

Game Review: ‘Halo 4’ for XBox 360

Posted on November 16, 2012

It’s been five years since Master Chief finished the fight and saved the earth in the events of Halo 3. Since, there have been an expansion turned spin-off, RTS, prequel and an HD remake of the original, but no proper sequel. As hyped as Black Ops II may be, no game’s fanbase may be clamoring more for a sequel than those of the XBox 360 exclusive Halo 4.

This is the first new proper Halo title made by 343 Industries and the start of a new trilogy for Master Chief called the Reclaimer trilogy. With the lofty task put on this new studio, the results so far have been amazing.

The Long

The biggest fear of Halo 4 was if the game was actually going to still feel like Halo. After all, it has been five years and a new studio working on the game. At the same time, the first person shooter genre has evolved by leaps and bounds since Halo broke open the floodgates of FPS shooting to consoles. Luckily, 343 Industries was able to take both into effect and comes up with a compromise that feels modern while not just trying to be another Call of Duty clone.

Halo 4 retains most of Halo’s signature control elements. Zooming in with a weapon comes from pressing down on the right stick. Melee comes from the right bumper. And the grenade toss happens from the left trigger. If you haven’t played a Halo since Reach, it will only take a few minutes to reacclimate yourself with the controls. There is a reason they have worked so well for the series in the past and continue to hold true to this version of the game as well.

Movie Review: ‘Anna Karenina’

Posted on November 16, 2012

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This is the third adaptation of a novel Joe Wright has made with Keira Knightley and the second of a beloved classic. The problem is that most of the belovees have actually read Pride and Prejudice, while the many who approached Anna Karenina got about twenty or so pages into it before throwing up their hands in frustration trying to sort out the -iliaviches from the -oliaviches.

That’s not a problem for the film, however; rather I think it may hurt its chances at the box office. Then again, the novel did find new life due to the Gospel According to Oprah, and this provides what I imagine is an excellent primer.

For one, Russian novels may suit the screen even better than their English counterparts as it’s much easier to keep track of faces than names. And Wright seems aware of this, as the names are totally unimportant. A few are bandied about, but it’s never difficult to tell Anna apart from, say, Princess Myagkaya or Countess Vronskaya or Yppikaya (notably absent from the film).

New Trailer for Indie Action Movie ‘The Package’ Arrives

Posted on November 16, 2012

Even though we often cover big Hollywood movies here, we can’t forget that there’s a large group of people who make smaller movies too. Some of these smaller movies are extremely artistic, deal with difficult subject matter or are otherwise far out of the mainstream in some way.

And others have a lot of guys shooting guns and blowing stuff up. The latest movie from director Jesse V. Johnson, called The Package, is one of those kinds.

It features Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin and tells the story of a “courier for a local crime lord (who) must deliver a mysterious package while being chased by a horde of unusual gangsters.” Sounds like my kind of movie.

To help you decide if it’s your kind of movie, there’s a new trailer for The Package that dropped recently. Check it out after the break.

Look for The Package to come to DVD, VOD and more early next year.

Movie Review: ‘Lincoln’

Posted on November 16, 2012

At numerous points in the watching of Lincoln, Steven Spielburg’s new ode to America and Americana, I was reminded of Tableau Vivant, a kind of staged group charades that was a popular entertainment of the 19th century. In Tableau Vivant, costumed enactors wordlessly enact a story, freezing in a series of familiar scenes or attitudes.

And so is the same in Lincoln, in which actors, led by an astonishingly physically like Daniel Day Lewis, enact the last several months of Abraham Lincoln’s life, frequently freezing in scenes or postures that seem designed to recall all the many paintings, daguerrotypes, statuary and coinage with which we are all so familiar and that pay homage to the man whom most agree is our country’s greatest president.

Despite the dramatic build-up around the central accomplishment of Lincoln’s severely truncated second term—the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery—and the political sausage-making this necessitates, the film feels less story than hagiography. Spielberg seems determined to convince us that Lincoln was a great president, and I buy it, but was it ever in question? Is this biopic or is it a nearly 3-hour Franklin Mint commercial? There’s been a lot of press about Lewis’s voice in this movie, but to me his entire performance, voice included, is problematic.

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