Total Recall - DVD Review

Starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bill Nighy, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho and Will Yun Lee. 
Directed by Len Wiseman. 

★½

There were two good things about this movie.  First, the special effects are great. Good job by the tech team, and I imagine it looked good in 3D on the big screen.  Second, there's a scene where Quaid (Farrell) is taking a break from all the chasing, and he rests against a piano, something he wishes he knew how to play. But then he discovers he can play it. It's a nice moment of discovery by Farrell, a good human pause to all the mindless action.

But the rest of it is high-speed junk.  There's turning off your brain, and then there's turning off the laws of physics.  There's a gunfight in zero-G that just took way too many liberties with logic. There's the plot twists you'd see coming a mile away even if you're not familiar with the original.  There's the fact that Jessica Biel's in it, and when's the last time her presence signified a good movie?  There's the deliberate borrowing of the art direction from Minority Report.

Stick to the Arnold version.

Random Movie Stuff - 3/27/12

- Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass, Hugo, Dark Shadows) has been offered the title role in MGM's remake of Carrie, based on the classic Stephen King novel about a shy girl with telekinetic powers who has the worst prom ever.  Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) will direct.

- Chloe Moretz has also joined the cast of The Drummer, a biopic about Beach boys drummer Dennis Wilson, who died in 1983.  It stars Aaron Eckhart, Vera Farmiga and Rupert Grint (Harry Potter).

- Kenneth Branagh (Thor) will direct the next Jack Ryan movie.  The reboot would star Chris Pine, who'd star after filming on Star Trek 2 is complete.  Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck have played Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in movies past.

- Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis have been offered the leads in Jupiter Ascending, the next sci-fi movie from Andy & Lana Wachowski (The Matrix).

- Melissa Leo (The Fighter) has joined the cast of Oblivion, a sci-fi thriller from Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy).  It stars Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones).

- Greg Dean Schmitz's Upcomingmovies.com was one of my must-visit sites about 10 years ago.  Yahoo bought his site awhile back, and now he's the main news guy for RottenTomatoes.com, a site I currently can't go a week without visiting.  Here's some news tidbits from his Weekly Ketchup column, which gives his top ten movie stories of the week (be they fresh or rotten):

1.  Michael Bay's producing a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, now titled Ninja Turtles, as the plan to have them actually be aliens.
2.  Brett Ratner's name has been attached to direct Midnight Run 2, a sequel to the 1988 hit with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.  DeNiro's expected to return but not Grodin.
3.  Jessica Biel will play Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock & the Making of Psycho, starring Anthony Hopkins (Hitchcock), Helen Mirren (his wife), James D'Arcy (Anthony Perkins), Scarlett Johansson (Janet Leigh) and Michael Stuhlbarg (agent Lew Wasserman).
4.  Ron Howard's production company Imagine Entertainment is developing another big-screen treatment of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Random Movie Stuff - 5/27/11

- Snow White & the Huntsman (starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron) had its release date moved up to June 1, 2012. In response, Relativity moved its Snow White movie (starring Julia Roberts and Lily Collins) to March 16, 2012. The Relativity one is said tob e more family-friendly, while Snow White & the Huntsman is going to be more for the PG-13 Twilight crowd.

- Jessica Biel and Bill Nighy are joining Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Bryan Cranston in the Total Recall remake, scheduled to open August 3, 2012.

- Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live) and Rashida Jones (Parks & Recreation) will star in Celeste & Jesse Forever, about a divorcing couple who try to remain friends. Elijah Wood and Emma Roberts co-star.

- Zach Braff (Scrubs) has joined the cast of Oz: The Great & Powerful, a prequel starring James Franco (The Wizard), Michelle Williams (Glinda), Rachel Weisz (Witch of the East) and Mila Kunis (Witch of the West). It's scheduled to open March 8, 2013.

- Jeff Conaway has died after being taken off life support, which he's been on since a drug overdose on May 11. He was the star of movies (Grease, Pete's Dragon) and television (Taxi, Babylon 5) and appeared on VH1's Celebrity Rehab in 2008. He was 60.