Whiteout Trailer

Whiteout, brought to you by two fine lads named Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, is now officially a trailer.  Soon, it will officially be a movie.  And you will need to officially go see it.  It’s murder, mayhem and mystery in Antarctica.  Ant-freaking-arctica.

Seriously though, Whiteout was a really great book and I think it will make for a really great movie.  It doesn’t hurt that Kate Beckinsale is easy on the eyes either.

This one is made of win. Win, win, WIN!

I like to think that somewhere Rucka and Lieber are giggling like schoolgirls.

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th came and went here without incident, but the kids at Camp Crystal Lake weren’t so lucky this year.  Jason Voorhees is back with a vengeance.  That’s right… they finally made a good Friday the 13th movie and it’s been a long time coming.

Unless you’re a 19-year-old bank teller, you know the story, so I won’t recap it here.  It’s the same plot, just with some new twists.  Friday the 13th’s twisted morality tale is still in effect, which means all the potheads and fornicators are doomed from the start.  One thing that kind of stuck out (at least for me),  is that Jason seemed to be more than just a psycho running around in a hockey mask… they actually made him very smart and methodical, as well as an unstoppable killing machine running around in a hockey mask.  There’s actually one scene that shows trophies he won as a kid in archery and hockey, which have haunting permutations for the camp visitors.

Friday the 13th is  a suspenseful, scary, bloody mess and well worth the price of admission, especially if you enjoy having the crap scared out of you.  In fact, you might want to bring extra pants.

Taken

Liam Neeson gets to stretch his badass muscles in Taken, a movie in which some very, very bad people get exactly what they deserve, usually in the most brutally efficient way way possible.

Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, a caring dad with a past filled with dark deeds.  When his daughter is kidnapped by sex slavers, Bryan engages in hot pursuit all over Paris, compiling a pretty heavy body count along the way.   Neeson’s Bryan is intense, methodical and driven and makes Jack Bauer look like a choirboy. Yeah, I went there.

The film’s star is also it’s brightest shining light.  A little more gravitas and some better performances (seriously, would it have been conceivable to cast an 18 year old actres as an 18 year old character?) would have probably garnered a better score, but Taken is a ferociously entertaining ride.

Three out of five stars

Gran Torino

Photo by Anthony Michael Rivetti / Warner Bros.

Clint Eastwood never ceases to amaze.  Gran Torino is a tour de force.