The Last Airbender Movie Review

I would like to preface this review by saying that I am an adult fan of the cartoon this movie is based on and have a greater admiration for the source material and these characters than the average movie watcher off the street does. Bear this in mind during your reading of this review.

Instead of reviewing the movie immediately, I wanted to say a few words about Avatar the Last Airbender the television show as it is near and dear to me and was not accurately portrayed in the M. Night Shyamalan film.

The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko set out to create a childrens show that set itself apart from the rest of the Saturday morning cartoon fare by creating a world rich in character and based on the myths and traditions of Central and East Asia. They did this by imagining complex and flawed characters, fantastic and exotic settings and landscapes and grounded it in the Chinese Martial Arts teachings.

The world of Avatar: TLA (I’m going to call it Avatar: TLA from now on since I can’t type “The Last Airbender” every time) is separated into 4 nations: Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Each of these nations drawing inspiration from a different Chinese fighting form that relates to their particular element. Earthbenders use Hung Gar for its powerful stance and strong attacks, Airbenders use Ba Gua or the use of quick directional changes and circular movements to generate power and so on. These decisions were not made lightly and you can tell a great deal of thought and care went into their selection.

The characters in Avatar: TLA are the crowning jewel in their creator’s crown however. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Zuko, Uncle Iroh, Azula, Bumi, Ty Lee, Mai the list of characters can stretch on for a long time, but what really impresses when you watch the show is how attached you get to all of them.

Aang is the focus of the show as the Avatar and you feel for him so much at the tremendous loss of his people that he has endured. The weight of the world is on the shoulders of a child who starts his journey spiritually and physically lost and that feeling shines through.

Zuko the exiled prince of the Fire Nation is one of the best examples of what made this show amazing. At the beginning we see him as a simple enemy for Aang to overcome. All he wants is to get his honour back, and the only way he can do that is to capture the last hope for peace in the world and he’ll go to any length to achieve that goal. As the show progresses though it’s like a curtain is slowly drawn back to reveal the true depth and mastery that the show creators have in character creation. Zuko is his mother’s son. He feels compassion and empathy in a home that see them as weakness. He admires and desperately seeks the approval of a father whose callous ambition for absolute power has dissolved any semblance of humanity he may have once had.

One of my favorite Zuko episodes is called “Zuko Alone”. We follow him as he wanders across the Earth Kingdom, trying to survive on the generosity and kindness of the people he might have to conquer and enslave someday, and it is here we see the true nature of his character. He befriends a small boy and his family and have to defend them from some seedy characters, all the while we get flashbacks of him as a child in the Fire Nation Palace and insights into the events that lead to his melancholy disposition. It is here that we learn that he was not always so, but instead was a happy and well adjusted youngster who had a loving mother. We also see the impact that losing her had on him. But Zuko would not have become the amazing character he did without help from his Uncle Iroh.

What can I say about Iroh? I’m afraid that trying to sum him up in this review would not do him justice. Simply put, Iroh is amazing. Period. Not only is he ridiculously funny with his irrational tea love and smelly bunions, but he also imparts sage wisdom to his nephew and is a firebending master that if he wanted to could settle any fight with force, but would only do so as a last resort. The episode “Tales of Ba Sing Se” showed us the Iroh that we had all grown to love and respect and made him all the more amazing by the fact that he had lost his son in the war and still felt the pain of that loss but remained the rock his nephew needed during his journey anyway. The episode was given greater significance as a tribute to the voice actor who played Iroh, Mako Iwamatsu. He had recently passed away after completion of the episode.

Avatar: TLA was an amazing show because the world was so densely packed with such wonderful and memorable characters that could make you laugh, cry and think. Whether it was Foaming Mouth Guy, or Cabbage Man, Sparky Sparky Boom Man, Yue, Chong the Hippy Song Guy or any number of small and large characters, the world of Avatar: TLA feelt like it had existed for a long time before we even knew about it.

Avatar: TLA was one of my favorite shows on television and it pains me to think that it is associated with the movie that I saw a couple days ago.

(Ok here’s where the movie review starts)

The Last Airbender directed by M. Night Shyamalan is his latest attempt at staying relevant in the movie industry after a number of flops such as “The Happening” “the Village” and “The Lady in the Water”. M. Night wrote and directed this movie and his inability to tell a story coherently and convincingly has pushed past the point of politeness. Someone’s gotta tell this guy to stop. Just stop M. Night.

Hhhhhmm. Ok. I went into this movie with expectations low, yet cautiously optimistic based on the strength of the source material. Boy oh boy was I let down. This movie was awful writing sandwiched between painfully bad acting and low rent special effects. The director attempted to cram into an hour and a half what the show took an entire season to do. It felt rushed from start to finish. We would start off with the scene in the arctic when Aang was discovered and then we would cut to another scene “Southern Air Temple” and from there some other stuff would happen, then voila, we’re in the “North Pole”. The film feels like a palsy patient on crystal meth, hop skipping and jumping around like crazy.

The entire movie is bogged down by a script that seems like it was written by a sleepy twelve year old. There were times during the movie where Katara would say a line and the audience would laugh. Outright laugh! That would be OK if the line was for comedic effect but it was supposed to be DRAMATIC! Why Shyamalan thinks he can write is beyond me. The dialogue serves only to get the story across, seemingly as quickly as possible and without the artistic and creative flare that we had come to expect from the show. Sokka, Katara’s brother is a huge sentimental favorite for the fans of the series thanks to his love of the meat and sarcasm but in the movie all we get is, “I don’t think that’s a good idea Katara” and “Katara! I’m all wet!”. At least they got the boomerang right.

The lead actor Noah Ringer who plays Aang, is just awful. Seriously did anyone bother to find out if this kid could act before they put him in this movie? His lines sound like they are being read off of cue cards, with the appropriate pauses for the cards to be switched. Personally I’ve never been in a play or movie, but I always thought that if I had to, I could pull it off. This kid made me realize that there is a lot you need to know to be an actor, things that regular people just don’t think of and that if I tried, I’d look like an idiot. That’s what he did for me in this movie. He provided that service at least. You will never have to be subjected to my terrible acting on any screen or stage anywhere. Thank you Noah Ringer.

Before the movie even came out there was quite a bit of controversy over the selection of the actors over the fact that they were casting white actors to play Asian characters and I admit I didn’t think too much of it before, but I have to admit it makes the movie somewhat preposterous when you see a village of people who look Inuit and the lead characters Sokka and Katara white as the snow beneath their feet. For me, this weird juxtaposition served only to take me out of the experience further.

The last thing that I really did not appreciate was the fact that they changed the pronunciation of the characters names: Aang was pronounced Ong and Iroh was pronounced E-roh. WHY? What possible purpose did it serve to do this? All it did was make me angry, angry at the fact that not only did they make my beloved Avatar into a shitty movie, but they couldn’t even get details like the characters names right?? Did anyone even watch the show? But the sad thing is that the show’s creators Mike and Bryan were both involved in this production, which boggles my mind. I don’t think they would have willingly or knowingly let this garbage bear the name of their baby, but if they did, well then I just gotta say WTF guys. WTF.

In closing, The Last Airbender is a horrible movie deserving of its 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It translates none of the wonder and imagination of the cartoon and should be taken out behind the chemical shed and shot. M. Night you are a master at Failbending ( thanks for that one Eric)

Star Trek Movie Review

From top to bottom, this is not your older, nerdier brother’s Star Trek. This is Star Trek for the masses of people who may have never given it a chance in the past, and that includes people who thought that they were too cool to watch a Star Trek film, although with the growing appeal of nerd chic these days, that old and trusty axiom may be starting to disappear altogether.

JJ Abrams reboot (and it most definitely is a reboot) of the classic sci-fi series takes a savvy eye and a new perspective to the beloved source material and brings us an interpretation of Star Trek that is updated for today’s audience. Similar in ways to what Christopher Nolan did for the Batman franchise, Abrams takes us back to the early years of the Federation with an emphasis on down-to-earth realism with less space age magic machines and technical mumbo jumbo. The starships internal designs have an almost steamboat-like design with lots of metal piping and railings in the engineering sections and beaming technology is still in its infancy. The Enterprise itself looks stunning, like a retro Cadillac restored to its beautiful hayday, and the special effects are top notch as you would expect. The presentation in Star Trek has a shiny new coat of paint, but doesn’t seem flashy or over the top which in the hands of less talented directors could have been its downfall.

The movie itself is faced paced and sprinkled with genuinely funny humour, but the best part for me was the interaction between Spock and Kirk. Zachary Quinto steals the show with his portrayl of the conflicted Vulcan, giving us a glimpse of Spock as a young go getter bound by logic but still learning to deal with his human emotions, plus he gets kinda freaky naughty. I won’t explain that further, but you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Chris Pine (Kirk) and Quinto seems like polar opposites, and they are, but the dynamic that exists between them in this movie is exactly what I would have pictured as their early relationship: a rocky one, but one complimenting the other.

The only downside that I could find with Star Trek was the story itself. Time travel is usually a difficult and treacherous basis for any story as it provides the potential for plot holes and inconsistencies that may leave the audience shaking their heads a bit. I also thought that villain Nero was a little shallow even though the director went out of his way to give us his reasons for doing his dastardly deeds, he still felt like a one dimensional character. The new universe that Abrams creates is explained away as simply a different timeline or alternate reality, which I think would be a particularly nasty can of worms, but then again, it does seem to open the door for potentially great sequels. The only thing that disturbs me a little bit is the complete departure from cannon that this may take the series down.

Ultimately the good REALLY outweighs the bad with this movie, and I would say it is a contender for best blockbuster of the summer.

So thats what I thought of the movie. Let us know what you think below in the comments section.

Review: Skate 2

Title: Skate 2
Developer: EA Games / Black Box
Version Reviewed: Xbox 360
Words: Jon Chan

I still remember the first time I laid my hands on Skate. After a little fumbling around with the then-fangled trick stick, the rhythm finally came to me and I immediately realized how obsolete the Tony Hawk series had become. The organic controls required delicate, but confident flicks and twirls – a most welcome contrast to the rigid and static button combinations of the hey-day. But we gamers quickly came to believe that this was merely version one point oh.

We envisioned enhancements, all agreeing with each other. “We should be able to get off our boards.” We demanded. We wanted to do hand plants. We wanted to move that encumbering dumpster bin. We wanted to bail through a mailbox.

We waited a long time, but someone up there (by that, I mean, someone at EA Games / Black Box) heard and answered our prayers; almost every one of them. At first play, Skate 2 seems to be more of the same – what might even be deemed ‘Skate 1.5.’ But then you sit around with friends, and go into the competitive multiplayer modes, or make repeated attempts to record that perfect line, and next thing you know you’re howling and hooting and cheering for the top line scores, bails, and crashes. Skate 2 manages to be just as exciting and entertaining to watch as it is to play, provided that your turn is coming up next.

It’s rather hard to imagine where Skate can go from here. The obviously evolutions have been made, and from this gamer’s perspective, its subtle adjustments and elements are implemented very well. Grinding seems to require a hair’s precision more. And getting off one’s board is useful and sometimes necessary, but it is definitely not the preferred method of transport. These conditions feel deliberate – sharpening the skills of the player, and promoting the joys of the skateboard. They are very subtle but, if truly deliberate, immediately flags Black Box to be a developer to keep your eye on [edit – Would have been, if EA didn’t lay the shut down on them].

In-game graphics and processing are also areas of improvement, with lighting, texturing, animation, and ragdoll physics making appropriate advancements alongside the state of today’s standard technologies. Art and sound direction have also received a makeover; the game’s intro feels a lot like a Beastie Boys music video featuring all your favourite skaters, in-game symbols and interfaces have been further modernized and polished, and the all around soundtrack is much more appealing over the partially sound music compilation of the original (Though Sister Nancy IS a rude gyal).

There are still some minor irritants though. Like many three dimensional games, quirky follow-camera issues make it difficult to skate as freely as one would like, while the inability to walk backwards just make most seasoned gamers scratch their heads. These two issues alone manage to break immersion, and when combined, are incredibly frustrating.

However, these irritations are rare, and Skate 2 does manage to satisfy the skater’s soul. Many sequels are drastically changed from their predecessors, sometimes to a fault. Skate 2, while not a vast difference from the original, sticks to a winning formula, and is a must play for all Skateboarding fans — but you already knew that didn’t you?

Movie Review: The Wackness

I don’t come across a lot of films that make me feel anything and when I do, its usually just basic gut reactions to cool explosions and special effects blockbusters that I forget about minutes after leaving the theatre. There are some movies that will reside in your mind for more than a couple hours, that you want to re-watch just to try to get back the feeling that you had while you were watching it and The Wackness is a movie that does just that.

The movie stars Josh Peck (you may or may not recognize him from his starring role in the Disney show Drake and Josh) as Luke Shapiro, an adolescent drug dealer in New York during the mid 90’s. Peck’s character is a real departure from his slapstick comedy role on television but he does an admirable job in his first theatrical starring role portraying a sexually frustrated teen during his last summer as a high school graduate before moving on to college. Co-starring alongside Peck is Sir Ben Kingsley as Dr. Jeffrey Squires, a pot smoking mid life crisis suffering therapist who wants to re-live his teen years through Shapiro and his daughter Stephanie played by Olivia Thrilby who you might remember from Juno as Juno’s best friend.

The movie is littered with references from the period (fancy that I can call it a period and not sound like a tool) whether it be a Forest Gump poster on the side of a bus, or pages in a newspaper covered with O.J. Simpson’s mug or the constant references to Rudy Juliani’s crusade on drugs and the homeless. I can count the number of times I’ve been to New York on one hand so I have no idea what to expect from the city beyond what I’ve seen in movies, read in books and played in video games, but what I can say is that the city I saw in the movie seemed really dirty and pretty at the same time. The city doesn’t know what it is, has different sides to its personality kind of like the main character. I won’t belabour the point that the city seemed like it had a smell, a touch and a feel to it that came across well and that I thought was worth mentioning.

Shapiro and Squires are a couple of losers that find each other through their common interest in the smoking of marijauana and also through Shapiro’s unrequited feelings towards Stephanie, Squires’ daughter, who he goes to school with but who doesn’t know that he exists. Stephanie is part of the cool crowd (aka the rich crowd) and Shapiro is on one of the lower rungs on the high school social ladder. The experiences that the writer/director Jonathan Levine weaves into the character are both timeless and culture spanning, making you instantly identify with Shapiro and the problems that he has to deal with. There are a couple of story lines woven throughout the film such as Shapiro’s turbulent home life with his parents, or Squires’ emotional distancing from his wife, but the important one and the one that hits home the most is Shapiro and Stephanie’s summertime romance. Shapiro is the everyman that you can’t help but root for, and his love affair with the girl of his dreams is a dream most guys can relate to.

Possibly the most important part of the movie is the music. What you get in The Wackness is a snippet of a Hip Hop symphony, a slice of the greatness that existed for that particular time in musical history. Some of the best Hip Hop artists of the time were releasing their best music, and the soundtrack is sprinkled with gems like Notorious B.I.G’s What, Faith Evan’s You Used to Love me, Craig Mack’s Flava in Your Ear, Nas’s The World is Your, A Tribe Called Quest’s Can I Kick It? and the list goes on and on, mixing it up a little bit with some Mott the Hoople and some reggae by the Pioneers. The soundtrack was so slick that I actually BOUGHT IT. I’ve never bought a movie soundtrack before, but I couldn’t help it this time. The music of the Wackness is like another character in and of itself, drawing you into the world of the movie and back in time like a symponic time machine.

So if you’re looking for a diamond in the rough, and you were born in the 80’s, and grew up in the 90’s, check out The Wackness, then tell someone else about it, you’ll be glad you did.

p.s. If anyone has suggestions for any other diamonds in the rough, please leave a comment bellow so that we can all check it out. And if you got mad love for the soundtrack click dis link to find a full tack list yo! The movie also has a fly ass website. It’s da bomb.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows Review

I spent my first 30 minutes of Spider-Man Web of Shadows cursing my expectations and frustrated at the PSOne-worthy tutorial Shaba Games had implemented into what was supposed to be the ultimate Spider-Man game (no pun intended). In strict and regimented try-and-try-again segments, an all-too-stereotypical Luke Cage instructed me to learn my basic combos, walk on walls, and eat my vegetables, and there wasn’t gon’ be no dessert if I didn’t eat mah veg’tibles, knaw’mean??.

So I conceded. Enslaved to the ebonical demands of a Luke-Cage-cum-Soccer-mom, I followed every order. I played along with every little mission. I jumped through every hoop, I scaled every tower, I swing-kicked every thug to which he ordered me. And then, like a child with a box of crayons and blank white-washed wall, I was set free. I got to roam the city in any direction I wished. I got to swing to my heart’s content. I got to be Spider-Man. The veggies Mama Cage fed me were terrible, bland, and flavourless. They reeked of old generation musk. But the dessert, the dessert was delicious and decadent, and so, so, so worthwhile.

Web of Shadows is to Spider-Man games as Skate is to other skateboard titles, which is completely ironic in its own regard since developer Shaba Games has hand their fair share making Tony Hawk titles in the past. However, they’ve managed to produce a Spider-Man title that, aside from the tutorials and minor gameplay flaws, is fun and refreshing from typical Spider-Man titles. Web of Shadows does a lot right. The swinging mechanic of the game feels natural. That is to say, the swinging in this game actually feels like swinging. In the past, web-swinging was an automatic and nearly passive mode of movement, a simple button press. In Web of Shadows however, swinging requires timing, depth-perception, and rhythm. A conscious effort must be applied, since Spidey’s web must actually connect with a surface, so say goodbye to swinging from the sky. Players must be aware of and adjust their virtual speed and trajectory in order to zip through New York City precisely, a mechanic that has obviously been refined through many Tony Hawk iterations.

Another nod to the Tony Hawk games is the combat system. As Spidey levels up, you can purchase and unlock longer combos, combo-variants, and chains, allowing you to customize your combo strings, not so dissimilar to riding a unique skateboard line. With both classic and symbiote suits to switch between, the permutations multiply. I could feasibly jump into the air, web-strike an opponent, pulling myself to him, flip him off the ground, throw him into the air, switch to my powerful symbiote suit, leash a tendril to my now airborne victim, and slam him into the ground. That’s just one of the combos I’ve devised, and the damage and pain I’ve put this poor thug through matches my Spider-Man personality to a tee.

What’s my Spider-Man personality? Like most next-gen games, I’ve got the choice between being good or evil, or in this case, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man or dark and vengeful Spider-Man (I refuse to equate Symbiote Spider-Man to a longhaired, tap-dancing, emo-fool-ass-hat). Throughout the game, I’m presented with forks in the road. The dark path, or the light path. Whichever I choose changes my mission objectives and pushes me closer to a respective side on the karmic spectrum. It sounds a bit black and white (or Black and Red/Blue) at this point, but it’s not so simple.

If you’ve ever read a Bible or have had the power of God threatened upon you, you’ll know, or at least have heard, that the path of evil is tempting one. I noticed myself falling into the dark path without even trying. I was ignoring helpless citizens, leaving them to the fates. I found myself using my black suit, and enjoying all of its power. I found myself using excuses to beat someone up if they so looked at me cockeyed. It all goes back to my childhood, as I’ve always had a thing for the Symbiote Suit. There was no Spider-Man more badass than that. But I digress.

To call Web of Shadows the best Spider-Man game ever would disservice past titles who have clearly paved a path for this very game to exist. Instead, I’d call this is an evolution of those Spider-Man games. Web of Shadows is definably “next-gen” in a lot of aspects. It’s very good looking, both Visually and physically. You can swing as far as the eye can see; buildings, cars, and newspaper stands are damaged with every hit; and the animations, textures, and poses are truly comic book-worthy. The game’s control scheme is a shining example that one needs not a gimmicky motion controller to attain that natural and organic feel. And while the game’s writing is a bit hokey, it’s easy to forgive, seeing that comic book writing is pretty cheesy in itself. But most of this stuff is icing on the cake. What we have here is a Spidey game that is as addictive to play as Skate, and imaginative as Amazing Spider-Man issue #300. But ultimately, what we have is the first chance to really feel like Spider-Man, and isn’t that what we all secretly want?