I saw The Protector and Hollywoodland tonight. Two very different movies. The Protector is full of amazing kick ass Muay Thai, most done by Tony Jaa, who is graceful and strong and makes walking up walls look easy. It has one extended action scene which is done in one long take as Jaa fights his way up and around four floors that will blow your mind. People were cheering and clapping thoughout the film (and, yeah, laughing at some ludicous plot twists, but that's par for the course in this kind of movie).

Hollywoodland is a very carefully crafted movie with some lovely performances. I had heard some negative things about Brody's performance, but I thought it was nuanced and that he was incredibly charismatic (those eyes kill me). Like all right-thinking people, I usually hate Ben Affleck, but he was very much an actor in this movie and I was impressed with his performance--and, Diane lane hit it out of the park as always. The film is not as deep as it wants to be, but there is some interesting stuff going on and lots of compelling moments.

I felt that the script for Hollywoodland had been massaged to give both Brody and Affleck equal screen time, and somewhere along the line the original reason for making the movie in the first place got lost. I thought most of it was very pleasant to watch (the performances were all terrific), but I could never quite put my finger on why the filmmakers thought I should be hearing this story, and after awhile I lost interest.

Yeah--it was definitely overthought to the point of losing energy--The DH calls it "First Feature Disease." I found the performances and some of the scenes strong enough to keep me inside the film, though.Of the three of us at the theater last night, one of us thought Toni Mannix killed him, one (me) thought it was suicide, and one thought Mannix did it on behalf of his wife, and I lfound it impressive that none of us felt cheated in terms of story, but that we all had different opinions.

The mood was finally right for me to go see Snakes on a Plane this afternoon. I'm happy to report that it was fun to watch throughout, despite all the handwave-y things that should have thrown me out of the movie.

I did think to myself that the witness against Eddie Kim wasn't quite so crucial as they made out, what with him obviously committing an act of domestic terrorism that would get him disappeared to wherever has taken the place of Guantanimo, Miranda rights or no. Not to mention that some of the people who died would surely have relatives that would go Charles Bronson on him.

Slashfilm and Coming Soon.net both have announcements that MGM is going to produce a Live Action Hobbit - possibly a two-parter in conjunction with New Line.

Are these sites generally accurate?

::Going to happy Tony Jaa place in my head. Considering staying there all day, or possibly until at at least Thursday.::

The MGM/New Line Hobbit story is now being reported in The Guardian.

I had no idea they were releasing the ruined unenhanced theatrical releases of the original Star Wars triology on DVD.

I'm turning in my geek card.

They're releasing them with the ruined ones, if memory serves. I've read people bristling at the appearance of supporting the crap by buying the originals the only way they can legally.

I bristle. I'm bristling right now.

I'm gonna stick with my ripped laserdisc copies, especially since that's all the unenhanced ones are going to be, really. Apparently, they didn't realize that we (or at least I) wouldn't have minded if all they did was improve the video and audio. Really. It's the crappy extra scenes and changes we don't want.

If i had the time and skills, I'd take the "enhanced" version and the "unenhanced" version and create a version of the second that uses audio/video from the former wherever they didn't actually fuck with it other than in a "make it look less like crap" way. I think somebody out on the internets already did that, actually, but I wouldn't know where to find it.