Alan Rapp

Nashville – Someday You’ll Call My Name

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Nashville – Someday You’ll Call My Name
  • tv.com: link

nashville-someday-youll-call-my-name

Despite Deacon’s (Charles Esten) repeated refusals, Juliette (Hayden Panettiere) continues to try to woo the singer-songwriter to dump his tour with Rayna (Connie Britton) and sign an exclusive contract to join her on tour. Deacon’s refusal, despite his concern over noticing Rayna’s growing uncertainty about going on a small, intimate tour with the man she used to love, isn’t the teen starlet’s biggest problem as Juliette’s mother (Sylvia Jefferies) shows up at the record label,  the recording studio, and later her home, trying to hit up her daughter for money she can use to pay for her drug addiction.

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News and Notes

/ / Film News & Trailers

King ConanDeadline is reporting Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s long delayed return to the Conan franchise might be a reality as soon as 2014

Empire Magazine is reporting The Wolverine will not be a prequel but a sequel the the accumulated continuity of the existing X-films

Examiner is reporting Matthew Vaughn has left the sequel to X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, in favor of directing a comic book adaptation of The Secret Service

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Chasing Mavericks

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Chasing Mavericks
  • IMDB: link

chasing-mavericks-posterEven though the film was directed by the combination of Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys) and Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, Coal Miner’s Daughter), I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed Chasing Mavericks. The film is based on the real life of surfer Jay Moriarty (Jonny Weston, who reminds me more than a little of Christopher Atkins in The Pirate Movie) who grew up chasing giant waves most believed were myths in a small cove in Northern California in the mid-1990’s.

Although the surfing footage is some of the best ever captured for a feature film, the screenplay is just as focused on Jay’s life outside the water when he’s not obsessed with his dream of surfing Mavericks. The fatherless young man whose alcoholic mother (Elisabeth Shue) is less than dependable latches on at a young age to a surfing neighbor (Gerard Butler) who, despite having enough trouble figuring out how to be a father to his own daughter (Maya Raines), finds himself cast into the role of a surrogate father to the talented young surfer whether he likes it or not.

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Cloud Atlas is in Need of a Road Map (and Lots of Editing)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Cloud Atlas
  • IMDB: link

cloud-atlas-posterCloud Atlas, the collaboration by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer to bring the novel of the same name by David Mitchell to the big screen is, to put it bluntly, a mess.  It’s an ambitious mess to be sure as the project bites off far more than it can chew by casting a small group of actors playing multiple roles across different time periods, but it’s a mess none the less. Fans of the book may be prepared for what’s to come, but the rest of us could use a road map of this late night ride to nowhere. (At least nowhere interesting.)

The film beings by throwing the audience into a variety of stories taking place decades, or in some cases centuries, apart (including two distinctly different version of the future – one of which owes a little too much to The Time Machine). Introducing a slew of characters in the opening 15-20 minutes, all played by the same group of actors who jump centuries, ethnicities, and even gender between tales (due to some strikingly inconsistent make-up and CGI), Cloud Atlas hits the ground running and expects you to keep up.

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Arrow – Lone Gunmen

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Green Arrow – Lone Gunmen
  • tv.com: link

arrow-lone-gunmen

Green Arrow‘s (Stephen Amell) vigilante justice is complicated by the arrival of an assassin who kills the latest name (Tobias Slezak) on Queen’s list before the archer can exact his own form of justice. After being grazed by the poisoned bullet that takes out his target, Oliver traces the assassin’s unique killing style to an unknown assassin known only as Deadshot (Michael Rowe). As Green Arrow traces the killer’s bullet back to his employers (through logic that’s far from clear), which leads to equally dumb plan of passing himself off as a member of the Russian Mob, Detective Lance’s (Paul Blackthorne) own investigation into the killings leads him to believe someone is killing off competing bidders for an energy company, a group that includes Walter Steele (Colin Salmon).

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