halfwhiteboy

I think I've been living under a rock since I've never heard that there would be a sequel to that abs-baring, testosterone overflow of a movie that was 300. At first I thought it was just one of those faux movie trailers but lo and behold, it is true! And here is our first glimpse of 300: Rise of an Empire :

Iron Man 3 is not really a sequel to Iron Man 2 but rather a follow-up to that blockbuster fun ride that was The Avengers . The film takes place after the events in New York City ( Remember that alien invasion action extravaganza? ), which was repeatedly referenced throughout the movie. Apparently it has left Tony Stark scarred, who's now suffering from sleepless nights, panic attacks, and even a bit of paranoia. This third installment in the Iron Man franchise takes on a very Tony-centric approach, and as such, we see a lot of Robert Downey Jr without the tin suit, something reminiscent of the first movie -- heck, even more than the first movie! It was a clever treatment in which we get to see Stark as the real hero, with or without the suit. It was nice to see him make do of what he has, to see gadgets fail, and to once more bear witness to his creative genius. Ben Kingsley as "The Mandarin." While the film attempts an introspective ride, it stops itself shor...

With all the hullabaloo over The Philippine Star entertainment columnist and editor Ricky Lo's painfully awkward interview with Golden Globe winner Anne Hathaway, another veteran in the person of TV host Boy Abunda* tries his hand at interviewing the rather catty actress (She's Catwoman after all!). In my mind at least. Boy Abunda: Hello, Anne! My name is Boy Abunda. Anne Hathaway: Boy? Your name's Boy? Boy: Yes, my name is Boy ( fighting the urge to roll his eyes ). Anne: Really? Oh, hi there! ( smiles ) B: Hi! You're so beautiful. A: Why thank you! You look good yourself. B: Thank you. A: Wait, are you sure you're a boy? B: No, I'm not. ( boisterous laughter ) Ahahaha! (Joint laughter) B: Okay, first of all, Anne, congratulations on your wonderful performance in Les Misèrables. You were brilliant. A: Thank you. Thank you. B: At the Golden Globes, how come no one thanked Victor Hugo, who wrote the novel on which the play, and now ...

So yesterday I had to watch the final installment in the Twilight series with My Bibe. I wasn't really expecting anything but my, oh my, was it one extended piece of nothing but fluff. Spoilers be damned but the two-hour film went just like this: Bella was getting acquainted with her new life as a vampire, the Volturi got wind of Renesmee, the Cullens embarked on a worldwide search for "witnesses," an imaginary fight ensued, and then everyone went home. And oh, what followed was an extended audio-visual presentation (AVP) showing  all the cast members since the first Twilight movie, much like how local teleseryes  do it in their final episode.

Agent 007's latest outing has been heaping praise and at the same time raking in money at the international box office (it has yet to be shown in the U.S.). And rightfully so! I daresay that  Skyfall is one of the best Bond movies ever made in the franchise's 50-year, 23-film history. Daniel Craig as James Bond. [ Source ] Since the 1960's, we all know James Bond to be this suave secret agent with a license to kill. Always perfectly dressed, he's got all the coolest cars and gadgets, and always gets to bed the most gorgeous of women with nary an effort. Bond had single-handedly made being a spy aspirational and such a cool occupation. But the world has changed a great lot since then, and director Sam Mendes has pretty much put this premise front and center, even questioning MI6's relevance in today's world where no one even knows who the enemy is anymore. With cyberterrorism and all, how can Bond keep up? I have to stop myself here to preclude myself f...

Set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight , Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy comes full circle with The Dark Knight Rises . As has been said, it's peacetime. Gotham's crime rate is at an all time low and everything seems alright. However, it all but seems like a lull between the storm because a carefully-orchestrated grand plan to bring the city down has been brewing all along. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has been reduced to a cane-toting, bearded recluse, languishing in sorrow inside his now-rebuilt mansion, Wayne Manor. His co-conspirator in the cover-up surrounding Harvey Dent's death, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), has likewise not been the happiest either. Then the arrival of Selena Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who's been referred to in the film as a cat burglar but never as 'Catwoman,' suddenly pulls Wayne out of his hermit life. Soon enough, everyone else in Gotham is jolted by the brazen -- and very public -- terrorist ma...

My Bibe and I watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last night. I went to the cinema with nary an expectation other than the twisted premise of America's 16th president living a secret life as a hunter of the undead cool (I still wasn't eager to watch Spider-man). Produced by the eccentric Tim Burton,  Vampire Hunter  is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, he who tried to make us believe in curving bullets in  Wanted . I haven't read Seth Grahame-Smith's novel, so I just went with the flow. The film to me is a great balance of visuals, action sequences and sound. I wouldn't call it a horror movie but this triple combination scared My Bibe a few times. It was graphic novel-ish in terms of treatment, and I'm not complaining. Though some may regard all those vampire-killing sequences as overly choreographed -- especially since a lot of them are in slo-mo -- they're cool to watch. That scene where Abe was chasing a vampire amid a hundred stampeding hor...

I'm giddy with excitement over The Dark Knight Rises . I've been checking sureseats.com daily but they still aren't selling tickets as I'm writing this. I wanna make sure that I catch it on opening day, which is non-negotiable, by the way. I've been a fan of director Christopher Nolan's reinterpretation of the Caped Crusader's tale ever since Batman Begins , where I loved how he tried as much as possible to ground everything close to reality. Now this admiration shot up to stratospheric heights when The Joker came out in the sequel. Oh yes, I loved the late Heath Ledger's take on the character so much that I dressed up as the anarchist-clown for Halloween that year. Why so serious? Now The Joker is but a distant memory, and it's Bane at the forefront this time. Anyway, the makers of TDKR have recently decided to whet our appetites even more with a downloadable 49-page document containing production notes from the film. Here are a few factua...

One thing more fun about the Philippines -- however fleeting -- is being able to watch Marvel's much-awaited The Avengers more than a week before its big May 4 opening in the U.S. I wasn't able to watch it on opening day here because I was busy but I was happy nonetheless to be able to catch it yesterday at eleven in the morning. Yes, 11am. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a movie that early since college. It was pretty obvious in Marvel's previous outings that they've been trying to tie everything together to an eventual Avengers film. In the last Iron Man flick, we were already introduced to S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury and Agent Coulson (even if that sequel was not up to par with the first one). Black Widow also already made an appearance there. Tony Stark was likewise there at the end of the last incarnation of the Hulk  talking about a team being assembled. S.H.I.E.L.D. was also very prominent in Thor , and Stark Industries was just as active in Captain Am...

I just caught the trailer for the upcoming Tim Burton movie Dark Shadows , a new take on the 1960s/'70s gothic soap opera of the same name. An obvious favorite of the director, Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins who was turned into a vampire by a jealous witch in the 18th century and was unearthed in 1972. I don't really know anything about the original soap but I'm loving the dark comedy and campiness evident in the trailer and I personally don't care if it doesn't stay true to the original. Also, after seeing a thousand and one vampire reinventions in recent times, it's a breath of fresh air to have a bloodsucker of the classic and campy mold once again. And Depp fits the bill perfectly. Dark Shadows also stars Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham-Carter, among others. It opens this summer.

I've already seen some clips and stills last year of Daniel Radcliffe's new film The Woman in Black and my first impression was that he looks really good here. Ditching his Hogwarts robe for a period three-piece suit made him look much, much better. Now the film is showing and goes head-to-head with Chronicle , another flick I'm excited to see (although Woman in Black isn't showing yet in the Philippines - bummer!). The Woman in Black tells the story of a widowed lawyer, played by Radcliffe, who is sent to a remote village to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased eccentric, as the website puts it. It's a period ghost story where the house to be haunted by a woman who's bent on finding something and someone she lost. And the villagers try to keep this a secret from the lawyer.

I just saw this video this morning (then read the accompanying article ): And now I wanna go see this:

Unlike My Bibe , who's a voracious reader, I don't care much about books. So at the turn of the new millennium when Warner Bros. announced that they have cast the three lead roles for the film version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , I had no idea what it was. It was only when the film was about to debut that I got intrigued and borrowed a copy of the book. The moment I started reading, I was under its spell and didn't let go of it until I was finished. I was suddenly a child again. During the same time, J.K. Rowling's "baby" was much lauded for getting kids all over the world to read again. But hey, don't count the kids-at-heart out. Potter also got me reading again (at least at the time)! I became a fan but far from the rabid kind who put up fan sites and stake out before book launches and cinema screenings. I was just so into the world of "the boy who lived," fanatic enough to engage in office conversations with fellow fans ...

Another week at the box office and my favorite film The Dark Knight pushes past Phantom Menace , The Two Towers , and Order of the Phoenix to land at no. 6 in the global box office charts with $949.2 million. Well, since it's still showing in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, it could overtake Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (cume: $961M) by next week. I'm being conservative here so let's just see if it could beat the first Harry Potter movie (cume: $976.5M).

$30. That's all it made at the U.S. box office. And because of that it holds a Guinness distinction of being the lowest grossing movie of all time. I was intrigued at Yahoo!'s " Movie Disasters: Historic Box Office Bombs " so I continued browsing. And near the end of the 13-movie collection was Katherine Heigl - yes, Katherine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy and of Knocked Up - sharing equal billing with Leo Grillo and Tom Sizemore in a film called ZYZZYX ROAD .

And here we...GO! The Dark Knight has breached the $500-million mark at the U.S. box office - and the fastest at that! I don't know why this excites me. It has also hauled in $417M outside the U.S., bringing it's global box office total to $921.8M. That's enough to catapult it to 9th place at the charts, six spots up from last week's no. 15. At the rate it's going, Dark Knight could easily overtake Phantom Menace and LOTR: The Two Towers by next week. And it could probably rest at no. 5 or 6 when its run is due.

Box office estimates for the Aug. 22-24 weekend showed that The Dark Knight had already grossed $489 million in the U.S. alone. For two weeks now it has already overtaken Star Wars as the second highest-grossing movie of all time (in the States, that is). It's still a long shot, though, from Titanic 's $600 million. I wasn't expecting Dark Knight to earn that much, judging from the performance of its predecessor Batman Begins . So, great! But personally, I don't think it could make another $100 million to dislodge Titanic from the top spot. But if it does, well great again! I'll be more than happy 'cause I just love the movie!

Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class – I really had to quickly get that during the few seconds in the film when what WALL-E stands for was shown. I find Pixar’s latest offering depressing, though. In fact it’s upsetting. While I was all starry-eyed following cute little WALL-E as he went about his daily routine, a few minutes into the film and I forgot about him and saw what was around.