It's my birthday and I'll eat cupcakes if I wanna (And my Star Trek Into Darkness movie review)

Panel from "The Mirrors That Predicted the Future" in Shazam! (1973 series) #4 (July 1973), script by Elliot S! Maggin; pencils, inks and letters by C. C. Beck
Well, well, well, guess whose birthday it is? (Go ahead, guess.) It's mine! (And not Billy Batson's, which is February 29th. Thank you everyone for all the wonderfully nice birthday greetings and cupcakes! Today I am turning six years old. (Which is a very good age to be!) Also, I had birthday cupcakes!

Go Bully! It's your birthday! (And my A-Team movie review)

Today is my birthday! I am six years old today. Which is a very good age to be!

It's not every day a little stuffed bull turns six, y' know, so today was a very special day when Marshall and Shelly and all my animal pals woke me up early to bring me breakfast in bed! That's a very special treat. I sat up in bed and they gave me orange juice and toast and waffles and butter and syrup and a Pop-Tart and tea (Earl Grey, black). I just wish they had put it all on a plate, and some cups.

After I finished doing the laundry and hanging out the bedclothes, it was such a beautiful day that I took my Razor Scooter out and went scooting all around Park Slope. Everyone was waving and wishing me happy birthday! It's nice to have so many friends in the neighborhood. My pal at the dry cleaners, Puck, the cute funny dog with the curly tail, even let me ride on his back for a while for a special treat while he wished me happy birthday! I think. He speaks Chinese and I don't really understand him. But when he brought out his Calgon I got to say to him "Ancient Chinese secret, huh?" And we all laughed and laughed and laughed.

In the afternoon I took my Metrocard and headed off for the all-new, all-different MTA subway (No more V trains! Different color M trains! I wonder if the tunnel pigs had to get dye jobs on the M line.) and went into the city to treat myself to a lovely lunch at Danny Meyers' Shake Shack! It is a long long long wait in line but luckily Mister Meyer came out and saw me and declared that I didn't have to wait in line, not the famous Bully, not on my birthday, and he escorted me right up to the Shack where I got a free chocolate malted concrete shake on the house. After the brain freeze headache went away, I thanked Mister Meyer and headed off uptown to my next destination...an afternoon at the movies! I'd really, really wanted to see a special movie and I had my Moviecash gift card (personalized with my photo on it!) so I headed over to 42nd Street and into the vast, sprawling AMC Empire 25, home of as many movies as you'd ever possibly wanna see, as long as ten of them are The Last Airbender.

But was I heading to see that new movie by M. Dark Knight Shyalaman? No I was not. There is a movie out based on one of my favorite TV shows of all time so I couldn't wait to see it. I told the ticket clerk how excited I was that my favorite TV show had finally come to the big screen and I asked her if little stuffed bulls got discounted rates and free popcorn and all the bubbly fizzy Coca-Coca in a giant barrel-size cup that I could drink because it was my birthday, and she said "No."

There's so many people at the movies even in the afternoon, and I rushed from floor to floor to find my theater out of the approximately seventy-three billion that are in this megaplex. I rushed into the auditorium just in time for the lights to go down on the screen and everyone's cell phones to light up and start chirping, and then the movie I've wanted to see for weeks began...The A-Team! Yayyyyyyyyyyy!

Recite it along with me: In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. Hooray! I was sure looking forward to lots of action-adventure stunts, car chases and van crashes, elaborate confidence schemes against the bad guys, a last-minute escape from the pursuing military police, and maybe a guest appearance by a Cylon in the opening credits. But, you know, I've gotta hand it to the studio...they certainly went in a different direction than you would expect! It's a pity they couldn't get George Peppard and Mister T and all the rest of the original cast, but the quartet of actors that made up the A-Team in the movie was an interesting choice. Sarah Jessica Parker narrated a lot of the action from the opening scene where the team went undercover at a gay wedding...I'm not quite sure why, but wow, that was some great costuming, huh?...to their escape from...I dunno, some guys...at the end of the film. Sarah Jessica P. didn't smoke any of Peppard's signature cigars, though. I guess that's the studio's way of saying don't smoke, kids! Which is a very good cause and you all should remember it.

The rest of the cast rounded out the A-Team with energy and verve. Cynthia Nixon played up her flirty side as the ever-on-the-prowl Face, and Kristin Davis wisely chose to bring out her most insane performance as H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock. Really, nobody acts that neurotic in real life, but it's funny to see Murdock stress about the little things. But by far the standout of the cast was Kim Cattrall , who perfectly captured the spirit and the persona of the loud-mouth, rough-and-tumble B.A. Baracus and his crazy-ass jewelry and ghetto outfits. Hah! I pity the fool who tangles with B.A.!

On the other hand, I expected bigger and better stunts and pyrotechnics in a movie version of this action show, and I've got to say I was a little disappointed at how modestly they played up the stunts and shooting. That might go right along with the absent cigars: don't shoot people, kids! Which is another very good thing to remember. Except the A-Team and the bad guys never even hit anything in the TV series. They could fire off a round of two thousand bullets from a van-mounted machine gun and all they would hit is the tires on the army jeep pursuing them and then it would go WHOOOOOP up and fly over and flip, but you'd always see the Army guys getting out and shaking themselves off. Nobody ever really got hurt on The A-Team, unless you count Dirk Benedict's chances of doing a Battlestar Galactica sequel. Haw! But I kids the Dirk Benedict.


The plot involved something about the team heading to the Middle East. I was hoping they were gonna go up against terrorists or something, but instead they just spent all their time lounging around the pool and gossiping and shopping and making phone calls to people back home. I guess that's a modern-day updating of the A-Team to say to you don't stereotype Middle Easterners as terrorist, kids, which is a pretty good idea.

Then there was a whole sequence where Hannibal met one of his long-lost loves, and I thought we were gonna have one of those nicely done romantic scenes you used to get once in a while in the TV show where one of the A-Team came back into contact with a love from his past but they couldn't stay with her because they were all on the run from the law (see the aforementioned "still wanted by the government.") I kept waiting for something to blow up or the A-Team to make a tank out of a golf cart but they still just kept on shopping and talking about shoes. That's a little quibble I had with the reality of this movie. If you're going to fight bad guys and keep one step ahead of Colonel Decker, you've gotta have on sensible shoes: army boots, or maybe even Face's glamourous but practical spiffy shoes. I really don't think you'd be able to run and jump and do stunts in four inch Louboutins, whatever they are.


You know, now that I think about it...hmmmm. Unless it was all during the time when I was out at the snack bar getting my 444-ounce soda refilled, or maybe the six or seven times I had to run to the rest room, I actually didn't see any action sequences at all. Nobody running, jumping, nothing exploding or shooting. Why, there weren't even any guns at all in the movie! I got excited when Kim Cattrall said a guy she had met had a big "love gun," and I thought All right! Now we're gonna see some action adventure! But then it was just a long scene of B.A. and another guy, I dunno, I think they were wrestling, and because they were in the desert it was really hot so they took off their...look, there weren't any guns at all in this movie!

You know something...I'm beginning to think that wasn't a very good A-Team movie at all. I don't know why critics said it was a "fun big-screen reboot" and full of "rousing action set pieces laced with sardonic humor". This was a pretty bad A-Team movie. Why, when I told the theater clerk that I wanted a ticket to see that big-screen version of the hit TV show, I never expec

...................

Wait a minute.

(checks my ticket stub)

Curse you, AMC Empire 25!!!!!

My review of the Iron Man movie

Tony Stark makes you feel/He's a cool exec with a heart of steel. That's what I was whistling this weekend as I lined up, ticket in hoof, to see the first major blockbuster motion picture adventure thrill-ride of this summer, the big-budget superhero flick Iron Man, which I've been waitin' for all year. You've prob'bly seen it two or three times by now, and everybody and his brother is bloggin' about the tight, action-packed script, the amazing special effects, and the apt and canny casting for this big Marvel movie, but I'd been spending the week staying off the internet, avoiding any spoilers that might ruin the surprise and excitement of the movie for me, and with my popcorn-bucket-a-jostling and my Big-Gulp-a-spilling, I darted through the ankles of the thousands of folks, confusedly working my way through the weekend crowd over at the AMC Empire 25 cinemamultimegaplex just off Times Square (conveniently around the corner from where Luke Cage has his offices when he first set himself up as a Hero for Hire!), dashing quickly into the darkened theater just as Forrest Whitaker was telling us we can change America by turning off our cell phones, and I snuggled into an empty seat, dug my hoof into my popcorn bucket, sat back and enjoyed the show.

And now I can tell you: from the bouncy opening credits to the last tearful moment, Iron Man is the feel-good movie of the summer; great fun for the entire family from nought to ninety. When brilliant inventor Toni Stark (Tina Fey) invents a unique new technology to integrate machines and humans, there's much confusion and action as everybody under the sun is trying to find out how to capture the Iron Man technology. The laughs begin when the Iron Man technology is accidentally implanted inside Stark's assistant, the bubbly Angie "Pepper" Potts (Amy Pohler) and Stark and Potts are forced into a uneasy alliance not unlike Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones or Sylvester the cat and the bulldog in The Defightin' Ones. But guess who wants the Iron Man technology? Evil scientist Obladiobladah Stane (Greg Kinnear) who will stop at nothing to capture the secrets of this technological treasure! Is it thrilling? Heck yeah! Dah-dah-DAH!

The special effects are quite amazing (they do a great job as showing how the Iron Man tech is working its way into Pepper's body) but I couldn't help but feel that maybe there could have been one or two more flying sequences. Come to think of it, I actually didn't see any flying sequences. Maybe they all happened when I was digging in my popcorn or snuffling up my nachos. A movie this fast-paced and exciting, you honestly better not blink or you might miss the best bit!


The action heats up towards the end of the movie in an exciting court sequence where the fate of the Iron Man is determined in an all-out no-holds barred legal battle upon which the fate of the free world rests! Will Toni Stark prevail? Will Pepper stop doing nutty things? (Don't bet on it!) And don't miss the cameo by Stan Lee (Maura Tierney)! From opening credits to the moment when the usher tosses you out, a solid two hours of thrills that's have you on the edge of your seat—and when you're a little stuffed bull, that means there's a lot of seat behind you!


Then again...well, I don't want to be that guy who complains, but as much as I giggled at the jokes and bounced along to the cheery pop soundtrack, in the end I'm not really 100% absolutely certain this is the Iron Man movie I expected. Um, I don't want to be that guy, but where was the red and gold suit? Why were there not very many punches to the face? And no shouting refrains of Has he lost his mind? Can he see or is he blind? Can he walk at all? Or if he moves will he fall? Why, it's almost like the writers and director and producers really weren't making a movie entitled Iron Man after all, but instead...

(re-checks my ticket stub)

Curse you, AMC Empire 25!

My review of the Transformers movie.

So! I went yesterday to the AMC Empire 25 to see that big new Transformers movie all the kids are abuzz about. It's very busy seeing a movie on the Fourth of July. Seriously! I had to dart in and out of everyone's legs with my big bucket of popcorn and my giant Coke, all the while holding my ticket stub in my little mouth. There were so many people stepping all around me I was afraid I was going to get squished! Haven't you people got family barbecues to go to? Go eat some hot dogs, for Pete's sake!

Well, I finally squeeze my way into the dark dark theater just in time to play "Coca Cola Screen Play," which is always an exciting and thrilling way to pass the time before the movie forty minutes of previews start. It is very fun to play these fast-moving trivia games. Just for fun, next time you see one, shout out into the theater "ANGELINA JOLIE!" as the answer to every question. I like the fill-in-the-blank puzzles a lot. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doo_". Doop! Oh wait, I was sure that was the answer.

Fourteen Steve Carrell previews later, Transformers starts. Wah-hoo! I am so excited I spill some of my popcorn on the floor. It would not be such a big deal but I had earlier sprinkled a bag of M&Ms in with them. Also, gummy bears.

So what did I think of the movie? It was pretty good! The effects were amazing and the plot just kept racing along so I would never be able to guess what happened next. I was very impressed by some of the big name stars they got to appear in the movie...seriously, did you ever think you would see George Clooney up on the big screen? Playing Optimus Prime? Me neither! The CGI effects they used were pretty amazing as well....Optimus Prime looks amazingly lifelike and realistic, like you could reach out and touch him, even though this movie were not in 3D. Which was a little disappointing, because I was wearing the glasses and all. Unlike many of the Transformers fanboys complaining online before the movie opened, I didn't even mind that you could see Clooney's lips move. He totally brought excitement and gravitas to the role of Prime. I think we are talking an Academy Award nomination here! Mr. Clooney is a handsome, handsome man and whatever they paid him for this role was not enough.

In fact, who'da thunk that you'd see the amazing cast they got to play the Autobots and Decepticons? Wow, they must have spent a lot of money to hire Don Cheadle to play Jazz and Matt Damon as Bumblebee. Don't you feel Brad Pitt was the perfect choice for Rachet? And oooh, Al Pacino as Megatron? Scary, scary man, absolutely perfect for the role. And Ellen Barkin as...I dunno, The Baroness or something. I couldn't figger out who she was playing, to be honest.

Usually I'm not a big fan of director Michael Bay. I had my hooves over my eyes during most of Armageddon, a very very loud movie which scared me very much. I do not want to see New York City destroyed, thank you very much! I think that film should have been titled Armageddon-outta-here! I did not see Bad Boys, and therefore I was lost and all at sea in trying to understand the subtle character development and intricate, Proustian plot of Bad Boys II. And I liked The Island much better when it was called Parts: The Clonus Horror. Still, Scarlett Johansson...that makes up for something, doesn't it?

Anyway. Michael Bay. I was expecting to see a lot of big explosions and car chases and sky-diving falls and crashes and booms and bangs and Mister Bay very much impressed me with a much subtler story that really delved into the personalities and wittiness of our favorite robots in disguise. It was sort of a "Transformers go Vegas" treatment in which the good guys were running a con game against the bad guys. You know, it is very nice in this violent day and age to see a film in which action characters can use their heads instead of their fists. I commend that philosophy.



That said, I have to admit much of the movie surprised me. CGI George Clooney as Optimus Prime was pretty impressive, but unless I blinked, I didn't get to see him transforming from one shape to the other, and I never even really heard that distinctive transforming whir-click-snap-shu-shu-shu sound effect we all know and love. I'm kind of skeptical about the decision that all the robots were human size and never grew to giant proportions and fought each other towering over the buildings of Las Vegas. And there was a whole lengthy sequence about dice and lighters that I thought was going to lead to something real Transformy cool—like giant transforming dice and lighters fighting each other! But it didn't work out that way. Hmmm, the movie was really crowded and everyone seemed to be having a great time, but when I think about it a lot it really was a weird Transformers movie...with George Clooney and Matt Damon and Don Cheadle and Elliott Gould and all...

(re-looking at my ticket stub)

!

Curse you, AMC Empire 25!

My Superman Returns review

Today I went to see Superman Returns, and after scurrying through the legs of the crowds of people to get to my theatre in the massive and confusing AMC Empire 25 Cineplex, I was so excited to settle into my seat in my giant bucket of popcorn and await that familar red and blue logo appearing on the screen. I know all of you have been eagerly waiting to hear what a little stuffed bull has to say about the superhero spectacular of the summer. Well, to be honest, it was pretty good but not as fantastic as I had imagined it would be. The dialogue was indeed sparkling and witty and I found myself laughing out loud several times at the antics of professional journalists. Anne Hathaway was especially cute and made an ideal Lois Lane, and while Meryl Streep is not my first choice for Lex Luthor, she had the proper amount of menace and gave off a scary evil vibe of control and obsession that is not only reminiscent of Gene Hackman, is actually is more stylish. I admit to being disappointed that she refused to shave her head for the role, however.

Where I was disappointed was in the lack of many of the elements I thought would be carried over from the original film and the startling updates. Instead of working for the Daily Planet, Lois appeared to be working for a fashion magazine in this new Superman movie, and Perry White was nowhere to be seen. It was a bit odd to see Lex Luthor obsessed not with land grab scams or destroying Superman but instead Lex's major plot seems to be just badgering and bullying (excuse the phrase) the employees. Now that I think about it, you know, I didn't really hear John Williams's familiar Superman march theme blaring triumphantly, or spot any kryptonite, or...hmm...you know, I can't actually remember seeing Superman. Maybe he was moving too fast to be seen. It is an interesting and risky new tact to take for a Superman movie, but I guess these major directors know what they are doing. All I would have done different was...

Hey! Wait a minute!

(re-checks my ticket stub)

Curse you, AMC Empire 25 Cineplex!