The American film industry has been plagued with so many heists movies, that it sometimes physically pains me to see a trailer for a film of that genre. It’s a genre that only works for a select group of people, most notably Steven Soderbergh in the Ocean’s movies, and a few others that I honestly can’t even recall right now, but when I saw the preview for Man on a Ledge, to be perfectly frank, I was hooked. The premise, admittedly, was rehashed and redone a million times over, but the way that it was presented was strikingly fresh.
Man on a Ledge follows Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington), an escaped convict who checks into a New York City hotel, with a room on the building’s twenty-first floor. He then climbs out of the window, onto a ledge, garnering the attention of some passersby which soon turns into a large crowd complete with ambulances, cop cars, and news vans. The man in charge of getting Cassidy safely back into the hotel is Detective Jack Dougherty (Ed Burns), but Cassidy doesn’t want him talking him through the ordeal. He wants the infamous Detective Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), who was once the department’s best until she let a rookie cop jump off the Brooklyn Bridge a month prior.
The whole thing seems rather routine by New York’s standards, but sometimes things aren’t exactly what they seem. Cassidy, who’s an ex-cop, was jailed for the robbery of a $40 million dollar diamond that belonged to David Englander (Ed Harris), one of the city’s most well known and richest businessmen. Cassidy insists that he’s innocent and the only way he can prove it, is if his brother Joey (Jamie Bell), and his girlfriend, Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), are able to get into Englander’s safe, retrieve the diamond, and make it out without a trace.
Written and directed by first time feature filmmakers Pablo F. Fenjves and Asger Leth, respectively, Man on a Ledge is a simply told film with an amazing cast that really have no business being there. Granted, the real purpose of the film is to serve as an exciting distraction from our regular lives, offering a halfway decent story and some predictable twists. In that respect, Man on a Ledge does what it’s supposed to, but not much more.
With some extremely cheesy writing and a sad attempt at a New York accent from Elizabeth Banks, the film is rather a caricature of what it could have been, hinting at greatness with the likes of Ed Harris turning in a great performance, as well as rather inspired performances by Sam Worthington and especially Jamie Bell, who serves as both the comedic relief and the nail biting action hero of this flick.
With that being said, Man on a Ledge does get rather exciting in its last 20 minutes, taking Cassidy off the ledge and into what is possibly the most dangerous places for him to be. The climax of the movie also gives the viewer some pretty decent twists that keep you on your toes for the remainder of the running time, but I just wished that the film’s first 80 minutes could have been as involving.
In this episode of Alcatraz we follow the events surrounding Cal Sweeney (Eric Johnson), a suave bank robber known for his theft of safety deposit box items. He is not a violent criminal unless things don’t go his way.
With episode 4, after our characterization of Dr. Soto (Jorge Garcia), we get back to the same feel that the first two episodes had. This episode had both the feel of a procedural cop drama and a mystery.
The very talented Jack White is releasing a solo album! I am not sure if I have ever been so excited about anything in my entire life! As sad as that sounds, let me explain. I have always been a big fan of White’s talent. He is an amazing musician in many areas. His voice is remarkably unique and bluesy. His guitar riffs are always chaotic and unpredictable, yet his acoustic sets can be beautifully melodic and soft. Whether it was with The Raconteurs, the Dead Weather, or (my favorite) the White Stripes, he has made an unmistakable impression on the music world.
With this new CD, it seems we will be able to let Jack White out of his cage. No restrictions, no rules.
The CD titled Blunderbuss will be released on April 24th of this year. The album will be released on White’s record label, Third Man Records.
Here is the first sample of his new album: A song called Love Interruption. Prepare yourself for the eargasm.
Jack is also doing a lot of producing for his label. Even actor John C. Reilly (Step Brothers, Chicago, Boogie Nights) has a few White-produced singles! – “I’ll Be There If You Ever Want” and “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar.” to name a couple.
I will be back shortly after April 24th for an extensive review which I am sure will be full of praise.
This is Button Mashing, Grizzly Bomb’s video game news headquarters. Previews, interviews, rumors and all the latest stories relating to the biggest games, all in one place. Here are the most important things you need to know for the week of January 30th, 2012:
‘Xbox 720’ Chipset in Production – (IGN)
Rumors and hearsay has become cold, hard fact: “Xbox 720”, or at least its core ‘System on a Chip’, is already being developed. According to Fudzilla:
“Recent speculation that the new main System on a Chip (SoC) for the Next Xbox began production is apparently accurate; the SoC did indeed start production in late December of 2011. Sources tell us that the code name for the chip is Oban, and it is being produced by both IBM and Global Foundries for Microsoft.“
Fudzilla’s report continued with a lot of important (and partially incorrect) combinations of words and numbers which are certainly important and made no sense to someone as tech-stupid as myself:
“The power behind the next Xbox will be a PowerPC CPU that is married to an ATI Southern Islands GPU, or modified 7000 series…”
However, IGNcorrected the initial mistake with the following update:
“…mass production of the system’s GPU will indeed begin by the end of 2012 but will not, however, be based on AMD’s 7000 series Southern Islands GPU. Instead, the processor will be derived from the 6000 series, which was introduced last year. More specifically, it will be akin to the Radeon HD 6670, which offers support for DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output.”
They went on to summarize it for the layman (Thank you IGN. Sincerely: The layman):
The Oscars are fast approaching, which means it’s time to check the list of nominees and watch as many of the nominated films as humanly possible. Of course, for a regular movie-goer like myself, not only would watching 61 movies in two months be a questionable management of priorities, it’s also nearly impossible to get access to some of the smaller, less mainstream films on the list. However three Oscar-worthy animated shorts you’d likely not have the opportunity to see are now streaming online for free for your viewing pleasure. Here they are:
Right before the All-Star break Alex Ovechkin got nailed with a three-game Shannaban, and in a brilliant move he proclaimed himself “unworthy” of attending the NHL weekend of festivities. Whether Ove was really so upset about his suspension from a marginally bad check that he wanted to “stick it to the man”, or was relishing a five day rest from league responsibilities it was a well-played move by the mad Russian. So with that we start the “All-Star Cheers and Jeers” which since the host city is Ottawa Ontario this year we shall re-name them the “All-Star Beauty Eh? and Hosers” awards.
The first Beauty Eh? goes to Alex Ovechkin for continuing to be the hard-hitting, trash-talking, beautiful tennis star-dating, Russian superstar he ought to be, and the Hoser goes to the NHL for not sticking up for itself and forcing Alex to go to the All-Star game anyhow. Suspensions have been levied in the past to players who have decided to skip the festivities so why not now?
As a full disclosure I will have to admit that I have been working in Ft. Lauderdale all weekend so my attention to the festivities has been somewhat diverse. I didn’t watch the Selection show which is no big deal, I was able to lobby a local bar into turning a couple of TVs to the Skills competition and I was forced to watch an audio-free web feed of the All Star game on my computer as I was working. So the next Hoser award goes to me for missing all of the miced up segments and joshing around by the players as I was forced to watch muted broadcasts.
The next Beauty Eh? goes to whoever came up for the concept of the playground rules selection process for the All-Star teams. Daniel Alfredsson and Zdeno Chara were named captains by being representatives of the host city and defending Stanley Cup champions respectively and got to literally draft their teams from the players who were voted All-Stars. This means the potential for regular season teammates playing opposite one another without the North America vs. The World awkwardness.
First Pick – Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk
There wasn’t a strong Hoser candidate from the Draft Selection Show except that Chara took Kessel before Seguin and Alfredsson took all the Swedes and Senators, but I have a separate Hockey score to settle so I will give an extra large Hoser award to the NHLPA for rejecting the NHL re-alignment program. Remember the NHL’s plan to change the conferences in a much more regionally friendly way? Well apparently the NHLPA shot that idea down and there isn’t enough negotiation time for next season so we won’t be seeing any re-alignment until 2013 at the earliest. [Boooo!]
The NHL All-Star Weekend continued Saturday night with the Skills competition, another pretty cool and diverse set of contests unique to the NHL. Let’s just give one big Beauty Eh? award to the Skills competition in general and mention the highlights. The fastest skater competition of course came down to young legs as rookie Carl Hagelin beat out rookie Colin Greening by less than one tenth of a second.
The Breakaway Challenge, the NHL’s version of the Slam Dunk contest, garnered Patrick Kane (above) a lot of attention for his Superman stylings, but I was more impressed that goaltender Brian Elliot didn’t allow any of the pieces of Kane’s exploding puck by him, and the creativity of Corey Perry’s “mini-stick” goal (right). Much like in the NBA though, the flashiest guy, Kane, got the fan vote.
The other big highlight of the Skills Competition was the Hardest Shot segment although new hockey stick technology have made the hardest shot a legal version of “corking the bat”. Zdeno Chara, as always, was dominant and set a new NHL high water mark with a 108.8 mph slapshot. I was most impressed however with Daniel Alfredsson who’s not only Swedish but also 39 years old and still was able to consistently shoot over 100 mph. It should also be mentioned that Chara has about 8 inches of torque height over Alfredsson.
Not amused.
The Hoser award for the Skills competition goes to the confusing scoring system and the bias towards individually scored points. I really enjoyed the Skills Challenge Relay which involved 32 different players showing their skills in shooting, passing (over barricades!), puck handling and speed, but the total segment was only worth the maximum of two points. So the competition that involves almost everyone is pretty much worthless when all of the head-to-head competitions were worth 5-6 points? Meh. The only other Hoser award goes to Patrick Kan’s hair which is twice as light on top than on the sides. If he’s not careful he’s going to wind up looking like Dr. Phil…
Moving on to the All-Star Game. Since I was watching the game on the web I was catching the CBC feed which involved the obligatory Don Cherry appearance. Although this has nothing to do with the All-Star game I am going to have to give a Beauty Eh? award to the genius who came up with the Don Cherry piano desk.
The NHL All-Star Game was the standard high scoring affair you would expect from what is essentially a pick up pond game with the best players in the world. Let’s give a Beauty Eh? award to all the goaltenders who come out to get a good natured drubbing. At the very least maybe facing such a high number of shootout opportunities allows the goalies to pick up on some of the super stars tendencies which may give them an edge next time a game goes beyond overtime this year. Marion Gaborik got a well deserved MVP award for his hat-trick plus an assist performance and Chara (+7) and Alfredsson (2 goals) both performed admirably as their teams Captains. Gabby also gets extra props for his nod to Anisimov’s “shoot the goalie” celebration that was chronicled on HBO’s 24/7 series earlier this year, which followed scoring his first goal on teammate Henrick Lundqvist.
Not much to complain about when it comes to the All-Star Game. You get what you expect: a lot of passing, a lot of scoring and no defense. I will have to give one big Hoser award to the All-Star jersey’s however. On the whole the jerseys weren’t too bad, but I couldn’t help but be super annoyed by the giant numbers directly under the collar on the front side of the sweater. Give the fans a little credit. The NHL has been ramping up player recognition by adding shoulder numbers and numbers on the top of the helmets but those chest numbers last night were just plain obnoxious. I was much more impressed with the jersey that Drake wore for his performance between periods.
One final Hoser award to hand out and we’ll conclude this years NHL All-Star Weekend review. I just looked up the location of the 2013 All-Star game and it’s going to be in lovely Columbus Ohio. Oh. Well. Let’s just hope for Jackets fans that Columbus is still playing in Ohio next year.
Grizzly Bomb 