Ed's Review Dot Com

Eros International, Reliance Big Pictures, Vinod Chopra Productions

Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Boman Irani, Kareena Kapoor, Sharman Joshi

3 Idiots is a Bollywood film. It’s partially English, but has subtitles. It’s the story of 3 friends, well, actually more than 3 who are students in an Engineering University who disagree with the premise of all that is important is grades and a degree and the opportunity to migrate to the United States. Rancho (Aamir Khan) is the leader and is always in trouble with the dean because his view is that they should teach Engineering to people who love engineering. Instead they are teaching memorization and test taking and how to get a good grade. The story is told in flashback where Rancho has been missing five years, and the friends are trying to find him to find out what happened to him. After this setup, we see a series of flashbacks to the trouble the guys get in through following Rancho who seems to be the only student in the school who really loves to learn Engineering.

THis is a very funny film. It also has a lot of Bollywood music and dance throughout and an interesting love story. Rancho meets Pia (Kareena Kapoor) while crashing her sister’s wedding, and doesn’t realize she is the daughter of the Dean. She is engaged to a guy who doesn’t appreciate her and only cares about posessions and wealth and power. Pia is attracted to Rancho, but it’s a difficult row to hoe, as there are many problems to face.

This film has been long awaited by the fans of Bollywood films, and for us white western folk, it’s a great initiation to this genre. It’s got enough English to be easy enough to follow, and subtitles for the rest. It’s got the best of Bollywood in song and dance mixed with a charming love story and humor that matches some of the funniest movies out there. These guys are in trouble all the time, and the way they react is a riot. I highly recommend 3 Idiots for anyone who doesn’t mind subtitles who would like to see the situation from the other side, from inside India where kids are just trying to find a way to support their families and have a better life. It’s not as easy as we think. It’s got a lot of heart and a lot of humor and is well worth it. One warning though. This is a very, very long film. It’s nearly 3 hours and it certainly did not need to be that long. But at least you’ll get your money’s worth as it’s a funny movie and sure to please.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Pandora Filmproduktion, JVC Entertainment Networks, Newmarket Capital Group

Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Mili Avital, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, Mark Bringleson, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt, Alfred Molina, Robert Mitchum, Richard Boes, Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris, Steve Buscemi

Willam Blake (Johnny Depp) is from Cleveland. He’s got a letter in hand offering him a job as an accountant in a factory in the end of the line town of Machine. We meet William Blake (not the poet, but the accountant) on the train as he begins his journey, only to learn that the job has been filled. William Blake ends up murdering the owner’s son and flees. He runs into a poetry loving Native American who is named He who speaks loudly but says nothing (Gary Farmer) who prefers to be called Nobody. Nobody and William Blake set off on a journey more of confusing than the movie has been so far. Everybody in the west is trying to kill him, but some hired guns are in the lead if they don’t kill each other first.

This film is definitely a western, but it’s absolutely hysterical. I laughed out loud so many times my sides hurt. This is a very funny movie. The characters are really nuts! All of them, and it’s a great cast. This is kind of on the order of what Monty Python and the Holy Grail did to King Arthur’s. Now I’m not saying it’s a good as that film, as the Holy Grail is one of my favorite movies of all time. But this is the same style of movie, absurd and simply hysterical, right up to the very last scene. There are so many parts that cracked me up, but I hate to go into it in too much detail as it would give away the surprises in the film. But if you’re fans of ironic and sarcastic slapstick humor, things like Rat Race, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and the TV shows Laugh In or You Can’t Do That on Television, you’re going to find this “western” a real hoot. Even now, a week later, I think of some of the lines in this movie and still crack up. I don’t know where it came from or where it’s been hiding since 1995, but it was a great hidden gem that really blew my mind! Now if I had a bunch of friends and a couple beers……….This would have been a hoot. The kind of stuff we used to watch late night in the dorms when I was in college. This matched up with the old W.C. Fields classics like “Never Give A Sucker an Even Break” or “My Little Chickadee”. Not as over the top as the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers, but more subtle yet with humor that catches you by surprise which is the best kind of humor. Great movie no one has ever seen before I suspect! I gotta give my daughter the credit for finding this one for me! If you need more reasons, it was Robert Mitchum’s last role, and the likes of Alfred Molina, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Steve Buscemi, and Crispin Glover. What a cast!

This is an interview with director Jim Jarmusch, the director concerning the filming of this movie.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Summit Entertainment, Millennium Films, Michael De Luca Productions

Amber Heard, Nicolas Cage, Katy Mixon, William Fichtner, Billy Burke, David Morse, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Christa Campbell, Charlotte Ross

John Milton (Nicholas Cage) is in the race of his life to catch Jonah King (Billy Burke), the leader of a Satanic cult who murdered Milton’s daughter and kidnapped her baby. In just three days, King and his followers are planning to sacrifice the child at midnight. Milton also rescues a waitress named Piper (Amber Heard) from her brutal, two-timing fiance. There are many strange things about Milton: his driver’s license is way out of date, he has a very strange gun, and he’s being pursued by a man in a suit who carries FBI ID and calls himself the Accountant (William Fichtner). Piper, who’s bored to death with her life, tries piece things together on the fly as they close in on King while living the adventure she’s always dreamed of.

Think this is just another Fast and Furious ripoff? Or another version of Gone in 60 Seconds? Not this time! This is a way different movie altogether. It’s a little derivative of Ghost Rider, but it’s a wild and crazy movie! There is no way to understand what the hell is going on here until they give you the clues one by one. It’s fun when you finally figure out who the hell Milton is and why he’s running toward King and away from “The Accountant”. These characters are bizarre for sure. This was a much better film than I expected, and I truly enjoyed every minute of it. It has some of the craziest driving I’ve seen since “Fast Five” but that’s just a start. The amazing gun that Milton stole is just that…amazing! These guys in the cult that killed Milton’s daughter are very evil, and deserve everything that rains down upon them. They are true slime. The police get pulled in to this, much to their dismay, and there are a couple of scenes with the cops that are hysterical. Basically this is an exciting race and adventure with all the great action and danger with a huge slice of comedy thrown in. This film is hysterically funny all the way through. It’s got flavors of many other films too. It’s very much like “Kill Bill” with the extreme violence and odd characters too. But not too much of anything else, it’s a fine film on its own. There is no love story or no romance, so it’s a guy’s film all the way, but it’s a really good one. Very well done, and a great evening of crashes and explosions to make every guy happy.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Buckaroo Entertainment, Michael De Luca Productions, Screen Gems

Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Maggie Q, Lily Collins, Brad Dourif, Stephen Moyer, Christopher Plummer, Alan Dale, Mädchen Amick

There have always been humans and vampires, and they’ve always fought each other. But in the post-apocalyptic world the battle reached a peak. Humans had the advantage of the sun, but the vampires had the numbers. A special class of warrior was developed that turned the tide and wiped out the vampires. These were a class of super-human priests. After the vampires were defeated, the priests were dangerous, so the church disbanded them, and limited their powers, and kept them from staying together. But one priest (Paul Bettany) had his niece captured and wanted to go out and rescue her as he was sure the vampires were back, but the church disallowed any priest to leave the city, and so he is forced to go rogue to find out what happened. He’s joined in the quest by the sheriff of a small outpost who happens to be the girl’s boyfriend. This turns the Priest into an enemy of the church and he is being chased from all sides.

Priest is based on a comic book story, and typically these kind of movies do not impress me much. But in this case it’s an excellent story. There is enough back story to make it interesting, and as the story unfolds we find out lots of surprising facts to make the story interesting. The battles are extremely well done, and the excitement level is very high. I really enjoyed this film, and I think Paul Bethany did an excellent job as a man driven to do what is right, no matter the cost. The rest of the cast is good as well, and the CGI is impressive. These vampires are certainly NOT Bela Lugosi by any means! This was originally shown in 3D, and I wish I could have seen it in the 3D version, but I still really enjoyed the film. It will probably get lost in all the big summer releases, so make sure to watch for it on DVD soon. This was spirited monster/horror film that was extremely well done. It’s well worth the time spent enjoying it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday June 21, 2011

• The Adjustment Bureau [Click HERE for Eds Review]
• Unknown [Click HERE for Eds Review]
• The Eagle [Click HERE for Eds Review]
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
• Cedar Rapids
• HappyThankYouMorePlease

Greetings readers.

This has been a slow couple of weeks for Movie Releases. As a result, I’ve been trying to catch a few in the theaters like Priest (Review coming tomorrow), Super 8, Hangover 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. In addition I’ve been catching up on some really quirky DVD’s. One in particular was Dead Man (review 6/24) featuring Johnny Depp, Crispin Glover, Robert Mitchum, Billy Bob Thornton, and others. It is one of the strangest and funniest westerns I’ve seen in a long time, and being it’s from 1995, I don’t know where it’s been all this time! Another was my first Bollywood film. This weeks new release 3 Idiots (Review 6/25) is a very clever story about 3 close friends in an Engineering University in India preparing for life and getting into all kinds of escapades. It’s a very long film, but quite interesting, so watch for the reviews for both of these strange films.

Another thing that was on my mind today is the subject of Traffic Exchanges. Have you ever heard of them? Well, I hadn’t, but I ran across the subject quite by accident, and was pretty fascinated.
Basically a Traffic Exchange is a web site that you can join, either free or for a small fee, and advertise your favorite web sites. The sites are social, that is, you can make friends and chat and enjoy other people company. Additionally they offer lots of games and prizes to keep it interesting. Maybe some of you have arrived at EdsReview.com from a Traffic Exchange as I’ve been advertising it on a number of them for a while. Basically, I enter my website: Edsreview.com in my account, then as I surf and play games and view other peoples sites, people get to see and visit my site as well. We help each other. Most advertisers are other Traffic Exchanges, but there are all kinds of things up there. Because they are highly controlled and open in a pane, not a new window, it is safe from spam and other bad things. The owners are very cautious of what it up there, and there is a way to flag any site that you think is inappropriate.

Being a movie buff, I was attracted to Horror Movie Hits. It is a free Traffic Exchange with an option to upgrade if you like. It is themed on horror movies, and the owner writes a blog and reviews strictly horror films from time to time. The whole place is a tribute to horror films and is a lot of fun. Then I found one of the best Traffic Exchanges around, Top Hits 4 U. TopHits4U is a general themed Traffic Exchange that is very friendly. There are a lot of fun games that make the time fly while you’re gaining points to advertise your favorite sites. There’s a slot machine-like game where if you win, you are granted a prize, but if you guess the wrong one, you get a ticket into a weekly drawing.

There is a hangman game that allows you to get your own hangman phrases to try to advertise your web sites while stumping the other players. Like the other, if you win, you get a prize. There are also other things, like the old Push the Rock up the Mountain game where I like to push it off the cliff from time to time. All of these are free and are just for fun. However, if you like it and refer other people to play, you get a bonus of their credits as well. Every so often there is a Last Surfer Standing game that always attracts a crowd and is a very social time for everyone. The chat boards light up that week.

The reason this was on my mind this week however is because just yesterday 3 of the biggest Traffic Exchanges joined and opened a brand new one that is very sexy! It’s probably a good idea to try out one of the free sites before jumping into Shockwave-Traffic Shockwave Traffic is different because it is a paid traffic exchange. For a small fee you can join, but every one you refer pays you a commission, so after a couple of referrals, it’s free an you start making money while having a good time. If you’ve never seen it, there’s a whole world of Traffic Exchange for almost any subject you’re interested in. From Movies, to science fiction and alians, to adventure and fantasy, to car racing or football. It’s as varied as the internet itself. I found it very intriguing who you meet on the Traffic Exchange. People from all over the planet.

Have a great week, and I promise some more good DVD’s are coming in the next few weeks!

–Ed of EdsReview.com.