Ted 2 Overview
When Ted (Seth MacFarlane) tells his best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) that he and his new bride Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) want to have a baby, everyone is thrilled. John decides to help him. After failing to get Tom Brady to unknowingly donate sperm, John offers to donate himself, but when things don't work out, the two to come up with an alternative—adoption. In order to adopt a child, the state requires that Ted prove that he is a person, and not a possession, in a court of law. With the help of a recent law-school grad named Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried), Ted and John set off to court to get the teddy bear the right to be recognized as a person。
To avoid your discs getting physical damaged or lost or in order to enjoy them anywhere and anytime you want, here we will take Ted 2 for example to show you how to backup Ted 2 DVD with original structures, how to copy movie only from Ted 2 DVD and how to rip Ted 2 DVD to iPad Pro, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy S7 for watching on the go.
Step 1: - Get a DVD Ripper
If you purchased the Ted 2 DVD from Amazon, you may find that your DVD player can't support the movies. As far as I know, most of the DVDs sold by Amazon are encoded for Region 1 only and may not work on DVD players in other countries. Plus, if you want to play Ted 2 DVD on iPad, Apple TV 4, Galaxy Tab S2, Kindle Fire HDX, you need to convert DVD to a common video first. And the DVD discs are easily physical- damaged, so it will be better to backup it to your computer. Therefore, a home-use DVD converter is badly needed to remove region code and make personal DVD backups from Ted 2 DVD, or convert to a common video file.
The best program I can recommend for handling (Ted 2) DVD disc is Pavtube DVDAid (available for Windows and Mac users). With the program, you can not only make a 1:1 full disc copy of the original DVD disc without quality loss with all the audio tracks and subtitles well reserved, but also copy only the main DVD movie content and leave out extracts, commentary, etc. In addition, the program can remove all the latest DVD copy protection including Region code, CSS, Sony ARccOS, Disney’s fake, etc. Besides, considerate backup solution and specific format templates for versatile PMP devices (iPad Pro, iPhone, Apple TV 4, Xbox One, PS4, Android tablets and phones, etc), Pavtube DVDAid ranks top on the DVD ripping, conversion and backup application list.
Step 2: - How to Backup, Copy and Rip Teb 2 DVD
1) Insert the purchased DVD Ted 2 in your computer DVD-ROM, click the DVD disc button to import your DVD movies. The software will quickly analyze the DVD and list all the DVD title. The DVD ripper will auto check and select the main movie title of Ted 2 for you.
2) Make your decisions:
Option A - "Full Disc Copy" without anything loss
Click quick button "Copy the entire disc" to starts copying the DVD disc to hard drive maintaining the original structure.
As soon as the copying task finished, you can click "Open" button to get the output videos. The backed up DVD movie is usually saved as a directory file structure within which there are VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folder. The VIDEO_TS folder contains main movies (.vob) and lots of system files (.ifo and .bup).
Option B - Directly Copy only DVD main movie and leave out extras
Click "Format" bar, choose "Copy" > "Directly Copy" from the Format menu to copy the . vob files only which contains the main movie on Ted 2 DVD. After that, do remember clicking "Convert" button to do Movie-only copy. When the copying work is done, you are able to click "Open" button to get the output .vob files without any other extra contents.
How to Play Backed up DVD movies
VLC Media Player (freeware) is one of the universal players that support DVD menu (DVD navigation) and video streaming to lots of other devices. It is available for both Windows and Mac.
Option C - Rip/Convert DVD to Any Format and Any Device
Besides backup DVD without quality lossless, Pavtube DVDAid also lets you rip DVD to MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, FLV, M4V, MPEG, SWF, ASF and more. Meanwhile, the program provides the optimized preset formats for almost all popular multimedia devices and HD media players including iPhone (iPhone 6S, iPhone 7), iPad (iPad Pro, iPad Mini 4), Android powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6/S6 Edge, Google Nexus 7/Nexus 10, Asus Transformer Prime/Infinity TF700, Amazon Kindle Fire HDX, Nook HD, BlackBerry Priv, Sony Tablets, Acer tablets, Lenovo ThinkPad, Zune, PSP, PS Vita, PS4, Amazon Fire TV 2, WD TV, Roku 3, Xbox 360, NAS and more. Simply select the profile to rip Ted 2 DVD to play on your devices with optimized settings and never worry about the video incompatibility!
You're done! Now you may got known how to backup, copy and rip your DVD dics when you wanna keep your DVD discs from scratching, or manage their movies in a more convenient way, or enjoying them anywhere and anytime you want.
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Sharing tech movie playback tips, tricks for video editing, useful media files transferring guides, top video apps and hottest digital reviews.
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Movie Review: Fast & Furious 7
It's all about Paul Walker in the seventh installment of the massively successful
street racing series, and that's just fine
The death of Paul Walker in November 2013 cast a pall over the future of the lucrative Fast & Furious franchise, which at that point was already halfway into production on its seventh installment. Walker, the blond-haired, blue-eyed hunk that was one-half dreamboat, one-half boy next door, had played a central role in five of the first six films, along with partner in crime Vin Diesel, and it was unclear how the production could continue despite his untimely departure.
Rating: ***
Directed by James Wan
With Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson
In Fast & Furious 7, the gang’s past catches up with them, as Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of the villain in Part 6, decides to takes revenge on his newly deceased sibling by going after Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian O’Conner (Walker) and the rest of Toretto’s squad. Along the way, which takes them from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi and back again, they accumulate allies and foes as the screenplay attempts to layer its thin plot with additional characters.
Director James Wan only mildly accelerates our pulses with his action scenes, most of which have major narrative gaps because it allows the good guy to arrive at the right moment or the bad guy to stand on the right spot, thus concluding a fast sequence of cuts and zooms in a way that resolves the tension but rides roughshod over credibility.
Like the infamous tank-jumping scene in Fast & Furious 6, which was panned by all and derided by most, this latest — and, by the looks of it, final — installment in the franchise has a few scenes that derive their entertainment value from being impossible. Not unlike many 007 films, or even that highway scene in Knight and Day, the film generates pleasure when it goes a little off the rails. One of the biggest laughs, but also one of the highlights, comes about 50 minutes into the film, when Walker makes an impossible jump from a bus dangling over a cliff onto a car as it spins its front end across the abyss to catch him in time.
Another 007-inspired moment, in which a sexy woman steps out of the sea in slow motion while the camera pans from her legs to her face, will be immediately recognizable as a (deliberate) exaggeration and is sure to elicit a good-natured chortle from the audience.
These kinds of scenes — silly at worst and unrealistic at best, but consequently all the more enjoyable — are unfortunately counterbalanced by shoddy camera work (one particular gimmick, repeated many times over, is to attach the camera to a falling body, thus creating the peculiar image of a static center with a dynamic outer core), multiple push-ins on women’s oh-so-unsubtly-exposed buttocks and quick cuts to mask the stand-ins that replaced Walker in post-production: his brothers, Cody and Caleb.
Of course, that last point of criticism will be contentious in the eyes of some, as the film could not have been completed without finding a solution to Walker’s absence. But in at least two fight scenes, we almost never see the characters’ faces, and one of those scenes takes place in a parking garage so dimly lit we are surprised the two men actually succeed in landing a punch. We accept this approach, because even those who have followed just a modicum of celebrity news the past few months would know the film was completed in large part without one of its leads.
This awareness is essential to our appreciation of the final scene, which packs a serious emotional punch as we see the veil being pulled back a little. Diesel doesn't quite break the fourth wall, but there is an unmistakable double farewell of sorts — in the world of the film and in world outside the film. These closing moments are made all the more poignant by our insight into the events behind the scenes and our knowledge that these two actors had shared the same diegesis for nearly a decade and a half.
Fast & Furious 7 is not a great film. Its final action sequence is overlong, story lines are badly cut together, the masking of the absent Walker is at times painfully obvious and some of the performances, like smooth-talking but dimwitted Roman (Tyrese Gibson) or the awkward blond agent Elena (Elsa Pataky), are caricatures that belong in a film with a Roman numeral “VII” attached to it.
However, as a tribute to Walker, who is as captivating at the age of 40 as he was as a 26-year-old, the film is a beautiful eulogy that ensures we remember him as Brian O'Conner, the policeman turned street racer, husband and father, whose friendship with Dominic Toretto grounded him when he needed stability and gave us endless adrenaline-pumping thrills over the years, for which we will be eternally grateful.
Source from here.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
‘A Love Story’ (‘Un Amour’): Film Review
The Bottom Line: A poignant real-life tale of one couple's entente cordiale
Opens: Wednesday, Mar. 25th (in France)
Director: Richard Copans
Producer-director Richard Copans tells the story of his Franco-American origins
Between Jerry Lewis, Maurice Chevalier, Bill O’Reilly and freedom fries, the United States and France have carried on a love-hate relationship that’s lasted for over two centuries now. One particularly inspiring case of the former is examined with beaucoup affection in A Love Story (Un Amour), producer-director Richard Copans’ documentary account of how his American father and French mother came together at a time when the world was coming apart, holding on through thick and thin as war engulfed Europe and they found themselves separated by an ocean.
Composed of archive photos, letters, sound recordings and present-day interviews, with dueling voiceovers providing each character’s point of view, this non-fictional narrative offers up a moving and historically apt follow-up to Copans’ 2003 film, Racines, which examined the filmmaker’s roots in rural France and Eastern Europe. But its veritable tale of Franco-American passion makes it a stand-alone work that could find takers in fests and select art houses following a late March release in Gaul.
Copans is more known at home as a producer than as a director, heading up the Paris-based company Les Films d’ici, whose doc-heavy catalogue includes works by Robert Kramer, Nicholas Philibert, Claire Simon and Luc Moullet. He first got behind the camera for the feature-length Racines, and is picking up the plot a decade later with a script – co-written with novelist-actress Marie Nimier – that jumps between the 1930s-40s and the present to faithfully recreate his parents’ story.
His father, Simon “Sim” Copans, first came to Paris as an exchange student from Brown, studying at the Sorbonne and living nearby on the rue Soufflot, where he witnessed the funeral of the assassinated president Paul Doumer in 1931. Eight years later, Simon was back in France on a group visit to Chartres Cathedral when he crossed paths with Lucienne, a young woman from the eastern city of Soissons.
The two soon hit it off with their shared love of literature and left-wing politics, both of them ardent Republican supporters during the Spanish Civil War. Simon, who was a member of the Youth Communist League along with activists like Harry Foner – shown in the film singing his witty ballad “Love in the YCL” – wanted to enlist, but instead he and Lucienne became godparents to children orphaned by the conflict.
When Germany invaded Poland, Simon convinced his girlfriend to marry on the fly, allowing her to flee with him to the U.S. But there was one hitch: not only was he Jewish and she Catholic, but Lucienne was fervently opposed to the idea of marriage, which she saw as an archaic institution belonging to the generation of her parents.
Simon nonetheless pleaded until Lucienne gave in, and after a shotgun wedding in Paris they moved to Manhattan, where the groom’s family set up a more traditional ceremony. These sequences allow for some amusing anecdotes about what it was like for a French country girl to find herself among a bunch of Yiddish-speaking New Yawkers, with Rabbi Marcia Rappaport commenting on how traditional Jewish customs have evolved over the last century, granting more autonomy to women.
The lovebirds spent nearly two years apart when Simon was drafted into an army propaganda squad, driving around Normandy to give news about Allied victories and playing American jazz records for the recently liberated population. The letters he wrote to Lucienne at that time form the backbone of A Love Story’s narrative, while his wife’s earnest replies are read aloud by Gallic actress Dominique Blanc. Other texts are recited by contemporary characters whom Copans encounters as he retraces his parents’ long journey, the future and the present blending into a single whole.
Even if the film is more of a personal exercise than an anthropological one, the director manages to frame his origin story within the greater context of world history, revealing how individual trajectories are shaped by events beyond anyone’s control. At best one can try to cope with the bad times, which is what Copans’ parents did until they were reunited and eventually settled in Paris. There, Simon would continue broadcasting jazz on French public radio, and his American-accented voice would spark other memories – including that of writer Georges Perec, who immortalized the shows of “Sim” Copans in his famous text, Je me souviens. The affair continues.
Production company: Les Films d’ici
Director: Richard Copans
Screenwriters: Marie Nimier, Richard Copans
Producers: Serge Lalou, Richard Copans
Executive producer: Anne Cohen-Solal
Director of photography: Richard Copans
Editor: Sylvain Copans
Composers: Michel Portal, Vincent Pelrani
International sales: Les Films d’ici
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/a-love-story-amour-film-786446
Opens: Wednesday, Mar. 25th (in France)
Director: Richard Copans
Producer-director Richard Copans tells the story of his Franco-American origins
Between Jerry Lewis, Maurice Chevalier, Bill O’Reilly and freedom fries, the United States and France have carried on a love-hate relationship that’s lasted for over two centuries now. One particularly inspiring case of the former is examined with beaucoup affection in A Love Story (Un Amour), producer-director Richard Copans’ documentary account of how his American father and French mother came together at a time when the world was coming apart, holding on through thick and thin as war engulfed Europe and they found themselves separated by an ocean.
Composed of archive photos, letters, sound recordings and present-day interviews, with dueling voiceovers providing each character’s point of view, this non-fictional narrative offers up a moving and historically apt follow-up to Copans’ 2003 film, Racines, which examined the filmmaker’s roots in rural France and Eastern Europe. But its veritable tale of Franco-American passion makes it a stand-alone work that could find takers in fests and select art houses following a late March release in Gaul.
Copans is more known at home as a producer than as a director, heading up the Paris-based company Les Films d’ici, whose doc-heavy catalogue includes works by Robert Kramer, Nicholas Philibert, Claire Simon and Luc Moullet. He first got behind the camera for the feature-length Racines, and is picking up the plot a decade later with a script – co-written with novelist-actress Marie Nimier – that jumps between the 1930s-40s and the present to faithfully recreate his parents’ story.
His father, Simon “Sim” Copans, first came to Paris as an exchange student from Brown, studying at the Sorbonne and living nearby on the rue Soufflot, where he witnessed the funeral of the assassinated president Paul Doumer in 1931. Eight years later, Simon was back in France on a group visit to Chartres Cathedral when he crossed paths with Lucienne, a young woman from the eastern city of Soissons.
The two soon hit it off with their shared love of literature and left-wing politics, both of them ardent Republican supporters during the Spanish Civil War. Simon, who was a member of the Youth Communist League along with activists like Harry Foner – shown in the film singing his witty ballad “Love in the YCL” – wanted to enlist, but instead he and Lucienne became godparents to children orphaned by the conflict.
When Germany invaded Poland, Simon convinced his girlfriend to marry on the fly, allowing her to flee with him to the U.S. But there was one hitch: not only was he Jewish and she Catholic, but Lucienne was fervently opposed to the idea of marriage, which she saw as an archaic institution belonging to the generation of her parents.
Simon nonetheless pleaded until Lucienne gave in, and after a shotgun wedding in Paris they moved to Manhattan, where the groom’s family set up a more traditional ceremony. These sequences allow for some amusing anecdotes about what it was like for a French country girl to find herself among a bunch of Yiddish-speaking New Yawkers, with Rabbi Marcia Rappaport commenting on how traditional Jewish customs have evolved over the last century, granting more autonomy to women.
The lovebirds spent nearly two years apart when Simon was drafted into an army propaganda squad, driving around Normandy to give news about Allied victories and playing American jazz records for the recently liberated population. The letters he wrote to Lucienne at that time form the backbone of A Love Story’s narrative, while his wife’s earnest replies are read aloud by Gallic actress Dominique Blanc. Other texts are recited by contemporary characters whom Copans encounters as he retraces his parents’ long journey, the future and the present blending into a single whole.
Even if the film is more of a personal exercise than an anthropological one, the director manages to frame his origin story within the greater context of world history, revealing how individual trajectories are shaped by events beyond anyone’s control. At best one can try to cope with the bad times, which is what Copans’ parents did until they were reunited and eventually settled in Paris. There, Simon would continue broadcasting jazz on French public radio, and his American-accented voice would spark other memories – including that of writer Georges Perec, who immortalized the shows of “Sim” Copans in his famous text, Je me souviens. The affair continues.
Production company: Les Films d’ici
Director: Richard Copans
Screenwriters: Marie Nimier, Richard Copans
Producers: Serge Lalou, Richard Copans
Executive producer: Anne Cohen-Solal
Director of photography: Richard Copans
Editor: Sylvain Copans
Composers: Michel Portal, Vincent Pelrani
International sales: Les Films d’ici
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/a-love-story-amour-film-786446
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Hot movie review - ‘A Girl Like Her’
A conceptually sophisticated, emotionally manipulative drama about America's teen bullying epidemic.
The causes and consequences of teen bullying get a potent if not entirely persuasive airing in “A Girl Like Her,” a mix of found-footage thriller, mock-doc realism and public service announcement that rings true almost as often as it rings false. There is much to admire in writer-director Amy S. Weber’s well-acted, well-meaning cautionary tale about a high-school student who attempts suicide after being relentlessly targeted by a verbally abusive classmate. Yet the film’s agenda-driven approach, while sure to strike topical chords and generate exposure in American high schools far and wide, has the inevitable effect of compromising the drama, which seems less and less convincing the more blatantly it strives for authenticity.
Weber’s film has a tough opening scene: Jessica Burns (Lexi Ainsworth), a sophomore at South Brookdale High School, opens her parents’ medicine cabinet, downs a bottle of pills and falls unconscious. All this is shot from Jessica’s p.o.v.: She’s wearing a pin concealing a tiny camera, which we later learn was given to her six months earlier by her friend Brian (Jimmy Bennett), for reasons that will be revealed shortly. As the girl lingers in a coma, watched over by her heartbroken parents (Stephanie Cotton, Mark Boyd), a documentary filmmaker, Amy (Weber herself), starts filming in and around the corridors of South Brookdale High, determined to capture a definitive snapshot of the average public-school experience. It’s not long before Amy has begun tracking the story of Jessica’s suicide attempt, the motive for which she soon traces to Avery Keller (Hunter King), one of the most popular girls in school — and, as we later observe in Jessica’s secretly recorded footage, the sort of mean girl who would give even Regina George pause.
At a certain point, however, Weber pushes her conceptual strategy well past the point of plausibility. If what we’re seeing here is supposed to pass for an actual documentary, the result feels clumsy enough at times as to suggest a textbook demonstration of how not to make one — starting with the crew’s habit of eavesdropping on students in their most private moments (the sound recording in these scenes is improbably first-rate). Elsewhere, there are instructive reminders that throwing a verite frame around a scene doesn’t automatically render it believable, just as the act of filming a parent’s grief doesn’t become less exploitative simply because the camera is shaking along with them.
What makes “A Girl Like Her” intriguing in spite of these flaws is the fact that Weber’s interest clearly resides more with the villain than with the victim in this scenario, which may account for why Jessica, though well played by Ainsworth, never becomes more than an object of sympathy. Avery, by contrast, emerges as the true protagonist of a story that fully intends not only to expose her, but also to redeem her — to hold her up as a living, breathing embodiment of the old saying that “Hurt people hurt people.” Heading up a strong cast, the 21-year-old King (an Emmy winner for her work on “The Young and the Restless”) etches a fully rounded characterization here, doing full justice to Avery’s viciousness, but also to the defensiveness and vulnerability lurking beneath her stereotypical blonde-queen-bee surface.
Humanizing a monster — and allowing her to tell her story in her own words — is an eminently worthy aim in a movie that is nothing if not eminently worthy. But at a certain point, Weber’s meddlesome alter ego doesn’t seem to be documenting the events in question so much as auditioning for the job of guidance counselor, all but enfolding her characters in a group hug. The teary-eyed, over-scored montage that closes “A Girl Like Her” would feel manipulative in the extreme even if it didn’t build to a final shot of altogether remarkable dishonesty: For a movie that’s trying to teach the teenagers of America that their actions can have tragic repercussions, there’s something borderline irresponsible about the idea that a simple show of remorse is all it takes to make everything OK.
Source: http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/a-girl-like-her-review-1201462415/
Monday, March 16, 2015
The most anticipated movie -'Furious 7' review for you
Any moviegoer who didn't know about the untimely death of Paul Walker would never guess it had occurred during production of Furious 7, a film that (whatever massive efforts were required to work around his absence) is as stupendously stupid and stupidly diverting as it could have hoped to be had everything gone as planned.
The Bottom Line: A nuance-free franchise crafts an honorable exit for its departed star
Venue: South By Southwest Film Festival, Special Events
Opens: April 3 (Universal)
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan
Walker, Diesel and their cohorts blow the doors off on one last adventure together.
The knowledge of his death in a November 2013 car accident colors our experience of this unintentional swan song in many ways, of course, but viewers trying to spot the scenes in which stand-ins and CGI played Walker's part for him will find it hard enough that they may do the right thing: Stop trying, and instead go along with a reworked screenplay that ushers him off the stage with as much grace as any other development in this muscle-car melodrama.
Technical miracles aside, the nature of the story makes watching Furious 7 something of a morbid game: Over and over, the action puts Walker's Brian O'Conner in such jeopardy that we think, "Ah, this will be the scene where they give him a heroic death." But saying "over and over" acknowledges that Brian survives, at least, the bomb blast that nearly kills his family in one fell swoop, that he manages to get out of that big bus hanging precariously over a cliff, and that he, and for that matter all his pals, drive their cars out of a plane in midair and parachute to the ground without so much as denting a fender. But producer Neal H. Moritz, who introduced the super-last-minute screening at South by Southwest, begged the audience to keep mum about Brian's fate, so we won't provide an exhaustive list of the many certain-death situations he faces and survives.
We needn't say much about the plot, either. Bare bones: Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), brother of the crew's defeated enemy Owen Shaw, has vowed to kill them all in revenge; an all-seeing surveillance program called God's Eye has been stolen by terrorists; the creator of said program (Nathalie Emmanuel's Ramsey) needs to be rescued; and a mysterious lawman with his own private army (Kurt Russell, who any oddsmaker would say is bound to be hiding something) promises to help Vin Diesel's Dom get Deckard if Dom's crew will save Ramsey and recover the God's Eye.
Tired yet? You will be after two hours of F7, which is as overinflated, if not as well formed, as the physique ofDwayne Johnson, who gave this ensemble a much-needed charisma boost when he signed on in episode five. Alas, Johnson is sidelined for much of this installment, laid up in a bodycast after saving a co-worker from an exploding building. Don't worry, kids, the Rock will be back for the climax, reentering the action with the words "Daddy's gotta go to work."
That is Wildean wit compared to most of Chris Morgan's unrepentantly dumb pulp dialogue. But Fast & Furious fans don't come out to critique lines like "Let's do this," they come to see a red sports car (one so expensive only seven were made) be stolen from a billionaire's Abu Dhabi penthouse; to watch it bust through his windows, fly through the air, and crash into the skyscraper next door (landing safely, of course) only to learn that the brakes have gone out, and it will have to take to the skies again into a third building.
Anyone who can buy that bit of computer-generated idiocy should have no trouble believing Paul Walker is in this film from start to finish.
Production companies: Universal Pictures
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan
Screenwriter: Chris Morgan
Producers: Vin Diesel, Michael Fottrell, Neal H. Moritz
Executive producers: Samantha Vincent
Directors of photography: Marc Spicer, Stephen F. Windon
Production designer: Bill Brzeski
Costume designer: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Editors: Leigh Folsom Boyd, Dylan Highsmith, Kirk M. Morri, Christian Wagner
Music: Brian Tyler
Casting directors: Anne McCarthy, Kellie Roy
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/furious-7/review/781615
The Bottom Line: A nuance-free franchise crafts an honorable exit for its departed star
Venue: South By Southwest Film Festival, Special Events
Opens: April 3 (Universal)
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan
Walker, Diesel and their cohorts blow the doors off on one last adventure together.
The knowledge of his death in a November 2013 car accident colors our experience of this unintentional swan song in many ways, of course, but viewers trying to spot the scenes in which stand-ins and CGI played Walker's part for him will find it hard enough that they may do the right thing: Stop trying, and instead go along with a reworked screenplay that ushers him off the stage with as much grace as any other development in this muscle-car melodrama.
Technical miracles aside, the nature of the story makes watching Furious 7 something of a morbid game: Over and over, the action puts Walker's Brian O'Conner in such jeopardy that we think, "Ah, this will be the scene where they give him a heroic death." But saying "over and over" acknowledges that Brian survives, at least, the bomb blast that nearly kills his family in one fell swoop, that he manages to get out of that big bus hanging precariously over a cliff, and that he, and for that matter all his pals, drive their cars out of a plane in midair and parachute to the ground without so much as denting a fender. But producer Neal H. Moritz, who introduced the super-last-minute screening at South by Southwest, begged the audience to keep mum about Brian's fate, so we won't provide an exhaustive list of the many certain-death situations he faces and survives.
We needn't say much about the plot, either. Bare bones: Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), brother of the crew's defeated enemy Owen Shaw, has vowed to kill them all in revenge; an all-seeing surveillance program called God's Eye has been stolen by terrorists; the creator of said program (Nathalie Emmanuel's Ramsey) needs to be rescued; and a mysterious lawman with his own private army (Kurt Russell, who any oddsmaker would say is bound to be hiding something) promises to help Vin Diesel's Dom get Deckard if Dom's crew will save Ramsey and recover the God's Eye.
Tired yet? You will be after two hours of F7, which is as overinflated, if not as well formed, as the physique ofDwayne Johnson, who gave this ensemble a much-needed charisma boost when he signed on in episode five. Alas, Johnson is sidelined for much of this installment, laid up in a bodycast after saving a co-worker from an exploding building. Don't worry, kids, the Rock will be back for the climax, reentering the action with the words "Daddy's gotta go to work."
That is Wildean wit compared to most of Chris Morgan's unrepentantly dumb pulp dialogue. But Fast & Furious fans don't come out to critique lines like "Let's do this," they come to see a red sports car (one so expensive only seven were made) be stolen from a billionaire's Abu Dhabi penthouse; to watch it bust through his windows, fly through the air, and crash into the skyscraper next door (landing safely, of course) only to learn that the brakes have gone out, and it will have to take to the skies again into a third building.
Anyone who can buy that bit of computer-generated idiocy should have no trouble believing Paul Walker is in this film from start to finish.
Production companies: Universal Pictures
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Jason Statham
Director: James Wan
Screenwriter: Chris Morgan
Producers: Vin Diesel, Michael Fottrell, Neal H. Moritz
Executive producers: Samantha Vincent
Directors of photography: Marc Spicer, Stephen F. Windon
Production designer: Bill Brzeski
Costume designer: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Editors: Leigh Folsom Boyd, Dylan Highsmith, Kirk M. Morri, Christian Wagner
Music: Brian Tyler
Casting directors: Anne McCarthy, Kellie Roy
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/furious-7/review/781615
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Blu-ray Highlights: Week of March 8th, 2015– Follow That Bird
Summary: There are lots of great Blu-ray movies on this week of March 8th, 2015, just like: Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, The Sound of Music, The Breakfast Club,Wolfcop, White Haired Witch, The Soft Skin and so on. Here is listed a haul of newly released Blu-ray Discs. Enjoy it~
New Blu-ray Discs Releases:
‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 ‘– Katniss and her crossbow are back in the latest installment of the YA dystopian-future franchise. Because it’s the popular thing to do these days, the producers have split the final book in the series into two movies. Despite that, reviews were pretty strong. The Blu-ray includes a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, making this one of the few decent movies available in that format. (Be warned that copies sold through Walmart reportedly only have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.) Also, Best Buy has an exclusive SteelBook version.
Unlike the last installment, ‘Catching Fire’, director Francis Lawrence has forsaken the annoying alternating-aspect-ratio gimmick in favor of a traditional 2.40:1 ratio throughout. When I asked him about this, he explained: “Yeah, I totally dumped that crap just to show Freakyguy666 what’s what. LOL. PWNED!!” True story.*
‘Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb ‘ – Notable only for the fact that it marks Robin Williams’ final film appearance, this third and allegedly last entry in the middling family franchise petered out without making much of an impression during the holiday season. It will probably still sell well on video, as these things usually do. I sat through the first two of these for the benefit of a friend’s children, but they have fortunately moved onto other things now.
‘Life of Riley ‘ – Legendary French auteur Alain Resnais (‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, ‘Last Year at Marienbad‘) passed away at the age of 91 last year, barely a month after the Berlin Film Festival premiere of his final feature. The movie mixes live action and animation, as well as film and theater, in telling the story of a group of friends dealing with the news that their (unseen) friend is dying of cancer.
‘Russell Madness ‘ – I gather that this is one of those ‘Air Bud’ things, or at least a knockoff. From what I can ascertain, the title is supposed to be a pun on “Wrestle Madness,” which I guess is supposed to somehow be a play on Wrestlemania. Or something. Yeah, it’s really strained, even by the standard of kids’ crap. I’m grateful that my own kids are still about a year away from becoming obsessed with garbage like this.
Source: http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/bluray-highlights-mar-10-2015/
You can also get the other Blu-ray movies on Mar 1th, 2015. Have fun with your family!
Learn More Blu-ray to Any devices Tips:
Blu-ray to TV- Enjoy Blu-ray movie on widescreen Smart TV
Blu-ray to Android- Convert Blu-ray to Android Tablet/Phone on Windows 8.1/8/7
Blu-ray to iPad- Copy 2D/3D Blu-ray contents to iPad Air on Mac
Blu-ray to iPhone- How to Convert Blu-ray to iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus?
Blu-ray to Xbox One-Copy Blu-rays to Xbox One for playback via Plex
New Blu-ray Discs Releases:
‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 ‘– Katniss and her crossbow are back in the latest installment of the YA dystopian-future franchise. Because it’s the popular thing to do these days, the producers have split the final book in the series into two movies. Despite that, reviews were pretty strong. The Blu-ray includes a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, making this one of the few decent movies available in that format. (Be warned that copies sold through Walmart reportedly only have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.) Also, Best Buy has an exclusive SteelBook version.
Unlike the last installment, ‘Catching Fire’, director Francis Lawrence has forsaken the annoying alternating-aspect-ratio gimmick in favor of a traditional 2.40:1 ratio throughout. When I asked him about this, he explained: “Yeah, I totally dumped that crap just to show Freakyguy666 what’s what. LOL. PWNED!!” True story.*
‘Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb ‘ – Notable only for the fact that it marks Robin Williams’ final film appearance, this third and allegedly last entry in the middling family franchise petered out without making much of an impression during the holiday season. It will probably still sell well on video, as these things usually do. I sat through the first two of these for the benefit of a friend’s children, but they have fortunately moved onto other things now.
‘Life of Riley ‘ – Legendary French auteur Alain Resnais (‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, ‘Last Year at Marienbad‘) passed away at the age of 91 last year, barely a month after the Berlin Film Festival premiere of his final feature. The movie mixes live action and animation, as well as film and theater, in telling the story of a group of friends dealing with the news that their (unseen) friend is dying of cancer.
‘Russell Madness ‘ – I gather that this is one of those ‘Air Bud’ things, or at least a knockoff. From what I can ascertain, the title is supposed to be a pun on “Wrestle Madness,” which I guess is supposed to somehow be a play on Wrestlemania. Or something. Yeah, it’s really strained, even by the standard of kids’ crap. I’m grateful that my own kids are still about a year away from becoming obsessed with garbage like this.
Source: http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/bluray-highlights-mar-10-2015/
You can also get the other Blu-ray movies on Mar 1th, 2015. Have fun with your family!
Learn More Blu-ray to Any devices Tips:
Blu-ray to TV- Enjoy Blu-ray movie on widescreen Smart TV
Blu-ray to Android- Convert Blu-ray to Android Tablet/Phone on Windows 8.1/8/7
Blu-ray to iPad- Copy 2D/3D Blu-ray contents to iPad Air on Mac
Blu-ray to iPhone- How to Convert Blu-ray to iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus?
Blu-ray to Xbox One-Copy Blu-rays to Xbox One for playback via Plex
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