4 stars****

If ever a movie gets written about Hollywood itself and shows you how to make a movie with the tricks and turns that studios wheel and deal without seeing product – the screenplay – this is it.

This movie was never was given a theatrical release in the United States. It was released on Region 1 DVD on January 20, 2009.

So what’s it all about?

A down-and-out film producer agrees to make his nephew’s film about 19th century English statesman Benjamin Disraeli, but can only get financing if he casts a well-known action star. Production is halted however, when the lead actor is kidnapped, so the producer hatches a scheme with a struggling creative executive to save the star and the movie.

William H Macy not only writes the screenplay (along with Steven Schachter,) but stars as the main character in the delicious journey through Hollywood’s highs and lows.

Meg Ryan is Meg Ryan. You either love her or adapt to her; either way she’s a marvellous comic/drama actress much in the same way that Jennifer Aniston holds top movies together in 2012.

This is 100 minutes of pure funny entertainment with Hollywood being the character played in poor light.

Of course the writers managed to ensure the love interest between the two stars played out beautifully and the introduction of Elliot Gould as a Rabi prepared to lose all high ground or morals for money, was a masterstroke.

Those nice people at Step by Step productions have put Hush 2 up on YouTube.

You can watch the whole movie for free.

Here’s short reminder of the movie’s blurb:

HUSH 2 is a riveting drama which takes a peek into a family ravaged by an undercurrent of drugs, violence and abuse. Life for 15 year old Mikisha (Sophia Thomas) has been tough over the last year after she becomes pregnant for her boyfriend Troy (Andrew Thornhill). She has no job and is still desirous of finishing school. Her mother, Darlene a single mom is suffering financially. Will she turn to her boyfriend for help even though his life continues on a downward spiral into drugs?
It is in these tough times when Mikisha needs help that she meets her very wealthy dad, Morris (Mark Daniel) and her sister Claire, (Lesley Cumberbatch). Could this reunion between Mikisha and her dad be the answer to all her financial needs or is this her worst nightmare? Will finding another side of her family give her all the love she has been searching for?
Find out more in HUSH 2, a thrilling & eventful story which will make you sit up and think…

To view the movie in full on YouTube, go via this link:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/HUSH-2-The-Movie/85199761570

Update:

The Hush people have posted this information…

Please note this limited-time trial of HUSH 2 will expire on Tuesday May 8th. We are transitioning to a system for rental of the movies online. Please continue to enjoy HUSH2 during this period. Very soon, you will be able to view all the HUSH movies on Distrify.com

Go to: https://distrify.com/facebook/tab?fb_page_id=85199761570

So, did you enjoy the movie?

4 Stars****

Seeking Justice is one of those movies that you can enjoy despite the reviews failing to confirm that it is worth the almost two hour visit to the theatre. The many twists and turns are not expected and maintain the excitement levels throughout.

So what’s it all about?

In New Orleans, English teacher Will Gerard, and his wife, musician Laura Gerard, are in love with each other. One night, Laura leaves a rehearsal and is assaulted, while Will is playing chess with his friend Jimmy. Will is visiting her in hospital when, out of the blue, a stranger named Simon tells him that he belongs to an organization of vigilantes and offers to eliminate the assailant. In return, the organisation would want a favor from Will in the future. Will agrees, and the criminal is murdered. Six months later, Simon collects his debt with Will. He demands that Will kill Alan Marsh, a paedophile. Will accidentally kills Alan and soon learns that the victim was an awarded journalist that was investigating the organization. Now he seeks evidences to prove his innocence but the network of the organization is powerful and is seeking Will out to eliminate him.

With a relatively small budget of around $17 million, the film has struggled to make back the cost of the movie, perhaps hoping that rentals will help it at least break even. That’s the force and results of poor reviews which are not reasonable for this movie.

Nicolas cage does a good job – the same one he does in every movie – he performs well. January Jones doesn’t get much in the way of opportunity to enhance her acting reputation now totalling around twenty movies, while Guy Pearce has a slim role that has a large impact on the screen. He consistently manages to claim roles in major movies.

Roger Donaldson directs well keeping the audience wondering what will happen next. This explains why the editor needs a good mention as well. If the movie is as bad as some say, the editor has kept it alive with some slick interchanges at relevant moments.

It’s a natural progression for Rihanna to move from her world of mega superstardom in the music arena where her music videos have become more complicated and closer to short movies rather than music videos.

For 131 minutes eyes will be glued to the screen to await an appearance from the trained big gun handler lady.

The game was originally a small plastic and sometimes cardboard guess where your opponent hid their ships on a grid pastime. In the movie aliens have launched a full-on attack on earth with only a few humans able to save the world; yawn, yawn.

The money spent on the FX will make the big money shots extremely entertaining, but if you expect to need your brain to be awake when you see the movie, then select another feature.

If you want to see your girl, of eleven number ones in the US fame, just nine short of the Beatles but already past Janet Jackson and Stevie Wonder, then Rihnanna won’t disappoint.

Screenplay writers now need to write a movie for Rihanna to perform the lead role, but please don’t let it be about a Caribbean rapper who has white powder and close family anger management issues.

What genre of movie would suit Rihanna best and which would suit her wonderful Bajan accent?

Step by Step productions have released information on their Facebook page about their next movie – Chrissy!

The producer’s of the Hush 1, 2 and 3 trilogy have set higher standards with each release so much will be expected from Chrissy!

Here’s their update:

We have just finished filming a new movie Chrissy! We are in the post production stage. Chrissy! starring Mikhaela Harrison and featuring Mac Fingal, Sophia Thomas(Mikisha), Peter Boyce wiull be in cinemas in September 2012! A Jamaican and Bajan collaboration!

Photo is from http://www.ikon-gfx.com/

2 stars**

Jason Segal won’t be appearing or writing the follow up to this hugely popular 2011 movie and having seen this version, you can see why he’s giving it a wide berth. Having been involved in the project from the get-go, chiefly as the main writer and latterly as the human star, this project didn’t wear well.

Amy Adams won’t be able to add this to her career resume with any real dignity and it won’t prove she’s ready for a large musical.

So what’s it all about?

When 3 Muppet fans learn that Tex Richman wants to drill under the Muppet Theater for oil, Gary, Mary and Walter set out to find the Muppets who have been split up for years so that they can put on one last show and save the Muppet Theater. Kermit the Frog now lives in his own mansion depressed in Hollywood, The Great Gonzo is a high class plumber at Gonzo’s Royal Flush, Fozzie Bear performs with a tribute band called The Moopets, Miss Piggy is the plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, and Animal is at a celebrity anger management rehab center in Santa Barbara.

Original performer Frank Oz must have wondered how Disney could tear through $45 million and still fail to bring any laughter from the audience. The only two slightly funny lines are insider movie industry quotes.

The majority of cameo guest stars will be unknown to most outside of the US with only Emily Brunt really making her (very) few lines worth a pay-check.

Sometimes, if not often, screenplay writers should ignore producers who try to bring the past up to date. The Muppets lived with most of us for generations and this version tarnishes the long term memories.

With Man or Muppet winning the song of the year from the people with the small statue, you know that very few songs were offered up for recognition.

The new cast voices were okay with most people failing to notice the differences as memories fade.

Just go and download the original Muppet movies and shows. You will appreciate the difference.

The film might be as much about inequality and class divide, or as future take on reality television or government controls. You get to make up your own mind.

So what’s it all about?

In a dystopian future, the totalitarian nation of Panem is divided between 12 districts and the Capitol. Each year two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal retribution for a past rebellion, the televised games are broadcast throughout Panem. The 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors while the citizens of Panem are required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss’s young sister, Prim, is selected as District 12′s female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart Peeta, are pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives.

The books, the trilogy by Suzanne Collins, have proved a great success with extraordinary sales not only among teenagers, but adults as well; currently Amazon’s Kindle lists Collins as its bestselling author of all time. With such high quality books, it was always going to be difficult for a movie to pack 374 pages into 142 minutes on screen. Something had to give. In this movie, energy was mostly missing as it plodded along at a snail’s pace, which is completely at odds with the novel.

If you haven’t read the books, you might still be disappointed. 24 people fighting each other until one is left standing should bring more action than all the Star Wars movies back to back, but it doesn’t.

The movie lacks any sense of impeding gloom, death or destruction. Jennifer Lawrence plays her part well in the lead role, but her energy isn’t matched by those around her. If the director was trying to imply the background to the games was more important than the games themselves, they missed by a long way.

There has been too much talk over the internet of how Rue’s character is played by a black girl in the movie – something that many feel is wrong. Just making such a statement, places those thoughts back a few hundred years. Everyone reads a book and unless colour is suggested or informed, it is up to the reader to how they shape the movie in their mind. Those people who made such comments should be thoroughly embarrassed.

The writer states that Rue has ‘dark brown skin.’ can it be any clearer?

The major flaw with this movie is that you will know who will win the games before they begin. There is no real twist to take the movie in another direction. The sales at the box office have been extreme. There may be many who won’t bother to follow this franchise, but like the Harry Potter collection, the sales will still be more than adequate and you will want to know what happens next, won’t you?

So what’s it all about?

Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now happily married and has a newborn daughter.

The writer is fading in her ability to sustain her ghost-writing career. Even when she tells her parents she’s an alcoholic, they ignore her plea for help, so she invests time and energy in believing the unbelievable – her current married ex would take her back, even though he has a wife and a new baby just a few weeks old.

Charlize Theron acts to her usual award winning standard. Her ability to perform with such a high quality throughout this movie is worth the ticket price alone.

Jason Reitman’s direction is first class, but that isn’t so difficult when you have the incredible Diablo Cody writing your screenplay. It’s more the lines that are almost throwaways that capture the essence of this script, not necessarily the lines you hear first time around.

The only negatives to take from this movie are the expectations that Charlize’s character would sleep with the disabled guy -so blatantly obvious – and the end of the movie was clear from the opening scenes. Balanced by the frankness of the dialogue, this is another Diablo masterpiece.

She is quickly becoming the new Joe Eszterhaus.

This movie leaves you feeling good and sympathetic with Ms Theron’s character, but you feel sorry for her dog, throughout. Take that dog for a walk, will you?

Sometimes you don’t want the past reinvented because it doesn’t do justice to your mind’s history. This is one of those occasions where the filmmakers dramatically improved, although changed forever, the life of Tintin and his dog. The animated figures move like people – but even more so.

So what’s it all about?

Having bought a model ship, the Unicorn, for a pound off a market stall Tintin is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine should be so eager to buy it from him, resorting to murder and kidnapping Tintin – accompanied by his marvellous dog Snowy – to join him and his gang as they sail to Morocco on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship’s master, drunken Captain Haddock, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock escape, arriving in Morocco at the court of a sheikh, who also has a model of the Unicorn. Haddock tells Tintin that over three hundred years earlier his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock was forced to scuttle the original Unicorn when attacked by a piratical forebear of Sakharine but he managed to save his treasure and provide clues to its location in three separate scrolls, all of which were secreted in models of the Unicorn.

As soon as you know Steven Spielberg is directing with Peter Jackson assisting in the producing department, you know you are almost certainly onto a winning combination.

Once you add Dr Who’s writer Steven Moffat and Egdar Wright, you know the screenplay stands a very good chance of being excellent. Daniel Craig and Andy Serkis provide the main voices with John Williams scoring the academy nomination for best music.

The level of fast breaking all-action-danger shows you how they managed to spend 135 million US dollars. The return of almost four hundred million suggests the investment was worthwhile.

You won’t need to be a child to be fully entertained. The only problem is waiting for the crew to produce the next two movies in the franchise. Did I mention it’s very good?

Movie trailers are supposed to entice you to want to go watch and experience the movie or download legally when it’s available. The problem arises when trailers either show you too much giving the game away or simply being so irrelevant that the movie you finally see wasn’t the movie you expected.

Trailers run from one to two minutes and are generally from the first third of a movie which covers the introduction so you know who the characters are and what the movie is going to be about. If they have some exceptional stunts and crashes from later in the movie, you may get to see them in the trailer providing it doesn’t give the story away and saves you spending your dollars at the theatre.

Take Hancock from July 2008. Many wish you would, it was such a disappointment. If you saw the trailer you may not know this was to be a superhero comic book film. You will have known that Will Smith gets to play a man with super powers and the explosions and stunts will get you to your theatre seat.

What you won’t know is about the unexpected and wonderful performance by Charlize Theron who takes the movie into another stratosphere leaving Will Smith to play his regular movie character. Theron is the real star although you’ve been duped into believing that Smith was.The second half of the film bears no resemblance to the first half – you could almost be watching a different movie. The poster doesn’t even feature it’s best star.

The lesson to be learnt is that just having star names doesn’t make a movie great, but showing a trailer that bears little resemblance to the movie just isn’t fair.

Edward Bovingdon of Yahoo UK Movies Features suggests a few more trailer failures.