How many out there know who the Muppets were?

Okay, 3 of you.  So when it was first reported that Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) would be tak­ing on one of the most beloved movie/TV prop­er­ties of all time, The Muppets, need­less to say, reac­tions were some­what mixed.

I grew up watch­ing the mup­pets (which is to say that I am still young by the world stan­dard. I was not sure whether he will milk it for his pop­u­lar­ity of just a spring­board for “I am Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — a sequel of his pre­vi­ous film which is not even in the cards.

Then as par­ody trailer after cre­ative par­ody trailer debuted online and in the­aters, more and more movie­go­ers became cau­tiously opti­mistic that The Muppets would actu­ally turn out to be not just an enjoy­able trip to the the­ater but a wor­thy install­ment in a series that hasn’t seen a big screen release in over twelve years (the last one being Muppets from Space).

Fortunately, The Muppets not only deliv­ers an enjoy­able trip to the movies, the film also addresses a num­ber of rea­sons why the tit­u­lar char­ac­ters deserve to be a sta­ple in the cur­rent cinescape – directly tack­ling the cyn­i­cism of our mod­ern enter­tain­ment offer­ings. That said, the film isn’t overly preachy, and despite a num­ber of celebrity cameos, lets the famil­iar felt-covered faces of char­ac­ters like Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and Fozzie Bear take cen­ter stage.

Unlike a lot of mod­ern films which have to work hard to keep their audi­ences enter­tained with explo­sions, eye-popping CGI, and “gritty” inter­pre­ta­tions, Henson’s cre­ations are still able to keep audi­ences invested due largely to their heartfelt/charming per­son­al­i­ties. Even Walter, despite being the new Muppet on the block, holds his own along­side his fel­low non-human friends, and will no doubt be a fan-favorite for years to come.

While the over­ar­ch­ing sto­ry­line in The Muppets isn’t the most imag­i­na­tive nar­ra­tive in the series, the com­bi­na­tion of social satire and gen­uinely endear­ing char­ac­ter moments suc­ceeds in deliv­er­ing one of the most sin­cere install­ments of the fran­chise. As men­tioned, Segel side­stepped the lime­light and puts Walter cen­ter stage. Walter is the world’s biggest Muppet fan – and des­tiny calls when he trav­els with his bio­log­i­cal, yet human, brother Gary (Segel) and Gary’s girl­friend, Mary (Amy Adams), to Hollywood. Walter becomes the only per­son capa­ble of reunit­ing the Muppets, who have all gone their sep­a­rate ways, so that they can stop a rich oil tycoon, Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), from tear­ing down the iconic Muppet Theater.

This film was for­tu­nately helm by peo­ple who wanted to see the Muppets back on screen rather than pros­ti­tut­ing them­selves over an 80’s icon (Patrick Harris –Smurfs and Jason Lee –Alvin and the Chipmunks — are YOU LISTENING?)

Without giv­ing much away, this film attempts to make a film OLD school, no CGI effects, no 3D gim­micks, just good old fash­ion pure cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence. With a good sto­ry­line, good moral val­ues, and funny and heart­warm­ing songs, this film will go a long way. It teaches some­thing miss­ing in teenagers now a days– SELF BELIEF.

This is the per­fect fam­ily movie for Christmas or any occa­sion as when you watch it together, it binds you. And if a teenager walks out of the movie to say –BORING. Then I feel sorry for this generation.

With 97% approval rate with ROTTEN TOMATOES, the crit­ics got this one right-BIG TIME. But you know what? I am cer­tain it will not be a big BOX OFFICE hit in terms of money because a cer­tain 26% crappy film about Vampire sex and babies are pol­lut­ing the world now.

Written by Christopher Sim, Edited by Trey Seah

Apple’s iProducts. South Korean pop music. Air. 

These things are every­where. You can’t avoid them with­out mak­ing a con­scious effort. 

In a word, ubiq­ui­tous.

That word is bandied around a lot in the doc­u­men­tary Helvetica. The film is directed and pro­duced by Gary Hustwit, and was released in 2007 to coin­cide with the fifti­eth birth­day of the font type­face family.

With the sub­ject of Helvetica seem­ing to be any­thing but com­plex, one would expect the rest of the film to fol­low suit by being sim­i­larly trans­par­ent; indeed, Helvetica is made up of footage of rant­ing old men, among other things. This, how­ever, is where the film truly shines.

“Puss in Boots” mixes it all up, how it mixes is refresh­ing. Even more than in the “Shrek” movies, from which this likely can­di­date for a new ani­mated fran­chise is spun off, it is a cheer­fully chaotic jum­ble of fairy tale and nurs­ery rhyme char­ac­ters para­chuted into a Spanish sto­ry­book set­ting. It also looks ter­rific: brighter, with a lot more visual piz­zazz than the “Shrek” films. Even when the story loses its thread, the movie rewards your eye.

Written by Adrian Lim

This a movie that feels like Ocean’s 11 but is not quite up to the styl­ized ver­sion of the film.

Here, Alan Alda (MASH) is at his creep­ily dis­lik­able best as a rich Wall Street fig­ure whose lowli­est employ­ees seek revenge after he has swin­dled them out of their pen­sions and life sav­ings. He is of course Bernie Maddoff who took away mil­lions from investors.

The movie takes half an hour to get going, show­ing us the work­ings of the rich in a rich town in a rich build­ing. So when Alan Alda gets arrested and is found to have swin­dled money from the work­ers in the build­ing, Stiller decides on a heist of the fraudster’s hid­den cash which coin­cides with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. It should have been fun but its rather less fun than it might have been due to some poor timing.

Written by Shalyn Thong
Edited by Trey Seah

Book in: A term used by Singaporean Men who are in the National Service, and means for the per­son­nel to report back to their respec­tive camp.

2359 was released in Singapore on the 3^rd November 2011.

It’s a local movie set in 1983 Pulau Tekong (the place where most Singapore Men would start their National Service in), about an island haunted by the spirit of a Bomo (a spir­i­tual medium) mother and child, and a sol­dier with a third eye.With such a plot, you could prob­a­bly get a Hollywood movie, but that wouldn’t be a place that’s any­where close to home, and it wouldn’t be a place Singaporean guys have gone to or would have to go to, unlike Pulau Tekong.

Written by Adrian Lim

In a recent event, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson chose Empire mag­a­zine to reveal the first look at The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Headed our way next October, the film adapts the enor­mously pop­u­lar books by Hergé in performance-captured, 3D form. They quoted:

“With live action you’re going to have actors pre­tend­ing to be Captain Haddock and Tintin,” says Peter Jackson. “You’d be cast­ing peo­ple to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be some­what dif­fer­ent. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised car­i­ca­tured faces, keep every­thing look­ing like Hergé’s art­work, but make it photo-real.” 

So my ques­tion is “WHY BOTHER?” Why can’t they just make a fan­tas­tic kick ass ani­ma­tion that look like the orig­i­nal with sweep­ing cam­eras and real­is­tic ani­ma­tion movements?

Written by Trey Seah

I’ll like to start by say­ing, bravo to Real Steel; the impact this film had on me was stronger than steel.

Many of us would remem­ber Hugh Jackman as Wolverine from the X-Men films, with his bushy hair, long side­burns and badass claws, it wouldn’t be hard to imag­ine him in another film which involves fight­ing and metal, albeit the clean shaven look with short hair.

Real Steel is set in the future, where human box­ing becomes obso­lete and robots are fight­ing in the ring instead. Hugh Jackman, who was once a boxer in the ring, ends up using robots to com­pete and runs into many obsta­cles. At the same time, he took care of his 11 year old son, who forms an unlikely rela­tion­ship and braces through the hard­ships together.