Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts

Monday, May 18, 2009

Should-Not-Delete Deleted Scenes – Angels & Demons

I’m a huge fan of Dan Brown, esp Angels & Demons. So you can imagine that how excited I was when I saw its trailer in the cinema for the first time. But when I finally bought the ticket and sat back to enjoy the show, I grew disappointed only after 5 min – yes, with the scene that Tom Hanks on a “Vatican helicopter”, instead of the CERN’s super jet.

With limited length of the film (actually not quite “limited”, 2 hrs 15 min according to my watch), it is understandable that the director needs to cut off sth from the original book. But should that be those most important things such like the father-and-son relationship between Camerlengo and the Pope? If you’ve ever read the original book, you will definitely agree with me that this is the key to the whole story – why this young man killed his be-loved Holy Father and planned for the series of cold-blood murders. Without the key, you are just looking at a normal plot-of-murders movie (OK, a luxurious version maybe). Was it because of the pressure from the real-life Vatican Court? Otherwise I just couldn’t understand why the director chose to keep so many details about religion, history and arts while deleted the key. BTW sometimes I felt like that Ron Howard shared some common things with Dr. Langdon – they showed off a bit too much.

Tom Hanks finally got a decent hair-do, for God’s sake (literally here…). But Ewan McGreger still stole the show, even with so many scenes deleted – the Father’s gown is gonna be the Next Bit Thing in fashion industry for sure.
The only thing that the movie did better than the book – they really found a stature of “Angels-And-Demons”!

Friday, June 13, 2008

End of their career? -- My Mom's New Boyfriend

Names like Antonio Benderas and Meg Ryan are once to be the main factor that attracts me to a movie. But remember this, however shining you are today, there will be a day coming to end it.

A B-class movie as it is, it's somewhat creative for the producer of "My Mom's New Boyfriend" to get Meg and Antonio to make some chemistry. And the son of Meg's long-time sure-win partner (I mean Tom Hanks), Collin Hanks, playing the son of Meg in this movie, this could definitely generate some scoop. But after all, a moive could not be successful with only these tricky things.

Antonio as an artist thief (smell the Latinic romance?), Colin as a young FBI agent who wants to track Antonio down (Sounds familiar? "Catch me if you can, son!"), and Meg as a middle-aged single mother who falls in love with Antonio. Bugs, Doggies, every routine things for a movie that is related for FBI, name it. The story is really not bad, and it should be a quite profitable project actually. Yet what we got here?

Middle-aged couple tries to catch up with the young generation: fall-in-love-with-the-first-sight? Come on, you are not teenagers any more! Weird Middle-East restaurant? That place could only remind us war now. And the worst scene of all? Seeing that once sweet Meg screaming and laughing like addicted to some things, if you know what I mean. I'm sure that I would like this movie much more if they faded to be the "background" only.

When you ignore this old couple, you will "suddenly" find the effort by Colin Hanks. His tones just like his old man! And all reminds me Tom Hanks in his earlier days like "The Man with One Red Shoe". Like Tom, Colin may not become a "girl killer", but the path to awards is open to him, if he keeps improving his acting. In this movie, my favourite scene is when he and two other FBI agents bugging his mother in bed with another man... *_*