Celebrity Friday: Tweet With @IanMcKellen Today 1PM EDT About #ViciousPBS

Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi are starring as a longtime same-sex couple in a British comedy airing on PBS called "Vicious." You can tweet with Sir Ian (@IanMcKellen) at 1pm EDT today using the hashtag #ViciousPBS. It should be fun!

MOVIE REVIEW: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The summer blockbuster movie season began with The Amazing Spider-Man 2  on May 2 and  Godzilla on May 16  (neither of which I went to see) and continued with X-Men: Days of Future Past which I went to see on opening day. I spent a fair portion of my formative early teen years reading the X-Men and New Mutants comics and I have enjoyed the X-Men films, especially the ones directed by Bryan Singer which play up the metaphorical analogy between having mutant powers and being gay. (In both cases, the person often tries to keep information about their status secret and often has to "come out" and reveal it, and society stigmatizes the status of being gay and being a mutant.)

Anyway, the latest X-Men movie is Days of Future Past and follows events depicted in 2011's X-Men: First Class. The movie starts in our near-future ad life sucks for the mutants because giant, adaptable robots called Sentinels are successfully hunting down and killing all mutants on Earth, making life pretty miserable for everyone on the planet as life as we know it is collateral damage to the ongoing human-mutant war.

Our heroes (from the earlier X-Men movies that starred Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, James Marsden as Cyclops, Anna Paquin as Rogue, etc) realize that the only way they can win this battle is to go back in time and prevent the current war from starting. This means that their earlier selves (who were introduced in  X-Men: First Class as James McAvoy as Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto/Erik Lensherr, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique/Raven and Nicolas Hoult as Beast) are going to have to be convinced to stop fighting each other and save the day.

Time travel stories are often tricky and non-sensical but Singer manages the action deftly, communicating the main details of Simon Kinberg's screenplay effectively to the audience, reveling in the early 1970s setting to depict the funky fashion and other foibles of the era.

It turns out that only Wolverine has the healing ability to survive a trip back in time (technically only his consciousness goes back in time facilitated by the mutant powers of Ellen Page appearing in her first summer blockbuster as a now openly lesbian actress). So he has to convince McAvoy's Charles and Fassbender's Erik to work together to stop Lawrence's Raven from killing Peter Dinklage's Dr. Bolivar Trask and thus precipitating Trask's evil invention of the Sentinel into the future-killing juggernaut it becomes, especially since Mystique's own DNA is a key component of the Sentinel (since in the original time line she gets caught after killing Trask).  Charles is currently addicted to the drug which allows him to walk but eliminates his psionic powers and Erik is in a metal-free prison deep in the heart of the Pentagon, accused of manipulating the bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy. Yes, the plot is complicated, but it is comprehensible.

The film really centers around the performance of 2013 Best Actress Oscar winner Lawrence with Oscar nominees McAvoy, Fassbender and Jackman having the next most prominent roles. Lawrence is more than up to the task of carrying a huge, visual effects extravaganza on her shoulders (as she has shown repeatedly with the Hunger Games movies) and acquits herself well here also. Dinklage and Hoult are both excellent, with Hoult having the added benefit of being very attractive. There's a small but memorable appearance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver during the action sequence to free Magneto.

The film raises some thought-provoking questions such as "If you could go back in time and stop a bad person from doing a bad thing, should you?" and "What would life be like if we had incontrovertible evidence that people with mutant powers existed"?

Overall, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an intellectually stimulating and well-made movie, smarter than the average summer blockbuster, but plenty entertaining.

Title: X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Director: Bryan Singer.
Running Time: 2 hours, 11 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.
Release Date: May 23, 2014.
Viewing Date: May 23, 2014.

Writing: B.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A.
Impact: B+.

Overall Grade: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

WATCH: Trailer for X-Men: Days Of Future Past

The trailer for the latest entry in the X-Men franchise is out. The movie is called X-Men: Days of Fture Past  and one that I am actually interested in seeing, thanks to its stunning cast and the fact it is being directed by Bryan Singer, the openly gay creator of the first two X-Men films.

The movie is released on May 23, 2014!

Marriage Equality Begins In England and Wales!

Marriages have begun in England and Wales as of midnight on March 29th. Prime Minister David Cameron celebrates by writing in the nation's preeminent LGBT periodical, Pink News:

This weekend is an important moment for our country. For the first time, the couples getting married won’t just include men and women – but men and men; and women and women. After all the campaigning – not least by readers of PinkNews – we will at last have equal marriage in our country. Put simply, in Britain it will no longer matter whether you are straight or gay – the State will recognise your relationship as equal. 

This is something that has been very important to me. I have been so lucky to find the most incredible lifelong partner in Sam and our marriage has been a very special part of the commitment we have made to each other. Of course any marriage takes work, requires patience and understanding, give and take – but what it gives back in terms of love, support, stability and happiness is immeasurable. That is not something that the State should ever deny someone on the basis of their sexuality. When people’s love is divided by law, it is the law that needs to change. 

The introduction of same-sex civil marriage says something about the sort of country we are. It says we are a country that will continue to honour its proud traditions of respect, tolerance and equal worth. It also sends a powerful message to young people growing up who are uncertain about their sexuality. It clearly says ‘you are equal’ whether straight or gay. That is so important in trying to create an environment where people are no longer bullied because of their sexuality – and where they can realise their potential, whether as a great mathematician like Alan Turing, a star of stage and screen like Sir Ian McKellen or a wonderful journalist and presenter like Clare Balding.

Congratulations, Britannia!

FILM REVIEW: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Other Half and I kicked off our annual end-of-year moviegoing season with Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. This is the second film in the trilogy of movies which are a film adaptation of The Hobbit, the young-adult book that is a prequel to the Lord of the Rings. Last year we saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which generally was viewed by most as unnecessarily long. Many fans of the books and the movies are scandalized that Jackson is turning one (frankly, not very long) book into three relatively long movies.

We saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at the Arclight Cinemas in Pasadena, not in 3-D or HFR but just regular 2-D.

The interesting difference between The Hobbit movies and the Lord of the Rings movies is that the former is based around dwarves as the main characters. This is useful because hobbits and dwarves are supposed to be about the same (short) height and so there are much fewer odd height juxtapositions in these films. However, there are some characters from the first series of films that also appear in the second: Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) and, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), VERY briefly.

The key character in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is of course, Smaug, the dragon. Amusingly, Smaug is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch (of Sherlock and Star Trek Into Darkness fame) while Martin Freeman (who plays Watson to Cumberbatch's Sherlock) plays Bilbo Baggins, the sole hobbit member of the dwarf expedition to reclaim their treasure stolen by Smaug.

The second edition in the The Hobbit trilogy is significantly better than the first. The action is sharper and the story more focused. Another positive addition to the film is the character of Tauriel played by Evangeline Lilly, a fierce elf that we meet in Mirkwood, the dark, enchanted forest our heroes have to get through in order to reach the Lonely Mountain.

Once they do finally get to the Mountain and encounter Smaug the action does tend to drag on a little and then the film suddenly ends without the quest having been resolved. For that, we will have to wait until next year's The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

Title: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Director: Peter Jackson.
Running Time: 2 hours, 41 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.
Release Date: December 13, 2013.
Viewing Date: December 20, 2013.

Writing: A.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A+.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: A (4.0/4.0).

WATCH: Trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The second film in the trilogy being written, directed and produced by Peter Jackson about a book written by J.R.R. Tolkien is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It is in theaters on December 13, 2013 and a new 3-minute trailer is out now!

Trailer for The Desolation of Smaug Is Out!

As I mentioned yesterday, the first trailer for the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, has been released worldwide today.

hat/tip to Wonder Man

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is coming soon!

The second movie (of three) adapting the story told in the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien is coming to movie theaters later this year. It's called The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The first movie was called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I saw the first movie in theaters last December and liked it very much. The Hobbit is a prequel of sorts of Tolkien's more famous Lord of the Rings books which were made into the blockbuster movie trilogy by Peter Jackson.

io9 is reporting that the first teaser trailer for The Desolation of Smaug will be released tomorrow, June 11th and the full trailer will be attached to this Friday's release of Man of Steel (The new Superman movie directed by Zack Snyder, produced by Christopher Nolan and starring Henry Cavill).

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

FILM REVIEW: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Since the movie adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings were my favorite movies of the decade it should not be surprising that I would want to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the adaptation of the prequel book, The Hobbit.

Although the identical creative team lead by writer-producer-director Peter Jackson that made the near-perfect, very faithful adaptations of the first three books are involved in the adaptation of The Hobbit to the screen, there have been some misgiving expressed by other fans by the decision to turn a much shorter, less ambitious book into a new trilogy of films. It seems doubtful that there's enough source material in what is essentially a children's book to make more than 8 hours of filmed entertainment for adults to enjoy.

However, Jackson has made clear that they are not just adapting the book The Hobbit but are really trying to create another series of films which attempts to more fully explore the incredibly rich world of Middle-Earth as originally envisioned and created by Tolkien. Tolkien was a English language and literature professor at Oxford for years who was basically the very first author in what is known known as the genre of speculative fiction to create a fully realized fictional world with a complete history and geography and back story connecting all the characters in the books.

When deciding to see An Unexpected Journey you have multiple options to choose from: IMAX, 3-D,  48 Frames per second (often referred to as HFR or "high frame rate"), or just regular 2-D. There are also various combinations of these formats (like 3-D HFR, or IMAX 3-D, etc).

The Other Half and I saw An Unexpected Journey in regular 2D at the Edwards Alhambra Renaissance-14, our  regular go-to theater, on Christmas Day. The movie theater we saw the film in was close to completely full even for a mid-afternoon screening. When we emerged about three hours later, the hallways were completely thronged with people lined up to see movies.

An Unexpected Journey is not getting as universally positive acclaim as the movies from the first trilogy (it has a 65% rating from critics at rottentomatoes.com, 81% from the audience) but like the other films it is a booming success at the box-office, having already brought in a half-billion dollars globally in the first two weeks.

Anyway, let's talk about the actual movie. Basically, I loved it! I am completely baffled by other critics who have said that the pace of the film was slow, and complained about the 10 minute prologue putting the story into perspective. I would agree that the scene where Bilbo Baggins meets the entire group of dwarves was a bit over-extended, but it is there to demonstrate how tentative and unassertive the hobbit is. Other critics had mentioned that the movie doesn't really get going until Bilbo shouts "I'm going on an adventure!" (as shown in the trailer) which happens about 35 minutes into the film, but to me that seemed to happen at the very beginning of the movie.

Someone else pointed out that the structure of An Unexpected Journey is almost identical to The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The fellowship is formed (after some reluctance by the hero), they run into some dangerous trouble early on and go see the elves. Then they go inside the mountain, where a lot of stuff happens and parts of the group gets separated from the others, then they leave the mountain and run into another even more serious danger, escape that and then the movie is done! This summary is pretty reductive, but it is roughly accurate, without giving away too many plot points.

Overall, if you liked any of the original Lord of the Rings movies and especially if you have read any of the books by J.R.R. Tolkien I am very confident that you will enjoy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Title: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Director: Peter Jackson.
Running Time: 2 hours, 49 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.
Release Date: December 16, 2012.
Viewing Date: December 25, 2012.

Writing: A.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: A (3.83/4.0).

WATCH: Trailer for 2012's The Hobbit

Ian McKellen Confirmed For "The Hobbit"

openly gay Sir Ian McKellen, 71

Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in all three Lord of the Rings movies, has signed on to reprise his Oscar-nominated role in the two upcoming films being made by Peter Jackson of their juvenile fiction prequel The Hobbit.

McKellen joins other stars from the very successful Lord of the Rings trilogy to return to Middle Earth for the prequel movies like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Elijah Wood as Frodo and Andy Serkis  as Gollum.

Sir Ian McKellen Expresses Interest In The Hobbit

Openly gay actor Sir Ian McKellen, who played the pivotal character of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies, has expressed his interest in reprising the characters in the upcoming prequel film adapations of The Hobbit.

Although Oscar-winning producer/director/screenwriter of Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson will not be directing the Hobbit films, he will likely be producing them, and according to McKellen, has only one actor in mind to play Gandalf (who plays an even bigger role in The Hobbit than he does in Lord of the Rings).

[A] fan asked: "Have you been approached yet by Peter Jackson or anyone else" to play the ancient Wizard?

McKellen replied: "Encouragingly, Peter and (partner) Fran Walsh have told me they couldn't imagine `The Hobbit' without their original Gandalf."

"Their confidence hasn't yet been confirmed by the director Guillermo del Toro, but I am keeping my diary free for 2009!" he said.

The news that Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, Hellboy II) has the inside track to actually direct the movies has been an ill-kept secret for sometime.


Interestingly, the Hobbit movies will likely be competing at the box-office with the two last Harry Potter movies which the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be released as in 2010 and 2011.