Z and I watched 300 last night. Interesting movie. The fight scenes were awesome. Really really awesome. The rest of the movie was sort of weird. Not the most upbeat movie around. In the end, the leader gets killed in a hail of arrows as does the rest of his 300. All because of the politicians not sending the complete contingent of army available. Typical politicians. The 300 that went with the leader of the warriors were tough though.

I liked the movie. It was long in some parts. I think some of the scenes could have been cut. More action could have taken the slower parts place. The audio was OK. I really liked the wall that the 300 built. Talk about using your resources the best you can.

I went with Z and L to see Harry potter – The Order of the Phoenix. I liked the movie. It was a bit tough to cover everything in the book. If they did that the movie would be 10 hours long. But they did a good job sticking to the book for the most part. The scene transitions were a bit rough but that has been consistent in every movie. When you read the books and then go see the movie you expect to get the same experience when they build out the plot but unfortunately the movie just does not have time to do so. Thus you get this "hard line" effect when they transition from one scene to another. The sound was good and the much discussed Harry kiss was very predictable albeit in a different plot location. I thought they really captured the Dumbledore's Army concept extremely well. It was exactly as I had imagined it when reading the book. Also they did well with the Deloris Umbridge character. Again, exactly as I imagined it. The fight between Dumbledore's Army and the Death eaters towards the end was lacking. I expected much more from that scene. It felt rushed and was cut down far too much. Also the whole plot line around The order of the Phoenix was much too short. They did nothing to develop many of the characters which turns out to be key characters in later books. For example Tonks was barely mentioned although she was in the movie. I would have liked to have seen her character get a bit more focus. I would have liked to have seen more focus on Creature as well.

The overall audio was good. The general imaging was too dark. Some of the scenes were so dark that is was hard to pick out details. If that was a creative choice it was the wrong one. This is especially evident in the initial broom flying scene and the initial dementor scene.

I liked the movie and will purchase it when it comes out on DVD. I think it is a good movie to go see in the theater. Evidently they are showing it in Imax theaters. I might go see it again in one of those. That would be good with the big screen and the Imax audio system.

So while on vacation I went and saw Transformers as well as purchased on DVD Shooter, Miami Vice and Cranked. So here are my reviews for the most part.

Transformers – Wow. I mean, really, WOW! This was a very good movie. Even my wife liked it. We took L to see it with one of her friends. Well, she calls him a boyfriend but we can discuss that later. J Anyway, the movie was great. The special effects were awesome and the sound was extremely good. They had great transformers included and the overall movie plot actually flowed. This will be a DVD buy as soon as it comes out.

Shooter – I really liked this movie. Good plot, good action and good flow. The DVD had great audio. This is a good one to have in the collection.

Cranked – WTF? This was, well, a pretty big let down. After the star actor was in both Transporter movies I expected more. Much more. Pretty much everything was horrible in this movie. The plot was choppy, audio was horrible and the camera work was…lets just say I could have done it better. The only good scene involved a newspaper bin. If you have seen the movie then you know. If not, don't worry about it.

I plan on watching Miami Vice today. My friend Clif says it is actually pretty good. We have very similar tastes in movies so I am looking forward to it.

I went with the family to see Spiderman 3 this weekend. The place was packed! I was pretty excited since the first two Spiderman movies were great. This one was, well, not to great. It was good but not great. I think, and this is just my opinion, that with this installment the movie series is starting the downhill slide. With this movie Spiderman (Peter Parker) has to deal with revenge as an emotion. The basic plot was Spiderman get overtaken by some "space sludge" that feeds off its host's emotions. So there is that "opponent" as well as the Sandman who is now made of sand and can control sand. That came with some pretty cool special effects. The real problem is this installment goes into the cheesy realm in between the action scenes. The plot management and development is very cheesy. Basically just watch this movie from action scene to action scene. Ignore the rest. If I had to give the movie a rating from 1 to 10 I would give it a 6. Still a D in my book but not a complete failure.

Z and I went out on a date last night. We went to JoJo's China Bistro for dinner. Always a good meal to be had there. Then we went out to the movies. It was my turn to choose so Ghost Rider was the selection. What a horrible movie. I mean, not just bad but really really bad. Bad acting, bad story line, bad filming, bad sound, bad everything. I pretty much am willing to buy most everything on DVD but this movie will not make it into my library. My advice, pass this movie over. Do not go see it in the theatres, do not buy it on DVD and do not rent it. If you are taking a cross country flight and they are showing it, read a book. It was that bad. Nicolas Cage normally is in great movies. This one was his one miss and a big time miss at that.

I went to see X Men – The Last Stand Friday evening. The movie was good but nowhere near as good as the second installment of the X Men movies. Too many characters meant less time to go deep on any one particular character. This left the story line shallow. Some of the new characters could have been left out and the resulting time could have been used to go deep on the remaining characters. The sound was good. It will be better when I get the DVD and watch the movie at home. The scene transitions were good in some spots and then very choppy in others. Over all I give the movie a C+. I did not think it was bad but I also did not think it was great.

OK. We watched the movie. Overall, I thought it was good. Not great but good. As always, the book is far better. I was a little surprised to see the PG-13 rating. I thought some of the scenes were a little “out there” for a 13 year old. I took my daughter, she is 11. Some of these scenes caught her off guard. Especially a scenes where “Silas” punishes himself for redemption in the eyes of the lord. That is one of the scenes that I referred to as “out there”. Some of the scene transitions were rough but then again, they did pack a great deal of info into a very tight time slot.

I will probably buy it when it comes out on DVD. I liked the story line and enjoyed the movie.

Waiting for the movie to start. I will blog afterwards with how I liked the movie.