Live Free or Die Hard, The Red Shoes, Dumplings, The Good German, The Middleman (again), & Scott Pilgrim

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth (and I hope last) Die Hard film. The first one is one of the best action films of all time, and I like the second one. The third one, however, was utter crap. The first two were at least somewhat based in a slightly heightened reality, and the third one just tossed that out of the window. And this one was even worse. Maybe it has to do with living in DC and having been to Baltimore quite a few times, but every building I recognized (besides the obvious ones like Capitol building and other monuments) was in Baltimore during the big chase scene in DC. And that's also ignoring the final chase scene that's supposed to be set just north of Baltimore on 695, and the highways are clearly Southern California, with palm trees and overlapping highway overpasses that basically are a California thing and are nothing like highways in Maryland. Also, the movie is also ridiculous when it comes to plot. And wastes Maggie Q, who is only there to look attractive. I also had a serious problem with "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away?" which I know was just trying to get on Timothy Olyphant's bad side. But that racial stereotype grated on me. Actually, just about everyone in the film besides Bruce Willis and Justin Long were wasted. Those two clearly have no more talent than what was shown in the film. Basically, the film was terrible and stupid.

The Red Shoes is not the Powell-Pressburger film, it's a recent K-Horror film, clearly still based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, but with a Korean twist. I objected to the shoes clearly being pink. And to the complete ripoff of Fight Club. Kinda creepy, but the stereotypical Asian horror touches (ghosts with long hair and walking strangely) just aren't nearly as interesting the hundredth time.

Dumplings is the extended version of the Fruit Chan part of Three... Extremes. The plot is slightly different, missing the freakiest scene from the short, but adding more character parts and being slightly more interesting. Still quite good looking and freaky, and I should try to see some Fruit Chan films to see if it's a one-off, but the ones I've read are good aren't really available on Netflix. I don't understand why it makes me want dumplings. But I want dumplings.

The Good German is Soderbergh being ridiculous. He basically just said: Casablanca and The Third Man are awesome films, and what made them amazing was the studio system that made the films. Not the talent or the writing. So he apes those two films constantly, never coming close to that quality.

Venus has a good performance from Peter O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker, but ultimately feels like a small character piece rather than saying anything important about anything.

The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability is the complete Middleman comic. The first TPB is basically the first episode of the show, the second TPB is the third episode, and bits and pieces of the third TPB were used throughout the rest of the show, from Manservant Neville to the Honey Ryder bikini joke. I actually don't like the ending of the comic at all, and prefer the tv show's version of the Middleman, although that may be due to that being my introduction to the universe. But I certainly recommend it to everyone. Also, I got the Scott Pilgrim odds and ends collection, with all the main comics being familiar to me due to most of them being online, but I cannot recommend Scott Pilgrim enough (and I apparently haven't raved about it yet on the blog?).