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This movie also comes from the mind of Stephen Chow and feels like the natural evolution of Shaolin Soccer. Bigger budget, more special effects and more of what made the first movie this great. The back story involves the “black axe gang” that represents the Yakuzas in Japan. A small housing complex gets into a scuffle with the gang but there is more then just ordinary people living there. Kung fu masters are revealed and they must defend the people living there.

It’s surprisingly fun to watch, there are few unexpected turns, and it pokes fun at reality more then once, when you see two characters running like cartoons with their legs rolling like if they where on bikes. You will recognize many cast members from the previous movie, but this one has a much more mature approach to the manner. People get hurt and die, they fight for good or wrong reasons but it remains a fun movie. It’s a pleasure on the eyes to watch. If you want some entertainment and some martial art action, Kung Fu Hustle is for you.

This super hero movie is like no other, heroes are built. Forget about special powers, Iron Man is about a man, his money and his quest to change the fate of the world. Tony Stark is played by Robert Downey Jr. and he offers a great performance. He’s really believable in his character, without being too emo (see Spiderman). Tony Stark is your typical rich jerk that makes a lot of money selling advance weapons. After demonstrating a new missile called the Jericho he is kidnapped by a terrorist group that demands he replicates those missiles for them. Surprisingly they have all the equipment needed, they just need the brains to complete the project.

The genius he is, decides to build a robotic suit instead of the missile in an attempt to escape. Obviously this prototype is far from the final product he’ll be able to accomplish in a lab with top level equipment. Imagine Batman with more money!

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Some might remember my infamous Opera 9 vs Firefox 2 vs Internet Explorer 7 post. I’ve decided to take a look back in the past and repeat the experience as new versions of both Opera and Firefox appear to be nearing release. In contrast I’ve chosen to leave the upcoming IE8 out of the battle because it does not seem to be coming as soon as it’s competitors. Safari along other browsers are probably very functional but they don’t spike my interest and don’t seem to make as much flame wars material.

For this review I’ve installed Opera 9.5 Beta 2 and Firefox 3 Beta 5 and aimed at comparing them. Lets get whatever is common out of the way. Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocker, anti-phising, RSS feed, skins, integrated search, anti-phising. All this is well and pretty much all the browsers woke up and followed the trends that became quite successful.

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I might be a cynic to call this movie unbelieveable, but Untraceable is really a quick forgetable movie that you might appreciate if you can enjoy mild torture and twisted logic of both heroes and villains of the story.

The idea is simple, someone put up a website called KillWithMe where he streams over the Internet the slow death of a victim. The twist is that it’s actually the viewers that kill because the death is initiated by the viewing of the website. The more people that log on to see the torture, the faster the murder occurs. You would think that since the murderer is annonymous at the beginning and seems to know quite alot about how the FBI agents function there would be a big twist reveal of his identity. I guess they got bored with the mystery and decided to place the movie with an other direction where the bad guy decides to stalk and attack the lead investigator in the case.

The movie ends like a car crash with no clear resolution. Aside the conclusion that a lot of people on the Internet are cluless and very gullable. There are some really annoying product placement like Windows Vista being used on every computer and where every window looks like it’s a media player one. On Star joins the fun but proves that somehow a skilled hacker could break into your cars computer, lock you in and threaten your life. None the less, it’s not a boring movie, things are happening and you have the kind of involvement when you keep telling yourself why didn’t she do this or that.

Wait for it to go on TV, it might be worth it then. 6 out of 10 -

On last week Totally Rad Show (TRS #55), they made a review of the latest Stephen Chow movie called CJ7. During their review I realized that this guy was also behind Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Proposed as great movies I was set to correct my mistakes and made sure I saw these two movies back to back. Here’s how great it was!

Shaolin Soccer
Imagine you take one part Soccer, and you mix it up with one part Kung Fu you will get one of the most intriging Kung Fu sports movie you’ve ever seen. Stephen Chow was relatively unknow until his action hits became mainstream. This movie was popular enought to come out of Japan and reach the north american market. I watched the dubbed version because I did not feel like reading through all the subtitles but I am not one to avoid a movie simply because it is subtitled.

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A while back I got pretty excited when I saw the trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom. I was sure this movie would spike my interest, and I can say it delivered all I was expecting. The movie was released today and instead of reading my review you should go out tonight and see it. It’s a kung-fu movie with a fun story line, predictable you might say, but still very much satisfying. Jet Li and Jackie Chan are not enemies but they do get their fair screen time fighting each other in different styles. The Forbidden Kingdom will swept you off your feet and bring you to this magical world. This young teen from Boston is a fan of kung-fu movies and spends way to much time in a pawn shop in China Town. Through very dramatic events he is thrown into an other world where his mission is to return his staff to the Monkey King of legend and end the tyranny of the an evil warlord. I feel like I want to see it again, I get that feeling only from great movies! Trailer is after the jump and pictures.

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This movie looked intriguing from the start. I don’t believe it got a lot of coverage, not even a wide release in theater. However, I’ll have to admit right here that I’m a fan of Ryan Reynolds, I don’t know why… I would consider him a pretty good actor, he plays comedy fine but he really proved he could do well in other genre like Amityville and Blade Trinity. You might of lost all hope already considering theses weren’t great movies.

But this is about The Nines, and how strange this movie was. The director wanted us to see his movie so much that he even admitted that he didn’t mind that people “pirate” his movie, as long as they see it [TorrentFreak]. None the less, it’s copyrighted to the studios, so him saying that, doesn’t make it legal to take off the Web. Now back to what I will call as an attempt to review the movie.

It’s complex to explain, but the movie evolves in three parts where Ryan Reynolds plays the central character. Each is very different and has to live through their own deal of trouble in the world. At one point, he notices the number “nine” appearing everywhere (he doesn’t go crazy like in Number 23), but he understands there is a greater meaning to the presence of this number, and someone is trying to tell him to remember something. By three parts I literally mean that he is playing the role of three different characters that evolve in worlds that are interconnected. In the first act he is an actor on the down slope with incendiary tendencies and a thing for new drugs.

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I’ll tell you what’s going on! The most impressive show on television is coming back for it’s final season. Usually TV shows get cancelled when they’re not successful and their ending is sometimes held with stitches. This is definitely not what is going on with Battlestar Galactica. It has been decided that the fourth season would be the closing act of the series and this allows careful planning for a great finale.

When I see this show made for television I don’t understand how we’ve been missing out on great television for so long. The production value is higher than many movies that come out today. I can understand that you’ve missed the show and you’d like to start fresh from the start, I would even recommend that to fully enjoy all the fun. I’m currently re-watching season 3 on DVD that was released two weeks ago. But if you’re short on time they have made a nice 8 minutes recap to get you up to speed and start watching season 4 as soon as it comes out. Beware of MAJOR spoilers in this video as it goes to every important plot point from season 1 to the end of season 3!

So now you have no excuse not to tune in for their return April 4th 2008 on SCIFI and SPACE at 10PM Eastern Time. And if you happen to be outside the US or Canada or don’t subscribe to these channels it’s possible to catch a glimpse of their content live using the TVUPlayer.