Movie Review - Wild Hogs

Only when men reach the age of 40 do they think of living the life and trying to fight their mid life crisis. How true is that? Well to play to the normal cliche of how middle aged men are portrayed when going through a mid-life crisis, Wild Hogs just shows the true nature of it.

Boasting a star studded cast of Tim Allen (Doug Madsen), John Travolta (Woody Stevens), Martin Lawrence (Bobby Davis), and William H. Macy (Dudley Frank), the movie starts off by showing these four individuals in their own personal life, living in a not too perfect lifestyle where everything may seem fine on the outside but they are crying a river inside. Not entirely satisfied with their life, these guys look for the very thing that changes them from being pussy cats into hungry lions.

The one thing that they all have in common is that the four of them love to ride their bikes and hang out at their local bar. Forming a group and calling themselves the Wild Hogs, they set out every week to have a drink and ride around hoping to find that very adventure deep within their souls. They got rather tired from just riding in their town's national day parade and wanted to do more than just that.

The story begins when Woody (played by John Travolta) was declared a bankrupt and his wife is leaving him. Feeling extremely down in the dumps, he then manages to convince the rest (Dudley, Doug and Bobby) to embark on a road trip all the way to the other end of the country in two weeks just on their bikes.

From there onwards they start their journey with plenty of hope and with their funny and hysterical antics along the way, they found certain bit of trouble with a gang of hells angels. Of course it didn't help that Woody blew up their bar as well. From shy encounters with gay policemen to giving families the wrong impression, their journey is definitely far from boring.

Of course a comedy wouldn't be without a little love interest especially with Dudley who has trouble with women and ends up falling in love with a local bar owner in a small town where Sheriffs were hired based on availability rather than qualification. From there on, the group went and saved the town from the evil clutches of a proper biker gang.

A good blend of funny antics and jokes coming from four grandmasters in their own comical right, this show is definitely one of the funniest shows to be released this year. A must watch and great for the family and kids.

Rated at 4 out of 5 stars.

Movie Review - TMNT

Remember the good old days especially during Sundays when TV3 was showing the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at 7.00pm? Remember you singing to the tunes of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and remember craving for pizza right after that? That was definitely the era of when most young adults now can relate to. A piece of history, which we grew up with, and now, the turtles are back with a vengeance in full CGI graphics and hitting the silver screen.

The build up and anticipation towards the movie was rather large for me personally and to be frank it has not been lost to hype. With the emergence of recent technology, gone are the days where we see cartoons taking the stage using old technology unless you are extremely anime inclined.

Our favourite characters are all back, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Splinter, April, Casey and of course, the very food which keeps the turtles happy, pizza! It has always been Pizza Hut's best effort to have their pizza commercials when this cartoon was shown, definitely made me want to order pizza using their age old number, 755-25-25.

The story starts off with a scene dating back 3 thousand years ago talking about a king and his legendary warriors. The king has opened a portal bringing in 13 beasts from other dimensions and his 4 best warriors were turned into stone. Not only did his army got wiped out, the king was hit with a curse as well, immortality.


Meanwhile back in the city, the once feared team of turtles are no longer a team with Leonardo gone away hoping to achieve to know what it is to be a leader. Because of his absence, the rest of the turtles resorted to trying to live "normal" lives but the turtle blood (ninja blood) within them still flows freely through them causing them to itch once in a while hoping to kick some ass.

The story goes on to tell about how Leonardo returns from his training and reunites the turtles against the beasts that were released over 3000 years ago who are currently terrorizing New York City. Of course, we wouldn't want the fearless turtles to be still stuck within an unknown cliche of uncertainty.

Meanwhile, the warrior king who was cursed with immortality is now trying to gather these beasts and his warrior friends (still in the form of a statue). To do this, he recruited the help of the foot clan (Shredder’s old group of ninjas). Well who wouldn't want to miss them out of any Ninja Turtle storyline especially since Shredder is supposedly dead and the foot clan is now being led by some quirky female with an Asian accent.

The story takes a turn when the statues agreed that the warrior king has indeed gone soft and turned against him. This time, the turtles finally decided to work as a team to banish the beasts and the enemy and at the same time broke the curse of immortality for the warrior king.

Now if you have the time, do take a breather from your everyday life and catch this movie. Definitely one you will not regret especially if you are a Ninja Turtle fan or just someone who wants to relive part of your early childhood memories of this series.

It's Friday, time to review "Blood Diamond"

The end of the week is finally here but it doesn't feel like it really is. I guess that is because yesterday was a public holiday here in KL and PJ which means I had the entire day off to spend with my friends.

So what did we do? Well I decided to catch up on some movies which I've missed and one of them was "Blood Diamond" staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou. What is it about this movie that made me choose it?

Well firstly there was a statement which I heard from my colleague saying that Leonardo DiCaprio deserved to get nominated for the Oscars for this but the what made me decide was when he said that the supporting actor should be the one nominated, that got me curious.

Convincing my friends that it was a good movie was no easy task. The first thing they usually ask me is, "Who is the star of the show?". And when I answer, "Er, its Leonardo DiCaprio", they just get all freaked out. I guess that telling them that this guy here is the star of a 2 hour 15 minutes movie would probably put them to sleep.

And believe me, some parts of when he was talking did make me yawn a little but it was his supporting actor that made the show interesting. When I say that he could act, I really meant it.

In fact most of the show revolved along his life and how he tried to make a difference by being what a true father should be, longing to be with his family and trying his utmost to protect his son from going to the dark side. Totally opposite of how Darth Vader ended up to be.

The movie talked about the whole issue of conflict diamonds in Africa. If you have no idea what conflict diamonds are, please read this first. But in short, it is basically diamonds that are harvested from countries to fund their civil wars. The show showed much of how life is in Africa from how villagers were killed or their hands chopped off by rebels to prevent them for voting for the government.

It is movies like this that makes us think how real situations like these are, and they are happening right now even as we go through our normal lives. Thousands of children suffer each day due to poor conditions or some even as young as 10 are thought to be rebel soldiers. In the show they mentioned that the word "Infantry" was derived from child soldiers, I guess it may be very true.

To be perfectly honest, I would rate this show 4 stars out of 5 stars. A very good movie which should not be watched by children as it may prove to be extremely traumatizing due to its violent (yet true) nature . There are plenty of action scenes as well as scenes that will touch you to your very core of your heart.