Battle of the Bs

Recently, I was immersed in a discussion about the virtues of seeing a B-movie at the cinema.

Some flicks justify themselves by their very existence - Machete; a grand return to Mexploitation flicks. Kick-Ass - an exercise in comic book deconstructionism that got a B reception but was really an A+ movie.

The great thing about B films is that all you need is one good aspect or quality or even a scene for it work for you. Just one.

Helen Mirren with a machine gun - Red is awesome for that one reason above all others. And I defend that to all who want to argue about it.

The only time B movies become a challenge and a headache are when you go to the movies expecting to see an A movie but wind up with a B. It can be harrowing - case in point: The Tourist.

That flick exists solely for the purpose of watching Angie+Johnny pout and smile. While I admit that might be more than enough for a good B-movie, watching As going so B is like watching an accident in slow motion. It's painful and the crash is still coming. If the movie ran on mute, the people who love it would still love it and the others who don't, well, will imagine themselves getting a root canal.

Knight and Day - another B that should have been an A. It was saved by the fact that the action was all A all the time. And like I said, you just need one thing for a B movie to be good.

I guess my point is that I'm readjusting my theory about Bs having a free hand to be as bad as bad can be. If you're expecting a B, then most Bs will satisfy that cinema trip. However, if an A slides slowly, embarrassingly down to a B, the journey can seem like the path to Mount Doom.

Know your Bs, filmmakers, know your Bs. That's all I'm sayin'.

Rapid-fire summer movie grades

Summer is drawing to a close and I haven't seen as many movies as I'd have liked (that's always the case - so it's nothing new). However, it's grading time and I'll have to make do with what I've got. Without further ado, here they are:

Kick-Ass - A+
Talent, originality and a potty-mouthed preteen who knows how to kill you six ways from Sunday. This may not be box office fodder but it's definitely comic book gold and a new cult classic.

A Nightmare on Elm Street - B-
Jackie Earle Haley created a magnetic, blade-grinding Freddie for the new age. The other leads, Nancy in particular, just sank. You know it's a problem when the slaughtered teens stand out more than the ones that survive.

Iron Man 2 - A-
The original Iron Man was a total A+ movie and comparisons are inevitable. Being a tad repetitive in parts brings it close to a B. It stays as an A because it manages to take grab hold of the worthy successor status courtesy eclectic new characters, eye candy action sequences and lip-smacking Avengers tidbits.

Robin Hood - B+
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe definitely have epic aspirations with this one. The acting talent on display, the elaborate battles and camerawork all have a Gladiator-esque flavor. However, this story was not the bill of goods I was originally sold. I wanted the definitive take on Robin Hood, not the man before the legend or whatever this was attempting to be. It felt more like Robin Hood: Origins than Robin Hood and that took away from it quite a bit.

Shrek Forever After - C+
I love Shrek and his supporting cast and I always will. Having said that, some franchises are way past their sell-by date. Terminator is one, Shrek is another. This one feels fatigued, wrung out and plain lackluster. Sorry, this just does not work anymore.

Image via Wikipedia

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - B-
They were hoping it would be the next Pirates of the Caribbean. It wound up just surpassing The Scorpion King. Video game movies are always dicey and this one was trying for epic franchise status but could only go a little further than mild popcorn pleasure. Jake Gyllenhaal sells the character all right but the mish-mash of accents, tones and costumes don't add up to much. Very forgettable!

Sex and the City 2 - A-
I've been a fan since the TV series. I loved the first one and the sequel is in some ways even better. It hits all the right notes and is funny, cheesy and over-the-top in all the right places. Sure, the characters haven't changed much in spite of the financial crisis and everything but that's what they're all about. The trip to the Middle East actually impressed me because they showed me a little something I didn't expect to see in a SOTC movie - cultural sensitivity. Wow, what has the world come to? Next we'll be talking about an animated Terminator movie for the kiddies - oh, wait...never mind.

More to come...hold your horses.

Oh, never mind

So Amanda Bynes is "unretired." Disregard the previous post and shame on me - should have realized publicity hounds come in all packages. Onto more interesting things...

Say it ain't so, Amanda

I never intended for this blog to be perezhiltonesque but some happenings in the world of celluloid do affect me and I want to comment on today's news.

Apparently actress Amanda Bynes at the age of 24 has announced her retirement from acting on Twitter. Right now, the news appears to be legitimate but it's entirely possible that a prank or something is at play.

If true, it is my duty as a film buff and defender of the cinematic medium to say it's a loss that I will feel along with many others I'm sure.

I agree that she isn't old enough to have made a significant impact on us. But I have also always believed that this woman possesses a certain something that will take her far.

I don't usually pay attention to Nickelodeon actresses but Bynes drew me in the first time I saw her on The Amanda Show. I thought then, 'this girl should do movies'. Many Nick actresses do some super softie flicks and fade away but Bynes was different.

She stole the show teaming with Frankie Muniz in Big Fat Liar and I knew she was on her way. It was when I saw What A Girl Wants that I saw glimpses of a young Anne Hathaway in the making. I filed it away under my favorite family movies and hoped Bynes would move on to bigger and better things.

Then for a while it seemed she had lost her way courtesy lackluster films like She's the Man and Sydney White. On the other hand, she did play against type in Hairspray and that was refreshing.

I was also looking forward to more from her in Easy A, possibly her last film. Bynes is one of those naturally charismatic and talented actors that connects instinctively with an audience.

It is my wish that she realizes she has much more to offer the silver screen. If not, I hope she finds a niche on the small screen at least.

In the end, it is her decision and I hope she does what makes her happy. If this is goodbye, I wish her well - Amanda, it has been a treat watching you on screen and I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that way. Adieu!

This photograph is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Movie lover diary: To like or not to like

My mom tells me I loved movies even as a baby. Long before I could talk, I used to sit entranced in her arms at the cinema. Thinking about that makes me believe I was meant to love films long before I knew that I did.

I bring it up now because I've been doing a lot of thinking about taste. Like or dislike for flicks is very subjective and critics cannot really agree on what makes a movie likable. So does a refined taste come from practice and a discriminating palate like fine wine? A movie critic recently told me that the quality of films has plummeted in recent years and she hates most of what she sees at the cinema.

I can see where that critic is coming from but I guess I'm just different. I always go in with an open mind and hope to have a positive experience. It's not because I think I need to promote movie-going or be an advocate for the cinema. It's just that I tend to enjoy the good parts of most movies that I watch. Sure there are some that are just plain awful with zero redeeming qualities but I don't need Oscar-level quality to satisfy me.

I just need a motion picture to make me feel something and make me see what the filmmaker was seeing when he was creating it. I'll still notice the negatives but I also make sure I don't disregard the positives because of them.

I guess for movies in particular, taste really is not simply what the Academy Awards tell us it should be. I think being on the positive side of the enjoyment fence is just as legitimate as many of the critics that enter screenings thinking of them as shooting ranges.

Let me illustrate. Two critics pick a 100 random films from a bin and watch them. Critic A enjoys 30 of them and hates the others. Critic B enjoys 82 of them. Does that mean Critic A has better taste than B? No. It just means Critic B has a different way of looking at movies than A and his perspective is just as valid.

Just some food for thought.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part XII

December
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader takes Lucy (Georgie Henley), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and their cousin on an ocean voyage with King Caspian (Ben Barnes) to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. With the returning cast under Michael Apted’s direction, this flick has a good chance of being the best of the series so far.

Tron Legacy is the sequel to TRON, the 1982 film set in a digital world full of fierce programs and gladiatorial games. With today’s special effects, an Imax 3-D experience should be something special. These two definitely seem like the best bet.

This list should leave you pretty cinematically satiated by the end of the year. Plenty to look forward to – should be a good year, fingers crossed. Bon appétit!

The right movie diet for 2010: Part XI

November
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I is the penultimate movie in the series and the beginning of the end. Since the last book is arguably the best one and director David Yates has consistently created quality material, the story of Harry, Ron and Hermione’s quest to save the world should be an awesome spectacle.

The other notable release is Unstoppable. As a Tony Scott fan since the 1980s, I'll watch anything he makes. This one is about rail company employees fighting to prevent an unmanned, half-mile-long freight train carrying combustible liquids and poisonous gas from wiping out a city. Seems to bring back memories of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which I found more than a little underwhelming. Still, the Scott-Denzel Washington combo is usually special and I'm hoping he will do better this time. Chris Pine and Rosario Dawson seal the deal.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part X

October
From director David Fincher comes The Social Network, a story about the founders of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, penned the script for this flick starring Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield.

Based on a DC Comics graphic novel, Red is about a former black-ops CIA agent (Bruce Willis), whose quiet life is threatened by an assassin. He reassembles his old team (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren) in a last ditch effort to survive. Karl Urban, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine and Julian McMahon join the ensemble.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part IX

September
Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) tries his hand at animation with Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole based on the series of children's books by Kathryn Lasky. It features the voices of Hugo Weaving, Emilie de Ravin, Helen Mirren and Geoffrey Rush in a story about a war between owls.

Director Ben Affleck returns with The Town, which is about a longtime thief trying to balance his feelings for a bank manager while dealing with the FBI agent looking to bring him down. Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner and Chris Cooper come together for this film.

If either of these is not your thing, try Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part VIII

August
Sylvester Stallone wrote and directed The Expendables about a team of mercenaries heading to South America on a mission to overthrow a dictator. This film has perhaps the largest gathering of actions stars ever brought together for a single flick – apart from Stallone himself, you’ve got Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke. Don’t miss the cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnold Swarzenegger. A possible new action classic!

After the success of Julie & Julia comes Eat, Pray, Love, another bestseller making its way to the screen with Julia Roberts as the lead.

If you’re in the mood for a creature feature, try out Piranha 3-D. I know, I know but it's piranhas...in 3-D...I rest my case.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part VII

July

This year, director Christopher Nolan gives us Inception, which is described as a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind. Nolan’s script has attracted the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe and Tom Hardy. The man usually does not create anything short of mind-blowing, so this should be special.

The Last Airbender based on the hit animated series is directed by M. Night Shyamalan. He hopes to make a comeback with this fantasy about a successor to a long line of Avatars who must stop a war that will consume the world. 


The right movie diet for 2010: Part VI

June
Many have been waiting forever for 80s TV series The A-Team to become a movie. The film is about four Iraq War veterans falsely accused of a crime who survive as soldiers for hire while looking to clear their name.

If there is only one animated flick you catch this year, make it Toy Story 3. It could be one of those rare trilogies that end up with three high-quality films.

As the comic book genre is mined deep, characters like Jonah Hex will continue to hit the screen. The unconventional tale is about a scarred bounty hunter tracking a voodoo practitioner bent on raising an undead army.

If that seems a little too out there, check out The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, a remake of the classic about a bullied boy who learns the true meaning of martial arts.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part V

May
Iron Man 2 is one that is on everyone’s must-see lists this year. If you enjoyed the first flick, this one should be even better with Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Don Cheadle joining Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Samuel L. Jackson for more armor action, humor and pure summer entertainment.

Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett come together for Robin Hood. The trailer brings back Gladiator memories, which is a very good thing.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time could be the first video game adaptation that does justice to the source material. Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton and Ben Kingsley under Mike Newell’s direction remove any hesitation.

If any of these are not to your taste, heist flick Takers, Shrek Forever After or Sex and the City 2 should fill the gap.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part IV

April
Based on the Mark Millar comic book series, Kick-Ass is an ultra-violent oft-profane tale financed independently by director Matthew Vaughn. It’s about a high school student who decides to become a superhero though he has no powers or training.

Staying with graphic novels, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Columbus Short, Jason Patric and Zoe Saldana join hands for The Losers. It’s about a CIA black ops team on a mission to take down those who targeted them for assassination.

Clash of the Titans kicks off the blockbuster season with go-to guy Sam Worthington as Perseus, mortal son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), on a mission that entails battling the monsters of Greek mythology.

From one remake to another. Look forward to A Nightmare on Elm Street with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger, the knife-fingered serial killer who haunts dreams.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part III

March
A delicious marriage of material and maker happened when Tim Burton took on Alice in Wonderland with usual suspects Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in tow. Add Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman and Mia Wasikowska and there is little that could disappoint about this project. Burton’s new take returns Alice to Wonderland as a teen where she reunites with familiar friends to defeat the Red Queen. Burton, Depp, Wonderland - what more can I say? A 3-D release too.

Kicking off the animation segment of the year is How to Train Your Dragon, the tale of a young Viking sent to the North Sea to take on a dragon as a rite of passage. The visuals are pretty arresting and the humor seems spot on. With the 3-D phenomenon here to stay, this should be another immersive experience. Featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

Another good choice is The Runaways, a 1970s biopic about the first successful all-girl hard rock band of the title starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie. Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, the film is based on the book by Cherie Currie, Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story.

Photograph: This image is of a poster, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by either the publisher or the creator of the work depicted. It is believed that the use of scaled-down, low-resolution images of posters to provide critical commentary on the film in question or of the poster itself, not solely for illustration, is fair use.

The right movie diet for 2010: Part II

February
The Wolfman has had a troubled upbringing but the remake finally hits cinemas with the skills of Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving on display. With Joe Johnston at the helm and an awesome trailer, this could be a welcome return to old school horror. Take careful note of Johnston's style as he will be helming the Captain America movie in 2011.

Speaking of spooky, Shutter Island from Martin Scorsese is a period horror-thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio about the disappearance of a mental patient on a remote island.

A possible third choice could be Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan teaming with director Kevin Smith for Cop Out, which is about buddy cops tracking down a stolen baseball card, a Mexican beauty, gangsters and drug money.

Another option is to check out The Crazies, a remake of the 1973 George A. Romero film, about the inhabitants of a small Iowa town suddenly plagued by insanity and then death after a mysterious toxin contaminates their water supply.

Honorable mentions go to Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief based on the first novel of the young adult fantasy series by Rick Riordanand, which I'm still ambivalent about, and Woody Harrelson flick Defendor, centering on Arthur Poppington who at night becomes Defendor, a superhero looking to rid his city of drugs, weapons, and the crime lord known as Captain Industry.

 Photos courtesy: http://cinematropolis.files.wordpress.com/
http://chasness.files.wordpress.com/

The right movie diet for 2010: Part I

Let's get 2010 off on the right note. The New Year is in full swing and so is the recession. After paying $17.50 for a 3-D Imax showing of “Avatar,” it got me thinking about what it would be like to go on a movie diet.

As a film lover and movie critic, I’ve gotten used to seeing 150+ (cinema and Netflix) movies a year but if I had to pick a much smaller number of theatrical releases alone, how would I select which ones to see? I would need to make sure the diet is balanced – some appetizing action/adventure films, a few comedy entrees (romantic or otherwise), a course of indie movies, a side order of horror and thrills, another course of drama and maybe some musicals and animation for dessert. Add in a side order of anything with great and/or critical buzz.

So what constitutes an acceptable number of trips to the cinema? With a year to play with, let’s say we can carve it down to about three or four a month. With the box office bursting at the seams, there are no quiet periods anymore, so let’s take it month by month.

January
Treat yourself to apocalypse flicks by choosing either Paul Bettany in Legion or Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. Bettany as machinegun-wielding archangel Michael or messiah figure Washington with the last Bible on earth – I’ll go with Denzel.

Be sure to also catch Cannes fave Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon about children in a German village before World War I and Fish Tank, a British indie drama about a 15-year-old struggling with an attraction to her mother’s boyfriend and a secret love of hip-hop dancing.

An honorable mention goes to the action return of Mel Gibson as a homicide detective in Edge of Darkness and Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe bringing back respect to vampires with Daybreakers.

Legion photograph courtesy: http://www.postergeek.com/

NYC blog more active!

I haven't been able to update this blog in a while. Click here to see the work Im doing in New York City for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
Hope you like it!

Summer flick VII: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Verdict: The most introspective of all the Harry Potter films manages to be the most compelling.

Let me preface my review by stating that I am a huge Harry Potter buff and I love everything about the books. I also appreciate the meaning of the term 'movie adaptation' and am prepared to cut the films slack if they do enough justice to the amazing series from whence they emerged.

'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' is perhaps one of the more difficult films to critique because it takes huge risks and is completely different from all five flicks that have gone before. If I had to choose one word to describe this film, it would be 'beautiful' - in this instance, it means beautifully nuanced, beautifully shot and a story beautifully told. And that is a word that has not struck me with vigor since I saw the opening of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' all those years ago. The film attempts a tightrope walk between light and dark tones and just about manages to pull it off. The story deals with Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as he discovers an old book belonging to someone called 'the Half-Blood Prince' and begins to learn about the secrets of Lord Voldemort's dark past. While the Dark Lord's death eaters threaten the world around them, the trio must also deal with raging hormones that thrusts their friendship into murky waters.

Though a Harry Potter book purist, I have learnt to see the novels and the films as separate entities that need to stand on their own. Liberties are bound to be taken when translating from one medium to another. The choices made by director David Yates ('Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix') and screenwriter Steve Kloves are honest, bold and for the most part display a brand of storytelling that is unique to the series.

I had to see 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' twice to properly grasp the various layers that have been interwoven into the narrative and internalize what worked for it. For one thing, Bruno Delbonnel's ('Amélie', 'Across the Universe') cinematography is some of the best work I've seen in a long time and definitely the finest this franchise has seen. For another, every actor delivers a performance that is captivating even if he or she appears only for a few scenes. Radcliffe blew me away with his comic timing (he is exquisite in the scene showing the effects of the luck potion), which was miles ahead of the others. Rupert Grint gets more screen time and dominates much of the quidditch scenes and romantic entanglements in the movie. Emma Watson holds her own as she always does and plays well off both Radcliffe and Grint. Michael Gambon shows us the Dumbledore that we are meant to know and Alan Rickman continues to confound as the enigmatic Professor Snape.

A special mention has to be made of Jim Broadbent as Professor Slughorn, the new Potions master. He is able to make the audience empathise with the character in a realistic way, which was not quite possible when seeing him on the page. His narration of a story about Harry's mother is an inspired addition that clicks wonderfully on-screen. Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy also does some of his best work, which adds more dimensions to his character. And that brings me to the narrative flow of the movie - it has taken six entries to do it but it looks like the filmmakers have settled on the right formula. The soft romance angle is interspersed with Malfoy's dark mission, deadly threats that seem very real and light being shed on Voldemort's secrets - what's surprising is that the elements blend seamlessly in the narrative.

While it might appear that there is not much wrong with 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', the shortcomings present are very noticeable. The funeral of a certain lead character, in my mind, was crucial to tie off the end of the story. Having said that, the concluding scene put forward by Yates does bring quite a lot of closure in the context of the movie. A fault that cannot be ignored is Kloves's tendency to hand one character's lines to another - this is a serious problem because definitions of characters start to vary as a result. Talking about additions and deletions, some of Voldemort's secrets are omitted, a battle scene is skipped and another one is inserted. The merits of each can be debated ad nauseum but the rationale behind each choice is not difficult to see. Sometimes one needs to turn off that book lover switch and see if the movie succeeds by itself and this one clearly manages to do so.

So what makes 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' the most compelling of the films and quite possibly the best of the bunch? For one, I didn't feel the pangs of huge missteps like I experienced after watching each of the previous flicks. For another, there is nothing more impressive than a movie that is able to bury itself in character development at the cost of action set-pieces. Yes, this film is almost too quiet for a Harry Potter flick but it is a stillness that reaches deep within and makes you think. And perhaps the most important question of all, does it accomplish the herculean task of capturing the spirit of JK Rowling's novel on the silver screen? The query is best answered by recalling that day years ago when I finished reading the sixth novel soon after its release. I felt a mixture of sadness and expectation triggered by the way the tale unfolded in book six. The truth is that the same feeling of melancholic anticipation came home to roost as the credits rolled on movie six. I just cannot provide a better endorsement of this movie than that!

Summer flick round-up Part VI

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Verdict: Though a tad repetitive, Optimus Prime rocks the cinema and 'Transformers 2' delivers a special effects-driven popcorn extravaganza.

The Good

Do you hear it? The sweet melody of robot-on-robot nuts and bolts action that blows the first film away without even trying.

All hail Prime: Optimus Prime is a real crowd pleaser in this one with everything from his dialogues to his arsenal of weaponry and his fighting moves.

Now that's what I call special! The special effects are worth the price of admission alone. The film provides mind-blowing eye candy that doesn't get old.

Who let the humans out? The role played by the humans is dialled back a ton from the first flick. In a Transformers film, that's definitely the right approach.

Action overload: Did you say you wanted non-stop Transformer action? Be careful what you wish for because when the Bay says 'action', he means it. This is skyscraper-scale mayhem for the masses and there is very little down time.

She's a fox: Megan is not the only fox in this movie but she has to be mentioned for the sheer weight of her sex appeal.

That's real power: I enjoyed seeing the Fallen as a villain though he doesn't have a whole lot to do. His origins and powers are interesting to watch to say the least.

The Bad

Did you say 'get it on'? Excessive sexual humor! Yes, it might be funny in small doses but indulgence is dangerous. Bringing up stuff like robot sex stirs images that are better left alone.

What just happened? There are so many new Transformers introduced that it's tough to keep up. There are close to 40 and we don't even get to know most of their names before they meet an untimely demise. 

The twins: I don't know what purpose they served in the film apart from seeming like a device to lighten the tension. It got tiring after a while. If they were pushed forward as kids who have not grasped what's going on, then maybe it could have worked.

The annoying roommate: He just annoys without a break. We get that he's scared and upset and all that - just let him pass out and let the story move.

Recycled material: While the action and some of the ideas are imaginative, the novelty isn't there any more and it isn't as immersive as I remember.

So where does that leave us?

It does what summer blockbusters directed by Michael Bay do. It explodes onto your senses and you feel like you are taken on a huge ride. Forget character and enjoy the action spectacle. If that's what tickles your fancy, make a date with 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'.