Tintin has always been a childhood classic of mine. While I might not be able to recite every story plot for plot, or name each and every character in a line-up, I always appreciated the comics and was sucked and mesmerised by his adventures.

So it was with pretty great excitement when I heard news of Steven Spielberg taking reigns of a motion-capture and animated film starring Tintin, his trustworthy dog Snowy, and his unlikely partner on his exotic quests, Captain Haddock.

After reading some pre-screening reviews about whether I should watch it in 3D or not, the response was in favour of the extra dimension, so I payed a little more, found my seat, and got ready for an adventure of Tintin proportions…. So how did it fair? Hop over the break to find out!

Read More

No matter how hard I try and forget, the fact that Transformers 2 : Revenge of the Fallen happened is something which I really struggle to come to terms with. Following the massive success of the original Transformers movie, which wonderfully introduced us to the world of the Hasbro robot-vehicle transforming toy franchise onto the silver screen with big summer block-buster effects, and young fresh talent.

Transformers(1) was the perfect example of great, fun and exciting film making for the summer masses. A sequel was not only inevitable, it was demanded! The Autobots and Decepticons have arrived on Earth and are making themselves at home so it was only a matter of time before we dived back into the world of Bay’s Transformers series and see what happens next. What happened next though, was Transformers 2 : Revenge of the Fallen. A movie so terrible that I almost began feeling sorry for the human race. If this is what the young adult male demographic wanted, humping robots, racist characters, and big robot ball jokes, then I fear the worst for our future. And when your leading actor admits to the film being terrible, and your big budget director not denying it either, well then, there seems to have been a serious problem. Michael Bay blamed the poorly written and incoherent story (putting it lightly) as a result of the big HollyWood writers strike that happened during the early stages of the films production. So he took what he could, and slapped together, what I like to call, the biggest insult to good movie lovers out there. People say, ‘but it’s mindless fun! It doesn’t need to make sense!’. Really? You’re happy with that? Why does a film allow itself to be mindless to be excused of being such a mess? I’m sorry, but we deserve a little better than that.

Regardless, it was admitted that Transformers 2 was a result of production problems during the time. And Michael Bay had commented that all the poor criticism it received was fair and heard, and it was with that humbling he decided to approach the third, and his final, movie in the series with a bit more trepidation. So fast forward 3 years, and Transformers 3 :Dark of the Moon has been released to the masses. With an open mind, and a forgiving of Bay’s last directorial sin, I decided to give this film a fair and fighting chance to impress me, and hopefully with the magic of the first…

And so? Did it do the impossible and redeem itself? Lets just say, after a shaky first half, I’m a Bay-liever again…

Read More

It took a while, but I eventually got a chance to view the latest X-Men movie to hit the circuits, X-Men :First Class.

X-Men : First Class does not follow any of the previous X-Men movies that we have seen grace our movie screens over the past few years, but instead decides to take a few steps back and visits the origin of the popular Marvel series.

And it’s a very welcome decision. We are all, or at least most of us are, familiar with the wheelchair-bound and all-round nice guy, Professor X, the more menacing and metal bending Magneto, and the rest of the mutant family in some way or another. But how the X-Men team and group of villains all came together and chose their sides is a story that, I think, only real X-Men buffs would know. As a general comic book fan myself, I knew of the modern and current day portrayal of the X-Men universe, but the beginning of it all was something I never really took time to investigate, and so the movie that chose to explore ‘the moment that changed world’ was a concept I was keenly excited about.

Read More

Last night saw the local release of The Hangover : Part II, the sequel to the critically acclaimed and hilarious guy comedy of 2009.

I was a big fan of the original movie. The cast was great, especially the breakthrough comedy talent of Zach Galifianakis, the story was clever and enjoyable, and the events as a whole were legitimately funny!

While sequels to comedies normally never seem to be as good as the first, I was quite excited to see the inevitable return of the Wolfpack cast. Probably foolishly so.

You see, what made the original The Hangover great was a sense of freshness during the time when comedy films were rather generic. There was a sense of mystery regarding the events in the film and it was great fun finding out exactly what happened on that memory-less night before that led to a missing friend on the day of his wedding. It was a race against time putting the pieces back together to find their friend, stumbling through Las Vegas the morning after and suffering consequences from their drunken unknown adventure the night before. Throw in a couple of wacky characters into the mix, crude language, boobs and dicks, hilarious awkward moments, a couple of gunshots and fist fights, and you got yourself a movie not only jam-packed with laughs but one of both the guys and the gals!

The first movie was a great ride with a great cast which left you drunk from laughter and set the bar quite high for comedies that came shortly after and, now, the team try do it all again in The Hangover : Part II.

Read More

So at Vinyl Destination we talk about all things Toys, Lifestyle, and Whatever. And today, is our first ‘Whatever’ post!

We’re gonna kick off ‘Whatever’ with a film review of the recently released and hotly anticipated summer super hero movie, Thor!
Now dont panic! I dont plan on boring you with all my cinematic adventures, only the ones I feel that matter, and in 2011… Thor matters!

I actually got a chance to watch the film last week already, a full week and a half before the US release. How South Africa got that right, I have no idea, but I aint complaining!

So anyways, to my opinion on Thor the movie itself…

(Disclaimer : I do not, and have not, ever considered myself a Thor fan. I somehow missed out on his comics in my younger years and I must admit I never found Norse mythology all that interesting in grade school. I was more a Spidey fan myself! But regardless, I am a fan of ALL things comic book adapted and have been waiting for Thor’s release since its announcement a couple years back! *Especially* since its part of the bigger ‘Avengers’ scheme of things…. drooooool.)

So how did the movie fare? Read on to find out..! ********* NB: we discuss the first 10 minutes or so of the film, as well as the basic idea of the plot. So please don’t read further if you want to keep as much of the film as a surprise!!!:) ********

Read More