The How "Battleship" Could Have Been Better Post.

A couple of these may count as spoilers.


1. Give the aliens some more definition.
2. Give Liam Neeson more to do.
3. Scrap the decision to set a scene to the theme from The Pink Panther.
4. Don't hire Steve Jablonsky to do the music (see also: any other production that does this).
5. Lose the "Transformers meets Dad's Army" climax, especially since one particular move was done better in Fair Game.
6. Keep an F-word in the movie.
7. Have people worth cheering on (no one here, except for the amputee ex-soldier and the geeky guy from the observatory, really qualifies).
8. As someone suggested, have a Rihanna/Brooklyn Decker makeout scene (the two never appear together). Did "Te Amo" (with Rihanna and Laetitia Casta) teach you nothing?
9. Include the star of Rihanna's only other movie to date. Seriously, this film could have benefitted from the ever-likeable and ever-hot Hayden Panettiere, cheerleading (Bring It On: All Or Nothing) or no.

Anneza and Amanda.

Tomorrow is Anneza's last day at DMWorks. I'm not pretending that this is a good thing - another bummer to add to the list, especially after last weeks' bombshell. Anneza's not going directly to another job; she's still living at home, so I guess she'll be waiting a bit (like sending out applications, or whatever). I'll miss her - not only was she a good person to work with, she was hot. (I always seem to miss the hot ones - at least I still see Joanna and Karen occasionally. Very occasionally.) Plus when I had The Omen on she didn't ask me to turn it down but made stabbing motions instead a la Psycho. Good girl.

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Last Sunday morning I went to the "multimedia" (read: critics') screening of Lovewrecked with a fellow poster on Guardian Unlimited. Amanda Bynes made this movie in 2005 while she was still doing What I Like About You and it was still on the shelf when the show was cancelled; it wound up going straight to DVD and cable in America, but like the similarly illfated Havoc (Anne Hathaway), Three/Survival Island (Kelly Brook) and The Truth About Love (Jennifer Love Hewitt) it's getting a cinema release over here. Not really sure why, thanks to the ending being obvious as soon as it starts (Amanda is hot for a rock star played by Chris "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" Carmack while her best male friend who fancies her stands by patiently... and so on), and more importantly thanks to it not being very funny. And to it being painfully contrived. And to Jamie-Lynn DiScala not being remotely believable as a teenage contemporary of 'Mands. And to Alfonso "Carlton" Ribiero being even less believable as a Caribbean hotel manager. And to the makers yet again making up a Caribbean island (St. Lucius?!) - at least the movie was filmed in the Dominican Republic. And to Lance Bass being one of the executive producers. And to...

Yet another case of Amanda Bynes being better than her material. Will she ever be in another thing as good as Robots?

Australian teenage mermaids > Nicolas Cage. Discuss.

Last night I went to see Ghost Rider and did not care for it (it came from the man who also did Daredevil, which at least had Jennifer Garner)... any Marvel adaptation without Stan Lee appearing is doomed from the get-go, plus crap merchant David S. Goyer (Blade: Trinity, Threshold) was involved. Trying to be campy while taking your basic story seriously is a tough trick to pull off, and this not being Xena: Warrior Princess it didn't make it - in fact, it was laughable (starting with Peter Fonda's hair). But I did like

a) the moment where Nicolas Cage and Sam Elliott go riding across the desert leaving trails of fire while a rock cover of "Ghost Riders In The Sky" plays,

b) the cute blonde waitress in the bar, who sadly got iced by the main villain,

c) Eva "lowrent Cindy Crawford" Mendes's impressive cleavage and bodacious backside (even if she was otherwise useless... but then again so was N. Cage, Esq.),

d) Christopher Young's score in lieu of endless songs, which is a decent dry run for Spider-Man 3, and

e) Er... that's it.

The ads before the movie included one from Nickelodeon for H2O: Just Add Water, which is a pretty weird juxtaposition - is there really an overlap of audiences for films about demonically possessed motorbike riders and fantasy series aimed at tweenage girls? (Well, in some parts yes.) Mind you, if it was down to choosing between Ghost Rider 2 and watching Australian girls deal with turning into mermaids, I'd go for the latter any day. The series starts in April, so that's one to set the video for.

Norbit: The same entertainment value as a blog entry dissing Hayden Panettiere.

Which is to say, none whatsoever.

Okay, the wedding climax which Eddie Griffin takes over for stalling purposes so Eddie Murphy can get there in time does have its moments, but it's too little and too late to save the movie from really making me nostalgic for Daddy Day Care. Or even Harlem Nights.


Amazing Rick Baker makeup, true, and Murphy actually does do quite well in his three roles (Norbit, his Tyrannosaurus-sized shrewish wife Rasputia, and the Chinese orphanage owner who brought him up), but the material isn't here at all (and since Murphy has co-story and co-screenplay credit, he has to have a lot of the blame). Borderline offensive - you can imagine Spike Lee's reaction to how every stereotype known to man comes along here (then again, he's not exactly renowned for his positive female characters himself), horrendously unfunny, and apart from the scenes with Thandie Newton lacking any kind of charm, it's hard not to believe the rumours that this cost Eddie Murphy an Oscar for Dreamgirls.

Mind you, I should have known this would be crap with Griffin and Cuba Gooding Jr. in the cast... kudos to David Newman for valiantly trying to add a touch of humanity to the movie with his music and actually succeeding sometimes, though. I guarantee these pictures will do more for you than Norbit did. And they won't cost you anything.

And yes, they have turned up on lots of other blogs, but I'd rather see Hayden humping the Stanley Cup 100 times than see Norbit again. A pox on bloggers bashing her, which is where we came in.