Transporter 3

Jason Statham hits the road again as the professional driver in Transporter 3 (Lionsgate)

By Janeane White

What is there to say about Transporters 3 (opening Novemver 26 throughout San Diego)? The movie itself was good but I preferred the previous films in the series. I'm not sure if it was because of the basic storyline or the need for even more action. There were plenty of amazing stunts and fight scenes and Jason Statham delivers an awesome performance as usual. The movie starts off with Frank (Statham) and his French detective buddy off fishing while some guy is running from the cops through the middle of town. Later on this guy ends up crashing through Frank's front wall of his house and Frank desperately tries to help once he realizes that the mad man is a friend of his. This guy tries to warn Frank not to take him away from the car but he doesn't listen. Apparently he and the girl in the car with him were equipped with a special bracelet that is an explosive and when you travel to far away from the car, BOOM! Frank is then taken hostage and told that he had to complete the mission that the previous guy failed. He unfortunately agrees and then the journey begins.

This movie had a lot of amazing action but I still feel like it could have been better. Overall I do think it was a great movie but like all sequels, I feel that it lacked in comparison to the original. There wasn't as much action and all the rules that Frank tried so hard to up hold, he breaks in one way or another. I felt that it was a different guy then the one that all of us are used to seeing up on the big screen. Frank was still the overwhelming bad boy but I felt that he lacked some of his well-known fierceness.

--Janeane White is a senior at Mount Miguel High School. She enjoys movies and spends all her time at the theater. She is also interested in special effects makeup done in the movies. She is an honors student and is currently working towards early graduation. Some of her favorite movies include Queen of the Damned, Hellboy, The Descent, the Underworld series, and the Saw series.

The Dark Knight

The Joker robs the mob while Heath Ledger steals the show in The Dark Knight (Warner Brothers)

There was a time when people thought it was crazy to try and have someone else take on the role of the Joker because no one could possibly fill Jack Nicholson's shoes. But after you see The Dark Knight (opening July 18 throughout San Diego and in IMAX at Edwards Mira Mesa Cinemas), you won't be able to think of anyone else besides Heath Ledger. Now Nicholson's Joker looks like a naughty clown while Ledger's Joker is downright nasty and disturbed (yet still oddly likable). Ledger's manically endearing performance as the unhinged psycho giving both cops and crooks nightmares is so riveting that it makes you sad for all the roles he'll never have a chance to tackle. Ledger died at the beginning of this year just after wrapping production on The Dark Knight. So this film offers his last completed performance.

Hellboy II Web Feauturette

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (opening July 11 throughout San Diego) is probably the film I have been most eagerly awaiting this summer. I am a diehard fan of Guillermo Del Toro's work but I have been especially excited about the Hellboy sequel ever since Del Toro appeared at Comic-Con and said that the script was so good that if you read it you would cry. (That was before Universal had given the greenlight to the sequel and Del Toro was still trying to convince people it was worth it.) In anticipation of Del Toro's new film I have been watching all of his old ones, and he just keeps getting better. Anyway, I thought I would share my enthusiasm by posting a video I cut together from the clips and interviews provided by Universal in their electronic press kit (highlighting the stuff I thought was cool like using trampolines for some of the fight scenes). Ron Perlman returns as Red along with Selma Blair as Liz, Doug Jones as Abe, and Jeffrey Tambor as Tom. I hope this whets your appetite like it did mine.

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Vantage Point

Do you see what I see? Vantage Point (Columbia)

Vantage Point (opening February 22 throughout San Diego) does a good job of insulating itself from criticism by embedding it's stupidest moments in plot twists that are difficult to discuss without spoiling the film. The film banks on the fact that if it moves fast enough and employs a distracting gimmick, maybe no one will notice its flaws.

The trailer and ads for the film play up the gimmick - eight points of view, one truth. This means that the film opens with a TV producer (Sigourney Weaver) on location in Spain, doing a live feed about the appearance of U.S. President Ashton (William Hurt) at a peace summit. But while they are broadcasting, the president is shot and a bomb goes off. This is not a spoiler because it's information prominently revealed in the trailers. But once the bomb goes off, the film rewinds and we find ourselves back in time to 11:59am that day. But each time we rewind, we then move forward from a new and different point of view. We rewind multiple times during the film: after the TV producer, we hook up with a rattled secret service agent (Dennis Quaid) who had taken a bullet defending the president in an earlier assassination attempt; a Spanish cop (Eduardo Noreiga); an American tourist (Forest Whitaker); the president himself (William Hurt); and then everyone else from the terrorist to a little girl who loses her ice cream are lumped together in the final rewind.

Screen Actors Guild Awards

The Bourne Ultimatum won the first ever Best Stunt Ensemble at the SAG Awards. (Universal)

Over the weekend, many industry guilds gave out their top awards. The Directors Guild of America honored the Coens for No Country for Old Men, and the American Society of Cinematographers bestowed its top prize on Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood. With a waiver from the still striking Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild got to have an awards ceremony with a red carpet and celebrities. No real surprises as Daniel Day Lewis and Julie Christie racked up awards yet again for their respective work in There Will Be Blood and Away From Her. This looks like a preview of the upcoming Oscars. No Country for Old Men nabbed the best ensemble, which bodes well for it to grab the Best Picture Award come Oscar time. You can see the complete list of winners at the SAG website.

But there was one surprise at the otherwise predictable SAG awards, a new category for Best Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture. The nominees were 300, The Bourne Ultimatum, I am Legend, The Kingdom, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. And the winner was The Bourne Ultimatum. Are you kidding me? I don't want to belittle the hard work that went into those films but what about Zoe Bell's phenomenal stunts in Grindhouse's Deathproof? Grindhouse deserved a nomination just for paying tribute to all the stuntmen of the industry's "all or nothing" days" as Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike put it.

And what about the insanely over the top stunts in Shoot 'Em Up? And were all Asian films excluded? They must have been or there is no excuse for overlooking work from Hong Kong (Exiled and Flashpoint just to name two), South Korea (City of Violence had breathtaking stunts), Japan and even Thailand. Heck even Live Free or Die Hard had more impressive stunt work than Bourne. Only 300 brought anything new or fresh to the action genre among those films nominated. As an action film junkie, I just had to get that off my chest. On the plus side, it's cool that SAG created this award. In Hong Kong, they have a category for Action Choreography. So it's nice to see the U.S. begin to pay respect to this particular cinematic craft.

More awards to come. The Oscars -- if the writers' strike ends or they get a waiver from the WGA -- is scheduled for February 24.  You can get a printable ballot for your own Oscar event, or join Scott Marks and I at the Museum of Photographic Arts' Oscar Party. And the winner is...

Hot Fuzz plus interviews with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

Here come the fuzz! Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the comic geniuses behind 2004's Shaun of the Dead, take on the American cop film to deliver Hot Fuzz. While Tarantino and Rodriguez are sending bloody valentines to the grindhouse pictures they love, Wright and Pegg reveal their affection for the American action films of the 80s.

Three years ago Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg decided to make a romantic zombie comedy, and their first thought was to call it Teatime for the Dead. That perfectly summed up their cheery British take on the American cult horror classic Night of the Living Dead. Then, the pair decided to take on the American cop movie. But Edgar Wright says he and his partner faced some problems: In the U.K. there really arent any action films and theres really not many cop films at all. Theres far too many gangster films so we felt that it was time to redress the balance and do a British cop film. And also address the fact that not really a lot of crime happens in the U.K. and so how can we make that interesting for a two hour running time.

Azumi: Interview with Ryuhei Kitamura

Azumi kicks some ass (Asia Vision)

Last month, Comic-Con came to San Diego and once again demonstrated the appeal of comic books around the globe. It also highlighted the fact that Hollywood studios are NOT the only ones turning to comics as source material. Japanese filmmakers are looking to their homegrown comics, known as mangas for inspiration. KPBS film critic Beth Accomando spoke with the director of Japan's manga-inspired Azumi (opening August 4 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas).

Shanghai Noon

Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon

East meets west both in front of and behind the camera as Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan teams with American actor Owen Wilson and with Hollywood's Touchstone Pictures for a period western entitled Shanghai Noon (opening citywide May 26).

There was a time when Jackie Chan was getting younger and younger with each film released in the U.S. That was because American distributors kept reaching further back in time for Hong Kong titles (First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy, Twin Dragons) to release in order to satisfy the growing U.S. demand for Jackie Chan. But now that Hollywood has discovered Chan's box office potential here, they are willing to back new American films with the stuntman extraordinaire. So now Chan is beginning to look but not quite act his age. It's just a shame that Hollywood couldn't have come to this realization a couple decades ago when Chan first tried to crack the U.S. market and was in peak physical condition. Anyone who's seen films from that era -- Police Story, Project A, Drunken Master II -- saw Chan at his best and is bound to be somewhat disappointed by this film. But his fans are going to have to deal with the fact that he is getting older and that Hollywood still doesn't quite get the over the top, in your face style of Hong Kong cinema.

That being said, Shanghai Noon is a delightfully entertaining action comedy with Chan and co-star Owen Wilson making a highly appealing buddy team. The story involves a kidnapped Chinese princess, a con man, a Chinese Imperial guard and a whole lot of gold. In case you cant figure it out. Chan plays the Imperial guard sent from China to America in order to bring the Princess (Lucy Liu) back. Owen Wilson is the con man who, like Han Solo, doesnt take an interest in anyones predicament until money is involved.

Shanghai Noon borrows from quite a few films -- Star Wars, Once Upon a Time in China and America, Little Big Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But it does so with such self-deprecating humor and unabashed openness that it's hard to resist. Chan still displays flashes of inspiration that draw on his love of silent comedians like Buster Keaton. Chan continues to prove that anything is a potential prop and unusual weapon from saplings in the forest to a horse shoe on a rope. And Chan's physical agility is still a wonder. He makes everything from scaling scaffolding to escaping a hangman's noose look easy.

Shanghai Noon is not Chan at his best but it's such good humored fun and has such a joyous spirit that it's hard to resist.