The Lone Ranger

The Gore Verbinski flick was beaten up in the press for its high cost and supposed poor quality before it was even released. The movie is not as bad as it was made out to be and its low box office seems to be a result of bad buzz, not a terrible movie. It is fairly long at two and a half hours. It is also a Western, not really the typical summer blockbuster genre but they did it well. Let's not forget that Verbinski wrote and directed Rango and directed The Mexican. And he is of course the man behind the first three Pirates movies, regardless of your opinion of the franchise.

I venture to guess that my dad would like the movie; Western fans and people that watched the tv show as kids must love it. The best parts are when they play the classic Lone Ranger theme music over the action. The Lone Ranger is nominated for two Oscars in the technical categories for Makeup and Hairstyling and for Visual Effects. Dallas Buyer's Club is anticipated to win for Makeup and Gravity for Visual Effects. If you like Westerns, or Johnny Depp, or Armie Hammer, you will probably enjoy this movie. I imagine Disney would have liked Lone Ranger to become a franchise like Pirates but that seems unlikely due to its box office. Depp and Hammer are very well cast. Depp makes the role of Tonto his own and Hammer embodies the Lone Ranger. I had completely forgotten that Hammer was ever a Winklevoss.

And because I thought of the quote every time the nephew was on screen, from A Christmas Story:

Mr. Parker: "What is the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse?"
Mother: "Ah... Victor! His name is Victor."
Mr. Parker: "How the hell did you know that?"
Mother: "Everybody knows that! "

Available for home viewing...
Iron Man 3
The third chapter of the Iron Man franchise maintained the quality and attitude of the first two movies. I was concerned when Jon Favreau announced that he would not be directing. I was happily surprised to see that he did return for his role as Happy Hogan, Tony Stark's driver/head of security. I couldn't help but wonder if the summer blockbuster was originally slated for a holiday release as it is Christmas time in the movie. The Marvel universe continues to dominate the pop culture lineup. The third Iron Man movie was the seventh film in the franchise. There is a television show now, Marvel's Agents of Shield, Captain America 2 comes out April 4th and the second Avengers film is set to debut Summer 2015. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy trailer just came out. Iron Man 3 has one Oscar nomination for Visual Effects. As mentioned before, Gravity is the likely winner, and rightly so.  The effects in Gravity are based on new technologies developed specifically for the film.