I’m a HUGE Tony Scott.  I think he is one of the most underrated, innovative, and original Directors out there.  His brother, Ridley Scott, gets more of the attention but I’m sure you’ve seen Tony’s work and didn’t even know it. 

Man on Fire.  No? OK. Enemy of the State.  No? OK. How about Crimson Tide, True Romance, Days of Thunder… or… Top Gun?  

Yea… there you go.

When I was at the local cinema on Saturday I saw a poster for his latest effort “The Taking of Pelham 123” and immediately got excited as June 12th is just around the corner. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the trailer.

With Denzel Washington, James Gandolfini and John Turturro providing performances, I’m sure Scott will provide an outstanding viewing experience. Forget X-men, forget Star Trek, this is my type of movie.  I simply cannot wait.

Movie: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Director: Gavin Hood
Staring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber

I’ve never been a fan of the X-Men series, I’m not sure why… maybe it was the lack of ever reading/caring about comic books.  As a child I never had the desire to be a super hero, I never really cared about who they were or where they came from.  So, when I heard the initial reviews of the movie I was intrigued. All of a sudden the concept of when an individual super hero came from seemed, well, semi-entertaining. Yea, I was semi-wrong.

When watching movies in general, I take the view that I’m going to suspend reality for roughly two hours as I visit the imagined world presented to me by the director.  Obviously, this really helps when watching a movie based off of a comic book, but when the graphics, computer animation and special effects look – SO FAKE – it’s hard to keep the reality of the situation from sneaking back in.  Countless times throughout X-Men Origins: Wolverine I was drawn to the poor CGI, the obviously fake backdrops, and the seemingly rushed camera work. 

With any movie, don’t matter what I’m watching, needs to be able to pull me in.  The movie has to make me care about the situation, about the characters, but for roughly half of this flick I simply didn’t care about anyone.  The story didn’t pull me in.  An event about half-way through changed that, but if was only momentary.  I cared about two characters that had no major role in the story, once the two characters in question filled their role, I simply stopped caring about the people the director wanted the viewers to be emotionally invested in.

Aside from a  super hero movie, this was an action movie. There was plenty of action, don’t get me wrong; however, the action fell victim to the poor production values that the special effects did.  I kid you not when I say there was a chase scene that was so poorly filmed, on some back country road, that I thought I watching a deleted A-Team scene.  It was that bad.  

So, if you are looking for mindless action with no real point X-Men Origins: Wolverine will fill that need for you.

Overall Rating: 5.5 (due to some fulfilling action)

This is a multifaceted story, stick with me as go over the events that have taken place.

Late last week, a production/working copy of “X-Men Origins:Wolverine” was leaked out of 20th Century Fox Studios.  Quickly a pirated copy of the unfinished movie was available on the net via multiple sources. Not long after the movie hit the web, Roger Friedman, a freelance entertainment writer for Fox News, downloads the movie, writes a review and publishes the story on Foxnews.com

Almost immediately entertainment bloggers began calling for Fox to fire Friedman.  Part of the backlash to Friedman’s actions appears to be due to a self-imposed ban on the part of bloggers to shun the early version of the film.

Josh Tyler, of CinemaBlend.com, says:

The review has already been yanked off FoxNew’s website, but it’s not enough. If it’s Friedman who is responsible for posting it, then he should be fired. If there’s an editor, then he should be fired and Friedman’s freelance work should no longer appear on Fox News. To do anything else would be hypocritical, ridiculous, and reprehensible. To do anything else basically sends the signal that Fox is pretty much OK with piracy. Do anything else and those of us who went out of our way to support Fox in shutting down the illegal pirating of their films won’t do the same next time, because apparently Fox doesn’t really take this whole thing that seriously. Heck if they’re going to keep Friedman on the payroll maybe I should just go download Wolverineright now and get my review up. Fox seems to be ok with it. Your move Fox. You can still do the right thing.  

He’s right – NewsCorp (Fox News / 20th Century Fox parent company) was put in a catch-22.

The editors at Fox News made a serious error in judgment to post a review of pirated work when they claimed to be attempting to target and prosecute the people who were pirates.  If Fox took no action against Friedman the company would appear to support piracy, thus making their hunt of individuals who pirated the film look like an empty threat.

As quickly as the call for Friedman’s firing surfaced, word was released from Fox News that Friedman was gone.

Put your views on Piracy aside for a moment and ask this question – Should Friedman be fired, and if so, why?  

The big problem I have with this entire situation isn’t that Fox News let Friedman go, it’s the fact that an Entertainment company can influence the decisions of News division.  While they both are separate companies, they fall under the same parent holding company.  Can’t such actions have a devastating impact on how organizational operations take place and what the public obtains for news?

What?  There is a story that is critical of our business over in the news division? 

Place a call and have it canned.  

What?  Someone disagrees with my political views?

Have them canned. 

I’m not naïve enough to think this doesn’t happen on a daily basis already, but this story only goes to highlight the risk we face when major companies having a “News” division and an “Entertainment” division. Eventually, they start telling us what news is and is not….

4/6/09 Update: It appreas Fox News has not taken any official action, yet.

Nope… he was canned.