[Movie Review] The last Airbender.

Well now, I don't even know how exactly to review this movie without being a totally biased douchemonkey. Not that I've ever done that anyway, but hell, this is a tough one.

I'd like to start off by saying that the Avatar series is one of my favourite animated series of all time and that I had always hoped that they would make a movie for it, and was pleasantly surprised when I heard rumour of such a movie.

Now imagine for me, if you will, my shock and f****** horror when I saw the dreaded name of M. Night Shyamalan looming in big 3d letters at the end of every trailer and poster in view.

From that moment on I felt as if I were a father. The father of a healthy, loveable, non-vegetarian child, one that was good at the piano and had a bright future ahead of him because of his paternally derived awesomeness.

One that was ripped from my arms and subjected to brutal torture and eventual death at the hands of the third rate hack that goes by the name of M. Night Shyamalan.

From the conception, I was afraid that this movie would fail horribly. The casting for this farce was controversial and overall ridiculous. The source material is based in a predominantly asian world with scattered shades of brown making appearances throughout. However, Shyamalan, in a bout of typical retardocity, absolutely insisted on an all white primary cast. This being solely because that's how he "saw " them.

You heard me right.

The director deviated from the source material behind a cult classic based on his own personal vision. If that wasn't heinous enough, he insisted on rewriting the very personalities of several key characters because he thought they were better that way.

So, gone are the goofy, inept, charming Sokka and fat, peaceful, silly General Iroh that we knew and loved for their moments of brilliance and overall inanity. They were replaced by an adept, stonefaced warrior named Soakah and a tall, thin, monkish General Eeroh. Why, you may ask?

Ask M. Night Shyamalan, because I really don't know.

He murdered the two comedy relief characters, changed their names and replaced them with annoyingly serious doppelgangers.

Now, even if the actors were wrong for the characters, and the characters were wrong for the story, you would expect at least some decent acting to shine though, right?

Wrong. The dialogue is more forced and awkward than jacking off for a semen sample, and together the actors manage the emotional credibility of a dead barracuda. I won't mention any of their names, because honestly, they'll want to forget they ever appeared in this movie. I hear that guy that played Aang is claiming that Shyamalan threatened to sexually molest him if he didn't star in it. True story, bro.

The special effects are "meh" at best, and the film's claim to being 3d is hilarious. You could watch it without the glasses and not miss a thing. So you miss two or three flying rocks - oh, teh horr0r.

On top of that, the lackadaisical soundtrack also disappoints. Every song has a generic feel to it and there is nothing that makes you say "Ok, this was meant for this movie." They might as well have picked up a $9.99 "Epic movie" soundtrack and threw the songs onto the video reel while they played Call of Duty.

Alas, I wish this was all I had to complain about, but there were so many other small things wrong with this movie that it disgusted me to have to watch it. From the showing of the Fire Lord's face (Weren't the Fire Nation supposed to be chinese-ish anyway? I felt like asking that guy for a slurpee and a pack of cigarettes.) to the lack of screen time, and personality, of Appa and Momo, to the omission of Katara's jealousy of Aang's waterbending skills, to the downplay of Sokka and Princess Yueh's relationship. Seriously, that last part bugged me big time. In the series that nigga had to work hard to get his bitch, shankin' some bigger niggas n shit, provin himself to her father n shit, getting over his personal inadequacies to discover that he's a good guy despite not being a prince n shit. Now he just walks up to her and says "You my girl." and everyone's okay with that.

The f***?

This is where I would usually put my Pros and Cons section, but I find that nary a battle has been fought that was that one sided. Instead, I shall make a list of what M. Night should have done to make a great movie.

The Last Airbender (directed by Niron Khan):

1. Cast people that look like the characters.

2. Pronounce things like they should be pronounced.

3. Not leave out majour characters like Jet and the Kyoshi warriors.

4. Make the movie longer than an hour and a half. 20+ episodes deserve at least 2 hours.

5. Scratch the whole 3d aspect and divert that budget to the special effects.

6. Not changed the water elemental ending to a giant wave. F****** Nickelodeon was more hardcore. Aang was supposed to have killed some niggas n shit.

7. Write the characters so they have some sort of personality.

8. Hire Hans Zimmer.

Consensus: 1/10. I have no idea how M. Night Shyamalan managed to take a great source material like Avatar and leach away all personality and wonder out of it. It's like he made a checklist of things that were great about the series and systematically f***** them up.

Some people said that not even M. Night Shyamalan could f*** up Avatar. They said that it just couldn't be done. They said that the movie would at least be decent, but you've proved them wrong.

Bravo, M. Night. Bravo, indeed.

[Movie Review] Prince of Persia: The sands of time.

Well now, it's pretty much a scientifically proven fact that video game based movies suck more dick than a polynesian crack whore, and as such, I was predisposed towards hating Prince of Persia before I'd even seen it.

In fact, such was the extent of the discrimination that nobody wanted to go with me to witness this travesty. In the end I went alone, sacrificing myself so that others may know how much this undoubtedly laughable attempt at film-making would gargle testicle.

Surprisingly however, it wasn't that bad. Sure, the storyline resembled the game's about as much as my nutsack resembles Abraham Lincoln, but who wants a word for word adaptation of a video game as a movie? Might as well replay the game so you could at least pause it every time a pair of tits pop up.

One thing that annoyed me from the get go was the star wars rip off in the opening narration. "A long time ago and in a place far, far away" or something along that kettle of fish. Persia really isn't that far away, especially if you're living in the middle east or central Europe. Oh wait, I forgot, Americans think they're the only people that have televisions. My bad...

Now, despite a few of the supposed "A-rabs" looking so goddamn caucasiany, I found the film's cast to be rather believable. Prince Dustbin (Jake Gyllenhaal) was somewhat snarky and slightly angsty but lacked the princey asshole-ishness that had been one of his major personality traits in the video game, which ended up just making him look like a naive daddy's boy for just about the whole f****** movie. It's probably because Gyllenhaal thought he was shooting another Brokeback mountain and forgot to bring his big boy pants.

Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) probably did more than her fair share of keeping the audience entertained with her rebellious antics and tight corset. A corset that was ultimately far too tight, judging by the lack of tits in the movie. Don't get me wrong though, I would string her ukulele any day.

The storyline progressed well enough, despite the somewhat clichéd plot twist that resulted in the Vizier/Uncle being the villian all along and betraying Prince Dustpan in order to go back in time and do something or the other that may or may not have involved cackling evilly. It was such a give away too, I mean, the guy had a bald head, goatee and waxed eyebrows. He was obviously the bad guy. It could only have been more obvious if he wore a neon sign and pranced around handing out leaflets that colourfully illustrated his sinister plot with helpful notes detailing exact methods of execution thoughtfully penned in.

Then, of course, there was the token black guy. You know, that guy who sacrifices himself for the sake of his light skinned comrades so they can wipe a tear from the corner of their collective eye and say "Poor Deshaun, he was such a jolly good bloke, eh wot?" and share a moment of sympathy for the helpful negro.

Despite my nitpicking, I have to admit that I was actually entertained by the movie. Director Mike Newell managed, in my opinion, to maintain a somewhat steady pace and keep the audience interested long enough to stop them embarking on a 4 month journey to the slopes of Tibet in a search for their spirit animal.

Pros: Reminds me of Aladdin; Good Parkour scenes; Good pacing; Decent acting; Decent Action scenes.

Cons: Clichéd and fairly predictable; Lack of tits; Mediocre Special effects; Questionable casting.

Consensus: 6.5/10 Token black guys. Good popcorn flick, while nothing to write home about, at least provides more entertainment that was expected from a video game adaptation. I would probably watch it again and might not mind some sort of sequel. Provided it has tits and possibly llamas.