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The Entitled starring Kevin Zegers, Ray Liotta, Laura Vandervoort & Victor Garber

Posted on December 21, 2011 Written by ripitup

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The Entitled Plot Summary- Minor Spoilers
the-entitled-movie-poster
The Entitled starring Kevin Zegers, Ray Liotta, Laura Vandervoort & Victor Garber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Ryan (Kevin Zegers) is a smart, well-educated young man who was failed by the American dream. He can’t land a good job, he still lives with his parents. His mother is sick, and their insurance doesn’t cover her medication. Fed up with the rich being entitled to everything, he comes up with a great plan to make 3 million dollars. He recruits two university students – Dean (Devon Bostick) and Jenna (Tatiana Maslany) with suicidal/violent tendencies, and together they kidnap the rich and spoiled Hailey (Laure Vandervoort), Nick (Dustin Milligan) and Jeff (John Bregar).

Hailey, Nick and Jeff are three childhood best friends whose rich businessmen fathers have also been friends for ages. As they are on their way to meet their fathers at Nick’s father Richard’s (Ray Liotta) house, they are kidnapped by Jenna and Dean and taken to a remote lake house. While Dean doesn’t like it one bit, Paul is in charge and he has even dated Jenna to manipulate her.

Paul has thought of everything. He never calls Jenna or Dean, he never talks to the hostages or shows his face. He uses gloves, and he uses a voice jammer when he makes the ransom call. It is simple: Each father is to give 1 million dollars to save his kid. But when Jenna learns that Jeff’s father hasn’t met the other fathers yet, she loses it and kills Jeff.

From then on, it becomes the ultimate challenge for Richard and Clifford (Hailey’s dad – played by Stephen McHattie) to keep Jeff’s death and the kidnapping from his father, Bob (Victor Garber). There is constant tension as friendships and motives are put to test, and desperate times will call for desperate measures as Richard reveals to Clifford that he doesn’t have the money…

With Paul hardly able to control Jenna (or Dean, Hailey and Nick try to escape. Even though the initial plan is perfect, can Paul pull off getting the money without letting Nick and Hailey be harmed.? And there is always the danger of Bob endangering the plans once he finds out….

*

What makes The Entitled special?

The Entitled does a great job of portraying grey characters. Well, apart from Dean and Jenna who are already too lost and too dangerous to be of any good to anyone…

But Paul is the perfect “villain”- he commits the crime for a perfectly good reason. You root for him from the beginning. Here you have a guy trying to save his mother, as opposed to 3 spoiled brats who drink and do drugs and don’t really care about the outside world. Of course Nick is a little more responsible, but he hangs with Hailey and Jeff all the time.

Paul is smart, calculating and is actually quite logical in who he decides to save and who he doesn’t mind hurting . You don’t have a career criminal or a psychopath. But he is cold-blooded when he needs to be. He has done his research, and he has planned his every move. And he seems to deal with the unexpected well…

The rich fathers are to be empathized with as they are loving parents to their kids. However we know they didn’t make their money by being honest and fair-so a part of us despises them just like Paul does. We don’t want the kidnapped kids to die, but we definitely want Paul to get away with it-with the money.

It might have some clichés, but it avoids a lot of clichés really well. The pace is slow sometimes, but it never fails to keep you wondering.

There is the issue of two minor plot holes, but we don’t know for sure if they are plot holes. Meaning: The ending we get may not be as definite as we think, and in that sense, they are not plot holes but just situations created to keep us wondering.

At 6.2 on IMDB, 2011’s The Entitled is under-rated. It might not be a game-changer in the drama/thriller genre, but it plays the game very well with some fresh angles. Not to mention a great cast.

Fun Notes about the Cast 

  • Laura Vandervoort played alien Lisa, the queen’s daughter in sci-fi series V (2009 version).
  • Victor Garber plays fathers often, but his characters are really different from each other. For instance, in the J.J.Abrams-created TV series Alias (starring Jennifer Garner), he played Sydney Bristow’s father Jack Bristow a seasoned agent with secrets, and a darn good poker face.
  • Stephen McHattie is no stranger to shady characters. Haven fans know him as Rev. Driscoll, who did everything in his power to make the “troubled” citizens’ life difficult.
  • Kevin Zegers plays grey characters often. In The Narrows, he found himself working for the local mob so that he could get into photography classes. In It’s a Boy Girl Thing he was a popular jock who didn’t exactly treat his brainy neighbor well. In The Jane Austen Book Club, he seduced his high school French teacher.

 

Other Kevin Zegers Movies

It’s a Boy Girl Thing

The Narrows

The Jane Austen Book Club

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Filed Under: Movies and Actors Tagged With: buy the entitled dvd, devon bostick, dustin milligan, John Bregar, Kevin Zegers, kevin zegers movies, kevin zegers the entitled, Laura Vandervoort, ray liotta, Stephen mchattie, Tatiana Maslany, The entitled, the entitled 2011 movie, the entitled cast, the entitled dvd, the entitled kevin zegers, Victor Garber, victor garber alias

You Again starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Odette Yustman & Sigourney Weaver

Posted on February 28, 2011 Written by ripitup

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You Again starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Odette Yustman & Sigourney Weaver
You Again starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Odette Yustman & Sigourney Weaver

Marni (Kristen Bell) has transformed herself from the ugly and unpopular high school girl to a beautiful and successful PR professional. Since she is pretty certain her awful high school days are way over, she’s more than happy to return home for the wedding of her older brother Will (James Wolk).

So she gets the shock of her life when she finds out that he’s marrying Joanna (Odette Yustman), the very girl who made Marni’s life hell all those years ago.  What’s more shocking and disturbing for Marni is that Joanna claims to have become a much different and better person and Marni!

Poor Marni has no allies in the house as her mom Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) wants her to embrace the now and forgive Joanna’s past.  Of course Gail’s optimistic “past is past” attitude disappears when she meets Joanna’s aunt Ramona (Sigourney Weaver). As it turns out, Ramona is the very woman who made Gail’s prom a nightmare. And it is Gail’s turn to be frustrated, as Ramon is the ultra successful, ultra-rich, very pretty multi-lingual owner of a hotel chain. And everyone adores this cool aunt, including Marni.

Can mother and daughter keep it together until the wedding? Or will disaster follow as Marni is pretty determined in proving to everyone that Joanna hasn’t changed at all?

**

You Again is a romantic comedy from 2010, with the emphasis on comedy.  It is really fun for the most part, although some things just don’t add up, even for comedy’s sake. And the first half of the movie is a lot more fun than the second. Still, it is a great cast. We even have Victor Garber as Marni’s father and Betty White as her grandmother. Remember Victor Garber as Jack Bristow, a.k.a Sydney’s dad from Alias? If you don’t, please watch him in one Alias episode at least. Then you’ll know why I like watching him in a comedy so much.

I really found Gail’s lack of empathy – even after she finds herself as frustrated as her daughter- hilarious and very humane.

On a note: Could the wedding planner be more annoying and Tim (Kyle Bornheimer) more of a loser? And am I the only one who thought Joanna’s rehearsal dinner show totally stupid and not romantic?

It could have been a little more original if Marni didn’t get her high school crush (Sean Wing) in the end (it is not a spoiler, and u know it!), but hey, all in all, it is a very entertaining effort. It is not a should-see, but a could- see. And its biggest fault is that Betty White’s role wasn’t Betty White enough.

Fun notes:

–          Dwayne Johnson has a very small but entertaining part as the Air Marshall

–          70s and 80s duo Hall& Oates make an appearance as themselves.

–          Both Sigourney Weaver and Jamie Lee Curtis have co-starred with Mel Gibson in different movies. Sigourney Weaver co-starred with him The Year of Living Dangerously and Jamie in Forever Young.

 

Currently 5.4 on IMDB.

My verdict: 7 for the first half, 5.5 for the second.

 

More on Kristen Bell

Veronica Mars starring Kristen Bell, Teddy Dunn, Jason Dohring & Enrico Colantoni

When in Rome starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel

Couples Retreat starring Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Malin Akerman and Jason Bateman

Forgetting Sarah Marshall starring Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Russell Brand

Serious Moonlight starring Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Kristen Bell and Justin Long

33 Actors From My Generation – Actors Born in the Years Between 1980-1990

More on Sigourney Weaver

Snow Cake starring Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman & Carrie-Anne Moss

More on Odette Yustman

And Soon the Darkness starring Odette Yustman, Amber Heard &Karl Urban

More on Victor Garber

Glee – TV Series – guest role

Alias TV Series – one of the leading roles

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Filed Under: Movies and Actors Tagged With: Betty White, comedy, Dwayne Johnson, james wolk, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristen Bell, Kristin Chenoweth, kyle bornheimer, movies, Odette Yustman, romantic comedy, sean wing, sigourney weaver, Victor Garber, You Again, you again cast, you again movie

Glee starring Matthew Morrison, Cory Monteith, Jane Lynch, Lea Michele & Colin Colfer

Posted on December 18, 2010 Written by ripitup

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Glee starring Matthew Morrison, Cory Monteith, Jane Lynch, Lea Michele & Colin Colfer
Glee starring Matthew Morrison, Cory Monteith, Jane Lynch, Lea Michele & Colin Colfer

Characters & Plot

Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) is a 30-something Spanish teacher at a small town high school. Former popular kid and former Glee Club star, he is a little far away from his glory days. He is married to his high school girlfriend/former cheerleader Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig), who is self-absorbed & materialistic. They want a baby and she is damned if she will make any sacrifices.

Will wants something more out of his life and he wants his students to have more soul. So he decides to take over the Glee Club, despite the stingy headmaster (Iqbal Theba)’s budget cuts. Unfortunately the club attracts all the social “losers” and not any of the popular students.

The First Glee Members

Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) is an ambitious girl intent on becoming a star. Unfortunately, she is considered scum at her school’s social ladder, often mocked by the cheerleader and the football team. Her singing gets her in, although she is still hated by a lot of people.

Mercedes (Amber Riley) seems to have the voice and the figure to become the next Queen Latifah, only she is not happy sharing the spotlight with Rachel.

Kurt (Chris Colfer) is thrown into the garbage bin everyday at school since he is well too much into fashion, beauty and is gay in every stereotypical way.

Artie (Kevin McHale) is subject to ridicule because he is in a wheelchair. But he can sing and play the guitar, so he does belong to the glee.

Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) is also a misfit, concerned with girl power and all that.

The Anti- Glee, Coach Sue Sylvester and Popular Kids

Cheerleaders and football players are the popular kids and they despise the glee club. This serves Sue (Jane Lynch)’s purpose since she is used to being the star teacher-coach of the school. Her office is full of trophies, her requests demand the school budget and she is more than ego-centric and narcissistic.

Will realizes that the Glee club won’t stand a chance if he can’t get at least one popular kid in, so he tricks the quarterback Finn (Cory Monteith) into joining the club. This annoys his cheerleader girlfriend Quinn (Dianna Agron), especially when Finn starts enjoying the club and Rachel’s company a lot more than he expected. So when the glee members find a way to lure other kids in, Sue decides to use her cheerleaders as spies, to destroy Glee from the inside.

The OCD –freak Emma, Other Teachers & Adventures

Emma (Jayma Mays) is the young guidance counselor with the hugest crush on Will. Will also seems to be developing feelings for her, much to the discontent of the football coach Ken Tanaka (Patrick Gallagher), who wants Emma to himself. Then there is the recently fired Sandy (Stephen Tobolowsky) who got fired for being a little too friendly towards his male students…

Episodes, Genres, Awards

Glee is a weird and refreshing mixture of comedy, drama and musical. It is not entirely a musical but we get a lot of singing and dancing during performances, rehearsals and occasional reactions where the characters need to express themselves as if they are already a star shooting their videos…

The cast is pretty cool and most of them can sing and dance. Jane Lynch’s perfectly annoying Sue earned her an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2010. The show won 2 more Emmys in 2010.

The show also won Golden Globe for Best Comedy/Musical Series in 2010. Matthew Morrison was nominated for Best Actor in 2010 and he is nominated again this year. Lea Michele (for her character Rachel) and Chris Colfer (for Kurt) are also nominated for the 2011 Golden Globes.

Verdict

Glee is rated 8.5 on IMDB. I started watching due to the Glee addiction of one of my close friends. I think it that it is a bit overrated. I’ll hand it to the creators- it is original and fun, sometimes realistic and often bordering on satire. The soundtrack entertains me more when more rock is involved as opposed to the current popular stuff.

But I do have a limit when it comes to musical and satirical comedies. I mean I love Grease and Hairspray as movies, but I didn’t watch Grease 2 and I really wouldn’t be interested in watching Hairspray 2, 3 and whatever, had there been series.

And I am more into rock operas, so my favorite musical tends to be Rent. And Glee’s storyline takes its originality from its format and not necessarily the characters or events.  And when Matthew Morrison acts like Justin Timberlake, it does get on my nerves.

So yes, Glee is fun. But I recommend slow doses and a tolerance for today’s music as well as developing a soft spot for musicals. I am not Glee’s biggest fan but so far I watched 6 episodes. I will let you know if the show grows on me more. But if I am not a major fan by the end of season 1, I am quitting. And it would help if the episodes were a little shorter…

Call me spoiled, but I just got too much used to getting mixed genres from my shows and a good mixture of comedy/drama doesn’t really cut it for me anymore. After all, my crime shows give me thriller, mystery, crime, good jokes, a great soundtrack, drama and romance all in one. Watch out for my next review on Bones- which tends to be one of those addictive and highly entertaining crime shows.

Fun Notes:

If you want to watch Stephen Tobolowsky in a totally different- I mean straight and serious- role, you can watch him as a crooked FBI agent in 1990’s Bird on a Wire. Granted, Bird on a Wire is a romantic/comedy/adventure starring Mel Gibson & Goldi Hawn but Tobolowsky’s role is serious.

Alias’s incredibly poker-faced, double-agent Jack Bristow , a.k.a Victor Garber, makes an appearance in the episode Acafellas, 3rd episode of Season 1. He plays Will’s father.I only wish he guest-starred more often.

***

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Filed Under: TV shows Tagged With: amber riley, colin colfer, comedy, Cory Monteith, Dianna Agron, drama, glee, glee awards, glee cast, glee characters, glee tv series, glee tv show, jane lynch, Jayma Mays, Jessalyn Gilsig, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, music, musical, Patrick Gallagher, Stephen Tobolowsky, TV shows, Victor Garber

Alias TV Show starring Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, Bradley Cooper and Victor Garber

Posted on November 2, 2009 Written by ripitup

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Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in Alias
Some of Sydey’s many disguises in Alias

Before 2001, I had no idea who Michael Vartan, Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper were. I had no idea the terrific actor that is Victor Garber existed and that Ron Rifkin made such a great villain. In 2001 – before Lost- there was Alias. The connection between the two shows? The creator/executive producer J.J. Abrams. The two shows could not have been more different. Yes, both include mystery, some unexplained supernatural possibilities (Alias will remember “Rambaldi”) and lots of action. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why Lost became the phenomenon that it still is. Sure it is captivating and all, but Alias had created an addiction in me that Lost didn’t. For those of you who never caught Alias, here’s the plot (although I should mention that the order we are given the story is more complicated & intriguing than my orderly version).

THE BACKGROUND

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is a promising college student, with a great boyfriend Danny (Edward Atterton) and loving friends (Will and Francie; played by Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey). Her estranged father Jack (Victor Garber) is a businessman she barely talks to and her mother died when she was a kid.
What she told Danny and her friends:
Graduation is taking a tad longer, since she is “working at the finance department of a bank called Credit Dauphine”.
REALITY, as Sydney knows it:

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

It’s not really a bank. It is SD-6, a secret branch of the CIA and Sydney is a secret agent there. She fights well, speaks many languages and knows her hi-tech gadgets, prepared for every mission by the fast -talking and nice geek Marshall
(Kevin Weisman). Every time she tells her friends, she is going on a business trip, she is actually going on a deadly assignments with her partner/trusted friend Dixon (Carl Lumbly). But Danny proposes ans she feels obliged to tell him. So she does..
He gets into shock and leaves a drunken message on her machine. The agency guys has him killed. Why would CIA kill an innocent civillian? They wouldn’t. They also wouldn’t go after her to kill her.
REALITY
She’s rescued by her absent businessman father and is told the truth: SD-6 is not CIA, in fact SD-6 is an enemy of CIA. Also, he is not a businessman; but a senior SD-6 agent. He offeres Sydney an escape route. But Sydney is upset and she wants vengeance. So she proves herself useful to her boss Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin). She further proves her loyalty by undergoing tests/interrogations and is cleared. After all, she is the best agent they have. Then she goes to the real CIA and joins them.
There she meets her “handler” Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan– the guy who is supposed to tell her about the counter-missions. Oh,that’s right! Now she is only pretending to be loyal to SD-6, while being true to the actual CIA. Now each mission has a counter one, making the timing harder, the missions more dangerous. She also has to pull this off under the unsuspecting nose of her SD-6 partner, who is genuinely a good guy that doesn’t know what SD-6 is really up to…
Then of course her father isn’t really only SD-6. He is also CIA, and he is loyal to them, not Sloan.
It is full of action. Car chases, gadgets ( lipstick with cameras and all that nice stuff), disguises, plane crashes, travelling all over the world- even 3-4 countries in each episode back to her resident location: Los Angeles.
MISSIONS

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

Michael Vartan and Jennifer Garner in Alias.

Of course as smart, gorgeous and dangerous as she is, Sydney is only human and taking all of the below very badly:

Arvin Sloane:
Arvin Sloan played by Ron Rifkin
Arvin Sloan played by Ron Rifkin

*Arvin is the man whom she regarded as a father figure until he turned out to be a psychopath and her fiancée killed. He also sent men to kill her. We also know he has lied to her everyday, since her recruitment. Now she has to see him everyday and smile to his face; so that she can bring the whole organization down when the time comes.
Not to mention the fact that she has to live with the fact that she worked for that organization for 7 years, thinking that she was helping the government whereas she had been betraying it.
Jack Bristow
Victor Garber playing Jack Bristow
* What is worse than an absent father? Probably a father who lied to you all your life, and seems to be revealing the truth at his own convenience: Oh yes, he has more secrets. He is not just SD-6, he is also CIA-a double agent. He also seems to be deprived of emotion. The guy has a poker face that makes him a great agent and the social bonding skills that make Hugh Laurie’s House seem like a teddy bear. He does love his daughter but he really has to work on the honesty issue. Her mother may not have been a school teacher after all. Telling what happened to her will be a spoiler, sorry…
WILL & FRANCIE
Will and Francie played by Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey
Will and Francie played by Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey

*Oh, she has great friends who know nothing about this secret life so she can only talk about trivial stuff with them and hang out. They love her and for the lives of them can not figure out why Sydney doesn’t leave her boring bank job. Pl?us, Will is a journalist and nosy by nature; and he suspects Danny’s murder was no ordinary crime. If he gets close, he too will be killed so she has to protect him from himself. It gets tricky to lead a double life when you live with one of your friends (Francie) and the other is fixed on solving your dead fiancé’s mystery.
DANIEL HECHT
Daniel Hecht played by Edward Atterton
Daniel Hecht played by Edward Atterton
* She has to live with the fact that her fiancée Danny was killed by her boss, and because she told him who she is.
MICHAEL VAUGHN
Michael Vartan plays Michael Vaughn
If her cover is blown, and he is discovered to be of CIA, they are both screwed (as in risking to be murdered by SD-6)…It really doesn’t help matters that they keep getting closer and become increasingly attracted to each other…
Their relationship never lacks adrenaline, friendship, honesty, sexual chemistry, bottled up feelings and not to mention the fact that they both face death almost everyday. It is nerve-wrecking to go on missions and fight together on the field- without being detected by SD-6 and it is worse for Michael to sit and watch as Sydney overtakes one deadly mission after another. So she can tell Michael anything. But she can’t even go out with him. Another thing about her life that drives her mad.
Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow and Michael Vartan as Michael Vaughn
This is as close to a date it gets for Syndey Bristow and her handler Michael Vaughn. She’s being briefed about her missions while pretending to be too strangers streching on the benches.
Michael Vartan as Michael Vaugh and Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow
So this eventually happens: Sydney and Vaughn get together. But how many episodes does it take? You are just going to have to see it for yourselves.
The Guest Stars

Yes, of course each episode has many guest stars but some of them are remarkably famous and it was certainly fun to see them in those kick-ass episodes: Ethan Hawke, Christian Slater and Quentin Tarantino.

Ethan Hawke in Alias
Ethan Hawke appears in Alias episode Double Agent (Season 2, Episode 14)
Christian Slater plays Neil Kaplan in Alias
Christian Slater appears in two episodes of Alias: Endgame (season 2, episodes 15 & 19)
Quentin Tarantino in Alias
Quentin Tarantino appears as McKenas Cole in 4 episodes of Alias.
TO SUM UP:
Season 1 is brilliant with an incredible season finale.
Season 2 does not dissapoint. Moreover it features guest stars that I love; such as Ethan Hawke and Christian Slater.
The whole season is amazing and the finale is arguably even more shocking than the first season’s. In season, 3 the show is still good- you hardly get upset with the script but with some actions of some characters (major actions of major characters, to be exact) but after season 3…The show is no longer addictive. It lose its vibe. The characters and their actions aren’t interesting anymore. The story twists are sort of desperate and you say “Come on,what the…?” a lot. Don’t even get me started on the 5th season. Of course they are worth watching in the sense that you want to know what eventually will happen to characters you have come to care about but still, if you quit with the 3rd, I am not gonna blame you.
My guess is J.J Abrams found a new show idea that he liked (Lost) and fell out of love with Alias. Writers wrote with the philosophy of “anything goes” and since this is not a soap opera, they failed.
However I watch the first 3 (and especially 1st &2nd) seasons over and over. After all, real life is never going to get that interesting and exciting. It is fun to be in a world of lies, deceit, passion, fights and chases and espionage for about 40 minutes each episode.

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Filed Under: TV shows Tagged With: Alias, Bradley Cooper, Christian Slater, Ethan Hawke, J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Garner, Merrin Dungey, Michael Vartan, Quentin Tarantino, Victor Garber

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