Johnny E. Mahaffey
April 16, 2013
The Novelist Portent
ENTERTAINMENT OF THE FREEDOM IMPAIRED: HANNIBAL; FAST FIVE; AND SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
Over the past weekend I had the chance to see Fast Five, and found it to be extremely stupid--and that, after all the hype of the movie going back to its "roots" of the first film. Here was a film about cars; not about cars.
Most of the movie seemed to be a Dodge commercial.
And in what world do Pigs drive manual transmissions?
Or, city walls and barriers yield to cars with safe in tow? At least in the Dukes of Hazard movie, Boss Hog's safe got stuck once, and that was outside of town! Plus... Fast Five's safe would've weighed both Dodge cars a time or two over.
Come on guys. Lose the CGI, do a few of your own stunts, and for God's sake open a hood every now and then. Although I did like what looked to be a vintage first gen Skyline that Brian was driving in the opening (his character seems to favor them in every movie, like the R34 of the second movie, and the R35 he challenged with at Fast Five's close-- A model I could assume he'd have installed one of the Greddy upgrade kits with a customised set of 40-45mm external wastegates, "teardrop" mounted of course). But the movie never really goes into any mechanics. Did the opening Skyline (if that's what it was) have a new Tomei Advanced Spec RB26 engine? Or something even better?
The Fast and the Furious franchise created a new generation of tuners, and solidified the love for already existing tuners such as myself that were already aware of things like the Great and Powerful 4G63 with a life support system consisting of a 16G turbo, or the later Super 20G TD06. The movie should hold true to its original path, the tuner scene has blown up huge now and a movie more akin to the first would go over better.
Mae a prequel, and BRING BACK LETI!!!!!!!
How could you kill off Leti like that? Bring her back and throw her behind the wheel of a nice K24-powered DC2 Integra Type R with a fat "Disco Potato" GT28RS, or something.

I wasn't too impressed with Hannibal, this new TV series on NBC.

As for Snow White and the Huntsman, I don't really like the Stewart girl, she's skanky looking in everything she plays, and in real life--it doesn't help that she rarely showers! Talk about the dark forest and its swampy motes.
But after getting past her mousy face, the movie was pretty good thanks to the Queen and her super acting skills. The evil Queen of course saving the entire movie, without her it would've flopped.