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Link Time! 6/14

BuzzSugar — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:17:30 -0700

The Movie Blog reminds us "never to trust those pirates."
The Film Experience is having a blog-a-thon to honor film's best action heroines.
Give Me My Remote picks a cast of newcomers for "Grey's Anatomy."
Popwatch shares the ways in which they bond with Dad through entertainment, for example, one can count on Dad walking in exactly during the sex scenes.
Want to talk about last night's season 3 premiere of "Top Chef"? YumSugar's the place to go!
ScreenGrab has an interview with Eric O'Neill, the ex-FBI agent on whom Ryan Phillipe's character is based in the movie Breach (which is now out on DVD).
TV Squad thinks the petition to save "Traveler" is rather ridiculous.
BuddyTV tells us where you might have seen those "John from Cincinnati" actors before.

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:30:00 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. Also releasing this week is Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider, which inexplicably took the No. 1 spot at the box office when it first came out.

Breach
There are more interesting and complex CIA thrillers than this one, but for what it is, Breach is perfectly adequate. Eric O'Neill (Ryan Philippe) is the new, young FBI agent hopeful assigned to the case of veteran operative and alleged mole Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper). Hanssen is suspected of providing information to the Soviets, costing the government financial drain and leading to the deaths of at least a few American agents, yet the FBI has never been able to gain enough evidence to take him down. As Eric gets closer to exposing Hanssen for what he is, he simultaneously puts his wife - and his own sanity - in danger. For more details, check out my review.

Two more newbies if you read more

Days of Glory
Earning a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars, Days of Glory is a French-language movie set during World War II. The story follows North African soldiers who enlist in the French army to help free France from Nazi occupation. The talented cast won an ensemble acting award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls
Tyler Perry, responsible for bringing us all of the Madea movies, along with the TV show "Tyler Perry's House of Payne," tried his hand at romantic drama with Daddy's Little Girls. The movie didn't do so well at the box office, despite the super-charming Gabrielle Union. She plays a lawyer assigned to help Monty (Idris Elba) gain custody of his three daughters, who are in danger of being given into custody of Monty's vicious ex-wife. You can watch the trailer for Daddy's Little Girls here.

Breach: Better Than Dateline

BuzzSugar — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:49:09 -0800

Perhaps I've watched too much "Alias" and "24," because it turns out I expect espionage/government agency stories to be fast-paced, entertaining, and suspenseful to the point of biting off my fingertips. If one goes into Breach expecting these qualities, one will not find them. The real-life story on which the film is based is intriguing, but the film itself is not. If the intention was to make a great dramatic thriller, then something went wrong. But as a way to tell the story of a real-life FBI take-down, it's more titillating than your average Dateline special.

Ryan Phillippe plays baby-faced Eric O'Neill, the FBI agent hopeful assigned to the case of veteran operative and alleged mole Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper). Hanssen is suspected of providing information to the Soviets, costing the government financial drain and leading to the deaths of at least a few American agents, yet the FBI has never been able to gain enough evidence to take him down. The actual things Hanssen did or how he got away with his crimes for years are not the focus of the film, and I was left thinking that maybe they should have been, so

The story is really about O'Neill gaining Hanssen's trust and learning how to play this man who has played the Bureau's best agents for years. Yet while O'Neill struggles to gain Hanssen's trust, Hanssen needles his way into O'Neill's personal life, endangering O'Neill's mission and causing tension in his marriage. Thus the two men dance a back-and-forth power struggle. I actually feel sorry for the real Eric O'Neill, because in Phillippe's portrayal, he's glum-faced and one-dimensional with a bulbous bottom lip that prevents him from speaking properly. When Phillippe as O'Neill whines to his superior, "What if he's smarter than me?," I had to snort. I mean, "what if?" - it isn't exactly a stretch.

Phillippe pales in comparison to Cooper, and perhaps that is the point. O'Neill is supposed to seem less capable in every way, and he succeeds. He is, essentially, the window through which we observe Hanssen, and Cooper's surly, bitter performance dominates every time he's on the screen. It was rumored that Hanssen viewed the FBI as an organization of imbeciles without enough sense to listen to his ideas, and his disdain for the bureau seems to have been a driving force behind his actions. The film, however, never spells out his motivations, wisely leaving the viewer to speculate.

The final glimpse of Hanssen, too, is well-played. Throughout the movie, Hanssen is a deeply religious man, judging himself as though through God's eyes while being both professionally and personally corrupt. In the end, O'Neill's triumph is silenced by the Hanssen's inward downfall.

And of course, we know the ending from the beginning; in fact, the film kicks off with actual footage of Ashcroft announcing Hanssen's resignation. Since knowing this takes away any sort of surprise ending, the getting-there should be the gripping part. Maybe I expected too much from this serious, slow-moving film, but aside from a few great moments, the grip is loose.

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Movie Preview: Breach

BuzzSugar — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:21:32 -0800

Breach opens this Friday, Feb. 16, and it looks like Ryan Phillippe is mumbling his way through yet another movie he doesn't deserve to be in. In this true-life tale that - like the Enron saga - just begs to be made into a movie, Phillippe plays young Eric O'Neill, an FBI agent hopeful assigned to work with renowned operative Robert Hanssen, played by the excellent Chris Cooper.

It turns out, however, that Hanssen is an FBI mole who has been eluding his own bureau for years and is suspected of having committed the worst breach in the history of U.S. intelligence. O'Neill is selected to acquire enough hard evidence to bring Hanssen down. I'll let you know when I post my review on Friday if Phillippe ruins what looks like an interesting story. To check out the trailer, read more

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