Rombie said: Craig's accent probably is once again the issue but it's as noticable as the issues we've discussed earlier in Cowboy's & Aliens.

Seriously? What kind of accent is he trying to do in Tattoo? Isn't it set in Europe? I figure no accent required, except for maybe when they say the Swedish names.

Couple noteworthy films to add:

Drive: We thoroughly enjoyed this 80's style, Michael Mann-inspired crime drama in which a part-time stunt driver/part-time getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) who's about to become a legit race car driver falls for a married mother (Carey Mulligan) and decides to help her recently paroled convict husband pull off a heist to pay off outstanding debts. It's more style than substance at times, but it is a fun movie to watch and even Gosling's usual affected understatedness doesn't put you off the character. The ending isn't the strongest, but it's time spent you won't regret.

What's Your Number?: Avoid like the plague. We watched the first 15 to 20 minutes of this and pulled it out. A comedy of any caliber, even a romantic one, needs to make a big splash of some kind at the beginning in order to maintain interest. We found this so insipid, unfunny and slow moving that we decided we didn't have time to waste on it.

Killing Bono: This was a fairly interesting look into the formation of U2 and the band that languished in their shadow, Shook Up. Ben Barnes is funny as the front man of Shook Up, who makes one bad decision after another on behalf of both his band and his brother, who was offered a spot in U2 by Bono but Barnes refused on his behalf and kept the information from him for 10 years. Rock biopic lovers will appreciate.

Just got a copy of the new The Thing, and will watch it this weekend, work willing.

We watched The Thing 2011 version on DVD, Friday night. The critical response on this one overall was not good, but in watching it I feel like they missed the point entirely. The film, in my opinion, goes to great lengths to make itself exactly like, and in some cases no better or worse than, a Carpenter 80's flick. There is even an anti-Feminist tension between the lead (some cute girl from a lot of films, but I forget her name) and the head Norwegian scientist just to smack home how 80's this film is. If a film were released shortly before John Carpenter's The Thing, this would definitely be it. I feel like it was a good move to make the lead a female, because how are you ever going to come up with a leading character that was as good in this situation as Big Boss/Snake Pliskin himself, Kurt Russell? And I was glad to see a lot of the shots being filmed the same, lit the same. The movie goes to great lengths to recreate and explain the "crime scene" we see at the beginning of the Carpenter flick.

However most of the creature effects they originally shot have been replaced with CG, all because the director didn't think they looked good in post. CG would definitely NOT be in an 80's prequel, and that's where I feel like the film dropped the ball a little bit. Especially after I retweeted stories and blog posts about how the effects were all going to be creature animatronics just like the original, which led me to believe they were on a better path to recreating 80's horror. If that was a plan at one point, they really should have stuck with it. I was honestly intrigued to see what they could do with animatronics nowadays, to see if the tech has come any distance in the last thirty years. I wouldn't have minded a "little" CG here and there just to clean up. But this is a full on effects showcase through some scenes, and I also feel like we see The Things way too often. The film is also missing the over-the-top paranoia that the original brought on so nicely, in stages of dialog. Here, it's like the lead figures out everything from one peep through a microscope and suddenly has everyone standing on opposite sides of the room; there's no suspenseful buildup of distrust and animosity, which the original did so well.

So is it good or bad? It's worth a view I guess, especially if you're a fan of the original like me. I was skeptical, given exactly how much I love the original, but I can see some definite effort through the production and music score to capture the essence of the original. And it's a frightening experience, certainly; I cringed during all the scenes where actors were leaning over Thing carcasses, expecting the bodies to do something horrible at any second, only to have the scene draw out with the actors continuing to lean. Frankly, it's good stuff in its own right, and it also tries to pay due homage to the original. So it's good, but only marginally. I would probably score it a solid 67% out of 100%, which is a good deal higher than Rotten Tomatoes.