How to Train Your Dragon

Studio: Dreamworks.

Voice Talent: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Craig Ferguson, and David Tennant

Plot Synopsis:

In the village of Berk... where Vikings have lived for 7 generations... fighting dragons is an everyday occurrence... Hordes of dragons often swoop down on the village to carry of the livestock, people and any other food they can find whereas the Vikings band together to try and fight them off. The leader of this village is the mighty Stoick the Vast. A massive red haired warrior who dispatched dragons with ease.

Hiccup, Stoick's son, is not strong like the other Vikings, instead he has a keen mind and comes up with inventions which are geared towards the capturing and killing of dragons. Sick of the constant teasing and the overall bullying of the other kids and adults, Hiccup decides to venture outside during a dragon raid to try and catch or kill a dragon. Hiccup sets his sights on the rare and dangerous Night Fury: a breed of dragon that has never even been seen. using the catapult that he invented, Hiccup manages to shoot one down but is unable to convince the other Vikings that he has.

He decides to try and find the dragons body to prove that he had indeed brought one down and discovers that the dragon had indeed been downed... but was still alive... Hiccup prepared to strike the final blow but in the end was unable to bring himself to kill the defenceless creature. He cut the ropes which tied the dragon up and released him. The dragon attacked Hiccup and knocked him to one side before taking off haphazardly and flying away...

Hiccup realizes that he is unable to become a dragon slayer like he wanted to and returns home dejected only to find that his father had enrolled him in dragon slayer training. Unable to protest Hiccup attends the training sessions only to be mocked by his classmates and also his love interest Astrid.

He tries to learn more about dragons by reading a viking manual only to find that all dragons were merely classified according to how dangerous they were and that all vikings were supposed to kill all dragons on sight. Te one exception to this rule was the Night Fury breed of dragon which no one had ever seen and lived to tell the tale... the manual advised that in the event of an encounter with a Night Fury... one should just hide and hope it does not find them. Intrigued by the fact that the Night Fury that he had brought down had not killed him, Hiccup returned to the forest only to find the Night Fury trapped in a canyon, unable to fly out since his tail had been damaged.

Hiccup tried to approach the dragon slowly and they soon built up a bond with Hiccup bringing food for the dragon (whom he names "Toothless") and Toothless allowa Hiccup to touch and stroke him. Hiccup builds a replacement tail section for Toothless with his mechanical knowhow and mounts it on him. However the tail is not perfect and Toothless is unable to fly freely. After several iterations, hiccup succeeds in making a design wherein he is able to ride Toothless and fly high in the sky and perform aerobatics and suchlike. In the meantime he has also been acing his dragon slaying lessons since his experiences with Toothless have taught him about the weaknesses of dragons.

However Astrid suspects that Hiccup is hiding something. How could a wimp like Hiccup become so good at handling dragons in such a short time? She follows him and discovers his secret... what will happen next? A grand adventure thats what! Watch the movie to learn more!!

My Thoughts:

Voice Talent: Nordic accents seemed a trifle forced... but I guess I can let that slide...

Animation: Top notch... there is a reason Dreamworks is one of the best studios in the business and it lives up to its name yet again...

Story: Based off a book which I havent read, but I loved it. An adventure of epic proportions and the coming of age story of a young boy I think this movie will be even more of a treat in 3D. Visuals were all stunning and even the end of the movie credit rolls had good art going into them. All I can say is that it blows every post Wall E animated movie clean out the water... a must watch by any standards.

Overall Score: 95% Cant find much of anything to take points off for, but I dont ever give out perfect scores either.

Green Zone

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Matt Damon, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Brendan Gleeson

Plot Synopsis:

Matt Damon plays the role of Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller serving in Iraq as part of a WMD search team. He is frustrated by the faulty intelligence that he is being fed by his superiors which always leads him to sites with no visible evidence of ever having been used to produce or store WMD's. He becomes convinced that the intelligence which they are being given (supposedly by a high level Iraqi general codenamed "Magellan") is fake. At a debriefing, Miller (Damon) brings up the point that the majority of the intel given to him is inaccurate and anonymous, stating that on his last three attempts to find WMDs, his team had come up with nothing. High-ranking officials quickly debunk Miller's theory about the intelligence being false.

During one such wild goose chase he is approached by a handicapped Iraqi man who calls himself Freedie. He informs Miller about a secret meeting of high level Iraqi generals taking place nearby. Sick of his fools errands... Miller decides to go off mission and try to capture the generals.

The meeting happens to be that of General Al Rawi... a top Iraqi general and his aides who have been in hiding in Baghdad. Many of his aides propose fighting other Iraqi forces and American forces, however Al-Rawi suggests that they remain where they are and wait until the Americans arrive and perhaps make the Iraqi army an offer to join their forces.

Miller raids the meeting... but nearly all of the high ranking generals (Including Al-Rawi) escape... Miller recovers a booklet from one of the captured men (Syeed Hamza) and is interrogating him about the booklets significance when a special forces team arrived and summarily takes custody of his prisoners and demands that Miller hand over all materials recovered from the prisoners. Despite Millers protestations the Special forces officers persist in trying to search him. A scuffle ensues where Miller manages to hide the book in Freddies pocket.

The Special Forces team had been dispatched by Clark Poundstone, a high ranking US official who was supposedly the one in charge of Magellan.

Miller reports the happenings of the day to Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) a CIA officer he had met after the briefing where he had been reprimanded for questioning the intelligence that was being given to him. Miller gives him the booklet, and Martin confirmed that the booklet contained the location of the safe houses of Al Rawi and his aides.

Martin was of the opinion that Al Rawi would be useful in reestablishing order in post-war Iraq... he felt that the erstwhile Iraqi Army had to play an integral part in any post war system of government... Miller was mortified by Martins idea of dealing with someone like Al Rawi who had been responsible for thousands of deaths under Saddams reign. Martin told Miller that he should not be naive and that hard choices had to be made unless he wanted the situation to deteriorate further and for more people to die. He suggested that they contact Al Rawi and make a deal with him to find out the locations of WMD caches and promise him a role in the future Govt. of Iraq.

Poundstone however tries to stymie their plans and forcibly takes possession of the booklet from Martin. He viciously hunts Al Rawi and all his aides with orders to kill and not capture. Why is he willing to kill someone who could be such a valuable source of intelligence... perhaps better than "Magellan"? Watch the movie and find out!

My Thoughts:

Acting: Well... there is so much action in the movie... that there is no real acting going on...

but there were intense scenes and Damon and Gleeson did a fine job IMO. Kinnear was okay... he made his character look like a douchebag like he was supposed to... The actors who played Al Rawi and Freddie did the best work IMO... that meeting scene was superb...

Story: Dont know how well it will be received by the American public... I liked it. Truth be told I was always skeptical of the WMD claims. Powell talking about WMDS being made in the back of trucks which would be on the move in the desert seemed to be far fetched to me. The story also didnt meander at any time. It was tight and kept you riveted to your seat the whole way through. Shame that I was able to predict the ending though my friends all cursed me for a full hour after the movie.

Overall Score: 75% Points off due to the fact that I wanted to see more of what happened in the end... but they sorta just fade out and allow us to assume what may have happened... then theres other minor stuff... plus the fact that Hurt Locker really kinda makes every other Iraq War movie look mediocre by comparison... if you read worse reviews elsewhere... its probably because some people really get offended by the conspiracy theories that this movie puts forward...