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Thursday, December 22, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol
On assignment in Budapest to intercept a courier working for a person of interest code-named "Cobalt", IMF agent Trevor Hanaway is killed by assassin Sabine Moreau. Hanaway's team leader, Jane Carter, and newly promoted field agent Benji Dunn extract Ethan Hunt and Hunt's source Bogdan from a Moscow prison. Hunt is recruited to lead Carter and Dunn on mission to infiltrate secret Moscow Kremlin archives and locate files identifying Cobalt. An unknown person broadcasts across the IMF frequency, alerting the Russians to Hunt's team. Although Hunt, Dunn and Carter escape, a bomb destroys the Kremlin. Russian agent Sidirov accuses Hunt of masterminding the attack.
Hunt escapes and is extracted from the city by the IMF. The Russians have branded the attack as an act of war by the US. The US president activates "Ghost Protocol", a black operation contingency that disavows the entire IMF. Hunt and his team are to take the blame for the attack. However, the IMF will allow Hunt and his team to escape from government custody so that they may operate to track down Cobalt. However, before Hunt can escape, the IMF's secretary is killed by Russian security forces led by Sidirov, leaving Hunt and IMF analyst William Brandt to find their own way out.
The team identifies Cobalt as Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist. Believing the weak must die for the strong to survive, he bombed the Kremlin and acquired a Russian nuclear launch-control device, and now needs its codes from the Budapest courier in order to launch a nuclear missile at America.
The exchange between Moreau and Hendricks' right-hand man, Wistrom, is due to take place at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. There Hunt's team-members separately convince Moreau and Winstrom that they have made the exchange with one another. However, Moreau identifies Brandt as an agent. While Hunt chases Winstrom — only to realize Winstrom is actually Hendricks in disguise as he escapes with the codes — Carter detains Moreau. Moreau attempts to kill the inexperienced Dunn, and Carter throws her out a window to her death. Brandt accuses Carter of compromising the mission for revenge against Moreau, but Hunt accuses Brandt of keeping secrets from them, as he has displayed fighting skills atypical of an analyst. While Hunt seeks more information from Bogdan, Brandt admits he was assigned as security detail to Hunt and his wife Julia while on assignment in Croatia six years ago. Julia was killed by a Serbian hit squad, leading to Ethan pursuing and killing them before being caught by the Russians and sent to prison.
Bogdan and his arms-dealer cousin inform Hunt that Hendricks will be traveling to Mumbai. Hendricks facilitated the sale of a defunct Soviet military satellite to Indian telecommunications entrepreneur Brij Nath, and this satellite could be used to transmit missile-firing instructions. While Brandt and Dunn infiltrate the server room to take the satellite offline, Carter, at a party, gets Nath to reveal the satellite override code. But Hendricks has anticipated Hunt's plan and takes Nath's servers offline before sending a signal from a television broadcasting tower to a Russian nuclear submarine in the Pacific. The submarine fires on San Francisco. Hunt goes after Hendricks and the launch device while Carter attempts to bring the broadcast station back online with the help of Dunn and Brandt. Hunt and Hendricks fight over the launch-control device before Hendricks jumps to his death with it. Winstrom ambushes Brandt but is killed by Dunn, allowing Brandt to restore power to the servers and enabling Hunt to deactivate the missile before it can detonate. He is confronted by Sidirov, who sees that he has stopped the missile, proving that the IMF is innocent in the Kremlin bombing.
The team reconvenes several weeks later, where Hunt issues them new assignments. Brandt refuses to accept the mission, but Hunt reveals that Julia's death was staged. Realizing he could not protect her forever, he arranged to fake her death, using it as a pretext to infiltrate a Russian prison and get close to Bogdan, an IMF source on Hendricks. Relieved of his guilt, Brandt accepts the mission given to him while Hunt watches Julia from afar. Watching her go, he listens to a mission briefing of his own before disappearing into the night.
Hunt escapes and is extracted from the city by the IMF. The Russians have branded the attack as an act of war by the US. The US president activates "Ghost Protocol", a black operation contingency that disavows the entire IMF. Hunt and his team are to take the blame for the attack. However, the IMF will allow Hunt and his team to escape from government custody so that they may operate to track down Cobalt. However, before Hunt can escape, the IMF's secretary is killed by Russian security forces led by Sidirov, leaving Hunt and IMF analyst William Brandt to find their own way out.
The team identifies Cobalt as Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist. Believing the weak must die for the strong to survive, he bombed the Kremlin and acquired a Russian nuclear launch-control device, and now needs its codes from the Budapest courier in order to launch a nuclear missile at America.
The exchange between Moreau and Hendricks' right-hand man, Wistrom, is due to take place at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. There Hunt's team-members separately convince Moreau and Winstrom that they have made the exchange with one another. However, Moreau identifies Brandt as an agent. While Hunt chases Winstrom — only to realize Winstrom is actually Hendricks in disguise as he escapes with the codes — Carter detains Moreau. Moreau attempts to kill the inexperienced Dunn, and Carter throws her out a window to her death. Brandt accuses Carter of compromising the mission for revenge against Moreau, but Hunt accuses Brandt of keeping secrets from them, as he has displayed fighting skills atypical of an analyst. While Hunt seeks more information from Bogdan, Brandt admits he was assigned as security detail to Hunt and his wife Julia while on assignment in Croatia six years ago. Julia was killed by a Serbian hit squad, leading to Ethan pursuing and killing them before being caught by the Russians and sent to prison.
Bogdan and his arms-dealer cousin inform Hunt that Hendricks will be traveling to Mumbai. Hendricks facilitated the sale of a defunct Soviet military satellite to Indian telecommunications entrepreneur Brij Nath, and this satellite could be used to transmit missile-firing instructions. While Brandt and Dunn infiltrate the server room to take the satellite offline, Carter, at a party, gets Nath to reveal the satellite override code. But Hendricks has anticipated Hunt's plan and takes Nath's servers offline before sending a signal from a television broadcasting tower to a Russian nuclear submarine in the Pacific. The submarine fires on San Francisco. Hunt goes after Hendricks and the launch device while Carter attempts to bring the broadcast station back online with the help of Dunn and Brandt. Hunt and Hendricks fight over the launch-control device before Hendricks jumps to his death with it. Winstrom ambushes Brandt but is killed by Dunn, allowing Brandt to restore power to the servers and enabling Hunt to deactivate the missile before it can detonate. He is confronted by Sidirov, who sees that he has stopped the missile, proving that the IMF is innocent in the Kremlin bombing.
Monday, December 5, 2011
New Years Eve 12/9/11
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Review Of Hugo
mysterious mechanical man with the ability to write and draw holds a place of honor in Hugo, Martin Scorsese's exquisite adaptation of Brian Selznick's magical, award-winning children's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. And the author's description of the automaton's construction — ''A cascade of perfect movements, with hundreds of brilliantly calibrated actions'' — is an equally good way to describe Scorsese's achievement in making art that uses the most advanced of technology to sing a song of love to the movies, from the very dawn of the medium. For a lay audience, the result is a haunting, piquant melodrama about childhood dreams and yearnings, enhanced with a pleasant survey course in early film history. (It made me cry, without guilt.) For more advanced cinephiles, the result is a cabinet of wonders in which each shot, each experiment in 3-D perspective, and, indeed, each scene in the story's progression can be linked to what we already know about Scorsese, his work, and his
well-known cinematic passions. A niggler
might note that every element is at times
an eensy bit too perfectly meshed and worked over. Today, I don't feel like niggling.
Hugo is played with jolting melodramatic pathos — and the genetic blessing of bottomless, pale blue eyes — by Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas). He is a sad young orphan who keeps the clocks running in a bustling 1930s Parisian train station patrolled by a limping gendarme. (As hammed up by Sacha Baron Cohen, the character constitutes one of the movie's few tonal dissonances.) Hugo is also the patient tinkerer who works after hours in his clock-tower hideaway repairing the automaton, gear by gear. Then a bitter train-station toy-shop keeper (Ben Kingsley at his best) and his intrepid goddaughter (Let Me In's Chloë Grace Moretz, kick-ass) set the boy on a path of discovery. Hugo both ticks and flies by, a marvel meant to be pulled from the cabinet and enjoyed.by lisa schwarzbaum
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