Tower Heist - It's Not Just a Robbery, It's Payback

Tower Heist

Tower Heist was brought into being around 6 years ago when Eddie Murphy had an idea for an all black Oceans 11 starring himself and others like Martin Lawrence and Chris Tucker, but as the idea was being formulated Eddie decided to leave the project and director Brett Ratner eventually came up with the film we have now with Murphy rejoining the cast.

The film centers around a high rise exclusive apartment building where apartments cost millions to buy and residents are waited on hand and foot, the place we would all love to live. The filming took place in New York City, on a budget of $85 million and Trump International Hotel & Tower was used for exterior filming.

Donald Trump allowed film makers access to some of his exclusive properties with one giving them the idea for Shaw's apartment, they also interviewed staff that work at some of the most exclusive apartment buildings so that they could get a feel for how they are run, from doormen, to maids and kitchen staff.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) has worked as building manager for a number of years and is loved by everybody even the billionaire owner Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) but when Shaw is arrested by the FBI for fraud in which it turns out he has lost or stolen $2 billion, and placed under house arrest in his penthouse apartment an act that if I am ever arrested it is the place I would love to be placed under house arrest. It has a rooftop swimming pool with a mural of a hundred dollar bill on its floor and Shaw has a 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso supposedly owned by Steve McQueen in the apartment. Josh needs to break the news to the employees that he has invested all their savings with Shaw and chances are it is all gone and Shaw will most likely go free.

Josh feeling let down by Shaw a man he trusted has it out with him and is fired, along with his brother in law Charlie (Casey Affleck) who is the buildings concierge, and the new lift boy Enrique (Michael Pena). Josh gets together with these ex employees and the maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) who it turns out has some skills at breaking into safes, after the buildings doorman Lester attempts to kill himself because he has lost his life savings.

The plan is to break into Shaw's penthouse where Josh is sure he is hiding $20 million, as none of the crew have any criminal skills apart from Odessa Josh turn to an old childhood friend Slide(Eddie Murphy) who is a petty criminal and together the attempt to put together a plan to rob secure penthouse that is guarded by the FBI. Eddie Murphy seems to be back in his old school street smart comedy performance along the lines of Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs.

The plot is a good one and with the likes of Matthew Broderick playing a broke investor squatting in the building who joins the crew and Tea Leoni playing the lead FBI role as the tough female lead. The trailers for the movie look promising and the soundtrack by Christophe Beck sets the mood for the film some of the scenes give the impression of a great movie but I dont want to spoil the movie by giving away scenes but Eddie Murphy is back to his best and gels well with the other stars who all play their roles perfectly.

Without having seen the movie, just the trailer, and scenes I think it looks a great film, it has a PG13 rating for language and sexual content and a 104 minute run time released by Universal the official site is Tower Heist.

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Top 5 Famous DNA Tests

DNA tests are not usually mainstream news on the world's media, but that isn't to say there aren't important or high profile DNA testing cases to report. In fact, over the last few decades DNA testing has played a growing role in the way we analyse the past and the way we interpret our future. Be it the determation of paternity through DNA Paternity testing or in establishing wider DNA links such as DNA forensic cases, our top 5 famous DNA tests reveal just how relevant DNA testing really is.

5. James Brown - The so-called 'Godfather of Soul' James Brown was subject to one of the most high profile DNA testing cases in recent history. The testing considered whether alleged children of the musician were in fact fathered by him, and a number of separate DNA paternity tests were processed in order to establish paternity. Of the 12 test submitted, only 2 have turned up to be positively identified as Brown's offspring - one of which is now a 45-year old woman.

4. Eddie Murphy - Modern comedy legend Eddie Murphy was involved in a high profile DNA testing case which particularly attracted the media spotlight and filled glossy column inches. His test was to establish paternity of the daughter of Melanie Brown (a.k.a. Mel B) of Spice Girls fame during a separation process. It was determined, following the collection and processing of samples from the child, mother and alleged father, that Eddie Murphy was indeed the father of his ex-partner's child.

3. Anna Nicole Smith - TV personality and model Anna Nicole Smith was thrust to the forefront of media scrutiny in her high-profile celebrity DNA testing case, where the paternity of her daughter was put to question. Initially, partner Howard K. Stern nominated himself as the likely father on national television, sparking the media storm surrounding the testing process - although DNA paternity testing methods ultimately proved ex-husband Larry Birkhead as the biological father of the child.

2. Marie Antoinette - French Queen and icon of history, Marie Antoinette was recently subject to advanced DNA sampling and testing techniques. DNA from a hair supposed to have been that of Antoinette was collected and tested with DNA obtained from the heart of King Louis XVII. Thanks to the advancement of DNA processing technologies, the samples were able to be matched to determine that a genetic link did in fact exist between the DNA samples, confirming the identity of the hair.

1. Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States of America, and is widely considered as one of the leading Founding Fathers of the modern constitution. However his image has been somewhat marred by allegations with origins of over 200 years that he had fathered children to his slave, Sally Hemmings. After DNA samples were recovered from relevant parties, it was determined that the alleged child Eston Hemmings did in fact share genetic material on the male side with Thomas Jefferson, although no firm conclusions were drawn as to whether that connection was with Jefferson personally.

In conclusion, it is clear to see from the above examples, the power of DNA testing and the role this has, and will continue to have, in our lives.

Kevin Camilleri writes articles for dna paternity test. Other articles written by the author related to paternity testing, home paternity test and paternity test kit can be found on the net.

Busted - Musicians Who Sang The Wrong Tune

Just as there are highly talented musical acts that never make the big time, there are musical acts that make the big time, only to never go anywhere. Some of these acts make the big time and make a fool of themselves, while others make the big time, make an impact, and make a quick getaway. Some are lucky enough to have at least one hit, while others are stuck with a few mediocre hits that come back to haunt them decades later. Some are loved for a while, only to fall from grace quickly, and some just never gain acceptance. The following is our list of the top five busted musicians, bands and solo acts who sang the wrong tune.

Milli Vanilli: Ah, Milli Vanilli. Just like our parents remember where they were when Elvis died, those of us who were children of the 1980's remember where we were when Milli Vanilli's secret came out. The singers that brought us "Girl You Know It's True," Milli Vanilli won a Grammy in 1990 for Best New Artist. This, however, was short lived after it was revealed that their talent had less to do with music, and more to do with lip singing. Still, those of us who were true fans didn't blame it on the duo; we blamed it on the rain.

Ashley Simpson: While performing on Saturday Night Live in fall of 2004, Ashley Simpson was caught pulling a "Milli Vanilli" when it was revealed she wasn't actually singing. This was followed by an ill-received performance at the Orange Bowl and a slug of condemnation. Still, Ashley Simpson has two huge things working for her: she's released two number one albums and she's young enough to bounce back from any criticism accrued. Plus, she can benefit from having her manager, who also happens to be her father, on her side. He seems just a tad crazy.

O-Town: A group that came together through the reality series, Making of the Band, O -Town got on the literal band wagon just a bit too late. As the boy band fad started to fade into the night, O-Town found that they were unable to gain substantial success. The group was together for only a short time and though they did release two albums, O-Town disappeared from the scene as quickly as they came into it. This is, however, old potatoes: the manager of the group, Lou Pearlman, apparently has more pressing worries on his mind.

Eddie Murphy: We love his stand up, we love his movies, we even love when he lends his voice to an animated donkey. We just don't love his music. Though he can actually hold a note quite well, the songs Eddie Murphy released have to be tunes that even he looks back on and says..."wha???" Still, Eddie did have two hits with "Put Your Mouth on Me" and "Party all the Time." The latter song was voted, in 2004, as number eight on the list of 50 Worst Songs of All Time by Blender magazine.

Gerardo: After playing the part of Ricky in the film, Can't Buy me Love, Gerardo Mejia became a singer...sort of. He was known more for his sexy appearance, his six packed abs, and his dance talent than he was for his booming voice. Still, he reached the top of the charts with his hit "Rico Suave," a hit that - admit it - you know you've sang along with. One of the first performers to merge Latin and English, Gerardo occasionally calls himself the "Latin Frank Sinatra." Uh....right.

Jennifer Jordan is a senior editor for http://iturbocharge.com. Possessing an infatuation with pop culture ? and a gift for stalking ? she keeps up on the latest news of the musical world.

Shrek Forever After

The theory is that Shrek Forever After is to be the last movie starring everyone's favourite green ogre voiced by Mike Myers. The title sounds pretty finale, but then again there are five movies called Final Destination, so you know. Still, whether or not this is the end, the fact is that this is a pretty good chapter in the life of Shrek and company.

Shrek is now living in his swamp with his wife Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and his three kids while his friends Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) drop in for a visit every day. On paper, he has a good life: a good house, nice kids, a great wife and a few pals. Yet, married life is getting to Shrek. He has no time for himself, Fiona keeps asking him to unclog a sewage pipe, the kids need their diapers changed, and Donkey keeps coming home uninvited with his half-donkey half-dragon mutant kids for play dates. (I still think these offsprings are the weirdest fairy tale creatures ever animated and quite frankly are a little disturbing to look at. Come on! A donkey plus a dragon? What do you tell the kids when they ask where mutant Donkey-Dragons come from?) To top it all off, a tour bus, or in this case tour carriage, keeps driving by while a guide is explaining to a bunch of tourists that in this swamp there lives a harmless ogre who is now married to a princess and neither of them would ever hurt a fly. Step right up folks! Watch the amazing harmless green muscle mountain! After a few days, that becomes annoying.

Eventually, Shrek snaps at his children's birthday party and leaves wishing he had never rescued Fiona in the first place. They say "beware what you wish for" but in a world populated with fairy tale creatures, that should be a law. Little does Shrek know that there is an evil little gnome, troll, or whatever the hell he is, called Rumpelstiltskin who knows about Shrek's troubles and gives an offer he should probably refuse, but doesn't because otherwise there would be no movie.

Shrek therefore signs a deal that makes him feared by all of mankind once again for one full day, in exchange for a day of his past. What Rumpel neglected to tell him, clever ego-tripping maniac that he is, is that the day Shrek gave away completely alters the past and creates a new present. Shrek is now wandering through a parallel universe where Rumpel in now king, ogres are hunted by witches, Donkey never met Shrek, and Puss in Boots needs help from Jennie Craig. The only way out: Shrek must once again woo Fiona and give her a kiss that will prove he is her true love. Hey, it worked before.

Despite a plot that is clearly inspired by Its a Wonderful Life (how corny was that particular masterpiece) this last Shrek movie has some funny moments and decent action scenes. A particularly inspired casting choice is Craig Robinson as Cookie, the cook for the ogre rebels fighting Rumpel. His chief concern is how close his food stand will be to the battle field once the fighting is over. Apparently, there is nothing like a little ass-whooping to make a bunch of ogre warriors hungry. Eddie Murphy still delivers some pretty good lines every now and then, and his character has a nice chemistry with Antonio Banderas' character. It probably can't be called on screen chemistry since these two actors are heard but never actually seen on screen.

The surprising thing is how good Walt Dohnr is at voicing Rumplestilskin. If you have no clue as to who Walt Dohnr is, that is not surprising since so far his body of work consists of supporting voices for Shrek the Third, and writing and art department credits on a few other animated movies. He voices Rumple as an evil egocentric who has the ability to suck you into a bad deal. Sounds like a salesmen on Wall Street.

The fact that DreamWorks gave the role of the villain to what is essentially an unknown actor confirms what I have been suspecting for a long time: Mike Myers is grossly overpaid for this particular role.

Dr Dolittle Film Review

Dr. Dolittle is a 1998 family comedy set in San Francisco. It stars Eddie Murphy as Dr. John Dolittle, Ossie Davis as Archer Dolittle, Oliver Platt as Dr. Mark Weller, and Peter Boyle as Calloway. The producers are John Davis (Garfield), Joseph M. Singer (Daylight), and David T. Friendly (My Girl). The director is Betty Thomas (I Spy).

The story is about a man named John Dolittle who lives in San Francisco. He can talk to and understand animals. His father thought there was something wrong with him and had the family dog taken away. Years passed and John never spoke to animals until one night after treating a patient, he accidentally hit a dog. When the dog got up and called him a "bonehead", he thought he was hearing things. The next day during a business meeting, he overheard some pigeons talking and panicked.

After the meeting he saw the dog from the previous night being taken to the pound and followed him to save him from being put to sleep. After he has a vet check the dog out, John decides to release it but the dog won't go away. He calls his family and, having overheard the dog barking, think he has bought them a dog. John takes Lucky the dog to his daughter's camp to show her. Later on, just before going to sleep, some animals come to John's door seeking help. They overwhelm him so he decides to help each of them, unbeknownst to his wife and daughter who are sleeping in the next room. After he finished, he was talking to Lucky about how alive he felt when he was treating the animals when an alcoholic monkey tells him about a suicidal tiger nearby. He agrees to help the tiger.

All is well until one day some rats outside his office ask him to help. John takes them into the office and treats one. That's when his wife and colleagues see him talking to the rats and think he is crazy. So they have him committed, temporarily. Meanwhile, the tiger is getting worse so Lucky rushes over to the hospital to tell the doctor but he doesn't want to hear it. He wants to block out all the animal voices and return to his normal life. But after overhearing a conversation between his daughter and father about being different, he has second thoughts.

There is a secret life message hidden in Dr. Dolittle. It is "Don't hide from who you are". Some people may think you are weird because of what you may be like or what you may do, but don't let it stop you. If you try to suppress who you are, you will end up miserable as John Dolittle was before he rediscovered his gift of communicating and understanding animals. At first, people thought he was crazy because he spoke to animals but soon they began to accept him for who he is and realize that this was his gift.

One other feature that caught my attention was the use of popular comedians as the voices of the animals. For example, Norm MacDonald was the voice of Lucky, the Dolittles' family dog. Ellen DeGeneres played Dolittle's dog when he was a child. Gilbert Gottfried appeared as the voice of the compulsive dog that Dolittle treats in the beginning. Chris Rock was Rodney's voice, Maya Dolittle's guinea pig. Paul Reubens also made a cameo appearance as the raccoon. This was probably done to add a sense of familiarity to the film and, thus, attract a wider audience.

To wrap, Dr. Dolittle is a film for the whole family. It entertains the old as well as the young audiences.

Kevin T. Dillehay has written nearly a hundred movie reviews from all genres. He provides a unique perspective on the movies you see all the time but may not stop and think about in depth. You are invited to check out his work at http://www.moviefilmreview.com/author/kmonk10.

DVD Pick: Tower Heist

Heist movies are a firm favorite. Though not every movie turns out to be an Inside Man or an Ocean's 11, there are some that have a lot of potential, and you would definitely love to see what they do with the characters that are so succinctly portrayed. We just got our hands on such, and we'd definitely say that this one has a future to itself. Here is a review of Tower Heist, starring Ben Affleck, Eddie Murphie, and others.

Tower Heist is set in an all service apartment service, where only the rich and the famous come to live. Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the floor manager, who has an affable air around himself, and is friends with everyone, from the bellboy to the manager of the hotel. In this hotel, like everyone where the rich and famous live, lives a billionaire investment banker, Straw, played by Alan Alda who takes time to give Kovacks tips on how to hire people.

It all comes crumbling down when the billionaire investment banker is caught by the SEC on insider trading, stock fraud, and a number of other cases. Of course, it should make no difference to Kovacks and Gang, he was just a person living in the hotel, but it turns out that Kovacks had given away the pension of the entire hotel to the billionaire to get it tripled. Stiller not only gets into a personal quagmire with everyone around, but his professional life suffers too, when he smashes a very valuable car in the investment banker's room, because one of his ex-colleagues tried to commit suicide, after he loses all his money to his investment ideas.

Kovacks now makes a ragtag team out of the three who followed him into the room to confront the billionaire, after he finds out from a sympathetic FBI agent that they have not yet got their hands on the cash cache that such frauds usually have. How he does that forms the rest of the movie.

To be frank, the movie is not quite intelligent as The Inside Man, and is not even quite as much racy as Fast and the Furious 5, but it has its sparkling moments. Stiller has all the awesome dialogues, and Eddie Murphy portrays a character in the right manner after a long, long while. Casey Affleck performs nicely as the on-off frenemy for Ben Stiller, and Matthew Broderick as the disgraced investment banker gives a good character to the movie too.

This movie is not for the hardcore heist fans, but for those who like a little bit of comedy about a bunch of madcap fellows who try to do something illegal - it might just be the DVD they would like to watch.The heist in itself is not all that great and there are several loopholes to the movie, but Stiller and Murphy do carry the movie on their shoulders.

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Norbit Movie Review

Last weekend, I visited my sister Saundra for a Memorial Day celebration. Our normal time together is always fun and exciting because we tend to shop until we drop. Nevertherless, we did find the time to watch Eddie Murphy's movie Norbit. In fact, my sister insisted that the family watch it together, maybe to encourage some family bonding. Well, this is my Norbit movie review of the good, the bad and the ugly with a few suggestions of improvements.

First, I think Eddie Murphy is a talented actor and comedian. I appreciate that he is able to play so many characters in a movie and make it almost believable to his audience.

Eddie plays the main character Norbit, a dazed and confused orphan that grows up to marry a large possessive woman. Oh yes, her character is also played by Eddie Murphy. In fact, he plays a series of characters, such as the Chinese man who owned the orphan home, one of his wife's brothers and one of the senior citizens. I think it's creative to play other characters and to a younger audience this is the type of humor they want to see. However, to the adult movie viewer, I think Eddie sometimes plays with racial undertones, such as the Chinese man saying that he may want to open a dry cleaners towards the end of the movie. C'mon, why does it have to be a Dry Cleaning business? What are you trying to say? Again kids will not get the hidden messages but adults will.

Secondly, I think the movie has a great plot and subplot. The main plot is Norbit's childhood sweetheart is trying to buy the orphan home but his wife's brother's have other ideas for owning the property. The subplot is Norbit's unhappiness with his marriage and his inability to confront his wife. I think this contributes to the rising action and climax of the story. Not to mention, that it keeps you entertained throughout.

Another positive aspect of the movie is the casts. I am a big Cuba Gooding Jr. fan. So I would recommend watching the film to see him in a comedy. Cuba is a diverse actor that has tried various genres to increase his many talents.

Lastly, despite my issues with some of the undertones, I think Norbit is a fun and enjoyable movie that is great for families.

Sophie Jaclis exposes her readers to a wide range of topics, from Dating, Movie Reviews, Health and Fitness issues, Online Marketing tips, and New Affiliate Programs. Her motto is to keep things simple, informative and straight to the point. Please visit http://www.lisajac.com/dating-chat-room and http://www.lisajac.com/moviereviewsforfamilies for the latest information and free ebook downloads.