Remember Bulletproof Monk starring Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott? It's about a magical Tibetan monk who takes in a troubled young man under his wing to train to protect a sacred scroll. The movie follows in the footsteps of the classic master-apprentice genre that used to be popular in the 1970s and 1980s in kung-fu movies. It's even used in the Star Wars series in the story of Luke Skywalker' s growth as a Jedi knight.

Now there's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (another Disney and Bruckheimer films production), and this one's really like Bulletproof Monk on steroids (maybe Bruckheimer is to blame). While the story is also about a teacher and his student, it's really based on an old poem that Disney has used before in a very well known animated movie (more on this later).

In the Nicolas Cage movie, Sorcerer's Apprentice, the age old story of an old, wise guy teaching a kooky kid the tricks of a trade is again in play. This time, the old master isn't exactly what you would expect. He's a no-nonsense character who plays with your mind - a trickster with a crazy sense of humor, especially when it comes to training goofy kids. Here's one of the many acting faces of Nicolas Cage and it's an amusing one. Just look at how ha made his face look as cuddly as a teddy bear's in the picture on top. That's his acting magic at work. There's more of Nicolas Cage's facial expressions in this link.

Cage plays the sorcerer in this movie sporting unkempt hair and a weary attitude. But it's a character who's got heart in his quest to find the one who will be a force of good on earth and train him as an apprentice before he fulfills his destiny. The apprentice is played by Jay Baruchel, who without his usual beard and serious face looks pretty much the ideal apprentice for Cage's magician. The way his hair is made up in the movie reminds us of eighties pop singer Rick Astley. Baruchel doesn't use a deep voice in Sorcerer's Apprentice, though. The squeaky version is what always works for the role of apprentice.

The Disney touch is all over the movie and is reminiscent of the Mickey Mouse short piece (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) in the original Fantasia animated movie, and that's actually the basis for this film. The premise comes from Goethe's poem that tells the story of a sorcerer's apprentice who's left alone in the workshop to do chores. He uses magic to animate a broom, but the spell backfires, and of course, creates a mess bigger than the dirty floor. The poem ends with the poet saying that only the master should call powerful spirits.

On the other hand, Bruckheimer's intensity is obvious in the slick machismo action scenes set in an urban sprawl where things get turned upside down and inside out with the help of - what else, but sorcery. The effects used for the magical sequences will make you stop blinking seconds at a time and wonder how the morphing transitions were made so smooth, they're magical. Well, we all know everything's done with computers these days and that's where the real magic comes from.

An actress to watch out for in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is Teresa Palmer.

Nicolas Cage Enters the Season of the Witch

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