First off, let me say, Never Forget!
*ahem * Now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at what's been happening since the last post: Final Destination 4 did moderately well thanks to the gimmick of its 3D presentation. (is 3D the way to save Hollywood? Maybe for a year or two. C'mon, Hollywood, you know how fast we get over this faddish crap. How about quality movies?) Otherwise, Halloween 2 tanked, Gamer tanked, Extract tanked.
A quick note, did anyone even know what Extract was about? Sure, Mike Judge of Office Space and there's some sex jokes, but did the trailers even imply that Mila Kunis was a con-artist trying to swindle the company? Or that Jason Bateman refuses to sleep with Mila unless his wife cheats on him first, and so goes about trying to hire a male-prostitute to seduce his wife? This is funny stuff, not even sploilers as they're pretty much the entire plot, aren't implied at all by the trailer, which tries to sell the movie entirely off of Bateman smoking a lot of dope. Marketing Fail.
I also feel bad for Gamer, as I like the genre, but overall its another Death Race, its another Crank, its another UGH!
When it comes down to it, I'd recommend seeing District 9 again this weekend. It gets better upon re-watching, now that I'm not completely taken off-guard by the protagonist's extreme douche-ness. For a rookie director on 30 Mil, its quite an enjoyable feat.
That aside, if you're dying to see something new this weekend, make it '9'. I shouldn't have to tell you why Sorority Row is only worth seeing to MST3K. Whiteout with the sexy Kate Beckinsale has an interesting premise, catching a murderer before he and his tracks are forever lost to an arctic snowstorm, but Dark Castle Entertainment has always managed to disappoint. I grant you, they're trying to step it up with good production values on Orphan, and the upcoming Ninja Assassin has already got my money, but...
*ahem * Now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at what's been happening since the last post: Final Destination 4 did moderately well thanks to the gimmick of its 3D presentation. (is 3D the way to save Hollywood? Maybe for a year or two. C'mon, Hollywood, you know how fast we get over this faddish crap. How about quality movies?) Otherwise, Halloween 2 tanked, Gamer tanked, Extract tanked.
A quick note, did anyone even know what Extract was about? Sure, Mike Judge of Office Space and there's some sex jokes, but did the trailers even imply that Mila Kunis was a con-artist trying to swindle the company? Or that Jason Bateman refuses to sleep with Mila unless his wife cheats on him first, and so goes about trying to hire a male-prostitute to seduce his wife? This is funny stuff, not even sploilers as they're pretty much the entire plot, aren't implied at all by the trailer, which tries to sell the movie entirely off of Bateman smoking a lot of dope. Marketing Fail.
I also feel bad for Gamer, as I like the genre, but overall its another Death Race, its another Crank, its another UGH!
When it comes down to it, I'd recommend seeing District 9 again this weekend. It gets better upon re-watching, now that I'm not completely taken off-guard by the protagonist's extreme douche-ness. For a rookie director on 30 Mil, its quite an enjoyable feat.
That aside, if you're dying to see something new this weekend, make it '9'. I shouldn't have to tell you why Sorority Row is only worth seeing to MST3K. Whiteout with the sexy Kate Beckinsale has an interesting premise, catching a murderer before he and his tracks are forever lost to an arctic snowstorm, but Dark Castle Entertainment has always managed to disappoint. I grant you, they're trying to step it up with good production values on Orphan, and the upcoming Ninja Assassin has already got my money, but...
If anything can be said about it, its that its short. I think, regrettably, that's what most people will notice first. Complete with beginning and ending credits, the film runs a meager 79 minutes.
Suddenly, I'm reminded of when my mom took me to see Land Before Time as a kid. Despite the fact that I enjoyed it, mission accomplished, Mom could do nothing but complain of the 1 hour run-time. I hadn't noticed, it seemed epic to the 7-year-old me. But for her it just wasn't enough bang for the buck.
This short running time does seem to hurt the movie. It points out how little plot there is to develop, and it doesn't give enough time to instead develop the characters or interesting creative aspects of the movie.
Don't get me wrong, the animation is gorgeous, and the creature and character designs are very imaginative. Visually, the film is a wonderful, though, I won't say ground-breaking. Its hard for action-based CG movies to compete with most video game cut-scenes these days. In fact, you need to have a lot of substance in an animated movie to appeal to the game-crazy juvenile to 30's adventure demographic.
Is that substance there? Not really. Character-wise, you've got curious hero, coward, old-miser, action-chick, bruiser, crazy guy who speak prophecies, and the twins. (Because every goddamned niche movie has to have some psychic twins, often identical, be it Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Tomax and Xamot in GIJoe. Its not cool anymore guys, knock it off.) Everyone gives you enough characterization for you to predict their path in the movie, but not enough to really feel for anybody. Most beloved to me was #8 (Bruiser), not only for looking the most muppet-ish, but also for using a big, red, cartoony magnet stuck to his head to get high (complete with bubbly bong noises).
The story itself was nothing too new either. Man makes machines, machines become intelligent, machines turn on man, apocalypse. The doll-men themselves where the only really new invention for the film. Anybody else getting tired of science always being the villain? “Oh, our hubris has killed us!” Are we as a society still so afraid of technology? Machines here and in the Matrix and in Terminator, cloning is evil in 6th Day, The Island, and Moon. Anybody ever made a movie where cloning or intelligent machines saved the world?
Despite the lack of original story elements, there are a couple cool devices to be found. The soul-transfer machine being particularly nifty.
In the end, 9 is still everything I expect from Tim Burton (produced or directed), style over substance. He has a look to his trailers that always gets my butt in a seat, but none of his films ever leave me satisfied. There are good ideas to be found in all his movies, but to date, only Batman and Nightmare Before Christmas really feel complete.
I'm on to you, Mr. Burton.
Suddenly, I'm reminded of when my mom took me to see Land Before Time as a kid. Despite the fact that I enjoyed it, mission accomplished, Mom could do nothing but complain of the 1 hour run-time. I hadn't noticed, it seemed epic to the 7-year-old me. But for her it just wasn't enough bang for the buck.
This short running time does seem to hurt the movie. It points out how little plot there is to develop, and it doesn't give enough time to instead develop the characters or interesting creative aspects of the movie.
Don't get me wrong, the animation is gorgeous, and the creature and character designs are very imaginative. Visually, the film is a wonderful, though, I won't say ground-breaking. Its hard for action-based CG movies to compete with most video game cut-scenes these days. In fact, you need to have a lot of substance in an animated movie to appeal to the game-crazy juvenile to 30's adventure demographic.
Is that substance there? Not really. Character-wise, you've got curious hero, coward, old-miser, action-chick, bruiser, crazy guy who speak prophecies, and the twins. (Because every goddamned niche movie has to have some psychic twins, often identical, be it Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Tomax and Xamot in GIJoe. Its not cool anymore guys, knock it off.) Everyone gives you enough characterization for you to predict their path in the movie, but not enough to really feel for anybody. Most beloved to me was #8 (Bruiser), not only for looking the most muppet-ish, but also for using a big, red, cartoony magnet stuck to his head to get high (complete with bubbly bong noises).
The story itself was nothing too new either. Man makes machines, machines become intelligent, machines turn on man, apocalypse. The doll-men themselves where the only really new invention for the film. Anybody else getting tired of science always being the villain? “Oh, our hubris has killed us!” Are we as a society still so afraid of technology? Machines here and in the Matrix and in Terminator, cloning is evil in 6th Day, The Island, and Moon. Anybody ever made a movie where cloning or intelligent machines saved the world?
Despite the lack of original story elements, there are a couple cool devices to be found. The soul-transfer machine being particularly nifty.
In the end, 9 is still everything I expect from Tim Burton (produced or directed), style over substance. He has a look to his trailers that always gets my butt in a seat, but none of his films ever leave me satisfied. There are good ideas to be found in all his movies, but to date, only Batman and Nightmare Before Christmas really feel complete.
I'm on to you, Mr. Burton.
If you feel like skipping the theater altogether this weekend, and I can't blame you, hit the rentals for some hidden gold you might have missed. I went to Blockbuster yesterday, and was completely taken off-guard by this find:
Timecrimes (Lost Cronocrimines) (2007)
Don't be fooled by the shitty-looking package, this is a fantastic movie. If it hadn't been for the glowing review from Roger Ebert on the package, I might have disregarded it entirely. Looking closer, I discovered this was released by Six-Shooter Films and Magnet Entertainment, the same group that snatched up the rights to the fantastic Let the Right One In. Seems this group is getting cheap distribution on excellent foreign films and bringing them over before the inevitable US remakes. Good work, guys. Get a new package designer.
The Spanish film takes a moment to get into. The initial set-up seems so goofy, until the first big revelation is made. A man, peering into the surrounding woods through his binoculars, sees a girl stripping in the woods. Going in for a closer look, he is attacked by a bandaged man. Frightened, he seeks shelter at a nearby lab where he stumbles upon a time machine, and gets shot back several hours into the past.
Its too big of a coincidence, until its revealed that he himself is the original bandaged assailant. This is only the beginning of his torment, though, as he must now attack his past self into order to get him into the time machine, so that only one of himself exists in the time-line. Through his inexperienced mucking about in the 4th Dimension, he's burdened with heavier and heavier tasks to perform to stop there from being a paradox in time, discovering all the while notions of non-linear time and predestination.
If you can get past the initial set-up to see why everything works out the way it does, you'll be treated to an excellent time-travel film. Reminiscent of non-linear films like Memento, Timecrimes forces you to pay attention to all the details of the dilemma, and is a very rewarding sci-fi genre film. This feels like an old-school, HG Wells short-story, exploring an ordinary man bound by the trapping of String-Theory.
Don't be fooled by the shitty-looking package, this is a fantastic movie. If it hadn't been for the glowing review from Roger Ebert on the package, I might have disregarded it entirely. Looking closer, I discovered this was released by Six-Shooter Films and Magnet Entertainment, the same group that snatched up the rights to the fantastic Let the Right One In. Seems this group is getting cheap distribution on excellent foreign films and bringing them over before the inevitable US remakes. Good work, guys. Get a new package designer.
The Spanish film takes a moment to get into. The initial set-up seems so goofy, until the first big revelation is made. A man, peering into the surrounding woods through his binoculars, sees a girl stripping in the woods. Going in for a closer look, he is attacked by a bandaged man. Frightened, he seeks shelter at a nearby lab where he stumbles upon a time machine, and gets shot back several hours into the past.
Its too big of a coincidence, until its revealed that he himself is the original bandaged assailant. This is only the beginning of his torment, though, as he must now attack his past self into order to get him into the time machine, so that only one of himself exists in the time-line. Through his inexperienced mucking about in the 4th Dimension, he's burdened with heavier and heavier tasks to perform to stop there from being a paradox in time, discovering all the while notions of non-linear time and predestination.
If you can get past the initial set-up to see why everything works out the way it does, you'll be treated to an excellent time-travel film. Reminiscent of non-linear films like Memento, Timecrimes forces you to pay attention to all the details of the dilemma, and is a very rewarding sci-fi genre film. This feels like an old-school, HG Wells short-story, exploring an ordinary man bound by the trapping of String-Theory.
House (1986)
As a kid, I really enjoyed this movie as a horror and a comedy. Now, it can only be viewed as comedy. Aside from a decent performance by Richard Moll as the tortured soul of Big Ben, there's nothing that can be taken seriously anymore.
The premise is pretty good, if a little disjointed; a Vietnam vet is haunted by the ghost of a squad-mate he left behind in the bush to be slowly tortured to death by 'Charlie'. Why the ghost chooses to haunt the house of the vet's aunt is beyond me, but he lucks out as his intended victim later moves into the house. Seems like he could have cut out the middle-man by haunting the vet directly, but I guess Apartment isn't as cool of a title.
None of the scares work anymore. Everything looks very dated and cheesy. Some of the laughs still work, and its always fun to see George Wendt on screen, but the laughs and adventure are all vastly inferior to 1987's House II: The Second Story, which has also become tame enough as a horror movie to now make a pretty acceptable kids' show.
House is worth a lark and the dollar I paid for it, just to see some old cheesy horror, but if you can, skip it and go straight for the sequel, which remains a pretty original piece of cinema, to say the least. From a simple ghost story, House II developed the namesake shelter into a series of temporal vortices, each one full of new creatures and adventures. Plus its got that one guy from Fright Night and a zombie horse. You can't lose.
On the comics front, I've been hitting old issues. Not a lot to entice me into new books, other than current Green Lantern and Flash. Good stuff, both of those. Otherwise, I've dug out my old
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles
The editions I have are from First Graphic Novels and collect the original adventures of the fab four.
Its amazing to go back and check out their quaint beginnings. Initially, all 4 turtles were really similar characters, only discernible by their weapons. Even their headbands were all the same color. Also, Leo stabs and kills Shredder in the first issue.
Its interesting to think that the turtles were created as a parody of Frank Miller's Daredevil comics. The Foot-clan is a parody of Daredevil enemy the Hand, and Splinter is a send-up of Daredevil's sensei, Stick (also seen in the Elektra movie, if you suffered through it). In fact, Matt Murdock can be seen in book #2. Though a parody themselves, the Turtles were then parodied many times over.
While the second of the four collections near and dear to my heart due to the awesome fight against the Triceratons, book four is the one worth checking out. Yes, April, Baxter Stockman, Krang and many other elements come from the earlier stories, but its book 4 that really cemented the Turtles as we know them now. By then, Kevin Eastman's art was looking much cleaner. His human faces are still kind of rough, but the turtles and their generic ninja foes looked great. The writing was also starting to cook, as Eastman started trying to differentiate the turtles, giving Raph a bit more edge, and the previously generic Donatello began to display an aptitude with machinery. This book, featuring the inexplicable resurrection of Shredder, is the basis of the original live action movie, as well as where the animated series got all of its character traits, still seen today.
From a series of violent, crudely drawn black-and-white comics to a media empire, the turtles may have passed their prime, but they've shown themselves to be an indelible force in pop culture. A new movie is on the way and, 20 years later, I look forward to taking my young cousin to it. He still enjoys the turtles from time to time.
Its really hard to find turtles back-issues these days, for one reason or another, be it from Peter Laird's desk or that of the TV producers who now hold them. If you can, hunt down the First collections or some online resource for them. Its some great reading for the kid in ya.
In fact, I think I'm going to go back and watch that first movie again...
No comments:
Post a Comment