Dirty.
I feel kind of dirty.
The geek in me really wants to see and really wants to like that Jumper movie.
However, the geek in me also knows it will suck horrible balls of nastiness.
Dead?
Looks the Joker will only be making one appearance now.
Bad craziness.
Happy Happy Joy F'n Joy!!!
Yes!!!
I think Roger is in the trailer too!
Those are your new shoes, Dawn!
I noticed Max put up a photo from one of our favorite movies over at his blog.
Indeed. This is the single best Christmas scene from any film ever.
Hell. It may be the single best film ever!
(And if you didn't realize it yet, I came home sick today and have been bored shitless and the cold meds are making my head even foggier than usual. And that's saying something since I'm usually way more messed up sober!)
Born on a desert floor, you've the deepest thirst...
So.
Giga asked me to update his Netflix queue yesterday so I rearranged some things and added some other films.
Shipping at the moment is Beer League, Little Miss Sunshine, and Notes on a Scandal to be followed by Rashômon, and then Lawrence of Arabia.
Yes. A little all over the place there.
Don't worry. There's plenty of Who in the queue.
This was actually really the first time I went into the system. Quite nice really.
I wonder if I plead enough to them... will they get the Japanease Masterforce and Victory series in?!?!?
Obscure TF stuff would be great.
Any of you partake of the Netflix awesomeness?
Damn!!!
No, it sounds like a go-go dancer name. There's a difference.
Planet Terror may well be one of the single greatest films ever!
(Yes. With Netflix I am now catching up on everything I missed in the theatre!)
Cherry Darling is one of the greatest film characters off all-time!
Robert Rodriquez should have directed the boring ass Transformers.
Spider-Man 3: Entirely Too Many Characters
So I finally got to see Spider-Man 3 via Netflix delivery the other day.
Um.
While it certainly wasn't as good as Spider-Man 2 or even the first film, it didn't really suck.
But the more I watched the more I got the feeling that they just tried to cram too much shit into the thing!
I mean, I've never been able to find any enjoyment in Spider-Man in the comics at all. It was just never my thing. Raimi's films have been where I have found the most enjoyment of the characters and even the villains which I've always found to be the lamest of most comic super-heroes.
I just don't get the thing of cramming so many characters into a single story. There's only so much plot a film can deal with and Spider-Man 3 started to really fall apart for me because of too much "stuff" trying to get done.
You really had 3 possible films here crammed into one and I realized that because it is so dense that I really only cared for maybe 2 of them.
*spoilers ahead for a film most readers probably have seen*
Continue reading "Spider-Man 3: Entirely Too Many Characters" »
In which Nala is blown away by James Bond of all things.
If ever there was a pop culture franchise that needed 10 bullets right in the head it would have been James Bond for me.
Sure, I'd like to see Star Trek put out of its misery but James Bond has trudged along regurgitating the same shit movie after movie for almost 40 years.
Now when I was a kid, I used to eat them up, especially when they'd play on ABC's Friday Night Movies. I remember various babysitters and such letting me, ass firmly planted on a pillow, stay up late to watch whatever Bond flick was on.
I was too young to understand the awesomeness of hating Alex Trebek and was too early-age geek gullible to not get sucked into the gimmicky Roger Moore era.
Hell... I recall watching that cheeseball awful Moonraker probably close to 30 times as it was run into the ground on Showtime.
But by the time of View To A Kill, I was now 14 and my growing sense of appreciation for cinema and my tastes in general made me realize that I'd been watching the same movie over and over and over for the past decade.
And yet that same formulaic James Bond film kept getting churned out every few years, going from Moore to Timothy Dalton to Pierce Brosnan and yet it was basically the exact same script with the exact same acting with the exact same gimmicks.
Not only could I never bring myself to suffer through them again, I honestly couldn't inflict anything Bond on myself even on home video or via movie channels.
I'm all for a little regurgitation every now and then but folks, the entire James Bond franchise should have died in the 60s.
Well... after coming back from a wine party last night, Giga remembered he at a Bond film to take back that was already going to be late so we stayed up and watched it.
Continue reading "In which Nala is blown away by James Bond of all things." »
TF 2007, 4: Part Deux, and 300
With the imminent release of the Transformers movie on DVD I find myself really apathetic to watching it again.
I can't say I'm in any hurry to go out and buy it and spend 2 hours watching it again.
Once at Botcon and once with Max Power, Kelmeister, and Kelmeister's Husband was plenty enough.
And what's even funnier?
We rented Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer this weekend and while I went into it expecting nothing at all I was totally shocked at how entertaining it was for the most part.
I really expected pointless action and what I got was an actual character-driven comic book movie!
Sure the ending was utterly lame and Jessica Alba is still totally miscast as Sue Sorm, but for the most part they totally nailed the interaction between the 4 main leads. That was really surprising.
Doctor Doom, due to the pointless alterations to his character from the first film is just as weak here, but it would have been hard to redeem him in any major fashion.
The Surfer was ok. After watching the featurettes on the 2nd DVD I'd really rather have had the actor who did the motion capture than the CGI insert. He pretty much is a cypher that doesn't really do all that much.
All in all, it was far more entertaining than I thought it would be.
---
And 300?
I had avoided it not in the hopes of avoiding another comic book-to-film adaptation gone possibly wrong but because I'm still too close to the source event.
Longtime readers will know I've got one of those useless degrees in Classics and I focused primarily on Ancient History.
The Battle of Thermopylae has been an interest of mine since I was 7 and one has to be extremely careful in fictional adaptations of primary interests. Some of you may even remember that King Leonidas of Spart was even incorporated into a design of naladahc.com back in 2002 for quite some time.
Now Frank Miller's 300 novel is OK and is saved by Lynne Varley's phenomenal painting/colors. And this transfers to the film.
It is a remarkable piece of visual imagery. Truly beautiful to behold and a part of me regrets not having seen it on a big screen.
The film also does a remarkable job of showing the likely savagery of hand-to-hand combat, especially with the Spartans. They were indeed literally bred as fighting machines and I think the movie conveys it very well.
Of course, it works best when viewed as a Spartan telling other soldiers of the last stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermoplylae, wrapping it up in an almost ethereal fantasy. It makes the savagery much more potent when viewed through this lens.
Sure it isn't historically accurate. Though there were 300 Spartans at the battle, in reality there were quite a few other soldiers from other city-states who were also instrumental in the battle. That is totally missed here. The fact that Sparta enslaved an entire people and that pederasty was ingrained in their military culture is totally overlooked here as well, funny since much of the ancient history is about enslaving others and specific forms of homosexuality were institutionalized in much of Greece.
Using the lens of the soldier reiterating the story makes this barely palatable that that is pushing it.
Now one thing that kind of irked me was the portrayal of all non-Greeks as basically monstrous creatures. In fact, some of them, even Greek traitor Ephialtes, are portrayed visually as if they come from Mordor instead of the Greek highlands or the Middle East.
Of course, once again, if viewed through the lens of a storyteller making the enemy and traitor disgustingly monstrous actually makes a certain amount of sense.
I recall that some critics were all up in arms over the portrayal of Xerxes and all but really, just look at how any culture portrays its enemies and any argument can quickly fall apart.
Overall, it is one hell of a beautiful film.
Will Zoltar still be a cross-dresser?!?!?
I am eagerly awaiting Gatchaman!
It'll be interesting to see if this is true Japanese Gatchaman or ends up a hybrid (name-wise) with Battle of the Planets.
Unfortunately, the characters will forever be associated with their Battle of the Planets names for me.
Them bitches is crack whore ZOMBIES!
I so totally want to see Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! and I never even knew it!
Greetings Programs!
I hadn't hear much about it but The Movie Blog mentions that it looks like Tron: The Next Chapter may actually be happening.
I'm willing to wager that most of you who read this here barely-about-transforming-crack at-the-moment site were either still individual sperm and ovum, in diapers, or barely out of diapers when 12 year old Nala was sitting at the Glenbyrne Cinema in Glass City watching Tron.
It is still one of my secret favorite movies and the fact that Steve Lisberger, the original creator will be involved is great news.
Lisberger also was instrumental in another favorite animated film of mine called Animalypics.
Bruce Kwakimota is still one of the best names for a bird karate champion ever!
Now I just need to see Superbad and I'm set for a while.
Went to see Stardust last night at Studio 35.
It has been years since I read Gaiman and Vess' original work but it is quite an enjoyable little film that any age could watch.
I hope Coraline will be as good, though that is not likely to be live action much at all.
Can he swing... from a web? No he can't... he's a pig.
Kelmeister sent me this:
If you haven't seen the Simpsons movie then you don't know how great Spider-Pig (aka Harry Plopper) is!
The problem is, he kind of just disappears from the script about half way into the film.
Interlude: In which I pontificate about the meganess of Angela Bassett
So I'm laying here in the Bed of Love™ on a Sunday morning watching the idiot box and flipped on Strange Days from 1995.
Yea. I know. Twelve years late to watch this.
Anyway, Angela Bassett is just awesome in this! Amazingly awesome.
I always thought she was hot and strong, but in this flick she is is hot and strong and intense!
She's like 49 now but man... I'm not usually the MILF type but oh la la!
Giga walks in and says "She'd make a great Mercy" and he's totally dead on right.
Mercy Graves is Lex Luthor's personal bodyguard in Superman: The Animated Series and when done right, she's a fantastic strong female character, both strong and sexy and totally in control.
I'm watching this movie now and thinking how great the gods-awful Superman Returns could have been if they had used the modern comics and animated series as source material instead of the tired old Richard Donner 70s shit.
Needed more Kodos.
The Simpsons Movie was great!
I even won a donut in Studio 35's trivia contest before the film started.
And after 20 years, we now know the state that Springfield is in!!!
Raiders of The Lost Attic of Love
G4 has a 2-hour live show from the San Diego Comic Con going on.
They have a live bit with Spielberg and everybody in the new Indiana Jones film, including Shia LaBeouf,
The thing that truly is awesome though... Karen Allen is in it reprising her role of Marion from Raiders of The Lost Ark !!! That confirms my initial thoughts that she's Shia's characters mother and since the film takes place in the 50s, he was most likely conceived around the time of Raiders.
Neil Gaiman was just on too.
The thing I hate about the G4 coverage though is the idiot hosts they get. These 2 were on last year and I swear so much of the info they spout during their attempts to be "hip" and "cool" is so incorrect it makes me want to scream.
Anyway, Simpsons Movie starts tomorrow.
"I'm excited by that prospect and I'm not even a 17-year-old girl"
Ferris Bueller's Day off is indeed a film to take to heart.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize this when I was 16.
Must... find...
I came across this over at Zaius Nation this afternoon.
I so have to find this Trilogy of Terror flick!
Yawn!
Ugh!
I think I would have been ballistic if I'd have gotten suckered into going to this shit.
Can you feel the love tonight (on your windshield)?
So I'm looking at this still from the movie and I'm thinking... "That looks creepy."
All I can think of is Spike and Carly (or whatever her name is in this flick) in a post-coital embrace on the hood of Bumblebee while Ironhide and Ratchet just watched them shag.
I wonder what whiney emo-band will be playing over this scene.
Oh wait. This isn't Smallville.
Much better choice.
Variety is reporting that Maggie Gyllenhall will replace Katie Holmes in The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins.
Yay!!!
Personally, I found the character of Rachel Dawes totally unnecessary to the Batman Begins storyline but hey, I'm just a loser with a TF blog so what the hell do I know.
I would have much preferred somebody like Selina Kyle to have been retconned as a younger friend of Bruce's than a brand new character.
I'm a geek for fank wanks every now and then and I think it was a crime not to have Selina in at least the birthday party scene. Hell, when Batman pops up at the Gordon residence I think it would have been perfect if Jim Gordon, as soon as he goes back in, says some kind of fatherly thing like "Barbara! No snacks before dinner!" or something like that just to establish that Barbara exists.
I'm all for the movies using The Batman cartoon explanation of an older Barbara too.
What would really be cool if Time Warner had the balls?
Introduce a 9-year-old Robin in the 3rd film and sub-title it "The Sensational Character Find of 2010" as an homage to the original creation of Robin!
I'm a fan of Dick Grayson and while I'm not a huge fan of the past 20 years of his Nightwing persona, I'm a complete believer in the fact that he surpasses Bruce at everything Bruce is good at!
Dick needs to be shown at a young age being a true insanely great acrobat. Add to that years of being taught by the supposedly greatest detective you should get a guy in his 20s who is insanely awesome and far greater than what DC has done with him.
Hell... Dick was supposed to be killed off in Infinite Crisis but was spared.
You just can't kill The Sensational Character Find of 1940!
You just need to make the adult version of Dick as awesome as the Robin-version of Dick.