Fungii.com

Deep Red (1975)

I can't believe this movie is PD, it's one of Argento's best!

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

OMG! This one's also public domain! So awesome! LOL

The Brain that wouldn't Die

Hey, this old movie is in the public domain. Cool, I can remember watching this as a kid and loving it. This movie and "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant " are classics!!

Ip Man

I finally got around to watching this movie today. For some reason I thought it would be long and boring, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. Some parts were terribly predictable and the action sequences were more than a little over the top considering that the film is supposed to be based on true events. Nonetheless, a very entertaining movie.

Straight-Jacket

I just finished watching Straight-Jacket from 1964 with Joan Crawford. A great William Castle melodrama about a psycho axe killer. Fun movie, very over-the-top performance by Ms. Crawford. This is the Columbia Pictures logo from the end, you can see they altered it a bit. That's pure William Castle, he had such a great, twisted sense of humour.

The Machine Girl

I saw this movie last night. It delivers on the gore and is quite funny. It has quite a few flaws though, a weak plot, flat characters, fairly bad acting. But hey, for what it is, it's great!

300

Finally got around to watching this movie a couple nights ago and I found it rather disappointing. You see most of the "good stuff" in the trailer, so the movie itself feels like nothing more than an extended version of the trailer.

My biggest complaint regarding this movie, by far, is the incredibly annoying and pointless voiceover narration. At one point we see the Spartans laughing about something, except King Leonidas. The narration then tells us how all the Spartans laughed but not the King. Fuck, no shit, I could have sworn I saw that just now with my own two fucking eyes. About 99.99% of the narration is of this kind of useless, obnoxious chatter. I wish they would release a version where the narration is removed, or at least gave you the option to turn it off.

But this film has many more flaws. A lot of the CGI is, well, bad. Most of the acting is pretty atrocious. Except for Gerard Butler as the King, he's pretty cool. The entire storyline with the Queen could have been jettisoned, it added nothing to the story. The soundtrack is all over the place, one minute rock metal, next an orchestra piece. The King tells the hunchback he can't fight for Sparta because he won't be able to stay in formation with the other soldiers. Yet, when we see the Spartans fight, they are out of formation more often than not. There's a lot of shit in this movie that was blatantly ripped off from Gladiator. Did I mention the dialogue? Brutal, embarrassingly bad, I cringed every time somebody opened their mouth to speak. Their spears pierced the enemies way too easily, plus they pulled them right back out again, effortlessly. There's this one scene where a Spartan is fighting a horde of Persians and what does he do? He throws his sword away! That was just stupid. There's supposed to be 300 Spartans in battle, yet we only see maybe 10 or 20 at any one time. The battles were fairly well choreographed, although the Persians were generally just cannon fodder, almost never putting up much of a fight. And the battles themselves were a little too obviously just actors working against a green screen.

What was good about this movie? Well, they were quite liberal with the bloodletting, which I quite liked. I was never a fan of the antiseptic carnage we get in most movies nowadays. They had a handful of cool one-liners - "This is SPARTA!" "Tonight, we dine in HELL!" "Then we'll fight in the shade!" Er, I guess that's about it. I suppose if you go in with very low expectations you might find this flick moderately entertaining, but I was expecting considerably more and was quite disappointed.

Crank, Slevin

Here's the movies I've seen lately.

Crank: I wasn't crazy about The Transporter, Jason Statham's other movie of moderate popularity, so I wasn't too hyped to see this movie. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how good this movie was, it's an adrenaline rush from begining to end, a great ride and very funny. It's seems like people either love or hate this movie. Personally, I give it two thumbs up, highly recommended.

Lucky Number Slevin: Another movie that I was in no big rush to see because of the lead actor, in this case: Josh Hartnett. I never cared for him, although he was ok in The Black Dahlia. Too bad that movie sucked. And this movie, Slevin, didn't exactly blow me out of the water at the begining, started kind of slow and run-of-the-mill. But the scene in the apartment was so funny, I was hooked from that point on. Great movie. I actually had a pretty good idea how it was going to turn out towards the end [I guess I've seen too many movies to be surprised by that kind of thing anymore], but that didn't really affect my enjoyment of the movie. Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu [she was really good in this too!], Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley also starred.

Three Faces of Torment

Anyways, before I went on my TCM vs. AMC rant, I was going to talk about the three cool flicks I've had the pleasure of watching recently. They are all black and white films.

The first is Eyes without a Face [Les Yeux sans visage], a French film from 1960. I've heard about this one mostly from Billy Idol's song of the same name. I knew the title of the song came from some weird French film and I always wanted to check it out. The story is about a girl whose face is disfigured in a car accident. Her father is a plastic surgeon who keeps kidnapping unsuspecting young girls, with the help of his assistant, only to surgically remove their faces so he can transplant them to his daughter. But the operations always end in failure. It's very much ahead of it's time, but I'm sure it had much more of an impact in 1960 than it does today. Still, it's a pretty creepy, haunting film. The girl looks freaky with her mask on. They show a fair amount of the transplant operation. And it's just too fucking weird to think of these young girls being put to sleep and then waking up with bandages on their heads because their faces have been removed! It reminds me somewhat of the movie Les Diabolique. Not sure why, different stories, although they're both French "horror" movies in black & white from the same period. And good movies, too.

The next movie I watched was The Face of Another [Tanin no kao], a Japanese film from 1966. Although I liked Eyes without a Face, I thought this film was even better. Holy crap, it's weird! This guy gets in an industrial accident that disfigures his face. He wears bandages all the time and his wife treats him differently now that he's a freak! He gets a doctor to manufacture a life-like mask that he can wear in public, and incidentally appear as a different person. The guy is weird, the doctor is even stranger and they don't seem to like each other. The doctor keeps talking about how the mask is going to take over his personality and the guy is like "Man, why don't you just shut the fuck up and leave me alone?"

I don't want to post too many spoilers, but he does try out the mask on his wife to see if she recognizes him. There is also a parallel storyline about a disfigured girl that you think is going to intersect with the main storyline, but it never does. This movie was filmed in a real "arty" way with some shots that seem completely disconnected from the story they were telling and other shots freezing into stills with no movement. And they did some shit with the sound, where when the doctor is having a private conversation with his patient, all the ambient sound fades away for awhile, and then comes back when the conversation is over. I could go on and on, there is so much weird shit in this movie, but it never distracts from the story. In fact, it kind of adds to the eeriness of the piece. The endings of both stories get pretty out there too. I definitely recommend this movie, it's a bizarre, overlooked gem. Oh yeah, it has a brief scene of nudity, a woman's breasts. This surprised me, I didn't think TCM was allowed to show any nudity at all. And then there was the scene with the girl and her brother...

The last, but certainly not the least, movie I watched was The Face behind the Mask, an American movie from 1941. Peter Lorre stars as Janos, an immigrant who comes to New York to start a new life. He's a really nice guy, but shortly after getting to the big apple, he gets stuck in a fire at his hotel and is severely disfigured. Unable to get a job because of his uglyfication, he is driven to suicide, only to be befriended by a small time crook, Dinky. They become friends and eventually partners in crime, with Janos as the boss of a small gang of crooks. But after meeting a blind girl, he has a turn of heart and tries to give up his life of crime and go straight. Oh yeah, he gets a mask so people can be in his presence without being horrifically repulsed.

This picture wasn't as intense or weird as the other two, but it was still pretty cool. Peter Lorre was really good, as well as the guy who played Dinky, George E. Stone. The story was somewhat contrived at times, but it moved along at a brisk pace and came to an interesting, if not predictable, end. It does some unusual things for pictures of the time, like sympathetic criminals. And an innocent person gets blown up. Altogether, a pretty good movie.

Films with similar themes:
Ki-re-i? - 2004 Japanese horror flick - plastic surgery.
Face off - 1997 action flick - face transplant.

Any other suggestions?

Mission Impossible 3

Just finished watching this movie and could not fucking believe how incredibly bad it was! Holy shit, I've seen some bad movies as of late, but this one takes the cake.

I heard of the non-stop action, which would have been good enough for me as a mindless action flick, but none of it is exciting or at all interesting. The second movie wasn't that great, but it did have some memorable set pieces. The motorcycle chase, the rock climbing intro, the fight on the beach, a lot of over-the-top melodrama but it was fun to watch. This is movie is fucking dismal, not a single set piece worth remembering. The helicopter chase through the windmills? Fucking stupid, the chase copter could have just flown above the windmills and shot down at the lead copter. The attack on the bridge? It's been done before and better -> True Lies. That scene has no drama to it, no build-up, they are driving along fine and then kaboom, everything starts exploding. As if that wasn't bad enough, they top it off by Ethan shooting down a jet with his machine gun. Fuck that was stupid. Over the top action is one thing, but when you start doing shit like that you're just insulting the audience. I thought the fulcrum scene in Shanghai would be cool, but it's not at all interesting, just Ethan swinging on a wire from one building to the other. That's fucking it, big fucking deal.

The camera work in this was atrocious, whenever a boring scene came up, they would shake the camera like crazy, trying to make it more "exciting". It just made the scene unwatchable. The bad guy played by Hoffman was the only remotely interesting character in this movie, but he doesn't get enough screen time. The plot drones on to a predictable, unimaginative conclusion. The first two movies in this series weren't perfect, but they were watchable and fun. This sad excuse for a movie is not.

Synchronicity - F for Fake & The Man in the High Castle

I watched the old 1974 movie F for Fake last night. It's a strange semi-documentary about deception, fraud and fakery with Orson Welles, the creator and narrator of this film. It's mostly about infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory, who painted and sold great works of art to art dealers for more than twenty years without getting caught. Clifford Irving is also featured prominently, who wrote a best selling book about Elmyr [Fake!] and also went on to write an unauthorized biography of Howard Hughes, which he eventually admitted was a hoax. It's a pretty decent movie, a little dated but has a lot of fun with its subject matter [especially towards the end!] and really makes you question who the real fakes are, the art forgers or the art establishment.

Strangely enough, I started reading Phillip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle this morning, an alternate history novel that explores what life would be like if the Axis powers had won World War II. What I didn't know until I got a little ways into the story, is that it also deals with fraud in the form of fake American collectibles. The themes it explores in that regard are very, very similar to what Orson Welles explores in his movie, especially the dealers who know their products are fake but continue to maintain the fraud because it's in their best interests. Weird. A good book though, not as crazy as some of his work, as least so far, but meticulously constructed and very enjoyable.

And just to connect this to my previous post on Mike Patton, here's the lyrics to the Faith No More song Stripsearch from Album of the Year:

It's over today
The heat is gone
Time is gone
F for fake
I feel no wrong
Hide no wrong
I love this place
The lights
Under this face
So dry

Only way to change
Give yourself away
Don't be ashamed
Next in line
Close one eye
Just walk by

In these days
I'm breathing stone
Crying alone
I'll win this race
I'll leave alone
arrive alone.

Love this place
The lights
Under this face
So dry

Stripped to the bone
I did no wrong
Truth is my name
Give yourself away

F for fake
F for fake
F for fake
F for fake
Give yourself away
Give yourself away
Give yourself away

Fear No Evil

Something else I would like to see released on DVD is an old [1969] TV movie called Fear No Evil. Although it was just a TV movie, it was really creepy. And it had Carroll O'Connor from before his "All in the Family" days. Apparently, this movie got huge ratings when it was first aired [and subsequent re-airings], but at some point it just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. It would be cool if somebody could dig it up from wherever it's buried and get it put out on DVD!

Two movies that failed to get off the ground

Two more movies I caught recently had similar themes: Red Eye and Flightplan.

I was surprised by how bad Red Eye was, it got fairly decent reviews and I had high hopes that Wes Craven could make a good movie after so many duds over the years. It can be divided into three parts:

√ Pre-flight: This part was actually pretty good We get introduced to Lisa [Rachel McAdams, yum!] a hotel manager trying to catch a red eye flight back to Miami after a funural in Dallas. At the airport she meets Jackson Rippner, a stranger who she seems to quickly strike up a rapport with. And we meet her father and the chick at her hotel.

↔ In-Flight: This is where the film begins to falter. We quickly learn what Jackson is up to. He changes completely from the nice guy we met in the terminal to this cold-blooded killer. Instead of using the charm he displayed earlier to manipulate Lisa into doing what he wants, he instead uses the cudgel of threatening her father's life to get his way. It's bit much. Of course Lisa tries to find a way to inform the other passengers, but Jackson is there to counter her at every turn. It's all rather pointless and doesn't go anywhere. I was hoping she would do something obvious, while also doing something more subtle that would slip by 'ol Jack, but no, this movie never dares to be that imaginitive. Case in point: she eventually just grabs a pen and stabs him in the neck. Woohoo, glad we suffered through all that cat-and-mouse foreplay so you could just wrap it up in such an obvious and easy manner.

↓ Arrival: Once back on the ground, this movie just goes from bad to worse. She runs out of the plane and evades security unto the main concourse, hops on a monorail just one step ahead of the dasdardly Jack. Steals an SUV, makes a phone call to her hotel just in time to save the VIP under attack from the neferious terrorists, then drives on to her father's place for the final showdown with the assassinator. And Jack. It's just plain stupid, and you'll finish the movie wondering what the fuck Wes Craven was thinking when he directed this turd.

You can tell right off the bat that Flightplan is a very different movie. It stars Jodie Foster as a chick leaving Germany with her daughter and the body of her freshly deceased husband on a flight to New York City. Shortly after takeoff, her daughter goes missing and she is having fits trying to find the little rugrat on the damn plane. The crew try to help her, but eventually they begin to doubt she ever came on the plane with her daughter, and soon discover that her daughter is in fact dead, having died earlier with her husband. At this point I was enjoying the movie, because you kind of wonder if her daughter is really alive or is Jodie's character a freaking loon? The only complaint I had at this point is the terribly slow pacing. Some scenes take forever for no apparent reason than to make that audience uncomfortable. Yeah, we get it, now get on with the fucking story dammit.

Unfortunately, the film takes a huge nosedive once we discover what happened to her daughter and why. The plot has freaking huge holes in it. Huge. The plan needed to be sure that nobody saw her kid board the plane. That nobody would see them taking her kid. That nobody would believe her. That she would open her husband's casket. That they would get their ransom, no questions asked. It's just stupid. And then she blows up the plane, while she's in the plane with her fucking daughter. Yeah, never mind all the volatile jet fuel on board, I'm sure just the nose section with the bad guy in it will blow up, leaving the rest of the plane completely intact. Sure. Stupid fucking movie.

Two Asian Movies : Two Thumbs Up!

Watched a ton of movies lately! Not sure why, just bored I guess. A couple Asian films that I've heard a lot about: Oldboy and Audition. Oldboy is a strange, funny and sometimes horrifying film from South Korea's Chan-wook Park. I enjoyed it a great deal, pretty damn cool flick. Here's the summary:

"An average man is kidnapped and imprisoned in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. He then is released, equipped with money, a cellphone and expensive clothes. As he strives to explain his imprisonment and get his revenge, he soon finds out that not only his kidnapper has still plans for him, but that those plans will serve as the even worse finale to 15 years of imprisonment. "

I heard Audition was pretty violent, but to my surprise, it wasn't really that violent until a bit of stuff right at the end. It's a Japanese film from director Takashi Miike. It has an interesting premise: using a film audition to troll for a widower's new wife. The girl he picks is a bit strange and everybody around him warns him that she doesn't seem right, but he pursues her anyhow. A good film, but not quite as epic as Oldboy.

Saw II

Just finished watching this movie and I would say it's OK. It's very much like the first one, but since we've already seen this kind of thing play out in the first movie, it doesn't have quite the same impact. Plus, there's very little in the way of surprises in this one, just a lot of gore and people dying. The characters are rather one dimensional and unsympathetic, so you don't care too much when they are threatened with death, negating much of the tension. But there is that ample gore factor that we all love so much [don't we?] so it's almost worth watching for that fact alone. At least it was more entertaining than the terrible Doom movie I saw last night [well, over three nights], but that ain't saying much.

Holy shit, I was reading the comments on IMDB, and people were talking about all the "twists and turns" in this movie. Huh, did I just watch the same movie? There were hardly any twists in this movie whatsoever, it was a pretty straightforward slasher flick with virtually zero surprises, at least ones that changed the plot one iota. WTF?

*** slight spoiler ***

I'm not trying to be a smartass, because I don't see twist endings coming 90% of the time, but this one follows the same template as the first movie. So if you've seen the first movie, I can't see how you could possibly be surprised by the ending of this one. I'm not saying this was a bad movie, it was fairly good, just not surprising. At all.

Val Lewton collection

Holy shit, I haven't posted here for a long time! I've been sick for the past week and I didn't feel like doing anything. Friday was so bad, I took the day off. Constant coughing, stuffed up head, it's been pretty miserable.

Before that I watched the whole Val Lewton horror box set, which is a good collection of films, very very much ahead of his time. I especially liked Curse of the Cat People. It's not about cat people and can barely be considered horror, but still a strange and interesting movie. I saw it a long time ago on television not knowing it was a sequel, of sorts, to Cat People, another Lewton production, and I thought "WTF??? Where's the cat people? Where's the horror?" Must have struck a chord though, cause I remembered it all these years later. The Karloff pictures in this set really show how great an actor he was beyond his Frankenstein performances, especially The Body Snatcher - he's very nasty but kind of sad, because you can see his hold over the doctor is all he has in life; without that bit of nastiness, he has nothing. Altogether a great set of movies, check 'em out. The titles of the movies are pretty funny because they promise one kind of movie but deliver something completely different. I guess it was part of Lewton's contract that the studio got to pick the titles for his movies, so you get stuff like "I Walked with a Zombie" and "The Leopard Man".

Three Extremes - Cut

Just saw the short movie "Cut" from the collection "Three Extremes" where three directors from Asia make three short [horror] movies. All I can say is "WOW!", good stuff. I was very confused by the ending, but I think this thread [SPOILER!!!] on IMDB got it right. I'll definitely have to watch this again to try and see if I got it right. Korea's Chan-wook Park directed this episode. Hong Kong's Fruit Chan [Dumplings] and Japan's Takashi Miike [Box] were the other two directors [and their episode titles]. The DVD won't be out till February, but it sounds like a must have, especially with the Dumplings ep being expanded to full-feature length.
Just watched "Dumplings" - ewww! Not sure if I'd want to see the full length version. That was pretty demented!
Three extremes site [flash]

More Movies Man

Profondo Rosso
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
This 1975 movie by Dario Argento [Deep Red] has a few problems with the plot [it's rather confusing and doesn't always make sense] but is considered one of his best, mostly because of the incredible visuals, cinematography and musical score. Marcus is an English pianist in Italy who witnesses a murder one night and after being questioned by the police, has a strange feeling he's seen something important, but can't quite put his finger on it. Sounds a lot like "Bird with the Crystal Plummage", an earlier Argento movie. But you can tell he's progressed a lot since that effort, at least stylistically. This movie has all the Argento trademarks; an awesome, catchy score by Goblin, the band who worked on most of his films; the cinematography, swooping crane shots, long shots, sudden zooms; intricate murder scenarios worthy of Rube Goldberg. The plot has quite a few red herrings that keep you guessing who the killer is. Although when you finally find out who the killer really is, it's not explained very well why, at least not after the first murder, other than "that's what crazy killers do". It also ends rather abruptly, I would have appreciated a bit more of a denouement, this ending reminded me a bit of Hitchcock's "Frenzy". I can't really complain though, this film rocks, I would definately recommend it.

Carlo: No Marc. You think you're telling the truth, but in fact... you're telling only your version of the truth. It happens to me all the time.

Addendum: hey, if you've seen this movie, do you know if Marcus' ex Carol is supposed to be his friend Carlo, or was Argento just playing with our minds with that obvious anagram? Looking at both pictures from the movie, they do look rather similar, but it's hard to say for sure.

Monster Movie Marathon

Mill of the Stone Women
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
This flick is from 1960 and has the Hammer Studios type feel to it. Hans goes to this mill to do some research on a book he's writing and he meets up with the owner [Prof. Wahl], who's an art teacher, and his lovely but very strange daughter [Elfy]. The lecherous Doctor Bolem is on hand to keep an eye on Elfy because she has some chronic medical condition. Hans stays at the mill for a week as he's doing his research and some bizarre things start to happen. Not bad for its time, a little slow going at times tho. But hey, look, we get to see Liselotte's nipple, woohoo!



Bio-Zombie
» IMDB
This Hong Kong flick is like a Chinese version of "Dude, where's my Car?", except with Zombies and shit. It's actually pretty funny, most of the time, and the zombie effects are pretty well done for such a low budget movie. The mugging did seem a little bit of an unsympathetic thing for our two leads to do. And it comes to a rather grim end for a comedy. But what the hell, it was damn funny for the most part.
"You oughtta smile... It'll break up your ugly face!" → Crazy Bee



City of the Living Dead
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
The Beyond
»Amazon.ca
»IMDB
Two Lucio Fulci flicks. Who Lucio Fulci? He's an Italian director who made some low-budget Giallo/Zombie flicks, a poor man's Dario Argento I guess you could say. Both these movies aren't too bad, they have some good gory sequences and The Beyond has a pretty spooky musical score. The one thing both these movies suffer from is an incomprehensible plot. The highlight of CotLD is the "driller killer" sequence, yet the killer in that scene isn't even a zombie, it's a father pissed off with some kid messing with his daughter, go figure. The Beyond has a few decent gore effects, although the "attack of the tarantulas" was rather silly, you could easily tell the fake tarantulas from the real ones. I wonder if Joss Whedon has seen The Beyond; his Hellmouth in Buffy is very similar to the "seven gates to hell" in the basement of the hotel as depicted in this movie.

I am the Wolfman!

The movie people still haven't called and they're supposed to start filming Monday. So they either don't need me or they're waiting till the last minute. I just wish they would let me know one way or another, so I can shave this hair off my face if they don't. I tried to call her Friday but all I got was her voicemail. I left a message but she never called back, so I tried again later and her voicemail-box was full! I wonder how many messages a mailbox like that can hold? Anyway, here's what I look like with hair on my face. Pretty freaky, huh?

We don't need no stinking badges!

The "movie people" called me today during lunch and asked if I wanted to do background for a movie. They said it would be from August 29 to sometime in December and started running off dates. I thought "WTF, I can't take three months off work!", so I said no. Then after thinking about it, I realized that it would only be two or three weeks at most, likely much less, so I phoned them back and said I'd do it. She said she would put me back on the "list", so I'm not sure if I got the gig for sure or I'm just on a list with two million other people. Anyway, it'll be cool if it happens, I'm thinking of it as a paid vacation. And I could really use a vacation, work has been kind of getting on my nerves lately, what with the shitty weather and constant stress of people expecting me to be everywhere at once. The movie is "Jesse James" with Brad Pitt [Tyler Durden!]. Not sure if that's the actual title or if it's just a movie about Jesse James, that Monster Garage dude. Oh yeah, she said I should stop shaving. Yuck, I hate having hair on my face. I better get this job if I go to that extreme.

Summer movies

Went on a bit of a movie marathon over the long weekend and this week. Just watched Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, very stupid movie. But I can't say I'm surprised as it was made by the same people that made "Dude, where's my Car?". Some parts are pretty funny though, especially the scenes with Neil Patrick Harris [Doogie Howser].

Harold: Did Doogie Howser just steal my fucking car?
Kumar: Yes... I think he did.
Harold: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Also caught 99.9, a Spanish horror movie from 1997. Good movie, the lead actress [María Barranco] was quite good, she was in almost every scene so she'd better be. The story had a lot of disparate elements to it that didn't totally add up to a cohesive whole, but it did manage to carry an eerie atmosphere throughout the whole 90 minutes and that made it worth it. There's no big surprise at the end like most movies these days, just a bunch of little twists and turns sprinkled throughout that keep the story moving along. Altogether, a nice litttle gem of a movie.

Another horror movie, Killer Workout aka Aerobicide, was a completely different animal. Holy shit was this movie bad! It was made in 1986 when all those Flashdance type aerobics were popular, so you get this low-budget flick that intercuts scenes of chicks working out, with cheesy murder sequences, then back to the aerobics. Hilarious. The cameraman was a perv too, going from their crotches to their boobs and back again. The murders are commited with, get this, a big fucking safety pin! Why? Who knows, just for kicks I guess. Although the killer will use the usual butcher knive when needed. Or a gun or dumbells, whatevers handy. And they have these two musclebound goons who are constantly fighting each other, and not very convincingly either, you can see they aren't really hitting each other. And a cop who's obviously channeling Eastwood's Dirty Harry. Badly. If you get a kick out of reaaally bad movies, you have to check this beauty out, it's craptastic!

A Czech movie from 1970 called Valerie and her Week of Wonders is arguably another horror movie, since it does have vampires. But holy shit, it has to be one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. I generally liked it, but if you like a good narrative, look elsewhere. Many scenes seem to go off in completely different angles from each other, it doesn't make sense. But in a way, it does, if you understand that the movie is about a girl's confusion about her sexuality after her first period. Nicely photographed and some interesting sets, I liked her all-white bedroom. The actress who played Valerie, Jaroslava Schallerová, was a real cutie, played the part well. So I kinda liked it, definitely left me scratching my head though.

And I also watched Sin City. I mostly liked it. I mean it was fun to watch and all, but I never felt too terribly close to any of the characters and couldn't care less if they lived or died, which kind of made my viewing experience a little... detached? Uninvolved? I don't know. Although Mickey Rourke's character Marv was hoot and made it worth watching for that performance alone.

Marv: I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad.

Also watched Troy, the first half was pretty bad IMHO, but the last half was actually not half bad. [yes, I'm trying to confuse you] The classic I drink your Blood, your typical Satan-worshipping-hippies-catch-rabies-and-go-on-a-killing-spree movie. And last but not least, Sexy Beast, funny gangster wants out but the mob won't let him movie. With heavy English accents [some of the dialogue was hard to understand] and Ben Kingsley in a standout role as the least sociable person you'll ever see depicted on screen. Funny thing is, I've met people like him. Hell, I'm rather unsociable myself. [But not that bad, I hope!] I learned a new word too: insinnuendos. LOL

Ben Kingsley claims the character of Don Logan is largely based on his grandmother.

Don: Shut up, cunt. You louse. You got some fuckin' neck ain't you. Retired? Fuck off, you're revolting. Look at your suntan, it's leather, it's like leather man, your skin. We could make a fucking suitcase out of you. Like a crocodile, fat crocodile, fat bastard. You look like fucking Idi Amin, you know what I mean? Stay here? You should be ashamed of yourself. Who do you think you are? King of the castle? Cock of the walk?
[He gut-punches Gal]
Don: What you think this is the wheel of fortune? You think you can make your dough and fuck off? Leave the table? Thanks Don, see you Don, off to sunny Spain now Don, fuck off Don. Lying in your pool like a fat blob laughing at me, you think I'm gonna have that? You really think I'm gonna have that, ya ponce. All right, I'll make it easy for you. God knows you're fucking trying. Are you gonna do the job? It's not a difficult question, are you gonna do the job, yes or no?

Doom da Movie

There's a trailer for the new movie coming out in October based on the legendary PC game Doom. Staring the Rock and directed by Andrezej "it's ok, even my mom doesn't know how to spell my name!" Bartkowiak. Looks like it might turn out ok, has an Alien vibe to it. It just better not be rated "PG". And it better have a chainsaw. And gibs. Rotsa gibs.

Hide and Seek

This horror movie [Hide and Seek] started off a little slow, but I'm cool with that as long as it follows through with something interesting in the second half. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Psycologist [psychiatrist?] David Callaway [De Niro] wakes up one night to find his wife dead in the bath, apparently a suicide. As the camera pans back, we see his daughter, Emily [Dakota Fanning] looking on in horror. Next we see her all weirded out in a children's hospital, where David tells hospital worker [nurse, doctor?] Katherine [Famke Janssen] that he is taking Emily out to the country for a change of scenery. They meet the Sherriff [Dylan Baker], the weird neighbours and Elizabeth [Shue][the post-dead-wife love interest]. And we start to hear about Emily's strange, unseen, new friend, Charlie...

That's the setup which takes up the first half of the movie and it's all rather boring, although there is an atmosphere of creepiness that almost makes it worth watching, mostly due to Emily being such a little freaking weirdo. But that's part of the problem as she doesn't ever come across as very likeable post mother-mortem, neither does her father or anybody with the exception of Elizabeth, who you know is not long for this world. And I'm not giving away anything much by saying that as Charlie makes it clear very early on that he doesn't like her. And you know if Charlie doesn't like you, you're gonna die, and die ugly. Katherine is somewhat sympathetic, but she's mostly in NYC while all the fun is happening way out in the crazee countryside.

I figured out where the movie was headed early in the second half. And I'm not being a smartass when I say that, I think most people would figure it out as easily since this movie ain't exactly subtle [or original for that matter]. So we find out what's happening, it ain't a big surprise, a few people die gruesome deaths and the movie proceeds to a very predictable wrapup, the end. Except for a general air of creepiness, this movie is quite forgettable, it's all been done before. And done better. I was glad they didn't have the "boogeyman" suddenly come back after being killed at the end, that type of thing has been done to death and I am so sick of it. And it was better than Boogeyman, which was a horrible, horrible bad bad movie. Bad. Considering the stellar cast headlining this movie, it should have been much better. There were also a few obvious continuity errors that I found rather distracting. In one scene, Emily is shown frantically locking a door with a set of keys. In a quick cut seconds later, the door is shown jammed shut with a wooden spoon. In another scene, a flashlight is shut off and knocked away into the water, where it mysteriously turns itself back on!

So yeah, I would say skip this movie. Or at least go into it knowing that it's not going to knock your socks off.

Primer

The movie Primer seems to be the kind of film that people either love or hate. After watching it last night, I fall into the former camp. I found it very engrossing, similar in some ways to Pi, Memento or Donnie Darko. Pretty wicked film when you consider it was made for about $7000 by the writer/director who was also the lead actor. It's not a typical movie mostly about plot and characters. Instead it focuses on it's central theme of time travel. The movie has a lot of technical jargon that might turn people off and it does take awhile to "get going". It definitely isn't the type of movie where you "turn of your brain" to enjoy some mindless entertainment, it demands you pay attention or get lost in confusion. And after watching it, you can mull over how the hell this story fits together.
IMDb entry for Primer.
Slashdot post on Primer. Synopsis with some spoilers.
Official movie site.
Review.
Rotten tomatoes entry. [70%]
Future Shop.
Amazon.ca.

Extended entry contains spoilers....

One thing I had a little trouble figuring out was how Aaron goes back in time to before the "failsafe" box was created. They mention he was able to bring one of the other boxes in the failsafe with him, so I figured that's how he did it but I only worked out "how" [within the logic of the movie] this morning. At least I think I understand how.

In the movie, they start up a box and wait a certain amount of time to pass. Then they come back, shut it off and hop in. The vortex, or what have you, cycles between two points in time: A. the time the box was first turned on [the past] and B. roughly the time when the box was turned off [the present]. They get out when the box is at point A, thereby going back in time to when the box was first turned on. Something the weeble-wobble couldn't do because it was an inanimate object, trapped in the vortex, going back and forth in time 1300 times until the machine eventually wound down, leaving the weeble in the present and much older, covered in fungus.

At this point, Aaron can only go back in time a short distance and must prepare beforehand by turning the machine on. But when he discovers the failsafe box and the fact that he can fit one of the other boxes inside it, then he can get around that limitation to a certain degree. By turning on one of the smaller boxes, turning off the failsafe and hopping in with the smaller box, and then hopping out at the failsafe's point A with the small box, he's changed the rules a bit. Now the small box's point B [the present] is in the failsafe's point A [the past when it was first turned on]. When the small box is turned off to begin the cycling process, it starts from the failsafe's point A and cycles back to an undetermined point in the past, before either box even existed! It's almost paradoxical.

Anyway, that's how I worked it out in my head, I could be wrong. :)

I like how he named the charactors' Aaron and Abe. Abe built the boxes and went back in time first, but Aaron found a way to go back in time to before the boxes were even built, therefore Aaron comes before Abe, just like in the phone book!

And at the end, when Aaron is building the "really big box" in France, I assume he's going to use it like Russian dolls, with one box inside another, inside another, inside another etc. so he can keep leapfrogging further and further back in time.

The one thing I didn't like much was the Granger storyline. He discovers the boxes and uses one. This brings up the subject of Abe's failsafe, but that's about it. Pretty much a dead end plot device created for the sole purpose of bringing up Abe's backup plan. Ick.

There were also comments on the IMDB forums about how Aaron[3?] went to France while Aaron[1?] continued on in Texas. This confused me a bit cause while there could be short periods of time where there would be more than one Aaron, eventually the first Aaron would have to hop in the box and blink out of existence to create the second Aaron, therefore there would eventually only be one Aaron. But I guess Aaron had gone back in the box many, many times, trying to fix things, therefore it might take a very long time for all the future Aaron's to blink out of existence, leaving only the one Aaron in France. And I guess that's why he went to France, partly to get away from the whole Aaron everywhere, all the time thing. And all the hot Fench chicks, of course.

[update] Mmmm, reading the forum, it looks like the consensus is that you can't go back in time past the failsafe. Damn, I thought my theory worked pretty well. Apparently, Aaron just used the failsafe to carry the little boxes back to replay the party scene over and over until he got it right. Doh!
The way the boxes are set up you could never go back any further than the first moment the box is set up.

Tom Cruise gets Squirted with water gun

Tom Cruise got squirted with a water gun disguised as a microphone at War of the Worlds premiere in London.
"Why would you do that? What's so funny about that? It's ridiculous. Do you like making less of people? Don't run away. That's incredibly rude. I'm here giving you an interview, answering your questions and you do something nasty. You're a jerk."

The doctor is in. INSANE, that is!

Tom Cruise's Medical Forum. ROTFL. My sides hurt, I need to lie down. Maybe take some vitamin pills.

Sin City

I was just checking out the web site for the movie Sin City. Holy shit, this could be a really cool movie! It's directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller [who also wrote the comic book it's based on]. And it stars a whole whack of familiar faces - Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Jessica Alba etc. Here's the IMDB entry with the whole list. There's a Slashdot article about how it was made too. [Funny that they mention that it's "the first movie ever to use a digital format supporting full-bandwidth RGB" and yet almost all of the movie is in black & white. I'm sure that it'll look good though.] Opens April 1. [I hope that this doesn't turn out to be one big April Fool's joke, that would suck] A couple of trailers can be found here. It looks like a combination of Max Payne and Kill Bill.

FNM - The Slender Thread

They just played the 1965 movie The Slender Thread on Scream starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. It also starred Telly Savalas and Ed Asner, aka Kojack and Lou Grant. It was about a lady [Anne Bancroft] who swallowed a bunch of pills to try and commit suicide, who then calls a "crisis center" hotline and ends up talking to a student [Sidney Poitier] working there. He tries to keep her on the line so they can trace the call, and in 1965 it can take a very long time to trace a call! They show some cool arial shots of Seattle at the begining. [I didn't know the Space Needle was that old!] And the story was pretty cool as they show what led her to this predicament, Ann Bancroft is a little creepy but sympathetic. Poitier's character seems mostly good, although at times you wonder if he even gives a shit if she dies.

Anyway, as I was watching the movie, at one point Inge [Anne Bancroft] says:
"I even tried to get arrested today
But everyone looked the other way"
Ha, right away I recognized that line from a Faith No More song. [Track 5 "Helpless" from the CD "album of the year"] There's also the lines:
"The water's clear
I see that it's full of dimes
For every wish, I wonder why
Why all I want is something beautiful
A place to rest"
Which seems to relate to this movie as well because Inge talks of sitting by a pool full of coins [dimes?] and wondering how many people who made wishes there are dead. So I guess this song was inspired by this movie, which I never knew and thought it was cool and shit. :)

Faith No More - Helpless

The air is warm
I hear the wind and the trees
I know I'm there, but I'll never be
The wind is soft tonight, the tide is low
And I know the way
(I never felt better now)

Sometimes life, it moves too slow
Slows to a crawl, and then the poetry is lost
And without speed, hope becomes certainty
And for once I'm certain
(I never felt better now)

A garden is it's own perfect world
Where everything has a place
Every leaf, every stone, every speck of dirt
But where's my place?
I even tried to get arrested today
But everyone looked the other way
I count the hours, and I count the days
But for once I'm certain

Don't want your help
Don't need your help
Don't want your help
Don't need your help
Helpless

You found a way to make me say
Help me please someone

The water's clear
I see that it's full of dimes
For every wish, I wonder why
Why all I want is something beautiful
A place to rest
(I never felt better now)

HELP

The Bourne Supremacy

Watched The Bourne Supremacy just now, good flick. A little too much of the shakey-cam if you ask me. I mean, it makes sense during action sequences, but when it's just two people talking on screen, there's really no reason to make it look like they're experiencing a 6.9 earthquake at the time. Stupid fad, I hope it dies out soon, giving me a fucking headache. Good car chase in there, I liked how Bourne's car would get spun right around and he would pull out of it. The story kinda floundered a bit near the end, it just didn't really build up to much of a climax. But overall a fun movie, succeeds at what it sets out to do - pure, mindless entertainment. But not fucking stupid, like say, I Robot.

Stendhal Syndrome

Also cought Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome last week on Scream. I didn't care for it too much, although some parts of it were fairly interesting, like when she walks into the paintings. You could see where it was going very early in the film so there was no element of suspense to keep you interested. Asia Argento is a detective? Sorry, that just never worked for me, she was just too young in this film.

*** spoilers ***

After the film was over, Mistress Olga, the Scream host for the movie, mentions that Anna was the victim and the killer/rapist, the cop and the criminal, the man [when she cut her hair short] and the woman [when she wears the blond wig], basically she had some weird duality thing going. And since she is the central character of the movie, is she the hero, or the villain? It would be interesting to re-watch the movie to catch all the little details like that, that I probably missed on my first viewing. Wish the picture quality was a bit better, the Scream showing was pretty rough. Maybe it's better on DVD?

I hated I Robot

I watched I, Robot the other day. Ugh, what a horrible movie! I was hoping it would have at least leave some of Asimov's story intact, but it was basically just a 'vehicle' for Will Smith. The black hat he wears through the first half of the movie looked ridiculous and was very distracting. And what the hell was all that shit about his running shoes? Will Smith liked his new sneakers so much he had to squeeze them into his new movie somehow? And he was supposed to be a detective? He never acted at all like a detective, it's like we were supposed to just accept that he was a detective because they said so. Never bought it for a second. At one point the main chick asks if he was trying to be funny, and I felt that way about him throughout the movie. He was trying to be funny, but never was. And the message[s] this movie was trying to send. WTF? Old is good, new is bad. Emotion is good, logic is bad. I forgot what else they were saying, but it sucked man. I think Asimov's robot stories are about unexpected consequences of progress and how they can't be 'contained' by the three laws. I never thought he was arguing against progress as such, unlike this movie which takes a very regressive, anti-tech POV. Which made me hate Will Smith's character, I was really hoping the robots would just kill him. Hated this movie from begining to end. Some of the effects were pretty sweet, too bad they're wasted on such a vacuous, unentertaining movie.

Checked IMDB, they gave it a 6.9/10, go figure.

Saw

I just saw Saw. I did just see Saw. See-Saw. Um, I just viewed the movie Saw. Not bad, pretty intense movie mostly set in a single room with two individuals being tormented by an unseen psycho. About what I expected, but in a good way. They obviously took their set decoration cues from Fincher's Seven, very gritty throughout. Maybe a little overdone, every location looked like a public washroom, from a bad part of town, that hasn't been cleaned out in 10 years. I was surprised at the "stars" involved in this production, it's a pretty twisted little flick that I think most Hollywood types would shy away from. Cool, good for them. The ending didn't have a big twist or anything terribly remarkable, in my opinion. But I was fine with that as it maintained a pretty even tempo from begining to end, making for a fairly intense 90 minutes [?] of entertainment.

More Moovies

More movies [and DVD's] I've seen lately:

Fail-Safe: I saw this one last night at around 1:30am, couldn't sleep, too much caffeine I guess. Good flick, Henry Fonda as the American president dealing with a nuclear mishap involving bombers heading for the old USSR. [it was made in 1964] I like his approach to solving the problem, crazy but better than the alternative. Also stars a young Larry Hagman as his translator.

Buffy: Season Seven: finally finished watching the last season of Buffy and I must say it comes across a lot better on DVD than it did on cable. Glad I completed the set, but what will I watch now? :(

Peter Pan: watched this one awhile back, and it was quite good. I usually don't find kid's shows very entertaining, but this one rolled along nicely. Great production values, a good story that wasn't sugar-coated for the small-fries. This is the kind of movie I would have loved as a kid.

Day of the Dead: I've seen the original Night of the Living Dead [and Tom Savini's 1990 remake, which was actually pretty good] and I have the DVD of Dawn of the Dead [the original, haven't seen the remake yet], so when the third in the trilogy came up on Scream I thought I'd check it out. It does have a lot of talking, but it also has a lot of very cool, gory effects. I actually thought the film moved along quite well despite being so talky, unlike Dawn which had some flat spots. And Bub the Zombie was a hoot to watch, they should have taken him with them at the end.

The Forgotten: sure, this movie is like an extended Twilight Zone episode, but it's a good Twilight Zone episode. I quite enjoyed it, Julianne Moore was good, the story was fun to watch unfold. I liked how people got suddenly taken away. And there was at least one scene that made me physically snap my head back when it happened. Reminds me of that scene in Joe Black when Brad Pitt gets hit by a van. [Now that was funny, gruesome, random death in a sedate chick-flick]

Secret Window: Johnny Depp made this movie worth watching, looks like he had fun playing the part. Typical Stephen King fare, you could see where it was going very early in the movie, but it was still fun to watch. Had some gore, some laughs and they didn't tack on any artificial happy ending.

And I've been continuing my Monster Movie Marathon. I finished both The Invisible Man Collection and The Frankenstein Collection. Now I'm working on Dracula. Whoa, that's a lot of movies!

Holiday Movies

Watched a whole lot of movies over the holidays, I think my brain is melting! It was nice to get some time off and relax though. Here's some of the stuff I watched:

Cold Mountain: I actually didn't watch this whole movie, just the first 40 minutes, I couldn't stand watching any more than that. I hated this movie. Nothing happened, the characters were so lifeless and uninteresting, it was dreadful. And the people on IMDB gave it a 7.4/10 rating, go figure. The part where people got blowed up real good at the very begining was kinda cool tho.

The Last Samurai: this one was pretty decent, and I'm not a big Tom Cruise fan. The happy ending seemed a little forced tho.

Mystic River: I didn't have very high hopes for this movie, but it was very good, I was pleasantly surprised. I love the way Clint Eastwood directs a film, he seems to have the patience to let the story and characters develop naturally, unlike a lot of other directors that seem afraid any quiet moments will cause the audience to lose interest.

Bad Santa: funniest movie I've seen in a long time. You'll either love this movie or hate it, it's very demented.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Willie: You know, I think I've turned a corner.
Marcus: Yeah? You fucking petites now?
Willie: No, I'm not talking about that. I beat the shit out of some kids today. But it was for a purpose. It made me feel good about myself. It was like I did something constructive with my life or something, I dunno, like I accomplished something.
Marcus: You need many years of therapy. Many, many, many fuckin' years of therapy.
------------------------------------------------------------------

LOTR: Return of the King: never saw this when it was in theatres, so watching the extended version on DVD was my first viewing. Very good, great finish to a great trilogy. Apparently, the Saruman sequence was missing from the theatrical release? I don't see how they could do that after watching the EE. How would they explain the where the magical orb came from? Finishing the Saruman story seemed pretty crucial to the whole story, even though they kill him at his fortress rather than having him return to the Shire like in the books. People complained about the multiple endings when this first came out, but it seemed perfectly natural when watching the DVD. Maybe people were getting restless after sitting in a cramped theatre for over three hours.

Monster Legacy Collection

Finished my Universal monster movie collection when my Monster Legacy Collection set came in the mail today. What a great set - Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man DVD's, plus the bonus busts of each that came with it. Way cool, there is 5 movies in each collection, 'cept Wolfie which only has 4. The busts are really nice, much larger than I thought and they look really neat. I also got the other three collections - Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Paid about the same for these, but no busts. Still, it's nice to have all these sets in my collection. I can remember watching them when I was young and just loving 'em to death.

I went through the whole Mummy collection on the weekend. The original Mummy was cool, but pretty slow going. They used some German technique of holding a scene for an extra long time to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, I forget what the word for it is. Definately not for today's ADD type viewer. Boris Karloff is very good in this one, he's got that look and that voice that'll creep the living fuck out of you.





The second movie [Mummy's Hand] was a lot quicker paced and light-hearted, still lots of fun. The third [Mummy's Tomb] picks up where the second one left off, even having a short recap of what happened in the previous film. All these movies reuse footage from the previous films, then change the story around a bit. Like second movie calls the mummy Karis rather than Im-Ho-Tep [?] and he is revived via Tana leaves rather than the magical scroll. Anyway, Mummy's Tomb was pretty good but not quite as good as Hand. The actors from Hand come back as the same characters 'cept older, you can tell because they're wearing a lot of makeup and their hair is dyed grey. :)

My favourite of this set is the fourth movie [Mummy's Ghost]. It has John Carradine as the priest, and he's the creepiest of the bunch. This movie has a strange, eerie vibe to it and the way it ends is way cool, not the typical ending for movies made during this era.

The last movie [Curse] is easily the worst of the bunch, you can tell the vein was all played out and they were just going through the motions at this point. The way the mummy is slowly trundling towards his victims, and then they just hop in their car and drive away, is both funny and somewhat sad. Hey, this is The Mummy, show some respect, some fear!

Great set, I was very pleased with it and I hope the rest are as good. I started the Invisible Man set a couple days ago, still working on the first movie. Never really watched this one before, but Claude Rains has a wicked voice, lots of fun listening to his evil schemes.

Haute Tension

I just finished watching this little gem and all I can say is "wow"! It's a French horror/thriller film from 2003 and the literal translation of its title is "High Tension". I really don't want to give away any of the plot as I think the best way to view this film would be to go in without any prior knowledge, other than it's very good. The version I saw was dubbed in English, very badly, and that's really the only complaint I have about it. I think there's another version that's censored, but I'm pretty sure the version I saw was uncut. Had to be, had some pretty gruesome scenes in it. It lives up to its title, very intense and well done, go see it!

King Arthur

Seed of Chucky

I thought this poster for the upcoming movie Seed of Chucky [Child's Play 5?] was pretty hilarious.

Weekend Movies

It rained for most of the weekend, so I stayed inside and watched a bunch of movies.

Underworld :: pretty good flick, very stylish, Kate Beckinsale looked hot. The ending was rather ho-hum tho, and the final creature effect amounted to turning the guy's skin green. After some pretty impressive werewolf transformations, the man with the green skin was a bit of a let down.

Ginger Snaps: Unleashed :: the first sequel to Ginger Snaps, the second "sequel" being a prequel, Ginger Snaps Back. This was a fairly decent movie, not quite as good as the original, but still not bad. The little girl who plays Ghost really stole the show and the movie takes an interesting turn near the end. It's playing on Movie Central this month and I might watch it again just to see if I missed anything. The first movie had a lot of metaphors about female sexuality during puberty, not sure what they were getting at with this one.

Lost in Translation :: an apt title. You could very easily get lost watching this movie as there ain't much of a plot. Nothing happens. The interactions between Charlotte and Bob are fairly interesting, but they don't exactly have deep conversations, it's mostly them looking longingly into each other's eyes, thinking "if only we weren't married to other people" and "I'm a young, hot chick and you're an ugly, old loser, this might not work". It wasn't that bad of a movie, but you could watch the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes and not miss terribly much in between.

I also finished watching my season one box set of the X-Files. When the series was playing on TV, I never got to watch it on a regular basis, just a show here and there. So it was nice to get to sit down and watch them in order, from the begining, with no commercial interruptions. The first few episodes weren't that good and I was a little unsure if this box set was such a good buy, even at less than half it's regular price. You could tell they were operating on a pretty meagre budget, the acting wasn't great and the stories weren't terribly gripping. But then you hit "Fallen Angel" and everything begins to fall in place. "Eve" was a great episode, very creepy. "Beyond the Sea" was probably my favourite of the set, great acting by Brad Dourif and a cool story. Sculley actually got some character development. "Squeeze" and "Tooms" were two good, interconnected episodes. "Conduit" had its moments. And the finale, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", was pretty damn cool, felt a lot more like a movie than just a TV show ep. I'm pretty happy with the set, and I would like to collect the rest eventually. But they sure as hell better drop the price, most sets go for around $50 nowadays, not the $120 they're asking for these sets.

After I finished the X-files, I moved on to 24. Never watched any of this when it was on TV, it just seemed like the kind of show you had to follow from the begining to 'get it'. And at $28, the price of a lot of 2 hour movies on DVD, you get 24 hours of stuff. [or less, I think the ep's are 40 minutes or so each] But all that 'stuff' wouldn't be much of a deal if the show wasn't any good. The first thing that struck me when I fired this one up is how good looking it is, they actually spent money on this and it shows. And it's letterboxed, woohoo. The story is well done, they keep the tension up almost all the time, switching between a bunch of interconnected stories [6?] to keep you interested. I've watched 5 ep's so far and I'm hooked. They end each episode with a bit of a cliffhanger though, and I wonder how they can keep that up over 24 episodes without that gimmick wearing thin. I ain't complaining, so far they've been able to pull it off. There are some slight plot holes, but considering how good this show is I'm willing to overlook them. For $28, this was a steal and I'm quite happy with my purchase. :)

Life sucks, then you die... and then, it still sucks!

Well, I succumbed to temptation & got Dead Like Me [which wasn't that discounted @ $54 but still, that's what I wanted to get], 24 [a show I never really watched but it's supposed to be pretty good, and hey, it was $29 and has six discs] and the first season of the X-Files. [I don't think I've seen all the season one episodes and @ $50 it was a huge markdown from the regular price of $110] Couldn't find any Firefly DVD's and I was tempted to the Angel first season set but I've seen most of them and this was getting expensive as it was.

The DLM set had really nice packaging, a plastic see-thru sleeve [with a reaper blowing a bubble gum bubble] over a box containing four DVD's, each in their own individual plastic snap-cases. Each snap-case has a reaper doing something: laundry, golfing with a scythe. Inside the cases are pictures of the leads with little post-it notes with a personal quote, like for George they have "Isn't stealing from dead people kind of tacky?" Altogether, one of the nicest packaging jobs for a DVD set I've seen yet. Both X-Files and 24 have the usual cardboard, fold-out boxes ala Buffy. Does the job but not very interesting.

The first DLM DVD has the pilot and extras, the rest have four episodes each. I watched the pilot and checked out the extras. Has interviews with the cast, kind of funny seeing Ellen Muth not acting in character. She seems much more unsure of herself and shy than George. Weird. They have a wack of deleted scenes too, although most of them aren't too different from what appears in the show. But hey, kudos for them including them in the first place. The pilot has a commentary track as well which I haven't listened to yet.

I also picked up a joystick for my PC, again, since my old joystick used a gameport and my newer computer has USB only. And I picked up the Megaman Anniversary Collection for my 'cube. Way cool, I have Megaman 2 on me old NES and I love that game, I can finish it in one sitting. It will be cool to check out all eight games, plus two from Japan that were never released here. Yowsa.

Weekend movies

Tried watching the Tomb Raider sequel, Lara Croft and the Cradle of Life. I liked the first one well enough, but I must say this second one blew chunks. Silly, aimless, I gave up on it halfway through. On the other hand, I watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines last night and it wasn't half bad. Not quite as polished as T2, but they could have done a lot worse. Some of the one-liners were hilarious, although I'd say about half fell flat. "Drop your weapon... and the coffin!" LOL And was it just me or were there a lot of continuity errors in this film? I think when Arnold was hanging off of the crane, they showed him on the crane in one shot, not there in the next and then back on in the next shot. A bit sloppy.

Phone Booth

I've hated, hated every movie Joel Schumacher has ever made, but I've just finished watching Phone Booth, which he directed, and it was pretty damn good. A lot of dark humour combined with a suspensful plot, I guess even Schumacher couldn't screw up this script. Colin Farrell, whom I'm not crazy about either, was very good as the slimey publicist, and Kiefer Sutherland was perfect as the demented sniper. Some stuff was a little farfetched, [spoiler below]

like how the sniper walked through the crime scene afterwards with a large suitcase, I mean come on, give me a break, that was a bit much. Very good movie, check it out if you passed it by because it was directed by such a hack. It was good despite him.

Nemesis Game Riddle

I just saw this movie and it was kind of stupid but there was a riddle that I never saw answered and I can't figure it out. It was something like this:

What does a spider weave?
It has no eyes, but it can see.

I'm not sure if that's the exact wording but it's close. This movie had a few riddles in it, half the type you've heard a million times before and the other half being nonesensical. Like this old one:

When is a door not a door?

When it's ajar.

SMG news

Sarah Michelle Gellar, aka Buffy, won't be guest starring on Angel in May, but she will start filming The Grudge in January. It's a horror movie based on the Japanese original, directed by the original's director, Takashi Shimizu, and produced by none other than Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame. The original is rated up there with Ringu, which was a pretty cool flick. [remade as The Ring, not bad in its own right] I'm looking forward to this, I like SMG but I'd rather see her in a good horror movie than in such light fare as the Scooby movies. And hopefully she'll leave her husband at home for this one. Thank god.

Spiderman 2 Trailer

Looks good. Now back to my billing.
Main Site.

Femme Fatale

I just finished watching this movie and...

*** spoiler ***

...that has to be the worst ending to a movie I have ever seen! What the hell was he [DePalma] thinking??? Holy shit, it was all a dream! And then a million coincidences come together to make all the main characters' lives turn out just peachy! Pure, utter bullshit. Gag, what a dissapointment.

Jackass the Movie

I missed the first half hour of this movie, but holy shit is it ever fucked up! These have to be the stupidest people ever assembled to make a movie. Some parts are pretty hard to watch, like the papercuts to the corners of his mouth. Eeek! At the same time, it was damned funny sometimes, like the old man shoplifting prank. If you can stomach it, there's a lot of puking, bleeding, bruising, naked feces-covered hilarity in this movie.

Dead Awake

Just started watching this movie but I have to go to sleep, got to work tomorrow. [ironically, this movie is about an insomniac] Too bad, this movie seems pretty good so far, hopefully I can catch it when it plays again. [Movie Channel] The weird thing is that it stars Stephen Baldwin, who I don't particularily like, most of his movies are crap. But this movie seems pretty cool, especially Michael Ironside as some wacked out bum rambling about midgets, circuses and paedophilia.

Unfaithful

Spoilers, but who cares, this movie doesn't have any surprises.

Watched Unfaithful on the movie channel tonight. I had rather high hopes for this thing. Diane Lane was nominated for an Oscar for this movie and hey, it got a 6.7 rating on IMDB. Well, the first hour of this movie is simply Diane Lane's character, Connie, cheating on her husband [played by Richard Gere] with some obnoxious, self-centered Frenchman. Oh Hollywood, always breaking those stereotypes. I heard the French original that this movie is based on didn't even show much of the wife's affair. Oh, if only they had spared us that torment in this movie.

Connie is not a sympathetic character. She is as self-centered, obnoxious and uninteresting as her conceited, fake lover. We are made to watch these fucking bozos for a full fucking hour. Oh the agony.

Then the viewpoint seems to shift to the husband as he [surprise, surprise] finds out about the affair. And when he wacks the boyfriend upside the head [truly hilarious, best part of the movie] I thought the movie would begin to pick up and actually go somewhere. It doesn't. It just drones on for a bit and then abruptly ends. By the end of this movie I hated the wife, the husband, the lover. The kid was ok, hopefully he can find a nice foster home to take care of him.

The way she meets Paul, loverboy, is so contrived, it's laughable. And when Gere gets into an accident that fucks up his trunk lid just when he happens to have a body in it, contrived. And when an employee from Gere's company just happens to be having lunch where Connie is making out with Paul... well, one or two of these things would be believable, but this movie just piles them on, one after the other. Gag.

I was hoping to sympathize with Gere's character at the midway point of this movie, but except for the bashing-in-Paul's-melon part, he sucked. I mean, he seems to totally forgive his wife after he hears her message on Paul's answering machine [how convenient was that!] but she never really comes clean with him, never confesses, or says she's sorry or asks for forgiveness. He's just a pathetic, little wus. Well, except for the head-bashing part. And the only reason she goes back to her husband is because she caught her lover cheating on her with another woman. And how fucked up is that, seeing as she is cheating on her husband with him. Then she keeps on lying to her husband. And he lies to the police to cover her ass. Oh god, I hate these people. Where's the excess violence when we need it the most?

Yeah, I hated this movie. It's just as bad as Swimfan, but at least Swimfan was so bad it was funny. This turkey just bored me to tears in the most irritating way.

Swimfan

I just finished watching Swimfan. Ben Cronin is a high school student. Head of the swim team. Has a sweet, if somewhat simple, girlfriend Amy. Along comes Madison, the new girl. She takes a liking to Ben, and manages to force herself onto him one crazy night at the pool.

And that's all you need to know about this movie, because everything that comes afterwards is so predictable, so utterly unoriginal, anybody who has seen an obsessed lover type movie has seen this movie. Madison can't swim. Guess what happens to her, huh. Ben's swimming buddy hooks up with Madison but ultimately rejects her. Guess what happens to him. And who gets blamed. This fucking thing writes itself. But the filmakers stick so closely to the paint-by-numbers plot, its strangely compelling. You know exactly what's coming next, you have to watch to see if the film-maker is going to take any detours whatsoever. He doesn't. Not once, this is the ultimate distillation of the jilted, one-night stand, psycho outsider turns killer sub-sub genre.

Yeah, I kinda liked it. You have to be pretty brave to make a movie like this. Or pretty stupid.

American Psycho Batman

Christian Bale is going to be the next Batman. Way cool, he's one of my favorite actors. His last flick, Equilibrium, was a blast. And Christopher Nolan [Memento] will be directing, so this should actually be a good one. I hope.

"He has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for," Nolan said.

Jerry Lewis

Wow, I just saw Jerry Lewis on TV and he sure put on a few pounds! He's had a lot of problems with back pain in his life, apparently. He was on the verge of suicide it was so bad, but his doctor implanted some kind of electronic device to control it. He has a remote control to crank up the voltage when the pain gets bad.

A Matter of Family

They're filming a TV-movie in Calgary called A Matter of Family. It must be set in New Hampshire as the police car on the sidewalk has New Hampshire State Police written on the door and a New Hampshire Department of Justice plaque is afixed to the old City Hall. Our 'new' City Hall is a big, ugly glass building and it ain't that new, I think it was built in the '80s before I came to Calgary. The 'old' City Hall is adjacent to the new one, in fact they are totally attached like one happy building and the mayor, aldermen and clerks have their offices in there. It's a cool old sandstone building. Anyway, here's some pictures of the set. Not much to see, and the camera was pointing away from the street so I couldn't sneak in there. Damn.

Kill Bill

Looks like Tarantino's new movie is now going to be two movies. I don't mind, as long as they're good. I loved Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction was pretty good, although I didn't care for Jackie Brown.

Several have been disappointments this summer, including "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," which received heavy publicity and generally favorable reviews as an enjoyable romp but which still failed to attract crowds.
Favorable reviews? I hated the first one. Hated.

HULK

I was thinking of going to see this movie tomorrow, so I checked out a few reviews. Holy shit! What a difference in opinion amongst the reviewers! They either seem to love it or hate it, not many sitting on the fence with this one. From what I gathered in the reviews, this is a more serious film than your typical comic-book movie. I find that interesting and makes me want to go see it.

Based on a True Story

A movie [Fargo] is made, based on a True Story [not really, they just said it was]. Film-goer from Japan, Takako Konishi, believes its true and travels to North Dakota in search of the buried treasure depicted in the film. It's winter, she dies out in the woods, from exposure apparently.

But it doesn't end there. UK film-maker decides to travel to North Dakota to make a movie about the incident, using a Takako double to recreate scenes with the locals. And finds out the true story, isn't...