Category: Movies

Went and saw War of the Worlds on the megascreen last night, and let me tell you…

While this is an old (old!) story, which many people probably already know the outline of, I don’t want to spoil anything for the most super ignorant out there, selecting the blank bits below should reveal what I consider most likely to be spoilers.

*** There are spoilers here, if you don’t want to know what happens, you’ll get a face full of ruination! ***

I haven’t watched the old old movie for a long time, so while I of course remember the surprise twist at the end, I don’t remember much of the rest of the story, so I don’t know how much this diverges from the original… But so the fuck what? It rocks!

Amazingly, Spielberg manages to make the kooky Mr Cruise seem like a real guy, freaking the hell out, really confused and scared, and totally fixated on saving his kids from these monsterous blood sucking alien invaders.

He’s so human and vulnerable, I could sort of imagine myself doing many of the same things. Though I probably would have been straighter with the kids about the alien invasion they were fleeing from, with the death rays, exploding buildings, tripods climbing up out of the ground, etc.

Speaking of the death ray, that was by far the scariest death ray I’ve ever seen, what with the arbitrariness of it, the whole f’toomp thing, with the exploding body just leaving clothes fluttering in the air. That was… Awesome… Scary.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself… The real coolness started after the storm (which was awesome in itself, but only due to the reaction of the characters, hiding under the table and so on) when our man Ray goes for a walk and finds his way to the cracked up intersection… I thought the whole crowding around thing was a bit strange, but fine… But when the tripod started to rise, slowly cracking the ground, and the nearby buildings, then when there was that big surge and the ground sort of collapsed and then jumped up again… That was really, just… Super awesome.

What a terrifying scene, as the crowd panicked and started running… With people not being picked off just for being slow, stuck at the back of the pack, but almost randomly no matter how fast they were running, no matter if they’d run to hide in a house or a shop… *f’toomp* *flutter*.

Now, a lot of other stuff happened, and you’ll need to watch it to see all of that, I’d just like to get onto the lame and the good now, rather than go through anything resembling a play-by-play…

The weirdest, most lame, most inexplicable character, I thought, was Robbie… Just what the fuck was wrong with that kid? I mean, he was fine when he was just a dumb teenager at the beginning of the movie, but what the fuck was he doing trying to jump a ride with the national guard? And why the hell was he all "please dad, I have to see it, I have to watch, let me go." I’ve got to tell you, I would have smacked him one and dragged him down the hill away from the artillery, soldiers & tanks on the ridge overlooking (what, Boston?).

Oh, but wasn’t it awesome when all the choppers arrived and started letting rip with their Hellfires, and the jets that blasted overhead launching their own tasty little missiles.

So, let me quickly sum things up.

1. Characters: cool, except Robbie.
2. CG: awesome.
3. Sound design: awesome (that huge horn that the tripods used, I want one on my RVR).
4. Alien ships: Scary. w00t.
5. Aliens: The rear leg was a little bit strange, but on the whole they were very very cool. The CG really was extremely nice.
6. Rocking?: You bet.

Oh, and I couldn’t help myself but have a gigantic bucket of Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha… Soooo good.

Bored with writing this now, gonna have me some rissoles.

Goodnight, nurse.

This post includes loads of references and spoilers for the new Batman movie Batman Begins. I don’t know that I give away anything that isn’t a bit obvious, but still… I’d hate to giveaway the fact that it turns out that Batman was dead for the whole time, and it was his ghost in the rest of the movie.

Now, this doesn’t take the form of a polished review, I haven’t editied or copy-checked or anything, this is really little more than a stream of conciousness ‘my thoughts on this’ format, so don’t expect more than that.

So, we went and saw Batman Begins, we caught a screening on opening day at the megascreen – we figured, hell, we had fun watching one of the Matrix sequels there, and the price is the same as seeing it at any pissy little normal cinema, so why not?

Bloody nice big screen, I thought the sound level was set a touch too loud, not quite to the point of peaking, it was just a little uncomfortable – still, it was nice and visceral to have some of the sound effects really getting in there and shaking the seating. Oh, and we made sure to be quite far back (it sucks being too close to the screen, having to look left and right to see things) 3rd row from back, in fact, which was pretty much ideal, maybe 4 or 5 seats closer to the centre would have been perfect, but I didn’t book our tickets very far in advance, so can’t complain about being in as good a spot as we got.

— Spoilers Begin —

I really enjoyed the movie, I liked the way they explained a few things which I wanted to know about, for example the stupid ears on the cowl were from the opera he was scared of when he was a child, the blades on his forearms from his ‘nija’ training, etc.

Speaking of the cowl, it was great to have little features and background trivia, like the mention of manufacturing faults in the cowls, and having to order so many thousands of them to avoid suspicion, and outsourcing distributed manufacturing around various companies in different countries. It was a really nice, realistic touch — you know, for a super hero movie.

I think Bale was great as Bruce Wayne, though I didn’t like it quite so much when he forced that throaty voice whenever out in his guise of Batman. Indeed, I think they did a great job with the whole cast, I thought Morgan Freeman was a real stand out, but he has such screen presence that’s really a given, his character was exactly who was needed to explain how Bruce gets his high-tech toys. It was nice having some very quick back story on him as well, gave him motivation (and obvious forshadowing for his later takeover), being shunted down to the storehouse, then being fired off in a very convenient (timely) manner. I also thought Michael Caine did a great job, and he has a lot more potential for arse kicking than the frail older guy they had previously. Have you seen Get Carter? Yeah, like that.

I didn’t understand what Bruce was doing when he was playing with the memory material making it into claws – they obviously didn’t use it later on in any fights or anything, so perhaps it’s forshadowing for use in a sequel. But it was a stupid idea anyway, when the claws weren’t in use, they dangled from his fingers like meter long pieces of string, which doesn’t sound very useful to me… Sounds like they’d just get tangled around things and be annoying.

I thought the Batmobile was (forgive me) RAD! But it was also involved in my least favourite event in the movie, the destruction of the monorail – that was stupid, did you see how big those towers were? How many people do you think were killed by the wreckage? It was just an outrageously stupid scene which simply didn’t gel the the (realtive) realism, perhaps that’s not the right word, maybe believability? of the rest of the movie. Internal consistency is completely vital when dealing with superheroes.

Speaking of the monorail, I thought the city design for Gotham was great, it was clearly such a sprawling metropolis, but with real looking buildings, real pollution, and a literal undercity. I didn’t like the deco (or whatever) styling that was given to the earlier movies, and I’m glad they reset that aspect of it. I’m expecting that they’ll use the monorail as part of the symbolism of the cities improvement, they obviously had the monorail as a shiney lovely thing when Thomas Wayne was still around, and how decrepit and graffito’d/vandalised it had become, so expect it to look nice again in the later movies. (I’m assuming it’ll be repaired following the Batmobile attack, that seemed to only effect a few spans.)

Oh, and that’s another thing, how the fucking hell did Batman manage to stay dangling on his cable underneath the monorail? His monofilament would have had to be magically passing through numerous solid supporting structures, but he just hung on, as if nothing was happening. If they were going to have him do that, they should have either made the carriage dangle from a rail above, or find some other way for him to hold on that didn’t involve magic.

Actually, that grapnel gun was the source of one of my other quibbles, at one point (I think it was right after he was set alight) he seemed to attach it to thin air, fired it straight up, or at least it seemed that way. I didn’t like that. Just have a fucking girder, for bullies sake. Perhaps if I watch the movie again some time it’ll be obvious that I missed something, but it didn’t seem like it on first viewing.

Last big quibble before finishing on a couple more positives – the psychoactive substance in the water, it needed to be inhaled through the lungs, sure is lucky no-one ever has steamy showers or makes coffee or shaves or washes their hands in the city, huh? Now, as the inhabitants of Gotham clearly do do those things, why wasn’t the city already chocka with nutsos?

It was nice to have Gordon in there in his pre-commissioner days, obviously he’ll be slowly climbing the ranks and helping Batman gradually clear up the worst of the corruption in the city until he’s finally a straight and reliable commissioner running things and being nice and sympathetic to our mate in a cowl, probably with an asshole mayor or unsympathetic press (maybe an opportunity for an ideally very brief appearance of Vikki Vale) or something like that.

I also liked the way they included the evil villain (Scarecrow) as a scary but non-campy, non-comical, psychopathic nut-job. He seemed to have motivation and at least a little bit of depth. And I loved it when he was shrieking like a girl after getting tazered in the face, that was awesome. I hope they manage to do something similar with The Joker when (it opened number 1 in the box office in the U.S., and seems to be going strong, so unless Bale isn’t in to it, surely they’ll have to make several?) they make the sequel, I don’t want to see a capering giggling clownfaced guy, I want to see a completely psychopathic brutal criminal. He can have a lunatic grin, sure, but I’d prefer he not have the big red clown lips – please?

What I did in my long weekend, by Morgan, age 8’ish.

I watched movies!

Including the surprisingly underrated Elektra. This sequel to the frankly terrible Daredevil manges to avoid any of the unbelievably bad wooden fight scenes, indeed, I was delighted to learn (thanks IMDb) that there was a Ben Affleck as Daredevil cameo filmed, which was subsequently cut. Basically, it seems that most of what Ben Affleck touches turns to excrement.

Anyway, it might not be that Elektra is so great, it certainly isn’t, it’s just that it’s so much better than Daredevil. But that’s not saying much, is it?

How do people get to make fight movies without being able to film convincing fight scenes? What was that bullshit on the seesaws in Daredevil? Did anyone think that looked cool? Who thought it would be a good idea to let Ben Affleck try to kick? He’s completely rubbish.

Oh, and Hollywood, please move past wirework, it’s not meant to make you say "wow, they’re so obviously using wires" it’s meant to make you think "what an awesome jump up that wall" or "w00t! no shadow kick!"

Alternatively, Hollywood, watch Ong-Bak, see those moves? Awesome, eh? Remember when you used to use stuntment to do that sort of thing? Why did you stop?

I still don’t really like Jennifer Garner, maybe if she had more range in her facial expressions, but I do like Goran Visnjic.

The other sequel I caught over the long weekend was "xXx 2 : I will fuck you in the eyes!"

This one uses Ice Cube in the title role instead of Vin Diesel — oh, speaking of our Vin, have you seen the video clips of him, aged about 14, teaching break dancing moves? This leg up, this leg over, move your hands, this leg up, this leg over… Funny.

Anyway, I guess it’s better than I expected, again this isn’t saying much, and I don’t know if it quite makes the grade set by the first one "xXx : TOO EXTREME FOR YOU!!!11!one!"

It’s got fantastic gadgets in a bad way. Really tiny pieces of movie bullshit. Ninjas with lights on their heads, and magical disks that dig holes a hundred feet through the earth in a second. Oh, and bling blinged cars by the dozen. Does anyone think ‘harlequin’ painted cars don’t look utterly fucking stupid? Flying disks the size of your palm with retina scanners? Stop it. You don’t need to do that. Use the CG for something cool, for bullies sake! Some of the Ice Cube fight scenes were pretty cool, man that guy has a scowl and a half. He’s pretty believable as a brawler. Not so believable as a guy driving a car up the tracks at 180mph chasing a bullet train, but never mind.

Too much bling bling, not enough shooting guys in the face after kicking their knees backwards.

Please, Ice Cube, kick their knees backwards, if you won’t do it for me, do it for the children!

You’ve heard of Ong-bak, right? It’s the cool martial arts movie from a year or two ago which featured… No wire work… No CG… And the main guy doing all his stunts, on screen, and with slow motion shots from multiple angles to prove that this dude just did actually run along, run up a guys chest, then stomp on his shoulder and the shoulders and heads of all his fellow baddies, running over this crowd of guys, then jumping over cars, flipping off this and that, and generally being utterly hard core and awesome.

Anyway, the thing is, it’s all in Thai, and the subtitles I’ve seen weren’t all that hot, full of that characteristically bad English you expect from subtitles, so I did what everyone who should be working on paying projects did and rewrote them. So, I present to you a nice set of subs, I’m sure they aren’t perfect (I left some of the cheesy dialog in there, just because, indeed I didn’t make any changes in the first 5 odd minutes), but they are now way more readable, and don’t distract from the actual story.

Ong-bak (2003) English subtitles.

You’re free to download and use these subtitles as you wish. Just unzip the .SRT file into the folder with the video file before starting your player. In VLC go to the Video menu, then hit Subtitle Track, then choose it from the list (probably Track 1). I’m sure they work with other video players, but I only really use VLC, so you might need to read the help files if it doesn’t work like this in your player.

Let me know if you use them and like them, or don’t like them, or don’t understand what I’m talking about.

When not being incredibly busy lately I’ve been enjoying Spun. Packed full of cameos and crazy antics. It makes speed (not the movie) look the opposite of cool, but is very cool doing it. Like Trainspotting with less scots and more fucking. And lesbians. And a green dog. And John Leguizamo beating off into a sock.

If you asked me to list the movies which I thought deserved a sequel, I probably wouldn’t come up with a very large number, anyway, one of the movies which wouldn’t even occur to me, because let’s face it, it was pretty forgettable, was ‘The Whole 9 Yards’, and who thought it was clever to call it ‘The Whole 10 Yards’? What does that even mean? There is no phrase ‘the whole 10 yards’ it’s rubbish.

Movies I’d like to see a sequel for:

• Bourne Identity. There are 3 books, after all, and they’re all complete rubbish, but I liked the movie.
• Spiderman. There already is one, but I want more. I just like it.
• Star Wars. I’d like to see movies 1 – 3 remade by someone other than George Lucas, have that person go through 4 – 6 to get rid of any shit he added with the 20th aniversary releases, and then go on to make 7 – 10. This person would have to be seriously gifted, and have hundreds of millions of dollars per movie. Phantom Menace would have no pod race scene, the kid would have virtually no role, they’d just be like ‘wow, this kid that isn’t all cute and shit, and who hardly says a word, has some serious force flowing, let’s send him off somewhere, forget about him for a while, and just have some cool kickass adventures for a while (with boobies and splosions)’.
• Alien. Another Alien movie, but with Predators. How long has this been rumored? I’d prefer that Ripley isn’t in it, and it’d be best to completely forget about that awful human alien hybrid from 4.
• X-Men. 2 was better than 1, if 3 is better still it will be seriously excellent. (But watch out for any visiting Aliens being too lame to exist.)
• Blade Runner. Why not?

Movies I don’t want to see a sequel for:

• Fight Club. I don’t think there is anything of value to add.
• Daredevil. What a big steaming pile of crap. Internal consistency is important. Something else that is important is: having people who can do martial arts convincingly, that fight between skank-ho and blind-bob was so unbelievably bad – give Dylan a camera and James a wig, I’ll play blind-bob, give us one afternoon and a few beers, and we’ll shoot a version 23x more believable.
• Lost Highway. Actually, David Lynch gets a lifetime ban from making movies, and all his previous movies are destroyed.
• Battlefield Earth. Fucking Scientology.
• Police Academy. Please un-make the ~7 that have already been made, k? thx.
• RoboCop. (Anyone else notice how these movies just got worse and worse the more they made?)

Enter today’s entry in he ‘I had AIDS before it was cool’ category*:

I saw an advance screening of Return of the King last night, was given 4 tickets, but Claire didn’t want to go see such a long movie on a weeknight, so the 3 seats to my right were the only empty ones in the whole theatre.

It’s long.

It’s not that good – really. The CG is shit, it’s a flickery jerky mess, if anything it’s actually worse than Two Towers. And that Andy Serkis needs to stop being so utterly shit at voice work. Lastly, if they’re going to cut out Saruman, at least they can also NOT have the fucking ring talking!

The spider was so bad it was laughable, might as well have been a little plastic toy bouncing along on a piece of elastic.

Oh, and if it’s not crying little bitches, it’s brave hearted fighters who virtually have blue painted faces and cries of FREEEEEEDDOOOMM!!! roaring from their collective throats. (I’ve seen this movie before, I think, now what was it called?)

The one good thing was… There were no Asian’s translating for each other at full conversational speech volume for me to bash in the heads of.

Revolutions was about 7.4 times better.

What a steaming pile of shit. And I have to sit through it again tomorrow. Gah.

—

* Also, put it in the complete fabrication category, I didn’t really see it last night, just wanted to make young James squirm in frustration that I (a non-fanboy) saw it first, and didn’t take him, even though I had too many seats. Lame joke, I know. And it probably didn’t even work. Pssht.

We went out to see The Matrix Revolutions this morning (first session started at 3 AM, you see). The megascreen was definitely the place for it, it’s been interesting to see the "reviews" posted by a lot of armchair critics, basically panning it, but with so much hyperbole, so much venom, that it’s clear they had their eyes shut for much of the time for fear of it being good.

It’s quite funny that some people think that to critique something you have to be negative, but only when it’s not being sad.

The truth is that Revolutions pretty much hits the mark, ties up all the loose ends it needs to, and, importantly, picks up the pace greatly from where much of Reloaded languished.

It must be clear that it exceeded my expectations, which is always a good thing. Whether it exceeded your expectations, I care not a whit.

Lastly (you hope) I think the movies are fully cohesive only when viewed as a whole, so for example, if you don’t immediately recognise (The) Kid, and know his unique origins, you don’t have a high quality perspective on any part of Reloaded or Revolutions, IMHO.

The other night we (Jimbo, Lummox (nee. Olderon), HotR & Moi) wandered down into our fair city for a spot of Film Festival Fun… Volcano High was on the menu, and it was güt.

Vaguely reminiscent of Battle Royale (the whole teachers vs. students in a future world in which there have been mass student revolts, etc), only with magic powers rather than crossbows or molotov cocktails.

Looks like it had a much bigger budget, though, with lots of fun CG, and stuff. Also has lots of physical humour, which probably make the laughs much more accessible to the non-Korean speaking audience.

James mentioned something about it being the anti-Harry Potter, and there is definitely some of that in it, though thankfully no podrace^D^D^D^D I mean Quidditch.