Dawn of the Geeks

The new Narnia movie is excellent. I saw the BBC version years ago and recently picked up the DVD box set for $25 at Best Buy. I can see why they released in on DVD before the movie came out. The special effects in the original movie were very cheesy with hand drawn cartoons for mythical creatures. At least they tried to blend in the animation with the live action. They did the best they could to make the cartoons look “real.” There’s only so much you can do with 1980’s technology. The new version’s special effects are top notch. Aslan no longer speaks like a badly dubbed foreign film. His mouth is fully animated like you’d expect from modern computer animation.

Plot wise, I didn’t see any obvious changes from the original movie which was very true to the book. The original movie was nearly three hours long which the new version is a little less than two and a half hours even with a much expanded battle scene. What they did it seems was simply to pace the movie better. The original was very drawn out while this movie keeps moving along. It was a very faithful retelling of the story which isn’t what I’ve come to expect from Hollywood so I was very pleasantly surprised. I even recognized some of the shots as been virtually identical to the original movie. I did like the original witch better. The witch in this movie was played by someone who didn’t seem to do “mean” very well.

Apparently in the early 1990’s Paramount was looking to make a version set in California. Fortunatly better judgment ruled the day and the project was canned.

Things to notice. The Professor is played by the same person who played Zidler in Moulin Rouge. The witch’s sled driver is the same person who played the oompa loompa in the new Willy Wonka movie.

Definitly worth seeing at least once. I’m hoping they do as well with the other books in the series.

Chicken Little is currently number 1 at the box office. In one of the previews the Numa Numa song can be heard playing. However, you won’t find it in the film. The Numa Numa wiki entry has the original lyrics to the song as well as an English translation and instructions on how to get the Numa Numa song on your phone as a ringtone for FREE.

Disney’s Chicken Little turns the classic story from just being about a chicken that thinks the sky is falling to a story about the relationship between parents and their children. It’s a very consistently funny movie with some serious moments. Highly recommended.

I was able to see Corpse Bride with my fiance yesterday thanks to a free screening she had pointed out to me in The State Press, ASU’s campus paper. The ticket said they were overbooking so show up early. We got there more than an hour ahead of time and there was barely a line. Maybe it’s just not cool enough because there aren’t any explosions and it’s rated PG. At only 76 minutes it’s very short for a feature film.

We both liked the film. It wasn’t particularly deep and it is somewhat predictable but it is entertaining. The only complaint I had was that they should have told the story of the Corpse Bride before she was dead. All you get is a song and dance summary. It would have lengthed the movie to actually play out her story. But, when you’re doing stop motion with as much detail as this movie was done in, it would probably have taken years to complete an additional hour or so of footage. The songs were decent but not as good as in Nightmare Before Christmas.

An interesting trivia is that this is the first movie to use a professional grade digital camera (like you could buy yourself at Best Buy or something) to shoot each frame. Previously film cameras were used for this type of thing.

So yes, I’d recommend seeing this film. The cinematography is incredible and the story is good. Again, my only complaint is the length. I think there was a lot more that could have been done.

Excellent movie. I actually saw the ending twice. Once after we walked out of “High Tension” the worst movie ever and once when we went to see it from start to finish. There isn’t a whole lot of fighting in this movie. It’s more about character development. How Batman came about. Which was the point of the movie. But it had enough car chases and fight scenes to keep things interesting.

The Katie Holmes character, an obviously liberal District Attorney, couldn’t tell the difference between justice and revenge. The main villian didn’t know what justice was either and leads a secret cult who has self elected themselves to control the evil population. They claim responsibility for burning Rome, etc. So we’ve got good guys who don’t know what Justice is and bad guys who don’t know what Justice is. No wonder they need Batman, who seems to have his head on straight about what Justice is. And I think that’s pretty much the point of superheros. We have the extreme left that’s so morally dead they don’t know what to do with the evil people (or simply can’t do anything about them) and the extreme right that can’t be anything but evil and so we introduce a superhero to take care of what needs to be taken care of.

See the Trailer for the new King Kong movie.

movie review by Jeffrey Westhoff, Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)

The most shocking thing about “Land of the Dead” is not the vivid dismemberments but how boldly Romero holds a macabre mirror up to post-9/11 America. In several senses of the word, this is one gutsy film.

A decade or so after the zombie invasion begun in Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead,” the surviving humans have barricaded themselves in the inner cities. In Pittsburgh, where the film is set, the rich have sealed themselves inside a glass skyscraper called Fiddler’s Green.

Led by the unscrupulous Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), the tenants of Fiddler’s Green have manipulated the middle class and the poor into distrusting each other. The plutocrats guarantee no one questions their life of luxury by keeping the peasants focused on the zombie threat, even though the wandering undead haven’t come near a city in years.

The only people who encounter the zombies anymore are paramilitary raiders who supply the cities by riding into outlying towns to scrounge for food, medicine and other essentials. The leaders of Pittsburgh’s team are Riley (Simon Baker) and Cholo (John Leguizamo). Riley and Cholo can’t stand each other, but they are both a day away from retirement.

Interesting. If we want to pretend this movie is about post 9-11 America then let’s consider the principle characters. We have the rich liberals tucked away in their urban glass castles with constant messages that everything is great. A leader (Kaufman) who is behind this deception. The only people in post 9/11 America telling people that terrorists aren’t a problem are the far left liberal leaders and movie makers like Michael Moore who call terrorists “minute men” and actually admire them.

The movie review is also wrong, the outsiders use the zombies as photo-ops and have them cage fight for bets. Those who live with the zombies have learned to use them for monetary gain. Amnesty Internation recently pulled a publicity stunt refering to Guantanimo Bay as a Gulag. They even later admitted it was just to get attention. Using terrorists for monetary gain by pretending that those who defend us are the real bad guys. Or as Senator Durbin called them “Nazis.”

Then we have the middle class people that the upper class people shun. When a hooker gets on the wrong side of Kaufman, he has her thrown in a cage to be eaten by zombies. Sounds familiar. When people speak against the far left they’re compared to Nazis and shunned. The far left has no problem with those who fight the terrorists being killed by terrorists. After all, the terrorists aren’t terrorists at all, they’re just “minute men.” Revolutionaries.

Those in the glass tower have no respect for those outside the tower. Like the liberals in post 9/11 America. They feel that anybody who isn’t a liberal is stupid. We live in the real world, they live in a glass tower. This is why Senator Durbin was shocked, shocked I say, to find that only 20% of Americans think he’s right in his view of Guantanimo. While tucked away in his glass tower, all he saw was people who saw things his way. He assumed his opinion was the popular opinion. Not only is it’s the far far minority opinion, but it’s wrong. It’s based on zero facts. And us “stupid red state” citizens know this.

Then we have the people actually fighting the zombies. They know they’re a threat. The “stupid and worthless” people outside the tower know this. The only people who don’t know this are the mindless liberals in the glass tower who eat up their leaders’ propoganda that everything is fine. I think you can guess who ends up dead at the end. Those who are willfully oblivious to the evil in their world, or those who recognize and meet it head on?

Someone once said, during the Civil War the North saved the South. Now, we’re returning the favor.

If Ramero really was trying to make some political statement with this movie it in no way supports the liberal viewpoint. If he was and it was intended to show how the Right is manipulating the people then he did an excellent job showing how in attempting to assassinate the leader (there are many exibits and images depicting the assassination of Bush) they are really killing themselves.

The ending also demonstrats a liberal spin. After an hour and a half (not including the prior 3 movies) of the zombies going through and killing people, they decide to let them alone since they’re “just looking for somewhere to stay. ”

As Karl Rove said

“Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.”

But this is all pointless. Land of the Dead is a great movie. There’s no reason to drag politics into it. If Romero was looking to present the Liberal world view of post 9/11, he did an excellent job of showing what an upside down view they have. I’d rather just enjoy the movie for the horror movie it is.

High Tension

Roeper said it was good but too clever (whatever that means). Ebert called it “nasty, brutish and short.” I decided that I should use a couple of my free passes to go see it since I’d seen previews and I was expecting a standard cheesy horror movie (is there any other kind? apparently). Turns out the dubbing was horrible. It’s actually a French film and they speak both english and french. I can’t really complain too much about that though as most english speaking Asian films like Kung Fu Hustle (fantastic movie) have the same audio issues. But what finally got us to leave the theater was the violence and distinct lack of plot. It opens with some guy getting head in a truck. Turns out it’s a decapitated head and when he’s done he drops in on the ground for us to see. This would be our killer. It just gets more gruesome so we left and saw another movie. I’ve never actually walked out of a movie before. It’s not scary. It’s just disgusting.

We caught the end of Batman Begins. Judging from the last 30 minutes of the film it was excellent. We’ll definitly be seeing that one. On Friday we’ll be seeing “Land of the Dead” which will hopefully be a more enjoyable horror movie. Dawn of the Dead (both versions) are excellent examples of what a horror film should be.

Considering I’m trying to get rid of the dating site ads, this is probably not the best movie to restart my reviews with. I started a movie review section last year but it went stale in August since it was such a hassle to update. Now, with a blog, it’s easy so I’ll probably review about as many movies as I see. Which is a lot.

The basic plot summary is John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) meet in Columbia and get married. What they don’t know is that the other is a spy. 5 or 6 years later they’re in marriage counseling and they both get sent to do the same job. That’s when they figure out they’re on opposing teams. Hilarity and drama ensues as they try (or not) to kill each other. Moulin Rouge did a much better job with the “does she love him or not” bit. The other standard fare is the huge gun fight, elevator music bit which has been done in a number of movies already including last year’s Dawn of the Dead. The first time I saw it was for some video game years ago. It was funny then, it’s losing the funny now.

This is definitely not an original movie. What it has going for it is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, since it’s rated PG-13 you’re only getting to see as much as Maxim Magazine would show. It also has the same problem as Ocean’s Twelve: it’s not about the story. It’s about the actors. They along with Vince Vaughn and one other surprise actor (unless you looked it up on IMDB) make up basically the entire cast. Everyone else is pretty much faceless. The goal of the movie is to show how cool Brad Pitt is and how hot Angelina Jolie is. They even have a pretty blatent ad for another one of his movies (Fight Club) in this movie.

Fight Club was a character study and a very interesting one at that. It wasn’t about Brad Pitt. It was about characters and how they interact. You know. The story. I have to say that Mr. and Mrs. Smith was entertaining. You just have to not ask too many questions. Hopefully Pitt with get off his self interested horse and start making some more story focused movies like Seven, Fight Club and Snatch. Angelina’s a hottie but I don’t think she or anyone else is currently taking herself seriously enough to do a deeper movie that isn’t just concerned with showing how hot she is. Maybe that’s all people want from her.

An excellent movie. Jamie Foxx plays a cab driver (Max) with big dreams who’s been temporarily driving a cab for 12 years to get everything in order for his new business. Tom Cruise plays a hitman (Vincent) hired by a crime boss to take out a list of people who are set to testify againt the criminal group. Vincent gets in Max’s cab and pays him a lot of money to be his personal driver for the night. At the first hit something goes wrong and now Max can’t be unaware of what his client is doing. Who knew Foxx could play a serious role. The entire movie is well paced and engrossing. The twists and turns will keep you from guessing what happens next all the way to the end. It’s rated R purely for the violence and language. My only complaint is the blatent Bacardi Silver ads. The two will be driving to the next location and the camera will pan up to ad on top of the taxi and hold for a bit. But, it is one of the few movies that can have an extended period of time with no dialog and still hold your interest.

M. Night Shyamalan has completely lost whatever touch he had when he came out with The Sixth Sense. Every movie after just gets more and more overly dramatic and shallow. It’s 108 minutes but it seems like an eternity. If you havn’t figured out what the twist is before you see the movie, then you’re behind on your knowledge of movie cliche’s and standard stories. The only thing I didn’t see coming was the final minor twist which just made me hate the movie more. M Night also needs to stop showing up in his movies. Hitchcock always has a little cameo in his movies but he had the sense to not say anything. Hitcock also made better movies. Although who knows, Hitchcock made a lot of films and not all of them are considered classics. M Night might eventually get back into the game but at the current rate he’s going the next movie is going to be three hours long, consist of no plot and have at least a 15 minute pause between each line of dialog.

The only thing I’ll give this movie is that the plot isn’t absurd like his previous two movies. It’s just very poorly executed.