Working For A Living

(With apologies to Chuck Jones.)

Star Trek is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2011 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

It HAD To Happen Sooner Or Later

Mainstream movies of the last several years seem to be having more explicit sex scenes; films like Ken Park, 9 Songs, Shortbus, The Brown Bunny, Lust, Caution, Antichrist, and Blue Valentine dip a toe, or other body part, into territory usually reserved for adult films (especially those that feature actual sex and not just the simulated variety).

Now comes the news that a porno company is making a sci fi film, called Horizon, with heavy emphasis on the sci fi. (This is via blastr.com.)

Great! Just what we all look for in our porn: more plot!

These porn actors and actresses have enough trouble trying to act in complex scenes involving pizza delivery and cable repair, imagine having to deliver lines about post-apocalyptic conditions on Mercury and alien invasion tactics. The mind boggles.

Up, Up, and AWAAAY!

File this under, "If I had a million bucks just lying around doing nothin'."

Sideshow Toys is offering an amazing Superman figure, based on the likeness of THE Man of Steel, the late Christopher Reeve.

The costume is spot on -- when costume designer Yvonne Blake adapted the blue and red togs from the comics to the real world, she nailed it (compare this version to the costume interpretation in the new Zack Snyder film - guess which one will be remembered the longest). The figure's body is incredible, with just the right amount of musculature to emulate/duplicate the physique that Reeve worked so hard to create (no padded-muscle-suit wearer he).

The range of motion is terrific, based on the gallery pics. The figure looks very life-like in the poses featured.

The one slight flaw is in the figure's expression. The sculptors did an astonishing job, but something about the eyes is not right. Compare this to Hot Toys work on a similar Michael Keaton-Batman figure, wear they got it 110% right.

The (Animated) Adventures of Jonny Quest

Jonny Quest, which ran for only one season in 1964, is one of the greatest animated adventure series ever made.

George Lucas must have seen this series as a geeky kid starting film school, as Jonny's adventures crossing the globe, traveling to exotic lands and encountering "scum and villainy*" (often with a supernatural bent) feel like mini-Indiana Jones tales.

I bring up this beloved series because an enterprising guy named Roger Evans has recreated the opening titles of Jonny Quest with stop-motion animated figures. It's a hoot and a half, and a real work of love. Evans does nearly shot for shot recreations, with some tweaking here and there (e.g., the Quest jet design). Here's the original article at io9.com.

And the JQ theme by Hoyt Curtain is still one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed for TV!

*yes, I know that's from Star Wars not Indy!

Monkeying around with Planet of the Apes

The latest Planet of the Apes movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is still chugging along nicely at the box office, proving to be a surprise hit.

You may remember its original title was Rise of the Apes, but cooler and perhaps hairier heads prevailed at Fox Studios and they put the franchise moniker "Planet of" back in there as it should be.

What you may not know is that in the reboot/rethink process the film went through several possible titles, which are presented here for the first time:

How the Planet of the Apes Got Its Groove Back

Manos: The Hairy Paws of the Planet of the Apes

To Wong Foo, Thanks For the Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes vs. Frankenstein and Jesse James

Stop! Or My Ape Will Shoot

Honey, I Shrunk the Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes 2: Electric Monkey Boogaloo

Destroy All Monkeys (Planet of the Apes in Japan)

Planet of the Apes: The Banana Hangover

Cowboys & Apes & Aliens

WTF?, Planet of the Apes

Justin Bieber: Never Say Planet of the Apes

Final Destination: The Planet of the 6pes

Tyler Perry’s Madea Straightens Out the Planet of the Apes

Your Time is Up

Writer/director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca and The Truman Show) has a new scifi film coming up called, In Time.

In the near future, units of time are bought and sold. If you want to buy something, you give them minutes of your life, if you want to live longer you have to work very, very hard for those precious extra minutes.

Here's the international trailer for In Time by way of io9.com.

Droid Safety

Here at the space station, a cute girl with an R2-D2 bike helmet gets our full attention. Now this is an item Uncle George's marketing peeps should have thought of a long time ago....

(This item was originally found at the blog Pop Candy, run by the lovely, talented and geektastic Whitney Matheson.)

Replaced have I been, Yes!

Well, the Star Wars Saga Blu-Ray release is coming up on us.

Uncle George decided to replace the puppet Yoda in Episode I: It All Goes Into the Shitter From Here with a CGI version to match the digital Yoda in Episodes II and III. io9.com's article on this has a nice pic comparing the muppet with the digi-version.

Now I love, love, love the Stuart Freeborn-created puppet used in The Empire Strikes Back, but boy oh boy, the puppet in Episode I is...just something, ain't it? LOOK AT THAT FUCKING THING! It looks like Yoda's dumb, drunk-n-hopped-up-on-painkillers, "look-alike" cousin.

Adios, fucker.

Timeline of the Planet of the Apes

Being into all things monkey, I heartily recommend this article at Rope of Silicon, where blogger Brad Brevet posts a timeline for the original five Planet of the Apes movies.

Before the Saw series became a yearly Halloween "treat" for the last few years, the period of 1970 to 1973 saw the release of a new Apes movie each year. And while the budgets for each successive movie were slashed considerably, they were able to tell some imaginative, thought-provoking, exciting and fun adventure tales that still hold up today. Original Planet of the Apes screenwriter Rod Serling would have been proud.

Stick them to the Game Grid

Here's the lightcycle chase from Tron, as interpreted by rolls of Duck Tape-brand duct tape, from io9.com.

Way awesome.

Of (Giant) Mice and Men

Ever have that dream where you wake up in the "Land of the Giants" and that creepy giant hand they always used is s-l-o-w-l-y moving in to scoop you up.

Maybe it's just me....

Anywoo, "Land of the Giants" was fortunate enough to feature not one but TWO great main title themes from the Maestro of Movie Music himself, John Williams. Here's Season One, and, my fave, Season Two.

LOOK OUT! IT' S MONDAY!

Yup, it's Monday. The start of another work week, or work weak if you prefer.

If you're like me, that's means a grief-filled day. In that spirit, here's an io9.com post about the Five Stages of Grief thru the lens of the Schwarzenegger Conan movies.

If you need a sugar rush to get through today's festivities, here's a fun piece from cracked.com looking at Marvel super-heroes and Hostess Snack Cakes. I particularly like the second item with the Hulk versus the Roller Disco Devils, which are a bunch of dudes in their mid-forties on roller skates, listening to tunes with lyrics like, "Yeah! Yeah! Baby" and "Wo! Wo!"

Review the Block!

I’ve been re-reading "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" by the one and only Joe Bob Briggs. It’s in that spirit that I present the following review. The drive-in will never die!

I took the landspeeder down off blocks, and since it hovered there in the air, I drove it down to the Arclight in Mos Hollywood to catch this little alien invasion flick that was made “across the pond,” as they say, in non-Communist Britain.

It’s called Attack the Block. It’s about these teenagers with funny accents who don’t own Xboxes and don't have much parenting going on, so they go around mugging women for their jewelry.

Then an alien lands smack dab into a car parked on the same street where the Little Thieving Rascals are doing their mugging.

Then the alien critter attacks the lead teenager named Moses.

Then Moses goes all Sammy Sosa on steroids on ET and kills it with a baseball bat.

Then the kids meet up with Nick Frost the neighborhood pot-head, and later the local drug dealer who wants Moses to be his new Number One Guy.

Then MORE aliens fall from the sky, except these are A LOT nastier than the one Moses clubbed.

Then the kids and the woman they mugged have to defend their ghetto block from crazy aliens while staying out of the path of the drug dealer’s bullets.

No breasts (except if you count the female alien, and I don’t). Several excellent beasts with day-glo teeth. Drive-in Academy Award nomination for John Boyega as Moses the Denzel Washington look-alike teen leader. Heads roll. Three quarts human blood. One quart alien blood. One motor vehicle chase with crash. Motorcycle, scooter and bicycle chases with minimal crashes. No kung fu. Samurai sword fu. Baseball bat fu. Kitchen knife fu. Oven fu. Not a lot of plot to slow things down. Excellent tunes from bands I never heard of. Three stars, BNFOS says check it out.

Of Capes and Cowls

The amazing folks at io9.com have some cool first photos from two very anticipated movies.

First up is the dreamy Anne Hathaway in her Catwoman garb from The Dark Knight Rises. From the pic, it looks like the thieving kitty stole the Bat's wheels.

And here is the first look at star Henry Cavill all suited up as Superman in Man of Steel. I like the tone of the image, what with all the sparks, rubble and busted metal, and I like that they're not using the Brandon Routh version of the costume, but, seriously, what is with the textured look to the costume?

Ever since the first Spider-Man movie, does every superhero costume has to have shit, i.e. a printed pattern, all over it? (Or was it Billy Zane's The Phantom that started the trend? But in that movie the Phantom's costume was more or less "tattooed" with tribal art and skulls, things associated with the character, and not just some silly grid pattern.) Are solid colors simply verboten? That aesthetic even carried over into the 2009 Star Trek film reboot, with the little delta symbol plastered all over their uniforms instead of having it simply be a solid color. The new Spider-Man reboot costume looks like it was made primarily from recycled basketballs due to the silly patterns in it.

Christopher Reeve and his classic costume showed you don't need little textured crap all over everything. It showed you need a very talented actor to bring the character to life. The actor makes the costume work, not vice versa.

Pot, Kettle

Star Trek Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencap from Trekcore.com.

Transformers 3 Fried My Circuits

Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

We're Mad about Cracked!

For perhaps the first time in history, we get TWO comic book movies released in the same month: X-Men: First Class came out yesterday and on June 17 Green Lantern will hit the big screen.

To celebrate this momentous moment in human/mutant/alien history, I've been reading some very funny shit on Cracked.com, like "5 Comic Book Movies Way Worse Than Batman and Robin," which includes such gems as the Captain America and Nick Fury tv movies. If you didn't know, tv Cap's shield is just a giant plastic see-thru Frisbee. Why? Perhaps so he can peep at the totally creepy David Hasselhoff and the puppies pic posted in the article.

There's also "The 7 Least-Faithful Comic Book Movies," which pokes the fun at Stallone's Judge Dredd flick (say it with me now, "I EM the law!") and the aforementioned, and much Bat-nipple-adorned, Batman and Robin. Perhaps my favorite comic book movie-related Cracked post is this one: 5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped, which looks at some long in development pictures, including Shazam!, Sub-Mariner, Luke Cage, and two heroes who actually made it to the screen this year, Thor and Green Lantern. Yes, this Cracked article is a few years old, but we hear at Bad News From Outer Space bow to all things funny, and besides that whole space/time continuum is a twisty, bendy river that flows back into itself, or some shit like that.

Some choice observations from that last article: "The Green Lantern is more of a class or profession than it is a man. Similar to "the sheriff" or "the mayor," or "an asshole,"" "according to the movies the vast majority of gangland activity before 1991 was comprised of double-dutch competitions, choreographed roller skating and breakdancing to save the community center from an evil strip-mall developer,"and "(Sub-Mariner's) powers are roughly equivalent to that of a jacked-up Aquaman, a character most famous for being ridiculously useless."

Great Bird

Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of these rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Forsooth, Verily It Be Hammer Time!

THOR (2011)

Marvel Studios first gave us a lusty, snarky billionaire who wears a flying suit of armor. Then they presented a nerdy scientist you never, just never, want to get angry, because he turns into a Monster of Mass Destruction. Now the comic book folks go into the next dimension, literally, and give us a superhero god in Thor.

Following the template laid down in 1962 when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Larry Lieber introduced the character, Thor follows the exploits of the extra-planetary being who, with his compatriots, inspired our ancient ancestors’ belief in the pantheon of god-warriors who reside in Asgard at the end of the rainbow bridge which connects our worlds.

Thor (Star Trek’s Chris Hemsworth) is the headstrong son of Odin, the leader of the gods (Anthony Hopkins) who thinks with his mighty hammer Mjollnir, instead of his head. The Asgardians and their eternal enemy the Frost Giants have had a truce for much of our Earth’s civilized existence, but the Giants make an attempt to steal a powerful object back from Odin’s people. For that brazen maneuver, Thor wants to wipe them out, and going against Odin’s express orders, the cocky warrior leads a team including his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) to Jotunheim, the world of the Frost Giants.

They quickly get in over their heads and Odin beams into save their armored hides. For his temerity, Odin banishes Thor to Earth to learn some lessons – after all, he can’t let a hot-head succeed him to the throne. It’s on Earth that the movie seriously slows down. Thor not only has to learn his lesson and get back in time to save Asgard, but he has a limp love story with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a cute physicist who is studying the effects of the bridge that gets Thor and others to earth (she calls it an Einstein-Rosen bridge, Thor sez it's “Bifrost, the rainbow bridge”). He also runs afoul of S.H.I.E.L.D., the shadowy government agency with the tongue twister of a full name.

The movie even takes the time to introduce Clint Barton/Hawkeye the super archer who will appear in The Avengers movie in what is perhaps the stupidest cameo ever committed to film. The appearance is so forced you have to be an Avengers comic book fan to even get it. To the casual viewer, you’re left wondering why some dude with a bow and arrow WHICH HE NEVER USES BTW shows up for 30 seconds. If he used his arrows to pin Thor to the wall, that would have been a decent move, instead he just sits in a crane bucket in the rain, not firing a single arrow. Compare that to Scarlett Johansson's memorable kick butt scenes as super agent the Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (she's also to appear in the Avengers).

Thor is not a terrible comic book movie by any means, Elektra and Catwoman get to safely keep that trophy between them, but it is so jam-packed with story, credited to five writers, that it needs more than its just-under-2-hour runtime to properly cover it all. All the pieces are put in place: the cast is uniformly good under the direction of Kenneth Branagh (which is probably why the Asgard scenes are the most fun with their kings, young princes and palace intrigue), the special effects are top notch (Thor swinging his hammer just as Jack Kirby drew it over 40 years ago brought a smile to my face). But Thor isn’t given a true journey of redemption as he should have been. He’s simply on earth for a few days and comes to the conclusion he’s been a bit of a dick, without actually having to DO anything to get to that life changing point. Loki’s character was also short changed – we don’t know WHY he would turn on Thor and Odin, especially if they’ve shown him nothing but love his whole life (does he just have an inferiority complex?). Being evil is never enough, unless you’re Sauron in Lord of the Rings, and Hiddleston shows some real spark as Loki.

This particular story with the god/fish out of water could have also used much more humor. When you run over a 6'5" ripped dude in the New Mexico desert with your truck and he claims to be the Norse god of thunder, he's either bug nuts insane...or he's not. Kat Dennings was the official comic relief in the earthbound scenes, but this story would have seriously benefited from more laughs, a la Iron Man 1.

The movie proclaims that Thor will return in The Avengers. I’m up for that, but let’s hope that writer and director Joss Whedon is better at juggling his Ocean’s Eleven-type superhero story and character demands.

Favorite Quote of the Day

From the article "The 7 Least-Faithful Comic Book Movies" at Cracked.com.

"Gene Hackman (Lex Luther) reportedly refused to be in (Superman III) due to a dispute with the producers. Meanwhile, Richard Pryor was coming off a string of hits and the producers figured he'd make a nice replacement. It was kind of like finding out you have no milk for your cereal, and using bourbon instead."

Pucker Up

Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of these rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

One Beamed Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One upon a time, boys and girls, the USS Enterprise stopped by the looney bin in a TOS episode called, "Whom Gods Destroy." It was run by Master Po before he shaved his head, lost his vision and started hanging around with David Carradine.

The inmates were revolting, er, I mean they revolted under the leadership, magnetic smile and smelly fur coat of Garth of Izar (seriously, did he ever dry clean that rag, it must smell like Chewbacca's crotch on a warm day), not to be confused with Garth of IZOD, the clothing magnate of Krypton (company motto, "KNEEEL Before My Shirt's Crocodile!").

Anyhoo, Garth is running the show on Elba II and he's itching to take it on the road, so he needs a ride, and what better wheels than your own friggin' starship (it's even been washed and detailed). But James T. ain't no dope; he and Scotty concocted a safe word based on a popular board game, like Chutes and Ladders or Hungry Hungry Hippos or something.

Garth spends the rest of the story trying to trick Kirk into giving up the secret word (say it really, really loud with me Pee Wee Herman fans: "Queen to King's level one!"). He offers Kirk power, glory, you know the usual stuff. Hell, Garth even throws Batgirl at him. At that point, I'd have squealed the secret recipe to KFC chicken AND Coca Cola, but not Kirk. Move over Superman, cause Jim Kirk is the real Man of Steel!

All's well, that ends well. Kirk and Spock (using Starfleet Academy's little known "Hit Me Over the Head So I Fall Down and Let You Two Fight It Out Until I Can Figure Out Whose Ass I Should Phaser" technique) defeat Garth and his Insane Clown Posse, free the asylum's overseer Dr. Donald "Duck" Cory, zap out all the bad and evilness from Garth and also got to check out the asylum's cafeteria, which actually has a 2 star Michelin Guide rating.











Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. Wall-E is Copyright and a Trademark of Pixar/Disney. No infringement of these rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

She Can Kill You With Her Little Finger

Hanna (2011)

What do you get when you make Jason Bourne 16 years old, and a girl? You get Hanna, but you lose a lot in that conversion process.

Hanna, well played by Saorise Ronan, is raised in isolation near the Arctic Circle by her father (Eric Bana). They live in a ramshackle fairy tale cabin. It seems that papa is a former CIA black ops agent, and he's passing all those survival and fighting skills to his daughter: Hanna is a pint-sized assassin.

But what's an assassin without a target? Enter dad's former boss Marissa Viegler (Cate Blanchett, with an extra large Texas drawl). However, the movie, written by Seth Lochhead and David Farr, is fairly muddy as to exactly why Marissa is doing what she's doing, which leaves an unsatisfying impression with viewers (none of use who watched the movie together could put a finger on what was Marissa's motivation).

Director Joe Wright handles the action scenes well enough, as we knew he could do the quieter moments in this story after directing Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. The major problem is the pacing.

The story resembles The Bourne Identity in that both follow super-assassin main characters who are unsure of their origins. Both stories take our heroes across several countries: Hanna starts in upper Finland, moves to Morocco and then to Germany. It's when she meets this traveling hippie family in Morocco that the movie nearly grinds to a halt. Hanna was raised in isolation in one location by her father and now she's introduced to other people, cultures and places. She also makes her first friend, winningly played as a hyper teen by Jessica Barden.

A lot of the culture clash material was interesting (Hanna discovers electricity, but also the constant noise of our modern society, even at night), but it went on far too long. It was almost as if they took two films, one an action flick and the other a coming of age drama, and edited them together. The story went from heavy action in the beginning to the culture clash to rather dull before remembering its action origins.

Hanna is certainly not a bad movie, but one that may play better on DVD when you can fast forward a bit through the dull parts.

Guidos and Guidettes in Space

What? It's the latest episode of the hit series TREKKIE SHORE.

Follow the latest exploits of buff, tanned bodies like K-Rok, Spock aka "The Fascination," Dr. McWoWW and everyone's favorite hobbit-sized hunka tipsy love, Yo'Neck, otherwise known as Snookie Don't Confuse Me With the Wookiee.

Set your phasers to tan, orbit da club, and beam 'em down. What?

Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Buckaroo Banzai: TheNext Generation

You all know Buckaroo Banzai, don't you? Among other things, he was a physicist, neurosurgeon and a rock singer fronting the band the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

Doug Drexler may be the closest thing the world of Star Trek has to Buckaroo Banzai. He started out as a special effects makeup artist (winning an Oscar for his work on the underrated Dick Tracy), moved into graphic design illustration, and then into CGI visual effects.

He has one of the coolest blogs around, Drex Files, wherein he shares the wealth of material on the projects he's worked on, with special emphasis on Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.

And now he's got another installment of Drex TV, his video blog look at the stuff we fans love. Check it out: http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/drextv-04-temporal-sonar/

The Master of the Movie Poster Image

Recently, I made a trip to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences building in Hollywood to scope out their exhibition of Bob Peak movie poster artwork. Not familiar with the name "Bob Peak?" Do you recall the posters for such films as Superman: The Movie, Camelot, Apocalypse Now, West Side Story, Every Which Way But Loose, In Like Flint, Rollerball, The Spy Who Loved Me, and the first five Star Trek motion pictures? Then you've seen Peak's amazing work.

Peak has been called the "father of the modern movie poster" for his brilliant designs and use of collage to depict scenes from the films. His use of color and especially light was second to none -- look at the energy in this image Peak created for Prince of the City: http://tinyurl.com/3ot7jam.

My only disappointment, if you could call it that, was I was expecting to see brush strokes or little smudges on the original artwork. Instead they were absolutely perfect pieces, almost like photographs (there were a few pencil roughs for some of the posters, and those were on slightly crinkled paper). I did find it amusing they had to touch up the Silverado poster. The large main figures are all on horseback, with the horses splashing in water, and there is brush spatter (imagine using a toothbrush to fleck specks of paint) that hit some of the smaller portraits higher up in the actual artwork. Those were touched up for the final poster printing.

If you can't make it out to Hollywood, please check out the Bob Peak website http://bobpeak.net/. You will be delighted and thrilled.

Adjusted for Boredom

The Adjustment Bureau (2010)

Philip K. Dick gets his umpteenth novel/short story adapted to the big screen, this time with extremely limp results.

Matt Damon plays a state representative running for US Senator. He's young, full of ideas and *gasp* folks are saying he has a shot at the presidency. But his career - nay, his whole life - will be derailed if he stays with the beautiful dancer he meets in the unlikeliest of places. As that dancer is played by the luminous Emily Blunt, you can see why a man would want her in his life.

However there are some shadowy figures, who dress like H&R Block agents from the early 1960s, who want to throw a monkey wrench into Damon's plans. Who are these suits and what is their deal? Well, actually we find out about them 20 minutes into the movie, which is a huge misstep on the filmmakers parts. Dick's stories are famous for their paranoia, and what better way to show that paranoia than have a political candidate constantly followed by mysterious men in black (and various shades of grey) who only he can see and who can literally disappear when they step through a doorway just a few paces ahead of you.

The Adjustment Bureau drops the paranoia altogether and merely gives Damon a problem to solve. It was pointed out to me that this story would have been better served if done in a light comedy style, a la Men in Black, and I have to agree. The early scenes with Damon and Blunt are played like a romantic comedy (and they work fine that way), so veering into MIB territory would not have been such a hard thing. Played totally straight though, the story falls apart - this might have made for a decent Twilight Zone episode - but after the explanation of who/what the Adjustment Bureau is, we're left with a big shrug.

This movie should have been adjusted off our big screens and simply never made.

Torch snuffed

The Human Torch, mainstay of the Fantastic Four, was extinguished earlier this month in Marvel Comics.

Put a stopwatch on your computer and see how long this comics' death lasts (my bet, not long at all).

IIRC, Marvel's last big death was Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, which received mainstream press coverage (verrry slow news day, yes). But they had his former sidekick immediately take up the superhero mantle of Cap, and then they brought Rogers back to life shortly after that as well.

I'm glad I gave up reading comics a long time ago with blatant money grabs like this going on.

Jason X, Audience 0

Jason X (2002)

Turn the lights back on at the Satellite of Love, 'cuz this is Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder, bots and girls.

Yes, when you'e done nine previous movies and your slasher series has become bloated and tired after soaking in Crystal Lake these many years, what else can you do but shoot your unstoppable masked killer into outer space?

They spent about $13 million on this turd pile. How many hungry and orphaned kids could have been fed and sheltered with that money? A lot, that's how many. Instead we get something that looks exactly like one of those bad Syfy channel movies, with shaky production values and a goofy cast filled with somewhat familiar TV actors.

And the story, good grief, the story - it was just a lame rip-of of Aliens and Alien. You see there were space marines on board a ship full of space college students (WTF, right). The space college students are from Earth 2, and are visiting our ratty, now-uninhabited Earth 1 with their terribly acted space college professor, where they stumble upon Jason Vorhees doing his Good Humor Man impression in cyrogenic freeze. Of course they bring aboard their ship a giant, hockey-masked freak wielding a machete. Jason quickly thaws out and gets down to bi'ness. First the grunts go after hockey head, get hacked and stabbed, and then he goes after the space kids. The majority of the cast was in their 20s it seemed, even the hardened space marines, so the movie should have been titled, Jason versus the Space Kids.

Now some of the sets come across as pretty decent, they look like they were designed and built by pros with a keen eye and love of the genre; others are of the "lets shoot in a dark warehouse with concert scaffolding and stacked boxes" variety (in other words, severely cheap ass). The CGI is TV quality and mostly laughable; the designs of the space ships are crude and look like pre-animation school student work.

But the worst part is that the kills are uninspired. After nine movies where old hockey face has slashed, stabbed and skewered everything that moves, and some of that gore was during the hey day of the 1980s horror craze under latex-master Tom Savini, you expect these kills to be something special. Use some frakking imagination for Freddy's sake! Jason simply stabs more than a few people, which we've seen 17,486 times already (not counting the Friday the 13th rip off slasher flix). Since Jason doesn't talk, the kills need to be "fun" and creative (especially creative). I laughed just once when he was using a coed in a sleeping bag to bash a second coed in a sleeping bag, which the director said was an homage to a previous Friday film (and I ain't talking about the Friday film with Chris Tucker as Smokey neither). Come on, people, you put Jason IN SPACE. IN A SCIENCE FICTION FILM. Have some fun with that!

The only other laff was when Jason comes back and he's all "robocized" with nanites and metal scraps. He was so ridiculously muscular and over-defined he looked like one of those dolls for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Nevertheless (and believe me, this movie is all "less") this is a stupid, stupid movie, and should be watched with many beers, pretzels, chips, assorted nuts, and most of all, lovers of crap cinema.

Take this Persian rug out back and beat the crap from it

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

Yet another disappointing summer blockbuster, a bloated, bland and boring adventure film with an American actor playing an Asian character but with a British accent.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays dusty Dastan, the titular prince. After raiding a holy city he is accused of killing his adopted father, the king. So he goes on the lame with a beautiful princess (the beautiful Gemma Arterton) to clear his name and yada, yada, yada. Dastan bounces around his and other cities using obvious Parkour/free running styles, but as this is a modern fantasy film, the quick-cut editing employed takes all the fun out of that amazing technique, so we're not sure if we're seeing CGI, doubles or whatever (look at Casino Royale and, of course, District 13 to see how to properly shoot Parkour for a movie). This ridiculous editing style is used in the many action/fight scenes so those are just a messy blur. When will we see an end to this wretched hyper-editing?

This is one of those movies where they spent far too much time and money building sets, props, costumes and on visual effects that very little was actually spent on story and character. Not one character appealed to me, or said a funny or interesting bit of dialogue (Alfred Molina came close). When you watch the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies you cannot imagine any other actor playing those lead roles. Persia's characters are so flat that ANYONE ELSE could play the roles; save for Molina, they didn't cast any actors with any real spark.

The movie was shot in a sepia tone making everything look the same, which is bad for a desert-based film. People, here's another word for sepia: BROWN. The story supposedly took place over more than a week, but everywhere they went looked exactly like where they just came from, simply more sepia-tinged sand and rocks.

There was no sense of adventure to be had in this mess. Watch the original Jonny Quest to see how to do exotic adventure on a shockingly limited budget (as least compared to a $200 million movie).

Sitting through a lousy movie in this genre only makes me want to watch a good one, like the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies, which had everything Prince of Persia does not: memorable characters, exotic settings, and a true sense of fun and adventure.

ps: As a capper to show you how they completely f-ed up everything, check out the movie's title font. Instead of a design that evokes a sense of the exotic or otherworldliness or adventure - see Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies - we get a dull white font that looks like it's perfect for a contemporary drama!