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!

This Spirit Has No Soul

So I popped in the DVD of The Spirit the other day. I lasted all of about six minutes. Something about the movie just makes me hate it.

Comic book artist/writer Frank Miller adapted the Wil Eisner comic book series for the big screen, but along the way Miller somehow turned it into Sin City 2, which was a huge mistake. (I hate to think he's a one trick pony, but that horse is the one in the barn.) I've never read a complete Spirit book, seeing as how it had its hay day in the 1940s. I've seen panels and pages reproduced in book on comics and it seemed to be a series that loved its two dimensional world, with Eisner playing with panel sizes, compositions, layout, color, sound effects, etc. In the film we just get black and white nonsense. These "green screen" movies work every once in a while, as it did with Sin City and 300, but here I was just annoyed. Perhaps because I didn't care for the characters or was interested in any of the actors the CGI work got all the attention.

The cast was full of big names, but nobody made a real impression with their character. Samuel L. Jackson's big bad The Octopus came across like a third-string Adam West Batman tv series villain. Gabriel Macht was a complete snooze as the Spirit. And the femme fatales, who are such a large part of the comic book series, all fell flat. Didn't care for any of them, including Scarlett Johansson, who is in one of my favorite movies of all time, Lost in Translation.

Oh, and Frank, I'd like my six minutes back, please.

Hulk is the Most Animatronic There Is!

SlashFilm has a post about an unused HULK ANIMATRONIC ROBOT that Ang Lee decided not to use in his film version of the Jade Giant.

The Robo-Hulk was created by effects guru Steve Johnson, who has worked his magic on everything from The Howling IV to Spider-Man 2.

I liked the CGI Hulk in Lee's movie just fine, but it looks like this cable-controlled creation would have been a lot of fun. However, Ang still would have told his Hulk story as over-wrought "Greek tragedy" so it would have sucked either way. (sigh)

Happy 2011 Everybody!

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

War of the Worst

Skyline (2010)

Many, if not most, artists get their start by copying the work of professionals. Cartoonists trace comic books and comic strips before trying their hand at creating their own characters and settings. Young filmmakers using Super 8 film or the family camcorder re-create scenes from their favorites movies in their backyards, i.e. the Raiders of the Lost Ark truck chase, but with Indy on a bike riding up to Dad’s old Toyota pick up.

Skyline, directed by visual effects supervisors “The Brothers Strauss,” is stuck squarely, and amateurishly, in the “recreate scenes from favorite movies” mode.

The story, if you want to call it that, concerns a group of Pretty (mostly) Young Things who are stuck in a fancy Marina Del Rey, California high-rise condo when aliens attack the earth over a three day period. Two of the young things - Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson)- are from out of town. They party one night with Jarrod’s bud, Turk from Scrubs (Donald Faison, playing Terry), and his shrill gf played by Brittany Daniel, and wake up the next morning to the alien invasion. And you thought YOUR hangovers were bad.

There are two huge problems with this movie. One, none of the characters is very likable, especially Balfour, who just comes across as distant the whole film, even when he should be intimate with his pregnant girlfriend. Seriously, there is no one in the cast we care about or root for. Two - and it’s a big one - there is no story here. None. Aliens attack and our cast spends most of the time in the condo opening and closing the blinds, wondering what to do. I kid you not, they do this so much that the blinds manufacturer should have received a co-producer credit.

In the Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds remake, Cruise’s character Ray is trying to reconcile with his kids when the aliens attack. They go on the run with Ray doing whatever it takes to protect his family. In Skyline, Jarrod and Terry have the bright idea to leave their girlfriends and the relative safety of the condo to explore the roof’s helipad. Why? There’s no rescue or escape via that route. They do this stupid move simply so that the movie can show the giant alien ships in the distance and, later, a giant alien monster thing clambering up to the top for a silly action beat. Characters do things so they can get to the next effects shot; nothing is ever done to advance any sort of story or plot point.

It’s like the whole movie was put together from a visual effects “sizzle reel” where there were a bunch of “cool” shots, but when they tried to shoehorn in those shots to make a logical story, the thing falls apart.

The movies that Skyline rips off are blatantly obvious, from Independence Day, to War of the Worlds, to The Matrix, without adding one single spin or fresh idea to any of them. The whole point of this movie was simply to set things up for a sequel at the end.

Skyline is so bad, so inept I predict it will sweep the annual Razzie Awards for Worst Movie next year.

Predators - Put this dull beast out of our misery

Predators (2010) Predators is the worst kind of sequel, one which simply regurgitates the first entry in the series and wants a generous pat on the back for doing so. 

The original Predator (1987) concerned a group of Special Forces types led by Arnold Schwarzenegger with all his late 80s charisma in full effect, as they navigate a treacherous jungle on a mission. The tables are quickly turned as these mercenary predators find themselves the prey of a hunter - one from outer space. It was a Rumble in the Jungle like none other with larger than life figures like Arnold, Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura, all machismo ("Ain't got time to bleed!"), rippling muscles, and cigars as big as loaves of French bread. Predator was directed by action maestro John McTiernan who went on to helm Die Hard (1 and 3) and The Hunt for Red October. 

Predators is produced by Austinite Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimrod Antal, the script was written by Michael Finch and Alex Litvak, reportedly from an earlier story idea by Rodriguez. This “original” story concerns dropping (here, literally by parachute) Special Forces types, led by Adrien Brody, into a treacherous jungle where they find themselves the prey of alien hunters. Like Predator, the Predators cast is multi-racial. Like Predator, Predators has a lone female member. I can hear Rodriguez saying “homage” but I call bullshit. The writers’ big idea was to make the soldiers multi-national, instead of from just one country’s army; they are pulled from hot spots all over our world (Russia, Sierra Leone, Israel, etc.). The problem is, not one member of this group "pops" or is memorable in any way (neither the actors, or the characters). They’re bland ciphers, just waiting to be killed off. I believe a much better angle would have been to have the characters be from different time periods: a feudal-era samurai warrior, a Clint Eastwood-esque cowboy from the 1870s, a Viking, a Special Forces merc, and, at this stage in the sequel game, throw in at least one EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL soldier to boot. Predators and Aliens have already clashed, so introducing time travel and other intelligent E.T.s into the mix is the next logical step. That would be a real motley crew, a dirty half-dozen of the best human (and non-human) warriors to go up against the Predators. 

SPOILER: The major deviation from the original is that this story is set in the jungle of an alien planet, apparently the game preserve of the Predator species. END SPOILER.  McTiernan shot in Mexico, while Antal has to make due with Hawaiian locations. After Avatar, which created an alien world from the ground (and blades of grass) up, it seems pretty lazy for filmmakers to go to familiar locations like a tropical jungle and call them “alien.” The exotic swamp world of Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back was built on a soundstage, in the Star Wars prequels they created green screen CGI shots of exotic and bizarre worlds, which is what Avatar did. I’m sorry, but the jungles of Hawaii are not alien enough. To add insult to injury, at one point a character recognizes a particular poisonous plant. My question is, HOW COULD HE HAVE RECOGNIZED A POISONOUS EARTH PLANT ON AN ALIEN PLANET THOUSANDS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY? And do NOT say the Predators brought the plants with them. That would be beyond stupid. 

This is the type of movie that really raises my ire: stupid, pointless, uninspired, and boring. It’s a sequel/remake similar to what Rodriguez did with his second film Desperado, which was a bigger-budgeted sequel that was essentially a remake of his first micro-budget film El Mariachi. But while Desperado improved on the original by casting Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek (professional actors with real charm and personality who "popped" from the screen) and ramping up the action and mayhem, Predators fails at every turn with a dull cast (seriously, you do NOT go from Schwarzenegger to Adrien Brody unless there is a real character to play - see Robert Patrick in T2 for how to play the strong/lean silent type), lifeless characters, and standard cookie cutter action scenes. Rent the original Predator instead.

A Great Movie and a Movie That Grates

Toy Story 3 and The Last Airbender (both 2010)

I recently had the opportunity to sit through a double-bill of two blockbuster movies released in theaters this year. Both had large budgets, veteran film-making crews, and audiences familiar with the tales. But where one was a magical journey involving a makeshift family, the other was a loud, ugly mess. The movies I’m speaking of are The Last Airbender and Toy Story 3 (guess which was the ugly mess).

It was very informative to watch these two films back to back. Where Airbender got everything wrong, Toy Story 3 got it right. The Toy Story movies have always benefited from the lead voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, as Cowboy Sheriff Woody and spacey spaceman Buzz Lightyear, respectively. Unlike the casting decisions of other animated movies, Hanks and Allen were not cast simply for their marquee value, but because they were perfect for these characters. The voice actors for all the other toy characters are spot on as well. In Toy Story 3, I was surprised it was Ned Beatty breathing life into Lotso, the huggable bear with less than huggable intentions, but he was the right choice.

Airbender, which is based on a popular Nickolodeon cartoon series, is set in mystical countries with a heavy Asian bent, but all the main (child) characters are Caucasian. In the beginning, we see an Eskimo-like village where all the elderly people appear to be Inuit, but the adolescent lead actors – a pair of which come from this very same village – are all white kids who looked like they took a bus from the local galleria. The characters in the original cartoon are all Asian, but you can see the studio execs saying, “We don’t feel Asian actors would carry the movie in most major markets, so all the good kids need to be Caucasian, mmm-kay?” It’s at this point that writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan should have quickly removed himself from the movie.

Toy Story 3 tells a simple enough story: the little boy Andy is now grown up and heading off to college. What will happen to all his old toys? Will they be disposed of with the garbage, tossed in an old box in the family attic, or perhaps given away to a kid or kids who will play with them? Airbender tells us there are four nations who control the elements of fire, water, earth and air. We see each nation has helpfully color-coded itself so we can tell them apart from one another (the fire nation wears red, the water nation blue, etc). There is the mystical chosen one who can control all four elements, so everyone wants this dude. The trouble is they found a martial artist for the lead (Noah Ringer), instead of an actor. This kid is terrible (which shows you how good Haley Joel Osment was in The Sixth Sense under the guidance of the same filmmaker, Shyamalan).

I’m just going to say it: The Last Airbender is a stupid movie. If the lead kids were terribly interesting actors that might have helped to elevate the thing, but the fact is they were all flat and unappealing. They all looked like they would comfortably fit on any Disney Channel series. Jackson Rathbone, who played Sokka, the young Han Solo/Madmartigan-wannabe NEVER blinked his eyes. It was unnerving at first, then annoying, then just totally silly (it was suggested a drinking game be centered on his unblinking peepers). I never once believed in any of these characters. I was watching actors act (unlike, say, in the Harry Potter series where all the characters are so vividly brought to life).

The scenes of characters “bending” or manipulating the elements were laughable. Apparently to control the elements you have to do a ton of martial arts flourishes – basically a lot of shadow boxing. With all the different styles of martial arts out there, you’d think that perhaps each element would have its own style: something extremely fluid for water, short quick movements for fire, and something “heavy” (or at least less fluid) for earth. This was not the case as each bender seemed to be doing the same flourishes for their respective element.

Toy Story 3 showed us that by keeping the story and characters first and foremost on everyone’s mind, the third outing for a franchise need not be a dull retread. I liked that it was a simple story – apparently one idea for TS3 was that the toys go to China or Hong Kong to save a malfunctioning Buzz. That sounds like something any studio would do, but Pixar wisely jettisoned that idea and kept things close to home (literally and figuratively). They kept the main group of Andy’s toys, but added a few new key characters in Lotso and Ken (Michael Keaton, doing an outstanding job as the lone male action figure in a line of girl’s toys). They even managed toss in an homage to Cool Hand Luke's infamous "spends a night in the box" speech!

That’s not to say Toy Story is all talk and emotions. There are some great action sequences, including a conveyor belt scene that was top notch in terms of pacing, but it also packed an emotional punch.

The Last Airbender left me annoyed and angry that I’d wasted 2 hours watching another failed big budget studio fantasy effort. Toy Story 3 made me laugh and smile and even brought a tear to my eyes at the end, so this double bill wasn’t all bad.

Giving Thanks to All Our Readers

Disclaimer: Star Trek is Copyright 2010 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Dullest Ninja Movie. EVER

Ninja Vengeance (1988)

A blond-haired "ninja" rolls into Redneck Town, USA, gets into trouble with the local KKK branch, and quickly goes on the lam. (Someone explain to me how going on the run and not wanting to fight equals “vengeance?”)

How do we know this guy is a ninja? From the contents of his nap sack, of course, which includes throwing stars, some rope, a thing that looks like a flute, some more throwing stars, oh, and two books on "ninjas and ninjutsu." The fact that they are two PAPERBACK books clues us in his training was first rate. This movie could easily have been titled, “Ninja Pamphlet” as it constantly flashes back to our ninja Chris Mason’s (Craig Boyett, who looks more like John Tesh than Chuck Norris) training on the beach by some white bearded sensei (Stephen K. Hayes) who drones on about important martial arts messages such as the way of the ninja, the concept of yin and yang, and the best dim sum joints in town. He’s like a very mellow Tony Robbins but with fewer bullet points in his Powerpoint.

The town locals are all KKK-carrying racist goofballs, who are often hilariously over-dubbed in crowd scenes (seriously, I've never heard "Git 'em!" so many times in one movie). Led by a corrupt sheriff and his son, Jesse the deputy (David Paul Lord), the rednecks kill a young black student Mike Washington (Frederick Phillips) who is friends with Sam (Janet Pawlak) the white idealistic town cutie who dreams of better things than being a KKK bride to Jesse. The triple Ks frame ninja Chris who tried to stop Mike's beatdown, so he dons his cross trainers and, with Sam in tow, goes running in the woods. And they run some more. And run a little more. And, yes, even some more. I think the woods put up the majority of funding for this flick.

I have to say this: Janet Pawlak, who is a cutie despite her nearly-up-to-her-armpits 80s jeans, runs with all the grace of a coked up orangutan. Seriously, it’s distracting. When she briefly clambers over a tree branch, it was one of the most graceless movements I have ever witnessed a human being perform. Maybe it's the jeans' fault.

The fight scenes are, without a doubt, some of the most inept I have ever witnessed. Lord and Boyett may have black belts but they have no idea of how to fight for the camera, and director Karl Armstrong doesn’t know the first thing about staging a movie fight. Also decent "chop socky" fight sound effects might have helped sell some of this mess, but those were also absent. The judo flips in the old Charlie’s Angels series were much more convincing. Speaking of which, Boyett appears to have invented the shoulder roll (don't tell William Shatner or Robert Conrad -- two guys who had mastered that move -- about this) -- at least that's what you would think after watching him do that move eight or nine times in the movie, whether he is fighting or not. In fact, after he checks into his motel early in the movie, he goes out for a little exercise and meditation in the park and the first thing he does is a shoulder roll! For NO apparent reason!

Pretty much everyone in the cast is a non-actor. Boyett, here in his first and only movie credit, makes me long for the early days of Chuck Norris. Norris was never much of an actor either, but he at least had presence (and a cool beard). Boyett is beyond bland, and quite beardless. "Bland" with a heaping helping of silly pretty much sums up this nutty ninja caper.

He's Coming For You!

Another Halloween treat on tap for you, the great undead funk band Here Come the Mummies performing "Attack of the Weiner Man" on the always awesome Bob and Tom Show.

Dig those mummified horns, man.

Trick and Treat

As the great orator Porky Pig once uttered, "Happy Halloween, you thing from another world, you!"

Here's a look at Star Trek's one and only - and thank goodness and Gorns for that - Halloween episode, "Catspaw." So load up on the candy corn, gummi worms and Snickers Bars and check out the Halloween shenanigans of Capt. Kirk and company as they go up against the goofiest pipe cleaner aliens you will ever see.

Dig it.

Disclaimer: Star Trek is Copyright 2010 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Warm up to this solid little thriller

Frozen (2010)

Alfred Hitchcock did it with Lifeboat and Vincenzo Natali with Cube. What these two directors did is set their stories in one very confined space (a lifeboat in the former and a cube-like prison in the latter). Now, writer/director Adam Green sets his story in the great snowy outdoors, but confines his main characters – a trio of college kids on a weekend getaway – to a ski lift chair 40 feet above the ground.

What could have been merely a “stunt” or "high concept" movie turns out to be a solid little thriller, thanks to the time spent at the beginning getting to know our heroes: Kevin Zegers as Dan, Emma Bell as his new girlfriend Parker, and Shawn (Iceman in the X-Men movies) Ashmore as Dan’s best bud Joe.

They not annoying jerks as is often the case with 20-somethings in horror/thrillers, but regular people, especially Joe, who meets a cute co-ed on the slopes and even gets her number, which he tries not to forget even when things go bad. Our trio wanted to make one last run down the slopes before it shuts down for the night, but through a series of believable mishaps, they get stuck halfway up the mountain. They don’t descend into Lord of the Flies territory, but the guys and girl start sniping at one another in a believable fashion; their attempts to extricate themselves from their harrowing predicament are also quiet plausible.

One thing the movie gets right is to increase the problems for the trio. The filmmakers don't simply confine them to the stuck chair lift; Green throws in frostbite scares, a storm, hungry wolves, steel cables which will shred your hands, and more; the tension increases as we go along, which is something the recent film Monsters desperately needed (that movie was simply "stuck in a chair lift").

For a lower budgeted movie, they made sure they got a decent camera/equipment package, including a crane to swoop around the chairlift (shot on a real mountainside), so if our characters cannot move, at least the camera can. The performances are mostly solid, with Ashmore being the standout of the three, and Bell being the weakest.

I have yet to see Adam Green’s other films, primarily Hatchet and the just-released Hatchet II, but if he brings the same creativity, fun and energy to those films as he did to Frozen, then they herald the arrival of a talented new filmmaker to the tired Hollywood scene.

Keep This Nightmare Off Your Street - and TV Screens

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Freddy Krueger (referred to as “Fred Krueger” in the movie) returns in a wasteful, useless remake. THANKS MICHAEL BAY!

This is the kind of production that gives remakes/reboots a bad name. As in the original 1984 Nightmare, Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley) is not a wisecracking goofball (that came in the later sequels and TV series), but rather a more sinister figure. The make up looks more like a real burn victim’s than the plastic pizza face worn by original Freddy Robert Englund.

This movie features many of the original film’s more famous beats or set pieces: the bladed-glove in the tub, the girl being flung up the walls of her bedroom, and Freddy’s face peering out from the wallpaper. These nods only made me appreciate the low budget, pre-CGI-era original. For example, the wallpaper was made of latex in 1984, now it’s all just obvious digital effects. Since the characters use cell phones, they didn’t try to recreate the memorable scene where the phone’s mouthpiece becomes Freddy’s lecherous tongue.

The cast is uniformly unmemorable, with actors Rooney Mara (taking over for Heather Langenkamp), Kyle Gallner, Kellan Lutz (one of those high school kids who looks 30 yrs old), and Thomas Dekker turning in forgettable performances. Mara appears in The Social Network and the upcoming remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She has a presence that is not fully utilized here; she’s the best thing in the movie, but that’s damning it with faint praise. I blame writers Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, director Samuel Bayer (a music vid director making his feature film debut) and producer Bay (who has already crapped on/out the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Hills Have Eyes reboot movies). Haley was an inspired choice for Krueger but since they do nothing new with the character or this story, what is the point?

Another thing that truly stuck out is the movie’s principal dream/nightmare location of a rusting industrial factory is spectacularly unimaginative, especially in the same year that saw the release of Inception, another movie dealing with dreams. The “steam and flame” (thanks, Roger Ebert) factory setting in the ’84 Nightmare could be forgiven as it was a low budget effort. But 26 years later, it’s pathetic to do a remake and set it in the same goofy setting, which every other low budget (and big budget) shoot ‘em up has used as a location (see Terminator 1 and 2, Cobra, Space Mutiny, and every other Golan-Globus cheapie action pic). The scenes of a hellish Los Angeles in the movie Constantine would seem to be more appropriate for a true nightmare. Oh, well, there’s always the obligatory Nightmare sequel…

Non Event

Any of you been watching The Event, the much hyped (perhaps over hyped) new NBC series? I’ve watched the first three episodes and I am so far extremely not impressed.

After watching the pilot episodes of Lost, Heroes and FlashForward, I was instantly hooked on those shows. Those characters (except for Joseph Fiennes and his goofy Drinky the Crow FBI agent) and those particular stories had me glued to the tube (at least until Heroes seriously went bad in the second season onward, and Lost was spinning its wheels from the middle of season two to mid season three). The Event, which deals with non-terrestrial people (are they alien, or what?) and a conspiracy (or two) involving our government simply hasn’t popped for me.

None of the actors or characters seems to stand out. Lead Jason Ritter is like any other handsome young actor. His presence and his character have elicited a big “so what” shrug so far. His gf, played by Sarah Roehmer, is pretty but not much else (remember how you first felt about Evangeline Lilly in that first season of Lost?). Blair Underwood - who has honestly never impressed me - as the Prez doesn’t seem the least bit presidential (see Dennis Haysbert on 24 for someone with presidential presence).

I’m just waiting for something to happen. Even the big moment (I won’t spoil it here) at the end of the first episode wasn’t as cool as it should have been. Perhaps it is the characters, or perhaps the odd storytelling method of constantly flash-backing that left me cold. Sure I wanted to know what happened and how it happened but I wasn't pulled into the story.

With its flat cast and unengaging storyline, I don’t think The Event will last long enough for them to reveal what the Event is.

Here there be Monsters

Monsters (2010)

I recently watched through VOD (Video-On-Demand) the long-anticipated movie Monsters, from first time writer/director Gareth Edwards. The film is due in theaters on October 29, 2010.

Edwards set blogs ablaze the last several months with clips of his first feature film and the knowledge that he was doing it all for a budget around $15,000, making him the 21st century’s new Robert Rodriguez (Edwards also served as credited production designer, cinematographer and visual effects supervisor).

With fingers crossed we sat down to watch this film, the story of a man and a woman forced to trek across Central America and Mexico – an area infested with dangerous alien creatures - to make their way back home to the United States. Call it Planes, Trains and Automobiles Meets The Mist (By Way of Cloverfield).

A prologue tells us that we discovered life in our solar system, but when we sent a space probe to collect samples and return to Earth, it broke up over Central America and the alien life forms started to spread, not just outward, covering the area, but upward as well: they appear to be 200 feet tall fully grown.

The story follows a photographer, Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), who is still trying to get that one great shot of the creatures that will win him the cover of a major magazine and propel him to the big leagues. He’s forced by the owner of the magazine he works for to play chaperone for the boss’s daughter, Sam (Whitney Able). His new assignment: get her out of Central America and safely back to the U.S.

For $15,000 this is an outstanding film; it looks good, sounds good and the visual effects – apparently created with off the shelf software (Adobe AfterEffects, etc) on a standard pc – are amazing. But the story is flat and the characters not defined enough.

In Monsters, the adversities the couple faces always seem to be on the same level, perhaps due to the low budget. Instead of building to a boiling point the movie just keeps a slow simmer and never gets any hotter. When their plans for Sam to take a ferry boat home collapse, they are forced to travel by car through the infected zone. But this is where the movie trips up. They build up the zone as so dangerous nobody can make it through. However the movie goes out of its way to paint a “life goes on” picture – even though there are giant monsters lumbering about behind hundred foot tall fences and fighter jets and helicopters constantly streaking across the skies, people will be people, so you have to have a roof over your head, you gotta feed your kids, there are still festivals to put on and attend - you have to mourn the dead, but still celebrate life.

I come back to Planes, Trains and Automobiles: each calamity forced those characters to further bang their heads together and examine their lives. It wasn’t enough that they had to share a single bed in a motel room, but then that room was broken into and they had their cash and credit cards stolen (which figures into a later scene). And then of course, they wake up the next morning in each other’s arms (one of the most famous scenes in modern comedy history).

It’s not much of a spoiler but at the end Kaulder and Sam have feelings for each other, but this story didn’t justify how they got there. Kaulder never really stood up and did anything heroic – he didn’t grab a gun and start shooting the monsters when their mercenary guides were killed. He didn’t have any special knowledge or know how that got them out of a tight jam. They were just a passive couple on a somewhat dangerous journey together.

This is a movie that wannabe (and veteran) filmmakers should watch for the technical aspects. I absolutely applaud Gareth Edwards and his two-man crew on what they were able to accomplish (I imagine 15 grand doesn't even cover lunch for a day on a Michael Bay picture). But the simple fact of the matter is you would need to look elsewhere for a more compelling story.

TGIF!

Disclaimer: Star Trek is Copyright 2010 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Prehistoric Fantasy At Its Worst

10,000 B.C. (2008)

Let me ask you a question – have you seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Patriot, Braveheart, and Hanna Barbera’s Dino Boy (scroll to 26 seconds if you want your eyes to melt)? If so, there’s pretty much no reason to waste your time with director Roland Emmerich’s latest empty-headed blockbuster, 10,000 B.C.

Emmerich is a master of visual effects (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow), but still a padawan learner as far as story and characters. Here he and co-writer Harald Kloser crib from so many obvious sources that a new Drinking Game should be made for this movie: you take a shot whenever you yell out whichever movie he is ripping off. At 35 minutes into this dreck, you’d need to call an ambulance to take you to a hospital to pump your stomach.

To begin, there is a bone-headed narration provided by Omar Shariff, that simply states EVERYTHING that is going on onscreen. Did Emmerich think this overly-lifted plot too complicated for his regular viewers?

The story follows a group of Stone Age mammoth hunters, centering on D’Leh (Steven Strait), whose father, a great hunter and leader, up and left one day and never returned. They should have known something was amiss when he said he was just going for “a pack of cave-smokes.” D’Leh has the hots for a blue-eyed girl, Evolet (Camilla Belle) who is the last survivor of her tribe and comes into the care of his people. The resident old lady shaman declares her to be the wife of whoever becomes the tribe’s new hunter/leader.

Evolet is captured by a tribe of horsemen from what appears to be hundreds of thousands of years of evolution ahead of the fur-wearing mammoth hunters. There must be a wormhole loose in the mountains as the story opens in the Stone Age, but then these goofballs – with obviously modulated voices that make them sound exactly like the dudes in Star Gate – ride in to the movie and they have clothing and metalwork which is from a much later period in history. Of course, to confuse things, the movie throws in a mention of Atlantis and even aliens, and ends in Ancient Egypt, pyramids and everything, so all of Emmerich’s favorite “motifs” are here (not only does he rip off other movies, but his own as well).

There is not one interesting or memorable lead character in this story. D’Leh could have been played by any hunky male actor from any show on The CW network. Camilla Belle is certainly no Raquel Welch. With such a fantasy setting shouldn’t you cast actors who pop off the screen and have personality? The heads of the tribes who band with D’Leh are much more interesting, but they are only minor characters.

Admittedly there is some beautiful scenery on display here, with amazing craggy mountain regions shot in New Zealand, Zambia and South Africa, but after The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all those aerial shots of our questing heroes running across said ranges – and there’s a lot - just brings to mind that better set of films. Many of the CGI creatures – especially the sabertooth tiger and the “terror birds” (raptors crossed with ostriches) – look extremely fake.

All the posters feature D'Leh staring down a sabertooth tiger. Here's an idea: since all this is just a bunch of comic book-flavored hooey, why not have the tiger "bond" with D'Leh (a la Marvel Comics Ka-Zar and his prehistoric tiger Zabu) after he saves its furry butt from a lethal trap and have ol' saber-face join D'Leh in his battle to save the girl and bring down the bad guy. It would have made the final battles much more fun.

There is also too much mumbo jumbo at work too. It’s one thing to have a cliched prophesy to fulfill in a story but to just introduce magical elements because you don’t know what else to do is just lame (I’m talking about the ending in particular). For a much more fun time overall, rent One Million Years B.C., a time when Raquel Welch knew how to fill out a fur bikini (and Ray Harryhausen knew how to put amazing and thrilling dinosaur special effects action on the screen).

Shear Advice

Star Trek is Copyright 2010 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights

Star Trek - "Turnabout Intruder"

Oh, how the mighty have (or had) fallen. This final episode of the Original Series "stinks on ice," to quote the great Mel Brooks.

Captain Kirk's bod is hijacked by a beyond-jealous ex-female friend named Janice Lester. She couldn't hack it at the Academy - perhaps it had something to do with her being bat-shit insane - and blamed all men, particularly Kirk for her predicament. So with the help of some kooky alien tech she finds on some planet, she swaps out the old katra (or whatever) with Kirk, leaving her in Kirk's BVDs and the captain wearing her Victoria's Secret collection.

Kirk starts acting...VERY strange: he starts filing his nails, issuing confusing orders (the Enterprise is apparently going all over the galaxy, proving "female" captains can't drive) and trying to get on Ellen. Why he didn't just put on a drag show is beyond me.

There's no place else to go with this goofy story than with a trial (I wonder if David E. Kelley of L.A. Law and The Practice/Boston Legal fame ever watched this episode - perhaps he saw it as a dry run for Denny Crane).

It's all unintentionally funny and a sad, sad way to end a series, any series. Shatner hams it up so much I imagine the entire sound stage smelled of bacon. Anyone who has ever done a Shatner impression has likely seen this episode. In fact, Shatner, as Lester, gesticulates so much that you could probably watch it with the sound off and still get what's going on.

Star Trek is Copyright 2010 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

A Vampire Movie With Dull Fangs

Daybreakers (2010)

Just because you have a new idea doesn’t mean you will have an interesting film.

Daybreakers posits that after a viral outbreak nearly everyone in the world has become a vampire. Humans – the vampires’ chief source of un-life sustaining blood – are on the verge of extinction.

Edward (not the sparkly ridiculously coiffed one from Twilight, here played by Ethan Hawke) is a blood specialist working for Bromley (Sam Neill). He has been working on a blood substitute to little success; meanwhile Bromley’s company runs a human “farm” which provides real blood to those who can pay (instead of Big Pharma, call it Big Blood). Edward is also a vampire with a conscience. He subsists on other-than-human blood, which is having a detrimental effect. Vampires who do not get real human blood on a regular basis “devolve” into what the movie calls “subsiders:” creatures with all the ugliest traits of the vampires but none of the charm (kind of like the post-Thanksgiving shoppers on Black Friday mixed with the monsters from The Descent).

Edward falls in with the beautiful Audrey (Claudia Karvan) and her band of human freedom fighters. He also hooks up with a man called Elvis (Willem Dafoe) who drives cool muscle cars and makes an interesting claim, which I won’t divulge.

The movie goes through great pains to integrate vampire sensibilities into our everyday culture: a homeless vampire’s cardboard sign reads “Will work for blood,” cars are designed for daytime driving with opaque windows and cameras and CCTVs, coffee stands sell coffee with “20% real blood,” TV ads tout the subwalk, an underground walkway/subway that enables the fanged to safely get around during the day. All this is basically meaningless as the movie never shows the “benefits” of being a vampire. The Lost Boys’s tagline was “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.” Daybreakers show vampires as beat cops, baristas, research scientists, corporate CEOs, school kids, and members of the military. They’re all hard working citizens of Vampireville. They’re not cool-looking rock stars. They’re just regular folk. So what is the point? Why would you want to be a vampire and live “forever,” especially if your main source of food is nearly gone (Soylent Red, where are you)?

The movie is a modestly budgeted affair (approximately $20 million) from Australia’s Spierig Brothers, who helmed the ultra low budget Undead in 2003. There are a few “juicy” scenes where bodies and head and things go splat, which was a lot more fun than all the decapitations in The Wolfman. The movie looks slick enough, with photography by Ben Nott and production design by George Liddle, but the majority of the film is shot in a sickly grayish green hue. That look apparently started with The Matrix, and since that film is over ten years old, I call for an official moratorium on movies shot in that palate.

The story opens ten years after most of the world’s population grew fangs and lost their reflections, but as human beings have also steadily declined shouldn’t the world be more anarchic or post apocalyptic and less corporate-y – more Mad Max and less Gordon Gecko? Everything is too neat and tidy; it doesn’t feel real. I never once believed in the story, and if you don’t believe, just like the vamps have no reflection, you have no movie.