speedy,

I wasnt bagging Lynch, I quite like his stuff. I was just trying to make the point that Silent Hill wasnt as incomprehensible as some people were claiming it to be. Anyway, I agree it looked cool and had cool monsters but I found it very dull. It wasnt scary and it wasnt much of a movie, well to me anyway.

starbuck,

Agreed that all three leads were average to terrible, and I can totally see why you called it 'weak', but I dunno in the end I enjoyed it.


text_fish,

I hated v for vendetta, but like I said in repsonse to starbuck, I ended up enjoying this despite lots of flaws


necros,

hehe, I thought of that scene in Mallrats as soon as that was revealed :) 

I hated v for vendetta, but like I said in repsonse to starbuck, I ended up enjoying this despite lots of flaws

Assess whether I like a movie or not based upon how attractive I find the lead actress even if the movie is cramming a message that is (in part in V, but not entirely) bilge. So V for Vendetta and Funny Girl two thumbs way up, Shakespeare in Love, boooooo! 

I couldn't enjoy a musical no matter who starred ;) 

Good movie--I think. I haven't been that confused since I watched Donnie Darko. I rewatched the end a couple times and that helped. 

the commentary track clears a bit up, especially if you use it over the last 15 min.

Its a bit too overcomplicated for the sake of being confusing but yeah at least someone thought through the time travel thing a bit :) 

i liked primer... and i think i need to watch it again. 

I thought both of the commentaries seemed to touch more on the making of each scene and not much at all on the story. In particular, Carruth seemed unwilling to share his interpretation of the story. 

Is anyone else as pissed off as I am over the recent torrent of shitty megabudget fantasy being churned out by Hollywood's bean counters and marketing men (and usually helmed by some visual effects supervisor masquerading as a "Director") to cash in on the success of LOTR and Harry Potter?

I mean the enormous hack job that was last year's Narnia was offensive enough, but it seems that this year we have a contender for "The most blatant attempt to create the next big fantasy franchise by getting the rights to film a shitty series of books and pouring all the money into marketing to try to convince the kids that it's another LOTR", when in actual fact the film is by all (early) accounts excreble garbage. Yes, that's right - Eragon. You see it's clever because it's "Dragon" with the D replaced by an E and it sounds like "Aragorn" and the movie has like elves and made-up languages and shit seriously you'll love this shit.

The sad thing is, because of the obscene amount of cash spent on the marketing, this film is gonna make a metric fuckton of money regardless of it's quality, make the talentless plagiarist spoilt arrogant little rich kid author of the books even richer than he already is (he only got his books published because Mummy and Daddy own a publishing company and they wanted their little Christopher to be happy and stop stomping his feet and throwing his books around the room). Have you even seen the books? Seriously it's fucking Star Wars with a few names swapped out and Jedis replaced by "Dragon Riders".

It's this line of thinking that is making New Line go ahead and rush out The Hobbit on the cheap and another (made up) LotR prequel that they somehow retain the rights to, all the while exluding Peter Jackson from having a chance to make it because of an unsettled lawsuit he has with them regarding withheld profits from the first LotR film's DVD sales.

What. The. Fuck.

To be honest, after LotR I anticipated the torrent of mediocre knock-off copycat shite that we'd be subjected to (I mean it's not like I have to watch it or anything), but I'm just getting tired of all this "me-too" hack bullshit that's now suddenly flying off the bookshelves and clogging up the muliplex. 

There was a three minute sequence of Eragon before Family Guy this week. The dialog, oh my God, did it stink! The least you can do when writing dialog for fantasy is to avoid phrases that anyone should be able to identify as contemporaneous. That someone paid to do this is just pathetic.

oh, it's on! Brrrr ...

I have never noticed the works of the
author even when browsing through Science Fiction stacks at the bookstores until the ad blitz from this movie occurred. There is a glut of heroic epic fantasy out now, and I prefer the ammoral sword and sorcery genre. I hate heroes, unless they are Batman. 

The inclusion of Jeremey "evil englishman" Irons in Eragon adds another chuckle, because he was in that D&D movie that took years to make it into production and promptly sank like a rock in the face of LotR. I hate elves.

I think LotR is flawed. As has been observed before, any flaws with the films should be laid at the feet of Tolkien, not Jackson, and I'm sure that's the case. I hate elves.

My first glimpse ( and I mean glimpse ) of Eragon promo photos made me think "cool, they're gonna ride on the fantasy-epic wave of LotR, but make one with an actual story and characters with depth. Go on, you can laugh, cause I hadn't seen the trailer yet.

Have you even seen the books? Seriously it's fucking Star Wars with a few names swapped out and Jedis replaced by "Dragon Riders".

...sums up my impression.

Also: I fucking hate elves. 

"I mean Superman could rape her so fast she wouldn't even notice anyway."

ROFL, that made my week.

Ok ok films I saw recently:

Superman Returns : Yeah I agree with you all really, it was fun to watch but it just didn't grab me, worth seeing but thats it.

Click : Utter, complete and total, utter, complete and utter, complete, utter SHIIIIITE

X3 : I enjoyed this a lot but I think X2 was a more rounded film, X3 has some very loose characters compared to the others too. Still, stuff blows up and people disintegrate and shit so its all good.

Way of the Gun : A Really great film about 2 rubbish thieves who get in over their head when they kidnap a pregnant woman who just happens to be carrying the baby of a very powerful man. Employs some very funny scenes too, which is surprising considering the moral tone of the film but it works well, definitely worth seeing. 

this film is gonna make a metric fuckton of money

Sorry, I'm just curious, but what's the difference between a metric fuckton and an imperial fuckton? Do they vary just by a factor of 69, or are they different units of measurement all together? 

Imperial fucktons are a british invention and are not officially used anymore, except nostalgically by elderly engineers and conservative politicians. It was a unit defined as the amount of a given natural resource, such as gold, ivory or slaves, that could be extracted from a conquered nation faster than the population could measure. It's use fell into decline and was eventually replaced by the metric fuckton due to the rise of manufacturing technology form the 1950's onwards.

The metric fuckton, while smaller, is commonly used to account for larger quantities and is defined as the amount of a given commodity with a cultural value of zero that can be transferred to a gullible public before becoming unfashionable.
The number of Cliff Richard singles that are sold on the last shopping day before christmas is usually measured in fucktons.

Also used, though less commonly, is the megafuckton which is equal to 1,000,000 fucktons.
There are a few quantities that are generally measured in megafucktons, such as the number of atoms in a galaxy, the marketing budgets for hollywood blockbusters, and mappers' egos. 

I lolled, loudly, at work. I return the beer.

check your email once in a while too. 

I lolled, loudly, at work. I return the beer.

I did this too, except I'm not back at work until January 2nd :D

Kell, you rock.

As of this moment of writing, Eragon is sitting on a stunning 09% on RottenTomatoes. Now watch as this film dominates the Christmas box office, spawns a plethora of equally shitty sequals, and opens the door for even more derivative literary dreck to be greenlighted in a $100m film deal.

Oh well, there's always Uwe Boll's In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale to look forward to in the new year. 

I was thinking Fuckton was a combo of Fuckhead + Automaton, but Kell went the flow and then rocked it hard. 

Body Heat (1981) - Lawrence Kasdan's attempt at a modern revision/update of Double Indemnity is only an above average effort and nowhere near the same league as Billy Wilder's great film. Not being subject to the same restrictions, there is a lot more (and in my opinion unecessary) emphasis on s_ex and the script, while containg some ripper dialogue, lacks finesse. Maybe I am being harsh but if you're going to use Double Indemnity as a basis, a movie with one of the greatest scripts of all time, then your own script has to be of a very high quality.

Still, the direction is very confident and assured, Kathleen Turner is good as the femme fatale and William Hurt is excellent as Ned Racine, a smalltime laywer drawn into murder against his better judgment.

6.5/10


Seinfeld Season 7 - I think this is the weakest series so far, but thats a relative comparison as this still has some killer episodes and even the not so good ones are still quite funny.

I actually hadnt seen some of these before either, which was a nice surprise.

7.5/10 

that was fucking brilliant.

But, I dont agree with this :

As has been observed before, any flaws with the films should be laid at the feet of Tolkien, not Jackson

I think if you see Jackson's other movies like King Kong and Heavenly Creatures, you will notice he has a tendency to overdirect and doesnt know when to stop on quite a few occasions. Subtlety or restraint isnt really his thing.

And while all three of the LOTR films are great movies, there are definitely bits that could have used those two charcteristics. 

make it difficult to translate the trilogy into film. Even if you had time limit to tell the tale.

In the Return of the King, you have three endings. There is the standard ceremonial ending where the kingdom is put together, the king is crowned, brave souls honored and etcetera; then there is a strange middle ending, where the hobbits go back to the Shire and deal with evile afoot that was left unresolved.

This section is strange because the entire trilogy up to this point has been within the genre of epic fantasy, but the story in this part reads more like Tom Sawyer than what has preceded it.

After this ending you have the melancholy and infinitely sad passing of Middle Earth.

Likely, it is impossible to translate this to screen very well as it is quite a stretch even in written narrative.

Point well taken on Jackson's over direction, though. There are scenes in King Kong that needed to be slowed down and the actors allowed to get their lines spoken intelligibly but Jackson chose to have a lot of busy work going on in the background that overwhelmed everything else. 

even if you had no real time limit 

[b]Pans Labyrinth[/b] [Laberinto del Fauno, El](2006)
Guillermo del Toro's Hollywood efforts may be sub-par at best, but by-god if they make him enough money to continue producing material like [i]The Devils Backbone[/i] and his new film [i]Pans Labyrinth[/i] then I say bring on [i]Hellboy 15[/i]!

Pans Labyrinth starts out almost like a live-action Miyazaki film, with an instantly involving sense of mystery and an incredible attention to detail, but then it gradually becomes more and more apparent that it's certainly not one for the whole family. This is a seriously dark film melding two seemingly unconnected yet seamlessly appropriate narrative strands together that will really keep the audience guessing as to when the Child characters' fantasy world and the grim plight of the Adult characters in civil war Spain will come together.

There's actually a particularly disturbing creature in the film that wouldn't look too out of place in Doom or Quake 1 so if anybody here gets the chance to go and see it, I'd strongly advise that they do.

Just be sure to have a strong stomach, because there's some stomach curdling gore in this that's on a par with the Hellraiser films. 

nt 

I've been hanging out for that one. Even when Del Toro makes duds, they're very stylish. 

Got this last night and overall I really enjoyed it. I thought the film began poorly, and I was prepared for it to suck hard, but once the action got going, all the Superman moneyshots basically hit the target.

I was a little apprehensive about the changes to the costume design I had heard about, but I am pleased to report that my fears were in vain as Brandon Routh looked absolutely fabulous as the Man of Steel.

I'm not sure I like where the series is going with the kid subplot - I think Superman works best as a bachelor rather than a family guy, but hey it could turn out interesting.

I thought Brandon did a fantasic job of filling the gaping hole left by Christopher Reeve. His acting was really believable especially when he took a brutal pounding from Lex and the gang during the third act - that really did make me wince.

Most memorable scene: probably the slowmo (bullet time?) sequence where Brandon, I mean Superman, takes a hot load in the eye from the machinegun guy during the climax of the bank robbery scene. That was some pretty intense cinematography right there.

So in conclusion: two thumbs up 

Army in the Shadows (1969) - Jean Pierre Melville's film about members of the french resistance during the second world war is one of the most atmospheric and moody films you will ever see. It's short on plot, and in fact the narrative structure is not really conventional playing out more like a "year in the life of.." with quite an abrupt ending. The script isnt concerned with The Resistance and what it actually did during the war period but is more focused on painting the state of mind of its members.

The acting is impressive and it probably features some of the best cinematography committed to celluloid.

What stops it from being a flat out masterpiece is that despite being very good at getting into the head of some of its characters, it never really lets the viewer get familiar with any particular character(s) and the result, whilst being undeniably great, is a very clinical and distant film.

8.5/10