Posted on
12.10.05 by Widge @ 5:37 pm  You, sir, made it to the age of 65. Proving you are no fool. At least not in my book. Rest well. Categorized as: Movies
|
Posted on
12.07.05 by Widge @ 3:41 am 
Written by Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely & Ann Peacock, based on the novel by C.S. Lewis My Advice: Matinee. But only if you must. England, during World War II, is getting the absolute crap bombed out of it. The decision is made to get the children of the cities the hell out of Dodge and out into the countryside where they will be safe(r). Thus the four Pevensie children head for the middle of nowhere, to stay with a professor (Jim Broadbent, in need of better facial hair) and his crotchety housekeeper (Elizabeth Hawthorne). While there, and bored, the youngest, Lucy (Henley) stumbles upon a magical wardrobe that opens onto another world: Narnia. There, she finds a kingdom frozen by the evil White Witch (Swinton), and she and her siblings will soon be caught up in a war between the forces of the witch's evil and the forces of good, led by the lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson). Let's address the question head-on, then. How do you take a straight-up Christian allegory, disguised as a children's book, and make it into a mainstream movie? Well, this movie is one way, but the allegory portion of it simply clunks. Of course, it clunked in the book itself too, until finally Lewis couldn't stand it anymore and, not content to merely hint around the bush any longer, threw the facade away in Book Seven, screaming "THE LION IS JESUS!!! GET IT???" and making lots of kids the world over feel betrayed. So the fact that the whole sacrifice portion of the movie is a little heavy handed can't be blamed on the filmmakers here. Categorized as: Movies and Reviews
|
Posted on
11.16.05 by Widge @ 10:19 am 
Written by Jorge F. Rodriguez, based on a story by Alex Ferrari My Advice: Grab it and watch it. The young lady's name is Bonnie (Polay). She's attractive, is apparently living a pretty decent life, but all of a sudden is inexplicably snatched from her home and life by Evil Dude and the Various and Sundry Evil Henchmen. Now she has no idea what the hell is going on, only that a bunch of armed-to-the-teeth people apparently want her dead...and she's going to die not even knowing why. God, I hear the whining all the time. Now that content is so cheap to produce and people can create their own movies/books/comics/internal organs, there's going to be nobody to ensure that there's a standard of quality! We're going to be drowning in crap! The only people who actually think this are people who haven't watched any movies or read any books recently--because we're already doing a dead man's float in crap. It's folks like Ferrari and Rodriguez who put the lie to these ignorant so-and-sos by throwing $8K on the table and making...well, what I would say is a better action flick than anything you've seen in cinemas this year...but you haven't seen any action flicks in the cinema this year. I've seen the box office. You're staying away in droves. You would do better to snag a copy of this, spend twenty minutes being entertained, and get on with your lives. It's sheer entertainment. You enter, like Bonnie, with a lot of questions and where the whole thing ends up is nebulous. The whole conceit has been done before in multiple ways but not in such a compressed amount of time and not without such concentrated tasty gunplay. You're there for the atmosphere, the mystery, and the guns. That's it--that's all the filmmakers promise, and they deliver. It warms the black pits of my heart to think this was made on such a budget. We get passed a goodly number of indie films around here, but seldom do we see anything as polished as this short is, and we've never seen one done in the action genre that looked this good. Hell, you could hand these two guys MI: 3 and it might draw me into watch it. The Bond franchise. Hell, anything. No, in fact, better yet: I'd like to see these guys make a feature on their own and stay the hell away from Hollywood. Whatever's out there killing the movie industry is no doubt infectious. Best indie we've seen in a while and the most effective indie calling card we've ever seen. The DVD's $20 and has bonus features out the ass. Go take your movie ticket budget and put it towards this instead. Categorized as: Movies and Reviews
|
Posted on
11.11.05 by Widge @ 10:20 pm 
Written by Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes, based on a story by Charles Belden My Advice: Wait for cable. On their way to the biggest game of the century (or something), a group of friends inexplicably decide to camp out in the middle of nowhere. They piss off the locals, because that's what you do in horror movies when you're out in the middle of nowhere, and then they stumble upon a small town that seems to be almost deserted--but not quite. Because they're stuck there waiting for a part for their car so they can get out of Dodge, they fall prey to a series of strange events that all seem to emanate outwards from that strange ginormous House of Wax up there on the hill... Categorized as: Movies and Reviews
|
Posted on
10.23.05 by Widge @ 2:42 am  This video has Bob Burns showing up to gab with Peter Jackson. He brings along the armature from the original Kong. It takes the full tour of the production crew for the remake, gets animated yet again, and enables Jackson to recreate a famous pose that he has the other puppet for. Too freaking cool. Found via MetaFilter. Categorized as: Movies
|
|
|
