Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Monday, May 03, 2010

Review: Clash of the Titans 3-D (2010)


So I was one of the last few people on the planet to catch the new Clash of the Titans film in the theaters before it left to make room for the oncoming Summer movie tidal wave. First off I'd like to bring to light a real cleaver trick my movie theater is employing to suck more money from my pocket as if they aren't doing that already. Since 'Clash' has been out for a little while they had it playing in one theater, nothing surprising here. I had heard and read that the 3-D in the film was not good so I was planning on seeing the regular version of the film and save a couple of bucks in the process. But to my dismay the theater (as well as other theaters in my area) were only showing the film in 3-D all day. So I was FORCED to pay $15 (as opposed to the usual adult price of $11) to see the lousy 3-D version. Mother. Fuckers.

Well after that delightful incident I sat down to watch the movie. Without going into the whole backstory we have some guy Perseus who is half-god but is adopted and raised by a mortal and his family. has said family taken away from him when the gods punish a band of human soldiers who claim to not worship the gods anymore. The gods want to teach mankind a lesson by threatening to release the Kraken upon the city of Argos if they do not offer the sacrifice of their princess and Perseus becomes the one who must try and save them.


To be honest, I didn't care for this remake. I was really looking forward to a fresh look at the greek mythological story but you know what? It didn't do anything for me. I didn't care much for Liam Nesson as Zeus, Fiennes was ok as Hades although it was like he was just doing Voldermort with a Ted Nugent hairdo. Sam Worthington did absolutely nothing for me. I understand he's mad about what happened to his family but I really didn't care. For all his declaration of stopping the gods as a man in the end he still had to use his godly abilities to foil Hades' plans so why the hell didn't he take advantage of his demi-god status earlier!!! In the end the god's still reigned on Mt. Olympus and man would still end up believing in them, what's the point?! And having Perseus falling in love with Io rather than Andromeda kinda doesn't make sense for his motivation for wanting to save the people of Argos so badly. In the original Perseus loved Andromeda so he was willing to do anything to save her, in the new one once he found out that he was a demi-god he really didn't need to help any of those people. His beef was with Hades, he could have technically gone on his own quest to go after Hades without the help of any of those people. He wasn't even from Argos! Oh and one more thing Calibus was WHACK!!!!!

As for the look and effects, the Kraken was cool looking but I thought the battle ended quickly, Medusa was pretty...why is this? And why the hell was Pegasus black (not that there's anything wrong with black horses...some of my closest horse friends are black) but...why? Give me Harry Hamlin and some stop motion creatures any day. Despite the dated look of the original 'Clash' and some slight cheese to the performances I felt that that film had more charm and more of a fantastical element to it than this 2010 redux. I mean it's Greek MYTHology, ham it up people! Oh yeah and the 3-D was garbage, but I knew that from reviews. It was never originally filmed with 3-D in mind and it's obvious.

Overall 'Clash' 2010 was just a 'meh' film. I was really excited to see this film but in the end I wasn't awed by it. The storyline was a little thin and the character motivations for the things they did during their adventures didn't make sense at times. I see they are setting up a couple of sequels and I hope that they improve upon this first film, but I doubt it. If there's one positive to take away from seeing 'Clash' is that it just makes me want to see a God of War movie even more.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Monday, April 12, 2010

Review: Spider Baby

This film was seen as a:


The only thing I knew about Spider Baby prior to watching it was that Sid Haig was in it. Other than that I didn't have much interest in seeing this film. I knew the film had a fairly decent cult following among horror fanatics but for some reason I never made the effort to watch Spider Baby. Well the other day with nothing on tv and the Final Girl Film Club deadline coming up I said "Eh, what the hell!" so I fired up the PlayStation 3 and pulled up Spider Baby on the Netfilx Instant-Stream. When the title sequence started and that kooky song played over it (sung by Lon Chaney Jr.) I knew I was in for something special and by the end I regretted not see this film earlier.

The basic jist of the story: The last surviving members of the Merrye family, watched over by devoted caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), are about to have their inbreeding utopia disrupted but some distant relatives looking to claim the family estate. The more Bruno tries to hide the family's secrets the more exposed they become to their visitors inquisitiveness and the surviving Merrye "children's" bad habits. Suffice it to say the movie is pretty good with a surprising amount of humor in it. I'm not going to go into huge detail about the film, it's a definite recommend but I do want to put down some thoughts I had while watching the film:

-Of course we open with the usual stereotype of the goofy black character being the first one to get killed..daaamn.

-The narrator and uncle to the Merrye children, Peter (Quinn K. Redeker) is the only other character beside Bruno that is nice to the "children". His demeanor kinda reminded me of this guy: 
-Even in one of his earliest films Sig Haig can be counted on to play some fucking weirdo character!


-So on top of being a scumbag lawyer (like what other kind of lawyer is there) Schlocker is not only an asshole but what the hell is up with the Hitler 'stache?!! It was made very clear that the viewer he was not to be liked from the get go!

-Maybe it's my urban upbringing and my overall sense of distrust of everybody but I don't care what kind of inheritance I'm entitled to I would never have insisted on spending the night in that house with those people they way cousin Emily did. Oh hell-tothe-NO!

-Speaking of Emily, bad enough that she insisted on spending the night in that creepy house and was completely disgusted by the purrrr-fect dinner she retires to the bedroom to...dance around in sexy lingerie?! Her character was more weirder than the Merrye clan...ironic no?



-Big props to Ralph (Sid Haig) for laying the pipe good on that uptight bitch Emily. One minute she was screaming running away from him the next she's moaning  in ecstasy and seeking out Ralph for some more. She certainly was keeping the family tradition alive.


-Very nice nod to Lon Chaney's iconic role as The Wolfman during the dinner scene where he mentions that it was going to be a full moon that night. Very Classy.



Those are just some of my thoughts about this crazy little film. It really was a treat to watch and I may have to add it to my movie collection. A must see for horror fans! Now I have to go and find that opening song to put on my ipod. Thanks again to Final Girl Film Club for motivating me to check out this film.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Retail Therapy for Geeks: Recent Blu Purchases

Amazon.com was having a really good sale on Blu-ray discs over the weekend so what's an unemployed geek gal to do but spend some money! At $10 a BD it was too good to pass up so I picked up 3 pretty awesome flicks.

Overlooked when it was originally released in theaters Dark City has become a cult hit in the years following. Although I own Dark City on DVD this Director's Cut on blu is totally worth the re-buy since it has been re-mastered in high-def. There are some extra commentaries and factoid stuff just in case you need to know EVERYTHING there is to know about the film. It's a trippy movie that stars Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly,  and Kiefer Sutherland prior to him saving the world in 24 hours while pointing a gun and yelling at everybody. A worthwhile movie to own at regular price or at a discounted price (although getting it on the cheap is always great).

Before she became a high-falutin' Oscar winning director, Kathryn Bigelow directed the pretty kick-ass vamp flick Near Dark. Despite the unfortunate new cover art for this Blu-ray release, which is an obvious look-a-like to something from Twilight's marketing ads, the vampires in this film are far from sparkly! It's a nice look at the early film work of Bigelow, actor Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli in Heroes) and the bonus appearance of Aliens Bishop (Lance Henriksen), Hicks (Bill Paxton) and Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) as vampires just pushes the kick-ass factor to 11 . A dark and gritty film with even darker humor Near Dark is a must have film for lovers of REAL vampires. 

Look, much respect goes to the original 1958 The Fly with Vincent Price but there is no beating Jeff Goldblum as Brundlefly!
See what I mean?! All ickyness aside David Cronenberg's The Fly is a true horror movie in every sense of the word and one of the best to come out of the 80's. I remember seeing this as a young girl and being so grossed out but pleasantly amused (is that normal for a 9 year old?) and engaged by this science gone awry story. I'm looking forward to watching this and being grossed out once again but this time in high-def! This is my first time buying this movie on any disc format (I might have a VHS copy laying around somewhere) but I would have gladly purchased this again if I had already owned it on DVD.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Tech nerd reporting for duty sir!

So on thursday I did something incredibly stupid but at the same time SOOOOOO worth it!

I bought myself a PlayStation Portable.

The good thing about it-I can play video games, music, veiw photos and video/movies on it. The bad thing about it-I spent $250 plus $30 for a video game on it when I really shouldn't have. But as my friend T told me I will only live once and you gotta treat yourself...and that IT'S THE MOST FUCKING COOLEST THING ON THE PLANET RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been wanting a PSP ever since they anounced it at E3 last year but I ended up doing the impulsive buyer thing now because of Star Wars. Ya' see what happened was while I was waitng on the line to see the midnight showing on Wed eve my two friends broke out their PSP's to show me the movie/video game trailers they had put on the system. I was like "shit this is cool"...Then this guy infront of us turned around to show off his PSP. See this guy ripped the Star Wars movies from his DVD's, coverted them and put them onto his PSP so he was standing there watching "The Empire Strikes Back" while waiting to see "Revenge of the Sith". So then the envy bug REALLY hit me and it didn't help that T and C were continuously telling me that I need to get one. See it was all the peer pressure!

So the next day I played hookie (becuase I came home at 4am after seeing SW) and took my mom to Target. I decided that I'd take a look to see if they had any PSP's, which I didn't think they would because they were no where to be found in NYC, and to my surprise they had two units left. Now had I not gotten paid that morning I would not have bought it, plus the fact that I'm behind on some bill payments I really should have not bought it...but alas the little tech demon on my shoulder kept whispering in my ear "Get it, Get it, GET IT NOW!!!!!!!!!". So I did.

Although I feel a little guilty for buying it, I realize that it was so worth it. See I found some programs that allow me to rip video from my DVD's and then converts it to fit my memory stick and play it on my PSP. So what did I do? I ripped and coverted my favorite episodes from Xena (ADITL) and The X-Files(Bad Blood)! And you know what? IT FUCKING KICKS ALL TYPES OF ASS!!!!!!!!!

I am such a happy little nerd right now!!!!!! God bless the Japanese and the PSP!!!!!^_^

(Are you happy now Amy, I updated my Blogger :P)