The Simpsons Movie…

Long story short - don’t bother paying to see this. The film feels like 3 episodes shoved together (and three episodes from the new seasons which is worse) and even for the Simpsons the plot is ridiculous. Though, more importantly the film isn’t funny - some jokes, like the appearence of ‘little’ Bart are entertaining and such but they are not exactly ‘laughing in the isles’ material. Nothing in this film is. And when Monty Burns could have filled the spot of the lead villian as easily and you don’t well thats just stupid. 4 out of 10 becuase I’m feeling generous.

The Bourne Ultimatum

While I was talking to my cousin yesterday he mentioned wanting to go to this and lacking anything better to and having not gone to see a film since the rather painful ‘Pirates 3′ I decided I’d head to this. While I had seen the other two movies in this series I have to admit that the exact details of the plots were rather vague in my mind… Compounded by the problem of having slightly more vivid memories of the books. But I did remember the whole thing being entertaining so….

Is the film worth your money? Yeah, it is. While there is a bit of an element of catch-up straight off the bat (for example, the movie begins right after the end of the second film appearently which I only realised by reading the wikipedia article on the film) but these things are made fairly obvious and theres a short (and unobtrusive) summary of most of the charachters in-film so its all understandable.

To be honest, I can’t talk about the film too much without giving away the plot points so I’m more going to talk about a few ‘feelings’ I had regarding aspects of the film.

Theres a really strong feeling of paranoia pervading the film for starters. What actually gets the whole thing rolling is a journalist getting some information about aspects of Bourne’s training/past but what is noticable is that the ‘evil’ government guys know straight off the bat - because they have his phone tapped. But they also have nearly every charachters phones tapped - this is a bit of the modern era at work; the film suggests that we are all being watched even if we don’t know it. And that at any time the government could decide to watch us… These guys really represent the (unfortunately more-true-than-not) element of the ’security services’ who have no oversight and can and will do anything to ‘protect freedom’. Yet within the film that includes assassinations in broad daylight, abductions of people who are innocent (but still pose a ‘threat’) and so on.. While it isn’t subtle it is well done. But it is hard to escape that feeling of paranoia throughout the film - best shown I suppose by the following two quotes (Which are as close to what I remember them being in the film);
Bourne: ‘’stop thinking of what you read in the news, this is the real world”
and
Evil baddie; ”it’s not over until we win” (relating to him ordering (at the very least immoral, if not illegal acts).

The film is surprisingly realistic. There are a lot of elements - like the evading of the security cameras for example which work quite close to how it would in the real world I’d say, which makes the somewhat unrealistic elements more noticalbe. My major one was the idea that a CIA building would be that easy to break into while my cousin pointed to the fact that a car (can’t remember which one) that’s that modern would not be capable of being hotwired because the act of breaking into the car by smashing the window would enable the immobilisers in the car. But at the same time it’s not that bad.

Product placement in this film is also very obvious. While I suppose some of it is there because it makes financing the film easier and it’s not quite at a level of bieng ‘insulting’, it is still pretty obvious.

The major flaw I had with the film actually relates to the editing of the action scenes. For some reason the director of the film seems to believe that in order for an action scene to be effective it needs to have cuts every second/two seconds. This is really annoying because it actually makes the action scenes nearly unwatchable - I actually found myself having to close my eyes because the cuts were happening so fast I couldn’t keep up. What makes it worse is that the fight scenes especially are exciting enough without having to resort to such poor tricks.

Anyway, if your looking for something to keep you going until 30 days of night (the next film I’ll probably go see) its not the worst movie you can see in the cinema…

The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky…

I’ve always found ‘Jodo’s’ books to be fairly entertaining if often rather confusing and meandering but I’ve recently begun to seriously consider buying his films.. Now granted the clips I can find online haven’t really done much to make me decide either way but my major problem is finding a good site to buy them from online.. Anyone have any suggestions?

Heres a trailer for the Holy Mountain:

and a clip from the same movie:

Looking For Group: The Movie

While the webcomic is quite good this trailer for the proposed movie looks really funny… Always good to see cartoon violence!

Perfect Blue

Just watched this ‘classic’ Anime - its been one of those films that I’ve been meaning for years to watch and seeing as I had the day off today thanks to the bank holiday I figured I had nothing better to do.

And to be honest, it wasn’t really worth it. The film isn’t exactly ‘bad’ - its just not very good. It has the same basic problems I have with a lot of Anime - the plot either is too basic or it doesn’t make any sense. In this case it actually manages to do both. The basic plot is a pretty basic, to the point where I’m sure I’ve seen it in an Inspector Morse/A touch of Frost/any other generic mystery show episode somewhere. It follows the lead character as she quits her band and then becomes an actress - where she starts to feel guilty about spending most of her time in rather ’seedy’ roles. On top of this she begins to get a stalker who it appears is starting to become violent.

And that’s it.

The rest of the film (which is fairly short) simply is more confusing than interesting. While it is a time-honored tradition in films where theres a ‘are they crazy or not?’ vibe to screw around with the audience this film goes waayy too far in its attempts. The end result is that I just stopped caring. But still it was only 80 minutes so if your looking for a fairly ok thriller you can do worse I suppose.

Anyway, I found this clip for a fake trailer for the movie on youtube. Done as a ‘romcom’ it’s actually more entertaining than the fillm:

Superman; The Flischer Studios episodes.

Came across a dvd of this and wasn’t too sure how many of the episodes I’d seen so I decided to borrow it for a bit. Turns out the only episode I hadn’t seen was ‘The Mad Scientist’ - for some reason the collection I have consists of all the Flischer Studios episodes except the first. But considering that I paid about 5€ 6 or 7 years ago for it I’m not that bothered.

Still though, these are astonishingly good - while the plotting is frankly a bit weak you can hardly make that a major complaint. More annoying is the fact that the story doesn’t follow its own internal logic - especially relating to Superman’s exact powers. I mean can he fly or not? Because he seems to move from ‘Being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!’ to being able to maneuverer in mid-air or keep on an upward trajectory despite being hit by a laser beam… One that no-one seems to be able to guess where its coming from - would following the trajectory not give you some clue? But regardless these are true classics of animation in every sense of the word, so for your enjoyment here’s ‘The Mad Scientist’ in all its oddly-plotted glory….

Cloverfield

Gavin talked about it a little while ago and now Apple have a trailer for it up - personally I’m thinking some sort of Godzilla movie but the idea that it somehow ties into the Cthulhu Mythos is an interesting rumor that I keep hearing.. Though I do have to wonder how you could possibly transfer H.P. Lovecraft to the silver screen - I mean, Lovecraft’s horror is and has always been based on what you don’t see not anything else…

Michael Moore’s TV Nation (man I wish this theme capitalised words in the post title’s)

I’ll admit straight off the bat that I like Michael Moore - I know all the points for claiming that he gets in the way of his own story, that his portrayal of the facts in question has been called to account and so on. And yet, despite this I find that his targets often deserve a lot of whats coming to them so….

Strangely after reading this book seems I have to say that while this book does not lack a lot of these flaws (in my humble opinion) its not as bad, maybe because its from somewhat before Moore became the household name he is today. The book covers a number of the various segments that Moore did on the show ‘TV Nation’ along with a bit of the story behind the book and some parts about the show after it finished. If your in any way familiar with Moore’s style the content of this wont be that surprising - the basic strategy is ”absurdity + corporate jerks/injustice = mockery and entertainment”. Though to be fair, that’s not all of what this show was about and its a bit unfair to label it as such.

Some of the segments cover small things - like how the residents of Greenwich used the fact that they were rich to get away with closing a public beach for their own private use or setting off car alarms outside the car alarm company’s CEO’s house. Others, despite their absurdity have a much more serious point - Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken is a ridiculous concept yet the stuff he fought against in the show - unsafe baby-walkers, lead pollution and the use of ’scab’ labour are all serious issues and their being addressed was worthy of note. Among my personal favorites in the book were the visit to the former USSR to try and buy the nuclear missile that was aimed at Detroit and the ‘health care Olympics in which Moore compares the health care systems of Cuba, Canada and America - Cuba wins but the network changes it to Canada. All of which makes you wonder how many other news/documentary pieces are changed because ‘we can’t say that (for political reasons) on TV’. You also see the genesis of ‘Sicko’ in that particular piece btw.

The final chapter on the show itself covers the censored episodes - one about extreme anti-abortionists (as an aside Louis Theroux of the ‘weird weekends’ fame was the reporter who covered that segment) and again just referencing the ‘health care Olympics’ again, part of the reason that clip was censored was no advertiser wished for the piece to air near their ads. The ’savings and loan scandal’ - where they find out that nearly none of the men who had robbed all the money suffered for it at all and a few other clips.

The last bit I want to quickly talk about is the TV Nation opinion polls - which are vaugely absurd alright but do give you an insight into many Americans mindset - such as not wanting Puerto Rico to become a state becuase it would ‘mess with the flag’ to the fact that 15% of Prozac users wanted Dan Quale back because ‘Al Gore wasn’t funny enough and that while only 16% of Americans believe that ‘people are out to get them’, 46% of those own guns.

On a final note regarding the ‘fact checks’ heres a rebuttal to the ‘fact checks’ done by CNN lately…

I have to admit I love viral marketing at times - it can be an artform…

This appears to be a ‘word-of-mouth’ type website advert for the proposed ‘WATCHMEN’ movie. It talks about the ‘Veidt Method’ and its creator ‘Adrian Veidt’

President and C.E.O. Adrian Veidt interviewed in latest edition of Nova Express - on newsstands now!

(If you’ve never read the comic book by Alan Moore you will not have a clue what this post was about nor why I’m kind of excited right now)

(even though I will be the first to admit that From Hell and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sucked and V for Vendetta, while good was not near as good as the book)

King Kong Vs Godzilla is …

Craptacular. I have to admit I haven’t seen such a funny movie in ages! Especially the low-budget effects… Here’s a trailer for it. Watch it from 2:00 on and it gets very entertaining. You have to love the cheap ”men in suits effect”: