‘But this is a Disney movie, what’s it doing here?’ I hear you say. To which I say settle down children and listen up. It’s surprising what a Jazz playing crocodile will make you forgive.
I went in to this fully expecting to end up spewing hatred toward Disney, because this happens to be my very favorite fairy tale and we’ve all seen what the Disney treatment does. Truthfully though the tales we know now are much different then the classic Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which I also blame Disney for, so I decided to bite the bullet and watch it.
We all know the tale or some version of it right? Good.
So this version has a bit of role reversal, well a lot really, and lots of kissing too, which I kinda like. Anyway in this one the prince is the one who must get over himself and because the girl he kisses isn’t a princess, she turns in to a frog. Makes some sense, which is new for Disney. It’s nice to see some character development on the prince for a change, usually the prince charming of these movies is pretty flat ‘he’s perfect’ and that’s it. He reminds me of Puss Continue Reading…
Well, it has come to this, reviewing New Moon but the sad thing is.. I wasn’t really dreading it. As much as a pile of shit the first movie was, I wanted to see how badly the fucked up this one.
Edward leaves Bella, after a close call incident with the Cullen family and it turns her whole world upside down. Heart Broken, Bella turns to Jacob, her best friend, to fill the void left by Edward. As time goes by, Bella learns that there’s more than just vampires in the little town of Forks.
I was surprised to find myself actually engaged in the movie this time around. Having a better script writer and director really helped New Moon move along at really brisk speed and not cringe at every damn word that fall outs of the actors mouths.
The greatest thing that they did was take Edward out of the movie at 20 minutes in and not bring him back till the last 20 odd minutes. Those 40 mins are the only parts of the movie that actually dragged, proving without a doubt that Robert Pattinson is a crappy actor. Taylor Lautner and Kirsten Stewart really bringing Continue Reading…
Imagine my surprise when I get home from being away for a few days to find another Asylum movie sitting in my mailbox. I was pretty stoked. I dug Sherlock Holmes and I was pretty sure, like 80% sure, that I was gonna like whatever they sent me this time.
I opened the box and pulled out Meteor Apocalypse, right away I liked the title. Fur sure stuff was gonna get blown up with meteors crashing into the Earth. Second thing I noticed was Claudia Christians’ name on the box. I was even more stoked, I’ve liked her ever since I saw Babylon 5 and The Hidden. I was ready to sit down and watch this movie.
The premise of the movie can literally be summed up by the on box description; “A gigantic meteor enters Earth’s orbit and begins to disintegrate, showering the entire planet with debris.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up, well, there’s also a guy David, played by actor Joe Lando, looking for his family when a meteor crashes into a local water supply and anyone who drinks the water ends up getting poisoned and then dies and his daughter ended up drinking the water, gets quarantined along with his wife and he tries to find them. Yep.. that sums it up maybe a little better.
I have to say.. I did like this movie. It was really good. Extremely well acted, Continue Reading…
You see the name and it reads Sherlock Holmes, but you see the picture and its not the new Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock Holmes. Pretty sad, eh?
Yep, once again the fine folks from The Asylum bring you a movie that the uninitiated will confuse with being the actual product. They did it with Transmorphers and The Terminators, so why not Sherlock Holmes?
I saw Transmorphers and truth be told, I kinda enjoyed it. After watching Sherlock Holmes, the exact same thought came to my head after I turned off the DVD player. For all intents and purposes they produced a fairly decent product, too bad they went for a knocking off a bigger name movie.
One thing that really surprised me is how well it is directed. I was completely expecting a simple point and shoot and maybe a quick pan here and there, something Kevin Smith would have done a few movies back, but director Rachel Goldenberg did a really damn good job. There were some parts when action was too skewed by the jump cuts to see what was going on, put that’s nitpicking. What was really well done was the chase scene in the forest, it was surprisingly gripping.
The acting on the other hand, well, it was bad. While Gareth David-Lloyd, he played Watson, was giving the best performance he could, was being brought down by the terrible acting of Ben Syder, Sherlock Holmes. Syder just delivered his lines, rarely emoting and sounded quite bored being there. Dominic Keating, he was on STAR TREK: Enterprise, plays the main villain and he just chews the scenery. It looked like he was having a good time, almost smiling the whole time he was onscreen.
Now this being a low budget movie, it can’t be as extravagant as its Hollywood counterpart but it makes due using fabulous period sets or locales, authentic costumes and props. There is CGI in the movie but used mostly at the end and mildly sprinkled throughout. My biggest complaint about big budgeted movies is the use of green screen when people are in vehicles, thankfully there is none of that here, thank you for that.
Also I think this version of Sherlock Holmes could easily be adapted into a pilot for a Sherlock Holmes TV series which I would probably watch.
In the end, I have to say this wasn’t that bad of a movie. And probably worth checking out if you want to mix it up a bit.
Ghost In The Shell is one of the most influential films of all time. Its themes and style gave birth to huge blockbusters like the matrix, fused traditional animation with CGI and brought anime to western culture, forever changing our cinema. Personally, this was one of my favourite anime titles growing up and like most fans I was slightly concerned when I heard phrases like “Update” and “Touch-up” being thrown around. I can honestly tell you, majority of the alterations were for the better.
For those who haven’t seen Ghost In The Shell, the film takes place in the year 2029 and follows “Section 9″; a cyber crime-fighting task force led by Motoko Kusanagi (The Major) as they track a killer called the “Puppet Master”. In the ultra-connected world of the future everyone’s brain is online all the time, meaning no one is safe from random hackings. Interestingly, Masamune Shirow (Comic) has written GITS so well that the plot can be enjoyed on many levels, giving the viewer a slightly different and fresh experience every time. For example, when I was younger this was a movie that was very violent, had great fight scenes and an amazing looking lead character. Revisiting the film now, all those things are still true but the deeper plot elements start to take on more importance. I won’t ruin the experience by saying too much, but I know I’ve seen something amazing when I am still thinking about it nearly a week later.
Now for the GITS 2.0 specific details. Some key scenes have been completely remade in CG which sounds like a great idea in principle but ended up being a bit jarring. This one point aside, some of the updates were spot on, like the addition of rain in some parts really helped build the atmosphere. The wireframe “Network” interfaces were updated from green to a glowing orange to match Innocence (Part 2) and of course the sound and video quality on Blu-ray was amazing!
I was quite happy to find an original version of GITS as well as a “Making of” in the bonus features. I watched both and really loved the nostalgic feel of the original and had some good laughs at the “Cutting edge” technology used way back in 94′/95′.
When it’s all said and done, Ghost In The Shell 2.0 is a great refresh for the series and polishes up some of the outdated visuals of the original, bringing the film in line with it’s second instalment. The scenes that have been completely redone in CG are jarring and tend to break the flow of the movie, but are well done when looked at as an independent element. Finally, is it worth picking up Ghost In The Shell 2.0 Blu-ray if you already have this on DVD? Absolutely! You’ve never seen GITS look or sound this good and its totally worth every cent.
Zombies are back! No need to board up the windows, (This time!) because its only an animated short, but with any luck we could see a feature length version of Haylar Garcia’s “A.D.” in the near future. Continue Reading…
I started reading the manga about a week ago and I really enjoyed it and I thought to give the Live Action adaptation a whirl.
For those who don’t know, Death Note is about a college bound student named Light who finds a notebook belonging to a Shinigama, a Death God. The notebook gives Light the ability to kill people which brings super detective “L” to Japan to hunt him down in the ultimate game of cat and mouse.
One thing that really annoyed me about the film is that its not a direct adaptation. It reworks the first three tankobans into its own interpretation that allows for massive gaps in logic and flow.
Yes, things cannot run as they did in the manga, some events in it make little to no sense, the addition of a steady girlfriend for light. A lot of little details were skipped in the film that annoyed me, though they added in some that were greatly needed, the introduction to Misa for one was well done.
It sounds like I am trashing the movie but it was a good movie; well paced, superbly directed, well acted (though horribly dubbed) and a terrific thrill ride throughout the whole 2 hours.
I was wondering how much they were gonna try and fit into the movie, thinking that it was only one movie (a sequel has been made and a part 3 is in the works) and seeing how they only did the first 3 volumes, I eagerly await the second movie; Death Note: The Last Name.
Definitely give it a view and if you like it, pick up the manga volumes, only 12 in all.
