"Dan O'Bannon, the veteran screenwriter, director, special-effects technician and occasional actor whose works contributed to several major sci-fi/horror franchises, has died at 63.
O'Bannon was of course best known for scripting Alien, the classic gothic sci-fi thriller that went on to spawn video games, comics, licensed novels and multiple sequels, ultimately including crossovers with that other murderous alien species, the Predator."
2010 Movie Project #3 - Dead Man on Campus (Cohn, 1998) "It was just like, 'time for sex. We're gonna have sex now. Prepare for sex." Director: Alan Cohn Writers: Michael Traeger and Mike White Starring: Tom Everett Scott, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Lochlyn Munro
I'm gonna open with this. Mark-Paul Gosselaar is the Ryan Reynolds that Hollywood forgot. He's got the charm, and he's got the comic timing. Unfortunately, he doesn't have all the talent, but he's good enough to carry a couple of comedies every now and then. Sure he plays Zack Morris in everything he does. Dead Man on Campus is no different. Make no mistake, it's like Saved by the Bell: The College Years... if Zack suddenly lost all of his morals and became a massive dick.
Since it seems to be preferred in this community, I've copied and pasted my latest review from my Oscar series. Enjoy!
I have been watching all the movies that won the Oscar for Best Picture. The next on my list was the 1987 winner, The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring John Lone, Joan Chen and Peter O'Toole.
The Last Emperor is an historical epic about the last emperor of China. The movie pays careful attention to detail and does a good job of portraying the last days of the imperial system of China, as contrasted with the modern communist republic.
The other Best Picture nominees that year were Broadcast News, Fatal Attraction, Hope and Glory and Moonstruck. The Last Emperor also won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Music (Original Score), Best Sound, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (autobiography From Emperor to Citizen by Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi).
I thought this was a good place to post this. The topic came up when there was this ONTD post about the guy jailed for leaking the Wolverine movie. I talked about how I don't DL movies because I actually love going to the movies. It's the whole experience that I love and sometimes the people. Then we talked about DLing vs "shelf pretties." I love it when people come to my house and are all "OMG you have this movie!" and stare for hours at my dvd collection. You don't get that with DLed content if you ask me. That is when I showed them this site I use. It's a FREE site that lets you show off your DVD collections. I do this for my books (shelfari.com), manga (justmanga.com), barbie collections, etc so why not? If interested, here is the site. Lets see your collections.
2010 Movie Project #2 - The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997) "Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English."
Director: Luc Besson Writer: Luc Besson Cast: Bruce Willis, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich
I'm a little indecisive about the Fifth Element. It's a movie set in the far future, which, at the the time of writing, I can't think of one I actually like. At the same time, it's not just another boring, bland, gun-metal-grey and jackboot-black dystopian future. It feels like today, not dystopian, not utopian, just with a lot more colour. But do I actually like the film, or hate it with the fire of a thousand suns? ( Full review under this thing. Here be possible spoilers. )
I've recently been re-watching Agnes Jaoui's films. When I watched them last year, I was really overwhelmed by how completely joyous and refreshing they were. I like the fact that there is no, or little, real resolution of the issues which the characters in these films are dealing with. We are only privy to a very small part of their overall journey. Which is a mature approach from Jaoui, because the kind of lofty ideas and issues which she deals with, are never, and should never, be resolved over the course of a 100 minute film. This narrative realism makes the time we spend with these characters much more precious, and each of their individual plights, ever more gripping. Jaoui's background in music has obviously given her a very discerning sense of when and how to use it to punctuate key moments. The fact that she mixes classical music, with human issues and occasionally riotously funny comedy, is what makes these films so delightful. For me, Jaoui is definitely an auteur. she has a distinct and playful style which is unique and instantly recognisable. She also creates challenging characters, that are not immediately likeable or sympathetic, which is a risky strategy in some ways, yet it always seems to pay off. Jaoui's role in ' A Taste of Others' is a good example of an initially unsympathetic character. In that, she is essentially a low-brow, drug dealing, promiscuous, femme fatale (in certain ways). Yet, as we chip away at the outer exterior of her character, we see a much more sympathetic side to her; she wants a normal life, she wants to love and be loved, the problem is that she just can't admit it. Overall, what makes these films so successful is a combination of things. Firstly, the quality of the production; every aspect from casting, to writing, to mise-en-scene is dripping with wit and quality (if you want to know how mise-en-scene can be witty, take note of the interior of Casard's house in 'Taste'). Secondly, leading on from the 'quality of writing' comes the vivid characters and their interplay which each other. All are initially defined by their role in the world; what they do and who they know. But as new relationships blossom, the characters evolve and their old relationships change. Thirdly, these films are funny. Ok, you're not going to get fifteen laugh-loud-moments a film, but there are plenty of quirky and subtle moments that don't jar with the overall impression which these films leave you with, which is: life is worth living.
Steven Soderbergh seems to have taken a leaf out of the Coens’ book of comedies, and made an “idiot” film. The “idiot” film is that genre that revolves around the actions of someone who doesn’t really have a clue, and yet we still strangely feel supportive of the character (whilst laughing our heads off at the same time). The aforementioned Coens have used it in classic like Burn After Reading, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and Intolerable Cruelty. Soderbergh had one or two characters in Out Of Sight that would fit the mould, but the movie didn’t revolve around them.
In this one, Matt Damon (MATT DAMON!) plays the title role, an everyday guy with delusions of grandeur and pieces of random trivia, both of which we are exposed to through his voiceover, as we watch his efforts to “help” the FBI bring down the company he’s employed at for price-fixing.
Soderbergh finds the perfect pitch for this film throughout. Anytime I thought I might start to grow weary of the track he took, he changed tack and kept me interested. And towards the end, when the actions of everyone start to unravel and expose themselves, there is a scene where we both watch Damon and listen to his thoughts, and this for me was the crowning scene of everything that had gone before.
It’s a small film compared to projects like Traffic, Erin Brockovich and the Ocean’s films, but I think this may well be my favourite Soderbergh film to date.
(Other great movies of 2009: Away We Go, Blessed, Elegy, (500) Days Of Summer, In The City Of Sylvia, JCVD, Lake Mungo, Revolutionary Road, Tenderness, The Wrestler)
Oscar Watch:The Informant! is an outside chance of getting in the Best Picture list (I don’t think it’ll make it, but who knows what will happen now we have ten nominees). However, as I see it, Matt Damon is sitting just outside the five Best Actor nominees I have predicted so far (Bridges, Clooney, Firth, Freeman, Renner), waiting for any one of them to fall back in votes so he can jump in their place.
This has everything a martial arts movie is supposed to have: lush, cinematically gorgeous settings; tangled plotlines and relationships; fantastic fight scenes; and an evil empire to overthrow. Everything about it screams "EPIC!" There's a slightly snobbish, or perhaps overly intellectual, part of me that wants to hate it for that reason alone, just on principle. But there's a reason some of these things have become cliches: the shit works. (Trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum; nothing that'll ruin the movie for you, I promise.)
so i just learned that some ballsy so-and-so decided to take on the challenge of remaking The NeverEnding Story. release date in 2012. gotta admit, i've got mixed feelings about this. that's my childhood!!!
Oh my god. I didn't expect to be amazed like that.
It starts out with some poor dialogue, bad acting (Misses Weaver and Rodriguez in particular), and some very clumsy exposition. It reminded me of Alien that way and I was thinking to myself, "If you like Alien, you'll love this."
But it got better when they got away from the army base into the wilderness.
Think Alien, Ferngully, Lord of the Rings (especially The Two Towers), Braveheart, and the modern combat movie of your choice all mixed up in a blender and poured out with the most amazing images you could think of. There are elements that are a real delight to the imagination and it's like nothing I've ever seen before. I don't know if it would be so great if you saw it not in 3D but the 3D version I saw was pretty spectacular. I'm thinking of seeing again at the IMAX...
December of 2009 is a fantastic time for the release of “Avatar”, mainly because it has been a horrible year for big-budget, mainstream film that everyone can gather around and love. The IMAX showing I went to had people applause at the end, and while it is something I have always found a bit silly (it’s okay if the crew is at the showing, but otherwise…), it does show the enthusiasm of the general public.
The film is a great cinematic experience. I find that big screen home televisions with all the current advances in home theatre, going to the cinemas is not that impressive to me anymore. Usually I’d just rather watch it at home, than go all the way to the movies so I can watch a film mixed with people talking, phones ringing, lots of random coughs, and that irritating light from young teenage girl checking her blackberry. But a film like “Avatar” makes it a pleasure to go to the cinema, and in an IMAX theatre, it becomes such a unique visual experience that cannot be replicated at home.
I like the 3D. Well, let’s take a step back. I’ve always like 3D, even the shitty to average films from the last few years. I’m impressed by technological cinematic advances and it’s about damn time they get off their asses and do something new. And James Cameron has made a gorgeous alien world and there were several times I felt lost into it.
But wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. People have thrown “realism” at us, when it comes to CGI, since CGI was invented, but it still has that glossy, shiny, plastic feel to it. From a distance the world looks real, that one hits the mark, and we can cross that out from our list. But characters and live creatures have still a decade or so to go before I can buy the “realistic CGI” tag that they keep trying to attach to every film.
And the plot is a crowd-pleaser and fun to watch, but if the technological marvel was not behind it, I would have rolled it into a ball and thrown it in a garbage. I did not watch the trailer for the film, but if I did, I could have probably outlined the exact story. It is the same stuff we always see, a mixture of white guilt and ethnocentricity. The Whites are bad because they are oppressing the poor, innocent natives. BUT also, it is only The White that can stand up for the poor, innocent natives and save them. Being both the oppressor and the savior, to me, seems like it is placing the rest of the world (and now universe) in a position unable to control their destiny. Their destruction or their survival rests on the White Man. Like most stories with similar plot, the film has an inability to be complex. The invaders are almost cartoon villains, with no moral compass and find joy in killing, while the oppressed are all pure and good. It is easy for viewers to side in such situations. But it would have been more interesting to portray a situation with the bad guys spinning the war in such a way that makes it hard for the characters in the film and in the audience to know which side to support.
But this is not a subtle, political film, so there is no reason to do that. It is the year’s best cinematic, big-budget, big-action, big-everything film and it is there that it succeeds. I can’t complain there.
What is your favourite festive movie? Is there a movie which you traditionally watch at Xmas (whether the film is festive or not)?
I dont know if I have an answer to this myself. Gremlins is probably my favourite film set at Christmas, though I wouldnt describe it as an xmas movie...
I have quite enjoyed Bad Santa and Elf in recent years, though Im not normally a fan of xmas movies.
When I was a kid it seemed like The Wizard Of Oz was on every Christmas. Mostly now my highlight is the Doctor Who Xmas specials. Channel Four (in the UK) also usually do a good line of 'alternative' xmas viewing and in the past I have spent the last few hours of Christmas day watching Bruce Lee or Godzilla ar something brilliantly non-festive.
I haven't really done a good job keeping track of what movies I saw this year that could also be construed to have come out this year but this is what I have put together so far. Not quite prepared to make any sort of best of the year list, I've just broken them down based on whether I loved them, liked them, or didn't like them...
Loved It Avatar (3D) Cherry Blossoms (Kirschblüten - Hanami) Hipsters (Stilyagi) Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Rabioso Sol, Rabioso Cielo) Who's Afraid of the Wolf (Kdopak by se vlka bál) A Woman in Berlin (Anonyma- Eine Frau in Berlin) A Woman's Way (Strella)
One of the best parts about seeing a film like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, is exploring the many meanings people have interpreted in the films symbols. I've mostly read that people think of the monolith as a doorway, and a symbol of the change in evolution that is about to happen. I recently saw this video on youtube explaining what the monolith means to analyst Rob Ager, and thought it was really interesting.
Sam Worthington experiences a strange new world in writer-director James Cameron's Avatar. Photo: Fox
Avatar is unlike anything you've seen before. A hybrid of live-action and CGI, James Cameron's latest epic is a dazzling landmark in film-making wizardry. Even if it features a storyline that's been seen and done before, it's a thoroughly engaging and exhilarating experience, chock-full of compelling characters and jaw-dropping action sequences - making it one of the best big-budget blockbusters of the decade.( Read the full review after the cut... )
You can follow Reuben Pereira's posts at Examiner.com.
Which of these general errors is more common? That is to say, of the two events: [Person refuting scientific theory via silly, uneducated thought-experiment], and [Person refuting moral theory via silly, uneducated scientific data], which occurs more often? And,
Which web-comic has a higher readership, and which one will thus continue to exert more influence on the population in general?
There could never be a more satisfying and simultaneously more depressing portrait of today's smug, self-aggrandizing, anti-philosophical, "scientific" intellectual than the XKCD comic. On the one hand, it's just a comic. On the other hand, the converse error (portrayed in the Chaospet comic) isn't just common, it's embodied in dozens of best-selling books, articles and television specials, all of which purport to tell us that the behaviour of animals is directly, even crucially relevant to human ethical ideas. The error portrayed in the XKCD comic is rarely committed, and rarely taken seriously.
Big list comin'... there are plenty of box office hits and critical faves too, so I imagine this list might piss off some (and some asshole will call it a "big bowl of fail" or some other retarded shit - I pre-emptively welcome this person to gargle my cum).
85. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (MARCUS NISPEL) Didn’t see the prequel, didn’t see the “Friday the 13th” remake (the only “Friday” I missed!). Platinum Dunes, you’re on my shit list.
84. HECKLER (MICHAEL ADDIS) Jamie Kennedy goes from city to city asking why people wrote bad reviews for Son of the Mask. There’s more to it, but somehow, less. Just cry into a pillow like the other people involved in that movie, Jamie, spare us a documentary about your petty need for validation.
83. THE PUNISHER (JOHNATHAN HENSLEIGH) Not pictured: Tom Jane’s disappearing/reappearing fire hydrant of justice!
82. XXX (LEE TAMAHORI) “Stop thinking Prague police and start thinking Playstation!” he says. Do they even have Playstation in Prague? Why would he assume a grown man in Prague would still play videogames? Mysteries of the universe…
81. THE HAPPENING (M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN) Don’t you guys wanna know about the bees???
80. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (BRETT RATNER) No, guys, don’t you see? We have to stop this powerful woman! She is… more powerful than men!!! And she wants… sex!!! She must be stopped/killed/penetrated by the most phallic dude in the movie!
79. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (PAUL W.S. ANDERSON) Seriously, how do you fuck this up?
78. JURASSIC PARK III (JOE JOHNSTON) As a dinosaur lover, I can’t even make it halfway through this movie anymore. My Jurassic Park box set remains one and a half great movies and a coaster.
So I've sort of read about the new technology and saw some interviews. But I've only been half paying attention because there's all this hype. Personally, I'm not thrilled when I see blue people running about, however people are still professing their accolades for the movie.
Anyone care to explain what the big deal is? All the technological talk seems to have me confused (if anyone cares to put it in layman's terms) and all I really wanna know is will the whole movie be in 3D?
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