Beauty-full little short, wonderful use of lights.
Nov 23, 2011
Nov 4, 2011
If Quake was done today
The guy is overacting, but this is hilarious. And showing real action at the end is pretty awesome.
Oct 30, 2011
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Hayao Miyazaki Edition! So we decided to watch all the Miyazaki movies recently. Unfortunately, I’m only writing this now that we’ve gotten through 90% of them, but oh well. Also – I didn’t watch Spirited Away because I had seen it before. Now I wish I had, to refresh, I remember thinking it was too surreal for me. And we saw Ponyo back when it came out. That one was also cute, also pretty weird.
My Neighbor Totoro – I think this ended up being one of my favorites. Two sisters encounter these forests spirits at their new house and have a few adventures. It’s very weird, there’s a flying cat bus (that’s a giant cat in the shape of a bus that you sit inside, not a bus for cats). But it was very sweet and had a heroic female lead with no romantic BS. What we noticed in the first few HM movies we saw is strong female characters whose movies are NOT defined by finding a man, which we loved. The fell apart in the last few we watched, sadly.
Kiki’s Delivery Service – Another really cute one, also one of the better ones. A young witch goes off on her own, has some adventures, and succeeds. There is a boy who likes her, but it’s not the point of the movie. The point is her finding her place in the world. It’s a lot of fun. Far too many shots of Kiki’s underpinnings for my tastes, though. Mr. Miyazaki has some serious issues with under age girls’ swimsuit areas.
Princess Mononoke – Holy shit, what happened here? We were just getting used to the cute thing of these last movies, and now this gore fest? the fuck? Dudes getting their arms and heads chopped off, blood everywhere, jesus christ. I actually really liked most of the movie, though. The way they did nature vs. man/technology/pollution was actually cool. I liked the action, and the blood didn’t bother me. Sadly, the movie goes to crap at the end. First of all Mononoke, who is a bad ass killer in the beginning, turns into a weak woman who needs saving, which pisses me off. And then they just wrap the whole thing up with the stupid love story and NO damn resolution of the man vs nature stuff. Boo.
Howl’s Moving Castle – I think this might be the best of the bunch. It does have a love story, which doesn’t thrill me. But it’s mostly the woman who is the strong one, in the end. But the fantasy of it is quite fun. Calcifer is a fantastic character. Howl is a whiny goth, but sort of in a charming way. It’s a very cool movie.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind – Eh, not as good. Also a man vs. nature thing. Perhaps a better resolution than Mononoke, but the movie is a bit weirder and didn’t really connect for me. Also – a lot more looking up skirts while a girl flies around, Hayao. Not a bad movie, but low on the list.
Porco Rosso – This one is actually pretty fun, maybe #4 behind howl, totoro, and kiki. An italian air force pilot after WW I gets some curse that turns him into a humanoid pig. He goes around bounty hunting, being charming and surly. Things happen, there’s some fun plane action, some funny humor. This one ends explicitly without telling you what happens which is kind of cool, but you can kind of assume.
Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro – Hm, one of these is not like the others. This movie is totally different from all the rest. I guess Lupin is an established character, so maybe that hindered Miyazaki. But it just seemed so different. The animation, plot, and humor felt american, not like Miyazaki at all. It was kind of slap sticky and silly, but not in the weird fantastical way that Miyazaki normally is. Felt more like an episode of inspector gadget than anything.
The Cat Returns – Now this is back to good Hayao stuff! This is exactly what I want from one of these movies. Whimsical, fantastic, fun, with a nice female heroine (still the problem of little girls with too short of dresses, sadly), varied characters and a weird ass world. This one is about a girl who gets pulled into a cat world – they are still house cats, but otherwise completely anthropomorphized, they talk and walk and wear clothes and use things. Crazy things happen, it’s quite kooky, and it all works out in the end. Great!
Castle in the Sky – I’m not sure about this one. We watched it in 3 or 4 parts. The first N-1 parts I wasn’t really digging it. I’m not sure why, it had the same sort of things that are likable about Miyazaki movies, but somehow I wasn’t on board. Yet in the last part, I was pretty engaged, amused by the pirates, happy with the events. Maybe the busy-ness of everything external to this movie distracted me too much to enjoy the first parts, which isn’t fair. Or maybe this one just isn’t as good as the others, not sure!
Oct 23, 2011
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Thor – Meh. The movie is fine, its got some okay fighting. The opening thing in Jotunheim was pretty cool. It’s interesting, it wasn’t really a comic book movie. More of a generic fantasy movie. Which is fine, I suppose, even could have been a plus. But the movie just wasn’t all the captivating. Not sure why. I guess the acting wasn’t great on some counts. I never have really cared about Thor, that probably doesn’t help. In their defense, I really didn’t think they could make Thor into a movie. So the fact that it’s not horrendous is somewhat impressive. I do like that they made godhood into advanced science of the magical variety. Cuz having a god in the mix is just dumb. And the 9 planes being planets is cool. Movie was just kind of okay.
Commando – Aw, I thought this would be good. I had never seen it. I thought it was a war movie, it’s more like a kidnapping movie. It’s very cheesy and 80s. Lots of Mr. Freeze-esque lines out of arnold. But the action just isn’t that interesting. Maybe it was bloody for the time, but not really now. And it’s just sort of standard shoot guns, guys die, nothing creative. Kind of bummed!
Trick ‘r Treat – Ha, what’s anna paquin doing in this? To its credit, the movie tries to be more than just a gore fest. It tries to play with time and perspective to go back over the same events with different people. I can see how that seems like a good idea. Didn’t really work though, it was just too silly to get interested in the intertwining events.
Deadfall Trail – Another well intentioned movie. 3 guys go out into the wilderness, crazy mostly-not-supernatural shit happens, they go nuts and turn on each other. That has the potential for an interesting psychological type movie. But it feels horrendously amateur, something about the filming and acting, I don’t know. Didn’t think it was very good.
Hunter Prey – On the flip side, I reacted very positively to this one. It’s certainly an indie movie, but some how when I first started it it, I thought it seemed like a web sci fi series. And all of a sudden I thought, they, this is really good for what it is. Some dudes are trapped on a planet, chasing a prisoner, things happen. It’s very small, there’s only a few characters. And in a sense the sets are small, not a lot there, but they do it out in the desert like they are on a remote planet, and it totally works. Such a smart way to give your small budget a big/realistic feel. The acting is rather decent, and though the effects are a little on the cheap side, they aren’t bad. Totally shocked that this was not a bad movie.
Hobo with a Shotgun – It’s been a while since I mentioned the Mother Night syndrome. That was a nick nolte WW II movie that I remember being very bad except for the quote “be careful what you pretend to be, eventually, you are what you pretend to be” or something like that. This movie, like the grindhouse movies and machete before it, pretends to be shitty. It succeeds.
Freakonomics – The movie version of this stuff wasn’t that good, which is sad. I really like the freakonomics guys, I listen to the podcast, it’s very good. They are kind of crazy economists, and that does (to me) force a limited perspective on some issues that doesn’t really make sense. But the book is good, and this movie is meant to elucidate a few examples from the book. But they spend WAY too much time on the sumo thing, and the rest of the examples just aren’t done all that fascinatingly. Sad, I still gave it 3 stars on netflix just cuz I like them, but it’s more a 2 star movie.
Seventh Moon – Two people get attacked in China. Um… that’s all I got. It wasn’t good.
From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas – I realize no one thought this would be good. I just love the first one so much. In this one, 5 bad guys get turned and fight each other. The movie decided to go with bats, that was a weird choice. Bats aren’t really very scary. And they also generally can’t chew through steel cables. Yes, I know, these are magic vampire bats. But still, not very scary. Otherwise it’s an expected amount of blood, some boobs, and that’s it. Crap.
Brothers – This movie is pretty good. The shocker I think is Toby MacGuire pulling off the part of a troubled soldier returning from being a POW. When the movie first started, I’m thinking how can he even pull off being a tough soldier. But man does he get that haunted look in his face like nobody’s business. He’s pretty scary (much scarier, for example, than bats). The drama of the supposed love triangle isn’t what the trailer makes it out to be (stupid god damn trailers). Mostly it’s about him breaking down, and that is done well. It’s a bummer of a movie, I never need to see it again, but it is a good one.
Harry Brown – Who doesn’t like a little vigilante justice? Michael Caine (say it with me, in a british accent, “My Cocaine”) is an old man watching his neighborhood go to shit taken over by young hoodlums. Eventually says eff this and kills a few. It’s a weirdly prescient movie, as it features a huge riot, remarkably like the riots that happened a couple months ago in London, but that happened 2 years after this movie came out. Not that riots are a new thing, but it was arresting to see that. People do a good job, it’s generally a good movie. It doesn’t have much of an ending, but maybe stories like this just don’t have endings.
Paintball – Sooooo, some people go to play paintball in the woods. Then some people start killing them. They are in some game they didn’t know they were in, and have to get out. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds, actually. For an indie movie it actually looks really good. If my friend had made this movie, I’d be thrilled for them. At the end of the day, it’s another “oh em gee, you are in this crazy totally-possible situation, how do you get out” movie, which isn’t my thing. It’s not even like I would seek this movie out, there’s nothing special about it. But bonus points for doing what it meant to do, I’d be proud of myself if I made it.
Assault Girls – 3 Japanese girls play some sort of real life video game. Kind of like final fantasy, in real life. The crazy dude player seems very FF to me. It’s very shiny with its digital set pieces and digital almost everything. Some of the effects are pretty cool, especially given that it was presumably low budget. It’s kind of neat, the idea of playing a video game like that. But at the end of the day, it’s fairly narrow in scope and not all the captivating.
Labyrinth – I think I saw this once, maybe, or maybe just parts. But seeing it now, it’s pretty good! Bowie is freaking weird, I knew he was in it, I didn’t know he was a bad guy, or had such a major role, or that it is essentially a musical staring him. That’s all kind of weird. But the puppetry is very good. It’s sad because all the puppets totally hold up. They look as good as they ever did. Now, maybe you don’t like puppets, fine, you wouldn’t have liked it then either. But if you appreciate that style, they look every bit as cool. The CG effects, however, look like ass. I wish they hadn’t put them in, they were totally unnecessary. Jennifer Connelly is good for maybe the only time ever (for me). It’s fun, it’s a good movie.
The Dark Crystal – On the flip side, this sucked. Granted, some of the puppetry is amazing. Probably the best I’ve ever seen. But the main character is correspondingly awful. And the story and acting are just pretty crap. I’m glad I know what skeksis is, now. Sometimes it comes up in nerd culture and heretofore I had missed the joke. But that’s really all this movie did for me.
Tron: Legacy – Not as bad as I thought it would be! Not nearly as bad, honestly. It just looked so bad. I’m not saying it’s amazing, but I’d give it above average. It’s fun, it’s flashy, it’s got little ninja flights, it’s got great music (the one thing everyone seems to agree on), the acting is fine. The CG jeff bridges is horrible. Maybe you can excuse that in the digital world, cuz he’s some crappy digital version, I could buy that, and they could explain it away in the movie. But the fact that he looks like that in real life is really weird. But besides that, honestly totally a good time.
Conan the Barbarian – Um, I know this is supposed to be great. This is the original I’m talking about here. But the fighting is super lame. No one ever thought the acting was good. The story is a decent take over the despot type thing, but obviously nothing special. I don’t get why this is supposed to be great?
Exam – Hm, weird british movie about 8 people who go into a room to take an exam to get a job. It’s kind of a psychological thriller. It’s entirely in this room, entirely with these 8 people, the administrator, and a guard. For the most part, I actually quite liked it. It was very small scale, but kind of a cool exploration of this really weird situation. But in the end, they didn’t know where to go, and went somewhere stupid. It gets too crazy, and then has a “twist” that’s not interesting, and a conclusion that makes no sense at all.
44 Inch Chest – Weird movie. Some guy’s wife cheats on him, so he and his buddies kidnap the other man and beat the living shit out of him, interrogate him, and terrorize him. That’s really the whole movie. At first it seems like just a fantasy reenactment movie, written by some guy who obviously was cheated on. In the middle for a bit it starts to seem more interesting. But then it ends kind of uninteresting again. Didn’t really get it.
The Accidental Tourist – I’m not sure where I heard this was good, but they were wrong. It’s about a guy who writes travel books. He and his wife separate, he meets this kooky (and I mean KOOKY) woman, has a relationship, eventually has to decide between the old wife and the new woman. It’s monumentally boring. That’s kind of on purpose. The man is very monotone, not only in voice, but in personality, and in spirit. He is a nearly dead person, which is why he has trouble with his wife and is attracted to the kook. It may sound like a good idea to make a movie about a boring guy, but it turns out that just makes a boring movie.
Oct 21, 2011
Oct 14, 2011
Oct 6, 2011
Oct 5, 2011
Stop motion ninjas
Stop motion went through a real slump for the past couple years, it just all seemed samey. But this stop motion choreography stuff is great.
Sep 30, 2011
Emma Frost’s Tits
Give it a minute so you can get to the fairly hilarious point, after that it’s pretty much the same thing for 4 more minutes.
Tragedy of the Commons
I don’t usually post comics. But I don’t usually laugh audibly for 5 seconds straight either.
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 21, 2011
The Notorious IBE
I feel like I see a lot of the pop dance out there (so you think you can dance, ABDC, LXD. I explicitly don’t watch dancing with the stars, which I believe in fact enhances my credentials) So I feel like breaking sometimes gets a little boring, I see the same things over and over. But this is pretty cool. Splits backward somersaults? arm spin doing the splits? Holding yourself up horizontal(ish) with one arm? Jesus.
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 6, 2011
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
The Source Code – So, imagine Run Lola Run and Inception had a baby. Except, contrary to what you would (fairly) assume – the baby doesn’t come out broken. The movie is cool, interesting, and Jake Gyllaplatypus does a really good job, especially in those moments where he’s trying to make sense of his situation. The movie does get kind of philosoraptor on you at the very end, asking you to accept a certain view of the result. It’s just the very end, you can believe it’s all in his head if you like, and I wouldn’t call deciding on that point to be necessary to like the movie, but it is kind of the take home message. Still good though.
Trollhunter – Damn, I had really high hopes for this one. Didn’t really have a good reason for that. Literally all I knew about it was the poster. But there was something powerful and majestic about that poster. I know what it was, it reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus – one of the best games ever and, given its dated graphics, still an astonishing visual. But first, this is a found footage movie. And while I love the style of found footage movies, I hate the pretense, I wish they’d just leave off the bullshit where they act like its real. More than that, though, I think the movie blows its load too early. In 25 minutes we’ve seen a troll, then we see like 5 more until the important one. If those trolls had been unseen, and then our first view was 70 minutes in, that could have been amazing. Maybe not, maybe I’m wrong, maybe that would have been a massively boring 70 minutes. And hell, you see the monsters throughout SotC, and it’s still amazing. On the flip side, the scenery is fantastic. I’ve never seen much about Norway, but wow is it pretty. I guess there’s a whole level of allegory to this movie that I didn’t understand. The trolls being a metaphor for the need for power, and the power lines or oil fields being the price we pay (ruining the environment) - that didn’t strike me much. And I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen at the end at all. Oh well, ultimately not great, I feel like it could have been great.
Mary and Max – Wow, what a good movie. A really really dark movie. It’s claymation, about a socially outcast 8 year old girl in australia who randomly becomes a penpal with a 40 year old asperger’s man in new york. Yes, that is occasionally creepy. The movie does stretch believability a little bit, things work out (or don’t) in convenient ways. But I can’t imagine a better way to tell this story. This movie is simultaneously hilarious and devastating. And I just don’t know how you could pull that off with real actors, or perhaps even with animation. Claymation has this fantastic ability to be serious, surreal, touching, wacky, and painful all in 5 minutes. I have to say, the movie made me cry a little, it was very touching.
Limitless – I had heard this was horrible, it’s not horrible. It’s not good. It’s an ok suspensey actioney movie. Narrators can be annoying, but I kind of like them. I think the big problem is the ending. It just feels a little too wish fulfillment on the part of the writer. Everything just turns up roses. I know most movies end happy. But most movies don’t’ end up SO damn happy. Like the writer just wrote his ultimate fantasy. It’s like writing a story about me getting super powers, just feels a little silly.
The Messenger – This is a pretty heavy movie. Woody from cheers and that guy who played the really creepy bad guy in 3:10 to yuma go around telling families that their loved one died in war. What a shit job. To some extent the movie does exactly what you imagine. It shows you the range of responses from people, from immense sadness to disturbing acceptance to the fury of the gods. And eventually these two men bond over their experiences, shared and missed. In as much as it is expected, it is still powerful. The guy from 3:10 to yuma is an amazing actor and the story of his war is captivating. Woody Harrelson is a bit less convincing, his listening to that story is perhaps the weakest part of the movie. But the rest of his performance is strong. Not a fun movie, but worthwhile if you can deal with being depressed for an evening.
Ninja – Yikes. I went in knowing there’d be horrible acting, writing, and general film making. But I did think it would have fun ninja fighting. How the hell do you make 90 minutes of swords and shurikens boring?
Hello Dolly – Yuuuuuuuck. We watched this because the song from Wall-E got stuck in our heads after going to Disneyland and we wondered what it was and we found out it was a musical that we hadn’t seen and it was on netflix, so there you go. But yuck. I’ve always disliked Barbara Streisand, despite realizing that I’ve never seen a movie with her in it, I just don’t like her. But now I have one datum, she is obnoxious in this movie. Granted, her character is obnoxious, maybe that’s not her fault, but yuck. And I know it was made 40 years ago, but it WAS after women got the right to vote, for christ’s sake, songs about finding a woman to do your cleaning are not charming. Oh, and on that note, Mr. Matthau, swinging your arms back and forth like you are marching IS NOT DANCING. This entire movie lacked any real dancing, had boring songs, hell, it kind of ruined the wall-e song a little for me. The problem, of course, is that I love My Fair Lady. And that movie has not only a “men are great” song but also the worst ending to a movie in the history of movies. But it gets a pass. Why doesn’t this? I don’t know, it just sucks. Okay, to be fair, I wrote all that only an hour into the movie. The rest of the movie got slightly better. They had one number with somewhat acceptable choreography. And the title song is somewhat catchy and Louis Armstrong is the awesomest part of the whole thing. But she still sucks, he still sucks, and the point of the story still sucks. So… that’s me being fair?
Buried – This is the one from last year where Ryan Reynolds is buried in a coffin. The whole movie is him talking to people on the phone and generally freaking out. He does a pretty good job, I suppose. I don’t know that it’s the best movie in the world, but it’s an interesting experience. It is essentially a thriller, but in that confined space, kind of neat. On the other hand, though I know I’m being unfair, I just can’t get over the part where he holds his blackberry up to his ear upside down. How do you miss that?
Smokin’ Aces 2 – I assumed this movie would be bad. But then after a bit I thought, hey this might be good. I like ensemble movies, this movie has a cavalcade of killers all going after a target. But it really just never comes together. What action there is seems like blindly swinging at cool instead of pulling it off. And then for some reason it tries to make a plot twist, where no plot twist was required, and it just seemed silly.
Blitz – Look, I’m ok with Jason Statham making shitty movies where he beats the shit out of bad guys in creative ways. Granted, if he makes 3 of those a year, we might get a bit sick of it, but whatever. However, I am NOT ok with Jason Statham making a shitty movie with precisely 2 minutes of action, one in the beginning, and one in the end. And the rest of the movie attempting to… be interesting? a mystery? suspense cop movie? Dumb.
Forks Over Knives – This is a “documentary” promoting a whole foods plant based diet. Now, I’m obviously on board with that message. Granted, I eat a whole lot of processed crap, and I’m not vegan, so I don’t act out the message of the movie. But I certainly agree in principle. Yet still, this movie was pretty horrible. All these documentaries, I swear they aren’t even trying anymore. It is just so transparent when they present facts, or portions of facts, in ways that trick people. I’m not an idiot, filmmakers. You can’t give me data, some of which goes from 1978 to 1999, some of which goes from 1999 to 2006, some of which another time period, and expect me not to get suspicious. You can’t say “a respected researcher” and “a respected journal” and not cite what the fuck you are talking about. This movie introduces every god damn person who would talk positively about their message in the world, yet they can’t name “a respected researcher”? I know nothing about this stuff, and I can poke holes in their arguments. Do they not understand correlation versus causation? You can’t just boil these things down to ONE cause and ONE effect. And if the studies they refer to make any attempt to suss out that connection, they make no attempt to inform us of that fact. They just spout facts and anecdotes and studies as if they are rock solid. It’s just very bothersome, especially given that I nominally agree with the moral.
The Wizard – Um, yikes. That’s not really what I thought it was going to be. I had never seen it, I knew it was video games, but I didn’t realize it was a 90 minute ad for nintendo. Not a particularly good ad, of course, it was made in the 80s. I’m sure if I had seen it as a 10 year old, and it was my introduction to super mario bros 3, this movie would just have an unassailable place in my heart. But, I didn’t, it wasn’t, and it doesn’t.
Skyline – Movie about alien invasion. Better than it deserves to be, but not necessarily good. Some decent special effects, obviously limited scale, but that doesn’t bother me. Some pretty horrendous acting and writing, but an okay story. Again, not good, but not as bad as you’d think.
Centurion – Oh Netflix Instant, is there anything I won’t watch on you? Granted, we’re all slowly turning on netflix, so maybe I won’t be saying that in 6 months, but that’s not really what I’m supposed to be typing. This movie was fine, romans run around, chopping up dudes, mostly run around and get chopped up themselves. Not very good, but okay background movie.
Marimba Zelda Cover
I know it’s just another Zelda cover. But 1) you could cover zelda on a kazuu and I’d probably listen, and 2) it’s actually really good.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 23, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)