Holy crap. I know I post a lot of things not everyone would be into, but this is honestly the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. The “animation” is just genius. The only thing that bummed me out is I don’t speak spanish (or maybe portuguese, he’s brazilian) so I had to read the subtitles, which meant I wasn’t appreciating the visuals. But still, awesome.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 11, 2013
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
The Hobbit – Loved it. It’s not perfect by any means, and not as good as the LotR movies, which had a great deal more epic-ness to them. I don’t know why people think it’s too long, I was never bored. The characters are mostly great, the fighting is always great, the CGI is fantastic most of the time, with a couple pretty shitty exceptions. I’m thinking particularly when they are all standing on top of a little rock after being saved from something, it looked really lame. The only really bad thing about the movie was the humor. There was some charming subtle humor, and that was good. But there was MUCH more obnoxious, over-acted, over-the-top, corny humor. A lot of awful one liners and pathetic slapstick stuff, I really really didn’t like it. Oh, and Radagast was a completely waste of time (and the worst of the physical humor, what is he, dick van dyke?). But let’s not dwell on that, because the rest of it was awesome.
Wrath of the Titans – Not bad, not great. Better than the last one, definitely. The fighting is a bit more interesting, though still not that amazing. The CGI is way better, it’s pretty great throughout. With the GLARING exception of anytime the pegasus showed up. That honestly looked like college freshman level animation, it was really really bad. Nothing particularly memorable otherwise, but an okay movie.
The Bourne Legacy – I’ve never been a huge Bourne person. I like them fine, the quick style fighting is a welcome addition to the genre, but all the conspiracy/mystery stuff was boring and over wrought. So now we have a Bourne movie without all the mystery, just fighting. I’m kind of okay with that. It’s not as slick as the previous movies, to be sure. Probably that’s on purpose. In the end it’s a fine action movie, nothing wrong with it, but nothing super memorable either.
Brave – This is a very fun, very sweet, very pretty movie. If it was a Disney movie, I’d say it was one of the best in quite a while. It is not special, though, in the way Pixar movies have been. It didn’t have that extra magic that those moments in Up and Wall-E (and others) had. But it’s still very nice.
Ruby Sparks – This is a pretty cute movie. It’s painfully hip and cool, but otherwise very enjoyable. The conceit of it is pretty disturbing, and fortunately they are not afraid to push it to it’s logical extreme. Sadly they do puss out in the end with a completely non-sensical (and/or completely non-sustainable) ending. But everything else about the movie is pretty good.
Lawless – This seemed cool in the ads, but good lord was I bored. I just couldn’t give a shit about anything that happened in it. I’m getting the same feeling about Justified lately. Maybe I just can’t get into that southern gangster (20s or modern) style.
Backbeat – This is about the “5th Beatle” who isn’t the producer, but this guy Stu Sutcliffe who was with them in the very early days. I didn’t know any of this history, so that was cool. The acting isn’t very good, the accents are kind of awful. But the music is great. And seeing the story is cool.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Man, why does reality have to ruin great internet ideas? Besides giving us some axe-wielding action, which isn’t something we’ve really seen before, this movie brings absolutely nothing to the table. No story, no acting, no writing, and no non-axe action to care about. I have the book too, but I really don’t want to read it now.
The Amazing Spider-Man – I don’t know. Some parts of it are good. I agree with everyone, the quippy jumping kind of obnoxious spiderman is done much more true to the source in this one. Yes, Andrew Garfield is too cool to be a nerd, so that’s out of place. But he is at least a bit of a nerd in real life, so that helps. The movie does most of the things it is supposed to, but maybe I’m spiderman’d out, or maybe it’s just not compelling. I’m glad he’s around, I hope with everyone else he gets folded into the greater Marvel movie universe. That would be the movie’s largest contribution, probably.
Case de mi Padre – Holy shit. I absolutely always finish movies. Even if they are god awful, I finish them because I have a disease. But I didn’t finish this one. So bad, not funny, not anything. If it was in english and I could ignore it while I played a game, I might have let it play. But having to read the horribleness was just too much. Jeez.
Machine Gun Preacher – Eh, I guess this movie was fine. I guess it’s a true story about some deadbeat who turns his life around and becomes a preacher, then goes to africa to help some kids, and ends up killing some dudes (with a machine gun, I guess). If it wasn’t true, it’d be less interesting. But it’s done pretty well.
The New Daughter – This is a horror-ish movie where Kevin Costner moves to some house with his kids and crazy stuff starts happening. It’s a lot better than I thought it’d be. That’s probably giving it more credit than it would otherwise get, but it’s decent enough. It’s not really spooky or anything, but it has a little bit of thrills.
Indie Game: The movie – This is pretty cool. It’s neat to hear the backstory on these games that I’ve played. It also makes perfectly clear that some of these guys are raving assholes. The Super Meat Boy guy is pretty cool. The Braid guy is kind of a douche. The Fez guy seems like a horrendously obnoxious person. Hard to say, I guess, they could edit the worst moments here and the best moments here. I’ve been pretty obnoxious at times in my life, after all. Besides that, interesting to see some of the business & the behind the scenes.
Act of Valor – Jeez, this seemed like it would be totally bad ass, right? The baddest of assest moments were shown in the trailer. The thing where the guy shoots the guy and the guy catches the guy as he falls. That’s as cool as it gets, so don’t expect more. I guess they used real military guys, so the acting isn’t very good. But it’s not all their fault, some of the writing is pretty bad too. By the way, FPS was lame in Doom, it’s still lame, sorry.
Mirror Mirror – What the fuck, why is this good? Remember when the two Snow White trailers came out and one looked god awful and one looked pretty cool despite Kristen Stewart? What happened to that? The Huntsman movie was pretty crappy, and this movie is pretty fun! I mean, it’s not genius or anything, and Julia Roberts is mega-annoying. But at least she’s SUPPOSED to be annoying. And the visuals are fantastic, the story is fun, the heroine is sympathetic, and the humor is humorous. Huntsman was none of those things, and had barely any action to show instead. I’m confused.
Ted – It’s pretty funny. It’s true that the funniest parts of the movie are in the trailer. But there’s, let’s say, an equal number of just as funny parts throughout the rest of the movie. And them a bunch of kind of funny parts. It’s not laugh my balls off funny, I don’t need to see it again like a really hilarious movie. But it was certainly fun to watch.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World – Welllll, I guess it’s good. The problem is that it’s really stupid. Not just the fact that something is going to happen to the Earth that engulfs the entire planet in fire. I guess that’s possible, but I’m thinking of something that big hit us, there wouldn’t be much to light on fire, but maybe I’m wrong. No, the real stupid part is where the 25 year old falls in love with the 45 year old and they are perfect for each other. It’s sweet, I guess, but it just seems so dumb. If you accept the fact that you make a great couple for 2 weeks, cool. But pretending like you were always meant for each other when you couldn’t be more different is just goofy. I suppose I’m taking it all too seriously, but the end really did kind of cause involuntary guffaws. But, ignoring all that, it was fun to watch.
Trek Nation – Documentary made by Gene Roddenberry’s son, I thought it was pretty good. It’s true that Eugene (the son) is very annoying. He really should have ctrl+f’d “I wanted to learn what kind of man my dad was” and deleted all but one. I think that would have cut 10 minutes from the movie. But besides his awkward, most often unnecessary narration, the movie is cool. I didn’t know much about Roddenberry, so hearing it all was really neat. Probably nothing here for a non trekkie, but for me it was cool.
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
The Hobbit – Loved it. It’s not perfect by any means, and not as good as the LotR movies, which had a great deal more epic-ness to them. I don’t know why people think it’s too long, I was never bored. The characters are mostly great, the fighting is always great, the CGI is fantastic most of the time, with a couple pretty shitty exceptions. I’m thinking particularly when they are all standing on top of a little rock after being saved from something, it looked really lame. The only really bad thing about the movie was the humor. There was some charming subtle humor, and that was good. But there was MUCH more obnoxious, over-acted, over-the-top, corny humor. A lot of awful one liners and pathetic slapstick stuff, I really really didn’t like it. Oh, and Radagast was a completely waste of time (and the worst of the physical humor, what is he, dick van dyke?). But let’s not dwell on that, because the rest of it was awesome.
Wrath of the Titans – Not bad, not great. Better than the last one, definitely. The fighting is a bit more interesting, though still not that amazing. The CGI is way better, it’s pretty great throughout. With the GLARING exception of anytime the pegasus showed up. That honestly looked like college freshman level animation, it was really really bad. Nothing particularly memorable otherwise, but an okay movie.
The Bourne Legacy – I’ve never been a huge Bourne person. I like them fine, the quick style fighting is a welcome addition to the genre, but all the conspiracy/mystery stuff was boring and over wrought. So now we have a Bourne movie without all the mystery, just fighting. I’m kind of okay with that. It’s not as slick as the previous movies, to be sure. Probably that’s on purpose. In the end it’s a fine action movie, nothing wrong with it, but nothing super memorable either.
Brave – This is a very fun, very sweet, very pretty movie. If it was a Disney movie, I’d say it was one of the best in quite a while. It is not special, though, in the way Pixar movies have been. It didn’t have that extra magic that those moments in Up and Wall-E (and others) had. But it’s still very nice.
Ruby Sparks – This is a pretty cute movie. It’s painfully hip and cool, but otherwise very enjoyable. The conceit of it is pretty disturbing, and fortunately they are not afraid to push it to it’s logical extreme. Sadly they do puss out in the end with a completely non-sensical (and/or completely non-sustainable) ending. But everything else about the movie is pretty good.
Lawless – This seemed cool in the ads, but good lord was I bored. I just couldn’t give a shit about anything that happened in it. I’m getting the same feeling about Justified lately. Maybe I just can’t get into that southern gangster (20s or modern) style.
Backbeat – This is about the “5th Beatle” who isn’t the producer, but this guy Stu Sutcliffe who was with them in the very early days. I didn’t know any of this history, so that was cool. The acting isn’t very good, the accents are kind of awful. But the music is great. And seeing the story is cool.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Man, why does reality have to ruin great internet ideas? Besides giving us some axe-wielding action, which isn’t something we’ve really seen before, this movie brings absolutely nothing to the table. No story, no acting, no writing, and no non-axe action to care about. I have the book too, but I really don’t want to read it now.
The Amazing Spider-Man – I don’t know. Some parts of it are good. I agree with everyone, the quippy jumping kind of obnoxious spiderman is done much more true to the source in this one. Yes, Andrew Garfield is too cool to be a nerd, so that’s out of place. But he is at least a bit of a nerd in real life, so that helps. The movie does most of the things it is supposed to, but maybe I’m spiderman’d out, or maybe it’s just not compelling. I’m glad he’s around, I hope with everyone else he gets folded into the greater Marvel movie universe. That would be the movie’s largest contribution, probably.
Case de mi Padre – Holy shit. I absolutely always finish movies. Even if they are god awful, I finish them because I have a disease. But I didn’t finish this one. So bad, not funny, not anything. If it was in english and I could ignore it while I played a game, I might have let it play. But having to read the horribleness was just too much. Jeez.
Machine Gun Preacher – Eh, I guess this movie was fine. I guess it’s a true story about some deadbeat who turns his life around and becomes a preacher, then goes to africa to help some kids, and ends up killing some dudes (with a machine gun, I guess). If it wasn’t true, it’d be less interesting. But it’s done pretty well.
The New Daughter – This is a horror-ish movie where Kevin Costner moves to some house with his kids and crazy stuff starts happening. It’s a lot better than I thought it’d be. That’s probably giving it more credit than it would otherwise get, but it’s decent enough. It’s not really spooky or anything, but it has a little bit of thrills.
Indie Game: The movie – This is pretty cool. It’s neat to hear the backstory on these games that I’ve played. It also makes perfectly clear that some of these guys are raving assholes. The Super Meat Boy guy is pretty cool. The Braid guy is kind of a douche. The Fez guy seems like a horrendously obnoxious person. Hard to say, I guess, they could edit the worst moments here and the best moments here. I’ve been pretty obnoxious at times in my life, after all. Besides that, interesting to see some of the business & the behind the scenes.
Act of Valor – Jeez, this seemed like it would be totally bad ass, right? The baddest of assest moments were shown in the trailer. The thing where the guy shoots the guy and the guy catches the guy as he falls. That’s as cool as it gets, so don’t expect more. I guess they used real military guys, so the acting isn’t very good. But it’s not all their fault, some of the writing is pretty bad too. By the way, FPS was lame in Doom, it’s still lame, sorry.
Mirror Mirror – What the fuck, why is this good? Remember when the two Snow White trailers came out and one looked god awful and one looked pretty cool despite Kristen Stewart? What happened to that? The Huntsman movie was pretty crappy, and this movie is pretty fun! I mean, it’s not genius or anything, and Julia Roberts is mega-annoying. But at least she’s SUPPOSED to be annoying. And the visuals are fantastic, the story is fun, the heroine is sympathetic, and the humor is humorous. Huntsman was none of those things, and had barely any action to show instead. I’m confused.
Ted – It’s pretty funny. It’s true that the funniest parts of the movie are in the trailer. But there’s, let’s say, an equal number of just as funny parts throughout the rest of the movie. And them a bunch of kind of funny parts. It’s not laugh my balls off funny, I don’t need to see it again like a really hilarious movie. But it was certainly fun to watch.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World – Welllll, I guess it’s good. The problem is that it’s really stupid. Not just the fact that something is going to happen to the Earth that engulfs the entire planet in fire. I guess that’s possible, but I’m thinking of something that big hit us, there wouldn’t be much to light on fire, but maybe I’m wrong. No, the real stupid part is where the 25 year old falls in love with the 45 year old and they are perfect for each other. It’s sweet, I guess, but it just seems so dumb. If you accept the fact that you make a great couple for 2 weeks, cool. But pretending like you were always meant for each other when you couldn’t be more different is just goofy. I suppose I’m taking it all too seriously, but the end really did kind of cause involuntary guffaws. But, ignoring all that, it was fun to watch.
Trek Nation – Documentary made by Gene Roddenberry’s son, I thought it was pretty good. It’s true that Eugene (the son) is very annoying. He really should have ctrl+f’d “I wanted to learn what kind of man my dad was” and deleted all but one. I think that would have cut 10 minutes from the movie. But besides his awkward, most often unnecessary narration, the movie is cool. I didn’t know much about Roddenberry, so hearing it all was really neat. Probably nothing here for a non trekkie, but for me it was cool.
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 27, 2012
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 11, 2012
Santa vs. Snoop Moses
These epic rap battles are usually kinda funny, but the writing isn’t always super crisp. This one cracked me up though.
Dec 4, 2012
Christmas Lights
First there was Psy. Now Skrillex. Don’t skip to 2:00 if you have seizures. Maybe don’t skip even if you don’t have them.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Parady
First of all: awesome. Second of all: great work on the costumes. Third of all: I can’t believe that song actually exists, it’s somewhat depressing.
Dec 3, 2012
Nov 21, 2012
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Looper – Pretty good movie, but not mind blowing like I was hoping. Everyone seemed to think it was the coolest shit in town. It’s cool and I liked it, but it’s not revolutionary. I’ve heard people refer to Primer talking to this, and it’s nothing like that. Primer blew your mind, this doesn’t blow my mind. It’s a fine world that they create, but it’s nothing new, time travel and one additional “power” that I won’t mention because they chose not to in the trailers. But it’s not like it’s a new version of time travel, and it’s not like they handle it all that well. To their credit, they stick to their on rules, which is the most important thing, and those rules have a direct impact on the outcome of the movie. But the rule obviously doesn’t make any sense, and that’s bothersome. People can’t help but think of time travel so linearly, which is just silly. But it’s really hard to make a non-linear movie, which is why time travel will always be kind of dumb. If it hadn’t been built up as the jesus movie, it would be a great movie. Worthy of ignoring the lameness inherent in time travel. JGL’s 2 hour impression of bruce willis is good. Bruce willis is good. Most people are good. They kid is a little shakey, it’s not his fault, but people in the theater were laughing a bit when it wasn’t supposed to be funny. But still a good movie.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi – This was actually hard to watch, so much fish. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that, and I’m not, but it’s still gross. Unfortunately it’s subtitled, so it’s not like I can just look away and listen. Sushi as sushi is kind of abstract and not so bad. But watching them hack up whole fish. Watching an octopus struggle against being stuffed in a plastic bag, was pretty upsetting. The story of Jiro is a good one, it’s crazy to see someone devote so much of himself, to the exclusion of himself and his family, to be the best. But the fish, man, yuck.
Men In Black 3 – Surprisingly fun. You’d be forgiven in assuming it’s a crappy rehash way past it’s time. But it’s actually pretty fun. Will Smith is charming and likeable, even though it’s the same act as always. And Josh Brolin doing a 2 hour Tommy Lee Jones impression is worth those 2 hours in and of itself.
Lockdown – Meh, kind of a letdown, no pun. It’s not bad, it’s a fine actioney movie, but there’s nothing interesting about it that I might hope for from Luc Besson. It’s barely even a scifi, if they didn’t take a space ship to get there, it’s really just a prison, rogue cop, save the pretty girl kind of movie.
Unknown – This movie actually holds together really well. Can’t talk about it much without giving things away, but there are lots of things you think are wrong with the story as it goes. Unrealistic or forced, but it really manages to clean itself up. Interesting, actioney, very well done.
Snow White and the Huntsman – Nope. I know everyone hates Kristen Stewart, so they assumed this was bad. But it looked pretty cool with the slashey slashey and the visuals. I’ve never seen Twilight, so I didn’t have proof, but yeah, Kristen Stewart is a horrible actress. The flow of the movie is kind of awkward for some reason, not sure why. Neon Flux and Thor do good enough jobs, I guess. Just didn’t come together, and there wasn’t enough action or cool visuals to justify the rest.
Battlefield – Wow. I’m trying to figure out what the most ridiculous part of this movie is. Where they reboot an 70 year old warship? The part where that warship is armed? Maybe the part where radio signals can combine at one point in space and glow like laser beams. Nevermind, it’s obviously the part where a radio signal “5 time as powerful as any before it!" somehow travels however much faster than it would need to travel to get to this other planet, and then for the aliens to get here, in all of 8 years (there’s all of 4 known stars less than 8 ly from here). All that being said, it’s kind of an awesome popcorn movie. The CG is all great, the ‘splosions are all great. I mean, I’m not exactly mr. blind patriotism, but when they reboot the battleship, it’s a pretty effective america, fuck yeah moment.
Hunger Games – I never read these books, don’t feel a burning need to now, but the movie is decent. You can tell they had to skip a lot. There’s a lot of relationships that are referred to as deep, but are given just 2 minutes of screen time. I assume there’s a lot more in the book. The set up is nice, dystopias are common enough, but combining with the gladiator/reality tv stuff is cool. Mostly it makes me want to see the next movie, where I assume they must rise up against the oppressors. Seems like that will be more fun. But this was good.
God Bless America – Wow did that suck. It’s a very puerile rebellion of what’s “acceptable” in society and filmmaking. It’s just a fantasy of: oh boy I want to kill everyone who pisses me off, wouldn’t that be awesome. But there’s no subtlety, no real meaning, no sense of self. It’s just being an asshole for a couple hours and going out in a blaze of glory, every troubled 13 year old’s fondest fantasy. Except Bobcat Goldthwait (he made the movie) is 50.
Cabin in the Woods – This movie is pretty cool. The concept is just neat. Everyone knows that it’s set up like a typical horror movie, but something else is going on. I didn’t know that they were going to be extremely upfront with what that something else is, right away. I mean, they tried to be a little vague, but it was fairly clear. The details in between the ideas are all pretty mundane, nothing special as far as effects or acting. It’s pretty damn bloody. Some of the dialogue is clever, but not the best Whedon stuff ever. Still a fun movie though.
Iron Sky – Meh. This movie sounds like a great idea: the nazis fled to the dark side of the moon after WW II, and sometime in the near future (from now), they come back to conquer. That sounds kind of awesome. But like many ideas that sound awesome when you say it on the internet, it’s not really awesome when stretched to a 2 hour movie. Acting is horrible, the set up is pretty bad. The sarah palin president is not funny, it’s just annoying. The effects are pretty good for an indie movie. But besides that, yikes. The last shot is pretty awesome though.
The Artist – So, this is best movie, huh? I don’t get it. The concept of seeing a silent movie star as the world moves past him is interesting. And a few scenes (the dream, the end) are very cool. But how can you make a movie about how silent movies are boring and not be boring? Either you are lying, or you are boring, those are the only options. It’s cool that you could pull it off, I guess. But it’s also cool when someone hacks a TI-85 to play Doom, that doesn’t make it the best video game of the year.
The Lorax – Pretty cute movie. I guess I can see why all the anti-earth people go bugs up their asses, it sure does lay it on pretty thick with the taking care of the planet. But that doesn’t bother me, so it’s just a cute movie.
Three Musketeers – Well, this movie isn’t very good. It’s trying to be very slick. It may be set hundreds of years back, but it is very much a modern movie. Change the swords for machine guns, and it’s a modern day heist/gangster movie. It’s got lots of sword fighting, that is pretty good. Lots of explosions that aren’t. Lots of CGI that’s very CGI-ey and not that good looking. But more than anything it seems to be a cynical exploitation of what someone thinks is cool. It’s just so unnecessarily slick that it has a fake sheen. Like a woman in Maxim with no knees, it feels artificial.
Ghost Rider 2 – Yikes.
The Iron Lady – This movie isn’t exactly about what I thought. Yes it’s about Margaret Thatcher, and yes it’s half about the famous part of her life. But it’s also about the last years of her life, and that’s the really good part. The stuff about her time in government is interesting, to be sure. Despite the fact that she seems like a horrible person, it’s pretty cool becoming so powerful in a society that wouldn’t give a woman such opportunity. But if it was just that, it’d be a kind of boring biopic. Instead it focuses even more on the end of her life, and Meryl Streep gets all amazing with her acting skills and such. It’s not an exciting movie, and I was kind of bored for lots of it, but as expected as it is, you can’t ignore what a good actor she is.
Safety Not Guaranteed – Meh. I thought this one sounded good. And then when the director started being floated as a potential star wars director, I jumped it up the list. It’s a quirky type movie, kind of purposefully dry and a little bland. I was enjoying it for the most part. But the primary relationship is really freaking creepy. Not in an interesting way, just in a icky way. And the ending is amazingly bad. Why the hell they’d make that choice, when there’s no reason to, completely changing the movie, is beyond me. I was still okay with the movie up until that, but now I don’t like it.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 10, 2012
Sep 29, 2012
Our Story in 2 Minutes
Is this awesome because of the Inception music, or because it’s awesome? Not sure.
Grounded
A crazy beautiful short film. What it’s about is a bit confusing. I get the general gist of what’s happening, plot wise, but I’m not really sure what the meaning is supposed to be. Damn pretty though.
Sep 17, 2012
The Butterfly Circus
It’s almost tragic how good this short film could be. The acting is really pretty poor, and some of the editing doesn’t help, it comes off awkward. But the way it is filmed, the feeling of the film, and certainly the scene before the end are all beautiful.
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