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Saturday, June 30, 2012

TEN Reasons you have to see ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER


1. Bowler Hat! I'm a sucker for a good bowler hat. A character wears one.

2. Jimmi Simpson is the actor who wears the bowler hat, and the only thing I know him from is a scene in David Fincher's Zodiac, where he plays a shifty loser. I like shifty losers in movies. This actor has a weird vibe that I like.

3. You gotta love all the black long coats and top hats going on. All the vampires wear leather and have awesome sunglasses on. Oh, the vampires can walk around in daylight, that confused me at first. Just warning you. In closing, great costumes.

4. Marton Csokas is a great vampire character and he walks around in the daylight (confusing at first). He has some nasty teeth in the first scene and plays a really slimy dude. He seems less slimy later, but still, that first scene is great.

5. Marton fights Abe Lincoln in the middle of a bunch of stampeding horses. It was CG as hell, but I must say I have never seen a fight scene that takes place in and over stampeding horses. 

6. All the fight scenes are pretty neat. Great choreography. AX-FU! There is a great ax in this. For me, the star of the movie is the ax.

7. Zack Snyder must be proud that action scenes love his speed up/slow down method these days. I only mention it because because the CG blood erupting in slow mo was actually quite beautiful and badass. And I usually hate CG blood.

8. There is a great old creepy plantation in this. I'm a sucker for a creepy moonlit plantation with the orange lamp light glowing in the windows. Total Sucker.

9. So we are telling revisionist history here, and the sweeping wide shots with recreations of famous battles and old cities are really impressive. The camera glides over these insanely detailed digital paintings and you go "Ohh-Ahh!"

10. Speaking of "Oh-Ah", the ending battle on a speeding train climaxes in a real orgy if chaos and boom boom bam! It is pure spectacle, and not really convincing, but like the horse scene, conceptually really neat. Mainly, the little red embers coming from the locomotive fill the air and are really cool and made me wish I had watched this in 3D. I would say watch this in 3D (i hate 3D) just because...

THIS MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY WTF! - the day scenes are so over-lit everything looks flat and boring. If you are looking at it through tented 3D glasses, it is probably fine. The night scenes are great, but in the day this looks like bad History Channel Reenactment Theater. Bluh. PLUS! I like the digital projectors that have been coming along, giving movies this vibrant clean perfection, but! 

ONE MORE WTF! You shoot it on digital and show it through a digital projector, man I see every pore on your face. It freaks me out. It doesn't look cinematic. It's too freaking perfect. I know its progress, but it looks cheap man. I respect all the work and artistry that goes into these movies, but I sat in my favorite seat, forth row up the stadium, and I was totally taken out of the movie by the perfectly defined inner contours of the actor's nostrils. I see too much now. I need some glaucoma so I can start enjoying movies again. 

Showstopper - Share an ax with a buddy, kill twice the vampires!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

TEN reasons you have to see... PROMETHEUS!



1. Alien pretty muched changed my life when I saw it as a kid. And this movie happens in the same universe. All the doors look, open and close, and make the same noises the doors in Alien did. So see if for nothing else then the ecstasy that comes from seeing those airlock doors swish open and closed, see this movie NOW!

2. Did I mention that Ridley Scott hasn’t made a science fiction movie since 1982. Can I say that most of the ills in society are pretty much caused because of this fact. Did you know that now Ridley Scott has made another science fiction movie that world peace should be coming up any second now.

3. Did you know that Darth Vader made C-3PO? Me neither. It kinda ruined everything didn’t it? Well, campers, you will be relieved to know that by then end of this movie, you will still have no idea who built C-3PO. In fact, you will have no idea what anything in life is.

4. Related to #3: If you call this a prequel, it is the best case scenario. It gives you more of that universe you wish you could live in, but it doesn’t rob the mystery of the original. I still have no idea what the Space Jockeys are or how their tech works. It answered questions from the first movie by asking more questions, thus making the first movie a small peek at the much bigger universe. Well played, movie.

5. If I could make any geek purchase, it would be one of those tank go-carts. I will cry everyday until I get a tank go-cart.

6. Noomi Rapace is so wonderful in this. Thank you world for making her the lead actress and not uber barbie Charlize Theron. Both are great, but Noomi looks like a scientist and is vulnerable and you feel for her man. Theron is great here too, but I have trouble relating to supermodels, so there you go.

7. What does a robot do all day with no one to talk to? Thank you movie for showing me that!

8. So in 1977 Dan O’Bannon wrote Alien (called Star Beast at the time), and he had these ancient hive mounds in them, and they did not make it into the final movie. O’Bannon cried himself to sleep then woke up the next day and kept on being awesome. Well, his ghost can now go into the light because after 30 plus years we have the mounds. You get to see them in this movie. What the hell are you waiting for! Go see it!

9. Idris Elba may be the best thing to happen to movies in the last couple of years. You just want to hang out with that dude!

10. Sean Harris, who may be my favorite actor these days, who always rocks and who played Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People and a mutant freak in Creep and a freaky freak in Harry Brown and who is just my kind of performer is here and get this, he plays a tattooed red headed mohawked douchebag! And he has the best death(?) in the movie. Ouch, really ouch.

Showstopper! Medical Pod Scene is a gift to humanity that will bring a glow to any rainy day from now on.



This moment brought to you by WTF! - You like the Giger ship in Alien, well here you go, I'm going to throw it at your head! HARDCORE GARRRR!!!!!