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!
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