IF after 53 minutes of screen time I still can not detect a plot in your film I will hit the eject button.
Yes, I am looking at you Nikolai Müllerschön, Writer/director of The Red Baron.
A note to filmmakers everywhere
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Category Archives: Blu-ray
A Pleasant Surprise
Early this week after I had finished my evening’s writing I found that I could not fall asleep. I spent a fitful twenty minuets in bed, but In knew I wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon. So instead of bothering my sweetie-wife by tossing and turning I got up, de-equiped my CPAP mask and such, and returned to the living room.
I decided to watch a TV show on disc, figuring about 40-50 minutes should put me in a more accepting mode for snoozing. I took out my latest TV acquisition, Star Trek The Original Series Season 3 on blu-ray.
Yeah, yeah, season three the one that gave us space-hippies and Spock’s Brain. However I selected The Tholian Web as my late night Star Trek Fix.
I had seen the episode before of course, but not in like twenty years or more. This is a much better episode and very strongly written. The science isn’t terrible — how nice to see c used as a unit as speed as it should be in this sort of setting — and the character dynamics were very nicely played out.
I had two out of episode thoughts that kept occurring to me.
1) I kept watching James Doohan’s right hand. Scotty has a lot to do in this episode and I marveled as what skill Jimmy Doohan showed in constantly making sure he right hand was out of frame or hidden from the camera. (Doohan lost a finger in WWII and concealed the fact on camera.)
2) I wondered why they had written an episode with so little Kirk in it. Usually you make sure you get the most out of your stars. They cost big bucks and you pay them even if they aren’t there. I know often episode like this will happen is a star is sick or engaged. I have no idea if this is the case with Shatner and The Tholian Web, but I am happy with the results.
It warped my little mind
So in an earlier post I told you about the production company, The Asylum, and how they make mockblusters. (Cheap knock titles of big films hoping to ride the coattails to profit. This used to happen a lot with made for TV movie, but now exists in the direct-to-home video market.)
We had lots of fun watching MegaShark versus Giant Octopus. This has caused me to investigate The Asylum’s catalogue for other hidden gems.
I found one.
Sherlock Holmes.
This of course is perfect for The Asylum as the stories and characters are in the public domain and Guy Ritchie can’t say boo to The Asylum and their knockoff with the exact same title.
OF course those old stories are kind of dull and slow for us modern audiences, but that’s okay the fine minds at The Asylum knows exactly what Sherlock Holmes, master detective really needs.
Giant Monsters.
I kid you not. Their Sherlock Holmes has Dinosaurs, Giant Octopuses (Octopi?), Mechanical fire-breathing dragons, and lovely steampunk powered armor.
Here’s the one sheet.
Who cloud resist that Sherlock Holmes? Fie on Guy Ritchie we’ll go with The Asylum!
(Fish is right we really do need a sarcasm font.)
[Of course I have been describe as a font of sarcasm, but I don't think that's really applicable.]
There is of course a trailer…..
Blu-ray Review: In The Loop
So my sweetie-wife and I came across this film, In The loop, when a trailer for it appeared on the blu-ray of Dog Soldiers. The trailer grabbed us and we just knew we had to see this movie.
In The Loop is the story of a build-up to war in the middle east my the USA and Great Britain, but rather than tell a serious tale dealing with Presidents and Prime Ministers this film is farce and centers on the middle management civil servants and elected officials.
The cast is primarily British and unless you follow Brit Tv most of them would be unknown to you. (The phrase in the image to the left should be delivered shouted and in a heavy Scottish accent for full effect.)
There are people trying desperately to stop the up coming war and others equally committed to seeing it realized. If you are humorless when it comes to your recent events and politics then you might want to give this film a pass. However if you can let go of your personal politics and enjoy the madness of rampant cursing Scotsmen, bewildered MPs, conniving suck-ups, General more Political than Military and back stabbing office politics then give this blu-ray a spin.
I was disappointed that there were more bonus features, though the 28 minutes of non-stop deleted scenes were a treasure.
After the cut — the trailer.
Sunday Night Movie:I Sell The Dead
So this week’s movie was a bit of a gamble for me as it was something I had never seen and further more was something I had heard little about.
I started the Sunday Night Movie habit as a way of utilizing my movie collection. I had realized one day that I rarely watched so many movies in my collection and when I did I tended to watch the same ones over and over. I started Sunday Night Movie as a regular event to enjoy those movies that I love but so rarely watched.
This is not one of those movies.
I Sell The Dead is a story about two men in the resurrection business in what I presume is the 17th or 18th century. Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) is partner and former apprentice to Willie Grimes in the resurrection business. That is they steal corpses and sell them to doctors. Their lives take a dramatic turn down a path of bump in the night events when they discover that digging up some corpses leads to a much more active product than the pair is accustomed to finding. They have a number of serious threats in their wretched lives, There Dr. Quint (Angus Scrimm, Best know as the Tall Man in Phantasm.) who is extorting their services without compensation by threats of the law. Then there’s the House Of Murphy a rival gang of resurrectionists with a tendency for murder and mayhem, and of course there’s the very active undead who are always ungrateful for being dug up or unboxed.
This movie is supposed to be a comedy and as such one is expected to give it more leeway that a traditional horror film or dramatic feature for suspension of disbelief, however this film had too many flaws for me to do that. There are endless anachronisms, historical errors, and a general failure to understand just what it was that resurrection men did. (They did not sell bodies to doctors for their general practice, they sold them to schools and teaching doctors for study, instruction, and research.) In the end this movie was simply too much of a mess with too little plot and too much gag to work as a film.
I recommend pass if someone offers a viewing to you.
A questions of ethics
So I was looking for a soundtrack that I thought was out of print and it cause me to ponder the ethics of downloading it.
I fully support buying material to support the artists. I buy my books, I buy my DVDs and Blu-rays, and I buy my music, but there are times when what I want is not in print. I cannot buy a copy that will support the artist. (Buying a used copy generates no royalties for the copyright holder.)
So in that situation is it ethical to download a copy? Certainly on the legal front it is illegal, but I’m asking a question of ethics.
I think so. I will support the legal methods of reimbursing the artists and such whenever I can, but if the copyright holders do not make it possible for me to pay them for the product I then I really do not feel bad about finding a copy on my own.
My story had a happy ending for the copyright owners. Not only was the soundtrack to The Wicker Man (1973) in print it was available from iTunes!
Sunday Night Movie: Dog Soldiers
So a while back I was working on a werewolf short story, A Taste Of Tears and Blood, (If fact my writing page horribly out of date indicates that is my current project) and as part of my research I was watching all sorts of werewolf films.
One film I put on the Netflix queue but never got around to seeing as part of the research was Dog Soldiers from 2002. This weekend I had is shipped from Netflix and my sweetie-wife and I watched it early Sunday evening. (I was unable to watch a film later by myself as it my habit because I was so terribly exhausted.) I was a little surprised when my sweetie-wife expressed an interest in the film, gory violent horror film are not her usual cup of tea. She is much more attracted to projects based upon the actors and the nationality of the production. This film had an actor she very much like to follow, Sean Pertwee, son of Dr Who actor Jon Pertwee.
This film was written, produced, directed and edited by Neil Marshall, who has gone to direct such movies as The Decent and Doomsday. If you like or hate Dog Soldiers it’s really just one man’s fault.
Personally I really liked Dog Soldiers, much more than I had expected. The direct was quite aware of his limited budget and knew the limitations of his production. He stayed very much inside those limitation rather than attempting cheap and cheesy digital effects like we see when we’re inflicted with SyFy.
The story is about a fix man army squad that had been dropped into the highlands of Scotland on a routine training mission. The squad is led able veteran Sgt harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) with the capable assistance of Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd of ROME) a young man recently bounced from Special Forces training for ethical reasons. The squad quickly find themselves in serious trouble when they are confronted with a werewolf pack and all the squad is armed with is blanks.
There is one wonderfully British moment when the squad has found temporary safety, and Cooper temporarily in command is ordering men to do this and do that to secure the building and orders the last man to ‘put a kettle on, we can all do with a cup.’
My biggest quibbles with the film is occasionally the characters posses superhuman capabilities and survive the sort of events no human being has any business surviving. That said the film transcends these fault by having neat and interesting characters, a nicely thought out premise, and a relentlessness about the doomed situation the characters find themselves in. I was disappointed that the Blu-ray disc did not have any bonus feature on it. I searched on line fro a collectors edition or some such, but none was to be found.
Surprisingly the gore in this film was restrained. There was lots of blood thrown about, but only a few shots of graphic violence. Again I think this was a function of the director understanding his limitations and using them to his advantage rather then foolishly ignoring them
I look forward to seeing more movie from Mr Neil Marshall.
Michelle Malkin Loves Communists.
So if you follow political columnist at all then you should already be familiar with Michelle Malkin. Ms. Malkin is a very conservative opinion writer. She’s known for fiery opinions defended aggressively with a penchant for name-calling. Ms. Malkin’s frequent posting are aggressive, and in-your-face which has earned her plenty of die-hard supporters and an equal number of die hard critics.
I am in neither camp. I do not care for name calling and I feel whenever you you do so in an argument you do nothing but weaken your case. I find her blog to be depressing. There is very little joy in her posts and nearly every post is about something that has offended, enraged, or irritated her. That’s fine if that is what she wants. It’s her blog and she can put up anything she likes, but it make for a repetitive and angry tone. I seriously can not think of a post that was truly just happy or joyous.
I frequent her site because it is a very good reflection of where conservative thought and feelings are for a number of subjects.
For a woman who like to call people to the left or her Socialists and Communists I have been surprised lately with her love affair for Communism. Thought I am sure it is one born out of ignorance.
Recently she’s been posting that Conservatives need to have an “I am Spartacus” moment of resistance to the health care reform, base on the stunning scene from the movie “Spartacus“.
Here’s the scene:
Spartacus is one of my favorite films and I will be so happy in a few months when I have it on DVD, but the film is a communist allegory.
The film was based on the novel Spartacus written by Howard Fast, who was a communist. I don’t mean that in the current Republican way of anyone left of me is a communist, Mr. Fast was a member of the American Communist Party. He was so hot politically no publisher would touch the novel Spartacus and he was forced to self-publish it. On the audio commentary to the Laserdisc of Spartacus Mr. Fast made it clear that the story was a communist allegory about the rich and the workers.
The film screenplay was adapted by Dalton Trumbo, another Communist. Trumbo spent 11 years in prison for contempt of congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Spartacus was the first film he was credited with writing after the blacklist. (Thoigh he had written many just denied credit.) He was proud of having killed films in Hollywood that were deemed anti-communist.
I have no doubt that if either man was still alive today they would happy tell Ms. Malkin that in their view she and her fellow conservatives are more aligned with Marcus Licinius Crassus than with the workers uprising symbolized by the slave revolt in Spartacus. (To be clear I am not a communists and I ignore the communist allegory of Spartacus, but then I am not trying to lift the film for my own political ends either.)
I am deeply amused by the irony that a communist hater is aligning herself with communist writers and with what they saw as communist characters.
Databasin’ fool
So I have spent a few hours this morning databasing my DVD/Blu-ray collection. I have according to the database 222 movies in my collection, but this number is not completely accurate. The database software counts boxed sets as a single entry, so for example my boxed set of the Star Wars movies is one entry, but it has three movies.
Given that my feature film count is closed to 290 from boxed sets. (The el cheapo 50 ‘classic’ horror films bosted that count by 49 alone.)
The database software is Movie Collector and I love it. After the jump is a screen capture of what it looks like. The software cost me $30 so it is not pricey. You can enter films by title, barcode number (typing it in by hand) or by scanning the barcode on the box of the DVD/Blu-ray. I bought a cheap barcode scanner off Ebay ($8) and it took me just a couple of hours to enter all the films. Continue reading
Sunday Night Movie: 2012
So being a fan os disaster movies, and to a somewhat lesser degree a fan of disastrous movies, withe the release of 2012 on Blu-ray I had to make that movie my Sunday Night Movie this week. (before anyone thinks I slipped a cam and actually bought the Blu-ray, I ordered it via Netflix. That’s one of the reasons I have Netflix, so I can see movies I would not ordinarily pay for.)
As I have said in other posts I thin Roland Emmerich is in a race with Michael Bay as to who can make more stupid movie. After Michael Bay raised the stakes with Transformers : Revenge Of The Fallen, Emmerich had no option but to go all in with 2012.
Like all really classy disaster movies this one has a diverse cast from all sorts of walks of life caught up in the disaster. They struggle to survive, many failing and ending up in either noble moving deaths if they were likable characters, or ironic fitting deaths if they were jerks. There isn’t a single surprise in this entire films save for the level of stupid.
For example, the scene picture above. Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) failed writer whose HARDBACK book sold less than 500 copies (a face many people know in the film, no matter how divorced those characters may be from the publishing business.) is running to catch the plane with his ex-wife, two kids, and their new step-dad in order to escape the eruption of the super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park. Behind the character is the slowest pyroclastic flow in the recorded history of vulcanology. In real life this effect can have speeds up to 750 km/hour. Jackson has managed to outrun the bit of disaster in an old RV. Crashed the RV into a fissure from the eruption, climb out of the fissure, chase down the plane with family et al aboard, and still manage to escape the deadly winds, pressure, and temperatures of up to 1000 degrees C. Now to paraphrase Morbius from Forbidden Planet: Prepare your minds for a new scale of stupidity values. What I just describe was the most CREDIBLE disaster/action/escape sequence in the whole film.
I laughed my way, and I mean that quite literally laughing out loud, through this entire movie. From the ridiculous psuedo-science (Sub-atomic particles do NOT mutate Mr. emmerich, they decay.) to the ignoring of the vast distances involved this film gets everything wrong and does it in the most over the top manner imaginable.
It is filled with stock character, not one of which has any spark of originality and life. It ignores the consequences of its own stupid actions and stands. SPOILER ALERT.