Tag Archives: Movies

Favorite Carmageddon Moment.

I’ve posted about favorite car movies and chase scenes… But I’ve never brought up this one.

Now, I am not a huge fan of George Looney Clooney, but he does a great job in this film  “The Peacemaker”.  In this scene, we have a car chase up to the point that Clooney says “Screw This” and turns the table.  He stops running and then uses his big Merc as a warhammer and demolishes the two little Bimmers that are chasing him.  You almost feel sorry for the little guys.  Almost.

 

Nicole Kidman spends a lot of time showing off how good her bottom looks in slacks. Eh, pretty good actually. The rest of the movie is fun, but not to be taken seriously. Nicole’s character is the least believable out of all of them. Oh, I also like the scene when Clooney jumps from chopper into the truck. That’s good stuff.
So, what is your favorite Carmageddon Moment?

The Best SciFi Flicks

Sunshine.
Alien/Aliens.
Event Horizon.
Pitch Black.
The Matrix.
Dune.
Blade Runner.
Serenity.
Cowboy Bebop.
These are my favorite SciFi flix, all for the same reasons. They all have something in common.  They each create a new universe… Some, like Sunshine, do it in a very subtle manner… Others like Dune, do it overtly and hit you over the head with it.  I think if I was going to teach a class on Science Fiction, these movies would be foundational on “World Building”.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the end all of a movie list… These are just my favorites… And in my opinion, must see movies.  If you haven’t seen one of these movies, you are indeed wrong.  Clarification on Dune… It needs to be the Alan Smithee version.  The original director cut too much out. Aliens, has to be the extended version. And with Blade Runner, don’t get the Director’s Cut, get the Original, with Harrison Ford’s voiceovers.
I like the darker stories… That’s just me. Bright shiney ones, like the new Star Trek film… Just fine. But I prefer darker stuff.
I also like the SciFi to leave some things unexplained.  Like future technologies… Show them, but don’t try to explain it to the audience. Characters wouldn’t explain things to each other… Unless the tech was brand new to that universe and it being paramount to the telling of the story.
Give the technology some limitation.  See, SciFi has technology like Fantasy has magic.  I don’t want to see tech or magic being the answer for everything.  The future tech and universe is just the setting and framework a good story is written upon.

The Eagle

I watched an interesting movie about a Roman Centurion who takes it upon himself to recover the Eagle totem of the lost 9th Legion.  I thought it was very well done and was quite interesting.   To a point.

The film makers did a great job on the Romans.  They took all sorts of time creating everything to look historically accurate.  And then they take the Romans north of Hadrian’s Wall and it all turned to crap.   Evidently the film makers want the Romans to look clean and shiny and the Scots to look like they are soggy and smeared in scat.  Until they get very far north and run into the Huron Tribe of Native Americans.  They called the tribe the Seal Tribe, supposedly some primitive Celts of some sort, but I forgot I was watching The Eagle and thought I was watching Last of the Mohicans.    I take umbrage at this.  The Scots of this time were indeed rather primitive and rustic… but they didn’t look like Indians and they didn’t shave their heads and they didn’t build silly little tents on the edges of north facing cliffs.  The film makers had a hard time filming on that location because of wind and rain blowing down their tents and such.   That should be a clue.  If you are wearing layers of Columbia Arctic Gear, Rain Gear and you have to keep putting the set back together… you can probably imagine that the Early Scots in that area were not shaving their heads, running around naked with ash smeared all over them and living in wig-wams.   They probably had long hair, wore a lot of furs, and built houses of some sort that could stand up to the weather they are living in.  Even the early Scots had a distinct culture and society.  They had standards of dress and hygiene.  Just because they were not Roman didn’t mean they were cave-men.

So The Eagle had great Romans… and the Scots were rubbish.

Standing the Test of Time

We all know that Hollywood has a thing for “Remakes”. It’s a money making formula for them. The biggest excuses for doing a Remake, is that the original film was “Dated”. And in some cases, maybe they have some point. For example, Clash of the Titans was certainly dated, but in doing the Remake, they ruined the charm of Clash of the Titans and destroyed all the reasons to like it. The new version is total rubbish.
There are some movies however that stand the test of time and you can enjoy them just as much now as when the film first came out.
Alien & Aliens. Predator. The Thing. Bladerunner.
These movies are so good, that they are Required Viewing for membership in The Horde. If you don’t like these films, you probably sodomize garden gnomes and stab kittens with shrimp forks. Anyone attempting to even put forward the idea to do a Remake on these films need to be up against a wall before they could finish the sentence.

Tom Selleck, good guy.

On Facebook, a “Friend” (who I don’t know from Adam) posted a link to a story about Tom Selleck.  The story’s headline is misleading.   Read the article and see if you come to the same conclusion that I did.  Tom reacted right.  He called the guy out on his poor gun safety.  Some clown picks up a gun, finger on the trigger, and starts pointing it at people… Tom sees it and promptly tells him to stop.  The clown probably regards Tom as a jerk and has his feelings hurt.  But that’s better than this clown claiming that “The Gun just went off” as he tries to explain to a grieving family how he killed their kid/dad/mom/etc.   Continue reading Tom Selleck, good guy.

Recent Movies

Battle LA: I enjoyed it a lot… I thought it was very well done.  It felt like you were watching someone play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but it was fun.  It even had the short vehicle stage.    Overall it was a great recruiting effort for the US Marines.   Which is a good thing, so I don’t begrudge them that at all.  But where is the movie about soldiers where they sit around and wait all the time?  Like in real life?

Sucker Punch: Distill all awesomeness and unfiltered imagination and mix in heavy metal and hot chicks… and that about sums up Sucker Punch.  The phrase Eye Candy doesn’t cut it… it’s Eye Crack… Zack Snyder did it… he made Crack for your Eyeballs.  I can’t go into any detail, because I’m still blown away by it.  Fight Choreography is something that Zack is very good at, not only that, but he’s very good at actually showing you the fight.  Not like some movies where there is so much happening you can’t tell what’s going on (GI JOE) but he actually shows you the fight.  Like his previous masterpiece “300”, this one is going to rock you.    It’s required viewing.   You have to go see this one.  ASAP.

 

 

Horrible Horror

I love horror movies…   But lately I’ve found no good scary movies at all.

“Devil”?  No.  Come on, the Devil is really in an elevator?  Stupid story to begin with, but at least that one had… Okay, I don’t know what that one had…  Paranormal Activity… started out good… had potential.. then the ending totally ruined the whole movie.  Paranormal Activity 2 was even worse… the super slow build up that lead to nothing but bitter disappointment.

I just watched “The Last Exorcism”.  This flick was semi interesting… A fake preacher doing a fake exorcism that turns out to be real… at best, it got “interesting”… had some potential… and then the ending was the worst of the retarded cliche endings that made Paranormal Activity look brilliant.

Ewe Boll could have made better horror movies than these.  These are “Pants On The Head” retarded.  I want my Dollar Fifty back from the Red Box.

Where are the good new Horror movies?  If this is what American Horror Film Makers are doing – they need to go back to Remaking Japanese Horror movies.  Or just quit… and go away.  Second thought, yes… do that.  Go away…