New blog, guys!

If you still wanna read my ramblings about animation, film and TV, head to my new movie blog and follow me if you have a Tumblr. I will be updating from there only from now on, so consider this blog just an archive of previous reviews.

Hope to see you there,
Slunk

Cowboys And Aliens And Blockheads

Let's do a little Q&A, for those who haven't seen this movie yet and are curious about it.

Is this movie about 'Cowboys' fighting 'Aliens'? Yes.

Did they make it silly or play it straight? They played it straight.

Does it have good special effects? Yes.

Does it have a good story? Hardly.

Is it fun to watch? Yes.

Is it a good movie? No.

Those last two sound like a contradiction in terms. Well, they are. I found myself immensely enjoying this film while it played. The only parts I really, REALLY couldn't stand were Olivia Wilde's character and the scenes that contained her, but we'll get to that.

As you have no doubt gleaned from the posters and trailers, the film features an old, grumpy Harrison Ford and a badass Daniel Craig. These characters are very entertaining and steal their scenes wholesale. Watching Daniel Craig beat the shit out of a whole bunch of guys at once never gets old and he makes a great hero. Harrison Ford shows a side of himself we have not really seen before, a grumpy old bastard not wholly unlike Jeff Bridges' character from the True Grit remake. Not as growly and washed up, but every bit as mean and brazen.



The actual 'western' scenes are very well done, and the 'science fiction' scenes are also very well done. The problem is that they don't really gel - they seem incompatible, at least in the form they have been put together in this film. Arch, whom I saw the film with, is a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns, particularly those by Sergio Leone such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. What characterises these movies, and the movies that draw from them such as Inglourious Basterds, is that there is a sense of slowly rising tension that builds, and builds, and builds until it cannot build any more, then it explodes into a maelstrom of violence that barely lasts a few seconds and leaves you thinking, "what the hell was that?!"

These tricks have not been utilised in C&A, the film opting instead on a series of 'setpiece battles' more in line with your average brainless Hollywood attempt at a scifi blast-em-up. Don't expect this film to be very intense at all, the intensity is in fact quite monotone throughout right up to the big final confrontation at the end.



I won't go on too much about Plot - because frankly, there's not much to go over. It's a very straightforward film, and if you actually sat down and attempted to write a synopsis of it, you'd find that the summary of the third act would be shorter than the other two by a magnitude. They know what they have to do, and they do it, for something like half an hour. Still, there are a couple of things that really bother me about the film's approximation of a story.



I found myself totally irritated at Olivia Wilde's presence. Daniel Craig is initially very surly toward her character and I found myself sympathising with his cries of "who are you?" and "what are you doing here?" I found myself asking those questions a lot too.

I joked with Arch upon seeing a shirtless Daniel Craig scrubbing up that this was a scene for the ladies. I was wondering, does this scene actually need him to be shirtless? Or is it a Twilight werewolf excuse to show off pecs and abs for the women in the audience? Suddenly, out of nowhere, Olivia Wilde comes in and they share a 'tender moment'. I felt defeated. Oh, so that's why he's suddenly shirtless, I thought. Every shot she is in, she is only there because the eight-or-so scriptwriters needed her to be. She's a walking, living, breathing plot device, and oh, did I mention she is a BLOCKHEAD?



It turns out Arch was much more tolerant of her role in the film because he thinks she's good looking. He would allow himself to be distracted by her prettiness, but personally, I don't see it. I see the currently and totally bewildering Hollywood vogue for women who have jaws substantially squarer and firmer-set than Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford combined. Maybe it's the Celt-Scand hardwiring of my brain to think that "pretty" girls ought to have round faces, but obviously it's a taste thing. Unfortunately, because she wasn't to my taste, I found myself constantly trying to justify her character in the plot.

Which brings me to...

>>> SPOILERS <<<



"IF YA DON'T WANT YER DARN-TOOTIN' MOVIE RUINED, AH SUGGEST YE SCRAM, VARMINT!"

***

***

Before Olivia Wilde reveals she is an alien, she feels like a forced, wedged-in love interest. There is no other explanation for her constant sudden appearances and cryptic bullshit. Then when we find out what she is, she is suddenly the bottomless pit of exposition, spewing forth loads of background on the aliens for us at a time.

I found myself so against her character that I was actually relieved when she died. 'Great', I thought, 'now we can get on with the movie'. Then she suddenly COMES BACK TO LIFE and tells us that she is an alien too, and had to take her current human form in order to walk among us.
When she said this, a guy in front of me in the cinema actually facepalmed. Slapped his face in horror, and dragged his hand down, staring in horror at what the scriptwriters had dared force down our throat. I wanted to say, badly, "yeah I'm with ya, buddy". There were murmurs around the theatre. I do not think I was alone in thinking the revelation was trite and ruinous to the movie.

From then on she is suddenly a Keira Knightley-style 'action babe', and when she sacrifices herself (very slowly - why did that super-fast alien take so frigging long to catch her scampering through those claustrophobic tunnels?), I at least had the satisfaction of seeing her stupid character die twice. This time she was gone for good but it was too little too late.

ON THE ALIENS

Arch and I were a little annoyed at how cold and heartless the aliens had been. They weren't even that alien in their psychology. They were just mean assholes. Why did they attempt to experiment on the humans and cut them up? Apparently it's because they want to know human weaknesses. Even though they can slaughter humans with relative ease and the inferior human guns seem to be pissweak against them. But hey, let's just keep loading up this massive crowd of brainwashed experiments because, you know, we just want to cut them up in lots of different ways.

Near the beginning of the film, when the alien exposes its delicate arms in the boat and strokes the boy's face, I thought, "oh sweet, these things might actually be slightly sympathetic. It seems they are curious about the human race to a degree". Then Harrison Ford scared it away and I thought "no, don't do that man, you're just pissing them off". By the final confrontation, with everyone killing everything and the boy knifing one of them in the chest, all such thoughts at a complex relationship with the aliens was completely gone. They went from curious aliens with a dangerous mean streak, to debased villains with no shot at redemption. Independence Day, The Prequel: I felt cheated.

The final fight started out cool but protracted very quickly into a tiresome confrontation that seemed to tide, according to narrative convenience, between the monstrous aliens being INVINCIBLE and relatively easy to kill, even with a cudgel or spear.

The movie seemed to revel just a tad in its own brainlessness so I suppose I will have to ignore the implausibility that a bracelet-gun designed for a totally alien pathology and psychology, would be able to work through a human being's empathic commands. I'll put that one down to Hollywood scifi silliness.

But whatever. At the end of the day, I still thought this was a fun movie, I enjoyed it at the time. It just doesn't stand up to the simplest scrutiny once you put it under the scalpel.

Sucker Punch

This has got to be the most difficult post I've ever written. This is literally the third time I've started this article, having trashed what I had written twice because it was too charged. Reviewing this film is actually hard work. I just hate it so much.

Okay, third time's a charm. Wish me luck, guys. Forgive me if I cut right to the chase and get to the heart of the matter here.

Sucker Punch is a movie about a girl who gets sent to a Home For The Criminally Insane And Criminally Sexy where she is surrounded by hilarious caricatures of chauvinist pigheadedness and impossibly beautiful porn stars who are introduced to the audience with that most tasteful of girl-on-girl action, the Catfight.
But wait, it gets better. For no fucking reason (I mean literally, for no motherfucking reason whatsoever, no relevance to plot, particular metaphor, anything) it shifts to an imaginary setting where instead of a nuthouse it's a brothel and they are all burlesque dancers and the creepy warden is suddenly a greasy moustachioed pimp.



Babydoll (our heroine) is told that she has to dance to entertain guests and when she dances, she does this dance that is so mindblowingly sexy that the audience is never actually shown. Instead it cuts away to these dumb fucking filmclips from Zack Snyder's Personal Playlist while Babydoll and her fellow inmates are transported to some hackneyed ripoff of every anime ever made where they are suddenly gunslinging samurai babes who have to kill everything ranging from giant robot samurai to steam-powered clockwork nazi soldiers to robot gunmen from outer space to pirate ninja vampire klu klux klan jester mimes. Okay I made that last one up. But I didn't make up the others.



There are going to be two schools of thought here, the first one thinking "OH MY GOD, NOW I HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE!!" and the other half thinking "How the hell would that work as a movie?" I'm obviously in the second camp and I'm trying to answer the question days later. Hint: Zack Snyder does not have the answer.

There are so many things wrong with this it isn't funny. First of all, the fantasies-within-fantasies that Babydoll has when she is dancing serve even less purpose to the main story than the burlesque thing. At least the Burlesque side story apparently mimics what is happening in real life; but in Babydoll's fantasies, she is kind of "imagining" what it must be like to achieve the very simple objectives her friends are performing (looking at a map, stealing a lighter) by turning them into high-flying, actionpacked adventures that might appeal to a mentally deficient and extremely immature twelve year old boy, but I don't understand how these are her fantasies and not Zack Snyder's.



It's virtually impossible to ascertain what period the film is set in; it could be modern day but some of what the characters are wearing would suggest a few decades earlier. In any case I guess it's just naturally assumed that throughout her childhood, Babydoll has had access to an incredible library of action movies, video games and over-the-top anime series because that appears to be all she dreams about. In some cases the rip-offs are all but shameless; two that come immediately to mind are the fact that the robot nazis look EXACTLY like the Helghast from Killzone 2 and another being that the ENTIRE SCENE with the dragon has been lifted right the fuck out of Lord Of The Rings: The Twin Towers. The effects aren't even that good; I mean, they're okay, but considering that's what this film is all about, those brainless segments, they really aren't the effects powerhouse I was expecting. There are a couple of particularly tragic shots where Zack insisted on a ridiculous closeup of something like a Samurai Sword or whatever and you can actually tell that the girl is a CG model; or the scene in the train where the blue lens flare is actually so strong and omnipresent that it distracts the viewer from the action.

They even pull KOOL POZEZ whenever they land on the ground because they know Zack Snyder is watching.



The dialogue in this movie is average at the best of times, but I found much of Babydoll's to be fatuous. Of particular note is her first meeting with the creepy old guy who tells her what to do where half her lines are mumbled "what?"s, "huh?"s and a few "uhhhh, what?"s, while her slack face is drained of any acting talent; I am half convinced these are simply shots the cameraman took by accident when Zack Snyder was trying to explain the plot to her that wound up getting used in editing.

The worst sin of this movie, in my opinion, is something that has become a very, very bad habit of Zack Snyder's, and that's including everything he can from Zack Snyder's Personal Playlist. Imagine you are on a bus or a train. Someone is right next to you with an iPod and they have your most hated song playing at full blast, to the point where you can actually hear the lyrics, but they're all distorted. You really want to tell this guy to fuck off, to take his shitty music elsewhere, you want to take his iPod and stomp it into the fucking ground. That is exactly what watching any film by Zack Snyder is like.



If your idea of a good movie is one where a blonde teen flips sideways through a storm of gatling gun bullets being fired by a ten foot samurai mech warrior while a loud, screaming guitar solo blares in the background, then see this film. It's been made for you. If, on the other hand, you think it sounds like one of the plots the autistic kid came up with from Real Ultimate Power, then perhaps you ought to give it a miss.

MARATHON REVIEW # 1: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD.

Okay. So, Scott Pilgrim.

Everyone kept telling me to see this movie, everyone ensured me it was my cup of tea, right up my alley, the real deal, totally something I'd be into if only I gave it a chance (as usual, the awful trailer put me off).

I saw it; it really wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Nonetheless I was asked, "so what did you think of it?" to which my earnest reply, in a slight daze, was "I've never loved and hated a movie at the same time before".

That really is the only way I can describe my personal alignment toward this movie. If you asked me to give it a rating out of five stars, I'd have to get back to you on whether it was worth five or zero. In fact I may never reach that conclusion for as long as I live.

So let's just delve right in here.

I am still reeling in shock that this was directed by Edgar Wright, who directed Hot Fuzz and Sean Of The Dead. I will give him his due for stepping out and doing something completely different, but I'm a little unsure he was the right director for this film.

I will not pretend to be a Scott Pilgrim fan - I haven't read the comic (though now I am curious to do so). I've only played the videogame which was a lot of fun despite focusing strangely too much on grinding for a beat-em-up (though I was massively biased toward that game because I am a longtime fan of the pixel art of Paul Robertson). But I think it was a poor choice to cast the bumbling, goose-necked Michael Cera as Scott.



I... I don't like him. It's a personal thing. Some people love him but he was just too much of a dork in that movie. The script he was given didn't help - I found Scott Pilgrim himself to be a profoundly unlikable character until the final scene of the film when he actually realises he's kind of been a gigantic dick to everybody and (finally) makes things right.

Now, the Exes on the other hand, were another matter entirely. In my opinion they saved this film. I was practically squirming in my chair through the first movement of the movie, until finally the Satanic Indian Matthew Patel showed up out of nowhere and started singing, surrounded by flying succubi. The whole thing had me in stitches and I realised this movie could still pick up yet, and it did.



The saving grace of this entire film was the lavish cast of opponents Scott has to face. Every one of them was a hilarious, larger-than-life personality, and my only gripe was that the Twins didn't get enough exploration. They are more of a walk-on part in comparison which I think is a shame.



To be honest I think it has a lot to do with the awkward directorial choice to create a live action movie based on a comic which is about videogames. As a result we have a movie with real actors walking around and walking into poles and banging drums which produce big comic-book words for sound effects. I wouldn't have a problem with this if everyone didn't also explode into coins when Scott defeated them or sprites and pixels didn't keep appearing along with Nintendo sound design. I couldn't decide whether it was supposed to be a movie about comics or videogames, and apparently neither could Edgar Wright.



The fight scenes for me were the hilight of the film, brilliantly directed and pulse-pounding, with highly creative special effects and a keen eye for spectacle. I have a fishy suspicion that these moments were the very reason and impetus for this whole movie being created. Certainly, they are the only parts I really enjoyed. If I had to give a black and white, straightforward summary of the film, I would say that the action scenes were fantastic but most of the jokes were lame.
This is obviously a personal thing and your tastes may vary, but I think it is a bit of a warning sign when a movie is made sheerly and solely for fans of retro video games of yesteryear and an obsessive fan of retro video games of yesterday doesn't find most of them funny. Again, strangely, the only parts I really laughed hard at were the bits with the exes - they are just so perfectly cast. The vegan bass guitarist, Todd Ingram, steals every shot he's in and his whole scene left me hysterical. I don't think there was a single evil ex of Ramona's (ironically) that turned me off as a character, as opposed to the more fickle, whiney, limp-wristed cast of heroes.



Ramona is a piece of ass but her personality is nothing short of repellant, Scott's band and friends are either grumpy, bitchy or just plain stupid (with the exception of his admittedly pretty funny gay housemate), and I am still really confused and a bit confronted by how everyone just keeps dumping and cheating on each other. Seriously, is this a Generation thing? A Canadian thing?? Am I so outside the social world this movie portrays?

Gideon made for a good final villain - I liked how charming he was - but my major complaint here is that with the compression of a comic series into a feature-length film comes the fact that we didn't really get to know him enough. As a boss, he's fantastic, but as a villain he's kind of lame; at least in the sense that he kind of shows up out of nowhere and we have to sort of take it for granted that he's the final challenge and the big bad. I think with more time there could have been a more solid buildup which overall would have strengthened the story, which I found focused a bit too much on Scott's hang-ups.

I will concede the movie wrapped itself up very nicely, though I found the beginning to be rather interminable - and unlike my fellow film nerd Arch, I don't find jokes about Michael Cera being a totally unattractive dork very funny.

So yeah.

I'm afraid I can't really conclude by saying whether I love this movie or hate it. Only that it was certainly an experience. I admit that I have no regrets about seeing it; I knew I had to see it sooner or later. But just because there are a lot of bloops and pixels, doesn't mean a movie is right up my alley.

We've got a lot to talk about.

Thing is, I am currently being worked like a dog and I'm also about as sick as one - I was sent home early from work today, which is crazy because it's taken four days for a supervisor of any capacity to say, "you look sick enough to go home" rather than simply "wow you look like dogshit". No skin off my nose, it's money in the kitty, but on the other hand goddamn I'm looking forward to my days off next week. What will I do with all that spare time?!

Well, apart from catching the hell up with Headbucket, I'm going to be spamming you guys with reviews.

1) Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World



A detailed explanation as to why it was a bittersweet experience for me, neither astoundingly good or astoundingly bad - but rather a strange mix of both.

2) Tron: Legacy



Rant detailing how the movie vastly exceeded my expectations - how it could have been better, or at least very different, and what it got right beyond the soundtrack everyone is talking about.

3) Megamind



I've had a certain friend of mine begging me for ages to review this film and I kind of just have a free pass for two sitting there so I mean whatever. I was going to review it side-by-side against Despicable Me but, despite having a free pass for it, I never felt inspired to go and see it. I'll probably have to end up renting a DVD for the double-review, which I will still be doing after this one. Eugh.

So there are these movie packs at my local Coles

...and they look bloody awful.

They are five-packs, twenty dollars each (wow crazy value right? RIGHT?), but the collections on them are pretty terrible. One of them has all five Doctor Dolittle movies. I didn't even know they made that many.



And so, for your enjoyment, I'm going to purchase some of these horrid collections (Dr. Dolittle included, of course) and see if I can somehow watch all five movies on each disc in one sitting. It'll be like a game.

The Human Centipede: Where to from here?!

Today I hung out with my old friend Nick and we bought a bag of chips and went to his place to watch a movie.

That movie was The Human Centipede.

I hope you clicked that link! Congratulations, you've officially seen the whole movie!!
Except for the part where the cops run in at the end and get shot and the mad scientist dies and the people on the front and back of the centipede both die and the girl in the middle is the only survivor.

Oops, -Spoiler alert-


Okay so maybe it's not exactly good form to deliberately tell someone the plot and ending and then warn them afterwards about the spoiler. But if you actually planned on watching this film, and would have enjoyed it had I not just spoiled it for you, then you belong in a home for the mentally unsound.

Where do I even begin with this travesty?
Somehow it picked up a budget of one and a half million euros (it was made by a Brit, Tom Six, though I didn't realise this because the two main characters were enragingly irritating valley girls) and wound up grossing about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars back worldwide. Clearly it was eaten alive by word of mouth. Not hard for a film where people walked out in disgust during the test screenings.

Perhaps the most stunning thing of all is that this movie was intended to be part of a trilogy. Rumour has it that the second is already in post production (I can only assume it had begun being made before the results for the first bomb came in), because not only is this concept now officially a guaranteed misfire, but this world has nowhere to go.

IMDB sums up this movie more or less perfectly in the following paragraph:

"A mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to "reassemble" them into a new "pet"-- a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others' rectums."

Yyyep. That's pretty much it.

Now, this film has become notorious, utterly notorious, for being one of the most revolting films ever made. Everything you think would happen in those circumstances does - they inadvertently eat each other's poo and the one at the end dies from an infection. I know Nick didn't take it quite as well as I did.
I just sat there pointing and laughing, making puns.

"Hey Nick, looks like she's between a rock and a hard place!"

It probably has to do with three things.
One, the characters were so pathetically one-dimensional that I literally could not have cared less about what happened to any of them. Two, I grew up with the internet. Things like people eating each other's feces is a concept you will run into eventually. Thirdly, the gore was not really all that shocking. Certainly nothing worse than the terribad but hilarious Machine Girl, which Nick and I watched directly afterwards.

Actually it's basically impossible to be scared by a movie where the mad scientist shows anyone a picture that looks like this.



That is actually from the movie.
Yeah, I know!!

What I really just cannot get over is that there was going to be three movies! Where can this idea go??

Apparently the sequel is going to have a Human Millipede (my own term), the same thing as from this movie but with twelve people. Not really sure how this works as a) the stereotypical, clichéd creepy nazi doctor is dead now and b) he acts like this is the first time he's ever gotten it to work with humans. Which means that whoever made the 12-person version was someone else.

What could Part Three have possibly been about?

Nick and I got to discussing this. Clearly, the only direction for it left to go is for an absolutely massive chain of people to be made, then the first person is fed all this yummy food and immediately has his mouth stitched up to someone's ass. Then the food will just keep going around and around this thing and speeding up until one of them is so disgusted at having to eat all this shit that they puke in the opposite direction. Then when the shit and puke meet, there will be this massive explosion and they will discover the Higgs Boson.

It will be called,
THE HUMAN HADRON COLLIDER



Now THAT'S an interesting idea for a movie!!!

Hey, you know what would be even better? If this thing makes money, right, then the sequel would be about some evil NASA scientists who hear about this crazy stunt (which probably took place in Switzerland or something) and use the same principal to construct a space elevator out of humans beings. They lead right up into outer space and basically whenever they want to send supplies to the moon, one of the people at the bottom on Earth has their mouth unstitched and they are fed the supplies and it goes all the way up via the digestive tract.

But then they rebel!!



See I didn't even come up with this shitty idea and I've already come up with some ideas for sequels that are at least interesting.

Honestly Nick and I only watched this to say that we had. It's one more thing to put on my resumé, I guess. "Managed to watch The Human Centipede without barfing once". But was it really worth it?

Tin Tin yeah more like Cringe Tin amirite pplz

So you know how James Cameron just released this ground-breaking motion capture technology that allows virtually limitless creativity, right? Well, you know how they were making a Tin Tin movie? You guys remember Tin Tin, right? This guy?



Yeah, you remember him. Of course you do. He's classic, he's a legend. He was the brainchild of Belgian comic book genius Hergé. He brought us the mysterious explorations of lovable Tin Tin, the titular scamp who gets into all sorts of crazy adventures.
And who could possibly forget his wacky cohort, Captain Haddock?



Obviously Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.



This is what they are doing with James Cameron's Avatar technology. This is what they are doing to Tin Tin.

Why.
WHY.

He looks like a fucking mutant.

It reminds me of these pictures that keep floating around the internet:







"Blistering barnacles!!!"

SEE THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS


You know, when I first heard they were making a Tin Tin movie using the Avatar mocap technology I was excited as hell. I was imagining a thrilling tribute to the comic and animated series featuring the clean, simplistically rendered designs of Hergé, a master of artistic conservation who enjoyed populating meticulously detailed backgrounds with simply drawn characters who barely had dots for eyes and lines for noses. It was a style.

This is just...
mutants.



Eugh, gross.

I can't tell who looks scarier, Tin Tin or the dog.

We are launching headfirst into the old Uncanny Valley argument again here; it's been discussed many times before so I shall be brief, but I'd like to offer up a comparison for your consideration.
With the use of the proposed motion capture technology, these ugly, nightmarish messes of facial features will move realistically and convincingly, just as a human's. The real question is, is that better or worse than watching the eerily photo-real faces of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within or The Polar Express shamble their way through swathes of dialogue with stilted, botox-ridden faces?

In either case, the picture here is incomplete.
If you want characters that look human, grab a camera, it's not that hard. They've been doing it for over a hundred years now. If you want them to look like cartoons? Draw them!

Sorry, is there something wrong with 2D? Did I miss something?
Didn't John Lasseter, the guy who got Pixar rolling, advocate more 2D animation in feature films? Instead we are being treated to a perplexing misuse of an amazing technology for an entirely self-defeating artistic blunder and destroying a loved masterpiece in the process. The truly scary part is that this movie doesn't even have a style. It's just creepy. There's nothing in those models to make you say, "oh, these are based off Hergé's drawings, obviously" or "that character was clearly modelled by -famous character designer-". It's just a human face that has been cut off and wrapped around a mishapen skull. I mean jesus, just look at this mess.

The Great Sperm Bank Robbery

Or: The Movie That Was Like A Much Shittier Version Of Avatar That Somehow Still Seemed Deeper In Terms Of Theme



I nearly forgot to review Battle For Terra, but thankfully Crowbar, a regular follower of this blog, reminded me that it was still in pending. And this film is just too weird not to talk about.

I'm not going to tear this film apart. It's not going to be a no-holds-barred-critical-beatdown as seen on such violations to my senses as Spaghetti With A Chance Of Meatballs. But as a disclaimour, this was not a good movie. In fact it was pretty lame. The ultimate issue was that it felt like a kid's movie aimed at adults, and the viewership was utterly called into question. Having gotten that out of the way, I am basically going to analyse this film and draw some interesting comparisons to James Cameron's Avatar.

Alright, so the reason I thought "The Great Sperm Bank Robbery" would be a much better name for this movie is because the aliens in it all seriously look like spermatozoa with humongous, cutesy eyes. And then they all get sieged at the beginning of the movie and whole bunches of them are captured and taken away to a huge mothership (hmm... mothership, I only noticed that just now), which from the aliens' point of view looks kind of like a giant circle floating in the sky.

Like an egg, you could say.

Okay enough on that, because although there are a lot of things here that disturbingly remind me of reproduction, it doesn't seem to go anywhere and it would probably be more important to talk about the plot of the film itself.

So basically, the plot of the film is Avatar. I'm not kidding. They kind of came out at the same time and the ideas are pretty broadly cookie-cutter Science Fiction, so I will not sound like a douche and say that they ripped each other off. What I will say, however, is that for such a shitty film (Battle For Terra is pretty shitty), it has some amazingly well-developed themes and story ideas, which actually surpass any of those found in Avatar.

For a start, the female protagonist is actually one of the aliens, which startled me. The human which comes into the story quite a bit later is seen as the support role; he is not the hero, but the sidekick, so to speak. He is saved by our alien main character, and they later operate to each other's mutual benefit. Throughout the film they become close friends, perhaps even soulmates, but not in a romantic or sexual way. They are just two sentient beings that need each other to gain a fuller understanding of life. Which is one gigantic "motherfuck you" to the "I had sex with this hot bitch and now I sympathise with their race" plot of Avatar.



The models for the humans (perhaps it's a good thing I couldn't find more of them) are frankly ugly as sin, but their humans feel a lot more human. The major exception to this rule is that of the human antagonist, a general (it's always a general). He is only slightly more fleshed out than the barbarian, racist Colonel from Avatar, which is kind of like saying he's slightly less evil than Satan.

-Spoiler-

By far the more interesting plot on show here is that of the alien secret society. Throughout the film we see a group of alien Wise Ones who govern the Spermlings and issue them orders. They are the beings who are responsible (reputedly) for the Terrans living their whole lives in tranquil peace. You know, kind of like the Na'vi from Avatar.

The difference here is that we don't get our intelligences insulted with that supposed peacefulness. It turns out the wise ones have actually been amassing weapons of war for a long time, training soldiers to use them, and have effectively been brainwashing the masses into thinking everything is okay. It turns out there is actually a streak of political intrigue here and a message that no race is completely devoid of a warlust.

A bit bleaker than Avatar? I don't know, is it really?

In Avatar we are led to believe that the Na'vi are morally infallible, and barely understand the concept of war let alone practice it, because basically the Na'vi are totally unlike humans (well, the humans who are rich and influential enough to make it to other planets, anyway) and wear necklaces made of flowers while skipping over the sunset to the beat of a Tiny Tim song. Until they suddenly take up arms and viciously slaughter the humans in a blood bath worthy of the Lord Of The Rings. Am I seriously the only one who sees the irony here? How can such a crappy direct-to-DVD film beat such a popular cashcow with the implementation of a few clever themes?

-Despoiler-

I mean, before you pull out your wallets and rush off to see Battle For Terra, be warned that the script is pretty horrendous in some ways (lots of cliché, reliance on very familiar situations and character types) to counterbalance the surprising enginuity of themes mentioned above. The graphics vary from "surprisingly good" to "bad, even for a direct-to-DVD" production. The alien faces are very expressive in contrast to the creepy, action-figure like humans. It seems for every yin that makes this film watchable, there is a yang elsewhere to put you off.



So what is the upshot of all this? Do I like this film or not?

Well no, this film isn't great and I certainly wouldn't go out and buy the DVD (thus defeating the purpose of a direct-to-DVD movie). But I was genuinely surprised and delighted by the thematic depth of the script and even a few of the characters. But I'll tell you one thing.

If Avatar, with its beautiful graphics and expertly handled 3D, and highly competent cast of talent, had the depth of theme of Battle For Terra, then it would be the greatest movie of all time. Instead what we have here are two movies that are really quite incomplete, and need each other to survive. Potent, and with great potential for vibrancy and life, but individually useless. Like a sperm and an egg or something.

And on a lighter note...

Read this. Now.

A friend of mine linked me to this a while ago and it virtually sums up everything I love about Pixar and, indeed, animation in general. If I were ever dumb enough to set up my own company, I'd use this page right here as my mission statement.
I even clipped one of Brad Bird's more powerful quotes and blue-tacked it to my monitor. It reads:

"You don't play it safe. You do something that scares you, that's the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That's what gets you up in the morning."

Read and consider.

So, a post about a game

That's a first for this one. I've branched out into film a few times but this really does warrant a mention. Mostly because it's mind-bogglingly, staggeringly retarded.

Surely some of you have heard of the indie game Minecraft. I've been playing it a lot lately and I have to say it is easily one of the greatest games I've played in years.



The brainchild and pet project of Swedish game designer Markus Persson, the best way to describe this game is an exploration game with elements of surival horror, the creative freedom of Lego (actually more creative freedom than Lego, come to think of it) and the best (only?) good thing about the red faction games. If you have the patience, you can essentially remodel the very realistic (if obviously quite blocky) landscape into whatever you want it to be. People have made some truly insane stuff in this indie gem, and as my friends know, I hardly play games at all these days but Minecraft has been sucking up every ounce of my spare time lately.

But you didn't write this article to promote some game, did you??

Well, no, the issue here is that last night I couldn't get onto the goddamn website or get a multiplayer server running because of a DDoS attack on the site.

The folks taking credit for this "co-ordinated attack" are none other than those lovable scamps from 4chan. Apparently, they were sending Markus a 'clear message' that they were unhappy about having to wait for updates for this game and so it would be in their best interests to bombard him with Distributed Denial of Service barrages effectively crippling the site, and in particular sales of the game, for several hours. This would therefore (?) coerce him into working harder on the game and releasing the updates faster.

One theory I heard is that the people from 4chan have nothing to do with this and are simply taking credit for it, and honestly, I am inclined to agree. The reasons I think this is the case are the same reasons this DDoS attack would be a fundamentally stupid thing to do if it were actually a deliberate attack from disgruntled fans:

• Markus has been mentioning for some time now that he is planning a Hallowe'en update, which will be released on Hallowe'en. If this DDoS attack was really a kick up the arse to get things moving, then good lord, talk about impatience.
  
• Updates are, always have been, and always should be a bonus to players. Patches are something we should expect if we pay ninety dollars for a game from a huge studio and our guy falls off his horse and into the ground and dies. But to target an indie developer because he's not catering to his fans fast enough for a ten euro game is just plain moronic.
• Minecraft is incredibly playable in its current state. I'm going to come out and admit that I played this game before buying it for a few weeks on a friend's account, and only bought it last night (somehow! Moments before the DDoS attack that was apparently supposed to stop people like me from buying it). I was still overwhelmed enough with the quality and excellence of the game to happily fork over ten euros just so I could have my own account. In fact, I mostly did it just to support Markus and the indie scene. I don't care if he's already rich, he fucking deserves it for making a game I love.
• Murdering Markus' site and cutting off sales is not going to motivate him to make updates for this game. One parallel I read which I found exceedingly hilarious is of a man who breaks his wife's hands and immediately demands her to make him a sandwich. We're lucky Markus isn't less of a man and just packed it in because of the attacks, running away with ten million euros and leaving us with an Alpha that had updates just around the corner.
• The guy is starting a fucking business. Anyone who has ever had to sit down and fill out a tax return should be able to guess how much work that involves. He's only hiring like, what, five, six people to help him out?? If you can stand the horrifying, ageless wait that it will take for him to get the business shit sorted out I'm sure we will be getting many more updates far more regularly from now on.

I mean, 4chan would take credit for this, wouldn't they? I thought the whole "scientology protest" thing was cute, a bunch of hopeless, friendless basement dwellers at least attempting to do something meaningful with their lives, but actively lashing out against independent game developers in an industry climate where EA absorb franchises like a gelatinous cube and destroys independent game developers who make games like Minecraft out of love in their spare time doesn't even make sense. Who the fuck even knows.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole?

Oh, I have? Ah, but I didn't explain why.

Okay, okay. At the behest of a few followers who wished for me to elaborate, Legend of the Guardians shall now receive far more than it deserves, which is the time it will take me to write a proper review.

NO, IT WAS NOT THE FACT THAT THEY WERE OWLS.

I love owls. If you don't believe me, perhaps the following will say a thing or two about how obsessed I am with them.

Here is a singing owl from my personal collection.



And here is a gorgeous statue of an owl roost.



Here is an owl eyemask which I wear every night to go to sleep. It's a gag about being a nightowl, you see?



Everyone thinks the residents of Owl Village are creepy but me.



I also read a lot on the subject.



This may have all started with an old Amiga sidescrolling shooter by Psygnosis called "Agony". In it, you were an owl who could shoot waves of energy and collect swords that floated around you psychically. The aim of the game was basically to be an owl and kick some ass.



IN SHORT, I FUCKING LOVE OWLS!!!

So how did Animal Logic manage to take my absolute favourite family of birds (and I love birds in general), make an entire movie out of them, and leave me feeling spectacularly underwhelmed, even frustrated?

Well, it's this poisonous little word I tend to unsheathe like a weapon quite frequently on this bitchy blog of mine:

Story.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in my years as an avid viewer of any film I can get my hands on, and after a degree's worth of studying film and animation in squirming, pinned-to-the-wall scrutiny, I have officially lost my ability to "switch off my brain" and enjoy a film that clearly doesn't take the art of storytelling seriously. I feel insulted as soon as I become consciously aware that a writer is attempting to deliberately manipulate my emotions through the use of hackneyed story mechanics as opposed to skillful use of empathy. This is the ultimate downfall of Legend of the Guardians: cliché.

I am going to try not to spoil too much here (I have actually encountered human beings who like this movie for some reason), but it's not much of a movie-killer to say that the hero's brother, Kludd, is so incredibly lacking for any proper motivation to his actions that it is a wonder he is even there. He feels more like a tool of the writers than a character, and once you push a character into that brainless territory you seriously need to write a second draft.
There were some good messages in this film that were more or less squandered completely.
A theme that should have been brotherly forgiveness under any circumstances came out of the oven shaped more like a cautionary tale about blind ignorance. The bad guys sounded and felt like some kind of Owl faschist regime, delegating lower orders to slave labour, but the villains of the piece were not scary. Least of all Metal Beak, and if you can't make a fascist scary then you're doing it wrong. He should have been better developed, but instead it felt more like he was just sitting there on the Bad Guy platform doing jack shit when in fact, the queen was a lot more intimidating and performed a lot more action. Either something of his character has been lost in translation from the books these are based on or he is such a weak villain they ought to have cut him out of the story altogether.
The plot runs around in circles to the point of exhaustion, and by the end of it you just want the damn story to be over and done with. The characters are almost universally infuriating, with only a couple of exceptions. The protagonist in particular is a boring, vapid character, which is unfortunately a very common problem in stories; they try to play a 'straight' character for the main role, but there's a difference between the straight man in an oddball cast and the most boring character in the movie. I think Soren's dedicated belief that the guardians are real is supposed to be somehow endearing, but it just comes off as annoying. I actually sympathised with his brother until the eightieth mean quip, because I agreed with him. It was suggested that Kludd had heard the same damn story from Soren a billion times before and even before they met them in the movie, I was sick of the bloody guardians.

But enough about the story. There are other things that weaken this movie, unfortunately.

Zack Snyder amazes me, he really does. I enjoyed The 300. I also enjoyed Watchmen, I thought they were both brilliant movies (well, the theatrical version of Watchmen, at least). People made fun of his overuse of slow motion, but I actually quite liked it! I thought it worked well in The 300 and it was deployed quite sensibly in Watchmen. And then there is Legend of the Guardians.

Good...

Lord...

...does the slow motion get old fast.

For a film so full of fight scenes, there is not a single slash of claws or pass of wings that doesn't lock into painful SUPER HIGH SPEED CAMERA technology porn. If the movie had no slow motion scenes at all, the fights would be far more exciting and believable. But then again the movie would be about eight minutes long.

The film looks beautiful, with exquisitely lush scenery and amazing detail on the owls themselves, but the animation suffers with certain characters like Digger who are grotesquely overanimated (suffering from that overly cartoony "snappy" syndrome I bring up from time to time). There are about three characters like this, and it wouldn't bother me as much if the rest of the owls did not move so gracefully, but it removes a layer of suspension of disbelief when you are watching something that simultaneously looks like a live action nature film and a cartoon.

The score started out quite interesting, it got a bit "heard it all before" toward the end, but as my previous post may have suggested, the inclusion of a montage sequence set to an Owl City song practically had me tearing the arms off my chair in the cinema. I actually felt humiliated to even be present in a cinema screening the movie. If anything does not fit in The Legend Of The Guardians in any capacity, if there is anything that could destroy the tone of that film even more than the poor characterisations and storytelling, it is an Owl City song.

People complained that they didn't understand how owls could fashion armour or bind books if they are just owls. To be honest, I didn't even notice that. I don't nitpick for the sake of nitpicking. I was too busy being consumed with rage over all the story problems.

Finally, the accents.

I am Australian. And the accents got on my nerves. Do people from beyond Queensland really talk like that? Or did the actors put it on a bit for the overseas markets? I'm honestly tempted to guess the latter. The English accents were no better - the scruffy kidnapper owls at the beginning of the movie sounded exactly like what they were: bad cockne impressions. It didn't help that they were trying to play a "two-man British comedy team" that fell on its face so hard it left a small crater.

Alright, I'm done whinging!

Ta, loves.

So, Legend of the Guardians.

My opinion of this movie is rather difficult to express with words.


Perhaps this will help.






What a worthless piece of shit.

Zack Snyder, you ought to be flogged.

So how far is too far?

Did you find the above comic to be offensive? Tasteless? Dumb? Or just fucking hilarious?

Next post will be a rather long one dedicated to discussing animations and other media that push boundaries. Do they mock censorship and cause a ruckus for a laugh? Or is there a more political or philosophical dimension to it?
I was already planning on making a post about this with reference to animations and shows such as South Park, Wonder Showzen and the more extreme offerings from Adult Swim, shows that go above and beyond the call of duty to push buttons and even offend. Of course, I knew that this was something I had to do after seeing Four Lions by Chris Morris, a hilarious screwball comedy about a group of bungling Muslim terrorists. It's the kind of comedy that leaves you clutching your stomach with laughter and feeling quite guilty for doing so.

The spambots are conspicuously absent when I expect them

Just wait, I'll replace the post about the Chinese spambots with this one and this post will get bombarded in a day. Anyway.

Announcing a small haitus as I am about to move in two days. Which means I'll be busy packing for those days and once we've moved, I don't know how long it will be until we get internet up and running at the new place.

Once we do, however, there are some movies and TV series I would like to discuss! Perhaps expect a new post in a week or two.

Dear Stephen King, please stick to books.

"Now you're king of the mountain. But it's all garbage!!" Kaneda, from the original 'Akira' dub

Okay, so, let me start this post out by saying that I actually quite like Stephen King. I'm not in love with the guy, his writing style isn't perfect (and I am now finally well-read enough to realise that), but the stories are fun and engaging and quite weird. I can't, however, say the guy is scary. Calling him the "King of Macabre" is an extravagance he frankly does not deserve (if anyone wants to read something macabre, perhaps you should check out Jeff Vandermeer's 'Veniss Underground').
No, rather, his stories are simply of a spooky aesthetic. Not unlike the films of Tim Burton; they aren't scary, but they are spooky, it's all about the strange atmosphere, the mood.

Let me tell you who can pull off 'scary'. Lars Von Trier.

Arch came home a while ago with yet another slew of new DVDs aquired from the magnetic, parasitic, money-gorging beast that is JB Hifi, among them a Danish miniseries called "The Kingdom". He pointed out that it was directed by Lars Von Trier, as though this alone justified the purchase of two seasons of a show neither of us had ever heard of.
I asked, "who's Lars Von Trier?"
Arch dramatically rolled his eyes and discontentedly spat out, "I'm sick of having to tell you. I'm sure I've told you at least five times."
Knowing Arch will be Arch, I accepted this and probed, "well the name rings a bell, but just refresh me, what has the guy done?"
He smirked and said, "nothing you would have heard of".
Upon examining the man's back catalogue, it turns out he was right. I have no idea what the fuck any of these things are, but I'll tell you one thing, The Kingdom ('Riget' in Danish) is probably one of the most mind-blowingly awesome television shows I have ever seen in my entire life.



The show bundles with it an earthy, homemade which makes it painfully engaging. One gets the sense that beyond a couple of very simple special effects, this show was made on practically no budget at all. And yet it is carried by the sheer skill of Lars Von Trier's insanity.
The editing is haphazard - what looks like a single take is often jilted into several - and most of the camerawork is hand held, slightly shaky. Everything has a disgusting red wash over it that, just as the green tints used in the Matrix made everything seem slightly more artificial, lend the entire hospital - even in its most mundane moments - a chilling sense of oncoming dread.

What I love most about this show, however, is the dialogue and the acting.



The characters are universally hilarious, deranged and hypnotising. There is the trainee nurse who refuses to witness an operation; the lovable, self-declared psychic Mrs. Drusse and her oafish son; the student whose love for a woman in the hospital is so incredibly deranged that he is willing to desecrate corpses to prove a point; the omniscient dishpigs with down syndrome who seem to be more in touch with reality than the surgeons; or my personal favourite, Stig Helmer, the stuck-up sham of a brainsurgeon who was exiled from Sweden and now resides in Denmark, possibly the country he hates more than anything else on earth.
There is a realness to these characters; flaws, redeeming features, quirks, untold intricacies, that draw you in and hook you with every episode. It is not the fear of the unknown that propels you through the series, but wondering how this unknown will affect the lives of the living, breathing human beings who reside in this hospital.



On that note, I must warn you in advance that the scary moments in this show are few and far between. The pace is extremely relaxed and never rushes to any conclusions. But when the freaky moments come they hit pretty hard as a result. Lars Von Trier is clearly a believer in "less is more" and he has succeeded brilliantly in creating a rich, immersive world that pulls and tugs at you with all its might.


Aaaand then there's the Stephen King version.



As many picky nerds such as myself will always be tripping over themselves to tell you, remaking something fantastic usually ends badly. Why? Because there's no fucking point in remaking it.
I'm sure Crispin Glover had the time of his life acting as Willard or The Wizard Of Gore, hamming up the cheese to critical levels, but no one really gives a shit about the originals so he had nothing to loose. The same treatment has been given to The Kingdom and the end result is an extremely cheesy version of a really good show.

Everything I like about The Kingdom, everything, has either been removed (for instance, the homebrew camerawork) or dumbed down to the point of insulting one's intelligence (for instance, the script).
The characters have somehow been simplified from three dimensions to one. Only the most superficial and cursory elements of the original cast have been brought into the remake, as though the reality of European conversation is simply too much for an American mind to handle.



The easiest way to describe Kingdom Hospital is as a dumb version of The Kingdom. It's an art film script given to Michael Bay to direct. Hence we have flashy special effects (which now look pretty dated), stupidly snarky and bravado versions of the entire cast, and many more "spoooooooooooooOOOOOooooky" moments which fail to scare at even the most withdrawn, interior level. While The Kingdom was a scalpel in the hands of a skilled surgeon, making precise cuts in exactly the right areas that would not be felt under the anesthetic, Kingdom Hospital is a rusty hacksaw in the hands of a bubble-headed nurse from Silent Hill. It straps you down in a chair and orders you, nay, commands you to be terrified. Then it explains itself in precise terms why it is so scary and why you should be scared of it.



Personally, however, I'd have to say the greatest sin of Kingdom Hospital is of Stephen King's incredibly vain (though admittedly not exactly new) decision to write himself into the fucking story.
The main difference between his Gary Stu in this ridiculous exercise in pointlessness from his far more forgivable literary works is that this guy is a painter (and also a hilariously crappy one, which no one in the story seems to notice but I guess I'll hold my tongue). Usually when Stephen King writes Stephen King into a novel and changes the name, he's still a writer. So this was a pretty brave move for him. He's essentially just decided to write himself into The Kingdom, like a bad fanfiction, based on the time he got his clumsy ass hit by a huge motherfuckin' car. I'd be more sympathetic if he weren't trying to capitalise on this incident at the expense of a great show. I am reminded of The Box, that fucking awful Richard Kelly remake where he couldn't decide whether he wanted to remake a pretty lame short story / twilight zone episode or write a love letter to his parents (the film is basically 50% a barely disguised biography of Mr. and Mrs. Kelly in the good old days).
Some people are actually interesting enough to have movies made about them. Others are not. In any case, if you're not exactly sure, it's not kosher to just tack it onto an existing franchise in the hope that your tragic / triumphant / amazing life will ride the tailcoats of someone else's work.

IN CONCLUSION

If you liked the American version better than the Danish one, be sure to check yourself into a hospital.
Preferably a haunted one.