Posts Tagged ‘Cinema’
Friday, December 26th, 2008
The SmarK DVD Rant - Remake-O-Rama!
What happens when I get three DVDs that I'm not passionate about enough to warrant separate reviews? I find a common thread and do a WACKY three-in-one review! I'm funny like that.
The Films
We all know that Hollywood is severely lacking in creativity these days, and really the writer's strike didn't help matters any. Which is probably why we're getting a neverending stream of movies adapted from old TV shows, old movies, or Broadway musicals. And by no small coincidence, I've got all three!
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Tags: Batman, Christmas, Cinema, DVD, MMA, Sting, The Dark Knight, The Rock, TV
Posted in Rants | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2008
The SmarK DVD Rant for Fred Claus
How's this for a high concept Christmas movie: Santa Claus has a ne'er-do-well brother named Fred (played by Vince Vaughn, as Vince Vaughn) and a nebulous "board" is trying to shut down the North Pole for cost-cutting reasons.
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Tags: aspect ratio, Christmas, Cinema, DVD, DVD on TV Reviews, Frank Stallone, Fred Claus, John Michael Higgins, Paul Giamatti, Santa Claus, SmarK Rants, Sting, Vince Vaughn
Posted in Rants | 1 Comment »
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Via Facebook...
Subject: Punisher?
Scott,
Any intention of seeing the new Punisher movie? I'd recommend it, if only on a comic book study basis. The violence is awesome and so ridiculously over-the-top that you can't help but enjoy it. I thought Stevenson was a great Castle, and far more believable as the grizzled war vet out for revenge than Janey was (and I actually sort of enjoyed Janey's performance). Also, if you get around to seeing it...see if you notice the same thing I did: that Dominic West plays Jigsaw almost as an homage to Nicholson's Joker, switching from sadistic to slapstick in the blink of an eye. It's not an offensive performance, but it's also not really who Jigsaw was. That said, outside of Stevenson's performance, the acting is pretty fucking terrible, but the violence is so satisfying that you don't really care. Besides, since when has the Punisher been about dialogue? Just curious on your thoughts.
-Donnie
Saw it tonight, in fact, and I thought it was pretty awesome for what it was -- an over the top stupid and violent tribute to 80s action hero movies. I think once you're in on the joke it becomes a lot more entertaining than someone going in expecting a slick movie like the 2004 version, because really you need a certain sense of humor to appreciate Punisher punching someone THROUGH the face and blowing someone's head off with a shotgun as a punchline. Julie Benz gets sucked into yet another helpless female role (her new specialty when she's not showing her goods on Dexter) and appears to be the only one not having fun with it. I actually enjoyed Loony Bin Jim as a villain more than Jigsaw (who went from Mafia caricature to goofy Dick Tracy villain way too easily) and found the climactic battle the most disappointing thing about the movie. Plus all the squishy sound effects got a little silly and tiresome after a while.
But really, if you can find a better and more hilarious death scene than the idiotic Irish parkour guys and their run-in with Frank Castle's big gun, please feel free to share.
I still liked the Tom Jane version better because I'm not a slave to the comics and found it more charming and witty than this brainless gorefest, but I enjoyed the brainless gorefest quite a lot on its own merits, too. The theatre was maybe 10% full, if that, though, so look for another bomb in the franchise.
Tags: Cinema, Joker, Punisher, Slick
Posted in Rants | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 5th, 2008
The SmarK DVD Rant for The Dark Knight
"You've got a little bit of fight in you. I like that."
"Then you're gonna love me."
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Tags: Batman, Blu-Ray, Cinema, DVD, DVD on TV Reviews, Edge, Heath Ledger, Heroes, Joker, MMA, RAW, SmarK Rants, Sting, The Dark Knight, The Joker, The Score, Two-Face
Posted in Rants | 45 Comments »
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
OK, I know I probably have to turn in my heterosexual membership card for saying this, but Twilight was kinda pretty good. Yeah, I didn't LOOOOOOOOVE it as much as Jodi did or the army of 14-year old girls in the audience did, but it far exceeded my low expectations and actually had a lot of redeeming value. They took their time with the story and didn't pack a whole "vampires v. werewolves" battle arc into the first movie like they were teasing, and it was basically a teenage love story instead of a boring fanwank like Underworld or Underworld: The Even More Incredibly Fucking Boring Sequel. Plus the teenagers were written to act and talk like TEENAGERS instead of adults, which I liked. People were awkward and gawky and said the wrong stuff at the wrong time, just like actual people do. As long as you take the bad dialogue and budget special effects on the deliberately cheesy level that the movie seems to support, getting dragged to it isn't the worst thing in the world. Thumbs up!
Tags: Cinema, NWA
Posted in Rants | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
The SmarK DVD Rant for Star Wars: The Clone Wars
You know, never let it be said that George Lucas is shy about marketing opportunities or self-promotion. A few years after running his prize franchise into the ground with the prequels, now we get The Clone Wars (which should have been the title of Episode II), which further mines territory that no one cares about any longer except for pre-teens who are seeing the movies for the first time. Really, do we NEED further examination of the time period between episodes II and III? Isn't the fanbase far more interested in what happened to Anakin AFTER he became Darth Vader?
Technically, this is a sequel to the Clone Wars mini-series from Cartoon Network a few years back, rather than a proper re-interpretation of characters who don't need any further interpretation. And really, it's a franchise for kids now, which I think generates a lot of the bitterness and cynicism among the older fans who grew up and watched Lucas take their movies away from them. But is it at least worth watching?
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Tags: Cinema, DVD, DVD Reviews, MMA, Politics, Sting, TV, Vader
Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=1207&item=0
Looks pretty good! Rourke kind of has that Kevin Nash thing going on and it looks like it takes the subject more seriously than the cheesy predecessors do. I still think there's more potential in a Sopranos-style backstage politics thing with the McMahons (or composites thereof) but that's apparently coming to HBO next year too. Now whether this movie ever plays in Saskatoon is another thing entirely.
Tags: Cinema, Politics, The Wrestler
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Sunday, October 19th, 2008
The SmarK DVD Rant for Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Unrated Collector's Edition
"Did you listen to my demo?"
"Yeah, I was going to, but then I decided to keep on living my life instead."
Judd Apatow has of course been on a hot streak as a producer ever since Anchorman debuted in 2004, and particularly with a genre that he has mostly mastered now -- the romantic-comedy as done from the perspective of the male. Despite the occasional commercial misstep (Walk Hard and Drillbit Taylor immediately spring to mind), Judd has been consistently successful because he's able to make the audience connect with the wacky characters who inhabit his movies by actually giving them human qualities instead of cartoon character personalities. Or at the very least, in ADDITION to the cartoon character personalities.
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Tags: Cinema, DVD, DVD Reviews, Edge
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Speaking of movies I haven't watched in a while, I got The Frighteners for free with my HD-DVD player way back when and it's been sitting on my shelf since then. So I figured that I'd get into the Halloween spirit with some scary movies and watched it again for the first time in 10 years. And amazingly, it was pretty great! I remembered it the first time as something of a cross between Ghostbusters and Evil Dead or something, and that the shift in tone halfway through the movie was really off-putting. Well I don't know if the extra 16 minutes in the Director's Cut fixed that or what, but I thought it moved pretty smoothly from the goofy con artist set up into the "Jake Busey trying for the serial killer record" payoff this time around and I had a blast all the way through. Maybe it's because I knew the change in tone was coming this time, I dunno.
Of course, there's still major problems with it. The opening scene makes absolutely no sense in the context of the rest of the movie now (Why would the Reaper be haunting that house?) and overall it feels like he could have very easily made two very good movies out of the concepts presented here instead of smooshing them together into one big idea. However, the awesome Jeffrey Combs is so much fun as the weird FBI agent and the later scenes with Frank shifting in and out of the hospital flashbacks are powerful stuff, even if the comic relief ghosts at the beginning feel like they're from a different movie by the time you get to the end.
Definitely deserving of the "cult classic" label and a clear sign that Peter Jackson was ready for bigger and better things at that point. Check this one out if you're never given it a chance due to the crap reviews it originally got.
Tags: Cinema, DVD, DVD Reviews, HD-DVD, House
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Sometimes I just like to review random stuff that I buy, what can I say?
So let's talk about my DVD collection a bit, shall we? I recently had a chance to reminisce on its beginning like a bad sitcom clip show when I switched from having them on shelves (which were increasing sucking up a good portion of my house) to tossing all the cases and putting them in binders instead. Five 250-disc binders later (and that's just MOVIES, not even TV sets), I realized how out of control my collecting has gotten over the years, and yet I don't see it stopping because new movies I want will always be coming out.
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Tags: Batman, Cinema, DVD, DVD Reviews, House, Lost, MMA, TV
Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
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