Well, as promised, I've just finished watching Ghostbusters II. Okay, it's nowhere near as good as the first one, but i'd truly forgotten just how funny it is.
Again, the "guys", i.e. Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, are
in fine form, with some excellent humour injected by the supplementary cast, i.e.
Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts. Peter MacNicol (a.k.a. "him out of Ally McBeal") also makes an appearance as the rather bizarre Dr. Janosz Poha. The supreme casting of the film, though, must go to Wilhelm Von Homburg, a 6' 3" german boxer / actor (who, unfortunately, died in 2004) as Vigo the Carpathian, 15th century ruler of "Carpathia", a fictional place assumed to be in the Carpathian Mountains.
In some ways, it feels more of a Bill Murray vehicle than anything, but
that doesn't detract from the enjoyment. If you suspend your disbelief, and try and control the urge to vomit at the "far too easy to defeat the bad guy" finale, for the whole 104 minutes, then it's a fine bit of 80s nostalgia.
I suppose the whole "15th century tyrant from Carpathia" attracts the interest, to me, because of my interest in the whole vampire mythos. Vlad Tepes (a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler), Prince of Wallachia (now part of Romania), was, of course, one of the sources of the Dracula story.
Which led me thinking about bad guys in general. I'd love to see some "celebrity battles". We've already had Aliens vs. Predator (okay, a bit of a bobbins film, but one up to Predator (sort of)) and Freddie Vs. Jason (very tongue-in-cheek funny, and one up to Jason (sort of)), but what about
some classics we'd like to see? I'm therefore running a bit of a fun idea about
"bad guy battles".
Here are my suggestions with an opinionated probable outcome :
-> Gozer vs. Vigo
Gozer wins by a mile (Sumerian god vs. Carpathian magician, it's got to be one to Gozer here...)
-> Darth Vader vs. Magneto
Difficult one to call this, but it'd go for Vader. True, Magneto could affect the
machinery of Vader, but the force could enable vader to affect magneto even with that silly "i'll protect the wearer from psychic attack" hat.
-> The ghost girl (Samara) from The Ring vs. The ghost woman and boy (Kayako and Toshio) from The Grudge
You've got to go with Kayako and Toshio on this one, it's simply 2 to 1. Also, Samara has this unswerving ability to get trapped in wells all the time, which (I'm sorry to say) is simply not what a cool, rock hard ghost should let happen. I also get the impression that Samara simply hasn't made it into the 21st century yet, still relying on VHS to get her message across, come on Samara, what's wrong with DVD, or even better, a good MPEG that can be downloaded via P2P???
Any more "celebrity bad-guy scrap" ideas?
Monday, September 25, 2006
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Die Geisterjager
People who either a) know me, or b) read this blog will know that I like cult tv and movies. On that front, have decided to re-watch some of the older films in my collection that, unfortunately, tend to get forgotten about in lieu of the more recent blockbusters.
Over the last few days, I've re-watched the Indiana Jones trilogy and the phenomenally good Ghostbusters, which i've just finished watching. Okay, by todays standards, some of the effects are a little dated, but it's still a cracking film. I've always been a big fan of Bill Murray, some of his films rate highly in most "funniest films"-type surveys, such as Groundhog Day (although, i'm not even going to mention Charlie's Angels).
It's probably Ghostbusters II tomorrow night, followed by (in no particular order), Blues Brothers and Time Bandits.
Wish me luck.
Over the last few days, I've re-watched the Indiana Jones trilogy and the phenomenally good Ghostbusters, which i've just finished watching. Okay, by todays standards, some of the effects are a little dated, but it's still a cracking film. I've always been a big fan of Bill Murray, some of his films rate highly in most "funniest films"-type surveys, such as Groundhog Day (although, i'm not even going to mention Charlie's Angels).
It's probably Ghostbusters II tomorrow night, followed by (in no particular order), Blues Brothers and Time Bandits.
Wish me luck.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Silent Hill
Just watched the movie adaptation of Silent Hill, a Konami / Team Silent computer game, available on platforms, such as PC, Playstation and XBox.
It stars Radha Mitchell (the female lead in one of my favourite films, Pitch Black) and Sean Bean, and was directed by Christophe Gans.
The story concerns a family, who's adopted daughter sleepwalks and has nightmares of a place called Silent Hill. To cut a long story short, the daughter and mother end up (via a car accident) in the small town in West Virginia, decimated by coal fires thirty years prior, and long since evacuated. Although, of course, no such town exists in reality, in fact, most of the movie was filmed in Canada (Ontario, to be precise). The mother (and a female cop who also finds herself in the town) then heads out to rescue her the daughter from a bunch of witch-burning puritans, led by a fanatical leader, Christabella (wonderfully played by Alice Krige, she of star trek / borg queen fame).
To be honest, the movie (as is unfortunately the case with computer game adaptations) is far from the best film I've ever seen, but it's certainly not the worst. The effects (mostly physical effects, rather than CGI) are good, even very good in places, some of the scenes are quite eerie, whilst the acting from most of the cast certainly doesn't do them any injustice. It's let down, I suppose, by being a bit, how can I put it?, daft. Even the suspension of disbelief, in places, isn't enough to overcome certain problems, not least of which is believing how a small town police department would be able to keep the "truth" about the events leading up to the major fire from either the authorities and / or the media.
The ending (spoiler alert) lends itself to the "film with a twist ending" genre, in the same style Sixth Sense, or The Others, with all of the town being dead, stuck in a "limbo" of sorts, even the girl, mother and cop, although you don't realise this until the end when the two return "home".
All in all, (as per usual), it's worth the rental fee, and certainly won't be the worst movie you'll see this year.
It stars Radha Mitchell (the female lead in one of my favourite films, Pitch Black) and Sean Bean, and was directed by Christophe Gans.
The story concerns a family, who's adopted daughter sleepwalks and has nightmares of a place called Silent Hill. To cut a long story short, the daughter and mother end up (via a car accident) in the small town in West Virginia, decimated by coal fires thirty years prior, and long since evacuated. Although, of course, no such town exists in reality, in fact, most of the movie was filmed in Canada (Ontario, to be precise). The mother (and a female cop who also finds herself in the town) then heads out to rescue her the daughter from a bunch of witch-burning puritans, led by a fanatical leader, Christabella (wonderfully played by Alice Krige, she of star trek / borg queen fame).
To be honest, the movie (as is unfortunately the case with computer game adaptations) is far from the best film I've ever seen, but it's certainly not the worst. The effects (mostly physical effects, rather than CGI) are good, even very good in places, some of the scenes are quite eerie, whilst the acting from most of the cast certainly doesn't do them any injustice. It's let down, I suppose, by being a bit, how can I put it?, daft. Even the suspension of disbelief, in places, isn't enough to overcome certain problems, not least of which is believing how a small town police department would be able to keep the "truth" about the events leading up to the major fire from either the authorities and / or the media.
The ending (spoiler alert) lends itself to the "film with a twist ending" genre, in the same style Sixth Sense, or The Others, with all of the town being dead, stuck in a "limbo" of sorts, even the girl, mother and cop, although you don't realise this until the end when the two return "home".
All in all, (as per usual), it's worth the rental fee, and certainly won't be the worst movie you'll see this year.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Time Travel
Films concerning time travel is my second favourite film genre, the first (as people who know me will tell you) is the whole vampire / paranormal mythos. Ever since Back to the future was released in 1985, at the ripe old age of 12, time travel has been an absolute fave. In a past incarnation, i.e. at university ('92 - '96), I was heavily involved in the Quantum Leap phenomenon, authoring an email mailing list, and attending various different UK and US conventions, where I met many interesting people! ;-) More modern films like Donnie Darko and the wonderful Primer add a much deeper, and far cleverer, style of writing to the genre as well.
However, the main problem with most of these programmes / films, are the HUGE holes, which are obviously unintentional, but through which you can put a very large critical eye. This, I suppose, is inevitable with this subject, since the whole concept of paradoxes makes any logically sound idea very difficult indeed (if, indeed, you can even apply logic to such a situation!). Take a few situations in Back to the Future, why did George McFly (at the end of the film) not think "Hang on! Why does my youngest child look identical to a guy who helped me at school?", indeed, leading to the conclusion, "Is it my youngest child?" ;-) What about the scene with playing the guitar on stage, both Marty's elder brother and sister both have disappeared (and presumably don't therefore exist), how does he know them? Does time travel / interference really work this way? Who knows, but these are the types of question which lead you to have to suspend your disbelief with a lot of these films, otherwise you'll end up analysing the whole thing and not (as is presumably the directors vision) to enjoy the film.
It was in this light that I watched A Sound of Thunder, a CGI-laden movie adaptation of one of Ray Bradbury's short stories of the same name from 1952. Directed by Peter Hyams (the same director of the other time travel film (and Van Damme vehicle) Timecop, and starring Edward Burns, it features a future where Time Travel is invented and used to allow very rich people to travel back in time and participate in a carefully controlled safari hunt of an already doomed Allosaurus. So as not to alter the future the Allosaurus was chosen to be killed and left in a swamp which it originally died in. This event was then replayed many times for many different people. Of course, things go wrong in one of the "time jumps", one of the paying participants accidentally steps on a butterfly (presumably an allusion to the butterfly effect), and ends up seriously affecting evolution.
Now, with a critical eye, the CG effects, whilst averagely good, aren't very well tied in with the real actors, so in certain situations, it's very obvious that the "green screen" is used, and the computer used to control the jumps, TAMI (Time Alteration Mainframe Interface), is, to be honest, mostly annoying, smacking of Ziggy from Quantum Leap, but not nearly as well written. Another thing that immediately springs to mind is why if it's exactly the same period in history every time, do the people not meet themselves every jump? It's glossed over very neatly (i.e. completely), or indeed why the need to "slingshot" 65 million years is necessary to fix the damage, when a simple 72-hours "jump" to tell the team not to go would presumably be a lot easier?
The ending (spoiler alert) of managing to retain a video of the whole event, even though it technically never happened since they changed time, is a bit of a stretch of plausibility as well.
On a positive note, the film is quite enjoyable. The concept is very interesting, Ray Bradbury's genius for a good story (even from the 50's) is the film's saving point. Hammering home the butterfly effect from chaos theory (years before the concept was common) sets the mind racing about what super strict controls would have to be in place if time travel ever was invented in "reality", a person from the future even existing, never mind interacting, in the past would introduce bacteria / cells (cold viruses to name but one) from themselves which could seriously affect the mechanisms of evolution of the planet.
I admit, it's ended very quickly, and overly neatly. Is it worth the rental fee? Yeah, I think so. Just.
However, the main problem with most of these programmes / films, are the HUGE holes, which are obviously unintentional, but through which you can put a very large critical eye. This, I suppose, is inevitable with this subject, since the whole concept of paradoxes makes any logically sound idea very difficult indeed (if, indeed, you can even apply logic to such a situation!). Take a few situations in Back to the Future, why did George McFly (at the end of the film) not think "Hang on! Why does my youngest child look identical to a guy who helped me at school?", indeed, leading to the conclusion, "Is it my youngest child?" ;-) What about the scene with playing the guitar on stage, both Marty's elder brother and sister both have disappeared (and presumably don't therefore exist), how does he know them? Does time travel / interference really work this way? Who knows, but these are the types of question which lead you to have to suspend your disbelief with a lot of these films, otherwise you'll end up analysing the whole thing and not (as is presumably the directors vision) to enjoy the film.
It was in this light that I watched A Sound of Thunder, a CGI-laden movie adaptation of one of Ray Bradbury's short stories of the same name from 1952. Directed by Peter Hyams (the same director of the other time travel film (and Van Damme vehicle) Timecop, and starring Edward Burns, it features a future where Time Travel is invented and used to allow very rich people to travel back in time and participate in a carefully controlled safari hunt of an already doomed Allosaurus. So as not to alter the future the Allosaurus was chosen to be killed and left in a swamp which it originally died in. This event was then replayed many times for many different people. Of course, things go wrong in one of the "time jumps", one of the paying participants accidentally steps on a butterfly (presumably an allusion to the butterfly effect), and ends up seriously affecting evolution.
Now, with a critical eye, the CG effects, whilst averagely good, aren't very well tied in with the real actors, so in certain situations, it's very obvious that the "green screen" is used, and the computer used to control the jumps, TAMI (Time Alteration Mainframe Interface), is, to be honest, mostly annoying, smacking of Ziggy from Quantum Leap, but not nearly as well written. Another thing that immediately springs to mind is why if it's exactly the same period in history every time, do the people not meet themselves every jump? It's glossed over very neatly (i.e. completely), or indeed why the need to "slingshot" 65 million years is necessary to fix the damage, when a simple 72-hours "jump" to tell the team not to go would presumably be a lot easier?
The ending (spoiler alert) of managing to retain a video of the whole event, even though it technically never happened since they changed time, is a bit of a stretch of plausibility as well.
On a positive note, the film is quite enjoyable. The concept is very interesting, Ray Bradbury's genius for a good story (even from the 50's) is the film's saving point. Hammering home the butterfly effect from chaos theory (years before the concept was common) sets the mind racing about what super strict controls would have to be in place if time travel ever was invented in "reality", a person from the future even existing, never mind interacting, in the past would introduce bacteria / cells (cold viruses to name but one) from themselves which could seriously affect the mechanisms of evolution of the planet.
I admit, it's ended very quickly, and overly neatly. Is it worth the rental fee? Yeah, I think so. Just.
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