Thursday, December 30, 2010

Inception



I've always been a little critical of Christopher Nolan's movies, not because I think they are bad but because I just haven't felt they lived up to the hype they seemed to generate ( especially The Dark Knight ).

Now along comes Nolan's latest movie Inception and again he's declared a genius and the movie is supposed to be one of the most amazing things to come out of Hollywood in years and this time it's almost true, Inception is a pretty good movie, it really is, I was a little disappointed with the end of the movie because it was the obvious thing to do with this type of film but despite that it was well worth watching.

There is one thing that confuses me, I'd heard that Inception was hard to understand and that the plot was confusing, I can only assume most of the people watching the movie weren't paying attention since they characters were constantly explaining what they were doing and why along with the consequences of their actions, if that was truly hard to follow then I suspect the viewers weren't paying any attention to the dialog spoken by the characters, it all seemed pretty straight forward, at least to me.

Inception is a movie I'd highly recommend and if Christopher Nolan manages to keep producing movies of this quality them his work will be something to look forward to for some time.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Robocop: The Series




I only ever saw a few episodes of Robocop: The Series and if you'd asked me before today I would've told you it was pretty bad.

For a little while now I've wanted to watch the series from beginning to end and it seems the DVDs are pretty cheap these days ( at least they are if you order them from Amazon UK ) so I ordered a set, so far I've only watched the pilot movie and the first regular episode ( which was based on a comic mini-series I also have ) and I thought they were actually pretty decent.

This series was made in the 90's for network television so of course it couldn't be as violent as the movies which I seem to recall was the cause for a lot of complaints and the TV series departs from the continuity established in the movie series.

The pilot movie was written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner who wrote the script for the original film and is based on their ideas for Robocop 2 which was abandoned when the studio decided to hire Frank Miller to write the screenplay and I think that's a real shame since with a Hollywood feature budget the pilot would've made a great feature film.

So far I've enjoyed what I've seen but it makes me wonder what one of the cable networks could do with this property if the got the rights to it and the people with the creative vision to do a modern Robocop TV series.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Well we made it.

Well it looks as though we survived Christmas without anyone winding up in hospital - well other than Fiona but she works there, at least this time she wasn't a patient.

Food and drink were consumed and far too much spent on presents but it was a reasonable day.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

A movie marathon.

As a result of buying a new Plasma screen TV a couple of days ago I've watched a whole bunch of movies. oddly enough most of them weren't in high definition.


Gremlins - A Christmas eve tradition, it's the closest my daughter can get to convincing me to watch a Christmas movie ( either that or Die Hard ).

Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement ( pilot movie for the TV series ).

Avatar ( Extended Edition ) - it's a fun movie I guess but I'm still failing to see what all the fuss is about.

Mr Vampire 2 - They don't make them like this anymore and that's a bit of a shame.

Family Guy: It's a Trap - Funny at times and not funny at others but I think three Star Wars spoofs is more than enough.

Lost in La Mancha - This documentary still makes me sad, hopefully Terry Gilliam will get to make his Don Quixote movie one day

John Carpenter's The Thing

Invasion of the Body Snatchers ( 1978 ) - This along with John Carpenters version of The Thing are two remakes of classic movies I really enjoy

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Where does he get all those wonderful toys ?

We bought a new TV on sale yesterday, picked up this little number for a $1000 off the recommended retail price and Panasonic currently have a promotion in Australia  where you can get a five speaker surround sound system and blu-ray player for the cost of postage if you buy one of their 3D TVs, I don't need the surround system so I'm going to give to my daughter when it arrives.

This is the TV if anyone is interested

Monday, December 20, 2010

Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner



Last night I watched the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner and I have to say I was pretty unimpressed.

I always though that roasts were supposed to be funny but this certainly wasn't, you got several comedians (?) and two of Shatner's Star Trek co-stars and the same jokes over and over and over again and they really weren't funny the first time, tasteless yes but not funny, for those who don't know Andy Dick is apparently bi-sexual and George Takai is gay which meant the show was dominated by anal and oral sex jokes which weren't funny.

I'd say this is easily the most disappointing thing I've watched in ages, what ever happened to the good old days when comedy was actually funny ?

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

More dresden Files



I've finished The Dresden Files I thought the first half of the season ( plus Storm Front ) wasn't very good but after that the remaining episodes of the show were solidly entertaining but I guess by then a lot of the audience had stopped watching which is a shame, there was some great stuff at the end especially episode 11. Things That Go Bump  which despite being an obvious bottle show was the pick of the series for me.


Monday, December 13, 2010

Stargate ( 15th Anniversary Edition )



Has it really been 15 years since Stargate was released ?, I have clear memories of going to see the movie at the cinema and it certainly doesn't seem like it was 15 years ago.

I've always enjoyed Stargate despite it's somewhat typical action movie climax letting things down a little at the end and I've owned several different versions of the movie over the years including the disastrous first Blu-ray release of the film, thankfully the 15th Anniversary Edition is an outstanding release in terms of picture and sound quality and easily the best release of the movie I've seen.

I was a little disappointed with the extras on the disc but the quality of the movie makes up for that, this is the release of the movie fans have been waiting for.


Sunday, December 12, 2010

Police Academy 1-7


I've always had a soft spot for the first Police Academy movie and I thought it's first sequel was OK but from then onwards the series suffers a sharp decline in quality, I was recently able to pick up the entire film series box set rather cheap.

Over the last few days I've watched all seven on the movies and my opinion remains pretty much unchanged, the first couple of movies are decent but watching the rest of the series was pretty hard work at times, there have been rumors of a new Police Academy movie floating around for a while now and I'm not sure that's a good thing, if done right ( and the series has always had a lot of potential ) it could be a lot of fun but if it's bad then it'll be just another Police Academy sequel.

10 000 BC




I haven't been overly impressed with any of Roland Emmerich's movies since Stargate, I guess as big dumb popcorn movies they do their job and all of his movies are a visual feast but I find they are very light on story for my taste and the same was mostly true of 10 000 BC but I did like it better than most of his recent output, in fact it reminded me of Stargate at several points during the film.

I picked this up for $5 new in a collectors tin with a film cell so I guess it wasn't well received or at least didn't sell all that well on DVD, ordinarily this is the type of movie I'd catch on TV rather than pay any money for but it was worth the price I paid.

Some of the location shooting done for the movie was rather pretty and it was nice to see some model work instead of just CG used for the special effects which makes a nice change from most recent movies.

Unlike most of Roland Emmerich's movies I could see myself watching 10 000 BC again at some point, it's by no means a great movie but is a decent one.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Non-Event


Well I've finally managed to limp through the first 10 episodes of The Event, I kept hoping the show would get better, there was plenty of running around but honestly nothing much actually happened, I believe the show is on hiatus until next year and based on the half-assed cliffhanger I'll be shocked if many viewers return when the show does, I seriously doubt I'll be one of them.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Aeon Flux



From a production design viewpoint this is an interesting movie but otherwise Aeon Flux was a mess.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Neverwhere



Over the last couple of days I've been watching the BBC television series Neverwhere which was written by Neil Gaiman.

I'd been aware of Neverwhere for some time, I've never read the book but I had heard that Gaiman was interested in producing a film based on this series and I can see why, there were some interesting ideas in Neverwhere but the series was severely hampered by it's low budget and I think a moderately budgeted movie exploring the same ideas could be interesting. - as it stands I think I could only recommend the Neverwhere TV series to die hard Neil Gaiman fans and having never read the book for all I know they might hate it.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Toy Story 3



I'm not sure but maybe I'm a heartless bastard.

Last night I watched Toy Story 3 with my daughter, I'd heard reports that it was an amazing movie that was incredibly touching and would make you cry at the end - well I didn't cry !

I'm not saying that Toy Story 3 is a bad movie, far from it , in fact I enjoyed it but it just wasn't the amazing movie I'd heard it was and by introducing a sympathetic character into the film with no motivation other to play with and love toys they telegraphed the ending to the movie long before it happened so that it wasn't a bittersweet but a logical conclusion to the film.

Toy Story 3 serves as a fine conclusion to a series of films and hopefully Disney / Pixar have the wisdom to end the series here rather than run the franchise into the ground.

I did enjoy Toy Story 3 but I found the movie predictable and to some extent more of the same, the opening sequence was a lot of fun but then the movie settles down to deliver more of the same antics that we saw in the first two films and for my money never quite manages to equal Toy Story 2 in terms of viewing pleasure.

I must mention that the Blu-ray looked and sounded great and I thought the Day and Night animated short was sheer genius.