Burke and Hare

I remember being slightly excited when I heard that John Landis was making a return to feature directing with Burke and Hare and then for some reason I forgot all about the movie so I was genuinely shocked to see it had been released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK, I had to have it and the Blu-ray was ordered.

The movie arrived yesterday and the first chance I got I fired up the home theatre ready for some fun after all it was a John Landis movie featuring an impressive cast - well apart from Isla Fisher but even she wasn't as painful as I usually find her, she was just wooden instead or petrified.

I was only vaguely aware of the real Burke and Hare but I thought there was a lot of potential for dark comedy in this movie and there were flashes of that but for me this movie didn't entirely work and I'm not sure why, maybe it's just that I had unreasonably high expectations for the film based on it's director, I'd only recently re watched An American Werewolf in London and I still consider it to be a fantastic movie.

Now that Landis has returned to film hopefully he will also return to the quality levels he used to achieve, I have to admit it was nice seeing a movie that didn't have to cut to a different angle every 10 seconds, it's nice to actually be able to see what is going on in a movie.

I don't know that I'd recommend buying Burke and Hare but it's certainly worth seeing.

Remakes?.... I've seen a few.

I've never been a real big fan of movie remakes, I'd prefer to see new stories rather than revamp existing ones and it doesn't help that with precious few exceptions the remakes are usually vastly inferior to the original version.

Despite knowing this I tend to eventually see remakes of movies I enjoyed even though I'm fairly certain I'll be disappointed by them and over the last couple of days I've seen the recent remakes of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

The Friday the 13th remake was interesting in that it really wasn't a remake of Friday the 13th but it seemed to be more of a loose remake of Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3 with a very brief recap of the final confrontation between a teenage girl and Pamela Voorhees where Pamela is killed and this is witnessed by her son Jason, the movie moves forward in time and Jason has become the silent killing machine we are all familiar with and a group of campers are quickly dispatched and the viewer is introduced to another group of characters and the it all starts to fall apart.

I actually enjoyed the first 10-15 minutes of the movie but then I was introduced to another group of characters and I didn't really like any of them so I just didn't care when they were killed off, it was all pretty routine movie making and even the deaths were uninspired, overall a disappointing movie made all the more disappointing bu the fact it started out well and then just fell apart in front of your eyes.

The Nightmare on Elm Street remake was just like the pretty blonde that was killed off by Freddy during the movie, easy to look at but lacking any substance, this remake was technically well made, it looked great and some of the transitions between the real and dream worlds were really well done but there was just something lacking from the proceedings, I've certainly seen worse movies but this was just bland.

I did think it was interesting that for the remake they went with a more realistic burn makeup for Freddy, personally I didn't really like it but I thought it was an interesting choice, because of all the makeup involved this is one film where you could get away with keeping the actor from the original version of the movie and I think that might have improved things somewhat, I had no interest in seeing the camp humor of some of the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies but I do think it might have been fun to see Robert Englund return to the role he created.

So there you have it, two more disappointing remakes, I didn't think either of them was as bad as I'd heard but I have no desire to see either movie again.

Assassin's Creed 2

I've FINALLY finished Assassin's Creed 2 on X-Box 360 and I have to say that overall I really enjoyed the game but despite that I have no intention of buying the next game in the series or if I do it will be a second hand copy so the Ubisoft and Microsoft don't get a single cent out of me as I really don't like being ripped off.

I was reading about the game online and apparently there were two sections of the game that couldn't be completed in time for the scheduled release date so they were removed and made available to download later as long as you were prepared to pay for them, this was content that was supposed to be in the game but now that the player has paid for their copy they want you to pay even more for content that you were supposed to have anyway.

What should have happened is that the missing sections of the game should have been completed and been free to download for everyone who purchased the game, this is exactly the sort of crap I've come to expect from Microsoft and it seems Ubisoft are also more interested in money than looking after their paying customers - very disappointing.

Assassin's Creed 2 was a fun game but the shoddy treatment  of the franchise's customer's  means that I will be going out of my way to not financially support it.

Freddy's Nightmares

It has always seemed a little strange to me that the Freddy's Nightmares TV series was never released on DVD, sure it was a cheap and nasty cash in on the popularity of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but I can remember enjoying some of the episodes when I rented them on VHS.

A while back I was reading that 1 volume of the series was released on DVD in the UK but further volumes in the series were cancelled due to extremely poor sales.

Well it took me a little while to find a copy at a price I was willing to pay but I got volume 1 of Freddy's Nightmares in the mail today, the DVD featured three episodes of the show including the pilot No More Mr Nice Guy which told the story of the parents in Springwood and how they killed Freddy in revenge for the murder of their children and despite it's obvious low budget I enjoyed seeing that episode again.

The other two stories on the DVD were It's a Miserable Life which I kind of liked and Killer Instinct which was dull and boring, from what I can recall of the show the episodes varied quite a bit in terms of quality but were always a little better when Freddy took an active part in the plot, something that didn't happen in these episodes.

What truly shocked me about this DVD was the terrible picture quality, in places it was some of the worst image quality I've ever seen on DVD, I saw a bootleg of No More Mr Nice Guy that was of a much higher quality than the official release leaving me to wonder if it was lack of interest in the series that was responsible for the poor sales of the DVD of the terrible quality of it's contents.

I know there are bootleg sets of the entire series available but to be honest I'm shocked that the series didn't get some sort of release to cash in on the Nightmare on Elm Street remake but perhaps Warner Brothers / New Line Cinema felt they couldn't compete with the bootleggers in terms of quality product.

There's a Bad Moon on the Rise.

Over the last couple of days I've seen a couple of werewolf movies on Blu-ray, the first was the classic movie An American Werewolf in London, I love this movie but it's pretty grainy in places especially in the beginning so I was worried that Universal would go mad trying to remove the film grain and compromise the picture quality in the process but thankfully that wasn't the case, I'm sure there will be a group of sad misguided people who will complain about this Blu-ray release of the movie but it looked great for a movie of it's age and the Blu-ray was cheap as well a great purchase if you are a fan of the film.

I also saw the recent remake of The Wolfman, I'm a big fan of the Universal monster movies and the original version of The Wolfman is one of my favorites so I was a little upset when the remake was first announced, then I heard Rick Backer would be doing the werewolf makeup effects ( as he has done in An American Werewolf in London ) and then Benicio Del Toro was cast as Lawrence Talbot and I though this movie suddenly had potential.

If only they had just shot the original script the movie could have been great but the studio had to change and  things and in the process spoiling the movie ( at least for me ), Rick Baker did an excellent job with the werewolf makeup but they did the transformations in CG and they were less effective than the work Baker did in An American Werewolf in London decades earlier.

The remake of The Wolfman isn't a terrible movie but it is a badly missed opportunity to create a classic horror movie.

Jonah Hex

I've seen it and I don't imagine I'll ever feel the need to see it again, despite all the changes they made to the character the Jonah Hex movie wasn't horrible, it was just bland.


What this movie needed was a decent director who knows how to tell a story and make it interesting and a decent script would've been nice as well, I could live with the addition of supernatural and steam punk elements if it was interesting but instead the movie was a wasted opportunity.

Solomon Kane

I'm not overly familiar with the character of Solomon Kane, I've read a few comics and maybe a short story over the years so I was well aware of the basic premise of the character but I guess I couldn't really be called a fan and I certainly didn't have any kind of in depth knowledge of Robert E Howard's character, I do remember being quite amused when the Van Helsing movie starring Hugh Jackman was released as it seemed to me that the character design was somewhat based on Solomon Kane.

A while ago I ordered a whole bunch of dirt cheap Blu-ray discs from Amazon UK and Solomon Kane was one of them, it's not that I was particularly keen to see it but it was really cheap and I though it might be fun.

As it turns out it been one of my better buys recently, I really enjoyed the movie, sure it's ambition exceeded it's budget and that showed the few times they attempted CG special effects which seemed incomplete or rushed but other than that this was a fun movie and I wouldn't mind seeing another one.

I have no real idea how faithful the movie is to the books but I wouldn't mind picking up a Solomon Kane novel or two at some point and if this movie gets a sequel count me in.

Overnight

There was something sadly compelling about Overnight, it's the story of Troy Duffy, the writer / director of The Boondock Saints, Duffy achieved what most people only dream of, he sold his first film script, got to ( eventually ) direct the movie based on that script and also managed to get a record deal for his band and then through sheer ego managed to throw it all away.

I must say that regardless of Duffy's personal failings I did enjoy The Boondock Saints but I haven't as yet seen it's sequel, at it's heart I guess this documentary is a cautionary tale about how wrong things can go when you achieve your dreams.

Be careful what you wish for............

Sold Out: A Threevening With Kevin Smith

I guess it would be fair to say I'm not a Kevin Smith fan, I have really enjoyed a couple of his movies, thought some others were OK and was bored stupid by Dogma.

Something I did enjoy was the previous two volumes of An Evening with Kevin Smith, they were funny and genuinely interesting but this third volume didn't do much for me at all, the behind the scenes tales from Die Hard 4 while mildly amusing in places were pretty much what I would expect from a big budget Hollywood production.

I guess this time around it just felt like Smith is running out of stories to tell which is a little shocking to me since I would think that Hollywood is the kind of place that would be an endless source of amusing stories to tell but apparently I was wrong or at the very least maybe I was expecting too much.

Countdown to Wednesday

Countdown to Wednesday was a fun little documentary, I have no interest in trying to get into comics but I  enjoyed learning a little more about the production process, despite the claims on the cover I don't know that it offers much of the way of valuable advice on how to break into the comics industry, interesting viewing if you are a fan of comics.

To Not So Boldly Go..........

There is a strange but well documented phenomena taking place at the moment when it comes to releasing older movies on Blu-ray, it would seem that after the complaints of an ignorant few ( and sorry if this offends but you are ignorant ) various studios are using excessive digital noise reduction on their films in order to remove film grain from movies often severely compromising picture quality in the process, this is nothing new and it doesn't look as though it's going to stop any time soon.

Unfortunately this has happened to the Star Trek movie franchise, with the exception of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn which for some reason actually received a proper restoration, now I have no idea why only Star Trek II received this treatment but the result were impressive, the movie looked great for a production of it's age and at times looked absolutely stunning, the detail and quality of the model work ( remember when they used models to make movies, those were the days ) was outstanding, this is an example of restoration work done right.

Recently I was ably to buy the Star Trek Movie Trilogy Boxset for cheaper than I could buy Star Trek II alone on Blu-ray so I though I'd get the boxset and see if things were as bad as I'd read.

As I'd mentioned earlier the restoration of Star Trek II was impressive, it was easily the best looking version of the movie I'd ever seen, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, wasn't too bad, there were scenes where the attempt to remove film grain did indeed compromise picture quality but as far as I could tell it was fairly minimal but the places where it did occur had me feeling a little nervous when it came to viewing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, as that was a movie that was fairly grainy in places and sure enough this movie suffered a lot more as a result of attempts at noise reduction, in places towards the end of the movie I'd go so far as to say the result was an image quality in certain scenes that was of a lower quality than the original DVD release.

I've seen some people say the movies are unwatchable and that is simply not the case but it is very disappointing and at times jarring to go from high quality visuals to sub-standard picture quality which often didn't remove the apparently offending film grain anyway.

The Star Trek II Blu-ray is well worth purchasing but I think I'd only bother with any of the other Trek films on Blu-ray if the were extremely cheap of if the powers that be realised the error of their way and commissioned the proper restoration the movies deserved in the first place.