Zed of Zardoz

You try to avert your eyes…but you cannot!  The damage this picture has wrought on your eyes will haunt you forever.  Witness Sean Connery as Zed in the movie Zardoz!

Simple Minds

People whose YM status message always reflects the current summer blockbuster du jour really annoy me.

Urduja movie review

I’ve refrained from writing movie reviews for a while, but after watching Urduja, I felt compelled to write this.  Urduja was…disappointing.  It epitomizes everything that I hate about Filipino cinema, all of the overacting and the bad jokes and actors who think they can sing.  The story is simple enough and easy to understand, but the dialogue sent shivers down my spine, or caused uproarious laughter at all the wrong times. The jumping to and fro between mangled english and tagalog also annoyed the hell out of me.  I can safely say that Urduja is one of the worst movies I’ve watched in a long time.

However, the animation itself is not bad.  I’ve been studying animation and composition in movies lately, and it was nice to see that these guys know their stuff, apart from the random slow mo effect or levitation.  Some of the animation sequences were very fluid, especially those involving the snake and the pirate chase scene.  The character design needed some help though; you know you’re in trouble when you don’t find the animal characters cute.

Unfortunately the sound design also lets the movie down.  You know how in those chinovelas and koreanovelas where the dubbing of the voices overpowers the background music?  That’s how it sounded.  Hell, the movie could have done with better direction, and the truth is if they had a bigger budget and more time, I’m sure this would have been a much better film.

But it’s not.

I do encourage you all to see it though.  I really hope it makes money, because that’s the only way these folks can get another project and make it better.  I’d encourage everyone to see it, and look at it critically.  Don’t praise it just because it’s Filipino, just because everyone worked so hard to make it.  No animated film is ever created with out the sweat and tears of hundreds of animators.  If other animated films don’t get a free pass, neither should Urduja, because if we never hold it up to the standards of others we’ll wallow in Philippine mediocrity forever.

Jumper is barely tolerable

I was one of those people who believed that Hayden Christensen’s awful acting in the newer Star Wars trilogy was due to George Lucas’ awful directing and hammy writing. I was only half right. Christensen proved all his critics right with this movie, and joins fellow actor Keanu Reeves in the “monotones only action heroes” club. He’s awful, just plain awful. He can’t even narrate well. There is no inflection in his voice and so you’re never sure whether he’s mad, sad, horny or angry, and your only clue is the shape his mouth makes. Also, Samuel L. Jackson looks like Sisqo.

I imagine the book must have been much better, but the plot just flits along too conveniently for my taste. Christensen’s apartment is full of pictures. When Sisqo Samuel L attacks him, a fight ensues and he barely escapes with his life. While looking amongst the rubble and licking his wounds, Samuel L find a few photos, chances upon a random one of a girl in a bowling alley and announces “well, who’s THIS?”. Cut to scene of Christensen going back to his hometown to hook up with said girl, whom he had a crush on since he was 5. Am I scaring you yet? Stay away from this movie. The special effects aren’t that great, and certainly not worth the price of entry. Do yourselves a favor and watch Juno or There will be blood. If I had friends with taste that’s what we would’ve watched tonight.

Movie Quote of the day : Conan the Barbarian

 

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.

I could say this all day in an Ahnuld accent and never get tired of it.

Knocked Up

Yeah I know it’s been out a while, but I only got to watch it over the weekend in bohol, thanks to my cracked and bruised but still managing to survive Creative Zen. The short of it is that I loved it. Since this movie is made by the same guys who did “The 40 year old virgin”, I was almost positive that I’d be laughing my ass off at it, but I’d say this was a better movie if only because it just felt more real. Nothing in it felt contrived, and the lessons learned weren’t passed along by some bartender giving sage advice. This, along with “The Breakup” is probably one of the most accurate portrayals of real life relationships that you can get when watching movies.

Also, this movie proves that men are animals, and there’s no way any of us can defend it. I’m looking at you, manblog.

Eastern Promises is a killer

It’s sort of a shame that Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg’s follow up to the well acclaimed A History of Violence, had such a limited run locally.  It lasted all of one week before they pulled it out, and I only got to watch it because we live on the fringe of the capital, which means our malls sometimes get movies later than usual.  Viggo Mortensen is a driver who works for the Russian mob in London, where Emma Watson ends up with a 14 year old girl giving birth and dying on her watch in the hospital.  It’s the closest you’ll ever get to a side of the world that you never really want to see, a gritty picture of the English underworld that’s far less amusing than guy ritchie’s movies would have you believe it to be.

If you live in the boondocks like me, you have one more day to check it out in the theater, or else you’ll probably just download it.  On a side note, is it just me or do both these movies have really awful posters?

Rest in peace (however belatedly) Ulrich Muhe

I was able to catch the The Lives of Others in the most recent cine europa film festival and found it to be one of the best movies I’ve watched all year. It’s tragic and sort of pathetic that I’ve only just found out that Ulrich Muhe, who plays the central role of a Stasi agent spying on a suspected activist playwright in the movie, died of stomach cancer last July. I don’t often do this, but when the filmspotting crew mentioned offhandedly that Mr.Muhe had died I was greatly saddened and felt moved to write a little something in his memory.

Thank you sir, for a movie that truly moved me, and a role that is certain to captivate audiences for generations to come.

Deathproof is ok too

Finally got to see the second half of the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse two parter, Deathproof.  This one’s the Tarantino movie, and while I don’t think I managed to blog about the Rodriguez helmed Planet Terror, I’ll preface this mini review with the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed Planet Terror.

I’d heard that Deathproof was by far the superior movie, so I entered the theater fully expecting to enjoy myself.  I almost didn’t.  The first quarter of the movie was pure cinematic masturbation on Tarantino’s part, and I just couldn’t get into it.  I suppose it was meant to be an intro into the “stuntman mike” character, but it just played on WAY too long.  I think the idea was that the first part of the movie was an entirely different story altogether, as evidenced by the sudden change of the title in the first few seconds of the movie, which lends itself entirely to the “grindhouse” aspect of the film, but nevertheless it just didn’t work for me.

The latter part of the movie though, was pure, unadulterated badassery, and was well worth the price of entry. In the end I’d say that I enjoyed Planet Terror much better, if only because I laughed a hell of a lot more than in deathproof.

The Golden Compass is OK

Not spectacular mind you, but good enough to merit dropping some coin to catch it in a theater. Unfortunately, it has some editing deficiencies that will leave most moviegoers a little confused about what’s going on, as there are numerous events that just “happen” out of the blue.

For example in one scene (not really a huge spoiler, don’t worry) a central character is kidnapped while on an expedition. After 45 minutes of shit happening, we are then quite matter of factly informed that he has since bribed his kidnappers and found/built a laboratory during all the time we were wondering had forgotten all about him.

Peter Jackson (and by extension the screenwriters of the LOTR movies)’s brilliance was in distilling everything that made the Trilogy awesome (ie the epic battles) and foregoing all the singing Tom Mombadil nonsense. They also set things up much better in the beginning, with the narration of the how the one ring came to be, Bilbo’s finding of the ring, etc. Of course Philip Pullman’s series might just be that more complex and difficult convert into a 2 hour movie, but an additional 15 minutes of narration would have helped to explain a lot of things.

Oh and I don’t understand the brouhaha over this being a rant against religion. I have been informed by Aissa that this is more apparent in the books, but anyone who watches this movie and comes to the conclusion that it’s anti-christian is a lunatic. It’s quite obviously anti-authority, but that authority could be the nazis, communists, or even the Marcos regime. A bit of advice for hardcore christians: Just because you treat the good book as fact, doesn’t mean you should take other people’s fiction just as seriously.