#technically though he is referred to as forgettable a few times

[oceanwithouthermoon]

guys, please never forget that saiki ISNT seen as just an average guy, hes seen as the meek, quiet, unapproachable nerdy looking boy who nobody can tell what hes thinking..

[flightlessribbons]

Well now that I've finished all the short character blurbs (with the exception of Paldea's crew) I just wanted to make a rambling little post about some of my reasons for certain headcanons in this AU. There's a lot of nonsense that I imagined and reached for as I played through the games!

- Starting off strong with a few about one of my favorite families with the BYG cousins first: why I made Elio, Gloria, Hilda, and Nate all related. It's all because of the player characters mom designs for each of them- especially the Alolan mom having such similar hair to Hilda and the Unovan mom- so I thought it would be fun to have them interconnect!

- Touya and Leaf being related to Bill- Bill canonically has a lot of siblings, so fitting Leaf into his family as his youngest sister was easy. And he has a sister in Fuchsia city with her son in game, so I liked to think that the little boy was Touya who eventually moved to Unova. Bonus points for being able to draw them all with the same bangs as Bill.

- Kris and Solana from pokemon rangers being related- purely aesthetic reasons and very self indulgent. The Ranger games are very dear to my heart and I wanna get around to them sometime!

- Hilda and Nate being forgettable: Hilda bc she's absent in the sequel so I felt like she would be more like an important presence with no real face to the name, and for Nate I feel like he's not as remembered for BW2 in comparison to Rosa (while that just may be my perception of it) so I gave him that same energy as well.

- Kris is in a similar, but different, predicament as them. Kris as a character only appeared in one game before Masters, so by the initial time of the Invitation Comics, she's sort of used to being overshadowed or forgotten in both her research and champ title. She's also been my FAVORITE PROTAG since I was a REALLY young kid, and her and Hilda are still tied for first in my favs!! So I really wanted to give her a personal arc about making her own name for herself.

- Jana's entire existence: I played pokemon Moon first, and when I played Ultra Moon after, the Selene from Moon, and the Selene from UM acted out like different characters in my head, so I made Jana to embody some of those points I imagined for that Moon protag.

- Making Calem a contest coordinator is the randomest HC that may not fit at first with his character, but I imagine there being different types of contests. Ones that are flashier or musical ones that Shauna might participate in (EDIT: changing Calem's side hobbies to fencing in lieu of the contest participation)

- Another reason why I refer to Shauna as an idol as she does different kinds of shows professionally, and Calem as just a coordinator, is because he does limited shows for fun.

- Selene is based on the little girl in the house of Professor Rowan's assistant in game, who talks about pokemon trivia when talked to. I wanted to tie the faller story components to her personally, and an encounter with the distortion world was the perfect opportunity! SM and USUM was the first time I wrote my headcanons down when playing, so technically it's the first organized piece of the POKEVERSE I made back in 2016-17 👍

- It's been a default to ship the player characters together, and will most likely continue being the case- save for one brain rot exception to that rule: postwickshipping. Hop and Gloria were the first and only ship I've deviated from that just because of their interactions through the game. Florian x Juliana brings me back to the protag ships though, and I have some plans for how the Paldea timeline plays out differently in this world!

- The whole Interpol relation to Hilda's family comes solely from Looker's appearance in the BW postgame. I'll probably make a whole post about how Hilda's mom and dad are relevant in other things in Unova, so I won't talk about it too much here.

- Making Johanna be Akari: I wanted to take a present day character to be Akari that wasn't Dawn. No one else fit the bill other than Johanna, and I really enjoyed making it work in this AU!

That's all the ones I could think of today. If you did go through these, thanks for reading! This POKEVERSE is just a culmination of self indulgence of how I pictured the games as I played, and I do plan on replaying through the games to reconstruct what I keep and change through the stories! Until next post 👍

[dwtsfun]

Dancing with the Stars Season 30 PREMIERE!!!

Hey everyone. Welcome back! We are here for the monumental 30th season of DWTS. Can you believe it? It's wild. Tyra is back as host and she was much better than she had ever been last season. Len and Derek are both at the judges' table with Bruno and Carrie Ann. And I actually liked what Tyra had on. I also thought everyone but one person did a good job. Okay, so now, let's move onto the recap/ranking thing.

As we know, when we have this many people, I tend to rank the couples instead of trying to format an entire recap. The same will be true for this season.

1. Kenya and Brandon- Okay so let me get this out of the way. I have been watching Kenya on RHOA for about a decade and I do not like her character on that show at all. I'm gonna try my best to separate her character on there from how she is on here (which I hear is how she is in real life). I just wanna get that out the way so I don't have to deal with any claims of bias. That being said, this dance really stuck with me more than any other dance from Monday night. I think watching just how natural she was, seeing how much musicality she has and Brandon's choreo really blew me away. I was not expecting her to be that good. Her lines were gorgeous and I felt her hold was actually mostly good. She is one of two women that I felt really gave enough to their performance without going overboard. I'm very excited for these two for the weeks to come.

2. Matt and Lindsay- Another shocker for me! I saw that viral clip of Matt dancing on The Bachelor last year and I got so much second hand embarrassment from it that I did not have any hopes for Matt and rhythm. But listen. Matt shocked me. Lindsay actually got something out of him. So much so that I maybe feel like he's actually got potential to be good. He's gotta loosen up his hips and get that footwork together, but I'm actually excited for these two as well. And I was not expecting that.

3. Amanda and Alan- I wasn't shocked to see what these two did on the dancefloor as Amanda is a dancer and Alan has worked with a big dance ringer before (Heather). So I knew that they were going to be good. And they delivered on that end for sure. I thought her attention to detail was great (almost too good cuz it caused her neck to get wonky). The thing that made me really fall for them is that they are really fun together. Amanda also dances through the floor and not on top of it. So I'm happy that we will have one major ringer that really brings it this season.

4. Mike "The Miz" and Witney- These top 4 are here because they all surprised me the most of everyone and they were the most enjoyable. I think Mike (or The Miz, not sure how I'm gonna refer to him just yet) was shockingly good. Like good to the point that he could be a legit contender if he just works a little more on his technique and reigning in the energy. He's very charismatic. He's got the right attitude. And Witney seems to be working well with him. Actually, I'm seeing little bits of her partnership with Chris Mazdzer coming through. I'm liking what I'm seeing from these two and I hope they improve like I think they will.

5. Jojo and Jenna- So I really liked Jojo a lot more than I thought I would. I thought I would roll my eyes every few seconds, but I wasn't. And she made me actually enjoy Jenna as well? Hell is freezing over right now lol. Anyway, I thought this was a great dance. I don't think it was the best of the night score wise, but it was up there. Once Jojo reigns in all that energy, she's going to be great. That was her biggest issue for me.

6. Suni and Sasha- I really wish I could've put these two higher. But I just couldn't justify it. Suni might be the best technician on the cast this season (like most gymnasts have been). Everything move was excellence. Her transitions between each move was also really nice as well. I don't notice that too often but I noticed it with her and I really appreciated that. My issue is that she's not really performing right now. She's in her head and I just want Sasha to figure that piece out sooner rather than later. I want her to stick around and that's gonna be her Achilles heel.

7. TIE Jimmie/Emma and Christine/Pasha- I feel bad for everyone that got a tango on Monday. It's a terrible week 1 dance. I also hate that these two both got pop songs from 2007 to dance to. Pop songs that should not be anywhere near a tango. It just made for two really weird routines. That being said, both were able to show some strengths that will bode well for them in the coming weeks. Jimmie has a really solid frame and good posture. Christine has a very flexible back. I'm a little more worried for Christine than I am for Jimmie as far as fan support is concerned, but I think she'll be good this week.

9. Mel C and Gleb- I hate having to put Mel all the way down at 9th place. I love her and while I think she had some of the best technique of the night, I wanted more from her and I felt like she had more to offer. I can only blame Gleb's choreo for that. While it was fine, it just didn't make a statement to me. It fell flat. He's gotta step it up because Mel has what it takes to make it to the end. And I actually would want to see her there. But in this season, where everyone is at least good (well everyone will be after our first elimination), you have to stand out with the choreography.

10. Iman and Daniella- First of all I want to say that this dance was underscored. Iman needs to work on his feet for sure. That being said, he's got great control of his limbs, he's got great musicality and he can just legit dance. I think this could've been 1 or 2 points higher. I hope he can be a basketball player that makes it far. Also, I want to say that the tall and long men this season have great control of their limbs and are not afraid to move true to their size. That's really nice to see.

11. Cody and Cheryl- I definitely expected these two to perform a lot better than they did on Monday. I'll chalk that up to first night nerves and having a difficult week 1 dance. When Cody let loose, you could tell that he is a really good dancer. Even some of the more technical things showed off his experience. I fully expect them to come back next week with guns blazing. The one pro whose knowledge of the show rivals Derek's, is Cheryl. I think she knows that they may not be in the safest spot right now and that that needs to change, stat.

12. Melora and Artem- I thought this dance was good, but forgettable amongst a sea of other good to great dances. There wasn't anything that Artem or Melora did wrong. It's just that type of season. Melora is definitely a performer. And she's got some of the basics down really nicely. She needs to find her balance though. She lost it quite a few times during that tango.

13. Brian and Sharna- Okay, this is low. But it is not indicative about how I feel about them as a (dance) couple or how I feel about his dancing. I thought he did a good job. I think they're great together. I just didn't care for this foxtrot. And that's okay. They are only going to go up from here and I can't imagine them leaving anytime soon.

14. Olivia and Val- Olivia was good as well. However, she is kinda stiff. I also didn't really like Val's choreo. I don't have much else to say here. She didn't really make too big of an impact imo. I also hated the outfit that production put her in. It was so unflattering and looked like they threw a pair of curtains on her body.

15. Martin and Britt- This was the one bad performance of the night. And it was bad. I had heard rumblings of him not rehearsing very much and that was so obvious in that paso. I think it was smart for Britt to throw that talking part in at the beginning to minimize any dancing he had to do. But yeah, it was bad. I hate that I have to say this because I love Britt, but these two should go next week. I just can't take anymore weeks of this dancing when everyone else is leaps and bounds better already.

So that's it. Sorry I'm so late. I was going to get this up yesterday but I had a terrible day and said "fuck it" to work, school and this blog. Let me know what you all thought about the show and I will talk to you all soon!

[iamcinema]

IAC Reviews #011: Bloodstream (1985)

Let’s go back a few years close to when I made this blog, roughly 2013 or 2014.

Around this point, I was looking for some unique, weird, and obscure titles to share for the horror forums I was apart of and to make notes of to eventually add to my collection. If I was able to find names that had little to no available information on them, then I knew I was onto something special. This would often bring me to sites like TwistedAnger that sold copies and transfers of horror, exploitation, and mondo films to fill me in on elusive material that were often times obscure and never got an official release. This little search would bring me to find Bloodstream, and with the interesting cover art, I knew I had to find more about it - but much to my dismay, there was very little to be had or known about it.

Bloodstream is 1985 low-budget slasher film directed by Michael J. Murphy, whom A Slash Above has dubbed the Ted V. Mikels of the UK, which is quite the comparison. Given that there was very little to go off of with this beyond the site’s review, I was left to scratch my head a bit as to whether or not I’d be able to find the film in its entirety beyond a few clips, which only made me hungerier for more after reading the synopsis.

Our story centers on Alistair Bailey, an up and coming filmmaker who is suddenly fired from a project he’s working on by a sleazy VHS distributor named William King. Instead of the film being scraped like he thought, he later finds out that King plans on distributing the film globally and it becomes a critical hit with the home video market. Rightfully pissed by this, Bailey seeks revenge and conspires to go on a killing spree with vengeful employee in a similar manner as the deaths in his movie - only this time, the effects will be real.

This got me pretty excited to check this out, and once the film got added to Youtube a few years ago, I was quick to jump at this. As a full disclosure, I did see and review this for UTA several years ago, but the details of my experience are on the hazy side. So, I won’t count this as a retrospective review this time around, but I’ll reflect on what I can if it’s as good or bad as I remember it being all those years ago.

Bloodstream in One Gif:

So, let’s dip our toes into this one.

________________________________________

But first, a little backstory about the film and what I was able to find. Going off the premise and opening alone, this one has a certain kind of tone to it, dare I say very pointed and self-aware. According to Murphy, the film was his response to distribution companies and presumably bad business experiences he’s had. Unfortunately, the film failed to be picked up for distribution before falling into total obscurity. I’ll return to this again towards the end to help wrap things up. The budget is also very low as one could expect; roughly £400 in 1985, or £1,053.02 in February 2020 (I’m not to sure what that comes out to in USD or CAD). Given the limited budget, I’m a bit surprised with what they were able to accomplish, and for that I’ll give it that much.

As far as our characters go, they were quite forgettable and the first time around I couldn’t remember who was who or what purpose they served. So, coming back into things with a fresh slate was helpful. Aside from our two focuses being Alistair and William, we have a couple others that will become topics of interest.

We have Judy, an actress brought into the flock by William whom he’s having an affair with to help advance her career. We also have Greg, a former pornstar who was brought in like Judy was to work under William. There’s also the matter of William’s family; his brother Simon, a misogynistic sleaze who has a thing for power while also being held under financial ransom by William at the company, his wife Sally, and his daughter Lisa - both of which whose dreams of being in the industry are held under William. All of this becomes important later on, which is why I brought this up. There’s also another focal character that ties this all together, that being Nikki, William’s secretary who acts as a mole and accomplice to helping Alistair get his revenge by adding fuel to the fire with her own hidden motives and intentions.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

________________________________________

As far as the story goes, it’s not all that bad, and in a way it reminds me of some tellings of Phantom of the Opera where our masked antihero seeks to get revenge on the Opera house owners who did him wrong by stealing credit for his work after being presumed dead. In a simialr fashion as the Phantom, there’s a lot of anger and malice behind the premeditated violence, and each of the murders was dragged out with a purpose in mind to send a message.

The plot moves along fast, as we’re immedately dropped into the action from the jump and the revenge scheme starts to take off within the 30 minute mark in a 73-minute film. However, it can feel like a log jam a bit with things being slowed down or padded out in the form of Alistair watching either his own movies or those from William’s distribution company. The quality of those films is pretty damn atrocious, playing on various horror film tropes and references like vampires, cannibalism, the occult, body horror, zombies, and Exorcist II: The Heretic - yeah, that happens. While it’s quite clear why these scenes are here in the first place, the run time could be shaved down to at least 65 minutes of these weren’t here.

From a technical standpoint, it’s not all that great and is overall uninteresting. The lighting is fairly poor, though I’ve seen worse. Some shots are overlit and others don’t seem to have enough, and while it doesn’t make it hard to see what’s going on, it adds to the overall cheapness. Speaking of which, the sets themselves aren’t all that remarkable either and it shows that they did their best to work with whatever they had with the budget since some of the locations feel like sound stages with black walls if it wasn’t places the crew likely had easier access to like their homes or a basic office space to rent out. There’s also a weird flickering problem where it will go from color to black and white briefly, which is a bit annoying as well.

The sound is probably it’s weakest point of everything else stacked against it, as some moments will be decently clear and others you’ll need to rewind it and try to figure out what was going on. I had to do this three times with finding Greg’s name, because I thought they were saying “Burke” for some reason. There’s also a fair amount of bad ADR going on, which is a bit laughable when it comes up. The sound quality in general just makes for a bad time with figuring out what’s going on, particularly in crowded areas where you have the background noise to deal with on top of it sounding like the actors are on the other side of the room when they’re in front of the camera. So, unless you have a good ear, you might be a tad bit lost, but it’s not on levels of Ax’Em bad.

On that note, how about the gore and deaths? While they aren’t perfect and are on the hammy side, I’ll at least give them some credit for having memorable death scenes and succeeding in what they could do for a microbudget. Some of them give me similar vibes to other slasher movies of the decade like Final Exam, Woodchipper Massacre, and Cannibal Campout, which I think helps me to enjoy them a bit more in a way. It tried, so I guess an A for effort is fair enough - especially with a particular implied off-screen death that’s quite brutal and Murphy apparently got a lot of e-mails and letters about it.

The acting is a fairly mixed bag as well, with it being mostly meh or average for the type of low budget flick where none of the actors went on to do anything else. When it comes to Judy, Greg, Simon, and the rest of William’s family, they aren’t there much to land a solid impact. So, when they get their own individual scenes where they’re on their own, there isn’t a whole lot to see to comment on about how well they hold up. They’re okay, nothing truly dreadful though. When it comes to Alistair, Nikki, and William though, that’s a different story.

While I found Alistair (and to an extent, Nikki) to be sympathetic, they didn’t do much to pull at my heart strings to get me totally revved up for the revenge sequences. The same can be said for William as well. Yeah, he’s a total sleazy, swindling bastard, but that’s about it. As a villain, he’s sort of forgettable. The writing itself is fine, which is surprising for this type of film, but the acting is stiff and doesn’t feel natural or right. I don’t know if any of the actors had prior experience given that they haven’t shown up in any other productions that I’m aware of or if a lot of the fault could be placed on poor direction. It’s a damn shame too since this could have been much better if one or both of those things could have been resolved. Plus, it could have been much darker too by pulling out all the stops since it already took plenty of risks with the aformentioned death scene and the social commentary it addressed. But we’re 35 years too late for that now.

To return to something I said at the start regarding Murphy’s intentions behind the film, much of this is heavily reflected in Alistair’s characterization where he brushes off the films produced by William’s company as “garbage”, and rambles about censorship, on-screen violence, and belittling distribution companies during the final showdown between him and William. Subtlety isn’t in this film’s dictionary, even more so towards the end where it raises the question about whether or not horror movies and the media contribute to real-life violence; much akin to other later films like Video Violence and Woodchipper Massacre. Yeah, it’s not an original concept at all and it’s been no stranger to us since the turn of the century or even for the time when the Satanic Panic and PMRC Senate case was going on, but it’s nonetheless fun to see how different artists handle the topic at hand.

________________________________________

So, what are my thoughts on this one? Well, I’m torn.

Back when I reviewed this in 2015, I was rather harsh on it for how low the quality was and that the acting was subpar at best. It left so much to be desired, as it could have been much bigger if it was given better resources to shine. I’d like to think there’s some other timeline where this could have been the success that Murphy wanted it to be, rather than his least favorite film he’s directed and ultimately faded away into obscurity - fulfilling its own prophecy in a way to become Bloodstream decades later.

With that being said, I think my old rating of 3/10 was a bit much. It’s no gem or masterpiece in any way, which again, is the sad part. But, it’s also not a total disasterpiece. If all the pieces fell in the right spot, this would be an easy 7.5/10 for me at the very least. However, with the technical issues and wooden acting, I’d give this a 4.5/10 to be on the generous side. If a day ever comes where someone wanted to do a faithful remake of this to show what we could have had, that would make for a fun night. If you want to give it a watch some time, it’s up on Youtube and it makes for a decent popcorn flick.

Rating: 4.5/10

[buzzdixonwriter]

Cowboys And Cavemen

This one’s gonna meander, but it’s about cavemen and cowboys and dinosaurs, so some of you may wanna stick around…

. . .

Recently watched the colorized version of One Million B.C. with Victor mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney Jr.

I remember frequently watching the original black & white version of this as a kid; it popped up on local Early Shows a lot primarily because it could be chopped down to fit an hour’s running time without losing too much of the story (Early Shows were afternoon movies with a local host that typically ran only 90 minutes from 4:30-6pm; with commercials and host segments there wasn’t much room for uncut films and as a result they featured a lot of B-movies with 65 minute running times, or else cut out sequences from longer films not germane to the plot).

The colorized version surprised me in a couple of ways.  

First, I’d forgotten just how well done One Million B.C. is in basic film making terms:  Once past the opening scene, in which an archeologist explains some cave drawings to a group of mountaineers who then imagine themselves in prehistoric times, there’s no recognizable dialog; the film is told in purely visual terms.

Second, the colorization was incredibly sloppy:  There’s a lot of weird blue artifacting going on that lays a strange mist-like quality over several scenes, and in several places the colorists inexplicably either colored the actors’ bare legs blue or else overlooked the mistake in the final color correction.

Third, the sloppy colorization doesn’t matter:  If anything, it adds to the weird dream-like quality of the film.  As an attempt to realistically recreate the prehistoric past, it’s gawdawful; taken as the imaginings of an average contemporary 1940s person with no real knowledge of prehistoric times (viz the prolog), and it’s pretty entertaining.

Technically the movie is a mixed bag.  The special effects are pretty seamless (yeah, you can tell when something is a rear screen shot, but then again rear screen shots in every film of that era were obvious)).  A travelling matte shot of a hapless cavewoman buried under a flood of lava is particularly well done and as amazing today as it was then (though the colorists dropped the ball and didn’t tint it a vivid red or orange in the colorized version).

There’s a lot of monsters, but they range from well done to just plaine…well…

The best are a woolly mammoth (i.e., an elephant in shaggy fur costume) and a baby triceratops (a large pig in costume) that really seem to capture the essence pf those creatures.

The worst is a guy in an allosaurus suit who kinda just shuffles along like a grandparent going to the bathroom, and in the middle are various lizards dressed up with fins and horns.

The lizards bother me more and more over the years.  At first it was because they were disappointing -- they don’t look like dinosaurs, dammit, but like lizards with fins and horns glued on -- but now it’s because I realize they were goaded by their handlers into fights and reactions shots.

That’s plain ol’ animal cruelty, even if they are reptiles and not mammals.

There’s an armadillo and a koala-like animal that appear thousands of times their normal size.  The koala-like critter (sorry, but I don’t know what it actually is) is passable as a giant cave bear or sloth, but the armadillo is just an armadillo (there was something about armadillos that 1930s audience found creepy; they’re waddling all over the Count’s hiding place in the original Dracula).

One Million B.C. was produced by Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr.  The senior Roach goes all the way back to the silent era, so this was not a huge stretch for him.  

Originally D.W. Griffith was to direct the film, but while he did a lot of pre-production work including screen and wardrobe tests, he either dropped out or was replaced on the eve of production.  (Reportedly he wanted the cave tribes to speak recognizable English and left when Roach refused.)

The special effects wound up in a ton of movies and TV shows over the ensuing decades; modern audiences are more familiar with the film through 1950s sci-fi than its original version.

All else aside, the picture is carried by stars Victor Mature and Carole Landis.  Ms Landis in particular is a spunky, charming cave gal with a blonde-fro and while Mature would never be an Oscar contender, he at least has the physicality and screen presence to get his character across.

The scene where he thinks Landis has died in a volcanic eruption may be corny, but you can feel his character’s grief.

. . .

A quarter of a century later it was remade as One Million Years B.C. with John Richardson in the Victor mature role and Raquel Welch in the Landis role.  

No disrespect to Welch, who by all accounts is a nice person, but she never showed one iota the acting chops of Carole Landis.  Welch is beautiful, and as a generic pin-up model cast as a film’s “sexy lamp” (look it up), she presented appealing eye-candy.  She appeared in one good sci-fi film (Fantastic Voyage), one campy monster movie (i.e., One Million Years B.C.), two incredibly campy WTF-were-they-thinking movies (The Magic Christian and Myra Breckenridge), and a host of instantly forgettable spy films and Westerns.  The best movies she appeared in were Fuzz, based on the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a.k.a. Evan Hunter nee Salvatore Lombino), where she did an acceptable supporting turn as a police detective, and Kansas City Bomber, a roller derby movie that many consider her best role.

Landis never enjoyed the same level of fame (or notoriety, depending on your POV) that Welch did, but holy cow, could the gal act.  It’s a pity Hollywood is crowded with talented, beautiful people because she certainly deserved a bigger career capstone than One Million B.C..

Welch’s personal life certainly proved less traumatic than Landis’, however.  When actor Rex Harrison broken off his affair with her rather than divorce his wife, Landis committed suicide.

The scandal exiled Harrison temporarily back to England.  A few years later One Million B.C. and Landis’ other films started playing on television.

Who knows what opportunities may have opened for her in that medium?

. . .

The original One Million B.C.  is vastly superior in all areas but one (well, two -- mustn’t leave out the catfight between Welch and Martine Beswick):  Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion dinosaurs

Mind you, most of the dino scenes in One Million Years B.C. are underwhelming.  To stretch the budget the producers used close ups of spiders and an iguana to simulate giant monsters, a brontosaurus does a walk through in one scene and never appears again, and the first big dino moment has cave gals poking sharp sticks at a big sea turtle.

On the other hand, the remaining trio of dino scenes are the aces and vastly superior to their corresponding scenes in One Million B.C..  The latter film’s allosaur attack is one of the best dino scenes ever animated, and the ceratosaurus vs triceratops battle followed by the pteranodon grabbing Welch are almost as good.

Both versions of the film had an interesting influence on films that followed.  One Million Years B.C. was followed by a host of prehistoric films, most of which existed only to cast voluptuous actresses in fur bikinis although When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, a direct follow-up, offered more monsters and a better story.

While One Million B.C. wasn’t the first film to sub real life lizards for dinos, it certainly told budget conscious producers that such substitutions were okay.

The 1959 version of Journey To The Center Of The Earth cast iguanas with glued on fins as dimetrodons, and for once the impersonation proved successful as the two species do bear certain similarities.

Producer Irwin Allen (he of Lost In Space and Towering Inferno fame) hired Willis O;Brien (the animator behind the original King Kong) and his then assistant Ray Harryhausen to do accurate-for-the-era stop motion dinosaurs for The Animal World documentary but apparently frustrated by the time it took to get results opted for lizards in his version of The Lost World (which, ironically, O’Brien worked on in a non-animation capacity despite having done the original silent version of the film with stop motion dinosaurs).

I saw Allen’s Lost World as a little boy and felt grossly disappointed by the obvious lizards, especially since the script identified them as belong to specific dinosaur species when they quite clearly didn’t (had the script said they evolved from such creatures, the way the most recent version of King Kong did, it would have been less egregious).

Allen’s lizards popped up in several TV shows he did, most notably the TV version of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.  That show’s co-star David Hedison played a supporting role in The Lost World so once a season they found some excuse to get him out of his Navy uniform and into a safari jacket in order to match footage with stock shots from the movie.

The Animal World wasn’t the first time O’Brien and Harryhausen worked together, and Harryhausen followed up One Million Years B.C. with The Valley Of Gwangi, an O’Brien project that the older effects artist never got off the ground.

. . .

Let’s back up a bit to discuss “O’Bie” (as his fans refer to him).

O’Brien was a former cowboy-turned-cartoonist around the early 20th century who became interested in animation.

Movies were in their infancy then, and O’Bie shot a short test reel of two clay boxers duking it out.

This got him financing to do a series of short films ala The Flintstones with titles like Rural Delivery, One Million B.C. (the titles were often longer than the films).

These shorts featured cartoony puppets, no actual actors.  O’Bie followed it up with The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain which was the first time dinosaurs were animated in an attempt to make them look real, and that was followed by The Lost World in which O’Bie combined live action with special effects, climaxing the film with a brontosaurus running amok in London.

O’Bie wanted to follow it up with a film called Creation but that got deep sixed.  However, producer Merian C. Cooper saw O’Bie’s test footage for Creation and hired him to do the effects for the legendary King Kong.

While O’Bie followed that success with the quickie Son Of Kong he never got to work on a dinosaur film of such scope again.

War Eagles (a lost-civilization-with-dinos story) was supposed to have been a big follow up epic, but the Depression and the growing threat of WWII caused it to be cancelled in pre-production.

During the 1940s O’Bie pitched a number of stories to studios involving dinosaurs or other monsters encountering cowboys, one of which was Gwangi (he also pitched King Kong vs Frankenstein which eventually got made as King Kong vs Godzilla using two guys in rubber suits, not his beloved stop motion effects).

Gwangi had cowboys discovering a lost canyon inhabited by dinosaurs, chief of which being Gwangi, an allosaurus.  O’Bie never got Gwangi off the ground but decades later Harryhausen did with Valley Of Gwangi.

. . .

I never cared for Valley Of Gwangi and much preferred One Million Years B.C. over it (and, no, not because of Ms Welch).

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I enjoyed cowboys as much as dinosaurs.

I’ve posted elsewhere how my interest in dinosaurs led me to dinosaur movies which led to monster movies which led to science fiction movies which led to literary science fiction which led to science fiction fandom which led to my writing career, but my genre of choice before age 10 was Westerns.

As others point out, most Westerns are actually crime stories, what with bandits robbing stagecoaches and banks, rustlers making off with cattle, etc.  The climax usually involves a lawman (or a vigilante who carries the weight of the law) confronting the evil doers and bringing them to justice.

Sometimes these vigilantes wore masks (Zorro and the Lone Ranger).  Sometimes those they pursued wore masks, and sometimes those masked villains pretended to be ghosts or phantoms.

They weren’t, and were invariably exposed as frauds.

Westerns based themselves in a rational world.

Other times a criminal in a Western would be after some invention that could bring either a great boon (say an energy source) or great harm (a death ray) to the world, and wanted it for their own selfish ends.

The story would invariably use the invention as a mcguffin device, maybe letting it figure into the villain’s eventual comeuppance, but never really influencing the outcome of the plot.

Westerns and fantasy genres (including science fiction) don’t mix well, The Wild Wild West not withstanding (and The Wild Wild West was not a Western per se but rather what we would now call a steampunk commentary on James Bond filtered through the lens of traditional American Westerns).

(And don’t bring up Gene Autry And The Phantom Empire, just…don’t…)

Dinosaurs and cowboys don’t really go together.

That didn’t stop O’Bie from trying.

In addition to Gwangi, O’Bie had two other projects that he did get off the ground:  The Brave One and The Beast From Hollow Mountain.

The Beast From Hollow Mountain is a standard Western about mysterious cattle disappearances and quarrels over who might be responsible, only to discover in the end it’s really -- surprise!  surprise! -- a solitary tyrannosaurus that somehow survived since prehistoric times.

The movie is constructed in such a way that had the dinosaur element not panned out, they could have removed it and substituted a more conventional ending.

While O’Bie didn’t work directly on the film after he sold the story, it did feature a variant of stop motion animation known as replacement animation.  Instead of building a realistic looking puppet with rubber skin and posable limbs, the dino in Beast was more solid and featured interchangeable limbs that could stretch and squash in a more realistic manner (rather, the movement looked more realistic, the dino sculpture no so much…).

The Brave One started life as a story about a young Mexican boy who raises a prize bull for the ring, only to have the bull face an allosaurus in the ring instead of a matador.

The producers who bought that idea hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to turn it into something filmable, and Trumbo sensibly jettisoned the dino to focus the story on the boy and his bull, much to the film’s advantage (it won an Oscar for best story when released, but Trumbo’s heirs had to wait decades before the award could be recognized as due their father).

The Valley Of Gwangi was yet another variant on the same basic idea, more expansive than the other two in terms of dinosaurs, and with at least a nod in the direction of trying to explain them (a “lost canyon” giving them shelter instead of a mountain plateau or remote island).

It never connected with me, despite having more extensive dino sequences than One Million Years B.C..

O’Bie animated stop motion cowboys fighting a giant ape in the original version of Mighty Joe Young but the context proved different.  The cowboys’ presence in Africa is acknowledge in the film itself as a publicity gimmick, and therefore not a true blend of the American West with a fantastic element.

Mr. Joseph Young of Africa himself, a 12-foot tall gorilla, was also presented as an exceptionally large but otherwise natural gorilla, not a throwback to a prehistoric era.

. . .

Before there were action figures, but long after there were tin soldiers, we had plastic play sets.

They came in all eras and varieties, but among the most popular were Wild West sets, Civil War, World War Two, and dinosaurs.

My father took a business trip to Chicago when I was four, and when he came back I remember eagerly crowding around the suitcase with my mother, grandmother, and aunt as he opened it and brought out souvenirs for us.

I forget what they got, but I remember feeling disappointed and forgotten since their stuff was on top.

But, underneath everything else, sat a large cardboard box, and in that box was a Marx Prehistoric Times playset.

It’s hard to adequately describe the joy that filled my heart when I opened it; it was one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

And while I later acquired a Civil War set and a World War Two set and a bag of what we then called cowboy and Indian figures, the dinosaurs remained my most favorite.

I bring this up because I think the Marx playsets explain the origins of two comics books, Turok, Son Of Stone (an on-again / off-again series from 1954 to 1982 from Dell / Gold Key) and The War That Time Forgot (1960-68 from DC).

In both cases, I’m sure somebody from each company saw some kid combing their Wild West or their World War Two playsets with their dinos and realized there was story gold to be found there.

The War That Time Forgot felt much more my speed, a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs and visited by American and Japanese forces during World War Two.

World War Two effectively ended any hope of their being a lost island with prehistoric monsters; pretty much the entire planet was scouted either on foot or by air.

Turok, Son Of Stone didn’t connect with me.  For one thing, it was too much like a Western in concept; for another, Turok and his brother Andar, being pre-Columbian Native Americans, were already from a neolithic culture, and the various cavemen and Neanderthals they encountered in their lost valley seemed more drab and colorless than their tribal background.

The dinosaurs they encountered always came across as large, dangerous, but wholly natural animals, different only from bears and wolves and bison by size and appearance.

Despite my indifference to Turok, I can absolutely understand why others love it and disdain The War That Time Forgot.

Different strokes for different folks.

. . .

We can’t close this without taking a look at The Flintstones, and we can’t consider The Flintstones without first examining Tex Avery’s The First Bad Man in order to bring this post full circle.

There’s a long history (har!) of contemporary satire using a prehistoric lens.  The Flintstones started life as a knockoff of Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners told in a prehistoric setting; the series made no attempt to present itself as realistic in any shape, fashion, or form.

Among the many cartoons and short subjects that preceded it (including Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur) is The First Bad Man by Tex Avery, an MGM theatrical cartoon.

Tex told the story of Dinosaur Dan, the world’s first outlaw, using Western tropes told through a prehistoric lens.

It works, because it’s a parody of the Western form, not a sincere effort to blend it with the caveman genre.  It works because it’s a jarring clash of genres, not despite it.

The caveman genre itself has fallen on fallow times.  Despite films like The Quest For Fire and Clan Of The Cave Bear attempting to do realistic takes on the topic, most people seem to prefer more fanciful approaches, best exemplified by the movie Caveman which sent up the entire genre while not skimping on the stop motion dinos.

With sword & sorcery / Tolkienesque fantasies finally acceptable to mass audiences and thus providing a venue for humans to directly fight giant monsters, there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for a return to the glories of One Million B.C.

  © Buzz Dixon

[taillefer]

Voice.

Bold what applies to your muse, italicize situational ones. Feel free to add your own suggestions and carry it on.

► ACCENT “country” │ “backwoods” │ “sailor” │ “noble” │ foreign speaker  

Growing up, few paid much attention to the way Taillefer spoke. He was the son of a servant, and in Alterac City this meant that, logically, Taillefer would be a servant once he had grown up. His speech only became an important aspect of himself to groom when he took on the training to become a jester at the age of fifteen. Once his role in life became dedicated to the entertainment of his betters, that low-class accent simply had to go.

► ELOQUENCE educated │ uneducated │ doesn’t use conjunctions │ shortens words │ just makes up their own words! │ old English │dependent on mood or setting

When relaxing with loved ones, Taillefer shifts between a casual and natural speech pattern and that of his performance persona: that which uses a grand vocabulary and grammar reminiscent of a time long-since passed. This persona is fond of speaking in metaphors and altering the minute details of his speech to ease the desired effect from his listener.

► TONE loud │ soft │ room volume │ high pitched │ low pitched │seductive │velvety │ speech impediment │ abrasive │ gruff │ shrill │ booming │ matter-of-fact │ toneless │ husky │ gravelly │ breathy │ nasal │ barking │ chatty │ condescending │ musical │ suave │ world-weary │ brash │ authoritative

Where a painter’s tools might be brushes and pigment, Taillefer’s voice is one of the most crucial tools to his profession. Any who has spent time with him knows that Taillefer talks. A lot. But he does so with an unshakable confidence and joy — every moment in every situation seems as though it were organized purely for his commentary. Or at least, that’s how he seems to view it. To those he respects his tone is rarely out of place and rather complimentary, but to the common man he is not shy about letting them know exactly how detestable he finds them with condescending observations, hypotheticals, jabs, and occasional demands.

► HABITS refers to self in third person │ incorporates different languages/terms/sayings │ uses gender-specific terms │ adapts to audience │ changes pitch around animals or children│ shifts tone when lying │ gives others nicknames │ uses terms of respect towards others

"Oh the jester is very fond of his nicknames, dear Creature of Greed. One ought to take it as a compliment — with a tongue as sharp as his, he could surely invent crueler monickers.” 

Taillefer less gives nicknames than he does titles. They most frequently are awarded to those who show some outstanding trait — such as the Creature of Greed or the Giver of Claws. These sorts of nicknames stem directly from personality traits or actions that Taillefer has personally witnessed and smiles upon. They are not, however, the only nicknames he assigns to others. Due to his profession and the stereotypical imagery that comes with it, Taillefer has developed a system of numbers, faces, and suits that he will occasionally refer to when giving someone a title based on his opinion of them.

For example: Taillefer refers to his partner Raulsius as “Ace of Hearts.” The ace is a card of power, which is what Taillefer sees in Raulsius — as Raul managed to melt the heart of evil-doers and convince them to do good for the world only by being himself. Ace is also the beginning. For Taillefer, he was the beginning of a new life on Azeroth. As for hearts, they are crucial to life and signify emotion and affection. Those sorted into the “hearts” category are those who embody everything that is wholesome in someone in Taillefer’s eyes. Thus, the “Ace of Hearts” belongs to someone Taillefer thinks is the beginning of greatness, wholesome, emotional, and generally gives Taillefer an optimistic view for the future.

MEANWHILE he has referred to someone he does NOT like as “Four of Clubs.” Four lacks the pattern that comes with two or three. It’s asymmetrical in his eyes. Technically greater than three, but much more forgettable. Four is the number of someone who is smug, but fails to live up to the skills of a three or a five. Mediocre. Undeserving of their place in the hierarchy. As for a club? Who honestly gets excited by the idea of being a club when they could be a diamond, spade, or a heart? A club is disappointment. And thus, the “Four of Clubs” is someone he finds undeserving, forgettable, and generally disappointing or boring.

► VOICE REFERENCE

I find that this song gets the general feeling of Taillefer’s voice down.

Meanwhile, his mannerisms in speech I’ve taken inspiration from Cicero from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and from Maxwell Roth from Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.

Particularly for Cicero, I took a lot of inspiration from @ariakitty in her depiction of Cicero’s inner voice from her fan fiction Dancing on a Knife’s Edge. Particularly the following paragraph:

So the scene was set, and Cicero had his parts to play. To Astrid and her surly husband, Cicero was the witless fool. They saw him as a man broken by time and duty. They saw madness because that is what he wanted them to see— and maybe he was a little bit mad. That only made his ruse all the more believable.

I was tagged by @bwontulak

And I’m tagging @ashes-black @drustwitch and @blackmarketmistress because you all have very interesting characters particularly in their voices!

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon Black 2 Randomized Nuzlocke Run [Part 9]

All eight badges earned, so what does that leave?

Pirates.

Team for the task?

Vertex (Luxray)

Caspet (Gengar)

Stormy (Metagross)

Photon (Rayquaza)

Nessy (Milotic)

Diego (Gardevoir)

...Those who did not participate in the last Gym, raise hands or whatever you have in place of hands for grinding.

#LET ME LEAVE THE GYM WITHOUT A CONVERSATION GEN 5 CHALLENGE.

Colress, I swear, if you pull a Euicine and make me fight you for the honor of not fighting the Terrakion...

He does not. He gives us a toy and basically says to check out the cave that I need Strength to go through more thoroughly. The Giant Chasm pirates are still blocking my way, so.

Siiiiiigh.

Box crew! What have you got for me!

I will take out Bessy, the level 33 Miltank, and teach her Strength.

Bessy is Modest and somewhat vain, but that doesn’t matter because she’s just here for HMs. She’s temporarily taking Vertex’s place, since Vertex isn’t in need of more experience.

Ah. Actually, Strength just lets you get Toxic. Which is fine, but sorry Vertex, guess I threw you out of the squad for nothing.

Hey we found the boat!

Marlon lets us aboard. Thought: I should go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex in case something goes wrong. Except that would take time.

...I am going to go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex.

After shifting a boulder on Route 22. And grinding for a bit.

Okay. A few hours later, I am more comfortable entering the pirate ship. Team levels are now 56-60. That is absolutely a balanced assessment of my current team. It is in no way misleading.

Me!

...This is the greatest grunt ever. He calls Marlon Smiley Swimsuit. Yes. You have perfectly boiled down his character essentials.

Oh wait, he has a Watchdog.

Sorry pirate friend. We can’t be friends.

Russell, my actual friend, is trying to go on his roaring rampage of revenge. Only as a responsible big brother, not a Sasuke.

I used to have a Sasuke. No more.

...I should have named Russell Itachi. If there’s ever a next time...

I continue to find it delightful that after N leaves, Team Plasma ditches their knight theme for a pirate one. I don’t even know why, I just love it. I love knight aesthetic, I love pirate aesthetic. My castle was right next to my pirate ship for most of my childhood, and it rocked.

Though my pirates wouldn’t steal people’s pets. A key difference. Pirate in name only. Well. And clothing. Pirate is just a more fun word than sailor, and pirates have looser fashion.

Mook time over?

Technically this one isn’t stealing.

Just animal abuse.

The villain of this game is just a salty old man who spent so much time in a refrigerator he decided the rest of the world should spend time in a refrigerator, too. Then he found out his region has a legendary Dragon/Ice type, and the rest is history.

Only history I have to repeat.

Because the villain of a Pokemon game decided his winning strategy would be shooting bolts of ice down at the world below.

Video games are the greatest.

...Wait. How did me and Russell get down here? Did Team Plasma just throw us off?

Also, yes Cheren. They use everything for evil. They’re the bad guys.

And then Cheren asks where the people Zekrom and Reshiram recognized are and. I wonder if he misses his friend. his best friend, [last game protagonist]. How much does it suck that he spent a full game with [person], and now they’ll never see each other again because [person] is bound to a different dimension. A world Cheren can’t touch.

Canon has, what. Red who comes back? Every other protagonist kind of just. vanishes as far as future references to that world are concerned. And Red spends quite some time up on a mountain. Alone.

These games are all about people who swoop in and birth legends, then vanish.

I made myself sad.

Anyway, to the Giant Chasm!

Totally bro.

Aw crud. Do I need Strength? I think I might need Strength. Can I mayhaps avoid that?

Oh. I could just go down the giant stairs.

Wow. Talk about your parties.

ONE MORE TIME ON THE BOAT.

I hate password games. At least the ship supplies a doctor early on. I wasn’t to the point of active concern, but I was feeling a bit itchy about using up healing items. I haven’t grown out of my usual standard in these games where I just let everything in my party die to avoid spending money.

Agreed, let’s roll you.

This guy just keeps throwing Cryogonal at me.

You know, I don’t have a lot to complain about regarding these games and their choices. I whine about everything, but all in all, I find all of them very solid and enjoyable. Even if gen 4 has too many HM requirements wtf just stop.

This isn’t really a complaint, but it is a confusion. Zinzolin is fought multiple times in a relatively small window, and his team never changes. We just keep beating him. I get the sense that they wanted a villain, but as a sequel game to a gen that went all out on that, they didn’t really have anything they were willing to turn into a threat.

Really, I feel like a better path to pick would have been giving one of the Plasma grunts a different hat and having them be the captain of a very confused and angry crew. But eh, whatever.

....Oh. You.

Why is the most anime hair dude in the game so gosh darn forgettable?

For the sake of my flawed memory, he wants to bring out the full potential of pokemon, and is willing to us whatever means are necessary. The only question is which approach actually yields results.

I like you, Colress. I am never going to remember you, but I like you.

Good grief his theme sounds like it came out of Phantasy Star.

First up is a level 50 Magneton. Caspet’s an okay choice, so I’ll just Shadow Ball it. Magneton Thunder Waves Caspet, then uses Volt Switch to swap in Beheeyem (also level 50), who takes a Shadow Ball and dies instantly.

Sorry, ‘faints.’

A level 50 Metang is switched in next. Out of twitchiness over Caspet’s paralyzed state, I put Nessy in and go with Surf. Metang uses Agility from the red. Colress uses a Full Restore. Metang hits a Zen Headbutt, but Nessy has the last laugh.

Ugh. Colress is going to send in a Magnezone. Stormy’s the best answer to that, I think. Stormy knows Hammer Arm. It hits, but like everything I hate, Magnezone has Sturdy. A Bullet Punch handles that.

A level 52 Klinklang is next. His only thing over 50. Stormy is paralyzed thanks to Magnezone, but a Hammer Arm that hits should end it, and I don’t think Klinklang knows anything that’s a threat.

Even if Stormy feels like being paralyzed.

Only once, though. Hammer Arm + Bullet Punch does the job, and we only have that pesky Magneton left.

Hammer Arm and we are done.

Please don’t make me fight another one of these clowns. I don’t wanna.

Aw heck, Russell’s having his moment with Purrloin drama. And I guess I’m not fighting robe dude. It’s all ninja for now. With my four pokemon who aren’t paralyzed. Maybe I should have fixed that.

:(

For real though, our rival’s plotline here is pretty dang sad. He wants his little sister’s pokemon back, and by the time he finds it, it isn’t hers anymore. It’s had an entirely different life without them, probably committing crime. Because it’s been told to.

This is why you get the pirate Plasmas and the knight Plasmas. It’s fantastic that you, the protagonist, has a crew of pokemon perfectly happy fighting and doing whatever you want. But living things being forced to do whatever you want them to because you happened to throw a ball at them is pretty screwed up.

There’s not really a satisfactory conclusion to all of this, since critique of a game mechanic that is never going to stop being a game mechanic doesn’t get to start dramatic revolutions regarding that mechanic, but it’s all very sad and sobering.

That pretty ice tho.

BUT WHERE IS THE PROTAGONIST FROM THE LAST GAME.

No, but thank you N. I was not ready to die at the hands of Kyurem. Your assistance is much appreciated, and pretty great in your sequel. Props.

Gee, that looks bad.

Cue dramatic anime battle sequence.

Followed by anime transformation sequence.

Welp. Time to kill you. Let’s just hope I can.

...Stormy. I think I might want you to tackle this. To the front you go.

But really.

So damn cool.

It’s dead now, but so. cool.

There are too many fights going on. I think I wouldn’t mind in a normaly playthrough, but for a Nuzlocke, this is needlessly stressful and I am not a fan also I beat Ghetsis in the last game and it wasn’t fun then, either.

He has six pokemon, and he opens with a level 50 Cofagrigus. That is not Stormy’s friend. Nessy, if you would. Hydro Pump hits. Toxic hits from the other side, and I will deal with that in a moment, after the Cofagrigus is gone.

Ghetsis, naturally, uses a Full Restore.

Nessy handles it in the end, but is down to 73 health. Eelektross is coming out next. Time to switch. To... uh. I’ll give Photon a whirl. Feeling lucky, I use Outrage, and Eelektross faints.

Ah. Hydreigon is out next.

That is a nasty type combo for my team to deal with. I think. Geez, mark this where I have all the regrets, but Photon’s staying in to murder the Hydreigon with Outrage. Ganbatte.

IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE AND A CRITICAL HIT, GOOD JOB PHOTON.

Seismitoad is next. Diego, time for you and your Magical Leaf to shine. Shine they do, and we’re on to Drapion, which I will leave to Photon. Two Air Slashes make their mark, and all that’s left is Toxicroak, so in you stay Photon.

AND WE’RE DONE HERE, SCREW YOU GHETSIS!

But where is that certain Trainer, N????

Anyway, with that, it looks like the plot portion of this Nuzlocke is over. All that’s left is heading up to challenge the Elite Four.

I think a battle like that can have its own part.

[mst3kproject]

Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo

 I tend to associate this movie with Killer Fish – probably because I originally watched them on consecutive days, but they’ve got many other things in common.  Both feature dull 70’s actors facing off against small animals that aren’t nearly as dangerous as pop culture would have us believe.  Both go out of their way to avoid showing us anything genuinely exciting or cool.  Both have boring, contrived climaxes, and both have titles that are technically accurate but dismally forgettable.  If this one had dropped the Tarantulas and just called itself Deadly Cargo, that would be ten times better already.

A couple of crooks fly out of Ecuador with no idea that their cargo of coffee beans and illegal immigrants is, for some reason I cannot even begin to fathom, infested with spiders.  A bad engine and the aggressive spiders lead to a crash landing in Finleyville, California.  This is a sleepy little hick town that depends on the citrus industry, and they clearly haven’t had an emergency in about twelve years but they do their best to rise to the occasion.  Unfortunately, their attempts to help only unleash the deadly arachnids on their community.  Eventually, the townspeople find that the spiders have made themselves at home in the town’s fruit warehouse.  If they cannot be somehow removed, the oranges will be unsalable, and Finleyville will go broke without a crop.

No shit.  The greatest threat presented by the spiders in this movie is to the town’s economy.  I don’t know why I find that so funny.  Most spider movies present us with the horror of a slow venom death, often while playing up the omg, it’s touching me! angle. Giant spider movies give us huge monsters that can entangle and devour us. Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo threatens that not only might we be bitten by spiders, we won’t be able to afford health insurance afterwards!

The economic angle is the key to what this movie is.  It’s trying to be something, and the first time I watched it, I wasn’t paying enough attention to pick it out.  On the second viewing, when the owner of the orange-packing plant refuses to shut down operations because of a few spiders, it clicked – this was a Jaws ripoff!  It’s got the shark and the Fourth of July Weekend and the whole thing!  There’s even a Little Alex Kitner, in the form of a kid who climbs a truck to see one of the spiders after the driver assures him it’s perfectly harmless.  Deadly Cargo has changed enough details that it could have been an interesting variation on this formula, but by the time the movie’s over its choice of shark stand-in has pushed it into a couple of corners it just can’t get out of.

I’ll come back to that – first, it’s Spider Nerd time again, and I actually do have to give Deadly Cargo some points for research.  Characters present a dead spider to some sort of scientist, who identifies it as a Brazilian Wandering Spider, Phoneutria nigriventer.  This species can be dangerous to humans, but usually only to small children, and they’re one of the few spiders capable of delivering a ‘dry’ bite that’s intended to scare rather than to kill. They’re sometimes called banana spiders because of a reputation for hanging out in shipments of fruit, but I don’t think they’ve ever been found hiding in coffee beans.  Why would a spider hide in coffee beans?  Spiders like small spaces to crawl into, such as those you find in between bunches of bananas or oranges in a box.  Coffee beans are too small to create spider-sized hidey holes!

The Nondescript Scientist also notes that Phoneutria isn’t a tarantula – another reason why the word Tarantulas should not have been in the title.  It also got a snort out of me because almost all the spiders we see in this movie are in fact Mexican Red-Knee Tarantulas (there are also a couple of Chilean Rose-Hairs).  These are the same spiders we saw in Ator: the Fighting Eagle, and are the spiders of choice for horror movies because they are docile, easy to handle, and don’t bite.  So yeah, if you ever actually see one of these in real life, you can just push it the hell over.

As long as I’m talking about the spiders in this movie, I’d like to know how they got into town so fast.  One minute the spiders are at the crash site in the middle of empty fields, the next they’re harassing the faculty at the School for Autistic Children (are you already cringing?  Wait until you see the kids marching in lockstep to an obnoxious whistle).  Spiders move at like one mile per hour.  Did the plane explosion just spray them across the entire state?

Plane explosion?  Yeah, of course there’s a plane explosion in this movie, and it’s fucking annoying because they came so close to not having one. After the crash the plane develops a fuel leak – but the town’s fire chief immediately notices it, and directs people to dig a trench the fuel can flow into so it won’t pool.  He goes around making sure nobody lights a cigarette or anything, and for a moment I really thought this might be a movie in which common sense prevails… but then some jackass on a motorcycle drives straight into the trench.  Seeing a giant fireball in a movie has never left me more disappointed.

I have digressed, though.  Let’s talk about the climax of the movie, which is one of the places where it most strongly resembles Killer Fish.  Killer Fish had the whole cast trapped with piranhas all around their boat.  Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo has them all in a warehouse full of spiders, as a power outage simultaneously shuts down the noise that had paralyzed the creatures and locks the doors.

This situation is so forced that it probably requires more explanation.  The spiders must be removed from the oranges so that they can be shipped, but the townspeople cannot just spray the fruit with insecticides, because their buyer specifically paid for chemical-free (somebody does try to argue that he didn’t pay for spider-free, which amuses me more than it should).  Therefore they paralyze the spiders with the sound of angry wasps and go around shoveling them into buckets of booze.

Like Banana Spiders, Spider-Wasps are actually a thing – the family pompilidae lay their eggs inside living spiders so that the larvae will hatch surrounded by something they can eat.  What I can’t find when I looked these up is any reference to the spiders being paralyzed by terror when they hear the wasps coming.  This seems pretty counter-productive from the spiders’ point of view – if you hear your deadliest enemy closing in on your, wouldn’t it be far more effective to run and hide, rather than roll over and present your belly to be ovipositored?

So that’s all ridiculous, and then we don’t even get a real sense of anybody ‘winning’ at the end.  The supposed moment of triumph isn’t the spiders being out of the oranges, it’s the trapped people escaping through the roof.  In Killer Fish the piranhas ate the human villain and Kate escaped with the jewels. Deadly Cargo doesn’t have a human villain – the greedy plant owner looks like he might be able to fill this role, but no, he’s later treated as vindicated when they almost lose the orange crop!  This means the only ‘bad guys’ here are the spiders, and dropping their helplessly paralyzed bodies into poison just doesn’t feel like a victory. Neither does watching boxes of oranges go out on a train.  It’s just lacking something.

It doesn’t help that the end of both movies also just leaves the killer animal problem lying there.  In Killer Fish the whole area is still infested with piranhas – what does that mean for the tourism industry?  Is there any way to get rid of them?  In Deadly Cargo we can’t possibly be a hundred percent sure all the spiders are gone. Some might still be hanging around in somebody’s fruit bowl.  Someone in another part of the country might find a hairy leg in their organic marmalade. We never knew how many spiders there were, so we can’t be sure they’re all gone and not out invading ecosystems where they have no natural predators.

Another big part of why Deadly Cargo is so unsatisfying is not only does it lack a villain, the good characters are never well-defined enough for us to really identify with any of them.  There’s a young couple and a fire chief and the plant owner, but I can’t remember any of their names.  The only people we get a sense of are the spider victims, who are introduced just enough to tell us that they either deserved to die (Mrs. Beasley, cheating on her husband) or didn’t (Little Alex Kitner).  We can’t even feel for the girl weeping over her dead brother.

There’s a heap of other silly bullshit in this movie. Like the guy who opens a trapdoor in the ceiling and then just stands there screaming like an idiot as three or four spiders fall on him – a shot that probably looked way cooler in the director’s imagination.  Or the straight-faced implication that the spiders could sense the warehouse full of oranges from four miles away and headed directly for it.  Most of this is just mildly amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny.  I’m sure Jonah and the bots could make a diverting episode out of this, but I don’t know if even they could make a memorable one.

[nerdylittleshit]

As 2018 came to an end I tried over the last days to catch up on some of the movies I wanted to see this year. There are still a lot of movies I haven’t seen yet, and I only included movies that were released this year, except for one (that is released in Germany, I know some already had their release in the US in 2017). So, time for some movies reviews. And let me know what you have watched this year, what you can recommend, and what I have missed. 

Arrival

Technical this movie was released in 2017, but I really wanted to include it in this list because it was so GOOD. The plot looks like your average Sci-Fi movie (overnight spaceships appear on earth), but it really isn’t. First of all the way the spaceships and the aliens are designed is really unique, and really gives you this feeling of something otherworldly. The main character is a linguist and her job is it to find out how to communicate with the aliens. I don’t think I ever thought as much about language as I did while watching this movie. And this movie had one of the best plot twists ever. First of all I didn’t see it coming (and yeah that says something), second it really changes how you watch this movie and third it changes the movie on an emotional level. I cried so much. 10/10

Your Name

It’s been a while since I watched an Anime movie, and this was one of the few that had a theatrical release in Germany (it’s also the most successfull Anime movie ever in Japan I think). The story centers around two teenagers, a girl from the countryside and a boy from Tokyo, who for some reason are able to switch their bodies for a day, which happens two or three times a week. They start to leave messages for the other while being in the other body and the starts as every other body-switch-comedy until at some point the body switch stops and the boy can no longer reach the girl. He starts to investigate and I won’t tell you more because the movie developed into a direction I hadn’t seen coming. It’s a beautiful, moving movie, and even if you normally don’t watch Animes you should make an exception for this one. 10/10

Black Panther

I admit that before this movie I knew little to nothing about this character, and while the trailer looked cool I had no huge interest in the movie. I only saw it because it was the last Marvel release before “Infinity War” and I wondered if there were any hints towards “Infinity War” (there aren’t). And then this movie completely blew me away. It is easily in my top 3 of all Marvel movies and I also think it is the best Marvel origin story. I loved Wakanda, I loved the world building, the music, the costumes, everything. This movie also has the best villian of any comic book movie. Because, let’s face it, most villians are forgettable. Killmonger however is different. Because never before I watched a movie where at some point I had to agree with the villian. Sure his methods were wrong, but not his motivation. And I think that if you make a movie about the first black superhero the question about race will always be the elephant in the room. Other directors might have a less serious, less political movie, but not Ryan Coogler. He asks complicated questions about race, about privilege, about responsibility, where there are no easy answers. This is both a big fun superhero movie, but it is also deeply political, because it can be both. And it is also a movie that you can totally watch without ever seeing a Marvel movie before, so don’t take that as an excuse. 10/10

The Shape of Water

I love Del Toro, I love the stories he tells, I love the way he uses colours in his movies, and this is no exception (though I think it is not his best movie). This movie is a fairytale. I don’t think it ever tries to be more, and it tells you so in the beginning, so don’t expect it to be more. It totally works that way, but the characters pretty much stay in the roles they have been given. It is also a story about outsiders, about the ones who don’t fit in our society, because they are women, or disabled, or people of color, or queer, or... fishman. This movie might be set in 50ies but in many ways the issues it adresses are still relevant. And the villian is very white, very male, very straight. And very American. I don’t think the movie was very sublte in its political messages. It’s a great movie, but I don’t think it was the best movie of the year. 9/10

Call Me By Your Name

Many moons ago I read the book this movie is based on. I’m not a huge fan of adaptions in general, because many times the book is simply better and not every story works on a big screen. However this movie somehow managed to evoke the same feeling in me that I had while reading the book. It is very sensual, and it also takes its time to tell its story (but so does the book). I really have to praise both Timothee Chalamet and Arnie Hammer, because so much is told through their faces alone. Quite a beautiful love story. 10/10

Lady Bird

I think this movie worked for me on a very personal level. It is set in 2002 and centers around a 17-year-old-girl and typical teenager problems. I was 13 in 2002 so this felt a bit like a trip down memory lane. Nothing about this story is new, and there are dozen of other coming of age movies, and yet this movie felt to me very personal and intimitate. It centers a lot around the relationship between the young girl and her mother, but never takes sides. Absolutely loved Laurie Metcalf in this movie, who played the mother. If you are not interested in young adult and/or coming of age stories or in general teenage girls this movie won’t work for you. But I loved it. 9/10

Annihilation

I probably wouldn’t have seen this movie in the theater and mostly watched it because it is on Netflix. It is visually stunning, and if you have the chance watch it on a big screen. The trailer made it look like a horror movie which it isn’t. Instead it is very dark Sci-Fi, with some (body)horror elements. The movie made me really uncomfortable and I think that was the intention of the director, but I failed to emotional connect with it. It is an interesting movie but read some trigger warnings before you watch it. 7/10

Avengers: Infinity War

This was probably the movie I was most exicted for this year. This movie really doesn’t work without context: if you never seen a Marvel movie before or maybe just one or two it won’t work for you. This movies depends that you know these characters, that you know their stories and their relationships to each other. All the emotional build-up happened in the movies before, so that this movie could largely concentrate on the plot. Give it to the Russo brothers to handle such a huge ensemble cast (though of course not every character got the same amount of screen time, but that’s ok). It is a hard to judge this movie because it really doesn’t work on its own. One of the few times the entire theater was silent during the end credits. If you love Marvel you will love this movie. 8/10

Deadpool 2

I might be in the minority but I liked the first Deadpool movie better. Maybe because the first was so new and unusual, but the second time a lot of the jokes didn’t work for me. Also the entire story arc around Vanessa.... please don’t. I don’t think this movie was bad, but I enjoyed the first one more. 7/10

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Someone said this is Star Wars fan fiction made into a movie and I think they are right. It is a fun and entertaining movie, but it kinda felt... unnecessary. If you are a hugh fan of Han Solo you will probably like this movie but as a general Star Wars fan... they could and should have released this story as a novel or comic and investigate the money for this movie in a more original story. 6/10

Ant-Man and The Wasp

First of all you can totally watch this movie if you haven’t seen “Infinity War”, just skip the post credit scenes. Second, it was a fun movie. Just as the first one. Hope aka Wasp played a bigger role, which I really liked. Compared to other Marvel movies this one felt small (pun inteneded) and focused a lot on personal relationships rather than saving the world. It is entertaining but doesn’t have the impact as “Black Panther” had. 7/10

Bohemian Rhapsody

I loved the casting, loved the costumes, the sets, the music. It was for the most part a very entertaining, very moving story. But if you are interested in Queen and/or Freddie Mercury please read additional to this movie a biography. A lot of the story felt to me very generic for a music movie. And they did a huge change towards the end of the movie, to make the story look more dramatic I guess, that I didn’t really like. 7/10

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Though it wasn’t perfect I really liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie and somehow everything I liked about it isn’t in this movie. We hardly learn anything about the French wizarding culture even though the story takes place in Paris. The Beasts are complete unneccessary for the story except for the Niffler. Characters make choices that seem illogical (Queenie). Major plot holes/logic errors (McGonagall, Creedence etc). Too much plot crammed into one movie. Some really problematic aspects (Nagini, Leta’s parents etc). And while the first Fantastic Beats movie worked on its own, this one was so full of Potter references you were probably lost if you never read the books. As a huge Potter fan I do hope J.K. Rowling has a master plan for the plot to make sense, and that next time an experienced script writer helps her to muddle through all of her ideas. 6,5/10

Mortal Engines

I saw this movie because a friend of mine wanted to see it and the Speampunk aesthetic looked really interesting to me. The look, the costumes, the music, the effetcs of this movie are great. The casting is ok. But man the story. Nothing you haven’t seen a million times before. The movie really had potional because of the world it is set it but unfortunately it wastes it. If you like Steampunk you can watch it but don’t expect too much of the story. 5/10

[nathanneedsausername]

2018 Film Retrospective

This is my retrospective of all the movies I saw in 2018. This is based on UK release dates so films such as The Favourite, Vice or Eighth Grade will not appear on this list despite technically being 2018 movies as I have not yet been able to see these yet. There are also many movies that I have missed in 2018.

I will still be updating this list throughout 2019 here: https://letterboxd.com/nathan_r_l/list/2018-from-best-to-worst-3/

If you want to see where these movies fall on this list as I see them.

So, anyway here from the worst of the year to my personal favourite are all the films I saw in 2018:

 37. The Queen and I (Dan Zeff):

I only saw this film a few days ago as of writing so it may seem a little harsh to call it the worst of the year as it hasn’t had any time to grow on me yet. Although I don’t see this getting any better with age. Sky intended this new David Walliams’s TV movie as a sort of Christmas present, but this must be one of the very few films I have ever seen that has actually made me angry. Nothing more than royalist propaganda that manages to completely miss the potential of the concept as well as missing the point of the sequence from Les Miserable that it decides to “pay homage too”.

36. Death on the Tyne (Ed Bye):

Not much to say here. Really it isn’t a surprise that UKTV made a bad comedy.

35. Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani):

I promise that I saw more than just TV movies this year, it just so happens that most of them were really bad. All of the changes that were added to the story were stupid and when they actually tell the story it is painfully boring.

34. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J. A. Bayona):

Let’s be real, despite ranging in quality none of the Jurassic Park sequels have warranted their own existence. That being said Fallen Kingdom might be worth watching just to see how hilariously bad these films can get. Despite having the same director as The Orphanage and A Monster Calls no amount of good tracking shots can fix a script that is this ridiculous. The script comes across like two different ideas for new Jurassic Park movies were awkwardly stitched together when the best treatment for both would have been not to make either of them. Through in an incredibly stupid and unneeded twist and the most underwhelming Jeff Goldblum cameo in cinema history.

33. Grandpa’s Great Escape (Elliot Hegarty):

Oh, look another bad TV movie. Davis Walliams consistently finds himself attached to these boring BBC productions never quite capture the heart and care of his writing. Walliams is a good children’s author, but the small screen adaptations of his work always feel rushed and unfocused.

32. Venom (Ruben Fleischer):

The biggest disappointment of 2018. Venom is corny, bland and forgettable. According to IMDB, Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer is behind this mess but judging by Tom Hardy’s performance and the incomprehensible CGI finale no-one directed this.

31. Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard):

A soulless, lifeless film that stinks of studio interference. All of the cast feel as if they are just playing the type of character they are expected to (especially  Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3-37). There are moments in this film where it feels like there is supposed to be a joke that has awkwardly been edited or written out after Lord and Miller left the project, these moments haunt the film and make me feel like this could have been great, but alas. 

30. Death Wish (Eli Roth):

At this point it might be time to consider that Eli Roth might be making bad movies on purpose. I went into Death Wish expecting something needlessly graphic and entertainingly violent and stupid but that’s not what this is. For the most part the gun violence in this film is pretty tame and the dialogue is far to generic and boring to be funny. There is one scene in a garage that showcases what usually makes Roth’s films memorable, but it comes too late to bring this movie into guilty pleasure territory. I do believe that Roth is a good filmmaker but the more he releases these mindless, generic thrillers the harder it is to defend him.

29. The Meg (Jon Turteltaub):

Half of this movie is a self-aware special effects movie that is genuinely entertaining. The other half is a boring and cliché. It should be good but never quite manages to keep up any momentum that it builds.

28. Tomb Raider (Roar Uthaug):

Technically better than the 2001 Lara Croft film although I know which one I would rather watch. Some interesting set pieces and homages to the newer tomb Raider games mixed with bland dialogue and an uninteresting plot.

27. Deadpool 2 (David Leitch):

Not as funny as the first movie but has better action. Deadpool 2 is mixed bag, the satire falls short when the movie insists on upping the stakes and having its audience feel emotionally connected to the story. David Leitch is a good action director and I look forward to seeing what he does next, but I can’t say that I’m all to exited about the next instalments in the Deadpool franchise.

26. Tag (Jeff Tomsic):

I don’t think that this film deserves the hate it seems to have gotten. Tag is a pretty funny movie with memorable characters and good camera work. It’s a little corny and the ending gets way to soppy but it’s a good film to watch with a group of friends if not just for some good Hannibal Buress quotes.

25. Click & Collect (Ben Palmer):

Hey, a TV movie that didn’t suck! Airing on BBC 1 on Christmas Eve this is an example of cringe comedy done well, the plot doesn’t always make sense but that doesn’t stop the comedy from really working.

24. Outlaw King (David Mackenzie):

A pretty good historical drama about Robert the Bruce. That’s all this is really a serviceable movie about an interesting topic. Not bad by any means all though a little forgettable, the performances and fight choreography are great but the writing lacks any real direction.

23. Aquaman (James Wan):

A list of other movies scenes from Aquaman made me think of:

Ratatouille

Splash

Raiders of the Lost Arc

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Black Panther

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Wonder Woman

Full review coming next

22. Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed):

Not as funny or engaging as 2015’s Ant-Man. This is a decent blockbuster with some good special effects and funny moments. A lower tier Marvel film for sure that gets completely overshadowed by the other two movies that the studio brought out in 2018 but still a fun watch.

21. Ocean’s Eight (Gary Ross):

About as good as Ocean’s 13. All of the hallmarks of the Ocean’s trilogy are present. The last 15 minuets begin to over explain what we have already seen and the name of the movie spoils and reveal at the end of the movie. A well-directed heist movie none-the-less that should be enjoyable for any Ocean’s fan

20. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg):

This movie is at its best when it is at its most Spielberg. There is a really great car chase and a plot that revolves around kids standing against authority. It goes on for way to long and some of the references are on the nose. It certainly needs to be cut down but it’s a movie worth seeing if you know your pop-culture.

19. Searching (Aneesh Chaganty):

By far the best example of found-footage to be released in years. Having the entire film appear from the perspective of computer screens and phone calls makes the experience feel far more real and personal as if you are right there figuring out the mystery with the character. The story itself separated from its gimmick has been seen before and the twist is a bit of a reach but with its unique style it feels completely fresh. If you hated Unfriended there is a high chance that you will love this.

18. My Dinner with Hervé (Sacha Gervasi):

A HBO movie featuring a fantastic performance from Peter Dinklage. The life story of French actor Hervé Villechaize is told through a crazy interview based on the one that the actor had with the director in the early 90’s. It’s a small film but one that has been made with a lot of passion from its director and star. Absolutely look this one out if you can.

17. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson):

Wes Anderson is responsible for some of my favourite films of all time. While his latest may not be his best work to date it is a beautiful and insanely well-crafted film full of life and wonder. Anderson has a particular style and this movie sums up exactly what makes that style work so well with every shot working perfectly.

16. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (David Slade):

It’s hard to tell at this point whether or not this will start a new craze for choose your own adventure movies the way that Avatar started a craze for 3D. Honestly I don’t think Charlie Brooker has left anywhere to really be explored with the this concept as he dives head first into a meta-narrative all about free-will. Certainly, an ambitious endeavour for the crew of Black Mirror that has taken over the cinematic discussion for a little while. I saw this with a group of friends trying to uncover as much of the story as we could in one sitting and I highly recommend that experience if you haven’t seen/played this yet.

15. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler): 

A Marvel movie that appears to have nudged its way into Oscar conversations, regardless of whether or not I think that it deserves that acclaim this is a great film. Black Panther has some of the smartest writing of any MCU movie and one of the best villains to ever appear in a superhero movie. This is a film that will be talked about for years because of what it means for representation, it also helps that it is a really good movie.

14. Game Night (John Francis, Jonathan M. Goldstein):

The biggest surprise of the year is that the two guys behind 2015’s awful Vacation reboot managed to make one of the funniest and well-made comedies of 2018. The camerawork in this film is brilliant, one long take in particular has to be one of my favourite scenes of the year. The plot takes some logical jumps but who cares when the film is this good.

13. A Quiet Place (John Kransinski):

Sure, it doesn’t all make sense when you analyse it but watching A Quiet Place on the big screen is one of the tensest experiences I have ever had. When the credits rolled after the first time I saw this film I noticed that for the past 90 minuets, that’s the sign of some effective tension.

12. First Man (Damien Chazelle):

Chazelle has proven himself to be one of the best directors working today. While I may not love his latest as much as his previous work on La La Land and Whiplash it has to be said that First Man is a solid base hit for a great filmmaker. The third act of this film features some of the best special effects of the year mixed with one of the most emotional sequences of the year. Gosling and Foy are both brilliant and both deserve nominations as does Chazelle.

11. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh):

Slightly twisted and very enjoyable Three Billboards is a strange film. McDonagh is able to find humour in the darkest of places but never undermines the serious nature of the subject matter.

10. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird):

Going into the top 10 it feels important to restate that these rankings are based purely on my own personal opinions on each film. Incredibles 2 is objectively not as good as the 2004 original, but it doesn’t have to be, this is a very fun movie featuring some great animation, fantastically directed action sequences that only Brad Bird could pull off and do I even have to mention the Jack-Jack scenes? Brad Bird is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever work in animation and this feels like his victory lap, not his best film but absolutely one that showcases just how great he is.

9. The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro):

Best picture winner, The Shape of Water deserves all the acclaim that it has gotten. This “adult fairy-tale” features a wonderful score, fantastic performances, beautiful set-design and characteristically excellent direction from one of the world’s greatest directors! Everyone has already lumped praise on this film and so I am not left with too much else to say other than see this film.

8. The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling (Judd Apatow):

I hear that 2018 was a great year for documentaries, I wouldn't know because I only saw this one but if Three Identical Strangers and Won’t you be my Neighbour are better than this then I need to see them. Judd Apatow looks into the life of his friend and fellow comedian Garry Shandling only 2 years after his tragic death. His approach leaves no stone unturned as he dives head first into the late comedian’s mind using his own diaries and interviews with his closest friends and collaborators. As a stand-up comedy fan it is absolutely fascinating to get a look the real life of an often misunderstood legend like Shandling for it to be as neatly put together and wonderfully entertaining as this is a welcome bonus.

7. Avengers: Infinity War (Joe Russo, Anthony Russo):

For the technical achievement alone Infinity War deserves a place in my top 10. The Russo brothers managed to pull off a stunt that just a year ago I was ready to call impossible, bringing together 10 years worth of character arcs and plot points while still making an enjoyable film. Even though it has been 9 months I still don’t know what to say about this film and my lack of words may be the best compliment I can give it.

6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie):

If you asked me in June I would have said that the Mission: Impossible franchise had peaked with Brad Bird’s Ghost Protocol in 2014, I also would have been dead wrong. Fallout is not just the best film in the franchise but an absolute high point in action cinema. Seeing this on the big screen was one of the most visceral and intense movie going experiences I have ever had, every stunt is a nail-biter and the whole time I was on the edge of my seat.   

5. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley):

This is the movie that I saw alone and have yet to properly have a conversation with someone about. This film slipped under almost everyone’s radar and then disappeared. I am telling you now find this movie it is a fantastic, quaint little film with the power to make you uncomfortable and make you laugh at the same time. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor Joy are both brilliant and the ending has one of my best moments of the year with a single long shot and the power of suggestion. If you missed it, which you probably did, go look it out. 

4. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee):

Loud, funny, unapologetic, stylish and controversial. Those are the five words that describe all of Spike Lee’s best movies and BlacKkKlansman is no exception. With multiple Oscar worthy performances, a great score and a screenplay that shows Spike at his angriest and smartest in a long time, this film will get under some peoples skin, as great cinema should. 

3. I, Toyna (Craig Gillespie):

Every now and then a movie comes along that perfectly sums up why I love this art form, I Tonya is one of those movies. Deeply impactfull on an emotional level while remaining hyper stylised, Gillespie manages to make the audience feel sympathy for characters that would be the villains in any other story by taking you on an emotional roller coaster through the life of Tonya Harding that leaves the viewer feeling just as broken as the titular character by the conclusion.

This film is so good I watched it twice in two days.

2. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig):

I fell hard for this film. Greta Gerwig’s painfully honest look at growing up feels like watching a selection of incredibly well shot home movies from a real person. The real achievement of Gerwig’s directorial debut is how it manages to feel relatable even if you aren’t in the same situation as the protagonist. When the credits role it’s hard to feel slightly disappointed that you can’t keep watching what is going to happen to this character next and when the only criticism you have is that you didn't want it to end, the film must have been pretty good.

1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman):

I’m just as surprised as you are.

Somehow and for whatever reason this is the movie that resonated with me the most in 2018, this is the film I see myself going back to the most. Sometimes the best film is the most entertaining one, this film had me hooked instantly and kept me in a near trance-like state during its run-time. In don’t have anything to profound to say about this film it’s just really a great film that everyone can enjoy. If this is still playing near you and you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out you won’t be disappointed.

[nitrateglow]

Movies watched in 2017 (11-20)

Continuing my 2017 film journal. So far, I’ve continued to find some real gems!

Three Came Home (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1950)

Documenting the true story of the American Agnes Newton Smith, a writer interred with her son in a Japanese POW camp during WWII, Three Came Home is a decent film, with solid performances and a few standout scenes. It is a movie which the censorship codes held it back from being a more powerful work; you always get the sense that the filmmakers wanted to show more of the graphic and harrowing side of Smith’s ordeal, which included torture and almost being raped. nevertheless, the filmmakers go as far as they could at the time, even allowing star Claudette Colbert to get in front of the camera sans make-up. Everyone is coated in sweat and grime. Sessue Hayakawa is there too as the sympathetic Colonel Suga. He gets one strong scene toward the end of the movie, where he evokes immense grief and guilt without words, a reminder of his power as a performer and his heyday as one of the best starring actors in Hollywood during the 1910s. (7/10)

BBC Sunday-Night Theatre: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954)

Peter Cushing as Winston Smith—who can resist that? Once again, this man proves he is one of the most underrated actors to have ever stood before a camera. Despite the obvious low budget, this is a great adaptation of Orwell’s novel, much superior to the American feature adaptation made a few years after. In fact, I would say the low budget and cramped sets add to the desolate, gloomy, claustrophobic atmosphere of Oceania’s dystopian world. Everything is dingy and depressing. The ending retains the bleak outlook of Orwell’s novel and Cushing’s great depiction of brokenness only makes it all the creepier. I also want to highlight the great work Yvonne Mitchell does as Julia; she’s pretty and sensual, but not at all a glamorous starlet like the American ‘50s adaptation. Overall, a great version. If you love the book and care about your adaptations being accurate, then you’ll probably enjoy this picture. (9/10)

Reaching for the Moon (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1930)

I wouldn’t really call this movie good and the only folks I can recommend it to are old movie buffs like me, but if you are into pre-code movies, art deco, Bebe Daniels, and/or Douglas Fairbanks Sr., then Reaching for the Moon is worth watching once. The plot is frivolous and forgettable, the pace is slow even for a 70 minute picture, and poor Fairbanks is kind of wasted. He spends some time doing his usual acrobatic thing, but it always feels slapped on and not organic to the scenes. Apparently the movie was originally supposed to be a musical, but the studio cut most of the songs at the last minute since audiences were getting tired of musicals in mid-1930. To be honest, I wish they had kept them in, because the musical numbers are the most energetic and engaging parts of the film. I especially enjoyed Bing Crosby and Bebe Daniels in the jazzy, very Depression-era number “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down.” Easily, that scene and the art direction are the best assets the movie has to offer; William Cameron Menzies does lovely work on the art deco sets, which are like a dream of 1920s glamor. (6/10)

The Eternal Mother (dir. DW Griffith, 1912)

Like the Griffith short I watched in the last batch, not an essential among his early work. Mabel Normand and Blanche Sweet are wasted as a wanton woman and a virtuous wife. The plot is incredibly thin and silly: a man leaves his good wife for a tart; the tart bears his child and dies on cue. The wife is so good that she takes in the child and the husband spends his years alone until he and the wife reunite as elderly folks. Not much of interest on the technical or story scale. (4/10)

Three Outlaw Samurai (dir. Hideo Gosha, 1964)

I got interested in this one after figuring out Rian Johnson used it as an influence on the next Star Wars movie. I’m guessing most of the influence came from the way Gosha shoots the swordplay, which is very kinetic and rough, but there may be some of the film’s cynical treatment of justice and honor in the new Star Wars too… maybe, since Star Wars is rarely cynical when it comes to good and evil, but we shall see. Regardless, it is a good film, an essential if you like chambara. (8/10)

The Dentist (dir. Leslie Pearce, 1932)

To say WC Fields is weird is an understatement. I would not say I am a fan, but I do adore his surreal and deadpan Yukon parody The Fatal Glass of Beer and generally like The Bank Dick. The Dentist isn’t as impressive as either of those, but it has plenty of good, misanthropic laughs as well as some very risqué humor for 1932 (but then again, this is from the pre-code era). (7/10)

The Fall of the House of Usher (dir. JS Watson Jr. and Melville Webber, 1928)

While not as good as the later Watson and Webber offering, Lot in Sodom, their surreal adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story is still dazzling. It actually feels quite modern. It is a modern dress adaptation and conjures more of the dreadful, claustrophobic spirit of the original story rather than sticking closely to the letter. It also has a lot more obvious Caligari influence than the later Lot in Sodom. (9/10)

Fire Over England (dir. William K. Howard, 1937)

I’ve been reading a lot about the Tudors lately and Elizabeth is my favorite of the bunch. After watching the pretty poor Cate Blanchett movie, I went sixty years back to this 1937 adventure film produced by Alexander Korda. While not focusing exclusively on Elizabeth, it does tell a rousing yarn about an English spy (playing by a young and totally adorable Laurence Olivier) out to do business in Philip II’s court before the legendary English victory over the Spanish Armada in the 1580s. It’s a fun swashbuckler complete with broad characters, a hiss-worthy villain, swordplay, and daring escapes, also of historical interest since the conflict between England and Spain is meant to reflect the then-contemporary conflict between most of Europe and the Nazi Germany. Flora Robson is a great screen Elizabeth, commanding and charismatic while also sporting a fierce temper. And though given little to do, Vivien Leigh is ravishing, and even in this early film, she and Olivier are wonderful together. (8/10)

Ruka [The Hand] (dir. Jiri Trnka, 1965)

I was turned onto the work of Czech animator Jiri Trnka by the Brows Held High episode on his 1959 feature adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That film is a charming fantasy and heartfelt look at the power of art; however, Trnka’s most famous film, the short “Ruka,” is much darker and proved to be his swan song before he passed away in 1969. It is a political satire about the suppression of artistic expression in totalitarian regimes. It is both darkly hilarious and incredibly bleak. Considering Trnka’s work is usually characterized as nostalgic and whimsical, his final film is strikes a sad, but still powerful chord and remains incredibly relevant even today. (10/10)

Big Deal on Madonna Street (dir. Mario Monicelli, 1958)

So freaking funny! I watched this one because Martin Scorsese recommended it as one of his choices for essential foreign cinema. Though Big Deal is a parody of 1950s heist pictures such as The Asphalt Jungle and Rififi, it is nothing like the pathetic cinematic parodies we get now, like Meet the Spartans or Fifty Shades of Black. Like Airplane or Blazing Saddles, it still understands that it needs to work as an original story with characters we enjoy watching and good gags that don’t really on references to popular culture alone. Big Deal is also interesting in its presentation of everyday life and urban poverty, seeing as our heroes are a mix of sad sack, small time criminals and lower class working folk; in many ways, it feels like a comic romp set in the same universe as The Bicycle Thieves or Umberto D. (9/10)

[aion-rsa]

Muppets Now Episode 1 Review: Due Date

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There are some franchises that stand the test of time. Superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, get rebooted and recreated over and over again. Looney Tunes and Mickey Mouse’s crew are technically the same characters over time, but the art styles and personalities shift by the generation and evolve, for better or worse. The Muppets, on the other hand, are always meant to be the same. They’re the same characters from the 70s with the same designs and dynamics. It’s not about rebooting the brand, but finding new settings for them.

The Muppets have persevered in different concepts, like hosting a meta variety show, starring in various movies, doing one hell of a Christmas special, having their own dated 4D Disney World show, and being reimagined as cartoon babies. Disney has been trying to figure out how to make them relevant in modern times, which led to a nostalgia-fueled comeback movie and a lesser follow-up.

Then came an attempt at a sitcom that mixed the mockumentary style of the Office and Parks and Recreation with the comedic show-about-a-show style of 30 Rock. The Muppets, which lasted one 16-episode season, had its growing pains, but by the time it was figuring itself out, the creative team was replaced. By the time THAT creative team was hitting its stride, it was cancelled. In the end, I felt the show hit more than it missed, even if it took a few episodes to start working.

I hope the same could be said about Muppets Now, the new series on Disney+ that once again tries to put these timeless icons in a setup that keeps them relevant. At its very base, it’s trying to be like the Muppet Show. This is another series about the Muppets chaotically putting on a show that features celebrity guests. Though, to differentiate itself from the other Muppet vehicles, there are two gimmicks.

For one, the format is more of a web-based variety show. It’s like if various Muppets have their own unrelated YouTube shows and the only thing holding it together is a framing device based on Scooter trying to get it all uploaded as a single entity. Miss Piggy has a fashion/makeup advice show, which brings back the sitcom’s brilliant idea of making Uncle Deadly her personal assistant. Walter hosts a segment about how some Muppets have special talents the viewers don’t know about. Swedish Chef is a contestant in a cook-off against a celebrity chef. Then there’s Kermit the Frog’s celebrity interview segment.

The other gimmick is that parts of the show are supposedly unscripted. When this was announced way back when, I imagined something akin of Whose Line is it Anyway? with Muppets. If funny, it would come off as impressive. From watching this, it comes off as the Muppets being scripted (or at least having a lot of direction) while it’s the celebrities who have to improvise off them. If that’s the case, then hoo boy, this does not work.

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This first episode features four celebrities. Taye Diggs and Linda Cardellini appear in Piggy’s segment and only Diggs appears to have anything to work with, as brief as it is. Carlina Will competes against Swedish Chef and is…just there, adding nothing as the host Beverly Plume (a talking turkey) is already the straight character of the bit. Then there’s RuPaul as the guest of Kermit’s interview segment. RuPaul’s unscripted performance is little more than rolling with the punches while the Muppets do their schtick. It’s fine, but nothing memorable.

The whole experiment reminds me of that Simpsons bit where Troy McClure hosts an educational video and backs up his information by saying, “Just ask this scientist!” and we see a random scientist say, “Uhhhh…” before it cuts to something else. So far, the celebrities and their unscripted nature are forgettable and useless.

Oddly enough, it’s Walter’s segment – the one that is completely devoid of celebrity guests – that acts as the highlight. First off, it’s great seeing Walter show up again and not be doomed to obscurity after Muppets Most Wanted left theaters. In this segment, he, Kermit, and Sam Eagle play off of each other perfectly and it gets silly enough to get a couple laughs out of me (especially when Kermit makes a fun reference to a certain Kermit meme). Having Piggy and Uncle Deadly show up at the end also helps make the episode feel slightly more connected.

The bottom of the barrel is “Okey Dokey Kookin’,” the Swedish Chef segment. Imagine your average Swedish Chef bit. Now add two characters talking over it for the sake of having something normal to contrast with, as if we already didn’t get that Swedish Chef’s behavior is completely weird. Also, make Swedish Chef kind of an asshole. Then have the bit go on for far too long. It’s really rough and there’s at least three more installments on the horizon.

What’s harsh in all of this is that the season of six episodes was filmed over the course of several days. There will be no real-time tinkering, so the only hope is that they’ve been saving their A material for later episodes or they’ve been learning some of their mistakes while in the editing chair.

If not, it’s back to the drawing board yet again for the Henson crew.

The post Muppets Now Episode 1 Review: Due Date appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[jennywatchingaseriestoomany]

christmas movies

I don’t know about your Christmas traditions or what makes you feel the Christmas spirit, but for me, a huge part of it is movies. I have some that I watch every single year, and it´s truly no Christmas without them, so with the holidays coming up, I thought I´d share some of them with you. So here you have them, in no specific order, my go-to Christmas movies:

It´s a wonderful life: 

I love this movie to shreds and I think it is such a good movie regardless of what holiday it is, but it’s no doubt that Christmas is the ideal time to sit down and appreciate every minute of this delightful classic. Even though this movie starts off quite depressing it always leaves you with the feeling that life, is in fact, wonderful. This movie makes me want to call all my friends and tell them that I appreciate them and to apologize to my parents for being difficult sometimes. It makes me want to run outside and smile at everyone I pass, and it makes me want to give out hugs because you never know who needs one.  This movie makes me remember to look after the people I care about because my actions can have a bigger influence than I tend to believe. Overall, its whole message and the feeling it leaves fits perfect for Christmas, which is why it´s on my watch list every single year.

White Christmas (Black Mirror: season 2, episode 4) I know that black mirror is technically a tv-series, but if you’ve seen it you would know that each episode is essentially a movie, so I´m going to count it as one. If you’ve seen it, you would also know that this episode, like most of it´s episodes, is pretty dark and doesn’t have that cozy uplifting spirit that most Christmas movies do, but for some reason, I still always feel the urge to watch this when Christmas comes around. It has sort of become a tradition for me to watch this late at night on the day we get out of school, just to contemplate life, death, the concept of time and everything in between, before waking up on December 22nd, ignoring it all just to have a typical, slightly superficial, morning of baking cookies, wrapping gifts and decorating while listening to Christmas music with a strong godly message even though I´m not a Cristian.

Also, I just think Jon Hamm is pretty cool.

Love actually: This one is probably no shocker because everyone and their moms love this movie, but with good reason. I don´t think it is one of the best romantic-comedies ever made, as some claim, but damn, nothing makes me feel more Christmassy than this movie. My heart smiles every single time Thomas Brodie Sangster is on screen. I laugh every time Rowan Atkinson is gift wrapping the necklace that Alan Rickman bought. And I cry every time “god only knows” starts playing over the montage of people reuniting at the airport. Overall this movie is just so wholesome, and it fits perfect for any part of the holiday. I´ve watched it every year since I was a little kid, and I am 100% sure that this movie will be a part of my Christmas traditions for a really, really long time.

Die Hard:

I have a pretty big family, which means that holidays like Christmas comes with a lot of social interaction, and while I love my family, it is a bit exhausting celebrating Christmas 4 days in a row with different people. Therefore, on December 28th, when there is no more celebrating to do and no more Christmas food that needs to be eaten, I always make myself a cheap, greasy pizza and eat it all alone whilst watching die hard in bed. I know that people love to discuss whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not, and while I agree that it´s more a movie set around Christmas rather than a movie about Christmas, it will always be a Christmas movie to me; because nothing sets the wholesome Christmas mood like watching John McClane kill a bunch of terrorists, am I right?

That concludes the list of movies I religiously watch every single Christmas, however you're not getting rid of me that easily because I thought I´d include some “honorable mentions” if you want to call them that. Essentially, I still find these Christmassy, but I don’t watch them EVERY year like I do with the list above.

The polar express: I know so many people who love this movie so much, but I´ve never been one of them. I never really connected with the characters, and I never got too invested in their journey either. The movie has some pretty visuals, but the way the humans are animated reminds me too much of a video game and have made me a bit uncomfortable ever since I was a kid.  This all may make it sound like I dislike this movie, but I don’t, I just don’t like it either, to me, it is just kind of forgettable. But, the thing is, even though I never put this movie on myself, I sometimes take a look if I see it playing on TV, and even though I go in with the mindset that I don’t really care for this movie, it always ends up giving me that true warm feeling of Christmas, which is why I still thought I´d mention it.

Also, if you know anything about me, you might know that my love for Tom Hanks is quite above average, which should mean that I would love this movie where he plays like half the characters, but I just don’t, sorry Tom.

Elf and How the Grinch stole Christmas:

The reason why I put these two together is because my relationships with these movies are EXACTLY the same. I never watched them as a child, but two years ago I was tired of not getting the references, so I watched them both for the first time ever on Christmas morning. They are both cute Christmas movies, and I´m sure I would have loved them if I had watched them at an earlier age, but most of my favorite Christmas movies are favorites because of the tradition or memories attached to them, and I don’t have any with these two movies. It´s not that I have anything against them at all, in fact, both of them lifts my Christmas spirit a bit, but I just don’t know if these two are movies I will keep coming back to each year.

The Harry Potter franchise: I have never met someone who qualifies Harry Potter as Christmas movies, but someone in Norwegian broadcasting must do so because they are always on TV during Christmas on so many channels! Don’t get me wrong, I´m not mad at this at all because I love Harry Potter, and every year I catch a few when they are on TV, but they are not really a holiday must for me.

Not going to lie though, they are really christmassy.

Home alone + Home alone 2

I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself a bit so I´ll keep it short. Such cute Christmas classics, I usually watch them, but Christmas isn´ t ruined if I don't.

The nightmare before Christmas:

People love to discuss whether this is a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie, but I can’t really choose, so to me, it´s both. I used to watch this movie every Halloween and again every Christmas, but after so many years of doing so, I felt myself starting to get a bit tired of it, thus I decided to limit myself to only watch it one holiday a year. The only problem with this was that I would have to choose between Christmas and Halloween, and Halloween won simply because I usually have a marathon every Halloween including this, corps bide and Coraline, and I wouldn’t want to ruin that. This now means that I don’t have a tradition of watching this every single Christmas anymore, but I still love it to bits and if I miss it on Halloween, I always catch up on it during Christmas time.

That´s it for this time! I hurt my neck first day off of school and the doctor has put me on bed rest so at least I have an excuse to lay in bed and watch movies all day this year. With that being said I hope that you've all had a great holiday so far and that you enjoy what is left of it. 

(Show: Parks and rec)