17/January/2011
It's hilarious at how terrible my productivity is. It's one thing that I'm struggling to work on redesigning the site, but I can barely even work on anything else, and now I can barely even write a blog entry without stumbling over myself. I've been trying to compose my thoughts on Zebraman for nearly two weeks now and I still haven't made my mind up! Surely I can't botch up mere summaries of movies I've watched, right?
... right?
La Horde: A French zombie movie. French zombies - is there a more despicable combination known to man? (let's see how long it takes for me to regret that remark! I've never even understood French bashing, personally, but I'm not the kind of person who lets a cheap joke pass by on the internet)
Crooked cops and multi-racial gangsters get into a scuffle at the top of an apartment building, only to realise, whoops, the city's kind of falling apart and is stuffed full of zombies, and everyone that's dead is coming back with a hunger for flesh! The three remaining cops and three remaining crooks reluctantly come to the conclusion that if they want to get out of there alive, they'll need to join forces. The two groups are frequently in a bit of a tiff, to put it lightly, especially when a pervy ol' fat guy joins up with them. Hijinks ensue.
Well, it's a zombie flick, what are you going to expect? There's violence. There's profanity. The characters get uppity at each other a lot. Everyone totally beats the shit of zombies in hand-to-hand combat, and this is the only movie I've seen where headbutting a zombie never fails. It's actually almost disappointing when the characters get their hands on a firearm because they actually make hand-to-hand combat with the living dead fun. Also, it doesn't help that the characters actually know right from the start that you shoot them in the head to kill them (when they don't even know these things are zombies!), and then afterwards totally forget that and instead just pump barrel-loads of ammo into their torsos, to minimal effect. Aim up, you dunces! You did it so well forty minutes ago!
It's brainless fluff (har dee har), but as a zombie movie it's reasonably decent fluff. There's an engaging dynamic between the characters (cowboy cop hates the gangsters, two of the gangsters are brothers and have had a troubled childhood in Nigeria, the lady cop was impregnated by one of the gangsters and she's a bit miffed about that), some great brutal action sequences, and it's just a fun watch. Nothing outstanding, mind you - I basically forgot everything that happened mere minutes after it finished, but still, if you're a horror fan it can't be a bad way of spending ninety minutes (certainly better than Walking The Dead, hoppity christ). I watched it with English dubbing, and I admit it almost defeats the purpose to dub a foreign film into English, but have half the characters speak in thick French accents anyway.
The Borrowers: The 1997 one. Yes, it's a kids flick, but I thought it was a rather fun romp. Little dudes living in the walls, stealin' all your food and up to no good! There is some faint resemblance of a plot regarding how a corrupt lawyer (played fabulously by John Goodman) is trying to demolish a nice ol' family's house (you can tell they're nice because everyone else in the film calls them nice people) by hiding the will that declares the house as their property, and the borrowers aim to get it back. It's basically an excuse for madcap antics of them being chased by the lawyer and a rather humbled exterminator across the city; there's just enough plot to stop you from going "okay, why is all this happening?" but not so much plot that you're wondering "okay, why is all this happening?"
If I were to describe the movie solely through hackneyed comparisons (the best kind of comparison!), it's a bit like if Mousehunt were about tiny humans instead, and focused more on them and their conflict with one crazy guy, rather than the person(s) hunting them and all their conflict over catching it. I mean, both movies have a mixture of American and British actors (John Goodman and Hugh Laurie versus Nathan Lane and Lee Evans!), they both have a brief fixation on chief, and, uh, micro technology. I'm sure if I'd actually seen Mousehunt within the past five years I could actually make a valid comparison, but at the moment I'm just tooting out of my bum. Doesn't Mousehunt have a not-quite-modern-but-not-quite-old-timey setting as well? I really need to watch it again. It's very refreshing watching a brainless children's film after what feels like non-stop zombie movies.
08/January/2011
Watched Walking The Dead (not to be confused The Walking Dead; this is the one) It was not very impressive. I wasn't really in a mood to watch a film to begin with so that might be the reasoning behind my very surly nature throughout it, but it just felt like a slasher-movie-by-numbers.
A journalist goes to a remote village in China after receiving a letter that some guy buried his daughter to keep her safe, and finds that the place is effectively a ghost town. The girl's mother is also snooping around for her, and the two team up to find the girl and unravel the mysteries surrounding the village. Surprise, everyone inside is dead and are zombies! (Also, the woman's father is going around with an axe cutting people's heads off, but that's not exactly as marketable a threat these days)
Although the packaging tries to market it as a zombie movie, it's more of a slasher film, as the axe-carrying dad is the main threat, and dead walking (yes, not walking dead, but dead walking. The female lead is very adamant that they aren't zombies, but doesn't really do a good job of explaining what the difference is. Especially when the dead walking are pretty unsubstantial; yes, dropping them would change the plot, but given how boring it is, who would notice?) are almost just there as set pieces. To be frank, I'm having difficulty recapping any of the mythos because it just felt like bollocks. There's a lot of mythos to these dead walking (I am getting sick of referring to them as that) like how they're controlled by "walkers," and the eyes are a pathway into controlling them, so dudes cut out their eyes so the walkers can't hijack their corpses, and all manner of miscellaneous titbits... but none of it really means anything. The zombies basically offer nothing to the story or to the action other than prompting totally forgettable and unnecessary chase sequences. The whole mythos behind them is never used, and only seems to exist so it can pull a totally ridiculous twist at the end.
The woman was dead the whole time, and her daughter was a walker!
And the male lead died at the end as well! But now he's back because the girl revived him!
OoOooOoooooo!!
Don't worry, there's more bullshit plot twists in the eighty minutes before that bombshell is dropped. For instance, it turns out the entire village was built on top of a graveyard!
OoOooOoooooo!!
It's just not an interesting movie. None of the characters can carry the story. The male lead gets to soak in a bit of mystery, but he hasn't any means of projecting his suspicion and intrigue because the only other person he gets to talk to, the female lead, knows all the answers. What's up with this town? Why was the girl buried? Who's the axe dude? She answers all of them without a pause. Well, shit, way to go. It's like having a Friday the 13th movie with someone who knows Jason's pattern, and he hangs out with the victims to warn them "hey, watch out, Jason's gonna pop out of that doorway in front of you just when you think he's still at the bottom of the stairs." None of the action has any... well, action. There's a lot of chase scenes, but quite often they just feel thrown in so the characters aren't just doddering around aimlessly for the whole movie.
It's almost a pity. The film is set in a picturesque rural Chinese village that looks positively beautiful. There's a very serene, back-to-nature vibe about it that obviously contrasts with the fact they've got an axe man and a town full of zombies bouncing around. If they had a better story they could have gotten something great out of it, but it just feels wasted on these crummy actors and their crummy production. Then again, it doesn't really look like any of them have been in any winners to begin with. They got my £8, and I'm sure that's all they're looking for.
If I have any kind words for the film, it's that I like how the female protagonist changes from a red scarf to a yellow scarf (between scenes!) as soon as it's fashionably appropriate.
05/January/2011
I like things!*
I received two packages in the mail today. One was Alleyway for the Game Boy, a game I already have on at least two multi-cartridges and isn't anything exciting, but I bought it in hopes of the manual expanding upon the rather ridiculous story cooked up by the blurb on the back of the box. No such luck, the manual is about as boring as stale cheese. Mind you, what kind of moron thinks a manual for a paddle-and-ball game would actually have any interesting reading material in it? Only a total moron, that's what!
The second package was a lot less disappointing, and I'd dare say its contents were pretty damn delightful!
A Dragon-Do Eclipse action figure (mint in box!)
DVDs of the Japanese Sentai film Zebraman and some Madballs cartoons!
Two Hershey's Take 5 fun-size candy bars!
A Christmas card!! (or a Happy Holidays card if you want to be pedantic. I'm not sure who they're trying to fool when frickin' Santa Claus is on the card. If you're going to call it Happy Holidays, at least give the snowman a Buddhist monk's robe or something, just to be snazzy)
This was a total gem to receive. Wes had informed me he was sending me a little surprise gift during Christmas (though it's hard to make it a surprise when he had to ask me for my postal address and rather bluntly implied what the action figure was!), so I know whose package it was as soon as I saw the figure, but the rest of the stuff came as a total surprise! I was most certainly not expecting today of all days to be my first foray into the realm of American candy!
Everyone says that British chocolate is much richer and stronger than American candy, which is apparently 'weaker' in comparison. My good buddy Aodhán (of AC Studios, which appears to have disappeared off the face of the internet... again. I'll have to pester him about this because such matters are totally important) was part of not one but two school trips to America years and years ago, and he confirmed firsthand that their Mars bars were crap in comparison (to go on a tangent, he also said that most people he talked to seemed really confused that there was a Northern Ireland as well as just plain vanilla Ireland. I should probably reveal that it was only a while back that I realised North America and South America are actually a bit different - that way we're even!). My brother was on hand to sample of the two bars, and he too expressed concerned. He consumed his first. I followed suit about five minutes later because I am a cowardly custard.
And OH MY GOD
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE
I HAVE LOST MY CHOCOLATE-AND-PEANUT-BUTTER VIRGINITY AND I HAVE NO REGRETS
Seriously, goddamn. I can't personally vouch for how good American chocolate is, but I can certainly say they know how to cram a bunch of ingredients into one hell of a concoction. I mean, chocolate and caramel are a natural combination, as well as peanuts, but pretzels and peanut butter? I would not have thought such combinations were tasty, or even holy, but I am very rightly corrected. Goddamn.
Wes, I want a box of this stuff. I am willing to pay with cash money. You have unlocked my lust for chocolate and peanut butter and I am now... I don't think I can take this sexual chocolate analogy further without getting awkward. Point is, it was surprisingly awesome. I want more. In my belly.
On a tangentially related note, I picked up a bag of micro pretzels in Marks & Spencers today. They were pretty atrocious. I still hold hope that the real non-micro deal will be delicious.
Despite the fact I was reasonably excited to be getting the Eclipse action figure, I guess everything else has kind of overshadowed it! Dude's still in his box, untouched. Probably for the best.
He's got company.
I was planning on leaving it until later in the week, but I watched Zebraman. I enjoyed it and definitely thought it was a worthwhile watch; maybe even a rewarding watch! But... I'm actually having a hard time composing my thoughts on it. It's pretty damn quirky, and even after going back to rewatch a couple of scenes I'm still unsure what I actually thought. Besides the very basic "it was good" remark. Hopefully by the next entry I'll be able to ramble about it in moderate detail.
But all in all, this really made my day. Judging from my previous excitement at receiving Bomberman: Act Zero from RQ87, I think I just like getting things. I thought I liked attention, but what good is attention if you don't get things out of it? Seriously, thank you so much, Wes! We must discuss how I can repay you. While I'm quite partial to Gold bars, I'm not sure they're snazzy enough to be the equivalent of two fun-size Take 5 bars.
* Except when I don't!