Quite happy, I launched into The Seeds of Doom. (For some reason, I keep associating it with this song.)
This is a nice, fast paced story. Yes, yes, it's a two-parter, then gets repeated as a four-parter, but it's still nicely paced, a fair bit of action, a fair bit of humour, quite a classic Fourth Doc story in many ways. Okay, fine, the Krynoid is CGI'd into the scene, but that was the style at the time, and compared with certain other previous efforts (*cough* Claws of Axos, Robot *cough*), it's integrated really well.
What helps is that it's all at a human level for a long time. The Krynoid is a costume for most of it, so there is actual interaction without odd eyelines everyone ends up with when dealing with overlay effects, which adds to the suspension of disbelief. And although I was very aware of the model shots (watching the Info Text at the same time as the story doesn't help in that regard), they are well shot and also work well.
As this is a six-parter, there is another disc of stuff, although there isn't really anything special on here that wouldn't have been on a four-parter release. No particular extra-length feature or special behind-the-scenes bits. I think the info text refers to the idea that there was to be a 90 minute version of the story, which was never screened, but for a moment I did entertain while speculative ideas about yet another run through of the story.
Good story, solid release, great watch.
[END]
Saturday, 9 July 2011
I've Been Watching...
Friday, 8 July 2011
Less Than Meets The Eye
Well, I went ahead with the threat...
Transmorphers (2007): Oh ye gods, this is bad. More Terminator than Transformers, the machines have come to earth, laid waste to it, and now humans are a race trying to survive and fight back against the machines. Which, it has to be said, don't do a lot of transmorphing. There's one that converts into a large gun emplacement, which, considering this is a cheap movie, gets used again and again. In fact, the animation in this makes Birdemic... no, wait, Birdemic is still worse. But this is from the same school, if a slightly getter GPA. I will grant that this movie has better gender politics, in that it has a pair of married women, but that's undercut by another scene which is a women in army fatigues bitch fight that comes off as exploitative than narratively driven. We can only be glad that the sound track often drowns out the dialogue. The best thing you can say about this movie is that it doesn't hurt anyone's career, 'cos no-one who's in this has one. This movie really is a piece of shit, and I say that as someone's who watched a fair few Asylum movies by now...
Transmorphers: The Fall of Man (2009): As a sequel, this is a prequel. Immediately bonus over previous movie: Bruce Boxleitner. I can only assume they caught him on a good day and got a yes before he had a chance to really think about it. And there's about 500% more transmorphing in this movie. And nearly believable characters... aside from the fact that the director/writer (same as Paranormal Entity) was also the star, so all the women are praising him... so, this is a far better movie that the first one... although it's still terrible. This movie comes in two halves, the first being before the opening of the above movie, as is the better half (and features Bruce), the second part is after the invasion has begun, and severely degrades in every respect. If you must watch this (and you never must), stop after the first part. Or just never watch in the first place...
[END]
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Team Xero #010
It had to happen: there be a movie! Although possibly too many scriptwriters...
I admit that this probably only amuses me... but it really amuses me!
[END]
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
This Film has been Ranted
It's amazing how many controlling bodies there are running the different aspects of the world. In this movie, we find out that movies are held hostage to the Movie Picture Association of America.
This documentary is different in one respect, it doesn't talk about what can be done to change things. Instead, it is a long spiel on the mystery that is the people behind the MPAA. Some movies are rated NC-17 (adults only), but a similar movie, with only a slight difference is R. Or PG-13. Typically, anything sexual that isn't missionary sex is banned. Violence, not so much a problem. (No mention of Passion of the Christ in that respect...) Not that this is unknown in America, the reverse seems to hold in Europe.
One very amusing sub-section of this movie is the private detective finding out who are the people of the MPAA. And she does. (It's scary just how easy private detectives can find out all about us.) So many details about them are revealed, and how they completely fail the guidelines for who should be on the MPAA. "Typical parents of young children" they are not.
Given all this, and that this movie itself wasn't rated (although it did earn NC-17 for 'sexual content', not 'because it reveals the MPAA to be full of hypocrisy'), I'm not sure how much impact this movie has made... although the trivia entry says that there have been some changes...
The MPAA has a rather powerful hold over what movies get released, basically, so this movie is a good look at them. But what other secret cabals are out there...?
[END]
Monday, 4 July 2011
Three in The Asylum
The Asylum is the Vanilla Coke of movie makers. You can't believe you tried it, and yet you want another...
Paranormal Entity (trailer): Here's an even more student version of a student movie. With only four actors, this stays inside the house and tries to creep out the audience by... having a phone ring. And flushing the toilet. There's only one actual ghostly attack sequence, otherwise it's just the guy wandering around. And then there's the ending. There's attempt at build up, build up, build up... and then we see there's only two minutes of movie left, so bang! End scare! ...the hell? Just... no.
Almighty Thor (trailer): Loki kicks ass without needing to take a breath by throwing out fireballs, but decides to fight Odin with a sword, because... Odin throws the hammer away to stop Loki getting it, so Thor and Jarnsaxa decide to find it first, which, of course, leads Loki to it. And there's a big battle that fails to be choreographed in any believable way. Loki is excessively American here, and Thor is an emo bitch (and he uses guns now!). At least it's easy to tell what world they are in, brown for Valhalla and blue for Earth. For a movie that's supposed to devastate a city, we only have a handful of people on screen.
2012: Ice Age (trailer): This starts with stock footage and bad CGI and goes downhill from there. You will believe that an ice glacier can move at 200mph... and if you do believe that, you might actually enjoy this movie. Instead, we get the plot of some insipid family trying to get back together, and seem to be the only ones in the world. Except when the bad editing has others all of a sudden around them. They go from car on an empty highway on overcast day, to tree lined avenue at night where they hit two cars, back to day where they are surrounded by cars. Urm? And then they destroy the glacier in a way that makes destroying the asteroid in Armageddon more credible! Oi vey...
I can only assume the third Transmorphers movie is just around the corner.
[END]
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Tr3n3f3rm3r3
Okay, let's get one thing clear: there is no dark side of the moon.
There is, however, yet another movie by Bay, and watching this you too will ask "aren't there supposed to be robots in this?" Now he's done, let's hope the next person who deals with this series will actually want to make a Transformers movie.
In this exciting adventure Sam Witwicky has a hot girlfriend (somehow) and gets caught up when Decepticons do stuff, and must join up with the Autobots to help save the world... just like in the other movies. Oh, and there's a fight that involves humans running around firing guns... just like in the other movies. You could be mistaken for thinking they simply tried to redo an old script...
One thing about this movie really annoyed me: the humour. Every single time they tried for the funny, they failed. This is usually because the "comedy" involves Shia LaBeouf, or the Witwicky parents who are pure comedy death. Gah! I am wondering there there could be a "fan edit" of these films which cut out all "humourous" scenes... and the scenes with just army guys... although the resulting frenetic cuts will probably cause seizures.
What a waste of Leonard Nimoy. Really? In some ways, if he said 'I did it for the money' I could respect that more than 'I cared about the script'. I'm also not sure why John Malkovich agreed to do what the script said. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is there entirely to look pretty (as completely overdone in the Dylan car scene, you'll know the one, Bay doesn't do subtle). And while she wasn't terrible, I did expect her to say that it was absolutely fascinating.
Anyway, can we move on now, please?
[END]
Friday, 1 July 2011
Firefoxed
My computers are slowly crashing one way or another. One problem I've had for a while is Firefox, which seems to freeze... then hang... then come right again. Really annoying. It happened on my laptop, and now it's happening on my desktop.
(I semi solved it on my laptop by making only run on one cpu instead of both. Now it hangs less frequently...)
This morning, without asking me, the desktop version upgraded itself to Firefox v5.0. Yeah, thanks for that. I was holding off to let it become a bit more stable with other people real world testing, but, no, I get that I have no say in how I use my computer, because, well, it is Windows I'm running after all (don't get me started on the complete failture of IE to ever upgrade itself on this machine).
Anyway, I've now been running it for about five minutes... during which is has hung several times already.
Yeah, big improvement there. Once again... thanks.
[END]
