Thursday, June 28, 2012

Abraham Lincon: Vampire Hunter


First off, a shout out to Dan the Movie Man. Dan reviews movies, just like us. Only Dan is far more prolific, and his taste is far better. So if you want legitimate suggestions for movies to go watch, check out his site. If you want to keep it mindless, stay right here.

This week we watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Now, before I get started, I wanted to mention that this movie got panned by the critics. To which many movie-goers responded "OF COURSE. It's ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, you twats. What were you expecting?" Now, that opens up an actual good discussion: If a movie is intentionally bad, does that excuse it's badness? Personally, I say no, it doesn't. But I can enjoy it nonetheless, which is all that I ask of a movie-going experience. So really, movie quality is more of a side note to me - the main question is whether I have fun or not, to which quality is mostly irrelevant.

Evan and I whiffed on half the previews. Lawless and Gangster Squad are pretty much the same movie, only set in two different locales (in the boonies, and urban Hollywood), and the trailers could both be set to this (it's from the MI:4trailer, if you recognized it). We both got ParaNorman, and then Evan took the week with The Watch (while I desperately hoped that Iron Sky would make it to Calgary. I was wrong).

The movie opens with a young Abe sticking up for his black friend, Will, and both end up getting beaten by a slaver. Abe's father intervenes, punching the slaver into a conveniently placed river. In retaliation, the slaver sneaks into the Lincoln household that night and bites Abe's mom. She ends up dying, and Abe wants to take revenge, but has to abide by a promise made to his father that he won't do anything stupid. When his father dies a number of years later, Abe (Benjamin Walker) can now take revenge. That's when he discovers that the slaver's a vampire, and much harder to kill than normal. He's rescued by HowardStark - sorry, Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), who teaches him how to kill vampires, and it. is. ON!

Henry sends him to a town with many vampires, and updates him with targets to kill. When he's not busy slaying vampires at night, he works as a stock boy, studies hard to be a lawyer and woos Mary Todd, who was briefly engaged to Stephen A Douglas (played by Alan Tudyk, one of my favourite actors). Eventually, Lincoln becomes president (you should know this already) and can still kick your ass seven ways from Sunday. He's Abraham Lincoln, fool!

This movie is all kinds of awesome, in all kinds of ridiculous ways. It's by the guy who did Wanted, so you know the action is going to be so far over the top, you won't be able to see the top any more. It take some time to get there, but then BAM! - Hyperkinetic action sequence during a massive horse stampede, and the audience is bowled over. I loved it. Of course, I did, it's exactly my type of movie. Now, there are going to be many people (and by that, I mean critics) who will undoubtedly look down upon this movie as a large amount of over-caffeinated tripe. And they are 100% correct. But there are many other people who thoroughly enjoy over-caffeinated tripe (myself among them) and we'll all love this movie. Sure, there are parts that could be better. The movie slows down a lot before the climax, when Abe runs for president and we have a time jump while he raises a family and tries to hold the country back from the brink of war. When it spills over, he's wracked with doubt about whether he did the right thing (what with the south fighting for slavery and vampirism). That could have used more action. But then it slides right back into jacked up action aboard a train on fire, and off we go for the climax.

It's a theatre movie, but only according to me. If you have a refined taste in entertainment, you probably won't like it. However, if you've enjoyed the same movies that I have, you will undoubtedly have a blast.

One last note. At the end of the movie, there's a scene set in the present that calls back to the one in which Abe meets Henry for the first time. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to skin color, but Evan thinks the guy was black. Could we be looking at Barack Obama: Vampire Hunter? He'd be played by Will Smith, and take on the Wall Street banker types (they suck your blood and your bank account). Evan and I are all in on this idea. Who can we throw money at to make it happen?

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter...Evan's Take

If you agreed to go to a movie called "Abraham Lincoln", you might expect a historical drama telling you about the life of the great US president, Abraham Lincoln and how he steered the country through the American civil war. Such a movie would likely explain why Lincoln deserves to be enshrined on the US penny.

If you agreed to go to a movie called "Vampire Hunter", you would probably expect to see a horror/action movie about a guy who hunts the bloodsucking undead. Or a B-movie with a crazy low budget...

But, if you agree to go to a movie called "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter", what do you expect to see? I would expect to see a ridiculous movie with a crazy premise, stupid action action sequences and something that doesn't take itself seriously. Well, Benjy and I went to check out just such a movie last night...and I must say that I got exactly what I expected.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter's source material is a novel of the same name written by Seth Grahame-Smith. The story interweaves historical facts about the life of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War with the idea that he is actually a vampire hunter seeking vengeance for the death of his mother at the hands (fangs) of a vampire. As the movie progresses, we discover that vampires have established themselves as plantation owners in the southern US and that slavery is actually a means for them to have fresh blood to feast on. Ultimately, the climax is centered around the American Civil War as the fighters from the north (led by now president Lincoln) are waging war against the vampires from the south to prevent the undead from enslaving the entire United States.

...Of course that's the plot...what else would you expect from a movie called "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"?...If you thought this was going to be a thought provoking masterpiece, then you should read the title again: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER! You'd better know this movie is going to be ridiculous!

So without spoiling anything else, I will just say that this movie is all kinds of FUN! It is by no means a perfect movie and it does slow down in the middle while Lincoln pursues his political ambitions. However, it has enough cringe inducing moments for a horror movie, a fun and unique story line that somehow manages to seem believable (in a horror-fiction-movie kind of way) and plenty of eye-popping action sequences and special effects to please everyone. There are two action sequences in particular that really stand out: one that happens in the midst of a stampede of horses and the other that happens on a careening train going over a burning bridge. Both of these are heavy on the CG, quick camera cuts and spewing blood...and they both end with moments that made me want to pump my fist and yell "YEAH...that's AWESOME!". Add in some of the best usage of 3D I have seen and you have a great way to waste an evening at the movie theater.

That's what this movie is...a tremendously great way to waste a couple of hours. If you feel that you need to be challenged by a movie and have it be poignant and engaging...then you will be very disappointed (and you need to read movie titles more carefully). But if you enjoy mindless movies (and you probably do if you are reading this blog) then this movie delivers!

Four silver tipped Ambraham Lincoln vampire axes out of five headless vampires...that sounds about right... 


Saturday, June 23, 2012

Snow White and the Huntsman


This week is the second anniversary of this blog. For two years, we have posted at least one column a week. In a rare moment of seriousness, I'm very proud of what we've done here, and want to thank you for reading. Now, enough of that.

This week, Evan and I saw Snow White and the Huntsman. We took Drew along as well. I know it's been out for a while, but last week Prometheus came out, and the week before that we were pretty busy. And by we, I mean Evan. Because I'm not the one that's moving, changing jobs, and getting married all within two months. Although to be perfectly honest, I do have soccer in some evenings. On to more movie-ish things ...

The previews were a little worrying. Previews are generally aimed at the same demographic watching the movie they're set before, so seeing Ice Age: Continental Drift, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, and Les Misérables was a little disheartening. But they capped it off with Bourne, so that was nice.

The movie itself starts with opening narration over the scenes it's explaining. You should also know this already. if you don't, go read the fairy tales. Or possibly the Disney movie. It's been released about eleventy-billion times. You shouldn't have trouble finding it. King and Queen have a beautiful baby named Snow White. Queen passes away, King remarries after a while to a beautiful woman who turns out to be a witch and murders the king, then takes over. Hope disappears from the world, until Frodo manages to take the ring to Mordor, and - no, wait ...

Anyway, Snow White is locked up until she turns into Kristen Stewart, whereupon she escapes into the dark forest. The evil witch hires a huntsman to lead a team of trackers into the forest, but once Snow White is found, the huntsman decides she's better off alive. He fights off the rest of the team, and he and Snow White go on the lam. They set out to find The Duke, who's the father of one of Snow White's friends from childhood, and whose castle is stupidly unbesieged by the Witch's forces.

Yes, they run into everything in the fairy tale, plus a few more. Also, the movie throws in every cliché it could, almost as if the writers had gone to TVTropes and said "We should include everything in this site." So we have Helmets are Hardly Heroic, Friend to All Living Things, Darker and Edgier, and most especially: Evil isHammy. Good grief, Charlize Theron must have had a ball playing the evil witch. Chews scenery with reckless abandon, hams it up to a laughable extent. A knock on Kristen Stewart was that she didn't act much, but she wasn't asked to do a whole lot, and Theron certainly makes up for any lack of acting (on anyone's behalf).

Aside from the cliché storm, it's actually a decent movie. The effects are spectacular, particularly the aging effects on Theron. The only downside: Who wants to look at an old, wrinkly Charlize Theron? But we do have a young Kristen Stewart to captivate us, so there's that. The music is decent, but I haven't given it enough listens to pass judgement. The humour is there (Chris Hemsworth and the Dwarves bring most of it), so all in all, I think I'll have to say it's a Blu-Ray movie. The big knock against it is the lack of action. But that's only a big knock against it for me, so you may enjoy it more.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Prometheus


Prometheus is the Greek Titans who decided to bring Fire to man. Which was awfully nice of him, but pissed off the Gods to no end. "Now they'll have fire." They said. "And they'll hit each other with it. That's what men do. You should have given it to the women!" For his impudence, Prometheus was chained to a rock, and had seagulls eat his liver. Each night, his liver would grow back, only to be eaten the next day as well. This is one of the few cases when have Wolverine-like regenerative capabilities would really suck. Also, I'm not sure why Zeus picked the liver. Does it have any special meanings to ancient Greece? Why not eyes? Or the tongue? Was there a big anatomical wheel that he spun beforehand? "Not the eyes, not the eyes, not the eyes ..." " ... Liver!" "Well, okay then. That doesn't seem so ba - ow!"

Anyway, Prometheus was also the name of the movie Evan and I went to see this week. We took Norm and Scott along as well, because hey, why not? The movie is named after the space ship the characters travel on. I think we tied the trailer game, but I can't remember too many of them, except for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I always like seeing that trailer in the theatre, because almost none of the audience knows it. So when the ridiculous title finally comes up, the whole theatre laughs in dibelief that they would actually make a movie this ... ludicrous. The only other trailer that comes to mind is Flight, because apparently Denzel Washington's oscar for Training Day is getting lonely.

The movie opens several thousand years ago with an alien on Earth (please bear in mind that when I say 'alien' Im not referring to the titular Alien in the franchise to which this is a prequel; I'm just saying extra-terrestrial). It dies (the alien, not the Earth, although that would be a cool way to start a movie). Suddenly, it's the future, and some people are exploring a cave. They find a painting that's similar to several other paintings, all with aliens pointing towards a particular star formation. "Why not go to that star formation?" they wonder. Maybe because you're in the Alien universe and would get eaten? Well, they don't know that, so they blithely go where no one has gone before, and die in horrible ways. Because, you know ... Alien movie.

Maybe I should have spoiler warned the previous paragraph, but you're not going to these movies for the intricacies of the plot (or maybe you are. Why?) You're going for the scares, deaths, and special effects. So this movie had scares, deaths, and very good special effects.

I liked the special effects, but I've never been a fan of horror movies, so I wasn't much into the horrible ways to die. Or the scares. So I give this movie a DVD rating, although I'm sure a number of people will love it far more than I. Instead, I'll finish the movie by picking nits. Massive nits, but nits nonetheless.

They have faster than light travel. The ship went halfway across the galaxy in two years (it's possible, due to relativistic time, that the trip took longer, but it probably took less than six, and at most 10 years). They also have mastered artificial gravity (walking around a ship in space normally). And finally, they have a completely human android. The Android does not have Wifi. All this tech and no wireless? Also, they send little flying balls (about the size of a softball) down hallways in a hollow mountain to map it. Can't they use sound? Seismic activity? There must be far better ways to map an unknown location.

Biology is pretty terrible. Firstly, the movie pretty much forgets about how similar simian and human DNA is. Second, the aliens on the planet seem to evolve and adapt incredibly quickly. As in, a single generation. Which would be cool, but then why did the aliens stagnate over the next four films? And yes, these are supposed to be the same things.

They set up some good foreshadowing, then never took advantage of it. The example that comes to mind is the atmosphere of the planet they're on. It's stated to be poisonous because of a high CO2 content. And so I thought someone was going to die that way. Nope. And there was a fantastic setup for one as well - except the person chose suicide by flamethrower instead of asphyxiation. Either of those is going to be a bad way to go, but at least too much carbon dioxide wouldn't be too painful. But nooooo, let's try immolation.

The 'villain' does some inexplicable things that are only explained if you remember why the ship in Alien was sent out in the first place. Or rather, the unstated reason it was sent out. Ostensibly to investigate/rescue an SOS beacon (from the Prometheus?), but actually to bring back a sample. Still, it has very little to do with the last half of the movie.

The humans manage to identify a buried alien ship based on their mapping. How? It's not like they've seen one before. Also, one of them can speak the alien language. I can get them reading it because of the paintings and all, but how on Earth (galaxy?) did they know the right pronunciation?

And finally, some people are running away from a large, falling object. They run in a straight line. Do they run perpendicular to the location where it will fall? No, no they do not. People! You have TWO WHOLE DIMENSIONS to run around in. USE THEM!

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Why I Skipped the Hunger Games


The title should also be appended "And Why I Probably Shouldn't Have" but whatever. No movie this week, so I'll tell you about why I didn't go to see one of the biggest movies this year (it's got the second biggest opening weekend this year, and will probably be in the top five grossing movies in 2012, when all is said and done).

I haven't read The Hunger Games (or any of the sequels). I got a page or two into the first one, but found it to be ... not good. That's unusual for me, because I usually brag about having a higher tolerance for crap than other people, but I guess my literary standard is a bit more uppity than I thought. That's not to say I don't love pulp, but it has to be well-written pulp. Take Star Wars, for instance. Timothy Zahn knows how to write a book, and can rock the GFFA like none other, so I really like reading his stuff. But it was only my determined love of all things Star Wars that propelled me through Kevin J Anderson's stuff. I imagine that at 15 years of age, the Jedi Academy trilogy would be riveting, but right now, it's rather trite.

So I passed on The Hunger Games because I didn't like the writing, but also because I thought the basic plot had been done before. And I say this with all possible respect, but a tournament to the death is has been used more than the village bicycle, if you catch my drift. There are actually two plots here, or more accurately, one wider plot and a narrower one that fits into it.

The first one is the basic tournement, usually with the losers being killed. Examples coming to mind are Mortal Kombat (the losers forfeit the souls), Battle Royale (which I haven't seen), Lionheart (ditto), Bloodsport (again, not seen), and The Condemned (this time, with prisoners. You can make them do anything if you promise freedom).

The narrower plot takes the above and sets it slightly in the future, and airs it on TV. It seems like the one thing movies can agree on is that in the future, we'll have no taste. Not that we have any now (reality TV comes to mind, as does Work It, which was thankfully cancelled), but I'd like to think we'd draw the line at actual death being aired. But then I read an article on Cracked that reminded me hangings used to be a pretty big show back in the late 1800's (before we decided they weren't rated E for Everyone), and even farther back, stoning was decent entertainment. So we definitely have the historical background to enjoy death, but only if the people deserve it (that's why it's killing, and not murder). It's not entirely unjustified that people in the future would watch death on TV. Examples include The Running Man, Death Race, and Rollerball.

So I jumped to the conclusion that because The Hunger Games had a similar plot to many other works of fiction, it must not be good, or that I didn't need to see it because I've seen it before, so to speak. And that's simply not the case.

Take Harry Potter. A young man lives with his Aunt and Uncle, discovers he has magical powers, and grows up to save the world while his best friends fall in love. Oh yes, and his cool old mentor wizard dies at the hands of one of his former students. J.K Rowling may as well have called him Harry Skywalker.

Or how about a young man's parents are killed, so he lives with others. He discovers he has awesome powers, and so he grows up to save the world while falling in love. Meet Harry Kent. A young man's parents are killed, so he lives with his aunt and uncle, has trouble at school, discovers he has awesome powers, grows up to save the world while falling in love? It's one journalism job away from Harry Parker.

They all follow the same basic plot, which is explicitly laid out in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's what happened when Joseph Campbell looked at a whole bunch of different stories and picked out the familiar elements, which got called The Hero's Journey. You can read way more about it in the link. It created a template (or distilled a template out of thousands of stories) that George Lucas used when writing Star Wars, which is why so many things can get compared to it.

All of which to say that I shouldn't look down on The Hunger Games because it sort of mixes Mortal Kombat with Death Race (and some 1984 mixed in). I doubt I'll have the chance to see it in theatre, so I may have to get the DVD. Evan vouched for it, so there's a good chance that it's actually decent. But don't ask me to read the books.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Men in Black III+


The plus in the title is not that we went to see more than one Men in Black (although you can bet that someone, somewhere, is writing a Men in Black IV). But it's to say that I went to more than just MIBIII this week. Anyway, Evan nearly swept the trailer game (although I called The Expendables II as the first trailer) with the aforementioned, Spiderman, and Total Recall. I only got The Great Gatsby. Which is being released in 3D. Sure, people say it adds a touch of surrealism to an adaptation of a book with surrealistic elements, but come on. If anyone is wondering about the unnecessariness of 3D, wonder no longer. It's totally unnecessary here. On a scale of one to ten, with one being absolutely pivotal and ten being totally unnecessary, the 3D in The Great Gatsby is a solid 15. In fact, from now on, unnecessariness will now be measured on a scale of one to The Great Gatsby in 3D. Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Men in Black III opens with a cake, held by a woman. The cake jiggles. That's the kind of humour we're looking forward to? Whee. The cake is scanned, then walked by the woman to a jail cell in a very totalitarian-like prison. The cell belongs to that of Boris the Animal ("It's just Boris!") who uses the insect hiding in the cake to break out of prison. On the Moon!

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Agents J and K are having a conversation. Well, J is talking to K. K is ignoring him and being surly, which is his usual demeanour. And this movie is all about going back in time and finding out why K is so surly. Could it be that you pulled him away from his marriage for the second time? Nope. That's never even mentioned. In fact, there's a new romance thrown in back in 1969, just to further cloud the issue. Does no one writing this remember what happened 15 years ago? No? That's what I thought (sigh).

Time travel is involved, complete with all of its paradoxes that are glossed over or ignored entirely. Jokes are involved, most of which are pretty lame, and said with about as much effort as one would expect lame jokes to be told. It's like everyone in this movie just mailed it in. There are some good jokes ("Sir, you should meet the Viagrans. They have a revolutionary new pill!") but they are few and far between.

The movie does pick up a bit as it goes along, and it has a surprisingly emotional moment near the end that sort of explains K's surliness, but not all of it (and no, it's not Tommy Lee Jones realizing that despite being a far better actor than Will Smith, he'll never make Fresh Prince level money).

This movie is blah. That's about the best way to describe it. I'm not sure who it's supposed to appeal to. Teenagers without my level of sophistication? (oh wow, that got egotistical). I can't imagine I'd like this movie any more when I was 15. So I give a DVD rating, and that's probably on the generous side.


On the plus side, then next night was much more entertaining. Although Evan couldn't come, I went to see FUGLY, a play put on by The Janes, to which one of my friends belongs (what a clunky sentence structure. Never mind splitting infinitives, I may have murdered one). FUGLY had vastly better jokes than MIBIII, and the message was more on point in today's world.

FUGLY's about a women (Perdita) who's misplaced her mind. So she goes looking for it with the help of Echo and the various people she meets along the way. It was much trippier than I imagined when it was first described to me ("It'll be about womens body issues"). Sort like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and a particularly cutting Jenny Craig ad. I'd like to think I'm above such petty judgements based on looks, but then the play probably wouldn't have been so uncomfortable. So even though women will identify with the play a lot more, I know there are some things I need to keep in mind as well. No rating for the play, and I don't think you'll get the chance to see it, since the last showing is tonight. But hey, maybe you can pay them to put it on for you, since they're all struggling artists and all. You know, if you make Fresh Prince level money.