http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935179/
what i learned from watching mud is that women are precious princesses that need to be protected. with violence, if at all possible. also, that kids are like tiny adults, but wiser, more perceptive, and more honest. also also, that matthew mcconaughey is a wizard. my whole world has been turned upside down.
despite the ridiculousness, mud was a somewhat entertaining film espousing values that were not completely abhorent. it could have been a lot worse. for example, there could have been nazis. or a werewolf. or a werenazi. werenazis are tough, man. no. joke.
mud gets two nazis.
2013-09-27
2013-09-22
sexy beast
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203119
i had a hard time figuring out what sexy beast was trying to be about, but i am prepared to believe that i was just being obtuse. anyway, there was nothing exceptional about this film. there were no real surprises plot-wise, and there were *way* too many old fat guys in their underwear.
sexy beast gets two cigarettes.
i had a hard time figuring out what sexy beast was trying to be about, but i am prepared to believe that i was just being obtuse. anyway, there was nothing exceptional about this film. there were no real surprises plot-wise, and there were *way* too many old fat guys in their underwear.
sexy beast gets two cigarettes.
2013-09-14
world war z
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711
when the zombie apocalypse comes, i sure do hope that the zombies are slow. that was my big takeaway from world war z, where the zombies not only rival cheetahs speed-wise, but the transformation from human to zombie takes 12 seconds, tops. or as sun tzu said, there is no combat without movement, nor is there a zombie apocalypse.
world war z had plenty of issues that rendered the overall story incredibly implausible, but it also got me to thinking about how the zombies could possibly be explained as a realistic phenomenon. they said something about a virus in the movie, but i find it difficult to believe that any virus, bacteria, or parasite could have anything like that kind of effect, especially on the 10-12 second time scale. however, since i am basically stupid, i knew i would have to enlist the aid of an expert to really attempt to answer this question. that is how i ended up consulting with "jessica," who claims to have gotten a passing grade in a fungus class she took. we worked it out. the zombies are actually not completely implausible.
first, the pathogen is a fungus. it has to be placed correctly in order to thrive, which is why blood in the mouth was not enough to infect brad pitt. i mean, aside of that the plot called for him to not be infected right at the beginning of the movie. the spores take hold and start producing mycelium, which produces a neurotoxin. the neurotoxin hits the nervous system like a ton of bricks and just makes everything fire. this is the part where the victim is writhing on the ground groaning. there are also some enzymes or something in there that essentially program the reptile part of the brain to GO EAT EVERYTHING THAT SMELLS LIKE A HEALTHY HUMAN. the enzymes have to travel through the blood to get to the brain, but that is ok because the neurotoxin is keeping everything firing, which includes the heart. so that is why you have a bunch of twitching before the thirst for human flesh begins. the programming does not have to do anything complicated with the brain's higher-level functions, which is why zombies do not have memory or emotion or tool use.
i, um, may not have gotten all those details right, but i am far too lazy to have jessica edit my draft before i publish. anyway, the point is that this could kind of work. we could make zombies that were kind of like this. and if we do not do it ourselves, someone else will. that is why i am taking this project to kickstarter. look for it in the coming months! might i suggest the $25K membership level? it will come with a reservation for you and up to two loved ones in a bunker which is guaranteed to be zombie-free at the time the outbreak begins.
world war z gets two satellite phones.
when the zombie apocalypse comes, i sure do hope that the zombies are slow. that was my big takeaway from world war z, where the zombies not only rival cheetahs speed-wise, but the transformation from human to zombie takes 12 seconds, tops. or as sun tzu said, there is no combat without movement, nor is there a zombie apocalypse.
world war z had plenty of issues that rendered the overall story incredibly implausible, but it also got me to thinking about how the zombies could possibly be explained as a realistic phenomenon. they said something about a virus in the movie, but i find it difficult to believe that any virus, bacteria, or parasite could have anything like that kind of effect, especially on the 10-12 second time scale. however, since i am basically stupid, i knew i would have to enlist the aid of an expert to really attempt to answer this question. that is how i ended up consulting with "jessica," who claims to have gotten a passing grade in a fungus class she took. we worked it out. the zombies are actually not completely implausible.
first, the pathogen is a fungus. it has to be placed correctly in order to thrive, which is why blood in the mouth was not enough to infect brad pitt. i mean, aside of that the plot called for him to not be infected right at the beginning of the movie. the spores take hold and start producing mycelium, which produces a neurotoxin. the neurotoxin hits the nervous system like a ton of bricks and just makes everything fire. this is the part where the victim is writhing on the ground groaning. there are also some enzymes or something in there that essentially program the reptile part of the brain to GO EAT EVERYTHING THAT SMELLS LIKE A HEALTHY HUMAN. the enzymes have to travel through the blood to get to the brain, but that is ok because the neurotoxin is keeping everything firing, which includes the heart. so that is why you have a bunch of twitching before the thirst for human flesh begins. the programming does not have to do anything complicated with the brain's higher-level functions, which is why zombies do not have memory or emotion or tool use.
i, um, may not have gotten all those details right, but i am far too lazy to have jessica edit my draft before i publish. anyway, the point is that this could kind of work. we could make zombies that were kind of like this. and if we do not do it ourselves, someone else will. that is why i am taking this project to kickstarter. look for it in the coming months! might i suggest the $25K membership level? it will come with a reservation for you and up to two loved ones in a bunker which is guaranteed to be zombie-free at the time the outbreak begins.
world war z gets two satellite phones.
2013-08-31
against the dark
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194271/
against the dark opens with a lame voiceover that lays out the exposition and then goes downhill from there. why was steven seagal even in this? he delivers a couple epic lines at wildly inappropriate times and hacks at some zompires. they could have filled this role with just about anybody. carrot top? sure, why not. i am confident that carrot top could play a paper-thin character at least as well as steven seagal.
the other--well, *one* other--thing that bothered me was that the female characters did not do anything other than walk around and wait until it was time to die/scream/escape. i would be writing an indignant treatise on the subject of objectification right now, except that they objectified every single character in the script, including steven seagal, which makes me think it is less a matter of objectification and more a matter of crappy writing. also, when did they find the time to do their hair? take a tip from your pal schmolli: when the apocalypse comes, you are going to want to do something with your hair that is easy to maintain and does not impede your combat capabilities. bald is beautiful, baby. you need to cover your noggin, get a hat.
against the dark gets one wasted hour of my life. literally! i applied the skip-forward button to the benefit of all.
against the dark opens with a lame voiceover that lays out the exposition and then goes downhill from there. why was steven seagal even in this? he delivers a couple epic lines at wildly inappropriate times and hacks at some zompires. they could have filled this role with just about anybody. carrot top? sure, why not. i am confident that carrot top could play a paper-thin character at least as well as steven seagal.
the other--well, *one* other--thing that bothered me was that the female characters did not do anything other than walk around and wait until it was time to die/scream/escape. i would be writing an indignant treatise on the subject of objectification right now, except that they objectified every single character in the script, including steven seagal, which makes me think it is less a matter of objectification and more a matter of crappy writing. also, when did they find the time to do their hair? take a tip from your pal schmolli: when the apocalypse comes, you are going to want to do something with your hair that is easy to maintain and does not impede your combat capabilities. bald is beautiful, baby. you need to cover your noggin, get a hat.
against the dark gets one wasted hour of my life. literally! i applied the skip-forward button to the benefit of all.
2013-07-05
iron man 3
more like iron man 2, part 2. which is basically what i expected. superhero movies come in two flavours: origin story and daily grind. the first movie is generally the origin story, and the rest of them are daily grind, unless you go back and redo the origin story. the origin story is where the bulk of the character development usually happens; it is where the superhero encounters all the change which guides them to choose to become a superhero/supervillain. the daily grind, on the other hand, might feature new gadgets/superpowers, but does not change much about the character's core. sometimes they try to invoke the origin story magic by having the superhero give up on being a superhero, then decide to become a superhero again, but it never seems as interesting as a real origin story. the iron man series has done a fine job of trying to do character development in the daily grind stories, but they are still daily grind stories.
iron man 3 shows a troubled tony stark wrestling with his experience from the avengers, but it was not clear to me what the problem was, exactly. it seemed that they meant to show he was hiding behind his armor or that he was thinking that the armor itself was iron man, and that his big character development was in casting off the armor and coming to realize that *he* is iron man. that is all very well and good, but it is not clear to me how that follows from the events of the avengers. i am also completely confused about why he blew up all his robots; they were perfectly good robots, and he is just going to have to go build more of them.
anyway, i did not find the character development that enthralling. the special effects and action and one-liners were well-executed, if standard, action movie fare. iron man 3 gets three prehensile robots.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)