![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Plus, Denzel Washington looks kinda fat in the movie, which weirded me out. John Travolta and James Gandolfini looking fat didn't bothe me as much. I'm used to that.
The Taking of Pehlam 123: C –
- Mood:
bored
One of my favorite parts of playing RPGs is how the various player characters interact and work together as a team. So when the group DOESN'T work together as a team, it annoys me. As it worked out, playing a chaotic good bard in a group of morally-ambiguous folk who on one hand don't have any qualms about animating dead foes as zombies to serve as slaves but on the other hand seem keen to ensure that the chaotic good bard character faces punishment for crimes (real or imagined) made for a singularly unpleasant experience. And since a bard's strength is directly proportional to the amount of buddies he has to bolster, he's not so good when he's on his own (either because he's avoiding other PCs because they want to lock him up or because he's disgusted with their necromantic shenanigans and blase attitudes about enslaving the dead to carry treasure). And so my character snuck away from the group and is off to seek a different group somewhere in Irrisen or lands beyond that fit better with his mindset.
The new character's a ranger (ironically, a bounty hunter who's been looking for the previous character), and she's a lot less squeamish when it comes to undead, and a lot more capable of working on her own if it turns out that teamwork isn't an option. Sucks to lose the old character, sure, but the new character's looking pretty cool and I'm eager to see how the PFRPG ranger works out in play.
- Mood:
tired
The movie's sense of humor is really quite entertaining to me. Take this early example, when Hollie sees Marshall eating something strange:
Hollie: "What are you eating?"
Marshall: "A doughnut stuffed with M&Ms."
Hollie: "Ummm... why?"
Marshall: "To save time. This way, when you finish eating your doughnut, you don't have to eat M&Ms."
And for a taste of the naughtier side of the movie's humor, as Will is rowing Marshall and Hollie into his rinky-dink rowboat cave river white-trash attraction...
Will: "Keep your hands and legs inside the boat, and I should warn you, things get exciting, and you may get wet."
Marshall (Looks down at all his science gear and tachyon detector instruments): "That's no good; this equipment is very sensitive."
Will (Leers at Hollie): "I was talking to her."
HA! Delightful!
Also good to see dinosaurs enjoy bouncing on rubber rafts and don't stop at ice cream when they want food from an ice cream truck. And Chaka's a royal pervert. And the scene where Grumpy the T-Rex, frustrated after the 4th time Marshal says that the humans have the upper hand and not to worry because the dinosaur's brain is the size of a walnut, finds a walnut the size of an engine block and throws it at their cave wrapped in a giant leaf the same way a menace might hurl a brick through a store window with a threatening note tied to it. That scene's final shot of the T-Rex watching them from the jungle below, a look of crafty and simmering vengeance on his eyes as he steps back into the shadows of the jungle to bide his time was brilliant.
In short: Best Will Farell movie ever.
Land of the Lost: B+
- Mood:
giddy
Best character: Kevin, the bird. I want a pet like that.
Best line: "It's funny because a squirrel got dead."
Best nod to greatness that's come before: the South American plateau looked just like the Lost World from the old 20's silent movie of the same name. Too bad there were no dinosaurs up topside, but talking dogs and Kevin are pretty good substitutes.
Up: A –
- Mood:
amused
Once upon a time, my dad and my best friend went to the grocery store. The grocery store had a wall of video rentals, and my dad said, "Pick out a movie, kids, and we'll watch it!" I wanted one movie, my friend Joaquin wanted another, and my dad was getting frustrated, so Joaquin and I decided instead at the last minute to pick a THIRD movie that neither of us would argue over, a movie that had a promising quote from Stephen King on the cover, along with a good-looking woman in her underwear getting pulled underground by a bunch of demonic arms.
That movie was, of course, the Evil Dead.
My dad hated the movie, but I loved it. I didn't realize that at the time, but what I DID realize was that here was a movie like nothing I'd ever seen before. A few years later, when I saw the sequel on a different video rental shelf, I nabbed it immediately. Watching Evil Dead 2 was when I realized that Sam Raimi was one of my favorite directors.
SO. All of that brings me to Drag Me To Hell. This is the first full-on horror movie Sam's directed since Evil Dead 2 (assuming you, like I, count Army of Darkness as dark fantasy/comedy), and although Sam's certainly not been a slouch since moving away from horror (A Simple Plan, for example, or those Spiderman movies some of you might have heard about), I missed the old Sam whose twisted mean sense of warped humor haunted my parents' VCR so often back in the day.
As it turns out, Sam hasn't lost his touch. Drag Me To Hell has the same level of energy, crazy violence, and over-the-top mayhem that Evil Dead did. There's no Bruce Campbell, and there's a LOT less blood, but fans of Raimi and Evil Dead should not let Drag Me To Hell's PG-13 rating scare them off. Just because it's PG-13 doesn't mean that there's no projectile explosions of fluid, flying eyeballs, rotted corpses, horrific dooms, and other delicious mayhem... it just means that it's not as RED as it was in Evil Dead. If there's one fault with this movie, it's that it's maybe a little TOO old-fashioned and, thus, pretty predictable at parts. But when you're drawing on inspiration like M. R. James and the Three Stooges, old-fashioned is fine by me!
It's good to have you back on the team, Sam! Don't wait so long next time!
Drag Me To Hell: A+
- Mood: happy
1) The special effects are great.
2) There's a couple of really cool action set pieces.
3) It wasn't bad enough to inspire me to write a huge rant about it, which is what Terminator 3 did.
But for as awesome as special effects are, they age. Writing does not. There's a reason why the original King Kong remains great, and it's not because the special effects are super realistic by today's standards. It's because the writing, the directing, and everything else about the movie was great as well. Terminator Salvation's effects were quite incredible, and at times it threatens to be redeeming itself with some exciting action scenes, but the writing and (sort of surprising) the acting and the directing worked to make the end result little more than a special effects demo reel. Which normally means I'd give a movie a C for being just purely fun to watch, but since this was a chance to resurrect a great movie franchise, it gets demoted.
ALSO: I was pleased to see my theory of movie scriptwriting held up. Relatively early in this movie, a character says, "GO GO GO!" in an action scene. This is normally my clue that the screenwriter is either giving up on the project or doesn't have the creativity to be a good screenwriter. Now and then, a "GO GO GO" pops up that doesn't indicate this, but Terminator Salvation provides some nice proof and weight to the theory.
Terminator Salvation: D
- Mood: disappointed
Angels and Demons: D
- Mood: bored
Just another advantage that tabletop RPGS still have over computer RPGS, I guess!
- Mood:
contemplative
Gonna be a long wait! But it's gonna be worth it, I'm sure!
- Mood:
anxious
My favorite movie of 2008 was a J. J. Abrams deal too. Cloverfield. Heck, there's even a Cloverfield easter egg in Star Trek. And now, Abrams has a chance of having my favorite movie of 2009 as well. There's a lot of competition though, what with Shutter Island, Avatar, District 9, and Drag Me To Hell, among others, but we'll see!
Spock made me weepy eyed with joy!
Star Trek: A+
- Mood: enthralled
Fast and Furious: C
- Mood:
complacent
Also: the movie should have been rated R becasue it's about a superhero who's special power is razor sharp claws and regeneration, both things that require gore to pull off. Heroes, which has a regenerating superhero, does this well. It's a LOT gorier than Wolverine. And it's on network TV. Weird.
Wolverine: C–
- Mood:
annoyed
The Haunting in Connecticut: B–
- Mood: annoyed
State of Play: B
- Mood:
hungry
Crank 2 was delightfully insane, filled with over-the-top mayhem and ridiculous action and pure R-rated lunacy and entertainment. Good times!
Crank 2—High Voltage: B+
- Mood: amused
( Most of the stories were pretty good! )
Dead But Dreaming: B–
- Mood: satisfied
( My ISP is Qwest via a DSL modem, and it sucks. )
ANYway... anyone else out there have any experience with Qwest DSL or Comcast cable modem internet, or just DSL vs. cable in general, and have any advice?
- Mood: frustrated
A spider the size of a dime has found its way into the inside of my TV, and what I was seeing was several of its legs sliding down between the glass/plastic front and the actual pixels of the screen. By smacking the top of the TV just above the spider, I got him to climb up and out of view, but he's still in there. Eating people on TV shows I don't watch, hopefully.
EDIT: Also? Lost is still super awesome. A hundred TV spiders couldn't change that.
- Mood: weird
- Mood: pleased
- Mood: curious
