Video Nasties - Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

Great documentary on the origins of the Video Nasties list and the drama surrounding the emerging graphic horror trend of the late 70's and 80's. Even has interviews with some of the folks behind the push. Excellent flick to watch to get a grip on censorship in the UK, and how far the establishment are willing to go to push their moral agenda no matter who really does get hurt in the process.

"Contagion"

A well made film that, while intense, isn't ultimately ambitious enough. I kept expecting twists and turns that didn't materialize. I'd still recommend seeing it, though.

Super 8


Utter let down. I should have known with Spielberg producing, it would be an ET circle jerk between he and Abrams. Several kids making a super 8 film for a film festival run across some scurry ET type shizz. The government, as only a totally one dimensional government entity can do in these films steps in as da really real bad guy. The kids do their typical Harlequin romance love thing with the one girl in the flick (obvious who the two love birds will be from first meeting). And there is virtually no real adventure, mystery or character development like in Goonies (another film Super 8 was meant to ape - err I mean homage). The film drags so much because you can see everything coming from a mile off given this is one sad cliche riddled mess. All this flick has going for it is all the money Hollywood can throw at a turd like this. So, ILM is the only standout character here.

The Golden Compass is a pretty good movie...
the graphics are quite awesome...

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Films I've seen since last posting:

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows"
Fair, but less evenly paced (more scatter shot) than the original.

"Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol"
Haven't seen the first three in the series, but still was able to dig it. Was overall the best popcorn film of the season IMO.

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"
Very good, but very brutal. Had some pacing issues as well, but I get the impression that they are inherent to the source material.

"The Adventures of Tintin"
Liked it better than I expected, but not my type.

"Hugo"
Cute and well-made, if not predictable. I can certainly can think of worse movies that have grossed more.

Recently, i watched the movie "Step up 2 the street" directed by Blake Collins. It is dancing movie and romantic sparks occur between two dance students from different backgrounds at the Maryland School of the Arts. I wanna watch it again in my spare time.

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"Chronicle"

It was good, but when the climatic battle came about the found-footage format indeed started hindering the film. They needed to do like "District 9" and seamlessly segue into a normal movie if possible. Still, the character development was better than usual, especially given its relatively short run-time.

Oh, and the friend I saw it with compulsively shouted out "TETSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" during the finale. (Yes, the third and final act is more than a little similar to "Akira".)

Didn't see it, so no comment.



Didn't watch.



Awesome flick (US version; the SE version is decent, but not quite as titular and enigmatic to the original book - not that the US version is 100% on-par). I really dug the characters, and felt awful at the ending. I hope major studios bring out the two sequels to this!



Never saw it.



Never saw it.

John Carter - 2 out of 5


Seriously, why did Disney invest in this?

Wait, it's an old premise!!! As in, we've seen this shit thirty ways from Sunday, fuckers!

We now have the technology. So!?! A CGI turd is a CGI turd, no matter how perfectly it's rendered!

We have a script! And? Your script is a loosely disjointed mess based upon a series of books written in old times and based upon nothing but dick fantasy! Go Hollywood, hundreds of millions dumped upon a script written by teens.

My understanding (based on a few articles I've read) was that "John Carter" was a passion project of Andrew Stanton, a major player at Pixar. He directed "Finding Nemo" and "WALL-E", and was a writer or producer for most of their other films. I guess they owed it to him after the success of those other films.

I saw Iron Sky yesterday on the Iron Sky On Tour when it was here in Espoo.

Good movie, good humour and good special effects as you can expect from the makers of Star Wreck.

Afterwards there was a Q&A session with the director who was funny and very vocal. He also gave a hint of his next project, and a hint of it is already at the very end of Iron Sky as well.

Haven't seen a movie before from Funland which is more like the movies Hollywood produces rather than a traditional Finnish movie.

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-IT Crowd

Rather than report back on all the movies that I saw this summer (there were a lot of them), I figured I'd just pop in to say that "The Raid: Redemption" is pretty awesome if you can stomach the violence level.

"Skyfall"
A friend of mine noticed that it opened here in the States a day earlier than advertised on IMAX screens, so a bunch of us went last night. It was one of the more impressive films released this year IMO, and I'm excited to see where they take the franchise next. 9/10

"Looper"
This had been on my radar since June, when highly positive impressions from test screenings started leaking onto some sites. It didn't disappoint. Had less action and more emotional resonance than I expected. In any case, it definitely is up there with "Skyfall" in being one of the highlights of the year for me (though I don't see as many films as some people do). 8.5/10

"Seven Psychopaths"
Well-made and often quite funny (the sequence where Sam Rockwell's character is describing to Colin Farrell's character, who is a screenwriter, how he'd end the movie they're writing is probably the single funniest thing I've seen this year). With that in mind, I liked it but didn't love it. 7/10

My verdict on "The Hobbit": In a word, okay. Good, in other words, but way too long for what was presented. And yes, I saw the HFR (48 frames per second) version. My thoughts on the technology, however, are too detailed and nuanced for me to bother to post at this time.

Disclosure: I read the first few chapters of the book around the time the LOTR trilogy came out, but never finished it, and my recollections are vague at best.

I've read The Hobbit many many years ago. Very good book.

I'm not going to see the film in the theatre. I'll wait for the extended/final/directors cut on DVD/Blu-ray. I haven't heard anything positive at all about the 48fps thing so I'm not too bothered about missing out on that.