Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollett, 2008)

I was really looking forward to this, but what a complete letdown! Atrocious acting, terrible humour, completely predictable and characters I just wanted to punch for being so damn annoying.

I liked the music though and there was a certain charm to it, but everything else spoilt it. The characters were annoying and completely braindead (Ari Graynor who plays Corina for example is a drunken embarrassment throughout the entire film; ridiculous, slutty and embarrassingly pathetic), Kat Dennings is just irritating as Norah and though I like Micheal Cera, here he's just his usual self again (typecasted), it's like he plays the same role over and over and here he plays Nick which again is pretty much the exact same role all over again- a pathetic and unconfident loser. Alexis Dziena who play's Nick's ex was also just playing to all that character's cliché conventions of a stereotypical jealous bitch. I liked the fact that Nick's band members were gay and not cliché but they were still dumbasses. The comedy was terrible- I'm not a fan of immature gross-out humour but this tried too hard to try and be funny with it, it just came off as unnecessary and predictable and cheapened the movie more. What we should have got was a sweet and charming film, what we got was a misplaced charm in a very tacky and unfunny and frustratingly bad film.

I had to literally force myself to sit and watch it the whole way through and give it a chance but it was just went from good to bad to worse. I guess I wanted another Juno (which I loved) but what I got was another braindead teen comedy masquerading as it. I wish I didn't waste my time over it.

A terrible teen movie and the worst film I have seen so far of 2009.

3/10

Shadow of the Colossus is to be made into a movie...

So once again, Hollywood comes along, takes one of my favourite games/series and attempts to turn it into a movie...at the expense of the fans which will suffer once more. This time around it's Shadow of the Colossus- a game so mind blowing in it's premise that honestly there's no proper way of bringing it onto the screen, but of course the corporate fatcats will deem to try anyway. There's no hope for it whatsoever, as usual, and especially since it is written by Justin Marks, who just recently did the diabolical Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It's also being produced by Kevin Kisher, who has been credited to The Scorpion King, another terrible film. Hollywood just don't know dick about adapting video games into movies, and they certainly won't know sh!t about this one either, especially considering how radical the game is. They should just leave it the hell alone.

SotC won't work unless it's a CGI movie. But I swear they'll try and make it like 300. Every fantasy movie wants to be like that nowadays, or like The Lord of the Rings- they never turn out like it, and it definitely won't for this. Cases in point: Eragon and In The Name of the King. Epic Fails. They will probably make it IMAX 3D now too, like everything else. It's the new gimmick, and they won't dismiss the fact that some of the scenes would look awesome on a massive screen with the new 3D technology. They'll probably wait for James Cameron's Avatar to come out to see how it effectively works there and then go in that direction. After all, they don't know sh!t about adding depth to the movie via writing, they'll just be spending money to wow audiences with special effects.

I wonder what Team Ico have to say about this- why did they sell the rights in the first place, anyway? They are supposed to be non-mainstream.

All my favourite games have had crappy movies made out of them bar a few, so there's not much hope.

Resident Evil has been messed up completly already- 3 crappy flicks and another 2 on the way.
Street Fighter- one unintentionally hilarious movie, another that is actually even worse. The animated movie however is king.
Mortal Kombat- Okay I loved the first one as a kid, twas was epic. And it was the first movie I can remember which had techno music with the fighting/action scenes...waaaay before The Matrix ever made it cool. And the soundtrack is killer. Underrated!
Mortal Kombat Annihilation- Pathetic. A new reboot dubbed "Devastation" is on the way (one can only hope it's good but again I doubt it).
Double Dragon- just plain silly.
Super Mario Bros. was terrible, but has somewhat grown on me after all these years.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within A decent sci-fi movie, nothing to do with the games though.
Final Fantasy: Advent Children- ridiculously crap film, 2 hours of Tekken style FMVs counting as "fan service"; no plot, no direction, no nothing.
Doom was bad.
D.O.A: Dead or Alive- dumb fun, but still shyte.
Bloodrayne- Awful.
Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance- Even worse.
The House of the Dead- Worse still.
House of the Dead 2- Worser than worse.
Alone in the Dark- Am I dead yet?
Max Payne- weak.
Silent Hill FINALLY! IMO, perfect. I loved it- but that's what you get from a director who is also a big fan in real life.

Next up, more of my favourite franchises being laid to waste:

Tekken Could go either way at this point but will most likely fail.
Castlevania Another epic fail, specially since it's Paul Anderson.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein- promising especially with the decent director pushing for the hard R rating.
and now Shadow of the Colossus

And even worse, rumours abound that Uwe Boll wants to make a Legacy of Kain movie next. Someone kill him, now.

Saying that, my favourite survival horror game Haunting Ground would work as a fantastic film only if Guillermo Del Toro directed it. He's got the visual style and ideas to bring it to life, and when I was watching Pan's Labyrinth it's amazing how some of the colours and tone match the game. Either him or Dario Argento (who's films the game was heavily inspired by) would be perfect. But i'm rooting for Del Toro. But that's wishful thinking of course and would never turn out like that, I really wouldn't want anyone to touch the game, it's a perfect little masterpiece which again should be left alone.

Either way, time to say goodbye once again to one of my most beloved games.

Review: Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003)

Solid story, generic execution

Not a bad film by any means, but with a lot of flaws. Whilst it's foundations are superb with it's vision of Gothic grandeur and historical mythology, the film unfortunately falls short because of it's ultimately generic execution. The story is fantastic- Romeo and Juliet with vampires as suitably described by the filmmakers. A centuries old war between vampires and werewolves which spills forth into our present day world (the city in which the film takes place is never revealed but it is European, probably Budapest or Hungary). The writers have done a great job fleshing out a history for the plot and weaving in a lot of historical myth and legend which gives the story a lot of strong background, and I was very impressed as it works a treat.

The acting is also superb all round, most standout being Micheal Sheen as Lucian and Bill Nighy as Viktor who have fantastic characters and really play their parts well. Kate Beckinsale was also very good in the lead despite her unoriginal role as Selene- an expendable "death dealer". Of course all the characters themselves are unoriginal but the actors really give them high class quality which is very appreciated, all their talents make up for it.

Now on to whats wrong with the picture- which is everything else. The visuals and design is what makes it lose marks- there is just nothing original or unique here whatsoever. The style is clearly lifted from The Matrix, and whilst it worked in those films well here it's just tiresome. The vampires are high-class aristocratic wearing Gothic gowns and other cliché attire that is now associated with them, sipping wine, wearing black leather, big boots, long flowing leather jackets; Selene wears skin-tight leather and wields dual guns and jumps and back-flips all over the place in slow-motion, guns fire all around and people fall and fly high with hidden wires. Wev'e just seen it all before, and done better. This has all been done to death ever since the first Matrix film came out and here it's just yet another poor imitation. Given the solid and original background story for this film I was hoping for an equally rich and diverse style for the look as well, and sadly all we get is a tiresome Matrix rip off. It really does lower the quality of the film, really. As a designer myself I was really hoping for something cool, they could have had a lot of fun in the design phase sculpting a world which houses the great story but unfortunately is just exactly the same as the dark, gloomy and rainy world of Matrix and The Crow, with a hint of Blade. I know it's hard these days to come up with something new but still, there was a good opportunity here to put in a fresh spin, a comic-book style coolness here but they opted for the safe Matrix style slo-mo and leather costumes rip-off which so often plague our screens. People seem to love it, I really am tired of it.

Directing again is so-so. Whilst Len Wiseman does a decent job on his first directorial debut there's still a lot of improvement that can be made, though kudos to him anyway for doing well on his first try. The choreography is decent though the action scenes as I mentioned earlier are dire- everything looks cliché and at times awful, they really should have thought about it better. The effects look dumb and the werewolves in particular look terrible. The transformations are really cringe-worthy and the actual creature suits are equally cheap looking (some scenes are an absolute joke). Worse still are the performances of them- the creature performers half the time just waddle around and the animatronics hardly move at all making it look even more dumb, and the fights involving them are really painful to watch, especially when there have been a ton of good similar werewolf films like Dog Soldiers which did a better job. The vampires again just act typically cliché, snarling and jumping- we've just seen it all before so many times. Some of the CGI effects are on the bad side but thankfully the computer effects are kept to a minimum- director Wiseman opted to shoot everything practical, and whilst this is great as everything looks raw and gritty I just wish the werewolf suits and acting was better so it would all work together. Again better directing would have masked the low grade suits, but unfortunately everything is on show.

All in all an entertaining movie with a solid story that is really not bad at all for a first entry in a propose trilogy by a first time director. Whilst I enjoyed delving into the world I just wish it was realised better, there was ample room for scope but they went with a cliché Matrix design both in look and vibe which I really didn't like at all. If only they did something more original, as the story is so well done they really needed the universe to be equally good too. Still, I look forward to the ongoing saga as the plot is interesting and is now just getting started.

4/10

Worst Star Wars lines ever

Okay, I love Star Wars. But I HATE the prequels. One of the reasons, okay one of the main reasons, is the dialogue. Out of all the problems with these prequels (along the directing, acting, story, plot holes etc) it's been the dialogue that has been mostly criticised- by fans and the general public alike- and it's not a big surprise why. Lucas is just a weak script writer and whilst his ideas are great his dialogue isn't- what he thinks sounds good on paper does not mean it comes out good on screan, especially when he directs his actors poorly too.

Here's my personal collection of, in my opinion, the worst lines in the SW preqeuls- which weren't very hard to find at all (in no order, though at some point I will put them in order of crap to worst):

1) Nute Gunray: Shoot them, or something!

2) Little Anakin: "Are you an angel?" (Oh dear god...)

3) Anakin: "YIPPPEEEEEEEEEE!!" (my ears!)

4) Captain Tarpals: "Ouch time." (he's a captain of an army and he talks like a fucking baby, stupidest thing iv'e ever heard)

5) Gungan:"Jar-Jar, usa the booba"
Jar Jar: "Mesa no hava da booba" (seriously, WTF?)

6) Gungan: "Jar-Jar, your in big doodoo this time!" (...)

7) (after Anakin has just explained that he killed all the sandpeople, women and children in blind range with no remorse) Padme: "To be angry is to be human.":.... Is that the reaction one would show when someone commits mass murder and runs amok????!!

8) Anakin: "General Grievous, I thought you'd be....taller..." (Grevious is like nearly 8 feet tall...way to go Anakin).

9) Obi Wan: "Did you press the stop button?"
Anakin-: "No, did you?" (If Obi wan had just asked, obviously he wouldn't have been the one who pressed it. Really stupid bit of dialouge)

10) Yoda: "Not if anything to say about it...I HAVE!" (Some things Yoda says are so stupid.)

11) Obi:"The sith are evil!"
Ani:"In my opinion the jedi are evil!"
Obi: "Well then you are lost" (well gee, thanks for your help Obi, it's like you just gave up helping him on the spot!)

12) Anakin: "If your'e not with me, then your'e my enemy!!!"(can it get any more patheically cliche?)

13) Grievous: "Activate ray-shields..."
*a scene showing some shields coming on* next scene:
Anakin: "Ray-shields!" (well thanks for that Anakin, as if the audience were too stupid to understand that they were ray sheilds having just seen them come on after Grevious just bloody TOLD US!)

14) Anakin: "You will trrrrryyyyyyyyyy!" (yawn)

15) C3PO: "This is such a drag, help i've fallen and can't get up, i'm quite beside myself" (really, what an idiot, and what a lame line of "comedy")

16) Obi:"I saw him...killing...younglings!" (Younglings? LMAO- Lucas needs a dictionary and a thesaurus too if he's coming up with stupid words like that)

17) Anakin: "I killed them. ALL OF THEM. And not just the men......but the women....and the children too! I HATE THEM!!" (LOL, hilarious)

18) Anakin:"They're ANIMALS, and I slaughtered them...... like ANIMALS!"

19) Darth Sidious: "POWER!! UNLIMTED POWER!!! (I expected him to say "It's OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!")

20) "Army or not... You must realise ... You are DOOMED!!!" (if he's going that far AT LEAST finish it off with an evil laugh at the end)

21) Sidious: "No no no,.... YOU.. will DIE!!" (honestly, is Lucas mentally 5 years old or what?)

22) Shmi Skywalker: "Ani? Ani? you are so handsome. I love... i-i-i lo... i loo00-- uuuuurrgghhhhhh!" (no comment...)

23) Anakin:"Do you like sand? I hate sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." (-is this shit for real? Yes, unfortuenatly it is)

24) Yoda has also been guilty of many stupid sounding lines becuase of the way he speaks, such as "Around the survivors a perimeter create."(completly the dumbest thing iv'e ever heard, alien or not). In fact most of the aliens in the SW prequels have such stupid lines of gibberish (coupled with their weird voices) that Gollum sounds the sanest out of all of them. Jar Jar Binks is mostly to blame here with his nonsense talk Eg Phantom Menace: "Oh mooie, mooie, I love you! No, no, mesa stay. Meesa called Jar Jar Binks. Meesa your humble servant." "My tongue is heavy" "The queen is being pretty nice meesa dinks...pretty hot" ""Weesa going hoooooome!" ......Absoloutly fucking atrocious.

25) Mostly however it's Anakin's and Padme's lines which are soo cheesy and cringeworthy it's like a parody of the worst romantic film you've ever seen. Even Entertainment Weekly also accucsed Ep3 of having the 15th worst line in the history of cinema, with Padme's "Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo".

26) Anakin:"I've been dying a little bit every day since you came back in my life..." (cringe)

27) Padme:"You're going down a path I can't follow. You're breaking my heart." (cringe x2)

28) Padme:"I truly, deeply, love you..." (how about:" I love you?" What's wrong with that, eh? Simple...and NORMAL)

29) Padme:"I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul; tormenting me." (cringe, worst romantic dialogue ever)

30) Anakin:"Believe me. I wish that i could just wish away my feelings" (cringe, Dear God)

31) Anakin: You are so beautiful!
Padme: It's only because I'm so in love . . .
Anakin: No, it's because I'm so in love with you.
Padme: So love has blinded you?
Anakin: Well, that's not exactly what I meant . . .
Padme: But it's probably true! [[.............I giveup. Taxi!]]

32) Padme: It has been far too long, Master Kenobi. Ani? My goodness you've grown.
Anakin:So have you. Grown more beautiful, I mean. Well, for a Senator I mean. (worst pick up line ever).

33) Darth Vader: "I HATE YOU!!!!" (lol, emo)

The prequels are universally regarded as having the worst dialouge in the SW saga- Lucas can't write for sh!t. I know SW isn't supposed to be Shakespeare, but come on, its not meant to be total laughable bullshit either. At lease the originals are fun and don't take themselves too seriously- the prequels do, and they fail hard. Just so bad! Maybe if it was in a different langauge it would tolerable...expecially the Anakin and Padme dialogue- it's just way too cheesy to be heard in English....hmm.. I should probably look for a Hindi dub of them, at least the romantic lines would work better and becom more tolerable to watch....no-one makes cheesy romance sound classy as good as Bollywood!

10 Reasons why Jurassic Park rocks

yep

The film IS a masterpeice, an action-adventure classic and one of the if not THE greatest dinosaur movie ever made, and there's nothing delusional about the statement whatsoever!! If Star Wars can get into IMDB's top 250 then so can JP and it's blasphemous that it hasn't already. It's impact on popular culture is pretty much the same.

Further to that, I give you my personal reasons on why the film is regarded as a classic and why it's my favourite film of all time:

1)ILM's revoloutionary CGI. They've only dated slightly in the 15 years since the film's release, and that really is something. However some people including myself still think this film still has some of the best showcase of CGI to date, and i would definitly use it as an example of truly photo-realistic computer imagery next to Gollum, Kong and Davy Jones. I put JP's CGI in the top 3 best CGI of all time, if not number 1.

2)Stan Winston Studio's Animatronics- a life size T-Rex which looks, acts and feels realistic, life-size Velociraptors which move and act with grace and realism- everything that Winston provided was sheer excellence, and truly pioneering.

3)John William's score- what can i say? Pure perfection. Two outstanding themes given to us, one of melancholy beauty and the other of heart-thumping adventurous grandeur, not to mention the rest which is a driving force in modern day awe-inspiring action and suspense. Truly flawless, and more than waht we should have got/expected from a film like this.

4)Ultra-realistic dinosaurs- the likes of which we have never seen before, not since the days of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen had imagery literally wowed audiences in it's epicness. Rather than monsters, we get natural animals how they would have behaved in all their glory. They act, look, sound and feel like nothing we have ever seen before, revolutionary and mind-blowing. Ficticious some may be in their portrayal, but still as close to realism as we are ever going to get. The first time ever the audience were given the information of dinosaurs actually being related to birds, and shown to do so. And agian, for a 15 year old movie they haven't been bettered.

5)Steven Speilberg- Expert directing from one of cinema's greatest visionaries. They couldn't have been a better man for the job (well, maybe James Cameron....!) but still an absoloutly perfect choice for a 90s adventure movie, and the perfect choice for the first Jurassic Park movie, it epitomises everything of the era. Style, grace, and heart-stopping adventure all come under one- no wonder this film was the highest-grossing movie of all time till Cameron's Titanic took the crown.

6)Jeff Goldblum- Perfect cast choice for Ian Malcolm, all his lines are realistically given with his trademark sporadic style, making everything sound natural and unique rather than straightfoward lines spoken off a card. Not to mention his delivery of humour, it makes him one of the most loved and coolest "quirky science guys" in movie history.

7)Massive imprint on popular culture- Velociraptors, Gallimimuses, Dilophosaurus are amongst a few of the dinosaurs which became normal house-hold names thanks to Jurassic Park. Even the word DNA and the concept of cloning became popular after this movie. Other such iconic images such as the vibrating water glass and the assumption of standing still when confronted by a T-Rex are all thanks to the huge success and popularity of the film.

8)Bob Peck- Such a small role as Muldoon but what was soon to become a legendary character. Everyone knows who he is thanks to this movie and everyone remembers him thanks to the film, the movie made a new genertion of people aware of his talent. His presense and portrayal of what should have been a forgetable side-character made him an iconic fan-obessed figure, and his lines in the movie are some of the most quoted by fans of the movie itself. So many people paid their respects to him after his death, and most of those people knew of him primarly due to this film. If that doesn't say iconic, i dont know what does.

9)Huge increased interest in science and paleontology Museum visitiaion records, dinosaur study and books went through the roof after the movie came out in 1993, and has slowly increased over the years since it's debut. The film provided a massive surge of people now interested in the future science of DNA cloning, dinosaur excavation and in-depth study of their evolotuion and relation to birds thanks to this film.

10)Some of the greatest and iconic scenes in cinema history- the first reveal of the Brachiosaur, the T-Rex main road attack, the raptors in the kitchen- these scenes amongst a few have made a huge impact on the world and people will always remember them. Just as the image of ET and Elliot flying across the moon is legendary, so are the scenes in JP along with the logo forever be in the hearts of the movie-loving audience. Thanks i guess must go to Speilberg for weaving his magic on all these films.