Wednesday, September 30, 2015
The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre (2010-2015)
Welcome, internet traveler to The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre. This is a defunct blog in which you can peruse some opinions on movies, TV shows and such for your pleasure (or not). Seeing as how this is a dead blog any comments left will not be replied to. Have fun!
Out With A Bang
This is my final review, the last hurrah. This has been an interesting exercise in writing and ego but now I must go. Let us come full circle and end The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre with a review of an anime, and not just any anime but an anime film I had been waiting to see for ten years before it was finally released on DVD in the US for the first time at the beginning of the month. Will it live up to my expectations and hopes? Let's find out as I review
Yup, as you can see from the list of directors above, this is another anthology film involving Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. You know the drill; time to go short by short.
Opening: This is a clever little bit to introduce the main title, seen above. I'm not going to give away what happens, you'll have to see it to believe it. It is cute, hilarious and deadly frightening all at the same time. Kudos!
Franken's Gears: A mad scientist tries to create life Franken-style, only with a ROBOT. Goes as well as you'd expect. This is one with no dialogue (the opening technically had dialogue but it was all in gibberish) which works fine (quite a few of the short films in Robot Carnival have little or no dialogue actually, which I can see made it ideal for importation to the West and explains its subsequent popularity on TV over here in the early 90s). This short is merely OK, nothing special but nothing putrid either.
Deprive: This is standard 80s anime fare, which is not standard for this movie. It involves a loyal robot rescuing a girl from alien invaders but the plot is meaningless as you are supposed to marvel at the action on display. I have seen enough of this type of stuff that all this short provoked from me was a ho-hum reaction. Easily the weakest segment of the film.
Presence: An inventor creates a robot girl but destroys her when she actually starts to think for herself. Years later his guilt catches up with him. Everyone else seems to love this one (it's also the longest part of the movie). I don't. The story itself is merely okay but the character designs are creepy, the animation is fluid but unnatural (something I forgot to mention by the way: most of the animation in Robot Carnival is done at a full 24 fps, which is very rare in anime) and the protagonist is not sympathetic at all. Oh well.
Star Light Angel: A girl goes to an amusement park, gets her heart broken then has an encounter with a romantic robot. This one is the opposite, people seem to hate this one the most but I actually kinda like it. It looks like an anime music video; all it needs to complete it is a J-Pop song.
Cloud: The *artsiest* short here. It's a robot boy walking in front of changing cloud formations. That's it. And yet, it becomes more than that. Subtle, meditative and beautiful, this is what anime should aspire to be every once in a while.
A Tale Of Two Robots: This is my personal favorite. Two robots, one Japanese and one European duke it out in Tokyo. Because it is the 19th Century however the results are hilarious. This one comes off as both a parody of WWII Japanese propaganda and of giant robot battles in general. It also has (in the Japanese version) the European antagonist speaking his lines in English and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Nightmare: Imagine Fantasia's "Night On Bald Mountain", only in Tokyo and with robots. It's okay but the influence is obvious. Come on, guys.
Closing: Like the beginning also cute, funny and frightening. A perfect way to end this movie.
In the end as with all anthology movies Robot Carnival is a mixed bag. Overall I would say that it is an above average effort, thanks to a few really good shorts and a consistently great level of animation. I'm glad I got it even though it wasn't the revelatory experience I was hoping for (it's not as good as Labrynth Tales or Memories). It was a fun watch. And even the failures are interesting failures (most of the time anyway). This movie represents a time back in the eighties when Japanese animators would actually experiment with stuff like this. Those days are mostly gone, although Otomo did release his newest anthology movie Short Peace only a couple of years ago and it is pretty good so there is still hope.
Well, I must now sign off and say adieu (or is it sayonara?). It has been an interesting six years, and I hope in another six I will be doing something more productive than writing movie reviews on the internet. But who knows? The future is always fluid but for now, for right now for The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre this is the
1987
Directors:
Katsuhiro Otomo
Atsuko Fukushima
Koji Morimoto
Hidetoshi Omori
Yasuomi Umetsu
Hiroyuki Kitazume
Mao Lamdo
Hiroyuki Kitakubo
Takashi Nakamura
Yup, as you can see from the list of directors above, this is another anthology film involving Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. You know the drill; time to go short by short.
Opening: This is a clever little bit to introduce the main title, seen above. I'm not going to give away what happens, you'll have to see it to believe it. It is cute, hilarious and deadly frightening all at the same time. Kudos!
Cloud: The *artsiest* short here. It's a robot boy walking in front of changing cloud formations. That's it. And yet, it becomes more than that. Subtle, meditative and beautiful, this is what anime should aspire to be every once in a while.
Nightmare: Imagine Fantasia's "Night On Bald Mountain", only in Tokyo and with robots. It's okay but the influence is obvious. Come on, guys.Closing: Like the beginning also cute, funny and frightening. A perfect way to end this movie.
In the end as with all anthology movies Robot Carnival is a mixed bag. Overall I would say that it is an above average effort, thanks to a few really good shorts and a consistently great level of animation. I'm glad I got it even though it wasn't the revelatory experience I was hoping for (it's not as good as Labrynth Tales or Memories). It was a fun watch. And even the failures are interesting failures (most of the time anyway). This movie represents a time back in the eighties when Japanese animators would actually experiment with stuff like this. Those days are mostly gone, although Otomo did release his newest anthology movie Short Peace only a couple of years ago and it is pretty good so there is still hope.
Well, I must now sign off and say adieu (or is it sayonara?). It has been an interesting six years, and I hope in another six I will be doing something more productive than writing movie reviews on the internet. But who knows? The future is always fluid but for now, for right now for The Pharonic Fantasy Theatre this is the
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Pain, Pain, Go Away
My personal life continues to deteriorate apace, with the universe offering promising hope and then snatching it away. The struggle is eternal. Symbolically, right now it is raining outside so hard that the frogs are trying to get inside. I kid you not.
Anywho.
This is the second to the last substantial post I am doing for this blog. Not only must I focus on other things, I've just gotten tired of writing about mere entertainment. I am weary.
Before I go though I figured I would do one more crappy list, and not a usual one. Instead of doing my Favorite Films Of All Time, I figured I'd give you two: my Most Overrated and Most Underrated Films Of All Time. And since I have always believed in getting the negative out of the way first, I'll start with the former. Please note that this does not mean that I necessarily *hate* the films in question (although a good amount of the time I do), I just feel that their reputation is undeserved.
The Most Overrated Films Of All Time:
Gone With The Wind (1939) - I *DO* hate this movie. Not only is it extremely racist and an offensive portrayal of the Old South (and keep in mind that this is coming from a white southerner), the characters are all really, really annoying and the melodrama gets old really, really fast. Why people idolize this film or the people in it as "classic" is beyond me.
Citizen Kane (1940) - This one is just overrated, and it has to be, being proclaimed by many as THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE. Any film getting tagged with that moniker has to be at least a little overrated. Everyone oohs and ahhs over the techniques that Orson Welles employed in this, but German directors such as Friz Lang had been doing it a decade before.
The Godfather, Part II (1974) - This one is just a mess, and nowhere near as good as the original. This is the most overrated sequel of all time, actually. Splitting the film between two stories should have been a cool gimmick but just doesn't work - Coppola should have just stuck to making a prequel, as Michael's story just isn't as interesting as Vito's. Watching the young Corleone fall into evil in the first film is more dramatically captivating than watching him simply be evil in the second. And Diane Keaton's line "I HAD AN ABORTION!!!!" is so overracted ("OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP) that I laughed the first time I heard it. DRAMA!!
The Star Wars Series (1977-1983) - Prepare for the flamers to which I say "HA! This blog is ending soon anyway, motherfuckers! Besides, maybe I can actually get some readers before it dies!" And yes, I know it is an entire series and not one film but I had to get this off my chest. This series of space fantasy films (they are *not* science fiction) are not awful per se but neither are they great cinema... or even *fun* cinema for that matter. Give me The Thief Of Bagdad (either the 1924 or 1940 version) for pure wonder or Conan The Barbarian for pure adventure over this stuff any day. The original is just Flash Gordon meets The Hidden Fortress with bad dialogue. The Empire Strikes Back is better but tries to work in ham-handed "philosophy" along with plotholes so big that if you think about them they'll make you go mad (ex: with it's hyperdrive out, how is the Millennium Falcon able to travel from Hoth to Bespin on presumably sublight speed? It should takes years and years to get from one star system to another and yet at most the story of the film takes a few months. See why I said that these are not sci-fi?). Return of the Jedi is a commercial letdown with teddy bears and an ending so perfunctory that it's laughable. Acting in all three is abysmal to merely decent with dialogue that will make you shudder. And all of this wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these are some of the most revered movies of all time. Fans of these movies have basically made a religion out of them. If you admit that you don't like them prepare to be burned at the stake for heresy. Well, I guess I'm gonna burn, baby, burn because I think that they are ridiculous. And before you say "you've lost all sense of wonder and fun from your childhood!", a) I am an adult now and have moved on from most of my childish tastes and b) I devoted an entire month of this blog to a series of movies where men in rubber lizard costumes beat the shit out of each other so there. Yes, I think Godzilla is more awesome than Star Wars. Flame away.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Speaking of George Lucas.... People love this one. Me not so much. Other than Sean Connery this entry in the franchise doesn't have much going for it in the originality department. Indy fights the Nazis *again*. He searches for a biblical artifact *again*. He teams up with Sallah *again* (and don't get me wrong, I like Sallah). This combined with the fact that they made Marcus a bumbling moron and that John Williams lays on the syrup too thick in his score means that I actually prefer Temple of Doom to this one. Yeah, I just went there.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - See? I can do Star Trek too (but not Star Trek II... badum ching!). A lot of Trekkies love this one but to me it's just IV with ACTION instead of comedy. You have a threat in the future, the Enterprise crew has to travel to the past to fix it and all sorts of hijinks ensue with the denizens of the time period. But instead of witty banter with San Francisco marine biologists you have Captain Picard gunning down Borg with a tommy gun whilst screaming like Sam Kinison. And that's something that has bothered me about this movie since I was kid by the way: didn't Picard get over his hatred of the Borg and his desire for vengeance back in the season 5 TNG episode "I, Borg"? I know. NERD!
The Avengers (2012) - Flame On! Sorry, wrong Marvel comic. But seriously, more flames for me! The sad fact is that Joss Whedon is simply not a good director. Serenity sucked (and I would have included that movie on this list except that even a good number of Firefly fans didn't like that movie) and I have never warmed up to any of his TV shows. He can write witty dialogue but that's about it. Other than that (and some of the acting performances) this is just another superhero movie with more plotholes and contrivances than you can shake a (soul-stealing) stick at.
Interstellar (2014) - Zing! Knew I would do it!
And now on a more positive note:
The Most Underrated Films Of All Time:
All Monsters Attack (1969) - I know I said this back in 2013 for my review of it, but this movie was made for little kids. Lay off, Godzilla fans.
Moonraker (1979) - Listening to Bond fans you would think that this is called Moonraper. Come on, it's a Roger Moore Bond film, what did you expect? Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.
Conan The Destroyer (1984) - This *is* an inferior follow up to the awesome Conan The Barbarian but it's not as bad as people would have you believe. Some of the characters and unorthodox casting are interesting to watch (Grace Jones! Wilt Chamberlain!) and there's less sex and violence than the first but this is a decent little fantasy film from the eighties. As long as you don't expect the (occasional) brilliance of its predecessor you will be alright.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - This one is like The Motion Picture (which I covered a while ago) in that people like to crap all over it. Could it have been better? Hell yeah. But it's still fun to watch and for all its flaws you can sense the potential in it. William Shatner is actually not that bad of a director, he should try it again sometime (stop laughing at me). Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score rocks. Of course.
The Star Wars Prequels (1999 - 2005) - No, these are not good movies. They have nonsensical stories and wooden acting. Buy you know what? They are not that much worse than their predecessors (let a whole new round of flaming commence!). If the kids like 'em, let them like 'em. You should be doing something to contribute positively to the human race anyway instead of telling youngsters why their entertainment sucks.
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) - Again, people take this shit waaaaaay too seriously. It's not that bad. I'm not even mad with the whole "nuking the fridge" thing or the space aliens. You have to laugh, because the people who had no problem with the Ark of the Covenant burning peoples' faces off and an evil cultist manually ripping hearts from chests and the Cup of Christ being able to heal bullet wounds suddenly find nuked fridges and space aliens to be "unrealistic". These are fantasy films for a reason, people. The only thing I *hate* is the fact that Shia LeBeouf is in it with predictable results (yuck).
Well, there you go. The rain has stopped in the time taken to write this. Hopefully my metaphorical rain will leave soon too. But even if it doesn't at least I can still count on one thing: some things in this life are going to be overrated by people, and some things underrated. The trick is to find what works for you and to disregard everyone else when it comes to your entertainment.
Anywho.
This is the second to the last substantial post I am doing for this blog. Not only must I focus on other things, I've just gotten tired of writing about mere entertainment. I am weary.
Before I go though I figured I would do one more crappy list, and not a usual one. Instead of doing my Favorite Films Of All Time, I figured I'd give you two: my Most Overrated and Most Underrated Films Of All Time. And since I have always believed in getting the negative out of the way first, I'll start with the former. Please note that this does not mean that I necessarily *hate* the films in question (although a good amount of the time I do), I just feel that their reputation is undeserved.
The Most Overrated Films Of All Time:
Gone With The Wind (1939) - I *DO* hate this movie. Not only is it extremely racist and an offensive portrayal of the Old South (and keep in mind that this is coming from a white southerner), the characters are all really, really annoying and the melodrama gets old really, really fast. Why people idolize this film or the people in it as "classic" is beyond me.
Citizen Kane (1940) - This one is just overrated, and it has to be, being proclaimed by many as THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE. Any film getting tagged with that moniker has to be at least a little overrated. Everyone oohs and ahhs over the techniques that Orson Welles employed in this, but German directors such as Friz Lang had been doing it a decade before.
The Godfather, Part II (1974) - This one is just a mess, and nowhere near as good as the original. This is the most overrated sequel of all time, actually. Splitting the film between two stories should have been a cool gimmick but just doesn't work - Coppola should have just stuck to making a prequel, as Michael's story just isn't as interesting as Vito's. Watching the young Corleone fall into evil in the first film is more dramatically captivating than watching him simply be evil in the second. And Diane Keaton's line "I HAD AN ABORTION!!!!" is so overracted ("OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP) that I laughed the first time I heard it. DRAMA!!
The Star Wars Series (1977-1983) - Prepare for the flamers to which I say "HA! This blog is ending soon anyway, motherfuckers! Besides, maybe I can actually get some readers before it dies!" And yes, I know it is an entire series and not one film but I had to get this off my chest. This series of space fantasy films (they are *not* science fiction) are not awful per se but neither are they great cinema... or even *fun* cinema for that matter. Give me The Thief Of Bagdad (either the 1924 or 1940 version) for pure wonder or Conan The Barbarian for pure adventure over this stuff any day. The original is just Flash Gordon meets The Hidden Fortress with bad dialogue. The Empire Strikes Back is better but tries to work in ham-handed "philosophy" along with plotholes so big that if you think about them they'll make you go mad (ex: with it's hyperdrive out, how is the Millennium Falcon able to travel from Hoth to Bespin on presumably sublight speed? It should takes years and years to get from one star system to another and yet at most the story of the film takes a few months. See why I said that these are not sci-fi?). Return of the Jedi is a commercial letdown with teddy bears and an ending so perfunctory that it's laughable. Acting in all three is abysmal to merely decent with dialogue that will make you shudder. And all of this wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these are some of the most revered movies of all time. Fans of these movies have basically made a religion out of them. If you admit that you don't like them prepare to be burned at the stake for heresy. Well, I guess I'm gonna burn, baby, burn because I think that they are ridiculous. And before you say "you've lost all sense of wonder and fun from your childhood!", a) I am an adult now and have moved on from most of my childish tastes and b) I devoted an entire month of this blog to a series of movies where men in rubber lizard costumes beat the shit out of each other so there. Yes, I think Godzilla is more awesome than Star Wars. Flame away.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Speaking of George Lucas.... People love this one. Me not so much. Other than Sean Connery this entry in the franchise doesn't have much going for it in the originality department. Indy fights the Nazis *again*. He searches for a biblical artifact *again*. He teams up with Sallah *again* (and don't get me wrong, I like Sallah). This combined with the fact that they made Marcus a bumbling moron and that John Williams lays on the syrup too thick in his score means that I actually prefer Temple of Doom to this one. Yeah, I just went there.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - See? I can do Star Trek too (but not Star Trek II... badum ching!). A lot of Trekkies love this one but to me it's just IV with ACTION instead of comedy. You have a threat in the future, the Enterprise crew has to travel to the past to fix it and all sorts of hijinks ensue with the denizens of the time period. But instead of witty banter with San Francisco marine biologists you have Captain Picard gunning down Borg with a tommy gun whilst screaming like Sam Kinison. And that's something that has bothered me about this movie since I was kid by the way: didn't Picard get over his hatred of the Borg and his desire for vengeance back in the season 5 TNG episode "I, Borg"? I know. NERD!
The Avengers (2012) - Flame On! Sorry, wrong Marvel comic. But seriously, more flames for me! The sad fact is that Joss Whedon is simply not a good director. Serenity sucked (and I would have included that movie on this list except that even a good number of Firefly fans didn't like that movie) and I have never warmed up to any of his TV shows. He can write witty dialogue but that's about it. Other than that (and some of the acting performances) this is just another superhero movie with more plotholes and contrivances than you can shake a (soul-stealing) stick at.
Interstellar (2014) - Zing! Knew I would do it!
And now on a more positive note:
The Most Underrated Films Of All Time:
All Monsters Attack (1969) - I know I said this back in 2013 for my review of it, but this movie was made for little kids. Lay off, Godzilla fans.
Moonraker (1979) - Listening to Bond fans you would think that this is called Moonraper. Come on, it's a Roger Moore Bond film, what did you expect? Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.
Conan The Destroyer (1984) - This *is* an inferior follow up to the awesome Conan The Barbarian but it's not as bad as people would have you believe. Some of the characters and unorthodox casting are interesting to watch (Grace Jones! Wilt Chamberlain!) and there's less sex and violence than the first but this is a decent little fantasy film from the eighties. As long as you don't expect the (occasional) brilliance of its predecessor you will be alright.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - This one is like The Motion Picture (which I covered a while ago) in that people like to crap all over it. Could it have been better? Hell yeah. But it's still fun to watch and for all its flaws you can sense the potential in it. William Shatner is actually not that bad of a director, he should try it again sometime (stop laughing at me). Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score rocks. Of course.
The Star Wars Prequels (1999 - 2005) - No, these are not good movies. They have nonsensical stories and wooden acting. Buy you know what? They are not that much worse than their predecessors (let a whole new round of flaming commence!). If the kids like 'em, let them like 'em. You should be doing something to contribute positively to the human race anyway instead of telling youngsters why their entertainment sucks.
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) - Again, people take this shit waaaaaay too seriously. It's not that bad. I'm not even mad with the whole "nuking the fridge" thing or the space aliens. You have to laugh, because the people who had no problem with the Ark of the Covenant burning peoples' faces off and an evil cultist manually ripping hearts from chests and the Cup of Christ being able to heal bullet wounds suddenly find nuked fridges and space aliens to be "unrealistic". These are fantasy films for a reason, people. The only thing I *hate* is the fact that Shia LeBeouf is in it with predictable results (yuck).
Well, there you go. The rain has stopped in the time taken to write this. Hopefully my metaphorical rain will leave soon too. But even if it doesn't at least I can still count on one thing: some things in this life are going to be overrated by people, and some things underrated. The trick is to find what works for you and to disregard everyone else when it comes to your entertainment.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Finish Line Ahead
Close to the end now. August has proven an even crappier month personally than July, so these posts have been short and to the point. With my previous diatribe against Blu-Ray I started thinking: not that my entertainment is *THAT* important to me anymore (thus the upcoming end of this blog) but what is important to me when it comes to the media I watch my movies and shows on? Obviously DRM is important, thus DVD over Blu-Ray, but what about my DVDs? What is important when considering to buy or even keep certain things on DVD? I am assuming of course that I like whatever it is I am considering.
Well, my wants have changed over the years. Back when I first started this blog, for example, extras were very important to me. Given the choice between a bare-bones edition DVD and a Special Ultra Limited Edition with 50 making of features and an audio commentary I was never going to listen to, I was going to choose the amped up version every time. Nowadays I don't really need that for every movie I own, in fact I only need that for a very small percentage of the stuff I have because obsessing on entertainment and how it's made is now less important to me. I recently re-bought some of my favorite anime movies because the picture quality was supposed to be better than the versions I already had. Also, when it came to Wings of Honneamise and the Patlabor movies they were supposed to take up less space than the behemoth boxset versions I had on my shelves. Well, the picture quality on the two Patlabor films was much better than on the old deluxe boxsets, while Honneamise looked exactly the same - but still took up less space, thus I kept it over the old one. The two huge Patlabor boxsets I had were superior to the new release in every other way - they had theatrical trailers and documentaries as bonuses on the discs, they had super-informative booklets and even the complete storyboards for both movies. But in the end the picture quality was vastly superior on the new DVDs, and I refuse to own two versions of the exact same movie (not counting Director's Cuts, etc), so I weighed my options and chose to get rid of my once beloved Patlabor boxsets. Why? Because picture quality trumps everything else. All the extras are just icing on the cake, and the cake itself is more important to me anymore. I also repurchased Vampire Hunter D (which I knew would have vastly superior picture quality seeing as how the quality on the old 2000 DVD was really poor - I was right) and again, the new release does not have as many bonus features but video quality is what counts the most. A lot of VHD fans are up in arms about the new DVD having a new English dub rather than the old Streamline dub, but I have always watched it in Japanese anyway so I don't care. Yes, it would have been nice to have both dubs as an option but again picture quality trumps all.
Now that I have my priorities straight when it comes to buying DVDs I feel that it easier to purchase movies and TV shows than in the past. Life is all about priorities. If you can learn that you'll be golden, instead of wasting time on a crappy movie blog that nobody reads.
Well, my wants have changed over the years. Back when I first started this blog, for example, extras were very important to me. Given the choice between a bare-bones edition DVD and a Special Ultra Limited Edition with 50 making of features and an audio commentary I was never going to listen to, I was going to choose the amped up version every time. Nowadays I don't really need that for every movie I own, in fact I only need that for a very small percentage of the stuff I have because obsessing on entertainment and how it's made is now less important to me. I recently re-bought some of my favorite anime movies because the picture quality was supposed to be better than the versions I already had. Also, when it came to Wings of Honneamise and the Patlabor movies they were supposed to take up less space than the behemoth boxset versions I had on my shelves. Well, the picture quality on the two Patlabor films was much better than on the old deluxe boxsets, while Honneamise looked exactly the same - but still took up less space, thus I kept it over the old one. The two huge Patlabor boxsets I had were superior to the new release in every other way - they had theatrical trailers and documentaries as bonuses on the discs, they had super-informative booklets and even the complete storyboards for both movies. But in the end the picture quality was vastly superior on the new DVDs, and I refuse to own two versions of the exact same movie (not counting Director's Cuts, etc), so I weighed my options and chose to get rid of my once beloved Patlabor boxsets. Why? Because picture quality trumps everything else. All the extras are just icing on the cake, and the cake itself is more important to me anymore. I also repurchased Vampire Hunter D (which I knew would have vastly superior picture quality seeing as how the quality on the old 2000 DVD was really poor - I was right) and again, the new release does not have as many bonus features but video quality is what counts the most. A lot of VHD fans are up in arms about the new DVD having a new English dub rather than the old Streamline dub, but I have always watched it in Japanese anyway so I don't care. Yes, it would have been nice to have both dubs as an option but again picture quality trumps all.
Now that I have my priorities straight when it comes to buying DVDs I feel that it easier to purchase movies and TV shows than in the past. Life is all about priorities. If you can learn that you'll be golden, instead of wasting time on a crappy movie blog that nobody reads.
Friday, August 28, 2015
Stooges Eternal - A Quick Musing
Can something be both timeless and dated? One would seem to contradict the other, right? I started wondering this whilst watching a bunch of Three Stooges shorts lately (friendly advice by the way: when you are going through a shitty time watch the Three Stooges). See, the original Three Stooges shorts ran all the way from the 30s to the 50s and a lot of the stuff in there is going to be obviously dated. Beyond the obvious superficial differences between then and now (the cars, the fashions, the politics, no television in the thirties, etc) there are some things that are almost alien to the modern viewer. Many viewers today for example would wonder what the hell an "icebox" is and why Curly would have to haul a huge block of ice up three flights of steps to deliver it to one.
I know what an icebox is because I study history and it is actually one of the easier ones to figure out... even I however had to look up what a letterpress is (definition: Three Stooges torture implement).
But you know what? Even with all of the dated pop culture references and facets of everyday life no longer in existence - which fascinate me, actually, as a student of history - the Three Stooges are still timeless. Not just because physical comedy itself is timeless but because of the themes and common human experiences inherent in the Stooges' scenarios. The Stooges as doctors will always be funny and a little bit sad, because unfortunately incompetent physicians will always exist.
There will always be courts and trials so the Three Stooges goofing off in a murder trial and wrecking a court room will always be funny. The Stooges wrecking a snooty rich person's house will always be funny as long as there are rich people who look down on us proles... and it gets even funnier every time the economy takes a downturn. Speaking of which, the Stooges as homeless and/or down-on-their-luck guys will always be relevant because so many of us are either or both of those things. There will always be love, greed, hate and laughter.
We don't get to solve our problems by poking a dude in the eyes or completely demolishing someone's house, so we will always look up to the Stooges as well as down on them. Wish fulfillment is always timeless. Oh, and until the day we invent water pills and laser toilets, the Stooges being plumbers will be really relevant... and really, really funny.
So the answer to my query is yes, something can be both dated and timeless. The Three Stooges, The Odyssey, Jimi Hendrix, Star Trek... actually combining all those would make the most awesome show in existence. Someone needs to do a Homeric, Jimi Hendrix scored Stooge Trek.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Feeling Blu
Last December I wrote that I got a Blu-Ray player for Christmas. Well, you may have noticed that I haven't reviewed any blu-ray releases on here, and there's a simple reason for that:
Blu-Ray sucks.
Oh, not in picture quality. The picture quality is awesome. So is the data capacity. No, the problem is summed up in one acronym: DRM. Digital Rights Management. Look, there's DRM on DVDs. Back when they first came out I railed about them because a) I thought it was all a plot by the entertainment companies to take our money by forcing us to upgrade our already existing VHS and LD collections (I was right, but at least DVDs have one million times the picture quality of VHS and are 50 times cheaper than Laserdiscs) and b)they had region encoding, which prevents people in one part of the world from buying discs from other parts of the world. I was right on that one too - the companies did it to prevent reverse importing from cheaper countries but in the process it means that a large number of foreign movies will never be legally released in the US. In fact it still pisses me off, but at least you *can* get a region-free DVD player if you look hard enough.
Blu-Ray is a hundred times worse. First, I can't even get screengrabs from the discs to put on this site, so that nixed any chance of me reviewing the original Star Trek series on here. Second, the player software NEEDS updates, or it won't even function at all. Not even to play a DVD. And I can't play BD's with Media Player Classic or any other free software. You have to buy one of two officially sanctioned players if you want to watch Blu-Ray discs on your PC, and you NEED to have an internet connection in order to update them, no matter if you don't have internet (still a possibility these days in some remote areas or if you can't afford it) or have spotty internet (which is more of a possibility).
In the end it's the increasing corporate control over everything. They NEED to control everything you see and hear - you are now in the Outer Limits. Personally I do not like being dictated to by the corporations how to entertain myself. I can watch my DVDs, even with their level of DRM - at least I can grab screenshots if I want or use a free player to play them. And you know, it's really sad because I *wanted* to like Blu-Ray, I had wanted a BR player for a long time... as I said the picture quality was tremendous. I enjoyed watching Star Trek on it but I can't use it anymore. I'm actually going to have to "downgrade" my Star Trek collection to DVD. Fortunately that is the only thing I got, so I didn't invest too much in this ultra-corporate-controlled format.
See, thinking positive!
Blu-Ray sucks.
Oh, not in picture quality. The picture quality is awesome. So is the data capacity. No, the problem is summed up in one acronym: DRM. Digital Rights Management. Look, there's DRM on DVDs. Back when they first came out I railed about them because a) I thought it was all a plot by the entertainment companies to take our money by forcing us to upgrade our already existing VHS and LD collections (I was right, but at least DVDs have one million times the picture quality of VHS and are 50 times cheaper than Laserdiscs) and b)they had region encoding, which prevents people in one part of the world from buying discs from other parts of the world. I was right on that one too - the companies did it to prevent reverse importing from cheaper countries but in the process it means that a large number of foreign movies will never be legally released in the US. In fact it still pisses me off, but at least you *can* get a region-free DVD player if you look hard enough.
Blu-Ray is a hundred times worse. First, I can't even get screengrabs from the discs to put on this site, so that nixed any chance of me reviewing the original Star Trek series on here. Second, the player software NEEDS updates, or it won't even function at all. Not even to play a DVD. And I can't play BD's with Media Player Classic or any other free software. You have to buy one of two officially sanctioned players if you want to watch Blu-Ray discs on your PC, and you NEED to have an internet connection in order to update them, no matter if you don't have internet (still a possibility these days in some remote areas or if you can't afford it) or have spotty internet (which is more of a possibility).
In the end it's the increasing corporate control over everything. They NEED to control everything you see and hear - you are now in the Outer Limits. Personally I do not like being dictated to by the corporations how to entertain myself. I can watch my DVDs, even with their level of DRM - at least I can grab screenshots if I want or use a free player to play them. And you know, it's really sad because I *wanted* to like Blu-Ray, I had wanted a BR player for a long time... as I said the picture quality was tremendous. I enjoyed watching Star Trek on it but I can't use it anymore. I'm actually going to have to "downgrade" my Star Trek collection to DVD. Fortunately that is the only thing I got, so I didn't invest too much in this ultra-corporate-controlled format.
See, thinking positive!
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Spoiled Beefcake
I figured after watching Hercules In The Center Of The Earth that I would want some more Greek mythology action, so on a whim I picked up a cheap $2.95 copy of the 2000 miniseries Jason and the Argonauts at a thrift store - a title I had never seen before. Well, I'm glad I only paid 2.95 for it, I couldn't imagine paying full-boat MSRP back in the day, because this thing sucks.
I'm not going to spend much time on this. First, the good (there is actually some): Frank Langella and Derek Jacobi are decent. The guy doing Hercules is almost okay. I like the fact that Atalanta is in it (she is in some versions of the original myth). I like that a *few* things are closer to the original myths compared to the 1963 Harryhausen movie. Speaking of which, I like the fact that this version actually has an ending; the '63 version kinda leaves you hanging.
Now to the bad. The acting, with the previous exceptions, is atrociously awful. Keep in mind that the '63 version does not have the world's greatest thespianism, but the 2000 miniseries makes that one look like Shakespeare in comparison. Jason is wimpy. Medea is just creepy. Pelias (played by Dennis Hopper) is absolutely execrable. The minor roles are mediocre at best. The direction is cheesy. The music is lazy and just plays the same stupid theme over and over again (definitely nowhere near Bernard Hermann's Jason score). The story itself is drawn-out, and while a few things are true to the myths, other things just seemed to be pulled out of the writers' asses. The part about Hercules being a servant of Hera is the worst offender - in the original myths, she is his mortal enemy continually plaguing him with woe and misfortune. Look, I know that some shows or movies take a lot of liberties with the source material, but at least I know that Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Disney's Hercules are total bullshit because they toss almost everything established out from the word go and don't even pretend to be accurate. They can actually be entertaining as a result. The problem with Jason 2000 is that it wants to have it both ways and thus can't decide what it wants to be. You can argue that the '63 classic isn't all that accurate either but a) it's still more accurate than the '00 version and b) it has a sense of wonder... and the MOST AWESOME SKELETON FIGHT EVER COMMITTED TO CELLULOID. The bottom line is that this version is not really worth seeing, just see the 1963 classic; it has its flaws but it is miles better. You know the drill about pictures.
I'm not going to spend much time on this. First, the good (there is actually some): Frank Langella and Derek Jacobi are decent. The guy doing Hercules is almost okay. I like the fact that Atalanta is in it (she is in some versions of the original myth). I like that a *few* things are closer to the original myths compared to the 1963 Harryhausen movie. Speaking of which, I like the fact that this version actually has an ending; the '63 version kinda leaves you hanging.
Now to the bad. The acting, with the previous exceptions, is atrociously awful. Keep in mind that the '63 version does not have the world's greatest thespianism, but the 2000 miniseries makes that one look like Shakespeare in comparison. Jason is wimpy. Medea is just creepy. Pelias (played by Dennis Hopper) is absolutely execrable. The minor roles are mediocre at best. The direction is cheesy. The music is lazy and just plays the same stupid theme over and over again (definitely nowhere near Bernard Hermann's Jason score). The story itself is drawn-out, and while a few things are true to the myths, other things just seemed to be pulled out of the writers' asses. The part about Hercules being a servant of Hera is the worst offender - in the original myths, she is his mortal enemy continually plaguing him with woe and misfortune. Look, I know that some shows or movies take a lot of liberties with the source material, but at least I know that Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Disney's Hercules are total bullshit because they toss almost everything established out from the word go and don't even pretend to be accurate. They can actually be entertaining as a result. The problem with Jason 2000 is that it wants to have it both ways and thus can't decide what it wants to be. You can argue that the '63 classic isn't all that accurate either but a) it's still more accurate than the '00 version and b) it has a sense of wonder... and the MOST AWESOME SKELETON FIGHT EVER COMMITTED TO CELLULOID. The bottom line is that this version is not really worth seeing, just see the 1963 classic; it has its flaws but it is miles better. You know the drill about pictures.
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