Synchronicity

Greatest fight scenes

2008-12-19T12:41:00.003Z

Just a quick mention of a great thread over on Boards.ie

Best fight scenes in a movie

a couple of my faves from the list

They Live:

No Retreat No Surrender 3

SPL ( a movie I was not familiar with.)

Ennio Morricone

2008-10-19T13:49:00.008+01:00

Saw the legend that is Ennio Morricone last night in Belfast. Really incredible experience. We were very lucky and got seats in the very front row. not ten feet from the Maestro himself!

Like many people I primarily knew Ennio's contributions to Sergio Leone's Man With no Name trilogy' The title theme to The good the bad and the Ugly and The ecstasy of the gold from the same movie. I was also aware of his soundtrack to The Mission, but I hadn't seen that movie in years.

When we got the programme for the night I discovered he also did the composition for John Carpenters The Thing and for Brian DePalma's The Untouchables.

All of the above (barring music from The Thing) were played and in fact the Ecstasy of the gold was played twice.
Here's a a video of the song from a different concert. Same orchestra and incredible soprano ( Susanna Rigacci)

The choir was the Belfast Philharmonic Choir, The video cannot convey the experience of sitting there with a full orchestra and 100-120 person choir belting out Spaghetti western tunes when you're there in person.

As well as the Movie themes I recognised there were a couple of pieces that I had not previously known which were also excellent, one in particular which made full use of the choir is called Abolisson. It highlights the amazing talent this man has, the songs vary from beautiful and melancholy pieces through lighthearted xylophone-driven numbers to the raises-the-hair-on-the-back-of- your-neck majesty of On earth as it is in heaven from the mission.

It just leaves one thing to say...Bravo Maestro!

Empires 500 Movies

2008-09-26T10:57:00.004+01:00

A rant if you will indulge me:

So Empire have compiled their readers top 500 films.
suffice to say the usual suspects dominate and everywhere I look I seem to find people bashing it as fanboyish nonsense. Fair enough, when it comes to subjective matters the wisdom of crowds is usually pretty skewed.

But as much as a lot of the empire list annoys me, the righteous 'my taste is so superior' backlash annoys me much further and in fact sends me rallying to wave my flag with the Empire hordes.

lets take a quick look at the alternative. The following is the top ten from the top 100 critics films in Sound and Vision ( a 'proper' movie review/criticism magazine).

1. Citizen Kane / Orson Welles
2. Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock
3. The Rules of the Game / Jean Renoir
4. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola
5. Tokyo Story / Yazujiro Ozu
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey / Stanley Kubrick
7. Battleship Potemkin / Sergei Eisenstein
8. Sunrise / F.W. Murnau
9. 8 1/2 / Federico Fellini

I am depressed just looking at the titles, don't get me wrong I love some of these movies
(godfather and Vertigo are particular highlights) and I'm sure those I haven't seen
are very worthy (they are all on my list I believe).

The problem is where you gonna crack a smile, Only 2001 offers any serious escapism (that I know of) here
and for that, is it really better than the Empire Strikes back?
I know which one I'd rather watch.

p.s for what Its worth here was my submission (as far as I can recall, unfortunately
the original list is no longer available on the empire site. ) to the Empire List.

1. Princess Bride
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Casablanca
4. Big Trouble in little china
5. Requiem for a Dream
6. Shawshank Redemption
7. Spider-man 2
8. Pans Labyrinth
9. Dragon: the bruce lee story
10.The Dark Knight

Yep I'm one of the people that bumped Dark knight into the top 15,
I stand by that I think its an great movie. I think I'd review it now
that other movies pop into my head ( no "once upon a time in the west",
"Army of Darkness" or "Hellboy", tough to call what I'd bump out)

Crystal Skull

2008-05-23T13:57:00.005+01:00

First viewing last night and I'm happy with it. It was never going to live up to the hype but it gives it a good old fashioned try. Let me get the failings out of the way first...

(Some spoilers below).

prevalent Supernatural/superscience. In a break with tradition the Supernatural/superscience elements are present almost from the get go. The Arks power was not revealed till the raider denouement, The sankara stones only come to life at the very end, the Grail isn't seen till the last 10 minutes. Spalkos psychic powers are hinted at from the start, and by the halfway point we have seen the skull used and indeed It actively drives the plot along. Oh and there's a UFO.

Underused talent. Karen Allen is woefully underused , as is the excellent John Hurt ( reduced to a mumbling wreck for most of the movie). Ditto Jim Broadbent (although in fairness he gets as much screen time as Denholm Elliot did in Raiders).

Overused CGI. Granted its no phantom menace but there are a couple of places I think they used it where it wasn't need. I'm probably being a bit harsh here but those CGI prarie dogs didn't agree with me at all. If I can tell its CGI it shouldn't be there.

Dialogue. I though some of the dialogue was a little weak towards the end. Particularily in the aftermath of the ship 'taking off'.

Right with that out of the way, On to the Good Stuff.

Karen Allen, if nothing else for her reaction to the 'none of them were you' line, She has an amazing smile. The chemistry between them was great and the dialogue between them was nice and snappy.

Go Shia! Mutt Williams was an entirely acceptable new character to the indy universe. Yes him being Indys son looked terrifying on paper but they played it for laughs. Great to see the little references to the relationship between Indy and his dad in Crusade. The looks exchanged on the motorcycle to 'this is intolerable!'.

Great Set Pieces. The Bike chase (particularily when Indy fights his way through a car..) is really well filmed, the camerawork screams Spielberg. The Jungle chase is excellent too with lots of leaping from vehicle to vehicle and interactions going on.

Great CGI. Along with the bad there was the good, the Nuclear explosion was great, as were the ants and the fairly subtle CGI used during the Jungle chase ( I knew it was there but I couldn't see the seams) .

Indy still kicks ass , the punches still have that satisfying THWAP sound ( IIRC that was created by someone beating a pile of wet leather!) and he can still pull off the stunts convincingly. his two slugfests with the big russian (while not quite as epic as his punch outs with Pat Roach) were pretty satisfying.

Ants!

All in all it checks all the boxes:
Hat Fedora and whip, creepy crawlies, Booby traps, a mystical McGuffin, Bad Guys defeated by their own greed, losing the hat and getting it back , breakneck chase scenes, fist fights, Quotable lines, A snake and a love interest.

Long live Indy!

"besides, You know what a careful guy I am"

2008-05-20T22:32:00.003+01:00

So its not far away now.. Thursday night I'll be seeing Crystal Skull*. Been trying to keep the expectations to a reasonable level to avoid a repeat of the spider-man fiasco. However walking past the Irish premiere in the savoy today and confirming my tickets are booked has kind of set me off a bit. I'm off to think calm thoughts!

*think thats what I've decided on calling it rather than Kingdom. guess time will tell whether I chose wisely or not ;)

161: Forrest Gump

2008-05-09T17:16:00.000+01:00

Well it only took me fourteen years (isn't that absolutely terrifying, it seems like only yesterday) but I finally got around to watching this.

As the inexplicably talented Forrest bumbles his way through an astounding array of historic events and places, he touches the lives of many, inadvertently teaching them life lessons (or in some cases, making them a fortune). Its pretty much exactly what I expected, a very sentimental moral tale. Forrest as a character starts out with the odds against him having an IQ of 75 and a twisted spine, But he makes it through the difficulties he encounters by living according to the aphorisms his mom taught him as a child. Indeed he seems barely seems aware of the trials he is is put through. Tom hanks Oscar win is well deserved, its a great physical performance as well as his subtle conveyance of emotions.

The movie is well paced , and it needs to be due to the sheer number and variety of Forrests experiences that we see. College football hero, Vietnam veteran, ping pong champion and long distance walker as well as several encounters with US presidents ( scenes which unfortunately have dated badly). In the course of these there is some really beautiful cinematography and effects. For me the best 'act' is the one set around the Vietnam war, we are introduced to Gary Sinise's character ('Lieutenant Dan') and some of the best effects,scenery and humour in the movie.

William Goldman raves about Robin Wright Penn in this movie , I thought she was passable and would in fact rate Gary Sinise's performance over hers. And as a character shes a pain in the ass, putting our poor Forrest through hell when in fact he's the best thing that ever happened to her (then again, guess it wouldn't have been much of a movie if they got together from the start).

In summary I'd have to say Gump is Sentimental,Soppy,Predictable and Silly and I really liked it. The humour and hints at independent movie style save it from being the big Hollywood schmaltz it could have been. If only they had gone a little further
it could have been great.

160: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

2008-04-29T20:32:00.004+01:00

Had this sitting on my shelf for ages and just hadn't gotten round to watching it.
Having read William Goldmans Adventures in the screen trade, I knew a couple of things going in , I knew it had comic elements and I knew that Paul Newman and Robert Redford have a great chemistry in it. Oh and I knew how it ended, Impossible to avoid really its of those iconic scenes that is referenced and parodied a lot.

I think maybe if I hadn't known all of those things beforehand I would have enjoyed it better.I'm jumping ahead somewhat. First things first, the opening credits reveal the music was composed by Burt Bacharach, a slight jump from the Sergio Leone soundtracks I'm used to in westerns. It gives it an anachronistic feel which is interesting but I'm not a big fan of that kind of music, so call that a point against..

The first few scenes are typical western style (poker, gunplay,a train robbery ) setting up the characters (Butch is the brains and Sundance is the hotshot gunslinger ) and establish that they are already notorious.
There are a couple of great moments, most of them from the brilliant dialogue. But there are some points where interest starts to wane. That awful 'raindrops keep falling on my head' scene. And too many drawn out shots where nothing actually happens.

However from the second train robbery , the film really finds its feed. The pair are pursued by a seemingly unstoppable and completely anonymous posse. The pursuit is very well shot and The banter between butch and sundance losses its joking nonchalance as they realise they are in trouble -"Who are these guys?"

The plot changes direction again they flee to Bolivia to avoid their pursuers for good, Taking Eta ,Sundances girl,with them. There's an odd and to my mind unnecessarily long photomontage bridging the two halves of the movie showing their
journey south. There are more great comic moments when they realise they don't speak the language, not knowing how to say 'This is a robbery' in their new home. Theres a great scene where Eta and Sundance are gleefully shown into the safe in a bank by the manager which is played with no dialogue, just backing music, that is worthy of mention.
The Actress playing Eta is overshadowed by Newman and Redford but she plays the part adequately.

In the end the pair draw too much attention to themselves and find themselves
hunted down. And we all know how it ends.

The lowly cover version.

2008-04-03T23:34:00.003+01:00

I was shuffling my winamp playlist tonight and came across Doctor? by Orbital. It got me thinking, I remember when I saw that on the track listing for 'The Altogether', I skipped impatiently over the other tracks to hear it. I guess I've always been a sucker for the idea of a cover version. Obviously quality varies significantly but the idea that some one could take a piece of music and make it their own is neat.
So as a tribute to the lowly cover version here's a list of some the most unexpected I've come across (also some of the best)

Tori Amos covers Nirvana- Smells Like Teen spirit.
Everyone paying attention? this is how you cover a song. Amazing.

Massive Attack cover The Doors -Light my fire
Fun cover by massive attack, I remember hearing them in an interview saying they got a lot of flak for covering this. Some people take things way too seriously.

Tricky covers Nirvana -Something in the way
Tricky is somewhat of a serial cover artist (as is Tori now that I think about it) , covering the Cure on a subsequent album and providing a version of Under the mango tree on this album. I actually heard this version of Something in the way before the original (is it wrong that I prefer it?).

The Prodigy cover L7 - Fuel my Fire
This is another cover I heard before the original. It may not be the best track in the world but I like it cause you don't expect the prodigy to do cover versions.

Primal Scream cover Nancy Sinatra
Yep you read that right, Primal Scream meet Nancy Sinatra. And its a really good cover too. Again I heard these in the 'wrong' order, bit of a theme that, didn't realise it till I started writing these down!

Nine Inch Nails cover Soft Cell -Memorabilia

heard this in reverse chronological order too. Another great cover and made it his own too, perhaps this is the least unusual cover of my list both being electronic artists of a sort.

Johnny Cash covers Nine Inch Nails - Hurt Nicely bookending this list a cover version that must rank right along side Tori's Teen Spirit cover. The video is quiet eerie too, like he knew he was about to die. pretty poignant stuff.

That's it for now, There are more covers for your perusal The Covers Project which is slowly but surely building up the definitive archive of covers that have music videos.

Giant Tadpole.

2008-02-05T21:51:00.000Z

Good to be back. Was having blogger login issues.

Wanted to mention a movie,not on the list, it's 'The Host' the Korean Horror movie about a Giant Tadpole. I really really wanted to like this movie, Empire gave it four stars claiming "you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll ask Hollywood for your money back".

Maybe so. If you're only comparing it to Hollywood made giant Monster movies. So umm that's Godzilla then. Fair enough. Of course now we have Cloverfield so maybe thats not true anymore either.

Anyhow. I might not have given it four stars myself but there is definitely worth seeing there. I really like it when an action or horror movie surprises me with something unexpected and I don't mean using Shaky Camera to convince me something dramatic is happening, no I mean when you see something on screen but you're not entirely sure or you don't quite believe what you are seeing. The first appearance of the monster is like this. Its let down by some really strange pacing decisions. It feels like they didn't edit it, the beginning of the movie rattles along at a nice pace, then there is a huge dip and lots of 'comedic' moments, I guess its the Korean sense of humor but for me it stole from what could have been a really great movie. ah well, maybe next time.

Its neat having a blackboard, and I've decided to capture our visitors efforts for posterity

Really cool things.

2007-11-08T22:20:00.000Z

The following things are cool.Canonically cool.

Stranger Than Fiction, I though Will Ferrell was just a zany comedy genius, turns out hes a great actor too.

The Lyrics Plugin for Winamp. Its great for sorting out those pesky Mondegreens.

This man, who I had the opportunity to see live recently here in Dublin, is very funny.

And since I'll be there this weekend, Dominicon a games convention with a real nice relaxed vibe.

159: The Pianist

2007-10-21T14:40:00.000+01:00

This is one I started watching before but bailed out on some time ago. Its not the kind of movie thats gonna cheer you up! Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman about his own survival in German occupied Poland through WWII.

This is a war movie without the war, Its filmed in such a way that we see everything from Szpilmans point of view as he movies from safehouse to safehouse avoiding the S.S and meeting people who are in hiding like himself and members of the polish resistance.

Adrien Brody is fantastic as the reticent and eccentric Szpilman. He conveys his state of fear and sheer incomprehension at the atrocities he sees everyday brilliantly. It's very easy to see why the film won its 3 Oscars. Its extremely well put together . Given the subject matter it probably goes without saying but it is pretty tough going in places, there are a couple of brutal on screen executions . This movie reminds me of Schindlers list , its brilliant but emotionally draining.

Synchronous tunes.

2007-10-06T13:58:00.000+01:00

I've noticed a lot of the traffic coming here is for people searching for 'synchronicity'. Since my movie related ramblings are probably not what people are looking for I thought I'd offer something to cater for those folks.

Well kind of , it's actually something I've been thinking of putting together for a while and was just looking for an excuse to do so.

Basically this is a list of music tracks that have the same title but by different artists and are not cover versions. It could be argued that that is a synchronous event! (Of course given that most of them are one word titles maybe thats pushing it).

One Love by Bob Marley,The Prodigy and Massive Attack.

I have a little bit of trivia on this one. Marleys video features Paul McCartney and Suggs from Madness. I have also read in an biography of the band that the prodigy used to sing U2s 'One' on the way home after a night out. I'm guessing thats where their title came from.

One by U2, Metallica,Lamb

Ok this is cheating really.. There is a plethora of songs entitled 'one' so moving on..

Rise by PIL, Primal Scream and by Gabrielle!

lets be clear here I'm no Gabrielle fan, shes' purely here because the song titles are the same, but I think its pretty safe to say neither stole the title from the other!.

Religion by Front 242, Philip Glass

I like the contrast in these two.

Wandering Star by Portishead, Lee Marvin

Wandering Star is one of my favorite songs ( no not the lee marvin version!)

Collision by Faith No More, Front Line Assembly also Front 242 (but I can't find a audio or video link.)

Fire It Up by Busta Rhymes and Modest Mouse

Busta Rhymes has a lot to answer for .. defiling the Knight Rider theme tut tut tut.
Modest Mouse on the other hand

Weirdly enough, I've been listening to Nouvelle Vague for the last couple of days. I knew all the original versions of the songs except for one 'This is not a love song' , I wasn't looking for it but while looking for links for this article I came across the video for 'This is not a love song' by PIL. Maybe I'm looking too hard but I thought that was synchronous.

Mountains of Madness news

2007-10-04T10:02:00.000+01:00

There has been some wonderful news.
Guillermo Del Toro has bumped Mountains of Madness up his priority
list, looks like he'll be starting after Hellboy wraps up (which I believe
will be in the next couple of months).

for those who have never read it the text can be found here.

The next question I guess is casting, professor Dyer, Danforth and to a lesser extent professor Lake are the central characters to the story.

I'm thinking unknowns would be best but maybe someone like Alfred Molina could handle on of the professors. I think it is likely Doug Jones will be involved somehow.

Any ideas?

Confess 2007

2007-09-11T09:26:00.000+01:00

just a quick linky to boost the official confess page in the google search for
Confess 2007.

See you all there.

158 : Dr. Strangelove or : how I stopped worrying or learned to love the bomb

2007-06-15T19:16:00.000+01:00

I wasn't expecting a lot from Dr. Strangelove , black comedy isn't my cup of tea usually, I probably wouldn't have made it past the credits if the film wasn't on the list. The opening sequence of a bomber being refuelled mid flight while a monotonous voice over tells us about rumours of a secret Russian Doomsday device.

In saying that the minute Peter Sellers appears on screen as Captain Mandrake (an RAF captain transferred to a US air force base) you know this is going to be an interesting movie.
I've only ever seen Sellers in the Pink Panther movies and Fu Manchu, he is absolutely brilliant in this film. He plays three roles, the aforementioned Mandrake who is the stereotypical british officer type who loses his composure as the film goes on, The president who valiantly struggles to keep the whole mess from escalating (but ultimately fails) and of course the eponymous Doctor. Theres not enough of the doctor, thats the only criticism I have of this film.

Dr. Strangelove is a top scientist who advises the war room, he is incredibly creepy and yet ridiculous . All strange ticks , odd smiles and an arm that wants to kill him apparently!

The basic premise is that a General (called Jack D. Ripper , the first in a line of dumb names including Colonel "Bat" Guanu and Mjr. "King" Kong) suspects the commies are poisoning "our precious bodily fluids" and decides to instigate a nuclear mission, reasoning the president will have to commit to an all out attack to avoid soviet retaliation. The president however endeavors to prevent the attack from succeeding by alerting the Russian.

There are three sets . The first is within General Rippers locked-down base (where the beleaguered Captain Mandrake is imprisoned. The second is the war room where the president ,General "Buck" Turgidson and the Russian Ambassador provide the entertainment ( "This is the war room! you can't fight in the war room") . And finally there is the bomber which is destined to drop the bomb.

(I'm assuming thats not a spoiler, The most iconic image from this movie is Slim Pickins riding the bomb to earth)

The war room is the centerpiece with the best gags and most cutting satire, the paranoid ("we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!" and Hardware ( "Buck" is clearly envious of the Russian doomsday device when its existence is revealed) obsessed military.

I was surprised to spot James Earl Jones in a minor role as the Bombadier of the plane crew,
the dvd indicates this was his first movie role.

I can't recommend this movie enough. It is brilliant.

p.s its also in black and white.

New blog.

2007-05-26T18:56:00.000+01:00

Quick post. I've just created a new blog for non-movie related stuff,
Its primarily going to be a place to store all those handy little tricks and tools
that I come across while working, that I inevitable have to figure out all over again several
months later.. well no more, now they have a home, and now hopefully they'll be
useful to some of you too

Spider-man 3

2007-05-08T10:58:00.001+01:00

So its been and gone. And in one word it's disappointing. really disappointing.
In fact I can't stop analysing whats wrong with it.

So in an effort to exorcise that demon, here are 7 things I think were wrong
with spider-man 3 (in no particular order):

Editing - or lack thereof, it feels like they just filmed it and kept everything

Not giving the viewers any credit - did we really need to be retold
all the characters background again? Did every single emotion need to be spelled out in words?

Acting - Maguire is great, don't get me wrong and Dunst is solid, but
they can't cry (at least not in the blubbering way the script seems to have required of them)

Unnecessary characters - I don't know if the screenwriter(Alvin Sargent) is just trying to cram these people in for the fans but Captain Stacy and Gwen stacy do nothing for the story and just eat extremely valuable screen time. And I hate to say it, even Venom is superfluous.

Cheese - for want of a better word the pieces that gave the last few
movies heart have been overblown here and just make you cringe.
No longer is the awful spider man theme from the 60s
cartoon played as a novelty by a busker on the street. Its played
by a brass band, at and apparent "we love spidey" event.

Plot overload - Everyone gets their own subplot and none of them
are resolved to any satisfaction.

characterisation - The characters do and say things that don't really make sense. Why did peter kiss Gwen? Why did sandman help venom? Why didn't the butler say something earlier? Why is aunt may now a fortune cookie?

Here is what I think happened. Sam Raimi had his villains ;Sandman ,
Green Goblin II. The studio and the fans wanted Venom. He caved and
then had 3 villains stories to deal with as well as tying up the threads
from the previous movies. Reading the wikipedia entry for the film it
seems Sargent looked at splitting the movie into two to do it justice but
couldn't find a decent ending for the first movie. So it remained one
bloated movie. Suddenly sam has a lot more to do, a lot more
characters and a lot more shooting and a lot more CGI and what suffers?
he can't give the scenes the attention they deserve. I think its telling that
there's none of the playful references to his own back catalogue that were
seen in the last movie. (crash zooms, the scene with doc ocks arms killing
the doctors). I think he just didn't have time and the movie as a whole
suffered because of it.

Just to be clear, I'm a big fan and I think a lot of things were done right.
The whole look of the movie is fantastic, CGI is flawless( venom is perfect,
Sandman effects amazing ), The action scenes are great. James Franco
is the best actor in the movie. Topher grace makes great use of his limited screen time.
Sam Raimi kept the humour which made the first two so funny. Bruce Campbell. J.K. Simmons eats the screen (again).

Spider-man 1 was the movie that relaunched the comic book movie genre.
Will it die with spider-man 3? Probably not, spidey 3 has already beaten
the box office records. And it looks like some of the best are yet to come,
Dark Knight and Iron man look good and I personally think Hulk could be
excellent too.

So, another spider-man?

I hope so. I don't think Sam Raimi got it so wrong that he 'broke' the
franchise. And there are still a lot of stories to be told for this character.
Whether Sam, Tobey and Kirsten will be back is hard to tell.

As for the story?

I'm biased but my personal favorite spider-man story is
"fearful symmetry :Kravens last hunt" It features the black costume
(not the symbiote) so there's some continuity there.But its also a bit
more adult and has some real darkness, not the Peter Parker in black
eyeliner kind. It'd mean introducing a new Villain but I suspect that'd
have to happen anyways. I think it would make a great movie.

Failing that, maybe go for something from the current spider man
writers? how about revelations/when the stars turn cold ? The Morlun
character is excellent and it gives Aunt May a reason to be in the movie.

Just my 2 cents.

Blade Runner

2007-05-01T09:41:00.000+01:00

Wow, heres a turnup for the books. I came across this on Digg, It seems
that there is a new Bladerunner 'Special Edition' DVD being released and it contains
recently filmed footage
apparently the actress who played the Replicant Zhora has mentioned it on her official website (theres not a lot of info there
just that she has reshot scenes in her original costume which she kept all these years.

Thats 25 years for those who are counting.

The big time.

2007-04-24T17:12:00.000+01:00

So Wayne finally got his EP together and
had his launch night in Sligo. Great night too, it even struggled on despite an unscheduled guest appearance
from yours truly! Yes it looks like he is heading for the big time now. Mind you after reading
this I'm not so sure thats a good idea!,
still I guess he'll save on the album artwork. The CD sounds great and you can even order it
from the last rule (which as it happens is an online
gaming supplies ~~pusher~~ I mean retailer

To keep this blog slightly on topic. I'll talk a little about Evil Dead.
I got this on UMD recently and watched it during the train journey down to Sligo.
I had seen it before (and its superior sequels). Its pretty dated stuff and
the acting is well about as much as can be expected from one of the original
'video nasties'. Theres some great camera work in it though, lots of weird
perspective shots.

And I can't go without mentioning Mr. Bruce Campbell the man whose career was
launched as the hard done by protagonist, Ash. He chews up the scenery
and makes the movie as he deadpans and pratfalls his way through serveral
bizarre and ridiculously gory encounters with the 'deadites' .

*Edit: forgot to mention I spotted what I believe is a poster for the original
'The hills have Eyes' in the first scene in the basement, a little nod to
wes craven, trivia fans.*

I cannot help though to compare it to Army of Darkness (the last film in the trilogy)
and find it wanting, although admittedly any pretense at horror has well disappeared by
the final film. So perhaps thats not a fair comparison.

As a final note I see we're being experimented upon.
I hope we get a clean bill of health.

Google and Heroes.

2007-03-25T11:58:00.000+01:00

A quick plug before I get to the meat and bones of this post. Mr. O Connor has a couple of new videos of him singing on his myspace He also has an single launch the end of next month 21st april in Sligo..

So onto the Google goodness. First off the Blogger site has had a bit of a facelift, customising your page with rss feeds and the layout elements you fancy is a piece of cake now. Also gone is the dreaded "Publishing..." delay. My one complaint is that the preview, while nice and fast isn't giving me a true view of what my layout is going to be.

For example, this line when I view it in the preview all fits onto one line.
As you can hopefully see thats not the case when its published.
Not hard to get around, I'm simply using <P> and </P> to handle
my line formatting now..

The other google tool I've started using (having applied for a free account and recieved it ages ago) is Google Analytics, basically its webstats for your website. And in typically google fashion its everything you want from a webstat service and then some. Its pretty hardcore your basic dashboard offering you a view customised for executive ( pretty colours and nice graphs), webmaster( browsers your visitors are using, javascript/flash/java compatibility) how many visitors 'bounce' arrive at your page and immediately leave and Marketer (keyword analysis, adword clicks and other 'evil' stuff).

Analytics lets me know that that the canadians are my biggest visitors (big shoutout to the canadians, I've always liked 'em) and search keywords that bring people here from google tend to be the names of actors and movies. y'know actors like Harrison Ford, Christian Bale, Kirsten Dunst,Maggie Gyllenhaal and movies like Casablanca, Requiem for a Dream and The Shawshank Redemption. ( Sorry that was mean, apologies if you just if you came here while searching for a movie starring Christian Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal. There isn't one currently but you can always hang on for this this

The last thing I want to mention is Heroes. If you haven't heard about it here's the quick
rundown, Its a TV series about a group of people who start to manifest 'powers' flight, telepathy
and even manipulating the space-time continuum. I watched the first 7 episodes last night, and
its only brilliant. The use of the powers is kept very low key and the story, each character has their own very down to earth problems, takes center stage. Highly recommended, I put it right up there with battlestar.

157: Once upon a time in the west.

2007-03-23T10:03:00.000Z

Epic spaghetti western and pure Sergio Leone, lots of close ups of
uglypeoples faces and plenty of Gunplay. There are echos of
"The Good the Bad and the Ugly" in that the male leads fill those
roles nicely, Charles Bronson as the enigmatic 'Harmonica' (we
never find out his real name) Fonda as the child murdering (just so
there is no doubt about his depravity) bad guy Frank and
(quick IMDB lookup) Jason Robards as the
really-not-as-bad-as-he-initially-seems bandit Cheyenne.

When I say epic I'm not kidding it clocks in at just under 3 hours.
And a lot of the time you feel every minute of it. From the brilliant
opening scene where 3 of franks gang are waiting at the train station
for Harmonica. It must be 10 minutes of the three of them just standing
around in silence barring the background noise ( a dog barking, a fly
buzzing dripping water etc) , the movie opens with 10 minutes of nothing
happening and I was absolutely riveted. brilliant.

Speaking of silence the movie is pretty sparse on the dialogue but what
little we get is great stuff. My favorite is when Harmonica gets off the
train and is faced with Franks henchmen..
"you bring a horse for me?"
laughs, "looks like we're one shy.'
"no.. you brought two too many"

Once he out-dialogues them, he then out-guns them. classic stuff.

One thing that really stood out for me with this movie is that the
audience are assumed to be able to put two and two together,
expositionary dialog is kept to a bare minimum. So its pretty engaging stuff.

When we were kids my brother and I saw the 'Man with no name' trilogy
a lot as my Dad was a big fan. To my mind this film is much darker than
those movies, but maybe thats just because Its been so long since I've seen
them, I'll have to pick them up and see.

Lovecraftian movies

2007-03-15T15:39:00.000Z

I'm very excited about Guillermo Del Toros planned adaptation
of the Mountains of Madness (now if only he'd stop letting
other projects jump the queue - I'm looking at you Tarzan and
Hellboy 2).

I was thinking how there hasn't been a worthy adaptation of
any of lovecrafts material as yet.

There are a couple of contenders though:
The Re-animator was reasonably successful,
but to my mind it was never one of the definitive lovecraft
stories and I believe liberties were taken with the story and
tone of the piece. I'm not really in a position to judge it
as I've never actually seen it.

HP Lovecrafts Dagon was a DTV release,
and the cover does not instill confidence again I haven't seen
it but I think with bad movies at least you can generally judge
them by their cover. leastways I can't think of any good movies
with bad covers?

Call of Cthulhu by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical
Society is probably the closest direct adaption of Lovecrafts
material cleverly put together as a black and white silent movie.
Still waiting on my copy so I can't confirm this.

The Mouth Of Madness directed by John Carpenter,
starring Sam Neill looks like it should be the winner here
even though not directly adapted from a lovecraft story. And its
pretty good but its kind of heavy handed and knowing in its
Lovecraft referencing and is more Carpenter than Lovecraft,
no bad thing but not the best lovecraftian movie.

Here are a couple of movies I think are more lovecraftian even
though they don't advertise it.

Alien/Aliens - Think about it, unspeakable relentless alien
horror jarring humanity from its view as the center of the
universe.Add in a healthy does of absolute hoplessness and thats
pretty close to what we're looking for. You could even say that
Ripleyis something like the Randolph Carter character, her
encounters resulting in her ending up alien herself, or you might
not.

Pans Labyrinth I think what really grabs me about
this movie is the fact that the 'real world' part is so real.
It's a case of the dragon in the woods, the more real the woods,
the more real the dragon. The time period (1930s) is not so far
from the period of lovecrafts stories either. This movie is
the one that convinces me of Guillermos ability to successfully
make "The Mountains of Madness".

Also an honorable mention for Hellboy with is "Ogdru Jahad" in
their crystal prison.

But back to "Mountains", to my mind the important thing to
get right is the scale of the thing. It has to be Epic (note capital E) .
The most important shot of the film? That tiny little plane slipping
through the gap in the mountains to reveal the dead alien city.

The Elder things will be tricky, Fungi-Plant-animals don't exactly
inspire terror.

But If anyone can do it Mr. del Toro can.

Spam considered useful

2007-03-14T11:16:00.000Z

Believe it or not the only thing that eventually made me post here
again was the volume of comment spam I was getting. There was
enough to give me that righteous 'I'm taking back whats mine,
damn your eyes' motivation.

Now that I'm back I guess I'll continue blogging my journey
through the 1001 you should see before you die. conveniently
enough its just been my birthday and one of the things I picked
up was a bunch of DVDs.

Amongst them:

"Evil Dead" (which I have seen many many times and probably
won't blog about),

"Equilibrium" (which was unlikely to appear in the 1001 movies
but I like much better than the matrix sequels),

"Anchorman" (again not a contender but allegedly quite funny),

"Top Secret" ( long time since I seen this but still a heck of a lot
better then the scary movie/epic movie crap we get these days)

and finally - "Once upon a time in the west", which I believe is in
the 1001 so that should be the next one reviewed. stay tuned..

156: It's a wonderful life

2006-01-05T15:55:00.000Z

Yep, I had never seen "It's a wonderful life', somehow I've always managed to miss the seasonal showings of this classic on telly. It being christmas and all I figured it would appropriate forthe next movie I see on the list to be this one.

I had always heard the plot of this movies described something like a man is convinced by an angel not to commit suicide when he is shown how much worse things would be if he had never been born.While thats certainly the climax of the movie most of the films 2 hours is spent following George Bailey (James Stewart) and getting to know just what a decent fella he is. Thats what really makes the movie. You feel like you know the guy, or at least that you would like to so when thingsgo bad for him , you really,really want it all to work out.
And of course it does.

Things you might not remember about this film, the slightly surreal ballroom/swimming pool transformation mid charleston competition and the rather odd special effects of the constellations (angels) talking.

Things you'll definitely remember, 'a bell rings, an angel gets its wings', James stewarts Homer Simpson impression "Woohooo!".

155: Chinatown

2005-12-06T19:20:00.000Z

This one started off looking pretty damn dissapointing. Its wasa real slow build and I had been expecting a noir film along the linesof the old Bogart movies. They were black and white and had a real sarcastic wit whereas 'Chinatown' was all colour and there was quite a bit of humourin there.

However as I watched the twists started to come and the pace was upped. The tone of the movie changes pretty dramatically when Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholsons character)is threatened by a couple of Goons gaurding a site where some illegal goingson are happening, his witty retorts are rewarded by a nose sliced up with a knife.

You can't help but like Jack, he's a private detective with a good sense of right and wrong in the noir tradition. He's not infallible though and he makes mistakes,makes incorrect accusations but his hearts in the right place. he's street smartthough and makes good use out of a couple of business cards and a busted tail light.

And because you like him its all the worse when the last few twists unfold and it all goes wrong. Its a downer of an ending, brilliant, but a real downer...
The part was written for Jack nicholson , and you can tell. He eats the screen,even Faye Dunaway barely gets a look in as the femme fatale of the piece.Without him I dunno if I could have made it through the first half hour.