Unobtainium in 3D

I recently watched "Ferngully II; Dances with USB enabled 10 foot tall Smurfs" (Avatar). The movie was good, the story was very thin but I only had one "cringe worthy" moment: they are mining for something called "unobtainium ". Really guys, is that all you could come up with?

But that is not that is not what I want to talk about, my big thought coming from the movie is that "3D" technology is heading in the wrong direction. Sure Avatar is darn good use of the current technology but I don't think we aren’t going to be able to get very much further on the road that we are traveling.

To me the current "3D" movies seem instead as 2D with depth. The problem is that the movies are still be recorded with one focus point, that means that while the movie is going on there is only one thing that is in focus, and if I am not looking at that then everything is going to be blurry. Take this to contrast real life 3D, whatever I am looking at is in focus while everything else is blurry. The result of this type of 3D is that we get a superficially looking 3D movie but the viewers are still restrained to look at a specific spot and depth in the movie.

I think that this is a good first step, however, since we are about to get ESPN broadcast in this 3D technology it may take a while to move on to something that is better.

Oh well, for now we will just have to put up with those stylish glasses in the theatres... and soon at home.

Sukiyaki Western Django

This weekend, among other things, we watched Sukiyaki Western Django on Blu-Ray at Chris and Jenette's. I have been wanting to watch it since Charity showed up the trailer on Youtube. Now that I have seen it I don't really know what to think about the movie, but it is awesome. Sukiyaki is a western set in Nevada around the year 1100, with a Gatling gun at a settlement full of color-coordinated English speaking Japanese gunslingers. If that doesn't sound like your cup-of-tea, this movie isn't for you. However if that description piques your interest check out the trailer; it is basically what the movie is like.



If you ask me this will revive Japanese Cinema to overtake Hollywood.

A for Awesome

It is not secret that I do not like V for Vendetta. I have a problem with the tone of the movie, the script of the movie, and the fact that you are rooting for the villain in the movie.
Well guess what "movie" does what V for Vendetta did, but with a double punch of awesome and awesome-r. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
This short film does a much better job of showing why some evil people are good and some good people are evil, and gets me to actually root for the villain. Other pluses are that it is funny, free, and a click away. Watch it.

Cloverfield

My very very short review of this movie:

You remember the Blair Witch Project? Remember Godzilla? Take the shaky cam from one add the monster from another, throw in a bit of "realism" and viola! Cloverfield.

I recommend this movie if you are a 13 year old boy, or if you thought 28 Weeks Later was a really good movie. Else I suggest a pass on this one.

But then again, I tend to have different tastes in movies than everyone else.

p.s. If you do watch this try not to think about what you would do, it just leads to frustration.

If you want a more detailed review let me know.

Chronicles of what?

Whenever I hear a sequel is being made to a movie I like I have two reactions; I get very excited to have the chance to see more of a story that I liked, but then I remember that very rarely am I happy with the way things turn out in the follow-up movie.

For example: remember how awesome the Matrix was... remember how much the sequels killed the movies? It also happened with 28 Days later, Underworld, and Battlefield Earth. All good movies that have their prestige tarnished because of sucky sequels. (Just kidding about that Battlefield Earth bit, they took five bad sequels rolled them into one movie and called it Xenu.)

However there are some movies that the sequels make all the difference in how much I like them: The Mummy series, the Back to the Future series, and Star Wars. All three are examples of movies that had great first movies but were made legendary because of the ones that followed. (Well the Mummy Returns helped The Mummy, I think the series is trying it's darnedest to disown the terrible move Scorpion King.)

So here we stand. The Chronicles of Narnia is in my top 20 all time favorite movies, and I would love to see another story set in its world, but I fear the reaper of suck. The only way to ward off that guy is to check the trailer:



So will the Caspian Prince be a worthy sequel to Narinia?

Stardust

I went to the movie Stardust yesterday, and it was well worth the price of the ticket. It was written very well -and it is almost Star Wars, but fantasy... the story isn't the same, but the feel for the universe that it creates has the same enormity. Stardust was funny, which is hard for movies that aren't comedies to pull off without becoming "kiddy" or awkward. Basically they did everything right, and I would have only liked to see a couple of things changed slightly (the pirate actually turns out to be too cliche for me... oh well).

If you are even remotely interested in checking out a movie over the next couple of weeks you need to see Stardust. This movie will be recognized as a classic in the coming years, and when you seen it on DVD you will be disappointed that you missed it in theaters.

Touche

Back in my younger college days I somehow got suckered into watching Meet Joe Black. There had to have been a girl there because two of my other friends Andy and Josh also watched, and I am pretty sure we didn't decide to watch the movie ourselves. One of the reasons why I know we didn't decide to watch the movie is because we were making comments all throughout the movie, and I doubt we would have done that if we actually wanted to watch it (well, that, and it is a girly movie).
Our movie commentary was going great especially when Joe meets the girl that he likes in the movie. When they part they do a series of "look backs" at each other and we were able to call all of them because of the easy to recognize formula of: boy looks, then girl looks, the boy looks, then girl looks, and then finally boy looks. We were calling out this play like a football coach, and then:

I wish someone took a picture of our faces when that happened because that was not suppose to happen. We were pretty stunned/amused.
I'm sure it wouldn't have made such a lasting impact on me if we weren't making fun of the seemingly formulaic approach that they were doing at the time, but even to this day I respect the movie, I won't watch it again (it is after all a girly movie) but I do acknowledge it's existence.