goodolmike: (Default)
Last night, I treated myself to a little Taco Bell and watched Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. It's about as bad as I remembered it. My favorite is Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. It's the one where Freddy's victims realize they have powers in the dream world, too, so they fight back. The 4th film is also great; it continues the story from 3.

300/365

Speaking of those movies, I still haven't seen the remake from last year. Is it any good?
goodolmike: (Default)
A few weeks ago, I bought the 5-disc box set of the Planet of the Apes movies. Last night, we finished watching it. I'm certainly very pleased with my purchase.

243/365

Planet of the Apes
The Charlton Heston classic with the super great ending. This one is a winner.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes
I hadn't seen this one before. It has a fun and interesting sci-fi twist starting about 3/4 in to the movie. I really liked this one.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes
This one dramatically changes the direction of the franchise. It even has a handful of funny moments. I kind of liked this one, but it's pretty scaled back, in terms of plot and scope, from the previous two.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
The budget for each Ape movie was dramatically less with each sequel. In this one, you can really tell. It was almost entirely shot in "Century City" which is basically a big shopping mall. Hated it.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes
This one came as a surprise to me. I guess I had not seen this one before, either. I thought it was fun and exciting. It also wrapped up the entire series nicely.

Before we shelve the Planet of the Apes series entirely, we have one more film to watch: the dreaded Tim Burton remake. I liked it enough, at the time. I'm sure it will be fun to rewatch.

---

Have a great weekend. For those of you going to Disneyland this weekend, I'll see you there!
goodolmike: (Default)
We went and saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes (worst title ever) the other day. It's very entertaining. The cgi was well done, not perfect, and the story was clever. Also, one of the actors in the film was David Hewlett who played Rodney McKay on Stargate Atlantis.

241/365

Then, yesterday I got the Planet of the Apes Blu-ray box set featuring the five original films. As a completist, I think it would have been cooler if it included that Timmy Burton version, but I can always just pick that one up separately.

Planet of the Apes Marathon, anyone?!

242/365 242/365 B
goodolmike: (Default)
Last night, I got together with some of my favorites and watched Girls Will Be Girls.



It's a comedy about some very sassy and aggressive women. And I don't think there are any actual women in it at all, just drag queens. I didn't think I would like it, but I LOVED it.

I first heard of it a few months ago when someone announced that a sequel was in the works and I guy we know is going to be in it (presumably as an extra). Dave and I has long-standing plans to watch it, and we finally got our act together last night. Turns out it's on Netflix Streaming. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

82/365

(Stayed out way too late last night. Zzzzz. Huh?!)
goodolmike: (Default)
Last night, I sat down with my new boyfriend Apple TV and watched an early 90's classic, Poetic Justice.



Starring screen legends Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, Poetic Justice was the much-anticipated followup to John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood. Like a lot of directors (M Night), lightning didn't strike twice for Singleton. Unless you consider Michael Jackson's Remember the Time. (Kidding, by the way. That video stinks.)

The movie is pretty awful and has no point whatsoever, but there are a few well done scenes. My favorite part, and I quote it all the time, is when Aisha goes in to the gas station to buy malt liquor, but finds out they don't carry Old English 800. "You ain't got no O-dees?!"

Maya Angelou, the most overrated poet ever, has a cameo in it. Turns out she wrote all the poetry used in the film. Ready to barf? The movie is called Poetic Justice because the main character is named Justice and she writes poetry. Cheese balls.

Tone Loc was in it too. He was actually looking kinda sexy.



Had me thinking, "Whatever happened to Tone Loc?" And then I remembered...

goodolmike: (Default)
We're having a big party at our house today, so I spent most of the day frantically cleaning and organizing. At one point, I went to the store for some random supplies. While I was there, I wanted to take a third-person shot of myself shopping. It was really difficult. Every aisle I went in to, someone would show up and ruin the shot or make me nervous. It was uncanny. I would find an aisle with no one in it, but just by standing there, I would subconsciously attract other customers. Like at the zoo if you stop at an empty exhibit. Try it some time. People are stupid. :)

Finally, I found an aisle with no one in it. Yay.

8/365

Speaking of guerilla art, Dave and I ate cookies & pizza and watched a great film about graffitistreet art called Exit Through the Gift Shop. I could not recommend this one more. What a fascinating film! It really draws you in right away and gets more and more interesting for the entire documentary. It's on Netflix streaming, so you can watch it right now! (Well, after commenting on this post.)

It was directed by "Banksy", who is famous for producing art that looks like this.



Ok, back to party prep...
goodolmike: (Default)
Last night, Japes [livejournal.com profile] jpinsd, Dave [livejournal.com profile] pinner123, Brian [livejournal.com profile] kingfuraday and I got together for a very impromptu movie night.

The first movie was How to Train Your Dragon.


Product Details


The guys all worship this movie because it was co-written and co-directed by Dean DeBlois, whom they all know in person. He's like the definitive bear. Check him out.

It's actually a fine film. Very beautiful and well-written. I had seen it before, but it was a second movie at the drive-in, so I slept through most of it. Seeing it on Blu-ray, wired on Rockstar Energy drink is definitely a much better way to enjoy it.

The second film we saw was the infamous Bear City, which just came out on DVD and has a reputation for completely missing the mark with regard to its portrayal of the bear scene. I'm certainly no expert on the bear scene, but it did seem pretty inaccurate.


Product Details


We were extra excited because Dave's picture is in the movie for a brief moment. Also, Brian's picture shows up during the credits, and our friend Shannon Grady has a song in it at the end.

Virtually every actor in the film is very skinny, with the exception of one character who appears to weigh 400+ pounds. **Spoiler Alert** He decides to get the lap-band surgery, which seems like a very good idea in his case. But in the end, he chooses not to so that his "hot" chubby-chaser boyfriend (who calls him "gordito". barf.) won't dump him. That's pretty jacked up.

As bad not-necessarily-a-classic as it was, admittedly it was still entertaining to some extent. Good times.

Next movie night with the guys? TRON (the original!).
goodolmike: (camping)


It's rad. It's a semi-true-ish story about the early days of rap moguls Russel Simmons and Rick Rubin. It has Run DMC in it, along with a very young LL Cool J and Sheila E!

Back in the late 90's, I used to hang out with this guy Matt, who had very strange taste in movies and music. He certainly brought out my weirdness. One day, we decided to have a little film festival. The theme was movies that one of us had seen but the other had not. We watched:

  • Krush Groove

  • G I Joe The Movie (The cartoon one, not the new one obviously.)

  • Eraserhead

  • ...and something else. Dern, can't remember. I just shot him a Twitter to see if he remembers...
    UPDATE: Matt said "Superman 2? But I thought we only watched three movies that day"


We both had part-time jobs back then, so it was easy to waste a day watching TV. Now, I can barely get through True Blood.

He moved to Austria, but we visit each other all the time.
goodolmike: (Default)
Yesterday, for me, was one of those straight-up bad luck days. My morning run didn't work out, then my truck rolled in to my fence and damaged the driver-side door pretty badly and work was particularly nasty.

But, next thing I knew, it was 4:30, which means "I'm on weekend." I kept telling Mark that I was depressed because I had had such a bad day. (I'm a pretty upbeat guy, so when I say I'm depressed, it's almost a joke. However, I was a tiny, little bit blue.)

Mark's solution was to take me to Onami (all you can eat sushi, that's right!) and the movie I've been wanting to see for weeks, Inception!



I had heard that it was weird and hard to follow. I'm certainly pro-weird. I had also heard that it's similar to The Matrix. Fine with me; I love that movie.

Turns out, it is all of those things. Plus, I thought Leonardo Decaprio was really great, despite looking like an aging man-child. Also great? Ellen Paige, Kitty Pride. I think I love her; she is so charismatic. There was also a buff European guy for Mark to get excited about.

What I really liked about it was the complex story. It was so dense. The audience is really expected to pay attention to key details, laid out early in the film, that come in to play later in the film. I really enjoyed having to work out what was happening. Most movies these days are much more dumbed down.



For the first third of the movie, my body was working out all that sushi I had eaten, so I was having trouble focusing on the story. Plus there was the non-movie-theater-volume conversation happening right behind us:

"Do you want to try to get a refund?"
"Do you want me to keep waking you up or do you want to just sleep?"

But at one point, I was fully engaged, and the movie seemed to get better and better all the way through to the super thrilling and intriguing conclusion.

I guess I'm excited about this Chris Nolan guy. He's very hot right now; hopefully he keeps up the great work. Oscar buzz? I vote yes.

Muppets!

Jun. 19th, 2010 03:05 pm
goodolmike: (Default)

On a whim, Mark and I finally watched our DVD of The Dark Crystal.

I think the last time I saw it was when I was probably 7. So it was interesting to see it as a cynical adult in the 2010's.

For starters, I found it very derivitive of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Wizard of Oz, but it has random spurts of originality, like the connection between the Skeksis and the Oo-urs.

At one point, the heroes go to Kira's village, which is clearly the Ewok village, complete with silly, baby puppets and world music.

What I found most interesting was that 99% of the movie was just puppets in front of a camera. The sets were real, the special effects were mostly actual, filmable happenings, and when they had to show full-body shots of the characters, they used children, or stunt people in costumes. Translation: no computer effects.

I suppose it was Jurassic Park that did this kind of movie in. Suddenly CGI was passable enough to be the default special effect.

I heard a sequel is in the works. I'm really curious to see how it's handled.

In random other news, I'm back to trying to sell my car. Anybody want a 2001 Saturn SC2?
I give discounts to hot bear daddies. :)

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