mario February 26th, 2008

Again, this is not intended to be a review for the movie mentioned in the thread title. The fact that Be Kind Rewind (which I saw with my family on 2/24 at Regal Santa Cruz 9) was a superb movie that managed to retain that delightful charm of Michel Gondry (despite being, for all intents and purposes, a straight-up comedy) is not the issue at hand, but rather the relative unoriginality of upcoming film releases (see previous post for enlightenment on the subject).

Surprise movie time!

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–Never Back Down
Or as I like to call it: “UFC The Movie”. I’d love to make the derivative call on this one for being a blatant promotional film for the Ultimete Faghting Champtionship, but strictly speaking this is more like your standard sports film, unoriginal in every respect except for the precise origin of its script. ORIGINAL, and the main character looks like a reincarnation of Tom Cruise.

–Run, Fat Boy, Run
I’m a big fan of Simon Pegg’s work (and work to be?), so this trailer went over well with me. And Hank Azaria?!? Sign me up! I actually saw the teaser originally, which doesn’t convey the plot very well at all, but I fully intended to see it anyway. You all should too, as it appears to be ORIGINAL.

–Baby Mama
Whatever reaction I get when I see Simon Pegg onscreen, I get the exact opposite reaction with Tina Fey. She may have gussied herself up a little bit compared to her Saturday Night Live days, but I see through her act. She’s still as smarmy and annoying as ever, and bringing in her SNL friends isn’t going to help any. I was especially depressed to see John Hodgman in this trailer, because I worship the ground he walks on. Apparently his expert con man tactics aren’t paying the bills if he has to make cameos in this dreck. And even though this is approximately the seven trillionth pregnancy antics film released this year, it’s still probably ORIGINAL enough to beat the system.

–Get Smart
I have to admit, I wasn’t excited about this movie when I originally heard about it. Maybe I was afraid of them pulling an Inspector Gadget (a fair assumption, since Gadget was very similar to Maxwell Smart and voiced by Don Adams). Luckily, humans evolved the capacity to change their minds, like, hundreds of years ago, and Steve Carell appears to be playing the role splendidly. However, as it probably clear by now, this movie is an ADAPTATION of a television show of the same name. I’ll still probably go see it.

–Sex and The City
Ugh. Bleck. Ick. So stupid. Our theater played a TV ad for Lipstick Jungle before the trailers, and the creators were trying to play it up as somehow different from Sex and The City because… it has different actresses in it? All the promotional material I’ve seen for this movie SEQUEL/ADAPTATION seems to be playing off of its success on television, and nothing else. They say trailer, but there’s so little footage that one could only really call it a teaser. I’m a sucker for Chris Noth (apparently he’s dreamy? All I know is that he’s the best detective on Law & Order: Criminal Intent), but don’t expect me to drop the Hamilton come May.

Total: 40% (2/5)

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In summary: as of a February 24th screening of Be Kind Rewind at Regal Santa Cruz 9 in Santa Cruz, CA, Hollywood was on track to be 40% unoriginal. Thanks for playing, and please go see Be Kind Rewind at your earliest convenience. Here’s Michel Gondry’s sweded version of the trailer!

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mario February 18th, 2008

Denver, The Last Dinosaur! He’s on DVD, and a whole lot more!

So yeah, I ordered one as soon as I found out this morning (the DVD / t-shirt combo, if you’re curious), and I suggest all you Denver fans out there to do likewise. They only printed 1,000 copies in this run to gauge receptiveness by the public, so please show them that there are still fans of this one-year-run cartoon show about a newly hatched dinosaur that runs into a gang of Gen X nerds and wears sunglasses and rides a skateboard and sometimes gathers everyone around a piece of his eggshell that magically reveals tangential tidbits about prehistoric beasts! DO IT. I am not kidding. If enough people buy Volume 1, they just might give us the rest of them, and then I’ll probably be your best friend or something.

I’d like to take a brief moment to express my profound gratitude to Laura, the nice lady that handled my order over the phone. I was having trouble getting the shopping cart system to work via the website, so I called them directly. Not only did she place my order quickly, she was very receptive to my love of some random old cartoon show. She encouraged me to drop her company an email to let them now how much I wanted the rest of the DVD volumes to be produced (the answer is a lot), and I did so almost immediately, but I figured a mention on some no-name blog on the Innertubes would also be in order. Thanks Laura! It’s refreshing to see a company not only release classic content on DVD, but to go the extra mile with merchandising and responsiveness to the fans’ requests. If anyone here orders this DVD set, let Laura know how awesome she is.

(courtesy of TVShowsOnDVD.com, several months ago but hey that’s just how I roll)

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mario February 17th, 2008

Last Saturday, I went to see Jumper at AMC Saratoga 14 with a few friends. This isn’t a review of Jumper… well, Jumper sucked and blew, and it was dumb. There, I reviewed it. But this entry’s primary purpose isn’t to review Jumper, it’s to showcase a little game I made up awhile back. When you go out to see a movie, pay close attention to the trailers. Add one to the count for every:

-Remake (a newer version of a previously released movie) (Ocean’s Eleven, The Italian Job)
-Sequel (slash prequel slash interquel slash etc.; a movie taking place within the chronology of a previously released movie) (Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Land of the Dead)
-Adaptation (a movie based on a previous non-movie work, like a book, play, real life event, what have you) (I Am Legend, Iron Man)

Count each trailer that meets one of these conditions (movies that match multiple criteria still count as one, though they make interesting case studies and should be noted for posterity), and compare it to the total number of trailers, and you have a percentage that represents how many upcoming films are “unoriginal”. Of course, plenty of movies that don’t fall under these criteria are unoriginal in a multitude of other ways (entries in well-defined genres, ripoffs of other movies, some guy getting kicked in the crotch, and so on), but I’ll go out on a limb and say that my definition of an unoriginal film is a far less forgivable instance. How many times do we need to see The Incredible Hulk on the big screen (at least two, apparently)? I’d much rather see another Michel Gondry movie with whimsically low-budget special effects than another James Bond crapfest. With this game, we get a general idea about how the coming months will play out in terms of originality in Hollywood. If we sample enough movies, we might even be able to glean some useful data and (God willing) throw together some Excel spreadsheet charts!

On with the trailers!

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–The Happening
I’m very excited about this one. We haven’t had an M. Night Shammalammadingdong movie for a few years now, and I’m eager to see if he can top Lady in the Water, arguably the shittiest film of all time. The presence of Mark Wahlberg and a seemingly pointless reference to Colony Collapse Disorder in the trailer are icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned. While the Wikipedia mentions that this script started as a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender (man, that would have been a really stupid idea), it no longer carries this distinction, and is therefore ORIGINAL.

–Street Kings
Keanu Reeves is at the top of his game when portraying a renegade cop who doesn’t play by the rules, so this will probably be good watchin’. I’m always sad to see more capable actors like Forest Whitaker get dragged down though. And looking at these credits, I see at least two rapper names (“Common” and “The Game”). Oh yeah, this’ll be good shit. But a cursory scan of the credits also doesn’t reveal the phrase “based on a short story by” or anything of that kind, so we’ve got another ORIGINAL on our hands.

–Wanted
Noble assassins that curve bullets around corners! It’s clear that these trailers were made just for me. What could have potentially been a freakish long streak of originality is blissfully broken by this ADAPTATION of a comic book miniseries.

–WALL-E
Pixar can do no wrong, and like every other film they’ve made, this one is 100% ORIGINAL. Though the robot’s resemblance to R.O.B. and Johnny Five is intriguing, I won’t hold it against them if the movie is up to their usual standards of excellence.

–10,000 BC
This film slides by on a technicality. Though it, as historical fiction, is loosely based on real life, it is not based on any specific real event, and therefore is ORIGINAL. The CGI blows though. So that’s something.

–The Bank Job
My brain didn’t retain any knowledge of this trailer after the film, so I’m glad I wrote it down so as to look up the video later. Wait, maybe “glad” isn’t the word I was looking for. There’s like sex and bank robberies and a bumbling ensemble cast and and other cliché bullshit, but the trailer proudly proclaims to be based on a true story, so it gets the dishonorable ADAPTATION stamp of disapproval. Oh yeah, and it sullies The Clash by playing London Calling at the end. Boo.

Total: 33.3% (2/6)

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So as of a February 16th screening of Jumper at AMC Saratoga 14 in Saratoga, CA, Hollywood was slated to be 33.3% unoriginal. Honestly, this is one of the best scores I’ve ever seen in my thus-far limited tallying, but now we’ve got hard data! Give this game a try the next time you go to the movies, and I’ll post your results (include date and location of viewing; the more random data, the better the pie charts!).

On a sidenote, “Hollywood Unoriginality Ratio” makes a great acronym to describe these dumb movies. Go me.

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mario February 2nd, 2008

Still disheartened by those lucky Japanese kids playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl over a month ahead of us, I thought I’d console myself with a little bit of the previous entry in the series, Super Smash Bros. Melee. This was the sparkling diamond amid a sea of GameCube coal. It came out less than a month after the ‘Cube’s stateside release, and I played it almost daily for a long time. Even after unlocking all the characters and stages and sound tests, I still kept playing. The game had an amazingly well-refined balance and complexity to it that made each experience unique. I quite literally saw something new every time I played that game. Though the occasional Super Mario Sunshine or Resident Evil 4 would momentarily attract my attention, I’d always come back to Melee. I played and loved the original N64 game, but Melee surpassed it in every way. Only in the past year have I seriously neglected the game, but it wasn’t out of lack of enjoyment. My hope was to approach Brawl from a fresh perspective, untainted by Melee‘s now antiquated graphics and control scheme. I want to be on the same play level as everyone else come release day. But since release day is now as far back as March 9th, I figured there wouldn’t be much harm in a little nostalgic run-through.

So I was sad to find that my save data was corrupted.

I guess six years is a long time to continually write and rewrite to a data file, but damnit, I had a lot of data! I had amassed thousands of hours (yes, thousands) of play time, fallen countless thousands of miles, and Link had racked up an impressive KO percentage. Kind of a bummer for all that to just disappear. Guess I’ll be making backups of such things in the future.

Sigh.

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