Monday 29 June 2009

Stop, its Captain Hammer time

There are very few films that have me screaming at the screen in rage.

Let me re-phrase that, there are very few films I have seen that have left me angry enough to be screaming at the screen. Usually I have the good sense to avoid them. One I didn't miss was Mildred Pierce, a 1945 film that I practically walked out of when it was show to me in college. It was insulting, degrading to watch and if anyone liked it I would suggest you check to see if they ever had a brain.
Another was A Knights Tale. It was so bad I did leave the cinema.

Why am I telling you this? Well while the last two were seen in trepidation last night I saw a film I wanted to see for a while. White Noise 2:- The Light. The cast looked interesting, Nathan Fillion and Katee Stackhoff (Mal Reynolds and Kara Thrace respectively). The plot could have been fun too, a man coming back from the dead is able to see who was going to die. It wasn't going to be Lord of the Rings but it might have been fun.
Oh boy... it wasn't
Okay, let's look at the plot, with a few spoilers. I already told you that Fillion's character (Abe) can see when someone is about to die. The twist is that if Abe saves someone's life that person becomes an agent of the devil, killing a lot more people exactly three days later. At first glance that could be interesting. It's not, but we'll get back to that later.

In the first five minutes Abe sees his son and daughter shot in front of him and decides to kill himself. After he is resuscitated he begins to see auras around those people who are going to die. At no point is this suicide addressed and it's neatly forgotten. In fact his only doctor is half crazy and happens to info-dump the whole "you see dead people" part of the plot before conveniently dying of a heart attack.
We next see Abe back at work (at no point are we told what his work is) where static on computer screens (urm..) directs his attention to those who are about to die.
Abe ignores all of this until an encounter with a homeless man who is killed on train tracks. He then sees the ghost of the homeless man and decides to stop it happening again. Saving people's lives give him a purpose (something this film was missing) and he saves three people. Including the pretty nurse that he had at the hospital, Sherry (oh hello Stackhoff).
Unfortunately we learn that Sherry has a crush on him (of course she does) and that, because the devil possesses saved people on the third day she's going to kill, like the other two Abe saved. Worse still she works with kids.
Of course she doesn't end up hurting anyone. In a mind bending final Abe ends up having to kill her for some reason that is never adequately explained, but gets killed by police before he can carry it out, in exactly the same diner his own family were killed (wha...?). With Abe dead Sherry is in shock and carted off into an ambulance, where she is promptly possessed.
Follow that, good it gets worse! Luckily for the bus full of old people and the tanker full of petrol the ambulance is heading towards (nuns and dynamite... not even original) Abe's ghost kills Sherry, freeing her and letting the ambulance miss.
Re-read that last sentence, I'm not kidding. Abe becomes a ghost and uses his powers of intangibility to kill her before the Devil can use her to blow up a bus full of old people. And that's the end of the film.

There aren't words to describe how bad this film is, it is horrendous. The acting is alright, mostly because I think Fillion is always charismatic and Stackhoff is just a great actress but everything else is so God awfully bad it should be avoided like the plague. There's no explanation, no sense or logic just empty stupidity.

Friday 26 June 2009

Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen

I've seen Transformers 2. Of course I have, I'm a transformers geek and believe it or not I was looking forward to this even more than Star Trek.
So that was disappointing

Let's do a quick list of the bad and the good:- so first the extraordinary bad
Mudflap and Skidz:- these two should have been killed off. Painfully and preferably by been eaten by Sharkticons. They were racist, irritating
and if you want twin brothers go back to the original and resurrect Sideswipe & Sunstreaker. They had personalities rather than a hodgepodge of bad ideas.
The Mother:- The most stupid human on the planet, she makes Paris Hilton jokes look tame. I was so embarrassed to be in the cinema I actually put my fingers in my ears and hummed. Can she please die between this and the next film.
Generic Cybertronians:- One of the key points of Transformers was that everyone had a character no matter how lose. They were individuals and everyone had their favourite, so why is there's about a thousand generic Deceptions in the final battle, other than to explode.
Too many people:- What characters we do have don't go anywhere. We get one or two lines and then jump back to the pointless "Comedy" that drives you to boredom and disgust.
Megatron:- Megatron is EVIL, he is no ones puppet and will ruthlessly crush anyone. Making him The Fallen's apprentice castrates the guy. In one fell swoop he goes from being the greatest threat ever to a slight annoyance fawning over the chief bad guy... speaking of
The Fallen:- No, The Fallen is not the Liege Maximo okay? He's The Fallen, one of the thirteen original Transformers who was created to guard against entropy but betrayed his God-creator in favour of worshipping chaos. See a interesting character. The Maximo was a big fat slug that sat around plotting. In this we've got some sort of mix, pick one.

Now the Good:-
The fights were interesting. Sort of. What we could make out

While I could go on about how annoyed I was by the so-called comedy relief or how I could survive the gaping plot holes I've got another problem that I want to address in more detail.
Megan Fox.
Now a lot of reviews are saying the film might be bad but at least there's some good visuals. The CGI and this woman come at the top of the list. Yes she looks nice, but she can't act for spit. For the whole film she's set decoration so that people my age, that really should know better, can drool over her.
Being able to look "interesting" while contorting over a motorcycle doesn't make you sexy. The problem is this woman will end up with a handful of Sexiest Women awards. I'm probably weird but I find her about as attractive as road kill. All the lingering shots and robots humping her leg just advertise that she's a sex object. Women aren't objects, how many years is it going to take to beat that into Hollywood producers and hack directors. By making them vapid twits that are attracted to losers and prats they are glamorising willful stupidity. It's annoying.

In summery Transformers 2 is not for Transformers fans, or good taste. It's a popcorn movie designed to waste brain cells. avoid if you can. That or find a petition to STOP MICHAEL BAY directing the next one.

Friday 5 June 2009

A great loss




David Eddings, perhaps one of the best fantasy writers of all time, sadly died on Tuesday and I just have to post something about this great man. Eddings was one of the very few writers I would have liked to meet in person. Even though its over used the word genius fitted him well and he seemed to keep his head. Eddings crafted his work with care and attention that out shines all his contemporaries. He knew exactly where the line was, how not to cross it and still make the story believable. Even though his work was strong fantasy, with Gods and Demons around every possible corner, his craft in characters and plot kept the reader grounded.

It's hard to describe exactly how big an impact this author had on popular fiction let alone me. There was a time when no matter where I went I could just pull out one of his books and jump into it. Their battered and dog eared pages lived in my coat's pockets for years and I still dive in once in a while, amazed at how he pulled plot threads together and kept it simple all the way though. 

There isn't anything more to say, well actually there's a lot but as with all great people you can never cover it all. Goodbye David Eddings, and commiseration's to his family 

Thursday 4 June 2009

Transformers 1986 movie

With the second live action Transformers film on coming I think is time for a couple of reviews. Here's the first. The 1986 Transformers G-1 movie.

Now, sadly, overshadowed by the massive, big box office, live action film the 80's movie is still better. Not just because it had wall to wall Transformers, or the fact that it went as afar as to introduce Unicron (The god of darkness). It's not the fact that within the first twenty minutes we basically have the Transformers version of the Somme, with the Decepticons raiding the Autobot City with shock tactics and really heavy explosives.

It's because Optimus Prime dies. He doesn't die of old age or from some epic sacrifice to save others. It's just a bloody great battle in which both he and Megatron both lose. In the battle the two of them throw their guns away and start hammering each other with fists and pieces of the shattered landscape. Finishing with an epic final blow and the heroic leader dying later of his wounds.

Megatron, as I said , has also lost. Or more accurately has been beaten to an inch of his life. Megatron is jettisoned by the ever traitorous Starscream and floats his way into Unicron's orbit. Now Unicron is a giant living planet that eats other worlds and is headed for the transformers home world. Voiced by Orson Wells Unicron is both awesome and menacing. He is concerned with the Autobot Matrix of leadership (a plot macguffin, deal with it) and rebuilds Megatron as the super-powerful Galvatron. The new Decepticon leader takes his new army of Cyclonus and the Sweeps to Cybertron ahead of Unicron. Where he kills Starscream and takes command of the surviving Decepticons.

The upshot of this is all our favourite characters are dead. Ostensibly to sell new toys but in the end its' killing off our childhood heroes and villains. We've lost just about everyone we have come to know over the last two years. Still that's not the end of the movie. It's just the first half hour! After the Decepticons chase the Autobots across the galaxy and back they finally get back to Cybertron where we find Unicron can transform into a giant robot. Following his instincts Hot Rod tracks down the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. Which Galvatron has  stolen from Prime's successor, Ultra Magnus. Unfortunately Galvatron is inside Unicron, so the big showdown ends inside the Titan. The story ends with Rot Rod taking the Matrix back form the Decepticon and opening it. Unleashing the one force that can kill Unicron and becoming the new Autobot's true leader; Rodimus Prime.

There's a lot more to it but you get the gist. As the story develops so do the new characters:- Galvatron becomes more and more powerful and mentally unstable, Ultra "I cant deal with that now" Magnus proves that no matter how good a soldier you can be a good leader needs more and Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime changes from a cocksure young man to a responsible leader of men. They grow up and learn something along the way.

So that's why I think this is a better movie. It's got the Autobots in it, opposed to cameo roles. They grow and change with the story. Become people we can relate to, even though they are robot aliens fighting planet sized robots with glowing balls of crystal. 

My big problem with the new film is that we spend far too much time following the human kid around. You don't like him, I can't find a single thing about LaBeouf's character that is endearing. The point of the human character is to give us a window into the Autobot's world, they explain things to him and we all learn what's happening. Instead of being this useful little plot device he's selling his family heirlooms for a chance to attract some bubble headed young woman he knows nothing about. That's his motivation, fantastic.
 
In this film we have exactly what we wanted. Giant robots beating the bolts out of each other and then we have a twist where the good guys can die. The result is exciting, fun, terrifying, soul destroying and a lot more fulfilling than the 2007 film. It's also a lot more adult in content, it deals with death on a serious level as well as sacrifice and why war is both horrible and, at times, necessary. 

Considering it's an 80's cartoon film made to sell toys that's saying something.