So, December is here and for the most gullible of us, this means one thing; the end of the world.
Now you laugh, but I have actually heard people discussing this in worried tones. They actually believe it's going to happen. So I'm going to point out a few things, to give you guys some peace.
The Mayan Calender ran in cycles (b'ak'tun) and this date in December is just marking the fact that our current cycle has ended and the end of the fourth world, which we are in now. Marking the start of the 14 b'ak'tun and fifth world. That's ALL.
Also, there is record of the Mayan's writing about dates beyond the 13th b'ak'tun, long in the the future. So there is going to be a future.
Let's also note that the world has been ready to end many times, according to scare-mongering idiots and the dates have passed without so much as a wave from Jesus or the Anti-Christ.
People love scare-mongering. And they like to preach. They know that if they preach a future prophecy, the people they are scaring will respect and listen to their word more often. And it's true. They will. How many of you have researched the Rapture just because of the man that foretold of it years ago? And how many of you are atheists?
This just proves that we will believe anything that someone tells us, if it scares us. Because we'd rather be prepared than surprised.
Instead I think that maybe we should use our common sense and use recent history to guide what we believe. Even the most gullible of us aren't as stupid as they want to believe.
In fact, Google Professor Brian Cox and hear his words on 2012. He's one of the smartest minds in Britain and he thinks that anyone who believes that rubbish is a nobber. And I agree.
Instead of wasting time worrying about the world ending (whenever it does), why not spend that time doing something constructive and enjoying life. Because when it does end, there's not a damn bit of difference that worrying is going to do for you. Look at the dinosaurs.
But I'm sure that the world isn't going to end in 2012. There is not one bit of evidence to support it. Even 'God' said beware of false prophets. So unless you find an alien ship under your house, with cannons the size of buses, I wouldn't worry.
And if you want to know how many times the world has predicted our untimely demise. Take a look at these past apocalyptic dates
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Resident Evil and Lava ~SPOILERS~
Now this rant isn't some kind of make-or-break on the franchise, the game, or anything like that. The stories have been particularly goofy lately, so I'm not even that surprised. But it is one thing that has really bugged me with the last two RE games...
There are ending spoilers for RE5 and RE6 in this topic.
One of my biggest pet peeves about RE5 was the entire final chapter. I think we're all pretty much in agreement that the climactic showdown with Wesker was ridiculous. (No human can PUNCH a boulder to move it.) But what bothers me the most is how ridiculously unrealistic it is (even for Resident Evil).
Of course, RE isn't the only one at fault. No one gets lava right. Volcano and Dante's Peak are horribly inaccurate movies. But it drove me nutty in RE5, and it's driving me nutty again because... It all came back in RE6 (as much as I hoped it wouldn't.)
For those unfamiliar with RE5, the final chapter has a plane (carrying Chris, Sheva, and Wesker) crash-landing inside of a VOLCANO. Emerging from the plane, Wesker mutates with Uroboros and gives chase (read: cumbersome stroll). After being defeated, he falls into the lava. While WADING and screaming in the lava, Chris and Sheva attempt to escape by helicopter. Wesker extends his tentacles up and grabs the helicopter, so they finish him off with an RPG to the face.
First of all, lava is not water. A human falling into lava would have a similar effect to throwing a styrofoam cup into motor oil. The density is so different that you wouldn't splash around or even really sink. You would actually need quite a bit of velocity to even make a dent. In theory, were you to have the correct heat resistant materials, you could walk on lava.
One might argue that something as big as Ustatank would probably make more of a dent in the surface than a normal human being, but it's not like cannon balling into a swimming pool. Lava is more like sludge.
Second, no normal human being can be that close to lava without instantly suffocating from the intense heat and toxic fumes. This especially bothers me in RE6 when you're literally running around ON TOP OF IT while fighting the Ustatank.
Third, on the subject of falling into lava... It keeps being depicted like it just burns really bad, kind of like acid or boiling water. Truth is... You pretty much instantly dry up from the intense heat and burst with steam, then catch fire, and quickly you are reduced to ash. You can't wade in it, especially when you're comprised of Uroboros, a creature that has a continually-emphasized weakness to fire throughout the game.
So yeah... Pet peeve of mine.
Sunday, 30 September 2012
'Yes' on the PC...
Have you noticed....that when you're on the computer and reading/doing something interesting and someone talks to you, you agree with everything they say without even realising what you've agreed to?!
I've been saying 'yes' to the yeti all day and I've ended up with 2 cups of tea, an apple and a thousand bonfire toffee sweets?! I really need to listen. He's still doing it, hope I haven't admitting killing someone or something... Too late now... Just smile Es, just smile...
I've been saying 'yes' to the yeti all day and I've ended up with 2 cups of tea, an apple and a thousand bonfire toffee sweets?! I really need to listen. He's still doing it, hope I haven't admitting killing someone or something... Too late now... Just smile Es, just smile...
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Top 10 underrated movie sequels
Yeah, so I haven't actually done anything with this page in a while. I'm still working on shit with my book, but I thought since I have an hour or two to spare, I may as well get something typed up and top #'s are simple, so in no particular order (except #1), I give you my top 10 underrated movie sequels.
10. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
I must admit, I'm not this movies biggest fan, but it tries hard, it really does.
T3 had a lot to live up to as a Terminator film, especially when it has to follow the two Jim Cameron powerhouses that came before it, something that you, I and everyone else knew upon its 2003 release.
I actually went to see this in the cinema with my (then) boyfriend who is a massive fan of the franchise, and whilst he enjoyed it, he also felt let down. T3 copies its predecessors format almost to the letter and doesn't really do anything new, but given the restraints set upon it without moving it to the war is understandable.
Still, this film is a hell of a lot of fun and boasts some really mind-blowing action scenes and is definitely enjoyable from start to finish. It could have done without the humour though, it may have worked in T2 (EC), but it doesn't really work here.
On top of this, the VFX are stunning and continue to wow me, especially when I see the battle-damaged T-850 jump out of that choppah.
Overall it's a fun film, and whilst it does deserve some of the negativity it garnered due to its repetition of the first two films and the camp humour, it's still (in my opinon) a worthy addition to the series and even ties it up nicely to lead into films such as Salvation and then neatly come full circle back to The Terminator.
9. Ghostbusters II
It's a fucking Ghostbusters movie! 'nuff said!
8. Day Of The Dead (1985)
Once again the 'darkness' of a sequel curses it - which is pretty surprising when you're talking about a George Romero zombie movie. Yet the verve and action of 1979's Dawn On The Dead struck an Aliens-style energy into the Romero Dead cycle, and won many new fans over who might have been less entranced by the bleakness of 1968's Night Of The Living Dead. They therefore were perhaps not expecting the tableau of unlikeable villains who populate Day Of The Dead, or the claustrophobic oppression of weary scientists running a military-governed zombie research lab in Miami.
Shocking too, perhaps, the grisly gore of Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero in the wake of the more pantomimic prosthetics and make-up of Dawn. Pretty much all fans of Romero, or zombie movies in general, love 'Bub', the zombie with personality who's trying to remember what he was like when he was alive; but as many are left cold by the sociopathy of Colonel Rhodes and his loathsome soldiers.
I just don't get it - this is everything a horror movie should be, and amongst the best horror outings of the 1980s. There's more than enough viscera to satisfy the hardest gorehound, some great characterisations (to compensate for one or two other admittedly sub-par performances), and to boot the entire film has the horrible confinement of a dreadful dream that you can't wake up from - itself a motif in the movie.
7. Back To The Future Part III
The black sheep of the family, yet also my favourite of the three BTF films.
Robert Zemeckis time-travel trilogy has more heart, integrity, cohesiveness, character development and laughs than even the original, perhaps. And I speak as someone who hates any western that doesn't feature Clint Eastwood (which is also Marty McFly's assumed name when he returns to the old West to stop Biff Tannen's ancestor killing Doc Brown - who ended up stranded there after the rather more clinical events of Back To The Future Part II).
If, as I am, you're a fan of trains and Victorian technology, the fact that our heroes must return to their own time in a steam-driven locomotive is a compelling plus, and the final shot of Part III is pure steampunk ecstasy. To boot we finally dig a little deeper into the Doc Brown character, who gets a girlfriend in Mary Steenburgen and in doing so develops not only the character but the movie and the franchise.
6. Predator 2
There's no Arnie and no jungle in Predator 2. Except a concrete jungle.
Most fans of the original 1987 John McTiernan aliens-vs-soldiers outing drifted away on receiving this information, only to miss, in my opinion, a more enjoyable movie. Me, I'm a fan of the city and the forest - the jungle and the beach, along with most other tropical environments, leave me cold. Therefore the Blade Runner vibe that Predator 2 shares with the later Se7en is a more engaging backdrop against which detective Danny Glover (a new character) must investigate a series of murders that may have an out-of-this-world motivation. Stephen Hopkins' sequel also has a far more inventive and chilling ending than the original movie, though I will admit, nothing beats the predators mimicry laugh at the end of the first film.
5. Grease 2
When the film was ultimately released on June 11, 1982, it tanked. Critics trashed it. Audiences dramatically dropped off after a solid first weekend that saw it going head-to-head with the opening of a little movie from director Steven Spielberg called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Unsavory word-of-mouth led it to a final box-office gross of fifteen million dollars. By all intents and purposes, Grease 2 was destined to disappear forever in the shadow of its acclaimed predecessor.
Irredeemably bad films do not endure over three decades, and there is a reason this one is doing so and in doing so has built up a cult following over the years.
Grease 2 is a bouncy, entertaining, sorely underrated cinematic musical, consistently more watchable than the '78 precursor. The songs, not nearly as oversaturated as the ones heard in Grease, are catchy, rock-tinted delights, and the musical numbers that accompany them are elaborate showstoppers.
This film is also irreverently ahead of its time—for proof, look no further than the breakout phenomenon that is Disney Channel's High School Musical, a prefabricated and highly inferior knockoff that has taken preteen and teen audiences by storm—Grease 2 arguably works better now than it did in 1982.
Grease 2 is a gloriously unpretentious gem just waiting to be discovered, and one of the better movie musicals of the 1980s and beyond. That the film hasn't yet received the full respect and acknowledgment it deserves only adds to its overwhelming appeal and charm.
4. RoboCop 2
It's difficult to understand why Robocop 2 is so despised when it expands so brilliantly on the satire of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original. Perhaps, partly, it's because the film's virtues are somewhat obscured in a difficult-to-stomach excess of sickening violence.
But Irvin Kirshner's take on Murphy's world is humorous, well-paced, excellently written by Frank Miller and Walon Green, and to boot numbers among the best of the last pre-digital major VFX outings, with the titular villain an impressive stop-motion creation by the legendary Phil Tippett (though less ergonomically pleasing than ED-209, RoboCop 2 has a lot more versatility). One would have thought that sci-fi fans who laud Kirshner's The Empire Strikes Back would give this sequel the same second chance that Alien 3 got on the strength of Fincher's later reputation.
Even if it isn't in the same league as Empire, it's easily the best of the RoboCop sequels, and its inventive satire even extends to an elaborate explanation of the apparently generic title of the movie, as evil tech corporation OCP attempt to make a cybernetic police officer who's more compliant than Peter Weller's 'Murphy'.
3. The Fly II (1989)
Despite its sizeable flaws, time has been kind to The Fly II. I remember the first time I saw it, which happened to be on television. Like many people I downright loathed it, especially since I watched it in quick succession with Cronenberg’s effort.
Perhaps it was the absence of anticipation, but I enjoyed The Fly II much more on my recent viewing. In most respects, no one should go into the sequel expecting the same kind of film. Walas doesn’t care about the deep, emotional story arcs or subtext. He made a simple, straightforward monster movie. There’s nothing intelligent about it. If you treat The Fly II in the same way you’d treat a Friday the 13th or Halloween, then you’ll probably enjoy it for the simple elements it gets right.
Rather than replicate the tragic love story of the original, the sequel leans more towards gruesome effects and gross-out fly vomit sequences. While this led to it being poorly recieved, the decision to do something a little different is hardly a bad thing for a sequel.
It’s also liable to make you cry, with a heartbreaking scene involving a mutated pet dog.
2. Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
Producer Arthur P. Jacobs and 20th Century Fox had a rigid strategy of matching the diminishing box-office returns of the Apes sequels with ever-thriftier budgets. So when the new franchise entry turned out to be set in modern-day America. there was a feeling that the glory of the chimps' tea-party was pretty much over.
Instead writer Paul Dehn came up with a simultaneously witty and tragic tale of prejudice which focused in on the series' most popular characters, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter). Director Don Taylor was also able to reunite the original actors to their parts, a factor which was often a problem in the Apes films. A classic just for Cornelius's famously witty response to a judge's question about whether apes can talk.
1. Alien 3
Whereas the original Alien was the scariest science fiction movie ever, and Aliens was the most intense science movie, Alien 3 proved to be the most depressing science fiction ever made, it's a film that is neck deep in a world of total nihilism..
When the movie came out in the summer of 1992, it got some of the most horrendous reviews ever, the only notable thing I read about that anyone said about it was that Ripley finally gets laid in this one (off screen of course).
I hated the movie when I first saw it. Hated it! I thought it was a horrible and disgraceful way to end the trilogy. Horribly depressing. I felt like I wanted to shoot myself after seeing it.
The movie yearned more to have a setup like the original, with just the one alien instead of dozens in the last one. But after seeing the trailers on the DVD extras, the way they advertised and promoted this movie thru the trailers indicated that this was going to be Aliens Redux. They had James Horners music going, and it climaxed with a horrifying image of an alien coming up and close with Ripley.
Now that I am past my expectations of what I thought and hoped it would be, I can now look at it for what it is. It's not a perfect movie as it was shot at first without a completed script, but it is quite powerful in its own way.
David Fincher gives this movie a very unique look that defined the way he shot his movies from then on. I can't find another director that I can compare this kind of work to.
Also, the acting all around is excellent. Sigourney Weaver has always delivered strong performances in every Alien movie as Ripley. She has never let us down. In addition to her, we also have Charles S. Dutton who is excellent and very strong here. His character is a sick human being by his own admission ("I'm a murderer and rapist of women"), and he plays the role fearlessly. Charles himself had served time in prison for manslaughter, so I keep wondering if he gets sick of playing all of these characters who have been in and out of prison.
I have come to believe that it is a better movie than most people would ever give it credit for. I also now believe that in many ways, it is a better movie than Alien Resurrection which tried to get the series back on track, but was more of a cartoon than anything else. It was interesting visually, but the franchise was kind of out of gas and ideas at that point. All we had left was the Alien vs. Predator films which were utterly abysmal.
10. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
I must admit, I'm not this movies biggest fan, but it tries hard, it really does.
T3 had a lot to live up to as a Terminator film, especially when it has to follow the two Jim Cameron powerhouses that came before it, something that you, I and everyone else knew upon its 2003 release.
I actually went to see this in the cinema with my (then) boyfriend who is a massive fan of the franchise, and whilst he enjoyed it, he also felt let down. T3 copies its predecessors format almost to the letter and doesn't really do anything new, but given the restraints set upon it without moving it to the war is understandable.
Still, this film is a hell of a lot of fun and boasts some really mind-blowing action scenes and is definitely enjoyable from start to finish. It could have done without the humour though, it may have worked in T2 (EC), but it doesn't really work here.
On top of this, the VFX are stunning and continue to wow me, especially when I see the battle-damaged T-850 jump out of that choppah.
Overall it's a fun film, and whilst it does deserve some of the negativity it garnered due to its repetition of the first two films and the camp humour, it's still (in my opinon) a worthy addition to the series and even ties it up nicely to lead into films such as Salvation and then neatly come full circle back to The Terminator.
9. Ghostbusters II
It's a fucking Ghostbusters movie! 'nuff said!
8. Day Of The Dead (1985)
Once again the 'darkness' of a sequel curses it - which is pretty surprising when you're talking about a George Romero zombie movie. Yet the verve and action of 1979's Dawn On The Dead struck an Aliens-style energy into the Romero Dead cycle, and won many new fans over who might have been less entranced by the bleakness of 1968's Night Of The Living Dead. They therefore were perhaps not expecting the tableau of unlikeable villains who populate Day Of The Dead, or the claustrophobic oppression of weary scientists running a military-governed zombie research lab in Miami.
Shocking too, perhaps, the grisly gore of Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero in the wake of the more pantomimic prosthetics and make-up of Dawn. Pretty much all fans of Romero, or zombie movies in general, love 'Bub', the zombie with personality who's trying to remember what he was like when he was alive; but as many are left cold by the sociopathy of Colonel Rhodes and his loathsome soldiers.
I just don't get it - this is everything a horror movie should be, and amongst the best horror outings of the 1980s. There's more than enough viscera to satisfy the hardest gorehound, some great characterisations (to compensate for one or two other admittedly sub-par performances), and to boot the entire film has the horrible confinement of a dreadful dream that you can't wake up from - itself a motif in the movie.
7. Back To The Future Part III
The black sheep of the family, yet also my favourite of the three BTF films.
Robert Zemeckis time-travel trilogy has more heart, integrity, cohesiveness, character development and laughs than even the original, perhaps. And I speak as someone who hates any western that doesn't feature Clint Eastwood (which is also Marty McFly's assumed name when he returns to the old West to stop Biff Tannen's ancestor killing Doc Brown - who ended up stranded there after the rather more clinical events of Back To The Future Part II).
If, as I am, you're a fan of trains and Victorian technology, the fact that our heroes must return to their own time in a steam-driven locomotive is a compelling plus, and the final shot of Part III is pure steampunk ecstasy. To boot we finally dig a little deeper into the Doc Brown character, who gets a girlfriend in Mary Steenburgen and in doing so develops not only the character but the movie and the franchise.
6. Predator 2
There's no Arnie and no jungle in Predator 2. Except a concrete jungle.
Most fans of the original 1987 John McTiernan aliens-vs-soldiers outing drifted away on receiving this information, only to miss, in my opinion, a more enjoyable movie. Me, I'm a fan of the city and the forest - the jungle and the beach, along with most other tropical environments, leave me cold. Therefore the Blade Runner vibe that Predator 2 shares with the later Se7en is a more engaging backdrop against which detective Danny Glover (a new character) must investigate a series of murders that may have an out-of-this-world motivation. Stephen Hopkins' sequel also has a far more inventive and chilling ending than the original movie, though I will admit, nothing beats the predators mimicry laugh at the end of the first film.
5. Grease 2
When the film was ultimately released on June 11, 1982, it tanked. Critics trashed it. Audiences dramatically dropped off after a solid first weekend that saw it going head-to-head with the opening of a little movie from director Steven Spielberg called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Unsavory word-of-mouth led it to a final box-office gross of fifteen million dollars. By all intents and purposes, Grease 2 was destined to disappear forever in the shadow of its acclaimed predecessor.
Irredeemably bad films do not endure over three decades, and there is a reason this one is doing so and in doing so has built up a cult following over the years.
Grease 2 is a bouncy, entertaining, sorely underrated cinematic musical, consistently more watchable than the '78 precursor. The songs, not nearly as oversaturated as the ones heard in Grease, are catchy, rock-tinted delights, and the musical numbers that accompany them are elaborate showstoppers.
This film is also irreverently ahead of its time—for proof, look no further than the breakout phenomenon that is Disney Channel's High School Musical, a prefabricated and highly inferior knockoff that has taken preteen and teen audiences by storm—Grease 2 arguably works better now than it did in 1982.
Grease 2 is a gloriously unpretentious gem just waiting to be discovered, and one of the better movie musicals of the 1980s and beyond. That the film hasn't yet received the full respect and acknowledgment it deserves only adds to its overwhelming appeal and charm.
4. RoboCop 2
It's difficult to understand why Robocop 2 is so despised when it expands so brilliantly on the satire of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original. Perhaps, partly, it's because the film's virtues are somewhat obscured in a difficult-to-stomach excess of sickening violence.
But Irvin Kirshner's take on Murphy's world is humorous, well-paced, excellently written by Frank Miller and Walon Green, and to boot numbers among the best of the last pre-digital major VFX outings, with the titular villain an impressive stop-motion creation by the legendary Phil Tippett (though less ergonomically pleasing than ED-209, RoboCop 2 has a lot more versatility). One would have thought that sci-fi fans who laud Kirshner's The Empire Strikes Back would give this sequel the same second chance that Alien 3 got on the strength of Fincher's later reputation.
Even if it isn't in the same league as Empire, it's easily the best of the RoboCop sequels, and its inventive satire even extends to an elaborate explanation of the apparently generic title of the movie, as evil tech corporation OCP attempt to make a cybernetic police officer who's more compliant than Peter Weller's 'Murphy'.
3. The Fly II (1989)
Despite its sizeable flaws, time has been kind to The Fly II. I remember the first time I saw it, which happened to be on television. Like many people I downright loathed it, especially since I watched it in quick succession with Cronenberg’s effort.
Perhaps it was the absence of anticipation, but I enjoyed The Fly II much more on my recent viewing. In most respects, no one should go into the sequel expecting the same kind of film. Walas doesn’t care about the deep, emotional story arcs or subtext. He made a simple, straightforward monster movie. There’s nothing intelligent about it. If you treat The Fly II in the same way you’d treat a Friday the 13th or Halloween, then you’ll probably enjoy it for the simple elements it gets right.
Rather than replicate the tragic love story of the original, the sequel leans more towards gruesome effects and gross-out fly vomit sequences. While this led to it being poorly recieved, the decision to do something a little different is hardly a bad thing for a sequel.
It’s also liable to make you cry, with a heartbreaking scene involving a mutated pet dog.
2. Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
Producer Arthur P. Jacobs and 20th Century Fox had a rigid strategy of matching the diminishing box-office returns of the Apes sequels with ever-thriftier budgets. So when the new franchise entry turned out to be set in modern-day America. there was a feeling that the glory of the chimps' tea-party was pretty much over.
Instead writer Paul Dehn came up with a simultaneously witty and tragic tale of prejudice which focused in on the series' most popular characters, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter). Director Don Taylor was also able to reunite the original actors to their parts, a factor which was often a problem in the Apes films. A classic just for Cornelius's famously witty response to a judge's question about whether apes can talk.
1. Alien 3
Whereas the original Alien was the scariest science fiction movie ever, and Aliens was the most intense science movie, Alien 3 proved to be the most depressing science fiction ever made, it's a film that is neck deep in a world of total nihilism..
When the movie came out in the summer of 1992, it got some of the most horrendous reviews ever, the only notable thing I read about that anyone said about it was that Ripley finally gets laid in this one (off screen of course).
I hated the movie when I first saw it. Hated it! I thought it was a horrible and disgraceful way to end the trilogy. Horribly depressing. I felt like I wanted to shoot myself after seeing it.
The movie yearned more to have a setup like the original, with just the one alien instead of dozens in the last one. But after seeing the trailers on the DVD extras, the way they advertised and promoted this movie thru the trailers indicated that this was going to be Aliens Redux. They had James Horners music going, and it climaxed with a horrifying image of an alien coming up and close with Ripley.
Now that I am past my expectations of what I thought and hoped it would be, I can now look at it for what it is. It's not a perfect movie as it was shot at first without a completed script, but it is quite powerful in its own way.
David Fincher gives this movie a very unique look that defined the way he shot his movies from then on. I can't find another director that I can compare this kind of work to.
Also, the acting all around is excellent. Sigourney Weaver has always delivered strong performances in every Alien movie as Ripley. She has never let us down. In addition to her, we also have Charles S. Dutton who is excellent and very strong here. His character is a sick human being by his own admission ("I'm a murderer and rapist of women"), and he plays the role fearlessly. Charles himself had served time in prison for manslaughter, so I keep wondering if he gets sick of playing all of these characters who have been in and out of prison.
I have come to believe that it is a better movie than most people would ever give it credit for. I also now believe that in many ways, it is a better movie than Alien Resurrection which tried to get the series back on track, but was more of a cartoon than anything else. It was interesting visually, but the franchise was kind of out of gas and ideas at that point. All we had left was the Alien vs. Predator films which were utterly abysmal.
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