Archive for the ‘Fantasy/Swords’ Category

Alice in Wonderland

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

tn_aliceinwonderland2010ALICE IN WONDERLAND by Louis Carroll or whoever is one of the most beloved and iconic children’s literatures of our times. It has also been one of the most adapted, referenced and re-interpreted. Ever since the books Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and A2: Rise of the Looking Glass were first published in such and such a year, I myself as a child growing up was inspired by, blah blah blah and you know the rest. In 1951 Walt Disney, etc.

As an adaptation of the original book, ALICE IN WONDERLAND is not entirely faithful. Like many versions it combines characters from the first book and the sequel (Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and Humpty Dumpty were from the second book according to Wikipedia, a popular websight). However it’s not meant as a straightforward translation of the book, but more a riff on the world of Wonderland, using our familiarity with some of the imagery and characters from previous adaptations and trying to be clever about re-interpreting them in a different context. (more…)

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Flesh + Blood

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

tn_fleshandbloodPaul Verhoeven’s first American-produced (and English language) movie was this knights and swords movie about a group of amoral mercenaries in Europe circa 1501. It’s not a fantasy because there’s no sorcery or dragons and Mako does not narrate. It does have Susan Tyrrell, but she doesn’t narrate either.

Rutger Hauer plays Martin, the sort of leader of a rowdy group of soldiers who, betrayed by their captain, set out for revenge and riches. While burying a stillborn baby they find a buried statue of Saint Martin, so they take it as a sign from God and carry the statue around with them, travelling in whatever direction his sword ends up pointing. (more…)

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The Beastmaster

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

After watching the complete PHANTASM series I thought maybe it was worth re-evaluting this Don Coscarelli individual, so I looked him up on that one websight. Turns out he did this BEASTMASTER movie that every American male child of the 1980s always talks about – I had no idea he did that one and I didn’t have cable in the ’80s so I’d never seen it before.

THE BEASTMASTER stars Marc Singer as Dar, aka The Beastmaster, a shirtless dude who is friends with animals. Basically, he is the Aquaman of land, he can communicate with the animals and they help him out, but you won’t see any animals talking like a Dr. Dolittle picture or the later installments of the Air Bud saga such as AIR BUDDIES, SPACE BUDDIES or CSI – CANINE SPORTS INVESTIGATORS. No, it’s pure man-to-animal telepathy. So, you know, he basically hangs out with alot of different animals, they are his homies, they goof around together and then if he falls in some quicksand or something they help him. Come to think of it this is not that great of a power, if he just had human friends they would actually be better at pulling him out of quicksand than a couple of ferrets. I mean it’s simple physics, really. So maybe his real power is that he’s friends with John Amos from Good Times.

This definitely has some of that Coscarelli magic, there is some crazy shit happening in this one. First of all, you got a villain played by Rip Torn with a fake nose and two braided pigtails with little skull barrettes on them. And Rip’s got his stable of witches who must’ve caused some real havoc in the ale houses back then because, as the camera demonstrates by panning up their bodies, they’re some real hot numbers but then they turn around and they got hideous monster faces. And in my opinion they don’t make up for it with their personalities either. They prophesize that the king’s unborn son will some day kill Rip Torn, so he sends them on a fetus hunt. I guess they’re pro-life or they don’t believe in aborting after the third trimester or something, so instead they use magic to transfer the unborn baby from his mama’s belly to the belly of an ox that they lead away and then slice open like a tauntaun. Witch, are you for real? Like I said, this was directed by Don Coscarelli. (more…)

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The Scorpion King 2: The Rise of a Warrior

Monday, August 18th, 2008

THE SCORPION KING 2 RISE OF A WARRIOR is the story of a warrior who rises. In movies we’ve seen many people and things rise, including The Machines, Carlito’s Way, The Silver Surfer, Leslie Vernon, Taj, Cobra, the Lycans, Gator, Jack Johnson, and Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. But never before have we seen the RISE OF A WARRIOR.

In this movie there are actually a bunch of different warriors but in my opinion the specific warrior who is rising is the one who will later be called the Scorpion King, not in this movie but in the very end of a different, better movie called THE SCORPION KING. What I’m trying to say is that this is the prequel to the prequel to the sequel to THE MUMMY, a movie I thought sucked. So the fact that this one is above average for DTV is pretty impressive. If you met a guy whose great, great uncle by marriage was a Nazi or a serial killer, but the guy you met wasn’t that big of a dick or anything, you would think “Good for him.” Same goes for THE SCORPION KING 2 RISE OF A WARRIOR.

This movie is 100% Stephen Sommers free, in fact it’s directed by Russell Mulcahy, who at least was a really good director at one time (RAZORBACK). And to be honest I don’t hold its MUMMY lineage against it because I’ve been a really big fan of the original SCORPION KING ever since I first saw it, uh… 2 days ago. (more…)

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The Scorpion King

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

Well, I gave up on Stephen Sommers after the rhythmless THE MUMMY so I never watched THE MUMMY RETURNS. But I have since learned to enjoy The Rock so today I finally got around to watching the prequel/spin-off THE SCORPION KING. It’s directed by Charles NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 Russell, so I didn’t have to break my Sommers boycott. And I’m glad I finally watched it. This is probaly the best riff on the CONAN THE BARBARIAN type of movie I’ve seen. Not as stylish or violent as 300 but a little more fun. And a hell of alot better than KULL THE CONQUEROR.

The movie got me from the opening scene where Tyler Mane and a horde of barbarians have some hapless dude who they call “an Akkadian” tied up. They are very proud of all the races and nationalities they’ve murdered but they never bagged them an Akkadian before, so this is a big day. But the Akadian says, “May the gods have mercy on you, because my brother won’t.”

His brother, is, of course, The Rock (registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment) as Mathayis, a long-haired, giant-muscled, bow and arrow toting, sword slinging, rope swinging, cuthroat motherfucker who storms in for a Rock vs. Mane Smackdown, and fires an arrow into Mane so hard he flies out the side of the building and lands five years later in the remake of HALLOWEEN. (more…)

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Beowulf

Friday, November 16th, 2007

THE BEOWULF 3-D IMAX EXPERIENCE

BEOWULF is the new “motion capture” weirdly computerized sword and sandal 3-D movie from Robert Zemeckis. He’s using the same technology and directational style as POLAR EXPRESS but it will go over better because that one was for kids, this one has a bunch of stabbings and monsters and a part where Virtual Angelina Jolie gives a handjob to a sword, so that means it’s more sophisticated and adult.

Ray iWinstone voices the blonde he-man of the title. Anthony Hopkins 2.0 plays the old king, Robin Wright Penn’s likeness plays the princess from the fuckin Shrek movies, and John Pac-Mankovich does his usual distractingly weird performance as some asshole who is pissed off about something or other. Also you got Crispin Glover inhabiting the monster Grendel and a very good computerized duplicate of Angelina Jolie’s head as Grendel’s hot mom.

I guess they ran out of comic books and ’70s horror movies to remake, so this one is based on an epic poem from 700 AD. All I knew was a dude named Beowulf fights a monster named Grendel, so it was a fresh new story for me. But some 1300 year olds might say it’s raping their childhood, because apparently co-screenwriters British-guy and Pulp-Fiction-guy-besides-Tarantino throw in a pretty big reinterpretation. In this one the king fucked Grendel’s mom (take that Grendel!) and in fact is Grendel’s dad. And Beowulf fucked Grendel’s mom too (ooh, snap!) and the dragon he fights at the end is his son. Ha ha, your son is a dragon! (more…)

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Underworld Evolution

Saturday, July 15th, 2006

This is part 2 of the Underworld saga and unfortunately I’m less sold on this Len Wiseman individual after part 2. I gotta admit, I had hopes for this one. From the trailers it looked more exciting than the first one. I thought maybe after a little practice and with a bigger budget this guy was gonna make a movie that was more fun. Now I’m not gonna say that Len Wiseman has destroyed my faith in the human spirit and man’s knack for overcoming obstacles with innovation and hardwork, but the guy was definitely trying to. We, as a people, can do better than this.

This is one of those rare part 2s where if you haven’t seen the first one, you will have no clue what in fuck’s name is going on. Also, if you have seen the first one, even if you have seen it recently, and if you are me, you also will have no clue what in fuck’s name is going on. The movie starts with a long flashback to 1602 or something, where you find out all this new information about how there were two twin brothers who were the first vampire and first werewolf and the werewolves were attacking villages so the vampires were trying to kill the first werewolf and then they caught him and his brother didn’t want to kill him on account of them being brothers but the vampires were assholes and got mad so they locked the werewolf brother away forever.

Then it goes into a montage of clips from part 1 and Kate Beckinsale’s character Selene has some narration explaining to you everything that happened in that one. At the time, when I watched it, I felt like I understood what happened, but now that I have seen this montage I’m pretty sure I got no clue what this is all about. Something about vampires, werewolves, a guy named Viktor, an ancient war, some fire maybe, possibly magical crystals or dragons, the hybrid species of vampire and werewolf, maybe swords, who knows.

So the movie hasn’t even started, I’m already lost, and then it seems like virtually the entire god damn running time of the movie is devoted to people standing around talking about yet more backstory. They spend so much time talking about the backstory that there’s not much time for actual story. “Ah, you THOUGHT this is what happened hundreds of years ago, but actually THIS is what happened hundreds of years ago. Here is an engraving of it. And wait until you hear about THIS thing that happened which is equally monumental. And THIS!” (more…)

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The Science of Sleep

Monday, June 19th, 2006

Hey fellas,

I saw THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP which is the new Michel Gondry picture that comes out in September. It was the closing movie at the Seattle International Film Festival here. Michel Gondry was there to briefly introduce the movie, but didn’t do a question and answer session. Which is good because the first question probaly would’ve been, “what was that all about?”

Here’s the “where I’m coming from” paragraph, I’ll keep it brief. If you’re not into Michel Gondry then throw a grain of salt on this one, because I like every movie the guy has made. Yes, including HUMAN NATURE. I was the guy in the theater who was embarrassed because he couldn’t stop laughing and nobody else could start. To this day I think people didn’t give it a fair shake because they only had BEING JOHN MALKOVICH to compare it to. I honestly believe there will soon be a mass re-evaluation around the world where people decide they like HUMAN NATURE after all, now that they like Michel Gondry. If this does indeed happen then everybody has to buy me a Pepsi or something.

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY is probaly my favorite movie so far this year so it’s impressive that Gondry has another one already done. And sure enough, it’s a good one.

SCIENCE OF SLEEP is sort of a surreal romantic comedy about Stphane (Gael Garca Bernal), a Gondry type who falls for his neighbor and tries to start a relationship with her. They have alot in common because they’re both very creative and goofy, but it’s awkward because he’s more of a weirdo than she is. Although he passes as a normal adult human with a boring job, he has some Pee Wee Herman in him. He keeps bringing her inventions such as a time machine that can go only one second into the future or past, or glasses that make reality 3-D, even though it already is. The movie depicts these devices as if they actually work so it’s sort of up to the audience whether to take it literally or not. (more…)

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Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »

Underworld

Saturday, June 3rd, 2006

Some of you may be wondering why the Bruce icon would adorn a review for some corny movie about an ancient war between leather clad vampires and werewolves, especially since Bruce does not appear in the film and probaly hasn’t even seen it, unless maybe on a plane. But some of you know what I’m getting at. According to recent reports, Mr. Len Wiseman – whose sole accomplishments in Hollywood so far are directing the two Underworld pictures and marrying Kate Beckinsale – will be directing “Die Hard 4.0.”

Now, I got a history with this movie, sort of. A while back, an Ain’t It Cool talkbacker named IAmLegolas begged me to review Underworld Evolution. I said I couldn’t because I hadn’t seen the first one and considering how boring I’d heard that was it might be more research than I was willing to do. As soon as I read this Die Hard news though I realized that Legolas had been ahead of his time and that the research would have to be done. And he was sure to point this out to me too. Good job YouAreLegolas, hats off to you.

I was already skeptical of this Len Wiseman individual due to a lawsuit that was filed over UNDERWORLD. Some company accused the movie of copying all its ideas from their vampire and werewolf role playing dungeon and dragon playtime games that they have. Now, I’m not gonna be judgmental about copyright infringement, and I’m gonna assume they’re innocent until proven guilty because the case never went to trial and this is America. But buddy, when your ideas can be confused with a fuckin role playing game about werewolves, you got a problem. That is the type of smear on your record that, back when we had accountability in America, would’ve kept you from even saying “John McClane” 5 times into a mirror, let alone directing the new DIE HARD. I hope you know you got a whole fuckin lot to prove to us, Wiseman. Don’t fuckin blow it. (more…)

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Brothers Grimm

Friday, August 26th, 2005

Ever since that documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA, Terry Gilliam has a reputation as the bad luck director who can’t finish a movie without the Lord dropping down on him like a bag of cinder blocks. I heard he writes his shooting schedules under a ladder on the 13th day of the month. It’s been what, six years since FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, he’s been trying to make movies since then but this is the first one to make it to the screen. People figure it’s a miracle if he can shoot a scene that is not interupted by an act of God, let alone finish a whole movie and have it released in theaters. So in that sense, THE BROTHERS GRIMM is a miracle. Because it is a finished movie with credits and everything. They even made a poster I think.

As far as actual entertainment value though it’s maybe a little less miraculous, in my opinion. The main problem: the first hour. A man of my knowledge and insights, I oughta be able to put my finger on it more than that, but all I can say is I was bored as shit for the first half of this movie. Nothing really painfully lame or anything but it’s just not involving and not in the usual Terry Gilliam way where he overwhelms and disorients you with his powerful imagination rays. It looks like a Terry Gilliam movie, it seems like an okay premise for a Terry Gilliam movie, but it just doesn’t click. It’s not funny. It’s not that clever. And takes for fucking ever to get going.

I don’t know for sure what happened but this is my guess. The poor bastard spends all these years doing these weird fantasies about the power of imagination and what not, then suddenly he takes a left turn and makes that great adaptation of FEAR AND LOATHING. It makes sense that he was the guy who could pull that movie off, but at the same time it’s pretty different from castles and hot air balloons and flying around on wings and shit. And all that heat, something in his brain cracked. So now he goes back and tries to do Don Quixote, he can’t do it without disaster: floods and sickness and I forget, did anybody get eaten by locusts in that documentary? He has such a hard time he figures what the hell, after all these years of fierce uncompromising independence, it’s time to take one for the team. He does one for hire, from somebody else’s script (the chump who wrote SCREAM 3) just to get his camera rolling again. But I bet he doesn’t really have his heart in it. (more…)

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