Archive for the ‘Science Fiction and Space Shit’ Category
Friday, March 5th, 2004
Lately I’ve only been reviewing current movies, but as you know, the Hollywood Reporter had a story the other day that MGM has hired a first time director to do a “re-imagining” of 2001 with “modern pacing and music” that will “take full advantage of state-of-the-art digital effects.” The director is not someone I’m familiar with, but they say he is perfect for the job because he’s done alot of music videos and won a couple of Miss Clio awards for his commercials. So before they ruin it I thought I would revisit Kubrick’s masterpiece of space ballet and shit.
No, don’t worry, I’m just fucking with you. They’re not doing a remake, as far as I know. But you almost believed it, right? Because it’s so awful, so wrong, so undeniably vile, that someone is definitely going to have to do it eventually. They came for Hitchcock and Hooper and Romero and Carpenter and Walking Tall and Amityville Horror and House of Wax and they even tried Billy Jack. They already got Charade and Planet of the Apes and Dr. Seuss. They burrowed into the brains of Lucas and Spielberg and Friedkin and Scott and made them second guess their younger, better selves. And now they’ve got their greedy bastard eyes on Kubrick. You fucking know they do. They’ll wait until his assistant is dead and his assistant’s grandchildren or whatever it takes, but the day it becomes possible, they dig out the contracts and they sign them in blood and they will swallow one end of 2001 and suck it down like one of those threads the yogis use and pull the entire movie out through the ass and into a paper shredder. You already know this, but I’m telling you this, because we need to get this out in the open, for our own good. We need to face the inevitable. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Keir Dullea, masterpieces, Stanley Kubrick
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Thursday, January 1st, 2004
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
Here he comes… one of my favorite online reviewers. It’s been too long, so it is a genuine pleasure to re-introduce the one and only Vern…
What’s up boys —
Vern here, still alive and ready to unveil my first “the ain’t it cool news” review for 2004. Unfortunately Seagal’s new picture with Ringo Lam is not done yet so instead I gotta review some movie about Battle Royale 2 by Kinji Fukasaku and son.
Previously on the Ain’t It Cool News: Battle Royale part 1 is a Japanese picture about a near future where school kids are put on an island by the government and forced to kill each other off. The survivor gets to live, so everybody has to decide whether to a) be all ethical and shit or 2) try to survive. It’s a pretty good movie and because it is brutally violent and not american, it has a big cult following here in my country of USA.
Battle Royale part 2 is the highly anticipated sequel, originally directed by Mr. Fukasaku again but he passed away and his son finished the job. It has been reviewed a couple times on here before by people who hated it and said to fuck it and etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji Fukasaku
Posted in Action, AICN, Drama, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | No Comments »
Friday, May 30th, 2003
Hey folks, Harry here – Actually, while Vern kinda rags a bit on this, I’m curious to see this for the exact same reasons stated in his opening paragraph… I’ve seen 28 DAYS LATER, CABIN FEVER, DADDY DAY CARE – but I haven’t seen CITY OF SARS (I hear that’s shooting in Toronto currently) or SINCE THE END OF THE WORLD and thus far… the best one is CABIN FEVER, and I’m sure it’ll remain, though I still think the best virus/end of the world flick is NO BLADE OF GRASS, but since 10 people have seen that… I’m probably in the minority there. Here’s Vern at the Seattle International Film Festival…
Vern sees SINCE THE END OF THE WORLD at SIFF
Harry I don’t know if you’ve heard of this one but apparently it’s been playing the festivals for a couple years. Otherwise I’d think it was part of a slew of disease/virus movies like 28 DAYS LATER, CABIN FEVER, CITY OF SARS and DADDY DAY CARE. There seems to be a general panic across the world about diseases and poisons like SARS, West Nile, the flesh eating virus, mad cow disease, anthrax attacks, etc. Oh come on, let’s not be a bunch of sissies people, it’s only your FLESH being EATEN by a VIRUS. Really not a big deal. Anyway the concept of SINCE THE END OF THE WORLD is that a mysterious disease has killed off most of the world. Now it’s 12 years later, there are 168 survivors in the San Francisco Bay Area and some dudes decide to make a documentary about it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Calum Grant, Joshua Atesh Litle, mockumentary, post-apocalypse
Posted in AICN, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, SIFF | No Comments »
Saturday, May 24th, 2003
This might bother some of you but I just want to say it up front: put me in the camp of people who say the original MATRIX really is “the shit” as the kids say when they mean that it is not shit but actually the opposite of shit, which is I guess in this case THE MATRIX. Because what these boys the Wachowski Brothers did was an extremely well executed twilight zone concept for the post William Gibson days which also happened to be the perfect vehicle to combine over the top Hong Kong martial arts traditions with american actors and computer effects AND an appropriate metaphor for our times.
I love the idea that somebody like Jackie Chan or Michael Jordan who has extraordinary physical skills could actually just be a smart dude who figured out loopholes in the laws of reality. If you can understand the program well enough you can cheat and do things that a person isn’t supposed to be able to do. In the old shaw brothers movies it was just magic or shaolin wisdom but here we put those same spectacular moves in a sci-fi context and we get a whole different spin where even some jackass like Keanu Reeves can fly through the air and be so convincing that most of American can watch him as the iconic badass Neo and not even think of him as Keanu anymore. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Carrie-Anne Moss, Harold Perrineau, Harry Lennix, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Monica Bellucci, Randall Duk Kim, Wachowskis
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 13 Comments »
Monday, February 17th, 2003
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Vern’s a good egg. If you don’t know that by now, then catch up to the rest of us and enjoy this new review by him.
Boys –
It’s me Vern. Remember me, I write articles, win awards, etc. Today I am returning to my old shtick of reviewing straight to video sequels nobody asked for. Enjoy!
Actually the first picture I’m gonna deal with here is not completely un-asked for. The first movie CUBE was one of those small time cult movies that nobody is really rabid about but everybody kind of likes. The premise is that a group of strangers find themselves inside strange, symmetrical rooms with vault doors on each side. When they go through a door, they find themselves in a room exactly like the last one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And when they go through one of the doors in there, it’s another room exactly like that one. And I could go on man. There’s nowhere to go. So of course they get into a George A. Romero type deal where they each have a different background and they argue and what not by they try to put aside their differences to solve the puzzle of “what in fuck’s name is going on here.” There is math, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrzej Sekula, Craig Sheffer, DTV, DTV sequels, Jason Scott Lee, Patrick Lussier, vampires
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 27th, 2002
Well that young bald man Steve Soderbergh is still on a roll. He just keeps hittin em, bam bam bam and even when they’re not a home run like THE LIMEY or OUT OF SIGHT they’re still real good. Hell, even FULL FRONTAL, he just squirted that one out like a soft ice cream, and it was pretty good ice cream too. This one is a little more of a sunday. It’s not my favorite soderbergh movie but that’s like saying “that’s not necessarily the greatest blowjob I ever got.” This guy has never made a bad movie. Go ahead, try to find one. You can’t. You would have to make a fake movie and put his name on it. But he didn’t make that one, you did. You can’t fool me. Fool me once, shame, shame, you can’t fool me.
First of all let me make it clear that I am ignorant on the topic of Solaris. I have not seen the legendarily long and boring and brilliant Russian version by Mr. Tartavsky. Also I have not read the book which is according to the credits what Mr. Soderbergh’s version is based on. But I did see this movie. So that’s my background on that one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: George Clooney, James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh
Posted in Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002
E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL: THE SPECIAL EDITION: FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY: THE MOVIE
This is one of those things where they take an old movie that was very popular, and then they change it, because they think the only way anybody would want to see a movie they loved on the big screen again would be if somebody just completely fucked with it and tried to ruin it. They did the same thing with the Star Trek pictures, and the exorcist (see below) and Night of the Living Dead on video (I’m still staying away from that one).
This goes into the Star Trek category where the individual who made it (Steve Spielberg) gets old, forgets everything that made him vital when he was young, and decides to change things, but claims it’s actually perfectionism. The most infamous thing here is that he wanted no guns in the movie at all. Which is kind of weird for a movie where the main characters get chased by a mob of cops. So there they are, a bunch of fuckin cops and government spooks, running around all holding a walkie talkie with their trigger fingers poised to, I don’t know, hit the little beeper button that you use for Morse code. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Dee Wallace-Stone, Drew Barrymore, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Friday, August 2nd, 2002
There are bigger fans of M. Night Shymalan than me. He seems a little too nice to me, trying too hard to please everybody. They call him a new Spielberg but if so he’s a new Spielberg who skipped over the young vital years of Spielberg when he made shit like DUEL and JAWS. Still, I really like this young man’s style. He seems to have a couple of trademarks already. He treats supernatural themes very seriously and in a unique style that tricks mainstream audiences into thinking they are not watching a genre picture. He populates his stories with precocious child actors and movie stars who give uncharacteristically quiet performances. His stories have themes of tragedy and loss, and they are much more about character and suspense than about actual action. SIXTH SENSE was about discovering what’s goin on with these ghosts, not running from them or fighting them. And UNBREAKABLE was a super hero movie without a single scene of somebody swingin on a rope or shooting a laser or something. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, Joaquin Phoenix, M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson
Posted in Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 12th, 2002
I heard a rumor, or actually I just saw it on the ad, that REIGN OF FIRE is supposed to be the perfect summer movie. And in a way I think it is. Because it takes a good special effects extravaganza premise – the world is obliterated by firebreathing dragons and a small community of survivors fight back in postapocalyptic england – and treats it much smarter and more dramatic than you’d expect.
Yeah, this is a movie with computer animated dragons, and a bunch of people fighting them. But the emphasis of the story is not on the fighting. It’s always on the drama. After a prologue and a MAD MAX-like dragons-take-over-the-world explanation montage, you get basically a DAY OF THE DEAD setup. Here is this community of survivors living in spruced up castle ruins using what limited resources they can find to survive. You find out about their whole system – how they eat, their security system, how they use birds for lookout and what they teach their kids to do if they see a dragon. There’s also a little I AM LEGEND in there because they treat the dragons scientifically. They are not magical. They explain how they breathe fire, how they reproduce, the best way to kill them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christian Bale, Gerard Butler, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Bowman
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 21st, 2002
Like PLANET OF THE APES, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and soon STAR WARS PART 2, MINORITY REPORT is a sci-fi picture that will mainly be discussed in context with the politics of the time. (the time being now. because it came out today.)
Again like the Yoda picture, it has been in the planning stages long enough that director Steven Spielberg (JAWS) and co-writer Scott Frank (I only remember him because he did OUT OF SIGHT. who knows who the other writer is) couldn’t have known how timely it would turn out to be. The movie takes place in Washington DC, 2056, where Tom Cruise is an agent in the flagship “Pre-Crime Deparment” – cops who use three water-submerged psychic “precogs” to track crimes of passion that haven’t even happened yet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Philip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 65 Comments »
