I’ve seen a few horror films that have creeped me out, and one documentary that reduced me to a shambled mess, but this may the first documentary that gives me the heebie-jeebies (I had it once already as a kid, but I’ve heard you can catch it again, unlike chicken pox, but very much like cooties.)
I dare you to watch the entire preview. In fact, you must watch the entire preview.
It was just announced last week the Masters of the Universe movie was cancelled, and although the version in the works sounded craptastic, it pains me a bit to know that a live action version is further away. But given the track record with cartoons about toys being given their due on the silver screen, I think a lot of those dues haven’t been paid, nor will they. Sure, in ten years Transformers or G.I. Joe may or may not get rebooted, but will I care? (Odds are yes. Because technically, this MOTU a reboot, and I do care.)
I apologize for the fact that I posted this video almost a year ago, but it’s too awesome and helpful in imagining what a He-Man movie could be like:
And how bad ass would this Thundercats movie be:
Plus, with the fate of the third Batman film from director Christopher Nolan up in the air, does this whet your appetite?
I'm not drooling, am I?
Finally, and this is definitely off-topic but in line with the post’s title, has anyone ever seen this movie?
The secret of his suck-cess
As a self-proclaimed prankster, I have to admit I love it when musicians release their crossover tunes onto easy-listening stations, knowing full well that their CD is nothing like that one song. Unwitting grandmothers and soccer moms hear it and think, “What a pleasant melody,” so they head to Target to pick it up, and image their shock at the remainder of the album. (I wanted to go into a whole thing about grandmothers looking for LP’s and cassette tapes, but I thought it was mean and stopped myself.)
So what better way to express the level of shock value than by rating them with surprised grandmothers?
The latest culprit: Shinedown, with their album The Sound of Madness
"Well I never..."
A few other groups have done it in the past, like Rise Against and their album Siren Song of the Counter Culture.
"That's music?"
Green Day committed the act late in the game, on their CD Nimrod.
"What silly boys..."
Oh, and what can I say about Extra co-host, Mark McGrath’s, “humble” beginnings in Sugar Ray. For the record (clever pun!), their first CD, Lemonade and Brownies (juvenile pun!) looked like this:
Nicole Eggert of "Charles In Charge" and something called... "Baywatch"?
It was their second album, Floored, that pulled the bait-and-switch.
(SIDENOTE: Both of the above videos were integral to launching McG’s future career as a feature film director. So every time you see Mark McGrath mugging on Extra, you can thank him for making Lemonade=Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Brownies=Terminator Salavation possible. And McGrath <> McG? Do I smell a conspiracy? Nope. Just turds.)
NOTE: Everything that follows is my opinion… and it’s all fact.
Fantasy movies are geared toward the audience that longs to be whisked away, and that’s namely the pre-teens of this world. The reason why they are so susceptible: there’s still imagination (child-like wonder) remaining in their brains. Any adult that is too into fantasy films obviously has a mental/social disorder (hello PotHeads and Twihards)…
I’m not meaning to be mean. I’m merely meaning to get to the bottom of why fantasy films don’t do it for me anymore.
Growing up, I loved Clash of the Titans, The Beastmaster, The Dark Crystal, Gremlins, Tron, The Princess Bride, and some movies had to deal with a Star War or a few. There were others that I couldn’t quite get into like Legend and Labyrinth, but I always felt they were more for the young ladies (for the record, The Princess Bride was being read to Kevin Arnold Fred Savage).
Outside of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (it’s insanely absurd and clever), when I was turning thirteen, Willow wasn’t even cutting it anymore. If I was going to like a dopey fantasy movie, it had something else going for it, such as my crush on Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands or me still being a fan of Steven Spielberg when he made Hook.
Let’s use The Neverending Story trilogy (yes there were three – and a TV show) to reiterate:
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
The first film released in 1984: AWE-SOME (hyphen added for pause worthy emphasis).
The second film released in 1990: (Avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis, avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis, avoid making tasteless joke about Jonathan Brandis…)
The third film released in 1994: Really?! Highlights from an IMDB review:
I cannot begin to describe how awful this movie is… NES3, for lack of a better term, sucks. The storyline was as unimaginative and vapid as you could hope for… After the fart jokes and potty humor commenced, I just couldn’t take it any longer. My advice is don’t wast your time and ruin your childhood memories with this piece of refuse.
Now I don’t count superhero movies or animated films because they’ve almost attained the status of having their own genre. Outside of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, what do you have left to defend? The Mummy films? Van Helsing? (Not fair – those are mostly Stephen Sommers‘ pieces of crap.) Okay, then. MirrorMask? Eragon? Beowulf? Lady in the Water?! Stardust and Coraline were even kind of meh.
(SIDENOTE: I will give props to The Last Mimzy, The Bridge to Terebithia, and Big Fish for tugging my heart strings, 300 for being new, and the first Pirates of the Caribbean for the laughs. Am I missing any others?)
Ultimately, have fantasy films declined from being the shit to just shitty, or am I just getting old? I guess the proof will be in the pudding (sorry for the oldtimer-y expression) when the following films get remade or updated:
(FINAL SIDENOTE: I really, really, really, seriously hope that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t fuck up The Last Airbender. I looooove that cartoon. That ended it’s run. On Nickelodeon. Just last year. Stop looking at me that way! I don’t have that serious of a mental/social disorder! Use this blog as proof!)
Just for clarification: Coinkydink = yes, it’s a coincidence. Coinkydonk = no, that sh– is on purpose.
I’m a fan of the old days when spoofs were actually quality works, and a noble genre in it’s own right. Early Mel Brooks and Zucker Brothersfilms are often sited as classics, but lest we not forget, um, nope, there’s nobody else. Satire is a dying form, mostly because it requires intelligence blah blah blah highbrow chitter-chatter… onto the jokes, man. No seriously, I have never seen a joke on this blog since it started last October.
So speaking of October and spoofs, what about comedy-horror films? For every Young Frankenstein, there’s a Love at First Bite. For every Transylvania 6-5000, there’s a Dracula: Dead and Loving It. For every Saturday the 14th, there’s a Saturday the 14th Strikes Back. And for every Scream, there’s more than enough Scary Movies.
So now we have two more vampire-themed “comedies” heading our way, and it’s Round 189 in “Hollywood’s Run Out Of Ideas So Let’s Make Two Versions Of The Same Movie And Have Them Compete Against Each Other.”
Examples of previous rounds:
The latest entries to the list are Transylmania and Stan Helsing (srsly). Here are their trailers:
The Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk-nesscomes down to this simple question: Do studios release similar movies against each other on accident (dink!) or on purpose (donk!)?
Not to brag, but I was quite the whipper-snapper at math in high school. In the honors program, A’s were the norm (there was one errant B in the third quarter of trigonometry), and I found out after graduation that my peers had a bet going if the valedictorian or I would score higher on the advanced placement test (more of them picked me than her… I earned a 5 out of 5, and I assume she did, too… but still… me > her).
Boasting does not become me, and since I’ve painted myself Just Sh–ty after claiming I was The Sh–, it’s time for me to deflect, quick!
So, yeah, math. It used to be pretty cool to “know” and “understand” how to solve problems without calculators, to me at least. It’s like history in that way – if you don’t learn from it, you’re doomed to repeat it. Well, maybe not, but my point is this:
Kids today have it easy.
Too easy? I wouldn’t go that far. In reality, does anyone really need to know how to _____ without computers? In reality, kids today need to know more about the birds and the bees, than tangents and cosines, or in other words, more about f—ing than functions.
Over the past year, there has not been 1, nor 2, nor 3, nor 4, nor 5, but at least 6 (!) math (!) teachers that have been found guilty of becoming involved with their students. That doesn’t add up. (Sorry, had to.)
(Keep in mind the St. in front of each prof’s name represents Sex teacher, not Saint. Did you buy it?)
BONUS!
"I'm your host, Admiral Ollie Ackbar, and this is my sidekick, Ed McMonCalamari."
This was one messed up dream, and it requires a bit of back story. I don’t know if the back story occurred in the dream, or if my subconscious naturally knew it, but here we go:
Apropos of nothing, including Star Wars, Leno, Letterman, Conan, Kimmel, and Fallon, everyone’s favorite token Mon Calamarian, Admiral Ackbar, hosted the highest-rated late night show in America (think Krusty the Clown). He was on top of the world, until one night when a prank went bad.
Apparently, a woman was invited on stage for a skit that involved ham, bacon, and other various pork products, such as, um, pork. She was eight months pregnant, and against the producers wishes, Ackbar went ahead with the bit. Something about the segment startled her and caused her water to break. Live. On national TV.
This lead to him getting banned from everything and everywhere, and he eventually went into the witness protection program when threats on his life seemed credible. Now back to the present day… dream.
While living under his new identity, he eventually started butting heads with his handlers. Unable to blend in, he put on an elaborate show which exposed his location. Soon enough, the credible threat found him. It ended up being a mechanical pig that looked a bit like this:
(Not So) Artistic Representation
The roboswine wasn’t the only surprise…
All along, the reason the government thought Ackbar’s life was in danger was incorrect. They believed it was because the public was outraged that he caused his audience member to go into early labor. The real reason? The pigdroid was upset about the wasted pork products, bitter of the fact that he no longer consisted of pork products.
And the meatless metal meanie never intended to kill Ackbar – he only wanted an apology. The consummate host obliged and soon was back on top of the world.
INGREDIENTS: A late night helping of regular Oreo’s and a glass of chocolate milk.
Today’s competitors aren’t exactly on level ground. One’s a movie trailer (wait for the fart), one’s a movie scene (watch the whole thing), and one’s a re-edited masterpiece that borders on annoying until the money shot payoff (skip to the end if you can’t wait). The latter is by my heroes over at Everything is Terrible; the formers are all real.
(BONUS! A re-edit of Gooby as a horror film.)
AWFUL BATTLE… GO!
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It was the best of Miller Lites; it was the worst of Miller Lites. In other words, drinking with friends has its good days; drinking with friends has its bad days. Here are the examples…
BEST
My good ol’ buddy Jay and I were discussing the state of the world one day, when he begin trying out some new philosophy he was developing. I don’t quite remember the details as he worked through them, but my translation of what he was trying to say was this:
Women are sports cars and men are semi rigs. Men prefer their women to be a two-seater, i.e. they’ve only been with one guy – that guy. Men, as trucks, are also two-seaters, but if they have an extensive history in their trailer, it shouldn’t be a surprise to their lady friend.
There was some part about women being minivans and another deal about a bunch of guys hanging off of a sports car, but that’s the gist of it. Do I get it? Do I agree? Only if I get to be a helicopter.
Men are from Mars, Women are from "Cars"
WORST
It’s hard to get my goat but Jay got my goat good. All I know is that the discussion slipped into an argument (a one-sided argument most likely) about there being more than one way to use the word “better.”
My stance:
There’s a “better” that expresses an opinion, and there’s a “better” that expresses fact.
Opinion “better” – G.I. Joe is a better movie than Transformers 2.
Fact “better” – Water is better to drink than oil.
A Freudian Psychologist's Dream Dream a.k.a. The Baroness Can-Can
Until the next brewsing…
The new preview for James Cameron’s Avatar reminds me of something… It was another pet project that spent way too much money and didn’t quite wow. What was it called?
(BONUS! An extensive article from The Onion’s AV Club about Delgo, and a thorough breakdown of Avatar’s preview courtesy of Spout Blog.)
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