Over at The Fake Life we've been discussing really bad cinema. We pitted the following movies against each other:

Superman IV vs. Star Trek V
Godzilla ('98) vs. Van Helsing.
Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones vs. The Matrix: Revolutions
Batman & Robin vs a bunch of really truly terrible films (Catwoman, Highlander 2, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, Alien: Resurrection, and Troll 2)

After a winnowing process we landed on Superman IV, Van Helsing, Attack Of The Clones and Batman And Robin as being the worst of the bunch (not necessarily of all time). Of those four we're now talking about which one would be the baddest of the bad. What's your opinion? Or if you can think of a worse film than those (made somewhere in the last twenty years or so) what would it be?

When I heard they were doing a Transformers movie I wasn't terribly excited, interested mind you, but not excited. When I heard that M. Bay was doing it that ratcheted it up a notch. After all it should be loud and feature a number of explosions, so who better? Now the trailer is here and while I'm not bursting at the seams, this does seem like it's hitting on all the cylinders that it should. My only complaint is that it's a little dark and cuts are too quick, thus it's hard to see stuff, but that's to be expected I suppose.

Get the trailer here!

I was cruising the geekfest that is Your Mom's Basement and read the following, Your Mom's Basement: Look Back In Anger: HIGHLANDER, which took the much beloved movie and tore it a new orifice. This, after reading a forum where someone bashed West Side Story, which happens to be one of my favorite musicals, got me to thinking about the reverence we have for our childhood favorites.

Okay so my beloved, dearest, darling wife is talking our adorable, little munchkins to the beach for several days. This means that it's time to play catch up. Help me pick five movies to see on DVD.

Ground rules:
All must be readily available on DVD from a major rental chain.
Four must have been made in the last five years. The fifth can be from any decade. I want to catch up on recent flicks, but am not adverse to seeing a classic I may have missed.
If possible pick one from each of the following genres: Horror, Sci-fi, Comedy, Action, Other. Not a must, but I gotta make this a challenge.

Help a brutha out!

So as I mentioned last week, I'm catching up on some much needed movie watching. Though no one recommended it in the comments I had read many an excellent review and decided to give it a look. (spoilers ahoy)

Main Entry: un·com·fort·able
Pronunciation: "&n-'k&m(p)(f)-t&(r)-b&l, -'k&m(p)-f&(r)-t&-b&l, -'k&m-f&(r)-b&l
Function: adjective
1 : causing discomfort or annoyance
2 : feeling discomfort : UNEASY

Hit the jump to read the review (spoilers ahoy).

According to SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud British movie magazine SFX lists the following as the Top Ten Science Fiction movies of all time:

1. Serenity.
2. Star Wars
3. Blade Runner
4. Planet of the Apes
5. The Matrix
6. Alien
7. Forbidden Planet
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. The Terminator
10. Back to the Future

Rather than give my reactions (Swan Shadow's are good) I think I shall attempt my own listage.

Being the protagonist in most British science fiction sucks.

Movie seen. There be spoiler's ahead.

It's... interesting. I think it will be fun to see a Joker that's a little less Cah-razy and a little more Psycho. I'm not one of these fanboys that cries, "Darker! Darker!", but the Joker is deep down a very nasty, insane freak. As fun as Jack was in the role, I'm hoping that they tone the character down. The muted tones that the characters in the first movie had were spot on. I really like the Scarecrow's minimalist nature and while the Joker needs to be a little more over the top it shouldn't be too much. That said I'll hold any further observations until we see this in motion and maybe whatever his cosumery looks like.

No, not Ziggy. I've been reading Neil Gaiman's blog (not the best celebrity blog I read, but good nonetheless) and he's been talking a little about Stardust, a movie based on his book.

I quite enjoyed American Gods and the Sandman comics, so I guess I'm looking forward to this movie. De Niro as a pirate could be awesome. Here's the synopsis:

In the tranquil fields and meadows of long-ago England, there is a small hamlet that has stood on a jut of granite for 600 years. Just to the east stands a high stone wall, for which the village is named. Here, in the hamlet of Wall, young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. And here, one crisp October eve, Tristran makes his love a promise -- an impetuous vow that will send him through the only breach in the wall, across the pasture... and into the most exhilarating adventure of his life.

Anyone know any more about the book?

I'll be checking this out tonight and will let all yall know what I think. As I'm a big fan of Cap'n Jack and women in corsets I have a feeling that I'll like it mucho.

Also, read my newest short fiction experiment, five hundred words a day. I'm batting .750 at this point. Saturday was a killer day and I just couldn't get in front of a computer.

Also, I hope to get a music review up and an answer to young squire Sid (or is that Sire Squid?) by WEEK's end.

Well my wife and I had one of those rare date nights where we both agreed that seeing a movie was definitely in the plans. We're both huge fans of the Pirates movies, so putting this on the radar was a no-brainer. It being a Monday night and over a week into the running also meant that a light crowd was likely. As it turned out I was right. There were a few couples, a group of children, and clumps of teens/young adults. I'd wager no more than thirty all in all. That's good, because the older I get the less I like sharing the movie experience with a gaggle of folks. Big event movies like this one are generally the exception, but even those can be painful if the crowd doesn't buy in to the movie.

Spoilers ahoy.

Though he doesn't like Will Smith The Southern Conservative has posted a trailer to Will's newest flick, thinking that it looks pretty good.

I happen to agree. But then I would. What say you?

Filmwad has put up a pic that seems to be what the Joker will be driving in the next Bat flick. Seems plausible to me, even a bit inspired perhaps. It defintely fits the, relatively speaking, low key atmosphere of the first.

Yes. Yes it does.

Rented this and watched it last night.

Caught this on DVD.

I met a buddy of mine to see this, this weekend. He is Mr. Comics guy, a regular geek like you and I, but he had never seen the cartoon, read the comics, or played with the toys. I think it's an age thing. He was probably just out of the right age range when they were really popular. So he went in largely blind. I, on the other hand, watched the original cartoon regularly and had most of the toys. We both loved this movie unabashedly.

Robert Downey Jr. Wields His First Gauntlet - The more I see of this Iron Man flick the more I'm digging on it. This shot of RD Jr. as Tony testing the repulsor in his glove is perfect. Me, I like the FF movies (mostly). The Batman and Spider Man flicks were aces. I can forgive the Ghost Riders and Punishers. I can almost forgive the fey looking Superman (thought to be honest I haven't seen SR). As long as they're batting around .400 it's all good.

Full-Size Working Halo Warthog Ready to Annihilate Adoring Fans - Gizmodo It's cool prop week here at ST.

While my favorite Warthog is the A-10 Thunderbolt (which got some sweet lovin' in the Transformers movie), with Pumbaa running a close second,

there's a different breed of Hog ready to hit the screens. The guys that have the best jobs in the movie universe, making toys for PJ's movies, have built the Halo ATV with the same nick.

Looks pretty sweet, no? I personally don't see the point of a Halo movie, but if it's got cool battle scenes with big old scary aliens I could be convinced to check it out. That is if it ever gets made. Oh who am I kidding? Video game movies will be the comic book movies of the next decade.

This is a thing of beuaty, as is the footage from Comic Con (ComiCon?).

See more beauty here.

Acorrding to MTV's movie blog we'll see a Narnia movie every May starting in '08 and lasting until they run out of books.

Adamson insisted that future “Narnia” films will be both more consistent and more faithfully inclusive to the source than “Harry Potter.” “‘Harry Potter’ is a different [animal],” he said via satellite from Prague. “C.S. Lewis wrote more efficiently [than J.K. Rowling]. We have a chance to embellish, [not exclude].”

The books are scant to say the least when compared to the ginormous HP books. And they contain some things that interpreted in the light of today's culture are going to be troubling (The Horse and His Boy). I mean look at the minor changes they made to TLTW&TW to excise Aslan's remark that war is not a thing for woman to take part in.

And who knows, if these are as successful as I hope, perhaps we'll get to see Lewis' space trilogy. A man can hope.

Lest you think I've been lounging around, here's what's been going down.

I saw the newest Bourne movie and it was good. It would have been reeeeally nice if i had rented number two first. It's not a must, but it's a good idea.

I caught up on Jekyll on BBCA. I'm not sure if BBCA rawks so much because American TV largely sucks or if it just does because it does. Either way, we win!

We went on a trek to Pilot Mountain. I will post pics tonight.

I rented Hot Fuzz. If you are like me and tend not to make it to some of the awesome movies while they're still in the theater, you should make this a priority rental. It has a fair amount of British swearing, a surprising amount of grue, references Point Break and Bad Boys 2 a number of times, and all of that works in a remarkably hilarious way.

I did manage a short Tech Stew cast, solo this go 'round due to someone else having a social life (and no he didn't call first).

I also managed to make it on The Political Ride though not the Religious one. Next week I'm planning to make it to all three.

Doug at Nerds With Kids brought us this little gem:

and says it best.

the trailer and posters for this train wreck seem to indicate that the movie has taken the concept of three guys on helium singing pop songs and made it worse. That's gotta be some kind of scientific breakthrough.

You should really check out his site. It does indeed rock the hizzy.

So I caught the end of the 1960 version of H. G. Wells Time Machine. It's been far too long since I read the book (if, in fact, I have) so I've no idea how close it stuck, but at the end George returns to the future to build a new civilization with the Eloi and his beloved. His friend Filby hears the time machine leaving and rushed in to see...nothing. It seems that George has taken nothing with him back to the future (hmmmm good name for a time travel movie title) until that is Filby notices three books missing from a shelf. He doesn't know which ones and asks the housekeeper "Which three books would you have taken?"

Sooooo, assuming you were to travel to the future and try and build a civilization with a group of really fit and attractive folks that were pretty much completely naive, what would you have taken? It has to be three actual books. Much like Netflix a trilogy counts as three separate books, if, however, it is ordinarily sold as one book that's acceptable. Remember that these are books that you wish to build a civilization on. This is not a "desert island" question. Also, assume that zero other books survive.

at being a blogger and NaNoWriMo-er. No writing of any kind this weekend. I'm flying to California on bidness Wednesday and hope to get some writing done at some point between then and Friday when I return. We'll see.

Food for thoughts:

I think Hillary crying sexism is pretty funny, but is she right when she intimates that being sexist in this country is easier than being a racist? I think so.

Olympians won't be able to carry any religious items into the Olympic village in China. I'm not surprised, I'm not even angry. I'm something I'm just not sure what.

The writers strike hurts good shows and helps crap (reality) shows. I'm not a big fan of unions and strikes and in this case I think that if writers are so worried about their monetary future I think that they should be creating it instead of clinging to DVD sales. Still they are in some sense fighting the power and so rock on with your bad selves.

The JLA movie will rawk hard as will Iron Man. Don't pinch me.

Why do people inist on building houses where they know they will burn down/blow away?

TTFN

Freakin awesome this is! HT to Ben and Chud.com for pointing this out. I once had my doubts about this movie, but every drib and drab that I see points to the fact that this just might be not only good, but also great.

Okay so I've finally seen the Dark Knight trailer and it's really good. For some reason it's not grrrrreat, but seeing Heath Ledger in The Makeup and Batman in motion again did whet my appetite for the movie. The greatness factor may be somewhat diminished by it being on a small LCD panel and not the theater, or maybe I'm just tired. It is a really good trailer.

If the last several months is any indication I may not actually make it to the theater to watch a movie that I really, REALLY want to see, but hey anything's possible.

ht to Sorro/Forro

Ooooooh yeah... Looking forward to this.

I saw Stardust (2007) on DVD over the holiday. I'm a pretty big fan of Gaiman and though I've never read the book this was based on I had much anticipation that this would be good I wasn't familiar with the director though I'd heard good things about Layer Cake. I went in pretty blind overall. The only thing that I kept hearing were references to Princess Bride. As that happens to be one of my faves I took the comparisons with a grain of salt.

Give it a listen. It's fairly short.

It's been a while since I did one of Janet's "Tell It To Me Tuesday"s. This one caught me.

What are the most disturbing films you have ever seen and what, in your opinion, made them so disturbing?

My answer sprang instantly to mind. It's 8MM. No it wasn't Cage's acting. I'll be honest, not a lot from the film stuck with me so I couldn't tell you how good or bad his perf was. In case you don't remember, it's about a private investigator who's been hired to find out if a snuff film is real or not. Snuff films (pornography where one of the participants is killed for real) are the stuff of urban legend. Teh movie is all about Tom Welles' (Cage) descent into the world of darkness.

Two quotes, both from Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) really speak to me. "If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you." and "There are some things that you see, and you can't unsee them." Without getting into too much personal detail I'll just say that I know how true these statements are and for that reason this movie really got me.

No other movie I can think of really got to me, except maybe Saw. Gore porn disturbs me no so much because I get physically ill (though both it and Planet Terror did make me queasy), but because there's a market for it.

YouTube - Mum's the Word is a short film by an old buddy from CHUD and teh Internets. Check it out. It's more than a bit dark, but awesome for such a short piece.

It's REALLY short and is pretty much teh definition of teaser, but go watch the Star Trek trailer on Yahoo! Movies. Also JJ Abramshas a heart. Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He got this email:

JJ Abrams wrote: Dear Randy --

Hi there -- I'm JJ Abrams, director of the new Star Trek movie.
I read about you and your condition, and ALSO your affinity for things Trek.

So, I just wanted to put the invitation out there -- that if you had
any desire to be in the film (can't promise you role as CAPTAIN,
but... we could do SOMETHING!), it would be my honor and pleasure.

The last thing I want to do is intrude, so feel free not to reply --
but I wanted to make sure you knew that, if you are willing and able,
the door is wide open.

I hope that your treatments are going well and that we get to meet one day.
Best,

JJ

He got a line and a uniform. That's just awesome.

So the above (slightly blurry) cheesecake came from Chocolata, a chocolate bar (heh) down here in the Woodlands where I've been for a couple of days of training. I'd say it's representative of yesterday's sensory overload. It's a chocolate cheesecake topped with bananas, Nutella, and powdered sugar (and more Nutella). I don't even want to think of how many calories I consumed in just this one desert. This was after having dinner and a couple of beers at 221B Baker Street.

Oooooh, the beers. Okay, if you're a beer snob this may annoy you. If it does, well I guess you'll live. The first was a "Black Castle", half Guinness/half Newcastle. It was good. The topper though and a beautiful thing indeed was the "Snakebite". It was Guinness floated on top of what I'm thinking was Woodchuck Pear Cider. Looooovely No other word for it. These works of beer art/science/mixology accompanied three great little mini-burgers with home made chips.

I needed all of this rib-stickingly good food, beer, and chocolate because I had witnessed something that blew me away. I saw Cloverfield. No, that's not right. I experienced Cloverfield. This isn't a movie you watch, it's a movie that rolls over you, stomps you flat, wrings you out. It's not the greatest film ever made. Truthfully it's a bit gimmicky. Blair Witch did it first (that I know of). Cloverfield, however, did it better. I won't tell you any more than that. Okay that's a bit of a lie. I do need to mention that this is the only movie I've seen in this decade that I can remember that caused me to stomp my feet, wring my hands, anything to bleed some tension out. When it was over I didn't really want to get up, almost couldn't. I was literally shaking. Now let me tell you that this isn't so much because the acting was fantastic (it was good though) or that the story blew me away (we've all seen very similar stories). It was because this movie overloaded my sight, hearing and yes even touch. I was a wreck. So, if you consider this a ringing endorsement, then go see it. If you suffer from motion sickness or don't like loud noises or bright flashes, do NOT see this.

I'll quite likely be seeing this again. Let me know what you think.

Okay so I watched the Super Bowl last night and for those of you that didn't you missed a good game, but more importantly you missed a good Iron Man trailer. YouTube - Iron Man Superbowl Spot

Also, I didn't even know that there was a wolf man movie coming out, much less that there were issues. Now according to IGN, Joe Johnston will be directing it. This makes me excited (for a prospect I was heretofore clueless about). For those of you who don't know, JJ directed Hidalgo (droool), October Sky (good flick), Jumanji, and The Rocketeer.

This movie will star Benicio Del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins. It starts shooting in March with a budget of $100mil. As a Mummy fan I'm all for remaking of the classics, so long as it doesn't utterly suck (shut up Miro)

And speaking od Del Toros JoBlo says that Guillermo is in "official talks to direct the two back-to-back installments of THE HOBBIT". This is somethink I heard about recently (or not so recently) and didn't blog about for some silly reason.

The studios have already set a 2009 start date for the movies, which have been budgeted at $150 million a piece (wowsers). Sam Raimi was an early rumored name for the directing gig after it became clear that Jackson would be too busy to return as director. But it became clear to fans (and obviously studio heads) that del Toro was the man for the job.

Of course all of this hinges on the writers' strike getting resolved. Already having a start date without nailing down silly things like writers, scripts, and directors? Interesting. I concur that GdT is one good man for this job. Of his body of work I've only seen Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Blade 2 and while not the best of the bunch apparently I'm totally thinking that this thing is gonna look AWESOME. And with PJ in the back and some of the original actors on board I can't imagine that the rest of it will suck. But you better hurry cause Sir Ian be gettin' old.

ht to hollywoodborn.

I've been keeping one ear to the ground on the live action G.I. Joe movie that's coming out on '09. There are more than a few movies that have come out or are coming out that have origins around the time of my childhood and so far they're going well. I enjoyed the Transformers movie, all of the Spider Man movies, and the Iron Man and Indiana Jones movies look promising. So can the Joe movie work? I think just maybe.

I've been checking out IESB and according to a recent posting Destro Has Been Re-Cast! Chris Eccleston, who played Dr. Who and the invisible dude on Heroes, will be donning the metal mask. Dennis Quaid will play General Hawk. Ray Park is filling out the Snake Eyes suit. That all sounds pretty good. The interview with the producer put some thematic questions to bed. And hey, if they screw it up completely, where's the harm?

In unrelated but still movie news, Rob Zombie may be directing a new Conan film. I had my reservations, but to be honest I haven’t actually seen any of Zombie's work and there are certainly enough horror elements in the original to make this an interesting possibility. No word on who would strap on the sword. It would need to be a big old wrassler type (and as much as I like The Rock, he's too purty).

Ben said that he'd like to see Pixar do OG pulp fiction like Flash Gordan/Conan. I could get on board with that. Don't think it could happen, but who knows?

So what properties would you like to see developed and who needs to handle it/star in it?