Tag Archives: Repostathon

The end is nigh…

Posted on by
Reply

No, this isn’t a review of 2012, or any of the numerous other apocalyptic blockbusters that are foisted on us every year. Nor the Watchmen Ultimate Cut, which has that famous phrase of doom and gloom plastered over its back cover. No, this is simply an observation (and little more than that, I’m afraid) that there are a mere 31 days of 2009 left. Indeed, 31 days of this decade.

Cripes.

So, with such limited time remaining, my yearly goal is once again under threat. Long gone are the days of reaching 100 films in September, t’would seem. But fear not, faithful reader, for this time last year I’d only made it to 81, meaning I’m just one behind myself (#80 was Transformers 2. Look, there’s a review already! Isn’t it impressive that I reviewed it on Blu-ray before it was even in the shops? … What do you mean “no”?) — and last year I did indeed make it to 100… just.

20 films, 31 days. Considering my average so far (7.3 films per month) I should only make it to 87. Well, 87.3. But, what was that? Yes, I’m only one behind last year and I did it then (did I say that already?)

Heck, maybe I’ll even push it to 101 this year.

[I didn’t.]

2009’s summary posts will be republished in November.

Alien vs Predator – Part 3

Posted on by
Reply

Having already published my thoughts on the two franchise starters and the remaining films in the Alien series (crikey, has it really been three months since that?), this is the concluding entry in my coverage of the Alien, Predator and Alien vs Predator franchises.

This time, I’ve covered the sole Predator sequel (to date [2015 note: times change]), and how the franchises fared as they came together to move into the new millennium. Be warned: things only get worse. Much, much worse.

2009 #17
Predator 2

“I’ve talked about the Alien sequels dramatically switching genres, but Predator 2 leaves them looking as if they couldn’t be more alike. Where Predator is a behind-enemy-lines/covert mission/jungle/war actioner, Predator 2 is an urban drugs crime police, erm, actioner… though both with a sci-fi twist, obviously.” – Read more…

2009 #18
AVP: Alien vs. Predator
(Extended Version)

“Anderson manages to amalgamate a popular and acclaimed film franchise, its almost-as-beloved stablemate, and an equally popular and acclaimed comics & video game series, and then decimate all three in one 85-minute (without credits) swoop.” – Read more…

2009 #19
AVPR – Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

“By not withholding the monsters, the characters’ dull lives become even duller. One of the Alien series’ strengths was in making the extraordinary (space travel!) seem mundane (space truckers), but AVPR makes the ordinary seem mundane, and that’s no achievement at all; in fact, that’s a great big failure.” – Read more…


And that’s it.

Except not for long, because at some point I’ll surely share another three-film entry covering the various extended versions of the three Alien sequels. And then, of course, Robert Rodriguez is working on a Predator continuation/reboot, supposedly still called Predators, not to mention the much-discussed Ridley Scott reboot/remake/prequel of Alien. Each project has good people involved, but it remains to be seen if any of them can pull it off.

Still, you can’t get worse than AVPR, right?

Though, they said that about AVP…

“Not because it is easy, but because it is hard”

Posted on by
Reply

The fact that man has been to the Moon is undoubtedly one of the most significant achievements of the last century. This pair of documentaries cover the journey there in different but complementary ways.

2009 #40
In the Shadow of the Moon

“The telling is dominated by the words of the actual astronauts, describing their personal experiences and feelings. Rather than following a mission-by-mission chronology it mixes all their stories together, thereby telling the tale of a journey to the Moon and exploring its surface only once.” – Read more…

2009 #42
For All Mankind

“aims to recreate the feeling and experience of travelling to the moon, not the hard facts of who went when and how it was done. As such it is both beautiful and artistic, featuring stunning photography that has been sensitively edited and scored.” – Read more…


Also note The Right Stuff, the fact-based drama that tells the story of the men who paved the way for the Apollo missions.

It’s halfway through 2009!

Posted on by
Reply

“But it’s September!” I hear you cry in response to my patently ludicrous title. “That’s not halfway through the year by any reasonable measure!” No, it isn’t — but it is (if you haven’t already guessed) the point at which I’ve seen 50 new films in 2009 (at last!); the halfway mark (obviously) of my annual goal. Yep, I’m more behind than Usain Bolt running in the wrong direction.

But still, I’ve had my reasons, and thankfully most of them are done with (cheerio dissertation!) Now I intend to launch a concerted effort to make up the remaining 50 and hit 100 before the year’s out, an aim I’ve yet to fail. (To be fair, I’ve only tried twice.)

But you know what they say about good intentions — they litter the path to not having seen enough films in a year.

Do You Wanna Date James Cameron’s Avatar?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s always fun to mush news stories together for potentially comedic effect.*

So when I heard, on the same day, of the expected success of the trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar (or, as I’ve taken to calling it, Phantom Menace 2: This Time Everyone’s Jar Jar) and the surprising success of The Guild’s music video for (Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar… well, I couldn’t help seeing what would happen were the two to collide…


* I’ll leave it to you to decide if this example is successful.

July 2009

Posted on by
1

100 Films has moved…

No, not the blog — just me.

Yes, it is a dastardly inaccurate title; a lacklustre — nay, pathetic — excuse for a gag; or, perhaps more accurately, a weak hook for a long-delayed update. And it was going to be called “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, a Mark Twain misquote that I’d just been researching, hence words like “dastardly” and “nay”.

So, one month on from my last post, and at around 58% of the way through 2009 I find the actions toward my titular aim floundering this year — never mind the last post, it’s been over a month since I actually watched a film. I have my reasons — well, excuses — but as I’m really my only taskmaster I shall keep them to myself. Unless you want to know the mundanities of moving house, my new TV, or our new ickle doggy-woggy? (You don’t.)

I’m at 38 films, then, which is 10 worse than this point last year. As regular readers with strong memories may recall, the end of last year saw a bit of a rush to reach 100 in the dying days of December (11 new films in the final six days, I believe it was), so being ten behind already doesn’t bode too well. (The fact that I’m 31 behind this point in 2007 doesn’t bear thinking about.)

I could witter on with precise how-many-films-per-day-to-catch-up statistics-like things (I know, I normally do), but instead I shall probably twitter on about it at some point (do you see what I did there? Almost as good as the title, isn’t it) and… well, maybe I’ll even actually watch some films. Perish the thought.

Alien vs Predator – Part 2

Posted on by
Reply

Five weeks ago (crikey, time flies) I began my series of reviews of the Alien, Predator and Alien vs Predator franchises with my thoughts on Alien: The Director’s Cut and the original Predator, both of which I’d seen before. Over the past few days I’ve moved on to the remaining Alien films, all of which I viewed in their original theatrical cuts and all of which were new to me.

Here’s a handy summary of what you may’ve missed, then, if you somehow had something better to do on a sunny summer weekend than check blogs every day.

2009 #14
Aliens

“Where Alien is a Horror Movie — but in space — Aliens is a War Movie — but in space. The central characters are a team of marines, as opposed to the original’s ordinary guys; where the first film’s design was dark, shadowy and oppressive, here it’s all gleaming tech, tanks and guns and spaceships and the like; and, just to underline the point, the score is full of military drums.” – Read more…

2009 #15
Alien³

“Even if in some ways 3 combines the first two — single Alien, claustrophobia, unarmed heroes; but there are lots of them, most with experience of killing — it adds enough variety, especially stylistically… it soon turns dark, dirty and decrepit, abandoning both the the military sheen of Aliens and the old tanker grime of Alien.” – Read more…

2009 #16
Alien Resurrection

“the most notable differences are its black humour, where the tastes of both [writer] Whedon and director Jeunet make their mark, and how grotesque it is — almost two extremes walking hand-in-hand. The deformed, perverted Ripley clones; the Hybrid; the Ripley-Alien sex scene — there’s nothing like this in the other films, and that’s a grand thing.” – Read more…


In the third and final part of this series I’ll be setting my sights on the allegedly-underrated Predator 2 and the much-hated pair of AVP and AVPR.

Alien vs Predator – Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

If you happen to keep an eye on my coming soon page or have been following me on Twitter, you may’ve noticed that I recently watched all eight films in the Alien, Predator and Alien vs Predator franchises, the majority of them for the first time.

As I’m sure you know, I normally only review films I’ve not seen before. In the interests of being thorough, however (and following in the footsteps of Casino Royale, Cube, and the first three… well, really, all the Star Wars films), I’ve also reviewed the only two I’d seen before — perhaps unsurprisingly, Alien and Predator themselves.

2009 #13a
Alien: The Director’s Cut

“Alien feels unchanged. It’s been said many times before but, first and foremost, it’s a horror movie — it just happens to be one set in space with plenty of sci-fi trappings… Whatever effect Scott’s trims may have had, they haven’t made it any less effective in this regard” – Read more…

2009 #16a
Predator

“it’s an entertaining war flick that turns into a sci-fi/action/horror skirmish thingy — but it doesn’t have the same finesse that imbues Alien and its sequel.” – Read more…


Reviews for the remaining six films won’t be too far behind.

Sit-rep (or, ‘In want of a better title’)

Posted on by
Reply

The start of April — which I know is nine days away, before you think I’m barking — marks the end of the year’s first quarter in just about every way possible (meaning in months, weeks and days). Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that the same will be said for this year’s attempt at 100 films.

To be on target I should have seen 25 films by that point (obviously). Unfortunately, I have only reached 9. (There’s almost a nice bit of symmetry there, as it’s nine days away… except if I’d decided to post this a day earlier or a day later that would be nonexistent, so it’s utterly meaningless.) On top of that, many of those I have seen remain unreviewed, and the last review I posted was hardly of high quality. Or much quality at all, really. It’s been so long since I’ve seen some of these that the reviews will be completed merely from quick notes made at the time and fading memories. Hopefully they won’t be quite as weak as that Some Like It Hot one though…

Once again, I won’t bore you with the reasons and excuses for this shortfall — though there are many readily available should anyone, for reasons known only unto themselves, actually be interested. What is almost worthy of note, however, is that today is the first day of a five-week holiday for me (the perks of still being a lazy student, yes); and while I still have work to be getting on with (yes, us lazy students do still do that. Sometimes), I’m afforded more time to… well, catch up on TV. But then films.

And, from this weekend, I’ll have near-exclusive access to a pleasantly large television — much, much bigger than the one I’m usually lumbered with — for two whole weeks. There are certain never-seen DVDs that are screaming for the chance to be watched on it. Plus The Dark Knight as close to IMAX as I’m likely to get for a while. And a chance to re-evaluate Quantum of Solace now that it’s on DVD. But I digress…

A definite chance to catch up, that’s the point. Of course, as I’m already 14 films behind where I should be as of today (worked out with some fiendishly complex maths, that), the ‘catching up’ might be more ‘damage limitation’…

Watchmen 2: a couple of suggestions

Posted on by
Reply

After finding Total Film’s humourous suggestions for a Watchmen sequel a little lacking in the funniness department, I thought I’d jot down a few myself. It doesn’t mean they’re actually any better, obviously, but it kept me amused for a few minutes.

Betcha can’t spot all the references…

The Watchmen Strike Back
In which the Watchmen form a rebel alliance to fight crime and try to repeal the Keene Act! Sounds depressingly plausible…

The Watchmen: Part II
Split between shocking events of the present day (which, for the viewer, is still the past) and flashbacks to the beginnings in an even-more-past New York. Oh, wait, that’s the first film…

Watchmen: The Superhero Who Shagged Me
The first one deconstructed the genre, the second spoofs it! Hey, it can’t be any worse than Superhero Movie… probably…

Watchmen Supremacy
Modern-day version that induces motion sickness.

2 Watch 2 Men
In which the least memorable lead from the first film goes on some redeeming mission for no reason other than more ‘cool’ action sequences. Stars Silk Spectre, but no one else.

Watchmen 2: Judgement Day
In which the bad guy turns out to be a good guy and an implausible nuclear explosion destroys a major US city. Oh, wait…

Watchmens
“Get away from her you bitch!”, screams Nite Owl as Ozymandias tries to steal his woman.

Watchmen to the Future Part II
Dr Manhattan takes everyone to the future, and then back into the events of the first film, and into the past, and things get mucked up, and the present starts getting erased, and then the future’s different too, and it barely makes sense but it’s still pretty good. And then it ends with them in the Wild West.

Watchmen Reloaded
In which things get even more convoluted and pretentious. Most likely option, then. No need to do the rubbish sex scene set to inappropriate music in the sequel this time though.

Watchmen: The Two Towers
I think leaving it at that is insensitive enough.

W2 (or, in the US ad campaign only, W2: Watchmen United)
Bigger, better, and even more focussed on The One Everyone Liked (i.e. Rorschach). Refuses to resolve his plot line, but then doesn’t do it in a third film (directed by Uwe Boll as Snyder goes on to relaunch V For Vendetta) because Watchmen Origins: Rorschach is scheduled for a couple of years later.

The Dark Nite Owl
Just had to get that one in there.