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10,000 BC -- More like 10,000 D-Minus

  • Mar. 10th, 2008 at 12:40 AM
Whaler
10,000 BC - the first 10 minutes (mastodon hunt) and the last 30 (pyramids being built) have some neat visuals, but not enough to save this film from its second rate homage-to-Hyboria roots. I think the most annoying part was how the old wise woman hundreds of miles away in the tundra kept an eye on the action of our Protag and company; her unintentionally funny reaction shots to every little setback and danger reminded me of nothing so much as the viewer response scenes in The Truman Show.

Add to all that the worst sort of stilted dialogue cribbed from the poems at the beginning of Savage Sword of Conan--or either Groo--with every line delivered as if the year 10,000 BC was populated solely by time-traveling Bollywood hasbeens, and what you have is a recipe for disaster.

Avoid, until such time as MST3K comes back just to lampoon it.

Comments

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[info]catsparx wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 05:40 am (UTC)
but its got mastodons... pyramids... sabretooth tigers... How can the film do anything but rock with those ingredients?
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 11:59 am (UTC)
Well... do I have to mention the live action Flintstones movies?
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[info]catsparx wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 07:27 pm (UTC)
Jeezus, now that sounds like something I'm glad I missed!
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[info]tithenai wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 06:16 am (UTC)
I giggled over the fact that between the time I read the post and decided to comment, you'd dropped the film a whole letter-grade.

It was a movie created during the Writers' Strike. What can we say. Although I am surprised to hear there was any speaking at all -- from the trailers I've seen I thought it was just going to be grunting and meaningful looks.
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 11:49 am (UTC)
from the trailers I've seen I thought it was just going to be grunting and meaningful looks.

I think that was exactly how the director communicated with the cast and crew.

The C minus originally up was me grading on a curve. Then I decided screw that! We'll have some standards on this LJ! :D

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[info]nick_kaufmann wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 02:25 pm (UTC)
It was created during the writers' strike?
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[info]tithenai wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 06:06 pm (UTC)
That's what the BBC said... They were commenting on it a few days ago. Although now you have me doubting my memory. *goes to dig things up*
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[info]nick_kaufmann wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 06:08 pm (UTC)
That strikes me as impossible. The strike was only 100 days long. There's no way they could have cast, filmed and CGIed this movie in that amount of time.
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[info]tithenai wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 06:26 pm (UTC)
Gah, I'm a moron -- you're totally right. This is what the BBC said:

This film was shot before the writers’ strike but there’s so little meaningful dialogue in ‘10,000 BC’ it’s the kind of film that Hollywood might be making had the strike gone on much longer – heavy on action and special effects, and not much need for elaborate language.

*hangs head in shame*

In my defense, I'll say that, um. ...Casablanca was shot in a week? *crawls back under her rock*
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[info]buymeaclue wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 11:49 am (UTC)
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I feel like my head is going to explode every time I see the preview. Mastodons! Sabre tooths! Wait...architecture? Was that a dino? WTF?
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 11:56 am (UTC)
Did I mention that they build you all up for raptors in the jungle, and then....

OSTRICHES ATTACK! GIANT, BLOODTHIRSTY OSTRICHES!!!

More than once I had to suppress my snickering, and not because the movie was making with the ha-has on purpose.
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[info]biomekanic wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 01:57 pm (UTC)
Soooo... was this set in the new world? Because Diatryma's (sp) are new world animals as I recall.
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 02:58 pm (UTC)
Of course! How else to explain the CORN they are given at the end of the movie by a tribe of proto-African Bushmen?
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[info]neutronjockey wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 12:11 pm (UTC)
I've been waiting for an F-List review on this. Thank you. I almost went to see it after viewing the trailer candy --- thankfully I saved the iMax fees for beer.
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 12:22 pm (UTC)
thankfully I saved the iMax fees for beer.

Then my work here is done. :)
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[info]byronstarr wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 01:52 pm (UTC)
I've had a bad feeling about this film from the get-go. It had possibilities, but everytime I saw a clip or read something about it I could faintly yet distinctly smell cheese.
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[info]biomekanic wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 02:01 pm (UTC)
I plan on enjoying this turkey once it hits one of the cable movie networks that come bundled with my service - i.e. one of the non-premium channels.

As for MST3K, it is back. There's Mike Nelson's project, Rifftrax ( how do you get around getting the rights to a bad movie? You don't. You just release a riffing soundtrack of your own to go along with it.
Also, Joel and crew are back with Cinematic Titanic, MST3K without the puppets.
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 03:04 pm (UTC)
How cool! I really missed MST3K. Have to check that out!
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[info]nick_kaufmann wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 02:24 pm (UTC)
Every time I saw the trailer -- and I saw it a lot -- I thought, "This is going to suck hugely." Nice to see my instincts are still spot on, though it wasn't a tough call knowing Roland Emmerich was involved.
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[info]lonfiction wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 03:09 pm (UTC)
Your fail-sense is made of win. :)
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[info]nick_kaufmann wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 03:10 pm (UTC)
My fail-sense was tingling all through the trailer!
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[info]biomekanic wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 05:07 pm (UTC)
I kept looking for the video game it was based on, as it smelled strongly of Uwe Boll.
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