Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

It’s an Outrage! Ugh.

I hope like Hell Tim gets sees some kind of damn good payday out of this.

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Land of the Lost — All crassness, no comedy. I think Beavis and Butthead were hired to do the script punch-up.  The previews made it look like this would be a somewhat family friendly film, but with all the smarmy innuendo and drug references, it turned out to be the year’s worst movie with the kids.

But on the plus side, it was a drive-in double feature with Star Trek again.  Youngest fell asleep (predictably) and oldest got confused when “the old guy” showed up.  (Take note, producers, when trying to shoehorn Shatner into the next one!)  I’m happy they wanted to see it at all though.

My youngest told me in the car a few weeks back that she “doesn’t like Fantasy”.  Dragons, wizards, all that jazz that she says “could never happen”.  (This was a sad moment for me as a sci-fi geek dad.)  :(  When I asked her whether she thought a talking sponge and his starfish friend could really have all those adventures under the sea, she said “That’s not fantasy, that’s comedy!”  Guess I still have a lot to learn about genres….

=D

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Tom Hanks looked around at all the exposition.  “Gee, there sure is a lot of exposition here,” he said, to no one in particular.

Then, because no one was listening the first time, he found some people and repeated it while standing near them.

Later, he picked up some of the exposition and used it to wipe the drool from his intended audience’s collective chin.  “I’m wiping the drool from their collective chin because I think they are so stupid they need every thing repeated dozens of times before they get it,” he said, dabbing at the audience’s chin drool with some exposition he found laying around.

When the required two hours of cinematic exposition had elapsed,  an important old fart in red teleported (apparently) to the Swiss Guard’s computer room long enough to watch some good old fashioned expositiony video.  “That there is some good old fashioned expositiony video,” the old man said, as he watched the expositiony video, which was both good and old fashioned.  “I must now teleport back to the Sistine Chapel, so I can glare sternly at the guy who was doing bad things on the expositiony video.  Thank goodness he walks so slowly.”

Then the important old fart in red teleported back to the Sistine Chapel, so he could be there in time to glare sternly when the guy who had been doing bad things on the expositiony video showed up. “When the guy who walks so slowly gets here, glare sternly guys,” he said to the other old farts in red, perhaps envisioning a Catholic version of the Care Bear Stare (but sternlier and glarier).  “I just saw him doing bad things on the expositiony video.”

A few minutes later, the movie ended.  But Tom Hanks did not notice because he was too busy loving on the exposition.  So he stuck around for another twenty minutes or so to  explain what happened.  “I sure do love me some exposition,” he said, lovingly loving on the expositiony exposition.

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Up till the last half hour or so, Terminator Salvation is a perfectly enjoyable, action-filled, maybe even compelling movie.  Not expecting much in the way of character development or theme, I was pleasantly surprised to find more of each than I bargained for. Not a masterpiece of drama by any stretch, but better than expected pathos for its class.  Not to be outdone by Star Trek, Terminator Salvation even manages to punch more than a few nostalgic buttons, and in a favorable and not all that ham-fisted a sort of way.  I could spoil it bigtime in this regard, but that particular spoiler would be pointless.

Then the credulity bubble popped.  By “credulity bubble popped” I mean I laughed harder than I ever have at any comedy.  It starts with some quibbly implausibilities around the behavior of metal under extremes of heat and cold.  Nothing here to be ashamed of–the preceding movies did far more to make Lady Science their bitch in this regard than this edition even dreams of. But then it goes off into crazyland.

You see, right after their helicopter successfully flies a half mile from the NUCLEAR EXPLOSION (EMP means nothing anymore, donchaknow?)  Ahem, as I was saying:  Right after they fly away from the nuke explosion, they proceed

to

perform

a

battlefield

heart

transplant.

Um.  You read that right. Battlefield heart transplant. When was the last time ANYONE in this brave new world was in Med School again?  And did I mention they were in the middle of nowhere, with no blood or supplies?  And that it’s a transplant from which the patient is awake and monologuing before the helicopter takes back off again?  Hoo boy!

Oh, poor, poor movie franchise people.  You had me up till then.  There is much I can forgive, but you took it a bit too far.

Now, even the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull people are mocking you.

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

1) Star Trek - A lot of fun.  Refreshing treatment that respects the original, and gives it a modern, lived-in feeling.  Hooray!  It seemed like they got over the whole cashless economy thingy, which always bugged me.  Loved the focus on character-based humor, and it was nice to see some action and brashness too.  Romulans didn’t come across as alien to me at all, alas, but that’s a small complaint.  I think it was probably a conscious ploy to keep things accessible and broaden the audience.  Better than Wolverine, if you ask me.  By at least a letter grade.  The GI Joe preview, unfortunately, dampened my enthusiasm for seeing this movie.  Kind of feel a nostalgia-rape coming on.  (So I picked up the Elfquest 1-5  in paperback to buffer the damage.) Transformers preview looked fairly blah as well.

2) Resident Evil 4 (Wii) - 43 hours of playing over a 2 year time period.  Meh. What a time suck.  Killing zombies is always fun, but I got wore out on the mechanics of the game.  The Merchant’s voice began to grate on my nerves, and the whole idea of some dude hanging out around every zombie-infested corner to sell or upgrade weapons was pretty damn laughable.  Not in any kind of rush to play more Resident Evil any time soon, that’s for sure. But it was fun enough while it lasted, I suppose.

3) Extreme Paranormal - A friend from CT has landed a show!  Nathan is one of the hosts of popular paranormal podcast “The Ghost Man and Demon Hunter Show”. Here’s the pitch:

“In “Extreme Paranormal” – Shaun, Nathan, and Jason are irreverent paranormal explorers who investigate chilling local legends, attempting to seek the truth by provoking spirits. Unlike other paranormal investigators, they put themselves directly in harm’s way – taunting ghosts, summoning the dead and daring the demonic to attack.

“Extreme Paranormal” gives rabid paranormal fans the ride they’ve always wanted: the chance to follow a team that dares to challenge legends, curses, and hauntings by actually attempting to provoke paranormal activity.”

I’ll be TiVoing A&E this October for sure!

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Based on the previews and commercials, it’d be easy to mistake Observe and Report for a comedy.  Seth Rogen and a wacky supporting cast having a ball poking fun at that most blue-collared of working class Americans: the mall ninja security guard. And don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of funny moments in this movie, even more than one flavor of funny: awkward-funny, character-funny, gross-funny, yada yada.

Despite the Hollywood feel of the acting and camerawork, this movie shows its true colors about 40% of the way through, when it shifts rather jarringly from a slick amusement that mocks the inflated opinions some mediocre people have of themselves into a indie-film tragedy about mental illness and truly harmful self-delusion.  And you know what?  To the extent that the movie does this, it works.  Even with its tongue in cheek homages to The Dark Knight and every other iconic movie about the badass hero who has to work outside the system to bring a dirty world into alignment with his ends-justifies-the-means (but only if they’re really really good ends) moral code.

Taken on the surface, Observe and Report seems like it shares a “vigilantism and belief in real life Joseph Campbell heroic arcs are for nutballs” theme with Watchmen. Scratch deeper and the theme becomes more about the myth Hollywood loves to force-feed us about how mediocrity can overcome any obstacle, given the right montage.  But what it’s really about are the dangers of believing in yourself too much, with the potentially discomforting use of a bipolar “high” and substance abuse as plot vehicles.

Ironically, the indie-film stylings lose out to Hollywood again at the end, resulting in a fatally flubbed finale.  This movie had the capacity to be… not quite great, but at least solidly notable; if only they hadn’t lost their nerve and let the theme go by the wayside in the very last moments. The movie called for a tragic ending, or ANYTHING BUT a “validation” ending for Ronnie (Seth Rogen).   Instead, after all this buildup of thematic tension over Ronnie’s increasingly scary frame of mind and faux recovery, we get something more like Falling Down, but played for laughs and with Michael Douglas getting medals at the end for his pure-hearted attention to civic duty.

Overall, this movie is an experiment that didn’t quite fail and yet didn’t quite succeed either.  It thinks it’s one thing and doesn’t want to admit to itself that it’s something else entirely.  Fitting, that.

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Now you tell me there’s going to be a Jonah Hex adaptation, too?!

Brolin as Hex … meh.  I’m going to give him benefit of the doubt for now.

But John Malkovich as the baddie?! ?

This could be good.  Haven’t seen much to giveaway what supernatural element will be in play, if any.

And speaking of Solomon Kane, looks like they are done.  Now it’s all over but the waiting.

Now if only my other major fictional mancrush would get his movie on.