’21 Jump Street’ is Surprisingly Not Terrible, Almost Makes Me Pee

The orig­i­nal  21 Jump Street was one of those ‘80s shows that seemed really cool at the time but look­ing back on it nowa­days you’re embar­rassed you ever liked it. It’s worth watch­ing for the glimpse at Johnny Depp’s early, pre-superstardom career and per­haps as a fun stroll down Regret­table ‘80s Fash­ion Lane, but not much else.

So when I heard about the new 21 Jump Street movie I wasn’t exactly quiv­er­ing with antic­i­pa­tion in my sparkly leo­tard. If not for the recent over­abun­dance of pseudo-nostalgic reboots of pop­u­lar TV shows from my youth, I might have been a lit­tle more excited about it, but my ini­tial reac­tion was a full-fledged “meh.”

After see­ing the film last night and laugh­ing so hard I almost peed myself (seri­ously), I’m com­pletely rethink­ing that position.

Like the premise of the orig­i­nal show, 21 Jump Street is about a spe­cial unit of young cops who go under­cover to fight youth-related crime. In this case it’s the awesomely-named Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Chan­ning Tatum), two under­achiev­ing cops forced to go back to high school in order to bring down a syn­thetic drug ring, with the fun twist that they used to be ene­mies in their own high school days.

Have you ever seen  The Other Guys ? Well  21 Jump Street  is kind of like that except set in a high school and Ice Cube is there to make it more awe­some and uncomfortable.

For­go­ing the cheesy teen melo­drama that the orig­i­nal series was known for, the new 21 Jump Street is all com­edy. While Jonah Hill and Chan­ning Tatum are hilar­i­ous together, I think the real source of the com­edy is in the editing.

As fod­der for funny quotes and ani­mated GIFs, 21 Jump Street is a gold­mine.  At the cen­ter of the plot is the fic­tional syn­thetic drug HFS (short for Holy Fuck­ing Shit) which has five phases:

• Phase 1: The Giggs
• Phase 2: Trip­ping Major Ballsack
• Phase 3: Over-Falsity of Confidence
• Phase 4: Fuck Yeah Motherfucker!
• Phase 5: Asleepyness

Through­out the movie you’ll see var­i­ous char­ac­ters take the HFS drug and react accord­ingly, while help­ful on-screen title cards announce what phase you’re wit­ness­ing. It hilar­i­ous, trust me.

If you are a diehard fan of the orig­i­nal show you’ll prob­a­bly be dis­ap­pointed to know that the new film is noth­ing like it aside from its premise and the  Johnny Depp / Richard Grieco dou­ble cameo that you’ll have to wait over an hour and a half to see.

At a run­ning time of 109 min­utes, my biggest com­plaint is that the movie is too long for a goof­ball com­edy and toward the end I felt it was get­ting old. There’s a lengthy car chase scene with a run­ning gag where you keep expect­ing an explo­sion, and when it finally does hap­pen you’re just kind of like “meh,” which sums up how I felt about see­ing this film in the first place.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

6 out of 10 stars.

Why ‘Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles’ is a Terrible Idea

You’ve most likely heard by now that the  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles are about to become the Teenage ALIEN Ninja Tur­tles in the upcom­ing 2013 film pro­duced by Michael Bay.

In a video quote that has got­ten TMNT fans’ col­lec­tive panties in a bunch to the point where even ex-TMNT celebri­ties and major news out­lets are weigh­ing in on the back­lash, Bay said:

“These tur­tles are from an alien race , and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny, and com­pletely lov­able.” [Source]

As a huge TMNT fan, I’ve been furi­ous   since I heard about it  on Twit­ter, and the fact that Michael Bay has a track record of ruin­ing beloved fran­chises from our child­hoods doesn’t help.

But I under­stand that Bay is just the pro­ducer and didn’t write the ‘Ninja Tur­tles’ script, so I’m not here to bash Michael Bay specif­i­cally (at least not today). So con­sider this blog post directed at who­ever is respon­si­ble for the idi­otic, hor­ri­bly ill-conceived idea that the Tur­tles should be aliens.

Image credit:  Goon­gas­nootch  @ Techn­odrome Forums

Now that I’ve had a few days to calm my ner­drage and col­lect my thoughts, it’s time we discussed:

6 com­pletely ratio­nal rea­sons why Teenage Alien Ninja Tur­tles is a ter­ri­ble idea:

1. Their name is Teenage MUTANT Ninja Tur­tles for chris­sakes. It’s obvi­ous, I know, but let’s not over­look the basic facts, ok? Because who­ever wrote the new script sure as hell did. I guess now we know why the new film will just be called ‘Ninja Turtles.’

2. It’s a com­pletely unnec­es­sary change to one of the core ele­ments of the Turtle’s mythol­ogy. How would you feel if Spi­der­man was never bit­ten by a radioac­tive spi­der? Or if Super­man wasn’t from planet Kryp­ton? (Feel free to sub­sti­tute any of your favorite superhero’s ori­gin sto­ries here.) The Tur­tles are, and always have been, actual tur­tles  who were trans­formed into what they are by muta­gen ooze. This is an essen­tial com­po­nent of the ori­gin story that you’ll find in every incar­na­tion of TMNT, includ­ing the comics, films, TV shows, and video games.

3.  If the Tur­tles are aliens, it means they weren’t cre­ated by acci­dent.  The shock of dis­cov­er­ing the fact that they were essen­tially cre­ated by acci­dent and the result­ing strug­gle to find their place in the world is a cru­cial part of the Tur­tles’ back­story. It’s a major theme that has shaped each of the Tur­tles’ per­son­al­i­ties and story arcs in some way. Take that away and you’ve removed one of the most essen­tial dri­vers of the Tur­tles’ char­ac­ter development.

4.  It means the Tur­tles are much less unique.   “Alien race” implies there could be lots of other Tur­tles out there. If there’s sud­denly a whole home planet of Tur­tles, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles don’t really seem so spe­cial, do they? The idea of adding more Ninja Tur­tles beyond the orig­i­nal four into the Turtle­verse is an idea that TMNT co-creator Peter Laird describes on his blog as a “weak, facile, cre­atively bank­rupt idea.” Ouch. Then again, I sup­pose that’s what he gets for sell­ing the franchise.

5.  It down­plays the impor­tance of Splinter’s role in the Tur­tles’ lives.   Splinter—a rat who is of course also a mutant and not an alien—is the Tur­tles’ sen­sei, care­taker and father fig­ure who raised them since they were babies, hav­ing been mutated from the same pud­dle of ooze. Shar­ing the Tur­tles’ same fate is what gives them such a strong bond. How does Splin­ter fit into the new alien ori­gin? Would the Tur­tles still look upon him as a father if they have an alien fam­ily chill­ing back on the home planet? Is there another whole planet full of rat peo­ple?? (Again—unnecessary com­pli­ca­tions to to an ori­gin story that is already quite com­pli­cated enough.)

6. It makes the actual alien stuff in the Turtle­verse a whole lot less inter­est­ing.   Now I know some of you are sit­ting there think­ing, “But wait a minute, the Tur­tles already kind of have an alien ori­gin!” Yes, it’s true that the Turtle­verse is already rife with aliens (e.g. Krang, Tricer­a­tons, Utroms…). Even the muta­gen that trans­formed the Tur­tles is an alien sub­stance cre­ated by (wait for it…) aliens . The point is there’s already ALL KINDS of alien crea­tures, char­ac­ters, plot lines, uni­verses to draw from if they want to go that route. Do we really need to make the Tur­tles aliens too?

To sum up:

If Bay and com­pany want to put aliens in the new Ninja Tur­tles flick, I’m totally fine with that. Krang, Bee­bop and Rock­steady? Awe­some! But for God’s sake–

LEAVE THE TURTLES ALONE!!!

13 Unique Etsy Finds Inspired by ‘Labyrinth’

I was cruis­ing around on Etsy today (as I often tend to do when I have  money burn­ing a hole in my pocket) and came across some pretty awe­some hand­made cre­ations inspired by the great­est 80’s fan­tasy film,  Labyrinth.   Below is a sam­pling of the most inter­est­ing items I could find, which range from cute to creepy.

Now hurry up, because you’ve only got 13 hours left to solve the labyrinth.

Cus­tom ‘Jareth’ Doll

Sure it’s a lit­tle creepy, but kinda cute at the same time.  At least CavingInn man­aged to get the size of David Bowie’s pack­age cor­rect, which I’m sure is the pri­mary rea­son why some­one would pur­chase this one-of-a-kind Jareth doll in the first place.  Er—that is, from what I hear.

“You have no power over me!” Framed Artwork

With this framed typog­ra­phy quote from BearAn­dRo­bot, you’ll never have trou­ble remem­ber­ing this line again.

‘Sarah’ Costume

Sarah was rock­ing the puffy shirt long before Sein­feld. FaerySpell­Cre­ations made this bil­lowy  cus­tom blouse and vest inspired by Sarah’s out­fit in the film.  I rec­om­mend pair­ing it with jeans and cheap plas­tic jew­elry to get the full effect.

Adorable Stuffed ‘Ludo’

This lit­tle guy is a hand­made cre­ation of felt and fur by Pelu­dossa, who some­how man­aged to make Ludo even more adorable than he already is.

Hand Sewn ‘Wild Gang’ Plush

With one of these hand sewn fire gob­lins by Pelu­dossa , you can “chilly down with the Wild Gang” (what­ever the hell that means) until you remem­ber you’ve  got a baby brother to save.  Sadly, the stuffed ver­sion doesn’t have a remov­able head.

‘Junk Lady’ Hand­made Art Doll

The Junk Lady was one of the coolest gob­lins in the film, and hap­pens to also be one of the coolest items on this list.  For $100, JunkPunkshop will hand­craft an orig­i­nal, one-of-a-kind gob­lin hag made of poly­mer clay who car­ries around all sorts of mis­cel­la­neous house­hold objects on her back.

‘Jareth’ Pen­dant & Mas­quer­ade Pin

There’s such a sad love deep in David Bowie’s heav­ily lined and mascara’d eyes…  These beau­ti­ful jew­elry pieces by The­Black­Em­po­rium were inspired by the film’s dreamy mas­quer­ade scene.

‘Hog­gle’ Doll Knit Pattern

Knit your own vertically-challenged, anti-social gob­lin com­pan­ion with one of AprilDraven’s Hog­gle knit­ting pat­terns .  This one won’t try to poi­son you or pee in your fountain.

“‘Ello!” Worm Hand­made Ring

Now here’s a Labyrinth worm acces­sory that’s more to scale. With this adorable hand­made,  hand painted ring from Art­ByAelia, you can lit­er­ally wrap Labyrinth’s cutest char­ac­ter around your lit­tle finger.

Dis­en­chanted ‘Door Knocker’ Pin

Knock and the door will open! (Pro­vided you haven’t pissed it off.)  Be a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tional com­pan­ion with this hand sculpted gob­lin pin from froudian artist Trollflings.

‘Magic Dance’ Cat Colllar

What’s more fun than watch­ing Labyrinth ? Watch­ing Labyrinth while humil­i­at­ing your cat. You and kitty can dance magic dance in style with one of these bitchin’ cat col­lars from FurButtons.

‘Bog of Eter­nal Stench’ Scented Oil

I’m not sure I want to know what The Bog of Eter­nal Stench smells like, but for a mere $3.50 you adven­tur­ous types can pur­chase a vial of scented oil from rose­mary­grace  that smells just like…like…OH WHO CARES WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE, IT’S THE BOG OF ETERNAL STENCH!

‘Stu­pid Baby’ Pin

This hilar­i­ous Labyrinth pin by The­Car­bon­Cru­sader says it all. Now go say the magic words again.

Hon­or­able mention:

In what can only be described as the most majes­tic work of art I have ever laid eyes upon, “The Gob­lin King’s Cross­ing” is a cus­tom oil paint­ing by Uni­cor­natopia of Jareth rid­ing a uni­corn, hold­ing aloft his mighty power crys­tal while famil­iar Labyrinth dwellers look on with unabashed awe.

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ Meme is Now a Movie

One of the great­est inter­net memes of all time is now a movie.   Safety Not Guar­an­teed  is a film based on the mys­te­ri­ous real clas­si­fied ad pic­tured above, which first appeared in a weekly Dan­ish news­pa­per.  The ad was later paired with the accom­pa­ny­ing photo of a rather serious-looking young man who seems to have stepped straight out of 1986, mul­let, turtle­neck and all.  The orig­i­nal YTMND that started it all has over 1.2 mil­lion views as of Jan­u­ary 2012.

What will a movie based on an inter­net meme be like?  The film, directed by Colin Trevor­row,  is about two mag­a­zine employ­ees (Aubrey Plaza & Jake John­son) who set out on an assign­ment to find and inter­view the quirky man who placed the clas­si­fied ad seek­ing a time travel com­pan­ion (Mark Duplass).  Accord­ing to an early review in  Vari­ety ,   Safety Not Guar­an­teed is “a sci-fi-tinged odd­ball com­edy about love as the ulti­mate risky adven­ture” that fea­tures “some nice soul-searching moments along­side a steady stream of laughs.”  Indeed.

Does axl­bon­bach  (the per­son who cre­ated the orig­i­nal YTMND) deserve com­pen­sa­tion?  What about the unknown man in the photo?

I sup­pose it’s only nat­ural that the film indus­try would start min­ing the annals of the inter­net for movie ideas, since they seem to have exhausted most other resources.  Last month we heard about  Bad Ass , a movie star­ring Dany Trejo based off the ” Epic Beard Man ” viral video.  It’s hard not to feel like these types of movies are only being made to cash in on the mil­lions of hits and social media buzz these dig­i­tal curiosi­ties have gen­er­ated over time.

One of the best doc­u­men­taries I’ve seen in the last few years is a film called  Win­nebago Man , in which the film­maker sets out on a quest to find out what became of the tem­pera­men­tal, potty-mouthed RV sales­man whose unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous sales train­ing video out­takes  ended up on the inter­net  and became wildly pop­u­lar.  It was a heart­felt and fit­ting trib­ute to a sim­ple man who did not real­ize the extent of his own fame, but whose recorded moments of weak­ness gave us so much joy.  It’s doubt­ful that movies like  Bad Ass and Safety Not Guar­an­teed  have their sub­jects’ best inter­ests at heart.

Abraham Lincoln Kicking Some Undead Ass In New Vampire Hunter Image

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Not one to be con­fused with Steven Spielberg’s devel­op­ing Lin­coln project, Bekmambetov’s genre splice re-imagines our 16th pres­i­dent as a vam­pire slayer stomp­ing through the Civil War-era United States.
Via www.cinemablend.com

‘Star Wars: Uncut’ is a Fan-made Orgy of Nerds, Memes, Kittens and Light Sabers

The premise:  the orig­i­nal Star Wars movie cut into 15-second seg­ments to be re-filmed by thou­sands of fans and then care­fully edited together into an amus­ing patch­work of fan-generated footage.  The result­ing film is an awe­some retelling of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope  through the eyes and cre­ative tal­ents of Star Wars fans around the world.

Star Wars: Uncut  was the genius idea of  Casey Pugh , a 26 year old web devel­oper and (one assumes) seri­ous Star Wars fan.

“I was work­ing as a web devel­oper for Vimeo and I was doing a lot of video-based stuff, but I was also think­ing about how I could enable film­mak­ers to cre­ate either short films or feature-length films together remotely,” he says. “I bounced an idea off my friends but I had no idea it would blow up to this scale–it’s just crazy.”

Crazy or not, Star Wars: Uncut  earned Pugh and his col­lab­o­ra­tors an Emmy award (the 2010 Prime­time Emmy for Out­stand­ing Cre­ative Achieve­ment In Inter­ac­tive Media — Fic­tion, to be precise).

Despite being a diverse mashup of live-action, clay­ma­tion, stop-motion, kit­tens, hand drawn ani­ma­tions, CGI, hand pup­pets, babies, Legos,  men and women in drag, Pop­si­cle sticks, paper­craft, and prac­ti­cally every other type of style and imagery you can think of, Star Wars: Uncut  man­ages to stay true to the orig­i­nal film’s nar­ra­tive and is rec­og­niz­able to any­one who has seen it.

Most of the clips are silly, unre­hearsed videos of the viral sort (com­plete with trash can R2D2s and news­pa­per hats).  But there are also pol­ished, beautiful-looking scenes from tal­ented fans whom you can tell put forth a lot of time and effort.

The entire film was recently released to the inter­net masses and you can watch it right here:

Star Wars: Uncut  is a film made by Star Wars fans for Star Wars fans.  I promise it will be the most fun and enter­tain­ing two hours of your life.

Who wants to see an R-rated Muppet movie?

If you’re a fan of the darker side of Hen­son (Mir­ror­mask, Labyrinth, Farscape) and ever won­dered what an adult Mup­pet movie could be like, you’ll prob­a­bly be inter­ested in the upcom­ing dark com­edy Hap­py­time Mur­ders.

Well, okay, Hap­py­time Mur­ders isn’t really a Mup­pet movie.  At least not in the Ker­mit and Miss Piggy sense. But it’s being pro­duced and directed by Brian Hen­son. And it has puppets!

“Hap­py­time Mur­ders is a dark com­edy that depicts an alter­nate real­ity where pup­pets are sen­tient beings that live along­side humans. The pup­pets exist as ‘sec­ond class cit­i­zens’ to the humans, and when the cast of an 80s pup­pet TV show, ‘The Hap­py­time Gang’, begin to turn up dead, an alco­holic ex-cop pup­pet turned pri­vate detec­tive must solve the mur­ders with his human ex-partner.”

It sort of sounds like Who Framed Roger Rab­bit meets Death to Smoochy meets Cool World . The film, which was picked up by Lion­s­gate last month, is in pre-production, and could begin film­ing as early as Jan­u­ary 2011. The lat­est is that Cameron Diaz might be inter­ested in the lead role.

Source: Screen Rant

Review: Reasons to Love ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 1′

When I first learned that Warner Bros. was going to split  Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows into two movies, there was much kick­ing and scream­ing on my part.  I was not alone.  There were plenty of fans and non-fans alike who felt it was a poor deci­sion, and one that fur­ther painted Warner Bros. as greedy stu­dio execs who were try­ing to milk the Harry Pot­ter fran­chise dry.

I saw Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 last night and I am happy to report that my atti­tude has changed.  My faith in David Yates still wan­ing, I went into the movie with slightly low­ered expec­ta­tions.  But when the cred­its rolled, I walked out of the the­ater with only pos­i­tive thoughts.  Reflect­ing on the fin­ished prod­uct, I now under­stand not only why it was nec­es­sary to make two films, but also why the film­mak­ers felt it was impor­tant.  They wanted to give us a proper farewell.

Right away, the decay­ing Warner Bros. logo sets the tone: this will not be a happy movie.  Dum­b­le­dore is dead, Volde­mort and his Death Eaters have infil­trated the Min­istry of Magic, and the wiz­ard­ing world is at war.  Times are so dark that even the Mug­gles are flee­ing their homes–nowhere is safe.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have said their good­byes to Hog­warts (the warm, famil­iar school set­ting is notice­ably absent) and set out on a jour­ney to destroy the hor­cruxes: objects con­tain­ing the seven pieces of Voldemort’s soul that are the keys to his destruction.

The dan­ger is emi­nent from begin­ning to end; this is the dark­est Harry Pot­ter film yet (which should be no sur­prise to those who have read the books).  There are some gen­uinely fright­en­ing scenes and, of course, more deaths of beloved char­ac­ters.  Yet all this doom and gloom is punc­tu­ated by sur­pris­ing lit­tle moments of joy.  I found myself cheer­ing at grand entrances, for exam­ple, when Dobby bursts into Num­ber 12 Gri­mauld Place wrapped around Mundun­gus Fletcher; and at other times laugh­ing out loud like when Harry tests out the wand that Ron gives him, which unex­pect­edly shoots out a pil­lar of flame  (it’s much fun­nier than it sounds, trust me).

There were also many moments in the film that felt like a love let­ter to fans.  There was an espe­cially lovely scene where Harry coaxes a melan­choly Hermione into danc­ing with him; it was a touch­ing and fit­ting trib­ute to their seven years of almost sibling-like friend­ship.  We were also treated to an early scene where Hermione per­forms a mem­ory charm on her par­ents, know­ing she will have to leave them behind.  In the books, we never get to see Hermione’s “Mug­gle” life, so I really enjoyed this lit­tle bit.

I some­times take issue when this type of fluff is injected into books based on movies, espe­cially if they replace scenes that are more crit­i­cal to the plot, but I could not find much to com­plain about here.  Even the book’s most ten­der moments are han­dled with great care like the death of Dobby (which man­aged to make me cry) .  There are, of course, some dif­fer­ences between book and film that improve the flow and pac­ing of events, but over­all I felt Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 was a very faith­ful adap­ta­tion that cap­tured the same feel­ings of iso­la­tion and impend­ing doom.

There were some low­lights for me, how­ever.  Let’s start with Xenophilus Lovegood–I didn’t care for Rhys Ifans’ per­for­mance.  I real­ize the char­ac­ter is sup­posed to be eccen­tric, but I felt really dis­tracted by his screen-time.  Also, I love Helena Bon­ham Carter as Bel­la­trix Lestrange, but with every Harry Pot­ter movie she gets more and more ridicu­lous.  When­ever she’s on screen I feel like I’m watch­ing the Helena Bon­ham Carter show–I wish she’d tone it down a bit.  Then there was Alexan­der Desplat’s score, which was not spec­tac­u­lar, but it gets the job done.  Those are my only com­plaints, and yes, they’re nitpicky.

Visu­ally, Deathly Hal­lows is a mar­vel of film­mak­ing, from the cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the spe­cial effects.  The spells, appari­tions, fly­ing and bat­tle scenes all looked amaz­ing.   As much as I missed Hog­warts, this film makes up for its absence with breath­tak­ing nat­ural back­drops.  See­ing it on an IMAX screen was truly a mem­o­rable experience.

But as spec­tac­u­lar as part one of Deathly Hal­lows is, it’s almost a bit unfair to review it as a com­plete film.  Even at a whop­ping two hours and twenty six min­utes long, I guar­an­tee you will be dis­ap­pointed when it ends; feel­ing rather like some­one pulled the rug out from under you.  And like all good two-part movies, this one ends on a major down note.  For those won­der­ing what part of the book serves as the end­ing to this film, I will only say this: they made a very good decision.

There were so many things to love about Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows , and I am con­fi­dent it will go down as one of the best films in the Pot­ter movie fran­chise, if not the best. The only bad thing about this movie…is that it ends.

Midnight Son is an Indie Vampire Film You Should Know About

If you’re a hor­ror fan like me who enjoys vam­pire sto­ries with a dose of real­ism (a’la Let the Right One In ‚ The Reflect­ing Skin, Grace), then Mid­night Son should be on your radar.  It’s an inde­pen­dent film with a lim­ited release from writer/director/producer Scott Leberecht.

If first heard about Mid­night Son on Twit­ter ( @MidnightSonFilm ), which promises to be “a gritty, real­is­tic new look at the vam­pire genre.”  Of course it got my atten­tion right away.

Here’s the trailer:

From the film’s web­site :

MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man con­fined to a life of iso­la­tion, due to a rare skin dis­or­der that pre­vents him from being exposed to sun­light. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bar­tender, and falls in love. Trag­i­cally, Jacob’s actions become increas­ingly bizarre as he strug­gles to cope with the effects of his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Forced by the dis­ease to drink human blood for sus­te­nance, he must con­trol his increas­ingly vio­lent ten­den­cies as local law enforce­ment nar­row their focus on him as a sus­pect in a series of grisly mur­ders.

If you want to see this film as much as I do, you can help out by click­ing here to demand Mid­night Son in your area.

5 Reasons Why the World of Warcraft Movie will Suck

Despite yesterday’s major geek­gasm news that Sam Raimi will be tak­ing up reigns as direc­tor of the highly-anticipated movie World of War­craft , I remain pessimistic.

The World of War­craft movie will suck, and here’s why:

1. First, let’s get the obvi­ous out of the way.  As a gen­eral rule, movies based on video games suck.

   Need proof?
   – S uper Mario Bros. sucked
   – Res­i­dent Evil (all of them) sucked
   – House of the Dead sucked
   – Silent Hill sucked
   – Laura Croft: Tomb Raider 1 & 2 sucked
   – Dou­ble Dragon sucked
   – Mor­tal Kom­bat 1 & 2 sucked
   – Street Fighter (both of ‘em) sucked

   …I could go on, but this post would get very long very quick.

2. The actual World of War­craft sucks nowa­days.  And things are only going to get worse as Bliz­zard scram­bles to main­tain its revolv­ing door player base.  Bliz­zard may claim to have some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 11 mil­lion sub­scribers, but for all the new peo­ple sign­ing up, there’s a whole lot of vet­er­ans and hard­core gamers leav­ing Aze­roth, who are dis­en­chanted with many of Blizzard’s recent “fuck you” deci­sions that tend to favor its own pock­ets over those of pay­ing cus­tomers.  With the new Star Wars MMO loom­ing on the hori­zon, Bliz­zard knows it must milk the WoW cash cow for all its worth–in the form of paid fac­tion trans­fers and over­hyped expansions.
3. I like Sam Raimi, I really do.   But just watch Spider-Man 3, and var­i­ous other films Raimi has fucked up.  When it comes to direct­ing, he’s kind of a hack who’s for­tu­nate enough to have cult status/geek cred with the Evil Dead fran­chise.  Sure he makes some damn enter­tain­ing pop­corn hor­ror movies, but is he capa­ble of pulling off an epic fan­tasy film?  I hope his work on Leg­end of the Seeker isn’t an indi­ca­tion…  Check out Raimi’s over-saturated IMDB page , where he’s cur­rently listed to have over 20 projects in pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Spi­der­man 4.
4. It will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive.  Snore.  I guess even out­side the game the Horde gets no love.  That aside, there are a zil­lion pos­si­ble sto­ry­lines in the World of War­craft upon which to base a movie.  Why choose lamestream Alliance?  I guess two mil­lion Night Elves can’t be wrong.
5. Last year, I included the long-rumored World of War­craft movie on my list of  Top 5 Most Antic­i­pated Fan­tasy Films of 2009 , which up until recently, Bliz­zard has main­tained would be the film’s year of release.  (I hope they didn’t really expect us to believe that! ) So it wasn’t at all supris­ing to hear that World of War­craft: The Movie is now slated for release in 2012.  TWENTY TWELVE!  Will WoW still be as pop­u­lar three years from now as it is today?

Hope I’m wrong!

Tim Burton Confirms ‘Dark Shadows’

My name is Vic­to­ria Win­ters. My jour­ney is begin­ning. A jour­ney that I hope will open the doors of life to me and link my past with my future. A jour­ney that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea high atop Wid­ows’ Hill — a house called Collinwood. A world I’ve never known, with peo­ple I’ve never met. Peo­ple who tonight are still only shad­ows in my mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomor­rows.

These are the words of Vic­to­ria Win­ters, and the open­ing to Dark Shad­ows , one of the most mem­o­rable TV shows of all time.  Today, vam­pire mania has sunken its fangs deep into pop­u­lar cul­ture.  Shows like True Blood dom­i­nate tele­vi­sion, while The Twi­light Saga is one of the best­selling book series.  But the Bill Comp­tons and Edward Cul­lens of the world owe their exis­tence to a vam­pire named Barn­abas Collins.

Dark Shad­ows is one of those old shows that makes you feel uncool if you’re unable to remem­ber it when it was on TV.  That’s totally me.  I was born in 1981, 10 years after the last episode of Dark Shad­ows aired.  Being drawn to all things hor­ror, cult, and vin­tage, I dis­cov­ered Dark Shad­ows some years ago dur­ing one of those casual “have you seen any­thing good lately?” con­ver­sa­tions with my par­ents, whom I am grate­ful for hav­ing passed down their good taste in movies and TV shows to me.  If there’s one true thing I can say about myself, it’s that I am never bored, because I always have a nev­erend­ing list of inter­est­ing things to watch, read, or play—and never enough time to do it all.  So some­how or another, through the fond sec­ond­hand rec­ol­lec­tions of my par­ents and at the rec­om­men­da­tions of oth­ers, Dark Shad­ows found its way onto my list.

And a few months ago I begun the long and ardu­ous (but highly enjoy­able) task of watch­ing all 1,225 episodes of Dark Shad­ows .  Yeah, you read that correctly—ONE THOUSDAND TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE!  For any­one else crazy enough to do the same, Net­flix has the entire Dark Shad­ows col­lec­tion on DVD.  I think I’m some­where in the early 300’s, but I can’t be sure.  And I am lov­ing every dark, shad­owy, and weird moment of it!

So I am absolutely THRILLED to learn that Tim Bur­ton has just con­firmed to MTV News that he will begin shoot­ing Dark Shad­ows next year, a fea­ture film based on the TV series.  And, shock­ing to no one, Johnny Depp will star as self-loathing vam­pire Barn­abas Collins, con­firm­ing rumors that have been cir­cu­lat­ing amongst Dark Shad­ows & Bur­ton fans for a long time now.  Both Bur­ton and Depp are known to be huge fans of the show, hav­ing grown up with the gothic soap opera.  I think Johnny Depp will be amaz­ing as Barn­abas Collins, and Burton’s campy, gothic style is per­fectly suited for the beloved TV show that was so deli­ciously strange.  Now if we can just get Danny Elf­man to score, I will be one happy (newly-initiated) Dark Shad­ows fangirl!

Harry Potter and the Half-way Decent Movie

So it’s like 3:30 a.m., and I just got home from the mid­night show­ing of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince .  I could go to bed, but I had to get a few things off my mind first while my mem­o­ries are still fresh.  Legili­mens!

First, the good.  This movie was a LOT of fun.  As one of my Twit­ter pals put it, Half-Blood Prince felt like return­ing to high school and see­ing all of your old friends.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been at the heart of every Pot­ter film, and HBP doesn’t devi­ate from this win­ning for­mula.  The film doesn’t waste any time get­ting right down to busi­ness, and it’s action-packed from start to fin­ish.  From a plot stand­point, it had a lot of ground to cover (as all the Pot­ter films do) and those two and a half hours just seem to fly by.  Over­all it was a solid Pot­ter film, and I’m sure it will hold up to many sub­se­quent view­ings, which are no doubt nec­es­sary to catch all the things you might have missed.  There was just so much going on in this movie it was almost overwhelming.

And now the not-so-good.  I don’t know if this is a byprod­uct of hav­ing been forced to wait an extra 9 months for its release and hav­ing inflated expec­ta­tions or what, but HBP def­i­nitely had its short­com­ings.  The down­side to cram­ming so much stuff in is that there’s quite a bit left out.  And I’m not even one of those book Nazis that insists all movies must be 100% faith­ful to the book; not even close.  I just didn’t under­stand some of the logic behind the deci­sions made in this film’s case.  They had time to throw in a bunch of lengthy scenes that never hap­pened, but they didn’t have time to include the ones that actu­ally did?  I would rather see a film where they’re forced to leave things out due to time con­straints ver­sus just mak­ing up what­ever the hell they want to.  With­out giv­ing any­thing away, the first 10 min­utes of this film is a prime example.

Many parts of this film just didn’t feel like a Harry Pot­ter movie at all when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five.  I think a lit­tle too much lib­erty was taken, to the point that some of the things that make Pot­ter movies feel like Pot­ter movies was lost–which is really sur­pris­ing, because I felt Yates did such a fan­tas­tic job with Order of the Phoenix.  Maybe I’m expect­ing too much; it’s just Harry Pot­ter after all.  Or maybe I’m just get­ting too old for this shit.  I cer­tainly felt old dur­ing the romcom-y bits when 90% of the the­ater was squeal­ing like giddy school­girls.  It could not have been more appar­ent who this film’s tar­get audi­ence was.

Speak­ing of get­ting old, when did the stu­dents of Hog­warts all turn 30?  I real­ize Daniel Rad­cliffe and com­pany have aged quite a bit since the first film, but I don’t think I saw any younger stu­dents at all in HBP.  You know what else I didn’t see?  Any infor­ma­tion about the Half-Blood Prince what­so­ever.  I feel bad for any­one who has never read the books that tries to watch this film; you will be hope­lessly lost.

For the rest of you–the ones who’ve read the books–despite my pithy com­plaints, there’s a lot to love about the film ver­sion of Half-Blood Prince:

(Warn­ing: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.  Beware! )

Things I liked:

• The bits about Harry & Hermione’s friend­ship, par­tic­u­larly Dumbledore’s “curios­ity.” So cute.
• Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn; great job!
• Aragog’s funeral and Hagrid’s sub­se­quent drink­ing binge.
• Snape bein’ all Snape-ish as only Snape can.
• Happy to see Tonks & Lupin together , how­ever brief.
• Both kids who played Tom Rid­dle (age 11 & age 16) were fantastic!
• Michael Gambon’s Dum­b­le­dore was much bet­ter played this time around.

…And of course,  there were some things that needed improvement:

Things I could have done with­out:

• Jessie Cave as Laven­der Brown.
• Pan­der­ing to the HP fan­girl set.  Yes I real­ize HBP is the “O.C.” of all the Pot­ter books, but the teen romance por­trayed in this film was just over the top, to the point where I felt like the roman­tic sub­plots over­shad­owed the main one.
• Ran­dom black woman who comes on to Harry in a cafe.  Seri­ously, what is up with ran­dom black char­ac­ters appear­ing in the Pot­ter films?  It’s almost like the direc­tors throw them in there for diversity’s sake.
• The heavy-handed direc­tion.  I swear in some shots you could almost feel Yates think­ing “Hmm, what crazy cam­era wiz­ardry can I do to make this scene look cooler?”
• The Weasley’s house burn­ing down.  Um, WTF??
• Fen­rir Grey­back.  Although an impor­tant char­ac­ter in the book, his pres­ence added noth­ing to this movie.

Things I missed:

• The “feel” and spirit of Hog­warts just wasn’t there for me this time around.
• Did they even bother to put the main char­ac­ters in uni­forms dur­ing classes?
• Where the hell were all the younger stu­dents?  I don’t think I saw even one.
• Dumbledore’s funeral.  I won­der if we’ll see it in the begin­ning of Deathly Hal­lows? I felt the end­ing in gen­eral was kind of a cop-out.
• Cho Chang. I thought we’d at least see her in the back­ground or something.
• Any back­ground infor­ma­tion what­so­ever about the Half-Blood Prince.

P.S.  Did any­one else almost pee a lit­tle bit when Dum­b­le­dore (whom J.K. Rowl­ing pro­fesses to be gay) starts telling Harry how he’s been fond of him since he was a lit­tle boy, and that they need to fig­ure out the deal with the closet??  Unin­ten­tional hilar­ity FTW.

LOTR Fan Film: $3,000 of Awesome

What can you do with $3,000 and a group of ded­i­cated LOTR fans?  Make a kick-ass fan movie, that’s what.   The Hunt for Gol­lum  is a 40-minute fan-made film based on the Lord of the Rings books and movies.  And more impor­tantly, it’s good.   Sur­pris­ingly so.

Based on Tolkien’s appen­dices,  The Hunt for Gol­lum  remains true to its source mate­r­ial and fits in nicely with the three offi­cial Peter Jack­son films.  The story is a pre­quel of sorts that fol­lows Aragorn on his quest from Gan­dalf to track down and cap­ture the crea­ture Gol­lum, who knows the where­abouts of the One Ring.  It takes place before Gan­dalf returns to The Shire, to warn Frodo of the dan­gers of his burden.

Every­thing from the cos­tumes and make-up to the film’s score and act­ing is well done, and closely mim­ics Jackson’s style of direc­tion and visual effects.  The fight scenes were epic and well choreographed.  

Even Gol­lum looks and sounds great:

It’s an impres­sive accom­plish­ment for such a lim­ited bud­get (the entire cast and crew worked for free).  Huge props to the film­mak­ers, who are as tal­ented as they are ded­i­cated.  The film was released today, May 3rd, and is avail­able to watch free online.  You can also check out the mak­ing of this epic under­tak­ing here.  Visit www.TheHuntForGollum.com , or click  the ban­ner below.  If you’re a LOTR fan, I highly rec­om­mend you go watch it—NOW!

Live-Action Ninja Turtles Return for 2011

In geeky movie news this month that makes me feel like a fifth-grader again, TMNT co-creater Peter Laird con­firmed in Vari­ety rumors of another live-action  Tur­tles  movie planned for 2011.  The announce­ment comes on the heels of  TMNT’s 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion.  Other than mak­ing me feel old, I’m also damn excited.  Because in Hol­ly­wood, every­thing I loved grow­ing up in the 1980s is sud­denly cool again.  The new Tur­tles  film will be pro­duced by Scott Med­nick of Leg­endary Pic­tures, who is cur­rently pro­duc­ing the soon to be released Where The Wild Things Are,  another live-action fan­tasy film (which hap­pens to be based on yet another com­pletely awe­some thing from my child­hood).  And if these screen­shots are any indi­ca­tion of what’s in store for the next TMNT , then color me green with excitement.

After the orig­i­nal live-action movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  films went from bad to worse, though 2007’s ani­mated  TMNT  was OK.  Then again, I’m of the opin­ion that the first Tur­tles movie is one of the great­est if under­rated comic book movies of all time—but I may be a lit­tle biased.  I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid.  Like  really  obsessed.  If it had a TMNT logo on it, I owned it.  I could quote the movies word for word (prob­a­bly still can).

My wish­list for the new live-action Tur­tles movie:

• Darker, grit­tier, edgier Tur­tles truer to the orig­i­nal Mirage comic books.
• Curse words.  Most TMNT fans have grown up, and so should the movies.
• Sex (if only to sat­isfy my mor­bid curiosity). 
• Real­stic CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
• Back to basics origins/roots sto­ry­line. (Think Bat­man Begins .)
• April O’Neil, and any­one other than Paige Turco to play her.
• Blood, weapons, and graphic violence.
• Moar Raphael.*

Things I could live with­out:

• Shell-tastic tur­tle puns.
• Any char­ac­ter who exists solely in the Archie comics series.
• No Venus.
• Ran­dom kid-who-meets-the-Turtles char­ac­ter (a’la Keno in Turltes II, and later Yoshi in Tur­tles III).
• Any sto­ry­line involv­ing time travel.
• A Turtles-themed rap song.
• A PG rating.
• Cowabunga.

The sucky part about all this?  Wait­ing two years.

*Raphael is still the coolest tur­tle, and if you don’t agree with me, I’m not shar­ing my Ninja Tur­tles fruit snacks with you.

Totally Emo Movie Heroes

There’s been a dis­turb­ing trend in Hol­ly­wood over the last cou­ple of years: inva­sion of the emos.  Aparently we girls like our movie heroes hot, angry, and whiny.  For what­ever rea­son, the hot male lead + pent-up angst for­mula seems to be work­ing, because emo sells.  All of the spec­i­mens listed here can typ­i­cally be found star­ing soul-searchingly out from the pages of Tiger­beat, or star­ring unwill­ingly in the steamy chap­ters of Mary Sue fanfics writ­ten by obsessed teenage girls.

Edward Cullen

‘Twi­light’ 2008

Most emo line:
“I don’t have the strength to stay away from you any­more.”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A well-tailored cus­tom pea­coat.

Rec­og­niz­able by his brood­ing stares, per­fectly disheveled hair and stalker ten­den­cies, Edward Cullen is a prod­uct of the roman­tic fan­tasies of 30-something author Stephanie Meyer, who would like you to believe he’s a dan­ger­ous vam­pire despite not drink­ing human blood and hav­ing no fangs.  Edg­ing out Buffy’s Angel in “the vam­pire who wants to be good” mar­ket, Edward Cullen is a vampy hero who spends the major­ity of his time obnox­iously tor­tur­ing him­self over his human love inter­est, the per­pet­ual damsel-in-distress Bella Swan.  Super­fi­cially played by Robert Pat­tin­son, who never read the books and never misses an oppor­tu­nity to make fun of his own sculpted-browed character.

Harry Potter

‘Harry Pot­ter and the Pris­oner of Azk­a­ban’ 2004

Most emo line:
“HE WAS THEIR FRIEND!!!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
An invis­i­bil­ity cloak, to hide his spon­ta­neous fits of cry­ing.

There is per­haps no hero more emo than boy-wizard Harry Pot­ter, who, among other things, strug­gles with school, girls, dead par­ents, abu­sive rel­a­tives, and an evil dark wiz­ard who con­stantly tries to mur­der him.  In a way, his emo-ness is prob­a­bly the most jus­ti­fied.  Some of Harry’s favorite activ­i­ties include mouthing off to teach­ers and Slytherins, alien­at­ing his two best friends, star­ing long­ingly at pretty Hog­warts girls, and wal­low­ing in the “nobody under­stands me” vari­ety of self-pity.  Played by Daniel Rad­cliffe, whose act­ing (thank­fully) seems to be get­ting bet­ter with each movie.

Anakin Skywalker

‘Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith’ 2005

Most emo line:
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A lightsaber, for mur­der­ing Jedi chil­dren.

Bet­ter known as Darth Vader, Anakin Sky­walker is the tragic anti­hero of the Star Wars uni­verse.  Played by a young and vir­ile Hay­den Chris­tensen, Darth Vader’s youth is a far cry away from the crusty old white man unmasked in the orginal Episode VI.  Unfor­tu­nately Christensen’s act­ing kinda sucks, so his ver­bal tran­si­tion to the dark side is often ripe with unin­ten­tional humor.  Anakin’s favorite hob­bies: dis­agree­ing with the Jedi Coun­cil, chillin’ with Darth Sid­i­ous, brood­ing over visions of Padme dying (then later help­ing the process along by chok­ing her—with his MIND), and whin­ing because he wasn’t bestowed the title of Jedi Mas­ter.  Now that I think about it, most evil over­lords act pretty emo, don’t they? I urge you to rec­og­nize the warn­ing signs.

The Phan­tom of the Opera

‘The Phan­tom of the Opera’ 2004

Most emo line:
“The world showed no com­pas­sion to me!”

Favorite emo acces­sory:
A mask that hides half of his hideous face.

Despite being 50% bru­tally hot and hav­ing a tremen­dous singing voice, the Phan­tom, an eter­nal pes­simist, refuses to rec­og­nize his inner beauty and instead uses his defor­mity as his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for mur­der­ing, steal­ing, and of course, stalk­ing the beau­ti­ful Chris­tine Daae.  But it’s not actor Ger­ard Butler’s fault.  Gas­ton Leroux’s iconic Phan­tom of the Opera, once a ruth­less and fear­some char­ac­ter, has been emas­cu­lated into the whin­ing, cry­ing, opera-singing emo kid most peo­ple are famil­iar with today, thanks to Broad­way leg­end Andrew Lloyd Weber.  

Spider-Man

‘Spider-Man 3′ 2007

Most emo line:
“I don’t need your help!“

Favorite emo acces­sory:
His emo flip hair­cut.  

As if Peter Parker wasn’t emo enough—you know, cry­ing about his dead Uncle Ben and pin­ing over Mary Jane—in Spider-Man 3, Toby Macguire gets what can only best be described as an extreme emo makeover, ruin­ing an oth­er­wise decent third install­ment of the block­buster Mar­vel franchise.

Futher­more, WTF is this?

 

Coraline: A modern day Wizard of Oz

“You prob­a­bly think this world is a dream come true… but you’re wrong.”

Cora­line is one of those movies I knew I would love before I even knew any­thing about it. Between being writ­ten by fan­tasy god Neil Gaiman , directed by Henry Selick (The Night­mare Before Christ­mas) , and fea­tur­ing dark and dreamy stop-motion visu­als, it just had my name writ­ten all over it. Nev­er­mind that I had never read the story*. I knew I had to see this movie the moment I heard about it.

And I was not disappointed.

From begin­ning to end, Cora­line is an absolute delight on the eyes and ears. It was sort of like watch­ing the inhab­i­tants of a Vic­to­rian doll­house come alive and invite the entire toy box over for tea. Every char­ac­ter was lov­ably quirky, funny, and mem­o­rable; includ­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of the not-always-inanimate objects. Even the voice act­ing of Dakota Fan­ning and Teri Hatcher, two actresses whom I ordi­nar­ily don’t care for, was very well done. I found myself so absorbed that it didn’t even occur to me which famous per­son I was lis­ten­ing to, which is one thing I typ­i­cally dis­like about ani­mated films–I tend to hear the celebrity, not the character.

And the visu­als were top-notch, as usual, which seems to be stan­dard for all of Henry Selick’s pic­tures so far. Kudos to LAIKA ani­ma­tion stu­dio and the hun­dreds of tal­ented peo­ple who brought the world of Cora­line to bril­liant life.

But Cora­line isn’t just eye candy. Like most of Gaiman’s sto­ries, Cora­line has a good mes­sage, and deliv­ers it with a bit of clever wit wrapped in child­like intrigue. Movie­go­ers may find Coraline’s sto­ry­line sim­i­lar to Mir­ror­mask , another of Gaiman’s stories-turned-movie, in which a young girl becomes dis­en­chanted with her life and par­ents, escap­ing to a dream­world where the grass seems greener at first, but soon dis­cov­ers it to be a warped and night­mar­ish ver­sion of her own reality.

I’ve seen some crit­ics already refer to this movie as a clas­sic , and I don’t think I would dis­agree with that. In many ways, the story of Cora­line is rem­i­nis­cent of another clas­sic, The Wiz­ard of Oz. And like Dorothy, Cora­line reminds us that there’s no place like home.

*Note to the book Nazis: Cora­line is pretty faith­ful to its source material.