It occurs to me that the brief mention I made of this movie in my previous post might get overlooked; so let me say this a bit more blatantly….
WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS DRIVEL?!? YOU SHOULD BE AT THE THEATER WATCHING THE Incredibles!
For more detailed reviews:
This evening after work Ariesna and I headed up to the World Theater in Cedar Rapids to attend an early Halloween Party.
Err… that’s not strictly true. We’d heard from AWelkin about said party being a mascarade and that it would start off by showing Shaun of the Dead. This is a British horror/zombie flick that was released here in the US not all that long ago and it had looked mighty funny, going by the trailers. Having now seen the movie, I can safely …. but that’s getting a head of myself.
We were running a bit behind schedule when we left (movie scheduled to start at 5:30, left house at 5:10, drive is ~30minutes) but we hurried along as best we could. Narrowly avoiding getting lost in downtown CR, I had to drive around the block a couple of times to find a place to park. We hurry inside –the time is now 6:00– and there’s no sign of a movie screen or a movie playing. We stumble around a bit confused when AWelkin waves us over. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones running behind schedule. *shrug* So we sit and chat1 until nearly 7 o’clock!
Finally the movie started and it was flippin’ fan-tas-tic! Sure, some bits had crude langauge and there was a bit of excessive gore but overall; 4.95 stars out of 5. Definitely, a must see and leaps & bounds better than the last movie we saw together.
1 Well, we tried to anyway but they were blasting annoying music at a near deafening level at us.
Whew! Ariesna & I just got back from watching Ghost in the Shell 2 – Innocence. Unfortunately, it was playing at what’s arguably the worst theater in town but that’s a topic for another day. This is one movie that I’m going to have to rewatch a few times before I get a real handle on it. Innocence has so many layers of complexity that it can be somewhat difficult to follow what the film maker was trying to accomplish. There’s some deep thinking going on in the film both about what is reality and where we draw the line between what is human and what’s not. So the story has a definite heaviness to it that I wasn’t really in the mood for but it is something that I want to see again when I can watch it more at my leisure.
As for the animation, it was top notch but there were a couple of scenes where the blending of 2D & 3D animation didn’t quite mess right and it made the characters feel like cardboard cut-outs in a grocery store. Overall though the visuals were excellent and the movie had a good flow to it.
On a side note: Batou’s dog is too cool. 🙂
Shaun isn’t having the greatest of times. The staff at the TV store he works in don’t take him very seriously as temporary boss; his girlfriend Liz has had enough of always meeting at the ‘Winchester’ Arms along with his yob mate; and his relationship with his dad – sorry, step-dad – remaims heavily fraught. And now the undead have risen and are spreading their zombie curse to everyone they can get their teeth into. Just doesn’t seem worth getting out of bed some days.
Movie Trailer, via Apple
*sigh*
Note to Self: When picking movies in the future, make sure you’re picking them because the story/concept appeals and not the special effects.
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go and see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Wow was that ever a mistake!
I went in knowing that most of the reviewers out there had said it was bad and about half of the geeks were saying the same1. However the trailers for the movie looked just gorgeous with an impressive style that felt very much like one would expect a 1940’s pulp sci-fi movie to look2, from the giant robots to the cars down to the ray pistol. The one interesting thing about the movie that one should remember is that the entire thing was shot in front of a green screen and there were no locations. All the background stuff was computer-rendered. Then it appears that they pushed the film of the actors through some filters to add a bit of noise & distortion into the film, giving a feeling of being from the 40’s. These computerized specials effects were unfortunately the only good thing about the movie. The writing of the movie was wretched. The acting was sub-par at best. If you wish to know more details, following the (more) link but be warned that there are some spoilers mixed in there.
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