Sorry, my heart just wasn't in this one.

In the summer of 93 a movie came out. A movie about dinosaurs. A movie about dinosaurs with effects that would rival anything that had come before it. That movie went on to become of the most most talked about movies of the year, and quite possibly one of the greatest movies ever made. That movie was NOT Carnosaur.

No, not by a long shot.

While Laura Dern was working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil on Jurassic Park, her mother, Diane Ladd, was slumming it in this attempt to cash in with the likes of that one guy who went on to do a few episodes of Voyager and that chick who was in Charles in Charge.

For those of you unaware of the 'story' in this nearly 15 year old movie, it goes something like this: Mad scientist genetically modifies chickens to resurrect dinosaurs in the hope of wiping out mankind. Meanwhile, the night watchman falls for a hippy and tries to stop the mad scientist. In the end, everyone dies.

Yeah, it's actually a little less straightforward than all that, but you get the idea. Actually, that might be the movie's biggest problem...the plot. It was far more complicated than it needed to be. A simple monster on the loose story would have sufficed. Instead, there's at least a half dozen underdeveloped subplots.

It would have been much simpler to make a movie in which Doc and Thrush come together to thwart the Evil Scientist and her army of dinosaurs. Hell, I'd watch that. Instead, we're treated to an hour and a half of unexplained captions, characters doing things for no reason, and, hell, characters who EXIST for no reason. The sheriff ads nothing to the plot. Why bother with him? Why spend so much time with him?

Wait, I've got it. The whole thing should have been about the scientist breeding dino DNA into the chickens to increase their size, and therefore increase the amount of meat. That would have been much simpler than the whole 'evil lady wants to destroy the world by creating dinosaurs' thing. Hmm...someone SHOULD make that movie, actually. It's got sci-fi original written all over it.

I really have no interest in rating this one. If I did, I'd give it 4 something somethings out of 10.

Crossing the Uncanny Valley River

Over the weekend I watched Beowulf. That's all.

That's just not going to cut it, is it? Hmm...damn, too bad.

Ok, let's try a different approach.

Beowulf is the kind of movie that...um...

Shit.

Oh! I know!

The CGI/motion capture look of Bobby Z's Beowulf was...hmmm...no, that's no good at all.

Beowulf was an ok movie that was a little weird to watch. It was just a little too uncanny valley for me. It would have been a lot better, to me, if they'd used people on a blue screen and put them in a mostly CG world. You know, like Revenge of the Sith or those other movies where they did that sort of thing...

The story itself was kinda interesting though. And Grendel looked pretty great. Overall though, it was an 'ok' movie.

Monster Movie Poster Mondays

Godzilla 2000 might actually have been the first Godzilla movie I ever saw in it's entirety. Sure, I had caught a few on tv, but never the whole movie and, I mean, it's tv, you flip though the channels.

Godzilla 2000 also started a run of watching Godzilla movies every Friday for a couple of months at my friend's house. It also started one of our favorite games when watching foreign movies. We'll look at a movie and try to re-cast it using American actors. It's one of the best games we ever invented. It's up there with 'Pullman or Paxton' and 'Name 5'.

The Great Zombie Debate: Running vs Walking and why it doesn't matter

There's an ongoing debate among zombie fans, are they better represented by the slow moving zombie packs that have historically been the bread and butter of the genre, or is it not scarier to face the all out unrelenting horror of a creature that can outrun but not out think you?

When I think of zombies, one of the first thoughts to enter I mind in the slow, shambling mass of the recently dead. They're slow, sure, but they keep coming. You can stop one, but more will come after you. They don't have to be fast to be effective. They just keep coming. How can you outrun a creature that doesn't need to stop to rest or to eat or to drink or to shit? They just keep chasing you. Keep running, they'll be right behind you with a determination that more than makes up for their speed.

On the other hand, movies like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil and their sequels, as well as the Dawn of the Dead remake have helped to popularize the fast moving zombie. A creature of blind rage and hunger, it's only driving force is more food. And, as this is the case, it will stop at nothing to get to it's next meal. Running though glass and fire means nothing to it. It's a creature of pure hunger and adrenaline. It feels no pain and has no interest in hobbies or colorful lights. It can outrun you if you make the slightest mistake. Your only advantage is the ability to out think the creature.

Now, it's long been thought that zombies are a critique of our society. We, as in Western 'culture' are the undead. Conformists with a herd mentality. Zombies are the ultimate consumers. All they do is 'use up' what they have and go get more. They don't plan ahead. They don't save for a rainy day. All they do is consume, consume, consume. They ravage they're environment in a never ending quest to to fulfill a hunger that just never ends. They are us, and we are them. We are the zombies with our SUVs, our throw-away electronics, our credit cards and our take out. If the zombies have always been a thinly veiled criticism of us, is it any wonder that the new breed of zombie movies has upped the ante to include zombies that move faster?

In an age when Google can return untold amounts of information in less than a second and companies can be bought and sold in a day, is it any wonder that zombie have had to adapt to catch up? Life takes Visa, and any attempt to slow things down is met with derision by those behind you in line. No, it was imperative that zombies move faster lest they be brushed aside on the way to the mall. Slow zombies became the old man in the powder blue Buick with the Florida license plate doing ten under in the left lane.

We needed a zombie that could envelope our own fear of being overwhelmed by our own culture. Life moves too fast for most of us. Email, cell phones, the internet, 1000+ channel HD cable/satellite packages. It's overwhelming and the modern 'fast' zombie seeks to epitomize that. Suddenly the fear isn't of city life coming to the farthest reaches of rural American and devouring the life we once lived, no. No, the fear is that the speed at which we have to live to get by in modern society is going to overwhelm us.

What say you? Fast or slow? Why? Defend your position.

I'm not sure why, but I expected better

Look, contrary to what you may have been told, I'm no idiot. When I put in a movie like Monster, I typically know what I'm getting myself into. Bad acting, bad effects, nonsensical plot, etc. I know not to expect to be mentally fulfilled by movies like these.

Still, it's not many movies that can leave me with my jaw dropped in awe of just how bad it is.

Monster is the 'story' (I use the quotes because it's presented as Blair Witch style fact) of two girls who travel to Tokyo to make a documentary about global warming. During their interviews something happens. At first, everyone thinks it's an earthquake, but no, soon they discover that it's something more ALIVE. It turns out that it's some sort of giant tentacled beast. I say 'some sort' because you never get a clear shot of the creature, just some flailing arms.

In other words, we're supposed to believe that two documentarians would debate amongst themselves how big a story this is and then, every time the monster was nearby, they would only use the video to get shots of each other, not the titular monster. Fine. I'll but that, I guess.

Actually, that's not even that big of a problem to me. I'll be the first to admit that the imagination is scarier than anything that can be put onto a tv screen. No, my biggest complaint is with the editing. And, according to the credits, that means I'm choosing to blame David Michael Latt for this debacle. It's meant to be the 'raw footage' from the event, but it just feels...not raw but boring. If this had been a real event, there would have been much more interesting events on the tapes. For example, over the credits they play these little 'man on the street' type interviews. Where were these during the movie? They were by far more interesting than anything uttered by our main characters. Large gaps in the film, as shown by blank screens, just kept taking you out of the movie. And, I still want to know what kind of camera they had to shoot this thing because it had to have been the cheapest piece of junk they could find.

I can deal with a movie that's bad. I can deal with a movie that has no budget. I can deal with a movie that is a little light on story. I can't deal with a movie that's boring though. And Monster for all it's craptasticly cheesy promise was BORING. I'm not going to blame the duo of Sarah Lynch and Erin Sullivan, I think they did okay with what little they had to work with. Hell, considering the budget, even the effects were ok. No, like I said, this falls squarely on David Michael Latt and director Erik Estenberg. Tighten the editing up a bit, get rid of some of the 'failing camera' gimicks and Monster would make for an almost enjoyable bad movie.

Someday, I will have to give a movie a 1, but not today. Monster gets 3 video cameras that they could have looted while wondering around an abandoned Tokyo that would have been a vast improvement over the one they started with out of 10.

Monster Movie Poster Mondays

I skipped last weeks monster movie poster because of the Film Club post. Not this week though. Lets see what I have on my hard drive now...

Ah, there we go. Gigantis, The Fire Monster. Gigantis was the title of the U.S. release of Godzilla Raids Again, the second Godzilla movie. This also marked the first time that Godzilla fought against another monster AND the first appearance of the giant, spiny armadillo Anguirus. Why was the title changed? From Wikipedia:

For a long time, this change in name was thought to be because Warner did not have the rights to "Godzilla". However, Edward L. Schreibman, the producer of the American version, has said that he changed Godzilla's name to "Gigantis" to give the audience the impression that they were seeing a new monster. He has since regretted that decision.

Cowboys and Dinosaurs: A tribute to The Valley of Gwangi