Shark Week: We Only Come Out At Night

There are ways to tell what kind of movie you're going to watch even before the movie starts. Sometimes you know an actor or a director and the kind of movies they make. Other times it's the subject matter. Still others it's from what people of have said about a movie. It's rare though that you get a warning from the DVD itself...

Oh boy. This should be awesome. You'd think I was watching the newly discovered footage from Metropolis or something. Not some shitty shark movie from 1987. A movie I picked up to review for last year's Shark Week but never got around to. A movie staring Treat Williams and Antonio Fargas. Yeah, THAT Antonio Fargas.

Let that sink in...IT.HAS.FUCKING.HUGGY BEAR.IN.IT.


I'd like to tell you what it was about, but to be honest, I'm not sure. I'm not sure the writer or director are sure either. I'm not sure Treat Williams knew what the hell was going on. Something about a cd and wire tapping. And some business types who wanted to kill a guy because of the wire tapping. And some diamonds. And a cd. Oh, I mentioned the cd already. And there was a shark. The shark was kind of secondary though. It was there, but the story, if it can be called that, wasn't about the shark. And Huggy Bear was in it.

Did I mention that it didn't make any sense? That's on top of it just being plain bad. Not the good kind of bad either. Not Death Bed bad. Not Octopus 2 bad. No. This was the kind of bad that can't be described with words.

It's kind of like this:



Yeah. It's a lot like that. The entire movie. Its only real redeeming quality is a molotov cocktail fight near the end. Which sounds cooler than it really was. 3 one eyed sharks called cyclops with a cd in their bellies out of 10.

Shark Week: Welcome to the Shark Zone

You know where you are?
You're in the shark zone, baby!
You're gonna die
In the shark zone!
Welcome to the shark zone
Watch it bring you to your

Hey...um...I didn't see you there...um....*awkward*

Shark Week! Right! Shark Zone! I watched Shark Zone! Starring no one I've ever heard of and directed by the auteur who made the classic Raging Sharks. I have to admit, that alone gave me high hopes for this one.

Do you really care about the plot when it comes to a movie like this? Or do you just watch the Nu Image logo appear on the screen and kind of brace yourself and hope for the best?

Ok, take Jaws, replace Brody with a guy who's dad died ten years ago and put him in charge of keeping a California beach safe. And, instead of 1 shark there is a school of Great Whites, despite the fact that sharks aren't schooling fish and great whites are lone hunters. And then, replace Hooper with a group of drunk dive instructors. Oh and diamond hunting. So, it's a low budget Jaws with Russians who are looking for diamonds. Russian mobsters who are looking for diamonds.

I always hate this kind of shit though. Where sharks in these movies act contrary to actual shark behavior, but it's not presented as abnormal. A 'school' of great whites is such a bunch of bullshit, but they talk about it like it;s the most normal thing in the world. Then again, this isn't a movie that prides itself on logic. This is a movie who's central plot point is a sunken Spanish ship near San Francisco.

And why the fuck is it that the best way to get someone to help you in movies like this is to kidnap their kid? I mean, a guy turns down $50,000 so lets make him more helpful by kidnapping his kid. You know what? Fuck you. Kill the kid*. Kill me. I wouldn't fucking help you at that point. I'd call the cops. Of course, I reside in a world of logic and not a world of cliche. And you know what? Why couldn't he just show these guys where to go on the map? What's the big deal? Sure, he doesn't want to go there, but why does it matter to him if someone else wants to risk their lives to go look for the dumb ship? Why does he have to wait for his kid to get kidnapped to popint on a damn MAP? Of course, if he wasn't there on the ship, the mad Russian mobster couldn't force him to dive in to retrieve the diamonds, and then what? Well, the story just wouldn't make much sense then would it?

But what about Shark Zone DOES make sense? I mean, the whole problem is that there are these crazed sharks at the ship wreck and in the end Jim defeats the mobsters. How does solving one problem fix the other? No one can say. All I know is that they end up on a cruise ship...and I was paying attention!

No one watches movies like this for the coherent plot though (or the acting...). The real question is, was it enjoyable? On any level? I guess so. I mean, I've seen worse. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Well, maybe someone I didn't really like. Then again, I'm not in the habit of suggesting movies to people I don't like. It was pretty much as awful as you might expect. 4 sharks eating four windsurfers out of 10.


*Ok. Maybe I wouldn't sacrifice the kid. Myself yes. Kicking my ass and threatening me isn't the best way to ask for my help.

Shark Week: Based on a True Story

Do you remember Quint's speech in Jaws? Of course you do. It's his harrowing tale of survival from the USS Indianapolis. He tells Brody and Hooper about it while they're aboard the Orca:

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

I always thought it was a story that deserved a movie of it's own, never realizing that in 1991 there was a made for TV movie called Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the USS Indianapolis.

So, if you've seen Jaws, or read the speech above, you know the story of the Indianapolis. After delivering the bomb, it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sank. The men that made it off the ship floated in the water for a number of days, some were killed by sharks, more succumbed to their injuries for the attack or drowned from the sheer exhaustion of staying above water for so long.

The movie stars Stacy Keach and his distracting upper lip scar as well as David Caruso and....some people I've never heard of. Keach plays the somewhat tragic Captain Charles McVay. What makes Chuck's story so tragic is that of all the captains whose ships were attacked and sunk during the war, it was Chuck that got court martialed for a 'failure to zigzag'. No. Seriously. You can't make that shit up. He got court martialed for sailing in a straight line. And, while it was not long before the verdict was overturned, he succumbed to his guilt and killed himself in 1968.

Mission of the Shark was entertaining enough for a TV movie and doesn't feel dated at all. It helps that the story takes place in 1945 and there aren't a ton of special effects. Some stock footage stands out at times, but if that's the worst of it, it's not too bad. We'll go with 6 please for the love of god grow a mustache and cover up that distracting scars out of 10.

Monster Movie Poster Monday: The Return of Shark Week

It seems like just yesterday that I was lamenting the fact that I didn't have cable and would, therefore, miss Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. It was then that I decided to hell with them! I'd have a shark week of my own! I'd watch crappy shark attack movies and talk about them online! I'd show the Discovery Channel! I could survive without them!

Well, here it is a year later and I still don't have cable.  Another year without the Discovery Channel's informative shark related programming. And another week of less informative shark programming for me!

 

Jaws 3-D. The only movie from the Jaws series that I haven't watched yet. And I will watch it this week, because you can't have Shark Week at $7 Popcorn without a Jaws movie!

Shark Week: An Auspicious Beginning

 

A bigger boat? For what? 

 

Yeah. Shark Week 2008 starts tomorrow at $7 Popcorn!

One of the best books I've read this year...or any year

It was after seeing the trailer for Blindness that I decided to read the book. To be honest, I was blown away. A lot of fans of the book, from what I've read online, have expressed some trepidation about the adaptation. That a film couldn't capture the the emotion and brutality of the story. To them, I say bullshit. Reading the book, I could see it as a movie. And, I think it could really work well on film. I think that's why I'm so excited about it. I can really see it being an amazing movie.

I'm eternally hopeful when it comes to things like this.

This is so totally exciting...but only to me...

You may or may not know this, but I love The Valley of Gwangi. I think it's just a terrific movie. Well, I've been looking for the comic book adaptation of it for a while. Just casually. It's not an obsession or anything, but, when I'm in the kind of place where I might find old comic books...I take a look.

Well, that includes a certain online auction/marketplace thing...and, I found it! Not just that, but I found it at a price that I was willing to pay for it! I'm really excited and can't wait to have it in my hands! It's so exciting! I can barely contain myself*!


*I can totally contain myself. I mean, it's just a comic book.

I wonder if Gotham's insurance companies cover damage by Batman, or if you have to pay extra for that

I know, I've done nothing but express disinterest in The Dark Knight. I did, however, just watch Batman Begins, so I figured going to see The Dark Knight with that fresh in my mind might work out alright. And, since I got out of work a little early (they don't need me to sit and watch files copy) and I have nothing better to do in this area of Indiana (or any area of Indiana), I figured I could go to the movies.

I'm not really interested in discussing the details of the plot. Plenty of people have done that already. And, lets be honest, some of them are much better writers than me. What I am interested in is the 'message' inherent in The Dark Knight.

Some will say that if go looking for a message, you'll find it. Well, I didn't really go looking for one, but I found it anyways. Stories, and by extension, movies, are reflections of the times. And The Dark Knight is nothing if not a reflection of today's society. In the Joker you have pure chaos. It's crime without motive. It's destruction for destruction's sake. The Joker envisions himself as Nero, fiddling as Rome burns down around him. He doesn't want money, or power...no, he only wants to live life his way. And, he wants the world to adapt to him. It's an easy parrallel to how many Americans view terrorists. True or not, many Americans see only a love for chaos and violence in Islamic extremists. They're one dimensional to John Q Public living in the heartland. And, as such, the Joker is one dimensional. He's clever, but he's violence for no reason other than spreading violence.

Batman, however, is our own government. He wants to protect the people of Gotham, but is willing to work outside the common boundries of law and morality. If he wants to tap into Gotham's cell phones to catch the Joker, then he's going to do it. Batman, unlike our own government, isn't power hungry. He knows when to break the rules, and he knows that he has to break the rules, but in the end, he still ends up doing the right thing.

Commissioner Gordan says it best Batman is 'the hero we deserve, but not the one we need right now.' Batman represents, in a lot of ways, the worst in us. He is the good guy. His motive is noble, but his means are not. And when someone like Harvey Dent comes along, someone who does the right thing the right way, even Batman looks up to him. Harvey Dent is a man who plays by the rules, not just his own rules. Harvey Dent is the man we're all waiting for to step up. Harvey Dent is the hero we need, but don't deserve.

Batman and the Joker are two sides of the same coin. One wants chaos, the other order and both are willing to sacrifice themselves and those around them for it. It's only in Dent that we are allowed to have real hope. Even those with the best of intentions though can go astray.

A few other thoughts:

Gary Oldman does the best American accent. I actually find his normal voice unbelievable.

Ok, Batman is the 'villain' now. He sacrificed himself to preserve Dent's reputation and to preserve Gotham's hope. Where do you go from there? I know I'm not the first to ask, but what can happen to make Batman the 'good guy' again?

The late Heath Ledger did do a fantastic job bringing the Joker to life. I don't know that it was good enough to warrant an Oscar though. Luckily I don't have to worry about voting for/against him.

Why does Christian Bale have to practically growl when he's Batman? It's kind of annoying and a little silly.

For a guy trying to 'save' Gotham, Batman sure does wreck up the place.

Katie Holmes was better than Maggie Gyllenhaal.

And finally, The Dark Knight was a good movie, not a great movie (and certainly not the best ever), but a good movie. 7 coin flips to decide who lives and who dies because the only morality in a cruel world is chance out of 10.

Film Ignorance: Batman Begins

I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but it seems like the interweb is abuzz with excitement over a recently released movie. Bloggers, movie fans, comic book aficionados and, according to at least one 7dp commenter, even grandmothers are in a tizzy over the release of The Dark Knight, aka the new Batman movie.

Conversely, here at $7 Popcorn Industries, Inc, LLC...there's been nary a word. In fact, the only mention of it here prior to today was to comment upon how indifferent I was about it! And do you know why? I'm not a big Batman fan, that's why. The Tim Burton Batman and it's sequels did very little for me. I liked the first one enough, but found the sequels to be, simply put, shitty. As a result, I never watched Batman Begins, and it's hard to get excited about a sequel to a movie you never saw.

Well, never saw until now. That's right. After 3 years, I finally watched Christopher Nolan's franchise reboot, Batman Begins. Like I said, I'm not a huge caped crusader fan. I find the concept of a man in a mask, fighting crime kind of silly. I mean, who does that?

Bruce Wayne does that. So, the question is, who does Bruce Wayne think he is?

This review was written as a part of Movies et al's Film Ignorance series. To read the rest of my review, please visit Movies et al!

Monster Movie Poster Monday

Over the weekend, I went to the Detroit Film Theatre and saw a double feature of Sinbad movies. So, I figured it would be a good idea to do a double feature here, too.

  

I hate when the internet is right about anything.

I'm not exactly a big Joss Whedon fan. In fact, I'm not even a slight Joss Whedon fan. I didn't get into Buffy, I never watched Serenity and I've never seen an episode of Firefly. That said, his online mini series Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was absolutely hilarious. Neil Patrick Harris is the titular Dr Horrible. He desperately wants to become a member of the Evil League of Evil, yet all of his plans are foiled by his nemises Captain Hammer, played brilliantly by Nathan Fillion.

It's 3 short episodes, and it's hilarious, but it's only online until midnight Sunday night, so go check it out while you can. Or you can purchase the episodes on iTunes, which I don't really recommend, but that has more to do with my oposition to the DRM that Apple enforces and...well, my use of Linux. Them jerks.

I really liked WALL-E. A lot.

Yesterday ended up being a really short day at work. I drove about 80 miles to go to a client site and fix their computer. It turned out to be a very minor thing, not the tradgedy they described on the phone, and I was out of there after about an hour. Suddenly, the entire day was ahead of me, and I had no real plans. No one expected me at the office, so I decided there was no real reason to go there. Nope, I being the responsible adult that I am played hooky and went to see a movie, don't tell anyone.

I went and saw WALL-E, the latest Pixar creation. I have to say, it was every bit as good that I had hoped it would be. It seems to me that Pixar just knows how to make a great movie.WALL-E is by all accounts a children's movie. Or, a 'family' movie, if you prefer. It is, on the one hand, a movie designed to sell a product, or products. Tickets, shirts, toys, etc. It never feels that way though. It never feels like it's pandering to it's audience. The movie is funny, not at the expense of any one else, but because it's just funny. It's not a movie that is filled with fart and poop jokes, or the kind of humor that pokes fun at cultural differences.

And yet, WALL-E is hilarious. And it also feels very genuine. Here is a CGI robot that doesn't speak, and yet is able to express emotion better than most actors. As much as I've been inpressed by Pixar's previous work, WALL-E blows it all out of the water. It was an amazing film and I'm glad I went to see it. 10 small robots cleaning up foriegn contaminants and learning to break the rules out of 10.

Zombie Rights!

The Republican Party has created a website where you can make suggestions for their political platform. This, naturally, is a horrible idea. Why? Well...for one thing, it means that I can submit something. Finally, an oportunity to have my voice heard and see if the GOP can adapt themselves in the modern world to become the kind of political idealists that I can get behind.

Filed under National Security: Military Policy

It's high time that someone took the initiative to ensure the safety of the American people (even the liberals and hippies) from the inevitable zombie apocalypse. What is being done? Do we, as a nation, have a plan to combat the rapid spread of the newly risen dead? What advice does the government have for us? Should we just resort to plastic sheeting and duct tape?

Is our military properly trained and ready to protect us from walking corpses? How will we handle our poor grandmothers rising from the grave and attacking us, rather that providing us with cookies and fresh apple pie?

It is this threat, and this threat alone, that we must prepare ourselves for. We must relax our current gun laws so that we can all be properly armed when the time comes. If I'm being chased by the living dead, I don't have time to wait 7 days before I can get a gun! I need one now!

And once the zombies are here, and the government has subdued the zombies through the use of force, and we've subjugated them, we'll need laws on the books to protect us from communists and necrophiliacs who will undoubtedly want to marry the wretched creatures! we must add a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between the living, and the living only! Before those patchouli stink ridden liberals decide otherwise!

It took two submissions (stupid 1000 character limit!), but finally, I can sleep at night knowing that the GOP is aware of my concerns and actively working to resolve them!

Just out of curiousity...

Am I the only movie blogger who does not care about the impending release of The Dark Knight?

In which I ramble about my view of humanity

I was thinking that I would review The First Men in the Moon for you today. You know, the movie I posted the poster of yesterday? You remember? Come on, it wasn't that long ago! Well, for those of you who don't recall, The First Men in the Moon was the 1964 film adaptation of HG Wells' story of an expidition to the moon in 1899, you know, 70 years before it actually happened.

On the moon, they meet some insectoid creatures. The scientist wants to try to communicate with them and to learn from them. However, it is Arnold Bedford who takes over, throwing the creatures into a pit and fighting with them before even attempting to learn the slightest thing about them. And, to be honest, it made me very sad.

You have to assume that it is Bedford's reaction to the strange creatures that humanity would emulate should we ever encounter some peoples from another planet. While some people, like the scientest, Cavor, would want to greet and learn from the new creatures, it is much more likely that we would instintively lash out and attack them without waiting for provocation. And, at the end of The First Men in the Moon, it is Bedford's glee that the creatures had been wiped out by an accidental germ from Cavor that really kind of sticks with me.

It strange, sometimes, to see a mirror held up to humanity in film. Think about The Lord of the Rings. It is Aragorn, the noble king who stands by his friends and would never betray them, that we hope to emulate. However, it is the tragic Boromir who is more of a true encapsulation of mankind.

Boromir is a good person, but he has many flaws. He wants only to do the right thing, but he doesn't realize that the right thing is the wrong thing until it's too late. He believes only in himself and his ability to succeed. Where Aragorn sees the ring as an evil thing that cannot be wielded by man, Boromir only sees a weapon. A weapon that he believes can save his land and his people. The truth, ultimately, is that they're both right. Boromir is simply too short sighted to see that the only way to use the weapon is to destroy it.

Of course, Boromir is tempted to take the ring. Who among us would pass on that? If all you saw was the ability to save the ones you love, wouldn't you try to take the ring as well? How many of us could truly pass that kind of power up the way that Aragorn did? Aragorn is the ideal, but Boromir is the reality.

We fear what we don't understand. Boromir and Bedford both show us this. We want to do the right thing, we want to help those around us, but sometimes, I think, we lose track of the right way to do that.

Monster Movie Poster Monday

And I'm you're back from outer space I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face I should have changed my stupid lock I should have made you leave your key if I had known for just one second you'd be back to bother me

Ok, so I didn't go to 'outer space' or even leave the state of Michigan over the weekend. Nothing cool like that at all. All I did was hang out downtown, ride my bike, drive with the top down and read a couple books. Actually, now that I think about it...it was a pretty cool weekend. Sure, I didn't see a bald eagle flying around like some people I know, but I did get a good view of the back of George Clinton's drummer's head. And, you know, that's good enough for me.

This week's poster is from 1964's First Men in the Moon. An adaptation of the HG Wells novel of the same name (and not the first adaptation either, for that you'd have to go back to 1919...I don't think that it had much of a poster for me to post though). And, of course, Dynamation can only mean one thing, effects by Ray Harryhausen.

I will never be able to explain why it is that I am such a fan of Keanu Reeves, but I am

I look at it this way...Nothing Keanu Reeves does will ever be as painful to watch as his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. I don't know who told him he could do Shakespeare, but whoever it was should be shot.

I'm not exactly excited about a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. It's a favorite of mine to begin with, and I just don't see how it can be improved upon. However, it is now and old and outdated premise. The cold war is no longer a pressing concern (though war in general and nuclear threats are still quite real and relevant). If I'm not excited about it, I am interested in it. For the same reasons I just mentioned. I want to see what they do with it. I want to see the approach they take to the story and I want to see how well that story resonates.

There are going to be some fun easter eggs in this one when it hits DVD I think.

I went out and saw Wanted last night. I expected it to be a kind of brainless but fun action movie. The kind that, if I believed in such a thing, would be best enjoyed on 'The Big Screen', or something like that. I don't know. I'm usually just as happy to watch something on my own TV as I am to watch it at the theater. Maybe it's just me.

We start off at a generic office birthday party attended by a generic office worker named Wesley. Wesley's father left when he was a week old, his best friend is sleeping with his girlfriend and Wes suffers from panic attacks. All in all, it's a pretty shitty existence. That all changes the day he meets Fox.

Fox is an assassin and she prevents a rogue assassin named Cross from killing Wesley. She then takes him to Sloan who explains to Wesley that the panic attacks are actually a special ability to slow down time and allow him to react quicker than normal people. This allows him to do some amazing things like shoot the wings off of a fly. It's not long after this that Wesley decides to join The Fraternity, and ancient guild of assassins. Wesley has one objective in mind, to find Cross, the man who killed his father.

That's the short, abridged, version. It's a bit more complicated than all that, but, you know, people hate spoilers. And, there will be some spoilers soon. I'm just that kind of guy.

Wanted was simply high intensity fun. Pure escapism. There is nothing here that you haven't seen before in other movies, but director Timur Bekmambetov did an amazing job of making the movie fresh and entertaining. It was a wonderfully dark sense of humor while still being able to get serious when it needs to. James McAvoy plays the everyman who finds out that he has special powers, but instead of stopping purse snatchers like Spiderman, he uses his power to kill people.

And, I have to admit that I got a kick out of Konstantin Khabensky being in the movie. Khabensky has previously worked with Bekmambetov as Anton, the main character in both Night Watch and Day Watch. And Chancellor Vallorum was pretty cool.

However, there was also something that I didn't like. The ending. This is your warning, I'm about to talk about the end of the movie. If you don't want to read about it, stop now. Here's the thing, movies are all about suspension of disbelief. You have to allow yourself to accept that there is a way to curve a bullet like a cue ball. You have to accept that in this world, the laws of physics are slightly arbitrary. And, you know, for two hours, I was able to believe in that. And then, Wesley confronts Sloan and reveals to the Fraternity that Sloan has been lying about who their targets are supposed to be, and in his defence, Sloan shows everyone that they had been marked to be killed too! And they believe him! Sloan admits he's been making up their targets himself and then they accept it on faith that he didn't just make it up that they had been targeted too! To me, that seems a little unbelievable. I can't imagine why no one would question him on it. Then, after Sloan escapes, he walks right into a trap by deciding to get right up close to Wesley for a point blank kill. Why not do it from a distance?

Overall, it was a well made movie though. It's really fun. It's everything you could want in a post-Matrix action movie. The effects look good. They throw in a couple new ideas and in the end, it's 2 hours of easy on the brain entertainment. I can't wait to see it on DVD now! 8 trains derailing on a mountain bridge after you drove your car into the side of it out of 10.

Is Jason Statham the new Steven Seagal?

Is Jason Statham the new go-to guy for 'blow shit up' generic action movies? Is he Hollywood's new Seagal/Van Damme? It's okay if he is. I mean, someone has to be, right? It's just...I used to like his movies. He was so great in Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells! I guess it's just a little dissapointing that he keeps just turning up in every cheesy action movie that comes out any more.