I know I normally hate prequels

I'll admit it. I think an Alien prequel could be interesting. Regardless of whether Ridley Scott directs it or not.

I've never made much of a secret of my distate for prequels. It's rare that they add anything interesting to the story. For some reason though, the thought of learning what happened aboard the ship that the Nostromo finds is strangely appealing.

Duh Duh, Duh Duh, Duh Duh Duh Duh

I checked my calendar.

Next week is shark week.

Let me repeat that in a larger font...

Next week is 7dp's 3rd Annual SHARK WEEK

You might want to stay out of the water.

It was bound to happen eventually.

I'd read how great it was.

I'd read how boring it was.

I'd read how faithful it was.

I'd heard it was amazing.

And, after reading and hearing so much about it, I got around to watching it myself.

That's right, I finally saw Watchmen.

By now, you've either seen it, read more than you ever wanted to about it or have been living underneath a rock (a rock with wifi access apparently if you're reading this).

I didn't hate it. I'm not sure I liked it though either. I was very 'meh' about it. I'm glad I watched it, and there were certainly things about it that I enjoyed...but, I think I still fall firmly in the 'it's unfilmable' camp. It's just too complicated of a story to do in a medium like film. You'd have to really adapt the story differently and it trying to remain ultra faithful to the source, it falls short.  

Watchmen is the kind of movie that needs characters you're familiar with. It works in the graphic novel because you can spend time on backstory. In the movie, well, much of the backstory is lost, and it suffers for it.

I blame director Zack Snyder. In his efforts to remain 'faithful' he gets the look right and he gets the story right-ish...but something is still lacking.

It reminds me a bit of the adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the things that Adams does well in the book is write jokes. And one of the worst things the movie did was set up Adams' jokes from the book, and then fail to deliver the punchline. Sure, it was still funny and enjoyable enough, but you knew something was lacking.

Watchmen all but puts it in writing that, with the exception of Dr Manhattan, these are all regular people. It makes very little effort to even try to explain why an ordinary person would put on an utterly ridiculous costume (and many of them are just godawful) and parade around fighting crime.

Sure, with an infinite amount of time to tell the story, Snyder would have answered every little question, delved into every character. I have no doubt there. And that's kind of the problem that I had with it. I really would have prefered that Snyder took the story and put his mark on it. Tell it his way. You don't have to use the comic as a storyboard to make a good adaptation. But, because that's what he decided to do, the end result is a movie that isn't nearly as good as it's source.

I have no idea how I feel about this

Part of me is all like 'OMG! This looks so COOL!'



While the rest of me is kinda like 'Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Again. Meh.'

I have to admit

I think Survival of the Dead is an utterly ridiculous title.

It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it though. I mean, it's Romero...and zombies. And, even though I may not have loved his last effort, I still want to see the new one.

[Trailer]

I was on vacation. In LA. I saw this.

I really don't like the voice over.

I know, I'm way behind the times on this one. You probably saw this an internet eternity ago (this past Tuesday), but it's hard for me to let something like this go past without mentioning it.



Now, I mostly liked The Machine Girl. Not the greatest movie ever made, but it was bizarre enough to be interesting and not so strange as to be unsettling. RoboGeisha looks like it make go quite a bit further, and I don't know how that makes me feel. It could be a gory, over-the-top good time or it could be trying to cram so much in that it collapses under it's own weight. The only thing I know for sure is that the trailer acts more like a highlight reel than a promo and the voice over is awful.