Professor of archeology, expert on the occult, and how does one say it? Obtainer of rare antiquities.

If you read movie blogs, and if you're here it's a good bet that you read one or two, you may have seen a meme going around. Basically, people have been writing 10 movie based facts about themselves, and then tagging other to do the same. I was not tagged. I'm not surprised by this as I write pretty infrequently these days. And besides, if I really cared all that much, I'd just do the damn meme anyways.

Now before you start yelling at me to 'quit your whiny whining whiner', let me explain something. The whole point of that last paragraph (other than linking to 3 other blogs) is because something came to mind this evening and, well, it made for a good lead in.

I have one movie related thing about me that I want to tell you. One thing that I want to write about tonight. See, I was looking for a movie to watch tonight. I'm bored. That's all there is to it. So, it occurs to me that I could watch a movie. Ok, sounds like a plan. I'll put a movie in. Well, I don't want to pay too much attention to it. See, I almost want background noise as much as I want anything. So, whatever movie I pick, it has to be something I've seen before. And it can't be Evil Dead 2 since I just loaned it out. It's been a long time since I saw Amelie and I've been wanting to watch it again for some time.

So I pull the DVD out of the DVD drawer. I put it in the DVD player. The menu comes up. I press play. I wander off momentarily. I come back. I press the audio button on the remote. As much as I love the sound of the French language, I know less than 30 words any more. And besides, like I said, I don't really want to pay that much attention. There is no dub on the DVD. French audio and English subs only. Now. This wouldn't normally bother me. Not even a little. Like I said, I love the sound of the French language. Subtitles don't bother me, not even a little. I just didn't want to pay much attention.

See, this happens to me a lot. I want to watch a movie, but not something new. Something I've seen before. Something that I've seen many times. Something that, if I leave the room and come back, or turn my attention from for a little while, I'll know just what's going on when I come back in the room.

This brings me up to the real reason for this post. My assumption is that I'm not alone in this. That other people do this with movies as well. And, well, I thought that it might be fun to share some favorites. I don't really have a good name for the list, but I'm going to list a few that I always fall back on, and if anyone else is so inclined, comment, or write about it on another blog and let me know.

My List Of Movies I Like To Watch When I Want To Watch A Movie But Don't Want To Watch Something I'm Unfamiliar With (in no specific order):

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (tonight's choice (Temple of Doom and Last Crusade are just as likely))
• Star Wars (any of the six)
• Lord of the Rings (any of the three)
• Shaun of the Dead
• Serenity
• Doomsday
• Event Horizon
• Hellboy II
• Planet of the Apes (the Chuck Heston original)
• Resident Evil

Alright. What have you got?

Oh, I'll show you what bad CGI REALLY is!

Last week, Total Film posted an article on the 20 Worst Movie CGI Moments. And, in looking through the list...I have to wonder if they really know what bad CGI is.




Yes, Sam Jackson's death in Deep Blue Sea is horrific (horrifically AWESOME!). With that and Shark Attack 3 to open things up, I had a feeling that they might be onto something fun. Then I read on...and realized that whoever wrote this article has never watched the SciFi Channel on a Saturday night (though I'm not sure if that says more about me or Chris Hicks).

It's one thing if you want to stick to scenes in big budget movies like Watchmen or Transformers and that sort of movie. That's a whole different discussion. But when you start off by mentioning a couple of low budget shark movies, well, they just can't compete. A movie like The Matrix has a lot more money to work with than the likes of Shark Attack 3. It's not a level playing field. And it's unfair to lump them into the same category.

Besides...if you want to talk about bad CGI? Let's start by taking a look at something like Attack of the Sabertooth.







That's from the friggin movie! A movie like Transformers puts more effort into an animatic!

And you want to talk about surfing? Die Another Day has not-a-goram-thing on Escape From L.A.

Do you really think that any thing about this looks better than what the accomplished in Die Another Day? Come on, dude!

Or, let's look at Event Horizon:

Do you really think that the opening sequence full of shitty looking floating debris looks better than anything in Lord of the Rings? And don't even get me started on Johnny Mnemonic or Lawnmower Man and their all CGI depictions of the interweb.

And let's be fucking honest, the only reason the effects looked bad in King Kong was because of how much Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop accomplished on LotR. Sure, the dinosaurs weren't the best CGI effects, but the damn monkey looked amazing.

The Wachowskis, the Bays, the Bruckheimers in this world will never put out the kind of movies that are chock full of bad effects and pure awesome-osity that the Lions Gates, Nu Images and Asylums will.
It's just a different mentality.

And not just among the film makers. As a viewer, I go into something like The Matrix with certain expectations. I expect to see something to write home about. When I pop in something like Raging Sharks, I expect to get a good chuckle and maybe be entertained for a few minutes. So, when I see a goofy alien, or a bad CGI shark, I laugh. I make fun of it. And while I may expect it to be bad, that doesn't mean that it's more inexcusable for a big budget movie to have a little shoddy CGI in it. Hell no. After seeing what people are doing on average home computers and with little money, I expect MORE out of the low budget flicks. When you have all the money in the world to spend on your movie, you damn well better hire the best. When you're on a shoestring, it's about getting the biggest bang for your buck. And when you don't...when you get something that looks like it was made using the airbrush in MS Paint...that's the CGI to get offended by.

Could we call it a flawed masterpiece?

I want to re-visit Event Horizon. As I said before, I REALLY want to like this movie. And I keep trying. The story is good, the actors are all good (well, Laurence Fishburne basically plays himself, and Richard Jones is an okay as the Magical Black Man, Cooper ( though he seems to be trying to hard to play a young Eddie Murphy)), the idea behind it is great, and by 1997's standards, the cgi is pretty damned good. I mean, everything was in place. This should have been an A-1 Super Dooper horror movie in space. (Look at me laying down those sick rhymes!)

It's not, but it should have been. I don't know. Everything just doesn't come together. It feels forced. There's just so little chemistry in the movie. And, I still blame Paul W.S. Anderson for that.

I keep watching his movies, hoping that he'll get it together and make something good. He did a good enough job with the first Resident Evil (though even there a lot of the casting, acting and story choices were a little suspect), but nothing else has really felt as cohesive.

So, it made me think last night, as I was watching Event Horizon again...what if someone else had directed Event Horizon?

I think it's fairly obvious that had Danny Boyle directed it, you'd basically have gotten Sunshine. Go figure.

What if Speilberg had been at the helm? He's done a few movies with aliens, but not really anything in space. He can certainly make a scary movie. Though you run the risk of making Saving the Event Horizon which has some great scares at the beginning and end, but a lot of boring BS in the middle.

Can you imagine Paul Verhoeven, instead of working on Starship Troopers, making a different kind of space movie. There'd be corruption everywhere, and a bit of nudity. The Event Horizon would be a warship, and the gravity drive a weapon. Everyone would falling in love and betraying each other as the Event Horizon destroys planets everywhere it goes.

What about George Romero? Event Horizon of the Dead. The Lewis and Clark arrives to find out that the crew have become flesh eating zombies. Weir gets bit, but hides it from everyone (someone ALWAYS gets bit and then hides it), and upon returning to Earth, he begins to infect everyone else.

Ridley Scott...? Well, most likely, he'd just make Alien. Which he did. 20 years prior. So, I guess, really, if you had Anderson remake Alien, you'd get Event Horizon.

I wonder if it's a misdomeanor or felony when you break the laws of physics...

Oh, Event Horizon! I really wanted to like you. I wanted to like you a LOT. I mean, you were a movie about space and black holes and space time distortion and other fun theoretical physics. And I do love theoretical physics.

General relativity aside, there were other things that seemed interesting about the movie. The whole interdimensional travel to hell and back. The mystery of what happened. The horrific consequences of defying the laws of physics. Things like that. It had a kind of claustrophobic, Alien style vibe at times. Though, really, what modern horror movie in space doesn't have some sort of Alien vibe?

The Event Horizon is a ship that went missing seven years ago. Now, the crew of the Lewis & Clark, joined by scientist Dr. Weir, are sent to investigate a signal that has been identified as coming from the Event Horizon, now in orbit around Neptune. Prior to leaving, Dr Weir appears to be plagued by dreams of his formerly suicidal girlfriend. I say formerly because I think it hard to call someone suicidal once they've succeeded. At that point, really, they're just dead.

When they get to the ship, no one is alive. They only find one body. However, the crew of the Lewis & Clark start to have visions. And one of the crew members is sucked into the gravity well that the Event Horizon uses as an engine. See, the engine creates a portal to another dimension and no one knows what's on the other side. Except the dude who got sucked in. And he wants to kill himself over what he saw!

The ship seems to bring everyone's worst fears to life and drive them crazy. Yeah, it's like that. Whatever came back from the other dimension with the ship wants to go back, and it wants to take everyone with it.

This was a movie that, had it had a competent director, could have been great. Well, it could have at least been really good. And, nothing against Paul WS Anderson (who's work I have really enjoyed on other occasions), but the flaws in this movie were predominantly from a directing stand point. Yes, I understand that the studio made him cut 30 minutes from the film. And I understand that that alone can wreck a movie, but he still got to choose which 30 minutes.

The biggest problem was that the movie kept building and building and then either wouldn't pay off or would pay off with the world's most predictable jump scare. Think about it this way, ever been to a cheap haunted house? Maybe something put on by a church or high school? It's kind of like that. You want to be scared because it's a haunted house, and you want to be scared because you know that their hearts are in it, but really, it's not that scary and you almost feel bad. Afterwards you lie a little and tell them that "Oh, you almost really had me back there!" just to make the kids feel better.

And it's in this way that a movie that could have been something special gets turned into a basic haunted house in space. And that's boring to me.

It wasn't a complete waste of time though. The effects looked really good. The acting was good. And I'm always interested in the ways movies try to get around general relativity to travel through space, and cutting a hole through space-time is as good as any. So, it's not that the movie didn't have anything going for it. And it's not that I wasn't entertained. I was just annoyed. 6 trips to a dimension of pure chaos where your crew will kill each other in some sort of weird outer space blood orgy out of 10.