Shark Week: What I learned

I know I don't usually write anything on the weekends, but I thought it might be fun to look at what I learned from doing Shark Week this year (and last year).

- Made for TV shark movies? Surprisingly good.

- I watched all of the good shark movies in 2007. 2008's selection was not nearly as good or as fun. Not that I expected any of them to be as good as Raging Sharks.

- In the future, I should probably avoid movies with Anthony Fargas.

- If I can find enough movies, I will almost certainly do a Shark Week 09!

That's it. Come back Monday when I'll be back to my usual schedule of...well, probably irregular posting! See you then!

Shark Week: Plenty of 3 but no D.

When I was a kid, in the summer time, the big thing was going to the beach. It was always something to get excited about and brag to your friends about. It was cool, it was special. It was this huge, awesome place where you could run around and swim and sit in the sun and eat sandwiches and then swim again. You sat on towels and had a cooler filled with ice. There was a ritual to it. Going to the beach was akin to something almost mystical. And, growing up on Detroit's east side, you went to Metro Beach.

I haven't been there in years. In fact, I've been there maybe twice since I was a kid, and only once to the actual beach. For some reason though, I stopped up there tonight to be greeted by a sign:

No swimming? What's the point? This awe inspiring place is nothing now. Not through adult eyes. The beach is tiny and dirty and you can't even swim. If you want to go to Metro and go swimming, you have to go in the pool. A pool! At the beach! What a joke!

On more piece of my childhood ruined by reality. I was so depressed that I wanted to go drink! I refrained though. I took the high road. I decided that a shark movie would cheer me up. Something cheesy. Something with bad effects. Something with an implausible story would certainly return the smile to my face. So, I put in Jaws 3.

Lou Gosset Jr, Dennis Quaid, Lea Thompson, a big shark, water skiiers...what more could you want? I mean, the movie really has everything. Well, not really everything. As you probably know, the movie was made to be seen in 3-D, and, unfortunately, it no longer is. As a result the movie is filmed in such a way as to look interesting and exciting IN 3-D. In old fashioned 2-D though, it looks silly and distracting. 

And that the shark is able to eat someone Jonah and the Whale style with the someone fitting fully in the shark's mouth is just silly.

Jaws 3 might, might be fun if you get a chance to actually see it in 3-D. On the old TV, in only 2 dimensions, it's a bucket of suck. It spends too much time trying to do cute 3-D tricks instead of just acting natural and telling it's story. I mean, let's face it, shark run akok in Sea World is an interesting idea. The addition of some dolphin vs shark kung fu only does so much to help it. 5 of Mike Brody's sweat stained shirts out of 10.

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!