Bishie - Short for bishounen, a guy so pretty other guys can't resist him either. BL - Japanese term for Boy's Love. Considered Yaoi Lite. DDR - Dance Dance Revolution, a game where you stomp on floor buttons and impress everyone else with your MAD DANCING SKILLZ IRCFiesta - A group of people in the irc channel #comicfiesta who have been online so long we have no idea what clean jokes and sensitive issues mean anymore. Seiyuu - The horribly talented Japanese who voice our favourite anime and game characters. Yaoi - Mangafied gay pr0n. 9000x more appealing than actual anything.
In which there are two angsters and the most kickass Englishman ever.
Listening to: Refraction - KINYA
Long overdue, but three's the charm, so buckle your seatbelts, get a warm cuppa, and brace yourself for...
MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR (or two, or three)
(SPOILERS AHEAD, and you know that!)
19th May: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
As everyone except those who vehemently avoid Star Wars knows, the last episode is actually the last episode of the prequel which then seques into Episode 4, which is actually the sequel to the prequel that was made before the prequel and the beginning of the actual series, and I'm beginning to see why every attempt to explain to my dad just ends with both of us going ARGH.
Anyway, it features Jedi angstwhore Anakin Skywalker, who has seen horrible visions of his beloved Padme suffering and dying. It doesn't help much that she is pregnant (the thought is so horrifying, he can't even mask his cringing horror while saying "I'm so happy for you!"), the Jedi are being asses, Yoda's being a hippie, and his best friend Senator Palpatine is giving him funky ideas that don't really follow the good side much. You just *know* something's up when you start thinking necromancy isn't all that bad.
Also, someone forgot to put the "bad" in Samuel L. Jackson's "badass", because he got flung off a window and took *every other Jedi* with him. That, and he made Anakin whinier. How Samuel L. Jackson defines "badass" is now beyond me.
All in all, it's got its good parts - the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin, Obi-Wan screaming "I LOVEDED J00, ANI!", R2D2 in general, Senator Palpatine kicking butt, the lack of Jar Jar Binks talking, Anakin marching into the Jedi Temple with hundreds of stormtroopers, and the transforming of Anakin into Darth Vader (SPOILER OMG).
Unfortunately for every good bit, there's something horrible: Anakin's moody emoting confined to only one smouldering expression that Kelly gushed about for weeks, plotholes larger than the Grand Canyon (Anakin tell me again why you're choking the one you went Sith for...?), really BAD scripting that eludes me now, and the opening space scene that actually gave me a migraine (>_O) are noteworthy. The fact that these are the most consistently mentioned points in any review is cause for concern (except the opening scene, that's just me).
Coolest scene ever - Anakin just stays *moody* the ENTIRE movie (pic thanks to KM!)
Of course we can just say it's a summer movie, you're meant to turn off your brain, but for this movie, it plain doesn't work - this is an epic spanning over thirty years, producing some of the most horrid stereotypes out there, and when people are saying a CARTOON SERIES is significantly better than the actual movie it is a prequel to, you know you've got PROBLEMS.
Maybe it was the pacing, maybe we should never have *had* Phantom Menace, maybe someone should've tried to force Hayden Christensen and Natialie Portman to generate chemistry at gunpoint, it was supposed to be the movie that fully connected the threads, and it did with everything that wasn't in the movie. Palpatine declaring himself supreme ruler of the Galactic Empire and everyone accepting it blindly? Read the novels. Why Grievous wheezes? Watch the animation. No one should need to dig for things that could've easily been IN the movie with proper editing.
So...how was it?
Honestly though, if you haven't watched it by now, you're not watching anytime soon. It's a good movie with decent action sequences, but it's not something I'd want to sit through again unless someone paid for my tickets. Besides, it's the last movie, it has the making of DARTH VADER from a whiny little bugger, that should be reason enough. It's a little sad to finally hear the words "THIS IS THE LAST STAR WARS MOVIE", but chances are it's not going to last. In this world of capitalism? Come on now.
Listening to: Silhouette of a Breeze - Ryou Kunihiko
18th June - Batman Begins
Batman turns DARK AND GRITTY, not that it wasn't supposed to be in the first place.
However, this one is different! We throw ourselves back into the past to see the moulding of Batman the ANGSTY VIOLENT GUY, and dayamn it's interesting.
...Well as interesting as it gets when you have Bruce Wayne in Tibet for the first half hour of the show rambling with his mentor named Henri Ducard about fear, overcoming fear, being fear, fear factor, blah blah blah blah fear blah blah fear blah OMG LIAM NEESON EEEEEEEEEEEEE! X3
Comic book canon or no, it was overbearing, drawn-out, and downright boring, and I never want to sit through that again, no matter how angsty and dark it was. Okay, maybe to see Liam Neeson kick butt as a ninja, but that's it.
(Why the sudden Liam Neeson fangirling? I don't know either, sue me. It'd be nice to have a mentor like him though, eh?)
ANYway, Bruce Wayne, now less angsty and considerably tougher, goes back to Gotham City and begins his crusade against evil by getting a LOT of Nifty Stuff, courtesy of Morgan Freeman. Among them include parachute cloth for his cape, kevlar batsuit, and of course...
The BATMOBILE.
OMG BATMOBILE EEEEEEEE XD
Never has anything that initially looked so repulsive became so badass. *__* To quote Gordon, "I gotta get me one of those". XD
Meanwhile his childhood friend-turned-District Attorney tries to get a kingpin jailed, but there's a bishie Doctor Crane who is actually the Scarecrow who uses nerve gas as a weapon (OMG BIOTERRORISM FLEE) and Ra's Al Ghul hatches a plot to make the entire city inhale the gas and go BATTY from fear (pun intended). Of course, Batman wouldn't be Batman if he didn't do something about it, and he does it with a better train fight scene (coughspiderman2cough).
So we have bishies, a man who looks like Christopher Reeves playing Batman, bishies, atmosphere, Liam Neeson, bishies, action, bats, angst, good music, and the most BADASS CAR IN THE WORLD, what could go wrong?
Nothing it seems...until the fight scenes.
Now for those who decided that this show wasn't worth watching (BASTARD), almost ALL the fight scenes generally have a person zooming in waaaaay too much, and only managed to figure how to zoom OUT the camera *after* the fight's done. This means during close combat, chances are you'll only see a big black blur and a guy screaming after getting clocked. It's not too far off from the TV series, probably - all you'd need is the little "WHAM PUNCH BAM" word balloons so that we know there's a FIGHT going on.
I wouldn't know, because, see, my seats were FIVE ROWS FROM THE FRONT, so I passed out from the motion sickness x___x Oh, I had a migraine after that too (Yes BMJ I am looking at you don't feel bad really it's the cameraman's fault).
So...how was it?
Great Batmobile, good acting, good music, good atmosphere, good writing, questionable philosophy, a draggy opening, horrid fighting scenes - all in all, if you can sit really far away from the screen, it's good entertainment.
As a bonus, it even makes reference to the first Batman movie by the end of it - I'm not a fan of Batman, and I *squeed*. O_O Although I suppose it's a trade-off, since we won't see the cool Batmobile or Batman's swarm of bats bailing him from the police in any other movie. T__T
So yes, watch. ^__^ It's got Liam Neeson in a role longer than 15 minutes goddammit!
Listening to: Loveless OST - Kawahara Yuji
25th June - Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy
The Demonic Error has this to say about The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy movie:
The Hitchhiker's Guilde to The Galaxy screenplay is written by book author Douglas Adams and finally made due to guilt on the producers' part, since he died promptly after trying to get the movie done for the last 20 years. One would think that for a series of books that has spawned a radio play, TV series, and its very own towel, they'd be clamouring to make a movie, the final merchandising frontier.
But noooo, they wait till the guy croaks, THEN they make.
*ahem*
Anyway, a bunch of people decided to make a movie that would be faithful to the original screenplay, as well as please the fans of Really Weird Brit Humour...or those who had read the book at least...all 15 million of them.
And they succeeded - to date, NOBODY except those who've read the book (or "get" Brit Humour) goes in and gets all the jokes. The rest, being humourless gits who only laugh at slapstick, look at the five people at the back laughing their guts out and wonder if this group of youths are just enjoying their inside jokes, or are they just smarter. Wishful thinking would choose the latter, but everyone knows however brilliant humans are, they are only the 3rd smartest.
The story goes as such: An Englishman named Arthur Dent manages to escape the Earth just before his home (figuratively and literally) gets blown up for highway construction. He is then accompanied by his best pal Ford Prefect, Galactic 2-headed 3-armed President Zaphod Beeblebrox, former Earth resident and former Arthur's failed romantic attempt Tricia McMillan (Trillian), and the cutest depressed robot ever, Marvin. Marvin is in fact so adorable, that making a plushie with soundbites like "I feel so unhappy" would be a hit amongst fans.
OMG MARVIN EEEEEEEEE XD *huggle*
Arthur then proceeds to become the most kickass Englishman ever by:
- experiencing handkerchief-based cults,
- ugly Vogons reciting even uglier poetry,
- cultivating a non-book romance (Mr. Adams says so, so it shall be, and it will be done subtly well),
- turning into a stop-motion figurine vomiting coloured yarn due to a ship running on improbability factors,
- queuing and following the rules of bureaucracy in alien planets,
- transforming thermonuclear warheads into a whale and a pot of petunias,
- witnessing the birth of Earth Mark II,
- and doing all that in his pyjamas and bathrobe, equipped with only a towel.
In between action and seemingly experimental filmmaking, the Guide shows up to explain things that none of the characters could ever explain without someone babbling incoherently, and it does so in a surreal animated sequence, full of bright colours and funny segments that again, the non-Brit humour people don't get.
The movie succeeds in reaching its intended fan base while alienating those who aren't, which can be considered a fairly successful move in its own right - Book geeks will be able to rise to higher levels of elitism by laughing at everyone who didn't get *any* of the jokes while the movie becomes a cult hit. Like Star Wars, except with better direction.
In conclusion, it is an entertainingly surreal movie that is only best watched by those whose sense of movie humour goes beyond supposedly witty repartee (like romantic comedies) or slapstick. For those who do enjoy it, being the third smartest will be a compliment for a long time.
Would you believe this damned thing took me 5 days to type? Really? Well, I suppose I'm the only one then.
Posted at 05:10 pm
labrynth July 6, 2005 12:53 PM PDT H2G2... my brother's response to the movie: stupid funny...
-___________________- guh..
kawa July 4, 2005 11:45 PM PDT KM: Yes. Alot of scenes, especially the Bat-backup is from "Batman:Year One". Gee I'm such a geek. They say by the end of the trilogy (hope so), it would follow some what like "The Long Halloween".
DM: Yeah, Ras wasn't like "i will guide you from the lost path" type of mentor.
KM July 4, 2005 09:20 PM PDT IIRC, Batman Begins itself is using elements from the Batman:Year One "reboot" of the comic series, so we can't reliably use prior comics to judge what is canon or not. From what I hear though it's fairly true to the spirit of that particular comic.
DMJewelle July 4, 2005 04:58 PM PDT Hitchhiker's: SHould watch.
Batman: All I know about comic canon is that Ra's existed, but not too sure about the rest like him being Bruce's mentor and stuff.
kawa July 4, 2005 01:57 PM PDT Star Wars: Yeah, lots of flaws, but it's still fun.
Batman Begins: OMG. Best Batman movie ever. Oh yeah, Batman Begins' not a prequel, but a restart of the Bat movie franchise. The buzz is that the next movie will have The Joker.
The origin being comic cannon or not, eh. The comic origins had left alot open to interpretation. Brucie boy did travel around the world to learn various martial arts, man hunt bla bla etc. But it was only later when he became Batman, Ras wanted him to be his successor and hence trained him a bit.
Yeah, Liam kicked lots of @$$e$. So's Christian Bale.
