WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 06/06/08

I got together for dinner and a movie with my old co-worker Scott last night. He wanted to see Prince Caspian and I was up for seeing it again. We went to Chunky’s Cinema Pub, which is always a fun place, since you can get food right in the theater. It was good seeing the movie again. I still found that some of the parts of the story they embellished to make the movie more epic were a bit overdone.

The ending battle scene does go a bit long, and seems a little more supperfluous than the epic battle in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The last act is a little overburdened for me, but there’s still a lot to like about the film, especially the first two thirds of the movie. It’s definitely the lesser of the two films, but still enjoyable.

Scott liked it too, though he also commented on the battle’s embellishments. We also both chuckled over a couple of times when Prince Caspian was reminiscent of Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. I’d remembered a few lines that had reminded me of “you killed my father, prepare to die” when I’d first thought the film too.

Repicheep was wonderfully fun in this film; Eddie Izzard did a great job with him. Trufflehunter the badger was adorable as well. The characterization, visualization, voice-acting and writing for Aslan still makes me get a bit misty-eyed every time he’s on screen too.

Originally Written 05/02/08

I got together with Jen, Gan and Chris for a bad movie night last night. Gan’s brother had an old VHS tape of the 1992 movie Evil Toons, that had promise, but unfortunately it turned out to be like an R-rated version of Manos: the Hands of Fate. As I quipped, you’d think a bunch of slutty girls in a house with a lusty werewolf and David Carradine would be fun, but somehow they managed to prevent that.

Even bare breasts didn’t help the movie, well not much. And I don’t know how they blackmailed David Carradine to be in that turd; he didn’t even look like he was having fun slumming it. The best part of the movie was the necronomicon book they found, complete a talking face on the cover and with VCL art of lascivious demons and werewolves inside. One of them comes to life, and the animation was good. Unfortunately they blew their budget on that and could only afford about 40 seconds of it. Otherwise the film was painfully dull and plodding.

Afterwards we watched a  movie I’d rented which sounded interesting. Shinbone Alley had a neat early 70s animation style, which was reminiscent of School House rock segments in many places. I liked the slightly-gritty look of the backgrounds. It also got trippy and weird in a few segments. It’s a musical and based on a series of stories, so the plot is kind rambled, but it was interesting.

It started out kind of whimsical and fun but got more serious and darker as the movie went on. I kind of liked the movie, but it had some severe problems. In the end it was a drama about a dysfunctional friendship. It acknowledged that people rarely change and if you love/care for someone than you have to take them faults and all.

That’s all well and good, but the movie didn’t seem to know what its message really was. In the end it’s almost a celebration of this damaged character, without acknowledging how messed up she is. It was an interesting idea, but the story could’ve been a little tighter and the ending left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth.

Originally Written 04/19/08

also got to finally see one of the episodes of the new season of Dr. Who last night as well. “Voyage of the Damned” was a good one, but how can you go wrong with an idea of the Titanic in space?

I liked how they played with the disaster movie plot points; it reminded me of The Poseidon Adventure (the original film) in several places, in a good way. The melodrama might have been a bit overdone, but it was still good.

There was an added bonus of killer androids too, which was just icing on the cake. I loved the references to the classic Tom Baker episode “Robots of Death” they got in there.

Originally Written 04/19/08

I saw The Forbidden Kingdom last night. I was worried that it might suck, but was hopefully with it getting a good rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so we decided to check it out. The film was a treat, even though it wasn’t perfect.

It was good fun to see Jackie Chan and Jet Li together in a movie. Yes they’re showing their age a little bit, but better late than never. Both of them still have their chops too. There was a lot of good martial arts. Some of the editing was a bit choppy, but the fight choreography was impressive.

The movie had lots of nice visuals too. It’s a pastiche of a whole bunch of kung-fu movies and legends, but it’s obviously made by people who love the genre, and it’s good fun for fans. Unfortunately the movie is flawed.

The biggest problem with it is the choice of actors for the kid who played the chosen one. I can be down with using an American in the roll, but the kid they chose had no charisma or screen presence, so he ended up sucking energy from a lot of scenes. He did get better towards the end, but I would’ve definitely liked someone else.

I didn’t hate the film, and I had fun with it, but it could’ve been better. Still, for fans of the genre, who can overlook some faults, it’s worth checking out.

Originally Written 03/19/08

When we were hanging out this weekend, my friend Lonnie wanted to watch Starship Troopers, which was fine for me as it’s an entertaining flic. I love how the first half of it is like an Aaron Spelling show in space, which is some goofy, silly fun, then once they get to the action the effects and CGI and design of the bugs are most excellent. It was an enjoyable way to flit away a lazy Saturday afternoon, eating junk food and hanging out.

I was also struck by a bit of a surprise at watching the film post 9/11. There’s a good deal of unplanned parallels to things going on today, even if we aren’t fighting giant bugs. First there’s a group of young adults who join up with the military during peacetime to better their lives. A vicious surprise attack by an enemy propels everybody into war, which is greatly underestimated at first.

Also, while it was satire and exaggeration, the media propaganda hit home in a few spots, including predicting having embedded reporters with the troops on the missions. Of course it’s missing the left half of the news machine, but except for a couple of throw-away lines there is no dissent among the population. Everybody agrees this is an enemy that needs to be fought and wiped out, but then it’s a battle drama, so the writing calls for that.

Anyway, it’s not a serious political treatise, it’s just something I noticed, that watching this goofy film from 1997 reads a little different in the paranoid 2000s. Damn I miss the late 90s, when the money flowed freely and the biggest thing we had to worry about was who the president was getting oral sex from.