Saw III
October 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment
This is our third outing with Jigsaw and while the traps have gotten even more creative this time around, the quality of the story has taken a nosedive. Instead of putting a group of people into a situation where they have choices to make if they want to survive, it’s individual cut scenes with people in traps and one guy watching others in a series of traps. Of course, it’s all brought together at the end so that it makes sense but the journey wasn’t nearly as interesting as it should have been.
As we know Jigsaw is dying and he’s training up someone to take his place. You might be able to guess who, you might not, but it doesn’t really matter. The apprentice doesn’t do things quite the way Jigsaw does which is apparent after the first encounter we see. Jigsaw really did like to “play a game”, and it’s not a game if you don’t have the possibility of winning. These new puzzles? Nope, can’t win. Why is this? Well, we get somebackstory to explain… and we don’t care. Also, Jigsaw used to be a nice guy. How do I know this? More backstory that we don’t care about.
We start off with the cops cutting their way into a room with a blowtorch. Inside are the remains of victim #1, the dude in chains from the trailer. A detective is called to the scene and notices the sealed door and knows this isn’t the work of Jigsaw. Next we jump to a lady with a guy in a room, neither of them are very happy and she’s going into work early (she’s a doctor.) Now we’re watching another guy sitting on a bed having flashbacks of his son getting hit by a car. Back to the hospital, doc sleepwalks through an emergency procedure. Back to the guy, something is amiss in the room so he interrogates his daughter. Doctor is popping some pills and gets locked in the locker room, and she’s not alone. Guy is sitting on the bed when his daughter walks in to get ready for school.
Think the proceeding paragraph was hard to read? You should try watching it. Blech. The entire movie jumps around like this. It’s not impossible to follow by any means, but it’s tiring.
After the previous movies I had high hopes and was very disappointed, hence I’m only giving this 2 stars. The blood and gore was first rate, the traps were creative, but I was so bored in-between the blood splatters that I just wanted it to be over.
MXC - Season 1
October 22, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Spike TV’s “Most Extreme Elimation Challenge” is one of those ideas that TV networks just love: a work of pure inspirational genius that DOESN’T require $270+ million and many years of filming in New Zealand to pull off. The premise here is simple: take a Japanese gameshow that puts eager, naive people into “games” (which are really very difficult physical stunts) that nearly always ensure a painful end result, and dub an English soundtrack over the top of it with some brilliant comic writing.
Thus was MXC born. It would be entertaining enough to just watch these people flinging their bodies into danger, but the added commentary from the two fictitious announcers, Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship, will keep you in stitches. Their risque double entendres (that kids won’t understand) and the punny names they create for the contestants are both just priceless elements of the show.
The production values here aren’t exactly going to win any Emmy awards, but since this is all about humor, who really cares? It’s enough to just sit back and enjoy the laughs. I recommend this set for anyone and everyone who likes to laugh.
Man of the Year
October 18, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Knowing Man of the Year was political in nature and that it was coming out of Hollywood, I expected to be knocked across the face with a hard liberal slap. Turns out it was more of a “politics sucks and it needs to change” slap, and I happen to agree with that message. Too bad the slap wasn’t funnier.
Robin Williams is Bill Maher.. er.. Tom Dobbs, host of a weekly talk show with a strong political message. He’s a liberal and proud of it, but really wants change more than anything else. One day during the audience warm up someone suggested that he run for President, and he mentioned it offhandedly during the show. The email started to flow and he decided to give it a shot.
Obviously he wins or there wouldn’t be much of a movie, but he has a few hiccups along the campaign trail. Typical movie stuff though, he stops being funny and gets boring but eventually gets his mojo back just in the nic of time. There’s a few other setbacks but they aren’t much of a surprise either. The real issue in the movie is that he won the election due to a computer error, finds out about it after the fact and is faced with the decision on what to do. Again, this is pretty obvious stuff.
Where the movie falls down is in the combination of serious subjects and humor. A good comedian like Robin Williams can do this easily in a stand up act, but it’s much harder to pull off in a movie. We’re hit with some typical leftist material (the rich keep getting richer, we need universal health care, companies are evil, etc.) and also get some rather neutral subjects (government is corrupt, lobbyist are ruining the system, electronic voting might be a really bad idea), but the shift between making us laugh and making us think isn’t very smooth. Many times the film stays serious just a tad too long and caused me to look at my watch to see how much longer the sermon would last. When Robin was allowed to be funny though, he was really funny.
I’m a big Robin Williams fan and that makes me want to like this movie more than I did. Take his funny bits and string them together into a segment on Real Time with Bill Maher and I’d give it 5 stars, but I wasn’t that entertained with the rest of the movie. Worth seeing if you’re out and can’t find something else, but otherwise wait for DVD.
Gojira
October 9, 2006 | Leave a Comment
When I was a teenager, I discovered late one night a tv show called Dr. Who on the local public broadcasting station. Being a sci-fi nut, I eagerly tuned in…for about 15 minutes. I was amazed that a modern show (modern to the year 1983, that is) could have such appallingly BAD special effects! I was stunned to think that ANYONE could think that people might be able to watch something that cheezy and actually ENJOY it without laughing out loud and pointing to the TV in a most deriding manner.
But then a month later I saw the original Gojira (that’s Godzilla for those of you not in the know) and realized where the WHOites got their idea from. I had seen many of the later Godzilla movies and kinda liked them but this was the first time I’d seen the first one…the one that started it all…the Grandaddy of all Godzilla movies! And it sucked.
I realize that it was only 1954 when the movie was made and that Japan’s film industry was very young and that Japan had only 9 years earlier been devasted by our military and two well placed A-Bombs, but c’mon! My Uncle Steve’s retarded, hair-lipped kid could create better special effects with only a Lite Brite(tm), some Playdough(tm), a handful of paper clips, a medium sized possum, and some flash powder.
Thankfully, however, the effects and productions values DID get better with the subsequent sequels that rose from the depths every few years. Godzilla was still a man in a rubber suit, and everything he smashed was a toy or a model, but some efforts were made to improve the look and make things flow more smoothly.
Fast-forward now to 2006. Sony now wishes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the release of the US version of the movie, titled: “Gozilla, King of the Monsters!”, (which was a complete hack-job of the original) by releasing a two-disc special edition containing the 1954 original and the above-referenced 1956 hack job.
What? You didn’t know that there were two different versions of the movie? Yes, indeed, there were two. There was the original version (very rarely seen here in the US) which was a purely Japanese film intended to be an allegory about the dangers and horrors of the nuclear age. And then there was the US version. This one came about when B-movie studios were clamoring for all the monster movies they could find. The 1950s was a HUGE decade for anything involving vampires, aliens, giant insects, and other deadly creatures. The original Gojira, however, while desireable for its monster, was seen as a movie that wouldn’t be able to make it here in the US due to it’s heavy handed story and depressing ending.
So some enterprising folks shot some of THEIR OWN scenes (starring Raymond Burr), cut out a lot of the preachy scenes from the original, and released it here to some measure of success.
And now, if you’re willing to shell out a few bucks, you can have BOTH versions! But you probably shouldn’t bother unless a) you are a SERIOUS monster movie freak or b) you are a movie historian. For either type of person, this would be a must have for the ol’ video library. However, for the rest of us, this is, at best, a classic cheezefest that would be best viewed w/ the guys from MST3K.
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Gun Play
Blood & Gore Car Chases T&A Chuckles |
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