Battle for the Ages.

THERE have been many great battles in our time. Ali vs. Frazier. Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals. LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee. Alien vs. Predator. But these can not prepare you for the incredible battle that takes place during Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Oh yes, I watched it.

Listen, I'm not talking about the battle between a badly rendered octopus and a shark so puppety it makes the cast of Thunderbirds look downright realistic. Oh no. I'm talking about the battle between the cast of this movie to one-up each other in the championship for the worst acted movie in the history of mankind. I don't know how they did it. I'm not sure how they kept it up. From the minute the movie started it was like a tour de force of forced dialog, strange looks into the distance, and unbelievably awkward romance.

First of all, it opens with a helicopter pilot doing something bad, and here it almost lost me. I was close to just abandoning the whole thing, because this guy was so terrible that I couldn't bear to watch him try to pretend he was really talking to Naval HQ over the radio (who at one point reminded him, over the radio mind you, that this mission was so top secret that if anything should go wrong the government would disavow all knowledge of him).

But then Deborah Gibson showed up. Yes, that Debbie Gibson. And thus I discovered that our friendly helicopter pilot was only preparing me for a battle for the ages. A masterpiece. Actors so wooden you'd think they were carved from trees. It is delicious. From the overbearing boss who fires Debbie in one of the most awkward "I'm supposed to be unlikable" scenes in recent history to the Naval commander who actually says the phrase "When we find the beast, we're sending him to hell!" to the Irish professor whose accent is so random that the script had to constantly remind me he was from Ireland. (And it did.)

There's an incredibly awkward romance between Deborah and the Japanese scientist. There's a painful bunch of extras who are supposed to be military security (who wear their sunglasses even when they're guarding people in a dark room). There's even a submarine commander who's accused by his pilot of being INSANE! But then, along comes Lorenzo Lamas and he reminds us that there will never be any actor so bad with so much work to his name for a reason. The man is amazing. I don't know how he does it. It must be seen to be believed. I'm not even sure what he's supposed to be doing in the movie. Who is he? He appears to be in charge of the military (sometimes) but he's wearing a cheap black suit, sporting a pony tail, and never really seems to tell us who he is. He's generic government boss guy. But he's oh so jerky. He makes racist comments. He makes bad puns. He yells at people over a radio. He calls the Mega Shark "Sharkzilla" for God's sake. It is un-be-liev-able.

And this doesn't even take into account that the movie has, and please, I don't want to oversell this, it has THE GREATEST SCENE EVER PUT TO FILM. When the airline passenger looks out the window and says...no. You HAVE to see this to believe it. You'll know when it happens, and hopefully you'll laugh as hard as I laughed and for so long I was afraid I was going to wake up everyone in the house. It was outstanding. Ok. I'm gonna move on to more stuff.

I like to do some game industry related stuff since I'm, you know, related to the game industry, so I sort of look around for anything game related that is cool enough to post. So, there's this, a documentary called Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Basically the pinball industry has become the video slot machine industry, and these guys were told to revolutionize pinball or they'd be fired, and they did, and then they got fired anyway. It's totally worth watching the trailer for some cool shots of the machine they put together.

So, last week I said the Avatar movie looked "meh" and then made a joke about getting sued by them for that. Well, now someone's suing them. You may not have heard of Delgo (God be with you if you have, or if you've seen it). At the risk of my immortal soul I'm going to put the trailer to it right......here. Careful with it. It will hurt you. But now there's this Delgo vs. Avatar lawsuit going on. Because apparently the people that made Delgo thought that maybe James Cameron ripped off their movie. Um...good luck winning that one. Delgo, by the way, is apparently the Floppiest Flop that ever Flopped. Good read.

Is this a viral trailer for Cloverfield 2? Topless Robot thinks it is, and it is exactly the sort of wacky, low budget viral stuff they put on the web for the original Cloverfield. I'm not buying it yet, but, who knows.

So apparently there are buckets of DC Movies in the works, including a Flash movie, a Bizarro Superman movie, 2 Green Arrow movies, and Shazam, which was supposed to have this guy as a bad guy (playing this guy, which we may have noted before here on the madtoad page). Now, some of this is intriguing to me for different reasons.

The Bizarro movie is apparently being put together by the guys who did Galaxy Quest, so that could be incredibly watchable.

The Flash movie reminds me that at one point in time Ryan Reynolds (who was going to be Deadpool for Marvel, but apparently dumped them to become the new Green Lantern for DC) claimed he loved the Flash (one of his favorite characters ever) and that he was interested in the role. Then...nothing happened, and suddenly he was Deadpool.

One of the Green arrow movies is Supermax, which is an idea I love (which I'm pretty sure we also discussed here before) and there was talk of this guy playing Oliver Queen which is a great idea as far as I'm concerned. But would you do two Green Arrow movies at the same time? What's the other one about? Who would be in it? What story would it tell? Intriguing.

Also, I don't think that Shazam movie is going to be worth the trouble. The problem really is with the concept. See Billy Batson is a little kid who turns into Shazam. Which means, that by default it would have to be a kid's movie. They wouldn't do dark Superman Returns or Batman Begins stuff with a little kid would they? That would be kind of creepy. Though given The Rock's predilection for making kid's movies, maybe that would all work out in the end? Who knows?

But DC is having all kinds of movie trouble. And not just Nolan not being ready to work on Batman 3. Did you know there was a Justice League movie in development and it got canned, partially because of trouble with Australia's economy? That's weird right, but here's the best part. Apparently DC didn't learn their lesson because now Green Lantern is having the same problem! (That link includes what I believe is a photoshopped Ryan Reynolds in a Green Lantern outfit. Outstanding.) And just because I don't think I've mentioned it before, the GL movie is being directed by Martin Campbell. If you don't know who that is, just know that he directed the (awesome) Casino Royale.

See, this is what happens, I go looking for something like Campbell up there to give you guys a nice link and I end up discovering things like Martin Campbell is remaking The Birds. Then I start clicking links and it looks like he's NOT remaking it. Or that the studio pulled the plug, or back burnered it or something (so that link to the movie is just outdated and those things never go away). But then I read that they're remaking Rosemary's Baby (trailer) and that one still seems to be going strong. See, I just get sucked into these things and then it's six hours later and I'm reading the internet and Allison's like "What are you doing?" And I'm like "I don't know..."

So then I was reading about these dudes making both The Birds (which they're not doing now because they can't think of anything cool that birds do, which was strike one, and watch Alfred's movie, I mean it's a masterpiece, the birds don't have to do anything, they just sit around and look creepy and then attack people in big swarms and...forget it. You're clearly not getting it. Hitchcock knew how to make a movie. You two guys...) and Rosemary's Baby (you forgot I paranthesised that sentence up there didn't you? I went on for a while there. Like I'm doing again here. And on top of that I made up a word) which they're being defensive about in that article because someone was saying "don't remake it" and they start lambasting that person by saying "We have this other script that isn't like that movie". Then why call it that? Then they're like "We changed the name to The Sacrifice." Great. Stop calling it the Rosemary's Baby remake then, and don't get so uppity. Chill.

Meanwhile, this is what Chris Nolan is doing: Inception. Again, looks intriguing, but I have no idea what it's about.

So, yeah, there's that.

Then, I thought, all I seem to do is complain about superhero movies and things, so I thought I'd give you a couple of trailers for moies that I am actually looking forward to.

Cemetery Junction as Travis pointed out when he sent me this link (thanks Travis!) this is how a teaser trailer should be done. Doesn't show a single frame of the movie, but I was laughing through most of it and would go watch it based on this alone.

And The Men Who Stare At Goats. That's a bizarre title right? What if I told you Ewan McGregor was in it? Does that pique your interest? How bout if I said Jeff Bridges was in it? Those 2 are nerd poster boys what with one being young Obi-Wan and one being Flynn from Tron. Ok, how bout if I give you Keyser Soze as well? Yeah, he's in it. Oh. And some dude named George. But you know, whatever. This guy's in it, so it's a must see. (And I didn't even mention that the T-1000 and possibly D.B. Cooper were in it). It's like somebody let me cast a movie.