Monday, July 27, 2009

capital punishment.

since no one cares what i think (clearly, cause you don't comment on my blog, and seriously, it's the only currency my blog has, so you know, throw me a frikkin bone people!) i'm punishing you all by refusing to use capital letters. i know, i know, capital letters means you're yelling, so consider this like the silent treatment. only it's the undercase letter treatment. you'll get your capitals back when i'm good and ready.

movies i'm looking forward to:

tr2n, which has now thankfully been renamed tron legacy or some such rot. Who cares? it's got jeff bridges (the original flynn) and looks pretty darn cool. how come nobody does good sequel names anymore, like aliens, or....actually, sequel names aren't usually very good are they? i guess they could have called it trons... (how come bruce boxleitner's not in it? is he busy? does scarecrow and mrs. king still come on? i don't think it does.)

book of eli. denzel washington being all cool and stuff in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. gary oldman being a creepy bad guy. mila kunis being all actiony and stuff. word.

tv i'm looking forward to:

amc is doing a remake of the prisoner. i used to like watching this but didn't understand it until i was much older. looks cool though. it has magneto and that dude that could talk to dennis quaid thirty years in the past on his ham radio. good music too. that trailer is 9 minutes, btw, so save it til you have some time. also, if you're interested, you can apparently watch the entire 1967 series here.

random miscellany:

if you could travel back in time what would you do? you could go to hollywood and make movies, couldn't you? i could. i'd go and write awesome scripts like star wars and usual suspects and cast awesome 50's actors in the parts, and they wouldn't be nearly as good, but it would make me laugh. (i could see bogart and peter lorre and maybe ronald reagan or somebody in the 1940's version of usual suspects, right?) well, somebody decided they'd make ghostbusters in the 40's/50's and they even made a trailer!

ridiculously interesting clip on the history of gi joe, leading up to how we got the movie we're about to loathe. a few things of note:

- 0:21 seconds into the clip - that's a cartoon of a guy punching his fist through another guy. i'm almost sure of it.
- 0:23 gratuitous plastic white tiger...was that a gi joe figure?
- 0:40 robert mitchum movie "the story of gi joe" is the namesake for the figure. ooh, i need to put robert mitchum in my usual suspects movie.
- 0:59 there's a slight village people feel going on here, but...is that dude in the front a black panther?
- 1:13 that ridiculous beard. i had one of those. that beard was fuzzy.
- 1:17 the red beard. man, that doesn't look right. he should see a doctor.
- 1:24 kung fu grip.
- 1:41 the new 8" super joe lineup apparently includes no budget for "clothes". they are rocking some sweet leopard print boxers though. nice.
- 1:56 that second comic that comes out on your screen is gi joe #21, one of the greatest comic books of all time (imo). it has no dialog. it is a 22 page ninja (snake-eyes) infiltrating a cobra base to rescue scarlet (again, i'm not bitter about the romance plot that's being ruined in the movie. no, wait, yes i am.)
- 2:23 that guy calls out ripcord like he was one of the main dudes, because they put him in the movie. but while snake eyes and scarlet were both series 1 figures (1982) and duke was a series 2 figure (1983), ripcord didn't exist until 1984. and he was so popular he was discontinued in 86. nice.
- 2:44 the gi joe drug elimination force? really? did we sell that to kids? also, the dude doing the voiceover says "takes on the growing drug trade". like kids were pretending their joe's were battling in colombia over cocaine fields? really? does anyone remember this?
- 3:10 i remember sigma 6 (vaguely) but i don't remember either of those movies.
- 3:26 nice gratuitous boob shot of the baroness. thank you sienna miller.
- 3:53 and it's done.

final cast for 1940's usual suspects:

alan ladd ... michael mcmanus (in 1994, stephen baldwin)
cary grant ... dean keaton (in 1994, gabriel byrne)
boris karloff ... fred fenster (in 1994, benicio del toro)
peter lorre ... todd hockney (in 1994, kevin pollack)
humphrey bogart ... roger 'verbal' kint (in 1994, kevin spacey)
ronald reagan ... dave kujan (in 1994, chazz palminteri)
robert mitchum ... kobayashi (in 1994, pete postelthwaite)
lloyd bridges ... jack baer (in 1994, giancarlo esposito)
lauren bacall ... edie fineran (in 1994, suzy amis)
spencer tracy ... jeff rabin (in 1994, dan hedaya)

and yes, i spent half an hour looking people up for this movie. sue me. you would have watched this.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I'm just going to keep ranting.

At this point I've given up on anything on this blog except me being angry at Hollywood movies. Why? Because it's something I care about and I just don't understand the pure crazy that spews out of Producers/Directors/Actors sometimes. I get that they don't care about the franchises I care about, but I don't get how they don't like money. The Dark Knight is filled with money. You know why? Because they made people like me happy. Bat-Guano-Crazy Batman fans were happy and look, a good movie, and look, money. Lots of it.

So it's inexplicable to me that the GI Joe movie even exists. Here's a nice ranty review from someone who saw a sneak preview. I have no reason not to believe everything this guy says. Why? Well, shortly after the review several "spoiler" filled reviews hit the web. About 5 in 6 of them were glowing, "OhmygoshIcan'tbelievehowGOODthatwas", Go see it in theaters it's totally worth the money reviews. Why does this make me suspicious? Well, I've seen the trailer...

But what makes the ranty review up there so more likely to be accurate is the fact that he is telling basically the same story the gushy happy awesome reviews are, except he doesn't sound like an idiot saying things like "Oh, my gosh this might be the greatest action movie EVER!!!11!!"

I could spend all day listing my problems with GI Joe, but I'm gonna just point out 3 things, then I'll rant about something else (Green Lantern, so if you don't care just go to google and look for anything more interesting than me ranting about Hollywood for 3 pages).

1.) Look at this logo. That's from the Cartoon Episode Guide. What does it say there right below GI Joe. It says "A Real American Hero" right? Except that inexplicably, in the movie, GI Joe is made up of the best soldiers from 10 NATO countries. Um...why? Oh, right. You don't care about our source material. Thanks for making that clear up front.

2.) Romance subplots - a.) Duke and the Baroness once almost got married. Wh-Wh-Wha?!?!? No, thanks, didn't need that. That's a stupid movie cliche, and thank you Director and screen writer for reminding me why you're hollywood hacks. Of course the totally hot bad guy chick and the main character good guy dude used to be in love. Why wouldn't they be. There's only 6 billion people on the planet. It makes perfect sense that those 2 people would end up in this situation. Riiiiight.

b.) Scarlet and (not Snake-Eyes) Ripcord. See, Snake-Eyes and Scarlet have always been a thing, in the comics, the cartoon, in the whole backstory of GI Joe. He's mute and silent and the best character in the show (we were kids, and he was a ninja, there was no way he wasn't ending up the coolest character in the show) and she was the totally hot red head (again, we were kids, of course she was the hottest chick on the show. She had a crossbow for God's sake.) They had a cool relationship where they never got together but you could tell they both wanted to. It was extremely subtle for a kid's franchise, and maybe one of the best things a cartoon/comic/toyline ever pulled off in the subtlety department. Seriously they should get an award for that somehow, I'm not even sure how they did it, but ask any GI Joe fan and they'll know. So who's Ripcord? Who knows? Some cheap crappy knockoff Joe character they made up for the movie, or ripped from one action figure 9 toy lines ago that nobody remembers or cares about. But he's played by Marlon Wayons (God help me, I don't want to hate Marlon, he's not even a bad actor, but between this and the Dungeons and Dragons movie it's like I killed his parents in a past life or something and now he's haunting me) and Marlon Wayons is chatty, and of course the writer and director of this movie believe subtlety is for French movies about red bicycles and we'll be having none of that, so Scarlet likes Ripcord. Great.

3.) Destro is Scottish, and his family hates the French, apparently because of something that happened 500 years ago, and this is why he blows up the Eifel Tower. Ok. Sure. Why not. But nobody likes the French. I mean, we've made it an American tradition (remember when we were calling them Freedom Fries?) So with the International Joes, Destro, the Villain, pardon me, the Scottish Villain may be the most American person in the movie. I'm not sure that's a good move on the movie's part. Movie, you might want to rethink that.

I'm already prepared for this to be bad, so let's just move on.

Green Lantern? Ryan Reynolds? Maybe?

Look, there's a Cartoon Green Lantern movie hanging out (That's the first 5 minutes of it) and it looks pretty good. Is there any hope that the movie will be that good? I don't know. I like Ryan Reynolds. I'm disappointed that this means probably no Deadpool movie. I love Deadpool. But it's Marvel and Green Lantern is DC and I'm sure neither side is gonna let him do both. But hey, Green Lantern is definitely more mainstream than Deadpool, so this is probably the right call on his part.

I just hope it's not a horrible CGI fest of bad green graphics, and seriously, I wish they'd skip the whole backstory, because do you really care? An alien gave him a ring, cool? Ok, can we get to the action??

Green Lantern, the greatest high concept in comics history: "A space policeman fights crime with the help of his magic wishing ring." Don't screw that up.

Anyway, here's pictures of nails.

Speaking of DC products, here's the packaging for the Wonder Twins.

And these are really awesome and funny reviews of Sky Mall Products.

This is better than the entire 23 hours of the Transformers movie.

And in honor of Michael Jackson's demise, here is the Eternal Moonwalk.