The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, I didn’t think I was going to get to go out and see it opening weekend, but I managed to swing it! I saw Coraline. This is the first movie that I’ve actively wanted to see for a long while, so it was a good excuse to get out of the house. Being out of the house is good, right?

The first thing that kinda surprised me when I got there was that it was in 3D. This was a mostly pleasant surprise. I don’t think it added a whole whole lot to the film, but it was fun, and a good reason to see it in the theater. On the other hand, I didn’t much appreciate paying like 3 dollars extra to buy the 3D glasses. On the other other hand, these are some serious 3D glasses. I rather like them. I’m keeping them. (There was a box to recycle them outside the theater. Why the hell would you do that? You paid extra for them, and they’re nice! Crazy.)

The movie itself… well, I think Essner said it best. If you watch the trailer, you know whether you are going to like the film or not. The movie is not surprising. It doesn’t switch things up, or have any twists. It’s just fairly straightforward.
Now, I don’t find that a bad thing. I love childish stories. This is completely a childish story, and it was a lot of fun for me to just let my inner kid out and enjoy every moment of it. It was well-enough put together, though I think you could safely say it follows a formula that many stories have used before. Still, those kind of things are why I like childish stories. I like getting lost in that. That’s mostly a personal preference, though.
It also helps that the visual style is pretty nice and stylized. I mean, I’m in the camp that says that the expense of doing stop-motion animation just isn’t worth it, but at the same time, once you’ve spent that money, it looks damn cool. The movie knows it, too, because the beginning perhaps drags a little bit trying to show you “Look how awesome our effects are!” And they’re awesome! But it apparently put Essner to sleep. It certainly takes a little while to get dramatic, I suppose.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty nice. I had a good time. I smiled all the while. Still, it’s not an instant classic, and I’m certainly only going to consider getting it on DVD on the cheap. It was fun, though.

And gods, it was a million, billion, billion times better than Corpse Bride. I think everyone can agree on that.

So a bit ago, Brer told me about this movie called Felidae. It looked like a Disney animated film, but it was all made in Germany, and based on a series of German detective novels. It was never released on DVD, or even outside of Germany, but a rare Laserdisc release of the film had an English dub on it, and, well, you know. With the power of the internet, it was findable. I was game, and we went about watching it.

This movie is mature stuff!

The first indication of this was quite early in the movie, when the main character, Felix, goes out and finds a dead cat. This isn’t too surprising, and you can’t see too much, but, you know, this isn’t what you would expect to see in a kid-oriented film. Soon, he meets some cats in the new neighborhood, who insult him by calling him gay… and then it gets more and more mature from there. There are extremely graphic and gore-filled deaths and evisceration, and plenty, plenty of talk about sex. Dead cats with their guts hanging out are used as marionettes. Felix kills things on camera in full view. Hell, there is even a SEX SCENE. It’s kind of amazing to watch. It makes you realize how censored so much of our stuff nowadays really is.
The movie isn’t perfect by any means. The dubbing is pretty god-awful, though if you were to look back at when it was probably dubbed, it was likely par for the course. The story itself also seems rushed to fit into the running time. Felix plays a detective role, but often we see him just pulling facts out of mid-air to move the plot along quicker, instead of seeing him actually work them out. There’s also a theme song at the beginning and ending of the film that rivals Soul Runnaz for worst adaptation of a plot into a song.
Still, I find it really hard not to like the movie. I’ve expressed before how much I, for whatever reason, crave childish things taken completely seriously and written well. The story underneath it all was a pretty damn good story, and the presentation just… it brings up those childish likes while appealing to that adult side of me. I ate it up. I would love to see more movies like this, definitely, and I certainly think this film is worth seeing, even with its flaws. It’s actually kind of a shame it isn’t on DVD somewhere. It would be a nice little movie to own.

So, Essner wanted to watch Hamlet 2. Now, I didn’t think the movie was going to be good. I mean, it never really seemed promising. It didn’t have anyone in it I really think could do the solid idea justice. But surely it would provide a few laughs, and maybe I’d be surprised and it would be good, right?

Oh.
My.
Fucking.
God.

I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie this horrible. The entire movie focused completely on B plots that went nowhere, had nothing to do with the premise, and weren’t the least bit interesting. Do I care that the main character is sterile? FUCK NO. Do I care that he has relationship problems? FUCK NO. The entire time you’re watching the movie, you are asking yourself, “Why the fuck is this scene here?” There is no answer to this.
All these pointless subplots could be saved if the movie would actually employ humor. There were two funny lines in the entire movie. TWO. The rest seemed to assume that naked men and the word “fuck” are funny. I mean, set up appropriately, both CAN be funny. But there was no setup. That’s all they did. Oh look, this character said the word “fuck” really loud. Hilarious.
So little of the film was about the play “Hamlet 2” which, I may remind you, is the funny idea the movie was supposedly based on. And when it does finally get to the point where we see the play, it’s nothing but a series of bad musical numbers. And not bad in a “oh god, that’s so bad! It’s hilarious!” but just… overwhelmingly mediocre. It sounds like a bunch of high school students with a big budget doing these scenes. It’s not funny, it’s high school theater with fucks.

What the fuck happened with this film? How could it go so completely wrong? How could nobody see how horrible an idea it was NOT to focus on the funny idea that the movie was about? How could nobody see that it was stupid NOT to add humor? Even bad humor would have been appreciated.
Essner described the movie as “a Disney Channel Made For TV Movie that has fucks for some reason.” That perfectly describes this film.

Ugh. I still can’t get the taste out of my mouth, even now…

So I saw Quantum of Solace on Sunday. The basic idea is that if you even mostly liked Casino Royale, you’ve got to see this film. I feel like I don’t have to tell you that, though, if you were a fan of the Craig Bond. This won’t have spoilers or anything.
The action was mostly non-stop. The movie rarely takes a breather, and when it does it’s mostly just to explain some plot and normally has some interesting things going on in the background anyway to keep your attention. The movie is shot in such a way that you get confused, but not TOO confused. I assume this is to sort of simulate how crazy actually fighting someone can be. Not that I’ve actually fought someone to be able to tell you or anything.
But yeah, Craig’s Bond is an unending badass who gets some laugh out loud badass lines and fucking murders everyone. And yet, somehow, they’ve managed to give him some characterization without it feeling forced, cheesy, or unnecessary. He feels like a real person and not a superhero. Granted, that just makes moments where he impossibly survives without major injury kind of stupid, but you rarely care, because oh shit, here comes yet another fight scene.
That’s something different about Quantum from Casino Royale. There is no downtime. Casino Royale took a little bit of slower time to have Bond do some actually spying. In Quantum, if Bond starts trying to gather information, you know there’s going to be a guy for him to beat to death jumping out from somewhere in moments. It doesn’t get quite to the point where you don’t buy it, either. The movie walks that line really well on a lot of fronts.
The most disappointing thing, by far, was the title sequence. As much as I would have liked to have seen Bond get into a boss battle with four giant naked women, it just doesn’t work nearly as well as Casino Royale’s. I mean, take a look at it. Cool card imagry connected with how much of a murderer this Bond is. Nice. I think part of the problem probably was… what the hell was Quantum of Solace about? If you don’t know that, it’s hard to make a neat sequence that captures the film easily.
I do think it’s odd that I can be half-confused about what the movie was about and still think it was completely awesome, though. I mean, I think I get the plot, mostly, but it’s going to require another viewing (When I get it on DVD. I mean, I probably won’t see it in a theater again. Gods, I have no time for this stuff.) to get it completely. We stood in the parking lot after the film discussing what we didn’t understand, even as we were all going “Damn, that was a great movie.”

And seriously. Damn. That was a great movie.

Here is a short review of Shoot ‘Em Up.

The entire time, I was laughing because what I was seeing was so completely ridiculous, and that was the point. It’s not some sort of high art thing, it’s just incredibly exciting and stupid fun. You should see it, if you would like exciting and stupid fun. At the very least, give it a rent when it hits DVD.
I’d sort of like to say more about the movie, but that’s really it before getting into details that I really think you shouldn’t know beforehand. They’ll add to the enjoyment. So… that’s it, I guess. Do give it a try sometime, though.

In other news, my wrists are really hurting. Which sucks. I also finally completed my quest to acquire Casino Royale in a buy 2 get 1 free used DVD deal, so that’s happy. Also, I need to write a poem using the word “Littoris.” Probably something talking about some book needing to “lick my Littoris.”

Yeah.