Submitted by GuyGG on Sun, 06/13/2010 - 11:59pm
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I have bunches of stuff to catch up on here. I have been, shall we say, a bit behind on the updates. We'll see how well I do getting posts online over the next week or two. There'll be some stuff from a little while back that I wrote but never got around to finishing off and publishing.
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Wanna see a cool, impressive new form of art/advertising? Check out what a company called NuFormer is doing. Take a look at a number of their videos.
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Speaking of creative, artistic types, here's one of the more impressive approaches I've seen.
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There are lame "photoshopped" photos, then there's this gem.
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You know, I really do think that Hollywood is going WAY too crazy with the horror movie remakes (though there actually have been some good ones, like Last House On The Left, Dawn Of The Dead or the sadly overlooked Willard). However, I can't help but love the cast they are assembling for the Fright Night remake.
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Speaking of remakes, the recent teaser reel for Mortal Kombat: Rebirth has been getting fanboys hearts all atwitter. I gotta admit, it does absolutely nothing for me. Well, they did at least cast Jeri Ryan as Sonya Blade, so that's a good thing. To be honest, I really couldn't care less about most physical fight scenes in movies and TV. Unless they are particularly inventive (for example, Jackie Chan), I pretty much tune them out. It was always my least favorite part of Buffy (but they did do the occasional fun job with them). This new Rebirth teaser is essentially nothing but a complete bore for me. I rather enjoyed the silly first film. Though I utterly hated the second film (the ONLY good thing about having seen that theatrically was the studio attached trailer for Dark City). I really don't care if the new Mortal Kombat sucks or not. I'll need to see more preview material to even decide to give it a chance.
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And on the subject of reboots, there's this destined-to-fail abomination: the remake of The Crow, directed by talentless hack Stephen Norrington.
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Then again, many fanboys complain about the Resident Evil film franchise, and the upcoming, gleefully 3D fourth installment, Resident Evil: Afterlife. Frankly, I'm looking forward to it. For whatever reason, those films have continued to work for me. I'm also amused that this fourth film will feature yet another composer for the music (well, composers in this case). This will, however, be the first time the franchise returns to a previous director (though Anderson did at least script/produce 'em all).
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For all you fellow fans of the fantastic series Chuck, here's the full video for Jeffster's music video from the (excellent) season finale.
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Riddle me this: why is it everyone complains about popular music stars getting movie roles, but when one of them does it and manages to do a phenomenal job, not only does nobody see the film but that person doesn't show up in any more films? I'm referring to Jewel in Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil. I was recently watching the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-Ray edition of the film. Huge thanks go out to Criterion for giving this film the care it so greatly deserves. This new edition is a longer director's cut of the film, which takes an already phenomenal movie and manages to make it better. If you haven't seen the 1999 film (and given box office results, few others joined me in the trip to the theater), you really should. I still consider it Ang Lee's best film. I also consider it one of the best war films made, despite the fact that it doesn't quite fit the mold of the typical war film - even as a Civil War film. I do have a request for Criterion, though. In 2008, they released The Ice Storm on DVD, and did an excellent job with it. It's my second favorite Ang Lee film, and I'd like to see them also get it released on Blu-Ray.
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Congratulations to Castle for some of the best "fourth wall" interaction I've seen. On an episode a month or two ago, the character of Richard Castle appears on a fictional talk show promoting the paperback release of his novel Heat Wave. Not only is Heat Wave a real book that was released under the fictional pseudonym (and it's actually a rather good book), but during this episode he promotes the July 27th paperback release of the book. And sure enough, the real Heat Wave book does, in fact, have an upcoming July 27th paperback release. It's a great attention to detail, and an amusing sense of meta humor. Heck, they've even referred to stuff on specific pages during episodes.
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I'm way behind on Glee, which just finished up its first season. There are certainly aspects of the show that aren't perfect (too many of the music numbers, in particular), but I do overall like the series. But if there's one character that always works, it's Sue Sylvester, played by the always-great Jane Lynch. The Dangling Kitten, a great piece of writing from the show pointed out by Jane Espenson on her blog makes me finally wanna get around to catching up on the series.
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That's it for now. A non-Ponderings post is due to show up tomorrow. It's another long one. Oh, and a couple more backfilled movie reviews should be showing up as well.
