For Your Eyes Only

After Moonraker shot James Bond into outer space, there was only one place for 007 to go next. Greece! For Your Eyes Only would mark the second time in the Eon Productions franchise in which they decided to bring Bond out of the world of fantasy and back into the world of Ian Fleming. FYEO took elements from the Ian Fleming short stories "For Your Eyes Only" and "Risico" to create a down to Earth approach 007.

Old ass Roger Moore would once again portray the super sexy secret agent. In this installment, Roger Moore plays 007 with less tongue in cheek, which i don't think is an entirely good thing. There are some points where Moore is too serious and it does not work as well for him as say a Connery or Lazenby. I think that Roger Moore's lighter take on Bond works just fine.

Of all of the "Back to Fleming's Roots" films, this is my least favorite of the four, but it is still a great movie. The action is really good and locations are amazing. When i was younger i kept hearing about how one of the bond girls in FYEO was actually a man so for a long time i swore that the main lead, Carole Bouquet was actually a man. I think because she had such a stone cold face and was dubbed that i just decided that was enough for me. I later found out that she is not a dude, but a lady! That's good to know.

I am not a fan of Bibi Dhal in the film, but mostly because American Bond girls are annoying and Lynn-Holly Johnson was just to young for Roger Moore, who was seriously Fifty Four at the time. I think there was a 36 year age gap between the two of them. Luckily Bond was supposed to be annoyed with her and not be into banging away on her.

Probably my favorite part about the movie is the hilarious score by Bill Conti. It has to be heard to believed.

All in all i like For Your Eyes Only. It doesn't blow me away, but at least it isn't as heinous as the next few 007 outtings!

★ ★ ★½

What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue - Review

When i first saw the cover for What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue i imidiately jumped to the conclusion that this film was a rip off of the Pixar film Up. Boy, was i way off! This movie is absolutely nothing like Up, with the exception of the fact that there is a boy, an old man and a flying house.

Where as Up is a beautifully, emotional adventure story filled with peril and self discovery, What's Up is a pile of shit that has nothing to do with anything other than heinous dialogue, child endangerment and racial stereotypes. As you find out in the first excruciating minute of exposition, you meet a group of Monster trappers headed by two old scientists and a dumb teenage girl and her stupid annoying brother. Apparently these idiots are called into action to send dumb looking monsters into an equally dumb looking dimension.

These Monster Trappers get some sort of magic stone that is able to fuel their house/laboratory and make it fly. Apparently one of the scientists is not too keen on flying which really comes in handy when you make a flying house. Why would you make something fly that isn't supposed to fly. Don't you think that would make your phobia of flight worse, by making a flying rickety house?!

So, for some reason these people decide to take the house for a spin. While IN THE AIR they get a knock on the KITCHEN DOOR. Somehow this french dude, made it up into the house with great ease, wandered into the house and decided to knock on the kitchen door. After a few French smell jokes, the crew decides to allow this "French Explorer" with them.

The idiots land in the middle of the Amazon, which is less detailed than my Tiger Woods' iPhone Golf game, and decide to go into a cave. Why do they go into the cave? I forget but who cares. While they are in the cave, the French dude, grabs the magic stone and tells us that he is going to use it to control the minds of every person on the planet. He starts off by causing a Hot Air balloon to crash into a tree. After this he takes some TNT and blows up the entrance to the cave, trapping the idiot monster hunters inside.

Somehow, these morons get loose from the cave and have a conversation with the french dude, who they still trust. The Frenchy drops the magic rock and it is rendered useless. So they decide to steal the Hot Air balloon to make the house fly. I am pretty sure that they leave the ballon pilot in the tree.

So, these fucking geniuses decide that they still trust old Frenchy and not only that, but the retarded girl that is with them has become smitten with him. While they are flying around in the house, that they can somehow control, the Frenchy starts to hit on the girl but her stupid annoying brother is watching tv. So what else could this trusted friend do, but Drug the little boy so he can hit on his sister. Yep, the little annoying kid gets drugged!

So apparently there are some monsters around the world that need to be trapped, so these fools go to a couple of places and trap them. But the best part is when they show up at the Great Wall of China, where they meet a Chinese man, who is probably named "Ching-Chong" for all i know. I know what you are thinking, "Damn ralph, that is really racist of you". But you have no idea how many stereotypes they fit into this one character!!! They gave this dude a camera and put a takeout container of Chow Mein on his t-shirt! They say stereotypical things to him and make him travel outside the house in the containment orb with the monsters. You think that's bad, you should see when the little annoying shit brother taunts the monsters and that Chinese Man with cookies!!

All in all this movie is a total pile of shit. I mean, it is really bad!!! I hate it with all my might. The dialogue is obviously put in after the animation was complete and the people who translated it, from wherever this movie came from, had no idea what the story was before they wrote the lines. Also, they only had one take to get the dialogue recorded. Also the dialogue sounds like the way i am typing this. Also i want to punch this movie in the face!

Up your butt, What's Up?!


ZERO FUCKING STARS!!

2nd Shitty DVD Cover of the Week - Dracula's Fiancée

I could not decide on just one SDVDCotW.

Gauntlet Films

I am going to start VHS hunting again!!

Let me know if you come across any "winners"!

SEE MY VIDEOS

Shitty DVD Cover of the Week - NYC Public School Principal

Shitty DVD Cover of the Week - David & Goliath

District 9 - Review

District 9 just may be my favorite film of 2009. A few weeks ago i posted a blog about how 1982 was chocked full of awesome sci fi and other geek films and that it was a shame that this whole year has been nothing short of lackluster. With all of the remakes and sequels and licensed pictures that come out, it starts to gets really frustrating when original films get overshadowed by cookie cutter crap. My three favorite films that have come out this year all were released within a week from each other between May 29th-June 5th. Up, The Hangover and Drag me to Hell are three of my favorite films this year and are the only films that weren't adapted from a book, toy, video game or comic.

The last film i saw was Transformers 2. Even though i liked the original a lot, the second one left such a bad taste in my mouth that it made me rethink seeing a lot of movies this summer up until two days ago. District 9 was a film that i had been looking forward to for a long time. A few years back i heard that Neill Blomkamp was going to direct the Peter Jackson produced Halo film. Back then, all of us Halo fans said "Who the hell is Neill Blomkamp?". So we all started looking him up and had all come across Alive in Joburg a short film about an alien race that was forced to live in a walled off shanty town patrolled by the military. We all ate it up. We thought that the movie was badass enough for us to "allow" this guy to make Halo. Even though Neill Blomkamp's Halo short films were amazing and Peter Jackson has proven that he could produce a blockbuster film, Halo fell through and so they started working on the feature length version of Alive in Joburg aka District 9.

With any great science fiction film, there is some social commentary, but not to worry, D9 is not as heavy handed as the commercials will lead you to believe. There is some hints of race riots, concentration camps and the civil rights movement, but a lot of that is abandoned by about the fifteen minute mark. The thing that surprised me was the fact that the documentary aspect of the film was also abandoned really early on, which would be my only gripe. The movie is set up like a documentary with pieces of news footage, interviews and field camera work, which made a scene between two aliens discussing the construction of an alien technology a bit jarring. For a few minutes i was taken out of the film. I kept thinking, who is the camera man that is shooting this conversation?

Once i got used to the fact that D9 was no longer a documentary, but a scripted story shot in a documentary style, i got into this film big time. The story is pretty interesting and something that none of the advertisements tell you about. This film is about a man named Wikus Van De Merwe who is the head of a government program that oversees the alien inhabitants of District 9. During an operation in which he is relocating the alien "Prawns" he gets sprayed with a chemical that slowly begins to alter his DNA and turns him into a half man half alien being. The government wants Wikus due to the fact that he is the only "human" that can operate the Prawn's biochemical weapons. Long story short, Wikus escapes and seeks refuge in District 9 where he becomes partners with an unlikely Alien creature. They both need each other to get what they require and the film turns into an all out buddy action film. I know what you may be thinking, here is just another movie that takes the low road by filling the last half with action, but this actually works. The action is driven by the drama and never feels forced.

With the brutal nature of the beginning of the film, you know that there is real danger around every corner. You root for the two heroes knowing that either of them can die at any moment. The fact that both Wikus and "Christopher" the Prawn have such different missions, you have no idea if the film will allow for two happy endings, which heightens the drama. Will one of them die? The chances are highly likely and that fact alone kept me on the edge of my seat.

District 9 is such a breath of fresh air! It is an original idea with many familiar element from science fiction films of the past. D9 takes from such classics as The Fly, Evil Dead 2, Logan's, Run and Alien Nation. It also takes from some of the greatest buddy action films of the past thirty years and was unapologetically self aware of that fact. The film is full of imagery that will be considered classic moments in sci-fi cinema. The final shot of District 9 is one of those iconic shots that are reminiscent of films like The Planet of the Apes and Evil Dead 2.

As soon as District 9 was over, i decided that i was going to buy the Blu-Ray as soon as it hit the shelves. I cannot wait to see this film again and i highly recommend that you check it out if given the chance. District 9 is probably the greatest science fiction film of this century!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Shitty DVD Cover of the Week - The Great Dumbbell DVD

A Badass Year for Movies - 1982

This past week i decided to scratch an itch that i had been letting fester for a while. I wanted to watch The Dark Crystal. So on Monday, i wasn't feeling well and felt that it was the perfect time to pop it in. I laid on the couch and paid close attention to it and realized that it was a pretty amazing piece of work. I had seen it a million times on cable when i was a kid, but i am fairly certain that i had no clue what was going on. The same goes for the movie that i decided to pop in on Tuesday night. Tron.

Tron was one of those movies that i had never fully understood until i watched it this week. I can chalk this ignorance of Tron's "complex" plot to innocent youth and the slow pace of the film.

Last night i decided to pop in another slow paced science fiction film that baffled me when i was a youngster. Blade Runner. Blade Runner is a film that i become a bigger fan of with each viewing. As i sat and watched this film, knowing the full story front to back, i decided to analyze it's story telling as well as it's technical merits. Blade Runner is an outstanding piece of art and is the favorite of the three films i have mentioned.

Right now in theaters is G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and i couldn't be any less excited. In fact, there isn't a single movie that has been released this year with the exception of a few that could give a crap about. There is something like three or four films that i think of as entertaining, but not even close to being that good.

2009 will never be looked back on in such a high regard as the year that Blade Runner, Tron and The Dark Crystal were released. 1982. Check out this list of movies!

48 Hours
Airplane II: The Sequel
Annie
The Beastmaster
Blade Runner
Conan the Barbarian
Creepshow
The Dark Crystal
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
First Blood
Megaforce
Poltergeist
Porky's
Rocky III
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Swamp Thing
The Thing
Tron

These are all movies that i would stop and watch if they were on tv right now. That is 17 movies that were released in 1982. That is more than one awesome movie a month. I know that some of them aren't the greatest, and nostalgia may be interfering with my opinions, but they will blow just about anything that came out this year out of the water. If you look at the full list, i am sure there are movies that i left off, that you would love to watch right now.

So, here's to 1982, a badass year for movies!!

What's Up?

For the last few months i have been posting an image of the shittiest looking dvd cover that is released that week. Today i decided to take a look at what comes out next week and came across "What's Up". Although the cover is not poorly executed, i had to post it based on principle. There are always these types of knock-off dvds, but this has to be the most shameless. I think i will have to Netflix this movie, just to see how horrible it is, especially after seeing this review on Amazon.

"If you buy this product, you just got ripped off. This is a cheap Brizillian rip-off of the Pixar film "Up". Unlike the inspiring tale "Up", this movie is a pure poop. It is as original as plagerism and as enjoyable as cancer.
Really $13 for this piece of %^&*. I can think of a million things you can buy instead of this.
If you like this, you might also enjoy ratatolong (about secret agent rat chiefs stealing receipies), little cars, little bee movie, little panda fighter (about a panda who wants to be a ballerina and a boxer).

Not I only gave it one star because I can't give it 0 star" - Bo Zhang

Moonraker

I don't care what you say, Moonraker is awesome! Ok, you probably know my love for the more serious respectful Bond films and you probably already know that Moonraker is the biggest whore of a movie ever. Obviously trying to ride the coattails of Star Wars 1979's Bond adventure actually takes 007 into outer space with laser guns!!

Moonraker is the definition of guilty pleasure. It is everything that is wrong with the series, as far as bringing Ian Fleming's character to life on the big screen, but it is so over the top and ridiculous that you cant help but have fun. Rarely does a character continue on to the next film in the series, There was Sylvia Trench, JW Pepper and now Jaws. Richard Kiel is probably the greatest of all the Bond Henchmen and he was really deserving of the return. This time he even gets to the point in which he becomes an ally to 007.

Lois Chiles' character Holly Goodhead marks a milestone in the Bond franchise by becoming the first and only American Bond Girl that is not super annoying. Many would say that her performance is bland, but i think she is probably one of the only Bond Girls that you would believe is a Rocket Scientist. She is nowhere near plain, but it is refreshing to have a Bond girl that isn't ridiculously insane looking.

My only real gripe with Moonraker is the main villain, Hugo Drax. He is so boring and has no charisma and makes me want to go home and sleep.

John Barry's score for Moonraker is amazing. There is a ton of that Barry "Space Music'' that i love so much. "Lured to Pyramid" and "Corrine Put Down" are two of my all all time favorite cues in the entire series.

Moonraker feels like an alternate reality Bond film, which feels like a What if 007 went into the fantasy world. I really like it even though it is totally retarded.

★ ★ ★ ★

Shitty DVD Cover of the Week - My Fantastic Field Trip to the Planets

Green Lantern: First Flight - Blu-ray Review

It's no surprise that i was looking forward to the first animated feature film Green Lantern: First Flight. The fact that there is the subtitle "First Flight" makes me hope for a sequel to this film.

With all of these DC Universe animated films, for some reason, there is a very limited run time. Clocking in at a mere 75 minutes, GL First Flight covers a lot of ground. Finishing up the origins story within the first four minutes, First Flight foregoes any kind of training and jumps right into the story, with some exposition sprinkled throughout. Even though there is no training on Hal's ring-slinging, at least the creators let us fans know that Kilowog is the trainer and is unhappy with the lack of official training that Hal did not receive, before Hal is thrust into his first case.

Hal is taken under Sinestro's wing and is sent on the trail to track down Abin Sur's killer. The more time that Hal spends with Sinestro, the more Hal becomes suspicious of Sinestro's motives and rightfully so. Sinestro is in league with Kanjar Ro in order to find the Yellow Element, which is the one power in the universe that can overcome the Green Element and take down the Guardians and restore balance to the universe.

The movie covers a lot of ground in the short time allowed, but it is handled pretty well. After watching Justice League: New Frontier, i think that it is okay that they did not spend more time on Hal's origins, but i think it would have been cool to see some training with Kilowog.

All in all i really enjoyed the movie and it looks fantastic on Blu-ray. I think all of the voice acting was great, but John Larroquette seemed like an odd choice for Tomar Re. It just seemed a bit off. I just never pictured Tomar with such a low voice. I wish that they did more with Sallak, who is one of my favorite lanterns.

There are a lot of cool extras on the Blu-ray including 5 Justice League episodes that center around GL as well as the Duck Dodgers episode where Daffy Duck becomes a GL when Daffy's and Hal Jordan's clothes get mixed up at the dry cleaners. There are a lot of special features that are all about the Comic series starring Geoff Johns. My main problem with the special features, which there are plenty of, is the fact that they do not have a history of Green Lantern documentary like they did with The Justice League, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman dvds. I was really looking forward to one of those. I also think that it is strange that nowhere in the special features is any sort of behind the scenes of the making of Green Lantern First Flight. All of the features pertain to the comics. Don't get me wrong, i LOVE the comics, but it felt like a big commercial for people to rush out to your local comic book store and buy DC Books.

I love Green Lantern and i have a feeling that the team of First Flight left a lot out, so that they dont step on the toes of Martin Campbell and the gang who are making the GL feature film. It is a great time for Green Lantern fans and i cannot wait to see what DC and WB has in store for the Emerald Crusader!

★ ★ ★ ★ ½

The Star Sapphires

For hearts long lost and full of fright. For those alone in blackest night, Accept our ring and join our fight. Love conquers all...With violet light!

The Star Sapphires just started off as a race of hot women that were recently infused into Geoff Johns' "War of the Light Spectrum" using the Violet color to represent love. For millions of years, the Zamarons, a race of immortal warriors, would choose mortal women of identical physical appearances to become their queen.

The first time we met the Star Sapphires they had chosen non other than Carol Ferris, the boss and love interest of Hal Jordan. It appears that the Star Sapphires are currently collecting anyone who has love in their heart and transforming them into warriors of the violet light.

Most recently the villainous Fatality has become a Star Sapphire and is seeking out John Stewart, the Green Lantern who feels incredible guild for destroyer her home planet of Xanshi.

In addition to Fatality becoming a Violet Lantern, Carol Ferris has once again slipped into the role as a Star Sapphire!!