New Reviews are now at Rotten Tomatoes

I finally got a profile at Rotten Tomatoes, and I'll be posting all my reviews there from now on, as it's a better place to get more exposure, and there's quite a large community of film fans there to talk with. However, I will gather all the reviews I post there each month as a mega-post for this blog.
Read my reviews here

My First Script

I tried to write a TV pilot, it's probably a bit too short of a script, and I haven't read it over yet, so be warned, I wrote this entirely as a personal project so it may be a bit muddled.
read it here
I'd appreciate comments/criticism.

What's wrong with this picture?

This Summer really sucks for movies. Not that all these movies are bad (I loved Toy Story 3) but it says something a bit disturbing that of the top 10 movies of the Summer, only 1 is not a sequel/reboot/adaptation. Come on guys, original ideas please?

Fatherly Advice

A new cartoon I made last week but never got around to publishing. Enjoy or something

I wish there was someone I could kick....

http://www.collider.com/2010/01/11/spider-man-reboot-already-written-film-to-be-gritty-contemporary/

But it's just how Hollywood works. Trend followers. Obviously, since The Dark Knight made the most money ever, people want all of their super hero movies to be "gritty". And apparently, because JJ Abrams and Michael Bay successfully took old franchises and made tons of money from them, it's suddenly OK to re-make any movies that are more than 5 years old. I've been fairly mellow about the reboot thing so far, but come on, seriously, rebooting a critically and commercially successful franchise just because Hollywood thinks people now want to watch new versions of the same thing over and over and over again only darker and grittier, that's just appalling.

Of course, leave it to Hollywood to put all the success of a film on its tone. The Dark Knight didn't become the world's #1 blockbuster because it was dark and gritty. It's because it was well made, exciting, action packed, had Heath Ledger, TONS of hype and was based on a popular comic. Plus, it was dark and gritty for a good reason. It wasn't dark just for the sake of being dark, it was dark because that's what the Batman comics are like, which appealed to the legions of Batman fans. The original Spider Man wasn't exactly gritty, but it was still emotionally powerful and incredibly well made. In my opinion, Sam Raimi's first two Spider Man films were better than The Dark Knight. And they were successful even though they weren't gritty. But Hollywood doesn't care about that, so don't be surprised if you see Clark Kent contemplating suicide or Mr. Fantastic having to choose whether Dr. Doom blows up The Thing or The Invisible Woman.

3 New Reviews

Avatar-

Have you ever been ashamed to be human? Ashamed to be in a species that steals and murders, that destroys the planet it lives on? Then perhaps you have something in common with James Cameron, whose masterpiece Avatar shows humans given a chance to experience the magic of life from a newer, purer perspective, while delivering a fantastically beautiful and powerful hero story as well.

It's pretty much impossible to review Avatar without first giving a nod to its fantastic special effects. Even though this is not an effects movie, the scale and detail with which the world is rendered is nothing short of breathtaking. The groundbreaking new technology with which the film is made allows for the creation of one of the richest fantasy worlds ever created.

The story and characters have been criticized as being simplistic, however, while they are definitely familiar, with James Cameron at the helm you'll be happy to see them return. Avatar is a classic fantasy fused with elements of sci-fi, making for a fresher presentation, and the film is expertly paced. Even though its running time is close to 3 hours, it never drags and is a joy to watch. The characters come off as very sympathetic, and the villain of the piece is the kind that you love to hate. It's important to have these familiar and likable characters to guide you into a completely new universe and a new era in film, and they're strong enough to keep the story grounded; they're never once upstaged by the special effects.

However, I don't think that the film is just an effects-heavy hero story; while it retells a classic fable about nature love and loyalty with enough gusto to make these age-old messages inspiring again, its sci-fi element brings something new to the table.
Many of the main characters are humans who are able to inhabit the world of the indigenous Na'vi by using technology to inhabit Avatars- Na'vi bodies that they can control. However, as the main character, Jake Sully, comments at the beginning of the film, they are always forced to leave the gorgeous fantasy world of Pandora and wake up in the hash reality of the human world, filled with despicable corporate attitudes and led by evil men with no respect for life. As Jake struggles to live in both worlds, he is increasingly frustrated by the fact that he has to wake up. But I don't think James Cameron wants to wake up. By creating the technology needed to create the planet of Pandora, Cameron allows the audience to experience that world- the film becomes an Avatar for them. By doing so, Cameron implies that we can all start again. If we are inspired by the beauty of this film, this Avatar, then it allows us to believe again in peace, it allows us to reconnect with nature. Ironically, even though the film's origins are entirely technological, it is used to allow us to reconnect with the fantasies that can still be fulfilled. This adds greatly to the power of the film, giving the final push that moves Avatar from a great film to a masterpiece. If this is what James Cameron's dreams are like, I'll walk in them any time.

The short version-
||||||||||| 10/10|

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan-
(Warning: contains mild spoilers regarding seasons 1 and 2 of Battlestar Galactica)

I am a huge fan of Ronald D. Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series. I firmly believe that it is one of the best shows ever to air on television, and that is why The Plan is such a colossal disappointment. It not only lacks all the powerful emotions, great characters and compelling storytelling of the series, but the nature of the film allows it to do so while simultaneously ruining some of the best moments of the series.

The idea of The Plan is to re-visit the first two seasons of the series from the perspective of the villains- the Cylons, while resolving some of the continuity issues and tying up the loose ends made during the series. It's a good idea on paper, however, it's filled with disappointment and missed opportunities. Ironically, although The Plan is supposed to resolve continuity gaffs, the first minutes create a very serious continuity gaff that can't be explained away. As it goes through the series, it continues to dispute known facts about the show in order to create poorly executed drama, muddling some of the best moments of the show. Instead of showing the reasoning behind the Cylon actions in the series, it changes them from the unified, powerful, frightening force that they were into the series to a bumbling collection of cranky incompetent bufoons who barely seem to count as villains at all.

Continuity issues would be forgivable if the story was any good- the Battlestar series had plenty of odd plot twists that overcomplicated the show, but it was so relentlessly entertaining that it didn't really matter. However, The Plan's "story" if you can call it that, is incoherent, meaningless, and mind-numbingly dull. A large amount of the footage is recycled from series episodes, and while it sometimes works, watching an entire scene that you've already seen just so you can see one "revelation" that doesn't mean much of anything, or watching a Cylon attack again just to show how it was a complete disaster for the Cylons and they really just had no idea what they were doing at all. The movie seems like a collection of deleted scenes from the show, and if they were, they would have been deleted for no good reason. A lot of the character development goes to Simon- a character who barely appeared in the show. While it would be interesting to give more backstory to the lesser known Cylons, Simon's story is flat and uncompelling. It lacks the long-term development of the series, and instead seems to be rushed and half-baked- then again, that's a pretty good description of the entire film.

The short version-

|||| 3/10|

Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side-

Star Wars jokes have been a staple of pop-culture humor for a while now, and Family Guy is no exception. However, the show's nonsensical tangential form of humor works better as episodic television than as a double-length parody. To call SSSDS a Star Wars parody is a bit generous- it's pretty much just Family Guy characters in Star Wars costumes making regular Family Guy jokes. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as the show's humor is still very funny, and even though creating an entire Star Wars spoof series just to showcase the show's signature humor seems a bit gratuitous, it doesn't make it any less funny. When the show does take shots at Star Wars, however, it's really spot on. There a lot of great jokes at the expense of the classic trilogy, but not enough to justify the hour run time.
Overall, Something Something Something Dark Side is a fairly funny episode that relies a little too much on novelty value and the type of humor that could appear in any episode of the show, but it's still fairly entertaining and funny.

The short version-
|||||||| 7/10|

Mantracker

Mantracker was awesome. I'm not allowed to talk about most of it, but suffice to say it was an amazing experience and I learned tons, it was an incredible adventure.

Um, I don't have TV, but I'm pretty sure Mantracker airs at 10 on Discover Science. But I'd check that.

I'm a Production Assistant! [and other updates]

Wow, so the first post in over a month. I guess I haven't been that motivated to blog, even though I really should. But anyways, the reason I'm finally posting again is I have big news.

I get to be a production assistant on the show Mantracker for 1 day. It's nothing glamorous, but I get to be on the set among the crew, which is really super awesome.

The blog may be getting a new domain soon, so keep watch for that.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Someone needs to send David Yates a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating A Suspenseful Action Sequence. After all, the director who, unfortunately, will helm the Harry Potter series to its very end, is a master of the anti climax. Last time, he ruined one of the most exciting, imaginative, and unique sequences by reducing the department of mysteries sequence to a disappointing shell of its former grandeur in his disappointing adaptation of one of the best books in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Now Yates has been given a smaller-scale book to deal with, and has slowed down the frantic, rushing pace he set on Order of the Pheonix to the brisk but uneventful filler that is Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The film moves by quickly enough, filling the first two hours with the entertaining and humorous teen drama that Rowling used to form the backdrop for her epic series finale. However, unlike Rowling, Yates doesn't reward his audiences for their trek through the melodrama with an intense and powerful finale, but with another weak, rushed effort at emotion that falls flat. Its exceedingly frustrating to watch Yates's adaptations as he is handed increasingly interesting material and continues to make it uninteresting. He managed to get the pacing right for most of the movie, making it entertaining, but when it comes to a scene of real weight and tension he disappoints due to his utter failure to create suspense. His action scenes are so briskly paced that they are over before audiences can feel any of the atmosphere he creates. His visual prowess is apparent in his construction of the final action scene, but unfortunately this impressive yet fairly detached light show is over all too fast, only rewarding us with a few seconds of special effects. The emotional climax of the film is likewise rushed, and while the reactions of the students of Hogwarts to this latest blow they are dealt is touching, he doesn't give us time to feel it. Overall, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is a fairly entertaining comedy that fails to convey the urgency and emotion that gave the book a scope that was far grander than its melodramatic setup.

The short version:

|Score: |||||- 5.4/10|

Coming up, a Harry Potter recap? And my long awaited (or not) account of my vacation to Kaua'i.

Salmon King

3 Days Later

And I'm still in love with UP. Seriously, I can't wait till this movie is out on DVD, it's really stuck with me. 

Old Trailers

I watched The Maltese Falcon last night, and one of the most interesting features on it was "Warner Night at the Movies" which showed the trailer, newsreel, and cartoons shown before the film. Despite all the love for Looney Tunes, there are certainly some bad ones, and this obscure WWII spoof certainly was one of them. The humor and advertising used back then was so strange and different. The original trailer for the film is included and is funnier than the cartoon, with weird transitions from scene to scene and dramatic and repetitive narration. Its funny how things were advertised back then. The question is, is advertising now any less ridiculous? Sure, seeing special effects or jokes from the most exciting and funny scenes of the film whiz by in 30 seconds may seem more exciting than the slow ads of years long passed, but whether its an abundance of information or almost none at all, ads still don't usually give an accurate sense of what the film is like.

UP

The blog is here to stay for the Summer. I haven't been blogging very much and didn't get all the reviews out that I hoped to, but I'm gonna be doing daily posts for a while to get the blog back in shape. Let's start with my review of UP, which I saw yesterday.

The people who came in late missed the best part. Up begins with a montage so poignant and beautifully excellent that it carries the rest of the film. As a result, director Pete Doctor is able to hit just the right emotional notes due to the deep emotional background that powers the film. When I first heard about Up, I immediately fell in love with the concept. A man tying balloons to his house and floating away? What's not to like? But I wasn't prepared for the incredible humanity and depth that makes this film not only an easy candidate for Best Animated Picture, but Best Picture overall. Up is sad, memorable, deep, sweet and hysterically funny, and gets just the right balance of humor and depth to keep audiences of all ages enthralled. The film made me laugh many times, but parts of it also had me tearing up. It's all masterfully wrapped up in just 96 minutes, and they're bound to be some of the bests minutes you spend on a couch or in a theater. PIXAR's masterpiece Up is a timeless, hilarious, bittersweet film that everyone can enjoy.

The short version-

|Score: |||||||||| 10/10|

A whole bunch of new reviews coming up.

I finally saw Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. I'm going to see Star Trek today, so look for reviews for all of those. Also, I made some logos and I want to take a poll on which I should use. 

Film Seminar

My school hosted a film seminar today, and although the scene was mostly adults trying to get into or succeed in the industry, it was a valuable experience and it got me some good contacts. Things started off with an address from David Cunningham. When I read his bio I thought "he directed The Seeker" man, that movie sucked. Then I saw his presentation, it was funny and informative, he was smart and his other movies looked good. Then I found out that after he had finished shooting The Seeker the studio decided to market it to 8 year-olds rather than the teen audience he expected. One thing was made clear: if I want to get into this business, I'd better prepare to be screwed over. Television producer Karl Fink described situations such as a gritty show about war and rebellion turning into a show about crime fighting dolphins, and a ripoff of his show airing right before he finished making his, forcing him to change his tactics. I will go more into each of the mini "breakout sessions" I attended and the rest of the program in future posts. 

Burn After Reading

Well, I finally saw Burn After Reading, and while it featured good filmmaking, humor, pacing and style, the lack of a definite protagonist and the fact that almost none of the main characters are even remotely likable makes it very difficult to enjoy the film. While the Coens' characters have long been less than perfect, they're at least human enough for us to identify with, but Burn takes the "imperfection" of the characters far enough that its impossible to like them, and they fail to function as accurate criticisms of human beings because they're so completely hateful that they fail to register as human. While the film does pack some good comedic lines, it is not essentially a comedy, and the grimness quickly douses the fun of the comedy, worsening the film by making it difficult to be able to tell when the Coens are being serious and when they're making a joke out of there pathetic, hateable characters, until the whole film becomes one big joke on watching the torment of their characters. The filmmaking is better than the characters are, with strong pacing and performances, and crisp photography, but it is not enough to redeem this otherwise shallow, unfulfilling  film.

The Short Version

|score- |||||- 5.5/10|

Star Wars-The Clone Wars

I'm Over It

Star Wars Episode I- The Phantom Menace was horrible beyond belief, and I easily thought it was the worst Star Wars movie yet, full of boring "political" plot lines, and dull acting, not to mention *shudder* Jar Jar Binks. That was before The Clone Wars, a movie so unbelievably awful that the fact that it shares a name with Genndy Tartakovsky's amazing animated miniseries disgusts me. The characters barely resemble their film counterparts, both physically (for the animation is stiff and ugly beyond words) and personality-wise. They constantly spew corny catch phrases and awful nicknames, making every line of dialogue cringe-worthy. Oh, and there's a new character, Anikin's apprentice, who's completely irrelevant anyway, and who's main purpose seems to be coming up with sickening nickname after sickening nickname, and screwing up the star wars timeline even worse than all the fan fiction spinoffs that are already out there. Not even the action is entertaining, as the animation is so stiff and uninteresting that  it seems more like watching a bad video game from the 90s. I would like to give a small nod to the music, which, although unbelievably out of synch with the tone of the movie, displays a slight hint of originality, using vocals to create atmosphere in a fashion similar to Richard Gibbs and Bear McCreary's music on Battlestar Galactica. However, the visuals are so inadequate that there is no mood for the music to set. Unfortunately for Star Wars fans, the torture is not yet over as the movie is but a 90 minute pilot for a TV series of the same name. The fact that it is a pilot shows greatly in its pacing and narrative structure, which seems to consist of three half hour segments mashed together with vaguely similar (albeit completely unimportant) story lines. This adds to the film's problems even more by making it disjointed and even less exciting. Overall, The Clone Wars is bland, irritating, and a worthless addition to the already bloated Star Wars Universe that only serves to further mangle the timeline.

The short version-

|Score- || 2/10|

|Guilty Pleasures Score- - 0.5/5|

Kung-Fu Panda

Here I go with yet another review thats waaaay late

Kung-Fu Panda is a breath of fresh air considering the general low quality of Dreamworks movies as of late. Its certainly nothing special, but its light, humorous, and, most important of all, its not another Shrek movie.The film is a decent movie and a great Dreamworks movie which shines through the thick layer of scum that has coated Dreamworks movies since the days after Shrek 2. It opens with a Samurai Jack influenced 2D sequence, which made me want more 2D feature films. The CG style almost seemed like a disappointment compared to the fun traditional animation, but the 3D animation is also high quality. Although the fat joke centered trailer made me cringe, Panda is a stellar example of how things that are generally frowned upon can still prove funny if done well. That being said, like the humor, the film is well executed but lacks depth. Its story is the typical underdog story, and a lot of the moments are incredibly cliche. The main thing that makes the film unique is the humor, which basically makes it an irreverent take on a cliche hero story rather than just a cliche hero story, which turns out to make all the difference. 

1 Year of Blog

Yep. Its been a whole year since I started this blog, with my first post being "I had mac and cheese for lunch" ah, what auspicious beginnings. It started out as a daily blog with a lot of style and opinion and a little substance, and has evolved into a review and production blog that updates a lot less often, but with better quality posts. I think things have slowed down a bit more than I wanted them too, and I'm going to try to pick up the pace a bit in the blogs second year. I think there were a lot of bad posts last year, and a lot of good posts. Some stuff was misguided, some was correct. I'm hoping to perfect my posting style, spelling and grammar, and film critique for next year. Heres what you can look forward to in year two

• A review of the complete Powerpuff Girls DVD set

• Another really late review, this time of  Kung Fu Panda which could be the last redemption for Dreamworks (and possibly the last time I use the Dreamworks label in this blog, I don't even know why they get their own label)

•The Shak Budisen Movie and more production news- the movie is currently still set for release this Summer, I just have to finish it, which I will do eventually. I've done some new animation which I need to score.

• Lots more reviews of movies I will be seeing.

• More random crap to keep the blog active.

• Me being pompous when I get 1000 hits.

• Yet another new name for the blog. I'm thinking of simplifying it to: "Stuff I'm Making and Watching"

• The premier of my new show

• Possibly a music video 

• Possible move to a private server where this will become part of an expanded site

• Stuff

Ok, thats all I got, but hopefully that will keep things interesting and keep this blog going.

~Kieran

Indy 4

So heres my very very very late thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A lot of fans were disappointed by this movie, but I am not a fan, so I set my standards even lower. I had heard it was awful, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was mildly entertaining. Yes, it follows the classic Indy formula the least, but since I didn't like the classicy Indy formula, I didn't mind. It was some fun mindless car chases, nothing special, but certainly not bad. That being said I do have a few gripes. Marion Ravenwood's appearance is pathetic and completely unnecessary. It seems like a failed bid at fan approval/nostalgia. Obviously, Indy is too old to fight Nazis, but fortunately for him, there's plenty of communists to fight. Go figure. Finally, the ending is a total anti-climax, and while the rest of the film was fairly exciting, the ending didn't live up to its promise, and the final love scene was bad as well. Overall, a pretty mediocre movie with nothing to offer besides some cheap entertainment. But thats all the series was worth to me anyways, so I don't really mind.