Aug 3, 2010

The Last Airbender Drinking Game!

No, I'm not done with this one yet. You see, I am still coping with the fact that this movie was so unbelievably craptastic that I've been thinking of ways to make this movie enjoyable for my friends who haven't seen it yet, or if I ever become utterly insane and watch it again.

So I've devised The Last Airbender Drinking Game!. This game has two goals:

1-Get you completely smashed
2-See if at last one can get some entertainment out of this movie

I would say this game is better played with no mixed drinks, you can pick any raw drink you like. Rum, Whisky, vodka, anything is fair game. Why no mixed drinks? SO YOU CAN FEEL THE PAIN AND DESPERATION OF THOSE WHO WATCHED THIS MOVIE!
You can pussy out of it and get some OJ in your drink or whatever, I'm willing to bet you'll get drunk anyways.

General Rules:

Take a hit when:

-Something that should be shown is instead narrated, or Shyamalan forgets that 90% of the time it's better to Show, Don't tell.
-The plot is exposed so glaringly and so close to your face you feel threatened by it.
-The CGI is so terrible you wonder if they were using the same computers used for the original Tron.
-Slo-mo kicks in
-something that isn't meant to be hilarious, is.
-Something that is meant to be hilarious, is not.
-Someone yells 'NOOOOOOO!!!"
-The editing team fails to do its job.
-Something happens without any explanation prior, i.e.: Zuko appears fine and dandy after the ship he was in was blown. In the same vein, take one hit when...
-Something doesn't makes sense

Finish your drink when:

-Deus Ex Machina kicks in

Although that should be enough for any adult man/woman to get themselves drunk, I want to add some LAST AIRBENDER special rules, as those I've mentioned before could apply to any other bad movie as well.

So, Last Airbender Special Rules:

Take a hit when:

-The name of any of the original characters is mispronounced
-Someone does an unnecesary dance to bend an element.
-The dragon from dragonball appears, instead of avatar Roku.
-Firelord Ozai appears in the scene, completely uncovered.
-You realize someone is acting as the complete opposite of their original counterparts.

Finish your drink when:

-You facepalm, you sigh, you say "Oh my god", "What the fuck" or any combination of those.

I am going to try this next weekend!. I think I'll need at least a couple of bottles of whatever I'm going to drink.

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Jul 30, 2010

My Top 10 tv to movie adaptations

Given the outrageous, utter disgraceful boodle of poopie that was The Last Airbender, I decided to remember, and arrange a top ten of tv to movie adaptations (That i've seen so far).


This list is not objective, as I'm basing it on the entertainment value I got out of them, but I can assure you that any movie I list here will be much, much more enjoyable than TLA.

10-South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
This one will be on this list because... well, there aren't many tv to film adaptations that I can put here and won't make me look like a complete moron (most of them will only make me look like a partial moron). South Park can be funny sometimes. Sometimes they even deliver deep messages to the audience, but more often than not you have to navigate through a whole lot of bad jokes, irreverent stuff just for the sake of being irreverent, and other in-your-face contraptions.

It wasn't an adaptation per se, more like a very long episode, but an epic one at that.

9-The Little Rascals
A bunch of kids trying to act is almost always an awful experience. They're kids after all. But most of the kids here manage to stay so adorable in their roles that I can't hate them.

I used to like this movie a lot when I was younger. I bet I won't like it much right now, but I can also bet that I will enjoy it more than the likes of mission impossible, naked gun, and of course, The last airbender.

8-Wayne's World
I was born in the early 80's, but I remember the 90's the most from my childhood, and this movie practically embodies what the 90's were about.

Also, this movie was made when Mike Myers was still funny.

7-Bruno
Oh Bruno, Bruno. You are an amazing guy, always looking for the best ways to make me feel incredibly uncomfortable, but amused at the same time. This is not a movie for the easily offended, and not even for the hardly offended.

Also this movie will make you at least 30% gayer.

6-Transformers(any)
This movie should probably be lower but what the hell. Michael Bay, blah blah, explosions, blah blah, shaky camera, robots taking a leak on federal agency guys, etc. yeah yeah it's a mediocre film. But here's the thing: IT HAS OPTIMUS PRIME.

What do you say? the transformers look like crap? what? I cant hear you over OPTIMUS PRIME'S BOOMING VOICE RADIATING AWESOMENESS EVERYWHERE.

5-The Spongebob Squarepants Movie
Spongebob is completely awesome and nothing you say can make me think otherwise. Spongebob is the greatest animated troll ever conceived and for that I applaud him.

This movie also has david hasselhoff and his missile-launching pecs, if you're into that kind of thing. Also, this movie has this completely unexpected and totally awesome guitar solo. Mind = blown.

4-The Simpsons: The Movie
You can say this movie was like an extended simpsons episode, and it kinda was, but it was funny, it was entertaining, and at some times, it felt like the OLD, simpsons. Remember those, when they were actually funny and witty?

The film looked very sharp and well animated, it was good entertainment.

3-The blues brothers(Both!)
Wait, I got the title wrong. This movie's real name is THE FUCKING BLUES BROTHERS, that's right, in all caps and all.

Here are some of the mind-blowingly awesometastic things you will find in this movies:
-John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman
-James fucking Brown
-The Blues brothers doing a music number with Aretha Franklin
-The blues brother sing Jailhouse rock inside a prison.
-A gazillion of police cars were demolished in a single car chase scene
-The blues brothers sing rowhide in a redneck pub.
-The blues rothers doing a music number with Aretha Franklin, AGAIN. And this time is "RESPECT".
-Eric Clapton

I don't think I need to say more.

2-The Addams Family
For an adaptation of a tv show that was an adaptation of a comic strip, this movie was entertaining. It had Raul Julia, which automatically makes any movie 100% better, Anjelica Houston as the best representation of Morticia ever, and crazy time-travelling scientist turned crazy bald guy Christopher Lloyd.

The movie was certainly darker than the original series, but it retained the style of humor and the personalities of the characters. Wednesday didn't really have much character until this movie was made.

I like to watch the original series on TV whenever I can, as the original had a style of humor that was sometimes subtler than what was the norm for that time. The film adaptation is a good representation of the original, albeit a little less funny.

1-Star Trek(Any!!!... well, mostly Wrath of Kahn and the last reboot...)
This is maybe a biased choice... but hey, THEY ALL ARE!. Star Trek had the advantage of having the cast from the series available for the movies, which some adaptations like The Addams Family didn't have, but they managed to get all the elements that make the show good and pack them into a movie.

With the reboot, new territory was explored, with more successful results than failures. But Most of the movies are sucessful in bringing that Star Trek feel to the big screen, which is what everyone is looking for.

And that's it. These movies have these things in common: 1-They respect the source material, 2-They are entertaining 3-They might have bad script, bad actors, bad plot, bad directing, or 0 entertainment value, BUT NOT ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME!

Picking these was hard because most of the tv to movie adaptations are pretty mediocre, but they're not awfully shitty ass bad, like, you know, some other movies.

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Jul 28, 2010

The Last Airbender

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT, SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB

I can summarize this entry with "The last airbender is the worst movie of the year and one of the worst tv to movie adaptations ever made", but if i did that I wouldn't get to rant about it, would I?. The tubes need some more clogging, that's what I'm here for.

Oh where do I start. I have no idea. Every second of this movie is so full of bad moviemaking that I could literally write an essay about what is wrong with this movie. Yes it's that bad. I would go as far as to say that is Manos: the hands of fate bad. I've talked about watching that one before.

After watching this movie, I sat down for a while, thinking about what could I say was good about this movie. My mind was blank. I thought "maybe the show wasn't that good after all, maybe I have a bad case of selective memory". So I watched the first two episodes of the original tv series that very night.

Nope, the show's still great.

So, for the hell of it, I would point out the things that weren't completely atrocious about this "movie":

-God Bless Mr Toub who worked with this trash of a script and managed not to look like a complete retard all the time, like all the other actors in this movie. Every time he was on screen I forgot I was being lobotomized by this movie.
-The Northern water tribe country was well crafted, the architecture was one of the few things well executed from the original series. But then again, walls and pillars don't have to recite an script.
-A few moments of the fight where Aang and the Blue spirit (Zuko in disguise) battle a horde of fire nation soldiers were pretty decent.

Does 1 decent actor, 1 decent set, and 1 decent to sub-par fight scene save this movie from craptastic grandeur? If you've been paying attention, you know the answer to that.

As I said, If I listed all the reasons to why this movie is a steaming pile of gorilla dung, it would be too long for anyone to care about reading.I could point out how this is one of the most hollow scripts with the most soulless dialog I've ever had the displeasure to watch, how everything they brought in from the series has been twisted, transformed, and disfigured for the worse. How Sokka is a lifeless idiot and a duplicate of Anakim, but with even less personality and zero sense of humor. You would think that a comic relief character should have some, but M. Night appears to disagree.

And then we have Katara, which went from a strong kid which was more of a leader than Aang ever was to yet another mumbling, lifeless idiot. Aang? a soulless skull of a character, a character you feel no emotion towards, in spite of the supposed predicament he's in... a disfigured parody of its tv series counterpart. Zuko and Iroh were OK i guess. Zuko worked better because in the series he's an emo kid full of angst, and that's how every major character is portrayed in this movie.

The story? suffice to say, nothing makes sense at all. We move from scene to scene with either no explanation whatsoever, or with a voiceover with Katara telling us what happened in her best interpretation of a speech synthesizer. "Sokka and the princess became friends very quickly"... oh right, I'm supposed to imagine them doing stuff that would make them become friends, instead of actually seeing and experiencing that. Well, that helps me like the characters more, I guess?

I am not going to go into detail because as I said before: if I do this would get a tl:dr tag (It's already long). But I assure you If I were to nitpick this movie, and I can, I can point out flaws in every single aspect of this movie. It's just a disaster.

I don't have to say that this movie pissed me off quite a bit because it's very apparent in this rant, and I don't think I've been this disappointed at a movie before, not even with the phantom menace or attack of the clones. I can resume my reaction to this movie with the 5 stages of grief

1- Denial: as I watched this movie, I was in a permanent state of denial. "It can't be this bad, it must get good at some point... "
2-Anger: "That's it??? is this gargantuan boodle of horseshit is the last airbender movie??" then I proceeded to nerdrage accordingly.
3-Bargaining: "Maybe the original wasn't as good as I remember, maybe if I watch the original again I will see everything was crappy all the time, yeah it will make everything ok again"
4-Depression: "Ugh... I was wrong, only the movie is absolute shit. My faith is lost, how can I trust any movie again not to take a dump on something I really like?"
5-Acceptance: "Well, it was crap, but at least I have the excellent original series that I can watch over and over and pretend this movie was never, ever made"

Final verdict: I don't recommend this movie for kids. Kids won't have fun because nothing fun or funny happens. There are no bright colors to distract them either. No playful Momo being a rascal with Sokka, no funny Appa. No careless, lighthearted Aang. No angsty but likable Zuko. Nothing at all for a kid. I don't recommend this movie to fans of the show, as it takes a dump on everything that made the original show a great series to watch.

I can't recommend this movie to people who like good movies, because a good movie, this is not. I can't recommend this move to people who like to watch bad movies and laugh at the badness because this isn't one of those movies. It's one of the movies you feel cheated and lobotomized, and feel genuinely sorry for the two actors that were actually trying to do a good work.

I will recommend this movie to the hacker that fucked me up and grabbed my wow and rapidshare accounts and tried to ran away with them. Fuck you.

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Jun 23, 2010

Toy Story 3

So after reading some reviews I decided to watch toy story 3 this week. I called a friend and we went to a theater close to where I work. As we were looking for a good place to sit down I started hearing and seeing a lot of kids in the crowd, which is normal for this kind of movies, but I told my friend "Ugh, there are a lot of kids around, trying to watch the movie with kids yelling and laughing all the time is going to suck".


Turns out the kids were mostly quiet, and I was the one laughing all the time!

I don't know if I was laughing to loud or not, I didn't really care. I was genuinely having a lot of fun with this movie. And I wasn't really laughing at the cheap slapstick humor or anything, but at the silly situations created by the plot. Even little things like a teddy bear, a clown and a baby toy hitching a ride on the back of pixar's planet pizza pickup truck were completely hilarious for some reason. It was the silliness of these toys acting this deep, complex plot that created such a nice contrast for me.

I watched the two previous films, and while they were enjoyable, they can't hold a candle to this movie's deep plot. I am not going to go into too much detail but suffice it to say, this movie has everything, and everything is well executed. It's one of the best pixar films and that's a lot to say. It will be one of the best movies of this year, if not the best. As with wall-e, this is a contender for best movie of the year, but probably won't get that recognition because people apparently can't get over the fact that animated movies from pixar are most of the time better than whatever Hollywood spews every year.

One thing though: do not watch this movie in 3D. The 3D was VERY weak. I could take off my glasses and it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. But if you want a movie that will make you laugh, will make you care for the characters, and will make you wonder what's going to happen next all the time, then go watch this movie.

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Jan 27, 2010

Manos: The Hands of Fate

So.. I watched the MST3K episode featuring Manos: The Hands of Fate.


And... well, yeah, Manos, the hands of fate... yeeeeah.

Manos! the hands of fate... what else can be said. It's the worst movie ever made without a doubt. Its just... you'll never expect... I mean, you can never be prepared to how bad it really is. And then when it's over you realize that, yes it was THAT bad.

Manos, the hands of fate. It has changed my life. I think it should be one of the best MST3K episodes ever because it was so damn hilarious, and I think I can't possibly go through the entire movie without the riffs delivered by the MST3K cast.

So, if you have 2 hours of your life to spare, and be warned that these are 2 hours that you'll forever want back, you should give manos a try. It's on google video, so go watch it!

The master will probably not approve though...

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Dec 2, 2009

Awesome Trek

So, I got a bunch of movies to watch this week. Among them was the last Star Trek, which I wanted to watch when it was released but never got around to do it. After the disappointment that was the new Star Wars trilogy, I really wasn't expecting much when I popped this sucker in. Oh but I was pleasantly surprised.

This is just a good movie, period. The acting, casting, direction, everything was spot on, and really, for a reboot of an old, mostly campy space opera series, you can't really ask for more. It avoids the usual traps that remakes of old movies fall in, and also doesn't overdo it on special CG animation, the whole movie just felt really solid to me.

I never watched the original Star Trek as a child, I grew up with "The Next Generation", I was more of a Star Wars kid, watching the (still great) original trilogy over and over on my father's VCR. However I have watched the original Star Trek and I could identify all the little nods and references. This isn't really a straight ripoff, no one is trying to make a carbon copy of their 1960 counterparts, they bring the essence of the original characters, and make them their own, and unlike the horrible new star wars trilogy, the actors feel natural and most of them feel like real people, unlike George Lucas' script-reciting robots. When Spock's mom dies, you care. When Anakin's mom dies, you wonder why you are wasting your precious time watching it.

Anyhoo, two thumbs up for this one. unlike what Hollywood has been trying to make us believe by churning out soulless space opera crap-fests every once in a while, space sci-fi movies can still be done well, and it makes me happy. I think the trekkers should be proud.

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