Movies

Dave Barry’s Commentary on Disaster Movies. “…realism is not the point of a disaster movie. The point of a disaster movie is to have exactly the same script as every other disaster movie.” He gives you the script and it is funny. Read it.

I was only 2 months old when I felt a disturbance in the force. That disturbance was the Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ve only seen parts of the horrid thing, but apparently the Star Wars site Blueharvest.net has the whole show in low quality real video (apparently maximizing the suffering). [via the bowels of Metafilter]

For those of you who have seen Unbreakable, check out this alternate ending. IMHO, it makes for a much better ending; very subtle and yet nothing is really lost from the version released. Those little text messages at the end were so… out of place. [from Widgett by way of Coming Attractions; Widgett’s site, NeedCoffee.com hath recieved a gigantic update as well.]

While this has been a lackluster year for movies, things have been heating up a bit lately. I think the movie that I am most looking forward to this Holiday Season is the Coen Brothers’ new comedy, O Brother, Where art Thou?. Judging from this review, I won’t be disappointed. The setup is fairly standard: 3 prisoners escape and travel across the state to recover a small fortune that was stolen from a bank. But remember, this is Coen Brothers we’re talking about here: “It�s a musical. And it�s based in Homer�s Odyssey.” Thats interesting. Other early reviews are also positive, so I’m confident I’ll enjoy this flick.

Unbreakable (***) I like it. I moved the full review to the movies section where it belongs. Go and read its coolness.

If all goes well, I will be viewing the film Unbreakable tonight. This is M. Night Shyamalan’s film first effort since the wildly successful The Sixth Sense. While I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, I wasn’t overly impressed. It was good, but it had some flaws, and thats the kind of film I expect to see tonight. Judging from the early mixed reviews, I think I’m going to be right. We shall see. Check back later for a mini-review.

A user on the Coming Attractions Discussion Forums made this funny observation: “wouldnt it suck if in the end of unbreakable

bruce willis really did die in the train wreck” – eman182. Lol…

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/ hosts 4 excellent Stanley Kubrick sites, including an awesome HTML version of the printed program for Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I recently acquired the 2001: A Space Odyssey DVD. As usual, I watched it with my jaw dropped for most of the movie.

Check out this humerous look at the deleted scenes of the Star Wars Trilogy. Wery spiffy. Especially cool is the Wampa ice creature subplot that was dropped from Empire. A more comprehensive source for the deleted scenes from the Trilogy can be found here. I’m still looking for the scene in The Phantom Menace where R2 has a conspicuous”Intel Inside” sticker showing…

Ok, so RedRival is still in the process of “upgrading”, but I’m going to start posting stuff anyway.

Salon recently ran an interesting article about the new “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy that is presently in production. I am currently reading The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first book of the trilogy. When I first heard that Peter Jackson would be directing, I was a bit suprised. This is such a high profile film that I would have expected a “safer” director to be chosen. While Jackson is best known for his mainstream work (The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures, neither of which did blockbuster business), he was also known as a bit of a B-film maker, with some real disgusting movies under his belt (Meet the Feebles, Bad Taste).

Also suprising is that all three films are being filmed at the same time. Generally, the first film is made and released, and, if it does well, the next two are put into production (the scream trilogy and the matrix trilogy are two recent examples). To have all three put into production at once, without a proven box office draw, is unprecidented.

It wasn’t too long ago when I witnessed the atrocity that is “Wild Wild West”. Quite possibly one of the worst movies I have ever seen; I actually contemplated writing a review for it, but I found that I was less motivated than a neutered dog when it came time to actually research it. But now I’ve found the ultimate reference for bad movies (“Ripping Hollywood the New Ass it Deserves”), and they’ve actually wasted their time to review all the bad movies so that you don’t have to watch them, including the Wild Wild Worst movie I have ever seen. Mighty selfless of them, I must say.