Ξ March 19th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Film |
My word. This had to be hands down the WORST James Bond movie I’ve ever seen. For one, this director, Marc Foster, must have thought we all have attention spans of 1.5 seconds. Have your stupid camera people keep their cameras still, Foster, you moron! Jesus, not everyone who watches this movie is a boy who just reached puberty who does nothing but drink Pepsi and watch video games.
Main Problem #2. You ever watch the old James Bond movies? Sean Connery and Roger Moore were suave. Daniel Craig is not. When Bond fucks the first girl, he says NOTHING. Yes, NOTHING. Afterwards, she gets killed and M gives him a guilt trip for fucking a chick and getting her killed. What the heck was that about?
Then with the main Bond girl, the character Olga Kurylenko plays, he once again says nothing. She simply says “get in.” That’s not sexy. In fact, the whole movie’s not sexy. Olga never smiles. Which is a shame, because she is an attractive woman. Just not in this movie. Apparently, Marc Foster doesn’t know what sexy is.
Main problem 3. Settings. James Bond is generally known for exotic, beautiful locales. Not this one. Instead, they pick the ugliest part of the Caribbean (Haiti, but not the cool parts) and the Bolivian desert to do most of the filming. When they do pick other parts of the world, they choose ugly interiors instead of something cool. Maybe beauty scares Marc Foster. Whatever the case, Quantum of Solace is an ugly movie.
I watched it with one other blogger and a few friends and none of us liked it. But then again, we’re not boys who barely reached puberty that do nothing but drink Pepsi and play video games. It’s a shame, because as you know, I’m a huge James Bond fan. Not this time around.
Marc Foster can’t do sexy. Therefore, he shouldn’t be anywhere near a James Bond movie. 2 dead zombies, for hands down the worst James Bond movie ever made. 
Ξ November 11th, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Film |
Recently, I watched both of these movies and decided to review them both together, because both are based on Celtic myths. The former is based on a Selkie, a person who can turn into a seal. The latter corresponds to its title, but in this case, Nessie is really a waterhorse.
The Secret of Roan Inish stars a little girl named Fiona who absolutely refuses to believe her missing little brother has been consumed by the sea. Fiona lives in a fishing village with her grandparents and must convince them that her sightings of her little brother are indeed real.
Shot in Ireland, this indie film looks great. The actors do a good job of making the movie believable. The one serious drawback though is that it drags. If I had the job of editing the film, I could have taken fifteen to twenty minutes out of the movie without losing too much and it would have made it a much better movie.
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep took liberty with the old Celtic legend of the waterhorse. According to legend, a waterhorse is not something you want to see. It tricks a kid into riding it then goes straight into the water, drowning the kid, then eating him or her.
Of course in this movie, the waterhorse is playful and good. Set during WW II in Scotland (outside of the Loch Ness, yes, you see where this is going), the movie tries to make some points about war and our dark sides.
The Water Horse also looks great. You’d enjoy the cinematography. However, the secondary characters were entirely one dimensional and predictable. The dialog just wasn’t that good.
In fairness, both were kid movies but I expect writers of kids movies to throw some bones to adults. Take Aladdin for instance. Half the dialog would have gone right over a kid’s head whereas an adult film buff got a lot of laughs out of it.
Both movies did have some elements of magic to them, especially Water Horse. I liked Water Horse more because it was easier to watch. I almost fell asleep in parts of Roan Inish. 4 dead zombies for Roan Inish. 
6 dz for Water Horse. 
Ξ October 17th, 2008 | → 8 Comments | ∇ Music |
Badman, and I hopped on BART and met up with Kathleen to see The Crüxshadows plus special guests I:Scintilla and Ayria at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco.
I:Scintilla opened, led by the sultry singer and lyricist Brittany Bindrim. From Chicago, they put on a pretty impressive set. Ms. Bindrim had a likeable charisma, waving her arms and dancing Goth style. Musicially, they were dark, yet still somewhat poppy.
Aryia came next with a more dance theme, complete with fans with pom poms and pink, lots of pink. The singer danced around a lot and smiled, and pretty much put up an enjoyable show.
Finally, The Crüxshadows came on. Led by singer/violinist Rogue, they belted out some enjoyable tunes. Rogue was flanked by two tall, thin blonde backup singers and also shared the stage with a cute Goth girl guitarist who played very basic power chords and not much else. Behind the stage were the drummer, the keyboardist, and a violinist who I’m assuming took Rogue’s role so he could interact more closely with the crowd.
Interact he did, having several times actually jumping into the audience and singing. He also slapped a lot of hands and his eye contact was excellent.
I enjoyed all three acts, but I:Scintilla stood out the most for me. They stuck more to playing the music than putting on an act, although they did manage to put on quite a show. After their set, thanks to Kathleen pointing out one of their members, I got to meet the band and got their autographs on the newly bought CD I picked up from downstairs.
Aryia was good, but almost out of place, reminding me more of Madonna than true Goth. Their music is nothing I’d rush out and buy though unless I needed some obscure dance music for the anti-zombie compound when we throw a Masquerade Ball.
Unfortunately, I can’t fairly judge The Crüxshadows as we only saw the opening four songs before having to run. God damn BART. It makes no sense at all that one of the world’s most beautiful cities doesn’t have a train that runs until 2:20 in the morning. That’s just stupid. Bitch all you want about drunk drivers, there wouldn’t be so many if they had public transportation when shows end.
I liked Rogue, as he seemed a man dedicated to his act, and also one who knew how to work a crowd. The mix was good, even though they had a lot going on. You could clearly hear his voice and catch every word.
All in all, good show, and was a pleasure finally meeting Kathleen in person. Great eye candy at the show, but that’s to be expected at the DNA Lounge at a Goth show. Wonderful for people watching as well as catching a show without breaking the bank.
Ξ October 15th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Film |
Terrorists, slimy politicians, rich assholes, revolutionary socialists, and a soundtrack from Motorhead. This movie has it all.
Alex, a disgrunted partially cross dressing waiter, worked in a restaurant for inhumanly snobby rich folk. After getting literally thrown out the door and becoming homeless, he has a chance encounter with some “people with political ideals who happen to use violence as a means.” One of them drops a gun, and that gun changes his life.
Befriending a homeless guy after sharing a newspaper for a blanket, the two start a people’s revolution, teaming up with a man living in a crude cottage, and a woman who was used for sex and impregnanted by the story’s protagonist - Nosh, the dirty politician.
With over the top English satire, the movie entertains for 90 minutes. Don’t expect much production because there is none. This is b-movie all the way, folks.
I actually found some of the humor worthwhile. It’s English so you know it’s subtle. No, it’s no Monty Python, but still worth seeing if you can stomach b-movies.
I had no idea Motorhead’s lyrics were actually political, and their songs fit the movie perfectly.
Not for the squeamish though, because the title says it all. Yes, literally. Alex and his cohorts do manage a revenge, but how far will they go and will they get away with it? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.
5 dead zombies out of 10. Pretty good for a b-movie designed to be over the top cheese. 
Alice is a 1988 Czech film, done with a combination of a single girl actress and stop motion animation. Although loved by artsy fartsy folks, I have to stand against my people for this one. I hated it.
I’ve always loved the Alice in Wonderland theme, but this one falls short. It’s more like Alice in the ghetto. The whole movie is grimy. The place needs a bath, the sets look like they’re straight from a concentration camp, and there was nothing magical about the movie.
Credit does to to Kristyna Kohoutova though, for she did a fine performance as Alice. She was the only live person in the movie surrounded by stop motion animation and filthy sets. She carried herself believably, but the rest was like a really cheap imitation dream.
Ok, I know the Czechs were poor in ‘88. I’m aware of that, and should I guess cut them some slack. But not everything had to be covered in a layer of grime. We got the point.
I didn’t even mind the close up of the mouth that constantly said “and Alice thought,” “and Alice said,” “and the white rabbit exclaimed.” You got used to it. It was annoying at first.
Another plus, when the queen said “off with their heads,” they really got decapitated. And lovely twist at the end.
Besides being dirty, the movie never left the house. Surely in the beautiful Czechoslovakia (in case you don’t know your history, in ‘88, they were still together as one nation) they could have found somewhere to film Alice. It’s a big country, with beautiful parts and a medieval backdrop. Perfect for an Alice in Wonderland film. Instead, the film will leave you feeling claustrophobic. Get out of the house and explore, Svankmajer.
If you’re a wannabe pretentious critic, see it just to see it. You can one up your wannabe competition. Just, don’t get your hopes up. I won’t be seeing it again. It took me 3 days to suffer through it the first (and last) time. 3 dead zombies. 
I’ve had almost two weeks now to test the Epiphone Tony Iommi Signature G-400 electric guitar and I have mixed results.
Positives: The neck is wonderful. It’s a little thick for my taste, for after a few hours one’s hands tend to go numb, especially when doing a lot of rhythm playing. However, it’s very smooth for leads and I find myself doing less mistakes at 20+ notes per second than I was doing on my Ibanez.
The fretboard looks cool, with crosses at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th frets. I would have preferred ones at the 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st, and 24th as well, but I’d take the crosses regardless. They just look cool.
The sustain is a dream come true. Nothing like being able to hold a bend for what seems like forever without having to resort to a sustain pedal.
Negatives: Why in the world is the treble/rhythm switch down there where the volume knobs should be? It should be more like a Gibson Les Paul, making it easier to switch from rhythm to lead and back. The other thing is, because of the placement of the volume knobs, volume swells are out of the question. If you don’t do volume swells, well, then you won’t mind. But if you do, you’re S.O.L.
I don’t like the bridge humbucker’s rhythm sound. It’s too muddy. Grunge is dead and it needs to stay dead. Plus, there is no whammy bar. Gotta have a whammy bar. That’s the one thing that keeps me from investing in a Gibson Les Paul.
Overall: For the price, it’s a pretty fine guitar. With a graphic equalizer or something else to adjust the tone, you can compensate for the bridge pickup’s muddiness. If it only had a whammy bar, I’d consider it. But for me, it’s simply not the guitar I want to record with. Would make a good guitar for a punk rocker though. If I wanted to seriously consider this guitar, I’d have to swap out the bridge pickups.
6 dead zombies
Ξ February 23rd, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Pedals |
I just picked up the Dunlop Cry Baby. Let me just tell you it’s an excellent pedal.
I’ve had a Morley Fuzz Wah/Volume before which unfortunately, they don’t make any more. I’d actually take the Morley Fuzz Wah Volume over the Dunlop Cry Baby. With the Morley, the Wah is more pronounced. The Dunlop is slightly more subdued.
The other thing with the Dunlop is there’s no way to turn it off. If you’re playing live, you’ll hear the noise it produces when you’re not playing. The only way around it is to route around the pedal with a switch, which is something you probably don’t want to do if you have a limited budget.
Strengths - it is a well-made pedal. Even though I’ve only had it for a week, I know my pedals and know that this will last me for years. It’s built of metal, and when the zombie plague comes, if you run out of bullets, you can smash a zombie’s brains out with your Dunlop Cry Baby.
Even though I mention the sound is more subdued than the Morley’s, it’s a rich sound. You really can get your guitar to cry with this pedal.
Overall - I thought the price was a misprint. It’s considerably cheaper than most other Wah pedals out there, yet the construction and sound are quite good. If you don’t mind buying used pedals, I’d suggest looking for a Morley Fuzz Wah, but if you absolutely have to have a new pedal, go ahead and grab the Dunlop. 7 dead zombies out of 10 
Ξ December 22nd, 2007 | → 15 Comments | ∇ Film |
Luck. Luck determines a lot in life. With any plague, there will be those who will have immunity to it, and those who don’t. The Native Americans who perished from smallpox were in better physical shape and had better diets than the Europeans who carried it over from the Old World. It’s just luck.
Wannabe pretentious critics can dismiss Will Smith’s Robert Neville character as the last survivor of an apocalyptic disease, who just happens to be a genius, a top scientist, and a military tough guy, but let’s just say it was luck and watch the movie. Or at least the movie hints that it was luck. I don’t see it as an implausible plot hole. There were other people immune to the virus. They just got eaten.
Francis Lawrence directs the 1954 novel I Am Legend, with a few modern day plot changes. This time around, a scientist “cures” cancer by using a genetically mutated virus. Good intentions. Bad results.
So Robert Neville and his dog Sam are the last survivors on Earth. By day, Neville and Sam are safe. By night, the monsters, half-zombie, half-vampire, come out with a super human fury, looking to feast on everything living.
Lawrence does a great job in portraying Neville’s loneliness. He talks to mannequins. He talks to Sam like Sam’s a human. And he watches a lot of t.v.
Neville’s also a classic “good guy.” Despite everything that has gone wrong, he still has hope that he can find a cure. One dimensional? Not at all. Smith does a fine job in fleshing out his Neville character.
Lawrence throws in his scares. I saw several people in the theater jump when Sam ran into a dark subway tunnel and Neville had to retrieve his only friend, knowing that they were there.
A great film? No. It doesn’t do enough to differentiate between the scores of other apocalyptic, other than knowing the virus was caused with good intentions. It did have an underlying point that we were too quick to play God. Or maybe I read that into it.
Smith does a fine job as Neville. Smith has matured into a decent actor, and once again, his son was casted as his son. But I think there was a slip in the film when they showed Neville had a daughter instead of a son. If anyone else caught that, by all means, let me know.
Is it worth seeing? Sure. But don’t expect to see something great because it’s just another Hollywood blockbuster that will generate big money, let you talk about it for a week, then forget it by the end of the year. 6 dead zombies for entertaining me for two hours.
Ξ December 9th, 2007 | → 9 Comments | ∇ Film |
Based off the children’s book Northern Lights, the Golden Compass was a film about an orphan girl named Lyra and her fantastic adventures. The Catholic League called this film offensive and called for a boycott. Although the book is supposedly anti-religion (I never read it), the movie itself isn’t that offensive, as the “bad guys” are a monolithic power hungry government body called the Magisterium.
In this parallel universe, humans stand side by side with their souls, which take animal form. Children’s souls, called daemons in the film, change shape for children still haven’t figured out who they really are yet. With adults however, their daemons remain one animal. A death to either is a death to both, and causing pain to one affects both.
Lyra is given a golden compass, which always tells the truth. The Magisterium was supposed to confiscate them all, but apparently she got a hold of one and only a select few people in the world, including her, can actually read the thing.
The Magisterium wants to dominate all thought, and suppress people’s concepts of magical “dust,” which I guess we’ll learn in the second film the relevance of. The movie ended prematurely without solving much. Usually with an obvious sequel, you at least have some resolution, but this one left it wide open. And yes, it’s a bad thing and dead zombies will be docked.
The other criticism I have of it is the flow. It flowed okay, but in some parts was rather choppy. There were too many main characters and only a few of them got developed, but of course, even those were one dimensional.
The special effects were quite good, but effects don’t impress me. Only dialog and good storytelling do. Both were mediocre at best.
I really wanted to like this film, for it’s a fantasy, but as usually happens in a fantasy film, too much is spent on awing the audience with neat-o special effects. That doesn’t fly to a pretentious critic. You must also have dialog, a storyline, and character development. Lyra, the evil Marisa Coulter, and everyone else were one dimensional and predictable. A few years from now, I’ll completely forget seeing this movie, as I have almost forgotten about the fantasy movie Eragon.
4 dead zombies
Ξ December 5th, 2007 | → 19 Comments | ∇ Film |
OK. This post is for movie buffs.
These are my top ten memorable scenes. These scenes went deep into my psyche for some reason or another and stayed there.
01. Dr. Strangelove - Major Kong rides the nuclear bomb like a rodeo cowboy. One of the more surreal moments in film history.
02. The City of Lost Children - “The Octopus,” two evil Siamese twins, are smoking. One inhales the smoke and the other exhales it. If you saw it, very bizarre and almost spooky, as was the entire movie. Terry Gilliam loved this flick, and yours truly’s a big fan of Gilliam, as you probably already know.
03. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch has a way of getting deep inside my psyche. I don’t know if it’s just me, but of all the scary movies I’ve seen, besides Ju-on 2, I find Lynch movies the scariest. I watched this one in the theatre and the dumpster scene made my heart skip a beat.
04. Lost Highway - David Lynch again. Fred Madison is in bed with his wife explaining a recurring nightmare. He says in the nightmare, he’s in bed with his wife and it’s her, but it’s not her. Suddenly, he looks over at her and it’s not her. If you saw the movie, you’ll remember what I’m referring to.
05. Pulp Fiction - Tarantino’s best moment by far. I don’t care what wannabe pretentious film buffs say. This movie’s head and shoulders above Resevoir Dogs. The fact that that dumb movie Forrest Gump won best picture above Pulp Fiction made me lose all respect for the morons who decide who gets Academy Awards. Anyways, I digress. Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace made one of the cutest screen couples ever, and I’ll never forget “Don’t be a Square.”
06. The Producers - “Your hats. Your jackets. Your swastikas.” I saw both versions and enjoyed the musical even more than the original. And I absolutely loathe musicals, so that’s really saying something. I laughed harder at that scene than any other in that movie.
07. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - The three-way shoot out. The best scene of perhaps the greatest American Western ever (even though it was an Italian movie shot in Spain).
08. Clerks - I don’t ever think I’ve laughed so hard in a movie when Dante and Randall are arguing about the morality of blowing up the Death Star, for there were every day workers on it. Imagine, you have to feed your family so you get offered a job on the Death Star to work on the plumbing. Do you deserve to die? The way they answer that question is classic.
09. Once Were Warriors - Grace’s suicide. Yeah, movie suicides are often melodramatic and almost stupid, but this one hit me.
10. Blue Velvet - David Lynch is not my favorite director. He’s just the guy who gets inside my psyche. I love Isabella Rosselini, but the scene I remember the most from this movie was without her. It was when Ben sings Roy Orbison and Frank listens, going from melancholy to rage halfway through the song.
Any film scene buried deep inside your psyche that pops out every now and then but you’ll remember it until the day you die? These are ten of mine.
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