JCVD – Review

Well, I finally got to see JCVD, and the verdict is that it’s a resounding success.

What’s Destroying my Brains – Frisky Dingo

Mention those proofs again and just see what happens Valerie!

Well, I’ve been totally destroyed. My brain has ceased function due to the fact that if it were a computer, FRISKY DINGO would have been a magnet playfully waved closely in it’s direction.

Just a quick note – I’m on Twitter.

Join up and follow me for even more mundane news! I’m ryanrochnroll on twitter!

Prince of Darkness – the not quite review

Only the hottest ladies make it to this blog.

So over the course of the last few days, I had a little free time in which to basically watch whatever I wanted. Blockbuster didn’t have most of that, and some of it is illegal in this state (I keed, I keed), but they did have John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, which was probably number one on my list at that particular instant. For the uninitiated, Prince of Darkness would be the second film in what Carpenter has referred to as his “Apocalypse Trilogy”. And though I never saw either Apocalypse, or even any x-men at all in any of the three films, I think he meant that as an allusion to the word they created in homage to the mutant menace, as the themes of growing strife and the nearing of the end percolate throughout all of the films in a steadily building, and ominously unstoppable fashion. Further info for those unfamiliar are the titles of the films, which start with The Thing, continue into Prince of Darkness, and fittingly (or not) end with In The Mouth of Madness. The three films all tend to share a kind of Lovecraftian dread and horror at the malevolent unknown, and they are better pictures for the ideas that Carpenter tried to bring in regarding class, human nature, trust, and yes, the end of the human illusion.

Watching the Watchmen

Alan Moore gonna break it off in ya ass, heard?

So, it’s become obvious to anyone who actually checks in over here at this site that I’ve gone pretty much tits-up with regards to regular updates. For this, I make no excuses. All my favorite sites that have pulled the same crap have listed their litany of reasons why it’s hard to update on a regular basis for this reason or that. Reasons why it’s hard to actually do what you set out to do and type some paragraphs up about stuff that you supposedly get moist over and hit a friggin’ spellcheck once in a while. I’m not going to make any excuses. To use a term I recently almost wore out on my letter to DJ Caruso, I have been a douche, and for the 1/4th of a person who still actually checks this site: my deepest, least moisturizing apologies. I won’t do it again. I have lots of ground to cover, and most of it is happening this weekend. Let’s get to the show.

The reason I even left that first paragraph in is because it highlights my utter shame and bewilderment over how utterly absent all developments regarding Watchmen were in the months past. And for a project and campaign so utterly up my alley to have been so well executed, but relegated to not even a mention is kind of ridiculous, and a little puzzling to at least myself. I have to play the subconscious card here and blame my own apprehensions about the adaptation of this material. It’s a feeling that I’m sure has plagued anyone who is a fan of the source material, especially anyone with any working knowledge of film or even the process of adaptation from one medium to another. It’s a brutal, unkind process and it doesn’t really have a lot of room for kindness or blind hope if you hope to create a product that is successful in a creative, or commercial sense. Look, obviously, it’s not easy. If it were, you wouldn’t see ten Ghost Riders and Uwe Boll movies for every Spider-Man or Dark Knight. And the prospect of taking a source as highly regarded and inherently untranslatable as Watchmen and adapting it is daunting enough that versions have been in the works for over a decade. The problem I tend to come across myself is that I am equally as much of a film enthusiast as I am for any other medium, if not more. So when I sit in the theatre watching an adaptation of anything, my first impulse is to judge how something works as a film, then worry about the adaptive prowess of those involved as a close second. So I think that aside from simply being distracted by more immediate things around me, there was a level of avoidance on my part to look very hard into the events surrounding the development of Watchmen, or at least to jot my thoughts down on it. But the fact is that an incredibly well executed marketing campaign has been a vital part of that development, and I would say between the online character journals, vintage in-universe news reports, clips, and 80s style viral video game, it’s clear from face value that the creators and especially Zack Snyder really get the property on a real, tangible level. And I don’t think it really and fully hit me that OH MY GOD THERE’S A WATCHMEN MOVIE until I recently purchased my tickets to an early midnight showing of this two and a half hour possible disaster/masterpiece. 

Summing it up: Yes, I have my tickets for a March 5th midnight showing at the beautiful Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar location. I’ll be there, towing my unfortunate (and likely sleepy) wife along with me to witness the event, and then, yes, review it. On my never-was-a-scout’s honor, it will be done. It’s a weird concept for me to be this stoked, but still totally unhyped. I’m hoping this will be a nice way to judge as critically as possible, and I think that a big reason for that is that I’m of the opinion that you don’t need to be so slavish to the source that you lose your ability to create a vision that is uniquely your own. In fact at some points, after I had been reviewing the output for this film and hearing key statements about using the book as a story board and what not, I almost began to think that might be the worst way to approach it, since there are beats and moments that are totally and completely unique to the original medium on this one, and it would be a travesty to pass off a hamfisted fan-vid as an honest to God film version of such a great work. TOO much devotion to source gives you awful junk like BATMAN: DEAD END which, I’m sorry, is crap. Yes, I know, it was made  on a nothing budget by devoted fans. Look, that doesn’t make something not suck, no matter how you slice it. I remember people saying that Boner kid was the best Joker ever to grace a screen. I wanted to wretch! I digress. Yes I’m going. I’ll report back on it. Hope some of you lovely folks come back here to check it out. PEACE!

 

Oh, what the hell, HAVE A LOOK AT THE AWESOME NEW PRODUCTION VIDEOS WITH CAST AND CREW!!!! Here’s a link to them on GeekTyrant. They’re pretty cool, and they twitter all day, so sign up!