Movie News, Reviews, & Reactions 2011

[Desertpuma]

I enjoyed it for what it was

[Krensky]

Considering all the punching up of the Compte d'Artanion's life and the baseless, vile, absurd libel of the Cardinal Richeleu Dumas did in his romances for the mindless masses of Paris reading enjoyment, I don't think you really have much of a leg to stand on regardless of what happenend in the film.

[Crafty_Pat]

In today's edition of "What the What?"

So long as Johnny "destroy all franchises" Depp isn't in it, we're ahead of the apocalypse, methinks.

[Mister Andersen]

While my innitial reaction is Eurgh, I am none the less mindful that the 2 Cushing films were none the less highly entertaining, even the 2nd one (Bernard Cribbins for the win)

[glimmerrat]

So a Hollywood Doctor Who movie has been given the green light.

Let me be the first to predict that it's going to suck, hard.

[agent oni]

In today's edition of "What the What?"

So long as Johnny "destroy all franchises" Depp isn't in it, we're ahead of the apocalypse, methinks.

Hmmm...Jeff Goldblum as the Doctor....I can get behind that.  Unfortunately, I don't think I can get behind a movie version of Doctor Who. 

[ThunderMonkey]

If Hollywood is going to do this... I'm pulling for Gray Gubler as the Doctor. (but I have zero expectations for this to actually work).

[Mister Andersen]

[Nepenthe]

Yeah, I did a fistpump when I first saw that. Tee hee.

[Crafty_Pat]

December 16 will be big for genre movies, apparently.

"‘December 16th is going to be a big day in genre films, with looks at both The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in conjunction with major theatrical releases, according to Collider.  The Dark Knight Rises is the big one; a six to seven minute “prologue” of footage from the film will appear at some Imax theaters before showings of Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol.

"A teaser trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will launch before showings of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.  A new trailer for TDKR will also be shown with the Sherlock Holmes sequel."

[glimmerrat]

Yeah, so I finally saw the new prequel for The Thing.

(click to show/hide)

It wasn't great, but it doesn't suck as badly as I feared. The writer/director obviously has a love for the source material, and it shows that he cares, but that still isn't enough to cover up the problems that this movie has.

1) Fucking CGI: The reason that the original still holds up is because of Rob Bottin's spectacular physical effects. We were promised the same with this movie. They fucking lied. Everything is CGI, even the blood splatter from wounds. Not a squib in sight. Why? CGI ages badly, and the effects in this movie border on goofy, which leads me into...

2) They showed too much: A cardinal mistake of bad horror, they tried to show the Things in explicit detail, and whilst the designs were pretty good, the bad CGI just looked worse. If they'd kept it in the shadows or hid part of the creature like they do at the start, then we'd be cooking on gas, but no. It comes off as lazy.

3) Plot Holes a-go-go: The director took the time to get the Norwegian base looking just perfect. He tied the plot in quite nicely to the Carpenter film, but there are a few issues. The alien spacecraft burns a hole in the ice as it tries to escape at the end. Why? I don't know. In the original, there's fucking film footage of the Norwegians blowing the ice with thermite and destroying the ship. That didn't happen. A pair of snowcats were driven to the crash site at the end, yet when MacReady does a flyover IN A HELICOPTER he doesn't notice a thing. In daylight. Two bright yellow fucking tanks. I mean, I can understand a lot of the attention to detail, but why the shit do it for some things but not others? It's just lazy.

4) They tried to do too much: Not only did they try and fit in all of the plot points from the Carpenter movie, they tried to add lots of other stuff too. They failed, and ended up doing a half-ass job on everything. I can understand the need to grant the movie its own identity, but really you're not helping yourself by choosing to male a prequel in the first place.

Incidentally, the creatures do some things that are just plain fucking stupid. If you want some examples then ask away, but i'm not fired up enough about this movie to bother right now.

That said, I was pleased to hear Carpenter's opening music over the end credits.

I guess it wasn't a BAD film. It just wasn't GREAT, and it could have been. 

[Gentry]

Man, that Expendables poster almost made me grow a third testicle. Who's the Asian chick? That's not Jet Li with emo hair, is it?

Also, Kudos to Chuck Norris for just joining the cast and not insisting his name be somehow separated in the credit line. Ahnuld and Bruce I can stomach kind of appended, but Van Damme? Really?

And on a tangent, who wants to see Ahnuld hit the gym and then do a Conan the King movie? Besides me, anyway?

[Coyote0273]

Man, that Expendables poster almost made me grow a third testicle. Who's the Asian chick? That's not Jet Li with emo hair, is it?

Also, Kudos to Chuck Norris for just joining the cast and not insisting his name be somehow separated in the credit line. Ahnuld and Bruce I can stomach kind of appended, but Van Damme? Really?

And on a tangent, who wants to see Ahnuld hit the gym and then do a Conan the King movie? Besides me, anyway?

It's Jet Li.

As for Van Damme... well, he is an action star of the era. Popular one who fell from grace, heh.

[Desertpuma]

The biggest money making star from that timeframe is not even in the film ...


Harrison Ford! ... Not that we need to see him running around in it.

[Gentry]

Nah, far and away the biggest hole in the film is Segal, baby! We need the power of the ponytail!

But hey, there's always Ex3. 'Cuz you know full well this movie is going to be bad bad awful but make a BILLION dollars anyway. And nothing says "you're not as cool as you think, Segal" quite like a dump truck full of money.