Mandatory music

I believe it is mandatory for me to play this song today:

Movies I’m looking forward to in 2011

Each December, people make lists about the things that passed in the previous year.  Now that it’s January, let’s look forward.  Here are the movies coming out in 2011 that I’m looking forward to seeing.  Well, maybe not looking forward to.  These are the movies I’ll probably just see with friends.

The Green Hornet
Apollo 18 – This is probably a rental.
Battle: Los Angeles – Probably a rental as well.
Paul – One I am looking forward to.
Thor
X-Men: First Class – One I’ll probably only watch with friends.
Green Lantern
Rise of the Apes – Another one I’ll probably only watch with friends.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – I’ll admit, I’m a tad curious about this one.  Of course, I never saw the second one, so it’s probably a rental.  Or I’ll wait for it to air on TV.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – Another one I am actually looking forward to watching.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Cowboys & Aliens – This one looks stupid, but a watchable stupid.
The Darkest Hour – This is probably a rental.
Conan the Barbarian – It’s a sacrilege, but I’ll watch it.
The Three Musketeers – Probably wait for this to air on TV.

That’s all the ones I know about.

Ten best scifi/fantasy movies of the past ten years

Everywhere you look this time of year you see lists for The Best/Worst Whatever for the Past Year/Decade. So, I might as well get in on it as well.

This is my list (in order of release date) of what I consider the ten best scifi/fantasy movies of the past ten years. The main difference between the movies listed here and some big name movies is that these have coherent plots. For me, that means far more than flashy special effects.

Donnie Darko – 2001

Harry Potter – 2001-2010

(I lumped all of these together because it’s easier than trying to pick one. I also tried to find something that had all the trailers together, but I couldn’t find a good version, so this is just the trailer for the first movie. How far they have come.)

Lord of the Rings – 2001-2003

(Same as with the Harry Potter movies.)

Spider-Man 2 – 2004

(This one it is easier to pick one of the three movies as better.)

Serenity – 2005

V for Vendetta – 2006

Children of Men – 2006

Iron Man – 2008

(The second movie was good, but I think this one is better.)

Watchmen – 2009

District 9 – 2009

Bugged by prophecy

There has been an issue that has been bugging me for some time. Usually, it has just been a slight buzz in the back of my mind, but several incidents in TV shows and books have brought it to the front. The issue is prophecy, premonitions, ESP, all that gobbledygook, mumbo-jumbo being treated as a real thing. As a skeptic, I know that if a person makes 100 predictions (by whatever means they wish) and one – by chance – comes “true,” they will focus on that one and ignore the 99 failures. But what do we see in TV and movies and in books? A character has a premonition or a prophetic dream and not only does the premonition or dream come true, it’s a key plot point. Have you ever seen a character’s premonition or dream not come true? And I’m not talking about the psychic the main characters make fun of because their predictions are wacky only to have one come “true” so that everybody becomes a believer. About a month or so ago there was an episode of Castle about a psychic. I believe at one point Beckett points out all the time that is wasted by the police following psychic “leads” that are just gobbledygook mumbo-jumbo. That’s true. But did they leave it there in the world of reality, or did they leave it on a “it just may be possible” ending? I know, I know, it’s fantasy, it’s escapism, but shouldn’t art try to imitate life?

I’ll end this with a great quote from the Babylon 5 episode “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari.” This was what Vir’s image in Londo’s prophetic dream told him: “Prophecy is a guess that comes true. When it doesn’t, it’s a metaphor.”

10 Movies for aliens

A day or two after coming to the conclusion that I needed to take some time off from writing, I came up with an idea for a novel.  Sigh.  Anyway, as part of my laying the groundwork for this novel, I asked myself if I could send ten movies out to aliens, which ones would I send?  These don’t have to be the greatest movies, or even ones I like, but movies that give a broad overview to what it is to be human and our view of the world.  Here is what I came up with.  (Since I don’t know that many non-English films, I just stuck with English ones.)  What do you think, and what would your ten be?

Gone With the Wind (1939)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Spartacus (1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Titanic (1997)
Amistad (1997)
Shrek (2001)

Undecided Voters

(How sad is it I’m using YouTube to post a Hulu video?)

I’m looking forward to this more than the movie

I’ll have to get some pizza rolls.

Judgment Day +13

Still a classic.

I finally saw Avatar

I wasn’t that impressed.

When I first heard about Avatar, I thought, That might be interesting.  Like most things, I took a wait-and-see attitude.  But then, even before it came out, I started reading how it would “change the way movies are made.” Stuff like that … annoys me.  I actually like, surprise surprise, good movies.  I don’t really care if they’re groundbreaking in their production.  So if anything, hearing Avatar was this “game changer” movie made me less likely to see it.

Then the reviews started coming out.  It seemed they all went along the lines of, “The effects are fantastic.” “How’s the plot?” “The effects are fantastic.” I thought the whole Star Wars Prequels debacle would convince Hollywood that special effects don’t replace plot.  I know, I’m an idealist.

Then I guess it was over Christmas I was home watching a Mythbusters marathon.  What sucked was it seemed EVERY commercial break had something Avatar.  Either a trailer for Avatar, or some phone with some Avatar feature, or some Avatar promotion at a restaurant, or some schmuck asking, “Has one of your loved ones committed suicide in the hope they’d be reincarnated on Pandora?  Then call my law firm at blah blah blah.” And I swear, there was one commercial break where all the commercials were Avatar related.  I’m the type of person where the more something is hyped, the less likely I’ll be interested in it.  So after being bombarded with everything Avatar, I decided, screw it, I won’t shell out ten bucks to see it.  I know, I’d miss all the amazing effects by not seeing it in 3-D, but I was sick of hearing about it.

So anyway, the other day I saw it in the movie section of my local library, and I checked it out.  At least that $1.50 goes to a good cause.  I’ll admit, I went into it not expecting to like it.  And I wasn’t disappointed.  In that regard, at least.

Since the main point of the movie was the effects, let me start there.  I did watch it on my dinky little TV screen, but even then, some of the creatures looked … bad.  I’ve seen how they use layers of effects to bring CGI creatures to live, like there’s a skin layer, then a fur layer, then a lighting layer, then a wind effect layer and stuff like that.  There were a couple times where, to me, it looked like the had forgotten the last few layers, and the creatures looked more like their plastic toy versions than what you’d expect an actual animal to look like.  I only saw the grand vistas on my TV and felt neutral about them.  I’ll grant that they may have been fantastic on the big screen, I don’t know.  As to the smaller, foreground stuff, I did get the feeling a lot of it was there for the same reason a lot of crap was in the Star Wars Prequels – to show the world they had the technology to do it.  Not for any silly thing like, say, plot.

Speaking of the plot, I wasn’t all that impressed.  I think my biggest problem was it felt like 90% of the movie was left out and all we saw were the big action scenes and some montages.  I think if it had been a Lord of the Rings style project, of three films filmed together, it might have been truly awesome.  It would break down like this.  The first film would start with more background on Jake and his brother and what Earth was like.  Then he’d go to Pandora, start training in his avatar, maybe have a scene where the base is attacked by the Na’vi and he helps defend it, and ends with him being chased by the thing and being saved by Neytiri.  The second film would go into detail his learning about the Na’vi and the people, becoming friends with some of them, perhaps being pressured into going on a raid of the sky people camp, and end with the destruction of the Hometree.  The third movie would be Jake fully becoming a native and gathering the forces for the colossal battle.

If there was more movie, then there would be more opportunity for the minor characters to, I don’t know, develop.  I mean, when Jake goes to bond with an Ikran, there are (I assumed) young Omaticaya cheering his name.  Who are they?  And when Jake first arrived there’s a scene of a giant dump truck or something with Na’vi arrows sticking out of the tires.  And since the Omaticaya are the only people nearby, they must be, I don’t know, raiding the sky people camp.  Why don’t we ever see such a raid?

So basically, I would have greatly preferred a deeper movie with more of a plot and character development.  If that could have been done without cutting into the effects, it might have been a fantastic movie.  As is, I felt if fell flat.

Hollywood vs. Reality

I started watching Armageddon just to see if it’s as bad as I remember – I think it’s worse because I’ve blocked so much of it out. But after watching this scene:

I just had to watch this to cleanse my palate: