It’s been quite some time since I’ve done these. Believe me, the acquisition of great band names hasn’t stopped, it’s just not always been easy to remember them by the time I sit down at my computer. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, I can finally keep that written list of band names that I’ve been talking about doing since I first started picking up on these things a few years ago. You see, Andrea and I have some pretty sweet new cell phones that have Microsoft Word installed on them and I can write down great band names whenever I hear them, no matter where I am. I already have a pretty nice collection, but I don’t want to blow my entire line-up just yet, so look for these to be metered out in bite-sized chunks every once in a while.

Enjoy!

Recently I came upon a really cool website (presumably from kottke.org, which is like a repository for cool websites) that follows the adventures of an English bloke named Ben Saunders who is trying to break the world speed record for traveling to the North Pole.

The current record-holders made the trek from Ward Hunt Island to the North Pole in 36 days. However, that team used dog sleds, were re-supplied numerous times, and even had a guide to the Pole. Ben Saunders, Ubermensch that he is, is making the trip by himself…on skis…dragging all of his supplies behind him on a sledge…is not going to be re-supplied by anyone during his journey…and he’s trying to make the trip in 30 days.

Saunders is carrying along with him all of the electronic gadgetry available in today’s connected world, so he updates an online journal every day so we can keep track of how things are going. When was the last time you read a blog where the author has to worry about polar bear attacks, shifting ice ridges, and frostbite taking a body part or two?

So if you’re sick of reading bad Emo poetry from 14-year old girls, a film dork’s movie journal, or more vitriol tossed around by politicians, check out the journal of one of the last true adventurers. It’s definitely worth a read.

30 Days of Night
I rented this one out of pure morbid curiosity. It was mostly a waste of time. Vampires attack a small Alaskan town that has the unfortunate honor of being completely cut off from the rest of the world for a month, as well as being thrown into darkness as the sun doesn’t rise thanks to the earth’s odd rotation. A great setup for a bad vampire movie. I could go on and on about the things I disliked, but instead I’ll mention the one thing I did like. Near the beginning of the film, during the big vampire/human battle, the whole thing is shot from a bird’s eye view, giving us a very cool angle on the whole affair. It was all downhill from there, though.
2 / 5 bananas

Bee Movie
You probably haven’t heard of this one. It’s a little 3-D computer animated film. It stars Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger. Ringing any bells? No? Ahh, movie marketing departments. If they’re not giving away the plot of the entire film in a 2 minute trailer, they’re inundating us with commercials, food tie-ins, and character cardboard cut outs at every conceivable public location a child might ever enter. Sadly, Bee Movie doesn’t really have what it takes to live up to the very omnipresent hype it received well before the film was ever released. It does have some funny moments, don’t get me wrong. But in the end, it’s a film that tries to be everything to everyone - legal thriller, social/ecological conscious allegory, kid’s movie, romantic comedy (which is slightly disturbing), etc. - while not doing any of them particularly well. Cut about 20 minutes of needless subplots and it might have been half as good as A Bug’s Life. As it is, though, it’s overlong, short on funny, and generally a forgettable film. Although it’s always a joy to hear Patrick Warburton scream all his lines, so at least it has that going for it.
2.5 / 5 bananas

The Plague Dogs
I grew up watching movies that might not be considered typical “kid” movies. While others were watching Cinderella, I was watching Time Bandits; they were watching My Little Pony, and I was watching Cloak and Dagger; they saw The Last Unicorn, I wore out a Betamax tape of Watership Down. If you think Watership Down is just a little cartoon about bunnies, then you’ve obviously never seen the animated film from 1978. It’s trippy, dark, disturbing, and was utterly over my 7-year old head. Still, though, I watched it all the freaking time when I was growing up. A few years ago at an STL Film Club meeting, I brought up my undying love of Watership Down and another member, Streeter, said that he preferred The Plague Dogs put out by the same animation house in 1982. He’s from Holland, so Streeter was able to see movies that never made it this side of the pond. Apparently the film was shown in Seattle in 1983, but I really don’t think it got a wide US release. Now, though, since everything ever put on any type of film stock is being released on DVD, Plague Dogs is finally available to anyone with a Netflix account. And I have to say, it was definitely worth seeking out. The film tells the story of two dogs who have escaped from a military laboratory and are on the loose in the English countryside. The government isn’t sure if the dogs were exposed to some experiments being done using the Bubonic Plague, so they do their best to hunt down our canine protagonists and capture or kill them before they spread the disease. The film jumps back and forth between talking animals and quiet ones as seen through a more human eye, letting us just watch as they try to figure out where to find food, shelter, and, ultimately, safe haven. But during these quiet moments, we also get a lot of voice-over from unseen human characters as they help give us the human side of the story and clue us in to the machinations being put into place to find these dogs. It was a really great narrative tool to help move the story along, but also to supply a sort of foreboding background as we hear mankind conspiring against our furry friends. It’s like watching Lady and the Tramp eating their iconic spaghetti dinner, all the while knowing that there are snipers ready to pick off the dogs as soon as they’ve eaten the last meatball. Needless to say I probably would have loved it if I’d seen this when I was a kid.
4 / 5 bananas

Resident Evil: Extinction
Again, a total morbid curiosity rental. I know it’s part of the RE canon that every movie (and video game, for that matter) have to have some form of mutant zombie monstrosity, but it’s getting pretty old at this point. Maybe they should try writing instead of just following the same formula.
1.5 / 5 bananas

The Lookout
I don’t really know what to say about this film. I liked it. It was entertaining. The hook was pretty cool - kid has brain damage from an accident and gets suckered into helping with a bank heist - and overall I thought it was an enjoyable night at the movies. But it’s not one I’m thinking about afterwards either. I guess it was good entertainment, but not much more.
3.5 / 5 bananas

I Am Legend
Watch the first half, skip the second. The isolation felt at the beginning, while Will Smith is stalking deer down the middle of Times Square, is palpable. But once the things in the dark start going bump in the night, for some reason, things go downhill from there. Maybe it’s because the bad guys are all CGI. And poorly done CGI at that. Would it have killed them to have a few bald-headed stuntmen with a little latex rubber and corn syrup on their faces? Aside from the action movie ending, there’s a half-way decent film in this adaptation of the far superior novel. But, unfortunately, the bad overtakes the good and this winds up just being a real disappointment. Again, watch the first half, skip the second.
2.5 / 5 bananas

Death At A Funeral
A jaunty little British comedy directed by Yoda. It’s fun. It’s funny. It has a lot of misdirection, confusion, and unbelievable, but amusing situations. It wasn’t a waste of time to watch, but in the end it is rather forgettable.
2 / 5 bananas

Dan In Real Life
Ever wondered what the Brady Bunch would look like twenty years later? Here ya go! The family at the center of this film is so sickeningly sweet and gosh-darn-wholesome, that they’re practically characters from a Rockwell painting. Because I couldn’t get past some of the familial cliches that would make the Kennedy’s blush - playing football on the lawn, charades in the family room, a crossword puzzle competition between the men and the women, witty banter around the dinner table - it made it really hard for me to care too much about the central conflict: Dan is a widower father of three precocious girls who happens to run into his younger brother’s new girlfriend and the two fall in love. The problem is, with such a close-knit family who are so sappily in love with one another, it’s hard to believe that Dan’s brother could ever really be mad at Dan for falling for the new girlfriend. In fact, you’d almost expect the brother to give an “Aw shucks, Dan! You’ve been sad for so long, I’m just gonna step aside and let you be happy for once.” I was really disappointed with this one because it received so many good reviews. A missed opportunity.
2 / 5 bananas

The Mist
The Plague Dogs aside, of the many movies I’ve reviewed this time around, two of the best ones have the smallest budgets to work with - The Lookout ($16 million) and The Mist ($18 million). $18 million is a drop in the bucket for director Frank Darabont, whose other well-known films include The Shawshank Redemption (budgeted at $25 million in 1994!) and The Green Mile ($60 million in 1999). But it just goes to show that if the story is solid and the actors are talented, you can spend less money and get an excellent film. The special effects might not be as believable as bigger budget films, but in service to the story, they work just fine. And what a story it is! A group of people get caught inside a local supermarket as a thick mist overtakes their entire town. Not a problem except for the other-worldly creatures that reside within the mist that are ready and willing to either eat you or use your body as a cocoon for their creepy little offspring. But the film isn’t really about the mist. The mist is a catalyst that forces this little microcosm of society to try to maintain their sanity in a world filled with scary, unseen, misunderstood things. Apparently Darabont insisted that if he was only going to have $18 million to work with, that he had to be able to keep the ending of the film the way he (and Stephen King, who wrote the novella the film is based on) wrote it in the script. And thank god he made this demand. The ending is one of the most heart-wrenching things you’ll ever see. Seriously, it took so much out of me that I was just exhausted after seeing it all play out. With a budget less than half of what Resident Evil: Extinction used, Darabont was able to create a film that was ten times as scary, at least one hundred times more resonant, and infinitely better. What a bargain.
5 / 5 bananas

Welcome to the Uncanny Valley!

This thing is going to haunt me in my sleep.

(Click here if you don’t know what the Uncanny Valley is. And if you don’t know what that is - congratulations, you’re not an uber-geek)

It is with a sad heart that I must say goodbye to Arthur C. Clarke, famed science fiction author whose best-known work was 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 is easily one of the best films of all-time and not all of the credit can go to Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay by Clarke is the perfect example of what film can be at it’s best - exciting, interesting, astounding, and thought-provoking. It really is absolutely incredible.

So goodbye, Mr. Clarke. May you find intelligent life wherever you are.

Man, Gygax and now Clarke…it’s already been a tough year to be a geek.