The Day After Tomorrow

It’s been a long time, but for no real reason I decided to watch this movie last night. It’s fantastic. The weather is the bad guy. How awesome is that? It doesn’t even try to make sense. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a 15 year old, despite clearly being in his mid-20s. Again.

I know it’s an old movie and this isn’t news, but I really think its awfulness will stand the test of time. I think my favourite thing about the movie is that it somberly points out the folly of rejecting the knowledge humankind has gained from science and then takes incredible liberties to make the plot more interesting.

In fact, for a humanities-riddled luddite like me, it was more interesting to read reviews like this one than actually watch the film.

And Jake Gyllenhaal can outrun a tidal wave in water up to his chest. LL Cool J once outran a great white shark in water up to his chest. They should have a race.

A short little post. I miss my camera.

I miss my camera because I saw a really good band tonight, and I was reduced to taking a picture with my four year old (i.e. ancient, apparently) phone. But I can’t even get that photograph onto my computer because the infrared on my phone and that on my computer don’t jive for some reason.

Maybe it’s just meant for an apple remote?

Incidentally, my affection for the Planet of the Apes movies has been greatly enhanced by a forgiving nature. A nature that continues despite the utter rubbish contained in the sequels, particularly.

The Dark Knight…

… is incredible. Wow. How insightful. It was so good I’m now going to watch Planet of the Apes sequels, just to try and balance out my universe.

Another big week ahead, and I don’t have much plans, other than stealing an idea and reading crazy amounts of books, as usual.

In other John goes to the cinema on his own when Sunday is feeling slow news, the new trailer for Watchmen is crazy awesome. Thank you Zack Snyder.

I would go to a cinema just to see this trailer on the big screen again.

Though, if you watch it on the youtube site and not just here, you’ll see comment bubbles in the video itself at the start. What’s that about? Don’t do this, youtube, for crying out loud. Viddler does it reasonably well, but don’t get carried away.

The most worrying thing for me personally about this trailer is that it makes me think I could stop despising Billy Corgan and go back to liking the Pumpkins again. I think too many 90s singalongs are affecting my brain in a strange way.

A short list of the reasons the new Indy movie sucks.

Kudos to me for my most internet-y blog title yet.

1. The utterly fantastic Cate Blanchett looks fantastic, acts fantastic, but can’t get over the fact the character’s a bit rubbish, really.
2. The Nazis actually did have bizarre expectations regarding occult artefacts; the Soviets did not.
3. There is too much CGI. Not as bad as the Star War prequels, but dude: too much CGI.
4. The movie just plain cops out on several levels, becoming downright sickening at certain points in a lame attempt at fan service.
5. Spielberg and Lucas are old.

Never in a million years did I think I would audibly groan at several points during an Indiana Jones movie. Suspension of disbelief is a given, and difficult to dispel: congratulations Harrison and friends, you did it. I am really, really disappointed.

Flesh Eating Virus + A Bentley Flying Through a Bus = Awesome

I’m fairly sure Neil Marshall is a genius.

Inspired by this, I’m driven to write a short and unprofessional (not to mention untimely) review of the utterly fantastic Doomsday.

I should probably include the basic premise: unspecified mystery horror-virus infects Scotland, the British government rebuilds Hadrian’s Wall. Thirty years later the virus reappears in London and the prime minister and his shady right-hand man send Rhona Mitra into Scotland to look for survivors. Said survivors have either become bloodthirsty cannibal savages or live in the country trying to recreate a medieval feudal society.

I know.

Doomsday came out in the US quite a while ago, and instantly became one of those movies I really, really wanted to see in a cinema but never got around to going to watch. How foolish I was.

The movie is utterly fantastic, and combines two of my favourite things, namely, a post-apocalyptic setting and truly ridiculous violence:

Unfortunately, it also combines two of my least favourite things, namely, cheesy dialogue and Bob Hoskins:

The wordpress theme I’m currently using doesn’t seem into doing captions, but I assure you, Bob is cheesing it up.

The reason Doomsday is brilliant is because it’s all completely intentional. The film is chock full of overt references from Mad Max (crazy barbaric denizens of the near future sporting Mohawks) to John Carpenter (naked, large breasted blonde taking a bath during a drug deal with a shotgun close at hand) and plenty in between. Marshall even had the foresight to include some of the worst music ever made (re: 80s British pop), although I just couldn’t get past Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I can’t be that knowing when it comes to my action/gore/sci-fi schlock.

The decision to soundtrack the people-eating party near the start with some Fine Young Cannibals DID make me laugh though. As did the underlying joke that people from the north of England and Scotland are a bunch of savages while those from the south are untrustworthy toffs too smooth for their own good. Except for Bob Hoskins. He seems to take Dick Van Dyke’s infamous attempt at a cockney accent in Mary Poppins personally.

On a sidenote, Bob Hoskins was in a movie called Last Orders in 2001 with Ray Winstone and Michael Caine. I remember thinking it looked interesting but I’m not sure that my ears could handle that much geezering around. Proceed at your peril.

Get Doomsday when it comes out on DVD.

No, I don’t want any ringtones.

Spam has discovered Facebook.

What am I going to do? I migrated from myspace for a reason, damn it. First, I saw a message on my friend’s wall from someone that was clearly a myspace-esque computer-generated mess. Because it said ‘what up’ and people don’t do that very often anymore, unless they’re being ironic and hilarious. People also don’t contact each other a lot regarding secret methods for getting new ringtones.

To be honest, it didn’t bother me. Until my own profile was stained with this mess.

This sucks. I can deal with the shameless lack of client privacy Facebook engages in, I can deal with the ‘feeds’ so creepy it makes me feel like I’m spying on my own friends, and I can even deal with having to turn down about ten invitations to join some crappy application a day.

But spam? On my wall? What is going to be done about this? Probably nothing. I’ll just stop using Facebook.

And then I’ll have to do work. Oh God.

Meanwhile, I saw Diary of the Dead the other night.

Awesome. That simple.

Romero has made a pretty cool film that almost never betrays the fact that he is really old (but still very cool), apart from a rather wonderful faith in the ‘kids’ and ‘blogs’. It was actually very funny. I often watch zombie movies and have the crap scared out of me and miss the ‘humorous’ bits that critics love to get arch about, but I was laughing out loud a few times in this movie.

I love the commitment to solid B-movie staples (drunken English professor, Texas blonde that knows how to repair motor vehicles), but it got a bit old a little part of the way through. The plot is reliant on one of the protagonists essentially refusing to put his camera down at any point. Twenty minutes in, I really wanted this guy to be eaten by zombies. I settled for encouraging his girlfriend to leave him instead. Yes, I know I have no control over the plot.

That was the one weak point, though, really. I was pretty happy, I didn’t know what to expect. And if we’re honest, after a good long look in the mirror, Land of the Dead was a bit crap really.