HIGHWAY (a review)

HIGHWAY (a review)

Isn't it fun to see movies with stars before they become super famous? This movie (made in 2002) has Jake Gyllenhaaaaaaaal, Jared Leto, Salma Blair and John C Reilly (from Scrubs).

The story: when a guy is caught screwing a man's wife he takes off before the husband can have his feet broken. They head off to Seatlle so his friend can find a girl he once made out with that he has been holding a torch for and along the way pick up a woman and meet a drug user/dealer/something and meet an alligator boy and, uh, other stuff.

Was it good?

This is so not my thing. Maybe it's the drug stuff that I don't see as wow cool or the endless wandering which to me feels more like a drug thing than storytelling, but I just didn't get into it. It's one of those movie filled with weird and wacky which can work, but you have to be just in perfect sync. Usually it means getting the mindset of the main character. For instance, in INTO THE NIGHT, Jeff Goldblum is a man who sees his girlfriend screwing another man and leaves her and develops insomnia and then one night he encounters a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) on the run and helps her as she tries to get some money together to pay off some mean guys. It has weird, strange, wandering all through it but it works for me because I get the whole insomnia/do anything to help Michelle Pfeiffer thing. In this movie, the whole running away to Seattle and then hooking up with Salma Blair and everything didn't connect for me.

*** NOT RECOMMENDED ****

my art...Kim Possible sketch cards

A FEW THINGS I'VE DRAWN...

Inspired by Elena's Kim Possible birthday party I decided to try some Kim Possible sketch cards. They were fun, but I have a lot to learn. First, with coloring. Yikes. Some of the, uh, interesting coloring is because I didn't have the right color and didn't want to leave that are white, but others were just that I didn't guage the color from the markers right. The colors change a lot as the marker dries and I didn't know that. Also, with body positioning. As simple as animation makes it look, I still had a lot of trouble getting body position to be both interesting and expressive. Most of these were made while looking at screen caps. Overall, I feel okay about them. For many of the characters this was my first time ever drawing them ever at all. I need a lot more practice, but it's fun so I'll probably be doing more.

KILLER PAD (a review)

KILLER PAD (a review)

A horror-comedy directed by Robert Englund. Yes, the original Freddy Krueger directing a horror-comedy! That's all I needed to know to put this on my must see list!

The story: four guys move into an apartment in Hollywood and throw a giant party hoping to hook up, but when the hot girls turn out to be killing people because one of them is the devil or something then they have to stop him, or her, or else...um...something.

Was it good?

No. But was it so bad it was good? No. There's some American Pie style jokes, but none of them really generate a laugh and the whole trying to get laid but the girls are killing people is okay, but not great. There is one nice beat where an old friend comes to the party but he's now a priest (not it yet), then of course he gets corrupted (not it yet) BUT then the boys realize that the girls are demons/the devil/whatever and the one person who could fight is the priest, but he's been corrupted so they are screwed. That was good.

And it's not that the movie is absolutely horrible, but there just isn't anything really good here either. Englund's directing doesn't really add anything and the choice to play it more as a comedy than a horror movie robs it of any real tension. There is a bunch of easy jokes, but for a movie that tries to be more comedy than horror, the comedy is easy jokes and never digs deeper to get to the good jokes. See even silly comedies like AMERICAN PIE or DATE NIGHT actually are about something. That gives the comedy more oomph. Here, for all the sex-based jokes, the comedy is pretty bland. And of course the other draw in b-movie horror (after beasts and blood, according to Joe Bob Brigs) is breasts and again for a movie with a lot of sex jokes there isn't any skin. So it isn't that it is horrible...just flat.

*** NOT RECOMMENDED ****

So what went wrong? Well, first, while parodies can be fun you have to have a clear sense of what you are parodying and here it isn't clear. Sex comedies? Haunted house? Demon movies? Something else? And if it isn't a parody then you are much better having the movie be ABOUT something. DATE NIGHT has married couple trying to reconnect so they won't get divorced. AMERICAN PIE has four guys trying to get laid, but learning that the girls are actually much more mature about relationships and sex. Here...well, there's just nothing there. The other way to do it would be to make it a horror movie with a lot of comedy, ala SCREAM, but again that wasn't the way they chose to go. Without any dramatic spine, without any point of view, without a sense of what the movie is about, without any jokes that really pop...the whole thing is just kind of empty. You need a point of view. You need something for the movie to be about, even if it's something simple. Even comedies are better when they aren't empty.

HOLY WATER (a review)

HOLY WATER (a review)

Okay, I was excited to see this film. See when I first moved out to LA one of the first writer events I went to had this woman (producer, manager? I can't remember) talking about this one script she recently sold about these guys who stole viagra thinking it was a bunch of pills, but then it was really this giant block worth millions, so they store it in the town's water supply while they figure out what to do. Funny, right? And the guy was a nobody writer and BOOM! his first sale for six digits. So when I saw the loglien for this film I had to see it.

The story: Four guys in a small, dying town in Great Britian steal viagra thinking it is a bunch of pills, but then it was really this giant block worth millions, so they store it in the town's water supply while they figure out what to do.

Was it good?

Not good. Not horrible, but it just wasn't much of anything. Maybe the humor is just too British (humour?) and isn't translating, but there wasn't much here I found funny. The biginning is how bad their lives are -- which is fine as set up for the robbery, but I didn't find any of it interesting or funny, and then with the actual stealing it was okay, but the part where things should kick into high gear -- dumping the viagra in the town well -- actually doesn't come into play until late and aside from quick round of wild monkey love, it doesn't really play into anything more. They easily could have removed that element from the movie, which is a shame because it's one of the funniest concepts and it was totally underutilized.

*** NOT RECOMMENDED (but not horrible) ***

GEISHA ASSASSIN (a review)

GEISHA ASSASSIN (a review)

Another Asian b-movie review! Two in a row! Weekend double feature! Woohoo!

The story: a geisha seeks out the man who killed her father and has to kill a lot of people to get to him.

Was it good?

Um, not really. The first half was just fight scene after fight scene. All the fights were like B-movie monsters -- they were passable, but nothing great. No great moves, no great wire stunts. Lots of hitting and swords and spinning, but it was all kind of meh. In the second half I think they got into the story more -- there are flashbacks of her as a young girl and her father, but by then I'd checked out and was multitasking so I missed a lot (foreign films with subtitles are hard to watch while multitasking). Maybe it came together, but for me it was too little too late.

*** PASS (but it wasn't horrible) ***

Recommend instead: there are so many good kung fu movies -- CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and HERO and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA and RUMBLE IN THE BRONX and...well, there are a lot of better kung fu movies.

TOKYO GORE POLICE (a review)

TOKYO GORE POLICE (a review)

WTF??? If you are looking for weird, bloody, over the top violence in a strange silly way and tons of strange, bizarre, strange...uh...weirdness, then this is the movie for you.


The story: (with help from Wiki) set in the future in Japan where the police force is privatized, a young girl, Ruka, helps the police hunt down engineered people -- people who have been DNA-altered so that whenever they get hurt they grow a weapon and go on a rampage. The person changing them is the "Key Man" and to kill these people you have to cut out a key shaped tumor that is inside each of them. Eventually Ruka meets the Key Man and kills him after learning that his father was also killed unjustly and in fact they are both looking for the same man because the same man ordered both kills -- he ordered the Key Man's father to kill Ruka's father and then had the Key Man's father killed. So now Ruka goes after the man who started all this.

Was it good?

Wow. Words like "good" and "bad" just don't seem to apply. This movie is so over the top strange...and I'm usually good for a big dose of strange, but this was even weird for me. From the over the top violence to people growing weapons to fetish clubs to flashbacks to suicide commercials to everything else. It was an overload of strange. But I'm a multitasker and a subtitled movie with lots of weird can lose me and this one definitely did. Usually when I get lost in a movie I ask myself if it was good enough to make me want to go back and watch it more closely. Here, the answer is no. All the weirdness and violence might be cool if I were in the right mood but I still want more of a story -- something with some emotion. And here, beside the revenge thing, which I'm not into -- I just got the feeling that nothing was there. And for all the satire (commecials with smiling school girls selling suicide instruments), I'm not exactly sure what is being satirized. Again and again, I just didn't connect.

*** NOT RECOMMENDED ***

R.I.P. John Wooden, age 99

John Wooden passed away today at the age of 99. Known most for being the coach at UCLA who won 10 national titles, he was also an all american and national champion as a player and a leader and educator for years after he retired. He was considered not only the great college basketball coaches, but one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. Rest in peace.