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uncle3000
... anyway, certain movies you never get enough of. I love Bakshi's Lord of the Rings from 1977. And Jane Badler is a beautiful woman. Right she's not a blode, and she can be aggressive as we've seen in "V", and I don't know her personally but if I did I'd probably ask her to stay with me.
Reviews
Pixels (2015)
Fun film with a lot of nostalgia
Using the basic 'alien invasion' concept this film has it all, with a nostalgic twist for the arcade games generation. A bit simple, yes, but still a fist full of entertainment.
The actors do a great job, the fact that Mr.Iwatani (creator of Puck Man) participates as a hardware tech in the arcade at the beginning, is thrilling. The CGI is very well made and representation of the game characters was flawless in spite of that several famous elements from the 80's were missing.
An interesting detail that sadly put me off already at the beginning of the film as we're back in the 80's browsing an arcade, - the monitors in all game cabinets are of flat screen type!? This is painfully obvious given that flat screens weren't around till at least 15 years later. All games then used standard CRT displays. In later scenes there were some CRT televisions and old CRT computer monitors shown.
Personally I would have liked more of the classic games involved in the invasion. Where was Gorf, Moon Patrol, Ghosts n Goblins and several other of the time's famous characters? Donkey Kong, which by the way was a tad too generously promoted, is and always will be a great game, but as the supreme ruling force of the alien invaders, the monkey is just out of its place. Why not have the Gorf mother ship pose as the ultimate threat?
Even though the film manages to deliver plenty of game nostalgia, as well as hang on to its objective as 'pixels VS humans', I can only give it a mediocre score. Because of its lack of research in the area of video game history, where it should, and could do much better. "Pacman and Donkey Kong" are of course two of the most famous games ever created, but how about a 'giant kung-fu master' walking down the street, kicking and beating buildings and vehicles? Or the Moon Patrol rover shooting down airplanes? And what about Scramble? I noticed the Konami logo on a few occasions, but where were the games? So much I missed in this film, yet I still enjoyed it.
Sleeping Beauty (2014)
Sleeping
The first 10 minutes seemed quite promising. At the beginning I really thought this movie would be something great, kind of like Lord of the Rings or some other well made adventure film. The photo is good, costumes and props were realistic looking, and the scenery was great, as was the music and what CGI was implemented. The Castle is real and looks just as a fairytale castle should look. I liked most of the characters except the prince who wasn't very royal. Right from the start I fell in love with the evil fairy (Olivia d'Abo), marvelous woman.
However. With the means to go to Bulgaria to shoot a film like this one with good costumes and to be honest pretty OK selection of actors (I'll get back to this in a moment), you would presume the result to be, if not true to the story, then at least providing you with an hour or two of adventurous excitement. But this project fails on all parts. I kept telling myself that "there's a twist to it, I'll wait and see", but no. No twist, no surprise, just funny looking zombies and what I felt was poorly inspired acting throughout the movie. It seemed to me as a lazy attempt to shoot the movie live, kind of like 'playing as we go'. Some of the actors have great potential, yet here they simply did not perform. And, who wrote the script, was there a script? - Interesting questions.
This project may have been a vacation event by Casper, a story for kids. A children's movie. But somehow I can't combine that with certain brutal scenes involved. I'm left with a strange feeling that the whole film is an experiment made together with family and friends. I'm not alone feeling this way, am I? I would give it a 1 out of 10, but the castle was impressive so I'll be generous enough to give a 2.