Monsters Vs Aliens

I have watched Monsters vs Aliens twice, though I did not see it in 3D. Only one theater in the area has 3D and it is the most expensive theater in the area (twice the price of the theater I usually go to, quadruple the price of the cheapest theater that releases the movies after the other theaters have had them for a few weeks), they also charge extra for 3D films. I really would like to see a 3D film but never have. It might have made me enjoy the film more since that was a major selling point for the film.

On my first viewing I did not really like the film all that much. It has a rather cliche plot; which is somewhat expected since it is based on 1950's B movies of the science fiction/horror genre. On my second watch through I enjoyed the film more, though I would not say it is anything greater than an average film. Part of the reason I liked it on my second viewing more than the first is because I expected less from the film and caught references to other films that I had missed on the first viewing. It does have a lot of references to other films. E.T., X-Files, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Independence Day, etc.

The film did have some fairly humorous parts. For example; I liked the scene with the aggressive girl and wimp jock. It also had some funny lines like this one: "We need our top scientific minds on this, get India on the phone." or this one: "Has it gotten hotter. I'd like to know. It would be a very convenient truth."

Miracle at St. Anna

I recently saw the movie Miracle at St. Anna and then looked it up on the internet. I was surprised to find that it had so many negative reviews. I found it to be pretty good. The film is about four black soldiers of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped near a small Tuscan village during the Italian Campaign of World War II after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy.

Though the massacre shown in the film, Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre, actually did happen, 560 people killed. The film is fictional not a documentary and should be treated as a fictional story. I'd make some type of comment about the real massacre but I don't really know much about it. I know it happened and some of the German's involved were or are recently being put on trial. Those that are still alive are in their 80's. It's very sad that a massacre of 560 people is mostly a foot note of the world wars. There were so many atrocities done by every side that it would be difficult to even list them all.

The acting by the large black guy with the name of Train (nicknamed sniper bait) and the child, Angelo (their in movie names - don't know/too lazy to look up real names), was the best acting in the film. My favorite scene from the movie is when the child first meets Train and calls him Chocolate Giant then licks him.

The movie was long, which doesn't bother me in the least, but I feel that the movie would have been better had some scenes been cut or truncated. In particular the first scene and the ending scene. The scenes weren't really that bad but they add little to the movie and the first one really doesn't make sense. Sure the soldier killing the traitor looked cool (the way he goes about it and then calmly closes up is pretty damn awesome) but it is too much of a coincidence that the traitor would happen to go to that post office, that particular window, and most of all that the postman would recognize him and have German gun (souvenir) from World War 2 on him at the time.

10,000 BC

I watched the movie 10,000 B.C. not expecting much from it. Knowing that the director of it also did Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow; I was expecting a lack of logic, lack of common sense, and many historic inaccuracies. It was as expected. I had heard about the great action and stunning CGI though. The action wasn't great, the CGI was not as good as it was hyped to be, the acting was very poor, and the plot was not very good.

I was basically thinking that it would be somewhat similar to Robert E. Howard's works without the Lovecraftian influence. If you know of his works, most famous being Conan the Barbarian, you'd know that he often fabricates antediluvian civilizations like Stygia (his version of a pre-Egypt, Egypt). In which they were technologically and magically advanced but things happened resulting in the fall of those civilizations (most of which were the remains of even older civilizations that had collapsed) surrounded by more primitive peoples. It was in part like that, in that there were many anachronism's like metal work, paper, and other such technologies around that wouldn't be invented for thousands of years. It even had a mortal god which is speculated in the film to have came from either space or another civilization that got destroyed (Atlantis). It was no where near as good as Robert E. Howards books though, the acting, action (fight scenes were not that great - the documentary I watched the day before had superior fight scenes to this film), and lack of logic really took away from it (freeing a Saber-tooth cat and expecting it to not kill you for example).

I will now discuss some of the inaccuracies for no reason other than using it as an excuse to talk about early humans and prehistoric animals.

-Horses were not domesticated until around 4500 BC
-Woolly Mammoths like elephants were not led by the bull (male) Woolly Mammoths. Instead they were lead by an old female like modern Asian elephants are. Elephants are matriarchal.
-Ice age hunters did not generally live in such large groups.
-Hunter Gather societies would be on the move often following the animals and during winter would have gone to warmer places.
-There were permanent structures and cities dating back to farther than 10,000 BC though. If you look up Göbekli Tepe. You'll find mention of an ancient city dating to around 11,000 BC. Temporary buildings and dwellings were likely built even earlier. Part of the reason so little is known about ancient technology is only things made from stone would really last. Things made from wood or other bio-degradable material would not have been preserved as easily.
-People of that time did hunt Woolly Mammoths and bury the left overs.
-People even before the advent of cities did do some domesticating of the land. Many hunter-gatherers cut or burned undesirable plants while encouraging desirable ones, some even going to the extent of slash-and-burn to create habitat for game animals.
-The usage of nets was widespread at that time but mostly used for fishing. Using a net to hunt Woolly Mammoth would not be very effective. The hunt as shown in the movie would not work very well in real life
-No place on Earth resembles the geographical location shown. There is no place were you can walk from snowy mountains, to jungles, then to dessert in a few weeks time.
-Since there are Pyramids shown it is guessed that this is located in Egypt. Had it been Egypt there would be no Sabertooth tigers and Terror birds. Those were species of the Americas (was some Terror Birds in Australia as well).
- Sabertoothed cats did exist but Smilodons were a species native to the Americas. There were other Sabertoothed cats but they had died out in Europe/Africa around 30,000 years ago. There were terror birds in that area as well but they had died out much much earlier more than 40,000,000 years earlier.
-12,000 years ago, aka 10000 BC, the Nile river was much stronger and the area near it was not a desert, was a savanna. It became smaller and area around it became more desert like around 10,000 years ago when drought came and the desert grew.
-The use of Bronze, Copper, and Iron did not occur until much later. I'd give a date but depending on where in the world your going by it varies since not every place figured it out at the same time or had access to metal deposits. Having said that the oldest known use of Bronze is dated at around 3,300 BC in the Near East (which includes Egypt). Different places developed metal workings at different times - some areas like in the Americas pretty much stayed with using stones, others like South Africa skipped the bronze age and went straight to using Iron after stone. As for copper it was used in some places like south asia as early as 7000 BC but still not as far back as 10,000 BC.
- Woolly Mammoths did not live in the Egypt area. Woolly Mammoths could not live in a desert environment. Woolly Mammoths were never tamed by humans and had nothing to do with Pyramid building. Though Egyptians did know of the existence of Woolly Mammoths. In 1994, a wall painting of a waist-sized mammoth was found in a pharaoh's tomb.
-Woolly Mammoths are shown galloping similar to horses. This isn't possible. Elephants and Mammoths can/could not gallop because leg structure makes it impossible.
-The size of the Saber-toothed cat and the Woolly Mammoth were larger than what they were in real life.
-The Pyramids are not that old the oldest ones date to around 3000 BC.
-The Pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by paid skilled works.
-The oldest known ships to have existed in Egypt are only 4000 years old (rotted remains found in caves). Though the building of ships is much older than that. Rafts were used by humans to get to Australia over 50000 years ago. Boat building is even thought by some to be even older than that. Homo Erectus may have built boats. The evidence for this is - Stone tools dating over 840,000 years ago were found on Flores which is an island and was an island separated from the main land even a million years ago. Having said that ships with sails did not appear for many millennium closer to modern time than 10,000 BC.
-The seeds given at the end of the movie were corn and beans. Corn is a plant of the Americas and was not grown in Europe/Africa until many, many millennium later (After Columbus's voyage). The plants shown growing were not corn or beans. Though people from the Old World (I.E. Asia, Africa, Europe) did travel to the Americas prior to Columbus - Vikings did it 500 years before he did and there is some evidence that the Phoenician people, a maritime culture which lived from 1550 BC to 300 BC, managed to get to the Americas. These people had little arable land so they mainly were traders. They had made extensive sea voyages. If Herodotus of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC, is to believed they also circumnavigated Africa. Some of the ships used in the Americas resemble their ships and the Atlantic currents do run straight at South America from the coast of Africa so it would have been possible for a lost ship to travel there, and the return voyage would be made easier by following the oceanic currents north then back east across the ocean.
-Deserts are very cold at night, people would wear a lot more clothes while sleeping/traveling at night.

I can go on but I figure I wrote enough for now.

Turtles can fly

Turtles can fly was the first Kurdish movie released since Saddam Hussein's fall. The movie is set in a Kurdish refugee camp next to the Iraqi-Turkey border a few weeks before the current. This was a very good film, that I recommend everyone watch, particularly the people who are for the war. The film primarily tells about the life in the village, it is not really an anti-war movie so much as a slice of life. It is not anti or pro the war, the characters in the film look forward to the fall of Saddam Hussein, war is just another part of life for these people.

Conditions in the refuge camp are very poor. The people are lacking in water, electricity and have no schools. They live in tents and the remains of buildings. The border between Iraq and Turkey is divided by barbed wire, dogs, and guard towers. A large number of the villagers are missing appendages. The orphan kids make money by collecting land mines to sell to a guy, who in turn sells the to the UN.

The movie follows three characters in particular. A 13 year old boy nicknamed Satellite because he installs satellites in various towns. Satellite is practically the leader of the village because of his ability to install satellites, speaks some English, and he organized and orders around the large number of orphans in gathering land mines. There are some elders in the village but they differ to Satellite because of his abilities. At one point when Satellite does not want to translate the news for them they steal his bike. He threatens to leave and they cave in quickly. The next two characters the movie follows are a pretty girl named Agrin, whom Satellite likes, and her armless brother Hyenkov who is somewhat clairvoyant. They are orphans as well, their parents were killed by the Iraqi's. They travel with a little child who at first we think to be her brother, but later learn that he is her son. Henkov loves the little boy, Risa, but Agrin hates him because of how her was conceived (Iraqi's raped her). I figure I told enough but do not expect a happy ending when you watch this. The plight of the Kurdish people is sad both in the movie and in real life.

The acting in this film was wonderful. This is not surprising when you take into account the actors are actual Kurdish refuges.

Some links:
-International Movie Database on the movie:Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand Has a preview and some of the comments on the film as well as discussions on the message board are interesting.
-Washington Post article: Who are the Kurds?. This gives a brief overview about the Kurds and I feel that if you do not know about the Kurds you should take a few minutes to read this article.
-Wikipedia article on Kurdish people. Wikipedia's more detailed than the previous link.

A trip to the movies

I recently went to the movie theater to see Batman: The Dark Night (btw an alright but not as good as many people make it out to be movie). It seems that every time I go to the theater the price has increased. This can't be helped I guess but is fairly annoying. I didn't pay a lot since I went on a discount day. The local theaters have been having various sales to bring in people; the theater I go to most has several deals. Mondays showings are five dollars and they give free popcorn. If you bring in a gas receipt of more than five gallons of gas on Sunday-Thursday admission is five dollars. They also have a stamp where if you go to the movies five times you get free popcorn, eight times you get a free movie, and ten times you get a free movie and free popcorn.

I go to the movie theater occasionally, because some movies are just better seen on a big screen than they are on home televisions. I rarely see movies near their release dates because I dislike crowded theaters. I like going when the theater is nearly empty. The reason for this is people talk during movies, answer cell phones, use their cell phones to take pictures/video of the movie, and people are very messy. If I get popcorn or something from the concession stand, I rarely do this since the prices are exorbitant, I take care to not spill any and always carry the remains (container) to the trash receptacle as I leave. Many people just leave messes, half full popcorn containers, and other stuff on the floors/seats of the theater.

Some movie links:
-Internet Movie Database is a good place to check for more info on films, upcoming films, reviews, and trailers
-The Internet Movie Script Database has many entire movie scripts.
-Based on the Book is a catalog of books that have made it to film.
-AFI's Top 100 film quotes and the films site are two sources for movie quotes.
-Rotten Tomatoes and eFilm critic are a couple sites for reviews.
-Can also use wikipedia or wikiqoutes to look for movies or quotes.
-To watch movies on line Veoh is pretty decent, at least for Japanese films. Watch Movies has some free online movies as well. Entertainment Magazine has some free classic movies. Of course there is also Youtube. I don't know much about these sites, since I do not have fast internet access but they do have some movies.

DVD vs VHS

It is at least a decade too late for this commentary but I feel like talking about them now. My local library is getting rid of all it's VHS tapes to make room for DVD's and Blu-Ray discs. I don't really like this, since there are quite a few movies on VHS that were never released onto DVD and are not likely to be released on Blu-Ray. Some films, even though they are on DVD, the library only has the VHS version, for example Sunrise at Campobello - a very good 1960 biographical film on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his family dealing with his paralysis that prevented him from walking (amazon.com only has the VHS version as well at this time).

DVD may have better video and sound quality than VHS and Blu-Ray has even better most likely. I do not have a player for Bluray, though I heard that image quality really is not that much better if you have an upscaling dvd player. Not that it really matters since I also do not have a high definition television.

I had/have less trouble with VHS than DVD. My old VHS tapes still play, sure some have a few lines or image problems from age or being too close to a magnet but in general they all play. Some of the DVD's I own though do not play. Some I put in the DVD player and the machine tells me bad disc error. Some refuse to play because of copy protection. I have had movies I took out from the library or rented that would not play on my computer unless I ran a program that stripped them of copy protection. I keep my discs in cd books and they should be protected from scratches and the like, I still some how manage to get small scratches that cause the video to freeze then skip several seconds before resuming. Rentals are more likely to not play from damage than VHS tapes used to.

I do like the extra's on DVD's, at least some. I don't usually listen to video commentary, or watch the making of documentaries. I like that they often have the option for subtitles or if foreign have the option for dub or sub. I was okay with VHS and still watch them and VCD (VCD are big in Hong Kong/China so some films are easier to obtain in VCD format) .

Alien VS Predators

I recently watched Aliens versus Predator (the first one). This was not the first time I watched it. It is not that good a movie, I knew that prior to watching it the first time. For some strange reason though I sometimes feel like watching movies that I know are bad. There is a lot I can say about this movie. I could mention continuity errors, stupid stuff in the movie, or the poor acting but I don't really feel like writing about that. The basic premise for the movie wasn't that bad though. Predators using Earth as a staging ground to hunt aliens for sport. That made lots of sense Predators like hunting dangerous prey. Aliens are dangerous prey. It's too bad they didn't do a better job making the movie. I'm probably going to see it's sequel eventually but I'm not expecting much from it.

A few thoughts brought on by the movie:

1. Pyramid buried under Antarctica ice why mix of Egyptian, Aztec, and (not sure but) pre-Cambodian. This didn't make sense to me the Aztec people even if you include the migration period are simply not old enough - started moving into the area that is now Mexico in 600 AD. If it was me I would have used Egyptian, Mayan (region inhabited by them had people as early as 10000 BC but they didn't start building pyramid like structures until around 1000 BC) and Asian (probably Chinese since there were Pyramid like structures there for example the first emperor of China's tomb is a Pyramid
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/firstemperor4a.html). Though Japanese would work as well since there have been pyramid structures found underwater off the coast of Japan that date around 8000 BC http://www.morien-institute.org/yonaguni_schoch1.html, http://www.timstouse.com/EarthHistory/Lemuria/japanpyramids.htm.

2. I do like that Antarctica was the chosen place for the pyramid since there is some small amount of data that shows that it maybe possible that a pre-historic civilization may possibly have been there (not much though and mostly hypotheses).
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/378/16465_.html

3. I don't know if many others noticed it but at one point in the movie it mentions that the Aztec calender was metric (based on 10), in real life it is vigesimal (based on 20) with twenty days in 18 "months". In addition to that the guy figured that the pyramid would reconfigure itself every 10 minutes because the Aztecs supposedly used base 10. Yet did not take into account that our 60 seconds in a minute is not base 10.

4. The end of the movie had a few things that really made no sense what so ever. First the girl running outside in just a tee-shirt in Antarctica the coldest place on the planet and not shivering. The predators used their technology to see the alien spawns inside humans during the movie but do not think to check the dead predator they bring on the ship with them for alien spawns. Did the girl even have a way to get back to civilization without freezing to death? The people who built the whaling station (which I'm not sure but don't think there were any in Antarctica as far back as October 1904) built the whaling station on ice that close to the edge and it didn't melt and fall in.

5. It is mentioned a few times that it is October during the movie and yet it was dark all the time. In the southern hemisphere that would make it summer time so there would be day light.

6. The Alien blood is highly acidic. The Alien at the end of the movie was injured meaning blood would flow. The Alien was dragged underwater. Strong acids when immersed in water have a tendency to heat up since there is a acid-base reaction. So it is likely that the Alien at the end of the movie would be boiling away because the blood would react with the water.

7. What would happen if an injured Alien was in an environment surrounded by base chemicals or if someone threw a base chemical onto the wounded alien?

8. The alien species sort of reminds me of Phragmites which are a reed like plant that excludes gallic acid from its roots. The acid destroys tubulin (a structural protein) of neighboring plants.

Superman Doomsday

I recently watched the Superman Doomsday animated movie. Having read the book The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern. I was disappointed in this movie. I had not read the actual comic books this was based on, at the time of it's publishing I had very little interest in comic books. Personally I would have preferred it to stick with the source material.

Doomsday is supposedly a weapon of Doomsday. As a Doomsday weapon he sucks. Would make a great front line soldier but as an apocalyptic weapon, not so great. Goes around killing things one at a time. Let's see over 6 billion people on Earth. If Doomsday were to kill 1000 people a day it would take him around 16,500 years to kill every human. That's not taking into account that people reproduce, that he'd also spend time hunting down the countless animals, and that people would actively go out of their way to stay as far from him as they could.

Lex Luther is supposed to be a super genius. In this movie, he came off as an idiot to me. Sure he created a cure for aids and bird flu. His purposely making the cure a life long series of treatments makes sense from a capitalistic point of view. If your goal is to make money curing the diseases is not the way to go. Other than that, just about everything he said and did was stupid.

His logic is flawed. When his people find Doomsday buried and an alien holograpically projects itself and says stuff in an alien language. Luther say that it is a warning and that the only reason an alien race would trap a being and dump it on the planet Earth is becuase they couldn't kill it. Not true. For starters it might not of been a warning at all. It could have been a threat or the alien could have been saying something like "let the games begin". Secondly just becuase you decide to trap and dump something on a planet doesn't mean that you do not have the ability to kill it. There are a lot of other possible reasons to do so. Logically thinking though if you did have the ability to trap something but not the ability to kill it, there are a lot of better ways and places to dump it. They sent it to Earth, when they could have just as easily sent it somewhere else like into a sun, into a black hole, or onto and then into the void between galaxies.

I also found Luther's hitting on Lois to be very stupid. Judging by Lois's past actions he really should have expected Lois to knock him out. I also found it stupid that he kept the Superman clones in the same building as he was in so that it could be easily traced to him. This is particularly stupid since he killed a girl earlier in the story to cover up that he and his people were the ones to find and release Doomsday. One thing he went to quite a bit effort to hide, up to killing the person most loyal to him, and yet the other thing he didn't try to hide/cover up at all. Kept the records of it in his office and did the stuff in the building he was in.

Considering that in the battle versus Doomsday, Superman was going to die. The battle was pretty crappy and Superman's tactics were beyond dumb. The smartest thing he did was to grab Doomsday and take him into space. That should have been one of the first things he should have done since Doomsday can't fly. Slamming Doomsday into the planet is an ok tactic, could have just left him in space though, but considering how much of the Earth's surface is unpopulated his landing spot was very dumb - middle of one of the most populated cities on the planet.

Evan Almighty

I had put off watching this movie for a long time because Bruce Almighty was a pretty bad movie. So I did not expect much from this movie. Bruce Almighty really did suck. First off why did that guy get chosen to be taught a lesson in that way, there are a lot of people who have much better reasons to hate the way the world works. What the main character did with the power which had no restrictions other than can't mess with free will was stupid. Given damn near unlimited power and he he uses it to give his girlfriend bigger breasts and make the dog pee in the toilet. There are so many things that he could have/should have done with that kind of power. I could continue listing things I hated about that movie but I digress, I intended to write Evan Almighty not Bruce Almighty.

Retelling of the Noah story in the bible. Evan Baxter the newsman from Bruce Almighty that was the rival of that movies main character is elected to Congress. He has a new house and starting a new life when God shows up and tells him to build an arc. Animals start showing up in pairs. People think he is crazy.

Evan Almighty was, in my opinion, a pretty good movie. Part of this is because I did not expect much from it and was actually expecting it to be really bad since Bruce Almighty was bad. I'd probably rate it worse if I was looking at it as a stand alone instead of comparing it to Bruce Almighty. Truthfully the movie was fairly predictable, had some factual errors (like congress parking and the guy being a newscaster while running for office since he would have to quite before running), and wasn't all that funny. I still liked it though. I particularly liked the animals helping build the arc. It was done in such away that I could believe animals could/would help in the manner they did.

Liked that the movie had a green message and actually tried to be green. Some movies or people will say one thing but do another. I like they did what they preached. It is very good that they used bikes instead of cars (also good that they gave bikes to the workers), that they planted 2000 trees to counter their effects on the environment, and possibly best of all that they donated the wood used in the movie (they had actually built an arc) to habitat for humanity to build houses. I hope that more movies will reuse or salvage the material used instead of tossing it in a land fill somewhere.

On the dvd there were some extra's. Including green tips and a game. The green tips are pretty good, though I do wonder how many coffee shops will allow you to bring your own reusable cups? It makes sense to me since less cups would be manufactured, less environmental impact, and cheaper for the coffee shop since they wouldn't have to pay for the cups. That said though some places just won't allow it. Corporate policy or managers decision being that only cups provided are allowed to be used.

The animal round up game was alright and I was happy to have gotten every single question correct (Yay, I know my animal trivia - of course had it been something like sports trivia I wouldn't have gotten them right). I did notice one problem with the trivia questions. The point was to match up the pairs of animals to go on the arc and it had you match up a male lion with a male lion instead of a female lion.

I don't generally think about the amount of work taken to make a movie, or the time it takes, or how much money is spent on the movie but in this case, I kept thinking about it. Getting all those animals and their trainers, building the arc, the amount of cgi needed, etc. Had to have been expensive and time consuming.

Random acts of kindness which is a message in the movie is a good message. Though some random acts of kindness, depending on where you live maybe illegal. For example, adding a coin to a parking meter that is about to expire when the vehicle is not your is illegal in some areas. Cleaning up a park maybe illegal since those parks are supposed to be cleaned by city workers (recently happened in Cleveland where volunteer groups cleaned several parks and the city workers are suing since that is their job). Also some random acts of kindness may not be seen as an act of kindness. For example, some people, most commonly women feminists, will actually get mad at you for holding the door open for them, even though you would hold the door open for anyone in that circumstance.

Peaceable Kingdom: A Tribe of Heart Documentary

I had watched the documentary Peaceable Kingdom at a free screening sponsored by Mercy for Animals. I don't really know why I attend Mercy for Animals or other charity events. The attendance to them is generally fairly low and it is not very likely that I will learn something I have not already learned elsewhere. The vegan dinners though at least give free food.

Peaceable Kingdom is a documentary on factory farms. I think it was well done. Some documentaries on factory farms show a lot of gore and have a high shock value. While this film did show the mistreatment of animals it did not do so in away that would make you want to puke like some do. It does make you feel sorry for them though.

The film talks about and shows information about farm sanctuary which is an organization that rescues animals from factory farms and interviews former factory farm owners/workers. It explains the differences of how farms are perceived and the reality of how massive factory farms are. The documentary would be very good for people who do not know about factory farms to learn about them and some of the practices of factory farms.

The picture at the top is one of Edward Hicks paintings on the Peaceable Kingdom (he did 62 variants). His Peaceable Kingdom series is based on this bible passage: Isiah 11:6 "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

The Children Are Watching Us - Criterion Collection

The Children are Watching Us is a black and white Italian film. I watch films from pretty much every time period and in a multitude of languages. I know some people who only watch current movies in there own languages and feel sorry for them. They are missing out on a lot of good movies.

I did not like this movie all that much. The film itself was not bad at all and it is emotionally touching. I just was not in the mood for such a sad film when I watched it. The film is mostly shown around Prico's the main character who just happens to be a child. The film is about the breaking up of a family. In the beginning of the film Prico's mother leaves his father for her lover. She does this in a pretty mean way, she just ups and leaves doesn't leave a note, explain it, or anything. Prico's father doesn't know how or can't for some reason take care of Prico himself (this is not explained), so he sends Prico to live with his mother (Prico's grandmother). Prico's grandmother is not that nice a person. Prico gets sick and loses a lot of weight. Upon finding out that Prico is sick his mother Nina comes back and vows to give up her lover. Things seem to go alright for the family until they take a vacation to the Italian Riviera. I don't want to give away any more spoilers but I will say this. Nina (Prico's mother) is not a very good mother nor is she faithful.

I did really like that the story was shown from a child's point of view. The kid was great in this movie, though the clothing he wore looked pretty stupid to me.

Shikoku

Shikoku is a Japanese Ghost story. I found it fairly interesting and really enjoyed the setting (some beautiful shots of mountains and streams). I watch a lot of Asian horror films. This movie is worth watching but it is slow paced and requires some actual thinking. It is not a shock/gore fest so if that's what your interested in this film is not for you. It's more a suspense film then a horror film.

The plot of the film is that a girl, Sagori, dies and her mother attempts to bring her back. Sagori's mother is a priestess and knows of a way to bring her back. The island they live on is Shikoku island and is a gateway between this world and the world of the dead. On the island there are 88 shrines in which people go on pilgrimages. The shrines act as a barrier between the worlds. To bring her daughter back she does rituals and traverses all 88 shrines in the opposite order that your supposed to. If she does the trek 16 times, one time for every year her daughter's age her daughter will come back to life. Even though that is the main plot the story doesn't really follow that it follows a friend of the girl's returning to her hometown and learning what happened and what is happening.

I could give away more of the story but I'd rather not. I will say this though no one in the film is really evil. Everyone has a reason for what they do and even the ghost is not evil.

The Most Dangerous Game

Last week I watched the Criterion Collection version of The Most Dangerous Game. It was a pretty good movie. Even though it is a very old black and white movie with a fairly small budget, it still is worth watching. The plot for the movie is very simple. A hunter Zaroff has hunted every type of animal and has grown bored with it. Hunting animals was not enough of a challenge even using more primitive weapons (exchanging a gun for a bow & arrow). To bring back the thrill of hunting he decided to hunt the most dangerous animal of all - which of course is humans.

Part of me thought that Joel McCrea, the main character of this movie, deserved to be hunted and killed. He was a hunter who went out and killed animals all around the world as well. Unlike Zaroff he hadn't gotten bored of it. The female leads brother Robert was such a jerk that I didn't feel sorry for him at all.

There was a point in the movie in which Zaroff gave Joel the option to join him in hunting people. Zaroff knew Joel was a hunter as well and large fan of Joel's books. Joel refuses outright and ends up being hunted. I would have made different choices. I too would have been outraged but I would have agreed to go on a hunt with Zaroff. Two reasons. I don't want to be hunted and I'd have a much better chance of shooting Zaroff in the back or tying him up or something.

If I had decided to be morally outraged and let myself be hunted (as opposed to pretended to play along and betraying him), I would not have taken Fay Wray with me. Seeing as to how Zaroff had different plans for her. The hunt sexually exited him and he was going to use her as relief for his sexual urges after the hunt. I would have left her at the Count's place so as to make it easier to survive. Don't get me wrong I would have worried about her and would not want him to forcefully take advantage of her, but she would be too much of a liability while I'm being hunted. I'd have a better chance without her slowing me down and having to protect her as well as myself and she was in no danger until after the hunt anyways. Taking her with him was good for the movie but practically it would have been better to leave her since she wasn't in any real danger unless he was killed and if he was killed he wouldn't have been able to help her anyways.

In the movie, the villain had grown bored with hunting animals and started hunting humans. Having thought about it for a little while more, I started to wonder if he ever thought of hunting people legally. People do hunt people in real life. If you just want to kill people become a soldier. If you want to hunt people down become a bounty hunter. If he was planning on hunting and killing people he could have decided to get paid to do it and became an assassin. Heck if he wanted to hunt them on his island he could have kidnapped his victims and killed them on the island. That would be more challenging and most of the clients wouldn't mind where or how he killed them.

I liked that even though Zaroff was a mass murder and possibly a rapist, he did have rules. He gave his prey a 24 hour head start and he said he'd let them go if they survived until dawn. Overall it was a good movie. Leslie Banks did an excellent job as Zaroff. The film had a very good music score which is not very common for movies of that time period. The movie was pretty fast paced. Even the commentary for the movie was pretty good (I don't generally listen to the commentary tracks on movies).

Movie and Television Viewing

According to one statistic I have seen the average US citizen watches 4 and ½ hours of television a day. I don't. I rarely watch television and couldn't tell you what television shows are on tonight if I wanted to. I'm not interested in most of the shows on television anyways. I don't like game shows, soap operas, reality television, sports (I rather play than watch), get my news through the Internet, and I can only stand watching so much crime dramas before I tire of them. I don't even have cable.

Even though I don't watch much television I do watch what I consider to be a large number of movies. My brother doesn't consider it to be a lot but he watches movies much more frequently than I do. Movies are generally better than television shows. Not always, Some movies are terrible and some television shows are very good.

The reason I watch so many movies is because the local library has a very good selection. I can get free rentals occasionally from Hollywood Video and Red box (little red boxes in front of a grocery store I occasionally go to). There are also a few cheap movie theaters in the area. One of the theaters show older movies for 50 cents on Monday's if three or more people, though it isn't that close to me. Another one also has a Monday deal in which for five dollars you can see a new film and get a free bag of popcorn.

I do not watch as much anime as I would like to. The local video stores and libraries do not carry a very good selection of anime and the local non cable television channels don't even carry US cartoons anymore. The local video stores also mislabel the few anime they do have for instance they rated Ranma ½ NC-17 when in Japan it was shown to children.

I used to trade anime fan subs in the mail but with the increasing number of anime being released in the US, more people having access to high speed Internet, and the price increase in sending stuff through the mail less people are willing to trade them that way. Back then they were all cd trades and now most people have dvd burners and find it easier to just copy movies then send them through the mail. Personally I like fan subs since I dislike purchasing movies and especially anime prior to seeing them (anime because some series are very expensive until recently Ranma ½ season one for instance sold for more than a hundred and twenty dollars). I also like comparing the various translations. The US companies translate them for the common viewers where as the fan subbers translate for fans. Basically the fan subbers are generally more literal and will leave in some Japanese words or concepts that the professionals will change. The professionals are also more likely to censor the released stuff.

I've considered getting movies and anime through an online service such as netflix but haven't done so yet. Many of the the foreign films I'm interested in seeing are not on it or are available through request from the library. Also returning the discs will be a pain since at the beginning of this year they got rid of most of the mail boxes. There used to be a mail box at the end of my street. The nearest mailbox is now more than a mile away. My sister used to get movies through netflix but had trouble with them which is another thing deterring me from using that service.

Source of statistic: http://www.dtg.org.uk/news/news.php?id=1950

Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse

I recently re-watched these two movies. The movies are not all that good. For some reason I like them though. I really don't know why. The story is not original, the character inter action is not that good, and some parts do not make sense. The games are much better than the movies.

I don't really know why I like zombie films to being with. No one else I know likes them. Most are poorly written or formulaic. Sure some are good like Frankenstein and Dawn of the Dead but most are not good. Even before I watch them I know that the movies are going to be bad but I watch them anyways. Something about zombies fascinate me.

Basic summary of the first movie: A mega-corporation is creating genetically engineered virus's and monsters. A vile containing a deadly virus is broken and is spread through out the entire complex via the ventilation system (which is pretty stupid if you think about it, since you'd think that a room that is being used to create or study virus would be self contained and not connected to the entire complex via air ducts). The super computer that controls the complex notices that the virus is released. Seals complex and kills everyone so the virus does not spread. A task force infiltrates the complex to find out why that happened (you'd think they would have been able to interface with the Artificial intelligence via remote but guess not). They shut down the computer (which for some reason did not explain why it did what it did), releasing the zombies. Then basic zombie movie.

Basic summary of second movie: Continuation of first movie. The mega-corporation let zombies out infecting most of the city. Standard zombie film with characters trying to leave the city. More detailed summary's can be found elsewhere.

A few questions that occurred to me while watching:

Why don't the zombies eat other zombies? They are brought back to life via the T-virus with basic motor skills, over powering need to feed, and virtually no intelligence. They are hungry and other zombies are around why don't they eat one another as well as the living? Are they given some instinct that makes them only want to eat the living and the truly dead? Zombies are stupid why don't we ever seem to see them attempt to eat inedible items like sticks or something?

In Resident Evil: Apocalypse there is a scene with them walking through a cemetery and zombies come out of the graves. How is this possible? In the first film they explained that the T-virus brings recently dead cells to life and requires the brain to still have some electrical energy (also used the incorrect myth of hair and nails still growing after you die to explain how its possible). Those beings in the graves have been dead too long for them to be reanimated. Also how did they get infected? The virus is passed on through bodily fluids (started air born but had already passed that stage else everyone would have already been infected) and they are buried under ground well away from any means of passing the virus to them.

How did Nemesis know that 13 were star agents and 1 wasn't? I can understand distinguishing an armed civilian and a non-combatant, but how did it know that the others were STAR personnel. The only way I could conceive this happening is took a good look at there faces or saw there uniforms and compared it to data stored in memory. It couldn't have done that though since it did not get a good look at all of them and later it knew Jill Valentine was a STAR member even though she did not have a uniform on.

I can easily accept some things like a virus that reanimates the dead, a giant corporation getting away with basically anything, a genetically engineered virus that mutates living things, Hollywood science like the bike exploding from a bullet shot through the gas tank, and other things but some things are just to unrealistic or go against established abilities for me to accept like the the above graveyard zombies and the Nemesis monster being able to distinguish the people.

Things I did like about the movies is people messing with things they shouldn't (i.e. Virus's), giant corporation that gets away with basically anything (there are several real life organizations which get away with a lot more than they should and that are more powerful than some countries), and mindless violence (I maybe a non-violent person and promote peace but occasionally I like to watch or play fake violence).

Movies can be purchased here: Amazon store

Movies watched in 2007

A partial and incomplete list of movies I watched during this year can be found here.

I have a tendency to make lists and lose them/have them thrown away/etc. One day several weeks ago I decided to make a list of the movies I had watched over the course of the year. There is no real purpose in doing so but I was having trouble sleeping and the list could be convenient. It is convenient in that I can quickly look up films I had watched.

I can use the list to help me recall movies, I also have a tendency to forget the name of a movie, even though I do remember the plot. A list that also has pictures and if for some reason I can not recall the movie at all, there is also generally a summary I can read to refresh my memory.

I chose to use an amazon store to make the list for a few reasons. The first reason being so that people might make purchases from it and I would get a small percentage. Another reason was because it was an option and I have no other idea as to what to put there. The final reason is I didn't know of a better list making site that also has a picture of the film and quick access to more information.

The list is incomplete since I could not recall every movie I had seen this year at the time or could not recall the movies name. I also didn't list most of the non-fiction videos. Something that surprised me is that there are a lot of movies I've seen that Amazon does not have (at least the version of Amazon I was using). Thinking about it I should not have been surprised since I watch a lot of foreign films many of which were not released in the USA, some of the films were never put on dvd (can only be gotten on vcd or VHS depending on the film), and some were either too small, or on subject that wouldn't interest most people.

A few of the movies I watched that were not on Amazon (or I couldn't find on DVD) are:

• DragonBlade – Honk Kong 3d Film
• My Wife is 18 - Hong Kong Romantic Comedy
• Tales of Ugetsu (AKA: Ugetsu Monogatari) – Japanese ghost story
• The Refusal - Jagerstatter – Documentary about an Austrian Catholic executed for refusing to serve the Nazi's
• The Reluctant Prophet George Zabelka – A documentary about a priest who served those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He later became a large supporter of non-violence.
• Some were not listed because they are not on DVD yet like the new Sweeny Todd Film
  

The list is here: http://astore.amazon.com/cursedpoolsof-20?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=1

SwapaDVD

I recently signed up with Swapadvd. It is a DVD trading site similar to PaperbackSwap but for DVD's instead of books. While personally not as interested in DVD's as much as I am in books, I thought I'd give this site a try. Considering I'm more into Asian cinema at the moment then American released films (mainly because I've seen most of the American ones I wanted to since they are easier to obtain), I really don't expect much from it but maybe I'll find some good films who knows.

While on the subject of online trading, for trading books I've had more luck and had more trades through bookmooch than I've had with Paperbackswap. If you were thinking about using a book trading site I think you should sign up for both to get the most chances, but I find bookmooch to be the better site, even though the other site does give the option of purchase credits at a reasonable price from them and bookmooch doesn't.