Formspring Question # 52--Potent Quotables Edition

What movie was the "Up Yours, Baby" quote from?

Kelly's Heroes

Thirty Days of Battlestar Galactica # 4--Favorite Musical Score

"Wander My Friends," composed by Bear McCreary and based on a traditional Irish war song.

English translation from Gaelic:

Wander my friends, wander with me

Like the mist on the green mountain, moving eternally
Despite our weariness
we'll follow the road
Over hill and and valleys
to the end of the journey

Come on my friends and sing with me
Fill the night with joy and sport
Here's a toast to the friends who have gone from us
Like the mist of the green mountain,
gone forever

Speed Review at Apocalypse Cinema

Hurry on over to Apocalypse Cinema for my review of the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock thriller Speed.

On Deadly Ground Review at Apocalypse Cinema

Avoid treading On Deadly Ground with Steven Seagal.

Independence Day Review at Apocalypse Cinama

Maybe I could have selected a more appropriate movie for the holiday, but I did not.

In the Line of Fire Review at Apocalypse Cinema

Do not miss the thriller In the Line of Fire, featuring Clint Eastwood agent aging Secret Service agent looking to redeem himself for a tragic thirty year old mistake.

Click Review at Apocalypse Cinema

Learn why you should reach for the remote whenever Adam Sandler's Click comes on.

Castaway Review at Apocalypse Cinema

Get marooned with my thoughts on Tom Hanks' 2000 film, Castaway.

Introducing Apocalypse Cinema

I had been debating for a while how to incorporate movie reviews into the Eye. I could not figure out how to make the individual reviews fit comfortably in with the rest of the content here while still being easily accessible. I wanted an easy way to list every movie review so you could conveniently click right on the review you wanted to read. Alas, the only way I could do that was to put them on a separate blog devoted solely to movie reviews. So that is what I did.

Apocalypse Cinema is the place where I am going to periodically review any movie I see that merit some comment, for better or for worse. I say periodically because I was planning to write reviews here whenever the mood struck, not on any set schedule. So Apocalypse Cinema might be updated once a day for a long time or once a month for an even longer time.

I will probably link to new reviews here if they become that infrequent just as a convenience. Science fiction film may get the cross posting treatment, but exclusive content will rule the day now that I have transferred all the existing movie reviews from the Eye to there.

As a bonus, I have never before seen reviews for all four Rambo movies up now so you can judge how the movie reviews are going to go. They are virtually identical to my television reviews here, but it is still a work in progress. Changes will come as necessary.

The eye is still my login focus, so nothing is going to change here in frequency or content. I am just could not fid away to squeeze in my Roger Ebert routine into what is already here.

Introducing Apocalypse Cinema

I had been debating for a while how to incorporate movie reviews into the Eye. I could not figure out how to make the individual reviews fit comfortably in with the rest of the content here while still being easily accessible. I wanted an easy way to list every movie review so you could conveniently click right on the review you wanted to read. Alas, the only way I could do that was to put them on a separate blog devoted solely to movie reviews. So that is what I did.

Apocalypse Cinema is the place where I am going to periodically review any movie I see that merit some comment, for better or for worse. I say periodically because I was planning to write reviews here whenever the mood struck, not on any set schedule. So Apocalypse Cinema might be updated once a day for a long time or once a month for an even longer time.

I will probably link to new reviews here if they become that infrequent just as a convenience. Science fiction film may get the cross posting treatment, but exclusive content will rule the day now that I have transferred all the existing movie reviews from the Eye to there.

As a bonus, I have never before seen reviews for all four Rambo movies up now so you can judge how the movie reviews are going to go. They are virtually identical to my television reviews here, but it is still a work in progress. Changes will come as necessary.

The eye is still my login focus, so nothing is going to change here in frequency or content. I am just could not fid away to squeeze in my Roger Ebert routine into what is already here.

Formspring Question # 22-Cinematic Cellar Dweller Editrion

What is the worst movie you have ever seen?

It would be easy to pick on some cheap science fiction or horror movie I have seen over the years. That would be too predictable, so I will choose the worst theatrical releae I have ever seen.

The Evil That Men Do sticks out prominently in my mind. Most likely, it is because I first saw it late one night on Cinemax back when I was way too young to be watching something like it. What can I say? I was never a sheltered kid. How else could I become so jaded today?

It does truly pai me to list a Charles Bronson movie as the worst film I have ever seen. Pre-Death Wish, Bronson’s tough guy act was the best in Hollywood. See The Battle of the Bulge, the Dirty Dozen, The Valachi papers, the mechanic, and Mr. Majestik as evidence. But as he got older, the budgets became smaller, the scripts worse, and the movies seedier. The Evil That Men Do from 1984 is a sad example.

There are loads of problems with the film, but they can all be boiled down to good intentions poorly executed. Did is say poorly? I meant tragically.

The film is about a Welsh doctor who becomes fascinated by torture. He uses his medical skills as a torturer for hire for any fly by night dictator who has the money. When a journalist friend of retired CIA assassin known only as Holland (Bronson) is tortured to death by the Doctor, (Not a typo. That is what he is referred as the entire film.) Holland agrees to come out of retirement and kill him.

The script is adapted from the novel by R. lance Hill. It is far less exploitive than the filmed version. Remember this was the time period when Hollywood and the music industry was behind Amnesty international’s effort to prevent the United States from supporting brutal Latin American dictators and looked the other way when tortured their own people because they were battling communist elements, real or imagined. There were good efforts to attract attention to the issue. This movie is not oe of them.

For one, it is gruesome without creating a sense of sympathy. In the first few minutes, the journalist is brutally tortured to death by slow electrocution. It is difficult to watch and the only act of violence done in earnest. Later, you are either beaten over the idea with further torture when Holland watches video interviews of survivors describig torture they suffered or cheap special effects like when Holland throws a henchman off a balcony with a fire hose wrapped around his throat. It is hilarious obvious it is a dummy hanging limp. Even the Doctor’s inevitable death at the hands of a mob of villagers is fake and anticlimactic. You do not get sense of justice out of it.

Other elements are done for the dumbest of reasons. The doctor’s sister is a fifty year old lesbian for the sole purpose of having her and her girlfriend make love on a bed Holland is trapped beneath. A film like this needs comic relief, but not marx Brothers level absurdity in that vein.
Another problem is the casting. Bronson was 61 at the time. His age was showing. Holland was played as an a quiet, unassuming man who was prone to extreme acts of violence when provoked, then would go back to his normal demeanor. His dramatic shift supposed to be a shock, but it came across more as a guy who is sufferi mood swigs after a stroke.

The Doctor is played starkly against cast by Joseph Mayer. He was a British actor who most often played the stereotypical stiff upper lip type, usually with a comedic twist. You would expect to see him as an English professor dating one of The Golden Girls, not attaching jumper cables to a dissident’s genitals while wearing an executioner’s mask. He just does not work here.

Other changes are just sloppy. In the novel, the Doctor is a Nazi protégé of Josef Megele who has escaped capture into the modern day. Presumably, the Doctor’s background was changed to fit better with Maher’s age, but the story element that the Doctor was eing pursued by the Mosad was left in. it is true the Mossad could still be hunting the guy anyway, but it makes less sense to me he is a bored doctor who gets his jollies torturing people than an escaped Nazi who honed his craft on concentration camp inmates decades before.

You get the idea. The filmmaker’s heart might have bee in the right place, but where his mind was is anybody’s guess.

(I went to YouTube looking for the trailer and found the whole movie. Watch at your own risk.)

Formspring Question # 22-Cinematic Cellar Dweller Editrion

What is the worst movie you have ever seen?

It would be easy to pick on some cheap science fiction or horror movie I have seen over the years. That would be too predictable, so I will choose the worst theatrical releae I have ever seen.

The Evil That Men Do sticks out prominently in my mind. Most likely, it is because I first saw it late one night on Cinemax back when I was way too young to be watching something like it. What can I say? I was never a sheltered kid. How else could I become so jaded today?

It does truly pai me to list a Charles Bronson movie as the worst film I have ever seen. Pre-Death Wish, Bronson’s tough guy act was the best in Hollywood. See The Battle of the Bulge, the Dirty Dozen, The Valachi papers, the mechanic, and Mr. Majestik as evidence. But as he got older, the budgets became smaller, the scripts worse, and the movies seedier. The Evil That Men Do from 1984 is a sad example.

There are loads of problems with the film, but they can all be boiled down to good intentions poorly executed. Did is say poorly? I meant tragically.

The film is about a Welsh doctor who becomes fascinated by torture. He uses his medical skills as a torturer for hire for any fly by night dictator who has the money. When a journalist friend of retired CIA assassin known only as Holland (Bronson) is tortured to death by the Doctor, (Not a typo. That is what he is referred as the entire film.) Holland agrees to come out of retirement and kill him.

The script is adapted from the novel by R. lance Hill. It is far less exploitive than the filmed version. Remember this was the time period when Hollywood and the music industry was behind Amnesty international’s effort to prevent the United States from supporting brutal Latin American dictators and looked the other way when tortured their own people because they were battling communist elements, real or imagined. There were good efforts to attract attention to the issue. This movie is not oe of them.

For one, it is gruesome without creating a sense of sympathy. In the first few minutes, the journalist is brutally tortured to death by slow electrocution. It is difficult to watch and the only act of violence done in earnest. Later, you are either beaten over the idea with further torture when Holland watches video interviews of survivors describig torture they suffered or cheap special effects like when Holland throws a henchman off a balcony with a fire hose wrapped around his throat. It is hilarious obvious it is a dummy hanging limp. Even the Doctor’s inevitable death at the hands of a mob of villagers is fake and anticlimactic. You do not get sense of justice out of it.

Other elements are done for the dumbest of reasons. The doctor’s sister is a fifty year old lesbian for the sole purpose of having her and her girlfriend make love on a bed Holland is trapped beneath. A film like this needs comic relief, but not marx Brothers level absurdity in that vein.
Another problem is the casting. Bronson was 61 at the time. His age was showing. Holland was played as an a quiet, unassuming man who was prone to extreme acts of violence when provoked, then would go back to his normal demeanor. His dramatic shift supposed to be a shock, but it came across more as a guy who is sufferi mood swigs after a stroke.

The Doctor is played starkly against cast by Joseph Mayer. He was a British actor who most often played the stereotypical stiff upper lip type, usually with a comedic twist. You would expect to see him as an English professor dating one of The Golden Girls, not attaching jumper cables to a dissident’s genitals while wearing an executioner’s mask. He just does not work here.

Other changes are just sloppy. In the novel, the Doctor is a Nazi protégé of Josef Megele who has escaped capture into the modern day. Presumably, the Doctor’s background was changed to fit better with Maher’s age, but the story element that the Doctor was eing pursued by the Mosad was left in. it is true the Mossad could still be hunting the guy anyway, but it makes less sense to me he is a bored doctor who gets his jollies torturing people than an escaped Nazi who honed his craft on concentration camp inmates decades before.

You get the idea. The filmmaker’s heart might have bee in the right place, but where his mind was is anybody’s guess.

(I went to YouTube looking for the trailer and found the whole movie. Watch at your own risk.)

Formspring Question # 18--Your Cinematic Experience is Incomplete Edition

What is the most famous movie you have never seen?

I looked on the IMDb Top 250 Movies and the first English language film listed I have never seen is #15--Goodfellas. So I suppose that is the best answer I can come up with.

Not a fan of the gangster movie genre.

Formspring Question # 18--Your Cinematic Experience is Incomplete Edition

What is the most famous movie you have never seen?

I looked on the IMDb Top 250 Movies and the first English language film listed I have never seen is #15--Goodfellas. So I suppose that is the best answer I can come up with.

Not a fan of the gangster movie genre.

New Planet of the Apes Movie Announced

Fret not--Tim Burton will not be directing it.

The film, tentatively titled Rise of the Apes, will be released on June 24, 2011. The plot sounds similar to the early, but scuttled, proposal for Caesar, in which a scientist genetically engineers a super intelligent ape who turns against humanity when the scientist’s wife is killed senselessly during a crime. Rise of the Apes involves genetic engineering that results in altering apes in general which results in a conflict between apes and man for dominance.

It sounds like the powers that be are packing enough of the entire original quintet to ensure Rise of the Apes can stand alone if it is not enough of a hit to merit sequels. Learning from Terminator: Salvation, I see.

Rise of the Apes will be directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa. The movie will rely heavily on CGI apes.

Wyatt is best known as the director of The Escapist, a nifty British film starring Brian Cox as a convict in the fifteen year of a life sentence without parole who gathers some fellow inmates together to plot an escape. It is not The Shawshank Redemption, but it is worth watching.

Silver and Jaffa wrote The Relic. I do not recall anything remarkable about the film, but it has been ten or twelve years since I have seen it. It was a cautionary tale about meddling with forces beyond human control, so someone thinks it captures the right tone. We shall see.

I cannot help but see the similarities with the premise of Caprica and the birth of the Cylons. The toasters rose up from slavery to destroy humanity like the apes apparently will. Do I catch a definite hint of Battlestar Galactica in the new apes project?

New Planet of the Apes Movie Announced

Fret not--Tim Burton will not be directing it.

The film, tentatively titled Rise of the Apes, will be released on June 24, 2011. The plot sounds similar to the early, but scuttled, proposal for Caesar, in which a scientist genetically engineers a super intelligent ape who turns against humanity when the scientist’s wife is killed senselessly during a crime. Rise of the Apes involves genetic engineering that results in altering apes in general which results in a conflict between apes and man for dominance.

It sounds like the powers that be are packing enough of the entire original quintet to ensure Rise of the Apes can stand alone if it is not enough of a hit to merit sequels. Learning from Terminator: Salvation, I see.

Rise of the Apes will be directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa. The movie will rely heavily on CGI apes.

Wyatt is best known as the director of The Escapist, a nifty British film starring Brian Cox as a convict in the fifteen year of a life sentence without parole who gathers some fellow inmates together to plot an escape. It is not The Shawshank Redemption, but it is worth watching.

Silver and Jaffa wrote The Relic. I do not recall anything remarkable about the film, but it has been ten or twelve years since I have seen it. It was a cautionary tale about meddling with forces beyond human control, so someone thinks it captures the right tone. We shall see.

I cannot help but see the similarities with the premise of Caprica and the birth of the Cylons. The toasters rose up from slavery to destroy humanity like the apes apparently will. Do I catch a definite hint of Battlestar Galactica in the new apes project?

Leonard Nimoy to Retire

This is definitely the end of an era. Leonard Nimoy recently told the Toronto Sun he is done with acting.His version of Spock will not appear I the next J. J. Abrams Star Trek because he wants to give Zachary Quinto the spotlight on the role. His stint on Abrams’ Fringe has also ended, so Nimoy feels it is time to get off the stage.

I do not blame him. Nimoy is 79 years old with limited options for roles he can play. Seeing such a dignified actor reduced to playing someone’s goofy grandfather would be as sad as it was watching The Who try to rock at the Super Bowl back in February. All I wanted was for someone to take Roger Daltry home and put him to bed. I do not want to see Nimoy reduced to that, too.

Nimoy has left behind a long career full of roles I enjoyed. Spock is my favorite, of course, but I am a fan of the original Mission Impossible on which he played Paris, and I have a peculiar fascination with In Search Of. I even recall fondly his turn as the voice of Unicron in Transformers: The Movie.

Looking back, I am surprised what a big part of my geek experience he has been. I hope he enjoys retirement.

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow

Someone Finally Apologizes for Battlefield: Earth

I suppose unleashing such Scientology drivel on a unsuspecting movie public would lead anyone to seek redemption. It has taken ten years for screenwriter J. D. Shapiro to unburden his soul, but here it is:

It was 1994, and I had read an article in Premiere magazine saying that the Celebrity Center, the Scientology epicenter in Los Angeles, was a great place to meet women.

Willy [Shapiro's pet name for his schlong] convinced me to go check it out. Touring the building, I didn't find any eligible women at first, but I did meet Karen Hollander, president of the center, who said she was a fan of "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." We ended up talking for over two hours. She told me why Scientology is so great. I told her that, when it comes to organized religion, anything a person does to reward, threaten and try to control people by using an unknown like the afterlife is dangerous.

Nonetheless, Karen called me a few days later asking if I'd be interested in turning any of L. Ron Hubbard's books into movies. Eventually, I had dinner with John Travolta, his wife Kelly Preston, Karen -- about 10 Scientologists in all. John asked me, "So, J.D., what brought you to Scientology?"

I told him. John smiled and replied, "We have tech that can help you handle that." I don't know if he meant they had technology that would help me get laid or technology that would stop Willy from doing the majority of my thinking.

A couple things stand out.

First, Shapiro expresses a distaste for organized religion because it utilizes the fear of punishment I the afterlife for the misdeeds of the current. His motivation for thinking this is obvious since he nearly joined Scientology and wound up writing a proselytizing script for them solely because he wanted to get laid. The man is obviously a paragon of virtue.

Second, Shapiro’s most successful film has been 1993‘s Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has had no critical or financial success with any script in seventeen years. He probably does not have much room to blame Scientology’s intervention, but considering they are a bunch of criminally abusive kooks, I will give Shapiro the benefit of the doubt.

(Via: Ain't It Cool News)

Which John Cusack Are You?


Which John Cusack Are You?