The Resident Evil film franchise seems to be the franchise that just keeps on going and going. Like the undead which forms the bulk of the danger to the characters in the film, this film series just won’t die. It’s success has both confounded critics and audiences alike. It’s turned Milla Jovovich into an action star whether we like it or not. It’s also a series that despite some major flaws continues because it makes it’s studios money.
We now have the first teaser trailer for the 5th film in the series, Resident Evil: Retribution, and just like the 4th film in the series it will be in 3D. It will also have several characters from past films who we saw die make appearances in the film. Whether they come back as themselves in the film’s present storyline or in flashbacks has yet to be determined. The trailer itself looks like a major advert for Sony smartphones, PS Vita and tablet products. In fact, I’d say that almost 40% of this teaser is all about pushing Sony products.
If that’s the case then this trailer does teach me one thing: Sony products will lead to a global zombie apocalypse. I think this event would never happen if people bought iPhones and iPads.
Resident Evil: Retribution is set for a September 14, 2012 release date.
Ok, I never thought I’d say this but it looks like Backstreet Boys has finally been part of something that’s been fun to watch and quite enjoyable. It’s this very one thing which is the latest entry in our recurring blog feature: “AMV of the Day”.
The video makes a play on the Backstreet Boys’ party song title, “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”, by taking out the band’s name and putting in Fullmetal. Yes, this is an anime music video where creator Rider4ZMusicVideos has combined the very popular shonen anime series, Fullmetal Alchemist, with the aforementioned Backstreet Boys song. To say that it was a surprise to see the two work well hand-in-hand would be an understatement.
Rider really plays up some of the comedy in the series with scenes chosen, but also does a great job of picking particular scenes to help lip-synch the lyrics of the song. Once again, I was thoroughly surprised just how enjoyable this video was and for the first time in my life I actually enjoyed listening to a Backstreet Boys song.
Anime: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Song: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by Backstreet Boys
I’ve been pretty good at avoiding fillms that I knew was going to be awful before I even stepped into the theater so certain films from 2011 that everyone call the worst I probably won’t have on my list since I never saw them. So, such films as Jack & Jill, Bucky Larson and Zookeeper will not make my list since I was smart enough to not pay to watch it.
This ten worst list of 2011 are from films I did see during the year whether in a theater or on video. I couldn’t decide which film was worse than the next so this order doesn’t really determine which was worst. It’s just my way of keeping things organized.
Shark Night 3D – I had high hopes that this film would be 2011’s version of Piranha 3D in that it would be silly, goofy and over-the-top and knew it. Instead it’s tame with it’s PG-13 rating (seriously a film about Sharks eating college kids in 3D gets a PG-13 treatment) and has none of the joie de vivre that Piranha 3D had or the bugnuts craziness that Drive Angry 3D threw at you.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – With a cast that looked to be better than the Orlando Bloom/Keira Knightley one of the original trilogy I thought this new beginning for Capt. Jack Sparrow would breathe new life to the trilogy, but instead we get one of the worst entries in the franchise (that’s saying a lot) and one that ended up wasting the talents of Ian McShane in the role of Blackbeard.
Season of the Witch: I never saw it in the theater after I read Lisa Marie’s review of it. So, I waited until it arrived on Netflix and took a chance that maybe it wasn’t as awful as she said it was. I think she was being kind with her review. This film was awful in it’s awfulness that I couldn’t even enjoy just how bad it was.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon – When I first saw this film I enjoyed enough of the action when it was robot vs robot so all the human interaction part never registered, but as I saw it again on blu-ray I realized just how awful this third entry in the Michael Bay franchise was in a franchise that should’ve been fool-proof. I mean it’s giant robots that transform fighting other similar robots. I think if Shia LeBouf was replaced by someone like Jason Statham I would’ve enjoyed this film more, but Shia’s whining and screeching took away any enjoyment I had from seeing robots fighting.
Cowboys & Aliens – Another film that had a premise tailor-made for the summer blockbuster season with a cast that had Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde (Mmmmm), Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, etc…not to mention Jon Favreau in the director’s chair. I thought that Favreau may have been railroaded and made a scapegoat for some of the failures of Iron Man 2 in 2010, but seeing what he ended up doing with this film made me rethink that maybe Marvel Studios was smart to cut him loose and bring in someone else.
Green Lantern – DC Studios…Geoff Johns…one of the Justice Leaguers. One would think that was recipe for one kick-ass space opera that would rekindle the fun that are superheroes the way Iron Man did in 2008. Instead what we ended up getting was one of the worst superhero films ever made which made Hal Jordan an emo character fighting against a villain who wasn’t terrifying and a cosmic evil that made the Lost smoke monster look horrific in turn. Fuck you DC and Johns for ruining what could’ve been a great franchise.
Arthur – I’m a child of the 80’s so I remember the original Dudley Moore version, but I was willing to give this one a chance. I shouldn’t have and any goodwill Russell Brand got from me with his performance from Get Him to the Greek vanished with this film.
Apollo 18 – Moon rocks with legs!! Nuff said.
Dream House – Another film that I thought was interesting enough to take a chance on despite the trailer pretty much ruining the twist in the story, but I thought it would have an interesting path getting to that twist. Daniel Craig may need to just stick to being James Bond, because he was almost like a cardboard in this film and the rest of the cast weren’t far behind. I never thought Jim Sheridan would ever make a bad film. I guess I was right. He didn’t make a bad film. He made a horrendously awful film.
Priest – This was another film that could’ve been fun fluff or even an entertaining bad film, but it wasn’t either of those. This was directed by Scott Stewart who did the abysmal Legion from 2010. I thought maybe he would do better a second time around adapting a popular Korean manwha title, but I guess the saying is true: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
I’m sure I left out a few other titles that ohters think should be on this list, but those probably I actually enjoyed or weren’t bad enough to bump any of these ten from my list. This list is pretty much almost a full day of my life wasted and me not able to get a refund. It’s near to 24-hours of awful that took a full day off of my lifespan. Ten films which could be the death of me down the line.
The fourth and final One Piece-themed “AMV of the Day” doesn’t come courtesy of AMV creator PixelCreekAMVs, but instead from Regiosk8 and is the best of the four.
“This Is War” takes it’s title from the 30 Seconds to Mars song of the same title. I will admit that I’m not the biggest fan of this group, but for some reason this song of their’s continue to be a favorite amongst amv creators especially when trying to convey and video’s epic nature. The Marineford War story-arc in One Piece definitely fills the criteria of being quite epic. One must consider the fact that this anime was and still is epic on it’s right, but this story-arc took it to a new level. It’s the arc which added a major level of seriousness to everyone’s fun as it’s creator, Oda Eiichiro, decided to kill off several main characters (fan favorites) and do so in a way that didn’t leave no question as to their final moments (American comic book writers could learn a thing or two about how to kill off characters and keeping them dead from manga writers).
I’m sure that 30 Seconds to Mars’ “This Is War” will be make another appearance in other amv’s but for now this one looks to be the best. Great job by Regiosk8 on the video and a nice tribute to one Edward “Whitebeard” Newgate to end the video.
“Throughout the Battle of Marineford alone Whitebeard had received 267 sword wounds, 152 gunshot wounds and 46 wounds from cannonballs- adding up to a total of 465 injuries upon his time of death. Despite this, there was not a single scar on Whitebeard’s back showing cowardice.”
This latest “AMV of the Day” mark the third entry which has the Marineford War story-arc in the One Piece anime series as the basis for the video.
“Move Along” is also the third AMV I’ve chosen from PixelCreekAMVs who has done a remarkable job of taking scenes from this epic One Piece story-arc. The video takes it’s name from the song used which happened to be by The All-American Rejects. This video once again highlights what has made One Piece such a huge fan favorite. It’s all about non-stop action with bits of comedy or comedy with bits of action. This is a series that goes full-bore and really not subtle about it’s storytelling on the surface.
I’ve got one more video in this One Piece-themed set but this penultimate choice til the last one has become a favorite of mine.
Just a little under a year ago I had chosen a particular favorite song as the latest “Song of the Day”. This song was Clint Mansell’s “Together We Will Live Forever”which was part of his exceptional film score for Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 scifi love story, The Fountain. I’ve decided to finally bookend that choice by choosing what has to be the best song in that film’s soundtrack and one of the best piece of film score ever composed: Mansell’s “Death Is the Road to Awe”.
While I’ve given Mansell with the final credit for the creation of this epic song (not just in tone and execution but in length), he had help from frequent collaborator Kronos Quartet and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. “Death Is the Road to Awe” takes the entirety of Mansell’s film scoring for The Fountain and distills them into a mixture of classical, post-rock and ambient dissonance which seems to all work so well together despite their very differing musical styles.
The Fountain was (still is) a film which brings out either love and admiration for it or utter hate for what some think was a pretentious, jumbled mess. Whether one loved or hated the film (rarely is there one who falls in the middle in their reaction to this film) the reaction most have had for the soundtrack has been mostly positive. I, for one, truly believe it to be one of the greatest film scores ever composed for any film. This song is the ultimate culmination of Mansell’s work for this film and just shows that classical, rock and electronic could co-exist side-by-side to create something truly unique and one-of-a-kind.
One thing I like about genre films is the fact that, whether they’re good or bad, they mostly accomplish the part about entertaining it’s audience. For the good to great ones they don’t just entertain but raise the genre to new heights. For the bad ones they seem to entertain in unexpected ways. How often have one watched a bad genre film, realize it’s bad and still just roll with it, laughing at it becoming part of it’s appeal. We wouldn’t have gotten years and years of Rifftrax and MST3K without enjoying the badness of awful genre films. Then there are genre films which takes the very well-worn tropes of the genre. The very things we as an audience groan and snicker at and manages to turn it into a love-letter to the very thing they’re making fun of.
The horror-comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil takes the backwoods horror which has been a major staple of the slasher subgenre for over a quarter-century and tips it on it’s head to create a horror comedy that never runs out of laughs and still manages to show cringe-inducing death scenes. It stars Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine in the roles of Tucker and Dale. We have two well-meaning “hillbillies” from the backwoods of West Virginia on their way to Tucker’s recently bought “fixer-upper” of a vacation home who come across a group of obnoxious college kids looking to spend the weekend on the shore of the very lake our two intrepid heroes’ vacation also sits off of. Through some misunderstanding between the very sweet-natured Dale who tries to befriend one of the pretty college girls in the group we see the beginning of events that will see death and mayhem visited upon both groups throughout the film.
We get the mandatory story telling us about how twenty years ago during Memorial Day a group of similar college kids were massacred by a couple of hillbillies on the very shores of the lake with only one survivor to tell the tale. This tale becomes the reason why the college kids start trying to “defend” themselves from Tucker and Dale who they thought kidnapped one of the girls in their group when in fact they had just rescued her from drowning. One by one each college kid dies in horrible fashion in their attempt to take on the oblivious Tucker and Dale who begin to think the group were on a suicide pact and means to take them down as well.
The film really does a great job of playing on the well-worn conventions of slasher films and making each such scenario play out in a way that if someone caught the scene a few seconds after it had already started they would think Tucker and Dale were trying to kill these kids. Each kill have just enough gore to satisfy horror fans so used to slasher films, but also funny enough every cringe was followed up by laughs.
One thing the film also had going for it was the chemistry between Tudyk and Labine as Tucker and Dale. They play off each other quite naturally that it’s not a stretch to believe these two were truly life-long friends who would brave the rush of misguided college kids to save each other. Even the college girl with the heart of gold, Allie (played by Katrina Bowden), adds to the film’s good-natured fun as she tries to explain to her friends that everything which has been going on (all the death and destruction) was all just a misunderstanding. Another thing which helps make the two leads in the film quite sympathetic has to be how obnoxious the kids really were who look down on the so-called “mountain folk” of the region because of their appearance thus their lack of education.
Eli Craig took three years to make Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, but the end result was all worth the wait. The film follows in the great traditions of horror-comedies of the past by never winking cynically at the audience at how smart it is, but letting the basic premise of the story play out as simply as possible. It helps to have a great duo in Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine in the roles of the Tucker and Dale. This film may not make many critics running to proclaim it as a milestone in the genre but it does succeed in entertaining it’s audience and just ending up being one hilarious 90 minutes of campy horror.
“…being a samurai is a burden.” – Shimada Shinzaemon
Miike Takashi (Takashi Miike to those in the West) has always been one of my favorite filmmakers and I consider him one of the most unique directors working. To say that he has an extensive body of work would be an understatement. This is a man who is quite at home at releasing 2-3 films a year. He has dabbled in all sorts of genres from drama, thrillers, horror, scifi, musicals and even children’s stories. Those who discovered him in the West mostly remember him for his more extreme films such as Audition, Ichi the Killer and his Dead or Alive epic. He’s taken extreme film-making to some unpredictable plac. While some of his films never work one could never say that they were ever boring or uninteresting.
In 2010, Miike released what I can only say is one of his best films to date with his remake of Tengan Daisuke’s 1963 film of the same name. 13 Assassins is Miike’s take on the classic jidaigeki (Japanese Edo period pieces…think of it as similar in idea to Merchant-Ivory period pieces) which incudes such great films as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Yojimbo to name a few. This film also shares some similarities to the “men on a mission” war films which were quite popular during the early 60’s which included one of my other top action films in The Dirty Dozen.
The film is loosely based on some historical characters from the Tokugawa Shogunate era mainly that of Lord Naritsugu of the Akashi clan. In this film he’s portrayed as a sadistic young noble whose familial ties to the ruling Shogun allows him to kill and rape both commoners and nobles alike with impunity. When a high government official fears for the government and the country should Naritsugo ever ascends to a higher position in the Shogunate he takes it upon himself to hire a trusted friend and veteran samurai, Shinzaemon (Kōji Yakusho), to plan and pull off the assassination of Lord Naritsugo.
From this moment on the film takes it’s time in introducing the men who would form the film’s title. It doesn’t linger or take too long with each man, but we learn enough of these 13 assassins to form some sort of attachment to each and everyone that the loss of each man, once the battle begins between Shinzaemon’s assassins and Naritsugu’s 200 bodyguards, has emotional impact and meaning. Even knowing that this mission ultimately becomes a suicide task still doesn’t stop the surprise when one of these men falls to the blades of their enemies.
The assassins themselves were quite a diverse group of characters that could’ve been lifted off your typical “men on a mission” film. We have the goofballs with the talent for explosives, younger samurai eager to prove themselves in battle and to their masters, veteran samurai looking to do one more last job before they retire from the life right up to the last-minute addition of a fool whose unique skill sets becomes integral to the missions success.
13 Assassins begins the final 45 minutes of its running time with a non-stop battle which rivals anything we’ve seen put out by Hollywood in the past ten years. Unlike the sturm und drang actionfests from Michael Bay and those who seem to emulate his style of action film-making, Miike takes a much more restrained approach to the proceedings. This is not to say that the action in this film was boring. He allows the audience to know exactly what’s going on with long takes and minimal amount of edits. I don’t think he ever used too many quick cuts to help simulate chaos during the fight. Instead he lets the practical stunt choreography and the inventive set design of the village turned killing field to dictate the flow of the action. It’s quite interesting to note how a filmmaker such as Miike whose reputation in the West has been built on his style of extreme visuals and imagery on film would be quite adept at such a thing as traditional filmmaking that eschews heavy-usage of CGI, quick-cut editing and unnecessary montages to help propel not just the action but the film’s narrative.
Again, unlike the Bay-fest the West has been flooded with the last decade or so this film also has as one of it’s strength’s the story all the action revolves around. The story itself is quite simple when one really boils it down to it’s most basic premise. Evil lord sows chaos around the countryside and a group of honor-bound fighting men band together for one reason or another to stop this evil. It’s a story as old as Beowulf and as recent as 2010’s trio of such films with The Losers, The A-Team and the Expendables. What this film does with it’s characters which helps it stand out from that trio is how well Miike was able to balance not just the action with the story but how to make each character in the film seem unique despite being so stereotypical of such films at first glance.
The acting by the ensemble cast (a who’s-who of performers in Japanese, but mostly unknown to Western audiences) adds just the right mix of melancholy and dark humor not to mention some rock star-like work from it’s lead antagonist. Gorô Inagaki (himself not just a talented actor but one of Japan’s more popular pop star singers) as Lord Naritsugu brings energy as the evil lord to every scene he’s in not because of being so over-the-top but the opposite. He plays this villain as a noble bored with the peaceful days enjoyed by everyone and could only enjoy what life has to offer when he brings chaos to the proceedings. The fact that this involves him raping the women of a fellow noble and cutting off the limbs of a nameless young girl just shows how much out of touch he is with reality and at the same time romanticizes the age of war hundreds of years in the past. The rest of the cast does an admirable job in their own roles. To say that it was difficult to see one of them die on-screen would be an understatement.
13 Assassins was released in 2010, but really got it’s major showing in the United States in early 2011. Despite all of that and with the eclectic group of films I was fortunate enough to have seen in 2011 that made my “best of” list it would be this film that ranks as one of the best of 2011 and also one of my favorite films of recent times. Miike Takashi has shown himself to be now just a filmmaker provocateur whose reputation for shocking audiences have bee well-earned, but also cemented the true fact that he is a filmmaker (both in and out of Hollywood) who has the skills and know-how to escape being labeled as only a filmmaker of a particular genre. His restraint and decision to remake a classic film in the jidaigeki genre shows that while he hasn’t lost his panache for extreme brutality (and this film has them to satiate action and gore fans everywhere) he can also create a film using the subtle brushstrokes of traditional, old-school filmmaking. With this film he has made one of finest and cements his place in the roll call of best filmmakers of the last quarter-century.
I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Through the Shattered Lens began as a way to keep me from getting bored on Christmas Eve of 2009 and tonight marks the 2nd year anniversary of that decision. Since then The site has gained several new writers and each of them has brought a unique voice to the world of entertainment blogging. The site doesn’t make money. It’s writers are all volunteers given the free rein to write what they want and how they want to. For a site dedicated to everything entertainment it doesn’t send it’s writers to film premieres or set production visits. It is a site which embraces the notion of grindhouse and that’s what we’ve done and continued to do since it’s inception.
I’ve come to see everyone who has contributed to the site as friends and humbled that they’ve stuck around this long without complaint. We all don’t always agree on what’s written but in the end it’s the civilized manner by which we discuss and debate the things written about that I think sets the site apart from other entertainment sites.
Here’s to hoping that the next year is even more successful and, first and foremost, fun for all involved and those who have continued to visit the site since the beginning. While I don’t know what the future will bring I do know that whatever comes around the corner myself and everyone here will have fun come rain or shine. Here’s to the upcoming year and hope y’all come ’round once in awhile to see what we have up our sleeves.
Til then, just “awwww” at the cuteness that are the Mini Ika’s.
This week leading up to the Christmas weekend has surely been quite a busy one for film fans everywhere. Earlier in the week we got to see the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises (and to a lesser extent the trailer for Wrath of the Titans). That was soon followed a day later by the first teaser trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming return to the world of Middle-Earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Now we reach the triumvirate of awesome film trailers for the week with the release of the first official trailer for Ridley Scott’s return to the film franchise which made him a household name and helped redefined sci-fi (especially of the horror variety) films.
The trailer for Prometheus looks beautiful especially when viewed on 720p/1080p HD. It still doesn’t explain just exactly what the plot of the film is, but it does show some interesting imagery which harkens back to the original Alien from 1979. We even get to see a glimpse of the pilot chair where the “space jockey” sits and the very ship itself found by Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo from the first film. Even the trailer pays major homage to the original film by slowly revealing the film’s title one section at a time.
Scott has been saying that Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien and that it’s a film that could stand on it’s own without people needing to see the films in the franchise. So far, we haven’t glimpsed any of the typical xenomorphswhich defines the franchise. Time to see if they make an appearance when the film finally comes out on June 8. 2012.
Through the Shattered Lens 