To whomever bought me a year's premium subscription, wow man, a totally unnecessary but totally welcome gesture.
No one had to do that for lil' old me. No idea who it was, I have a suspicion but to the person who did it, thank you very much. I'll endeavour to make things interesting in the year your have provided me as a premium member.

Thanks a bunch, whoever you are
Happy Annual Family Gift Giving Day

My matinee was sparsely attended, which is not terribly unusual for a Saturday afternoon at the local multiplex but I will be curious to see the numbers of this late tomorrow.
But enough industry nonsense.
Can The Fox carry a movie all by herself? Well, I'm more than a little biased but I'll say she probably can. But she wasn't all by herself on this one was she
This is Amanda Seyfried's movie. She's an actress, The Fox is a star, there is a difference and it's important to note.
Megan essentially plays herself, or the self that she shows to the public at any given time. Same as she did for Michael Bay two times. Her delivery is rather dead pan and could easily be mistaken for bad acting. But I think it was by design. Her character Jennifer, at the start of the film is vapid, superficial, self centered and slutty... rathe rlike Megan herself I understand and her delivery through the first reel seems to play up that. After becoming demon infested tho, her delivery seems more animated and there are some instances, when she's downright creepy. We all know she can do sexy so that's a given as well. But she's the foil.
Amanda Seyfried's Needy is the heroine. She has the most to work with. She gets to express all the emotion. Since Amanda is an actual actress and not a star, she delivers. So as performances go, the two girls hit their marks I think.
Diablo Cody's second time out is a bit fumbly. The movie isn't sure if it's a comedy or a horror movie. It isn't scary at all and their are some really funny lines, But it never goes all the way in either direction. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "disjointed" but Diablo could have probably taken another crack at it before she stamped "final draft" on it.
The direction by female action director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Aeon Flux) is good, not outstanding but serviceable. The gore gags are mostly off-screen which can be disappointing for the gore hounds. But she tried
The soundtrack is pretty awesome.
I enjoyed the film, it's not perfect, it's good, not great. Slightly better than average I guess. It's lacking something. Can't quite put my finger on it... oh yeah.
Tits.
Horror movies need tits. There's cleavage, implied nudity, lesbianism, lotsa dirty talk, but no tits.
Any future DVD/BD purchase relies on what Kusama puts on the thing. She says there were tons of cuts that will be on the release so one hopes there's some extra skin and not just gore. I don't expect full nudity. The Fox has already publicly stated she's not keen to show the skin. She's proven she can be a sex symbol without doing that... but it never hurts Girl has diarrhea of the mouth anyway so who knows what the future holds. Miss Seyfried however has a film at the TIFF called Chloe directed by Canada's foremost director these days Atom Egoyan. She gets naked in it, but she's an actress, not a star She gets implied naked in this and after seeing those big cans of hers in a bra, well, I'm anxious to see them out of one
Everything is better with tits.
Jennifer's Body certainly would have been. Not that it was bad, but unless you get to see it for free like me, you can probably wait for DVD.
By Odin's beard that chick is fuckin' hot tho.
I guess that's the problem. It was like a 90 minute cocktease with Diablo's witty banter and some blood. Entertaining, but frustrating. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go oggle some Fox pics and take care of something

District 9

A hybrid of the faux documentary style that is all the rage and a traditional narrative, it may be the best science fiction film in years.

No joke.
To think it was done on the minuscule budget it was is staggering.

No stars, at least none with any fame in this part of the world. Just good, solid storytelling, with a real world parable and hyper realistic situations and performances.

We are not nice people, it's not hard to imagine that this is how things would turn out should this ever really happen.

Lots left unexplained, totally open ended. You can see they have something in mind.

Inter species prostitution is touched upon in the film and as a concept just fires the imagination

That's only one of the awesome things in this movie.

The aliens or "Prawns" are completely realized, full characters. You actually empathize with them.

The combat, oh my the combat. Lotsa doc style hand held and it kicks much ass.

The film is way more violent than you would think.

Neill Blomkamp can write his own ticket from here on in I suspect.

As for Halo. I'm sure if he still gets the chance to direct it, it will be an awesome movie. A real war documentary feel. But that's not really what I envision when I think of a Halo film. Blomkamp's style is very specific, gritty, handheld, from the documentary world. When I think of Halo I think of sweeping, epics. Blomkamp would excel at the job, but i can't help but wonder if the Halo film would be better served by someone with a more epic, less tightly focused vision.

District 9 is most definitely on the blu-ray purchase list and the shit hot awesome movies of 2009 list.

--

Inglourious Basterds

It would seems Quentin Tarantino gets better with age. He started out pretty damn good to begin with so just imagine

The film is a WW2 fantasy, taking real figures and elements of the actual war and turning them on their ear to present an alternate history, and a more awesome one at that

The film is less about Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raines and his Jewish American "Basterds" as it is the story of one focal point arrived at by three roads. The Basterds road is the one seen in all the ads for the film and is primarily the focus, but not the heart of the film. Shosanna, the Jewish girl from France who escapes the slaughter of her family at the beginning of the film is the true heart of the piece. The Nazi story is the most surreal and intersects with the two other stories often as it tells the tale of the Nazi "Jew Hunter".

They all come together in the final reel of the film in what may be the most violent and completely awesome finale ever I won't give anything away of course but this film has incredible stuff all the way through it.

it being a Tranatino film, there are long passages of dialogue in English, German and French. That may put some people off as the dialogue appears to be about nothing. Innocuous things that seem not to give anything to the story. You soon realize though that every work does in fact add to the story being told and you are rewarded for paying attention as the film's "chapters" reveal more and more.

Rock solid performances are a given. It's a Tarantino picture after all. His style is also on display in interesting ways here, especially the Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz sequence

he even manages to get Samuel L. Jackson into the film, even if it's only as a narrator.

There is definitely Oscar bait here.

--

So, two masterpieces in the span of two weeks. this closes out the summer movie season for me so lets see what we've learned...

Star Trek was awesome
X-Men Origins: Wolverine sucked ass
Angels and Demons was OK
Terminator Salvation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but still not great
Up was fine I suppose, something lacking though
Land of the Lost was just OK
The Taking of Pelham 123 was good, but nowhere near the original
Transformers: Rise of the Fallen was good, but not great
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was OK
Public Enemies was pretty good
G.I. Joe was kinda awesome I thought
District 9 was awesome
Inglourious Basterds was awesome

Not too shabby

So I've taken some time, read some other opinions, had a nap, generally mulled over how I spent the afternoon.
There's just no avoiding it. People are gonna dump all over this thing. Take numbers will tell the story ultimately and although there are some who loved the movie for what it was, there are plenty of others who are gonna be too high brow in their thinking.
Here's what I think anyway.
10 year old me LOVED this fucking movie man. It's precisely the kind of movie that kid me just got off on. Adult me as it turns out, isn't too far removed from kid me. Adult me hears the arguments, sees the problems, the logic gaps, the continuity errors (The Baroness is American?) but you know what, adult me got his ass kicked by the more svelt, energetic and generally bad ass kid me
I had a great time with this. It's not my G.I. Joe of course. Save some specific characters, you could have called it MegaForce 2 and it would still be awesome. But when has an adaption of an established property ever had a fully accurate translation to another medium right?
The changes made I can live with, rather easily it turns out. I still have reservations about Cobra Commander who really doesn't make an appearance until the final reel but that could easily be fixed in a sequel, should the audience numbers demand one.
Eccelston chews scenery, dude who plays Duke does a fine job, The Wayans who does Rip-Cord, hardly a central character in my recollections of the cartoon is funny without actually making me laugh, which is odd, but not upsetting. Sienna Miller's Baroness gets a heap of screen time and she looks good, affects a good American accent, lets hope they fix a few things about her and her costume if there's a sequel tho. Dennis Quaid looks like he's having fun. Rachel Nichols... well, you already know what I'm gonna say about Rachel
HOT!
The sets and gadgets and gizmo's and the action sequences... I have heard many reviewers say that much of the film took them back to when they were playing with their Real American Heroes. The situations they put them in, the amazing things we as kids would have them do. I was right there with those reviewers in that regard. The entire film has the same sensibility and energy of the cartoon. It's not the perfect G.I. Joe movie as I would have envisioned it, but it's pretty damn good anyway
A BluRay purchase is in my future for sure.
It's not perfect, it is big and kinda dumb and many would say that's no excuse, but I say that those people need to lighten the fuck up. Sure, some would want it to be hyper accurate and realistic for today's more mature audience. But me? I think this is the precise kinda treatment this film should have had. Glossy, high energy, totally unrealistic fun. What summer movies have been since a robot shark chewed on a British Shakespearean actor back in '76 and created the summer movie season.
As far as I'm concerned, summer '09 has brought two movies with teh awesome. Star Trek and G.I. Joe. So far, everything else is just trying.
District 9 awaits.

So I have posted again. Hopefully they last. People enjoy them, I work hard on them, let them be seen!

The proper credit this time goes to Terry Richardson, Steven Meisel and Alexei Hay.