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Film was sold out (of course) at the Southbank cinema’s, apparantly they had sold all internet tickets by 4pm!

Personally I love packed movie cinema’s as there is always someone interesting to talk to and at the very least someone who’s laugh was way too hard and makes you burst out.  I had such a fellow in front of me.  Every moment in the film where MJ was trying to be sincre “but Peter… what about me!  Don’t you care how I feel?” this poor fellow just couldn’t help it, it was like watching a fatman hold together a burst pipe, eventually something was going to crack.

Luckily his laughter was well recieved as I think I haven’t buried my head in my hands so many times in a movie.  Every time Peter and MJ were together (roughly 98% of the film) I kept wanting to shield myself from the trainwreck which was their relationship… I think they must have consulted Dolly on how to create a relationship that Teenagers could relate to.

On the flipside I’ve never walked out of a cinema and heard sooo many people comment about Emo.  I think everyone was amazed as me at how Peter Parker was affected by Venom best shot i could find on the internets:

Yes… Peter Parker sporting an emo haircut and black eyeliner, and even looks at himself in them mirror a lot.  Real men don’t look in the mirror at themsleves, only emo’s and Men for evading people who are about to stab them in the back.  Which Spidey sucks as well in this film, it seems all you have to do is walk up behind him and you’ve got him with his emo pants down.

To be fair, I ‘ve never really liked any of the Spiderman films.  Toby just doesn’t cut it for me as Spidey, he’s just too plain… annoying!

There were a few cool fight scenes, and with the Green Goblin returning you know some stuff is gonna blow up.  Props for giving the Green Goblin less armour and more X-games style.

Out of the 3 hours of film I’d have to say I’d rewatch, maybe 15 mins of it JB compressed style.  Those of  you who know how I watch a movie will appreciate this.

After watching the great movie that is Mad Max 2 on Channel 9 last week I had the urge to purchase a copy of Mad Max on DVD to own a piece of Australian film history.

I thought for sure a copy of this 30 year old film would be in some bargain bin in town. After bumbling around in the City I came up with less then a desert scoundral scouraging for gasoline by digging a hole through bitumen with his bear hands (I even looked in one of those dirty hippy stores where they smoke various tabacco and listen to Black Sabbath while eating their cornflakes).

My friend Stackboy however, sat in the comfort of his bedroom and heard my plea for a Mad Max DVD and sent me a link on LS that showed ezydvd did have a copy.

Success! After looking briefly over the website my highly trained knee-jerk buying took into place and I hastily typed in my credit card information to have the DVD to be delivered to my door for a little over $36 AUD.
Certainly this is a premium price for such an old movie; but I justified it to myself that it was a ‘rare’ movie and one I couldn’t find easily.

To my dismay, today I walked into a real ezydvd store and there was Mad Max DTS DVD sitting there shining away at me; but to the tune of $14.95 AUD! Of course I realised that somewhere out there in the vast nonthingness of space and time that there would be another cheaper Mad Max DVD for purchase; I just didn’t bargin for that it would be the same (albiet online vs offline) store!

Asking the store attendent behind the counter if this DVD was on special or not, she answered with ‘Nope – that DVD has always been that price as I recall’! Those cunning ezydvd deviates have been at it again!

I’m going to attempt to try and redeem some of my dignity by writing nasty letters to the online store and demand for some type of compensation for such blatent price differences. I wouldn’t matter so much if it were $5 difference, but over double the price is too much of a low blow!

Max would be pissed.

The Hitch Hiker’s guide to the Galaxy is an epic tale written by Douglas Adams that I think most people already know the in’s and out’s of…

At least I thought I did before I did the ringing rounds to see who was coming to the opening tonight. When I called my friend Megan she had no idea what I was talking about, and asked “What’s that? Some type of indie flick?”… hmm… “yeah, you could
say that” I replied. To be honest it’s quite strange hearing that some people have never heard of the tale before.

This turned out to be a good thing however, as whilst Megan is by know means a sci-fi buff she enjoyed the whirlwind movie for what it is; a fun tale of running about in space. Quite a slick piece of film slapped together. It feels like you’re being whisked away from one scene to the next with very thin cross-over between the two. It works well for HHGTTG as it is truely is a chaotic rollercoaster ride.
The guide itself is designed quite neatly in typical modern minimalistic state with simple pictures and verbatim narrative from the book.

There were quite a few things cut out and changed in the film version from the original ‘piece’. I refer to the book as some type of artwork as it’s widely considered as gospel and therefore can’t be interpreted in anyway. Whilst the movie is not a canonical form of the book it is still the world of HHGTTG, and therefore brings an immense sense of scale to the film.

I did hope that Marvin the depressed android would have slightly more screen time but he made his debut wondefully (definately my favourite character, I love Robots). Perhaps my only decent criticism is that the film could have been a tad shorter, just some things here and there didn’t seem to gel too well and grated a little. Still the pace was kept up and ultimately

For those of you that haven’t read the book then I do recommened it. However if you have read the book then be prepared for a fun film that won’t give you much else then a fix. This is not an epic tale, more like fast food which ultimately these days are what movies are about.

I give the movie 4/5 for those who are prepared to sit back and relax. 2/5 for those who want to see a verbatim copy of the book.

A new Tron is on the way!

The original Tron was an awesome little flick, and Tron 2.0 video game was extremely fun.

I think that was the first FPS in a long time I finished because I was enjoying the experience so much (short attention span I know).

I’m not sure if you could get the same sense of ‘wow’ the original Tron had, as back then computers were mystical devices that had unlimited potential – who knew what the hell was happening inside! Now days, they’re like a toaster and people just use them to get the job done.
Could be good, could be awful – but either way I hope they use a Byte instead of Bit!

Saw Ocean’s 12 last night with about 10 other LanSmash crew and even Sunset!
Had great seats in the Imax cinema and it turned out it was a full house.

The movie opened up with a bang, still having that 70′s touch and a little flair. The big bad dude from the Bellagio is back and finds each of the original Ocean’s 11 , telling them they have two weeks to return the money they stole with interest.

So the teams back and head oversea’s to steal enough cash to pay back, with interest. The style of the movie is very similar to Ocean’s 11 with a little more ‘unsteady cam’ and a lot more ‘artistic shots’. It binds well though, I found the cinematography was great and well polished.

In the end though, I thought they fitted too much into the one movie. Like Ocean’s 11 you won’t know all the tricks until five minutes till the curtains draw. Except this time you won’t have a freaking clue what has ‘happened’ in the movie until the ending.

It’s a twisted movie trying to grab some of that ‘here’s how we done it’ magic. It comes out as a rather dull movie. I was relieved when the movie finally finished. I bet it was a lot of fun for the actors who played in it, but maybe a little too obnoxious behaviour for the rest of us.

To the movie’s credit there are a few choice humour scenes, and even a few action ones. Though I was disapointed that the chinese ‘grease monkey’ guy never get to flip out like the last movie.

So an entertaining movie, but it’s no Oceans 11, especially the original 1960′s movie.

6.5/10

Saw Resident Evil 2 tonight, and what a blast it was. Sure, the plot was zero and the believability is nil (like killing a priority 1 employee? I just don’t get it) but no one cares about such things in these game movies.

It’s all about Alice and her super human powers this time round. Taken right from the ending of RV1 she’s busted out of the lab, surrounded by a Racoon city full of zombies and PMT to boot.

You just know she’s gonna whoop some ass. Thrown at her are typical zombies back from the grave or freshly dead, and even some uber bio weapons with big long tongues and sharp teeth. Alice joins up with Jill Valentine from the original RE to take the screen, after all without Jill there wouldn’t be any Resident Evil genre.

I’m not sure what video game RE2 was trying to capture; the first half of the movie I felt like I was being put in a very real Resident Evil Zero universe which was cool with our familiar S.T.A.R. cast back to kick some zombie butt.
Nemesis looks like a dude out of Quake, and even though he’s authentic looking to Resident Evil 3 video-game I just couldn’t help but think I was watching a deathmatch when Alice fights Nemesis. Bam! Nemesis whips out his rocket launcher as Alice is strafing around Nemesis as he’s firing his chain-gun. I was sitting there thinking, where are the zombies dude!? I felt the city was void of zombies, sure there were tons of them when you did see zombies, but it was all or nothing.

The gameplay, I mean movie flowing was fine with not much story line to hold on to. That’s okay because with lots of explosions who needs a story line!
Sound is always a killer in scary films, and the creators of this flick decided they’d go fairly standard horror sounds and pump it up by going LOUD silent LOUD silent LOUD silent through out the flick.
And oh, slow motion!? Every time zombies entered it cut to slow motion and I can’t figure why in god’s name they did it. WTF is with freaking slow motion man, it has to be the worst film effect ever especially when just thrown in for no freaking reason.

There are a few choice scenes in the movie with some adrenaline pumping butt kicking fun. Namely when Alice struts her stuff and kicks the good old ‘bad guys in black bike helmets’ (Where the hell do these guys come from anyway? They seem to be in tons of movies . The pace is fast enough to keep any A.D.D. freak entertained and give a good pump up in the process.

Ending was good, and enough meat to want to watch RE3 whenever that comes out. Not sure if this has much replay value, pretty much lots of pretty explosions is the only thing that will keep you coming back to watch this.

So all in all, an entertaining night and a fun movie to watch. Not something really for the kids though, and probably not as cool as the recent ‘Dawn of the Dead’. Though RE2 definitely has a great tech feel about it with HUD’s and computers that can hack the gibson by typing in ‘hack system’.
I give it 2.5/5!

I just wish I had seen this movie in America, man it was released September 10th! This country has a little too much lag for my liking sometimes.