Sinbad Legend Of The Seven Seas

I was a huge fan of Ray Harryhausen growing up.  My mom took me to see Valley of Gwangi at the Alban Theater and I loved it.  Later she took me to the Virginian to catch The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.  I got to see that one again with my sister and her kids when we all went to the drive-in and saw it on a double bill with Big Jake.  I remember waiting patiently to see The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts.  There were several misses before the stars aligned and I got to see them.  I loved every one of them and Sinbad became my childhood hero.

When I heard that Dreamworks was doing an animated Sinbad film, I was a little disappointed.  Sinbad needed to be made with live actors and stop motion animated monsters.  Sinbad wasn’t a cartoon with a funny dog sidekick and a woman in his crew.  Eventually I warmed to the idea that the movie might be entertaining, so I started looking for the DVD.  The problem with animated movies on used DVDs is that they are usually in pretty rough shape.  Another problem is that most copies you find used or otherwise are Full Screen.  I finally ran across a copy at one of the pawn shops, but it appeared to be a bootleg.  I collect bootlegs if they’re decently made so I purchased it and added it to the collection.  Then a few weeks ago Big Lots got the movie in for $5.  That’s more than I normally pay for a movie at Big Lots, but it was in Widescreen, so I added it to my stack.

I decided to finally give the animated Sinbad a viewing, so I popped it in the DVD player and was pleasantly surprised.  The movie was actually quite good both as an animated film and as a Sinbad movie.  Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas concerns Sinbad’s quest to retrieve the Book of Peace from Eris the goddess of chaos.  Sinbad (Brad Pitt) is accompanied by Marina (Catherine Zeta-Jones) the soon to be wife of Sinbad’s old childhood friend Proteus (Joseph Fiennes).  It seems Sinbad has been framed for the theft of the book and the only way he can be saved is for Proteus to take his place until Sinbad can rescue the book.  Eris (Michelle Pfeiffer) throws several CGI monsters in his path, but eventually he ends up in Tartarus with the book in his sights.

The difference in the 2-D animation of Sinbad and crew and the 3-D CGI animation of the monsters makes it look similar to the old Harryhausen films where the stop motion monsters looked different from the real people.  I thought it was a nice little touch.  The voice work is all fantastic in the movie as well.  Pfeiffer sounds particularly perfect as Eris. 

Supposedly the original plan was to make seven Sinbad movies with each telling of a different voyage, however, when the grosses came in on The Road to El Dorado, the studio dropped those plans and Sinbad only made the one voyage.  It’s really too bad.  I would still love to see a sequel.  Of course I would also still love to see Ray Harryhausen’s long forgotten planned follow-up to Clash of the Titans, Sinbad on Mars.  I give Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas 4 stars.

Wanted

I was late jumping on the Mark Millar fan wagon.  I have gone through a couple of periods where I read very little if any comics.  Millar came to prominence during one of those periods.  By the time I was deep into collecting again, his Wanted and Kick Ass mini-series had both completed their runs, and Wanted was on its way to the big screen.  Needless to say I had no burning passion to rush out and see Wanted because of comic book loyalty.  I did think the trailer made the film look interesting, but figured I would catch it on DVD.

When I finally purchased Wanted, I bought it on Blu-ray.  Now keep in mind I still haven’t got my HD TV, so my Blu-ray player is still sitting in its box.  That means I couldn’t watch it even after I bought it.  Of course it seemed silly to buy it on DVD after I already had the Blu-ray, so there I was.  Then one day at Wills I stumbled onto the deluxe 2 disc box set in the acrylic slipcase with the fake bullet sticking out of it.  I have a weakness for really cool DVD cases, and they sold it to me for about $6.  I couldn’t pass it up.

So now that I had Wanted on DVD, I popped the disc into the DVD player.  By this point I was a huge fan of Millar’s Kick Ass having seen the DVD and read the graphic novel.  I was also currently reading his books Nemesis, Kick Ass 2, and Superior as well as the Clint magazine.  I went in to the film with much higher expectations than I initially had when all I had to go on was a cool looking trailer.  I should point out that Millar did not write the movie.  Michael Brandt and Derek Haas wrote the screenplay.  I also understand that the movie strays pretty far from the comic series.  It doesn’t matter.  I still enjoyed it. 

Wanted concerns an accountant named Wesley (James McAvoy) that finds out he has super reflexes and abilities that were passed down from his missing father, one of the greatest assassins of all time.  Wesley is brought in to the Fraternity, a band of assassins that are tasked with killing people to maintain order in the world.  His assignment is to track down and kill the man who killed his father.  There are plenty of wonderful action sequences in the movie, and the special effects and stunt work/green screen work makes for an adrenaline pumper.  Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman co-star and they each do a fantastic job bringing their characters to life.

Now that I have seen the movie, I want to check out the original comic book.  I missed winning a set on auction on eBay a month or so back, but I’ll get them eventually.  I have patience for these things.  As for Wanted the movie.  I really enjoyed it.  I give it 3 stars.  I do think they got a little muddled near the end, and that brought my rating down a bit.

Dark Storm

I stumbled across Dark Storm at Big Lots one day in the $3 DVDs.  It had Stephen Baldwin and scenes of disaster on the cover of the DVD.  I figured for $3 it would probably be some entertaining cheese.  What I did not expect was that Baldwin would get all super-powered as a way to fight the dark matter storms that his experiment had created.

There is a standard espionage storyline dealing with military secrets and budget cuts, but the reason anyone will be tempted to pick up this DVD is by the promise of spectacular disaster footage.  There are some neat storms, but they never really take center stage.  We get lots of plot about Baldwin’s home life and his health after he gets infected by the dark matter.  We get several scenes where Baldwin walks into the face of the storm and uses his super-weather powers to stop the storm from wreaking more havoc.  Personally I wanted more havoc. 

Dark Storm isn’t so boring that I wanted to turn it off, but I felt disappointed that I had wasted the 89 minutes to watch it.  Dark Storm only rates 1 star.

Hammy’s Nutty Fun DVD

I was looking for something short and sweet when I ran across Hammy’s Nutty Fun DVD which was an exclusive bonus disc offered with Over The Hedge when it first came out on DVD.  Hammy is the squirrel voiced by Steve Carell.  He is extremely hyper.  ADHD doesn’t begin to cover Hammy.  The bonus DVD contains lots of games and interactive content aimed at little kids, but it also contains a brand new Hammy cartoon short.

The short concerns RJ the raccoon (voiced by Bruce Willis) playing a prank on Hammy with the help of a couple of young porcupines.  The trio of pranksters have set up a video camera to record what happens when they leave a boomerang out for Hammy to discover.  Needless to say, chaos ensues.  Hammy after realizing the boomerang is inedible tries to throw it away, but it keeps coming back.  As a cartoon short, it’s not horrible, but it’s not on a par with the classic Warner, Disney or MGM cartoons.  Even comparing it to more recent attempts, like the Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman shorts or the Scrat shorts from Ice Age, the Hammy short falls short.  Technically the short is perfect.  It looks beautiful and the sound is amazing.  Where it fails is heart.  The short is a string of fairly funny sight gags stitched together, but there just isn’t a truly satisfying narrative or conclusion.

I guess since the DVD was free with the purchase of Over the Hedge, I shouldn’t complain too much.  Of course I actually bought the free bonus DVD at Wills and never have picked up a copy of Over the Hedge the movie.  Perhaps with the games and stuff on the disc, kids will get more out of it.  For me, however, Hammy’s Nutty Fun DVD is a disappointment worthy of only a 4 on the Night Flight scale.  I will go back and rewatch the Scrat shorts.  I will definitely rewatch the Penguins of Madagascar short.  Hammy, I’m afraid, will sit on the DVD shelf for quite a bit longer before I have any desire to watch it again.

AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter

Despite two subpar films, I decided to go full speed ahead and finish out the Asylum DVD triple feature.  AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter is The Asylum’s take on Aliens Vs. Predator.  The alien here is a whacked out spider creature.  The hunter looks like a robot ninja with a metal coolie hat.  It’s CGI vs. a left over Power Rangers costume.

AVH features former Greatest American Hero, William Katt as Lee Cussler, a small town newspaper editor/publisher/writer who dreams of being an acclaimed novelist.  He and the sheriff go out to check on a disturbance and find a crashed alien spaceship.  The alien did not arrive alone, however.  Another being is hunting the alien, but willing to kill anything else that gets in its way as well.

AVH is just as silly as I Am Omega and Monster, and the logic seems to have escaped this film as well.  People seem to travel from place to place almost magically at times.  At other times it seems to take hours to make it across the backyard.  One character spends the whole movie worrying about his wife and wanting to get back to her, but then allows himself to get separated from the group and lost inside the alien ship.  The movie is truly baffling in its complete lack of logic and common sense.

I will say that AVH was probably the most fun of the three films, but I still couldn’t get over the stupidity of it.  The alien looks neat.  The hunter not so much.  The movie gets 1 3/4 stars from me.

Mega Piranha

When you see a DVD with a title like Mega Piranha, with a cover depicting a giant toothy fish biting a battleship in half, and with the Syfy channel and The Asylum’s names featured prominently on the back of the case, you have only two possible options.  You can shake your head and walk away, or you can plop down $5 plus tax and buy it at your neighborhood Wal-Mart.  Guess which path I chose?

Having been dazzled by Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus this spring, and catching the first few minutes of Sharktopus this summer, I had no choice but to check out Mega Piranha.  To be fair, I like piranhas.  I loved the Roger Corman and Joe Dante classic from 1978.  I have never been able to hear the classic line, “Look, up in the sky.  It’s Superman!” without thinking of Heather Menzies (well actually her body double) since seeing the film.  I liked the piranha that chewed off Aquaman’s hand back in the Peter David scripted comic of the 1990’s.  I even liked the piranha sequence in the grindhouse classic Make Them Die Slowly.  I even had a friend with a pet piranha.  He used to feed it guppies until one of the guppies got to be its buddy and the piranha refused to eat it.  Let’s face it.  That was a bad-ass guppy.

So I missed Piranha 3-D this summer.  I wasn’t going to miss out on the cheesyness of Mega Piranha.  I popped the disc in and sat back.  It didn’t take long for the fish to chow down on their first meal of horny swimming couple.  The couple get eaten and the story quickly forgets about them.  Then a boat gets taken out by the fish and the U.S. government represented by Greg Brady (Barry Williams as Bob Grady) sends James Bond wannabe Jason Fitch (Paul Logan) down to find out what exactly happened.  For a boat to go down so quickly had to be the work of terrorists, or actually, really hungry fish.

So Jason Fitch goes to this South American country where he meets up with uber-brainy fish scientist Sarah Monroe (played by ex-teen pop star Tiffany who has apparently decided to rejoin her battle against the other ex-teen pop star and star of Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus, Debbie Gibson.  This time, forget concerts in the mall.  She’s  trying to beat her at playing the brainy scientist in a movie with giant sea creatures).  Let me just add that this is one contest in which I can’t choose a side.  Tiffany posed in Playboy, but Debbie Gibson had that great Mojo Nixon song written about her.

Back to the piranha, these fish are no ordinary piranha.  These have been genetically altered to grow larger, but they won’t stop growing and they keep getting more aggressive.  First off, why were these scientists even trying to grow larger piranha?  They explain that they were experimenting on fish to help increase the food supply for struggling and hungry villages, but who eats piranha?  And secondly, once the piranha start to get too aggressive and start growing to the size of dinner plates, wouldn’t you think the smart move would be to exterminate all of them instead of letting them escape? 

By the time the movie is over, the piranha have grown larger than a Buick.  They are leaping out of the water and crashing into office buildings, eating beachgoers and doing all sort of CGI tricks.  The military has tried shooting them, bombing them, and are set to nuke them.  However, now that the fish are off the coast of Florida, no one really wants to drop a nuclear bomb on them.  The scientists quickly come up with another solution.  They will make the piranha fight each other.  If one of the big piranha can be made to bleed, it will start a feeding frenzy that will kill them all.  Anyone else have a problem swallowing that train of logic?  Oh well if I wanted a movie that made sense, I wouldn’t have chosen one titled Mega Piranha with a big fish eating a battleship on the front cover. 

Mega Piranha was about 90 minutes of cheesey fun if you can over look the huge logic holes.  I enjoyed myself even if I didn’t buy the ending for a second.  Mega Piranha gets 2 stars.

Masters Of Horror: We All Scream For Ice Cream

I was looking for some short DVDs and I figured since it is getting close to Halloween, horror movies would be a good thing to check out.  We All Scream For Ice Cream was another horror short from the second season of Masters of Horror.  This one was directed by Tom Holland who did Child’s Play and Fright Night.  I remember really enjoying Fright Night when I first saw it at the Keith Albee theater, so I had hopes for this one and for the most part it didn’t disappoint. 

The plot involves a childhood prank gone horribly wrong that resulted in the death of ice cream selling clown Buster played by William Forsythe.  When one of the kids moves back into town after growing up and having a family of his own, Buster shows back up and starts killing the ones responsible for his death using their own kids and a voodoo doll-like ice cream treat.  When the kids bite into the ice cream which is shaped into a human likeness, their parent melts into a big puddle of runny melted ice cream.

I enjoyed We All Scream For Ice Cream, and like Valerie on the Stairs it has some decent making of featurettes.  One deals with the making of the film while the other deals with how the make up effects were pulled off.  Both are worth watching.

I give We All Scream For Ice Cream a 9 on the Night Flight scale as well.  I remember reading that they wanted to concentrate more on monsters for season 2 of Masters of Horror, and with the demon in Valerie on the Stairs and the killer ice cream clown in We All Scream For Ice Cream, they have a couple of decent ones.  Both of these episodes were much better than some of the season one episodes.  I’m sorry they never produced a season 3 although Garris did work on Fear Itself for NBC and a Masters of Science Fiction series that I missed.

The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters

I discovered Space Invaders during the early part of high school.  I liked it a lot.  Later on I found this new game called Pac-Man, and it hooked me as well.  I believe it was my junior year of high school that Mom bought me a Sears video game system.  It was an Atari 2600, but Sears sold it under their name instead of Atari.  She got me Space Invaders for it and she would pick up other games for me as well.  One of the last games I got for the Atari style system was Donkey Kong.  It was one of the last because I took some money I had gotten from working at the library and bought a ColecoVision and an Atari adapter.  Coleco had two big claims to fame.  Their graphics were much better, and their system was made to adapt.  You could plug in the Atari adapter and play all the Atari 2600 games.  You could also purchase an adapter that turned the ColecoVision into a computer called the Adam.  Their marketing plan was for Adam to take a bite out of Apple.  It failed and Coleco disappeared shortly after I graduated.  I ended up packing away my ColecoVision and didn’t mess with it again until my son was born and had gotten old enough that he wanted to play video games.  He seemed satisfied with Dad’s old machine until he saw the Sega Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog.  From that point on the ColecoVision and the old school games were relegated to the back of the toy room.  He wanted the newest and the fastest game systems with the animated CGI graphics.  I found I no longer had the hand eye coordination to play the games and moved on to Civilization 3 on the computer or old school pinball machines when I could find them.  Of course my wife can still kick my butt at pinball, so I keep to the safety of Civ3.

The King of Kong is a documentary about a couple of guys that never let go of old school classic arcade games.  Billy Mitchell was the king of arcade games.  He boasted the high score on several different games with records that lasted for years.  Steve Wiebe decided that he needed something to cheer himself up, to make him feel good about himself, and decided to try and break Mitchell’s record score on Donkey Kong.  The film chronicles Wiebe’s attempt to break the record and have his score recognized as legitimate.  Mitchell throughout the later half of the film seems to only be concerned with retaining his title and keeping Wiebe from being seen as a true champion.  To say that Mitchell’s behavior in the film comes across as “douchey” is probably an insult to douches.  Mitchell is part of the team that evaluates Wiebe’s first world record score sent in via video tape.  A pair of guys from Twin Galaxies show up at Wiebe’s house to take apart his Donkey Kong machine and evaluate whether the machine has been tampered with in order for Wiebe to break the record.  They declare that there was a gummy substance on the board and that Wiebe’s score was invalid.  When Wiebe shows up at Funspot for a sanctioned video game tournament, friends of Mitchell’s continuously try to distract Wiebe or psyche him out.  They continuously relay his score to Mitchell by phone.  Once Wiebe breaks the record, Mitchell sends up a tape of himself achieving an even higher score so that Wiebe’s win is immediately knocked off.  Mitchell refuses to face Wiebe in live competition and he even refuses to speak to him when he shows up on the last day of another tournament in Mitchell’s home town.  When he finds out that Wiebe is eating at a restaurant Mitchell owns, he cancels his plans to have dinner with several other gamers and friends that had shown up. 

I know that film editing can be used to make anyone seem to be a bigger jerk than they are and it can make someone appear to be a saint that is a royal ass, but even later public forum events seem to bear out that Wiebe really is a nice guy with true integrity and Mitchell is… well, he let’s his actions and his friends speak for him.  It reminds me of the contestant on Big Brother that used a fellow house guests toothbrush to clean the toilets.  The behavior was reprehensible, but her mother stood behind her and thought it was fine that she did it.  Mitchell’s friends don’t see a problem with his treating Wiebe like crap, but most human beings would feel his behavior was… well, douchey.

King of King got a lot of very positive reviews when it was released, and it is an interesting film.  I don’t know that I found it as funny as some reviewers did, and I can’t say that I’m anxious to watch it again either.  I’m not saying that I won’t watch it again, but it’s not high on that list.  Perhaps the reason for my feelings are that I have dealt with one compulsive gamer (a friend that stayed with us for about 6 months and would wake my wife and I out of a sound sleep as he screamed into a microphone at another gamer playing some espionage mission computer game) and my son who seems to view gaming and gamers as almost a different religious sect.  I’ll mention something about a game system and he will tell me how serious gamers don’t like that machine because it doesn’t hold up well to long hours of extended play.  I feel like I just offered the local rabbi a ham sandwich.

I’ll give The King of Kong 2 1/2 stars.  It may deserve more, but I’ve dealt with people like the player that claims he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t do drugs, so playing video games is a healthy vice.  I love my DVDs, but I don’t spend my entire life watching them.  I am finishing up a 4 day break from work and I have watched 3 DVDs.  I’ll watch another one later tonight.  I have also went for a drive in the country with my wife, taken my wife out to a couple of dinners, a lunch, and a breakfast, and bagged, boarded and organized some comic books.  Okay, full disclosure, I have also purchased some DVDs.  I now have all 5 seasons of Quantum Leap.  Oh and I also didn’t smoke or do drugs, but I did have one bottle of Sam Adams blackberry beer.

The Penguins Whacked Out Holiday DVD

After watching The Departed and The Beyond, I wanted something light and short.  I had planned to hold off on Christmas themed DVDs until at least November, but I decided that I would make an exception for the penguins of Madagascar.  I have a confession to make.  I actually enjoy the Nick TV show The Penguins of Madagascar.  I got hooked by watching the DVD, and now when I’m flipping channels and it’s on, I have to stop and watch.  So I figured I would ignore the seasonal aspect and concentrate on the penguin aspect instead.

The Penguins Whacked Out Holiday DVD was a bonus DVD when people purchased Madagascar on DVD at Wal-Mart.  I didn’t purchase it that way.  I bought it used at Wills or KV.  The DVD contains a new Penguins short that finds the penguins preparing to celebrate Christmas.  Skipper has planned every detail out.  Private on the other hand notices Ted the polar bear sitting sad and alone and doesn’t want him to spend Christmas eve that way.  He decides to wander out and buy Ted a present.  Unfortunately for Private, a lady out shopping mistakes him for a toy and buys him for her doggie, Mr. Chew, as a Christmas present.  The other penguins notice Private is missing and track him down.  The tracking sequence has some wonderful bits in it including the three penguins “blending in” by following a group of nuns.  It’s an obvious joke, but delivered very deftly.

Needless to say the penguins sneak into the lady’s apartment and rescue their comrade, but not before their rescue effort tears the apartment to shreds.  For a bonus short, the sound is remarkable especially in this section.  When one of the penguins swallows an entire dish of peppermint candies and then spits them back out like machine gun bullets, the sound, even on my simple two channel television is amazing.  I can’t wait to see (or hear) it in 5.1 stereo.  Guess what electronics item just moved up my wish list.

The DVD also contains a featurette on the making of the short as well as commentaries, Christmas songs, and other playful features.  This is not the best Christmas themed DVD that I’ve ever owned, but it is a delight never the less.  I give The Penguins Whacked Out Holiday DVD a 9 on the Night Flight scale.  The squeaker gag alone probably earned it that spot.

Death Race

The original Death Race 2000 was a favorite of mine growing up.  The movie and a similarly themed arcade game were based on the idea of running over people for points.  I saw the original at the Valley Drive-In, but I don’t recall which film it was on the double bill with that night.  I think it may have been Race With The Devil, but I’m not certain.  I saw the film again several years later when it played the midnight movies at the theaters at which I was working.  The movie was campy, violent fun with high-speed car chases and a gratuitous nude sauna scene.  It was classic Roger Corman.

I started hearing about the remake back in late 2007 or early 2008.  I was intrigued, but I wasn’t desperate to go see it.  The plot had been heavily changed and the initial reviews were not kind.  No longer was there a point system for running over people, and the drivers were now all prisoners hoping to win their release by winning 5 races.  The film opens with a showdown between two drivers, Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe.  Frank’s voice is dubbed in by David Carradine, the original film’s Frankenstein, which I felt was a nice touch.  In place of the original’s Sylvester Stallone, Death Race features Tyrese Gibson as Machine Gun Joe.  The duel ends in a fiery crash that kills Frankenstein.  But Frankenstein is too popular a driver to just let him die, and since he always wore his mask, all they need to carry on the legend is a new driver.  That’s where Jason Statham comes in.  He’s Jensen Ames, an ex-driver who has been working at a steel mill and trying to feed his wife and daughter.  Jensen soon finds his wife killed and he is swiftly framed and imprisoned for the crime.  He begins to think these events might not just be a coincidence considering the warden’s (Joan Allen) desire to use him as the new Frankenstein.

Despite not being as campy as the first film, Death Race is not a horrible movie.  It is more a gritty action film, and Statham knows a thing or two about delivering entertaining action heroes with both the Transporter and Crank series.  Ian McShane is along for the fun as Coach, part of Frankenstein’s pit crew.  All the actors appear to be having fun, and I had fun watching the film as well.  No one is going to confuse Death Race with David Mamet, but the film in no way deserved the lambasting it received.  It has to be viewed as the type of film it is, which is a high-octane escapist action film with big explosions.  I find that I usually enjoy Paul W.S. Anderson’s films because I know what he is going to deliver, and he knows what his audience wants.

The stunts in this film are throwbacks to the old school drive-in car chase flicks of the 70s like Eat My Dust and Grand Theft Auto.  You know better than to get too attached to any car because it is most likely going to get smashed to hell by the end of the picture.  Anderson opted to do the stunts the old-fashioned way rather than using CGI.  Yes, much of it was done against a green screen, but no insurance firm is going to issue a safety bond to let you stick your star in the middle of all the mayhem that Death race unleashes.

I enjoyed Death Race, but I will admit that much of it was predictable.  There was no way that the warden was going to let her most popular driver win his 5th race and his freedom.  His presence means too much to ratings and licensing.  Fortunately the movie doesn’t make Jensen so stupid that he doesn’t figure this out.  There is also a scene where a new vehicle is released on the racers by the warden to help spice up the race.  The Dreadnought takes out all but the two arch rivals, which seems to make poor business sense since this eliminates many other rivalries as well as the chance that one of them could defeat Frankenstein.  Oh well, turn off your brain and enjoy the carnage.  As the boys from SCTV might say, them cars “blow up real good”.

I give Death Race a surprising 3 stars for pure mindless entertainment value and for Joan Allen taking on the evil warden role with amazing zeal.  The only thing she was missing to compete with the old school grindhouse prison wardens was a scene where she tortures one of the prisoners in the showers.  I guess Dylan Thorne’s place is still safe.