Is Prometheus a Game-Changer?

Ridley Scott's Prometheus has already been lauded as the savior of this summer's batch of movies and the savior of an entire movie genre. After seeing it myself last Saturday, I was confused.

I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was intriguing, well-filmed, and thought-provoking. But I also came out of it a bit.... befuddled. No, it wasn't the plot's various twists and turns that had me scratching my head. It was the insistence of setting the table for a sequel through various plot cliff hangers and an ambiguous ending that had me down right mystified.

Top Ten... Ish Movies of 2011

Really personal opinion and there were still a few a movies I wanted to see (My Week with Marylin, Albert Nobbs, A Separation, just to name a few) but I did see around 30 movies that came out this year and I think that's pretty good.

11. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes - I was intrigued. Serkis deserves some sort of honorary Oscar or something. The work he does is borderline brilliance. Franco was bland at times, but I didn't think it hurt the film. And the story line was really accessible to current day with the Alzheimer's storyline. I know that science fiction isn't a very artsy genre but the work done in this movie deserves recognition. While the main actor was a CGI ape, I never lost interest. That has to mean some sort of good work was done, right?

2012 Oscars Picks and Predictions

Greetings one and all. I've been to the movies more this past year than in any other year in my life. Why? I'm not entirely sure. I've always loved movies but strongly disliked going to the movies. Strange? Yes. Anyways, basically I've seen my fair share of films from the past year and have enjoyed many good films. However, I didn't LOVE anything. I thought the year was full of some very solid films but nothing really blew my mind. I wanted to preface my analysis and picks with that thought because I definitely don't have a "cause" that I am rooting for this year (like I did with Inception last year).

Without further ado, picks and commentary on the categories I can actual speak about without embarrassing myself.

A Cinematic Top Ten... Er Seven: Christopher Nolan Edition

I have found in my cinematic travels through Middle Earth, Oz, and beyond that I thoroughly enjoy movies with ambiguity amongst the protagonists and antagonists. At times, this confusion bleeds into moral ambiguity. I prefer the former over the ladder, because discussions of morality get too intense and off the point. I like when traditional "bad" or "good" characters are not necessarily as they seem.

The example I most often use to illustrate this point is one of my top, if not favorite, characters in film history: Hannibal Lector. He is obviously a deplorable human being full of violence, cannibalism, and severe psychological problems. But in the Silence of the Lambs, he acts as a guide for the protagonist, though with heavy pseudo-sexual overtones that not only confuses Clarice Starling, but the audience as well. While he is disgusting and horrific, he is still an essential piece in finding and killing Buffalo Bill, a serial killer on the loose. Hence the protagonist/antagonist line blur.

A Quick Analysis of the Harry Potter Movie Series

Currently, I am waiting around to go see the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise. I have always been of the opinion that the books are way better but the movies were always a nice way to relive the glory that was the books. And the movies become increasingly more important in the summer of 2007, when there were no more books to be read.

But I'm going to be brutally honest and say that, as far as movies go, the Harry Potter movies aren't all that good. Many may think this is blasphemy but lets look at a few points.

A Cinematic Top Ten: CROPCIMS Edition

Hopefully, this will be a continuing type of post which considers an interesting (sometimes unusual, sometimes pretty basic) top ten list concerning films, actor/actresses, directors, basically anything within the realm of cinema. I hope to mix it up so it's not always the same thing.

For the first rendition of this post series, I want to focus on an idea I came up with after hearing Baby Got Back while flipping through the radio. What the heck? That is what you are probably thinking right now. How does Baby Got Back relate to movies? Well, name one other song Sir-Mix-A-Lot has done. Waiting..... Still waiting.... Wait, you can't name another song he's done? Neither can I. Surprise, surprise. He's the epitome of the one-hit wonder in music. Now, this cinema theme relates to that. One hit wonder actors don't really exist because you can be really bad and still get jobs in Hollywood or an Indie film or on stage or anywhere really.

The Levels of Movies

If I asked you, out of the movies that you have seen in your lifetime, what percentage you would give at least a 6 on a 1-10 scale (of likability), what do you think that number would be? A really stuck up "movie connoisseur" kind of person might say 15%, an average person might think around 75%. Myself, well I try to limit the number of movies I watch that I think look bad from the beginning so I would say my number is around 63.5%. But that's just liking a movie, which isn't too hard to do. It doesn't necessarily imply you'll buy it on Blue-Ray, watch it over and over, and be the person every looks to to know the answer to every trivia question about Big (or whatever the movie may be).

What about if we upped the stakes and said it had to rate 6.75-8.25? Obviously the percentage would shrink significantly (for me around 25% but only because I filter the movies I watch vigorously). Let's say that at about a 6.75, a movie becomes a "good" movie. Not a "great" one like Apocalypse Now or an "ok" one like X-Men (original, haven't seen the new one yet), but a "good" one like Old School. We can already see that a 1-10 scale is probably over simplifying our movie assessment and designating a single number to a movie is foolish, uneducated, and down right insulting to everyone involved in that movie (unless we're talking about Faster, in which case it can be simplified to a number, 0).

Super 8 and a Quick Review of the Science Fiction Genre

The first time I saw the teaser trailer for Super 8, I was intrigued. The first time I saw a full-length trailer, I was downright giddy. With whiz-kid J.J. Abrams directing and legend Steven Spielberg producing, the planets appeared to be aligning for a hidden gem to appear out of the absolute crap-fest that is this summer's lineup of movies Hollywood decided to release. Though I haven't seen the movie yet (it's released on Friday) Super 8 seems as though it has a retro Sci-Fi feel, slightly reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET: The Extra Terrestrial, and Back to the Future.

While I'm extremely excited for the release of Super 8, I wanted to take time to reflect on the genre that has captured the imagination of the world through film time and time again. The genre that can take us to places we only dreamed of going. The genre where aliens are commonplace, computers have minds of their own, and some of humanity's most important questions are asked. The genre which really captures all of the greatest aspects of film: the genre of science fiction.

And Now For Something Completely Different

My co-editor and I love sports, which should be fairly obvious due to the fact that we keep churning out lengthy posts and podcasts even though there are five people who read: us, our mothers, and the occasional sucker who somehow accidentally comes across this blog in a Google search entry like "Justin Beiber" or "NFL Draft". But another thing I really enjoy and am fascinated with is movies (or as a friend of mine would say "films"). Bleedblue is into movies but not quite to the extent that I am. However, we have still discussed at great length movies we like, why we like them, and argued about what qualifies as "good" and "bad". Anyways, what I am trying to say is that there will be times when I may make a post or two about movies. This is a disclaimer to our regular readers. If you don't care about movies, first of all SHAME ON YOU. (Kidding, but not really.) Secondly, you can just skip over my fairly superficial analysis of film if you so choose. It's nothing special but I know there are a lot of people out there who like movies and enjoy a nice discussion. So I'm just to giving you a heads up and introducing the first ever completely movie-related post on DRD!