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Movie Release Awareness for April '08
Posts
See, this pisses me off aswell. Back in the day, slasher flicks were fun. Nowadays they're like watching a Teletubbies movie, only less scary and violent.
I don't know, Halloween is really damn tame as far as T&A and gore.
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I'll be seeing either that or Forgetting Sarah Marshall this weekend.
Also I just noticed Preachers sig/av combo. Awesome.
It has some similarities with LA Confidential, but its a bit more streamlined and more brutal.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Slasher flicks in general seem to have lost their sense of fun.
I'm not a huge Stones fan (I'm more of a hardcore Beatles fan... and these two are often mutually-exclusive...) but I like a lot of their material. I knew at least half the songs well enough to sing along.
I'd say about half of the performances were really good, and half were sub-par. Jagger doesn't have the voice he once had, so he kind of either screams or croaks his way through some songs that don't deserve it. For instance, "As Tears Go By", a soft ballad they hadn't done live in a really long time (if ever?) was made worse because he couldn't sustain any notes, and couldn't really sing softly at all.
The first few songs, while solid performance-wise, seem to lack a certain something. Then they do Some Girls, and that's when, for me, it all gelled. That one was a highlight for me.
My favorite Stones track, "Sympathy for the Devil", is in there, but I didn't care for this version. The music was interesting and different, but Jagger just messed it up in my opinion.
Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood both play really well, and sound great together. Keith Richards even sings a couple of songs; while he's clearly not the singer Jagger once was (well, still is, somewhat) he still succeeds in sounding good.
Charlie Watts also plays well, but apart from a funny bit after one of the first songs (you'll know when you see it) he's just solidly in the background for most of the show. I have nothing bad to say about his performance. Solid.
The guests were fun. I don't really like Christina Aguilera, but her performance melded well enough into the show, and it was good enough that I'm not complaining. I love the White Stripes, and Jack White's cameo was fun. The funniest part was that, to my ears, White sounded more like 60's / early 70's Jagger than Jagger himself sounded. In any case, their voices melded well together. Buddy Guy was also fun, even if he looked a little too enthusiastic.
As for the cinematography: contrary to many other concert films, you get very few group shots or shots of the entire stage. Instead, you get tons of close-ups, which means that, on the IMAX screen, Jagger's and Richards' faces are sometimes more than 15 feet tall. In very high definition. These guys are OLD.
Since the cameras tend to follow whoever's playing the more interesting bit at any particular time, the sound mix follows that instrument, which means that some instruments keep moving around the sound field. If this sound mix were mixed down to stereo and released on CD, it would be really bad and very distracting. In this case, with the IMAX sound system, it helps you to link the image with the sound even more. Still, sometimes the focused instrument is mixed too prominently and ends up being grating.
Overall, I had fun, the performances were generally good, and the film was worth seeing. Oh, and the bits of archive footage inserted between some of the songs are pretty funny.
One last thing: when you see audience shots, look for a yellow baseball cap. See if you recognize the famous actor who's wearing it.
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Whenever there was no one talking and people hitting each other? It was good.
Apart from that? Not so much.
What we need to get made is a monster movie that breaks the big cliché and takes monster design in a whole new direction. Make the monsters small, maybe Deinonychus size or slightly larger, give them numbers, and make them fucking fast. I'm not talking just Alien fast, I'm saying they should be so fast that they face the same problem as the tiger beetle: an inability to see much of anything at top speed! They'd be bouncing all over the place!
It's Never Ending Story in China with better action.
The 10 minute fight between Jackie and Jet in the temple was epic.
Yeah, I was afraid they wouldn't actually show us a fight (Fuck you War) but it was a great fight.
The movie was entertaining, worth the 7 bucks I paid for.
I've heard good, Rotten Tomatoes doesn't agree.
That usually means good in my book.