Tag: movies

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Found this ad for Coraline in this morning’s newspaper:

Coraline: The Other Mother's Chocolate-Covered Beetles!

It’s kind of hard to read, between the pixel size and the printing, but the funniest bit is the blue sidebar on “Finding the Tastiest Beetles:”

Beetles are delicious creatures that live close to home. If you use beetles from your backyard or basement, check them for shiny and fully developed thoraxes (beetles still in larval stage will be chewy and bland). The most mouth-watering kind, with translucent shells and large veins, can be found in the forests of Zanzibar.

It’s so perfectly Martha Stewart for the Macabre.

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We watched Star Wars last night, the DVD version. It’s been about four years since I last saw it. When Revenge of the Sith came out, we came home and immediately re-watched A New Hope, then caught the next two films over the following week or so.

It’s been long enough that memories have blurred, and some (but not all) of the revisions to the film don’t seem jarring anymore. (I had the same experience last month with the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, especially with the first two films.) Most of the scenes where they just wanted to do more dynamic shots, like the Millennium Falcon blasting its way out of Mos Eisley, not only blend in just fine, but really are improvements. As for Mos Eisley itself, I’m of two minds: On one hand, I liked the stark barrenness of the tiny frontier town presented in the original version. But at the same time, it does make more sense for a spaceport to be a bustling metropolis.

All the scenes with Obi-Wan, Luke, and the droids on Tattooine take on added significance after having seen just how Ben, Anakin, and Padme were connected to each other and to the droids a generation earlier.

As for additional scenes: I still think the Jabba the Hutt scene adds absolutely nothing to the film, and that if they really wanted to add it, they should have rewritten Jabba’s dialogue (an easy task) and/or edited it into something that wouldn’t simply re-hash the conversation with Greedo. The brief moment with Luke meeting Biggs, however, adds quite a bit.

At one point early in the film, I turned to Katie and said something to the effect of, “The next time they re-release this in theaters, I am absolutely going.” But the more I think about it, I’m not sure I’d want to, at least not immediately. The 1997 re-releases were great, and I saw each movie several times, but the audiences — especially the opening night audiences — were full of the hardcore fans who cheered whenever a character first appeared on screen. They were reacting to things outside the movie itself, actually distracting from it rather than enhancing the shared experience. Maybe waiting a week would cut down on that sort of thing.

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  • Can we get a moratorium on covers of “Last Christmas?” Actually, can we get one on the original too?
  • Funny how easy it is to spot a cover by Darryl K. Sweet. It makes me want to mash up Xanth, WOT, and every other fantasy series he’s covered
  • I can’t see giving someone Countdown to Final Crisis as a gift. Maybe a gag gift?
  • Someone EXPANDED The Red Balloon into a full-length film????
  • Nothing says Christmas like 50s xmas song played on a mall stage by a guy with a ukulele. Now he’s singing Over the Rainbow. ????

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Several months ago I was browsing the local Blockbuster video store for a movie to rent, and I stumbled across one that made me laugh out loud. It’s the title on the right, and you’ll see why if you compare it to the rather more well-known title on the left.

I mean, seriously, look how carefully they tried to match the source material.

  • The title, Alien vs. Hunter, as close as possible to the original Alien vs. Predator, carefully using only descriptive names.
  • The logo design, with the TLA (three-letter acronym) in large type and the full title in small type below it.
  • The layout on the packaging, with close-ups of the two creature’s heads, one on each side.
  • The monochrome design, using green instead of blue.
  • The creature designs, one with an elongated head and nasty-looking teeth, the other wearing a mask.
  • Even the font on the full title is similar.

I have to admit I haven’t watched either of them, so I have no idea whether this attention to detail pervades the actual movie. But I can seriously imagine someone not paying close attention picking up the wrong movie by mistake.

On the same trip, I found another video called Transmorphers — by the same production company, it turns out (big surprise) — but they didn’t try nearly as hard to match the packaging to anything Transformers-related. Still, for a good laugh, look through the titles of movies by The Asylum — I think Snakes on a Train may actually trump both titles.