Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

How’d we get so lucky? Vern is back again with a review of EIGHT BELOW!!!

Friday, February 10th, 2006

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here about to head off to bed so I can be chipper for tomorrow’s flicks at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, but I noticed another review by our own outlaw Vern trickle in via this fancy electronic mail box. I couldn’t help but immediately read it… laugh out load at least a dozen times and then post it up for the rest of you folks to enjoy. Without any further ado, here is the man himself!

Howdy fellas,

I’m only watching number movies this week. You saw my review of 2001 MANIACS. I’m planning on seeing THE THREE BURIALS OF (whoever it is, Miguel Arteta or somebody) but there was this screening of Walt Disney’s new picture EIGHT BELOW INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY, so I went to that first. This is a dog movie, and usually a movie like this would have a trailer set to either

a) “Bad to the Bone” or
b) “Atomic Dog”

and then the poster would say, “Every Dog Has His Snow Day” or some stupid shit like that, and the dogs would be wearing sunglasses and possibly giving a thumbs up, if dogs had thumbs. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in AICN, Family, Reviews | 3 Comments »

Roll Bounce

Thursday, November 17th, 2005

This is one of those movies that on the cover should have a big quote from Roger Ebert or somebody saying “Seriously, not that bad!” I’m not gonna try to convince anybody that ROLL BOUNCE is great but it is actually very well made and watchable for a movie about kids rollerskating. You can face that fact or not, I don’t give a fuck, but there it is. ROLL BOUNCE is kind of good.

Now if you are new around here you may not be familiar with me, I should probaly specify that I am not some pedophile or somebody, and personally I have never reviewed a movie about kids rollerskating before. ROLLERBALL was strictly adults and so was DERBY. I’m a first timer here for this type of material is what I’m saying, and don’t worry I won’t make it a habit. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Family, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Robots

Friday, March 11th, 2005

What this one is about is robots. It’s a movie about robots, so they called it ROBOTS. You see how that works? Movie is about robots = title is ROBOTS. That is the level of imagination and innovation we are working with here in America circa 2005. Ain’t life beautiful.

Before I go on, I gotta warn everybody, just because a movie is in IMAX doesn’t mean it’s in 3-D. I saw GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS and POLAR EXPRESS there and the 3-D made those worthwhile, and I swear on THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: RENAILED that is the one and only reason why I went to see this ROBOTS. Now obviously I would prefer if a 3-D movie was a horror or a part 3, something where either a shark or an eyeball is gonna pop out of the screen at some time. But I have accepted that now 3-D is for kids movies only so a man’s gotta settle. I didn’t mind payin my ten bucks but then when I walked into the theater and there was no goggles, I realized that I was finally suffering the consequences of my ignorance about Imax. I knew this day would come. ROBOTS is not in 3-D. Sheeit. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Family, Reviews | 4 Comments »

The Next Karate Kid

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005

Two time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, hailing from Bellingham, Washington, stars in the explosive finale to the Karate Kid quadilogy. This one was Swank’s first starring role and came out in 1994, when movies were just as crappy but not quite as funny as their ’80s counterparts. The director is Christopher Cain, father of Dean Cain and director of The Amazing Panda Adventure.

Swank plays Julie, a pouty, sullen teenage girl who lives unhappily with her grandma after the death of her parents. Anything anybody says to Julie, she takes offense and throws a hissy fit. You know how old people are, they try to be nice but they don’t really understand where your teenage mind is coming from, so they offer you some lemon bars or something and you’re like “GOD DAMN IT WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?!” and run out of the room crying. So then Julie goes in and stabs grandma to death in her sleep, while jerkin off. Or was that a different movie? I can’t remember. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Family, Martial Arts, Reviews | No Comments »

Finding Neverland

Saturday, January 29th, 2005

FINDING NEVERLAND is one of those movies that feels kind of like a remedial imagination class they force you to take on Saturdays because you fucked up. You may not know this, it tells you, but it turns out imagination is important and magical and all that kind of crap. Johnny Depp plays J.M. Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan. The movie starts the same as ED WOOD, he’s the writer of some flop play that the audience already hates literally about 2 seconds after it starts. It’s the first line of dialogue and a dude is already asleep.

So J.M. needs to imagination up his life somehow to inspire him to write Peter Pan, and luckily he runs into a widow (Kate Winslet) and her spunky kids (a bunch of kids) while he’s walking his novelty oversized dog. Next thing you know he’s hanging out with the kids, dressing up in silly costumes and imagining stuff with them. They’re still pretty bummed about their dad dying so he has to teach them to have a childlike sense of wonder, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews | 1 Comment »

The Polar Express

Wednesday, November 10th, 2004

THE POLAR EXPRESS 3-D IMAX SPOOKARAMA

A few years back I wrote a piece called FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (working title: BORING: THE MOVIE). It is available on this web sight as well as in my collection 5 On the Outside. In the piece I talked about the wrongness of computer animators trying to create photorealistic human characters. I argued that no matter how real they looked they would never look completely real, because they wouldn’t be able to walk quite right, or have a human soul, etc. I guess I didn’t mention it in that piece but there was a scene in the movie where two realistic human characters kissed, and it was like watching mannequins go at it.

(For your information, there’s a porno called REAL DOLL: THE MOVIE where pornographic professionals like Ron Jeremy stick their penises inside ten thousand dollar silicone sex dummies. That movie is disturbing in a different way from FINAL FANTASY because the dolls are not moving and their faces don’t look alive. So it looks like these guys are having their way with dead bodies. But picture two of the dolls going at it with no animate objects involved. Then picture a rated PG version of that. That’s the scene in FINAL FANTASY, I guess. It’s not natural.) (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | No Comments »

Garfield

Sunday, November 7th, 2004

the asshole cat

Man, what a fuckin week. On Tuesday Bush got either “re”-elected or re-”elected,” and I’ve been stumbling around muttering to myself ever since. Stabbing at my porridge with my spoon, staring blankly out the window, mouthing the word “why” to myself over and over again. One thing I know, there are some things in this world that just cannot be explained. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes people vote for a president that couldn’t be trusted to put on his own pants. And sometimes a guy gets the blue state blues, walks around town in a daze, suddenly finds himself at home having rented the movie “GARFIELD,” not really knowing how or why. I know for a fact this happens because you’re lookin at the guy who it happened to. Me. It was weird.

What this is is a movie based on the popular comic strip from the 1980s called Garfield. Like all comic strips it is not funny and about a talking animal. This is a cat called Garfield who is orange. The thing about Garfield, he is real fucking fat, he eats lasagna. That’s funny because real cats eat cat food, but this one also eats lasagna. Also he says “I hate Mondays” at the beginning although this does not turn out to be important. But it is that sort of detailed characterization that makes him, you know, Garfield. I guess. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Family, Reviews | 12 Comments »

Whale Rider

Friday, June 20th, 2003

Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…

A coming of age story about a young girl hardly seems like Vern’s cup of tea, but I’ve met this guy. He may be an ex-con, hardened by his years on the road and in the pen, but he’s got a soft spot a mile wide. It’s one of the things that makes him such a good read:

Boys,

Well SIFF is over but that doesn’t mean I can’t somehow end up seeing WHALE RIDER, which won best film and best director at the festival. In fact, I DID end up seeing WHALE RIDER, which won best film and best director at the festival. Also I wrote a review of it. Or at least I am writing a review of it right now. If all goes as planned you will keep reading from here and it will be a review.

First of all let me say that this is not about some guy riding around on a whale. I thought maybe it would be some dude who travels from port city to port city helping people, solving problems, delivering goods, etc. I don’t know if maybe he would be on the run for a murder he didn’t commit. Or maybe if it was Seagal he would be an ex-CIA whale rider fighting corruption using his special spook skills, while riding a whale. That’s not really what the movie is like though. If that’s what you’re expecting this may be your biggest disappointment since LAST OF THE DOGMEN. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in AICN, Drama, Family, Reviews, SIFF | No Comments »

Fly Away Home

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

First of all I want to thank this news group for the way you guys are pretty nice to me. To be frankly honest a lot of the people I’ve bumped into since getting out have NOT been exactly COOL about it. Although not everyone especially people that don’t know about it, they are nice. But point is you guys have not given me too much shit as far as I’m concerned. Quite honestly it means a lot to old vern. It really is a fucking beautiful world out there in my opinion but a lot of people are too wrapped up in evil and especially negativity to really breathe it in

Thanks especially to my bud who gave me some writing tips and movie ideas to rent. Tonight I rented fly away home on account of the “posting” here about it. Yes, it was a good movie although it is about geese. In fact in my opinion the movie is god damned beautiful both as far as the look and as far the story plot. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews | No Comments »

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Wednesday, October 23rd, 2002

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL: THE SPECIAL EDITION: FOR THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY: THE MOVIE

This is one of those things where they take an old movie that was very popular, and then they change it, because they think the only way anybody would want to see a movie they loved on the big screen again would be if somebody just completely fucked with it and tried to ruin it. They did the same thing with the Star Trek pictures, and the exorcist (see below) and Night of the Living Dead on video (I’m still staying away from that one).

This goes into the Star Trek category where the individual who made it (Steve Spielberg) gets old, forgets everything that made him vital when he was young, and decides to change things, but claims it’s actually perfectionism. The most infamous thing here is that he wanted no guns in the movie at all. Which is kind of weird for a movie where the main characters get chased by a mob of cops. So there they are, a bunch of fuckin cops and government spooks, running around all holding a walkie talkie with their trigger fingers poised to, I don’t know, hit the little beeper button that you use for Morse code. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Drama, Family, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »

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