Good Movies Found Here, But a Title is Lost

Here's the second teaser shot from the 8-page comic. It's all drawn, just needs a few words. If you guys liked the Lighthouse comic from last year, then I think you'll enjoy this one. Speaking of which, I posted a new page of Last Night for everyone to read. There will be one more page after this one (which I might post early), then the big 8-pager.

Last weekend we finally made it to the River Cinema in East Grand Forks. I was very impressed with the whole set-up, not to mention that you get your ticket and concessions in one spot. We only used up a third of my gift certificate I got from Christmas, so we get to get a couple more times, as well. The owner himself was there to take our tickets, which was weird, but cool that an owner would actually devote himself that much to his business as to place himself in the position to be able to interact the most with patrons. Seemed like a nice guy, too. I'm posting about the movie itself below, so hold your horses.

School starts for me soon, I'm getting a little nervous about starting everything back up again.

I got out my beer kit over a week ago and got it prepared. All I had to do was mix some stuff into boiling water and try not to get myself all sticky with beer mix & honey. Then I waited while it fermented in its keg. Just yesterday I bottled it, now I resume waiting. If all goes well, it should be ready by my birthday.

What Am I Watching?

Night of the Living Dead 3D- Judging by the IMDB threads, it's apparent that people don't really know what a remake is. This movie is NOT a remake. I won't state it again. It was fucking cool, though. All the characters' names from the original are used, but the similarity pretty much ends there. Barbara and Johnny are trying to find a cemetery where an uncle's funeral is being held. They find the cemetery, but no people. While looking, they are attacked by zombies. Barb runs away and somehow stumbles upon a funeral home. The funeral home is quite obviously crawling with animated corpses, and she is saved just in time by its owner, Gerald Tovar, Jr. (Sid Haig!). She takes off again, and is saved this time at night by a guy on a motorcycle who takes her to a farmhouse whose occupants run a huge pot farm and are reluctant to call police, even after they find her wild sory of zombies to be true. The original Night of the Living Dead is playing on the tv before the cable goes out. Tovar eventually shows up at the house and admits his involvement with the dead coming back to life. This movie was made with some great ideas and should be looked at as a tribute to Romero, if anything. By the way, the version I watched was 2D. And not to worry: This movie was officially monitored by the ARCA (American Re-animated Corpse Association), who can assure us that no zombies were harmed in the making of this film.

Death Race 2000- This was an odd movie. Shown on TCM Underground, it shows us a world of the "near future" with a president who controls the media and religion and wholeheartedly endorses an unltraviolent transcontinental race where the racers can earn points by hitting pedestrians. The movie starts off with the pope sying "Oh, great American multitudes, and sports fans everywhere..." Hmm...oddly prophetic, huh? There racers: Calamity Jane (neo cowgirl), Matilda the Hun (neoclassical Nazi), Nero the Hero (neo Roman), Machine Gun Joe (neo mobster, aka Sylvester Stallone), and Frankenstein (neo...Frankenstein...he's had limbs replaced). As far as the pedestrians are concerned, kids and elderly earn the most points. Strangely enough, many apparently forget a race is on and wander about the streets, giving the drivers plenty of targets. One hospital along the race route even put its elderly out in the middle of the road as a method of euthenasia. The President of the "United Provinces of America" (so we became Canada, then?) seems to be an almost mythical figure who is quick to blame the French when racers begin getting killed off by an underground resistance trying to end the race once and for all. The drivers are all equipped with navigators of opposite sex who not only navigate and perform regular maintenance on the vehicles, but also help release tension in the racers sexually during their pitstops. What a job! The commander of the Resistance is Thomasina Paine. Big surprise there. The ending is a little silly and wraps things up in a neat little package. But the movie overall was very good.

Sweeney Todd- This is the 2007 versio with Johnny Depp--our very first movie at the River Cinema. I will say that I HATE musicals. I refuse to watch them. I saw West Side story once while playing Mushroomhead, and that was as close as I ever came to enjoying a musical, and I had to be drunk to do it. But this was a kickass movie. I mean, it's a Tim Burton movie. Even his musicals are dark and creepy. Plus I love the story of Sweeney Todd. Basically a barber is falsely imprisoned by a judge who wants his wife. 15 years later, he returns from jail to find that his wife is gone and daughter adopted by the judge who put him away. He swears revenge and broods in a way that only Johnny Depp can seem to do. He takes up shop above a woman who sells disgusting meat pies, and they eventually combine their skills and begin killing people, cutting them up, and putting them in the pies, which become the best meat pies in London. The mechanical barber chair is a nod back to a 1936 version directed by George King and starring Tod Slaughter (I posted about this movie a few posts back), and worked very well in this version, as did the sickening thud of the bodies as they tumbled head-first down three stories to the floor of the cellar. The bright red blood was forgivable, given the theatrical aspect of this story. This version ties as my favorite, the other being a 2006 miniseries put out on the BBC that was NOT a musical and was perhaps a more accurate portrait of 19th century London.

Rollerball- Nope, it's not the dorky 2002 version with Rebecca Romijn & LL Cool J, sorry. This one is the original, from 1975 with James Caan. Again, it's the future, and corporations rule the earth. Rollerball is a national pasttime, where virtually anything goes as long as rollerskating men can get a lead ball into a bucket. Jonathan (Caan) is the game's oldest player, and is being pressured to retire by the corporation running it. There is a heavy notion of history being revised and rewritten, and books are "edited" on computer. Again, oddly prophetic, given our country's sense of history (ask how many people think Gone With the Wind was an accurate depiction of the South).

Desperate Souls- Jason, you owe me an apology for making the assumption that this wins the title. Yes, it sucked, but it was bland and hard to follow. Some orphans esacpe their abusive orphanage and use a book to release some kind of evil power. Why? Who knows? Who are they unleashing it on? Apparently, themselves. They all become zombified and attack a group of camping teens. One orphan was left alive, and he's trying to protect people from the zombified ones, which he killed in the first place...This synopsis is just annoying. Jas, the title's revoked. This movie had no "oh-my-Doug-this-is-a-really-horrible-movie" aspect to it, it was just plain annoying. Ankle-Biters had it. Zombie Lake had it. This movie does not.

What's Up, Tigerlily?- Originally a Japanese spy film, Woody Allen bought the rights to this film, took the Japanese audio out, put in English--except he wrote a completely different script, in which the spies are fighting over a secret recipe to really good egg salad. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist must have got their idea from this one. It is funny as hell and I can't believe this movie doesn't get more play. I happened to catch this on accident on TCM.

Re-Animator- Med students conduct bizarre experiments involving reanimating the dead. There is a lot of dark humor in this movie that you kind of have to watch to know what I mean. The reanimated corpses seem almost superpowered, which is silly. There was surprisingly good evidence of bruising in some places, though. The bruise on one guy's head and the ligature marks on a girl's throat after she was strangled are remarkably accurately done. The movie ended on a grim/uplifting note (is that possible? Of course!), and what happened to the main character, Herbert West, is up in the air until 2003.