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it would be better than Ocean’s Thirteen though for sure – that movie *sucked*….! 🙂

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So the summer movie-going season kind of hit a wall in mid-July due to work and other commitments, sadly. But that’s why the DVD was invented, rightl? 🙂 So I finally saw Pacific Rim this afternoon on DVD. While I’m sure the effect of mecha-robots and kaiju slugging it out was diminished somewhat by watching it at home – it was still entertaining.

Likes: – the way the soundtrack draws you in when the battles intensify (this was done well IMHO in other recent movies, notably The Avengers);

– The robots are pretty cool, even if not that original (we’ve seen them all pretty much a zillion times before if you have seen Transformers or any anime mecha from Gundam onward through Evangelion) although I was a bit disappointed the majority of the battles occur at sea rather than on land – gotta smash up those buildings and stomp the people and cars! One of the mecha uses an actual ship as a bat at one point, so that’s pretty cool, too, even if I think they have a bit of a comparative scale issue on that point;

– The actors are all fairly unknown (to me, at least) save Idris Elba, who seems to be really hitting the big time of late. Charlie Day also resembles Sam Rockwell more than a little bit – I was surprised it wasn’t the latter. I’m glad they did it that way and not just have a bunch of big names who demand more money and more screen time – stories like this are about kaiju and the men/women who waste them with huge robots, first and foremost!

– the fact that the robots didn’t just win the war at first go and that the kaiju kept coming back, meaner and more vicious.

And, then the inevitable gripes and spoilers (alert!)

– it’s been pointed out many times over that building big robots to take out big monsters wouldn’t work. Godzilla proved that with Mechagodzilla, and that was guys in rubber suits (and arguably, both characters were bad guys anyway)! Suffice it to say that with mecha, you just have to disbelieve from the word go, or you can’t enjoy it;

– why, oh why don’t the robots simply RIP OFF THE MONSTERS’ HEADS when they fight them? It’s obvious from the start of every fight that trying to punch them out (especially when half submerged in water) DOES NOT WORK. Nor does throwing them around, on the few times they try it. And when you have pilots trained in martial arts and that have flexible swords mounted in the back of the mecha, using those skills and weapons more than as an afterthought *might* make sense – who knew? Again, a boxing match works best on land, and more likely between guys in rubber suits who don’t have the benefit of CGI weapons. 🙂

– the whole thing of the monster shorting out all the mecha in one of the later battles excepting the Gypsy Danger because they were ‘digital’ and it is ‘analog’ is completely bogus. Do you really think that shorting out wires and hardware depends on whether there’s a CPU? The answer is NO. Fried wires and computers are fried, period, guys. Ask any Cylon, old or new.

– there are a few too many ‘fight to the last man’ cliches here, but at least the movie doesn’t drag them out, so they don’t distract *too* much.

– I don’t care how many helicopters you use – there is no way they could lift a mecha like that? But barring some other plot device (like how the Autobots could fly when the plot suited it), not sure how you resolve that one….?

All in all, an entertaining ride, even if not seen on the big screen. Next up, catching Elysium and Oblivion on DVD to finish out summer movies …. three months late!

A final word – throughout this movie I was constantly saying to myself – Gojira would have kicked ALL their a**es! Thankfully we only have to wait until the start of next summer to see it happen……muhhahhah!

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At one point or another, we’ve all seen these on various family members, friends and celebrities. I myself have had the Reverse Mullet as well as an attempt at the Hair Metal (I however never, ever used petroleum products in my hair, I just never brushed it :))

The 13 Ugliest Hairstyles of Our Time

Notable missing participants, by hairdo style:

1) The Flock of Seagulls – this is now called ‘Japanese Anime Hair‘ and if you go to any Comic-Con or watch a Justin Bieber video, you’ll see it in abundance;

2) The Beehive – What, no B-52’s?

3) The Side Ponytail – You can’t leave out Tina Majorino’s ‘do in Napoleon Dynamite! Plus if you double up, you end up with Witch Hunter Robin…

4) The Jheri Curl – Ah, the days when Lionel Richie ruled the planet. But Keenan did the best turn in Hollywood Shuffle….

5) The Crimp – The two words that remain, forever, infamous: Gene. Simmons. And in a side note – kerewin and I have seen this ‘do in person at Whistler, complete with guard-Guidos to protect it.

6) The Big Bang – I’m not going to comment on certain sisters who have sported this ‘do – you know who you are 🙂 – but to this day, an entire western half of the Salt Lake City valley still keeps these ‘stylists’ in business….there, however, it is known as ‘The Hair Claw’.

7) The Phil Spector – I always wondered what happened to Bernie from Room 222….Or did he just reach the Tipping Point?

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Saw the ‘rockumentary’ Beware of Mr. Baker last night. It tracks the story of Ginger Baker (most famous for being in Cream) from early music days through Cream, Blind Faith and beyond until the present day. Some reactions:

1) I had only really heard his playing in the context of Cream, which ultimately limited my impressions. While I don’t completely agree with either his (stated at least a couple times rather egotistically by him in the movie) or his bands perspective that they were the ‘cream’ of the rock talent at the time (So the Beatles and others like Jimmy Page and John Entwistle weren’t? There were others too) Cream were obviously in the top tier to be sure.

But the thing I liked about the movie was that you see a LOT more of his playing in far, far different contexts, and I definitely have a new view of his abilities as a result. I had not realized he was really a jazz drummer, he considered himself a jazz drummer, and ultimately at one or two points in the movie, he attains that lofty status amongst other top-tier jazz drummers – very impressive and he definitely more than holds his own – I have a much stronger respect for him now just seeing this footage alone. While I have to say that I’ve always preferred Keith Moon‘s drumming, and will still maintain that KM may be my preferred choice for a *rock* drummer – I now think GB is definitely a far more versatile and skilled drummer who obviously crosses many more types of music having seen this film.

2) Like other famous people (and arguably worse in many ways) – he was a disaster as a father, fairly loathsome as a family man and at many times, as even a human being. It’s one thing to be devoted to drums and music above all else – fine. But why have a family and treat them so horribly? Why not just stick with groupies and be done with it? Use a condom? The mind boggles – there’s simply no excuse. We’re all human, yes – but acting this way is simply beyond the pale.

3) He reminds me in many ways of Keith Richards from the ‘too onery to die’ standpoint – but I find it hard to believe that Keith Richards was near as irascible as GB was (and still is). The movie begins with GB literally wacking the poor filmmaker hard in the face with his cane because he was mad about the film having anyone else from his life in it! While to a certain degree (they include outtakes also as the credits roll at the end) this is funny and serves to make him even more of a curmudgeon – the word ‘beware’ is certainly applicable time and again as his story unfolds.

This is definitely a movie worth watching – may be a bit too ‘music nerd’ if you aren’t into drummers, rock stars acting like the immature freaks they often are, or musicians from the 60s – but definitely worth seeing all the same.

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how many can YOU spot? 🙂

click here for big version (that you can read and scroll around).

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Obviously!

More war propaganda posters can be seen here. Some are quite ridiculous and have not dated well, including at least one very racist one targeting the Japanese.

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Was headed out of the library last week and saw a Marvel Anime of the X-Men on the shelf, so checked it out. Just finished watching it this am – and had some interesting reactions.

First, I’m not an X-Men expert by any means. I’ve seen the movies, and recently read an anthology reprint of some very old X-Men comics I read as a kid, but otherwise nada mucho. As far as the movies went, I liked the first two better than the third one, which I felt kind of squandered things to a degree character-wise into just action and mayhem (maybe due to different director, not sure). Then the X-Men First Class movie came out – which I liked more, although Kevin Bacon’s villain was fairly ridiculous (while entertaining, to be sure).

I guess one of the challenges in following any of these comic stories, characters, ‘teams’, etc. at this point is that so many of the plots, counter-plots, stories, etc. have been either done so many times or sent in one direction, then another, then another new writer steps in and takes it in a different direction (thinking of the recent Marvel Knights X-Men series I watched, in addition to the JJ Abrams ‘redo’ of Star Trek in the two recent movies, etc.) at some point you have to simply give up on a linear history of *any* character and just enjoy the story for what it is or tries to do.

So in talking about this X-Men anime – I liked the fact that they had yet another team of obscure weirdos to battle (the ‘U-Men’) and that ultimately there was another team of ‘evil’ Mutants – the Inner Circle – to deal with too. The animation is very well done, and there are obvious nods to the movies in some of the presentation and implied plot points (at least to me). However, there are also a number of times where there’s either too much mindless violence that transitions to a plot stoppage where everyone sits and ‘monologues’ too much, and at least two to three key points where characters who have certain knowledge don’t say anything, don’t act as you’d expect them to, and then the plot moves forward irrespective (this is otherwise known as a ‘plot hole’ :(). And yet again, certain X-Men seem far weaker here than otherwise implied – most notably Storm (who got her a** kicked far too many times in the movies too vs. her implied power?) – so that’s a problem. Am I reading too much into this? Probably. Another gripe (although this is anime, after all so not a complete surprise) is that nearly every woman in this thing is drawn as if she was first seen in Ghost in the Shell – and if you’ve seen that movie or series, you know what I’m talking about. It just doesn’t work here, guys.

I guess to sum up, if you like X-Men and have more nerdy knowledge about all the myriad characters and history of same, you will probably like this too. I liked it, but didn’t like it as much as I *should* have, which is disappointing. If I had to choose, I’d pick the Marvel Knights series…..

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