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plarkin
Reviews
Bones: The End in the Beginning (2009)
Enjoyable and entertaining with a fun twist
{Possible spoilers} I quite enjoyed this episode, once I got past the "What's going on?" aspect. The idea of "The Lab" as a night club was a laugh and it was fun seeing all the characters' similarities and differences from their usual roles, especially Grayson "Did I mention he smells like a spring day after the rain?" Borasa as a gang-banger. I got a kick out of the usually buttoned-down Booth walking around half naked or with his shirt open all the time. And Hodgins looked great in that trench coat, talking like some '40s noir novelist. The call-backs to previous plot points was amusing and the music was fun -- who knew Sweets could sing? I wonder who on the production team is a BIG Motley Crue fan? Although it added to the episode, I really want say to those who want to push the Booth/Brennan romance angle, remember "Rhoda?" And "Moonlighting?" Don't mess with a winner!
King of the Lost World (2004)
Not so much a movie as a collection of movie clichés
I gave this film a 3 / 10 because at least it was in focus, lit, audible and none of the actors stared at the camera or off-camera people. So technically, at least, it was of acceptable quality.
As for plot, character interaction/development, dialog and so on, it was mostly sewn-together cloth of movie clichés. As these shortcuts and symbols get relied on more and more our movies will become more and more stylized and incomprehensible to those not familiar with the language, like Opera or Japanese Kabuki and Noh theater.
One of the newer and more annoying such idiocies is the "safe line." The explosion at the end is "limited extent -- 300 yards" says the Challenger character, and it's true: once our heroes have run 305 yards away, they can safely stop, turn and witness the event completely unharmed. Everything within a 300 yard radius in all directions (including up and down) is completely and utterly destroyed, yet the survivors can stand a few inches farther away and suffer no blast effects, no radiation effects at all. They don't shade their eyes from the light and heat and don't hold their ears to shield them from the noise.
I have been seeing this kind of thing in more and more movies lately and I want it to stop, do you hear me? Stop it! Right now! (pant, pant, gasp)
I feel better now....
Fangs (2002)
An instructive course in movie-making
The first time I saw this, I agreed with all the other posters who say this is a BAD, BAD movie. Watching the acting is like eating old, cold popcorn with no butter, salt or anything. And the better I knew the actor to be, the worse the acting seemed. For this I blame the director. The plot was transparent, the characters cardboard, the motivations only hinted at or missing entirely. For this I blame the writer. The second time I saw it, it was vastly more entertaining because I knew not to expect any better, and I could appreciate the flashes of creativity, humor and even humanity that are peppered through the film.
The writer, Jim Geoghan (if that really is the writer's name/identity -- have you taken a look at his photo? is that for real?), has mostly written for sitcoms. The punch-punch-punch, joke-every-ten-seconds style needed to keep the attention of the average sitcom watcher does not translate well onto the movie screen, and the 22-minute time frame doesn't lend itself to the habit of thinking deeply or extensively (or sometimes at all) about character, meaning, emotion, motive or the nature of creativity.
The director, Kelly Sandefur, appears also to have gotten his start in sitcoms, and the same comments apply. But he also seems to have mainly done Visual Effects Filmography, which explains a lot. Just as movies directed by long-time stunt performers tend to have lots of spectacular stunts, sometimes (often) to the detriment of the story and music video directors tend to create chaotic, nihilistic, iconoclastic films, this film looks just great, but the other qualities suffered.
In fact everything about the look of this film is really very good. The cinematography, lighting, staging, focus, sound -- everything technical is in fact excellently done.
The serious film student, especially one with ambition to make films of one's own some day, can definitely profit from a study of this film and its faults and its strengths. The main lessons: writing is important. Match your writer to your subject. For example, the humorous parts of this film fell flat because the writer is used to a laugh track guiding the audience to the (intentionally) funny parts. A playwright can often write a more effective script because he's not used to relying on a sound track to guide the emotion of the viewer -- he has to do it with the story. Also, match your director to the material. Don't ask a music video director to direct a tender love story, or any scene that lasts longer than three minutes. And if you ever get to make a movie (and if you can afford it), get all the technical crew of this movie to work for you! But first, see to the writing. A badly filmed great story will be easier to watch than an excellently filmed mediocre story.
In the Year 2889 (1969)
Even lower-budget remake of a low-budget film
From the description and comments, I thought this plot sounded familiar, but I remembered Mike 'Touch' Connors being in it, and I was right! This is a remake of Roger Corman's "The Day the World Ended." It makes me wonder what was the point of trying to out-cheap Corman, the "I can make a movie for less money than anyone else" master? Then I remember the overwhelmingly inflated egos of some people I have known. Oh. Right.
sigh
Colonel Humphrey Flack (1953)
Wonderful comedic characters, with echoes of Nero Wolfe
Does television seem to get worse all the time? Then imagine what it must have been like almost 50 years ago! This wonderful comedy still resounds in my memory. Mowbray's delightful Col. Flack and his hard-bitten but game sidekick "Patsy" Garvey were con men, but with a twist: they preyed on other con artists, and usually saved the bacon of the innocent unsuspecting marks in the process.
One of the running gags was the Colonel's quoting something in Latin or some other language, to which Patsy would respond, "Which means?" Then the Colonel would deliver a pithy, often idiomatic (slang) translation. The one heard most often, usually when they were about to be found out, was "Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit!"
Alan Mowbray was _the_ quintessential English Gentleman (of dubious means), and Frank Jenks was the perfect flat-voiced, squinty American foil. The relationship between these two has definite echoes of the interplay between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the Rex Stout stories.
I don't know if any episodes survive anywhere, but if any do, and you have a chance to see any of them, do so -- you won't regret it.