2008

Zhastar.

It's been awhile since I did a movie nitpick, and of the two films I saw most recently: X-Files: I Want To Believe and HellBoy 2, it's X-Files that gets the nod.

Not so much for the film itself, but for the very mixed reaction I've seen to it.

IMDB has fans who liked it, fans who hated it, and fans who were disappointed but grudgingly appreciative as only truly devoted fans can be.

It also had non-fans who liked it, who hated it, and some who thought it was OK. Some non-fans thought it entirely accessible. Some fans thought you had to have seen all nine (or at least the first six, maybe seven) seasons of the series to truly appreciate it.

So this nitpick isn't really going to be a review of the film; at some point, fandom takes over and makes a review something of value only to other fans, who all have their own reviews in their heads anyway. Instead, I thought I'd take a look at some of the more common of the criticisms of the film and nitpick those.

 Click here for the complete text.

Couple more Olympic Torch Relay posts:

• http://kazakhstan.neweurasia.net/2008/04/03/olympic-torch-in-almaty/
• http://kazakhstan.neweurasia.net/2008/04/04/friday-photo-waiting-for-the...
• http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jynWQAQgVOcTumux3r3MqyvLTgyA

I would take exception to the Press Association article that alleges security was "exceptionally tight". I've seen exceptionally tight security at events in Kazakhstan, and this was not it.

There were a large number of unarmed people in red whose job it was to keep people off the streets along the route. Most did so politely and the crowd of people, while curious, was for the most part pretty orderly. I took photos and video at three spots along the route, starting at Republic Square, and saw no significant problems, nor any sign of Uighur or Tibetan protestors.

Here are some other blogs that also have photo collections from Tuesday's Olympic torch relay in Almaty:

• http://blog.azion.kz/hot/
• http://restec.livejournal.com/44760.html

This is the map of the olympic torch relay route taken on April 2, 2008 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Ron Gilbert at Grumpy Gamer stole my thunder with his succinct post on the monster movie Cloverfield. However, while he was pleased that it was a film that features a giant monster killing annoying hipsters/yuppies (do yuppies still exist?) I was annoyed that it didn't happen fast enough.

As always, spoilers, blah blah blah.

Cloverfield is that rare film that dare asks the question, how long can it really take for a monster hundreds of feet high, sporting teeth the size of intercontinental missiles and towering over midtown Manhattan, to eliminate half a dozen annoying twentysomethings.

The answer, unfortunately, is too long. The problem is that while the message comes through clearly: do stupid things and you're going to die-- the movie lets these people get away with stupid thing after stupid thing, and then kills them later, usually when they aren't doing something so stupid.

 Click here for the complete text.

As a latecomer to Mystery Science Theater fanhood, I'm glad that former head writer/host Mike Nelson is continuing to make bad movies enjoyable with RiffTrax. Being a longtime fan of Star Wars since seeing the first film at the age of six, I felt morally obligated to at least take a look at the new trilogy. With each passing film I was more and more horrified. Mike's rifftrax on the prequels got better and better as the movies themselves became more humorless and unwatchable. Some fans might consider the third prequel the best of the bunch, but for me, it's the worst. Luckly the rifftrack for that episode is the best of the three; it's the only reason to subject oneself to the film.

300 falls into that same category.

MST3K tended to focus on films that were so bad, hardly anyone would watch them. The show eventually ran into trouble when the very existence of MST3K increased the value of the rights to the films they were lampooning beyond the point where they could afford the rights to the movies. RiffTrax escapes that loophole by distributing only MP3 audio files, which they then help sync to your DVD of the movie by having a disembodied voice (named Disembaudio) do line readings from the film periodically. Files are also available to sync with NTSC or PAL versions of the film, and there's even a special Windows program that handles the sync for you if you're playing the DVD on a computer. If you don't already own the DVD of the movie in question, you can order it from RiffTrax.

There, of course, is the catch-22. Riffing is funniest on movies that aren't very good, or that you don't like. I've also listened to the tracks for the Bourne Identity and LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, which are films I like. At some point these tracks fall a bit flat compared to the others. So in order to get value out of RiffTrax, you have to own (or at least rent) the movie. But riffing works best on films you wouldn't necessarily want to own.

RiffTrax seems to realize this, which is why they are also offering a video on demand option. Perhaps what they really need is a deal with NetFlix.

 Click here for the complete text.