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The
Big YEAR END Spectacular! - EPILOGUE
SURPISE!
Thought i'd spring a little extra on you fine folk and hit you with
a little follow-up to my year end posts... nothing too special..
enjoy!
3.
The Matrix Reloaded/The Matrix Revolutions - I have a
confession to make, i'm not a huge fan of this series. The first
film, while borrowing heavily from the sensebilities present in
Science fiction Anime for about a decade or so, was pretty unique
as a film. It wasn't you're run of the mill effects extravaganza
that sci-fi filmmaking had become... it had a brain, and the action
scenes were pretty well done... though i always felt the film felt
more like a few good ideas cobbled together than a fully realized
concept. The sequals on the other hand were everything the first
film wasnt, loud, brainless, special effects showcases with little
in the way of plot or character... the legacy of the first film
has been horribly tarnished by the sequals... What was supposed
to be a big deal became the non-event of 2003.
2.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
- I learned to love James Cameron in 2003... And this film had a
lot to do with it. I wasn't exactly thrilled to hear there was a
new Terminator in the works, but upon seeing the final trailer i
became very pumped... Then i saw it. 90 minutes just isn't long
enough for a Terminator film. T2 clocked in at well over 2 hours,
and while there are scenes where T3 comes close to recapturing the
feel of Cameron's Terminator, the horrid acting, mediocre dialogue,
and a weak weak weak villian keep this one from coming anywhere
remotely close to touching the previous two films... the ending
was quite awesome though.
1.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Sean Connery starring
in a film based on an enjoyable alan Moore comic, and looking a
lot like the classic adventure flicks i LOVE. I really had high
hopes for this one, but in the end all i got was a lackluster Hollywood
trip with no plot to speak of, and some of the worst acting i've
seen from Connery well... ever! Horrid direction and staging made
for a completely underwhelming experience, what could have been
a great adventure in the same vein as Indy or The mummy ends up
being a cheese-ball romp more in line with The Avengers... ugh.
3.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl -
One of the best films of the year. Awesome performances and all
that, but i felt the DVD was lacking, particularly where extras
are concerned. What was touted as an in depth making of feature
was little more than promotional fluff, worth maybe a glance and
that's it. There was really nothing else of interest on theb extras
disc, and most of the stuff is DVD-rom related and boardering on
promotional cheese. Also absent are the films awesome trailers.
The movie itself is adequate, but the picture had a few authoring
flaws and the soundtrack was a bit on the underwhelming side...
not bad per se, but for such an epic film the picture should be
pristine, and the sound should hammer you... for the 2nd highest
grossing film of 2003 this disc was a bit of a letdown...
2.
Die Another Day
- The disc is fine, let me get that off of my chest, the film itself
i didn't manage to catch in theatre, and that's the reason i file
it here... Pierce Brosnan to me was the perfect actor to play Bond,
and MGM have been squandering him! Bond is supposed to be a secret
agent with no equal right? Then why the hell do they keep upstaging
him with these cheesy female secret agents... Jinx was laughable
at best, and Halle Berry was damned horrid here (she should stick
to the pathetic human dramas she's been churning out for years,
she's definitely not an action hero unless she's backed up by million
dollar weather special effects). The whole film turned to crap after
the excellent first act... The villian was horrid, the bullet time
- slo mo - rapid cuts were horribly out of place in a Bond film,
and the final act was a throwback to those dreadful Roger Moore
Bond's of the 80's... i was horribly dissapointed here.
1.
Milennium Actress
- Sony has released no less than two spectacular Anime dvds in as
many years (Cowboy Bebop and Metropolis) so imagine my excitement
when i heard Dreamworks was getting into the Anime scene. Dreamworks
has been consistantly one of the best DVD publishers out there.
Imagine my shock when i get a look at Milennium Actress, one of
the finer anime films to come out in ages. No English track!!!???
WHAT??? Yeah i know some of you anime purists like the stuff subtitled,
not i, i'm a dub man all the way... being animation i find that
when a dub is handled properly it really bears no difference from
the source material (see Spirited Away, Jin-Roh, or Cowboy Bebop...
all fantastic dub jobs). I can enjoy my anime, focus on the visuals,
and still get an enjoyable story... Well When smaller companies
like Bandai are releasing discs with a 5.1 english mix, a DTS Japanese
mix, and a disc of extras, a disc with only a theatrical trailer
and a Japanese track is inexcusable from the likes of Dreamworks!
If you pull this shit with the GHOST IN THE SHELL sequel due on
disc in 2004 i will be seriously pissed off...
3.
Devil May Cry 2 -
What can i say about this game other than the first one was infinitely
better. Dante had easily been one of the coolest new characters
to come along in a while, and for the sequal Capcom drained him
completely of character. The action intensity of the original became
a slow paced game of wandering through expansive enviornments no
where near as interesting as those found in the original and occaisonally
hacking a bad guy repeatedly. The difficulty was also toned down
bigtime... While the visuals were pretty gorgeous, the rest of the
game just didn't compare to the prequel, and what the hell was up
with that horrid looking second character?
2.
Manhunt - Violence for the sake of violence, great idea
there Rockstar, while the GTA series felt like a kind of clever
satire, this just feels like exploitation to me. Then there's the
gameplay... sure you can stab some schmuck in the face with a shard
of broken glass, but you've got to sneak around the guy for 45 minutes
to get the opportunity. The Game's engine is nice at least, with
some great graphics and sound if nothing else.
1.
True Crime: Streets of LA - I really want to like this
game! The gameplay stands somewhere between the free-roaming chaos
of Grand Theft Auto III and the tight mission structure of The Getaway
(which i loved, but not enough to reach my top ten of 2003). Graphically
it was passable, there were some great gameplay elements in there
(like answering police radio calls), but god did the soundtrack
suck! Hundreds of horrid gangster rap tunes... with maybe four solid
metal tracks mixed in there... then there's the voice acting, which
was a little "overcooked". And the hand to hand combat
and shooting systems, which were too complex for the game's own
good. I'd like to take another crack at this one, but i just don't
see it happening.
EQUILIBRIUM
-
Who would believe a small film with a budget of around 20 million
by a rookie director, which was all but shunned theatrically, would
end up being the best sci-fi film to hit DVD in 2003, and is actually
one of the strongest sci-fi films to come along in recent memory.
Director Kurt Wimmer combined elements of truely classic sci-fi
like "1984" and "Farenhiet 451" with a blend
of dystopian and utopian imagery to create a truely magnificent
and unique gem of a film. Sometime after a third World War, humankind
has embraced a drug named Prozium, which supresses emotional highs
and lows, and keeps everyone more or less level headed in the hopes
that tensions don't flare and the world doesn't get thrown into
another war. Outlawed are forms of creative expression which may
evoke an emotional response, music, art, literature, etc, and enforcing
the will of "The Father", the ruling body, are the Grammaton
Clerics. Bad asses in long coats who carry automatic pistols and
are highly trained in a martial art called Gun-katta, which turns
their firearms into an extension of their being and allows them
maximum effectiveness in combat. When prestigious Grammaton Cleric
John Preston (played exquisitely by Christian Bale) misses a dose
of prozium, his world of greys quickly becomes a world of vivid
color, the ordered nature of his surroundings begins to crumble.
Preston becomes the enemy, his partner (played menacingly by Taye
Diggs) becomes his chief adversary, and he becomes instrumental
to the resistance in overthrowing the current regime. Beautiful
production design and great performances from solid character actors
like Sean Bean and William Fichtner combined with some incredible
fight coreography and slick direction... if you're a fan of dystopian
science-fiction in any way shape or form, you should see this film!
Freedom
Fighters -
I've already spoken at length about this one in past updates, so
i'll try to make it brief. IO Interactive have outdone themselves
plain and simple... What started as "Freedom: The Battle for
Liberty Island" caught my attention first on our internal release
sheets... listed as an action/strategy game... then i spotted an
ad in a gaming mag which featured the Statue of Liberty holding
a sickle and bottle of vodka instead of her torch and notepad, and
that was about all it took. There's something about alternate history
that's always appealed to me, particularly those "what if so
and so won the *blank* war?" stories... I'd even written a
few short stories back in the day, one of which invloved the Germans
dropping the A-bomb on britian and the US to end WWII and centering
on a small elite group of US soldiers wandering a European wasteland
as mercenaries, and another involving a Russian invasion of Eastern
Canada... but back to the point... this shit really entertains me,
and the thought that went into the bacground of this game was far
deeper than the gameplay could have warranted, as evidenced by the
opening cinematic... this thing just plain rocks! I was expecting
a mediocre to good action game in the vein of Hitman 2, what i got
was a brilliant tactical shooter leaning slightly to the action
side of things with a great squadmates mechanic, wonderful level
design, and phenomenal AI, if you're a fan at all of military themed
action games, you owe it to yourself to play Freedom Fighters, if
you're an alternate history kind of guy as well, then this is required
playing.
found
a cute little quiz online, answer a few questions and they tell
you which Finding Nemo character you are. Turns out i'm Dory, which
is cool enough i guess, she had me laughing my ass off in the movie...
kind of sucks that i'm a blue female fish though... the lesbian
part is kinda cool i guess...
props
to Kev over at Notanywhereland
for digging this up.
Last updated January 7th, 2003
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