Burnt Zombie Awards 2009

It’s been a hectic last few weeks here at BurnAllZombies: those of you who know us will know why it’s been a bit quiet on the updates, but with 2010 just around the corner, updates will be coming at you so fast, you won’t know what’s hit you.

New Year’s Eve is as good a time as any to look back over some of the best of what 2009 had to over. On that note, we bring you the inaugural Burnt Zombie Awards, a run-down of the finest movies, games, music, TV and comics had to offer this year. Of course, if you disagree, we can discuss below. It’s not as if we’ll send the zombies around if we don’t agree with you…

BurnAllZombies Update

Yep, it’s an update on all things BurnAllZombies related: things have been a little bit hectic recently, so updates have been slow, but that’s all going to change in December. There’s been a few changes, and here’s what’s coming soon

• The Comic Catch-Up will be back soon with a bang: Dan will be looking after it. He’ll also be bringing you some other updates and trailers for next year’s big movies and games and other news as and when it’s newsworthy.
• In the world of Games, we’ll have reviews for Assassin’s Creed II and Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time up soon…once I can get past the really hard bits.
• Stuck for some Christmas presents? There’ll be an epic multi-part guide to Christmas presents: you want to buy your loved ones some games, consoles, DVD/Blu-Ray movies or maybe even some books or comics? We might be able to give you some ideas.
• As the nights are getting darker, it’s time to start hitting the cinema more, and we’ll have movie reviews for Where The Wild Things Are, The Box and coming soon, we’ll also have James Cameron’s epic Avatar.

Keep checking back for updates, or even better: follow us on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook or subscribe via RSS feed up in the corner there. Go on, you know you want to.

Humbug, Humbug, Humbug

It just wouldn’t be the festive season without some Christmas movies to get us in the mood: early November might just be a little too early for some people to begin decking the halls, but the season is starting early with Disney’s presentation of A Christmas Carol, the classic tale written by Charles Dickens and now brought to the big screen by Robert Zemeckis.

Disney’s take on the fable is animated though uses a form of motion capture similarly to that previously seen in Zemeckis’ The Polar Express and Beowulf (although for this movie, the look is a lot smoother, embracing the fact that it is, ultimately, an animated film.) It’s a perfect opportunity for the multi-faceted Jim Carrey to play several roles, this time taking on Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts who haunt him on a Christmas Eve night.

For a modern adaptation, A Christmas Carol is surprisingly faithful to Dickens’ source: set in an impressively realised Victorian London, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge shows off just how miserable he can be when dealing with gentlemen seeking alms, his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) who invites him along for Christmas dinner and his own clerk Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman.) That night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley (also voiced by Oldman) who pleads with Scrooge to recant on his greedy ways, telling him that he will have three visitors over the next two nights who will show him the folly of his ways. Those three visitors, as everyone should know, are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, of Christmas Present, and of Christmases Yet To Come.

Paranormally Active

Few films have experienced the frenzied internet marketing hype that Paranormal Activity has received in the last few months: sure, this year has also given us the phenomenal trailer to Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (a far better experience than the film, reviewed here) and Neill Blomkamp’s debut feature District 9 proved that aliens could still rake in the cash at the box office. But the effortless success that Paranormal Activity has had in the US has kept the film riding high in terms of takings and hype. It’s even been a consistently trending topic on Twitter since even before its release.

Paranormal Activity doesn’t open this side of the Atlantic until the 25th November (though you might be lucky enough to catch a paid preview screening on Friday 13th) but it was also the surprise film at this year’s Horrorthon at Dublin’s IFI, and if that screening is anything to go by, the film will prove just as successful this side of the Atlantic as in the US.

Befitting a low-budget film (costing only $15, 000 to make), the film takes a mockumentary style in which the lines between reality and the film are blurred: some text at the beginning claims that the footage was found after the events of the film, footage which is recorded on a camcorder bought to record the strange nocturnal events in the home of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (the actors lend their own names to the characters in the pursuit of realism.) What follows are about three weeks of footage (cut down to a little over ninety minutes) as Micah and Katie come to realise that the disturbances in their house aren’t just neighbourhood children or creaking floorboards, but a malevolent presence that doesn’t take kindly to being challenged or recorded.

Beware Of Bathrooms

With Zombieland crashing into cinemas next week, just in time to scare all of us for Halloween, we’ve got an Irish exclusive clip of the movie, giving you an idea what to expect from the horror-comedy, directed Ruben Fleischer.

As the world descends into zombie-infected madness, Jesse Eisenberg teams up with Woody Harrelson to survive the harsh wilds of flesh-eating madness, and with the zombies moving like this, the film promises to be both hilarious and scary in just the right measure.

Check the hilarious clip below (though be prepared for the zombies with toilet roll) as Eisenberg shares his rules for survival in a zombie-infected world.

Zombieland is in cinemas October 9th.

In Space. Screaming. Yadda.

Horror movies set in space are always a bit hit-or-miss: for every Alien, there’s a Jason X, and a hell of a lot more in between. Pandorum, a US/German co-production from director Christian Alvart, might have a trailer that tries to sell it down the Alien-route, but having watched the film, you might be left wondering if you have to re-evaluate your opinions on what makes a bad horror-in-space film.

On board the space-ship Elysium, Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from suspended animation: disoriented, he remembers little other than the role he was trained to fulfil as a member of the flight crew, taking over from another team who will then enter “hypersleep” themselves, who are strangely absent. When Bower is joined by the similarly awoken Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid) the two struggle to find a way out of the anteroom in which they’re trapped. As both deal with the after-effects of their extended sleep, both physical and psychological, Bower makes his way out of the room and into the ship proper, where he finds what appears to be an abandoned ship is instead haunted by flesh-eating monsters, intent on stopping him from reaching his goal in the reactor.

Carrey On Christmas

It might be a little bit early to talk about Christmas (three months and counting) but I’m still unsure how I feel about Robert Zemeckis’ steady decline in terms of movie-making. True, very little of what he’s made has been poor, but there’s a big difference between the Back To The Future movies and Beowulf.

But I’m slightly more optimistic about his CGI take on A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge (and the ghosts) and presented in Disney 3D. To be honest, I can’t much stand Charles Dickens, but there’s something about his Christmas tale of mizerly Scrooge that has always appealed to me and I really enjoy reading it or checking out some of the adaptations around the season.

You can check out the trailer below, but at least it’s steering clear of the uncanny valley that The Polar Express journeyed through. Certainly, judging from the trailer, there’s nothing to indicate that this may be nearly as good as seeing Bill Murray or Patrick Stewart in the role.

A Christmas Carol is due for release in 3D (selected cinemas) and 2D in UK and Ireland on 6th November.

Even With Your Pants Down, Keep Your Guard Up

There’s a new trailer for horror-comedy-action flick Zombieland hitting the internet, and we’ve got the trailer in HD for you to check out.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Yep, that’s the same Abigail Breslin as was in Little Miss Sunshine, keeping it in comedy ville but not afraid to tussle with the indead.

The film promises some fun deaths (obviously), irreverent humour (hopefully) and, most importantly, big guns and zombies. Who doesn’t like big guns and zombies? (Don’t answer that question, or you will be forever barred from this site.)

Columbus (Eisenberg) is a big wuss – but when you’re afraid of being eaten by zombies, fear can keep you alive.  Tallahassee (Harrelson) is an AK-totin’, zombie-slayin’ badass whose single determination is to get the last Twinkie on earth.  As they join forces with Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin), who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem, they will have to determine which is worse: relying on each other or succumbing to the zombies.

The film is due for release October 9th, but if you just can’t wait that long, why not check out the Official Site where you can turn yourself into a zombie in a (relatively) pain-free and non-lasting fashion.

Zombieland is due in cinemas October 2nd 2009 in the USA and October 9th in the UK and Ireland.

In Search Of Home

Having already won Oscars and hearts with Revolutionary Road and his directorial debut American Beauty, Sam Mendes returns to the world of couples and relationships for Away We Go, being flown into cinemas by stork this weekend. Yes, this is a film about pregnancy, babies and families, but before you start worrying that things might get too mushy, you can relax.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph star as Burt and Verona, a couple who have been together since college and now, in their early 30s, are expecting their first child. When Burt’s parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) announce that they are moving to Belgium before the baby is born, Burt and Verona come to a realisation: there is nothing tying them to their Colorado home once Burt’s parents are gone, so they decide to move. Thus begins a cross-country journey as Burt and Verona search for a place to call home, assessing whether they really want to live with Verona’s former boss (Allison Janney) in Phoenix, or her sister (Carmen Ejogo) in Tucson. But the trip takes on a much more introspective tone when Burt and Verona start to wonder what kind of parents they will be their unborn child after they meet Burt’s cousin LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) with her free-spirited ideals, college pals Tom and Munch with their own adopted family and a final visit to Burt’s brother, whose own family situation has undergone a sudden change.

Competition: Food For Thought

***The competition is now closed***

Thanks for all your entries, we’ll be in touch with the winners shortly.

It’s a film about food, how could we not talk about it?

Nora Ephron’s Julie and Julia opens in cinemas across the UK and Ireland today. Starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep (in a role that has her hotly tipped for an Oscar), the film is a light-hearted comedy-drama about Julie Powell (Adams) and her attempts to cook her way through the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s book, while also showing some of the life of Child herself (Streep) all presented with Ephron’s sparkling wit and timing…yes, even the most skeptical geeks amongst us still has to admit to having a soft spot for Sleepless in Seattle.

Have a look at the trailer for Julie and Julia below to see some snippets of Streep’s amazing performance and the beautiful food on offer.

To coincide with the film’s release, we’ve also got our first ever competition here at BurnAllZombies, and we’ve got two books to give away tying into the film:

First, we’ve got Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia: My Year Of Cooking Dangerously from Penguin Books, the book that inspired the film and a heart-warming account of the effect of Childs’ recipes on the life of a twenty-something woman, looking for meaning in her life (available at Amazon.)

AND

we’ve got a copy of Julia Child’s own My Life In France, a memoir of an American life in post-war Europe, her early days as a cook and her experiences of French culture. The biography, written by Child and Alex Prud’homme, has been called ‘Exuberant, affectionate and boundlessly charming’ by the New York Times, and if Child’s personality is anywhere near Streep’s performance, it’s easy to see why.

(My Life In France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud-homme, ISBN 9780715639009, £7.99, pbk, Duckworth Overlook.)

Both books are fascinating looks at life, love and food (as well as our relationships with them) and you’ll be guaranteed that you’ll want to read them after seeing the film, and probably want to try your hand with cooking some fine French cuisine too.

To enter the competition, all you need to do is leave a comment below, letting us know which book you’d like to read and why. If you’re not the commenting type, you can also enter by sending an e-mail to ken@burnallzombies.com with “Julie & Julia competition” in the subject line. The winners will be picked next Wednesday, 16th September at 9pm GMT and notified by e-mail.

Julie & Julia is open in cinemas now; both books are also available for purchase, but why buy when you might win?

When You Wish Upon A Comic

The stock market isn’t usually a topic we’ll cover here on BurnAllZombies, but this latest news is something we just couldn’t ignore, the news that Disney have acquired Marvel Entertainment in a stock and cash transaction worth approximately $4billion. That’s…a lot more money than I can count.

Robert A. Iger, President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company had the following to say:

This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories.

Interestingly enough is Iger’s mention of “entertainment properties,” highlighting Marvel’s value as more than just a comic book company, but also with big-screen potential (and much more) as well.

It’s an interesting development, and there’s some more information that I’d like to know before deciding on whether it’s a good deal or not. On the upside, this gives Marvel much more money to work with, potentially giving them the buying power they need to buy back film rights for the Spider-Man franchise from Sony, or mutants and the X-Men from Fox. But there’s also a point where we have to wonder just how much influence Disney will have over Marvel’s publishing division, and we can only hope that the company’s comics remain free to publish as they have been for years. But given the recent merger between Disney and Pixar, with both companies remaining free to operate individually, we can hope that there won’t be any adverse effects.

The full press release will be due later today, but until then, you can check out just what Marvel have to say about it themselves.

Is It Really Better Late Than Never?

It’s the second guest post in the last couple of days, and this one is right up there on the headlines, as I take a look at what the industry could, and should, do differently to help combat piracy.

With the internet more rife with pirates than a Johnny Depp movie, we all know illegal downloading exists, and Irish ISPs and their reactions to sites like The Pirate Bay have been hitting the headlines over the last few weeks. The music industry in particular are doing their best to clamp down on piracy and illegal downloads, but let’s be realistic: internet piracy will probably never be completely eliminated, at least not until the ultimate cause gets nipped in the bud. So is piracy the result of consumer greed, or in some ways, have the entertainment industry been too slow to move into the digital age and created a situation of their own delayed action?

Check out the full article over at Culch.ie

Blue Friday

There comes a time when you just have to resort to clichés, so here goes: forget everything you thought you knew about James Cameron’s Avatar. Why? Because the game just changed. Significantly.

For a film that’s been fourteen years in the making, surprisingly little is known about Avatar. Cameron himself has been quick to talk about the film’s plot during its production, speaking at length at this year’s E3 gaming conference and showing some footage off at San Diego Comic-Con. Despite this, two production stills and a teaser poster are all that most of us have seen of the film, a 3D epic (and IMAX, where available…who else misses the IMAX on Parnell St?) involving marines and the blue-cat-like, alien Na’vi, set on the inhospitable planet Pandora.

Check out my full preview, and the trailer, over at Venntertainment

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

Few people can deny the awesomeness of Carrie Fisher: her last Star Wars movie might be over twenty years ago, but the gold bikini (and the hair) are still worth a mention, and Princess Leia remains one of those characters that a variety of men and women either want to be or be with.

Sorority Row is a remake of the 1983 slasher film The House On Sorority Row and Fisher plays a bad-ass housemother in a sorority house where the girls hold a dark secret involving the accidental death of a housemate the previous year. It’s all a bit like someone knows what they did last summer, to be honest, but who cares when there’s people dying. The trailer promises that the film will have some fairly interesting (and hopefully graphic) deaths, and the presence of Rumer Willis and Audrina Patridge from MTV’s The Hills ensures that even people who don’t like the stars will probably check the film out, just to see how their favourite celebrities might kick the bucket.

Sorority Row is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland September 9th, 2009. That’s 999, the same number to call if you’re ever in those countries and being pursued by a masked killer.

In Basterds We Trust

Revisionist history isn’t necessarily synonymous with Quentin Tarantino, but it’s what you get in his latest big-screen offering, the intentionally misspelled Inglourious Basterds. In some ways, it’s a typical Tarantino film, some parts offering wickedly dark comedy, witty character interactions and bloody violence; in others, it’s quite different from anything Tarantino has done before and marks a more mature approach from the director, while retaining everything that has made his films instant such cult classics.

Inglourious Basterds steps back in time further than Tarantino usually brings us, ignoring the usual 70s-exploitation-cinema influences behind Kill Bill, Jackie Brown or Pulp Fiction in favour of a movie set during World War II. There are several different intertwining storylines to the movie, told across five chapters, each telling its own self-contained story before coming together in the fifth chapter, and giving the film a similar feel to Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill although, in this case, the film remains linear and chronological throughout.

Angels & Demons: Redux

There’s a point in every man’s life when he realises that no matter how many guns and awesome effects a film has, it may still end up being a heap of…well, weird.

On that note, take a look at the red-band trailer below for 2010′s Legion. According to the movie’s IMDB, “after a terrifying biblical apocalypse descends upon the world, a group of strangers stranded in a remote truck stop diner in the Southwest unwittingly become humanity’s last line of defense when they discover the diner’s young waitress is pregnant with the messiah.” The movie is directed by Scott Stewart, who has a long list of experience with special effects (which explains some of the movies look) but has an uncomfortable range of actors going from the former A-list through TV-favourites and relative-unknowns.

Judging from the trailer, we can expect some balls-to-the-wall action when the film is released next year but…well, watch the trailer and you might start to feel a little uncomfortable at how ridiculously over-the-top things are. It just remains to be seen if the film embraces this, or gets overwhelmed by taking itself too seriously.

Legion is due for release January 2010.

The War Of The Geisha…Continues?

Back in July, we had a look at the first trailer for Noboru Iguchi’s RoboGeisha, Japanese exploitation cinema at its finest, with all manner of grindhouse and anime influence, along with some Power Rangers references (and shrimp, if you looked hard enough.)

Courtesy of Iguchi’s own blog comes the second trailer, giving a better look at the film’s storyline…if you can understand the Japanese. And if you can’t, just bask in the glow of the glorious bullet-time and ultra-delightful J-Pop. If even that doesn’t satisfy, just watch the trailer to the end. And don’t say you’re not impressed by a sword-weilding torso, because we’ll all know you’re lying.

Mega Shark? Bah, Sub-Standard You Mean

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet for MegaShark vs Giant Octopus, you’re missing out. The preview for the direct-to-DVD movie hit the internet in May and instantly became a YouTube sensation with its less-than-B-movie schlock, finishing with a shot of the titular mega-shark jumping from the ocean to attack a passenger airplane. The movie comes from the studios of The Asylum, an American company known for their direct-to-DVD features, many of which have some shocking similarities with some much bigger movies, and this year alone has seen the release of Transmorphers: The Fall Of Man and The Terminators.

When a marine experiment goes awry and an ice shelf collapses, freeing the battling animals of the title, Emma MacNeil (Gibson) thinks she sees a large shape swimming away. After a series of disasters, including the destruction of an oil rig and the death of a whale, Emma turns to her mentor Lamar Sanders (Lawlor) for help identifying the cause, and the owner of a large tooth fragment. They’re approached by Japanese scientist Dr. Shimada (Chao) whose own clues point towards a giant eye, proof of the octopus. With the two prehistoric beasts becoming an international threat, the three scientists are charged with finding a way of capturing, or destroying, the battling duo.

Sinestro Isn’t Just A Name, It’s A Way Of Life

DC Comics have a surprisingly good track record with adapting their comics and characters into animation, from the critically acclaimed, Emmy-Award winning Batman: The Animated Series in the 1990s through Justice League (and its follow-up/sequel/final seasons in its “unlimited” form), anime-influenced Teen Titans and even the short-lived Static Shock.

It’s commonly understood that many of DC’s animated series are intertextual and share continuity: there have been several crossover episodes, most of them through the aforementioned Justice League, Batman: TAS, Superman, Batman Beyond (or Batman Of The Future in some markets.) Most of these have been produced, written, designed or at the very least influenced by Bruce Timm. In 2006, production was started on a series of animated movies or DC Universe Original Animated Movies, which feature further stories from the shared universe. The latest release, Green Lantern: First Flight tells the story of Hal Jordan, the first human Green Lantern and, in many ways, the most popular character to hold the title.

Robs From The Rich, Gives To The Poor

I haven’t been able to find much information on the live-action Goemon movie, save for an ultra-short synopsis. The film is supposedly based on legend of Goemon Ishikawa, a 16th century bandit hero, and the Robin Hood comparison’s are surprisingly appropriate. But it’s not necessarily the story that’s making me want to watch Goemon: honestly, Disney’s Robin Hood killed any interest I could ever hold in the character, and don’t ask me to explain why, because I can’t.

What’s piqued my interest is that Goemon is directed by Kazuaki Kiriya, who also directed 2004′s Casshern. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the film from when it released, and only watched it after seeing the DVD on sale and deciding it looked interesting. I was proven right, and the film graduated to becoming one of my favourites, not just because of the vibrant scenery, extra-enhanced colours and effects, but because it has a genuinely moving and interesting story.

My interest in seeing Goemon is to see these strands come together once more, and I can only hope that it proves as effective as Casshern: judging from the trailers, the two films are stylistically similar. The film has already been released in native Japan, even airing at this year’s Cannes Festival (colour me jealous) but there’s no word on either a cinema or DVD release in Europe or the US. But as soon as I find out, I’ll be announcing it to anyone who’ll listen.

The trailer for Casshern is below,with some explanatory subtitles,  just in case you fancy checking it out.

In Other Weird News

The lead up to San Diego Comic-Con (or SDCC, for those in the know) has had its fair share of unusual announcements, but certainly the most unusual to know has been the announcement that Sam Raimi will be directing a feature film based on the World Of Warcraft film. Raimi, best known for directing the Spider-Man movies and, of course, the Evil Dead movies.

The full press release is below, with details from Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures.

Districted Viewing

In 2005, the short film Alive in Joburg provided an unusual look at the alien invasion film, chiefly because, as a South African production, there wasn’t a flying saucer floating over the White House and threatening to blow it up. District 9, the full-length take on the same film, takes a news-crew mockumentary-style look at a ghetto outside Johannesburg, inhabited by aliens who share a tense peace with the authorities in the area.

Directed by Neill Blomkamp, District 9 expands on the original short, now produced by Peter Jackson. The film maintains much of the same cast, storylines and similar effects, but the trailer below looks impressive, and even manages to hold its own when you look at the trailers for the rest of this year’s big films (like Terminator: Salvation.)

District 9 is due out August/September 2009. The full Alive In Joburg can be found under the link.

The War Of The Geisha Begins

The trailer for RoboGeisha has been doing the internet rounds over the last few days, and rightly so. Director Noboru Iguchi brought The Hajirai Machine Girl to screens in 2008, a film I’ve been meaning to see. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that RoboGeisha‘s visual effects come from special effects director Yoshihiro Nishimura, also responsible for the deliciously violent Tokyo Gore Police.

Japanese cinema has a much more disturbing view on dismemberment and body modification than Hollywood usually dares to tread, and some auteurs will be familiar with the invasive organic-machine imagery of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (how many families bought their kids that DVD last Christmas thinking they were getting a Marvel comic-book movie.)

But RoboGeisha, as you can see from the trailer below, fulfils some other ridiculous criteria that many of us that were kids in the 1990s will remember: namely Power Rangers (in all its incarnations.) Take a look at the trailer below and don’t act like that it doesn’t bring back Megazord-fight memories. But consider yourself warned: there’s gore galore, and it’s not for the faint-of-heart.

And just to complete the wackiness, check out Tokyo Gore Police below behind the cut.

Dawn Of The Vampires

New vampire flick Daybreakers is one that could really go either way. A slick vampire thriller set in a future where vampires are in the majority, hunting down humans, the trailer above has shades of Underworld, 30 Days of Night and Ultraviolet.

The thing is, though, there’s a world of difference between these three films, ranging from the good (30DoN) to the bad (Ultraviolet) with Underworld falling somewhere between the two at a point where few people admit to liking it, but it still manages to do well enough to spawn two sequels.

Either way, Daybreakers boasts a much better known cast than those other films, with Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Defoe (all of whom have starred in their fair share of stinkers, let’s be honest.) It remains to be seen whether relative newcomes Peter and Michael Spierig’s movie will prove a success or something worse.

Daybreakers is due for release in early 2010.

Robotic Realities

With the release of “Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen” just a few days away, there have been an increasing number of TV spots and other forms of advertising for the movie.

The internet, for its part, has been awash with footage of giant robots: full reports on these sightings can be seen atGiantEffingRobots.com and TheRealEffingDeal but there’s a collection of some related videos below.

Robotic Revenge: (A Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Review)

The first “Transformers” movie didn’t really sit well with me, but maybe that’s because I expected something different from it, certainly something very different from what I got. Watching it a second and third time recently on TV, I thought it was a little bit better, but it did little to save me from that earlier disappointment I had on the first viewing.

I’m glad to say, however, that the second movie, “Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen” did for me what the first didn’t and I really rather enjoyed it.

The full review is below, and for anyone wondering, it gets a B- grade, which is still much better than most of this summer’s big action films.

This Trailer Doesn’t Like Yellow

In the great scheme of things, there’s no lower form of art than the fan-made trailer: in some ways, I find them absolutely despicable.

Except this one: I don’t particularly like Nathan Fillion as a potential Green Lantern, but using some massive trailers from the last few years mashed up together, including Star Trek, Dragonball (and quite a lot of Fantastic Four), there’s this fan-made trailer for Green Lantern.

It doesn’t look wonderful, but it has more stuff in it than a lot of trailers, and has a hell of a lot of promise: with any luck, it’ll drop a massive hint to some production companies and we’ll get a few more (well made) superhero films out of it.

Consider Your Franchise…Terminated

“Terminator: Salvation” opened this weekend stateside, but won’t be hitting cinemas in the UK and Ireland (and Australia too) until the first week of June. 

The Terminator franchise wasn’t necessarily something that needed such a drastic reboot: “Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines” wasn’t a great film, but it wasn’t exactly the nail in the coffin that, say, “Star Trek: Nemesis” was to that franchise.

On the other hand, “Terminator: Salvation” just might be that last straw that it takes for the Terminator franchise to rust and turn to scrap metal. The most forgiving of fanboys and girls might be able to see past its flaws, but if the general reaction of the audience at the screening I attended is anything to go by, the rest of the cinema-going public might not be so forgiving.

I originally thought I’d grade things on an A-F scale, little thinking I’d be using anything lower than a D: I’ve since revised that, and I’m going to work off an A-D scale, with some plusses and minuses thrown in there for good measure.

On said scale, “Terminator: Salvation” gets itself a C- with the full review below.

Sin-ekh-du-kee

The big screen's just never big enough

Embarrassing confession time: I’ve never watched “Being John Malkovich” and only saw “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” for the first time within the last six months. That’s quite disgraceful, I know.

That said, I enjoyed “Eternal Sunshine” immensely: as far as narratives go, I usually like them somewhat fragmented and not quite making sense until the end, so that ticked most of my boxes when it came to it, and I found Jim Carrey much less annoying than I usually do (possibly even less-so if “The Truman Show” weren’t on heavy rotation on TV…not that it’s a bad film, but doesn’t anyone else just think that there’s something wrong with his face?)

It’s disappointing that “Synecdoche, New York” is only opening outside of the States now (UK and Ireland release is this weekend, and Oz only got it recently too) when it was amongst the Oscar discussions for this year. Yeah, this is a film that was spoken about in the same breath as “Doubt,” but turns out far superior in my opinion (especially when it speaks such volumes to the failing/struggling writer in me who is his own worst critic.)

In keeping with the results of this poll, I’m going to grade my reviews now, and “Synecdoche, New York” (with the full review below) gets an A+.

Maximum Warp…Punch It (A Star Trek Review)

Well, it’s finally here: several years of waiting has finally culminated in the new “Star Trek” movie beaming to a screen near you this week. 

You can be jealous: I’ve already seen it twice (yeah, twice…it was better the second time, and I’ve a feeling it might be better still when I’ve seen it the third time…and then even better the fourth…okay, suffice it to say, I liked it, I liked it a lot.)

I’m too young to have grown up watching “Star Trek”: I’m sure many of the people going to see this film are. But my childhood was built around a lot of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” still holds a special place in my heart (along with my DVD collection, and anytime I manage to catch any re-runs…but enough of the space-station love.)

Anyway, my main concern can be set aside: my childhood remains intact, and there were a hell of a lot more moments in there that were faithful to the series rather than shitting all over it. (To be honest, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” could learn a lot from this film.) Instead of worrying, what I got was this awesome romp, this fun, intelligent and well put-together film and…well, did I mention I loved it.

In case me saying “I loved it” didn’t quite do it for you, my full review is below. (Until I get a few more votes on this poll, I’m sticking with my marks out of five grading system) and this gets a shiny 4/5 (but it’s more like 4.99999/5)