m

• Black T-Shirt which reads: Carlito's Way: Rise to Power (front) and "When you got'em hangin' on the meathook... they tell you everything." (back)
• A small King Kong movie poster
• Kong Movie Camera Bubble Gum Rolls Candy Container
• Kong: Mighty Chew Bubble Gum
• DVD of Joss Whedon's Serenity
• DVD of The Incredible Hulk: The Complete First Season (starring Lou Ferrigno), and featuring a lenticular hologram that changes him from Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.

Posted by Michael Huang at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of my favorite childhood movies (which still retains its likeability as an adult) is the movie The Princess Bride. When the Princess Bride DVD was released by MGM in 2000, I bought it, but was really disappointed with the number of extras on it. A year later, they released The Princess Bride Special Editon DVD, with additional extra features. Coming soon is the The Princess Bride Dread Pirate Roberts Editon DVD and Princess Bride Buttercup Editon DVDs. As far as I can tell, there's no difference between Buttercup and Dread Pirate Roberts, other than the cover of the DVD, but these two new versions add a mocumentary special feature on the Dread Pirate Roberts.

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The financial success of this film pretty much guarantees the making of an X4.

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The Good

• King Kong
  Maybe someday Peter Jackson will make short movies again, but I doubt it.
• Reservoir Dogs
  This movie is little more than an hour and a half. Made back when Tarantino knew how to edit.
• Almost Famous
  Great movie. Awesome performance by the cast on this movie. A niche movie about rock and roll and groupies.
• Blackhawk Down
  I enjoyed it, although some of the elements of film are gruesome. Apparently the film was made in Morocco.
• Vertigo
  Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece.
• Hotel Rwanda
  Brutal and compelling. Don Cheadle stars as Paul Russebagina, who manages to house over a thousand refugees in Hotel Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide. A good movie, but probably not something I could watch again.
• The Mask of Zorro
  Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. A really fun movie, but the backstory runs way long.

  The Funny
  

• Along Came Polly
  Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller in a toilet humor romantic comedy. Ben Stiller plays a insurance agent whose wife (Debra Messing of Will and Grace) ditches him for a scuba instructor (played by Hank Azaria) on their honeymoon.
• The Wedding Crashers
  Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Christopher Walken are great in this movie. Rachel McAdams is super cute in this movie.
• Jackie Brown
  An adaptation of an Elmore Leonard book, it's a good caper movie with snappy dialogue that feels very Tarantino.

  The Unwatchable
  

• Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
  I've decided. I don't like Charlie Kaufman scripted movies. I think it's the internal monologue of the character (who is always a loser) that just transforms a 2 hour movie into a 2 hour pity party. Because the characters are often so unlikeable, it's hard to have any sympathy for them.
• Brother Bear
  In the making of feature of this movie, it was revealed that this film was only made because Michael Eisner, happy with the success of the Lion King, asked whether there were other animal movies on the process and green-lighted Brother Bear. The result is an all-too-generic Disney movie with singing animals.
• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  This movie felt like a B-movie, despite the A-movie budget.
• I, Robot
  Asimov is rolling in his grave over this adaptation. And of course, the evil robots have red eyes.
• Minority Report
  The special effects are neat, the movie is based on a Phillip K. Dick story, but it could have been any generic Tom-Cruise-gets-betrayed-by-someone-and-is-on-the-run movies.
• Bourne Supremacy
  I expected good things, having really enjoyed watching the Bourne Identity, but as far as sequels go, it wasn't anywhere as interesting as the original.

  The Sleeping Potion

• From Hell
  Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Heather Graham (Felicity Shagwell), Ian Holm(Bilbo Baggins) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) in a movie adaptation of a graphic novel about Jack the Ripper. Despite the cast and the performances, this one put me to sleep rather quickly.

  Posted by Michael Huang at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ocean's Twelve (Widescreen Edition)

by Warner Home Video

The plot of the movie centers on Terry Benedict (played by Andy Garcia) discovering the whereabouts of the Ocean's Eleven and demanding they pay the money stolen from him back. Add in a rival thief, and a love interest for Brad Pitt, and you've still got a really lousy movie. Part of this may be because the movie uses at least two deus ex machinas (possibly more, some are just too borderline) to get the protagonists out of their situations, which makes for a really unexciting film.

2/5: Not Recommended.

Posted by Michael Huang at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pulp Fiction

by Walt Disney Video

I can see why the movie is so highly lauded -- despite the violent and gritty nature of the film, it is still better than 99% of the garbage that Hollywood delivers these days.

The conversation at the beginning of the film about Europe and McDonald's is classic, and while most of the dialogue of the movie is unrealistically sharp and witty (think Gilmore Girls talking about drugs, guns and coffee) the film has plenty of moments to make it a worthwhile movie to watch.

Posted by Michael Huang at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ringers - Lord of the Fans

by Sony Pictures

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1. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
2. The Godfather
3. Infernal Affairs
4. The Princess Bride
5. The Fellowship of the Ring
6. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
7. Beauty and the Beast
8. The Fifth Element
9. Spirited Away
10. Hero

Posted by Michael Huang at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Friday evening ota, littlestar and parakkum and I went to DeAnza to watch a presentation of the Oscar-nominated animated film The Mysterious Geographic Adventures of Jasper Morello, with a talk by the director Anthony Lucas.

My notes are in the extended entry.

Continue reading "Talk: Anthony Lucas / Jasper Morello" »

Posted by Michael Huang at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The latest of these movie people moving into games is director James Cameron. In fact, he's got an new idea that blends games with movies. Cameron is working on Project 880, which, if approved, will be released first as a networked multiplayer game, and then as a movie.

Imagine Entertainment, the company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer that created the TV show 24, has teamed up with producer Jim Banister, Halo creator Alex Seropian, and others to develop a sci-fi reality show called XQuest. If it flies, contestants will occupy a cramped spaceship-like module for a month. Its flight simulators will subject them to rocket-like conditions, including six Gs of thrust. Players will ply the galaxy while following the rough contours of a plot. Outside the ship, online gamers will track the crew's mission and ultimately board their own PC-based spaceships to rendezvous with contestants in shared, simulated space. The next season's cast, in theory, is chosen from those who show the most skill playing the game at home.

What do I think about all this?

I think both creatively and profitibility wise, the money spent in developing a game without a prior IP is better spent elsewhere. When we were working on our project at Castaway, we were asking for a budget of 40 million dollars to develop a brand-new original IP. Publishers balked at these figures. Too expensive. Not a high enough profit margin.

My advice to James Cameron: Make the movie first, then make the game. I haven't seen T3: Rise of the Machines yet, so I don't know how the movie trilogy ends, but there's a license there that you can use to make a MMOG with. Or use Aliens even. These are worlds already established, rich with lore and possibility. A game, even with your name emboldened across the box cover isn't going to sell on its own, and unproven sci-fi licenses are the worst ones to try and make a sucess of.

MMOGs are not easy things to make a success of. There are more failures than successes in this market. While gamers can name the half dozen sucessful titles, there's more than several dozen that have failed for one reason or another, but mostly because game players simply weren't playing.

Movies based on games just don't work. There's a few oddball successes here and there, but for the most part, they are utter and complete failures. There's a reason for it too -- the emotions involved are different -- movies are experienced by watching, while games are experienced by playing. Try as we might, the way we sympathesize with characters in a movie is very different than playing as that character.

Posted by Michael Huang at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Filming for Harry Potter 5 to start

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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

by Walt Disney Video

The animation is top notch, and the remastering by Disney has done well to remove any artifacts from the original film print. I watched this in the English dialogue version, which has had modern stars Patrick Stewart, Uma Thurman and Edward James Olmos doing the voices for characters in the film.

The second disc of the 2-disc set includes the complete storyboards of the film.

Posted by Michael Huang at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

• SNL's "Lazy Sunday", which after airing on SNL this past Saturday Night became practically viral this week, first being encoded by fans, followed by an official release on SNL's site a few days later. The rap music video follows Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg on their lazy sunday as they buy cupcakes and see the Chronicles of Narnia.
• Sci-Fi Inside: Battlestar Galactica, a 20 minute behind the scenes look at Battlestar Galactica with some recap/sneak preview. It sounds like this is one of the specials Sci Fi will air before kicking off the new season in January.

Posted by Michael Huang at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Question: But video game movies suck.
Jackson: They do.
Question: So what will be different?
Jackson: Hopefully it won't suck.

Interview with Peter Jackson

Posted by Michael Huang at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Widescreen Edition)

by Touchstone / Disney

Personally, I find the Wikipedia to be this generation's interactive "Hitchhiker's Guide".

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The Terminal (Widescreen Edition)

by Dreamworks Video

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It's a bad, bad movie.
1/5

Posted by Michael Huang at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

West Side Story - recut as a horror flick
Titanic, recut as a horror flick
and the winner: The Shining, recut as a feel-good drama, coming of age story.
New York Times Article on the phenomenon, and Tattered Coat reports all sorts of statistics on how these trailers have spread like wildfire since they originally posted the links.

Posted by Michael Huang at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Animatrix came out today. It pretty much is a must see for all animation fans. An anthology of stories all set within the world of the Matrix, animated by some of the best animation studios in Japan. My favorite short is the film noir inspired "Detective Story".

Posted by Michael Huang at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched Out of Sight, the J.Lo/George Clooney movie based on a book by Elmore Leonard. J. Lo's character, Karen Sisco, is due to get her own show on the networks this coming fall season. I tend to like Elmore Leonard books and movies since they are usually heist or caper films -- and there just aren't many being made in Hollywood these days. The reason for the difficulty in making heist films is simple -- it's tough to make the audience feel sympathetic for criminals. Look at Gone in 60 Seconds... it's about a bunch of car thieves... it's tough to make anyone who's ever had their car stolen feel sorry for them. Ocean's Eleven works well as a heist movie works well for one reason, and one reason only -- it's a casino getting hurt. What is for sure to be a summer blockbuster, The Italian Job is also a classic remade heist film. It looks like it will be a fun film. What's most surprising to me is how many classic heist films they've remade, and how few new ones are being made, but as I've said, the trick is in making sympathetic characters.

Looks like it's gonna rain today. Those dark looming clouds do not bode well for the coming day.

Posted by Michael Huang at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matrix: Reloaded: I thought the original Matrix was a wonderful film -- lots of new concepts, a good combination of philosophy and action. The visual effects were stunning. I think in part, a large part of why the Matrix succeeded the way it did was because no one was expecting it to succeed. Matrix Reloaded is Matrix plus four years of technology.

The sequel suffers from the problem of over anticipation and needless hype. Everyone expected something that would make their head explode, but Reloaded is simply the bridge between the Matrix and Revolutions. I can see a lot of foreshadowing for the third film being set up with this movie. I also think that while the first is more accessible to the general public, the second is definitely more esoteric. Erin asked me after the movie why people laughed at a certain part, and the only explanation I could give was "it's a computer geek thing". I don't think a lot of people truly "got" the concepts behind the Matrix -- in every movie, there's a thematic question. In the first, the question is : "What is the Matrix?" The question in Reloaded is "What is Neo?" By the end of the movie, you have the answer, but you have even more questions.

There's even more things in Reloaded that I want to talk about, but writing about them would reveal way too much. I already feel awful about everything I've already said (although I know that most of my friends have seen it already). Just like there's a lot of cultural symbolism in a film like Spirited Away, Matrix Reloaded has a lot of symbolism and references that can't be appreciated without a firm grounding in anime, comic books, hong kong cinema, cyber-culture.

X2: While X2 is more entertaining, I think Reloaded is way more cerebral. I don't think X2 can withstand the repeated viewings test, whereas I believe Reloaded can.

E3. Damn, I'm glad it's over. I think E3 gets worse every year. Less and less games, bigger booths, louder music, games converging towards the generic instead of diversifying. Here are my top picks for the show. These will be different from what editors of gaming mags/sites pick since 1) they had more access than me, and 2) I don't give props to engine demos.

Best Booth: Nintendo

Even though the Nintendo booth was smaller than in previous years, the game selection there was one of the better ones of recent years with a good deal of innovative games. I expect great things from them.


Best GameBoy Advance Game: Advance Wars 2.

I just love these types of games. The strategy-puzzle genre has been largely absent from the last couple of generations of consoles, which is sad, because they were my bread and butter in the days of the Nintendo.


Most Noticeable Game missing from the Show: Star Wars Galaxies

Much hyped, but no show, even at the closed Sony Booth. This is never a good sign... especially if the game is supposed to make it out this year.

Most Innovative Game at the show: Nintendo's Pac Man game

In this game, one player gets to hold onto the GBA, and be Pac-Man, while the other three players are the ghosts chasing Pac-Man.


Worst Game Concept: American Idol
I couldn't tell if this was a button mash or a Karaoke game. Whatever the case, the idea is bad, bad bad. Can we vote this game off E3?

Top Three Game Concepts Overused at E3: First Person Shooters, Massively Multiplayer, Tomb Raider knockoffs.

Ugh. And people wonder why I'm so cynical about the future of games.

Upcoming Game Franchising:


Squaresoft: Final Fantasy-Anything

EA: Sim-Anything

Blizzard: Warcraft Anything

Tecmo: Dead or Alive Anything

Capcom: Megaman Anything

Konami: Metal Gear Solid: Anything

I had a pretty good time hanging out in L.A. and meeting up with people. I must say though, that one of the most memorable moments of my visit down here was playing Carcasonnes in the hotel bar while the Jewish Canters convention were whooping it up singing in the bar.

Posted by Michael Huang at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This news might be a little late, but Indiana Jones is coming to DVD! Unfortunately it's only going to be available (initially) as a box set. If you've seen my DVD library, you know that I like boxsets, usually. The problem with box sets is when you are getting something you know you'll never watch. I know that I will probably never watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And everyone who's seen the movie knows why. Because it's the worst one of the three. Plus, I prefer having bonus material on the same disc (swapping out discs to watch bonus material rarely happens). They made us wait 6 years for these titles (actually if you think about how long Paramount was on the DivX crew, it's probably more like 4 years of wait on DVD + 2 DivX years).

Posted by Michael Huang at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTV Films Present: Better Luck Tomorrow

by Paramount

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I was making dinner when it occurred to me that the phrase "cut through like a hot knife through butter" must be fairly modern in origin. My reasoning being that were it an old phrase, existing before refridgeration, the phrase would make no sense whatsoever, since butter at room temperature is fairly soft, and hot knives would pass only a little bit more quickly through butter than a cold knife. But, butter coming from a refridgerator like mine (which has been known to freeze sodas on occasion) is rock hard, and a hot knife (heated by hot water) cuts through it (thankfully) quite quickly.

One of my co-workers proposed this past weekend to his girlfriend of three years. He and I share the same birthday and the same birthyear, which makes him the same age as me, give or take a few hours. Anyways, he is ready for marriage, I am so not. It's not that I wouldn't be a good husband or a good father, it's just that, well, I'm simply not ready for it. And while there are certainly plenty of pros and cons to being married, it's a lifestyle that I just can't handle yet.

I've lived my life for 28 years, and in alot of ways, I'm still trying to figure out who I really am. A person isn't complete until they find the other part of themselves, and the other part can only be found in the presence of another person. Who I am when I'm around people is different from the person I am when I am alone. Who I am when I'm with a group of people is quite different from who I am when I'm amongst friends. All these different facets of my personality. Sometimes fluid, sometimes hard, constantly changing.

Shrek: "Ogres are like onions."

Donkey: "They stink?"

Shrek: "Yes... No!"

Donkey: "They make you cry?"

Shrek: "No!"

Donkey: "Oh... you leave them out in the sun, they get all brown and start spoutin' little white hairs."

Shrek: "No! Layers! Ogres have layers! You get it? We both have layers!"

Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody likes onions. You know what everybody likes? Parfaits."


From the movie Shrek

Now that I think about it, a lot of things are like ogres and onions. Think about things that make you cry, things that have layers that not everyone likes...

Posted by Michael Huang at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I heard this weekend that they are finally adapting Asimov's "I, Robot" into a movie. Obviously I'm excited that one of my favorite short story collections is going to make it to the big screen. Will Smith has been signed on as a detective who investigates robots. As is typical for a Will Smith film, the release date is set for the July 4th holiday. I'm hopeful that the film will make it to the box office. Many many years ago in 1978 , Harlan Ellison (another famous science fiction author) wrote up a screenplay for "I, Robot" but due to a whole slew of snafus (mainly the expense of special effects), the film was never produced. It looks like now, after all these years, the curse might finally be broken.

Posted by Michael Huang at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The rains started yesterday. I knew it would still be raining when I awoke this morning. The rain's going to last all week.

Work is taking us to see the Daredevil movie on Friday. I was never a big fan of Daredevil when I was a kid. I always preferred the X-Men or Spider-Man rather than Daredevil. The interesting thing about the classic Marvel Superheroes is that in the wake of the nuclear dangers, most of their origins were due to radioactivity in some form or another. Until the idea of mutants came along (which saved the writers from always coming up with gamma rays or radioactive spiders). Anyways, it ought to be interesting, as it'll be the first movie in a while where I won't be comparing it to the original work. The classic Marvel Superheroes were all based around New York and the East Coast. The Fantastic Four have a building on Baxter Street, Spider-Man and Daredevil patrol NYC. I think the X-Men are in Massachusetts.

I went up to fill up at the pump yesterday, and it's $2.17 a gallon now for premium unleaded. We're all just waiting for the bombs to drop now. When I was in High School, I read some of the prophecies of Nostradamus. This was back during the Gulf War (yes, another sign of my age -- where were you when the Gulf War started?) and the media had labeled Saddam as the Anti-christ. Now the interesting thing about the prophesies is that you can interpret them anyway you like, but the quatrain that always fascinated me was century 10, quatrain 72:

The year 1999, seventh month,

From the sky will come a great King of Terror.

To bring back to life the great King of Mongols,

Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

This of course, refers to Bush's announcement of canidacy for President (which happened in June of 1999) but by July, in his campaign speeches, he was already calling himself president. It also refers to his past as part of the Texas air national guard. As well as a conflict in Asia (North Korea, anyone?). I'm not sure what the 4th line in the quatrain means... you'll need someone more versed in astrology to give you that answer, I think. Mars could refer to the the God of War, but it could also refer to a astrological position. Maybe it's Bush who is the Anti-christ, not Saddam...

Posted by Michael Huang at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adaptation

by Sony Pictures

Literally, it means you are what you think. If you can think of nothing but failure, then you will not be able to think of success.

That seems to be the theme of my day today. The sermon at church today was on the creation of man, and how God made us the way we are, and how he loves us unconditionally, like a parent loves a child.

Then I went to see "Adaptation", which is a somewhat disjointed movie with a Nicholas Cage as Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter who has major self-esteem problems. He's fat, he's balding, he can't seem to get a date, and he's got writer's block. We hear in voiceover Charlie's thoughts. In fact, the movie opens with a monologue of Charlie tearing himself apart, piece by piece. It was somewhat painful to watch, as some of the issues that he beats himself over is what we can do to ourselves sometimes.

Posted by Michael Huang at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mamoru Oshii, the director of Ghost in the Shell and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade has a new live-action film out called Avalon. It looks like a visual feast, if the trailer is any indication.

Posted by Michael Huang at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)