Day: April 25, 2006

I’m just full of reviews today so I’ll keep on going. I mean to always review every piece of new media that gets into my hands but it’s surprising how much media that actually entails!

Last night, Mike and I felt like grabbing a movie so we headed over to Blockbuster and scanned the Previously-Viewed Movies section.

Here’s where I go on a tangent in saying that I rarely rent movies any longer, I go ahead and buy the previously viewed ones. Especially the ones under $9.99. For example, we bought 2 movies for $17 + tax which comes out to $19.55. Voila. Instead of renting a movie for…$5.75 (help me out here people…cannot recall how much a rental costs), I can go ahead and just purchase it for a few dollars more, which allows me to lend out the movie to my good friends (read: If you want The Island, come and get it.)

I haven’t bothered pawning off some of the lamer ones that I’ve bought on a whim, but I’m sure I could get at least $5 for a DVD.

Anyhow, back to my story about The Island.

Oh man, we loved this movie. It kicked serious ass. It had a sci-fi story within a mega action movie. I am a fan of the sci-fi but let me tell you that it isn’t hardcore sci-fi so don’t worry about that stuff…just watch it for a cool story and super, super action sequences. We’re talking “OH man, they didn’t just do that, oh, OH!” action sequences where a guy gets a freakin’ crowbar to the face and you’re thinking “Ouch.”

You know, sometimes I want to say a lot about a movie, but then I don’t want to ruin anything about it so I don’t bother saying anything. Just like now. The only thing I will leave you with is…best.movie.ever.

Ha ha, all kidding aside here, Scarlett Johanssen. *meow*

I give it three thumbs up. I really think this was the movie that got away from me in 2005. Why did I not know about this movie? It’s like no one has ever told me about it! I take that back…I can’t remember who (Eric?) mentioned it a few weeks ago, but they were the ones who planted the seed in my head to go check this movie out.

Dad, I know you’re reading this – make this your next movie to rent. Although, we know it’s the summer so no movie rentals will happen until the winter.

I forgot that before we watched Deliverance on Saturday, Mike, Eric and I watched a movie called Timecode as recommended by Benoit.

Timecode’s story revolves around a bunch of people working at a production studio and there’s a whole plot about people cheating on one another.

Storywise, not the most original or intriguing storyline, but that’s not the best part of the movie.

The movie is filmed in real time, with four different cameras. Your screen is divided up into four quadrants so that you can see each of the four cameras. At first, the story focusses on different people and different settings, but as the movie goes forward, some characters/scenes interact with the other, which basically gives you two, three, four different angles to one shot.

The movie was a little hard to follow in that they still have people talking in one scene while another is talking. They mix the audio so the one you should be paying attention to has higher volume but at some points I was thinking “Wait, who’s talking? What quadrant should I be watching?”

Plus, it didn’t help any when Salma Hayek starts having sex with one guy and then all of us kind of missed what was going on in the other three quadrants. 😉 Ha ha.

All in all, I would like to say that this movie is worth seeing just for the method they filmed it in. Supposedly the took 15 takes to get the final version – keep in mind that the film revolves around a very roughed in storyline – the rest of it involves the actors/actresses improvisationaling their roles…they even include Version 1 on the DVD so you can see how much was different.

If you don’t mind watching a movie with a ‘so-so’ storyline and are more interested in the concept behind it, I suggest you check out Timecode.

Also, a special ‘sorry’ goes out to Vero seeing as she wanted to watch it but we (I) went ahead and watched it without her. I’m sorry and that won’t happen again.

The year: 1972.
The movie: Deliverance.

I remember first hearing about Deliverance when my dad downloaded the theme song which is Dueling Banjos. I never thought about actually watching the movie since I was thinking it was a western.

This weekend Eric said he had bought the movie so we popped it in.

This movie was excelent, albeit a little freaky. It revolves around 4 men on a canoe trip (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox) and something awful, AWFUL happens to them on the canoe trip (I won’t spoil it for anyone. I wonder if I should since the movie is freakin’ old) and then the rest of movie shows how each man deals with the stress which comes from what happened. We’re not talking about someone losing their canoe or anything. Let’s just say you wouldn’t want your enemy to go through the same fate.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the movie, although I was freaked out in certain parts since I have this weird thing about lake water in which I always think I’m going to rub up against something in the water which shouldn’t be there…so the movie freaked me out in a few parts.

All in all, you should definitely spend the $10 and pick this up at your local Future Shop. Two thumbs up.

I enjoy the older movies where they were less about special effects and more about the story and character development/analysis. They got into the brains of individuals.

Check it out.