Really Bad Marketing

You saw the trailer for John Carter. You saw the superbowl TV spot. You saw the commercials. You were not interested in this movie at all. Rightly so - it had one of the worst marketing campaigns I'd ever seen. It looked ridiculous. It looked incomprehensible. It looked like every sci-fi movie ever made, a rehash of everything we've seen before. Heck, the arena scene looks like it was pulled exactly from another terrible film: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Who wants to go watch a movie that looks like all of this? No one. No one in the US anyways. Hence why a 250 Million Dollar movie only made 30 million during its opening weekend. The marketing was terrible.

Yet everyone should have wanted to see this movie. It had a significant amount of things going for it, all of which were ignored by the marketing campaign. Let's name a few...

- Directed by Andrew Stanton, the guy who made Finding Nemo and Wall-E

- Based on book series that defined all of science fiction as we know it today (Star Wars, Avatar, everything)

- Guy who wrote original book also created another popular character: Tarzan

- Written by a Pulitzer Prize and Hugo Award winner

- The story is actually about a Civil War soldier. It is grounded in the real world, with sci-fi thrown in after the first 20 minutes or so. The trailers make it look like all crazy sci-fi.

Let's give it another shot though shall we? Check out this Fan-made trailer below.

Okay, now THAT is a movie that I want to go see. Hollywood's marketing was awful, yet a fan can hit all the emotional points and other things that make a person want to go see this movie.

Hollywood: 0

Fans: 1

Note: I haven't seen John Carter yet. I've heard very mixed things on it. I want to see it sometime though.

The Year Ahead Pt. 1

January and February are notorious for their terrible movies, mostly because that's where Hollywood decides to throw all their trash every year. This year we actually had a few decent movies (supposedly, I never saw them sadly): The Grey, Chronicle, and Haywire, among others. Still, all of those even had pretty mixed reactions. With January and February officially behind us though, it's time to actually start getting excited about movies again. To help you out, I'm starting a short segment listing movies you need to be looking forward to this year, broken down by category. Also, each segment will likely only list movies coming out within a month of or two of when the segment being posted. Hence why I'm not bringing up movies like The Avengers, Prometheus, or Lincoln yet. Witha ll that being said, let's get started!

The Hard to Ignore

The Hunger Games (March 23rd)

Admit it, you've read the books, or at least some of them. You've been sucked in to this simple, often annoying, yet completely addictive sci-fi teen fiction series. It's fantastic. I just started reading book 2 last night and found myself staying up far too late because of it. Now we're just nine days away from the movies' release, and my excitement is growing. Initially, I was entirely unexcited for this movie, but as more and more leaks get released from people who have seen it, I can't help but be enthusiastic. Word on the movie-blog street is that it's great, potentially even a new sci-fi classic. If you're already sick of hearing about this series, if you're getting flashbacks of the Twilight craze, here's a word of warning: It's just going to get worse. Buckle up and prepare to get annoyed by the fans. However, the best thing you can do is just to give up, give in, read the books and go see this movie when it comes out. You won't be disappointed. At least... I hope you won't be. (please be a good movie... )

The Ones You Haven't Heard Of

The Raid: Redemption (March 23rd)

Are you sick of all these wimpy action movies with tons of CGI explosions, fake fighting robots, terrible acting, and nothing but english speakers? Well this will probably be the movie for you. Once again, the press has been going crazy for this thing. It actually came out a year or two ago (or at least that's when it was first seen), and it's gotten nothing but praise. The way I've heard it described goes like this: "You know how most action movies have a few cool scenes here and there, then the last 15 or 20 minutes of the movie are the really awesome cool part? Well, those like 15 or 20 minutes of most action movies are spread out to about 80% of this movie. It's pure adrenaline." If you don't mind heavier violence and you didn't think that trailer above was awesome enough, I suggest you watch the original trailer instead. It will blow your mind. To pieces. Many pieces. I want to make trailers like that... [trailer music is everything, that one gets it right]

Moonrise Kingdom (May 16th)

Wes Anderson. Enough said. The genius behind The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Royal Tenenbaums, and my favorite, The Darjeeling Limited, is back at it again. The funny thing is, I'm rarely ever incredible excited to see his movies, but every time I see one I absolutely love it. Sometimes the topic at hand appears strange and uninteresting (like Moonrise Kingdom), and yet, even then I find that I end up loving them. He isn't to be ignored. If you're ever looking for the definition of the word "quirky," watch a Wes Anderson movie.

The Not So Unnecessary

Titanic 3D (April 6th)

At about this point, you're seriously questioning a lot of things about me. I beg you not to dismiss this movie. Yes, it has some very corny scenes that have been made fun of in pop culture to no end. Yes it's a sappy love story. Yes it's being re-released in theaters in the completely unnecessary 3D format. Put all of that aside though. It's a genuinely great movie that has only been brought down BECAUSE of societies jokes. At the time, and for over a decade after, it was the highest grossing movie of all time because loved it. Now that it's been 15 years since its original release, there are many many people that have never even seen it. Releasing it in theaters again may seem like a moneygrab, but I don't have a problem with giving people all over he world an opportunity to see something in theaters that they've never seen before, or to re-create the theatrical experience of a great movie again. I say we should bring older movies back to theaters more often.

Side note: I don't enjoy 3D in movies, but James Cameron knows how to do 3D. He's the one that brought us Avatar, and even people that don't like 3D an admit that he did a great job with it there. This movie WILL look good in 3D, and if I go see it I'll probably see it in 3D. But you should know, it's also being re-released without the 3D attached. So you aren't forced into 3D.

The Questionably Awesome

Cabin in the Woods (April 13th)

I don't like horror movies at all. But I love sci-fi, I love unique takes on things, I love being surprised, and I love Joss Whedon's writing. This has all of that. It takes a completely and very intentionally stereotypical premise and goes an entirely different direction with it. It looks like great campy fun and I'm really curious to see how the movie ends. Cabin In the Woods is another one of those movies that could have fallen into the category of being completely unnecessary, but I don't think so. We need this new take on things. Will it be good though? No clue. It could be the lamest movie of the year. It could be campy to the point of becoming unbearable. I hope none of that is true though. I hope this movie exceeds expectations. It better, especially if it has an awesome band like The Naked and Famous in the trailer.

The Hunger Games [Book Review]

After well over a year of hearing about The Hunger Games trilogy in podcasts, from friends, from random people, etc, I finally gave it a shot. Admittedly, I was a little bit wary because of it's categorization as "young adult" fiction. However, with the movie coming out soon and everything, I decided I couldn't delay much longer. Thus, I broke down and read it.

Not gonna say a whole lot on it really except to say that the hype holds up. It's genuinely a very entertaining good read, and it goes places I really didn't expect it to go at all (especially in relation to the games). From the very first chapter or two my predictions started completely falling flat. The games themselves were enormously entertaining to read through, and took up a much larger portion of the book than I anticipated.

The only thing I really didn't like (and it is a huge thing) was the main character. Katniss. She was okay at the beginning, and I definitely understand her motivations and thought processes... but I was constantly annoyed with her, especially once the games started. She was so so clueless about how she was affecting other people for almost the whole book. That wasn't fun to read. It was annoying. It made me angry at her character. From the moment Gale entered the scene, I understood his perspective and where he was coming from. From the moment Peeta entered the scene, I understood his perspective and where he was coming from. I feel like at some point or another I've been in both of their positions. Katniss though? She had no freaking clue about anything. Everything with her felt extremely selfishly motivated and uncaring towards others' emotions. I couldn't handle it.

At this point, I'm debating whether I even want to read the 2nd book. All the end of the 1st book did was set up team Edward/Jacob situation that I don't care about at all. If there's a genuinely exciting plot with cool stuff going on, I'll read it, but I definitely don't feel like it's going there at this point.

It's strange. I'd still recommend the book to most people, and I genuinely did really really like it... so it's odd that I'm saying so much negative stuff. Maybe it's just a male thing. Maybe females really understand the conflicts that Katniss deals with. I think she deals with those conflicts in the poorest ways possible. She never cares about anyones' emotions except for her own and what the audience might be feeling. It's painful to even read.

What do y'all think? Am I just coming at things from the male perspective? Should I still move on to book 2, or is it exactly what I fear it will be?

The Hunger Games: 8/10

How Small We Are

Some of these are old, some newer. You may have seen a few before. All are phenomenal.

It's amazing how our perspective of time is so limited. These videos give us a glimpse of how small we are, and look at things in our world that we may take for granted or see as normal, but when viewed over a fast speed show an entirely different kind of beauty. They inspire awe.

How much greater and more amazing must God's view of our universe be?

I ordered these videos very intentionally. It starts out with a view of humanity across city scapes, which then fade into nature and places where no humans have touched, which then transitions to a video that shows both nature and cities together gorgeously, followed by the final video of the entire earth which shows the stark contrast between cities and nature from space.

Dark Knight Rises? Bane Rises!

Just got back from my screening of the prologue for The Dark Knight Rises! The film actually doesn't come out until next summer sometime, but they had a few sneak previews across the country at various IMAX theaters, and I was lucky enough to go. Fun fun!!

At the bottom of this post you'll find a plot description of everything that happened during the first 8 minutes of the movie. I don't think it's that spoilery at all, barely anything happens, but it is a fun sequence to set the movie up with. If you want to go in the movie blind, then ignore the last paragraph of this post. Otherwise, continue on to read what I thought about it!

It was good. No... it was great. It's exactly what I expected from Christopher Nolan. I still think I prefer the opening sequence to The Dark Knight (the Joker's bank heist), but this prologue was completely thrilling experience. There were some technical issues though. Watching it on IMAX was a little overwhelming. The movie literally took up the entire domed screen, so it was very disorienting at times. Additionally, Bane's voice (the primary antagonist) was extremely hard to understand, thus I felt like I missed out on a lot of the plot. I don't think it was a sound issue with the theater - I think it was Bane's accent combined with the fact that he's always speaking through a really awkward mask. Which, side note, Bane's medical issue is pretty ridiculous and interesting. This isn't revealed in what I saw today at all, but apparently the reason he has the mask is that he suffered some sort of a problem way back when, but the problem left him with enormous pain, so much pain that he would literally die because of the pain. Thus, the mask provides with him a constant stream of pain killers, allowing him to live. It's a weird deal.

Bottom line is that all this screening made me want to do is watch the whole movie, and go back and watch the first two again. It got me excited. It made me remember why I love movies. The full domed IMAX experience was awkward enough that I probably wouldn't do that again, but it was a great experience overall. Christopher Nolan hasn't lost his touch. I'm just curious to see where the movie goes from here. So much is still completely unknown about the movie, which is weird to say considering I just saw 8 minutes of it. Heck, we didn't even get to see Batman! The whole preview was entirely about Bane. I'll end with this though: The only thing the prologue needed was a bit of clarity, as I really didn't understand the "why" of most of it. And more batman.

Okay, below is a description of the whole prologue, or at least what I remembered from it! If you saw it and remember more, or know things I got wrong, or understand stuff better, please comment and let me know.

Also, I got a shirt, which is cool.

Plot of the Prologue

The movie begins with Commissioner Gordan speaking at what appears to be the funeral of Harvey Dent. He says some nice words, of which I've completely forgotten, then the scene ends and we fade to what appears to be a country in central Asia, though I could be completely wrong. The largest portion of the prologue starts here. A US commander of sorts is standing next to an airplane when a vehicle pulls up carrying three captured individuals, all with hoods over their heads. Apparently they have a connection to Bane (the primary antagonist of the movie), so the military guy takes them all into a plane then threatens to throw each one of them out until one of them spills the beans on Bane. After one of the hostages is shot, another begins to speak, but with a very odd, quite hard to understand, almost electronic voice with a thick eastern European accent. His mask is removed, and it turns out, he's Bane! Surprise! Saw that coming. Anyways, Bane stalls for a bit talking to the military guy while a C-130 cargo plane appears above the military plane. No one in the military plane seems to realize another plane has appeared above them. The military guy asks Bane if his whole plan was to get captured, which of course Bane replies affirmatively to, and then says that no one on board the plane will survive. Guys repel down from the C-130, break in to the military plane, and chaos ensues. The military plane has somehow now been attached to Bane's secret little C-130, but only by the tail. The C-130 goes faster, thus causing the military plane to fall perpendicular to the C-130. The forcing being applied to the plane are so great at this point that it begins ripping to pieces, all while chaos is still happening on the plane. Did I mention it doesn't look like he used any CGI at all? It appears they literally attached the plane to the C-130 and it literally ripped apart. Could be wrong, but I do know that Nolan very very sparingly uses CGI in anything. Anyways, to continue... At some point, Bane's henchmen start drawing blood out of one of the guys through a tube, and it appears to be very important. My guess is they took the plane just so they could get at these guys so they could get the blood, but really it's all unclear at this point. I can't understand much of what anyone is saying. It's just chaotic and blood is being drawn and a lot of people are dying and a plane is being destroyed. A few of Bane's men are on the outside of the plane now trying to blow the back of the military plane off so as to create a vertical opening heading back up to the C-130. The whole sequence ends with Bane grabbing on to one guy (one of his fellow henchmen, his sidekick? Or is it someone from the military plane that he's trying to capture? not sure), and they raise out of the rear of the plane heading back up towards the C-130. The military plane is then unhooked from the C-130, and it drops below. The purpose of the whole event??? Still not sure at all. The screen fades to black, and a bunch of extremely short clips from later parts of the movie play in an effort to get me excited to see more... which I'm already excited to see more but whatever! The end. Everyone leaves.

Wow, that was one massive paragraph. Sorry, English teachers across the world.

The Dark Knight Rises

Yes, yes in fact I WILL be going to see a 10 minute sneak preview of The Dark Knight Rises on Tuesday night at the IMAX in Huntsville (Space & Rocket Center)... for FREE.

Success.

I'll let you know how it is. But I'm guessing it's going to be unbelievable and mind blowing.

Directors

This is the kind of stuff I can watch beginning to end without getting bored in the least. Below is a roundtable interview with 6 pretty big and potentially award winning directors of movies this year.