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Favorite Fantasy Films of 2010

Favorite Fantasy Films of 2010

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While fantasy on television has suffered a bit over the last couple of years, films are doing better than ever. Animated films, especially, seem really able to grasp the complex worlds of fantasy. Looking over a list of 2010 films, some real highlights come to mind. What’s amazing is that the films oriented toward adult audiences, such as Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland (both reviewed in the upcoming Black Gate #15), were almost entirely underwhelming, while the young adult films contained some surprising (and not-so-surprising) gems. I previously spoke about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (along with compelling follow-up commentary by Magille Foote), so I’ll focus on some other films from the year.

how_to_train_your_dragon_posterHow to Train Your Dragon

Hands down, of the fantasy films I’ve seen this year, my favorite was the unexpectedly charming How to Train Your Dragon. Any film with vikings and dragons guarantees to entertain, but I did not anticipate that this film would tug at the heartstrings quite as much as it does.

The main character, Hiccup, is the scrawny young son of a Viking chieftain who decides that rather than killing a wounded dragon, he will instead befriend it. Out of this strange new friendship he calls into question everything he’s ever known about the Viking way of life … and about a threat that’s even more deadly than the dragons they’ve encountered in the past.

It’s really a wonderful coming-of-age story about standing up for your principles even when it’s difficult, when everyone around you believes that you’re not only wrong, but outright foolish.

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Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

Goth Chick News: Cool Stuff in 2011

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super_8There are bits of wrapping paper static’d to the lamp shade and tendrils of curly ribbon hanging off the chandelier. Here I lay in a sugar and red meat coma under the pressing weight of one too many conversations with the essence of Christmas spirit, three times distilled. With New Years Eve still in front and a bacchanalia of epic proportions behind, what can I do but think happy thoughts about the coming year and a time when the little troll living between my ears will finally stop running in circles and shouting.

Trust me, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

But 2011 looms large and full of promise; that not all movies will be filmed in 3D, some remakes may be worth watching and some events will be worth waiting for. So for you I pull myself up off the sticky floor and shake the glitter off my Mr. Grinch flannel PJ’s to bring you the annual “Cool Stuff in 2011” list. I know you probably have some of your own things to add to it, but far be it from me to ask you to get up and try to type in your current state. Nope, leave it to me to take one for the team, and if you feel up to it later, go ahead and chime in.

Now that the room has stopped spinning, let’s start with the movies.

Super 8, a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams is the obvious place to begin, mainly due to the two gentlemen at the helm.  Until its release in June, you can content yourself by following along with the elaborate viral marketing campaign that has been teasing the crap out of those of us trying to determine the focus of this film.

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Scott Pilgrim vs. A Second Viewing

Scott Pilgrim vs. A Second Viewing

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Earlier this week, Andrew Zimmerman Jones posted a review of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I’m here to provide a different take on the film…

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is, in my opinion, one of the best movies of 2010. I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite films of the past five years, but after its lackluster release last August, viewers seem divided as to whether or not they enjoyed the whole Scott Pilgrim experience.

Scott gets a life
Scott gets a life

Some have said that it’s mostly style with very little substance or, as Mike Allen put it, “the cinematic equivalent of a box of Nerds – fizzling sweetly on the tongue, then gone and forgotten!” But I disagree, staunch Scott Pilgrim fan that I am, and I’m here to tell you why, if you found yourself wholly underwhelmed by the film, you should give it just one more chance. If you know where to look, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will surprise you with its intricacies.

This all started when the lovely and mysterious C.S.E. Cooney posted as her Facebook status: “Didn’t like Scott Pilgrim VS the World as much as I wanted to. Entertaining, though.”

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TRON: Legacy

TRON: Legacy

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tron-legacy-posterTRON: Legacy (2010)
Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen.

Disney has sunk a hefty amount of money into the making and marketing of TRON: Legacy as a blockbuster and a future franchise. Given the long-term currency of the 1982 original, this is what you would expect. The IMAX 3D release that coincides with last year’s release of Avatar makes Disney’s scheme of conquest obvious.

And yet, after watching the film, I have to wonder if Disney had any idea what they were doing with this, uhm, strange and mostly airless film. It’s decked with gorgeous neon visuals and special effects, but it is neither an action extravaganza to grab the young viewers nor an intelligent enough follow-up to the heady ideas that TRON smashed around in 1982 at the edge of the computer revolution. It appears that the revolution has not been televised. Or not screened.

TRON: Legacy is no fiasco—it will make a profit and I imagine that international box-office will make up the significant part of it—but it’s only “adequate” all around. Considering that I went into the film with the realistic expectation that it might very well suck, I can say with enormous lack of passion that I am “satisfied.” However, this won’t be a film I’ll want to revisit the way I do its predecessor, nor will it make it onto my DVD shelf. The benefit of the IMAX 3D presentation is significant enough (see it in this format if you can) that my disappointment would increase in its absence.

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Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

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Scott Pilgrim levels up when he gains the Power of Love.
Scott Pilgrim levels up when he gains the Power of Love.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World , a live-action film based on a popular comic book limited series which was written to mimic a quasi-video game world, goes beyond “quirky” into a new realm of meta-film.

What do I mean by this? I guess the best way to explain it is that at no point during the film is the viewer really allowed to forget that they’re watching a film. Watching the film is like watching a mix of anime and video game which happens to be performed by real actors. The fight scenes are extremely impressive, a mix of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Super Mario Galaxy, with some Guitar Hero thrown in for good measure.

“Realism” has no place in this film.

At first, you might think that things like this would ruin the film, but instead it allows you to engage with the film on a whole different level than what you’re used to … and it works.

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No Mere Nostalgia, Part II: TRON (1982)

No Mere Nostalgia, Part II: TRON (1982)

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tron-title-cardOn the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy. . . .

Earlier this year, I marched stolidly at the front of a phalanx to defend the original Clash of the Titans right before its re-make was about to hit theaters. I found the re-make more palatable than I expected, although I have since gotten frosty about it after watching it a second time when the DVD came out; the sucker just doesn’t hold up. Although a sequel to the re-make is now in the works, I think the status of Harryhausen’s 1981 film remains secure. It may even improve.

Now I am facing a similar-sounding situation with this Friday’s looming release of TRON: Legacy. I am here to defend the 1982 film TRON, a movie that balances on a triple-edged knife’s tip of nostalgia, prescience, and ridicule.

However, my position with the new TRON is different than that of the new Clash of the Titans. The forthcoming TRON: Legacy is not a re-make, but a sequel, and this puts me less on the defensive and instead rezzes me up. The early reviews are lukewarm, but at least TRON: Legacy isn’t trying to override the memory of the first movie, and it has brought back the original star Jeff Bridges as well as director Steven Lisberger (in the role of producer this time).

During the early stages of the “New TRON movie” development, Disney did consider doing a re-make, but thankfully someone in the Mouse House realized that a sequel was a better plan. Developments in computer technology between 1982 and 2010 provide an opportunity to explore how the world of computers from the original film have changed — how the grid and the primitive Internet have expanded to rule the world and transform into a reality parallel to our own — and that is fertile ground for a sequel. A sequel almost seems a necessity.

But that TRON: Legacy got made at all is a celebration of one the weirdest, long-term success stories of science-fiction cinema: how a “video-game craze” movie that got a muddy reception on its original release turned into a piece of technical prophecy, an oracle of the modern hi-tech zeitgeist.

Yes, but is it a good movie?

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Goth Chick News: You Really Need to Tell Me Everything… Now

Goth Chick News: You Really Need to Tell Me Everything… Now

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image0083I’m about to cross into some sacred territory here, but what the heck.

I really didn’t like The Empire Strikes Back, originally the second (ultimately fifth) in the Star Wars series. In fact, it pretty much put me off the rest of the movies and though I doggedly attended each and every one, the shine went off at number two.

Why?

Because the story left me hanging.

Yep, that’s basically it. The fact that we had to — nay, were forced to — come back for number three to find out what became of Han Solo, who was frozen in carbonite and being rocketed toward certain doom at the end of Empire, sucked the life out of the entire experience for me. Darth Vader’s evil pales in comparison to a cheap trick like an unfinished storyline.

Now before you start peppering me with email and comments about how George Lucas is a national treasure and “how dare I” and all that, please hear me out.

I know a lot of you will say that being left in suspense is part of the fun, and that if a tale is too rich to be told in under three hours it deserves to be broken up into segments. In the case of an HBO series or daytime soap operas I completely agree; waiting to see what happens tomorrow or next week is indeed the hook that keeps the viewers coming back, me included (i.e. True Blood).

The big difference is, the individual segments were never conceived or written to stand alone. And perhaps this is the argument one could make about George Lucas and his intentions when he wrote the entire Star Wars epic. However, a little cynical part of me can’t help but wonder if it had something to do with money, and that’s the bit that ever so slightly gets under my skin.

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Goth Chick News: Vampire Zombies on a Plane, Snakes Not Included

Goth Chick News: Vampire Zombies on a Plane, Snakes Not Included

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image004I believe everyone has something that unnerves them, which is not in your typical things-that-are-scary category. We’ve already agreed that clowns and little kids with blank stares rank high on the creepy index, but there are other more benign items that cause the hair on the back of our necks to stand up, mainly because they exist on the outside of the everyday.

Allow me to provide an example.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to visit Cape Canaveral in Florida for a night-time launch of the space shuttle. Though the event was scuttled by technical difficulties, there was something strangely frightening about the massiveness of the shuttle (and “massive” hardly does it justice).

This monolithic structure, sitting in the middle of an otherwise vacant launch pad and lit the way it was, seemed strangely terrifying. It didn’t belong there on what looked like a normal airport runway. It was gigantic and alien and out of place. I can’t explain it sufficiently, but I had nightmares about standing near it for several weeks after. Maybe because it was in a place my mind just couldn’t agree it should be, and that turned “normal” upside down.

It was because of the chill that comes from everyday things being displaced that I picked up Guillermo Del Toro’s latest paperback release The Strain to sustain me on a recent, long plane ride. In case you aren’t familiar with Del Toro, he is the owner of the incredible imagination that brought us Pan’s Labyrinth, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2007.

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Yesterday Was A Lie, A Film Review

Yesterday Was A Lie, A Film Review

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bgtitle“Yesterday Was A Lie” is an indie film that indulges in experimental exposition right out of the gate.

The story unfolds in a purposely non-linear fashion, and the unwary viewer can easily lose track of what is happening. The blurbs identifying the film as a “metaphysical mystery” do little to suggest how different is this film from what one might expect a mystery film to be.

The subscriber reviews in Netflix and Blockbuster seemed to generally pan it, although those who gave it five stars mostly did so while not sharing their revelation of what the film is about.

The ‘genius groups’ take seemed to be that one either gets it or one doesn’t get it, and if one doesn’t get it, one won’t understand it in any case. Those of a sub-genius persuasion, and I count myself among them, will very likely benefit from an understanding of the story before seeing the film.

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“We Belong Dead”: Bride of Frankenstein

“We Belong Dead”: Bride of Frankenstein

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I will be one of the Black Gate team present at the World Fantasy Convention this weekend, so if you are there as well, just look for the guy who appears lost. (I’ve never been to one of the big conventions before.)

bride-of-frakenstein-universal-weeklyTwo weeks ago I discussed the key Hammer Horror film for Halloween, Dracula (1958). It would be a grave omission not to discuss my key Universal Horror film for Halloween—especially since this year is that movie’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

This is going to be a “strolling” review, in which I walk through an entire film and simply point at things. It’s a good sort of October stroll, I think.

Three-quarters of a century ago, on April 22nd, Universal Pictures released the long-rumored, delayed, and awaited sequel to their 1931 smash hit adaptation of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Bride of Frankenstein. The world of Gothic film has never been the same. Bride is the highest achievement of the Universal Horror series, the best film ever from director James Whale, and a defining moment in the cinema of the fantastic, weird, and grotesque. Every viewing of the film is an unfettered joy and a voyage through the dark imagination.

(Promotional materials advertise the film as The Bride of Frankenstein, but the actual on-screen title eliminates the definite article, and I’m a martinet about these things.)

Universal in the 1930s built their House of Horrors on the twin success of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931. A later successful double feature of the two would create the Universal Horrors of the 1940s. And it was the director of Frankenstein, British import James Whale, one of many theatrical directors who were given film directing jobs in the new world of the “Talkies,” that the studio pegged as their great hope not only for horror, but to put the studio on a competitive level with MGM. Whale wasn’t only a sure hand with horror movies like Frankenstein, The Old Dark House (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933), but also produced successful stylish comedies, musicals, and murder mysteries for the studio.

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