philosoraptor42 | Entries tagged with videos

The previous trailer made by this guy can be found here. This is the same again, but with clips from the latest Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer included too.

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If anyone is unfamiliar with the 90s cartoon intro that this is based on, you can see it here.

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How many of the 170 horror movies can you guess?

(Answers can be found here)

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(If you like this video you should probably check out the youtube link above and click "like". Plus in the video information there's a tinyurl link to Mediafire. Apparently the band Flashworx have offered up this EP as a freebie.)

Seriously, the movie Drive has done weird things to my taste in music. I can't stop listening to stuff like this these days....

Evil Dead (2013)

Wow.

Look, there's going to be triggering stuff in here. I can't help it. I don't normally worry about blood too much, but this time I'm going to be showing a lot of it (eventually). What's more there is an um... "iconic" moment in the original movie "The Evil Dead" and regardless of how they handled that in the remake, I'm going to have to discuss the original on which its based anyway. So the review below WILL (later on) include a r*pe discussion. However, I'm going to do as much of the review as I can before I reach that point. Also, there will be two trigger warnings below. The first is for discussion and images related to violence and the second (very close to the end) is for the r*pe discussion.

This review is going to cover a lot of bases so here's the contents:
1. The Non-Triggering Review
A short basic introduction that expresses my general feelings on the Evil Dead series as a whole, includes my opinion on the new movie, but is somewhat lighter on actual analysis. ("So like every other movie review you've done then?" - Oh touche!)

2. Confused by the Critics
I explain why I think some criticisms of the new remake make no damn sense and analyse what might be causing the reviews to be so drastically polarised.

3. The 'iconic' moments
I talk about the bloodthirsty elements and get into the real guts of the movie. I talk about how much this remake has taken from its predecessor and whether it should have done so.

1. The Non-Triggering Review

Before I get to any of the triggering stuff (don't worry, the warning will be nice and clear when we get to it and any triggering stuff will be a long way under the cut), I'm going to try and give as thorough a summation of my thoughts on the movie as I can.

Okay, so um... look hand-on-heart here. I didn't like the original movie of "The Evil Dead" from the 80s. I saw "Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" first and was kind of puzzled by it. But I increasingly loved it the more I watched it. It marked the beginnings of my adoration of horror comedies, since Raimi seems to be unique in his ability to not only have real creepiness and horror and real laugh out loud moments in the same film, but to have both in the exact same moment!

Then I watched "The Evil Dead" and it was a massive let-down. I wasn't used to low budget horror at all - and the original is SERIOUSLY low budget. The film felt slow and plodding. Bruce Campbell's character wasn't the charismatic narcissist I'd come to love in the sequel either. It didn't have the comedy of the sequel. Okay, actually there is some comedy in the second half, but I didn't reach that point. When it came to the aforementioned 'iconic' moment, I just turned it off in disgust. (I came to watch it again last October for Halloween Candy's 31 day marathon. Familiarity with the entire Friday 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, along with a few Lucio Fulci movies probably helped me to stomach it better and be a little more forgiving of its flaws, but the hills certainly weren't alive with praise for it.)

So I must say, like many people, I was kind of hoping for this remake would be a horror comedy like parts 2 and 3. But the poster made very clear that was not to be the case. The teaser poster was covered in the words "THE MOST TERRIFYING FILM YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE." (In caps, just like that.) So I was just going to have to accept that this wasn't going to be a humourous film.

I've often said in the past that the best horror films have a sense of fun. Actually gore can be part of that. It's true that gore isn't always scary. In John Carpenter's "The Thing" the gory parts seriously freak you out, but it's the tension while you are waiting for The Thing to strike that really get to you. It's the atmosphere that makes a horror movie creepy, but the gore is the fun part. This film has lashings of gore and there are clear moments where, while not a laugh riot, you can tell the director is aware of the silly elements.

I've heard a few reviewers complain that the acting isn't very good. I have no idea what they are talking about. Some characters get rather less screen time than others, but the acting felt pretty good from everyone. Particularly impressive was Jane Levy who plays the first person to be possessed by the evil.

The basic story is simple. Several friends go on a getaway to a cabin in the woods. They find a scary-looking book. Someone is silly enough to read words out of it. Et voila, demonic possession of a particularly horrible sort ensues.

( Non-triggering section of review continues under the cut... )

Elsewhere on the internets!

(Lindy West's article)

(Review at "Diaries Of The Demented" blog)

(Review on the Screenrant Underground podcast)

(Horroretc Podcast discussion - I haven't heard it yet)

(Half In The Bag video review - I haven't watched it yet)

The short film (less than 5 minutes) that got Fede Alvarez noticed by Sam Raimi is not horror and, unlike the Evil Dead remake, is all CG visual effects:

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Hotel Transylvania (2012)

The reviews for this haven't been great. They haven't been exactly awful, but certainly lacklustre. This deeply surprised me because the director is none other than Genndy Tartatovsky and I kind of love this guy. He's the creator of Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack, he was closely tied to The Powerpuff Girls and was animation director for the (actually pretty damn awesome) Powerpuff Girls movie.

(Click on the image for full size. Rotating from top left: Aku the demon from "Samurai Jack, Yoda wielding a lightsabre, Dexter and Deedee from "Dexter's Laboratory". In centre, Genndy Tartatovsky dressed as Samurai Jack.)

What's more Genndy Tartatovsky was responsible for the Clone Wars cartoons which spanned the gap between George Lucas' second and third awful Star Wars prequels (not the 3D animated Clone Wars cartoon, that came later). Tartatovsky's Star Wars cartoons had the same characters as the movies and featured the distinctive and creative animation style of the Samurai Jack cartoons, but what was incredible was that the Star Wars prequel universe suddenly felt exciting in those cartoons.

The Clone Wars cartoons showed a genuine villain who seemed to pose a real threat to the Jedi (though he gets his chest crused by force powers, so that's why General Grievous seems a little pathetic in Episode III), they showed clone army commandos who actually seemed to have an advantage over the droids (as opposed to in the movies where we're simply told that clones are better and then see no real evidence of it). They showed Yoda going out on missions, C3PO being genuinely funny, Anakin and Padme suddenly demonstrating a bit of genuine romantic chemistry, and the plot was well paced and had a clear logical progression. It was just simply superior to the live action movies in every way.

Genndy Tartatovsky was supposed to be working on a sequel to the classic Jim Henson puppet animation movie "The Dark Crystal" (titled "The Power Of the Dark Crystal"), which would presumably be his first major project to use puppets. Instead "Hotel Transylvania" is his first 3D animation movie (which isn't to say that the other movies didn't use computer effects, but not with 3D graphics).

The story of "Hotel Transylvania" is that Dracula's young girl Mavis is now reaching the age of 118 and she wants to see the world. However, Dracula is terrified that she'll come to harm from humans and he's been exaggerating the threat they pose all her life. Meanwhile Dracula runs a hotel, taking pride in its complete isolation from the human world. The hotel provides a getaway for monsters wishing to escape meet up away from the prying and threatening eyes (and pitchforks) of human beings. Monsters regularly flock to the hotel for Mavis' birthday celebrations since Dracula always makes a big effort over them. When a human tourist manages to turn up at the hotel it risks not only destroying the hotel's reputation, but also revealing to Mavis that humans aren't as threatening as she was led to believe....

Dracula's daughter Mavis turns into the cutest vampire bat EVER!

So what was wrong with "Hotel Transylvania"? Naturally there was the possibility that I'd find nothing wrong with it at all, but with so many lacklustre reviews there must be something about the movie which at least lessened its appeal for some viewers, right?

( Read more... )

Some classic 2D Tartatovsky work:
( Video clips under the cut... )

*Mild/Moderate Trigger Warning* This discussion of misogyny and the damsel in distress trope may inevitably be triggering for some readers as it discusses power-imbalances and some violent or abusive scenarios. That said, there is no use of graphic descriptions nor any reference to sexual violence.

The post below is going to analyse some bigotry against Anita from Feminist Frequency. She has released the first of her "Tropes Vs Women" series about videogames now. Personally, I was unsure about some of the stuff about Starfox Adventures (since I cannot help but imagine that the character change in that game must be somewhat related to Microsoft buying Rare - since it would be harder for Nintendo to keep hold of a game not starring one of their copyrighted group of characters), but asides from that I was mainly reacting with "ah, I guess that's right".

Inevitably there's been some backlash. One of the videos criticising Anita (and undoubtedly NOT one of the best critiques she'll receive) comes from a Youtube user called Thunderf00t....

Now it's been a while since I've been made really angry by some bigoted ranting. I've reacted to some news articles, sure, but I've generally not been chasing down internet idiots. I've been a lot better off for it though.

The last idiot I really thought I needed to alert people to was Pat Condell. Condell was seemingly only known on the internet, but he seemed to have a wide following. So when his videos went from annoying and crass to all-out hate-mongering, I felt the need to expose precisely why people shouldn't support him. (He's still up to the same old tricks it seems. One of his latest videos claims that it's racist not to consider all Palestinians, every man, woman and child of them, to be evil terrorists. That's pretty typical rhetoric from him sadly.)

But the recent dodgy internet hatred doesn't seem to come from a single person. Instead it seems to be embodied by a large gang of mostly libertarian internet users who are strangely opposed to feminism and demand protection from criticism if they post offensive comments (on the grounds of 'free speech' apparently).

"Thunderf00t" seems to be a pretty big ringleader of this group. By this point Thunderf00t is pretty well known to be someone your average decent supporter of feminism will be upset by, but he attracts a lot of attention so I feel like he's probably as good a representative as any for this disgusting internet misogyny recently.

First of all some background...

Thunderf00t and Freethoughtblogs

Thunderf00t had a run-in with well known pro-feminism atheist blogger P.Z. Myers (who runs the blog Pharyngula) who is disinclined to accept misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. on his comments threads. When Thunderf00t was offered space in Freethoughtblogs and decided to use it almost entirely to dismiss women's rights the other bloggers on Freethoughtblogs decided that he wasn't fitting in. He was alienating their female audience and conveying bigoted views with which Freethoughtblogs bloggers did not want to be connected.

Anita's "Tropes Vs Women" series

Anita used Kickstarter to get funding for her project to analyse the history of gaming and the portrayal of women within videogames. The comments at Kickstarter began to fill up with misogynistic comments from utter scumbags and the response by decent human beings across the internet was to donate huge amounts of money to her project. The misogynist comments had made it very clear to everyone just how much of an idol videogames were to these horrible individuals and just how sorely the world of videogames needed to be analysed from a feminist perspective.

Thunderf00t's video "Feminism Vs FACTS (RE Damsel in distress)" and how it completely misses the point of Anita's original video at Feminist Frequency, feminism as a whole, and plain old common sense.

I only came to watch Thunderf00t's poor attempt at a critique because I stumbled on someone showing one of his old videos "The Internet: Where Religions Come To Die". Not knowing it was from Thunderf00t I approached it with a pretty open mind. There were parts that were well-argued and other parts where it was more obviously labouring the point. I noticed that the video seemed to have a very "us and them" stance which appeared to represent the vlogger's genuine stance rather than being a rhetorical tool.

1- Double Dragon Neon

Thunderf00t's latest video begins by questioning Anita's research for her videogame critique. He argues that she is wrong to claim the damsel in distress of the game "Double Dragon Neon" is portrayed as weak, ineffective or ultimately incapable because the game finishes with her punching the villain in the crotch.

While this might seem like a reasonable argument to someone who had never watched the original video, already Thunderf00t is showing a clear failure to understand Anita's argument. Anita's concern with "Double Dragon Neon" mainly focusses on the opening which, as an update of an older game, rejigs the 8-bit classic by showing the damsel in distress character being punched in the gut and carried away in deeper colours, pristine 2D graphics with her cleavage clearly visable as she is punched and her knickers clearly visible as she is carried away. This update of the older classic begins straight away with an utterly demeaning image for women, right before introducing the two MALE playable characters.

The ending where she gets to help beat up the villain in the end is earned after the two male characters have spent the entire game trying to save her, while she sits and waits for them. There's even a part of the game where the two playable MALE characters (since Marian herself is NOT a playable character) can fight for her affection, while she cheers them on in the background. This all serves to back up the idea of women as objects the male characters compete for. Yes, even if the unplayable female character gets to help deliver the finishing blow at the last minute, she's still been completely helpless for the whole game and used as a woman-shaped trophy by the game designers.

( Read more... )

Thunderf00t simply doesn't understand the topic he is trying to discuss and yet there are internet misogynists rallying around his video which now has over 10,000 likes. Meanwhile Anita has had no choice but to disable ratings and comments because of an over-abundance of misogynistic trolls. Check out her excellent analysis of the Damsel In Distress trope in videogames below:

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So, the Oscars ceremony rolls around again and we see yet more of the typical boring arguments about which films were picked by old white men who form the judges panel. There's criticism of Seth MacFarlane for not being funny enough, as if it was normal to expect comedy gold during the show. However, the Oscars continue to somehow hold respect within the industry, so each award received continues to make a serious statement. Possibly even a political statement sometimes.

However, I'm not convinced that I've ever heard of an Oscars-related issue so politically charged before. Sure, the lack of recognition for black actors has always been an issue, as have other inequalities in the industry related to gender, sexuality, disability and so on. However, in this particular case, unknown to most of the viewing public across the globe, there was a protest taking place outside the Oscars this time in relation to the plight of visual effects workers.

As the time came around to hand out the Oscar for visual effects, there was a brief suggestion on stage that visual effects work needed proper recognition at the ceremony. Samuel L. Jackson seemed oddly cagey at this stage, seemingly insisting that the visual effects award be rushed through. After lamenting some difficulty handling the envelope, Jackson announces that the winners of the award are the team who worked on "Life Of Pi".

They read out a long list of people to thank, but before they even reached the end of their pre-agreed list, the theme from "Jaws" began to play loudly. The speaker spoke louder to be heard over the music. Having finished the list of 'thank yous' he then began to make reference to their company's financial difficulties. It was at this moment that his microphone was turned off. There was to be no mention of these difficulties during the Oscars ceremony (at least not indoors).

The shocking thing is that the team suffering from those 'financial difficulties' is, in fact, filing for bankruptcy. The visual effects team "Rhythm and Hues", which also worked on another nominee "Snow White And The Huntsman" that was similarly profitable, is going bankrupt because the film studios have failed to pay them. Their workers, who are directly responsible for the success of "Life Of Pi" at the Oscars, have not been given their basic wages.

While the Oscars shoo the visual effects team off the stage within the ceremony, one protest board outside reads "WILL MATTE PAINT FOR FOOD".

THE EVENT AT THE OSCARS
There are clips from the Oscars all over youtube, but it is rather harder to find this clip of the visual effects winners being cut off when receiving their award. Hopefully this clip is still working.

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You can find out more information about this in the following links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/25/oscars-protest-life-of-pi
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/02/25/oscars-visual-effects-protest-li fe-of-pi/
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Life-Pi-Visual-Effects-Artists-Protest- Oscar-Red-Carpet-35967.html
http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682488/when-winning-an-oscar-means-bankru ptcy-vfx-artists-protest-the-academy-awards

EXTRACT FROM THE GUARDIAN

"Several hundred people reportedly congregated outside the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles as the stars walked the red carpet, demanding better treatment for the artists who make the spectacular visuals for blockbuster movies possible. The protest was planned after the well-known Rhythm & Hues effects house filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, shortly after winning a Bafta for its work on Life of Pi....

"When the visual effects team behind Life of Pi attempted to draw attention to Rhythm and Hues' plight during their acceptance speech for the best visual effects Oscar, they were cut off by the band as the speech went on beyond the stipulated limit."

(Cross-posted to moviebuffs)

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A Royal Affair was my favourite film of last year. I said in my "movies of 2012" list that it was the best costume drama I have ever seen. What I didn't realise, however, was that the film was chock full of CG and I didn't even know that it was there. All I knew was that the film was utterly beautiful. It seems that the film features a palace created out of thin air. Wow....

Les Miserables (2012)

Normally when you write a review, you kind of want the final verdict to be a bit of a surprise. If someone doesn't want to wait for the surprise they can rush to the end, but to really understand the final verdict you often need the commentary.

This time I'm shifting that tradition and telling everyone straight off that my rating for this film is *drumroll*:

C-

If I'm really satisfied by a film I'll give it an A. If I think it was pretty good, I'll give it a B. C-, however, is my "your mileage may vary score". It often means that I can recognise that a film is not exactly bad, but for one reason or another it didn't appeal to me personally. C+ is a little different because it means I think there was some small issue that, if corrected, would change my opinion. I cannot say that here.

Les Miserables was just totally NOT my sort of thing. I've never seen the musical on stage and might well have had a different impression there, but judging it as a movie I cannot say that it appealed. However, I can also recognise that certain scenes and performances were incredible and the film benefits from an impressive cast. It's also beautifully shot.

So from this point on I suggest that you disregard my score, because what it comes down to more than anything is "would I enjoy a musical like Les Miserables in the first place?" For me, it seems the answer is no. Ignoring that personal issue though, I do have a number of things to say about aspects I liked and disliked, and those do not always line up with what I heard before I went in...

( Read more... )

Awesome hilarious animation video about a guy who meets aliens, from the creator of "Pingu Vs The Thing".

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(More vids from Lee Hardcastle here)

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(somegreybloke's youtube channel)

( Original Dire Straits video under the cut... )

rhoda_rants decided to do this new meme so I guess I ought to follow it. If you are interested in sharing your current desktop image, the rules are pretty simple:
1.) Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper. (So yeah, that's mandatory right?)
2.) Explain in five sentences or less why you're using that wallpaper!
3.) Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! (Coz that's cheating!)

I'm a big fan of the Metroid Prime series. "Metroid Prime Trilogy" is like my favourite game of all time. I also love the colour effect on this pic. It's just generally really cool. There's a tumblr blog I follow especially to find new awesome Metroid pics.

(My desktop pic originated here)

Also.... ever wondered who would win out of Samus Aran and Boba Fett in a DEATH BATTLE?

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Naturally I absolutely had to post this first video. It's clips from "The Amazing Spider-Man" set to the the theme of the 90s animated series. So cool!

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Also recently came across this new fan-made trailer for "2001: A Space Odyssey". The trailer is done in a more modern style to make it look like 2001 is an exciting fast-paced sci-fi thriller.

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New awesome Cracked video. YAY!

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Also anyone not following the new tv series from the freddiew youtube channel "Video Game High School". It's utterly crazy and it just gets better and better. (Now up to episode 7 btw.) :D

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(via Topless Robot)

Parody of Lana Del Rey's depressing song "Video Games" altered so that it's actually about videogames. What happens when a woman marries the wrong brother?

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Next up, the Cracked "After Hours" discussion also consider who Princess Peach should choose, only this time between Mario and Bowser. You may be surprised by their decision....

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Also somewhat vaguely related is the funniest SMBC video for quite a while now. Not about Super Mario this time, but it is about videogames... and "pie-cake".

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Very probably the best scene in the movie "Hesher". It doesn't really give anything away about the rest of the film.

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This song has been going around my head constantly for the last few days. It's so insanely brilliant.

And if that doesn't impress you, how about this other song where Daffy goes METAL? (Iron Maiden fans definitely need to see this.)

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