The noble goal of this categorie should be the deconstruction of movies…. yet it tends to turn into biased fanboy rants
This is an overview of the first three installments of the highly successful Scream trilogy, which will get a fourth chapter this week. The guide is spoiler-free, no revelations of the idedntity of the killers are made, it is just here to give a general feeling of what this series is about and why I think it should be watched.
For a spoiler-free overview of the Scream Trilogy click here.
Tomorrow Scream 4 arrives in french cow country and to say I’m excited might not really cut it, after all Scream has been my first “serious horror movie” when I was ten and I am now in the demographic being targeted as nostalgia cash-in.
The idea of having a fourth Scream or Scre4m as they call it now, always sounded ridiculous to me – then again I was young and believed what the guy in the television told me. “The rules” clearly established in Scream 3 that either you have a continuing franchise OR a concluded trilogy.
Since Scream 3 (or Scr3am ?) took the second route a sequel was out of the question…
But in a year where we have 3 part 4s (Scre4m, Pirates 4 and Twilight 4) it doesn’t seem that far off. The question is:
Will this movie be any good?
Tonight is the Superbowl of movies and the annual “predict the winner not the best movie” is just fun, so here are my predictions, let’s hear yours.
Be aware that I really suck at those predictions and the only time I got most of my votes right was when Slumdog was nominated in most categories.
My failed predicitons include: Best Picture/Best Director split with Avatar/Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds for Cinematography and Original Screenplay (I was really sure about that), Atonement for Best Picture (I mean what the fuck was I thinking?) so these predictions might not be the best to lean towards.
Also check out the biggest possible fuck ups that could happen tonight.
Best Picture:
Ok, this category (and Best Actor) is the easiest to predict. The question is not if King’s Speech will win, but if it will sweep the awards and take some unjustified trophies (cough Best Supporting Actor cough Best Supporting Actress cough) over the more deserving candidates.
A fantastic upset in Wonderland would be the victory of Toy Story 3, I know it won’t happen, but just think for one second that the Academy would decide to reward 15 years of storytelling art that has been unjustly overlooked, by rewarding the third fantastic entry in an outstanding series. Toy Story 3 while not my favourite pick of the year (that would be Banksy’s Exit through the Gift Shop) would be a Oscar winner where I guess very few would have a problem with it winning, but let’s go on and give the Oscar to the by the numbers crowd pleaser… hey you guys remember Shakespeare in Love?
Will win: The King’s Speech
Should win: Toy Story 3
Should have been there: Exit through the Gift Shop
Director:
See above, not to mention that Nolan did not get nominated (again) for his great directorial work. Fincher could pull a very unlikely upset, but given the love for King’s Speech I guess Fincher will have to return with a Benjamin Button movie to get the academy love and stop making critical movies – you know what, screw the that, Fincher keep making more movies like this.
Will win: Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)
Should have been there: Christopher Nolan (Inception)
Actor in a leading role:
No brainer, but at least Firth’s performance is a great one in The King’s Speech. While the overall product doesn’t really interest me, it is undeniable that Firth elevates the entire movie.
Will win: Colin Firth
Should have been there: Mr. Brainwash
Actress in a leading role:
I seriously hope this won’t be a “Sorry Annete Bening for never giving the Oscar to you”-scene today.
Will win: Natalie Portman
Actor in a supporting role:
John Hawkes delivered one of my favorite performances of the year, but this night should belong to Bale. He should have it in the bag. Bale has won most of the critical awards. Unless there is a King’s Speech upset, he should definitely get the recognition he deserves, after all – he’s a fucking amateur!
Will win: Christian Bale
Should have been there: Ken
Actress in a supporting role:
The wild card of the evening, here is much that can happen, especially that it is one of the few categories where True Grit has a chance to grab an Oscar and with the love True Grit is getting (pushing out Nolan and grabbing 10 nominations) it might be possible that Steinfeld upsets this. But I love Leo’s performance in The Fighter and I just hope that she and Amy Adams won’t split the Fighter votes.
Will win: Melissa Leo
Could win: Hailee Steinfeld
Should have been there: Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey (Black Swan),
Chloë Moretz (Kick-Ass)
Adapted Screenplay:
For some reasons the Oscars mostly manage to neatly split the two frontrunners in the screenplay category so that the second place at least gets a screenplay trophy (Milk/Slumdog) or the second place gets overlooked in a move that few saw coming (Precious winning over Up in the Air – not to say for political reasons, but for political reasons). So this should be The Social Network’s trophy. I doubt True Grit will surprise and Toy Story has no chance here as well.
Will win: The Social Network
Should win: The Social Network
Original Screenplay:
Sr…. oh yes, The King’s Speech… like usual
Will win: The King’s Speech
Should win: Inception
Cinematography:
True Grit, this category is one of the most likeliest for True Grit otherwise it will go out empty (with 10 nominiations) so apart from the fact that it looks gorgeous, it should be a category where True Grit has a chance to not completely loose (unless it surprisingly snags the audio from Inception).
Will win: True Grit
Should win: Black Swan
Editing:
If King’s Speech gets the Oscar here, then it’s another “It’s best picture so hand in the other awards as well”. The editing was pivotal to the Social Network with the neverending time-jumps, so I hope it goes to Network since Inception has been overlooked.
Will win: The Social Network
Should have been there: Inception, Life Remote Control
Sound Mixing:
BRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Will win: Inception
Could win: True Grit or Salt (sleeper surprise)
Will burn down the Kodak theatre if it goes to: The King’s Speech
Sound Editing:
BRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Will win: Inception
Could win: True Grit
Art Direction:
This one is a tough call, but I’ll go with the frontrunner and assume that the room where Firth and Rush had their lessons, plus the period peace will help King’s Speech.
Will win: The King’s Speech
Should have been there: Tron: Legacy
Costume Design:
I go with the most obvious one:
Will win: Alice in Wonderland
Should win: everything else
Makeup:
Haven’t seen any of the three, so I go with the current consensus.
Will win: Barney’s Version
Special Effects:
No-brainer.
Will win: Inception
Foreign language film:
This year I’ve been lazy on the foreign film front, only seeing Of Gods and Men which didn’t get nominated. This category is often decided by random chance or by the film that is the least offensive (Waltz with Bashir and Entre les Murs loosing to departures). I’m just going with the one that has had the most media attention:
Will win: Biutiful
Could win: no idea
Music (Score):
I don’t think any of the soundtracks are that great, I (naturally) enjoyed Inception, Dragon has the standard fantasy fare and I don’t remember much of 127 hours, so once again I’m lazy,
Will win: The King’s Speech
Should have been there: Toy Story 3, Tron: Legacy
Music (Song):
I really don’t care, the least annoying song to me is If I rise, seeing that 127 hours has no chance in the big categories it might score here. Country Song makes me run amok and We belong together from Toy Story 3 bothers me even more than “Down to Earth” from Wall-E. Still I’m going with some Pixar love.
Will win: Toy Story 3
Could win: 127 hours
Should not win: Country Song
Animated feature:
Is that a question?
Will win: Toy Story 3
Documentary:
I have a lot of catching up to do and I’m looking really forward to Restrepo. Right now I just have to be loyal to my favourite, even if he’s not allowed to attend the premiere:
Will win: Exit Through the Gift Shop
So, that makes the categories where I can act as if I understand anything, so now about the ones I just copy paste the usual predictions:
Documentary short:
Strangers no more
Short film (animated):
Madagascar, a Journey Diary
Short film (live action):
God of Love
What are your predictions?
Holy hell, Oscar season is close to an end, so I’d better get the list out of movies that I really enjoyed this year.
This article will consist of 4 parts. Two for the top 10, a special part for “special achievements” and hopefully a fourth about the year 2010 in general retrospective.
So lets jump into the top 10:
#10 – Fatal Promises
An Austrian documentary about human trafficking. A compilation of testimonies of people who were forced into prostitution or to work on a fishing boat under inhumane conditions. The movie was made by Kat Rohrer and her mother who risked a lot to get some testimonies and information.
A truly unsettling documentary, that goes under one’s skin.
Pivotal moment:
Very hard to pin – in this movie there are so many stories about things that happen in our vicinity that we don’t see. The dread and fear those men and women have had to endure is beyond imaginable. It is not really a moment, but the fact that Rohrer not only focuses on prostitution, which is the most well-known form of human trafficking, but also sheds some light on other forms enriches this documentary a lot.
If I had to name a specific scene it would be the testimony of a woman, who was taken with another girl to a sauna and had to witness a thing so unimaginable I don’t dare to write it down since I fear that I cannot phrase it properly.
Also the part about the conference about Human Trafficking is helmed in a fantastically satirical way and stands in stark contrast to the horrible stories that get told thorough the documentary.
When time has passed…
… the movie will hopefully still be around. It is not a big documentary, I don’t know if it has won any prizes or how it is doing internationally. I don’t know if there will be a DVD release as announced at the screening I was attending at the beginning of last year and the website doesn’t seem too up to date.
Urge to rewatch: 5%
It is a very good and informative documentary, but it is so intense that I can’t fathom myself watching it again.
#9 – The Social Network
The long believed frontrunner for Best Picture offers a great combination and a good balance of the many crafts involved in movie making. While I don’t regard The Social Network as Fincher’s best movie or one of the greatest movies ever made, it is undoubtedly a movie with few “weak spots”. Acting, directing, lighting, camerawork, editing, sound – it all gets mixed together to a highly enjoyable movie.
Pivotal moment(s):
Technical:
The bar sequence (which I already described in my review) is not only thematically very interesting, but I also like the fact that an important scene like this was done in a crowded, loud bar. This is only achievable with a good sound mix and I appreciate that they portrayed this discussion in a very crowded place instead of taking the easy route and just have them talk in a room in a normal tone.
Dialogue:
If I had to select one piece of dialogue that has stuck with me it would be that one:
Mark
It just started raining.Gage
Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?Mark
No.Gage
Do you think I deserve it?Mark
What.Gage
Do you think I deserve your full attention?Mark
I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition and I don’t want to perjure myself so I have a legal obligation to to say no.Gage
Okay. “No” you don’t think I deserve your attention.Mark
I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall they have a right to give it a try. But there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention — you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. Did I adequately answer your condescending question?
Firstly because the way the dialogue is written is just superb, but more so because the way Eisenberg delivers these lines lets us see two things at the same time: an arrogant brat, but also a man of tremendous intellect, who one can’t help but admire.
When time has passed…
Unlike Benjamin Button The Social Network will not be forgotten quickly. Not only is it a very well made movie, but it is also one of the first movies to deal with phenomena like facebook on a serious basis. It treats our current world with respect. The Social Network is not a movie that looks down onto our current state and raises a brow, condemning our way of life – it merely reflects how very human and timeless conflicts of betrayal are still present in our this “new” world.
Urge to rewatch: 30%
I won’t switch off the TV if it is running some day. I just don’t need to rewatch the movie right now.
#8 – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
I might be a little preoccupied here, but I don’t care. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was a fantastic fun movie, that shows how the most generic story can be unique and fresh by using different narrative-techniques. This movie had more “what is real and what not” than Black Swan, I mean what really happened when the people burst into gold? Will Scott Pilgrim 2 tell us that he was inside of the Matrix all along? Or is the top still spinning? We will never know…
Pivotal moment:
The first seconds of showing the Universal Logo with 8-bit sound – within those few seconds the film tells you exactly what you’ll get. If you have to smirk or laugh about this fact, this movie is definitely for you.
When time has passed…
Sadly Scott Pilgrim (like Kick-Ass) underperformed at the boxoffice, to say the least. It flopped, making 13 million less worldwide than it cost. 2010 was the year that saw two movies targeting the geek demographic and both were not successful, so it might be possible that there won’t be anything similar to Scott Pilgrim in the next years. But I am pretty sure that this movie will become a cult film. The adverts might have scared some people away but the ones who saw this movie will continue to suggest it to others and spread it.
Unlike “Fanboys” Scott Pilgrim is a movie that can be watched by movies outside of the nerd-community. You don’t need to “get” all the inside jokes, you don’t need to know what a Triforce is to understand the quirky characters. Also the use of special effects is unlike anything that has ever been done with special effects and shows a whole new world for expressing character motivations.
Urge to rewatch: 65%
If there is nothing else to watch and I’ve already seen Iron Man too many times, bring on Scott Pilgrim!
#7 – 127 hours
Franko’s performance, Boyle’s direction and the true story behind it add up to the great experience that is 127 hours. It is a very intimate and moving film, with conflicts that are more than relate able and if you will you can ponder a lot about what happens in the movie.
Pivotal moment(s):
Technical:
When Aron has to cut his nerve – I cannot recall anything this year where audio work has been so pivotal to translate the feelings of a character. With the help of the sound-mix we can really feel what is going on inside of his head.
Narratively:
Aron drops the knife – a very simple scene. He basically loses his knife and has to pick it up with a stick. But this scene was the scene I couldn’t stop staring at the screen. Rarely have a stick and a knife been more interesting. There was no dramatic music, just the simple attempt to regain the knife and the fact that it was not only not boring but in fact quite gripping is another achievement of this movie.
Conceptual:
Aron not answering the phone. The idea that stuck with me after the movie was the scene when Aron’s mother called and he did not care or did not want to talk because he just wanted to go outside. The entire movie was about him realizing that this was a mistake and this concept has something very relatable and scary to offer. How often do we treat our family or friends like something that just slows us down. When a friend of mine had an accident a few years ago I remembered that few hours before we didn’t really come along and I was complaining about him the entire day afterwards. It is a very devastating prospect because something like an accident just shatters your whole perspective and you realize that you have put trivial complaints or selfish thoughts above the existence of a good person – and in that manner 127 is able to capture this perfectly.
When time has passed…
This is the movie I am really unsure. It might vanish quickly. It might not even resonate with that many people and it is definitely not a movie I would watch on a regular basis. The only thing I know for sure is that it was a movie that really affected me and that I will gladly recommend it to other movie lovers. Maybe it is good that 127 hours isn’t too much in the spotlight, otherwise the “overrated” calling would start and we all prefer bitching about The King’s Speech right?
But it won’t completely vanish, because it is a Danny Boyle film, so even if it won’t reach the popularity of Trainspotting and Slumdog it might make it to many Danny Boyle DVD/cinema-all-nighters.
Urge to rewatch: 10%
#6 – How to train your Dragon
What can I say: Dreamworks, I’m impressed.
To make a movie that is not depending on pop culture jokes and stereotypes, but actually relies on characters and story was something I never expected from How to train your Dragon. In fact I started an article a few weeks after HTTYD about the fact that both Dragon and Avatar share the same thematical core, but the key difference being that Dragon didn’t feel like we were rewatching Pocahontas. It is actually quite interesting and I hope I will get back to this article and finish it some time.
Pivotal moment:
Dragon-riding making sense – there are not many good movies featuring dragons. There are even fewer stories featuring the concept of riding dragongs. Why? Because it is mostly a childish fantasy of “wouldn’t that be awesome” and to the rest of the world it just doesn’t make any sense.
Why would a dragon, a mighty beast of the sky team up with a puny fragile human being – or to extend that idea, why would a dragon take commands from a human?
There are notable exceptions, like Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. In Pern dragons are genetically engineered, they are more or less organic versions of KITT, which is why their obedience makes sense.
On the other hand HTTYD is the first story with dragons I’ve seen where the concept of dragon-riding makes sense: because toothless has a damaged tail, the collaboration is necessary. The rider no longer is just a guy who gives commands, he is an extension of the dragon. They are interdependent and they can only work as a team. It’s a fantastic, fresh way to “force” collaboration between two different parties that will later grow into a genuinely friendship.
When time has passed…
Don’t expect Dreamworks to change their ways, they will learn from Dragon by making Puss in Boots, a “sequel/prequel/whatever” to Shrek, Kung Fu Panda 2 and of course at least two sequels to Dragon since it is based on a children’s book-series. If one were to be cynical one could say that the success of Dragon did not stem from Dreamworks, but from accidentally discovering a good source material.
Dragon has garnered about close to 500 million dollars worldwide, audiences rewarded the fresh and new movie by letting Shrek 4′s boxoffice sky-rocket to 750 million dollars – fantastic!
Urge to rewatch: 50%
Part 2 and Oscar predictions hopefully tomorrow in time…
With the BAFTA-Awards tonight the race is close to being over and since the BAFTA’s can have the habit of changing the Oscar dynamics, I was thinking of the biggest possible Fuck Ups that can happen come Oscar night.
Alice in Wonderland for Best Art Direction or Costume Design
Art Decoration and especially Costume Design are categories that usually don’t align with the other awards. Unless your big Oscar movie is a period piece the Costume Design or Art Decoration will be handed to a boring period drama (The Duchess) because they are themost obvious candidates for this instead of the most sophisticated.
Which makes Alice in Wonderland a clear example: It is in-your-face-Art-Direction, it has “look we have costumes” written all over it. And given the horrible quality of the movie’s story the only merit it has is that it is overstuffed with Tim Burton things.
Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress
The little girl Hailee Steinfeld plays the lead role in True Grit, a remake by the Coen brothers and for competitive reasons the studio pushed for a supporting actress nomination instead of a lead actress nomination. Why? Because Steinfeld wouldn’t be able to compete with Portman and Bening.
Steinfeld does a great job with True Grit and it is remarkable that she is able to hold her ground while playing side by side with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin – but awarding her for supporting actress is just ridiculous.
How can you judge a lead performance with other supporting categories? It is irrational and awarding her for it would only give room for further “nomination tactics” and illogical choices.
Natalie Portman not winning for Black Swan
Come on Oscars! You could do right this time! Portman is fantastic and you could hand her the Oscar NOW – instead of giving it to Annette Bening and to Portman a few years later as an apology. Do the right thing, Portman deserves it!
How to train your Dragon winning over Toy Story 3
I love Dragon, it is one of my favorite films this year. My assumption that it would be wrong if Dragon would win in the best animated movie category is not based on “It’s not as good as Toy Story” but on a logical contradiction:
If Dragon would win over Toy Story 3, then we could assume that the Oscar voters deem it a better film. But if that were so, then why wasn’t Dragon nominated for Best Picture and Toy Story 3 was?
The fact that Toy Story 3 is nominated for Best Picture makes this category very pointless indeed.
Helena Bonham Carter winning Best Supporting Actress
I love Carter, she’s a great actress, but this is just wrong. It was baffling enough that she was nominated over Barbara Hershey and Mila Kunis (Black Swan). If the Oscar voters decide to give King’s Speech everything (add Sound Mixing as another possible fuck up) it could translate into a win for Carter. A decision wrong on so many levels it can only be topped by one:
Geoffrey Rush winning Best Supporting Actor
Yes, the whole world loves King’s Speech, a movie for the ages and so on and so forth.
I don’t really care for this movie, but the acting from Rush and Firth was top notch.
But…
This is Christian Bale’s year. Like Natalie Portman Christian Bale’s role in The Fighter is just beyond anything else in the supporting actor category. His manners, his looks, the way he nailed everything pitch perfectly.
Bale reminds me of last year’s Christoph Waltz or 2008′s Heath Ledger – the universally praised and loved performance. He has won every major award he was nominated, so we should safely assume that Bale has it in the bag, but one can never know, how big the love for King’s Speech is.
If he gets shafted, then it’s another of those things when you will see the Fighter in 10 years, you will automatically think “Wait, didn’t he get an Oscar for this… No? Why not?”
So I just hope that (same with Portman) they make the right decision.
Bring on the BAFTA-awards!
Nomiated for Best Picture are:
Black Swan
True Grit
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
The Fighter
127 Hours
Inception
Toy Story 3
Winter’s Bone
The Kids Are All Right
More nominations here.
First and foremost: Wow, do I suck at predictions!
When I wrote about Social Network I was stating my fears that it might get overtaken by a “fresher” movie:
As I said in the paragraph addressing the backlash, there will be one with social network and it will only need a moderately good movie to come out in December to beat Network because it is new and people might have grown tired of Network.
And it seems like exactly this has happened. Within a week The King’s Speech has overtaken the Oscar run, now collecting insane 12 nominations (among one very unearned nomination for Helena Bonham Carter, who herself stated that she doesn’t think her role is particularly Oscar worthy).
The runner up now is no longer The Social Network but True Grit with 10 nominations.
The five big movies (the one with nominations for best directing) are:
Black Swan – Darren Aronofsky
The King’s Speech – Tom Hooper
The Social Network – David Fincher
The Fighter – David O. Russell
True Grit – Joel and Ethan Coen
Now I’ve never been the biggest proponent of The Social Network, but since the three movies I care for in this race (Black Swan, Inception and Toy Story 3 – I have not yet seen The Fighter or 127 hours) don’t stand a chance to win I’ll have to root for Fincher to upset The King’s Speech similar to Slumdog Millionaire beating Benjamin Button.
My biggest gripe with these nominations are the things that have always been a gripe with Oscar-predictions/nominations:
1) If your production has enough nominees/winners working on it you’re automatically a frontrunner and if your product is acceptable you get a load of nominations
2) If you are a frontrunner you get awards for almost anything no matter if you deserve it or not.
The two biggest nominees (The King’s Speech and True Grit, both Category: 3, Rating: Lukewarm) are prime examples for this. Both movies have been on every “top list” as soon as they were announced.
You can safely predict “untitled Coen Brothers project” for any year they are bringing out a movie. Same goes for The King’s Speech, this movie has been on top even before we had seen any moving images (trailers/clips).
Why?
It’s a historical movie, many acclaimed talents and… it has Nazis in it, but most importantly it is sappy and crowd pleasing enough to be an automatic candidate (Frost/Nixon).
On the other hand movies like Toy Story 3 and How to train your Dragon can try as hard as they want, they can succeed in storytelling in ways neither True Grit nor The King’s Speech do, but they won’t get much recognition. They earn the “Best animated picture” and Toy Story gets one of the 10 slots but it’s not really in the race.
The Good:
1 Exit Through the Gift Shop getting nominated for best documentary!
I had stopped believing this movie would make it when it was not nominated by the directors guild for best documentary, but it seems as if Mr. Brainwash has got the Academy!
2 Winter’s Bone collecting four nominations!
I still have to write a review for this very good movie (Category: 3, Rating: Great). I only expected the main actress Jennifer Lawrence to garner a nomination, but thankfully Winter’s Bone also got a nomination for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and John Hawkes, who was my favorite part of Winter’s Bone with one of the year’s best performances.
3 Aronofsky for Best Director!
Finally he gets some recognition after not getting nominated for The Wrestler in 2008.
4 Inception for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture!
Self-explanatory. Thankfully Inception didn’t get totally blocked out in the main categories like The Dark Knight.
Now the ugly part:
1 No directing or editing recognition for Inception:
As a big Inception fan I’m naturally upset about two categories Inception failed to get nominated: Best Director and Best Editing and I don’t know which one is the harder blow. Director was somehow expected, because the Academy loves the Coen Brothers, so either the Fighter or Inception had to go. Mr. Nolan seems to get the shaft once again (similar to Dark Knight having all guild nominations but no Academy Award nomination). The fact that Inception has always been in the top five makes the blow as hard as the one against Dark Knight two years ago, but well… that’s the Academy.
While not getting nominated for directing is the tougher pill, the more unexpected is Inception not getting nominated for editing, which seemed (after SFX and Sound) Inception’s biggest Oscar chance. But I guess 127 hours was so well edited and they didn’t have the balls to omit the King’s Speech so they kicked out Inception (boy I’m giving the King’s Speech way too much flack…)
Plus Inception even got nominated by the editors guild…
2. Black Swan getting only a handful of nominations!
Director, Editing, Cinematography, Actress, Best Picture – Five nominations for the movie that got nominated from every guild, a movie that seemed like one of the biggest contenders. Neither scored a screenplay nomination, best supporting actress for Mila Kunis (come on Helena Bonham Carter got nominated for King’s Speech! Where she did nothing!), Make Up (obvious choice), Costume Design (see next point), one of the two sound categories (just remember the amazing sound work in the shock sequences or the creepy sounds of changing skin… brrr…) or best score.. just wow.
3 Hereafter getting nominated for best special effects over Tron!
Why? Because it’s a movie by Clint Eastwood and Scott Pilgrim and Tron are too hip, or whatever convoluted reason they came up with. This category this year is probably the least imaginative since we have two sequels who merely improve upon their previous entries (Iron Man 2, Harry Potter), a movie by a respected Academy member (Hereafter) and two other blockbusters (Inception and Alice in Wonderland).
I can’t understand how Tron did not make the cut and it would have been a miracly had the Academy recognized the fantastic special effects in Scott Pilgrim.
4 Best Costume Design and Best Song are still useless categories!
Last year’s winner Sandy Powell pledged that the Academy Award for Best Costume Design should stop honoring just period pieces, this year the Academy nominated:
The one with the obvious costumes (Alice in Wonderland)
Three Period Pieces (True Grit, The King’s Speech, Tempest)
And one movie set around the millennium (I am Love)
So four standard “Look we have costumes” movies.
And the nominees for Best Song are proof how big of a joke this category is. Mostly you have some generic pop songs to animated movies and one good song (127 hours) – this category should only have one nomination and save us the annual Randy Newman horror.
To sum it up:
The big winners: The King’s Speech and True Grit.
The big losers: Inception (except for technical categories it only got nominated in two categories where there have been 10 possibilities when you see the two screenplay categories as 10 nominees) and Black Swan.
The possible big big losers:
The Social Network, this could turn ugly and it might just get a screenplay award while King’s Speech sweeps everything else.
Also Black Swan will likely just get Natalie Portman’s Oscar (if Annette Bening does not upset it) and Inception will be the biggest loser with only one category (Special Effects) since I’m counting on True Grit to get the technical awards and King’s Speech for Art Direction… well.. so long!
Nomiated for Best Picture are:
Black Swan
True Grit
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
The Fighter
127 Hours
Inception
Toy Story 3
Winter’s Bone
The Kids Are All Right
When it comes to movies the Oscars are like the big annual soccer league and it sometimes is more interesting to keep track on who might get nominated.
This year is another year where I feel that the nominations are much more interesting than the actual race since it seems to be a fight between The Social Network (David Fincher) and The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper) and compared to last years very intriguing Hurt Locker vs Avatar this Oscar run I feel like I couldn’t care less – but since I have yet to see The King’s Speech my mood could dramatically shift in the not to distant future.
I guess my low motivation stirs from the fact that I’m rooting for Inception or Black Swan (and Exit through the Gift Shop for documentary) and neither of the two are favorites to win.
Both movies are made by directors I admire and neither Nolan nor Aronofsky have yet been nominated for best director or best picture.
Interestingly both delivered movies that went into my top five 2008 (The Wrestler, The Dark Knight) and neither of them managed to crack the big five at the Oscars 2008 (the movies that get nominated for both best director and best picture).
A big indication on how the Oscar nomination might look like are the four guild nominations:
Directors Guild (DGA)
Writers Guild (WGA)
Screenactors Guild (SAG)
Producers Guild (PGA)
A combination of DGA, WGA and PGA is usually a lock for the best director nomination – one of the few exceptions was 2008 when Dark Knight despite having those three nominations did not manage to get best director/picture/screenplay but had to make way for The Reader (or to loosely quote the TV-series Extras “If you want to win an Oscar make a Nazi movie”) – a move very few had predicted and for some reason (cough Batman) the 5 best pictures expanded to 10 last year, with the Academy’s statement: “Well… yeah we know it should have been Batman and not The Reader” – quotation might be tainted by fanboy perspective.
Today the DGA was the last guild to announce their nominations and the five directors are:
David Fincher – The Social Network
Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech
Christopher Nolan – Inception
Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan
David O. Russell – The Fighter
I must admit I was a little surprised since I was fully expecting the Coen Brothers’s True Grit to be in the mix, well lets hope I don’t set my expectations to high for the Fighter (especially when it seems that Christian Bale is finally on a straight course for Best Supporting Actor).
Inception and the Oscar (Nominations):
So how are Inception’s Oscar chances?
I’ll check the categories first which I think Inception will hopefully get nominated but I highly doubt that it will win.
Acting department
While I love the performances in Inception none of them has the Oscar-flair, probably because Inception is a movie where so much of our attention is drawn to the world and the possibilities of dreams that despite having great roles and performances they tend to get overshadowed – so unless a miracle happens and Marion Cottilard gets a best supporting actress nomination there won’t be much to find here.
Plus the fact that Inception has no actors guild nominations is another big indication.
The big three:
1. Best Picture
With so many nominations on so many top 10 lists and 3/4 guilds AND 10 best pictures AND the fact that Dark Knight did not get nominated AND the fact that shit like The Blind Side got nominated last year the Best Picture Oscar nomination is 100% sure.
SMALL CORRECTION: Inception was nomninated by the SAG – for best stunt ensemble. Sadly stuntperformances is one of the overlooked/unrewarded arts come oscar season…
2. Screenplay
Another sure bet. The best way to think about a nomination is if you ask yourself “Is this factor alone enough to warrant watching the movie?”
For example I don’t like The White Ribbon, but the fantastic cinematography and the fact that the movie is shot in such a captivating way warrants watching the movie – and the Academy thought the same last year by nominating Christian Berger.
What is the thing people talk about when it comes to Inception?
The story. It is probably the movie with the most attention drawn to the screenplay. Just skim through the reviews, story and screenplay (and Nolan’s directing) are the most frequently cited factors that people love about Inception.
Now a win is pretty much an unincepted dream since The King’s Speech is a runner for Original Screenplay as well and usually the two main contending movies split the screenplays if they’re not nominated in the same category (2008: Milk and Slumdog Millionaire). But since for some inexplicable reason Precious won Screenplay last year, there might still be hope…
3. Best Director
Seems pretty safe now, but there is still the possibility of a The Reader move. Dark Knight looked pretty safe too, but in the end it wasn’t and with the Coen Brothers around to kick into the top five and one or to late surprises one should never be too safe.
Inception and the Oscar (possible wins)
Best Visual Effects
Inception is one of seven movies on the shortlist for best visual effects (along with Tron, Harry Potter, Scott Pilgrim, Hereafter, Iron Man 2, Alice in Wonderland) and is nominated for 4 awards by the Visual Effects Society.
The fact that the movie got praised for being a special effects movie that was not dumbed down makes Inception an ideal candidate to reward the craftsmanship and the way special effects are used to tell good stories.
Chance: 80%
Main Contender: Tron Legacy
Best Sound Editing/Best Sound Mixing
Two Oscars that get confused easily: sound mixing describes the process of cutting all the sounds/music and the stuff only a skilled ear can hear together. Sound Editing is fabricating sounds that are not recorded on set (best example would be the flashing lightsaber sound).
Richard King won 2008 for Sound Editing for The Dark Knight (the only Oscar Slumdog did not manage to grab) and now he’s back on Inception.
About sound mixing… I guess you can never have enough BRRRMMMM!!!
Chance 70%
Main Contenders: Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, Tron (guessing since I haven’t seen the movie)
Cinematography
Wally Pfister the cinematographer who started out filming erotic straight to DVD videos got nominated for Best Cinematography for his work on: Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight – notice the pattern?
With his fourth nomination guaranteed he might snatch it, but there has been a fair share of beautifully shot movies so this will be a tough call.
Update:
The American Society of Cinematographers selected their five movies as well:
Black Swan – Matthew Libatique
The Social Network – Jeff Cronenweth
The King’s Speech – Danny Cohen
Inception – Wally Pfister
True Grit – Roger Deakins
Chance 40%
Main Contender: Black Swan – Aronofsky’s movie are filled with geniusly orchestrated compositions and Black Swan is no exception.
Art Direction
Need I say more? Another Oscar that can be easily taken from Inception since Art Direction is usually an Oscar that gets handed to period pieces (and King’s Speech being the main Oscar contender)
Inception’s beautiful art direction might be overlooked for more obvious-in-your-face art direction (just ask the guys who only get nominations for costume design if they make costumes for a victorian age movie).
Chance: 40%
Biggest Contenders: The King’s Speech, Alice in Wonderland
Editing
Four dreamlayers, each with a different goal, each with a different time and setting, coordinating and editing it together and still making sense is a feat as remarkable as coming up with the script of Inception.
Chance 50%
Biggest Contenders: The Social Network (main Oscar movie and tremendously well edited), Black Swan
Score
Hans Zimmer is back, Golden Globe nomination for Inception’s score and always coming up when talk is about the best score, the dreamlike quality of pieces like Old Souls as well as incorporating a slowed down version Je Ne Regrette Rien to explain the trademark BRRRRM is pretty cool, especially considering that he found a way for the soundtrack to both be suspenseful but also serve the characters in the story.
Chance 40%
Main Contenders: The Social Network/King’s Speech (big boy bonus), How to Train your Dragon, Toy Story 3
Nominations (with bold for possible wins, red for very likely win)
Picture
Director
Original Screenplay
Editing
Cinematography
Art Direction
Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Visual Effects
Original Score
Preface: I’ve been a Saw fan since I bought the first two movies on DVD and seen every subsequent movie in the theater and while there were many downturns since the series progressed endlessly, I never stopped defending Saw when people called it idiotic, sick, torture porn or whatever.
That being said: Saw VII made me ashamed of having ever raised my voice to defend this series. Saw VII is everything critics have accused Saw of being, it more or less affirms everyone who has never seen a Saw movie in their (until now) ill-informed prejudice.
First Warning: This fan-rant will make my Expendables outbreak look like kindergarten. It is a wall of text, if you have not seen Saw VII, there is a quick review at the beginning urging you not to see it, please read if you have considered watching Saw VII.
I’ve had a high tolerance for idiotic shit happening in Saw (hell, even after the disastrous Saw V I gave part 6 a chance) and you know that something has to be REALLY wrong when people like me (as well as he majority of Saw fans out there) hate this movie so much.
Second Warning: if you want to see this movie because you want to know what happened to Dr. Gordon – he has a 2 minute cameo, that’s it, don’t waste your money on seeing that on screen, please!
The good:
4 minutes of Tobin Bell
It might be great if you are drunk – but then again Sex and the City 2 was horrible despite being drunk so I’m not sure if that will do the trick.
The bad:
Bad acting even for Saw standards
Gore flying at you (in THREEE DEEE)
No story, just a series of sequences loosely held together
Dream sequences with 3D traps inside!
Hilariously bad/predictable ending
Saw VII is everything the critics have accused the Saw series of being
Rating and Moviequation:
Category: 1
Score: 05%
Edit:
Hilariously true Saw video here:
Let the rant begin!
But why am I wasting so much time on a movie I hate?
Well considering how much time I spent watching previous Saw’s those few more hours won’t change much of the overall amount of time that has been wasted, so bring it on…
Third Warning: I know that Saw is not as great as Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, therefore it would be ridiculous to compare something like the Saw series to a timeless masterpiece that. Similar to Expendables I will base this rant on the expectations and qualities that go hand in hand with a Saw movie, so my references will be Saw I – VI, all right, let’s dive into this.
I just want to write the points to warn people in advance how ridiculously bad this is, so bad that the only reason I would watch this instead of Sex and the City 2 is the fact that Sex and the City 2 has the longer running time.
The opening
The opening has never been a strong point of the Saw series, except for the first one it was afterwards primarily used to kill somebody off.
Saw opened with a guy waking up, having no idea where he was, serving as a narrative help for the audience to immediately connect (like in Buried we can relate to the guy not knowing anything because we neither know what the movie will be about).
Saw II was way more arthouse and innovative by killing of a random guy, but at least he served as a hint for the detective to find Jigsaw.
Saw III probably has the most story-connected opening since it picks up right after Saw II with the protagonist being trapped – but also such a disgusting mutilation that I cannot watch it at all.
Saw IV has a game that at least has a character reappear in the movie.
Saw V kills someone in an Edgar Allan Poe pendulum trap, he has no real value to the plot other than to set up a flashback – do we see a slight downhill trend?
Saw VI pits two people against each other, forcing them to mutilate themselves, chop of their arms and stuff to have one killed – the scene has no further importance than to set up a crime scene and another ridiculously badly acted scene, both have little to none effect on the story.
Saw VII sets a new standard in terms of laziness.
It opens with Dr. Gordon crawling with one foot (he lost the other in Saw I) and cauterizing his bloody wound on a steam pipe – this sequence is there to shut the fanboys up and expect some grand finale.
Followed by a trap set in public space where two men have to fight over a girl who had her way with both of them or any other ridiculous reason, whatever, they have to either kill each other or let the girl die and so starts the gut splashing opening (of course in 3D, because… that… serves… the… story… whatever).
After the trap the gimmick title Saw 3D exposes the hollowness of this installment even more and the opening is off, never to do anything for the plot.
But considering what the rest of this movie is about, an empty plotline is the least of Saw’s problems right now.
It’s in 3D…
… and looks as cheap as it gets.
You remember Avatar 3D, the only 3D that even I, a passionate 3D hater, can say “well it was okay”?
It was good because we didn’t mind it, the Na’vi weren’t pointing at us to remind us that it was in 3D – don’t worry, Saw reminds you. Even a doctor might be amazed of all the body parts that can be thrown at you.
No Tobin Bell or Dr. Gordon for you!
Tobin Bell has been the spine of the Saw series since Saw II.
He’s the best actor in the franchise and brings a gravitas and sincerity to the role that no other actor has had in this series. He continuously rewrote his lines if they did not fit the character and to me he is the best example of an actor taking the craft seriously.
The Saw series might be a joke to many, but not to him. Watch interviews with him either he is a great actor because he is so much in his role or he is a great actor because he can pretend in interviews to be invested in his role.
He was killed off in Saw III which was pretty surprising for a franchise to kill off the glue that held the series together. Realizing this they took the prequel/sequel route with Saw IV and the subsequent sequels tried to incorporate the dead Jigsaw whenever possible.
With Saw VI the backstory was interestingly connected to Jigsaw but we had to ask ourselves: how much time did that guy spend on prerecording messages?
With Saw VII we don’t have to ask since he no longer is in the movie… not for most of the time.
Same goes for Dr. Gordon so if you were trapped by the promise that Gordon would return… he is in there for 2 minutes, which pushes John and Gordon to a total of 5-6 minutes.
So the question: is a cameo between horribly acted, pathetic gore scenes in 3D for 14 euro worth the 5 minute cameo?
Acting
It has never been Saw’s high point. Hell Saw V and VI basically made a sprint for the title “worst acting in a horror movie” which was claimed by this year’s Shocklabyrinth 3D.
But now Saw is back to reclaim the throne and this time they have brought the big guns.
Chad Donella is playing a detective whose lines are just beyond anything you have seen in The Last Airbender, this includes saying crazy 4 times within a minute.
He also explains why a safehouse is called SAFE house (spoiler alert – because it’s safe).
Costas Mandylor returns as emotionless Hoffman… the rest is just not worth mentioning.
Plausibility or suspension of disbelief?
Granted a movie about a cancer patient building a machine that rips people apart has a huge implausible set up we have to accept, but after a certain amount of traps and planning it gets ridiculous. The series has since tried to “explain” the fact that Jigsaw finds empty warehouses, meat factories and all that nice lairs by making him a wealthy civil engineer, the setting up of the traps has been tried to fix by introducing more and more apprentices to provide the muscle power.
With Saw IV we had to accept Jigsaw having an internal atomic clock to calculate events and people even after his death, counting on the detective to figure out the vital clue just at the end of the movie instead of at the beginning and there is a fair share the fans can further accept, but Saw VII just throws all logic out of the window.
How did they set up a trap in the middle of Toronto (or Saw-city)?
Was it a deserted warehouse?
I don’t know, looked pretty neat, maybe John Kramer bought it before his death and nobody bothered to check after he was revealed as the Jigsaw killer if there might be some torture tools inside? Or maybe Hoffman rented the place? Was probably cheap anyway since it’s Canada.
Left alone that the traps have gone so overly elaborate. While rigging people to a carousel was remotely plausible (Saw VI) hanging two people over lawnmowers to slice them apart defies any cost-benefit calculation.
The so-called plot
Maybe most of this review will sound like this:
Traps traps traps traps traps traps
I will dissect the traps so thoroughly (and frankly there is still a lot ground to cover) because there is almost no story to dissect, so the traps are the only element from the original Saws that remains, but let’s go to the “plot”.
Bobby Dagen gets put into a series of 4 traps (like in Saw III, IV, V, VI, damn really original) until he fails his final test – oh, wait that should be a surprise.
Meanwhile Hoffman wants to kill Jill for putting him into the reverse beartrap… that’s about it, really I can’t spend more time on this subject because there is nothing else happening.
Oh yeah and Bobby’s story is as much connected to Hoffman’s story as the opening trap is to anything.
Police incompetence
Jigsaw is now like Godzilla (not King Ghidorah), when he is doing a trap, time stands still, people, friends, entire families get abducted and put into elaborate traps and the police force can’t make any progress until the plot allows it.
Basically this is a repetition of the already atrocious Saw V (which compared to Saw VII now looks like Konga Godzilla King Kong) with nothing happening.
Wasting the only good storylines
There are many ways to write oneself into a corner, one is by dropping a character’s entire arc for a generic storyline that has to drag thorough the entire movie until we get the resolution we already know.
Interestingly both Saw V and VII make the same mistakes starting by said dragging storyline. In Saw IV we were introduced to Agent Strahm who albeit generic and stereotypical did everything in his power to find Jigsaw as fast as possible, trying to get the clues correct. Saw IV ending with Strahm being locked up in the sickroom and Hoffman being revealed as the antagonist there was potential for a big mind game as a sidestory in Saw V.
But don’t worry, the writers knew how to screw up a story that would write itself: they made Strahm walk around to serve as a plotdevice for flashbacks that didn’t add anything to the story (sadly more on that later), commenting on the things we had just seen, resulting in the worst scenes of Saw (until Saw VII) only to get killed off in a dissatisfying way.
With Saw VII Jigsaw’s wife Jill loses all her motivation. She went from mysterious and distant (Saw IV) to not present (Saw V) to not quite an apprentice but someone who understands John (Saw VI) to crying woman (Saw VII).
With Jill being the closest person to Jigsaw and his philosophy she could have provided a counterforce. Especially given the fact that Hoffman has almost no character and does not seem to care that much about the job (and we all love our serial killers in fanatic mode more than in opportunistic mode) it could have been a symbolic battle about John’s legacy and methods… coulda woulda shoulda…
Speaking of Jill…
Women in Saw
Serial killers are white males…
As quoted by Scream 2 when they discuss the likeliness of a female killer.
Women in horror movies are many times objectified, degraded or used as shrieking whining stereotypes.
Surprisingly Saw was the exception to this rule. I am personally not fond of Saw III (the fan favorite) but at least it was a horror movie featuring two pretty good actresses in big parts on both sides of the spectrum: Amanda as the serial killer/Jigsaw apprentice and Dr. Lynn who had to perform surgery on Jigsaw. It was a battle between wills and interesting that women were portrayed as strong as well – especially considering that Amanda had a physical confrontation with a blood thirsty Donnie Wahlberg and held her ground.
With Jill there would have been another way to combat the woman stereotype (there are already enough crying women when it comes to the random traps), but her story is basically she’s panicking and is no match for Hoffman. Additionally there is a sequence where Hoffman smashes her head onto a table which is done in a brutally and sadistic way that made me cringe more than any CGI blood that gets thrown onto the screen despite featuring no gore or anything.
The rest of the women is equally panicky/useless and Tanendra Howard from Saw VI returns to remind us how bad of an actress she is.
Flashbacks that do nothing
A flashback is a narrative technique that can be used to give us insight into the storylines, the characters motivations or they let us see a previous scene in a new light (notably Atonement, a movie I hate, but there are some great usages of flashbacks to enhance the different point of views).
Having said this, none of the flashbacks have anything to say about the story.
Saw V’s flashbacks might have been disconnected to the main plot and not helped the story at all, but at least they were semi-interesting to watch if you cared about Jigsaw and why Hoffman became the new killer.
Saw VII’s flashbacks have NO justification for being there, they neither enhance the story nor tell us something we didn’t already know:
We have Bobby Dagen having a flashback where he watches a Jigsaw survivor and gets the idea that he could fake that. Wow, who would have thought about that! I never realized that Bobby got the idea of exploiting people after he had seen some of them talking abou it!!! This changes my world!
Then there is a book signing for a Tobin Bell cameo which tells us… that Jigsaw knew Bobby was lying…. No shit, probably that’s the reason he got tested like we were told previously.
The newer Saws have been suffering from a very soap-opera narrative style that introduced new characters and pretended via flashbacks that they had been there all along, but nothing comes close to the insulting scene, where the new officer Gibson has a flashback when he met Hoffman.
Why? Is it important? Does it change his motivation? Does it provide him with some insight to track down Hoffman?
Not to speak that Hoffman shoots a hobo in cold blood in this scene and we all know how much Jigsaw loves people who do those things. He probably thought: hey that Hoffman guy, he can shoot the shit out of junkies, I’ll hire him as a new apprentice after all he can built a really nice pendulum.
Thankfully the flashbacks are basically non-existent, more of them would have spiraled this movie even further down.
The horror is not seeing!
Saw has become known as a gore franchise, people who have never seen Saw will immediately tell you how disgusting it is, how sick and disturbing and that anyone watching these movies is a natural born killer, but looking just at the original Saw it is quite indeed remarkable how little we have actually seen.
The goriest scene in Saw, where Dr. Gordon cuts off his own foot – sounds horrible, I know, but actually we never saw the sawing (lame pun I know), all we saw (get it?) was the Saw (it gets old but I’m too lazy to get my thesaurus) on the foot and then some blood, quick cut back to Gordon’s and Adam’s faces. One of the most horrific scenes was almost entirely in our minds.
Saw VII knows about this power and shows us Dr. Gordon’s severed limb! Isn’t that great, but then again at least they attempt to “rationalize” how he did not die of massive blood loss.
But Saw VII takes it up a notch.
When speaking of horrible traps that make the public cringe and one trap that literally defines Saw:
THE REVERSE BEARTRAP
This is a trap preying on claustrophobia, having to make horrible decisions and putting the audience on the edge of their seat. Amanda has to find the key to the trap before it rips her jaws open… brrr… just thinking about this makes me cringe.
The trap was used for promoting the idea of a Saw movie via a short film featuring the writer Leigh Whannell in the trap:
We never saw the trap working, we (or at least I) were relieved when Amanda made it out in time (even if we knew she survived the way the movie was cut/shot was just damn exciting) and the possible outcome of the trap remained in the part of our brain that plagues us with irrational scary images.
With Saw VI the beartrap featured a return, which was actually quite an interesting way to make the movie come full circle like the tagline suggested by putting the second apprentice into the same trap the first apprentice was tested, storywise it was really “symbolic”. Also the set up was different: Hoffman was put into this situation without getting any chance to escape from, but he managed to get out of the chair he was strapped to and had to find a way to prevent the thing from killing him – the suspense in the scene (which considering it was the fifth sequel was a pretty good finale) came from the fact that there was no given plan how he would escape and we were unsure if he would survive of not – then again with Saw VII being planned you could kinda guess what would happen.
So we had two instances with the reverse beartrap – separated by FIVE years, which allowed for a huge kind of morbid nostalgia when we saw it again. Now why not repeat the same trick again? One year later you can still cash in on the same nostalgia – in fact why didn’t all Saw movies have a reverse beartrap in them? Way better than coming up with something new.
I have to repeat, the beartrap was scary because we did NOT see how it worked, not that I am spoiling anything, but with the thing not doing its job two times before, I leave it to your imagination if there is a gloriously 3D jawripping beartrap.
Boring! Let’s get some traps rolling!
Wow this rant is getting long, you must be bored right now…
You know what would cheer you up? A trap!
Not that kind of trap!
Saw VII knows that the target demographic is represented by an impatient blood hungry male (the stereotype the Saw series has always been accused of catering towards to) who can’t focus on more than five minutes of dialogue, so thankfully they have included as many traps as possible, they even go as far as to include a ridiculous go-kart dream sequence where Jill gets torn apart in the cheapest possible way, right after she wakes up we cut to four skinheads getting smashed/torn/ripped apart in a gory way (arms and jaws flying away from the body) that just makes you laugh and if that was too much story for you we cut to a survivor meeting where someone we never say talks – TRAP! While the woman talks we cut to a GIANT HUMAN BLENDER MADE OF LAWNMOWERS and see a man killed before we cut back to the meeting – isn’t that great?
Traps for maximum gore!
So we have come to terms with the fact that this ridiculous piece of trash is bad and full of traps, but we need to realize how bad these traps are or to be more precise: how they are deliberately constructed to give us the maximum gore experience.
I have written in my previous Saw article that the thing about the traps that makes them interesting is that they can be overcome and theoretically they could be overcome in Saw VII as well.
But we very soon realize how they work:
Person A finds him/herself in a trap with hopefully more than him/herself so we can up the bodycount.
Insert Jigsaw-tape offering a ridiculous reason for the test and how this all is symbolic and stuff.
Insert way to mutilate Person A or Person B (best way both).
There is a 60 second counter until the trap snaps and kills person A or B (preferably both or more)
Mutilation begins and until second 5 is displayed everything might work.
Shortly before the timer runs out person A fails, which results in the death of A/B/C/the world.
I’m not kidding you EVERY trap is constructed this way, it is so pathetic and cheap it made me shout out loud when the third trap again did not work, where is the suspense if it is always the same formula that gets them killed?
And while we are at the subject…
Bobby’s game and Saw’s philosophy
So the main game is about a guy who pretended to be a Jigsaw survivor (and no one questioned where the trap was etc.?), he goes through the four rooms watching people die and serves no purpose to the story.
We could say the same thing about Saw VI’s game. It was not really connected to Hoffman’s actions at all, but here we arrive at the crucial point: William’s story and character was interesting.
He was an insurance guy, who was tested because he denied Jigsaw health insurance (thus tying him naturally to one of John’s reasons for starting his insane killing machines). Also the way his tests were made basically showed how to do it properly.
To me Saw works best when it is about choices that are morally not acceptable. Jigsaw would place many victims into traps where for example William had to choose which person he would allow to survive. The trap “reflected” William’s policy in the way that by denying insurance he “chose” who would live or die.
Now we would all agree that killing is wrong (I seriously hope) and the fact that you can only save one person means that he decides which one dies – there is no right and wrong in this. It is putting us out of our safety zones into an extreme situation, psychological horror, which is the reason I liked Saw.
When Amanda had to kill a man to save her own life she was put out of our norms of society into a brutal, wild, unfriendly situation, where she acted out of impulse. The idea of killing a person for one’s own survival is disgusting and unsettling – and it leaves the audience with the question “What would I do?”
We may not ponder for a long time on these questions but for a few seconds the movie rattles on our cages of morality, which is why I have “enjoyed” the Saw movies up until now.
Is there ANYTHING like this in Saw VII? Nope, the traps Bobby faces are one person in a trap getting killed because Bobby fails. Unlike William who had a near breakdown Bobby has no change of character. William was a despicable guy, a sleazy suit-wearing smartass but he showed remorse, regret. While he was getting pushed to the limits of his mental and physical capabilities he exposed his human side and we even felt genuinely sorry when the past caught up with him and condemned him for his previous choices.
With Bobby… well he walks, then he comes to the end.
Killing innocents
With the years the excuses for trapping people have become more and more ridiculous. The series started out with drug dealers, addicts, voyeurs, the sort of people you wouldn’t want on your Star Trek convention.
Then there were people like a police officer who was killed because she spends too much time with dead people (really as a police officer who investigates in MURDERS she is probably bound to spend a lot of time with the case especially if the case is Jigsaw)
Then there was an officer who was killed for not trusting the killer…
And Saw VI topped that by killing a guy for smoking, that’s right you read it.
But NEVER has Jigsaw killed people he himself considered innocent. In Saw VII a woman is killed with no “excuse” Jigsaw more or less states that she didn’t commit any crimes and still she is in there, wow…
But we could argue that this was the case with abducting and threatening Dr. Gordon’s family in the very first Saw – then again it was not until Saw II when Jigsaw claimed that he never killed anyone etc.
In Saw I he was fed up with the world and wanted to “teach” people, he never said about everyone can survive it, the angle about “everyone has a choice” was introduced later on.
The way the woman is killed in Saw VII just trumps every cruelty that has come before.
The big fanboy ending
Yep, so we get to the ending.
And after suffering through two stories that were connected through an automatic machinegun we ask ourselves “hey wasn’t Dr. Gordon supposed to be in this?”
And the writers reveal the final “twist”
It’s Dr. Gordon, oh my god! He worked for Jigsaw since Saw!!!!!
And he is locking up Hoffman in the bathroom!!!!
And he throws the SAW into the camera… in THREE DEEE!!!!
This is wrong on so many levels and would warrant an entire article but if you have suffered through all of this then I guess you won’t mind a little bit more or to say it with the words of Jigsaw
“Suffering, you haven’t seen anything yet!”
The Gordon story:
Since Dr. Gordon did not return to Saw II (money), there was the obvious question “What happened to him?”
When he did not return to Saw III most people gave up on him, there have been hints thorough the series, but nobody except delusional fanboys took them seriously. In Saw II there even was a scene where a hooded figure performed surgery on a video and since Tobin Bell was not around that day they used a double, the unintentional hair of the actor under the hood that was seen was not Tobin Bell’s hair (just a glitch during movie making) which sparked conspiracies that this was Dr. Gordon.
After five sequels nobody cared anymore for Dr. Gordon and every time someone used “It was Dr. Gordon” as an explanation it got more and more ridiculous and worst of all: predictabke.
It was probably the most predictable storyline and with a series that was keen on having a final revelation at the end of (almost) every movie, choosing the most obvious theory is not the way to go.
Besides…
Saw and the twists
If there was any sense to Saw VII one might argue that it might have been about survivors learning from Jigsaw to appreciate their life and Gordon becoming the new accomplice/whatever is symbolizing this change.
But we should also look at the only information we got about Gordon: he was put into a room forced to saw his foot of and kill the man trapped with him otherwise he would lose his family. Thinking that his family has been shot/wounded he sawed of his foot shot Adam (who survived the shot) watched Adam beat the guy from Lost to a pulp and then left promising Adam he would return.
Then the guy who put him into the trap appears, the guy who just made his life horrible and footless because his relationship was not working at all – then the Jigsaw killer makes him a foot prosthesis… and that’s it?
A twist only works if the picture afterwards makes sense. That is one of the reasons why Saw IV was not that beloved since the revelation of the killer did not grant us a bigger understanding. The best twists work when we look back and say “oh that’s how they did it, yeah I can see that he has been a double agent all along, how stupid of me to miss that”.
With Saw IV they withheld information about Hoffman, so it was surprising that he was the new Jigsaw, but his motivations did not make sense, we did not know why Hoffman was the killer, that was a cliffhanger for the sequel.
Compare this to the original Saw where it was pretty surprising who the killer was but once you knew it you were “Oh this is kinda interesting, he has cancer so he knows he’s gonna die and that’s why he’s sick of people who throw their life away.”
See how you can piece together everything in a “plausible” way?
With Dr. Gordon there is NO explanation other than fanfiction, there is no hint why Gordon became what he is, he just became it. Maybe they didn’t give us the explanation because that would ruin the twist… that had been guessed since Saw II…
For a supposed finale (that feels more like a cliffhanger if you don’t know that this is supposed to be the last Saw) this is just not doable, everything should fit together, but that’s probably a byproduct of making the story up as you go, remember this is not Harry Potter where everything was more or less planned out even though the writers act as if this was planned since Saw II.
The Gordon story could have worked. He could have been forced to become a new apprentice but secretly planned to not only cross Jigsaw but after his death destroy the only thing (established in Saw II) that Jigsaw saw as his goal: his legacy.
Jigsaw lived on in the traps that continued despite his death so Gordon destroying his legacy, corrupting everything about what Jigsaw thought he was telling the people, hell you could justify every plot/trap inconsistency with Gordon manipulating Hoffman into a wild killer that would bring the downfall of the “help yourself” Jigsaw mantra….
It’s not the best story I’ve just written, but come on, everything is better than locking Hoffman in the bathroom, seriously, this was the nr.1 theory… that’s worse than Lost!
O.k. I’ll take it back… it’s not worse than the flash-sideways in Lost…
Seeing this ending, especially considering that Hoffman got abducted by not only Gordon but two other pigmasks whose identity was not revealed (so much for tying up plotlines), everything just turned into a laughable comedy. The fact that they have recycled ideas (more pigmasks at the end, tooth pulling trap, human blender) from the original (and terrible) Saw IV script speaks volumes for the barren river of inspiration for these movies.
Afterword:
Sadly this movie has already passed 100 million worldwide and will surpass both Saw VI and Saw I, therefore turning it into a success, affirming the producers that Saw: In Space, the new beginning 3D will feature even more gore and traps!
Because if Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare has taught us everything, it’s that sadly none of these franchises stays dead and keeps reminding us that they were beloved way back in the days… in a way Saw now truly is the Nightmare on Elm Street of my generation.
The following analysis was written under the assumption, that I am 100% right and if you disagree you are wrong and clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Translation: this is a heavily biased, unfair, one sided fanboy rant that assumes that everybody hates book 7 and that Speed Racer is of the same artistic quality as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I did not enjoy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as a book and since I am a whiny biased bastard, I can’t phrase a plausible argument against Deathly Hallows that would equal the epic work of Daniel Hemmens, so go there, you’ll have a better time, then you’ll have reading this wall of text.
This article is me coming to terms with Deathly Hallows and getting really excited for the last Potter movie, while watching Harry Potter an
d the Order of the Phoenix, because even though I more or less despise the book, I am 90% certain that the movie will be great and here are my 12 points why (13 if you count Emma Watson’s dress):
1. The story is made for cinema
Probably my biggest gripe with Deathly Hallows was the fact that it tried to turn Harry Potter into something that it never was – namely the Lord of the Rings.
We have one Voldemort-soulpiece to rule them all, we have a fair share of sitting around doing nothing, we have Ron turning into Gollum, the sword of the King (I know it’s inspired by King Arthur, but still), the epic siege of the castle…
It was not really gripping to read about Harry arguing that they had no plan at all, but cinematically speaking the images will be beautiful, since pictures can always enhance the loneliness that had to be put into the book by letting them repeat over and over again how they had no plan.
The movies except for some small moments, never managed to really hit the feeling of going to Hogwarts school for me and became more interesting when the story shifted towards Voldemort with the school year just as a rough outline for the story.
Thematically the movies grew stronger, the books weaker. When reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince I could not help imagine how great the sequence in the cave at the end would look on the silver screen and with Deathly Hallows, it really seemed like the movies really started to influence Rowling’s writing style, inserting imagery and plotlines, more in tune with an epic fantasy blockbuster than a book about a young wizard’s final year.
So where the book failed to me, the movie will probably succeed since, different media require different narrative skills, so bring on the Lord of the Rings 2.0!
2. No promises to keep
Why was it necessary that Sirius died falling through the veil?
Why did a building implode when the Avada Kedavra backfired?
How did Voldemort re-aquire his wand?
What was the story of Alice and Frank Longbottom?
One of the greatest aspects of Harry Potter to me was trying to puzzle out what happened “back then” what the overall story was, if Harry was a Horcrux – and like Lost the theories fans had exceeded the answers we were given by miles.
Some of the big offenders I listed, like Sirius’s death, where Rowling stated that she didn’t want to kill him but she had to because it was important for the story… then the fact that Harry still got Sirius’s mirror and Rowling stated that he would be important at the end seemed to strengthen the hunch that something important was going to happen with Sirius…
Nope, he just died for shock value and a random guy picked up the mirror to act as a plotdevice whenever Harry was in danger, way to go J.K., way to go!
The movies on the other hand never made those promises since they were just Harry Potter lite. The backstory of what happened during the war is never that important. The only important thing is the general effect on the characters, like Neville’s parents are there to act as a motivator for the characters, but their backstory is never pivotal to the plot.
Therefore we never have the feeling the movie that there will be a huge twist concerning this story. If you look at the prophecy from part 5, it’s a really big deal in the book and was foreshadowed since part 1, but in the movie it is about 5 sentences long.
With Potter 7, the “big twists” (Harry being a horcrux, Lily and Snape being friends, the diadem as well as almost all the horcrux locations, Snape being a good guy) were guessed after book 6 by about 60% of the readers, Harry being a horcrux was so obvious, it spawned conspiracies that it was too obvious and therefore a red hering.
So the only twists that hadn’t been guessed were either uninteresting (Dumbledore’s sister) or forced into the final installment much like the sideways in Lost (Harry going Neo and waking up at the train station, everything to do with the Deathly Hallows that had never been mentioned anywhere).
With the movies never being keen on those things, the disappointment will be spared quite a lot, the background story will hopefully be reduced to the very basics, which might result in another thing:
3. No copy-paste character biographies
How do you make a great opening for a final book?
I don’t know, Dark Tower had quite a nice opening for book 7.
I just know how you don’t do it: do NOT flood us with Dumbledore’s Wikipedia site!
Book 7 felt like Rowling tried to justify Dumbledore’s status as a walking deus ex machina (which worked really well and nobody had a problem with it) by waving a backstory into our faces and telling us “see…. see how complex this character is”
While one might get away with putting endless Daily Prophet and Rita Skeeter articles into a book, this won’t happen in a movie, because once again different media demand different approaches.
Half Blood Prince is a prime example for this.
Yes it made the whining fanboys angry who think a movie can only work if you put it on screen precisely like it happened in the book – seriously guys, watch the extended cut of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, suffer through all the narratives that go nowhere (which is great in the book, but feels overly long in the movie) and please realize that if it weren’t for artistic directors like Cuarón and Yates the movies would have never created an identity of their own.
Half Blood Prince might stray away from the book like no other Potter, but it (mostly) stands on its own feet. They only used the flashbacks necessary to reflect on Harry’s choices and the idea of Riddle’s corruption was recycled in the storyline about Draco and Harry – themselves standing before the same choice Riddle stood.
Draco choosing power.
Harry choosing friendship.
The idea was only hinted but it is there, where the horcruxes are hidden and all the other flashback stuff can be explained in movie 7 and would have only slowed down movie 6.
So if they keep this approach, there might be a great chance that they slash away a lot of Dumbledore’s gay nazi past and they might even save us from Snape’s flashbackshow, which read more like Rowling explaining the gaps to us than an actual memory.
4. Neville Longbottom and the sword of Gryffindor
What no Hogwarts?
That was a big bummer in book seven. Like I mentioned in point 1 this might work in favor for the movie, but it probably won’t change the fact that Neville organizing an illegal wizarding group against Death Eater teachers while getting a badass scar and having orgies in the room of requirements (last point being an educated guess) is way more intriguing than Harry sitting around and Voldemort sitting around.
The feeling of “why the hell didn’t we spend time with Neville, Luna and Ginny doing awesome stuff?” will probably be there in the movie as well, unless I interpret the trailers correctly and there is some footage of stuff in Hogwarts.
First would be the shot of the Death Eater stopping the Hogwarts Express, then we have Filch going through the corridors of Hogwarts which could either be close before the finale or (hopefully) something that happens between Harry’s sitting sessions.
Here is hoping that there will be some Hogwarts footage, not only as a fanpleaser, but also as a constant reminder what the stakes are. If we see how horrible not only the ministry but also Hogwarts has become, we want our characters to succeed even more.
This might be the weakest point, since it might have already been stated that there won’t be any Hogwarts clips…
5. Less rules, less explanation
Many of my gripes with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows stir from the fact that J.K. Rowling’s world is built on rules that the series has managed to abide with (for most of the time). Rowling while constantly using plot devices knows how to bring them into the story without leading to further complications.
What many fantasy authors and viewers don’t seem to understand is that magic does not equal doing everything one can do whenever one wants to – if you don’t have a strict set of rules for your story, the result is Eragon.
The problem with Deathly Hallows is the breaking of said rules. After having read thousands of pages through Harry Potter the reader knows about how likely a spell or potion can be detected and with each installment it becomes more and more complicated to maintain the rules while still having children wizards fighting against enemies with years of experience.
With Deathly Hallows we know about the defense of places like Gringotts and the Ministry of Magic and we start to see that the situations are orchestrated in a way to make it possible for Harry to enter the Ministry of Magic.
The movies on the other hand are a completely different cup of tea:
Remember in the book how they elaborated the Fidelius charm and how Sirius Black was the one keeping the secret?
How did the movies deal with it: Yeah Black was one of the few who knew the location and betrayed them.Oh, what about how they go into much detail on how to camouflage themselves and using invisibility cloaks to pass undetected.
What happened in the movie: they just flew with broomsticks since the muggle’s ignore all the magic stuff (one line in Azkaban).What about the elaborate plot about Umbridge sending the Dementors into Little Whinging?
Nah, just another sign of Voldemort’s rising power.
So generally while this was always a fact that made the movies less attractive than the books, since I don’t like all the convenience in the book, a simpler universe might help me enjoy the story more than I originally did.
6. It’s a different thing to write than to film
Why did the army of the dead fight during the battle of Minas Tirith?
Because in movies it’s not as easy to get away with stuff happening out of the audience’s grasp. In an epic book full of battles it is no problem to have an army appear and fight somewhere else, but in a 3 hour movie that builds upon two battles, there has to be a payoff for Aragorn running around half an hour.
So stuff like Hermione and Ron popping up saying “By the way Harry we destroyed the Horcrux, because we just went into the chamber of secrets” is very very unlikely in a movie. It was hard to swallow during the book that Ron and Hermione imitated parseltongue and destroyed 1/7th of Voldemort’s soul behind the scenes.
Harry, Ron and Hermione are our heroes, so I hope the movie uses this untold story, to bring it onto the screen and kill two birds with one stone: firstly to make this action a little more believable then just a throwaway line we have to accept and secondly it will give Ron and Hermione their moment to shine.
Since Ron kills the first Horcrux in Part 1, he really needs to do something pivotal in the second movie.
7. Nostalgia from the movies
When the Harry Potter movies started, we were naturally disappointed for the most part of it. Not because they were not as good as Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (nothing really is), but because we had lived so many months and years within the world of the books that we have had our imaginations captured in Hogwarts, we had an understanding how the common room looked like, how the trick step halfway up the stairs worked.
The familiarity of Hogwarts was not present in the movies, because they were totally different from what we had imagined. But after nine years of movie history, while they might not have replaced the pictures of Hogwarts, the pictures of movie-Hogwarts have their own place in our memories, the movies have painted a picture of Harry Potter and developed their life outside of the books. This movie nostalgia will of course heighten the drama in Deathly Hallows and if you liked the previous movies this will automatically enhance the effect of the Harry Potter finale.
8. No more Hogwarts, no more distractions
A movie with 2 hours of running time was naturally not going to delve into these details as much as the books did, in the worst case it reduced school activities to mere plot devices to give Harry the necessary hint to figure out the puzzle.
Chamber of Secrets in my eyes suffers most from this, since they only kept stuff that was important to the plot the school year felt like a set-up to give Harry the necessary tools to win the final boss fight. We didn’t mind this in the books because firstly most plotdevices were hinted at already a few books beforehand so we never felt cheated when a magic room popped up in book five and because they also did other stuff during the year that was never important for the plot.
With the Hogwarts storyline gone, everything is geared towards the big finale, there are no more potion classes or anything.
This might seem repetitive, since it is my basic argument, but the point that book 7 deviated so much from the things most fans (or at least myself) liked hurt the book, but the movie will benefit from it quite a lot.
9. Bill Nighy
Seriously, even if it is just a cameo, it can never hurt to have Bill Nighy in your movie.
10. Trolling might have helped
Joanne K. Rowling has always been aware of the online activity and hopefully some of the things people complained might have been noticed.
And I’m not talking about fanboy whining like my problems (for example it really annoyed me that Hermione was not wearing a cheerleading costume during the final fight, but I guess Rowling never understood her character…), I’m talking about serious stuff like Harry using the imperius curse at Gringotts and kinda enjoying it or Harry using the cruciatus curse in front of McGonagall with no moral problems, stuff like that (on the other hand, the scene might have worked if the Ravenclaw Common Room would have been filled with Victoria Secret models).
11. No 3D!
Pretty self explanatory, no ugly post conversion to 3D, jayyy!
12. The books are done
My favorite Harry Potter movie is Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Why? Because one can really feel that 1) the skills of everyone involved have increased and 2) the books were done.
With the early Potter movies the directors were depending on Rowling’s information what would be important. With Chamber of Secrets for example she told Chris Columbus what to insert because it would be important for Half Blood Prince.
I can’t imagine how weird this must have felt for a director: “Yeah I’m gonna insert that… probably it will be important… I guess…”
When Potter 6 was made, the story was done, we knew how it ended, therefore the movie team could decide what to insert and how to restructure the movie to best tell the story.
Like the link at the beginning of the review says: an adaption is not about retelling the events of the book but to tell the ideas of the book using the story techniques of film.
With the final movie going, they don’t even have to care anymore about setting up the next one, so no more “Harry getting the firebolt because he needs it to fight the dragon in Goblet of Fire”, they can really just focus on the themes of friendship, loyalty and love this story has to offer.
So, grab your firebolts, remember the ingredients of polyjuice potion, know that every Slytherin is inherently evil and get ready for the final Potter – well not quite yet.
Good news everyone!
Scott Pilgrim vs. the world is in Austrian cinemas… RIGHT NOW!
But only in a handful of cinemas…
Yes, again the Ponyo debacle is happening a little bit.
Scott Pilgrim was headed for a January 2011 release, which made me check out Amazon.co.uk if the blu-ray would come out before that and I could import it (it comes out in November).
Thankfully the movie is hitting our cinemas, allegedly October 22nd – except it’s not, unless the websites for Austrian cinemas are just too slow.
So why a Ponyo debacle again?
I’m grateful this movie is coming out now, but the fact that the marketing just started about a week/two weeks ago, will be very bad for the awareness about Scott Pilgrim. I saw the trailer with Piranha 3D, the marketing department is probably doing the best to promote the movie but I guess it will very soon vanish and underperform, like it did in the US (even though there was a big hype in the US, which lead me to fear that this movie wouldn’t be released in Austria at all).
Anyhow, Scott Pilgrim will be in austrian theatres, it’s a movie about a geeky guy, trying to make out with a girl working at Amazon.com.
When he’s starting to date her, he learns the terrible truth: he needs to defeat her seven evil-ex-boyfriends to win her – let the battle begin!
To get in the mood for Scott Pilgrim I’ve selected four great movies and one episode which celebrate and glorify geekdom in all its nerdy facets – and don’t anyone lecture me on the difference between nerds and geeks.
You know those annoying horror geeks who won’t shut up during a movie?
Remember when you were watching [Rec] and people kept complaining that this is completely implausible and they would act totally different?
Everyone knows and probably hates that guy, he’s complaining about characters not wanting to shoot their daughter after she got bitten by a zombie – why? Because he/she has seen zombie flicks and knows the rules, unlike the characters who experience a zombieinvasion for real and have not watched these films.
But – what if there was a zombieattack? Then these geeks might come in handy!
Zombieland is a laugh-out-lout comedy about a dysfunctional “family” trying to make its way through a zombie infested world. Next to The Boat that Rocked this is my feel-good-film.
And if you know what a proton pack is, you will have twice the fun watching it.
Geek factor: 50% – the main character has created a set of rules how to survive a zombie movie, something most of us have done more than once…
Accessibility for non-geeks: 70% – if you don’t mind some bloody zombie effects, this movie is well written, the humour is understandable even if you haven’t seen any zombie movies
What is inherently associated with geeks nowadays?
Comics.
And what question do comic geeks ask themselves over and over again?
No, not “who would win in a fight between X and Y” because the answer is always Batman, no matter who is fighting.
The question is:
“Why aren’t there superheroes in real life?”
Well Kick-Ass answers this question… at least for a while, then it throws the main character into a conflict between a stereotype mob boss and two superheroes with guns acting like Adam West and Burt Ward.
The whole movie is filled with comic book references, musical and photographical homages (heroes shaking hands in front of the rising sun).
Kick-Ass is a violent funny thrill ride, one of my favourite films of 2010 and doesn’t lose its impact even after a few viewings.
Geek factor: 70% – he’s wearing a cape, yeah like Batman! A movie about Batman walking around with a gun and his 11 year old daughter killing an armed mob in one of the most exciting action sequences of the year, need I say more?
Accessibility for non-geeks: 85% If you have wondered, who Adam West is, you probably won’t laugh at Nicolas Cage’s voice, but there is still a lot of humour and emotion in this movie for the casual moviegoer. The action is top notch, the actors give their best and most importantly: it is an exciting modern-day western.
Now here is where we get into discussions about the difference between geeks and nerds.
Star Trek has been plagued with the nerdy stigmata. The Star Trek stereotype is the one of some lone nerd sitting at his computer, studying the Jefferies tubes, warp-core or the tachyon scanner (admit it, you know at least one of these words!).
But what if…
What if a group of aliens would watch Star Trek and structure their life after the series? A whole race of nerds, looking for a saviour.
And if you don’t have James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols you will get Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, Daryl Mitchell, Tony Shalhoub and Sigourney Weaver.
They are the cast of a cancelled Sci-Fi series called “Galaxy Quest”, unfortunately the aliens don’t know this and therefore the worn out actors who are fed up with the series have to fight an interplanetary war… aided by a bunch of geeks who have the plans of the series’s ship because they have religiously studied each episode.
Geek factor: 85% – this is Star Trek come to life during a Star Trek convention!
Accessibility for non-geeks: 75% if you don’t know the Star Trek jokes, the script of the movie makes sure that you will get the humour anyway. Alan Rickman playing a wannabe serious actor who is stuck with a role he hates is hilarious no matter what you know about the Intrepid-class starships.
Futurama is geeky Simpsons (some geeks might argue it’s the better Simpsons) it is mocking science fiction stories and a Star Trek episode was inevitable. In “Where no fan has gone before” – catch the reference? Add +1 to your geek score.
Fry sets out to rescue the banished Star Trek movies that garnered a major religion in the 3rd millennium… staring all the actors of classic Star Trek (minus the late Deforest Kelly and James Doohan) plus Jonathan Frakes who offered his voice for two words.
Geek factor: 90% – do you know who Welshy is and why he dies?
Accessibility for non-geeks: 30% – while Futurama is a series that can be enjoyed by non-geeks as well (even though it has a very nerdy stigmata that is especially strong in german speaking countries – for whichever reason, probably bad dubbing), this episode is a strict fan-service, filled with Star Trek jokes and references that can only be entertaining if you know the series.
In 1999 a group of Star Wars fans learns that their friend is dying of cancer and will not be able to see the new Star Wars movie… the only logical conclusion: break into George Lucas’s Skywalker ranch and steal a workprint of Star Wars Episode 1.
So a road-trip begins, in the millennium falcon, a story about friendship, paedophile dating, getting punched by Harry Knowles and your personal Death Star – all for a soulless movie not worthy of the original Star Wars trilogy.
But they couldn’t know this in 1999… at least the characters don’t know it since the movie had a long way until the big screen in 2008 – almost getting censored because the cancer subplot was deemed inappropriate.
Geek Factor: 100%
If you’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here…
If you know why a bunch of Star Wars fans is taking a shortcut to Iowa…
If you know that it’s Trekkers, not Trekkies…
If you’ve been looking for love in Alderaan places…
Then watch this movie.If not…
Accessibility for non-geeks: 00% it’s no movie for you.
…except if you want to see MACHETE as “The Chief”
