Laika will stay in business forever. You may ask, how? They currently employ over 300 employees at their main location and each of their films consistently underperforms, the last two straight up bombing. May I inform you the president also owns Nike. He's worth 35 billion dollars. To his son, Travis Knight, who just did Bumblebee, this is pocket money for them. I can see the conversations now.
Phil Knight: Alright son, what do you want?
Travis Knight: Hey dad, I just want to make another movie with those dolls. You think you can spare some money?
Phil Knight: No problem my child. How much?
Travis Knight: The usual, 60 million.
Phil Knight: Why, go right ahead, you little wiper snapper! Just bring some of it back.
Travis Knight: Thanks daddy! I'll fund the next one with my Bumblebee money!
As for the movie itself? No idea, didn't see it, no one did.
What the hell is this raceswapped bullshit?
I can't say much more than what other critics have said a million times before in the past 100 years or so, but damn, I forgot how revolutionary this film was. I saw the post-processed colorized version of the short feature, in my opinion the best version, and it absolutely blew me away how ambitious this was for 1902.
Let's see, we've got a basic structured narrative, which includes a beginning, a middle, and an end. We've got amazing special effects through use of practical sets, matte paintings, and in-camera tricks. We've got great performances that tell the audience the story and what the characters are feeling, without the use of dialogue. There's also some great composition with actors in the framing of what the camera could see.
The only shoddy special effects are some of the quick cuts (Because there wasn't any editing equipment back then), and actually, I find the rocket hitting the moon's eye to be the worst special effect of the film. The rocket appears much bigger in size than what it actually it is and the cut to the rocket hitting in the eye is too jarring. Otherwise, the movie has some great work with blending together smaller sets and in-camera tricks with the real actors.
Georges Méliès possibly revolutionized movies forever and I think everyone owes something to him. By today's standards, it's not the best movie ever created, but goddamn, at the time, it certainly was. A milestone in motion picture history. Everyone interested in movies has to at least watch it once.
Okay, now that you finished that little Godzilla movie, can you get back to this, please?
This is going to be the greatest comedy of 2024. They will be showing this in arthouse theaters years from now with Stuckmann making appearances like Greg Sestero does for The Room.
Why wasn't this in the actual fucking movie? This is better than everything else that was in that trash Ridley Scott wrote.
To think, Zack Snyder made a more visually interesting movie with his iPhone than Marvel does with IMAX cameras. This short speaks volumes about the movie-making process.
Need I remind you only the first part of the story is being shot right now. Be prepared for this to bomb and part two never getting made.
For a fan film, I couldn't have asked for better. Since I'm a die-hard fan of the Half-Life video games, this was a real treat to watch, both this and Part 1. The acting was a little hokey at times, but what more could you expect? The visuals and presentation are outstanding for a short built off of only $500.
Why VALVe sat on this and didn't make the animated series a reality I'll never forgive. This should be a feature length movie. I'm now 100% confident it would work.
Well, uh, that was something.
Why is this even classified as a movie? It's just a 1 minute film about a group of guys electrocuting and killing an elephant. From what I understand, and what the description of the video states:
"Topsy the Elephant belonged to the Forepaugh Circus and spent the last years of her life at Coney Island's Luna Park. Because she killed one trainer (who burned her trunk with a lit cigar), and subsequently became aggressive towards two other keepers who had struck her with a pitchfork, Topsy was deemed a threat to people by her owners and killed by electrocution on January 4, 1903 at the age of 36.
Inventor Thomas Edison oversaw and conducted the electrocution, and he captured the event on film. Edison used the film in his campaign against George Westinghouse and AC technology."
Edison didn't just electrocute the elephant because he felt like it, he just oversaw the execution, which the elephant was going to be hanged originally anyways.
DO YOUR RESEARCH, YOU CRYBABIES.
I give the Minions a small pass, because they're basically just like those old cartoons from the 40's and 50's that they would show before a movie would begin. The only problem is, the timing doesn't work at some moments. Only 1 joke in this entire short got me to chuckle. The rest was just filler, so at least, thankfully, it was short.
What am I doing with my life, writing this?
I didn't have time to watch a full movie today, so this short will suffice. Too bad what I picked had to be garbage. I like the idea in concept. For a Halloween live special, Blumhouse productions did a fake live snuff film recording at a Halloween party. This sounds like a cool idea, one that could lend itself to an unprecedented online experience, but the execution here is fucking garbage. It feels so amateurish in it's costuming, set design, lighting, acting, and just everything. Nothing sticks, nothing is scary, and there are so many periods of time and gaps of stuff just not happening. I can't count how many times I wanted to shut it off.
Like yesterday, I didn't have enough time to squeeze a feature-length horror film, so I had to suffice to watch a bunch of shorts instead. However, just so there's a topic, I turned to Jan Svankmajer. His surrealist style of stop-motion animation is quite a product of the time. I felt a random rush of emotions and thoughts as I watched this piece, mostly of amusement. The animation can be a little creepy at moments, but you can't deny the fascinating and undeniable talent Svankmajer has. His clay-mation throughout all the shorts I've seen, notably his music video, Another Kind Of Love, are all grotesque and off-putting, but there was an intrigue to it that kept me watching. Worth checking these out.
I actually first got introduced to David F. Sandberg from seeing his mainstream theatrical production, Annabelle: Creation. Once I looked him up online, I had no idea he was the man behind creating those fantastic and viral horror shorts on Youtube. Later on, I sat down and watched the feature-length, Lights Out, which I really loved. But as for his first-time short films, they're all perfection in a hand basket. All of the ones he's done, including the original Lights Out short, are genuinely creepy and tension-filled little moments captured brilliantly on camera. My favorite of his currently is the 2014 Pictured. Right from the get-go, the short starts off creepy with a rather grainy and faded picture of a creepy-looking girl standing on a sidewalk. From there, the short escalates, as the girl in the picture escapes and manipulates the photograph, taunting the owner in the house. The brilliant use of sound and finale set-up make this one of my new favorites. When she's putting her hand up and and down and the girl in the picture moves each time she does this, I got braced for impact and I was almost yelling at the monitor. There was a slight final scare, but it was more of an unsettling startle. I love all of Sandberg's work so far, and I can't wait to see more of his talented productions in the future.
Easy watch today, because again, I'm busy with life and other projects. I'm a fan of Hardcastle's work, from his Pingu's The Thing and his other clay-mation work. Chainsaw Maid though, is a very peculiar series of videos. I love chainsaws in my horror films and this seemed like the perfect combination of sexy and horrific, but there's a good balance. I almost view this maid as the Ripley from Alien: a badass that has to protect a kid. Now, for some reason, Hardcastle has an extreme fetish for this clay-mation and the maid doesn't finally get nude until the third part, which is actually the worst one, but the first works. If you're going to watch any of these, just watch the first, The other two just aren't good enough for recommendations.
Easily my favorite of all of Georges Méliès' films. I was actually laughing out-loud while watching this. An silly and over-the-top visual acting comedy sketch that's timeless in it's humor.
Annie Oakley > Atomic Blonde
I have nothing else to say about this, I just decided to make a random comment as I marathon a bunch of short films before the year ends. Happy New Year, everyone!
Now I'm really out of stuff to say. A terribly predictable script that's held up by it's direction and score. Paco Plaza uses lots of good shots and plays with his scenes, even if what's happening doesn't advance anything. They make for good moments. An example, Verónica walking down the street, but everything's going backwards, then forwards and back. Or the trick with her walking out of bed, when she's actually standing up, is a nice transition. I've seen used in a commercial before. I just appreciate it's a visually interesting movie. The characters are likable enough that you don't want to see them picked off, but not anyone I'll be writing thesis essays about. It's your The Conjuring family again. If you happened to notice this on Netflix, it's not bad if you turn it on, but you're better off renting Lights Out or Deliver Us From Evil if you crave something more spicy.
As the Oscars grow increasingly irrelevant and a shell of it's former golden Hollywood days, the limp dick Academy has opted to create an "Achievement In Popular Film" category, as well as a shorter show time and other changes. The details and eligibility for nominations are to be announced later. As viewership continues to plummet every year, this year's being an all time low, some pointing to streaming or politics as the perpetrators, ABC and those running the show are in total panic mode. If they continue digging into their rut, they would probably have to end the Oscars completely. I am completely against adding this category and it just serves as more proof how out of touch these people are. By creating this separate "achievement," it highlights a slue of conflicts. One, they're aware they don't recognize "blockbusters" or any movies general audiences like as real films. Two, movies like Mad Max: Fury Road will now have the privilege of being shoved out of the Best Picture nomination and instead lumped into shit like The Smurfs, because, this is "most popular" film, right? The Smurfs made like a billion dollars, that means it has a chance of winning an Oscar now. This is the same shit that happened with the Best Animated Film category, masterful works of art like Loving Vincent have no shot at even touching the Best Picture award. However, if they consider Fury Road artful enough to get a Best Picture nod, people will still complain why didn't X blockbuster also get nominated? This will still cause debate about what counts as an award worthy film. Three, what the hell defines "most popular?" The box office or the critical reception? Are we going to gauge the popularity based on the extremely outdated Tomatometer:tm: or the "rigged" audience score? How about the flawed "Cinemascore" system that only weighs initial reactions of a film from literally walking out of the theater? Four, just adding this category at all is shady and screams desperate. We need other categories made first well before a popularity contest. How 'bout following The Golden Globes' footsteps and making genre based wins? Best action movie? Best drama? That way at least each type of film has a shot at getting recognition. The Oscars have always been shit, but this "attempt" at staying relevant is only going to sink them lower. Now Disney owns two wins of the night, since all the most popular movies made now are distrusted by Disney, and they always win the Animation award. No coincidence ABC, who runs the show, is owned by Disney. They've already thrown obviously endorsed lame Star Wars skits into past shows, but this is no longer a celebration of the best of Hollywood. This is a money driven popularity contest, and I hate it. Black Panther will get the win so they can scream black empowerment, even though the film is odious filth.
why are we still here? just to suffer?
If you paid for a ticket for this, you're the problem.