film – Page 2

Review of Total Recall (2012)

This review originally appeared on Amazon. See more reviews by Dan.

Total Recall (2012)

Rating: ⭐⭐

Why are there remakes?

Sometimes I wonder why a film gets remade only to make it worse. The original Total Recall was a good film. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but a clever, funny, action-packed (and only slightly campy) romp through space and the human mind. Not so this remake – if you can see past the overused lens flares, here’s what you’ll learn about our future:

Cars, elevators, emergency exits, surgical equipment, and life in general will become less safe, not more, as we invent increasingly smart automated systems.
All common sense will be lost along the wayside: when faced with the opportunity to kill their enemy, both good guys and bad guys alike will prefer to give them another chance to fight back. Again. And again.
Even though a nation is capable of building robots capable of working tirelessly and surviving in the inhospitable parts of the planet, they’re far more-likely to use those robots to kill other humans working for them in the hospitable parts of the planet.
At some point in time, people will stop caring how practical their mobile phones are, and instead start using ones that require that you find a nearby window before you can use the screen (which can then be seen by all the strangers near you).
Gravity turns out not to work like we think it does. Who knew!

If you can forgive the silly plot and unbelievable characters, the acting isn’t intolerable and the story’s “fun enough” that it’ll distract you for a while. Don’t expect miracles, though: this film should have gone straight to DVD.

It’s All Fun And Games

Back to work after a great weekend. Troma Night was particularly successful this week – we watched a RiffTrax‘d copy of Eragon (“Get your ragons online at e-ragon!”), which was suitably hilarious; the classic bit of self-deprecating sci-fi that is Barbarella (“Hmm… camp bad guy number 104… how will Barbarella get past this one? Oh; using sex. What a surprise!”); and Human Traffic, which is what Trainspotting could have been if it wanted to appeal to the 24 Hour Party People demographic. Kinda.

That’s three mediocre-to-good films, plus a RiffTrax on one of them. That’s pretty good stamina for Troma Nights these days. After the last film had finished, everybody stood up and meandered towards the door, chatting as they went about the various recent events (floods, terrorism, blah blah) that had been going on. Then stopped walking. Then kept talking. “Well, I’m sitting down again,” I said, after awhile, and so did everybody else. And so, for the first time in years, a 3-film Troma Night ended with everybody sat around chatting for half an hour or more. Which is fab: Troma Night’s always supposed to have been about the people (not the films, the beer, or the pizza, which jointly come about second), and actually stopping to pass time at the end of a night was a fun and unusual reminder of what we’re all really here for.

Then on Sunday we had a low-key but “different” Geek Night. We only had Matt P, Claire and me, so we took the opportunity to learn and try out a handful of the games from the Playing With Pyramids book and Treehouse sets Claire had gotten from Looney Labs (creators of Chrononauts and Fluxx, amongst other things). Aside from Treehouse itself (which is an easy-to-learn and short game – with perhaps a little too much luck – that gets you used to playing with the pyramids), we played Icehouse, Homeworlds, and RAMbots.

Icehouse is the original Icehouse strategy game – a real-time (no, not simultaneous turn: actually real-time – players can all perform legal moves whenever they like) board game, which is somewhat unusual. Icehouse is fun, but I think it would work better with more players, more diplomacy, and more thoughtful strategy than we were executing.

Homeworlds is a stunningly-clever turn-based game of space strategy, diplomacy, exploration, and conquest. There’s a few things in it that make you have to think quite hard (such as the way that the hyperspace system works, the fact that the orientation, not the colour, of a piece implies it’s ownership, and the difference between free and sacrificial actions). Not to mention the secret alignments of the players. This game’s been running through my head ever since we played (I’ve just come up with a strategy that I should have done in the last three turns to lead me to a victory that would have been particularly brutal).

Finally, RAMbots – which I quite liked, but which I think could be ludicrously good fun with four players – is a simultaneous-turn based game of secret orders, which reminds me slightly of the ship-to-ship combat in Yo-Ho-Ho! Puzzle Pirates! or Space Fleet. Players each secretly “program” their robots using instructions from their “limited” code pool and execute them in a way that will seem instantly familiar to any computer scientists who play it (at least, those who are familiar with ideas like priority queues, program counters, and parallel processing), and shouldn’t be so hard for others to learn, too. These robots can drive around the board (actually a chessboard) trying to activate and ram “beacons” in an order chosen by the player to their right, but it’s also possible to ram, push, pull, tip up, and shoot at the other robots too… causing damage lets you “steal” from their instruction set, making it harder for them to write effective programs… and so it goes on.

We’ll be having another Geek Night on Friday, if you want to join in: we’ll be playing more of these four games (and perhaps some other bits of pyramid-related fun), and maybe even a game or Illuminati, if it’s not too late by the time it (and it’s carriers) arrive.

Troma Night CLXI – Tonight

CHANGE OF PLANS: All of the tickets for Pan’s Labyrinth are sold out. For those that didn’t get a ticket in time and for those that weren’t coming to Pan’s Labyrinth anyway, Troma Night now starts as usual at The Cottage at 8pm. Tell anybody who might not know.

Tonight is the 161st Troma Night (based on liberal estimation and basic guesswork), and it’s a somewhat unusual one. The plan is as follows:

8:00 pm – start at the Arts Centre for the stunning-looking Pan’s Labyrinth. Yes, this means that we won’t be ordering pizza at 8pm: instead, I suggest that people either (A) eat beforehand or (B) have a snack beforehand to keep them going, and we’ll order pizza later. I suspect I’ll be doing option B.
10:20 pm – return to The Cottage, order pizza for anybody who’s hungry, and watch something else. I propose an MST3K, or perhaps one of the B-movies Jimmy provided some weeks back, because I anticipate that something silly, bad, and/or funny will be quite welcome after the psychological thriller than Pan’s Labyrinth is likely to be, but I’m open to suggestions and I’m happy to do things democratically.

If there’s anybody who doesn’t want to come along to Pan’s Labyrinth but does want to come for the rest, let me know and I can give you a bell when we leave the cinema, so you can meet us in a timely fashion. But really, you should come.

A Very Merry Troma Night – Tonight At The Cottage

Tonight’s Troma Night will be held at The Cottage. It’s the final Troma Night of the year, and it’ll be our least Christmassy of the “Christmas” Troma Nights ever, we suspect! Here’s the plan:

8pm prompt start – order pizza and start watching ~~xXx~~ Top Gun (we can’t get hold of a copy of xXx – sorry!)… with a RiffTrax! This’ll be our third RiffTrax experiment; hopefully it’ll be as great as the last two.
Second; Bernard & The Genie; wonderful Christmassy comedy starring Lenny Henry, Alan Cumming, and Rowan Atkinson.
Third and finally; Snakes On A Plane, perhaps the most overhyped movie ever (or, if folks can’t survive another feature length film, I suggest MST3K ep 602 [Paul, would you be so kind as to bring this, please?]).

One more thing – as a small “thank you” to everybody who’s made Troma Night so fantastic this last year – and as a Christmas gift to our friends in general – Claire and I have decided to “buy a round”: we’ve racked up a sizable quantity of ales for tonight’s attendees to drink. So come along for some good films, bad films, pizza, and – just this once – you can get pissed on us. So to speak. Ahem.

See you later.

Synopsis For Harry Potter Movie

From an e-mail. Original source unknown.

Two Films I Want To See

Children Of Men, due for release this September, looks good. In the near future, all the women on Earth become infertile, and science is at a loss to explain why. By 2027, no children have been born in 18 years, and the future of humanity is bleak. There’s a trailer about, too. It all looks remarkably well put-together.

But in the nearer future, I’m looking forward to seeing Thank You For Smoking, which a group of us are seeing at the Arts Centre tomorrow at 5:30pm (thanks for the reminder, Paul). It’s getting great reviews and it sounds great. Just so long as I can stop thinking of Aaron Eckhart as “that guy from The Core“… (damn, that film sucked)

Halloween In Aber

I’m a big bad wolf, it seems. And last night I, along with Little Red Riding Hood (Claire), Death (Bryn), Paul (Andy!), Judge Doom [barely] (JTA), Pinocchio (Matt), and Matt (not in costume… grr), went out to the Coopers Arms to see Pagan Wanderer Lu. And he was good – some songs I knew, some songs I didn’t: tried to buy a CD at the end but it was £3 and Claire and I only had a £20 note between us and he evidently hadn’t sold £17 worth (i.e. 6) CDs yet because he couldn’t give us change so he’s holding one for us. Nothing rhymes with ‘Aberystwyth’, by the way.

We didn’t stay for much longer, because by this point the room was very full and very hot (particularly with us all in costumes)… so we bailed and went for a sly drink in Scholars, before retiring to the flat to watch My Neighbours, The Yamadas. Which was good.

Hmm… what’s everybody else saying:

Bryn‘s been reading up on the history of Halloween
Claire writes a little about the night: she’s right about arguments and miscommunication; oughta be more careful of that in future.
Expect a report by Pagan Wanderer Lu soon, particularly as he reads my blog and this oughta remind him… =o)
Andy mentions last night.
Some pictures of the gig here.

Thunderbirds Are… NO!

I saw Thunderbirds at the cinema last night. Jeez; was that awful. Unlike Bryn (who’s complained at length about the film already), I’m not a long-standing fan of the original TV series, and so the film didn’t ‘ruin’ it for me (although I did notice several major inconsistencies). Nonetheless, I still found the film to be quite abysmal.

The whole thing feels like a bad re-make of Spy Kids. It’s riddled with continuity errors (where did that door opening switch go?), conveniences (suddenly an electronic lock becomes a mechanical one later in the film, so that Parker can pick it), plotholes (The Hood states that he was born with his powers, then later states that he gained them after the Thunderbirds failed to rescue him), false geography (I must take that trans-Thames monorail someday), false physics (you’re landing that rocket how?), bad sound effects (reminiscent of 60s cartoons, but no, not authentic to the style of the original series), awful acting (look; I’m scared – look; I’m concerned – look… umm), characters with no common sense (let’s all leave the base undefended during this period of suspicious activity, for no reason whatsoever – and – my being a Thunderbird is a secret, so I’ll be seen to exit a disaster scene with them… in my flying car)…

The best thing about the film was the subtle and less-subtle jokes they made about the original series: “Look at him, like a puppet on a string!” says The Hood, as he uses his mind control powers on Brains. In another scene, with a close-up of a character’s hand, strings can clearly be seen supporting it (in the original series, the characters were puppets but for close-up scenes real hands were used).

It’s currently averaging 4.5 on the IMDB. I’d give it a 3, and it’s only that high because (a) I’m not a Thunderbirds fan and (b) I’ve seen a lot of awful films this last year.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind last night with Claire and Paul. It’s an absolutely stunning film (currently ranking at #49 in the IMDB’s top 250 films list), a must-see! Go watch it! But try to know as little as you can about it before you do; it’ll only improve the expeirence.

In other news, the U.S. patent system is a joke. Seen this patent for “Method of exercising a cat”?

All Questions Answered

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This repost was published in hindsight, on 11 March 2019.

Ruth wrote:

Today we have been…

…testing Dan. Earlier I sent in to ask how many times the big Panda said ‘nice’ in Panda Ko Panda (12, 5 times referring to bamboo). When we were getting food at the Chinese, Dan accused Bryn of having sent that in (he was logged on at the time), I might have got away with it but I burst out laughing.

Then just now, Bryn and I were wondering how many cups of coffee you could make using all the water in the pacific ocean. In case anyone wants to try it, the answer is 259 million cups, using 518 million tablespoons of ground coffee. That’s a lot of caffeine!

Bryn: “Can you imagine the size of the coffee filter?”

Being Charlie Kaufman

Just watched Adaptation with Claire and Paul. Absolutely fantastic – a post-modern marvel. Put simply, it’s an adaptation of a book entitled The Orchid Thief – a true story about the author, Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), meeting John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a horticultural specialist who collects endangered orchids, set to the backdrop of Charlie Kaufman, the film’s writer (Nicholas Cage), trying in vain to write a screenplay version of the book, The Orchid Thief. The film spans four billion years, with particular emphasis on the last 17, and, despite the best intentions of the in-film screenwriter, manages to include guns, drugs, and a car chase… and not so many flowers.

I’d never thought that Charlie Kaufman could ever produce anything quite so mind-boggling as Being John Malkovich, but he really has. My mind boggles still. Watch it. And invite me along. <wink>

Andy’s Party And Other Happenings Up North

This is my third and final attempt to write this journal entry without something terrible happing that causes me to lose it in it’s entirety.

Spent a long weekend (Friday to Tuesday) in the North-West of England, firstly at Andy’s party, then later visiting my folks in Preston, with Claire. Details follow…

ANDY’S PARTY
The weekend started at Andy’s 21st birthday party, in Bury/Bolton/somewhere-in-that-whole-Northern-Greater-Manchester-area. It was an absolutely fantastic party, with beer flowing freely down our chins and onto the floor, interspersed only with drinking other things, including but not limited to helium from a great quantity of balloons we shouldn’t have been left near. Now that other people I know are passing the great 21-barrier, I don’t feel quite so old (at 22).

Andy’s speech was beautiful and heartbreaking. The food was great. The company was even better. It was great to see folks who I’d not seen since the end of term (and, in some cases, who I won’t see again for some time). Later, we retired to Andy’s house and lounged around drinking and talking until approaching 5am (I, sadly, fell asleep at about 3:30, as Claire had some hours before).

You can read other accounts of Andy’s party here, and here, and here too. And yes, I know it’s bad practice to make a list of links like this, but I don’t care: this is my third attempt at this entry, okay?

The following morning, we played Mario Party 4, and Claire won!!! With a hangover, no less. This is her first time as the ‘Party Star’, and she seemed glad of it: as my entries on 30th June and 7th July, among others, show, I have a bad case of winning whenever I play. This was, I believe, the first time I’ve ever not won. I came second. Barely. ;-)

MY FAMILY
After this, Claire and I continued to Preston to meet my mum, my sisters, and my gran, who’s visiting from Hartlepool. I hadn’t seen my gran in about a year, and it was good to see her again… although she still insists – most strangely, somewhat favouritistically, and at least slightly tactlessly, that of her two children and five grandchildren, I am the ‘favourite’ – the ‘special one’, as she puts it – old people, eh? [photo removed]

Played lots of Super Monkey Ball 2 and Mario Party 4. Sarah, the elder of my two younger sisters, and the self-dubbed ‘white sheep of the family’, is getting to be really good at the former. Spent a great deal of time at the pub. Watched “Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas”, a very well animated and clever cartoon feature film from Dreamworks, with an all-star voice cast. Apart from some confusion over the motivation of the evil goddess Erin, and a little over-frequency of ‘saw it coming’ (probably less of an issue for the children at whom the film is targeted), this is a very good film.

Back in Aber now, and have loads of work to do before a deadline on Friday. Better get on with it.