and by King, I do not mean Kong. Saw the latest G v K movie just now – and here’s my review – (major spoilers ahead, so you have been warned).

So it was inevitable, by the end of the last movie (and if for no other reason that he has ‘king’ in his name) – it was Kong’s fate to fight Godzilla. Last time they fought (in the 60s), it was a draw. This time, it was largely the same outcome, but a lot more plot challenges along the way.

Without boring the reader too much, there are, simply stated, too many plot elements stolen from other movies, monster or otherwise, recent or old. I’ll simply name a few and you can figure out where you think they showed up in this movie: 2001 Stargate Sequence; Crazy Godzilla watchers tearing around in a van; Human-kaiju interface being used for ‘new’ mechas; little kids being used as a ‘friend’ for the kaiju; – i’m sure I saw more but simply can’t remember them all.  And you may spot some of your own?

There are other silly mistakes (the old-school Transformers problem of scale depending on scene and camera shot comes to mind in several places, just like it did in Cloverfield).  One unexpected amusing part – when the ‘evil Richard Branson‘ (effectively a Bond villain that thinks he’s saving the planet while stroking his own immense ego, immensely) gets killed by his own creation *just* as he starts “monologuing” – thereby saving us from having to hear it – but then a central character complains he ‘wanted to hear the speech’? Too funny.

I also liked that while it’s arguably partially stolen from Godzilla 2000 (specifically, the Godzilla Prediction Network in that movie) – the daughter of the GZ scientist from the previous movie (who is in this one too but only gets 2-3 token scenes this time around) is running around with a computer geek and connects up with another crazy kaiju conspiracy theorist who has a podcast they both follow. Arguably the best parts of the ‘human’ plot are with them, hands down.  The little girl who is Kong’s “muse” (akin to the tiny Japanese fairies in all the classic Mothra movies but not near as corny) is good, but her reactions are obviously meant to make you root for Kong (and that’s just wrong, of course 🙂 )

This makes for an interesting side plot/comment – in monster movies, one of the easiest traps to fall into plotwise is to have too much human interest plot and NOT ENOUGH MONSTERS! I would argue that the first of the GZ remakes balances this nicely, this movie somewhat goes slightly too much in the wrong direction (meaning more monsters, please). There have been unique takes on this angle though, e.g. Cloverfield is all about the disaster effect on the humans, and the monsters are the cause, but arguably not otherwise the center of the plot, really.

But a key point – does it deliver on the actual monster battles? Arguably the most important of any ‘monster’ movie – By and large, yes. There really weren’t enough of them, but for the most part, we get to see a lot of taxpayer-funded military hardware going to Davy Jones’ Locker, and a lot of future Hong Kong real estate developers are going to be pretty rich about 20 years from now, to be sure. I’ve never understood why in monster (or superhero) movies all the crowds seem (still) to be ‘hiding’ in skyscrapers when the all the fighting starts? I guess it makes for interesting camera work and effects? At least the crowds in Cloverfield actually seem to be trying to GET AWAY, excepting the roof rescue near the end of the movie.

So we get to see both GZ and Kong get in their hits, although the big ‘e-ax’ Kong wields is a bad version of Excalibur meets Harry Potter’s wand in the end with a little bit of Krull thrown in – although having it around pays off when the ‘real’ villain shows up in the end, courtesy of Evil Richard Branson (see villain snark above). And as per usual in these movies, apparently these megacorps have so much money as to build giant underground, magnetic tunnel transport systems and THEN be able to afford building a mecha-Gz only to know it doesn’t have enough power to actually DO anything for longer than a few minutes? Seems like bad decisionmaking to me, but hey, I’m no CEO. 🙂

In the end, as with all the non-Toho Gz movies of late (and their latest, Shin Godzilla, although it’s arguably closer to the 70s one) – the original, classic 70s ‘roar‘ of Gz is still left out of these movies, and that’s arguably the biggest plot flaw of all, besides no Ken Watanabe (and he is missed!). Of the three recent Godzilla movies, the first one (directed by Gareth Edwards) is still the best. The second one arguably has some of the best ridiculous monster battles (and still has Ken Watanabe), but is otherwise simply a set up for this movie, really.

Bash on, Titans – you make too much box office to stay out of the frame for long – I’m sure someone will make another – maybe Gz will fight a Jaeger or one of the Avengers or something – they did it several times with both Predator and Alien, after all :).

we still remember you….even if this clip itself is pretty old…

candybowl

So, we were eager to see the new WW84 movie on Friday like everyone else, but in the end, the movie is unfortunately fairly mediocre (several spoilers ahead, be forewarned):

1) While it’s certainly ‘made’ very well, and Gal Gadot once again is great in the movie (like the last one), as kerewin said, it could have been fine being a half hour less in length and still told the same story;

2) The whole initial Diana as “overachieving future Amazon” when a small girl was essentially a repeat of the setup from the previous movie – they already told all that once before, so why repeat it?

3) Bringing back Steve Trevor was OK but would have worked far better as a flashback in places rather than an actual ‘character’ in the current movie plot – to wit:

a) anyone can tell you a 1940s pilot cannot simply jump into a modern jet (even if it’s an earlier 70s museum jet – i’m unable to determine what precise model it was – but same diff) and fly it, “just like that”;

b) you also cannot expect to simply fire up a jet that’s been on display in a museum and take off (does it have any fuel? has it been prepped for flight? lots of q’s) let alone fly to CAIRO in it from DC (besides having any fuel at all, does it have the range/enough fuel to fly to EGYPT, period)?

4) How did they get back to DC *from* Cairo? Seems like it happened faster than the actual outbound trip?

5) as cheesy as the Legion of Doom and earlier era Cheetah characters are – their outfit is much better villian-wise. Kristin Wiig is good in the movie, but the outfit is at best silly.

6) A cheetah may be by definition an ‘apex predator’ – but if you truly wanted to be the best ‘cat’ predator, a African lion, Asian tiger or others like the puma or snow leopard are much more the real deal. None of those may run 70mph (in very, very short bursts, truth be told) but the cheetah in many ways is a simply much faster cat version of a coyote or hyena – despite not being a pack hunter – and in its environment, there are other predators (e.g. hippo for one, besides the African lion) that are far more dangerous.

7) The whole ‘flying’ thing at the end doesn’t make sense to me. If she had that ability, she’d have had it on the Amazon island to begin with and they’d all have been flying around (instead of just amazing jumps and gymnastics, which seem the *actual* ability). I get the skill of being able to ‘flip’ herself into the air and ricochet off things using the magic lasso – that’s fine. But that doesn’t bestow the ability of flight?

8) Finally, at the end of the first movie, Bruce Wayne mailed her a bunch of the 40s photos, etc. that include her group photo with Steve Trevor and the rest of them in WWII. So that implies both that Batman exists (also proven by the other JL movie itself) and, that Batman knows who she is. So last time I checked, Batman was around in the 80s too? So where the F is he? Surely he’d have seen all the ‘make a wish’ broadcasts at minimum, if not leading an investor revolt against them, etc.)?

This last is one of the truly major plot flaws in nearly all ‘big team’ superhero movies – e.g. where were all the X-Men when the Avengers were otherwise teaming up with all the OTHER Marvel heroes to fight Thanos? When Cap and The Winter Soldier were fighting Hydra (the ‘bad’ former Nazi org that apparently owns its OWN fleet of invisible, underground-moored flying aircraft carriers to rival that of SHIELD) they make mention of Iron Man and then that ‘he’s busy and can’t help’ – WTF? Either they’re all there or they’re not? Same should apply to DC – either in WW’s universe Batman and the rest don’t exist – or they do, and they should be showing up? Lame.

Generally speaking the movie is decent – there’s far worse out there in either the MU (and certainly as regards DC superhero movies past and present) but there’s also far better, including the previous WW movie as a prime example of arguably the best DC superhero movie, certainly the best recent one (the first couple Christopher Reeve Superman movies are definitely otherwise up there too)….I was waiting (in vain) for General Zod to show up, but Terence Stamp must have been in lockdown already….sigh.

Other opinions:
Victoria Advocate
Cinemayward
IGN

candybowl

So wayyyyyy back in the C/D monthly subscription days, the Vector was always one of my two “halo cars” when it came out (the other being the b+b Cw311 which became the Isdera Imperator when it actually went to short-lived production). The Vector never really got that far though, acc. to this video, only 20 ended up getting made. And like so many of these era cars, while I’d love to try and drive one (with of course the $1M insurance policy in place before I started it up and broke a window switch or something stupid), a lot of it hasn’t aged well.

in the example seen in this video, it has more air dams and that stupid back spoiler that the original W2 car didn’t have at debut time (link below to that C/D article) and to me, (like when comparing the Lotus Esprit Turbo vs. the S1, S2 or S3 that don’t have them) all that extra crap detracts from the appearance – I doubt it makes much difference functionally in the end, though.

And given my far-overly-analog approach to cars these days, that instrument panel would drive me nuts after one drive (if not before the first drive was over – nope, I’m NEVER owning a Tesla or anything like that, NOPE) but it wasn’t the interior I was crazy about with this car anyway, it was the looks and the whole ‘concept’ of the car as the original 1980 C/D article had (that was the Vector W2, slightly earlier than the version seen in this video) and in the actual C/D road test a bit later.

in the end, I suspect the Cw311 would be a far easier car to live with (the Cw311 was virtually a production car even at the prototype stage, whereas the Vector could be argued was *always* a prototype in many ways…) but still, I agree with Doug DeMuro – this is still arguably the craziest car ever built – Somewhere, 75+ year old Jerry Wiegert is smiling…

Somewhere in the North Atlantic, Cmdr Ramius is going to his final resting place. RIP.

Former James Bond actor Sean Connery dies aged 90

candybowl

So I started reading the Maurice White autobiography (My Life with Earth Wind & Fire), and it’s been pretty good so far. In it, he references The Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill, so I thought i’d look that up – no one can argue with the success, talent or influence of Earth, Wind and Fire, after all and Maurice White was *the man* at the center of it all.

In doing some digging on ol’ Napoleon, however, while i’m happy the book worked out for Maurice, I think i’ll pass. Gizmodo has a great article on Hill for those interested – Enjoy.

candybowl

she can still hit those notes, definitely. What’s also interesting about Heart after all these years, besides the acoustic side to their music, and the definite female power they did way, way ahead of most (definitely in rock) – is when you hear them talk, how they are still truly PNW flower children inside. Kudos (7+ years late, I know) – bittersweet, but completely appropriate that Chris Cornell is the inductee presenter (RIP).

need to find that Thunderfingers DVD out there somewhere, maybe Scarecrow??

plenty more where that came from:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thunderfingers

candybowl

I blogged about this before when I rewatched it during a period of unemployment several years ago. While parts of this movie haven’t aged well, MOST of it is still extremely funny and way ahead of its time (that’s what they all say)…

How We Made: Airplane!

I’ve also seen the Letterman clip where Leslie Nielsen uses his ‘fart machine’ (right around the 6 min mark) – mildly funny but the best part is that you can tell Letterman is annoyed after the first couple times, and it’s always funnier when the host isn’t in control of the situation – while LN sits there like a kid and just tries not to laugh at himself:

candybowl

Make Room! Make Room! versus Soylent Green: can film trump book?

Thankfully given the age (and the genius of Phil Hartman, RIP), it’s pretty hard to spoil 1973’s Soylent Green at this point. Saw this article in The Guardian this am and have to completely agree, movie is far better and more focused than the book, way better zap ending, too. I also knew (later) about this being EGR‘s final performance but not about the cancer diagnosis he never told others about – truly poignant. And of course Charlton Heston in his usual over-the-top craziness, gotta love that, perfect casting choice.

This riot/scoops scene completely freaked me out as a kid watching this, I had no idea what happened to the people once they were thrown in the truck, so scary.

here’s another take on the movie from 2013:

Soylent Green Is (More Than) People

The article does in fact leave out one other very cool piece of trivia – that movie was arguably the debut of one of the very first video games, Computer Space – the game is briefly shown when the Soylent executive and his GF are playing it in their condo, before he gets wacked, very early in the movie. Another piece of Nolan Bushnell marketing sharpshooting, although that game itself ultimately was a flop. But boy are they worth something these days….

candybowl