The Thing: The Reimaginator 3

There was Thing 1 and Thing 2 and you might have thought that was enough.  You would be wrong.

Mostly wrong, anyhow.

The thing about The Thing is the story is very basic.  Some Thing is found.  It’s not from here.  Cue ominous music.

This didn’t keep the first two films from being quite different experiences.  But a potential viewer would wonder what else the third installment might bring to the table.

A female hero, for one thing.

The film started exactly as the 1951 film did with the discovery and removal of an alien body from under the arctic ice.  The scene is a clear message that this new film would not ignore its origins.

In this film, I found the in-your-face homages worked just swell.  It was part of the entertainment.

There are some telegraphed moments.  When you realize so-and-so isn’t human.  Well, you saw the hints about his thingamabobs and when he didn’t whatchamahoozit.  I mean, the lingering shots of randomness are kind of hard to ignore.

So, there are some unsurprising surprises.  This isn’t a huge drawback in a third version of a film story I have seen many times before.  It’s still insulting as a viewer, but I’m in for the Hollywood schmutz already.  So I just kept my eyes open and ignored the slight sting.

This Third Thing blends the best elements of the two films without managing to better either one.  We see the elements of the Mad Scientist type character brought from the ’51 film, plus the more gritty horror-realism of the ’82 film.  We get all that with the backdrop of the Selfish Man as viewed through a 2011 lens.

All in all, this is obviously not an original film, but it has some original moments.  It’ll probably stand as the third best of the films by my count.  Far worse things have been said about a film.

As in many things, what counts for this film is execution.  The how.

How is this disastrous alien encounter going to go down?

It went down in flames.  Screaming.  Just like it should.

What counts is Lars.

Get it up now! Come on!

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Back from the Woods: Squatchy as Hell

Image via Wikipedia

Just because I was silent, doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention.

I have been out about the riverlands and the woods, but that wasn’t keeping me from writing.

No, I have been truly and utterly flabbergasted by the various shows.  You know these shows.  The Ghost Hunterers and the Finding Bigfeet.  Few others on the periphery.  But really these two are the biggest culprits.

They are so horrid at hiding that they are just entertaining us and nothing else.  I keep vacillating between thinking that the producers and editors are trolling everyone.  Or that perhaps the show is a game.  We are supposed to play along.  Find the obvious bullshit.  Like Jason “brushing” into a picture frame on a wall.  Otherwise it takes the Scooby Doo fun out of it.  Velma and Daphne were never fooled by Shaggy knocking into the wall “accidentally”.

The Bigfoot Finders is clearly trying to follow the Scooby model.  At least in the sense that the only member of the gang with half a brain is the woman.

I tried to play the game and have furiously notated obvious insanity in each episode.  The amount of notes is staggering.  I had a hard time envisioning how best to present it.

And then I watched this last Finding Bigfoot episode.  They have gone off to Ohio.  Home of Moneymaker (henceforth referred to as “Bigfool”) for a whopping four-year span during which he was in Akron, about 80 miles north of the Salt Fork State Park.

Now, I’m not going to break the whole episode down*.  All of the episodes of both GH and FB  follow a pretty standard pattern.

What I am going to say is that this episode showed just how similar they are in other aspects as well.  The manner in which investigations occur is at best tolerable and at worst outright laughable.

The bias is oozing out of their pores.  The techniques are muddied and, from the little the audience can see, provide very little in the way of quality collected data.  A sound in the dark is a medium-sized rock thrown into a field.  How do we know?  We just do.

I still love the witness accounts, but which of you can keep from guffawing at this troop of clowns pounding through the forest banging on shit and shouting into the night?  They are, after all, trailing that most elusive and shy creature, the ‘squatch.  What better method?

I did catch Cliff’s dig.  Touche.  Field work is not to be given short shrift.

And so we come back to my tramping in the woods.  The winter weather has been crazy warm.  Me and dog have been tramping out in the forest preserves of Northern Illinois.  We have almost all of the same experiences at 5 am in the dark near the riverbank as all these people.  Knocking, bonking and thudding sounds.  Giant splashes.  Deer.  Raccoons.  Birds, big and small.  Strange piles of large trees.  Tiny piles of branches and stones and shrubs.  Hobos.  Booze bottles.

I digress.  The point is.  There are other explanations.

Yes, Labagh Woods looks awful squatchy.  It has everything a squatch needs.  But I think the trolls are keeping them out.

*I am working toward a List of Asshatterous Activity for these episodes.  Everyone loves lists.  List making is good for the soul.  Not as good as list completing, but you can’t have one without the other.  Additionally, stay tuned as I edit and roll out that backlog of movie reviews.

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The Beast (1975)

Sometimes when you are mucking about in the Interzone, you discover something described as a French erotic horror/comedy/drama film.

OK, that doesn’t happen frequently.  But it does happen.  At least once.  Before you learn your lesson.  Maybe this is your lesson?

The film in question is La bete.

You can’t expect me to read this description and not laugh, “Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast and a woman.”

I know, it’s horrible.

The movie is supposed to be based on the story of Lokis.  Loosely based.  As in, yeah, I think you get where I’m going with that.  Ahem.

Anyway.

Fans of ancient lore might recognize some elements of the saga of Queen Hvit and Bjorn (mentioned at length in The Book of Were-wolves, Chapter 3) as well.

Of course, those are venerable old tales and this is a piece of 70′s fantartporn.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  Except…well, just take a look for yourself.

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The Hobbit Trailer

I might watch this when it comes out.  Ho hum.

SMAUG IS COMING!

Yippee ki-yay, Motherfffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu….

Things are slow here.  The dog and I are not medically cleared to run yet.  No running make dog and man go crazy!

It doesn’t make it any better when I try to watch something like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

I have a fondness for the original slate of Apes films.  The original is still a solid film to watch.  Those films are far more sparse and you don’t fall victim, as an audience, to expecting an immersive film experience so much as a late Saturday afternoon matinée.

That said, I will tell you straight out that I favor the apes in the 1968 movie.  They are obviously much more low tech, but they resonate more with me.  The eyes are real.

In the new version, Caesar gets little sympathy from me.

The movie is not the story of the slave Caesar from the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.  Son of future ape-scientists Cornelius and Zira, and hidden away in the circus; eventually to become the catalyst of an ape revolution.

Sure, it sort of sounds the same as the new movie.  Caesar is the catalyst of an ape revolution, that’s for sure.  However, this movie does it closer to home.

No far-flung future.  Just regular old Corporate greed and individual selfishness are at the core of this ape revolution.

Does any of that even matter?  Probably not.  As long as the apes rise up, right?  That’s what we really want to see.  Revolution.  Change.  The end to slavery and mistreatment of the metaphoric little guy.

You get all that, sort of.  It’s just that it feels like the script writer’s precocious child did much of the work on this one.  The logic failures are so numerous as to make anyone a mite dizzy.

Let’s face it, when they put James Franco and Tyler Labine right up front at the beginning, I realized they were making a comedy.  This conclusion is only cemented when we get introduced to John Lithgow, Alzheimer’s patient, pianist (stop giggling) and father to scientist Franco, who looks like a cross between Don Music and Charles Nelson Reilly.  Circle gets the square!

Every step of the plot is moved along at a pace that doesn’t happen in the shipping industry, much less when creating a new cure for disease.  The scientists are sloppy beyond reckoning and the dialogue is atrocious.

Let’s not forget the image of little baby Caesar in swaddling clothes being secreted away before the King, I mean CEO, has him put to death.

I could go on; it just baffles.  The cure comes in convenient hand-held gas dispensing containers.  The cure affects all ape species….except humans, which it kills like an aggressive airborne virus.  That’s a new twist, isn’t it?  Ah, humanity, will you ever learn…TO MAKE A WELL-CRAFTED MOVIE?

Even the bloody field of battle at the end is sanitized for film.  Devoid of blood and bodies, for the most part….

…..except for my favorite gorilla, Gorilla John McClane.

GJM saved Caesar on the bridge, then flung himself off the bridge at the helicopter which was shooting an automatic rifle at them.  Now that’s good cinema.

I could probably enjoy the film despite all that.  However, the very crux of the movie is the ape-saviour Caesar, whose mother is killed.  She is killed for attacking a handler.  Sadly, it turns out that Caesar’s mother, Bright Eyes (the callbacks in this film to the early franchise are sad and almost intentionally antagonistic; hardly worth a mention), has come to full term with ape-child and was only defending herself.

That’s right, kids.  The scientists curing Alzheimer’s and getting ready to move to human trials….WERE NOT AWARE THAT THE TEST SUBJECT WAS PREGNANT.

This is the face of the new Apes franchise.  It’s no wonder the apes won.

I just dare you to watch.

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Full Moon May Spoil Geminid Meteor Shower’s Peak Tomorrow | Meteors, Fireballs & Meteor Shower Viewing | Skywatching Tips | Space.com

Full Moon May Spoil Geminid Meteor Shower’s Peak Tomorrow | Meteors, Fireballs & Meteor Shower Viewing | Skywatching Tips | Space.com.

Meteors!  Duck!

The moon was supremely bright last night.  It will definitely hamper the viewing.  I heard it was going to be cold too, but so far it’s holding at a nice few degrees above freezing.  I may put shorts on.

As to the Geminids, don’t think for a minute that I won’t take a peak regardless of weather or lighting conditions.

Perhaps I’ll finish my review of Sisters while shivering and staring skyward.

Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world’s earliest languages to the grave | Mail Online

Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world’s earliest languages to the grave | Mail Online.

This is the kind of article that evolving culture tends to produce.  A sad, lonely tale of a woman who had nobody to speak to in her native tongue.

Sometimes there really isn’t anything to be done.

My initial reaction is that someone with more skills than the linguist with whom the indigenous woman was familiar should have attempted to record as much of the language as possible.  If not directly working with Bo (the name of the woman and her tribe) to learn the language, then at least video and audio that could be examined in the future.  Perhaps they did, the article isn’t specific on that point.

In the end, I just saw a woman and her improbable friend, spending their last moments together unburdened by any other bullshit than two people connecting personally.

How can that be the wrong way to see things through?