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for June, 2008.
Sunday May 14th 2006, 8:09 pm
Filed under: Movies, Posted By: HarleyHarley
I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and lived there till I was 17, then I moved to Finland and have been staying here ever since. I study, work and take care of a Finnish Hound puppy, two budgies, a tortoise and a boyfriend. I like Carnivore, Type O Negative, The Pixies, Rasputina and a zillion other bands. I also play bass in a band ;P
MSN:
URL: http://www.harleyquine.com
Buy this on DVD at Amazon.co.uk!The House on Haunted Hill is a re-make of the classic 1959 version, of the same name, starring Vincent Price.
The Plot
Six people are invited to a birthday party hosted by Stephen Price (Geoffrey Rush), an eccentric multi-millionaire who’s empire is based on scaring people. The party is held in an old mental instituation and the gimmick of the party is that if they stay/survive the night they each get a million dollars. The house has its own ideas of hospitality and the ‘contestants’ find that they’ve signed up for more than just Price’s cheap tricks.
The Review
The plot, although very generic for the genre, is executed in an original way. My expectations for this movie were pretty low after the disappointment of movies such as ‘:linkout:The Haunting‘. I was spookily surprised.
The acting was standard with the exception of Geoffrey Rush who shines in everything he does anyway.. think Captain Barbossa. Special effects were invisible (being a good thing) which in the horror genre is pretty rare.
The images throughout this movie were disturbing. I was freaked out by the images in :linkout:The Ring (nail through finger-nail, creepy lil black-haired chick), so this movie really got to me. It’s hard to say that I enjoyed the movie, but I did like the fact that it managed to disturb me so much. This is one to watch when you feel like a thrill, but whatever you do, don’t watch it alone :o/.
Links
:linkout:Buy The House on Haunted Hill (1999) on VHS
:linkout:Buy The House on Haunted Hill (1959) on VHS
:linkout:The Official Site
Sunday May 14th 2006, 8:06 pm
Filed under: Movies, Posted By: HarleyHarley
I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and lived there till I was 17, then I moved to Finland and have been staying here ever since. I study, work and take care of a Finnish Hound puppy, two budgies, a tortoise and a boyfriend. I like Carnivore, Type O Negative, The Pixies, Rasputina and a zillion other bands. I also play bass in a band ;P
MSN:
URL: http://www.harleyquine.com
This, without doubt, is the crappiest zombie-movie made by a non-cinematically challenged film-crew. The cover of the DVD was very promising, with cheesy phrases like ‘The dead walk, you run’ and ‘how do you kill something that’s already dead?’ but the actual movie was just a George Romero/Sam Raimi patented plotline wrecked by Hollywood commercialism.
The plot was simply “bunch of people trapped on an island with zombies running around eating humans with the forces of evil behind it all, buggers that they are”.
Mostly the movie consisted of a few soft-core porny scenes and a lot of shooting zombies in the head. The movie, being based on a video-game, had flashes of the original game, which was not a totally bad idea. However the constant matrix-ripoff, slow-motion scenes and panning the camera around the characters was just poo.
All the characters were pretty much there just to be zombie-fodder or a hand to use a gun (which played the lead part in the movie btw.) for not a single character seemed to have any depth. The worst disappointment however was the complete lack of any indie or camp-spirit. The movie featured hardly any gore, sick humour or even a single tool, harnessed for the noble art of mutilating walking gore-driven corpses. How could anyone even consider a zombie-film without a chainsaw (or lawnmower)? Creepy. Also the film featured some of the crappiest dialogue written…
Guy: You did all this to become immortal. Why?
Evil: To live forever!
This cracked me up but it alone should still ensure that at least some of the movie-makers will be lined up and shot when the revolution begins :D
The soundtrack also consisted of very mainstream and not very exciting songs. Especially in gory zombie-films it would be interesting to hear some grindcore or deathmetal which would fit the genre better and be inspired by the same kind of vision as the movie-makers.
This movie proves that underground zombie-movies don’t work with Hollywood-commercialism and that Americans love their guns.
On the “gore-meter”, House of the Dead gets a “bitch-slap”.
Links
:linkout:Official site
Thursday May 11th 2006, 8:12 pm
Filed under: Movies, Posted By: HarleyHarley
I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and lived there till I was 17, then I moved to Finland and have been staying here ever since. I study, work and take care of a Finnish Hound puppy, two budgies, a tortoise and a boyfriend. I like Carnivore, Type O Negative, The Pixies, Rasputina and a zillion other bands. I also play bass in a band ;P
MSN:
URL: http://www.harleyquine.com
The Chronicles of Narnia is a re-make of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe which I loved as a young whipper-snapper. Both of them are based on one of seven books by C.S Lewis collectively known as The Chronicles of Narnia, which you should have read already or you’ve had a deprived child-hood.
The Plot
It’s about four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy who after being evacuated during World War I, find themselves and a huge house owned by an eccentric professor. During a game of hide-and-seek, Lucy (the youngest) hides in an old wardrobe in the Spare Oom and falls into a snowy forest-clearing with a lamp-post (my what a lot of hyphens). There she meets a faun called Tumnus who invites her to tea and she learns about how Narnia is ruled by an evil witch called the White Witch. The White Witch keeps the land covered over in snow and is of course.. ‘evil’ cos she’s an evil witch see. Mikey thought she was hot. Turns out she’s the evil chick in The Beach and Constantine as well.
So after that Lucy returns to the Spare Oom and tells her siblings, who don’t believe her of course and there’s a big malarky until all the children find themselves in Narnia and the whole story really begins.
The Review
What really surprised me was the level of acting. Usually when kids are stuck in front of a camera the whole film is ruined by their stuttering emotion-less dialogue (think the first three Harry Potter’s) and it’s difficult to follow the movie cos the acting is just so crap. The kids in this movie really could act. The characters, although not very deep, came across the same way as in the book (they didn’t have much depth there either).
The White Witch looked the part although when she first meets Edmund I did have to cringe a bit at the obvious change in her manner, it was too obvious. Throughout the rest of the film she did make me want to hide though.
I read that the only part that had a real lion (Aslan) was when he first came out of the tent. The special effects were awesome, they looked like real animals. No more “that shark is obviously rubber”, even the beavers persuaded me that real beavers talk.
I can’t say I enjoyed this version better than the 1988 made for TV version. The witch in that version was much scarier and the overall feel of the movie was darker. What I can say is that the interpretation and the “sucking-in” power of this one was stronger. When watching, it was easier to get absorbed in the story and to feel that Narnia really exists.
To sum up.. this version is great. It sticks to the original story mostly without getting bogged down in special effects or artsy fartsy rubbish. The acting was pretty good (although it was annoying trying to figure out who was doing the voices (I’d heard them before.. just couldn’t place them). If you’re a fan of C.S Lewis you just haveeee to see this one. If not, then you should broaden your reading list ;oP.
Links
:linkout:Buy The Chronicles of Narnia on DVD
:linkout:Buy The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe on VHS
:linkout:The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
:linkout:The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (1988)
:linkout:Into the Wardrobe : A C.S Lewis web site.
