WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 03/04/10

I saw Shutter Island a couple of weeks ago. It was a decent movie and a solid mystery. The mood and atmosphere worked well, though I did think some scenes were overdone. I was a little disapointed that I’d mostly figured it out before the end, but it still was satisfying the way it played out.

I saw The Crazies tonight. I love zombie movies, so as soon as I saw the trailer for this, I knew I was going to check it out, even though it looked like it could just be goofy fun. It turned out to be better than expected and was entertaining and effective with both the tension and decent characters. It won’t win any oscars, but it was well done. I also recently learned that it was a remake of a Romero film from the 70s, so I may have to look that up.

Originally Written 03/04/10

I’m catching up on PodCastle stories and they’ve run two recent tales which have had fun with twists on standard tropes and archetypes of fantasy stories. As it turns out they’re both entertaining tales by the same author, Tim Pratt.

Restless in my Hand examines the possible reasons for the delays in a hero’s journey and Another End of the Empire follows a dark lord’s exploits to try and escape a dire prophecy. Fun stuff. If you enjoy fantasy and good audio fiction, they’re worth checking out. Fun stuff. If you enjoy fantasy and good audio fiction, they’re worth checking out.

Originally Written 02/01/10

I ended up watching a bunch of b-movies this weekend, some good, some not so good.

There were two episodes of MST3K, which I believe I’d seen parts of before. First Spaceship on Venus from the 1960s was notable for being a European production with a multi-cultural team made up of members from various countries. It started out fun and had some good riffing, but once they got to Venus there was a lot of pointless wandering around and the last half of the film dragged.

Future War a low-budget turd from the 90s was the other episode of MST3K. It sounded promising, as it was described as cyborgs with hunter dinosaurs pursued an escape human slave from a space ship down to 1990s LA, where the fugitive gets help from a streetwalker-turned nun. Come on, that sounds like it’d be a lot of fun, but not so much. There’s lots of boring dialog and multiple fight scenes with bad kung fu and characters throwing empty cardboard boxes at one another. The dinosaur puppets were amusing though.

We also watched Carnival of Souls, which is somewhat of a cult favorite. I’d heard about it and been meaning to watch it for some time now. The premise is interesting, where a woman escapes a deadly accident but is then haunted by mysterious apparitions and ghouls which threaten her sanity. It started out interesting and with a good atmosphere for a low-budget film.

Unfortunately it dragged on way too long with lots of padding that didn’t do much to flesh out the story, and it was just a long march to a predictable ending. It felt like a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode that had been padded out to an hour and twenty minutes. I believe there was an episode of the original Twlight Zone series which handled a similar story and worked a lot better.

By far the best movie of the bunch was It, the Terror from Beyond Space. In that film a rescue rocket is sent to pick up survivors from the first manned mission to Mars. They find only the captain is left alive. He claims a mysterious monster killed his crew and is taken back home by a skeptical crew to face court martial for murder. So the film starts off with some nice dramatic tension and before long they discover the survior’s story may ring true, as something has snuck on board the rocket and mysterious events unfold.

The film is a time capsul of the late 1950s and echos the times it was created in. Everyone smokes and the women are resigned to stereotypical roles of nurses and essentiall stewardesses in space. When attacking the monster they use WW2 guns and grenades, not fancy sci-fi weapons, but it feels genuine to the age.

The monster is obviously a guy in a rubber suit, but it’s a fun design. While it’s dated now, it is a solid film with some good tension and nice set design and lighting to create a creepy mood. It could be argued that the idea is prototypical to the movie Alien as well. Of the movies I watched, this is the one I’d recommend fans checking out.

Originally Written 01/24/10

Land of the Lost was a better movie than I was expecting, though admittedly I had low expectations. There were some groaner parts, but overall it was amusing and entertaining, if not high cinema.

They did some nice touches to reference the Sid and Marty Kroft TV show and I liked the visuals of lost world outside space and time. There were some fun creature designs too. The characters weren’t that great, but it was a fun little adventure. It’s nothing special but makes for a good popcorn flic.

The Maiden Heist was a fun find in the video store. Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H. Macey play three security guards working an art museum, each one of them fascinated, no obsessed with a specific painting or statue. When they find out a large part of the gallery is being shipped to a museum in Denmark, they decide to save the pieces love by stealing them and replacing them with forged copies.

What follows is the planning and bumpy execution of an amateur museum heist. It’s quirky and uneven and a bit forced in places, but it had some sweet moments too. It was also fun to watch the three commanding actors having fun playing understated roles.

Originally Written 01/17/10

I saw Sherlock Holmes last week. I hadn’t realized Guy Ritchie was directing it until my friend Paul mentioned it before the showing. You could definitely see his touches in the movie. Some of the high-speed photography during the fight sequences were a bit distracting, but besides that they were stylish.

The grittier view of Sherlock Holmes worked fairly well. Besides looking at his vices and inner demons, I did like how it showed his mind analyzing the scene and planning actions in slowed-down cut-aways before a couple of the fights. That worked in giving him believability when he deduced everything at the end of the film. The relationship and interplay between Holmes and Dr. Watson’s more-reserved nature was fun too.

Overall it was a decent story, but it didn’t totally grab me. I wasn’t astounded by it, but I didn’t hate it either and it was sufficiently entertaining. I’d give it 3/5 stars.

Then this week I took advantage of leaving work early enough to see Daybreakers which was kind of a disappointment. When I first saw the trailer for it, it looked like a good cheesy vampire movie. I wasn’t expecting Citzen Kane but it could’ve been better.

It started off well enough, with a fun story of how a plague had transformed most of the world into vampires. It was a nice twist that the humans were the freaks and having them hunted for blood allowed for good use of themes of dwindling natural resources and corporate greed. They started off well, with some really nice visuals of the muted world of the future, with high-rise buildings with shuttered windows and the cold wash of fluorescent lighting. Unfortunately after that it went downhill fast.

The rest of the movie was overwhelmed by amped-up action and science too stupid to even really be funny. There were moments I enjoyed and seeing Sam Neil play a creepy villain was fun, but overall it kind of felt like a chore to watch. It’s too bad because I wasn’t expecting high cinema and it could’ve been more effective as a fun rental if they’d done a little more with it and toned the exploding vampires down a bit. I’d rate it a 2/5 stars.