WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 06/12/08

I heard about Stan Winston passing away from cancer. That’s a bummer, the industry has lost another pioneer. He’s done good work making creatures in so many movies I’ve enjoyed.

Coincidentally, Terry and I rented a few horror movies to hang out on Sunday night and relax after a hike. We weren’t expecting much, but Pumpkinhead (3): Ashes to Ashes was actually a surprisingly decent movie. It was a competent sequel that continued to theme of vengeance and being cursed by it, as well as expanding on the storyline of Ed Harley. They gave Lance Hendrickson some nice camera time in the film and it’s always fun to see him show up. As a bonus, Doug Bradley, the man who plays Pinhead, played one of the characters in this film, this time an evil but intelligent villain.

Stan Winston’s studio didn’t do the creature effects for Pumpkinhead that time, but the creature still looked good. There were some quick shots of poorly rendered CGI effects, but most of the monster’s scenes were done with a full suit, and they were good.

We also watched Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud which was done by the same studio and looked to be filmed at the same time. It was more of the same, this time centered around a re-telling of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. The story was the lesser of the two, but it was still a fun popcorn flick.

Finally, there was Hellraiser (6): Hellseeker. This one was pretty bad, as expected. Like the other latest movies, the plot was one which didn’t have anything to do with the original story, but the studio glommed on the Hellraiser angle to squeeze more money out of the franchise. They tried to have a tie-in with the Kirsty character from the first two films, which had one interesting scene to it, but otherwise it didn’t make much sense and wasn’t all that interesting.

The plot also tried to be mysterious and non-linear, but instead just came out as a mostly boring and confusing mess. It was similar in some ways to Hellraiser (5): Inferno, just not as good.

Other than poor writing and cliched ideas, the thing that bugs me about these sequels is that they suck a lot of the intrigue out of the original premise of the series. The first two Hellraiser movies were really cool and something different and unique. The third one was kind of campy, but still fun, then the fourth had Hellraiser in space and just sucked rocks, and it was all downhill from there.

The idea for the movies was the dark side of desire, not a biblical Hell. The original concept of the Cenobites was S&M culture turned up to 11, and it made for creepy, visceral and very unsettling horror. Now they’ve turned that into standard avenging demons punishing the wicked. Wrong! Pinhead doesn’t care about your sins, he just wants to play with those foolish enough to want to push boundaries to the extreme.

Originally Written 06/10/08

I was inspired to watch Dark City last night. When I was driving home I was listening to the Filmspotting podcast.One of the listeners responded to their top five list, box-office bombs that we liked, and said that they liked how Keifer Sutherland was doing his impersonation of Peter Lorey.

I thought that was a good description of his vocal patterns in that film, and it was fun seeing it again. I know some people didn’t like it, but I love the film noir theme and it’s a fun story. Sleep now!

Originally Written 06/06/08

I got together for dinner and a movie with my old co-worker Scott last night. He wanted to see Prince Caspian and I was up for seeing it again. We went to Chunky’s Cinema Pub, which is always a fun place, since you can get food right in the theater. It was good seeing the movie again. I still found that some of the parts of the story they embellished to make the movie more epic were a bit overdone.

The ending battle scene does go a bit long, and seems a little more supperfluous than the epic battle in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The last act is a little overburdened for me, but there’s still a lot to like about the film, especially the first two thirds of the movie. It’s definitely the lesser of the two films, but still enjoyable.

Scott liked it too, though he also commented on the battle’s embellishments. We also both chuckled over a couple of times when Prince Caspian was reminiscent of Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. I’d remembered a few lines that had reminded me of “you killed my father, prepare to die” when I’d first thought the film too.

Repicheep was wonderfully fun in this film; Eddie Izzard did a great job with him. Trufflehunter the badger was adorable as well. The characterization, visualization, voice-acting and writing for Aslan still makes me get a bit misty-eyed every time he’s on screen too.

Originally Written 05/12/08

The folks behind EscapePod and Pseudopod have finally opened their new fantasy-themed audio-fiction podcast, Podcastle. I’ve been listening to the first several episodes, and like their other podcasts, the stories and production values are both very good.

They started off with one of Peter S. Beagle’s (of “The Last Unicorn”) early works, Come Lady Death. Another story is a retelling of a classic Grimm’s fairytale, Goosegirl, which gets into the psychological schisms caused by a spell forcing a switched identities.

There were also two stories, back to back, which have heroines going up against social conventions and norms, Fear of Dragons and Run of the Fiery Horse. The stories get a little political, and the first one is a bit heavy handed, while the second is more balanced. Both of them had neat takes on Easter and Western tales of dragons (or serpents) and I loved the mythology of them, especially the Fiery Horse one.

Originally Written 05/02/08

I got together with Jen, Gan and Chris for a bad movie night last night. Gan’s brother had an old VHS tape of the 1992 movie Evil Toons, that had promise, but unfortunately it turned out to be like an R-rated version of Manos: the Hands of Fate. As I quipped, you’d think a bunch of slutty girls in a house with a lusty werewolf and David Carradine would be fun, but somehow they managed to prevent that.

Even bare breasts didn’t help the movie, well not much. And I don’t know how they blackmailed David Carradine to be in that turd; he didn’t even look like he was having fun slumming it. The best part of the movie was the necronomicon book they found, complete a talking face on the cover and with VCL art of lascivious demons and werewolves inside. One of them comes to life, and the animation was good. Unfortunately they blew their budget on that and could only afford about 40 seconds of it. Otherwise the film was painfully dull and plodding.

Afterwards we watched a  movie I’d rented which sounded interesting. Shinbone Alley had a neat early 70s animation style, which was reminiscent of School House rock segments in many places. I liked the slightly-gritty look of the backgrounds. It also got trippy and weird in a few segments. It’s a musical and based on a series of stories, so the plot is kind rambled, but it was interesting.

It started out kind of whimsical and fun but got more serious and darker as the movie went on. I kind of liked the movie, but it had some severe problems. In the end it was a drama about a dysfunctional friendship. It acknowledged that people rarely change and if you love/care for someone than you have to take them faults and all.

That’s all well and good, but the movie didn’t seem to know what its message really was. In the end it’s almost a celebration of this damaged character, without acknowledging how messed up she is. It was an interesting idea, but the story could’ve been a little tighter and the ending left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth.