Filed under: Review | Tags: cinema, film, movie, movies, apocalypse, of, the, Review, reviews, Films, undead, zombies, zombie, dawn, dead, running, George A Romero, runners, horde, shambling, shambler, Zombie Apocalypse, mall, Zack Snyder
In 1968 a 28 year old filmmaker named George A. Romero made a film that would spawn not only a new genre but an entire pop culture phenomenon. That film was ‘The Night Of The Living Dead’ and it was the birth of zombies as we know them today. It was the first time that zombies were apocalyptic in nature, a world-wide event that meant the possible end of mankind.
Romero followed this up a decade later with a film which many consider to be the greatest zombie movie of all time ‘Dawn Of The Dead’. The film told the story of a group of survivors who barricade themselves inside a mall in an effort to escape the shambling hordes of zombies who have gathered outside. It was a simple story but for some reason its commentary on consumerism and its balls out gory violence struck a chord. It was destined to go down in history as a horror classic.
In 2004 the decision was made that Dawn was to be remade, directed by Zack Snyder who’d go on to direct ‘300’ and ‘Watchmen’. The basic plot, as it turned out, would essentially be the same: A group of survivors would hold up inside a mall and try to continue surviving but this time it would be all flashy and grand because it was the 21st century and ‘28 Days Later’ had been released just two years earlier. It’s what modern audiences would be expecting.
Yes, gone were the slow, shambling zombies that many of us had come to know and love. They were replaced by a new breed, a fast, screeching zombie. The runners who would bolt towards someone at the first sign of human activity. Now, as I said yesterday, I have come to appreciate the runners as long as they are used effectively or for good reason such as in ‘Zombieland’ or ‘Dead Set’. So does the Dawn remake really gain anything from using the runners instead of the shamblers?
Well, no. Not really. The problem is that for most of the film, the survivors are inside the mall and when they do head outside the zombies have gathered into a massive horde, so large in fact that it they don’t have enough room to run. Sure, there are scenes in a sewer and an underground car park which are probably better for having had the runners but what’s the point of having of giving them this super speed if they’d be just effective, more efective in fact, throughout most of the film if they were just the normal shamblers?
Perhaps I should clarify something before going on. I didn’t hate this film. It’s definitely entertaining. The first twenty minutes or so is simply a superb example of film-making and the later scenes between the group in the mall and Andy, another survivor on another rooftop, is a cool idea. Hell, the montage of the people going about their daily business inside the mall accompanied by Richard Cheese’s version of ‘Down With The Sickness’ will probably go down as one of my favourite montages for the choice of music alone. I also really enjoyed the cameos from the cast members of the original, particularly Ken Foree who got to repeat his line “When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
No, the problems with the film are derived from two simple things, the running zombies and the character development. The original film focused on a small group of survivors, allowing their characters to develop and allowing you to care about what happens to them. In the remake the group is simply too large. I found I couldn’t really give a fuck whether they died or not. Actually, the only character I really gave two shits about was Andy and you don’t even see him close up until after he’s joined the legions of the undead.
Now to finish this by just rounding out my views on the running zombies in this film. When it comes down to it, they just aren’t scary. They’re no way near as threatening as the slowly advancing hordes. Maybe it’s because you pretty much always hear their bestial screeching long before you see them. There’s nothing that scary about something which has basically just screeched the zombie equivalent of “I’ll be with you in a second if you wouldn’t mind waiting, thank you very much.” You’d think that an individual runner would present more of a threat than a shambler but I’ve seen a number of shamblers lurch suddenly round a corner to catch someone of guard. The reason being, of course, because they didn’t announce their presence.
This lack of fear doesn’t seem to stretch to all runners though. For some reason the runners in Dead Set did seem genuinely threatening and at times I did find myself a little scared by them even though they made similar noises to the ones in this film. Maybe it‘s down to the way it‘s shot. You barely ever see the zombies up close in this film which just sucks. The kills aren‘t really worth talking about either.
So yeah, even though I had some problems with it, it’s still an undeniably entertaining film, probably more so if you don’t think as deeply about zombies as I apparently do. It’s perfect if you just wanna watch something without really having to engage your brain too much. Three pints out of five.
Filed under: Review | Tags: cinema, film, movie, movies, apocalypse, Review, reviews, tv, Films, horror, undead, television, zombies, zombie, british, dead, running, Charlie Brooker, brooker, Davina McCall, mccall, big brother, big, brother, Dead Set, set, Jaime Winstone, Andy Nyman, Kevin Eldon, Riz Ahmed, Beth Cordingly, Kathleen Mcdermott, satire, UK, Channel 4
I don’t know if I’ve made this clear in the past but I’m quite the fan of Zombie films. I’m not sure why. There’s just something mildly appealing about being one of the few last members of a doomed species surrounded by the undead who want nothing more than to consume your flesh. That may seem odd but who wouldn’t want to be one of those survivors, no more of the drudgery of everyday life, going to work and earning a wage but fighting back the shambling hordes just so you could say you survived. Yeah, for me the Zombie Apocalypse is escapism.
There’s also a fantastic sense of hopelessness in zombie films. In the best ones it seems as though once the infection has begun to spread then the fight is already over. The zombies have already won simply through sheer numbers. The infection often seems to be global and it seems as though it’s only a matter of time before the remaining survivors succumb to either a natural or unnatural end. This is why my favourite zombie films are the original Day and Dawn of the Dead. It’s made very clear in those films that the undead dominance is practically total. The same is also true of the absolutely fantastic piece of Zombie-related televisual entertainment I’ll be looking at today, Dead Set.
Now, let’s get one thing out of the way right at the outset. Dead Set’s zombies are the runners that are becoming more and more prominent throughout zombie fiction. Whilst still being a zombie purist and preferring the shambling, rotting kind who are no real threat on their own but amass in huge numbers causing survivors to become trapped and ideally turn on each other, I will admit that, when used correctly, the runners can be effective. This was perhaps best demonstrated recently in ‘Zombieland’. Running zombies were perfect for that film because the survivors didn’t spend most of their time trapped in one location. It was essentially a road movie and in that kind of film I can see why the runners would be more effective than the traditional Romero variety.
In Dead Set, the running zombies are effective but for different reasons that Charlie Brooker, the writer of this and all-around genius, has stated himself in response to friendly criticism he received from Simon Pegg, well known slow zombie advocate. Basically the runners are used due to budgetary constraints restricting the number of crowd shots, the need to differentiate itself from Pegg’s own ‘Shaun of the Dead’, and the fact that infection needed to spread quick enough to stop an evacuation of the studio being possible. That last one will make more sense once I get into the actual review which I seem to be having some difficulty in doing. Anyway, to sum up these are all fair enough reasons.
Right, to the synopsis then. ‘Dead Set’ starts off during an eviction night for the reality series Big Brother. Throughout the day there have been reports of massive riots or some such thing occurring throughout Britain but despite the possible ramifications of this, the producer decides to take Big Brother to air as normal. During the eviction, however, something horrific happens and before long the only people left alive are those inside the Big Brother house, unaware of what’s happening outside, a show runner, the producer and the evicted contestant. There are a couple of other survivors but the main focus is really on these and, later on, the show runners boyfriend who is trying to make his way to the Big Brother house.
The show runner, Kelly, soon finds out that the outside world is pretty much devoid of life and decides to make her way into the Big Brother house, what with it being possibly the safest place in the world right now. When she makes it inside the house mates think that she’s a new contestant, albeit a fairly crazy one. When a zombie manages to get in and bites one of them, however, they soon realise the situation they are in.
And that’s pretty much where I’m going to leave the synopsis. I’ll say right now that this really is a must watch. It’s available in all of it’s fantastic five part glory through Channel 4’s YouTube page here. My apologies to people outside the UK. I know how these things often work so I wouldn’t be surprised if you find some kind of content restriction message. You can always buy the region 2 DVD, which I would recommend for anyone if I’m honest. It’s always nicer to have a physical copy of something. There are of course other methods you could employ which I will no way endorse here.
So what makes Dead Set so pants-wettingly brilliant? Well, everything really. The very idea of taking Big Brother and putting a zombie apocalypse around it, is in itself a wonderfully simple idea and allows for all the satire and commentary that the best zombie films are known for. In this case it’s reality TV that’s on the chopping block, obviously, and the culture that surrounds it. All of the contestants are the kinds of twattish stereotypes that Big Brother and it’s generally twattish audience thrive on. From blonde bimbo to flamboyantly gay transvestite, all the archetypes are covered. There’s even that one who’s a little bit stupid but likeable enough that he’d probably never actually win. From what I’ve seen of Big Brother those are generally regarded as background characters who never get much screen time because they aren’t as twattish as their housemates. I need to stop using the word twattish.
What’s interesting is that most of the characters, whilst still retaining may of their stereotypical charactersitics, manage to undergo major developments. For example Veronica, the blonde bimbo character, upon finding out about the zombie apocalypse enquires “Does this mean we’re not on the telly anymore?” but by the end she’s able to come up with a plan in order to take down a zombie lose in the garden. It manages to take what should be a relatively unlikeable cast of people and make you care about them and what happens to them in a way that I imagine Big Brother itself would have trouble doing in two months of programming.
It’s also quite clear that a large portion of the zombies are drawn to the Big Brother house, something which makes sense because most of the people there probably where fans of the show who were turned on the night of the eviction and one of the contestants even muses that they the house was almost like a temple to them in life. This echoes Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ where it is theorised that the zombies come to the mall due to some fading half-memory of their former life in which they considered it to be an important place for them. In this case the people used to come here to feed on the micro-fame of the people inside the house and now they’re back to feed on them once more, only this time in a much more literal sense.
Of course, you could talk about the satire and social commentary in zombie films until the cows come home and I’m sure people will continue to do so until the inevitable real life Zombie Apocalypse. The most important thing is how is this invasion of the undead portrayed on screen and all I’ll say is that Dead Set does not disappoint. It is exquisitely gory, revelling in the dismemberment of people by the ravenous monsters. Seriously, for a TV mini-series it seems as though absolutely no punches were pulled. You get to see a zombie get it’s head smashed in with a fire extinguisher, a zombie being carved up for bait and British television ‘favourite’ Davina McCall getting her throat bitten out. The whole thing is enhanced by the fucking fantastic sound effects, each squelch and stab being presented in sickeningly, crisp detail. Awesome. Speaking of sounds, I should also say that setting the initial zombie outbreak to Mika’s ‘Grace Kelly’ was an ingenious idea.
Right, I think I’ve spoken enough about this now. If you haven’t watched it yet, find a way to do so and do it now! Five pints out of five. I‘ll be back tomorrow with either a new list, a review of ‘Antichrist’ or the remake of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ which I‘ve decided to rewatch after my softening on the whole running zombie thing. Laterz.
Filed under: Documental | Tags: chen, cheng, china, chinese, cinema, class, democracy, documentaries, documentary, elect, election, film, Films, lei, luo, monitor, movie, movies, political, politics, Review, vote, voting, weijun, why, xiaofei, xu
Ah, democracy. It’s a funny old thing. People vote and people get elected and on and on it goes. Good times. Yeah, I don’t have that much to say about democracy. It’s pretty good, I guess. Better than a dictatorship at least. Good for democracy.
Anyway, with that pointless rambling out of the way, let’s get onto the review and it’s something a bit different today. It’s a short documentary, less than an hour long in fact, and is part of a series, ‘Why Democracy?’, which was shown worldwide on the subject of democracy. I can’t say I know much about the series having never seen or heard of it before nor seeing any of the other films within the series so I’ll just say I’m sure it’s a very good series which raises many important points about worldwide democracy though I will point out that the opening claims that it is being watched by 300,000,000 viewers. That might seem impressive but keep in mind that’s not even a quarter of the world’s population. Still, whatever.
So this film is called ‘Please Vote For Me’ and it takes place in the Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China. It follows the first ever election for class monitor in all of China amongst a class of 8 year olds. The first candidate is Luo Lei, a boy who has been chosen by the teacher to be class monitor for the past two years and has a reputation for being quite strict when it comes to enforcing the classes rules, even going so far as to beat other children when they step out of line. The second candidate is Cheng Cheng and I can only really describe him as a real life Chinese Eric Cartman without the foul mouth. He’s very manipulative and tries to manipulate every situation to his advantage. The third and final candidate is Xu Xiaofei, a girl who is perceived as being quite shy and not particularly adept at coping with stressful situations.
The first thing you notice is just how quickly one of the candidates, Cheng, turns to dirty tactics in order to try and make the election go his way. Each of the three has to perform in a talent show and Cheng decides to tell his helpers to encourage people to boo and hiss during Xu’s performance, leading to her breaking down in a flood of tears. Whilst Xu is outside being comforted by her mother and teacher, Cheng heads outside and apologies for Luo, claiming that the entire plan was thought up by him. Devious little bastard.
Also interesting is the ways in which the parents try and help their children during the election. Luo Lei’s father is the head of the local police force and as such he organises a trip for the class on the monorail, the most up to date form of transport in the area. It also seems as though this is where Luo get’s his inspiration for his strict enforcement of the rules. Cheng’s parents help him by writing his speeches and telling him exactly how to catch put his opponents and make it seem as though they are liars. Xu’s mother is divorced and is the head of the school. She doesn’t seem to provide much of the way in tactics but helps by boosting her daughters confidence as much as she can.
I don’t want to give away the ending of the film as it’s a really interesting piece that you should probably watch it for yourself and it can probably be found fairly easily on the internet. Ah yes, here it is on YouTube. What I will say is that the film is a fascinating look at the way that the voting process works. You might think that all the mudslinging, underhanded tactics and bribing of the electorate is exaggerated because the election is being held amongst children but really, is it that different from what happens in real elections? Think about it. Yeah, deep.
All in all, I’ll say that despite it’s short length, ‘Please Vote For Me’ is a really enjoyable film and is really quite comedic in it’s look at the democratic process. I highly recommend you view it. Four pints out of five. Laterz
Filed under: Review | Tags: alicia, and, arnold, bane, batman, beer, booze, chris, cinema, city, clooney, drink, drunk, film, Films, freeze, george, glover, gotham, gough, ivy, joel, john, michael, movie, movies, mr, o'donnel, poison, Review, robin, schumacher, schwarzenegger, silverstone, thurman, uma
Fuck you movie. Fuck you long and fuck you hard. Then fuck you some more. And then further fucking is in order for you. Did I mention fuck you movie?
Filed under: WTF | Tags: anthro, anthropomorphic, Arthur Kuroda, cinema, crazy, Eiichi Kikuchi, executive, film, Films, fuck, funny, furry, Hideki Saijô, Hironobu Nomura, Hitomi Takashima, insane, japan, japanese, koala, Lee Ho, Minoru Kawasaki, movie, movies, Review, reviews, subtitled, subtitles, the, weird, what, WTF
Yes, it’s time to take a look at some of the more bizarre films that have been released throughout the world and I’m gonna be honest from the get go, a lot of these films are gonna be from Japan. They just have a way with the pants crappingly insane and I love them for it. In that vein, the first film I’m going to be looking at is the 2005 film, ‘Executive Koala’ directed by Minoru Kawasaki.
Christ, I’m not even sure where to start with this though the beginning seems to be a pretty good place. The film opens with a happy little song which seems even odder once you get into what the film is actually about. The song is a accompanied with strange little ‘Hello Kitty’ style illustrations of a koala in a business suit performing various actions such as exercising and urinating up against a pole. Allow me to transcribe the lyrics, as they were in the translation I found, to this most awesome song.
‘He’s got such cute eyes,
He’s got gray fur
He’s a sweet thing
He’s a happy-go-lucky kind of guy
Restructuring, emotion
Nothing gets him down
Extramarital affairs, getting a divorce,
The world is beautiful
Go! Executive Koala!
Go! Executive Koala!
You don’t want to make him mad
Go! Executive Koala!
Go! Executive Koala!
A world filled with love
Is just ahead of us
Koala
Koala’
So yeah. I hope that gives you a small taste of the things to come. So the film opens and we learn that Executive Koala is appropriately enough an executive at a pickling company. A pickling company that is run by a six foot tall anthropomorphic bunny. It just makes sense. Life is pretty good for the Koala named Tamura. He’s got a sweet job which he’s very good at, makes a decent living and has a human girlfriend. Then, one day, his human girlfriend is murdered and he is quickly made the prime suspect.
There isn’t any direct evidence against him however and so he is allowed to go free… For now! Anyway, he begins a new project at work in which he tries to convince the head of a Korean kimchi supplier to enter into a business partnership. This leads into a montage wherein Tamura takes the head of the kimchi company around what I assume is Tokyo, sightseeing and such. Keep in mind that Tamura is a human sized, anthropomorphic koala wearing a business suit. Oh, and it also turns out that the head of the kimchi company has a pet flying squirrel that’s about the size of a small dog.
Seriously, what the fuck has happened to animals in this world? Why are there giant ones wearing clothes? Why are there others that are bigger than they should be? Is it all because of some bizarre genetic experimentation? Why does this film have a frog that runs a convenience store? It can’t be millions of years in the future when animals have evolved to this point naturally because it’s clearly the modern era.
Anyway, it turns out the Mr. Kimchi, who’s name I just can’t be bothered to find out, was a former lover of Tamura’s ex-wife who has been missing for some time. It turns out that they were in correspondence for some time whilst she was with Tamura and she sent him photos of herself after Tamura beat her, events that Tamura himself fails to remember.
Anyway, it turns out that Tamura used to be the head of the pickling company but, because of some horrific racial memory of what Western settlers did to his more arboreal and normal looking ancestors 100 years ago (Which means that either Koala‘s evolve incredibly rapidly or yeah, it‘s some sort of genetic experiment thing), he had a deep seated hatred for humans, a hatred he used to take out on his wife. His rabbit boss and his psychiatrist inform him that he killed his wife and they erased his memory of this incident and the rabbit took control of the company. Believing that he has killed his ex-wife and his girlfriend, Tamura decides to turn himself him but the psychiatrist and the rabbit try and stop him and inject him with a tranquilizer.
When Tamura regains consciousness, he finds the rabbit and the psychiatrist dead and is quickly arrested and sent to Alcatraz which seems to be in Japan now for some reason. Whilst there he suffers at the hands of the other inmates but is soon rescued and released from prison by Mr. Kimchi’s giant flying squirrel. This is where things really get fucked up.
It turns out that Mr. Kimchi and Tamura’s ex-wife have been going around killing people and making it seem as though Tamura was the culprit in order to exact their revenge. It also turns out that Tamura’s girlfriend was really his ex-wife wearing a mask. Oh, and his ex-wife learned the ancient Korean method of resurrection from Mr. Kimchi which is why she isn’t all dead and that. It just makes sense.
Anyway, his wife is about to shoot Tamura when the detective who arrested him jumps in the way of the bullet. He tells Tamura that he has found out he is innocent and a battle ensues between Tamura, his wife and Mr. Kimchi. They knock each other out and awaken at sunrise. Then they… all laugh… at the sunrise… and become friends with Tamura and his wife deciding to get remarried. They kiss while Mr. Kimchi applause, his applause apparently bringing the shot detective back to consciousness. Guess he knew the ancient Korean method of resurrection as well. Good for him. He applauds the koala and his wife as well, apparently forgetting about all of the murders she committed and the fact that she shot him. They all stand together and stare into the distance whilst a circular rift in time and space appears in the top-left corner to reveal the shop-keeping frog I mentioned earlier who is also now applauding. There the film ends.
Right. Well. I feel like I’ve been brain raped. I’m not sure exactly what happened here and I’m fairly sure my synopsis hasn’t really helped you figure out what happened here. The plot is actually fairly normal right up until that batshit crazy ending and it would actually be quite boring except for the fact that everything that’s happening is happening to a god damn six-foot tall koala fucking bear. The suit that the guy wears is actually quite impressive. It blinks, the mouth opens and it has two thumbs, just like a real koala. It doesn’t make the film any less insane but it is quite cool. The frog looked dodgy though.
So yeah… Umm, I’m not really sure what else to say about this except it was actually quite entertaining. I really have to check out some of this guys other films which include titles such as ‘Calamari Wrestler’ and ‘Crab Goalkeeper’. I think this dude has found his niche, job plus animal, and is sticking with it. Good for him. Overall I give Executive Koala three and a half pints out of five. Laterz.
Filed under: Great Movies, Shitty Games | Tags: 1987, cinema, cyborg, Dan O'Herlihy, delta city, distant, ed-209, film, Films, future, in, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, movie, movies, Nancy Allen, nes, nintendo, not, old detroit, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Review, robocop, Ronny Cox, sci-fi, the, To, verhoeven, video game
To finish off my recent RoboCop theme type thing, I thought I’d take a look at the RoboCop NES game.
Filed under: Review | Tags: 1993, 2011, cinema, cyborg, Darren Aronofsky, delta city, distant, ed-209, film, Films, Fred Dekker, future, in, Miguel Ferrer, movie, movies, Nancy Allen, not, old detroit, Paul Verhoeven, remake, Review, Rip Torn, Robert John Burke, robocop, Ronny Cox, sci-fi, the, To, verhoeven
RoboCop 1 Review is here, RoboCop 2 review is here
Ok, so here’s the review of the third film in the series, the one which I said would be up the day after the review of the second film. I don’t know why but for some reason when ever I say something will be up the next day, they rarely ever are. I should probably just saying that they will be. Seems to be more likely that I’ll keep to my schedule if I don’t plan on having one. Anyway, let’s begin.
So, RoboCop 3 was made in 1993 and was directed by Fred Dekker. Now the first thing you’ll notice if you take a look at the UK DVD box set is that, whilst the first two films are rated 18, this film is a 15. Gone are the scenes of extreme violence that had been kind of a hallmark of the first RoboCop films. You won’t see anyone’s hand explode or any surgeons removing the brain, eyes and spinal chord of someone like we’d seen previously.
Also gone is Peter Weller, the role of RoboCop this time being played by Robert John Burke. It’s really disappointing. Burke doesn’t have the mechanical movements anywhere near as well as Weller, he doesn’t pull off the character as well, though there’s less for RoboCop to really do, and his mouth is blatantly different. That’s not really something that can be helped I suppose. Speaking of people’s mouths when they’re wearing masks, doesn’t Christian Bale have a weird little puckered mouth that the Batman mask just accentuates? Maybe it’s just me.
It does have to be said though that without the RoboCop helmet, Murphy does still look quite a lot like Peter Weller. I don’t know if Burke actually resembles Weller that much in real life or if it’s prosthetics of some kinds since they obviously made moulds of Weller’s heads for the earlier films. I guess I’ll never know since there is neither a making of or a commentary included on the DVD and I really don’t care enough to search around the internet trying to find out.
So let’s get down to the plot then. What is RoboCop 3 about? Well, this time OCP, with it’s brand new CEO played by Rip Torn, is trying once more to build Delta City where Old Detroit still stands. This time they are being aided by a Japanese company named the Kanemitsu Corporation who have bought a controlling stake in OCP, so I guess they’re not so much being helped as they are being bought out and continuing with the old companies plan. Or something. I don’t understand business.
In order to carry out this plan OCP has created a new armed force in the guise of the Urban Rehabilitators who are headed by the very English Paul McDaggett (John Castle) who it will turn out is the pieces main villain. That’s right America! Never forget who your first enemies were! And one day, when the time is right, our tiny island nation with will claim back what is rightfully ours! Ahem. Sorry about that. Seem to have gone quite mad for a second there. Where was I?
Oh yes, so the Urban Rehabilitators, or Rehabs for short, are going in to Old Detroit and forcibly removing people from their homes. A few homeowners don’t take too kindly to this and decide to form some kind of Rebel Alliance. They go underground stockpiling weapons and the like and are accompanied by one of the most annoying movie character archetypes of all time, the genius kid who’s unfeasibly good at using computers. God I hate those characters. The character of Lex and her l33t hacking skillz are one of the few things that annoyed me about Jurassic Park. So if it annoys me in a good movie, then you know that in a film that I’m not particularly fond of, it’s really gonna piss me off. And it does. Immensely.
Anyway, whilst RoboCop is trying to defence some of these people from Rehab agents, his long-time partner Lewis is killed by Dagget. This leads to RoboCop joining the resistance along with his ladt scientist friend who maintain him, herself having grown disillusioned with the terrible things OCP are doing. In the end the resistance is also joined by the Detroit Police Department and a war occurs between the resistance and the Rehabs. RoboCop gains the power of flight, Dagget is killed and the day is saved.
The main problem with this film is that it feels like a pale imitation of the rest of the series. Once more the interludes from the news team are back but now they don’t seem anywhere near as effective as they once were. I’m also tempted to say that if there had never been RoboCop 1 and 2 then this would be a mildly entertaining, mindless sci-fi action film but those films do exist making this just a piss poor entry into the series. One and a half pints out of five.
So that’s it for a look at the RoboCop films of yesteryear. So how good are they at representing the futuristic world we now find ourselves in? Well, let’s take a look at the robots/cyborgs first. The series features cyborgs in the forms of RoboCop and RoboCain. Both were amalgamations of mechanical and organic parts. Now, we’re not exactly at the level where we can recreate these kinds of cyborgs but we’re certainly progressing. There are digital eyes, robotic arms which wire into the nervous system and, slightly more worrying given the ways in which the company tried to control their cyborgs in the series, an entire array of remote controlled animals.
As for robots, well, robots have certainly come along way since their ancestors crawled out of the primordial ooze in the forms of devices such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners. There are bands made up of robots, BIGDOG, the frankly disturbing looking robotic beast of burden and once more, an entire array of robotic animals. There are even robots you can have sex with. Warning, the following video is probably not suitable for minors or people who are disturbed by people talking about the wonders of having sex with something that looks like an ugly plastic corpse:
All I know is that I’m not putting my cock anywhere near something that is described as having motors, servos and something called an accelarometer. So yeah, we’re clearly not at ED-209 level of robotics either although ED-209 did shoot the shit out of people so maybe that’s a good thing.
Still, as I said in the first RoboCop review, we’re not really sure exactly when these films are supposed to take place. I supposed that they were probably set somewhere between 2000 and 2050 simply because of the things that have changed and the things that haven’t, so there’s still 40 years worth of scientific discovery and development to go and, honestly, at the rate with which discoveries in these fields are occurring, I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe we had caught up with the technology of RoboCop within that time period and that would be cool.
So I suppose I can’t really finish this without talking about the proposed remake of the original RoboCop. Well, I was actually kind of interested in this one what with the news that Darren Aronofsky, director of 2008’s awesome ‘The Wrestler’ was slated to direct. This seems, however, to have completely fallen apart thanks to MGM wanting the new RoboCop to be a 3D film. Aronofsky has no interest in making such a film and rightfully so. The story of RoboCop is interesting enough that it doesn’t need a shitty gimmick like 3D. I can just imagine a ten second head-on shot of ED-209 as he sprays thousands of 3D bullets into the audience. Oh what fun it won’t be. So yeah, I guess you could say my interest has wavered ever so slightly with this news. I just hope MGM and Aronofsky can come to some kind of agreement and make the awesome remake that RoboCop deserves.
Well, that’s probably it for RoboCop. Laterz.
Filed under: Review | Tags: cinema, cyborg, Dan O'Herlihy, delta city, distant, ed-209, film, Films, future, in, movie, movies, Nancy Allen, not, old detroit, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Review, robocop, sci-fi, the, To, verhoeven
Well, yesterday we looked at the ground breaking 1987 sci-fi film, RoboCop. Turns out that it was quite popular and what happens in Hollywood when something is uber-popular? It get’s a sequel of course! It happened with Jurassic Park, it happened with Jaws and for some reason it’s happening with Ghost Rider. And yes, it happened with RoboCop as well.
RoboCop 2 was released in 1990 and was directed by Irvin Kershner who directed many peoples favourite part of the saga set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, ‘The Empire Strikes Back‘.As for the cast, well, as far as I can tell everyone who wasn’t killed in the first film seemed to return. Peter Weller dons the heavy-ass costume once more and is still awesome as RoboCop. What the hell else has he done anyway? Hmm, ‘The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across The 8th Dimension’ and a bunch of other things I’ve heard of but never seen. I really should check them out.
(Spoilers Ahead) Anyway, this film is set two years after the undisclosed year of the last film and RoboCop is a hit with all the folks who live in Old Detroit. People like him so much, in fact, that OCP have decided to create a new model called, well, RoboCop 2. Massive points for originality there. Anyway, the problem is that every time they integrate RoboCop 2 with a human brain, it goes crazy and immediately commits suicide, unable to take what’s happened to it. It seems that the reason that Murphy was such a success was his strong dedication to holding up the law and the fact that being a strong Roman-Catholic prevented him from committing suicide. Of course, I thought it was just because they’d wiped Murphy’s memory and his humanity slowly came to the forefront. But hey, whatever.
Whilst all this is happening there is turmoil in the streets. The rest of the police force is on strike after OCP has cut their wages and their pensions, Murphy is essentially stalking his wife, the mayor’s office is in debt to OCP essentially giving the corporation the option to buy out the city and a cult has grown up around a drug called Nuke and a dealer with a messiah complex named Cain.
So the wife situation is sorted when Murphy realises that he’s no longer the man he once was and tells his wife that his face is a reconstruction made in honour of her dead husband. Murphy is then captured by the drug cult and essentially ripped to pieces. His parts are dumped by the striking police officers and he is reprogrammed by OCP with a few hundred new directives which are aimed to make him a more helpful figure in the community as opposed to being just a violent tool in the war on crime.
Murphy’s new programming basically renders him useless as a crime fighter, leading to many wacky situations in which he tries to arrest a corpse and give a lecture to a bunch of kids who are trying to rob a shop on how disappointed there parents must be in them. It’s definitely a different turn from the previous film in which RoboCop existed in a ridiculous, exaggerated world but everything about him and his story were played seriously. It’s not entirely unwelcome though. It provides a few laughs and doesn’t last long enough to become particularly annoying and for some reason it must have really stuck with me. The only bit I remember from watching this movie as a kid is when he shoots around a guy smoking a cigarette and says ‘Thankyou for not smoking.’ Good stuff.
Anyway, Murphy eradicates his new programming by electrocuting himself and decides to go after Cain, the striking cops following him and acting as his army. During the attack Cain is mortally wounded, leaving Hob, a ten year old with a penchant for swearing, and Angie, Cain’s girlfriend, in charge of the drug cult. Meanwhile Dr. Faxx, an OCP psychologist, decides that Cain will be the perfect candidate for the RoboCop 2 program, his crippling addiction to Nuke being a good method of keeping him under control.
Christ, there’s a lot going on in this film when you actually sit down to write about it. Let’s try and wrap this up quickly. Mayor’s office tries to make deal with drug cult in order to get money to keep control of city. RoboCain busts the deal, killing many of the mayor’s aides as well as Angie and Hob. RoboCain goes crazy at the sight of some Nuke during a media junket for OCP as they announce the buying out of the city and the deployment of RoboCop 2. RoboCain shoots the shit out of a bunch of people. RoboCop stops him. Good times all round.
So that’s it in a very large nut shell. There’s still the odd news break here and there but it’s not as effective as when Verehoeven does it. The man just has a way with that kinda shit. It’s no where near as good as the first one but it’s still enjoyable enough. There’s some dodgy stop-motion animation used to bring RoboCain to life but as I said last time, that stuff has a certain charm and can help in portraying the jittery motion of a mechanical object. The computer effects used to portray Cain’s face via a screen on RoboCop 2’s body look especially dated but, well, what can you do?
Perhaps the biggest problem with this film is the dramatic change that occurs within Dan O’Herlihy’s character, the OCP President. In the original film he’s portrayed as a kind old man who truly seems to care about the people in his employ and the people of Old Detroit. In this film he’s just a massive douche bag who does whatever he can to make money and make sure his development plans go through. It’s really quite odd.
In summation, I’d give RoboCop 2, the film not the robot, three pints out of five. Laterz and see you tomorrow. Guess what I’ll be reviewing then. I dare you.
Filed under: Review | Tags: 1987, cinema, cyborg, Dan O'Herlihy, delta city, distant, ed-209, film, Films, future, in, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, movie, movies, Nancy Allen, not, old detroit, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Review, robocop, Ronny Cox, sci-fi, the, To, verhoeven
Well, it’s officially the uber-futuristic year 2010 where cars fly, boards hover and aliens have welcomed us into the inter-galactic community. What a time to be alive! Oh, wait. None of those things have happened. Thanks a lot assorted movies for lying to me. With that in mind, I’ve decided to take a look at some films from our past that made predictions about our not too distant future. So let’s begin by taking a look at the RoboCop series, a bunch of films which never really state a specific year as to when they’re set but I think it’s safe to assume that it’s some time between the years 2000 an 2050, which is good enough for my purposes. Also, the trilogy box-set was just delivered to my house so this seems to be as good a time as any. As always, massive spoilers ahead.
Now the basic plot of the film goes thusly: Cop chases gang. Gang kill cop. Cop get’s resurrected as Cyborg. Cyborg police officer, RoboCop if you will, battles crime whilst battling the conflict between mechanical and organic within himself. It’s a simple yet awesome concept and it’s directed brilliantly by Paul Verehoeven. If you’ve seen Starship Troopers or Total Recall, then you know that Verehoeven is very good at creating worlds which seem slightly off, layering in things such as TV shows, news broadcasts and advertisements to build what you might call exaggerated versions of our own world.
The same is true throughout RoboCop. Every now and then a news broadcast will break in, updating the viewer not only on what is happening with regard to the plot but also what’s happening elsewhere in the world. For example there’s little stories about a Star Wars laser defence system, rebels fighting Mexican and American troops in Mexico and the white government of South Africa getting neutron bombs. It just crafts a vision of a world that’s going to shit. The adverts and TV shows reinforce this with one ad detailing a battleship-esque game which allows the family to play out a nuclear war. There’s even the bizarre TV show called ‘I’d Buy That For A Dollar’ which everyone seems to love.
But that’s all background, brilliant though it is. What about the meat of the story, I hear you ask. Well, it’s a futuristic Detroit in which the police force is owned by a corporation, OCP. They’re trying to clean up the crime-ridden streets so that they can begin work on turning Old Detroit into the new and improved Delta City. To that effect they’ve begun research into robotic law enforcement. One division has come up with the ED-209 but progress comes to a bit of a halt when a glitch in ED’s programming causes him to shoot the shit out of an OCP executive. Instead the company president turns to the RoboCop program which seems more promising. All the program needs is a ‘volunteer’ and in a city where cop killings are a frequent occurrence, it surely won’t be long until they get one.
Enter Alex Murphy , a recent transferee from a quieter district. He’s partnered with Anne Lewis and heads out on his first beat. Is that what it’s called? Beat? Sounds weird. Ah well, I’m sticking with it now. Anyway, they run afoul of a gang, led by Clarence Boddicker (played by Kurtwood Smith who is fucking awesome) and chase them to an abandoned steel mill… A steel mill which was abandoned with a lot of toxic waste still lying around as we’ll find out later. Anyway, Lewis is incapacitated and the gang capture and shoot the shit out of Murphy. There’s a lot of people who get the shit shot out of them in this film. It really is quite gory in some places, which just makes it all the more awesome.
Anyway, OCP get their ‘volunteer’ and incorporate part of Murphy’s brain and face into the RoboCop. The scene where he’s being built is quite cool, seeing jumps through time through RoboCop’s eyes as they switch him on and off during testing. Finally RoboCop is complete and ready to start his beat… That still doesn’t seem right. Meh. Anyway, he starts to make a difference, cleaning up the streets, averting crimes and making people feel safer. The only problem, from OCP’s perspective, is that he still has some of Murphy left in him. He dreams of his family and of the gang who killed him, eventually causing him to pursue a vendetta.
So RoboCop/Murphy manages to track down Clarence and arrests him. During the arrest Clarence reveals that he’s working for Jones, the executive at OCP who was head of the failed ED-209 program and that Jones ordered him to kill the head of the RoboCop program. So he goes to the company in order to arrest Jones but finds he can’t as a secret part of his programming forbids him from taking action against highers-up within the corporation. A fight with ED-209 ensues and is ended when ED tries to follow Murphy down some stairs. Poor ED.
So Jones has Broddick freed from jail and orders him to take down Murphy, who at this point is on the run, the police believing he has gone haywire. Jones provides the gang with some military artillery and a tracker to help find the mechanical lawman. They track him down to the abandoned steel mill where a fight ensues and one of the greatest on-screen deaths ever occurs.
One of the gangsters attempts to run down Murphy in a van. Murphy shoots at the windscreen, causing the gangster to duck and drive straight into one of those mysteriously abandoned barrels of toxic waste I was talking about earlier. This essentially causes the gangsters skin to begin to melt… No that’s not the right word. I’m not sure what is… sloughs, maybe? Why not. His flesh slowly sloughs from his bones. It’s an horrifically brilliant sight. And then a fucking car hits him and he just explodes in a shower of organic material! It’s fucking awesome! Fuck it, let’s just include a video of it. Viewers of a nervous disposition may not want to click play:
Brilliant! And that horrible, strained noise he makes too. Great stuff.
Anyway, Murphy kills Broddick and goes off to stop Jones who is trying to reinstate the ED program after RoboCop’s apparent malfunction. Still unable to take action against an executive at OCP, Murphy shows a recording of him confessing to the murder of the head of the RoboCop program and the president fires him. This allows Murphy to finally take action against him and he does so, in the form of shooting the shit out of him until he falls out of a window. Awesome.
So that’s basically Robocop. What more is there to say? Peter Weller is fantastic in the role of Murphy/RoboCop. The way that he moves when he’s all cyborged up is so mechanical and deliberate and he manages to pull off the mix of a man with thought and a computer with programming with aplomb. I salute him.
In the end, it’s an incredible film. Sure, some of the effects of ED-209, who’s movements were pretty much all stop-motion animated, look a little dated but I think it adds a charm to the ‘character’ of ED and the animation just seems to make him look more mechanical which always helps when dealing with robots. The other problem is this was made in the 80s. No, that doesn’t sound right.. What I mean is that as with all films dealing with the future, it seems as though the people who made the film assumed the fashions and hairstyles of the time would carry on for decades to come, especially in the 80s. I suppose they can’t really be faulted for that.
There you go then. I love this film, I hope I’ve made that clear, and award it five pints out of five. If you haven’t seen it then you shouldn’t have read this review. It’s full of spoilers. I warned you at the beginning. What were you thinking? Now, go watch it. Oh, and if you’re name is Ed and you haven’t changed your last name to 209 then you either haven’t seen RoboCop or you have far more sense than I would if I were named Ed. Laterz.
Filed under: Cage Rage | Tags: 1973, 2000, 2006, a, ah, awful, bad, bear, bees, brett, bullet, butterfly, cage, carol, cheadle, christmas, cinema, comedy, dance, don, edward, family, film, Films, happy, holidays, honey, it's, japanese, leoni, life, man, merry, movie, movies, new, nic, nicolas, not, pachinko, pumpkins, punching, rage, ratner, remake, Review, reviews, shit, smashing, suit, summerisle, tea, terrible, the, very, video, wacky, wicker, wings, woman, wonderful, woodward, xmas, year
Well, today is Nicolas Cage’s 46th Birthday and I completely forgot. So to celebrate here is a video I made a while back of Ragin’ Nic Cage dancing with a bunch of round-headed aliens to ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’ by The Smashing Pumpkins aka the song I use as theme for my Cage Rage vids. Enjoy and Happy Birthday, Nic!
Oh, it was originally a YouTube only trailer for the Christmas episode, so you can ignore that coming later this week bit at the end. You can view Episode 1 of Cage Rage here, and Epsiode 2 here
