The Halloween Horror Film Update!

Good news! After being released in America last week, Saw VI has become the worst performing Saw film ever! Bringing in just $14 million over its first weekend it's worse than the original Saw's $18m and a much lower return than the $30m upwards that Saw's II to V's opening weekends...erm...saw. Now, Saw VII has already been confirmed so don't go getting your hopes up too much but at least this makes Saw VIII seem a bit more unlikely. God knows there's been far too much torture pornfest films in the last 3 or 4 years. Hostel, Hostel II, The Hills Have Eyes, The Hills Have Eyes 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (sensing a pattern here?), The Hitcher, Captivity. Enough! There's only so many different ways to gruesomely kill someone and you found them all! Well done. Now fuck off will you?

You might want to prepare yourselves for me turning into a dirty big hypocrite at this point. Ready? Good. Wes Craven may be directing Scream 4!!! (See what I mean?) Scream 4 is basically going ahead whatever happens but the big question is whether Wes will be there to give the franchise the best chance of having as decent a return as it could possibly get. He recently stated on Twitter, "In response to the rumors about me directing SCREAM 4, a deal has not yet been set, so stay tuned for accurate information." Yes, I know, that's technically a denial not confirmation. But he says a deal has "not yet been set." In other words there are talks in place and there is a possibility of it happening. And I really hope it does.

The Scream franchise was actually, y'know, good, as opposed to most horror films out there. The first two films are absolute genius, parodying the hell out of themselves and other horror films in hilarious fashion whilst also managing to be somewhat scary and shocking. The third one was weaker and probably stretched things a bit too far, but it was still fun and worth seeing if only for Randy's cameo appearance in which he gives his awesome horror trilogy rules (Number one: You've got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman in this film. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third film you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up!).

However, I suppose me saying Scream 3 ran out of steam isn't very promising for a fourth film is it? Well, it's been 9 years since Scream 3 so at least the franchise has had a bit of a rest and some new ideas may have spawned in that time. And the original writer is returning which is promising. There are also rumours that this will be the first in a new trilogy. That may be a bit much to be honest but we'll see. The last bit of good news is that a lot of the original cast are also returning. Neve Campbell (Sidney), Courtney Cox and David Arquette (Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley) and Jamie Kennedy (Randy) are apparantly all signed up. If Wes Craven gets back on board too, Scream 4 will surely be at least as good as Scream 3. And compared to most other horror films, that's the equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back or Pulp Fiction. Hooray!

Lastly, I may post a review of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in the next couple of days. Depends if I have anything else that needs doing. Keep an eye out!

I Really HATE People Who Talk at the Cinema...

and I could quite happily shoot them all. Well. Maybe. With a water gun I suppose. Actually what I should do is follow them home and when they're watching something they really like on TV play Knock Knock Ginger, slowly driving them insane until they're unfit for work and lose their house and everything in it and they have to watch TV in the window of Curry's instead. Then I'd heckle them from across the street so they couldn't even enjoy that sorry form of entertainment. Maybe then they'd learn a lesson. Dicks. As you can probably guess I had a couple of people talking in front of me when I went to see Up. Repeating the jokes every 5 seconds and talking in not at all quiet voices about things they knew were gonna happen later in the film that I DIDN'T KNOW. Grrrrrr. Come to think of it this is supposed to be a review of Up isn't it? Suppose I should get on with it really...


Oh, Up, you curious little film you. Who would have thought we'd get an animated childrens film about the story of a 78 year old man who isn't Santa Clause? Carl Fredricksen is an ex-balloon salesman who promised his wife they would one day live her dream and travel to South America. Whilst always very serious about making their trip Carl and Ellie never quite make it and, unfortunately for Ellie, it is left too late. Spurred on by Ellie's death and the threat of demolition to his house due to building work, Carl sets sail to Paradise Falls, South America in that very same house, using his history with balloons to make it all possible. It's an astounding sight:

What Carl doesn't realise however is that Russel, a 'Wilderness Explorer' (or Cub Scout) is on his porch when the house takes off, presenting both annoyance and companionship to Carl on his journey. In fact, Carl's adventure soon becomes a little too crowded for his liking with a rare, exotic bird (whom Russel names Kevin!) and a talking dog named Dug joining the pair once they reach South America. I don't really want to spoil the story from this point on but I will tease that Kevin's rarity and a childhood hero of Carl's come into play during the second half of the film.

I can't stress enough how touching and emotional this story can be, especially for what is supposedly a 'kids' film. It's surprising how sad it can be at times. The opening montage of the film, showing Carl and Ellie growing old together whilst continuously having to put their plans to travel to South America on the back burner, is sad because you KNOW they're not going to make it in time; if they did then it wouldn't really be much of a film. But seeing some of the reasons why Ellie doesn't ever get to live her dream is even more heart-wrenching. Your only 10 minutes into the film and your already close to tears! There are a couple more moments later on too which really highlight the love and devotion the couple had for eachother and make you fully empathise with Carl about his lost love. It's sadder than any other animated film I've seen, more so even than Bambi or The Lion King (damn Disney parent-killers!) but, to be fair, it's questionable whether many of the kids watching the film really have the ability to empathise with Carl and fully comprehend how he is feeling during these moments. Maybe they're not such strong moments for the younger viewers but I know I was very surprised at some of material on show here. Girls (and probably some boys) may want to take some tissues!

Whilst being a bit of a teary affair though, Up combats this by also being very, very funny. The classic 'odd coupling' of Carl and Russel works really well. They play off eachother superbly with Russel's humorous over-excitement and awe being counteracted wonderfully by Carl's world-weary attitude, dry wit and forced tolerance of the young boy with whom he is stranded. Add Dug's doggy behaviours and thoughts being translated into English and Kevin's hilarious squawking and mannerisms into the mixture and you realise you have a great set of characters here. None of them really outstay their welcome and the funny lines just keep coming. Another high point is seeing their relationships with eachother grow to the point were they enjoy being together on their fantastic adventure. This makes the film both more heartwarming and funny, as Carl begins to become a father figure for Russel and their camaraderie leads to even more amusing lines. The final scenes of the film really show how important the two become to eachother.

I saw Up in 3D and I must say I was a little disappointed by that aspect of the film. This surprised me as I was thoroughly impressed by the last 3D film I saw (Toy Story 3D). I think I've narrowed this down to 2 main reasons though. Firstly, I'd had 15 years to get used to seeing Toy Story in plain old 2D so the sequences and images from the film were all stored in my head in this way. Knowing how the film looked without 3D seemed to make more of an impact on me as you could literally see the differences in front of your eyes. With Up I have nothing to compare it to. Whilst I can imagine what it all looked like in 2D, I can't directly compare it to this format unless I go to see the film again but in 2D instead. And whilst I'd be tempted with a film as special as Up, I'd say balls to that if I have to see every 3D film in 2D as well just to be impressed. So what am I saying? If you want to release a film in 3D you should release it normally first and then do a 3D version 15 years later? Hmmmm. No. But something didn't quite work.

Maybe it's due to my second reason - you simply get used to the 3D after a while. Toy Story 3D was the first 3D film I saw. Maybe I enjoyed the 3D so much because it was new and a novelty for me. With Up it wasn't really a new experience anymore and the 3D suddenly just becomes expected and shockingly normal. If I've become so blasé with 3D after only 2 films I hate to think what it would be like if I'd gone to see all the tens of 3D films released this year. 3D should be kept as a rare thing, for films that can truly benefit from the technology. Whilst having 3D in Up was nice, I can't really justify it being an extra £2.

So, I think you can tell I quite enjoyed Up. Whilst I question the overall necessity of the 3D and am slightly concerned about some of the cutting real-life issues the film deals with (but don't get me wrong, they didn't spoil it AT ALL), I was thoroughly entertained for the full 96 minutes and would encourage everyone to see it. It may look like a cute kids film but Up could appeal to anybody. There was even an old man sat alone in the audience at the showing I went to. Maybe he could relate to Carl and will now be inspired to follow his dreams despite being in his twilight years. Or maybe he was just lost. I'm not sure.

9/10

Shall we carry on like nothing ever happened?

Look! New post! Now I'm back at Uni I will try to update this place more. Promise. I meant to do a load of reviews over Summer as I saw 20 odd films but I never found the time and it felt too much like work. Ahem. So we'll pretend Summer didn't take place and carry on as per the mission statement. Which I posted a couple of weeks ago of course >_>

Anyway. TOY STORY 3 TRAILER! Now, I'm aware it could seem like this place is becoming a Pixar dedicated site after my one other entry being that Up preview I did (which, incidentally, came out last Friday and I'll try my best to do a review of in the next few days when I see it...see what I mean about Pixar dedication?), but I love Toy Story so much I couldn't not tell people about the trailer. Yeah, I'm a big kid, I think we all know that. Just take a look at the trailer and then come back for some opinions...oh and make sure you watch it in HD.

Click on the poster to go to the NEW trailer!

Awesome. Andy's all grown up (deep voice and everything) and the toys are no longer needed. So he's shipping them off to a kindergarten! That gives the story the perfect 'toys escape' set-up that the other 2 films had. Admittedly it's not entirely original but it worked very well for the previous films and I think having the same basic formula will play towards the strengths of the franchise. Namely the stunning action sequences as the toys' plans come together and the humour, which seems very much in place just on the basis of these 2 minutes ("Lets see how much we're going for on ebay!") The big question though is where will Woody and the gang escape to? Will they try and return to Andy? Thankfully the trailer isn't giving much away about the second half of the film and we'll just have to wait and see.

Pixar love getting a Buzz Lightyear that still believes he's a space ranger into the films though don't they? They put a second Buzz into Toy Story 2 and now it looks like our Buzz is being reset to his factory settings! Which makes him a Spanish space ranger for some reason. Toy Story told us he was made in Taiwan so that's not it. Maybe 'the real Buzz Lightyear' was Spanish? But then surely Buzz toys would all sound Spanish anyway...whatever. If it means we see Buzz prance around like an idiot and say "to infinity...and beyond!" in Spanish then I'm not going to complain.

It struck me the first time I saw the trailer just how GOOD it looks too. I saw the original Toy Story in 3D last week and whilst the first fully computer-animated film still looks impressive there's no denying this type of animation has advanced a lot in the last 15 years. Most notably, Pixars human animations now look a lot more realistic. The new 17/18 year old Andy looks beautiful!

Lastly, I'm obviously just excited Toy Story 3 is almost here. I mean its not got the best history and almost didn't get made a few times. It was canned for a few months when Disney and Pixar were about to go their seperate ways a few years ago. Disney then anounced they were going to make the film themselves without Pixar. Then Disney ended up buying Pixar and they both said they were scrapping Toy Story 3 AGAIN. Finally a few months later the two companies came to an agreement on a new story for the film (which originally involved Buzz malfuctioning and being recalled by his manufacturers, leading to the other toys trying to rescue him) and decided that Pixar would be the ones to make it after all. It's no wonder Toy Story 3 is being released 11 years after the last installment!