E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Last night I had the pleasure of watching E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I haven't seen this movie but only once when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I remember my parents bought the VHS and we all watched it in the living room while my sisters and I sat on the floor eating spaghetti. Don't ask me how I remember that. I can barely remember last week. I guess the film touched me in a way that I will always remember it and where I was and what I was doing when I first saw it.

So since it had been so long I decided to have another viewing and so I put the DVD in my Netflix queue. Good or not (it's up for debate), like the Star Wars DVDs, this is the, I guess you could call it “Special Edition” with updated CGI effects. I soon figured that out once E.T. appears in the movie and the effects are clearly a better quality than were available when the film was shot in 1981. One scene that seemed to be very touched up was the scene where Elliot and E.T. are in the bathroom and Elliot is showing his alien friend what a bath is. Wow, I just realized how wrong that statement sounded. I assure you it was innocent. I'm curious as to how the scene originally looked , because I don't remember.

New updated effects or not, this film still holds up. Sure, there are plenty of things that date the movie, but the main message of the story still remains. You really develop a fondness for E.T. He makes you feel like a kid again. I felt like I was 5 years old again sitting on the floor with a plate of spaghetti. E.T. feels like a real character and not simply a puppet. The child actors in the film play a huge role and their talent really shows. Especially little Gertie played by Drew Barrymore. I'm telling you, between Whip It and re-watching E.T. I'm really coming around on Barrymore.

If you haven't seen E.T. in as many years as I have, I really suggest you give it another watch. This film is truly one of Spielberg's finest. Of course now that I've written this entire entry, I realize that I'm telling you all something you've already known for almost 30 years. Just remember this. You should never be required to listen to Neil Diamond's “Heartlight”. A song that had nothing to do with the release of the film or soundtrack, but was inspired by the movie. Nor should you listen to Michael Jackson's “Someone in the Dark” which was actually commissioned by Spielberg for the E.T. Storybook. Maybe it's just me, but it was no “Billie Jean.” Hell, I feel like he already wrote this song and it was called “Ben” and it was better, but this is a debate for a whole other blog. Just stay away from that Neil Diamond song. 

The Living Dead Series

ZOMBIES!!!!

George Romero

Who doesn't love a good zombie flick? In the last several years especially, the popularity of zombies has risen. Most big cities have a zombie walk event, and various zombie themed things and stuff. Yeah, I got lazy with that last sentence.

I was in the mood to enjoy a good zombie flick and I came to the realization that I have never seen Night of the Living Dead. Director George Romero created this horror classic. In fact, Romero is the godfather of modern day zombies. Before Night of the Living Dead, zombies showed up in movies about voodoo and they were just people under mind control. Romero took a much scarier approach by making the zombies the walking dead.

So I decided that if I'm going to watch NOTLD I might as well watch all of the Romero zombie series. So I did.

The first movie up is Night of the Living Dead of course. Fuck, this movie still holds up. What's great about George Romero's movies is he adds some social commentary. The movies are about the people in them and the zombie apocalypse is simply the backdrop. This is indie filmmaking at it's finest.

Next up is Dawn of the Dead. I saw the 2004 Zach Snyder remake before I ever saw the original and I think that made this hard. The remake is so very very good. After seeing that, this one just could not compare. I didn't like what they did with the makeup for the zombies in this one. They were all blue. What's up with that? Did all these people die of suffocation? I'd recommend that you pass over this one and go straight for the 2004 remake. I think it might be the best zombie film ever made.

Day of the Dead really surprised me. For some reason I didn't expect this one to be good, but it was great. Again Romero focuses on the struggle between the people in the story. This movie also shows us that the zombies do have little intelligence and a flicker of a memory.

The only movie from the Living Dead series that I saw in a theater is Land of the Dead. This one was the only big budget movie in the series. George Romero deserved this. He deserved the known actors and the amazing makeup effects. I didn't like this movie when I first saw it, but I have completely changed my mind on that. This movie is awesome on the effects alone. In a world of overdone CGI effects it's great to see a film make use of the extremely talented effects artists who make the gore look real and not like a video game.

Diary of the Dead is where things get, lets say cheap. I have to admit that I could not finish this movie. I know that it is in no way fair to comment on a movie that you didn't finish, but I just couldn't. The acting was pretty bad and the effects were all cheap CGI. I was really bummed out at what was happening to the series.

Finally, the most recent in the series is Survival of the Dead. This one is more of the same as the last one. Like the other films, this one deals with the struggle between people. In this case it's to feuding families. The problem is that I don't find any of the characters interesting. I don't feel invested enough to care if any of them live or die. I guess the idea was to side with one of the families, but I really felt like I was on the side of the zombies.

Make no mistake that George Romero is fucking king in the horror scene. I just really hope that Survival of the Dead is not the end of the series. I hope he goes out with a bang. There really isn't an ending to any of the movies and that's the idea. The zombies go on and on. Maybe one of these days Romero will write and ending and close the book. I hope it's good. I promise you I'll see it no mater what. Zombies are awesome!!!!

Batman Forever

This will the be the third time that I have sat down to write this entry. I completed it altogether the first time I attempted it, but Blogger lost all but the first paragraph after I went back in to edit a word. The second time, I was about two paragraphs in when I just lost interest and scraped the whole thing. This time around I am dedicated to rewriting it. So let's get started.

I was recently home sick from work flipping through the channels trying to find something on daytime television that wasn't about going back to school or filing for workers compensation. That's when I stumbled across a movie that I haven't seen in a long time.

I loved the Batman movies when I was a kid. I can still remember the summer day in 1989 when my father took the whole family to see Batman. I absolutely loved that movie and the sequel Batman Returns. But there was something different about Batman Forever. Actually, there were a lot of things that were different. First of all, that's the same Alfred and Commissioner Gordon, but that's not Michael Keaton as Batman! I soon found out why this movie looked and felt so much different from the first two movies. This movie was not directed by Tim Burton, but Joel Schumacher.

Batman Forever clearly seems to be directed towards a younger audience, but why? Tim Burton's Batman was a great success and this is still part of that same series. If the studio wanted to make the movie differently, why didn't they just reboot the franchise? Probably because they already had an audience and a reboot would NEVER work.

I don't have anything against Val Kilmer as an actor. In fact I really like him. And I think we can all agree that Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor, but I'm not sure if he was really trying to play Harvey Dent/Two Face or just another version of The Joker. If you remember in the first Tim Burton's Batman Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent. I heard that Williams was set to play a more prominent role as Two Face in a future sequel, but once Joel Schumacher took over as director he had Billy Dee Williams' contract paid off so that he could cast Jones. When I first heard this I was a little bummed, but now I feel like Williams lucked out. 

 

When it comes to casting I think Jim Carrey was a great choice for The Riddler. He was THE funny man at the time with the success of Ace Venture: Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, and The Cable Guy. He was definitely a good “get” for this one. As far as Chris O'Donnell, I have no opinion. What happened to that guy?

I feel like Schumacher was trying to recreate the 1960s Batman series. Was he even aware that Batman was based on a comic book? I have a feeling like Burton was more inspired by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns version of a much darker Batman. Schumacher on the other hand used a lot of those crooked camera angles that were popular in the 60s Batman. Ok, so it's obvious what Schumacher was trying to do here, but keep in mind that this isn't his series really. He was taking over the series. Sure, every director should put there own touch on something, but again, the series should have just been rebooted.

You know what's really wrong with this movie? Batman had nipples. Seriously, he had nipples! What was that meeting like? “Joel, we're very pleased with what you are doing with our Batman franchise,. We don't really care about a story, but we need something to sell to the kids. Can we put nipples on Batman's suit? Kids love nipples!”

Also, what the fuck is up with all the neon? Did Gotham suddenly spend all of the city's income on neon lights? Even the Batmobile was tricked out in neon lights. What was wrong with the Batmobile before? Sure, there have been some pretty ridiculous versions of the Batmobile, but I think that Tim Burton's version was one of the coolest. Why would Batman want to light up his car. He should be more concerned about sneaking up on his enemies not give them a big bright warning sign.

Is this really a bad movie? No, I wouldn't say so. Hell, I really liked this movie as a kid. I even owned a copy of it on VHS. There are just some things that I never understood about the differences. I could write a whole other entry about the movie that followed, Batman and Robin, but it's already gone down in history as one of the worst films ever made.