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A long
time ago, Origin Software had a talented programmer called Chris
Roberts who designed the first Space Combat similator for the
PC. The game was revolutionary for that time,
and pushed the limits for hardware requirements. Traditionally, Origin
pumped out a couple of other sequels, but none of them came close to
that original feeling of that first Space Combat shooter. And that
talented programmer? He went on starting his own company Digital Anvil,
which at the end was sold to Microsoft.

Wing Commander (the
movie) is directed by that same programmer. And boys does it hurt.
Incredibly. The effects are neat but not extremely
impressive (they come from Digital Anvil), but the story is one
big cliche. There are so many obnoxious scenes that I wasn’t sure
if I had to laugh or cry. Pings in space? Ridiculous.

However I do recommend watching the movie: there is a huge
difference between producing a video game and a movie. Wing Commander
(the movie) sets a neat example of things gone wrong. Terrible.

Brian de Palma’s ‘Mission to Mars‘
is one of those rare movies that didn’t make it quite in the cinema,
despite the reviews. The movie tells the tale of a rescue mission to
Mars. We have seen dozen of those ‘Mars movies’, but De Palma’s movie
strikes a good balance between reality and well, science fiction:
‘Mission to Mars’ had different NASA advisors help making the movie.
According De Palma, the technology as shown in the movie are actually
things that are in NASA’s ‘Mission to Mars’ plans. However there are
certain things that actually make it a science fiction movie: Buzz
Aldrin mentioned that the movie will be a big hit for UFO fans and the ‘face of Mars’ followers.

Nonetheless, the movie has some striking similarities with Kubrick’s
‘2001’: pretty pictures, scenery and dazzling (like in
amazing) computer graphics. Not to mention a fairly realistic
‘zero gravity’ approach. Watch the blood and pop in this movie behave under those ‘no gravity’ circumstances. Pretty neat.

The story is a ‘bummer’: when a major actor is killed way
before the movie ends, it normally says a lot about the movie. In this
movie, Tim Robbins, an actor I actually like, gets killed within
15 minutes (woops). The rest is history: Watch the movie’s special
effects (stunning, really) and forget about the story line and the
rest: interesting, but thank Einstein, it’s science fiction, you know.

ABC had the ‘traditional’ Veteran’s Day movie and again it was ‘Saving Private Ryan‘.
Directed by Spielberg, the movie sports Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and a
bunch of others. A fictional movie about a bunch of Rangers who’s
mission is to bring a paratrooper home, just because 3 of his brothers
died in earlier battles. Like a green card so to say. And it all plays
around D-Day 1944.

Which already shows how ‘enthusiastic’ I am about this movie. Not
so. There are a couple of major annoyances in the storyline: first of
all Spielberg fools us thinking that ‘the veteran’ at the start of the
movie must have been the personage as played by Tom Hanks (Capt.
Miller). Which isn’t the case and since it isn’t, nobody can explain me
how a paratrooper dropped in the midst of France can have flashbacks of
the actual landing at Omaha Beach. And the ‘green card story’
makes it all a make up story in the style of Hollywood. We see it in
the rest of the movie, where everything is turned into a ‘bad vs. evil’
contest. And tearjerker-scenes with swash-mooshy orchestra
strings predictably tuning in. Can it get worser than that?

If you want to see this movie, watch for the first 15 minutes
(Omaha Beach) and then close your eyes the rest of the movie. Which is
a shame. If you need to watch a better war movie (if they exist), run
to your video rental and take a look at ‘A Thin Red Line’.

We decided to catch a movie, and this night it was The Ring. The movie apparantly a remake of a Japanese movie, Ringu. And apparantly that movie also scared a lot of people.

Before I end up in a rant about movies like these, remakes or not,
there’s one kind of movie I can’t appreciate. You guessed it: I don’t
like horror movies. The generic American horror movie literally dumps
the viewer in a ‘pool of blood’ and ‘anger’. And in most of those
movies, it’s always women who die a bloody dead. Somewhere’s in
the late 80s, mid 90s, things apparantly changed, when directors
started to concentrate on different photographic effects to scare the
shit out of people. Call it the David Lynch or Twin Peaks
factor. Watching the movie ‘The Ring’ convinced me that
horror-movie directors have learned things from Twin Peaks.

Great photography in The Ring, that’s for sure. The video (as played
in the movie) reminds of great silent and absurd (surrealistic) movies.
And although absurd, yes, the images in that video get to people, one
way or another. The ladder that leads to something (‘Heaven is a barn,
and hell is a well’), the mirror and the man watching out of the
window. It could have been a Lynch movie.

There are flaws. Some clues seem to be missing (how and who?).
The effects (somewhere at the end) are neat, but not really impressing
(‘Let me guess, she steps out of the video’). And it is
too easy to swallow that some people don’t die ‘because of the
fact that they made a whatever of the movie’. And all those clues
to the number seven: we’ve seen that before too, didn’t we?

But on the overall, a good (and surprising) movie. And better than
‘Signs’, for sure. Don’t watch the movie on your own. And count. Seven
it is, OK?

I noticed this movie last night when checking the TV timetables. Johnny Depp it said. And a bit of Sci-Fi and horror.

Anyways, The Astronaut’s Wife is
a mix of a horror and sci-fi. The story is intriguing: two
astronauts lose contact for 2 minutes, are rescued and sent to earth.
The wifes of them notice strange things. Guess what: they get pregnant.
One commits suicide. A lot of relatives get killed. A fired scientist too (guess why?). Johnny gets killed. Wife survives and delivers her babies (of course). Whoa. Babies? Yes: twins. You know, it can’t get more evil than that.
I mean: aliens and twins are pretty interchangable, you know what I
mean? And then the movie ends. We can only hope there won’t be a
‘The Astronaut’s Wife part II’.

Director Ravich plays a lot with the colours of the scenes, and only
those snapshots of the environment are interesting: lots of blue
coloured shots, from NASA rooms to appartments. Charlize Theron (you
know the one that played the evil half-sister in ‘The Devil’s Advocate)
does a fair job: apparantly it was her first leading character role.
Surprise appearance by Donna Murphy (StarTrek Insurrection), who
alas kills herself (I wonder why a good actress [BroadWay] like
her doesn’t try to get better roles? She appears to be a wonderful
singer). And Johnny Depp? He does better in other movies.

If you want to get scared for a half an hour and enjoy watching
arty-blue-decors, go ahead. If you’re a fan of mrs. Murphy, cut out the
first 20 minutes (or was that less?) and burn the rest. In other
cases, rent Rosemary’s Baby. I’ve heard that Ravich was heavily
inspired by that one.

I had a bunch of movies on the ‘Screen of desire’ list to check on to, but I’ll start out with Jackie Brown.

If I’m not wrong, the second movie of Quentin Tarantino, the
self-taught director of the hit Pulp Fiction (which also happens to
show tonight, but I’ll skip that one). However, this movie didn’t get
as much attention as Pulp: basically because fans expected a kind of a
same movie. Also Jackie Brown seems to be the kind of typical
Tarantino tricks in the ‘We let old stars burn again’-category, in
this case it’s Pam Grier
(from Foxy Brown to Jackie Brown, I hear you). The movie focusses
around a stewardess who tricks law enforcement (Michael Keaton) and
‘bad-ass’ gangsters (Samuel Jackson, De Niro and Bridget Fonda). And
yes, apparantly Tarantino wanted to focus on the characters and that’s
why most fans ended up disappointed.

However, there are some flashes of Tarantino-style editing: the
shots around Bloomington’s are surprising (but not original). Also Pam
Grier probably displays her best acting skills in this
movie: I suspect Tarantino to have a secret crush on her.

To close off this rant: Pam looked pretty much different at the end. Like way older than in the rest of the movie. But maybe I see ghosts. And mind the cursing and the weird shot of De Niro doing something you wouldn’t expect him to do. Luckily he gets shot.

The movie A Thin Red Line, directed by Terrence Malick and based on the autobiographical novel of James Jones
(1962), tells the tale of the Charlie Company involved in the battle
around Guadalcanal. Published around the time of Spielberg’s ‘Saving
Private Ryan’, the movie was grosly underrated and most of time seen as
a ‘rip off’ of ‘Saving Private Ryan’. However, when the movie starts,
the difference in approach is right there: the movie ‘A thin red line’
has no pretentions. It’s confusing, particularly because of the
monologues, flashes of the past and even random
images of the flora and fauna and beloved.

Where Spielberg bombs us directly with the violences of war, Malick
slowly builds up the tension: the marines we follow are slowly pulled
into a circle of violence and cruelty of war. The signs slowly appear:
American marines with cut off legs put on display by the Japanese. And
when one of the sergeants finally raises his arms to start the attack
on a hill, it’s like watching the first 15 minutes of ‘Saving Private
Ryan’.

So where’s the difference? Malick effectively uses movie and sound
to build up this story: Spielberg throws in the first 15 minutes of war
and lets the movie end into a typical Hollywood tearjerker.
The actors in Thin Red Line are like anonymous soldiers (American and
Japanes) with seperate motives and actions. Without the heroic bombast
of ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Because at the end, surviving a war is not
about doing heroic things but literally about trying to
save your own life. With some luck the life of the soldier next to you.

 That message in this movie is obviously more clear than in
‘Saving Private Ryan’.

No wonder why this movie won’t show up in your super-duper
Dolby Surround cinema theatre. Most likely it will show up in your
local filmhouse. If you ever had to make a choice between ‘Saving
Private Ryan’ and ‘A Thin Red Line’, go for the latter. You don’t
need to see a multimillion dollar movie to learn about the horrors of
war.

I‘ve
watched several Schwarzenegger movies and there’s something that came
up my mind the other day: Schwarzenegger always has the best
‘one-liners’. I’m wondering, if script-writers (directors?) especially
for him change the script. I’ve never seen him saying too much. Or
saying something highly erudite.

But back to the movie: True Lies
has the world’s favourite bodybuilder playing a spie, besides trying to
be a good husband for not-all-time-boys-favourite Jamie Lee Curtis. No:
I’m not a fan of Curtis nor mr. Bodybuilder but  the
movie has some interesting turns, effects and stunts. However, the
storyline really drags. Three-quarter of the movie we see an
obsessed Austrian trying to find out if his wife has estranged him. But
of course she didn’t (I mean, this is Hollywood, remember?) and that’s
what Schwarzie and Curtie want us to know. So why bother
watching? Because of the Sea Harrier stunts and effects at the
end. And fans of mr. Muscle-Bundle will enjoy hearing Arnold
saying his traditional one-liner before he finishes off the evil-doer.

If you need to see this film, take a nap for 1 hour and then wait
for that Sea Harrier scene. In any other case, make sure that you’re
not going to see True Lies 2. Which apparantly is scheduled for 2003.

Also
known under the name of ‘Frequently Asked Questions about my Nokia
Communicator’. The year that this movie was released the Nokia
cellphone annex portable computer was heavily advertised. With splashy
scenes of the movie.

Val Kilmer plays the role of Simon Templar, also known as ‘The Saint’.
Oldies recognize the name: yes, the movie is based on the tv-series
starring Roger Moore. During one of his missions, our international
culprit and brat falls in love with Elisabeth Shue.

Valmer (underachiever number one) fails to bring any colour to his
action, but then the story drags anyways. He can’t help it, can he?

Karate-kid Shue, however, surprised me in an interesting role: a
nerdy doctor in physical science chasing the dreams of cold fission.
It’s definitely no wonder why so many people like her, and I think
she’s far more intelligent than the ‘average’ role she normally plays
in other ‘teeny-bop-no-brainer-movies’. On her role in ‘Cocktail’:

If I’d known that it was just going to be about these guys throwing drinks around then I might have had some second thoughts…

Apparantly she also plays a Bloom in Leopold Bloom (2003) (a movie inspired by James Joyce’s anti-hero).

But to get back to the topic: if you need to know how your Nokia
works (because you threw out that manual), the movie is worth
seeing. If you’ve a secret crush on Shue, it’s a good movie too. And
that’s about it.

Das Boot was
shown at the History Channel, last night. It’s Sub-week at that channel
and I think they have a Sub-week every year. Thus showing every known
submarine movie over and again.

However, Das Boot (the Director’s Cut, originally a German
mini-series) tells the story of a crew of a German U-class submarine.
As Ann Medina already stated before the movie started, it’s
definitely the ‘ultimate’ of submarine movies. The characters are
well-put, the effects were amazing (for a German production) and the
storyline is actually interesting, comparable with ‘real submarine
life’. There are some small flaws in the script: it is predictable on
several occasions. The movie runs 216 minutes, which is a rather ‘long
seat’.

Overall, an excellent movie for people who aren’t afraid of
‘subtitles’. Like any movie that has been translated and subtitled, it
takes out some of the suspension, the ‘sharpness’ and
bluntness you normally find in the German language.