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5/30/05 - Chain Reaction: (Jerry Goldsmith) --Expanded
Review-- "In an attempt to continue the success of the films inspired by the Academy
Award-nominated The Fugitive in 1993, Fox's Chain Reaction offers another variation on
the good-guy running from a good-natured cop routine. This time, the two primary fugitives are
scientists on a university experiment that successfully yields clean and abundant energy by
extracting hydrogen from water. When assassins kill the other scientists and set off an
absolutely enormous explosion to destroy their laboratory, the two heroes are set up and
accused of murder. Their boss escaped the blast, but as Morgan Freeman can be in a number of
circumstances, you can't be sure if he's on their side or not. The film takes an
interesting concept and group of characters and allows it all to degenerate into a standard
chase story. The actors really aren't believable in their roles, the chases have been largely
done before..." *** Read the entire
review.
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5/26/05 - Spamalot: (John Du Prez/Eric Idle) --Capsule
Review-- It's not often that a Broadway production gets a blurb at
Filmtacks, but given Spamalot's outstanding 14 Tony nominations and
its origins in the 1975 cult classic film, Monty Python and the Holy
Grail, the Python enthusiasts among score collectors can't miss this one.
The music by John Du Prez (best known for his score for A Fish Called
Wanda) and Eric Idle (whose lyrics are true Pythonism at their best) are
characteristically silly, distracted, and not very complex in structure.
While the story of the film is the premise of the play, characters and events
have been re-arranged and the songs mostly poke fun at the structure of
Broadway productions and their big numbers; some knowledge of musicals will
help you get most of the jokes. There may not be some of the signature lines
("Ni! Ni! Ni!" or "Come back and fight like a man!"), but there are just
enough shrubberies, monks slapping themselves with their prayer-boards while
chanting, and other various off-kilter British humor to satisfy hardcore
Python fanatics. Any song with the lyrics "Always look on the bright side of
death" (stolen from Life of Brian) deserves a spin, and hearing a John
Denver song skewed to gospel styles is among many funny adaptations of tune.
A slightly larger instrumental ensemble is recorded for the album, which
features impressive production information and complete lyrics. Politically
correct chumps beware... Python's not dead yet! Listen to the album and
purchase it at
Amazon.com. ****
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5/22/05 - Madagascar: (Hans Zimmer and co.) --All New
Review-- "From the writer and director of Antz and The Ren &
Stimpy Show comes Madagascar, the latest production from the
PDI/DreamWorks studio that has most recently brought the two extremely
popular Shrek films to the big screen. The short animated film has all
the glitz and visual attraction for kids, and while the film's premise is
rich with promise, the execution of it seems to have gone awry in critics'
views. A giraffe, lion, hippo, and zebra live the pampered life in New York
City's Central Zoo, and mostly featuring mostly famous voices, their
personalities carry them on a journey that involves an escape from the zoo
and consequent travel back to the wild. Their transport lost at sea off the
large East-African island nation of Madagascar, the animals have to cope with
real life on the island. Somewhere at this point, the story loses all
cohesion and this plot summary ends. As a purely slapstick style comedy,
Madagascar relies heavily on its soundtrack to accentuate its sense of
humor...." * Read the entire
review.
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5/18/05 - Dust to Glory: (Nathan Furst) --All New
Review-- "While most people probably haven't heard of the Baja 1000 event (in
Baja California, Mexico), it's a fully sponsored auto race that has the distinction
of being the world's longest non-stop point-to-point race. All sorts of vehicles
inhabit the same course, from race cars worth millions of dollars to motorcyles and
Volkswagen Beetles. The actual course changes from year to year, and features
secret checkpoints that make it risky --although still legal-- to take shortcuts.
From dirt roads to actual Mexican highways (where racers not only have to weave
around regular civilian traffic, but can get pulled over by the cops for speeding),
the race takes drivers on a perilous journey that has different records for each
class of vehicle. The speedy ones can make it in 16 hours, and the slowpokes have
to do it in 32 hours to even qualify as a winner. Most vehicles don't even make it
to the finish line, with injuries and even deaths (to drivers and spectators who
stand along the edge of the road to watch) not uncommon...." **** Read the entire
review.
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5/15/05 - Valiant: (George Fenton) --All New Review-- "A
digitally animated British film from Vanguard Studios, Valiant was
co-produced by the producer of Shrek and is aimed at British audiences
with its all-British cast and stubborn English humor. It's the United
Kingdom's attempt to capture the same enthusiasm (and box office) as Aardman
Animation's Chicken Run of several years ago, and there's just enough
humor aimed at Americans in Valiant to make the film viable for an
international audience as well. It's a hard stretch to say that the film is
very loosely based on real events given that the story involves a patriotic
pigeon who decides to go to war for King and country in the Royal Homing
Pigeon Service during World War II. But the British military actually gave
medals for bravery to carrier pigeons at the time, so one could conceivably
say that the story is partly based on true events. All joking aside, the
film's animation is adequate, and the voices of everyone from Ewan McGregor
to John Cleese bless the variety of pigeons and other birds on screen..."
*** Read the entire
review.
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5/11/05 - Event Horizon: (Michael Kamen) --All New
Review-- "One of the scarier, somewhat-trashy horror/sci-fi flicks of the
late 1990's, Event Horizon is a loose adaptation of William Castle's
1960 film Thirteen Ghosts (which was badly remade in 2001). The
concept of inheriting a house with several brutal ghosts and a machine meant
to open the gates of Hell is translated into the script for Event
Horizon, in which a starship of that name is built to fold space (and, as
in Dune, travel great distances instantly) but instead opens the gates
to Hell and kills its own crew. When a rescue ship, "Lewis and Clark," goes
to rescue the adrift "Event Horizon," they are attacked by both the ghosts of
the previous crew and the ship itself, which is slowly pulling itself back
through the gates of Hell now that it has new human souls on board. Thus, the
storyline is nothing new, although the execution of the film is beautifully
rendered, with the ring-spinning mechanism at the heart of the ship offering
extremely disturbing visuals..." * Read the entire
review.
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5/8/05 - Flight of the Intruder: (Basil Poledouris) --All
New Review-- "Director John Milius' 1991 adaptation of the popular
Stephen Coonts novel came under much criticism at the time of its release.
Viewers who had read the novel sharply criticized the adaptation, claiming
that much of the intrigue revolving around the intelligent, politically
complex portion of the plot was replaced with black and white wartime
situations that make for good, dumbed down American cinema. For the story of
A-6 fighter pilots during Vietnam of the early 1970's, the characters, while
maintaining flight names such as Cowboy, Razor, Rabbit, or Tiger, didn't
closely resemble their counterparts from the book as well, further irritating
Coonts readers. Adaptations of technothriller war novels to the big screen
was a hot idea in the early 1990's, with The Hunt for Red October
opening the box office floodgates to potential mega-profit imitations.
Composer Basil Poledouris had by chance been the composer of the popular
Hunt for Red October..." ** Read the entire
review.
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5/4/05 - Battlefield Earth: (Elia Cmiral) --All New
Review-- "If cinematic science-fiction failures are to be ranked on a
list, the 2000 epic turkey Battlefield Earth would exist someplace
high on that list. A significant level of talent was employed to bring L. Ron
Hubbard's best-selling novel to the big screen, and it's hard to imagine just
how so many people managed to produce such a hideous film. A poor plot, dumb
dialogue, cheesy effects, et al are all so pronounced in the film that even
fans of bad B-realm sci-fi flicks laughed at this one. The plot is a usual
"mankind in turmoil" kind of affair from Hubbard: a race of strangely
dressed, bad mannered alien humanoids called Psychlos conquer Earth sometime
in our future and do some pretty nasty things, including (but not limited to)
the destruction of fast food restaurants, the elimination of the designated
hitter rule, and, of course, the mass enslavement of humankind. Not only do
they manage to keep humans like this for a thousand years, but they
accomplish it while dressed like someone you'd see..." ** Read the
entire review.
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