DC seems to have smartened up with not only their direction in film but their execution. When I heard this year's direct-to-dvd was "Wonder Woman", I was less than excited. I gave "Superman: Doomsday" a stellar review last year and was expecting a lame follow-up. Was it because she's a woman? Probably. I'm a jerk. What of it.
I'm a little taken aback at how much "Wonder Woman" kicked ass. There are few movies with such a short run time (an hour and thirteen mins) that mix action, comedy and backstory so damn well. Nathan Fillion (Mal from "Firefly" or more recently known as "The Hammer", which is his penis by the way) made me laugh out loud. There is a running 'crap' joke, believe it or not, that I found just hilarious. It's first use by Queen Hippolyta was awesome since it was so blunt. It's final use and punchline near the end should have been more of a kicker but only due to Keri Russel's light delivery, a tiny bit more emphasis on the word 'crap' probably would have shot milk out my nose. But enough about crap because this movie wasn't! (zing!)
Any time I hear "origin story" I think 'yawn' but apparently if you throw a shitload of hot "supermodels in battle armor" shoving swords through people's stomachs and cracking their opponents necks, it actually turns out pretty damn good. The original story of how Diana (Wonder Woman) is sent from Themyscira to "Man's World" (in this case, eastern USA) is pretty much intact. During her origin, that comic readers like myself are so familiar with, some awesome backstory is layed out that makes the rest of movie completely engaging. Other Amazonian ladies, who I'm only lightly familiar with, are given not just interesting character but you see relationships develop that have a big payoff later on. This makes the action much more interesting because on the surface, it's lots of cartoony punching (ie, one punch might throw someone flying a whole city block). The climax jumps back and forth and never misses a beat, I was actually quite into it and everything they writers were throwing at me, I soaked right up.
But if you're still not convinced, Wonder Woman is 6' tall, long legs, black hair, blue eyes and has some huge melons (which even get a close-up...seriously!)
Next year we get an animated "Green Lantern" story, which I anticipate almost as if it were the feature film (which will be coming out late '10 or early '11). With great characters and action, I think they're testing the waters really well, and smartly have the original animated series writers, producers, etc on board that made their animation department a hit in the first place with Batman: The Animated Series. I'm not sure if they're setting up on cohesive universe, though, as the Superman film had Supes being kind of a veteran and now we're getting Wonder Woman and Green Lantern's origin stories but whatever.
I've never been an aficiando of horror movies, my brother made me watch them and if he didn't, I probably would have never seen a single Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street to this day. Steve had (has?) a special hard-on for Freddy but Jason never got left behind. The last one we watched was probably Jason Takes Manhattan, which sucked balls, because he only took Manhattan for pretty much the last 20 minutes of the movie. However, he did knock a guy's head off in one punch and nothin-but-netted it into a garbage can.
Jason wasn't truly scary to me until he came back as a zombie through some wierd mojo and as he got slashed and hacked, he would then be missing certain body chunks in the following films, which was kind of neat. The part that made him scarier after the resurrection was that he was an unstoppable force walking around thinking nothing but "Kill it!".
I, and the world, wrote this series off when Jason's soul was jumping from person to person and the 'zombies' were eating people's hearts to keep him alive...I don't understand it either, but it happened. Due to this write-off, I have yet to see Freddy vs. Jason, which I actually do intend to watch as I hear that, despite being silly, it's not a bad slobber-knocker.
I did see Jason X on the space ship but my brain decided to erase it so I actually don't remember anything aside the fact that I watched it, and that's probably enough.
Anyway, be warned, this 'review' will be chock-full or spoilers but since it's a Friday the 13th film, I don't think you're going for the plot anyway so read on, if you dare...
The 1st twenty minutes of this movie could have been the whole movie and I would have walked out satisfied. A quick re-do of Jason's mother's death sets up the Crysal Lake mythos in a nice minute and a half. Cool, I get it, time for murder-death-kill.
A group of teens are walking into the woods, talking to eachother as if their dialogue were being read as they spoke (classic F13? Yes). Seems they're on the hunt for some Crystal Lake pot, which has a very special curator (though it will be to some debate to horror-nerds whether this is actually Jason's pot or just happens to grow nearby as it's never officially established). In any case, they get too close and piss Jason off. He checks out the scene and thinks of some clever ways to kill them off. Oh, and there's boobies. After much killing and a few boobies, we get the title screen, now the movie begins!
One of the pot girls looks a lot like Jason's mommy, who I guess he has a hard-on for and keeps her as a souvenir. Good thing she's not dead because her brother is riding through town for the billionth time in the last month looking for her. Despite the fact that he's been there looking for her before, so much that the sherriff knows him by name, he later mentions he has yet to try looking on the opposite side of the lake. Not exactly detective material. He ends up meeting up with a truck full of douchebags and their hot girlfriends which makes the viewer think "Hey movie, kill those douchebags and show me those titties", to which the movie responds, "Okeedokee".
Speaking of douchebags, when Graham and I saw the film, there was some douchebags in our row talking through the whole thing. Graham gave them the evil eye. There was another douchebag a few rows up who took a phone call mid-movie! Well, that was the last straw for Graham who turned and yelled "Get off your phone! What the fuck!", to no avail, the man had to get yelled at my our same-row talkers (ironically) before finally...continuing to talk on the phone. But we couldn't hear him any longer so who cares.
Anyhoo, the majority of the movie takes place in two locations, Captain Douchebag's cabin and Jason's Crystal Lake township. You do see each kill coming, but Jason never simply kills someone, there is always some cool weapon used or just something nearby that could impale someone, most often a 3 foot long machete (which, when injected into a females head it embeds itself so tightly, you must show her boobies to get it out again).
Basically, you get what you came for and all this boils down to is, is this a good re-start for the series? I would say, yes it is. It updates things just enough. There are certainly a few flaws, the only one that really is kind of 'what?' is that Jason finds his famous hockey mask only coincidentally just after his original mask of a bag gets torn up. Kind of a throwaway for something so important to his image. Graham (who I saw the film with) also pointed out some poor foreshadowing, there is a buzzsaw in the shed that is shown not once but twice, making you go "ooh, what's gonna happen"...and it never gets used! Rip! Jason is also a full-on human again...or is he? There is a hinting line in the film that after Jason drowned and his mother went on a rampage...Jason came back. Hinting that if he died once, he can come back from death again! Good news, considering the best thing about these films is how the heroes always find a way to kill Jason at the end. This movie proves that the old formula works and you don't need to put Jason on a spaceship just because we've seen him kill at a camp before.
Nerd Improv (aka Nerdprov) started last week and I get to play again tonight! Night #1 was fun times, it was basically the 1st half was NerdProv and the 2nd half was the 'veterans' doing whatever improv they do. So the actual Nerd part was about half an hour only but it was fun.
Between games was trivia, including easy, medium and hard questions (Eric Fell was able to list 11 actors who have played Dr. Who, gaining us 20 points) and the games were regular improv games with a simple twist. We played interrogation, for example, and I had to guess the weapon was Gandalph's staff and I did it in Narnia. Another scene was 'Moving People' where they acted out the movie The Bourne Identity but the trivia (questions ranged from Star Wars, Dr Who, Indiana Jones, etc) was the main part that made it nerdy.
Jen (of T23 fame) and her boyfriend John came out (since they live down the street) and John went up for moving people and Ian gave out prizes and John got Monty Python Season 2 which I thought was a pretty sweet prize! The winning team (mine and Eric's, FYI) also got prizes from Ian Boothby's private comic collection stock which was pretty cool of him. I got Catwoman: Dark End of the Street, Kristin got Sandman Chronicles and Eric got Batman: The Long Halloween, some very nice scores.
Shows are Monday night at 8PM at Chivana Restaurant on West 4th. If you need a landmark, it's 2 blocks west of the The Comic Shop on 4th and Arbutus, which you should all know well.
