Now I’m not talking about people portraying political figures in movies and television shows. I’m saying actual politicians portraying themselves and other. This issue was brought to light after I heard a recent story about Bill Clinton guest starring as himself in The Hangover 2.

I thought this was interesting because Clinton has been surrounded by controversy since his affair. Clinton will be number two in the list of controversial guest stars for the Hangover movies after Mike Tyson in the first movie. A few years back Stephen Harper made an appearance on the hit T.V. show Corner Gas. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but now I realize why every one was surprised. On one hand it was hilarious due to the fact he parodied himself as himself. On the other hand him parodying himself he drove home the joke of Canada being a parody of the U.S. I in no way believe this but it makes us look bad in the eyes of the outside world.

Politicians in movies are always a controversial topic and I don’t think it would fly unless it was for a self-aware comedy.

Halloween Special

In the spirit of the holiday I decided to review a zombie movie. Also in the spirit of The Simpsons I’m doing it a week late. Although this isn’t your usual horror movie like most zombie movies filled with gore and cheap scares. 28 Days Later understands that zombies make excellent movies but it is hard to build entire movies around them. This is a good zombie movie because the plot isn’t based around them. The zombies are just set pieces that could easily be replaced with a story line along the lines what would happen if everyone on earth disappeared sans maybe 20 people.

In fact, in the third act the movie becomes less about zombies and more about the protagonist, Jim, saving his new girlfriend from a group of non-infected soldiers that plan on raping her. Needless to say he succeeds in saving her using a clever plan that involves using the undead to his advantage.

All being said this isn’t a perfect film, there are a few plot holes like how a bike messenger was able to take down around 15 trained soldiers guerilla style. What this movie does do well it does very well. The entire movie does an excellent job of making the viewer feel alone, the entire movie feels empty. Using many shots of the empty streets of England, which I imagine was hard to do seeing as the place is known for being very busy.

I’m going to end saying going to say that I shouldn’t be surprised this movie is so good. With director Danny Boyle the man behind Slum Dog Millionaire, the academy award winning love story, and the upcoming 127 Hours the true story of a man stuck with his arm under a boulder for 5 days. 

A Review: Devil

Recently a group of classmates and I went to the movies and made the unfortunate choice of seeing Devil. Before I get into this review I am going to tell you now I’m going to spoil the ending for you if you haven’t seen it. The movie starts out with five very untrustworthy people entering an elevator together. And slowly but surely they start dying off in gruesome ways. This is, as we later find out, because each one of them has done some evil deed and their life and gotten away with it so the devil has come to collect his debt.

            The ending is incredibly predictable, and the acting is sub par. With an entirely C through B list cast what more can you expect. There is one part in this movie that I have to share with you because it literally made me laugh out loud. One of the security guards watching the events unfold in the elevator via camera proves to the other security guard and police officers the existence of the devil and his presence there that day by dropping a piece of toast. I kid you not, he claims bad things happen when the devil is near so to drive this point home he drops the toast and it lands butter side down. While I agree with him that dropping my toast butter side down is a terrible thing I highly doubt it is the malevolence of the devil that makes it happen.

            All in all this is just another movie that made the poor decision of plastering M. Night Shyamalans name all over it. Even though all he did was write the movie he did not contribute to the terrible decisions made by the actors or director. So to every one who boo d when his name came up during the trailers when I went to see The Expendables, I say you cant judge a book by its cover this is a bad movie all on its own it did not need M. Night Shyamalans help.

Blue Mountain State

I feel like going off topic again this week and discussing my new favourite show Blue Mountain State. BMS is comedy show following three-college freshman as they make their way through college life. Now it is a very good thing that I didn’t start watching this show before I started college because if I watched this in high school I would have opted to go to school in the US on a football scholarship. This doesn’t sound like a bad thing but I probably wouldn’t have gone to class and would have been drunk all the time, which would make me have to drop out and work at Wild Wing for the rest of my life. But I digress, I don’t have to do any of those things because I have this show for that, BMS is an excellent show because it shows off the ridicules over the top shenanigans that college kids get into. The show does everything well, the comedy is funny, the girls are hot and the characters are well developed. The main characters, Alex, Sammy and Shillo are relatable to anyone who has been to college. Alex the one who is cool without trying to be, Sammy the one always out to get laid and Shillo the one out to do good in school but party on the weekend. The show even goes all the way with a football show by taking every football player stereo type and putting them all into one character, Thad Castle. He is a dumb, large, sexually frustrated ladies man. It may sound like this show has too much going on to seem balanced but it all seems to flow together. That is not to say the show isn’t without its flaws, the plot holes are about a mile long, like how can these guys spend every hour of every day being drunk or high or both and still win games and pass classes.        

Motion Control

I would like to take a step back today and talk about video games, specifically motion control. You see back in 2006 Nintendo, having previously been focusing on handheld gaming, released the Nintendo Wii a gaming console set to revolutionize the industry. It sounded excellent on paper a game console that would track your movements instead of using a controller. Unfortunately just looking good on paper and actually being good are two different things. The console turned out to have a terrible game library and the graphics were around that of a Childs art project. Worst of all it didn’t do a good job of tracking players movement, it just seemed to get the idea of what the player was trying to do and tried to fill in the rest for itself. It is now almost four years later and the Wii is finally doing what it was trying to do in the first place with the Wii Motion Plus an attachment for the “Wii-mote” that of course you have to pay 35 dollars for, just to make the thing do what you want it to in the first place. Although did all these bugs in the console make people stop buying the system? Nope. The Wii made more than any gaming system ever almost 70 millions dollars as of March 31, 2010. Although Sony and Microsoft didn’t just sit back and take this, after realizing that the Wii practically prints money for Nintendo they decided to dip their toes in the motion control market. Early signs are not good; The Playstation Move is an embarrassingly blatant rip off of the Wii even the controllers look the EXACT same. Kinect, XBOXs turn at motion control, threw the whole controller deal out the window and uses a camera that tracks your movements instead. Now all of these ideas are good but there are two things that game developers are forgetting, if people wanted to get up and move around they will not want to do it playing a video game and secondly Motion control will never be fully immersive until the player gets more feedback than something on a sreen.    

Character Development

Character development is a key part of any movie. A lot of filmmakers, cough cough *Michael Bay*, think that character development can be excused in action heavy movies. This is a ridicules notion because action scenes are more enjoyable and immersive when you have developed a relationship with the characters in them. A perfect example of this the 2009 blockbuster and Oscar nominee District 9, practically the first half of the movie is used to develop the main character which made the second half of the movie all the more enjoyable when the action scenes make there appearance. As I blatantly referred to before Michael Bay the director of the incredibly successful Transformers movies tries to excuse character development for explosions and goes one step further in the second installment by excusing any type of story in general for more explosions. Which is a shame because this seems to be a waste of Shia LeBeoufs talent. To date, I still believe Shia LeBeoufs best work was Disturbia an incredibly immersive thriller in which a young man on house arrest believes his neighbour is a serial killer. Okay back to character development, In Predators, the remake, character development is almost none existent. In fact the movie starts with the main characters literally falling out of the sky. The movie sits them down in front of you and says, “These are heartless killing machines, that’s all you need to know.” That is exactly what they stay throughout the movie, heartless killing machines. The one character in which anyone can relate to turns out to be the worst of the bunch in the third act. This isn’t to say these movies are bad, they are gore filled mindless action movies and they pull it off perfectly. But if you want a movie with a little depth to the story I suggest something along the lines of Shutter Island, Inception, District 9 or a personal favourite Fight Club.          

Remakes

People have many different views on remakes of movies. A lot of people just think of them as a money grab for uncreative moviemakers. I do not agree at all, I think they are excellent was to appeal to the publics nostalgia. They can also be used as upgrades from the original, seeing as the cameras of yester-year make movies look like they are being viewed through a used coffee filter.  Few remakes pay respects to the classics if done correctly. An excellent example of this is Oceans 11, which used the biggest stars of its time, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, and told the story of old army buddies getting together to pull off a heist in Las Vegas. The remake is the same general story of buddies getting together to rob casinos in Las Vegas. They also used the biggest stars of our time, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, and the story flowed perfectly together. I personally saw the remake before the original and I can honestly say they are equally good. Critics, on the other hand, have a different opinion the website Rotten Tomatoes gave the original Oceans 11 48 percent. The remake got 81 percent. In my opinion, this differentiation in scores is unbelievable. The movies are almost exactly the same only making minor changes to incorporate the technology of the day? The character development also gets changes. While both movies have 11 main characters, the remake only develops the story of three people that keeps the story easier to understand. I will be talking more about character development in next week’s blog. To wrap this up, if done correctly remakes can be an excellent trip down nostalgia lane.