Dalek gets completely confused following "The Golden Compass" to the "Northern Lights"

I really can't figure out this movie at all. I mean it I really can't. Its not that I don't want to, but because the makers of "The Golden Compass" don't want me too. They've made the film so completely and utterly incomprehensible that there is no point in me trying to figure out whats actually happening unless I read the book. So to that end, I am not going to review this film until after I have finished the book, because there is no real point for me to do otherwise.

Oh and go see Enchanted, its a nice cute little flick, which is more than what I can say for the past few movies to come out of The Mouse House.

I AM BEOWULF AND THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Beowulf reviewed at TZ.

Not one of my better efforts but I'm sure someone will find it interesting.

Oh dear...

The Beav has just posted a comparison of Rene Leloux's La Planet Sauvage and the results are, to say the least, a bit wanting...

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews22/fantastic_planet_dvd_review.htm

This is one of the most interesting if not quite accessible animated films I've ever seen and I hoped that a label like Criterion would look into it, but seeing now that even MOC in the UK couldn't get it right (and they're the next best thing), I just don't know anymore.

STRIKE ACTION!

And the writer's strike is officially on. More information including the end of civilization as we know it to follow in the coming days.

A tribute to an underrated video game or: Dalek's having trouble at the moment.

Wow. Long time, no post, and for a reason too. Your old pal Dalek is currently having trouble finding movies to talk about since THE BIG MOVE (tm) so instead I'm going to talk about an arcade game I've rarely seen anything written about. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... QUARTH!


Quarth is a 1989 space shooter from Konami, one of my all-time favorite publishers. It is also what could be considered the original "puzz-em-up", a weird blend of puzzle game and shmup that a lot of hard core retro gamers usually associate with ADK's Twinkle Star Sprites for the Neo-Geo. But Quarth appears to be the pioneer in this case, and I'm always surprised it doesn't get the respect it deserves.

There is something of a plot to this game. Sometime in the then futuristic 1990s, a rare gravity phenomenon creates what scientists call a "block-hole" (as opposed to black hole =P). This becomes a launching point for thousands of bright green tetrad lookalikes that are smashing into everything possible on a direct course to Earth. As the anonymous pilot of an experimental space ship, you are the last line of defense and the goal of the game is to push the blocks back to the block hole Again... its not much of a plot.

Now the first thing you notice about Quarth is the look of it. Somebody at Konami must have been a real fan of Trip to the Moon filmmaker George Melies since Quarth is a gigantic love letter to him. Your craft is what I can only describe as a flying shell, and if you've seen "A Trip to the Moon" (and if you haven't, its on YouTube probably) you might recognize it as the spacecraft the scientists got to the moon in. Since the game is set in space, you pass various planets in the background and they all have human faces, again as homage to the filmmaker. Its one of the most unique looks I have seen in a game and also one of my favorites.


Play mechanics are the essence of simplicity. The blocks are presented incomplete and to destroy them you must fill the gaps to create various shapes of squares and rectangles. Like Tetris, you can control the rate the blocks travel towards your ship at the bottom and this is important to get bigger combinations of blocks for bonuses. Also it is important that your ship can only fire once per button press and for good reason too, as Quarth is the ultimate anti-button masher. If you make one too many mistakes on a block and make it too big for your own good, you're going to get killed, and fast. As in the case with Space Invaders, if any block makes it to the bottom of the screen you blow up and lose a life, so judicious use of block control and fire power are necessary to beat this game.

One last thing... Most of my snaps are from the Japanese version. When Konami decided to localize this for American arcades they renamed the game Block-Hole, added some new more urgent sounding music, and also changed the main ship to a more conventional space fighter. Oddly they didn't do anything else to the game so the new fighter and music stick out like a sore thumb against all the whimsical Melies-esque backgrounds. For this reason and this reason only I prefer the Japanese version and apparently Konami did too as they decided to allow you to play as both ships when they ported Quarth to the Game Boy in the early 90's.

So that's Quarth, a sadly underated gem from Konami that kinda got lost in the shuffle back when it came out originally. I hope however through this review that I've given it the fair shake it deserves.

On hiatus....

Since I'm busy working my way out of college over the next couple of weeks, updates will be a bit slim. Time for the obligatory *groan* hiatus folks.

Knocked Up: Judd Apatow is 2 for 2.

The short version:

Knocked Up is good, real good.

The longer version:

Judd Apatow has been on a streak lately with his minor miracle of a film The 40-Year Old Virgin becoming a surprise smash two summers ago. So naturally, a sequel was probably required by cash-strapped Universal to save whats left of their dumpstered reputation. Well Knocked Up isn't a sequel, not quite. It has most of not the same cast (even Carrell is in it... as himself) and was even originally conceived to be a sequel according to IMDB. But the result has nothing to do with that film... which is perfectly fine since Knocked Up is still pretty damn good.

Apatow regular Seth Rogan plays Ben Stone, a Jewish Canadian shlub living illegally in LA off of funds he received from a traffic accident settlement. He and his buddies are trying to make a living running a website that lists all the shots of bare breasted women from all those crappy softcore exploitation flicks that you and I pretend we don't watch (IE: Wild Things) while goofing off and smoking lots and lots of marijuana. Life is good for Ben... until he meets Alison.

Alison (Katherine Heigl) is a professional working woman. She's just landed an on-air gig at E! after taking Ryan Seacrest's (who is brilliant in his tiny little cameo) verbal abuse for many a day working back stage. She's got it all, money, fame, fortune, and a bun in the oven left by one Ben Stone. You see Ben had a one night stand with Alison a while back where he didn't use a condom. 4 weeks later, that one night stand has started cellular mitosis. Alison doesn't want to abort the pregnancy and this forces our new and somewhat awkward couple to get to know each other. This is the central plot of the movie.

As you can see its a very simple plot, and its also complicated by a couple subplots that go nowhere like the one about Alison's sister that goes nowhere, but Apatow's writing is so rich with wit and one liners that you forget about the story (unlike a certain flick last year whose name I shall not mention here). Its cute and sweet and I enjoyed it.

HOWEVER...

I didn't find it as funny as I did to Hot Fuzz a few weeks back. Most of the jokes elicited minor chuckles and not the straight guffaws I got out of that flick. Hence a lower position in my current sig on TZ.

**** 1/2 out of *****

"Meditation Field" > You.

For those who care, here's my review of the best movie you'll probably never see:

http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=17246

At World's End... What a Pleasant Surprise

ARRR MATEY! There be SPOILERS ahead!

Its amazing that I find myself liking the final installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise considering I personally despised the previous installment, Dead Man's Chest. Theoretically, 3 should also suffer the same issues as in the case of other franchises that had to split sequel scripts that were just too big in half (namely Matrix) but somehow it manages to come very close to the original despite some problems keeping it from reaching that level.

Now the good news is this film is basically the opposite of Dead Man's Chest. Where that film was all non-stop action sequence with very little plot, this film is all plot and thats great since I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the last flick. We pick up the story more or less where DMC left off. The British East India company led by the capitalist slimeball Cutler Becket (Tom Hollander, who is much better here than in DMC) is using its newly acquired control of Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) to launch an all out war on pirates and raiders alike. You see the Brits are basically blackmailing Jones into doing their bidding (which includes killing that stupid Kraken) by threating to blow his heart up with some well placed cannons. Yes the heart finally has a point folks, thats one of the many improvements in this film.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, our heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) along with the newly reincarnated Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, hooray!) have arrived with a bunch of paid mercenaries to acquire a map to World's End from Pirate Lord Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat). World's End is the key on Earth to Davey Jones's Locker which our hero-of-sorts Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, who doesn't show up until reel 3!) fell into after being munched on by the Kraken. Much of the plot of the first half of the film is concerned therefore with releasing Depp from his watery tomb and its easily the strongest part of the movie for me.

Once that is accomplished we're off to Shipwreck Cove so that the Pirate Lords can argue amongst themselves before setting out to defeat Cutler Becket and Jones once and for all. In between all of this, there are various double and triple crosses, escapes and close shaves, but thankfully none of them last long enough to feel really butt numbing as the ones in the last one did. However there are still problems, many of which are holdovers from Dead Man's Chest.

For one there's the Kalypso arc where we finally find out the true identity of Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) from the last flick and her connection to Davey Jones. This starts out pretty good with a lot of pathos from Harris and a great scene where we finally see Nighy instead of that CGi thing but starts to feel kinda pointless by film's end. Humorously, I think the writers realized this while doing the film and added an extra line in about how that didn't serve any point. To confuse this further, there is a very strange sequence between Elizabeth and Sao Feng that makes you think Elizabeth is the real Kalypso. Only after watching the film through do you realize he's being metaphorical. The other problem I have is with Norrington (Jack Davenport) who is given the short shrift here after basically being the best actor in the last movie. His arc is way too short and its resolution is far too abrupt as if Elliot and Rossio just no idea what to do with him. You could also say the same about Governor Swann but his death was much better handled and shows what a monster Becket really is.

The last problem is again with the editing. This movie could have had a whole half hour cut out of it and that probably would have made it better than POTC1, which is still a bit of a minor masterpiece. Happily the editing problems don't actually occur until the film's third and final act whereas they were all over the place in DMC ("Yeah, ok guys, the water wheel looks nice but do we have to spend FIVE FUCKING MINUTES on it?").

Once last point to make before I wrap this up. This movie is funny! Almost as funny as Black Pearl, and much quicker than the forced humor of DMC. I think its the presence of Geoffrey Rush that helps the most since he has such great chemistry with Johnny Depp. Oh and the appearance of Kieth Richards as Daddy Sparrow is well worth the 6 bucks I payed to get in.

So overall At World's End is not a perfect film, but it is a much more satisfying experience than that piece of shit Dead Man's Chest. That movie left me leaving the theater angry, disappointed, and frustrated. This one left me with a smile on my face. Yo-ho, Yo-ho, a pirate's life for me.

VERDICT: *** 1/2 out of *****

Going to see POTC 3 in 3 hours...

Keeping those hopes down in the gutter folks.

EDIT: Shock of Shocks! Its not bad! Expect a full review sometime this weekend.

An introduction of sorts...

Welcome to the very first ever installment of my second (and hopefully much more successful) attempt at a blog chronicling my journey through this... this vast wasteland that is modern day cinema. As I type this I am currently engaged in finally departing from college with my BA in Liberal Studies and a minor (because the fuckers won't offer a major until NEXT year >_<) in film criticism, so I've seen my share of movies both old and new, good and bad. Does that make me a good critic? FUCK NO! Does that mean I'm going to be pissed off at a lot of movies everyone else seems to like because I've seen all those shitty cliches before? FUCK YEAH! Thats what this blog is going to be about, foul mouthed Dalek going all crazy on movies, both good and bad. But first some ground rules....

1. I will try to limit this blog to only involve movies I see in 35mm or (if I get reeeeallly lucky) 70mm. This is, as VFX guru Richard Endlund once said, how god intended movies to be seen (despite how those assholes at REG keep gouging the prices). If there is a big movie I missed, and happen to catch it on dvd, I'll make an exception.

2. I do NOT take requests. The only movies I will comment on are the ones I choose to see. So I ain't going to a shittacular like Transformers next month because the public commands it.

3. My opinions are my own. They are only an acceptable representation of these films from my perspective.

4. If there is a reason why I'm so cranky about this is because I've been burned too many times. Seriously my first attempt at one of these was Lost in Space back in 1998 and I liked it! WHAT WAS I THINKING!!!!!?!

Refreshments are available in the lobby, please silence your cell phones, enjoy the show!