24 hour Scifi Marathon at Drexel Gateway

So I attended the 24 hour scifi marathon at the drexel for the first time this year. it was very good. here is a small review package:

The first film was 12 Monkeys, which I own and love. It's just superb. But I had already seen it, so no big deal.

Next we moved into a 1955 movie, King Dinosaur, which was a terrible movie, but was made better by the audience. Basically, a new planet appears in our solar system, and some people go explore it and discover dinosaurs, which are actually iguanas and baby alligators and stuff like that. At the end, they nuke the island the dinosaurs are on, and the best line of the movie is said:
"do you realize what we've done?" "yes... we've brought civilization to Planet Nova."

The Great Yokai War- this is a Takashi Miike movie, and the best way I can describe it as was what I heard from someone else, in that it is like a live action Miyazaki film. It's a pretty good movie and well worth watching.

Puzzlehead- very low key indie film about a man that makes an android in his likeness. if you liked primer or pi, you'll like this one, has that same feel to it. kind of loses steam at the end.

Frankenstein meets the Space Monster- similar to King Dinosaur in it's old B movie-ness and the fact that the audience made it much more watchable... has some hilariously stupid characters in it

fido- this one might give shaun of the dead a run for funniest zombie movie... it's hysterical, best movie of the marathon for me

automatons- .... this is the worst film i have ever seen. that is not an exaggeration either. oh man. let me delve into this further. this movie is filmed in awfully grainy black and white, and the sound mixing is friggin terrible. it has robots in it that are basically like what you would dress up as for halloween, in that they're like cardboard boxes. this movie was made in 2005. Basically, we have two sides at war. angus scrimm from phantasm is in it. i missed the first half hour, and i come in, and angus scrimm is continually giving updates on the war that's happening, and some girl is building robots in her workshop. this continues for thirty minutes, and the guy i was with said it had been like that for the thirty minutes before. then, the girl sends the robots out. Now before, the movie was just bad and boring. now it became another animal entirely. we have a 20 minute robot battle, but replacing the man sized cardboard robots, are miniature gi joe sized robots. and they're firing their little guns, and this is depicted with little circular flashes of lights, and sparklers are being thrown all over. And then, for 90 straight seconds, we see one of the miniatures burn. and then the surviving robots reach the enemy base and kill everyone in the base very slowly and disgustingly for about 10 more minutes. there is a lot of screaming and it's all terrible. then the enemy commander is stabbed through the heart, but she lives long enough to have .... forget it, i hate this movie. i'm not going on anymore, it's the worst movie ever made.

chopping mall- 80s slasher movie using robots, lots of fun... man that automatons review flashback took it out of me, i barely feel like continuing

so i'm going to stop

but i did see star trek: the motion picture and flash gordon which both rocked, and a couple of other 80s movies, lots of good stuff

Grindhouse

Haven't been reviewing much lately, but I wanted to preach of my love for Grindhouse for a few minutes.

Grindhouse is the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature tribute to theaters of the 60s and 70s that used to show B-movie fare. Tarantino did Death Proof, about a serial killer that uses his car as his weapon, and Rodriguez did Planet Terror, a zombie movie. I am familiar with these types of movies... well mainly with Planet Terror-esque movies, I cannot say I have really ever seen anything that Death Proof might be considered similar to.

We'll begin with Machete, the first fake trailer shown, this one done by Rodriguez. I can't say much about this one... I'd go see it. It's basically about Danny Trejo as a guy that uses machetes and awesome other weapons to kill "the bad guys". It was fun, but nothing amazing.

Next, we moved into Planet Terror. I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It's hilarious, the characters are wonderful, it has Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn, Bruce Willis and Sayid from Lost (Naveen Andrews) are both real cool in it. It's just a lot of fun, with great humor and great gore. Another Grindhouse like movie that Rodriguez has done is From Dusk Til Dawn, but I liked this one just a bit more.

After Planet Terror, three more fake trailers played.

The first was by Rob Zombie, and it was Werewolf Women of the SS. I have seen a number of vintage trailers that were JUST like this, and unlike the two that followed, if you didn't know it was fake, you might actually believe it existed. I mean, I've seen a real trailer about Werewolf Biker Gangs. This movie could exist, and it's goofy and fun to see, but still. However it ends with a great cameo from Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu that needs to be seen.

Next, we had Don't, by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. This was the funniest 3 minutes of film I have seen in a very long time. I don't want to get into it, I don't know if explaining it could give it justice. It's unbelievable.

Finally, we had Thanksgiving from Eli Roth (Hostel/Cabin Fever). While nothing could beat Don't, this one came damn close. I greatly dislike Roth for Hostel, and the fact that he's making Hostel 2, but he showed that he knows his horror with this beauty. My favorite old type of trailer were the ones this one was spoofing, such as Black Christmas or My Bloody Valentine. It has this very deep voiced guy doing the narration for the trailer, and he's not stressing any words. He is just very dark, and just saying shit like "This year, death comes home for christmas" or something like that, but just really matter of factly, and with his deep voice, it just sounds scary. The sound is always terrible in the trailers, and entire death scenes are shown for whatever reason. Thanksgiving does this all wonderfully. It was so spot-on, I absolutely adored it. The discoloring of the film in the trailer was just right, everything was so perfect, the voice included, and of course it was absolutely hysterically over the top.

So with this perfect intermission over, we moved into Death Proof.

First the bad. This movie is so Tarantino, you forget it's supposed to be part of a grindhouse double feature. You have characters with a lot of smart-ass dialogue, people talking about movies, long scenes in cars or bars of people just talking and talking, and of course feet. Tarantino has a weird foot fetish, and he films feet, a lot, especially in this movie. Also, through Planet Terror and the first half of Proof, the film is artificially aged to look old. That just stops in this middle of Death Proof, and it's obviously being shot on present day digital. That was a weird choice.

And finally, the movie begins with some girls just shooting the shit, talking about guys, for a pretty extended scene. At the halfway point, another group of girls shoots the shit and talks about guys again, for another extended scene. Just couldn't get into that, especially twice.

Through all of that, Tarantino shows he's something special. There are two distinct parts to the movie and I won't spoil too much at all. The plotting of the movie is superb, though someone that expects the constant barrage of goofiness you see in Planet Terror might be disappointed as that is not present here. I haven't seen anything quite like Death Proof ever before. It ends with one of the best climaxes I've seen in a long while as well, it's intense, hilarious and exhilarating all at once. I was seriously breathing in short gasps for the last 15 minutes, it's very well done.

I know I'm not saying much about Death Proof here, but I don't honestly know what to say. I don't want to say much plot-wise, because it does twist and turn nicely. The acting is great, though I could go without seeing Vanessa Ferlito's ugly face ever again.

Death Proof is just so different and unexpected. See it.

Overall, Grindhouse is my favorite "movie" of the year, though I guess there was two in there, wasn't there. It's 3 hours, twenty minutes long, and I wanted more when it was all said and done. It's just a ton of fun to be had.