Spoiler Threat Level: High

Damn it! I love it when that happens…

Again this blog is living up to its one liner I’ve chosen: “movie blogging outside the frame”. Why? Because I again don’t agree with anyone else in the world. The first time this obviously happened was Avatar. And Toy Story 3 is the second time.

You know, while leaving the cinema I knew that Pixar made another very good movie. Compared to Avatar, it hits more nails and evokes way more emotions. And it’s truly better than Pixar’s Up. So, Toy Story 3 really is worth a watch. But I think you already knew that. This movie’s definitely better than most of the mediocre shit called 3D animated movies that get chewed out by Hollywood once in a while. You know, the usual shit circling around family values and other boring family oriented stuff.

But let me get one thing straight: this movie in no way ever is so good it deserves a whopping 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes or a 9.1 on IMDB. Those ratings are beyond ridiculous.

Perhaps it’s only me (so you can challenge me in the comments) but to me it feels like the whole world went insane just because a 3D animated movie manages to present you a different plot theme accompanied by deeper and richer characters. Having this stuff is great and wonderful in those “lets-do-the-same-shit-again”-times. But does it make Toy Story 3 automatically one of the best movies ever? Sorry, but I don’t think so. (Sorry, I lost count of the…Sorries(?!?)).

Sure, Toy Story 3 has some good stuff in it, that’s a given. I love the incinerator scene and I so love Spanish Buzz womanizing everything with less plastic on it than him. Ken and Barbie were a blast, especially when she all got in serious mode and showed him who the master is. The crazy ape and the baby doll looked wonderfully creepy and the little girl at the end was so cute I could’ve cuddled her for hours. (By the way: if you’re get the feeling there are a lot of toys in this movie….well, there are! Hundreds, if not dozens!!).

Is it only me or does the wall in the background really scream CHEAP TEXTURE? By the way: that's one of their many escapes...

But for anything great there seems to be something subpar in this movie, too. My biggest complaint regarding Toy Story 3 is the plot full of escapes – which got repetitive to me after the second variation already. Sometimes I even got the feeling the movie’s about nothing else to be true.

First the toys get thrown out and have to escape from the garbage bag. Then Woody escapes from Sunnyville. Then he escapes from the little girl. Later in the movie the whole gang’s escaping from Sunnyville. Almost at the end they again have to escape, this time from the garbage “plant”. That’s five escapes! It really surprises me that seemingly nobody out there noticed this big flaw of the plot.

Another thing that nags me a little bit is the fact that I smelled the dark secret of Sunnyville miles ahead. I never believed the “we are all so lovey-dovey stuff”. Not for one second. The same has been done to death in other movies already. I didn’t know what exactly would be going wrong but I knew that there’d be a small surprise for the gang.

This thing is nothing major here, I presume the producers knew it already but went ahead to use this plot device. It works well enough to introduce us to the movies antagonists, but a different way of doing this would’ve been great, too. At the very least, Pixar’s Cars was way worse in that department. On the other hand, Wall-E was way better.

Welcome to Sunnyville which is so sunny you get suspicious.

The incinerator scene with all characters accepting their fate was very well done. Kudos to them for pulling this scene of. On the other hand, they missed an epic opportunity to create not only a good but pitch perfect plot. You know, the longer I watched Toy Story 3, the more I knew they should’ve focused on the similarities between Sir Lots-A-Hug Lotso and Woody. Both toys held the same feeling, the only difference being that Lotso is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Pixar should’ve let Woody and the gang help Lotso on his journey to his old owner. Upon reaching their destination they should’ve learned that his old owner died many years ago. In other words: Lotso’s backstory took place many decades ago. Boy, that would’ve been a revelation. And it would’ve carried a heavy truth: no matter how much you don’t want to things are changing.

But yeah, they went for the incinerator. Which is not a bad thing, I might add. I only think the plot above would’ve been more interesting. And it would’ve had not a single escape…

Nevertheless, compared to the other stuff released by Hollywood this movie definitely worth a watch. But no matter how I look at it, it’s not one of the best movies ever.

Is someone out there who agrees with me?

I always knew that Klingons have a softer side to them – but not that soft. I pity the red shirt for being too stupid to not knock at the door of a Klingon. Hello? You never enter the room of a Klingon without knocking first and running second.

Stupid red shirts…*grumble*

Andbyohtheway: I love the the animation here which is superb in my eyes. From start to finish. I especially love the moment when the Klingon (Worf??) goes into high pitch mode and starts to “wiggle” his whole body. Comedy gold.

Spoiler Threat Level: Low

Stop the printing press! Madmind now is one the most important movie blogs ever.

Some days ago an informant sent us/me (and not Wikileaks (yeah, baby)) some tapes containing all discussions of the screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi regarding the final draft for the stylish scifi movie Aeon Flux. The decoding of the analogue encryption took some years but it was definitely worthwhile. The tapes themselves are about ten hours long – minus the accumulated twenty days of silence in between when the authors were silently thinking or waiting for the pizza service to answer the phone.

Since it would be way too much to leak everything here, I only publish their discussions regarding the first 14 minutes of Aeon Flux (I save the best stuff so I have something to save my ass against Paramount):

Manfredi: You know Phil, I think the first seconds of the movie are fantastic. There’s no better way to introduce a character than letting her catch a fly with her eye lashes.

Paul: Yep, totally agreed. Nothing beats that awesomeness. The teens will love it! But somehow I get the feeling we could her introduce a little better.

Manfredi: What do you mean? We introduce her perfectly with the opening text of how the world became how it is now.

Phil: Oh yeah, I love that stuff. Simple but elegant. Nothing beats some lines of text on a big screen.

Manfredi: On that regard…don’t you think we should be more consistent here?

Phil: What do you mean?

Manfredi: You know, right at the beginning we smash some cool lines of text onto the screen. But seconds later – after Aeon catches the fly – we added some voice over narration which tells the audience about the city and the resistance. Wouldn’t it be better to either do everything text only or voice over narration only?

Phil: Hey, I love this kind of diversity. But if you want you can change it. But don’t forget the work, pal, it takes some seconds to change “title card” to “voice over”.

Manfredi: …Agreed, diversity is cool. And it’s really enough introduce us to the world. We only would surprise the audience too much, if we’d add some motivation of Aeon herself.

Phil: Yeah, you’re right. You cannot introduce the audience to both the world and Aeon’s motivation at once. Would be way too much at the beginning. Moreover, Aeon Flux is an action scifi – believable character motivation is for sissies.

Those "brain talk" outfits somehow remind me of a trilogy called Lord of the Rings. But I am sure that's totally coincidental.

Manfredi: Okay, onto the next thing: the moment when she’s brain talking with the hot mastermind. I think the idea is cool somehow stupid. I really hope that no one notices.

Phil: What?

Manfredi: Aeon is walking in broad daylight – while she’s talking in her brain with the Handler. Normally Aeon should’ve run into someone else or fall down, since she cannot see shit. She basically walks blind in those moments. But well, I believe this was in the comics, so we cannot do much about it.

Phil: I don’t know, I like the idea of brain talking though. Okay, the walking thing could be an issue, but there are enough geeks and nerds out there. No problems here. The only thing that nags me are the constant costume changes of Aeon. In the first six minutes alone she wears four different costumes. That’s even more than the first shitfest of the Star Wars prequels managed to achieve.

Manfredi: Oh, come on, not that again. You know we need to address the teenage girls demographics – and the teenage boys demographics. We cannot change that. If done right it could look fantastic. But you’re not the only one. From the last discussions you know I totally hate the dialogue between Aeon and her sister Una at the market. It’s so stupid! Moments ealier ago we establish that the city is one big surveillance camera – only to let Aeon talk in broad daylight with her sister about throwing over the Goodchild regime. Way to go, man! That’s so stupid. In this dialogue we even establish the fact that they talked about this stuff more than once. Why did nothing happen and – for example – both be thrown into jail?

Phil: I slightly agree, but on the other hand you know the saying that the more information you have, the less information you find.

Manfredi: Yeah, that’s true. And if we now change anything, we’d have to rewrite the whole scene. I hate it but let’s continue.

That's some lovely appartment Aeon lives in. Her medicine vault must have been filled up with antidepressants.

Phil: Which right leads to my costume complaint  number two. I know we discussed it earlier, but come on…why does she of all things have to wear a white suit when she’s working in the night and black would be better? I still don’t understand this.

Manfredi: Because the white suit is for the audience, not for logic. We need to see her clearly.

Phil: As do the guards…which are better camouflaged than our heroine by the way.

Manfredi: Those are stupid and no names. No risks here I think. Do you think those guards are just stupid enough, or already too stupid for our movies sake?

Phil: Hmm, good question. If they’d be able to fight properly it would mess up our nice action choreography and timing. We have to keep the script at 90 pages.

Manfredi: You’re right. And adding more guards would add some other timing problems. So it’s better to keep the numbers in the dozen for the most important facility in the whole city.

Phil: Do I smell some irony here?

Manfredi: No.

Phil: By the way…we really should change the moment when Aeon jumps down into the open main surveillance chamber – it gives of the feeling as if she knew from the script there’d be a gymnastics apparatus hanging from the ceiling. I always get a strange feeling when reading this.

Manfredi: Hmmm, I don’t. I always imagine that Aeon hacks into the blueprints of the building, so she really knows beforehand. I think that imagination of the audience is very important for this movie to work.

Phil: Oh yeah, imagination is important. You see, seconds later after jumping down she has a pitch perfect device to destroy the whole surveillance stuff. If I’d start to think about this on a logic level I’d be getting nightmares and headaches. Because how the fuck could the resistance create this device and how did they know how the surveillance system works? And why are there no safety mechanisms?…Argh, please let’s continue, before I cannot bear any longer and start to write something better.

Manfredi: I can understand you, but at least the next scene is totally awesome. It’s so emotional when her sister gets killed. It’s a shame that we’re way too lazy at the moment to put this scene right at the beginning. We’d have our crystal clear character motivation. But then we also would have to rewrite at least a dozen dialogues. And that’s too much work.

Phil: Absolutely, and think about this…If her sister’s death would be her main motivation we would have to write at least three scenes which introduce the audience to her more. You know, the audience in this version of Aeon Flux probably will give a shit about the death scene. They know nothing of Una.

Manfredi: Now that you mention it…

Phil: But well, that doesn’t really matter I think, We aim for cool action moments and impressive visuals, empathy would only distract.

Manfredi: That’s a good point. We are working for MTV Films, so impressive visuals without substance is out motto.

Phil: Yeah, and talking about logic and sense makes me hungry, especially when I start thinking about those strange hand-feet of Sithandra. Let’s call the pizza service?

Manfredi: Let’s call the pizza service!

…

You know, there’s not really much I could add here as a reviewer.

It might come to a surprise for the one or the other but I sometimes watch European movies. Admitted, anything else would be stranger than fiction because I am living in Europe.

Today was such a day I went local again. I watched a French movie about some high school kids. It’s called The French Kissers, and well, the titles fits the movie really well. In a way it was the depiction of the more than awkward phase of puberty in full bloom – accompanied by much slurping and smacking. In other words: More than once it was embarrassing not only for the characters but also for the audience.

But you know why I mention that movie at all? Not because it’s horribly bad or good. No, it’s because the movie showed me – again – why I sometimes so fucking hate European movies and incompetent European filmmaking. You know, you can rant about Hollywood all you can and want, but one thing they do know: they know how to write movies with a purpose. I don’t mean “purpose” in the sense of “let me show you how ugly the world is to make it better”. Nothing of that kind. I mean “purpose” in the sense of “this movie has a goal, the main character has a goal he wants to reach”.

European movies on the other hand, for reasons totally beyond me, very often (or to be more precise: almost every time) tend to be the exact opposite. Those movies have no purpose, in other words, no clear goal to reach. Most often you see character talking, living, doing shit all the time – while I sit in the chair wondering why the fuck I should care about any of this.

You know, the movie I watched today again absolutely proved me that having no fucking goal whatsoever ends up in a movie that could end anytime – in other words a script you could cut in half since nothing of importance happens. There is no purpose. The character doesn’t reach or learn anything. You have to imagine it: in the last scene of that movie you see the main character walking to school while saying hello to his friends. Fade to Black. End credits. That’s it. I never would have guessed that the end was coming. It simply arrived and, bang, the movie was over.

I never got the feeling of closure or that the plot reached its end. Not even once. And I never cared for the main character because he had no goal to reach against opposition. Nothing. Basically the movie faded to black because the time ran out, not because something of importance happened earlier on. In other words: that movie could’ve continued forever. Now that’s what I call great European filmmaking. The movie from today was just another example in a so long list of European movies without a purpose. It’s fucking embarrassing.

I really wonder when everything started to decay to such a level. Of course, Hollywood produces shit, but at least there’s a goal to reach for the characters almost every time. Even in such abysmal shit as Kangaroo Jack or New York Taxi or Soul Plane. Some might call this “entertainment shit” or “movies for the masses” or “formulaic writing”. But those formulas work very well. At least in that regard Hollywood learned its lesson many decades ago. Europe, it seems, still needs some decades to learn the same thing.

Spoiler Threat Level: Medium

The story of this movie is as fast told as the title of this post written: you take one bomber with a wish for a slightly bigger banking account, one cop who wants to prevent that from happening and a bus which takes the can for this romantic drama. Mix, stir and you got yourself the action hit of the summer of 1994.

After I watched Speed ages ago I am more than surprised how fast this movie is, even when you judge it by today’s standards. I really don’t want to know how big of a revelation that movie had to be for movie goers of the last millennium when the bus hit the silver screen for the first and the last time.

While Die Hard or other action flicks very often take their time and slow down or simply show us a close up of the suffering main character, Speed doesn’t do any of this. The only exception are the scenes between big fat explosion number one (Dennis Hopper ends up in smoke) and big fat explosion number two (some no name bus gets called to heaven). And funnily enough, those are the exact scenes that lack. More about that later (in other words: two paragraphs).

Can you *hick* tell me, why we're *hick* doing this scene? *Sound of falling tree is played while Jeff Bridges kisses the ground*

Speed’s plot really doesn’t waste a second and sprints from one action moment to another. For example, Keanu Reeve’s character barely makes it onto the bus (of course with a little help from our beloved afrocool guy), only to then see the open end of a barrel. Of course, seconds later the bus driver gets shot so that our beloved Sandra Bullock also has something to do. Shortly after that they almost have to stop in a traffic jam and so on. I have to admit that I love such action intense stuff (see From Paris with Love) so I had a blast watching it.

It’s clear that with so much action and so much turns the characters feel bland. It’s also clear the whole plot feels so constructed and hence impossible in reality as the face of Pamela Anderson.

Okay, the bland characters might be a little bit of an understatement. Let me be crystal clear here: not for one second did I start to like anyone of them. Especially the character Jack played by Keanu Reeves. Almost everyone in Speed is way too stiff, too boring and with way not enough background information. Moreover, Speed has such an amazing amount of lack of humor from almost every corner that in moments I was so starved for a cool one-liner like a zombie in dire need for some tasty brains.

Oh the nostalgia - mixed with impossible physics. But that's what makes this scene so charming.

I am the first one telling anyone asking that the current stream of Hollywood action movies push way too hard regarding the stupid jokes routines (Transformers, anyone?). But during the making of Speed, Jan de Bont seemingly was fed up to the back of his teeth in terms of fun or humor (watched too many sitcoms?).  Of course, Speed has some funny moments (and one of the best wtf expressions ever) but I book all of them as coincidences – or a different second director. This is a true shame, because with some cool one-liners or badass moments with a wink, Reeves and Speed as a whole would have.

"We're at the airport." "Yea, so?" "I already seen the airport." ... *WTF!??!!*

Besides its lack of humor Speed also massively impressed me in another department: implausibility. Yeah, I know, this remark is kinda stupid because Speed is an Action Movie. But even for action movie standards, Speed did some massive stuff here. Especially in the second half this movie pulls some stunts so crazy that even I started wondering what went wrong in editing. Did they lose some twenty minutes on the floor or what? If you have some time get your copy of Speed (BluRay, DVD, whatever) and watch the movie starting with the attempt to disarm the bomb on the bus. Although I watched Speed with only half of my brain in active mode, I still managed to notice many inconsistencies:

• Although the undercarriage seems to rub on the floor, Keanu Reeves not only manages to get below the bus, no, he even has a ton of space above him
• When the police department finally learns who the bad guy is, it only takes some mere minutes for them to get to and surround his house – in full armor
• Although Keanu Reeves married his knife to the bus tank it miraculously never ends up dry, even though the fuel indicator constantly is on the free fall
• And for the love of god, why the hell does some bus floor have rolls on it?

As you can see Speed is not the best contender for any kind of plot related prize. But who’d care for that. I certainly don’t, despite having the problems I described above. But as I already mentioned, the action way makes up for that. So if you have nothing better to do, treat yourself to some good old 90s action movie shit where the stunts are analogue and the cameras don’t shake.

According to Reuters, a German student had some sort of death wish. Why? Because he did the craziest stunt I’ve ever heard of (and I’ve watched a lot of movies):

A German student created a traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hells Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

The combination cannot get any crazier: Hells Angels, puppy and bulldozer.

Monty Python and the Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker trio would’ve been proud of him. That’s for sure. And the student watched way too much stuff of them.

I can only imagine the epic “wtf just happened??!??” expressions on the faces of the Hells Angels when the student made his way through the traffic on the bulldozer while screaming “So long suckers”. And yeah, if anyone ever tells me again that Germans have no sense of crazy, lunatic and stupid humor, I show him this news article (and my various blog posts of crazy German movie titles, of course).

By the way: the puppy was unharmed and safe (which means he didn’t throw him that hard or long I think). So you can laugh…

Spoiler Threat Level: Medium

Let me warn you upfront if you are from the US: By watching My Name is Khan you either start to hate yourself or the movie. Totally depends on your mindset.

On the whole the joint venture movie from Hollywood and Bollywood brings the best from both worlds. I loved the colorful and lush scenes in the right moments and I loved the great Bollywood soundtrack.

I also love the fact that there is not one single dance number. Yep, you read right. Not one! Thank god, Fox Star Studio or whatever the western counterpart of the production team is named. If there is one single thing I hate, it’s the dancing numbers which substitute for sex scenes. Come on guys, show us thirty boring seconds of blurred bodies in motion and save us at least forty minutes per movie. But I am loosing track here…

If I had to describe My Name is Khan in one word I’d pick “manipulative”. From the get go the movie uses every single frame to show us a character so bigger than life and so innocent and naïve that I was unable to anything else than root for him. You could even describe him as some sort of Indian Jesus. Really, he is characterized as that good and innocent and this fact doesn’t change one iota until the very end.

At the beginning of My Name is Khan you see the titular character at the airport and anyone who ever set one foot on those things in recent times will know what happens: since Khan is autistic and therefore acts a little strange he of course gets immediately snapped by the airport security. There he states the reason for his travel: he wants to meet the President and tell him he’s not a terrorist.

In the following course we not only follow him on his travel but also see his past which leads to this travel.

I am Khan. Khan? Khaaaaaaaaannn!

Of course this would be no Bollywood movie without the big Love and My Name is Khan is no exception. In fact, most of the first half of the movie is only about that, shown in the typical Bollywood way – except the dancing of course. Surprisingly I really liked that, especially those moments when this fluffy and cavity causing music kicks in. It has so much innocence to it I simply don’t know from most of the romantic comedies I have to endure now and then. It was refreshing although I constantly felt the movie had to reverse at one moment to its total opposite.

In that regard My Name is Khan also delivers as predicted: 9/11 happens and the world becomes hell.

My Name is Khan doesn’t try to be neutral or anything. This movie throws everything it has to show you a country that changed for the worse and to make you totally feel sympathetic towards the main character – and basically hate everyone else.

This movie in full power goes for emotionalism at its highest. It throws everything at you so you get the point. And its single biggest tool to do this is the main character of Rizwan Khan. I laughed and I felt with him, but I also know this character (and hence the script) manipulated me in ways beyond my imagination.

The only thing I can safely write at the moment is this: I seriously need to watch this movie another time to get a better impression and a better feeling. Currently the movie is a mixed bag to me. I loved many moments and the overall visual style. But because of this obvious manipulation I cannot really say whether I liked My Name is Khan or not.

Any by of the way: it seems this movie exists in several versions because in my version there was no scene (which gets mentioned here and there) where Kahn and a choir sing “We shall overcome” in a church.

And by oh way the second: the director seriously should have added some title cards here and there because I seriously couldn’t tell that some massive parts of this movie seriously take place even before 9/11.

The following clip is from a Bollywood movie called Alluda Majaka. Anyone who regularly watches YouTube videos should recognize the face of actor Chiranjeevi, as this guy emerges everytime you search for “Bollywood” “action scene” or similar stuff.

And boy does he deliver in this video!

In a way he’s the one who comes closest to our holy action god Chuck Norris. Of course there’s still a margin of the size of a galaxy between both since Chuck Norris can walk on air and once destroyed a black hole just by shouting at it.

Nevertheless, having a horse slide underneath a car and riding through glass panes where you’d normally place doors and riding between a bunch of strategically extremely well placed cars is epic, too.

Watch and marvel:

Spoiler Threat Level: Medium

Before I start the review itself: I fucking love both the teaser and standard movie poster! Both are some of the best designed sheets in recent memory and I couldn’t even think of something fitting better than those two.

Okay, on to the movie…

Do you know the moment when you watch a movie and think “Okay, that was stupid”? Splice is a movie in which those moments occur every five or so minutes.

I.Am.Not.Kidding!

First of all there’s the experiment itself where a female scientist decides to mix human DNA with a DNA from another experiment she conducted earlier with her partner and boyfriend. To me, that was one big fat “Stupid!!!!” moment.

From there on it only got worse…

I know that the director Vincenzo Natali wanted to show us humans who cross the fine line of morality, to show us what can happen when you mix humans with animals. It’s the serious scifi route, not the action scifi route. I also know he wanted to show us people who cannot differentiate between a child and an experiment, who blur the line of protection vs. isolation/control, although both sometimes go for the control route.

But even though I somehow know the intentions it doesn’t help me at all, because…you know…

…every goddamn single character is totally and awesomly acting stupid the whole damn time!! Especially the masterminds of the experiment, Clive and Elsa, the supposed geniuses of this movie.

Clive and Elsa, the human forms of the word "stupid".

You know, conducting the experiment at all was the first major “stupid” moment as already mentioned above. Minutes later it was “let us keep it even though I got attacked by it before it even was born”. Then it was “let’s not kill it”. Then it was “let us treat it like a child and name it/her Dren (Nerd read backwards – cool idea)”. Then it was “let us hide her in a slightly unsafe location and teach her”. Then it was “lalala, let us bring her to a location in the woods that unsafe it’s not even imaginable anymore”.

This continued the whole damn time! Later on it even got more crazy and absurd. Goddammit, how can two people be so stupid? They are supposed to be geniuses, for crying out loud! Almost the whole time I was scratching my head, asking myself when the heck those two might have lost their brains. Sniffled too much DNA in the cafeteria?

If you want to watch about human stupidity – don’t look further. This is the ultimate movie regarding this theme. You cannot go further than this. But be warned: if you’Re like me who truly fucking hates movie characters acting stupid all the time, you have a problem.

You know, it's not that hard to imagine this thing being a funnily shaped human...I guess

We're getting closer...

Now we're talking, baby! (And by oh the way: why does a creature without a single strand of hair have eyebrows and eyelashes of all things?)

So what led the characters went down this whole let us act stupid stuff? One reason is that Elsa seemingly had a traumatic childhood in which she seemingly got treated badly by her mother. I guess this should establish her reason for starting this experiment at all, as we also learn at one time she never wanted a normal child. Why? It’s better to have an experiment than a baby since you better can control the first one. Well, it didn’t really help me to at least begin to feel sympathetic towards her.

Moreover I began to feel some urge to erase her from the screen because of her character trait called “massive ignorance”. mix that one with “stupidity” and you have an instant winner on your hands. One of the best moments regarding this mixture was in the second half of Splice when Elsa seriously told Clive that her beloved Dren doesn’t like meat, although she earlier gorged a rabbit in the woods in a spectacular gory way. At least this led to one of the best lines of Splice when even Clive in a true “wtf?” manner asked since when rabbits account as vegetables.

Oh yeah, Clive. Her friend and scientific partner. Well, to be honest I didn’t like him either because he not only acted stupid the whole damn time (as everyone else) but he very well knew he was acting stupid – which makes him an even more of a retard than Elsa. The only excuse he had were his sexual desires as it seems. In any case he didn’t have balls whatsoever, although he used them in more than one occasion (which results in one of the single biggest “WTF??!11!!” in recent memory – in other words: when the movie even trumps itself by pulling off one act of stupidity you’ve really never seen before).

Of course, she's not eating a rabbit here. That's simply some slightly red colored, juicy vegetable.

And then there’s the single biggest flaw of this movie: I never felt truly sympathetic towards Dren, the hybrid child Clive and Elsa created. Heck, the creators of Splice even tried to make Dren look cute by having her cuddle a cat, for example (Avatar, anyone? Cats normally always work). But it simply didn’t work. The only thing I constantly thought while watching the movie was about what she probably will do next to give us a hint of her true nature. The good thing was that I was constantly sitting on the edge of my seat since there was this constant pressure.

Because of stupid characters and missing sympathy I also never deeply cared about this whole parenthood stuff Natali shows us, meaning, the main plot not centering on a monster/experiment but on a child two unfit parents try to bring up. To write it in a harsh way: The only thing I constantly thought was “Call someone! Put Dren in a prison, or even better: Kill. It. Now!”. Yeah, harsh, but that’s how I felt about Dren in many moments.

Another thing I didn’t really buy was the external pressure the plot tries to create. Before creating Dren both scientists puzzled together two blob looking creatures from which they extract some important proteins to cure humans. Something like that. Of course this takes time and the company pressures them to work on it before the next stockholders’ meeting. Having no results to market and make money from could lead into financial disaster.

I haz cat. I are cute!!

Later in the movie, the stockholder’s meeting takes place and they proudly present their results – the two creatures. But, of course, something goes horribly wrong, as the creatures start to slash each other in a truly gruesome way. Blood is everywhere and finally we see the remains splattered all over the place. And this is the exact moment when Splice almost jumped the shark to me (yeah, I endured the stupidity) because…nothing happens. At all. Nada.

You know, there are two artificial creatures created by a company. Both creatures act as gruesome as it can get. And there is no single trace of a religious leader or politician who puts a break on this whole operation. And there even doesn’t seem to be a backslash on the market. You know, I’d immediately sell my stocks after watching a failure as big as this. But that never seemed to happen; the company went on without any major hiccups. Moreover there were no signs of a journalistic wave crushing over them as it normally would happen. Nothing. Zippo. Nada.

In times in which even a sneeze from the holy Steve jobs himself can create a major disturbance in the (stock) force this simply feels ridiculous. Here the scriptwriters really messed up. I can understand their wish to keep everything as tiny as possible, but then they shouldn’t have gone the stockholder way. There could have been different ways to increase the pressure on Clive and Elsa.

Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t hate Splice – not really. It’s just that I am not that massively overwhelmed by it as many other people/reviewers/movie goers. The movie is good if you can overlook stupidity, it’s intriguing in its premise, but not fantastically great. The movie asks the right questions. It’s an intelligent scifi movie without your usual action stuff that gets boring so quickly, but accompanied by fantastic special effects.

But, oh well, on the other hand Splice offers us acts of pure stupidity on epic levels every goddamn five minutes. I.Am.Not.Kidding! If the director would’ve toned that one down just a little massive bit, the movie could have become an instant classic. Perhaps he could do something on the editing of the director’s cut.

This time I only got a massive headache from way too many facepalms.

Someone has mixed an “Amazing Spider-Man” in with the “Peter Parker – The Spectacular Spider-Man” series. This will not stand. (Comic Book Guy)

Imagine, for a minute, a movie in which two franchises called Star Trek and Star Wars team up. For whatever reason necessary.

Does that sound ridiculous? Indeed it does. Those two just don’t fit together at all, despite anything and everything some geeks throw into the discussion just to make this come true.

This thought about Star Wars and Star Trek crossed my mind while I was reading a news article regarding the latest plan for new superhero movies set to be released on 2012 onwards. Although I was extremely happy to read Batman 3 is now on track I also got the feeling that Hollywood doesn’t do itself a favor with all those superhero movies – and especially those “teaming up” movies that are supposedly on the way…

Star Trek and Star Wars aka. Batman and Superman aka. Superhero One and Superhero Two.

I never was a big comic book reader. As a child I never really got into this world as comic books. I read once in a while something of those old Superman stuff but that basically was it. Comic books really never were that big in my life. This also might trace back to the fact that I am living in Germany where this tradition is not that massive or big as in the US. On the level of a subconscious mind of a whole society I would state the hypothesis that, after World War II and the German Autumn filled with terrorism of the Red Army Fraction, there was no big desire to read comics which also have to do with myths of another country and bigger than life heroes.

Of course I nowadays try to dive into this world of DC and Marvel but there is one thing I am absolutely sure of:

Those comic book worlds and franchises are a terrible mess!

I am sure many of you understand everything that’s going on in those franchises, but I don’t. As a result I never became a true comic book fan or at least someone who is interested in this stuff.

The quote posted at the beginning of this post from our beloved Comic Book Guy nails this mess perfectly. There are different “franchises” within the different franchises. There are of course different authors with different takes, sometimes swapping between two books or even in one single comic book. Then there’s different universes in which “our” reality is called something like “Earth 90210″, so basically you have the mess multiplied with infinite. And because of the age of those franchises we have massive amounts of character changes, character deaths, resurrections, uncountable amounts of enemies and so on.

And to finalize everything we have a nice and wonderful mixture of all those different franchises. We have teaming up stuff as Justice League and yet again different teaming ups in several different fractions and so on. Of course, there are spin-offs as well.

If there’s anyone out there who grasps all those things I salute to him. To me it’s a pile of mess you’d have to take on for months or even days to understand and sort everything.

The worst part of this absurd situation is the fact that Hollywood seems to be eager to just to the same route as Marvel and DC by using its massive talent for franchises. We already have several big franchises with several movies each which already got a reboot or soon will have one: Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Hulk. So basically every Super-Franchise except for X-Men and Iron Man (probably). Of course, there’s also the small superhero movies as Spawn or Ghost Rider. Did I forget something?

To make things better we soon get several new supers on the silver screen: Flash, Green Lantern and Captain America which themselves will get several movies and one or two reboots. And to make things even better Hollywood will soon completely mix up those several franchises wherever possible and “reasonable” to milk money, as already hinted to at the end of Hulk. As a result we soon will be blessed with the production of Justice League or a similar Mixture Movie (Batman & Superman, Batman & Spiderman…the possibilities are endless).

And then, in some years, we will hit the Jackpot when we get several Mixture Movies that combine character from different franchise reboots, while at the same time another reboot of those original franchises with yet another character hit the screen. To illustrate this imagine a Mixture Movie with Superman and Batman. In this movie Batman is played by Christian Bale while at the same time a reboot of the Batman franchise hits the screens.

Okay, it’s not that we cannot sort everything out regarding those movies since their numbers are low in comparison to the comic books. Nevertheless I am sure we are facing an utter mess. Comic book geeks or uber geeks might feel right at home since they already know this stuff inside out and do such sorting all the time.

What’s left in this whole mess is the normal audience scratching their heads…