"N" is for The Notebook

 Nah, I'm just pulling your chain. It's for something I'll regret much more than that: The Night Porter. So I'm going to try not to slow down too much, but the Cap'n's social calendar is picking up a bit, so the ABCs might be spread out a bit more for parts of April. It's why I pushed so hard to get to the halfway point before March was done, but never fear; I'll be done by the end of the month. While technically cheating, I've already watched "O" and "Q" and once I've subjected myself to The Night Porter, you'll find out what they are. I'll continue to post them in order, even if the opportunity comes to watch them by skipping around.

 I figured it would be cruel and unusual to all of us to let Ryan Gosling win, so while you're waiting for The Night Porter, here's an April Fool's Day past.

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The Five Worst Movies I Saw in 2012

 For a change, I saw more good movies than terrible movies in 2012. I know, this must come as a shock to you, but it's true. Looking back, there are several movies I saw that were "okay" to "meh," but very few that outright stank. Well, that were made in 2012 anyway: Horror Fest and Summer Fest entries don't count this year, with one exception.

 The very bottom and the very top lists for 2012 aren't going to be too long, but while I try to put together some kind of notion of how I want to organize the "Best Of"'s, there's not much question in my mind how the bottom of the barrel stacks up. (The middle is going to take me a little while...)

 In the interest of fairness, I didn't see many of what people tell me are the very worst of this year, including: That's My Boy, Battleship, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Total Recall, The Watch, Guilt Trip, For A Good Time Call, Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2, Parental Guidance, or The Apparition. Unfortunately, I can't be of any help to you in that respect, but I can promise you that this list serves as one last So You Won't Have To for last year.

 So without further ado, let's count down from 5 to 1 of the Worst Movies of 2012.
 

 5.Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies - So of the three films about Abraham Lincoln released this year, I saw two of them, and instead of picking the one with the vampires from the director of Wanted, the Cap'n wisely(?) chose the knock-off instead. From what I hear, The Asylum's cash-in / rip-off is arguably the better of the two, and if that's the case then I'm glad I didn't watch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. This movie was terrible, and only became watchable as the anachronisms began to pile up, along with the shoehorning in of a young Theodore Roosevelt, who helps Lincoln, his secret prostitute mistress, Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth (a member of the Secret Service... yeah, I know) to protect Fort Pulaski from zombies.

 And trust me, while that last sentence may have you intrigued, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies in no way deserves your attention.


 4. (tie) Underworld: Awakening and Resident Evil: Retribution - Here we have the case of two sequels, well into their franchise lives (four and five, respectively) that serve no purpose other than to set up the next sequel. While it's true that I've given up on the Resident Evil series, I held out just a sliver of hope that the return of Kate Beckinsale to the Underworld universe might up the trashy factor, but it was not to be. Underworld 4 was a lot of moping, Scott Speedman body-doubling, more pointless philosophical debate about what it means to be a vampire when Lycans control the world, and just a smidgen of Stephen Rea chewing scenery. If there's a fifth film (and Awakening is going to look awfully silly if there isn't), I can't say I'm all that enthused that we'll ever get back to the campy tone of the first flick.


 As for Retribution, well, there isn't much I would add to the review linked above. It's not really a movie, but a series of extended (read: boring) fight sequences peppered with pointless dialogue designed to reset the story (again) so that we can get to a "more interesting" movie next time. Since it looks like the next film is going to have even less of a plot, it's hard to imagine how hard Paul W.S. Anderson is going to have to work to screw it up. Then again, he lives to disappoint, so he'll find a way...

 3. (tie) Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance -  Speaking of disappointing, what the hell happened with these two totally unnecessary sequels? They were primed to be very necessary, very schlocky, audiovisual overload based solely on the combination of source material and director. On the one hand, you have John Gulager, director of the hyper-ridiculous gorefest Feast, directing the sequel to Alexadre Aja's T&A meets Blood & Guts remake of Piranha. And on the other hand, you have Nicolas Cage returning as Ghost Rider and behind the camera are the directors of Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of the most ridiculous movies in Jason Statham's already ridiculous action movie career. Oh, and both movies were shot in 3-D! They couldn't lose! It was impossible!

 Somehow, both films end up being complete and total wastes of time. Not only are Piranha 3DD and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance not the anarchic clusterfucks you would hope for, but they're something even worse: Boring.

  Yes, boring: neither film is remotely fun to watch, in a trashy way or in a "what the hell was that?" way, which is a cardinal sin when making sequels to two absurd movies. Gulager not only doesn't deliver on the DD's his title promises (unless you count the first and last five minutes of the film), but all of the energy of Feast is replaced by the worst tendencies on display in Feast II and III. Instead of kinetic camerawork and editing, he instead falls back on a love of flatulence and cameos for the sake of having cameos, so that while he can't make a baby piranha swimming up a girl's va-jay-jay and biting her boyfriend's pecker interesting, he sure can give us three different montages devoted to David Hasselhoff running in slow motion.

 Far be it from me to point this out, but when the Spongebob Squarepants Movie finds a better way to use a superfluous cameo by David Hasselhoff, then you're doing something wrong.

 Meanwhile, Neveldine and Taylor not only don't add to the gonzo stupidity that was the first Ghost Rider, but they dial back the insanity and Mega-Acting / Neo-Shamanism by Cage and give us the tamest possible version of Spirits of Vengeance. We get less Ghost Rider, more mumble-cage, a supernatural knock-off of Terminator 2, and to top it off they find a way to waste Anthony Stewart Head, Ciarán Hinds, and Idris Elba. Thanks, assholes. Now we'll never get a properly stupid Ghost Rider movie.

 2. Taken 2 - Can we just agree not to let Olivier Megaton make movies anymore? While I didn't see Columbiana and maybe it's actually good, Megaton has now ruined not one, but two franchises with shitty sequels. First he stripped the absurdity from the Transporter films, giving the world the first boring Jason Statham action film, and then in 2012 he took Taken and drained everything good out of that with his awful sequel.

 Taken was a pretty simple concept: sex slave traders take Liam Neeson's daughter. Liam Neeson kills everyone standing between him and his daughter, in increasingly brutal ways, because that's what he does. He has a very particular set of skills, skills that make him a nightmare for people like you. Presuming that you are Eastern European sex slave traders, of course. It's a stripped down action film that delivered simple, no frills beat downs and torture.

 So logically you'd follow that up by having the families of everyone Liam Neeson murdered (yes, he has a name, and it's Brian Whogivesashit) want revenge on him and his family. In his infinite wisdom - well, really to nail Famke Janssen now that Xander Berkley wasn't asked to come back - he invites his wife and daughter to join him in Istanbul, where Neeson and Janssen are promptly kidnapped. So okay, that means Maggie Grace is going to have to do the inverted version of Taken, right? She'll save her father and mother than maybe kill Rade Serbedzija, because who else would be playing the father of the guy Neeson electrocuted to death?

 Nope. Liam Neeson gets out, crashes into the American Embassy and somehow doesn't end up being shot or prosecuted for property damage (because he calls Leland Orser, returning along with John Gries and D.B. Sweeney who is reprising someone else's role for a quick cameo paycheck). We then don't see Maggie Grace (sorry, Kim Whogivesashit) until after Neeson goes back to rescue Lenore Whogivesashit and kill all of the bad guys. Because that's what he does. Also she passes her driving test, which is somehow integral to the plot. (Not kidding)

 Only this time you can't tell that's what he does because Olivier Megaton doesn't know how to shoot a comprehensible action sequence to save his life. I literally ended up with headaches during the three (the ONLY three) fight scenes in Taken 2. It's virtually impossible to tell what's going on, who is hitting who, or where anyone is in relation to the person they're in combat with because Megaton and his editor throw rapid cuts of extreme close-ups on the screen to guarantee that nobody has the slightest idea what they're seeing. So not only is Taken 2 a LOT of setup for very little payoff, but when the time comes for Liam Neeson to use his particular set of skills, you don't even know what the hell is going on, and it hurts your brain.

 I HATED Taken 2, and there's no possible way that an "Unrated" version could be an improvement, because unless they hired a competent director and editor to reshoot the entire movie, it's a total waste of time.

 But Taken 2 isn't the worst movie I saw this year. It's not even the worst Luc Besson produced movie I saw this year, because that distinction goes to:


1. Lockout - Here's the deal: I'm willing to be veeeerrrrrry forgiving when it comes to cheesy science fiction. There are a lot of things I'll put up with if a movie can easily be summed up as "Escape from New York in Space," so even if Lockout was rocking a 17% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes the night we went to see it, I was prepared for that. I knew we wouldn't be watching high art, but instead a goofy, illogical, dumbed-down crowd-pleaser that catered to the cheap seats. As long as I got Guy Pearce as a bad-ass for ninety minutes, I figured we'd be okay. Besides, after that we'd be seeing The Cabin in the Woods. Surely it couldn't be that bad.

 And sure enough, it starts out promising. In fact, the opening of the film is the European Trailer, which is Guy Pearce making wisecracks and being punched while Peter Stormare interrogates him. And then we flashback to why he's being interrogated, and there's a clever joke involving jumping out of one window and into another gone wrong.

 And then there's the high speed unicycle chase that looks like a Playstation (One) cut-scene.

 Okay, that's really bad, but let's keep going, right? It'll get schlocky soon.

 And then Lockout fell apart. As I said, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to movies like this, so I'll let things like repeatedly putting up a title card to let us know what we're looking at even if we've seen it five times. It's like watching a TV movie without the commercial breaks, I guess. It supports the theory that Lockout is "a series of movie-like images taped together." But then it gives up on the laws of physics while still trying to use said laws of physics as critical plot points. Then your brain begins to melt a little bit, then you start laughing. Not at what's going on in Lockout, because that ceased to make sense a long time ago, but because it's the only way to express what the movie is doing to your brain.

 Do yourself a favor and click on the link embedded in the title. It's called "Four Reasons You Might Be Drunk Enough to Watch Lockout," and while I don't recommend watching Lockout, especially not while drunk - as you are likely to do harm to your television for subjecting you to Lockout - it may give you some idea why, try as I may, I couldn't find a worse movie to watch in 2012.



 (Dis)Honorable Mention: Men in Black III, American Reunion, The Campaign - All of which were okay, I guess, but not movies I'm probably going to watch again.

 Extra (Dis)Honorable Mention to The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot so pointless and so tedious that I couldn't even talk myself into finishing it.

Horror Fest VII Day Two: Bela Lugosi Triple Feature

 One of the things the Cap'n doesn't do as much as I'd like to during Horror Fest is showcase older horror movies. Oh sure, every now and then I'll throw in something from the 50s or 60s, but they're few and far between, and in all honesty, I first came to be a fan of horror films because of a friend of my father's. He used to tape AMC's Monster Fest for me, back when AMC showed movies without interruption and had Robert Osborne providing information before the films (in other words, when AMC was Turner Classic Movies), and they used to have Universal Classic Monster triple features on Saturdays. I still have those tapes, with Dracula and Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, and my personal favorite at the time, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. They would even have non-Universal films like King Kong, and that's how I slowly made my venture into watching "scary" movies.

 It's my own doing, but I've never really shared that experience with Horror Fest audiences. In fact, the only movie with Bela Lugosi I've ever shown at a Fest was Plan 9 from Outer Space, which a) barely has any Lugosi in it and b) was used as a key example of why I found M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening so amusing. So it seemed like seven years in, it was time to give classic horror it's due.

 I chose three Bela Lugosi vampire films - Dracula, Mark of the Vampire, and Return of the Vampire -  because there's an interesting through line for the first two and the third one is clearly designed to use the name recognition of the second, but also because they're all better than one might expect in their own right. Lugosi tends to get the short shrift of the classic horror stars, in part because he worked a lot, and a lot of the films he worked on weren't very good, but also because these days he's as associated with Ed Wood as he is with playing Count Dracula, and not in a good way. It's a shame, because there are a lot of very good Bela Lugosi films (The Black Cat, The Raven) or roles where he plays a fine supporting role (Son of Frankenstein). Still, I thought it would be fun to have a vampire triptych, so let's take a look at that, shall we?

---

 If it's all right with you, I'm going to spend the least amount of time on Tod Browning's Dracula, because I suspect that's the film most of you have seen. Dracula did, after all, start the Universal Classic Monster craze (even if Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera preceded it by several years), and while it's a looser adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel than some might like, Browning's macabre sensibilities and atmospheric lighting and set design do make it memorable.

 And, of course, there's Lugosi as Dracula, who loves his "children of the night" and "never drink(s)... wine." Reprising the role that made him famous on the stage, Lugosi's gaze and Hungarian accent make him instantly memorable to anyone who has ever seen the film. Both menacing and alluring, repulsive and erotic, Dracula benefits immensely from Lugosi's presence, keeping the rather dull second half and abrupt conclusion palatable.

 ---

"Vampires in the twentieth century? Don't be ridiculous!"

 Four years later, Lugosi and Browning would join forces again for Mark of the Vampire, a film that begins in a similar fashion to Dracula. In a village (this time in Czechoslovakia rather than Romania), the villagers live in fear of the bats who roam at night, convinced they are the vampire minions of Count Mora (Lugosi) and his daughter Luna (Carol Borland). When the local Doctor Doskil (Donald Meek) is called in to investigate the death of Sir Karell (Holmes Herbert), his immediate reaction to the bite marks on Karell's neck is that a vampire attacked him and drained his blood, much to the disbelief of Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill).

 Meanwhile, Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) is charged with taking care of the estate, including the impending nuptials of Karell's daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan) to Fedor (Henry Wadsworth), both of whom appear to be the new targets of Count Mora and Luna. With the arrival of Professor Zeller (Lionel Barrymore) comes the promise of saving the family from this vampire curse, and from the castle they've abandoned, even as Mora resurrects Karell to join his undead cabal.

 For most of the film this seems to be where Mark of the Vampire is going, until it takes an abrupt turn with about fifteen minutes to go, and to say anymore risks massive SPOILER territory. So I'm going to mark the next section accordingly and if you don't want to know what the twist in Mark of the Vampire is, I'll meet you in the Return of the Vampire section.

 SPOILERS FOR MARK OF THE VAMPIRE BEGIN HERE

 It turns out, in a very unusual transition, that there ARE no vampires. Professor Zeller, in an attempt to trick Baron Otto into confessing to the murder of Sir Karell, constructed an elaborate ruse involving Count Mora, Luna, and an undead Karell in order to hypnotize the Baron. Everyone, with the exception of Fedor, is in on the hoax, we're led to believe (or need to believe if you want to accept the sudden shift in narrative and tone). Mora and Luna are actually actors hired to play the vampires, playing into the Baron's superstitious nature, and Irena goes along, despite her reservations. To be fair, the Professor is exploiting her father's death and using a look-a-like that she needs to pretend is her father as they re-enact the night of his murder. It is a little tasteless.

 The twist is a little difficult to reconcile because so much of the film involves characters who must have known that this was a hoax (especially, as we learn, because the Professor arrives a year AFTER Karell's death) but disappear shortly after the twist is revealed (in particular I'm thinking of the Maid, who comes in as part of the Professor's plan, it would seem, but either doesn't know that Luna and Mora aren't vampires or is very good at playing scared for characters who are in on the ruse. There are a number of scenes that have nothing to do with the Baron that advance the vampire story, misleading the audience until very late in the film.

 After we discover what the film is really about, Browning wraps things up nicely with a few scenes of our heroes celebrating, and then Mora joking to Luna that he should be the lead vampire next time, much to her amusement.

 SPOILERS FOR MARK OF THE VAMPIRE END HERE

 ---

 "It looks like the Jerries dug up his grave for us!"

 Lugosi returns to the cape and fangs, this time for Columbia (Dracula was for Universal and Mark of the Vampire for MGM) in Return of the Vampire, which is more than just a way to clue in audiences that their favorite bloodsucker was back from the grave. Again not playing Dracula, this time Lugosi is Armand Tesla, an eighteenth century expert on the occult turned walking dead. With his werewolf sidekick Andreas (Matt Willis), he is terrorizing the Ainsley institute in London, 1918.

 Lady Jane Ainsley (Frieda Inescort), with the help of Doctor Walter Saunders (Gilbert Emery), seek to stop Tesla after he attacks Saunder's daughter Nicki (Sherlee Collier) and before he can reach her son John (Donald Dewar). They track down Tesla to his tomb and manage to drive a stake through his heart, freeing Andreas from his servitude, and Ainsley takes the former wolf man back to her institute to rehabilitate him.

 Twenty three years later, Saunders dies in a train crash and Sir Fredrick Fleet (Miles Mander) of Scotland Yard comes into possession of his diaries. Needless to say, he's not pleased with the idea of Lady Ainsley driving a stake into someone's heart, and orders an investigation of her actions. Unfortunately, the Nazis are bombing London, and during one of the Luftwaffe air raids, they blow open the unmarked grave Saunders and Ainsley moved Tesla to. Two gravediggers unwittingly remove the stake from his heart and re-bury the vampire, but he returns.

 To Return of the Vampire's credit, when Tesla comes back, he isn't content simply to be a vampire in London. No, he wants revenge on Lady Ainsley for stealing twenty three years, and he starts by finding Andreas and transforming him back into a wolf (a talking wolf, but I'll overlook that), but using his servant's association with the Lady to his advantage. After Andreas kills the real scientist, Tesla poses as Doctor Hugo Bruckner, a scientist smuggled out of a concentration camp and back into London, who Ainsley provides unfettered access to her facilities. Tesla sets his sights on ruining the wedding of the now adult John Ainsley (Roland Varno) and Nicki Saunders (Nina Foch) as his ultimate revenge...

 I wasn't expecting too much from Return of the Vampire - the 1943 (IMDB says 1944) production seemed suspiciously like a cash-in on Lugosi's decade plus affiliation with Dracula (even Mark of the Vampire was from 1935), but the film cleverly uses World War II to its advantage, and the bombed out portions of London become the setting of a very different sort of vampire film. It also helps that Tesla has a plan and implements it, rather than wandering around aimlessly finding victims (like Mora in Mark of the Vampire). The struggle between Ainsley and Tesla is as interesting as the back and forth between Van Helsing and Dracula, and while the resolution is largely out of their hands, there is at least one great scene showcasing their battle of wills.

 It's certainly a better constructed film than I was expecting, with the opening section of the film being a surprising prologue / flashback designed to set the stakes before we're even aware that Return of the Vampire is going to leap to (roughly) present day. Like Mark of the Vampire, it openly acknowledges the difficulty for authorities (in this case, Scotland Yard) to believe such a fantastic story, but as Fleet and his detectives discover, the evidence is hard to ignore, even when it points to werewolves and vampires.

 This trifecta proves to me that classic horror films have as much of a place in Horror Fest as the more contemporary fare, and in the future I resolve to include more of it for everybody to see. But for now, it's time to close out with a very recent film indeed, The Cabin in the Woods.

Blogorium Review: Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace in 3-D

 How would I know? I didn't see it. I was too busy picking up my copy of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One to be bothered with garbage like Star Wars. Like, duh!

 Oh, you wanted more than that? You don't believe me, you say? "Of course you'd say that, it sounds just like the kind of excuse you'd make up, Cap'n" you say? Well, you're right. It does sound just like the kind of excuse I'd make up, even though you all know I'm a Twi-Hard and have been for as long as that term existed, and probably even before that just because it was cooler then before Summit made all those movies and Twilight got all commercial and crap. Back in the good old days when you could ask somebody about Twilight and they'd be all "what?" and you'd feel cool. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 "Besides," you say, "we all know you didn't go see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace LAST night, dummy! You saw it on Thursday at the midnight showing because we totally drove by The [insert name of nearby theatre showing The Phantom Menace in 3-D] and saw you in line with your fancy lightsaber you bought when you were working at that toy store but told everyone it was 'too expensive' so don't even front, homeskillet."

 As though I'd be the only thirty something waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in theatres again and relive my early twenties as an obnoxious fanboy. As though I couldn't have just stayed home and watched Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace on Blu-Ray while wearing 3-D glasses and being all "great graphics" like Freddy Krueger said in the Nightmare on Elm Street movie where Freddy dies (in 3-D) even though in that scene he was actually referring to a video game he was playing with his "power glove" which also begat the line "NOW I'M PLAYING WITH POWER" like the real Nintendo Power Glove that Nintendo wouldn't let the makers of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare use so they made the joke anyway. I could have done that. But you know you're right: I didn't.

 Actually though, that's a really good idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that while I was watching Hostel Part III. I'm going to try that right now -

 ***TEN MINUTES LATER***

 You know what? Never mind - that was a horrible idea. Now my head hurts and I think my eyes are bleeding and I'm only halfway convinced that's because of the glasses. I guess I could review the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One Special Edition Two Disc Blu-Ray / DVD / Digital Copy that I got that came with a replica of Bella and Edward's wedding invitation and the special replica(s) of Bella's engagement and wedding rings I bought on Target dot com for $24.99 (what a steal - am I right or what Twi-Hards???) or the guy they hired at Target who looked JUST LIKE Taylor Lautner but who would only sign copies of Abduction... wait... maybe it was Taylor Lautner. Huh.

 Anyway, I could totally do that, or I could review Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D (short review: It Sucked... in 3-D!!!) which, you're right, I totally saw on Thursday and put up a review of Hostel Part III at roughly the same time to trick all of you. I mean, duh, it's STAR WARS. I was into Star Wars before I was born - that's how far back I go with that. I had totally memorized the Journal of the Whills before most of you were like "R2-D what now?" and yeah, Greedo TOTALLY shot first. What is wrong with you people? Do you really think that HAN SOLO is a COLD BLOODED KILLER? Come on, people. Why would a cold blooded killer go to all the effort to get Chewbacca back to Kashyyyk for Life Day? I mean, Life Day is just a made up Wookie Holiday anyway. It totally didn't exist before 1978.

 Sorry - where was I? Oh right, I was going to tell you about how you should not see Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace in 3-D and get your own awesome Pod Racer 3-D goggle glasses things. I mean what else are you going to do this weekend? See Journey 2: The Mysterious Island? One of those boring Oscar nominated movies? Yawnsville! Yeah, I bet seeing Hugo is really going to enrich your life or some crap like that. Well does Hugo have its own Jar Jar? I don't think so! Game, set, match: you lose, Scorsese. Lucas for the win. Now if you'll forgive me, there's a special interview with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart about the wedding of the century I need to be partaking in. What the hell kind of Blogorium Review could I give you on Monday if I hadn't seen that?

Horror Fest V Day Two: Curse of the Undead

Curse of the Undead is a Universal cheapie from the 1950s that is 80% Western, 15% melodrama, and 5% vampire film. Even when it is a vampire film - and you can tell, because that's when the theremin starts playing - it's not a good or even credible vampire film, although it might explain certain elements of the True Blood and Twilight series.

If you're looking for a plot, I suppose you could say that Curse of the Undead is along the lines of Shane or A Fistful of Dollars, if the mysterious stranger that rides into town to help a rancher save her land was a vampire. No, seriously. A vampire that dresses in black, walks around in daylight, and periodically sleeps in a coffin. He's very keen on drinking blood, and it seems like the film might wander into traditional vampire territory, as he slowly turns the rancher's daughter (figuratively and literally) away from the town preacher. The only thing that seems to bother our fangslinger is the cross button (I'm not kidding) the preacher wears, allegedly containing wood from the crucifixion.

The Twilight and True Blood connection comes in because there are long - some might say interminable - scenes where the vampire (who was hired to kill a land grabber) wanders around town, taunting the preacher, talking to the Sheriff, negotiating with the man he's supposed to be killing, and then trying to uncover some kind of landowner conspiracy. When he's not doing that, the vampire is arguing that his "condition" is unfairly judged by the preacher. There's a lot of chatter in Curse of the Undead, and considering that it's not a very long movie, that's a bad thing indeed.

Curse of the Undead is so far from horror that the creative geniuses involved in the film decided to indicate that the "man in black" was a vampire by playing a theremin every single time the camera cuts to him. Were it not for a decent set up - involving attacks on young women in the desert by an unknown assailant - and the semi-novel way the preacher wins his gunfight with the vampire (just guess), I'd say that Curse of the Undead was a total wash. At the very least, I understand why the film never made it to DVD...

News and Notes (or the Cap'n eats some crow...)

At this point, many people have noticed (or pointed out to the Cap'n) that my previous News and Notes Column about Amazon listings of yet-to-be-announced Criterion Blu-Rays is almost totally moot now. At this point, The Thin Red Line, Seven Samurai, and The Darjeeling Limited are all listed on Criterion's website, and I have no reason to doubt that Videodrome and Antichrist will be far behind. I could say that I was simply warning people against pre-ordering until an official announcement came, or I could weakly suggest that I discussed this briefly a month ago, but there's no getting around the fact that Amazon was correct in listing the discs and the Cap'n shouldn't have questioned it. Not that they were reading this blog in the first place, but a valuable lesson was learned about opening my big mouth.

In part I bring this up because accountability means almost nothing online, especially in blogs. People say wildly incorrect things or make assertions and then when it turns out not to be true, they simply go along with the correct version and pretend what they said never happened. I mean, who's really going to remember that I said that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was "visually arresting" if I now tell them I have no interest in ever watching it again? Because I did say that, and I don't really want to watch it again.

The Cap'n makes a lot of claims online that I don't always stick to. I always told you I wouldn't see Shit Coffin or Shit Coffin 2, and yet those are clearly links to reviews of Friday the 13th (2009) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010). I also said I wouldn't watch Rob Zombie's Halloween and that I had a marginal interest in Halloween 2 but I also watched both of them. Now, I could provide the caveat that I waited until I could watch each of them with no cost to the Cap'n, but let's face it, I said I didn't want to see them and I did. It doesn't even matter that I hated the first three because I saw them anyway. So I can't really argue when people expect me to go watch horrible movies I genuinely don't want to see. Well, that and I dragged many of the people who say that to their share of awful films / Horror Fests.

So I'm not perfect, but the Cap'n will try whenever possible to own up to semi-hypocritical statements made on this blog. And I won't watch a Twilight movie. Trust me, I've had plenty of opportunities where no cost would be incurred on my part and I still said "no thanks." There's absolutely no curiosity on my part towards those films. So look forward to me eating those words in six months*.


*Not.

Blogorium Review: Daybreakers

Much to my surprise, Daybreakers is a very good, mostly serious vampire movie. I don't really know why, but I thought based on the trailers that it was going to be very silly or corny and stupid; a kind of Underworld mentality crossed with the vampire society from the first Blade movie. Fortunately, it's nothing like that, and better still, it's less tonally messy than Michael and Peter Spierig's previous film Undead. While it's not quite a Thirst or a Let the Right One In, I fully recommend you check out Daybreakers, as it is a damn solid film that manages to tell a different kind of vampire story, and even manages to add to the lore instead of pick and choose (ahemTwilightahem).

Set in the not-too-distant 2019, Daybreakers is the story of a world post-vampire plague, a world where the Wesley Snipeses and James Woodses and William Ragsdales have failed miserably. Being that all of these vampires used to be humans, they do what people do best: adapt. Vampires work at night and sleep during the day, have subterranean travel systems if they need to do some daytime work, and have cars with clever window tinting and cameras to compensate for the lack of reflections in mirrors.

I actually like the idea of showing (not telling) the various little ways that vampire society adjusted to the change, and it actually makes sense considering the shifts we would probably making if forced to adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle. In short order, we're given a quick indicator of how the disease probably spread, the way that society operates (hint: not much differently than ours, except at night), and the class structure (hint also: really not that different, save for one important point I'll get to in a second). Clearly they're all pretty happy being vampires, as immortality cleaned up pesky diseases and smokers are allowed to go for it because, well, what's going to happen? Not much.

The downside to the world of Daybreakers is that the human population is rapidly dwindling, and so too is the blood supply that vampires so desperately need to survive. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a hematologist at Bromley Marks, is trying to synthesize a blood substitute with little to no avail, much to the concern of Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), who watches his existing blood supply diminish daily. Bromley's attitude towards finding a substitute is (mostly) from a business standpoint, but Edward has some genuine concern about humanity, in part because he was "turned" against his will by his brother Frankie (Michael Dorman).

When Edward accidentally runs a group of humans off the road and hides them from the police, their leader, Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan) introduces him to Lionel "Elvis" Cormac, a vampire-turned-human by circumstances Edward can't quite explain. With the possibility of a cure at hand, will a society accustomed to eternal life be willing to go back to mortality if it means solving the blood crisis? If the cure is as hard to crack as Edward thinks it is, will anyone try to change back?

The reason this matters at all is that Daybreakers sets up an interesting conundrum: if vampires go too long without drinking human blood, they begin to regress into feral, bat-like creatures. Early in the film viewers get a glimpse of blood-starved, homeless vampires, ignored by the upper class and two or three days away from posing a serious threat. When Frankie comes to visit Edward on his birthday ("I've turned 35 ten times now") with a bottle of human blood, an ensuing fight about ethics leaves shattered glass and blood on the wall, attracting the attention of a wandering feral vampire. The subsequent home invasion is handled in a way that's unnerving and a bit sad. It's clear that the bat-creature is just starving, and it's attacks on Edward and Frankie are instinctual rather than malevolent.

I enjoyed the way that Daybreakers doesn't go for silly or over the top most of the time. It tends to set things up in one direction (making you think that Audrey might be the long-missing human daughter of Bromley) only to head another way (introducing her in a later sequence which is tangentially related to the main story). Many of the problems that I had with Undead came from the fact that it was never clear what kind of movie it wanted to be: was it a horror-comedy? A zombie film? An alien invasion film? Daybreakers manages to be a serious (and entertaining) movie about vampires that doesn't treat them as disposable fodder for some badass hunter or as a prop to tell teen romances or sell books.

The one issue I had with the film came from an initially broad performance from Willem Dafoe, who plays Elvis a little broader than anybody else in the movie. This is not to say that Ethan Hawke or Sam Neill are playing wholly restrained mopey vampires - there is actually some nuance to both characters - but Elvis rolls into the film singing "Burning Love" and flinging around a southern twang that really sticks out initially. Eventually he settles down, but I couldn't help but feel like Dafoe was more like a character from John Carpenter's Vampires than the Spierig brothers' Daybreakers.

Still, it's a very minor complaint. I had really expect Daybreakers to be some goofy, over-serious film about vampires contemplating mortality, a maudlin extension of Interview with the Vampire or The Hunger or something like that (both movies I like, by the way), but instead the Spierigs take the material seriously, aren't afraid to play both the quiet and vicious sides of vampire lore, and ultimately deliver a story that's fresh and fun to watch. These vampires aren't just cool or scary, and they don't spend all of their time pissing and moaning about living forever (in fact, the film opens with a child vampire committing suicide because she'll never grow up). Much like Thirst, the film takes a concept that could be pretty trite and goes in different directions with it, and I for one was pleased with the results.

Now it's just a matter of conveying it to the folks sick to death of The Vampire Diaries...

Blogorium Review: Twilight - New Moon

So New Moon is the second film in the Twilight series, based on the popular novels by Stephanie Meyer. Like the first film (entitled "Twilight", which is a little odd since that would make it The Twilight Series: Twilight, but that's kind of like changing the title of Pitch Black to The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black, because what does that make the title of The Chronicles of Riddick?), New Moon centers on Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a teenager trying to make her way in the world.

At the end of Twilight, it looked like Bella and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) were going to be together and happy despite the fact that he's a mopey hundred and something year old vampire that turns sparkly in the sunlight (don't ask). But some rival vampire clan isn't okay with this and things get a little heated during Bella's birthday party and Edward decides that the farmer and the cowman should be friends world of humans and vampires shouldn't mix, especially in this specific case, so he decides to take off for parts unknown.

Bella is devastated and goes catatonic, but then this dude Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who was in the first movie, starts making his move, and suddenly she's caught up in this love triangle between an absentee vampire and a shirtless werewolf-

Okay, I'm just joshing you. There's no way I watched New Moon, or Twilight, nor will I ever. But I did watch Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and that is true. No April Fools there.

The best part is that even if I didn't put up that whole Twilight ruse to much with your schemas, you still won't believe that I kinda sorta enjoyed Alice in Wonderland. You really have to temper the hell out of your expectations, and it doesn't hurt that it cost me nothing but time to watch the movie, but I was truly ready for a massive trainwreck of a movie, which is not exactly the case.

Let's get this out of the way first: this movie could easily be called Alice's Adventures in Narnia. It's not really Alice in Wonderland in any form or fashion. Oh sure, all the characters you're expecting to see are there: the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Queen of Hearts (Helena Bonham-Carter), Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (Little Britain's Matt Lucas), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), The White Queen (Anne Hathaway), The March Hare (Paul Whitehouse), the Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), and of course the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry). Even the Dodo from the beginning of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is there, voiced by Michael Gough. But they, like Alice (Mia Wasikowska) are simply there to service an epic battle story.

Remember how in Prince Caspian (for the four of you who watched it), how the children return to Narnia and it's all broken down and decrepit after they left? That's Wonderland - pardon me, Underland - now, because the Queen of Hearts staged a coup with the help of the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and the Jabberwocky (Christopher Lee) and stole the White Queen's crown and Vorpal sword. Alice has been summoned back to Underland (the explanation is actually so stupid I don't want to explain it) in order to be the White Queen's Champion and slay the Jabberwocky to restore blah blah blah.

The story is crap. I mean, it's a dundering bore of a plot, hampered by its insistence that rather than finding her situation unusual, Alice insists that she's dreaming and should take nothing seriously. There's no sense of whimsy whatsoever, which I suppose is in keeping with the "take all the fun out of it" Hot Topic mentality of post-Ed Wood Tim Burton films. And believe me, Alice in Wonderland is going to make a killing for that faux-goth clothing emporium.

"But wait, Cap'n; you said you kinda sorta liked it! What gives?"

Too true. You got me; despite the fact that the story is alternately infantile and desecrating to the source material, Alice in Wonderland is a visually arresting movie. There's nothing that isn't fun to look at when Alice goes down through the rabbit hole, and Burton gets all the credit in the world for making something that had to be 95% visual effects and making it look like a world. Had I seen it in 3-D, maybe I would have appreciated that even more, but under the slightly dubious circumstances I saw it, even the partially washed out picture looked great.

The character designs are great too, and while it takes a little bit to get used to the elongated arms and legs on Crispin Glover, by the time he crashes the Tea Party hunting for Alice, you're more interested in watching the characters interact. There is a period before the battle when Burton is principally interested in re-acquainting the audience with (ugh) Underland, and that part is pretty good. Not great, or even necessarily very good, just pretty good.

I really can't forgive the ridiculous 11th hour dance sequence, as it really sticks out like a sore thumb and screams "kid's movie!" as loudly as possible. To wit: I find that funny because, for a children's movie - and this most certainly is that - primarily, Alice does cross the moat to the Queen of Hearts' castle by jumping from one decapitated head to the other. To make it clear they ARE actually heads and not head-shaped rocks, she gets her foot stuck in one and drags out some viscera. Gross, and not exactly kid-friendly, unless you like explaining to your children precisely how you get from "Off with their heads" to what Alice has to cross.

On the other hand, I really did like Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat and Helena Bonham-Carter's Queen of Hearts. Crispin Glover is also pretty good and has a genuine speaking role for a change, but isn't exactly trading on the "weird" persona people tend to cast him for. Mia Wasikowska is also pretty good, although she doesn't have much to do as Alice. I realize that by necessity the Mad Hatter should be all over the map, but despite that it's hard to find any kind of character in Johnny Depp's performance. There are a few moments when he calms down a little bit and you get a glimpse of the Hatter behind the madness (a particularly good moment comes after *spoiler* Alice beheads the Jabberwocky. The Mad Hatter has the Knave of Hearts at sword-point, ready for the kill, but when he sees what actual killing looks like, he throws his sword down in disgust.)

You know, I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it was I liked about this movie. Every positive I come up with is countered by an equally valid negative. I'm beginning to suspect that the Cap'n is being more forgiving of Alice in Wonderland because it wasn't totally unwatchable. It's aggressively okay, but not much more. It's certainly not something I'd own or even watch again (even in 3-D), but I suppose that the expectation for a truly awful movie was tempered enough that I'm willing to shrug and let Alice in Wonderland and I go our separate ways.

- so Bella goes to the Volturi to find Edward before he exposes himself in sunlight and is put to death. She doesn't quite get there in time, but she pleads her case to their leader Aro (Michael Sheen), and they agree to spare Edward on one condition. Because Bella has seen the vampire world when no mortal should, she has to be turned into a vampire when she's "of age", and Edward agrees to do it. But Jacob's not giving up, because werewolves and vampires should can never be friends. Not at least when they're duking it out over the girl from Panic Room and Catch that Kid, and I don't mean Joan Jett.

To be continued in the Blogorium review for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse...

Additionally

Don't think the Cap'n doesn't know you were all out picking up New Moon at midnight last night. I may not have been conscious, but my psychotic psychic projection was, and it saw you.

ALL OF YOU