"I'm a Marvel" / "And I'm a DC" (2)

This time, Batman and Hulk want to determine whose movie franchise sucked most before brand new movies were made this summer:

"I got a re-boot after fans called Batman and Robin a disastrous embarrassment to comic book movies everywhere."

"What? That, your movie? How do you sleep at night?"
"At least, no-one mistook me for Shrek!"
"Just like no-one mistaked [sic] George Clooney for you!"

Indy IV: the preview to be watched after seeing the film

The video I'd like to show you today is a movie preview of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's really funny, I assure you.

Good Burger

This scene from the (unfortunately) unknown comedy film Good Burger is dedicated to those of you who have a student job this summer, and perhaps work in a fast food outlet:

"I'm reporting your name to the manager!"
"The manager already knows my name!"
"Oh! I'll see ya in HELL!"
"OK. See you there!"

XD

Here are some good scenes from the film:

Episode III gets reviewed

I recently found a really good review of Star Wars Episode III and I thought it could be interesting to feature it on this blog, among the other piles of random stuff that I accumulate on a daily basis. (I hope some of you saw the film, at least…)



"Count Dracula shows up. The Chancellor says: 'Get help. You're no match for him. He's a Sith Lord.' Dude, where are they gonna get help?!?"

" … and what does this shithead ever do to make you fall in love with him? All he ever did was bitch everyone else including Ooba-Dooba, make blatantly treacherous remarks and — I wanna stress this again — he committed mass murder and Ooba-Dooba knows it."



"Obi-Wan must carefully sneak up to his position. So naturally, since he must be as covert as possible, he picks the biggest, loudest thing he can possibly find to ride up there. This thing makes noises like a dying giraffe: it's so loud the whole damn planet would be alarmed to its presence, and the damn thing even starts shouting right at the enemy's base!"

"The Emperor whips out a lightsaber and does some of that jumping around crap. The three Jedi Windu brought with him use an ancient Jedi defence technique known as 'Standing There And Letting Your Opponent Kill You', until it's soon just Windu vs. the Chancellor."



"'But wait, Obi-Wan! If Leia is my sister, then who was our mother?'
'Ow… she was the Queen of Naboo. But when things didn't work out between her and your father she lost the will to live and just up and died.'
'Ya know, she was having two kids… She didn't think it was worth living for us?'
'I guess not, Luke.'
'Oh, what a bitch!'"

The Dark Knight

Today I went to the cinema to see The Dark Knight. This is truly the best film I've seen in years, not only for the brilliant script, dramatic scenes, perfect photography, but also for Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. It wasn't Ledger on the screen, but just the Joker. Jack Nicholson's performance in Batman was already fantastic, but here Ledger gives the character a new dimension, namely that of a psychotic villain killing just to satisfy himself, and enjoying creating chaos in Gotham City. It wouldn't be much of a surprise if Ledger is awarded a posthumous Academy Award in March 2009, and if the film is nominated for Best Picture as well: Christopher Nolan did a marvellous job — just like in Batman Begins, being the mastermind behind both the script and the camera. I'm definitely going to see this movie a couple of extra times! I highly recommend it to you, even if you don't give a shit about the Batman franchise; go and watch it for the sake of it. Maybe this scene featuring Ledger will further convince you:



"This town deserves a better class of criminals. And I'm gonna give it to 'em. Tell all your men they work for me now."
"They won't work for a freak!"
"Frrrreak?"

And here's just another excellent trailer:



"Dent! Jesus! I thought you was dead…"
"Half." --> Brilliant. Harvey Dent / Two-Face's make up was terrific!

As a bonus, I even found the complete opening scene of the movie, a clever bank robbery by the Joker. If you never watch the videos I feature, please watch at least this one!!!

NostalgiaCritic analyses… "Batman & Robin"!

Here's the trailer of the most awaited critic/critique of one of the worst movies (or "pile of shit", I should write) that has ever been created. I even watched this "thing" this very afternoon, just to have a good laugh and then after I re-watched the brilliant review made by thatguywiththeglasses.



Perhaps you are willing to watch the movie trailer — but don't do it if you don't want to waste 2,5 minutes of your life.



Now, if you're ready, please watch this amazing review (sorry but there's no imbedding on his website):

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/nostalgia-critic/34-nostalgia-critic/234-batman-and-robin

"Hello, Mr Horse" (David Walliams as Lou Todd, in Little Britain season 2)

Audi came up with a terrific commercial for its new R8:



This was a perfect example of a commercial that will never work with most people, because it's a reference to Coppola's Godfather. Maybe it would be interesting to situate the scene first: Johnny Fontane came to his godfather, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) because he needed his help: Jack Woltz, an influent Hollywood producer, turned him down for playing the main part he wanted in a new movie. Johnny is a bit desperate:



So, Don Vito sends his consiglieri Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) to Jack Woltz in order to make him an offer he can't refuse… But Jack Woltz still refuses to take Johnny Fontane for the role—in fact because Johnny slept with one of his mistresses. Tom has no other option than to take the hard way:



The spoofed scene in the commercial is thus Jack Woltz finding the head of his valuable racehorse Khartoum when he wakes up!

P.S. Note that the character of Johnny Fontane presents uncanny resemblances to Frank Sinatra's career, who was "mysteriously" helped…


Today's featured Uncyclopedia article: The Godfather, of course!

The film is widely accepted as the greatest film in cinema history, voted number one on most internet websites like Fresh-Tomatos.com and the IMDB. However, it is also the subject of great controversy. Ever since the films release, mass cults have formed. Often, people claimed The Godfather's Vito Corleone was made in the image of Jesus Christ. Evidence for this claim comes from the characters title:

God = Shows the religous side of Vito.

Father = Shows that his father is God.

Putting both words together gets the title "Godfather." Some people continue to believe he has the title because it sounds cool.

The film also arose the disease known as MCD (Marble Cheeks Disease). This disease is caught from when people try to be like Marlon Brando and put marbles in there mouth, only what they fail to realise is that this can lead to a very serious disease, depending on how clean the marbles are. People who still want to pretend to be Marlon Brando have to make sure they sterilise their marbles with bleech before putting them in there mouths.

Brilliant!

Movie posters

The official poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has just been released, so have a look at this great piece of artwork by Drew Struzan—who also made the Star Wars posters, but also those for Harry Potter and the Back to the Future trilogy, among others.


(This picture was retrieved on TheRaider.net.)

By the way, a Frenchman compared the French and the American trailer of the movie, and noticed a dozen of differences due to the censorship of the MPAA. Unbelievable and outrageous! "Big Brother is watching you", it seems. Just a bunch of hypocrits.

Indiana Jones 4 : Comparaison des teasers
envoyé par Rialeb

Talking about movie posters, here are two parodies that I found on Uncyclopedia (where else?):

This one is a spoof on the Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones poster. The following replaces, respectively, Leonardo DiCaprio by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tom Hanks by George Bush, a parody of Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can.

79 golden awards

The 80th Academy Awards Ceremony took place a week ago, and now it's time to watch a four-minute summary showing the 79 films that were awarded the Oscar® for the Best Picture before the 80th (No Country for Old Men):



For an exhaustive list, I refer you to the Wikipedia entry.

Be Kind, Rewind

Here's the trailer of what seems to be a very promising comedy movie, Be Kind, Rewind, starring Jack Black (whom you might have seen in Mars Attacks! and King Kong) Basically, the plot revolves around a guy who's "magnetized" and caused all the tapes of his shop to be erased. In order to avoid bankrupt, together with his fellow shop assistant, he's going to make brand-new (very) cheap versions of the movies, which will of course be shorter. But it'll work perfectly!



Re-shooting a film in such a way is apparently called "sweding", a neologism that's likely to be taken up by many people in the future.



Even the trailer got sweded:



Frenchies! (Well, the director, Michel Gondry, is a Frenchman.) This version is even cheaper as the original movie itself! Don't forget to check out the official website.

Deer Hunter

While I was doing my duty (i.e. taking my exams), my family had fun watching movies and series. They saw a film called The Deer Hunter, with Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken — two actors I admire. My brother was so enthousiastic about it that he told me to watch an extract on YouTube: the Russian roulette scene.

Wikipedia summary:

The Deer Hunter (1978) is an Academy Award winning American film about a trio of Rusyn American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. It is loosely inspired by the German novel Three Comrades (1937), by World War I army veteran Erich Maria Remarque, that follows the lives of a trio of World War I veterans in 1920s Weimar Germany. Like that novel, The Deer Hunter meditates and explores the moral and mental consequences of war violence and politically-manipulated patriotism upon the meaning of friendship, honor, and family in a tightly-knit community and deals with controversial issues such Drug Abuse, Suicide, Infidelity and Mental Illness.

I have to see the rest of the movie! My brother told me that there were other funny scenes, like the use of a flamethrower to get rid of enemies…

PS. Maybe you wonder why I wrote "funny" instead of "violent". That's maybe I find violent scenes funny… What kind of a freak am I???


Today's Uncyclopedia featured article: Ronald McDonald, seen as a dangerous criminal and sex addict, but also prime minister of Hell.

Ronald McDonald poses for the camera with his victim.

Here is Ronald's original look. He only had about 5 fans, so he changed his face for more fans...to eat. But will he change back? NAW!!!

Christmas Week: "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"

The National Lampoon's Christmas Vacations ranks high in my favourite movies. I watch it every 25 December evening. It stars Chevy "Combover" Chase and other actors belonging to the Saturday Night Live show, such as Randy Quaid.

Let's start with the cartoon opening titles:



In this film, Clark Griswold is the head of a small family. He wants to celebrate Christmas with his whole family. First they have to go and cut a tree in the forest… That was quite an adventure, but it's nothing next to what happens after that…



Clark also attached 250 strands of lights to his roof…

… but it didn't work… But wait!



The attic scene:



The saucer sledge scene:



The dinner scene:



Towards the end of the film, Clark is really pissed off (due to the various disasters that happened in his house [including the burning of his Christmas tree and the electrocution of a cat]), but he was mostly frustrated because he hadn't received his bonus money, until…



I hope you enjoyed these fragments and that you might want to watch the whole film.

Catch 'Em If You Can

In today's Simpsons episode (braodcast on Club RTL) there was a remarkable spoof made on the opening credits of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can. Let's watch those first:



I find it highly original, and John Williams's music is — as always — tremendous.

Let's now watch the parody, just after I mention that Homer and Marge try to escape from Bart and Lisa because they'd like to be alone just one day.



In one word: wicked!

Walt Disney: Emperor of Dreams

Here's the final version of my blog entry about Walt Disney, which I also posted on germ@namur. Maybe I'm just gonna change a few links, adding silly things (like the spoof on Honey I Shrunk the Kids).

Who has never heard of Walt Disney? This world-famous cartoon director and businessman was born on 5 December 1901 in Chicago, IL. He is an icon in American culture, as will be shown in this blog entry.

Walt Elias Disney started his career as an advertising illustrator, but failing to meet the success he desired, he left his hometown to go to Hollywood. He founded a cartoon production company (known today as the Walt Disney Company), and a couple of years later, his Steamboat Willie made him famous, with its introduction of the character of Mickey Mouse. This film was the first in an endless series of worldwide-successful cartoons such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland – among many others.

But Disney’s interest lay not only in cartoons, but also in live-action movies: he most notably produced Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews. Disney also invested his money and his time in the creation of an amusement park in California, Disleyland. This theme park was designed in such a way that all American families could walk in a fantasy world that would remind everybody of his cartoons, for instance by getting lost in Alice in Wonderland’s labyrinth. As a philanthropist, he decided to create a new university, CalArts (short for California Institute of Arts), in order to promote the creativity of talented people who would probably become prominent in the arts.

Walt Disney died of lung cancer on 15 December 1966 — he was a heavy smoker. An urban legend says that Walt Disney was cryonically frozen, but he was actually cremated. Despite his death, his work was carried on by others, through the Walt Disney Company, which is now owned by his offspring. For example, several other theme parks were built in Florida, Tokyo and Paris. Even a Disney Cruise Line was opened in the Caribbean.

As far as the movie legacy is concerned, the Walt Disney Company went on to make not only many other successful cartoons such as The Beauty and the Beast, but also live-action films among which Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and hybrid forms mixing traditional animation with live action, e.g. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The latter is the only film featuring characters from Disney and from Warner Bros. in the same frame.



For almost a dozen years, the Walt Disney Company has invested more and more money in computer-animated films, which notably resulted in the two Toy Story films. These were made by the Pixar Animation Studios, which are now owned by Disney. Their most recent released film is Ratatouille.

In conclusion, Walt Disney is considered as an important character in the American, but also world culture, which makes him a legend. His future-oriented empire is one of the most powerful, and it still has many wonderful stories to tell, making us wander in the utmost fantastic universe.



Simon Labate and Quentin Poncelet

Clarkson is beaten…

Remember my passion for watching Jeremy Clarkson destrying cars? Some talented YouTuber got this brilliant idea: putting together as many movie car crashes as possible. Here's what it looks like:

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Morality: always fasten your seatbelt when you get into a car!!!

Good guy! I can't figure out how this man had the courage to make such a montage… It probably took him hundreds of hours…

Would someone be nice and count the number of cars that were destroyed??? Think about all the stunt cordinators that have to create such "choregraphies" (I mean by that "stunts", of course). So many crashes, but all of them are completely different…

300

This entry is the 300th I wrote for this blog. That's quite a number, don't you think. It obviously make me think of the movie, 300, which I haven't seen yet. Perhaps in another life. Meanwhile, we can enjoy thatguywiththeglasses' parody in 5 seconds:



And this one (which I've perhaps already displayed before):



Here are two videos I found a month ago but I was keeping just for the sake of this 300th blog entry. The first one is a video about the Top 100 quotes in the (English-speaking) movie history.



However, I'm surprised that "I am your father" wasn't in this Top 100…

The second is a marvellous montage of bits of films where a character says a number; here we have the complete count from 100 to 1.



I told you it was brilliant! Thumbs up!

"When this baby hits 88 miles an hour, you're gonna see some serious shit!"

"One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them. One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
[By the way, here's the original version (in the so-called Black Speech of Mordor) of that quote in the book: "Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul." I think it just sounds great.]

Some other alternate endings

Here's a first one about V for Vendetta, a movie that I really enjoyed watching this summer, as it is about totalitarism and rebellion against it. (Doesn't it remind you of a certain Star Wars saga?)



(This was in fact mixed with shots from Scary Movie and Die Hard With a Vengeance.)

By the way, here's the story in a nutshell (and for once, it is not a Five Second Movie)



I don't remember if I've already shown you this one about Independence Day. If it is the case, watch it once more:



Hahahahaha!!

1-18-08

Our famous NostalgiaCritic posted a video about a film code-named "Cloverfield". Please watch the official trailer before watching his opinion on that trailer. He is, as usual, very convincing…

Good guy, I just pissed myself!

Maybe it's Jesus: maybe he just wanted the Bible to get a twisted ending and decided to rampage through the city! Maybe it's all four of them, maybe it's a giant robotic Donkey Kong Jesus riding a puff of smoke. Holy shit that'd be really cool… BUT HIGHLY IMPROBABLE!

So I guess it must be a Blair Witch-like movie with a huge teasing campaign… and a giant monster. Maybe the return of the angry Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters?

The Bourne Ultimatum

Yesterday we went to Leuven in order to go to the movies: originally, we were to watch a British film called Control, but as it wasn't on anymore, we watched The Bourne Ultimatum, the third movie of the franchise around the character of Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), a brainwashed spy who desperately struggles to find out who he actually is. Of course, the FBI (or the CIA, or some obscure agency) wants to catch him first—because they think him of being dangerous.

Here's one of the trailers:



The screenplay was quite good (even if I didn't remember much of the two previous movies), but I was disappointed with the photography: there wasn't a single shot that wasn't shaky… I admit that such shots perfectly fit in action scenes, but I doubt of their usefulness in dialogue scenes. Of course, we were seated on the 5th and 6th rows, and it may affect our judgement.

But still, it was great fun to go to Leuven: after the cinema, we went for a swift walk in the city with Professor Vandelanotte as tourist guide. We saw a fountain (Fonske), the Town Hall and several famous buildings such as the University Library. And then back to Namur! I'm already looking forward to our next trip; it'll probably be on 2 November to Ghent.

Why are all good Belgian movies Flemish???

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to go and see a Flemish film called Ben X, which has already got several awards and it will perhaps make it to the final 5 in the Foreign Language Film category of the 80th Academy Awards Ceremony in 2008. Wait and see. If you haven't seen the film yet, please watch the trailer:



Ben is kind of a modern Rain Man, but addicted to computer games. He's bullied at school and the film's all about it. This bullying is so harsh that he'll consider committing suicide.

I found this film very interesting in the way the action was filmed; photography was brilliant and innovating. I especially liked the opening credits.

I still wonder why we can't make such achieved movies as this one in Wallonia…