TOP 10 CHANGES I WOULD MAKE TO THE STAR WARS SAGA

The Star Wars movies are a work in progress. Lucas has been tweaking them and making changes from the re-release of the original movie in the late '70's through the recent Bluray editions of the saga. With the upcoming 3D versions of the movies, it's likely that he will continue to refine his movies to more fully realize his vision, for better or worse.

As Anakin's mom says in Episode I, "You can't stop change." As a long-time Star Wars fan, I'm mostly okay with the changes, many of which are subtle and actually improve and enrich the visual world of the movies. A few changes don't really work (Jabba's scene in A New Hope). And some are just weird and unnecessary (Vader's "Noooo!" in Jedi and his shuttle trip in Empire).

If you hate the changes made to the movies, you should go back and look at the originals some time. We take for granted some of the more subtle improvements that have been made to these movies. Thanks to the Special Editions we are spared the awful landspeeder effects, flimsy light sabers, and the atrocious Rancor blue screening.

Knowing that Lucas will continue to make updates, here's my list of changes I think should be made.

Just because you can show us an alien's tonsils, doesn't mean you should.

1. Fix Some of the 1990's CGI (Original Trilogy): If it's going to be in there, at least bring it into the 21st Century. Whether it be the dodgy compositioning and texturing (Sarlacc beak) or the overly ostentatious CGI in the Max Reebo Band number, it's time to go back and do some much needed touch-ups to the early generation digital effects.

2. Add Some Battle Droids to the Background Inside the Sandcrawler (A New Hope). The Battle Droids were ubiquitous in the Prequels but are totally absent from the original trilogy. It would be great to see some old rusted Battle Droids in the background inside the Sandcrawler or even replacing one of the robots in the droid sale. This would be a nice way to visually tie the trilogies together and some evidence of some Clone Wars action that might have happened on Tattooine, which would give some context to the Cantina bartender's line, "Your droids will have to wait outside! We don't serve their kind here."


3. Vader and the Blast Door (A New Hope): Before the Millennium Falcon escapes the Death Star and right after Obi-Wan sacrifices himself, Luke shoots a wall panel causing a door to shut on Vader, locking him out of the hangar. The way I see it, Vader is not going to wait for someone to fix the door, nor is he going to walk around. We need to see his red light saber poke through the door and begin cutting its way into the hangar. This helps establish Vader as an unstoppable bad-ass.

We could even see him step through in time to see the Falcon leave. This would be a nice call-back to The Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon attempts to cut through the door on the Federation cruiser and it also recalls moments when Darth Maul watches the Naboo ship escape on Tattooine and when the Falcon narrowly escapes Vader twice in Empire. (Come to think of it, there are lots of shots in Star Wars in which people frustratedly watch ships take off.)


3. Add Count Dooku to the Jedi Council (The Phantom Menace): One of the problems with Count Dooku as a villain is that he comes out of nowhere in Episode II and we have to listen to a lot of people talk about his backstory. He plays such a major part in the prequels that he should really be visually established prior to Episode II. Since we hear that he is an important Jedi prior to the Clone Wars, why not see him on the Council in Episode I?

Digitally put him in place of the "conehead" Jedi Ki-Adi Mundi and give him that character's one line and then at least we are introduced to him and we actually see that he was an important Jedi rather than having to take Mace Windu's word for it. It gives him a clearer character arc and makes him a more effective villain.

4. Fix Some of the Bad Puppet/Mask Work (Original Trilogy): This is sacrilege for some people, but the Special Editions were not ambitious enough when it came to improving on the bad mask and puppet work throughout the Original Trilogy. I'm surprised Lucas didn't remove more of the cheap masked characters from the Cantina scene with digital characters. Now that the Prequels are over, it would be nice to see some Prequel aliens represented in there. Also in Jabba's Palace, Max Reebo looks like a big ole Muppet.

It's time to play the music...it's time to light the lights...

5. Fix Yoda. (Throughout) I'm a bit dissatisfied with Yoda in both trilogies. I like his range of movement and performance in the Prequels but there was something very plastic about his skin. It was a bit too shiny and translucent. I'd really like to see him "reskinned" with a duller tone that is more like the puppet used in Empire and Jedi.

Yoda was never the same after the stroke...

That's not to say that I am a huge fan of the puppet. There are some scenes where he works well and some scenes that are painful, such as when he is "emoting" surprise when Luke manages to lift the X-Wing from the swamp. Or the awful Yoda dummy that was in Luke's backpack. Or his death scene in Jedi where Luke pulls a blanket over him, which gets caught on his rubber toe and pulls it back like an empty glove. If there ever comes a day when they can create a CGI Yoda that is indistinguishable from the puppet Yoda, they should go in an fix a few scenes to make Yoda more expressive and lifelike.

Hellooooo dear!

6. Fix The Emperor (The Empire Strikes Back): Re-doing the Emperor's sole scene in The Empire Strikes Back with Ian McDiarmid was a great move. The only problem was that he was wearing his weird Mrs. Doubtfire makeup from Revenge of the Sith. Let's fix this so that he looks more like his appearance in Return of the Jedi.

7. Tweak a Few Lines in Jedi: After Sith, there are some lines in Return of the Jedi that stick out as not being very accurate. After Luke expresses his intent to redeem his father, Vader says, "Obi-Wan once thought as you do."

The only problem is that Obi-Wan pretty much had made up his mind to kill Anakin before he even got to Mustafar. It's actually Padme who wants to take Anakin away in the same way that Luke does, so the line could be changed to, "Your mother once thought as you do." This change makes the line more accurate and also more emotionally powerful. With the return of his son, there is no doubt that thoughts of Padme are running around inside Vader's head as he struggles to turn back.

Also, when Luke asks Leia about her "real" mother, she gives a description of her as a beautiful but sad woman which begs the question, who is she talking about? To simplify this, the word "real" should be removed and we can just assume that she is talking about her adopted mother, the one we see her with at the end of Sith, and Luke, trying to ease into the topic, doesn't bother to correct her.

8. Diversify the Rebels (Original Trilogy): It seems like the Rebels are a pretty homogeneous bunch. In the first couple of movies, Chewie is the only alien in their ranks. By the time we get to Jedi, we see some Mon Calamari and some other aliens but it still doesn't seem very representative. I'd like them to make it a little less human-centric to contrast better with the Empire, which is supposed to be the undiverse faction (being diverse in the Empire means you don't have a British accent.) Let's actually see some of those Bothans that Mon Mothma is all broken up about. The Star Wars Galaxy is a pretty diverse place, let's show it off.

And give Chewie his damn metal.

9. Fix the Tauntauns (Empire Strikes Back): While the stop motion work that you see is not too bad, the Tauntauns look much worse when you see them in close and medium shots when they are dead-eyed animatronics. Even worse, when you see them in Echo Base they are often hiding behind ice columns to hide their puppet mechanisms. I'd like to see some CGI in these shots, to make them more convincing and lifelike in the background.

10. Give Ahsoka Tano A Cameo In Sith: As a nod to the popular The Clone Wars series that has brought a whole new generation to Star Wars and is set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, let's have a quick cameo from one of its protagonists, Anakin's Padawan Ahsoka Tano. She could be simply strolling down the hallway in the Jedi Temple or otherwise in the background, but it would be a treat to work her into the live action movies.

Here's a bonus one:

11. Take Out The "Nooooo" and "She's Lost The Will to Live." (Revenge of the Sith): There you were in 2005. It was the movie you had been waiting for forever. For the most part, Lucas had not screwed it up. There was no Jar Jar, very fewAnakin/Padme scenes, it was a legitimately satisfying Star Wars prequel, with some of the best scenes and sequences of the entire saga.

You were at the end and Anakin had been rescued from his brutal defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan, in a scene that was surprisingly intense and graphic. Intercut with a scene of Padme dying while giving birth to the twins is a sequence in which Darth Vader is born.

Intertwining these two scenes was a brilliant and haunting choice. Then we get the one-two punch. First, some Jaialai-handed robot tells Obi-Wan that Padme is dying because, "She has lost the will to live." The droid is practically shrugging as it gives this half-assed diagnosis. You just wished Obi-Wan would have split it in half and said, "No dumbass, she was Force Choked!" It was a stupid, awkward moment.

Then we cut back to Vader and he looks a little terrified as that mask is lowered onto his face. sealing him into his suit. There is a beat and then we hear that infamous breathing and we see it displace the mist that his hanging over him. In a clear visual allusion to Frankenstein, his operating table is straightened and he takes his first awkward steps, while telekinetically crushing the droids and equipment around him. He asks, what has become of Padme and when he is told, he lets loose an awful melodramatic "Noooooo!" while the camera slowly zooms out and Palpatine looks on, pleased. This moment ruins the otherwise perfect scene, which was to be the tragic summation of the entire prequel trilogy.

Both of these moments can be easily fixed. First, cut the droid's line and the shot entirely. We already know what happened to Padme. It's goofy and unnecessary.

Second, I agree with the sentiment of "Noooooo!" but not the execution. This is a Tragedy after all, so it's okay that emotions run big but the combination of the line and the camera zooming out is a huge cliche. Let's replace the "Nooooo!" with a scream of rage and loose the zoom out. I would even have him crush the droids after he finds out about Padme, like he's letting loose some kind of Force storm, letting the Dark Side give him power, which pleases Palpy.





Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Monster Movie of the Week: Mimic (1997)

MIMIC (1997)
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Horror/Survival

THE MOVIE

Horror movies are like icebergs of which we only normally see the tip. The rest of it is generally too unpleasant to show on screen. And I’m not talking about violence or gore, that’s evolved into its own genre: the sadistic torture porn movies that are so popular now. I’m talking about horror movies that identify people’s phobic pressure points and hammer away at them. Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly and Ridley Scott’s Alien both do this. Mimic is nowhere near as good as those movies but is stylish and effective and doesn’t pull any punches: kids and animals are fair game. In fact, the movie opens with a scene in a children’s hospital in which we see a very sick child struggling to stay alive. Although, children are commonly present in movies like this there is a convention that, although they maybe in dangerous situations, nothing is really going to happen to them. You knew Ripley was going to go back and rescue Newt and everything would be okay (well until David Fincher got a hold of them), you knew Timmy and Lex really weren’t going to get eaten by Velociraptors in that kitchen. In fact, there is a pair of kids in The Relic not unlike the bug collecting kids from Mimic but the only difference is that the filmmakers in The Relic chose an unrealistic but less disturbing fate for their two kids.

Of course, if you are scared of bugs then Mimic will probably freak you out. Myself, I grew up in apartments in Chicago, so I’ve had some run-ins with cockroaches. What the production design of Mimic does very well is capture the kinds of places where you are likely to run into bugs. Everything is dark and shadowy and wet and grimy. Urban decay is the overriding design theme. The movie even ventures into the legendary subterranean New York, where the subway tunnels meet once-elegant but long-abandoned train stations from the turn of the last century.


Mimic was one of the first English-language films from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who has given us such great genre movies as Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. Mimic fits well into his fascination with insects and monsters and underground places. The movie also as a subtle Latin American aesthetic to it in its Catholic imagery and especially in the way that the insects cowls close to form a face resembling Mexican folk art.

In the movie’s opening scenes, we learn that a deadly plague has swept New York’s children. The disease is carried by cockroaches who have survived all conventional attempts to eliminate them. An entomologist has genetically engineered a hybrid insect species to eliminate the cockroach infestation. The new species, the “Judas Breed” was engineered to be sterile and die out after a short period of time. We jump forward several years and there are several mysterious and violent murders happening in or near the entrances to the underground. We see fleeting glimpses of a tall figure that seems to be wearing a long cloak. Meanwhile, a couple of kids bring the entomologist a mysterious bug, resembling the Judas Breed insect but larger and more highly evolved. Several groups of characters go investigating the subway for various reasons and end up trapped and trying to escape the infested tunnels.

Mira Sorvino plays the entomologist. My first problem with this is that every time I see her I think of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion which makes me giggle. It doesn’t help that she’s about nine feet tall and has a weird tranny voice. On top of that, her character is written as a one of a long line of movie scientists who adhere to hare-brained theories with absolute certainty. In this case, she tells a bunch of people to smear insect guts all over themselves because “they’ll think you’re one of them!” That’s right up there with “Don’t move! It can’t see you if you don’t move!”

The monsters in Mimic are man-sized insects with the ability to rearrange their bodies into a vaguely human shape, thus they are the titular “mimics.” If you see them in silhouette or without your glasses on they look like people, otherwise, they don’t exactly pass. The whole mimic thing is really just a nice little visual subplot in this movie which is more concerned with big scary man eating bugs (the movie has about as much to do with mimics as Signs has to do with crop circles). The visual style serves to cover up a pretty typical monster movie plot that is fairly derivative of other movies such as Aliens. This was a troubled production and del Torro was fired and rehired by the producers over creative disagreements.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Good effects all around. There is actually a surprising amount of practical effects, handled by the great Rob Bottin.

MONSTERS

Female drones and one big giant male “king bug.”

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available in a 1st generation DVD with few features.

As of this writing a nifty director's cut has been made available on Bluray with a digital copy. In truth, the Director's cut is not THAT different but it does restore some interesting subplots to the movie. If you were ever wondering what the deal was with the mysterious abandoned church where the Asian priest was killed near the beginning of the movie, a major scene is restored which shows the place to have been a front for a sweatshop. Also more prominent is the subplot involving Sorvino's character's attempt to become pregnant.

The set has some nice featurettes about the making of the movie. Refreshingly, del Torro speaks frankly and directly to the camera for an extended chat about the difficulties making the movie and his original vision for it. More generally he talks about the craft of filmmaking and horror filmmaking in particular, especially the studio pressures to reach the lowest common denominator. I was struck by something the director said, which was to the effect that some of his best movies are the ones he never got to make, referring to some of his famously unfulfilled projects like At The Mountain of Madness. He's currently working on Pacific Rim but has had a bad bit of luck over the last few years with projects falling through, starting with his involvement with The Hobbit.

The set has some of the usual stuff, such as a few deleted scenes and even a gag reel. They did a decent job cleaning up the picture but, it is a dark murky movie from 1997 so it's only going to look so good. It's actually pretty cheap at the moment and definitely worth picking up for fans of the movie or del Torro.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

None in particular.

SEQUELS

There have been two direct to DVD sequels, one crappy, one surprisingly good.

MINORITY REPORT

This is an ongoing feature in which we look at Race and Survival in monster movies.

The veridict:

It should be noted the director is not American but that doesn’t mean the genre trends don’t apply. That being said, he first dude to die is an Asian Catholic priest. Read whatever you want into that.

The wonderful Charles S. Dutton, an African American actor probably best known for the TV show “Rock” and his role in Alien 3 is one of a small group of survivors in the last act that consists of a black dude a Latino(?) dude and a white couple. The Latino dude gets it first. Then Dutton basically sacrifices himself so that the white people can get away (sort of like his death in Alien 3.) This is a movie stereotype I like to call the Sacrificial Negro. Ultimately the survivors are a white couple and an orphaned autistic Latino kid.

TRIVIA

The Assistant Director on this movie was none other than Robert Rodriguez.

TRAILER

Monster Movie of the Week: Gamera 3: The Revenge of Iris

GAMERA: REVENGE OF IRIS (1999)

aka Gamera 3,

Gamera: The Awakening of Irys

Gamera: The Incomplete Struggle

Director: Shusuke Kaneko

Genre: Kaiju Eiga

THE MOVIE

Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko is the modern master of the kaiju eiga genre. With Gamera: Revenge of Iris, he surpasses the high benchmark he had set in the great Gamera: Attack of Legion. In the twisted destinies of the Gamera and Godzilla franchises he manages to make a movie that is far superior not only to any Heisei Godzilla movie but possibly to any Godzilla movie up until that time. This is ironic for several reasons. First, Gamera was created as a cheap Godzilla knock off with a reputation for poorly produced kid-oriented movies (although the Godzilla movies would eventually embrace this more profitable approach in the 1960’s). So the fact that a modern Gamera series would be relaunched which employed modern near-Hollywood quality special effects at a time when the Godzilla series gave us such non-classics as Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla was a serious challenge to the always competitive Toho Studios. I personally believe that the success, acclaim and quality of the ‘90’s Gamera movies as well as the horrible reception of the American Godzilla movie both led directly to Toho’s decision to bring the Godzilla series back in 1999 and they informed the kinds of movies that we saw in the the Millenium Series.

Secondly, Shusuke Kaneko is a lifelong fan of Godzilla and never particularly cared for the old Gamera movies. He had lobbied in the early 1990’s to direct a Godzilla movie and was declined. After the success of the Gamera movies, he was finally given his chance to take on Godzilla and gave us the great Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack, which many consider to be the finest Godzilla movie to date and, like Gamera 3, is a certain contender for best kaiju film of all time.

Iris takes place a few years after Legion and features some returning characters from Gamera: Guardian of the Universe as well as some new characters. Mayumi Nagamine, the ornithologist from the first movie returns as do the giant Gyaos monsters which are popping up with increasing frequency around the world. The movie also introduces us to Ayana, a young girl whose parents were killed during the battle between Gamera and Gyaos in the first movie and who also harbors a deep hatred of Gamera because of this. This is an interesting storyline as it puts a face on the all of the people that are killed off screen during a kaiju battle. One of the things that this movie does very well is remind us that even though Gamera may be “heroic," he is still a monster and he causes a great deal of death and destruction where ever he goes. Ayana eventually comes across a mystical Japanese artifact that hatches into a strange creature that she names Iris, after her cat that was along with her parents. Iris grows into a giant monster that Ayana raises to battle Gamera, developing a dark version of the bond shared by Gamera and Asagi from the previous movies.

Gamera 3 is a millennial movie and like many movies made in the late ‘90’s , there is a feeling that the world is out of balance and that disaster is just around the corner. This aspect of the movie is not developed as much as I would like and raises more questions than is satisfactorily answers. For example, early in the movie a submarine discovers a graveyard of fossilized Gameras on the seafloor. This is a really striking image but what does it really mean, other than that the ancients created “beta versions” as one character explains. The return of the Gyaos seems to be related to environmental collapse (as determined by a “game” run on a Sega Dreamcast of all things) and somehow this is related to Japan’s consumption of “mana.” Maybe one day we'll get a sequel trilogy that addresses some of these plot issues.

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS

Gamera gets a slight redesign here continuing the trend of making him darker and meaner looking. Compared to the relatively cuddly costume from Guardian, this Gamera has lots ridges frills and dangerous bits. He really looks good in this movie.

There is even a special “Nightmare Gamera” that is featured a couple of times in this movie when Ayana flashes back to when her parents were killed we see what Gamera looks like in her memories and we see a version of the character that is even dark, white-eyed and evil looking. This Gamera is a visual cousin to the Godzilla featured in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah.

Iris, is a bit of a mixed bag. The final form of Iris is an anthropomorphic collection of biomechanical blades and tentacles. My biggest complaint is that Iris lacks a real “face” with eyes we can identify with. However, he is a striking monster particularly when it is able to take flight on membranous wings.

The Gyaos get a great makeover in this movie and their flying scenes are done digitally and they look amazing (no more Rodanitis.) One thing that the movie really succeeds at is unobtrusively using CGI to supplement the suitmation effects, which is something Toho has historically been shy about (or possibly cheap about) in their Godzilla movies, insisting on exclusively using the old techniques to bring their characters to life.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

Gamera battles a pair of Gyaos in and above Tokyo’s Shibuya district. This is perhaps the greatest and most exciting kaiju action sequence ever, probably rivaled only by Rodan’s attack on New York in Godzilla Final Wars.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

No too hard to get. You can get it individually or in a three pack. There are some good interviews and stuff on the DVD, including some scenes from the movie redubbed for comic effect.

Gamera 3 has also been recently released on Bluray. Unfortunately, it is being treated as a budget release and has not been restored or cleaned up for its HD release and the image quality is only marginally better than the DVD release. On the up-side, you can get the whole trilogy on Bluray for less than $15 on Amazon.

SEQUELS

This movie ended the Heisei cycle of Gamera movies. Gamera: The Brave was released in 2006 and brings the series back to its roots in a pretty solid kids movie.

SEE ALSO

Godzilla Mothra King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack (2001)

Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Star Wars Bluray Review, Part 1: The Prequels

I grew up on the original trilogy of Star Wars. Like many other people my age, it was a HUGE part of my childhood. Like many others from my generation, my interest in Star Wars dipped in the mid eighties and then spiked again with the re-release of the movies on video in the mid 1990's, which coincided with new novels, comics, toys and the eventual release of the Special Editions. Like many other Star Wars fans, I was psyched about the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999 but unlike many other fans, I actually enjoyed it. My point is, despite my affinity for the original movies, I am not an Original Trilogy partisan. I like to take Star Wars as a series of six movies that are all pretty flawed but each of which has their own strengths and weaknesses.

The movies are all out on Bluray in either a set of two trilogies or a mammoth boxed set which includes all six movies and three discs of bonus materials. I've managed to make my way through all the prequels thus far and will be looking at the other three movies at a later date. If you are interested in my thoughts on the bonus materials check out this entry.

It's hard to believe its been over a decade since the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. This was perhaps the most hyped movie of all time and was released to strong negative reaction by fanboys and people who grew up on the original trilogy, so objective reactions to the movie are relatively hard to come by. It will always be judged in comparison to people's impressions of the movies that came before it. However, Roger Ebert gave the movie a clear-eyed review and three and a half stars. In his review he called it, "an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking." Prior to the movie's release, Steven Spielberg saw the film and said that Star Wars fans were in for a "treat." The movie was a massive hit and audiences flocked to it. For a whole generation of children, The Phantom Menace is their Star Wars.

So how does the movie hold up twelve years later? Episode I is a solid piece of pop entertainment, with lots of excitement and spectacle. The movie's 3D release is right around the corner, and watching it again at home it seems almost like The Phantom Menace was made with 3D in mind. The podrace sequence, in particular, is going to be a lot of fun and the novelty of seeing it in 3D will actually justify its length.

Star Wars to me has always been about a great story and, for me, this is where Episode I and the other prequels really outshine the Original Trilogy. While Lucas often fumbles the specifics of cinematic storytelling (dialogue and directing actors) his visual storytelling and the overarching plot and themes make the prequels really resonate. Lucas is telling the story of the fall of a democracy which parallels the story of the fall of his hero. The prequels are political allegory and much more ambitious than the simplistic rebels vs. evil empire story of the original movies.

Attack of the Clones was released three years later and, in some ways gave audiences a little more of what they were expecting to see in the previous movie. We have Anakin in his prime, lots of Jedi action, the Clone Wars, Mandalorians, stormtroopers, less Jar Jar, etc. But it also devoted an inordinate about of time to an absolutely painful-to-watch love story. Clones features some of the absolute best and worst moments in Star Wars. The last forty minutes of the movie are amazing fun.

Three years later, Revenge of the Sith was released. In many ways, this was the movie that fans had been waiting for. It featured the rise of the empire, the Jedi purge, the creation of Darth Vader and birth of Luke and Leia. Sith is a dark piece of pop tragedy and actually a pretty solid movie. For my money, it is tied with The Empire Strikes Back as the best of the six movies. Whereas with the previous two prequels, I would cut whole scenes and sequences, in Revenge of the Sith I would only cut some dialogue here and there which diminish otherwise strong scenes.

Even the performances are better, as the actors have more to do (although Natalie Portman is still basically furniture. Being a heroine in Star Wars is a thankless task) and Hayden Christiansen's descent into evil mostly works, although the movie could have used another scene connecting how he went from assisting in the murder of Mace Windu to killing children. Ian McDiarmid, who had hovered in the sidelines for two movies as the slimy politician Palpatine here gets to complete his journey to power in grand fashion. He has some great moments in Sith, especially the chilling story he tells Anakin in the opera scene about the fallen Sith Lord, Darth Plagueis.

As far as their transition to Bluray, the movies are a mixed bag. The Phantom Menace is the only one of the three not to be shot digitally and the transfer is not up to part with the others I've seen snippets of the movie broadcast in HD on cable and the Bluray version is not a whole lot better. Revenge of the Sith is the most recent movie (2005) and it is absolutely beautiful on Bluray. It feels like there is almost nothing between you and what you are looking at on screen and the level of detail on costumes and sets is amazing. If nothing else, the set is worth it just for Sith. The presentation on Attack of the Clones is better than Phantom but not quite as good as Sith.

The prequels are flawed movies but, realistically, so are the originals. You can't fault the new movies for their lackluster performances, wooden dialogue, and inappropriate comic relief without holding the original movies to the same standard. Again, I look at Star Wars as a six movie series with an epic, multi-generational story about fall and redemption. It is a story that is much better and more resonant than the medium in which it is told.



Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Monster Movie of the Week: Skyline (2010)

SKYLINE
Genre: Sci-fi/Survival
Directed by: The Brothers Strause


THE MOVIE

We are experiencing a mini-boom of alien invader stories: Battle Los Angeles, Cowboys & Aliens and Falling Skies and V on TV. We have yet to get a great one in this wave but Skyline is an interesting take on the genre from The Brothers Strause, who are best known for directing Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Like the great Signs from M. Night Shyamalan, Skyline aims for a smaller scope than your average over-baked invasion movie. The movie limits the action to a small group of survivors in a residential high-rise in L.A and the immediate area.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Skyline is the fact that it was produced for around ten million dollars, which is amazingly cheap considering the amount of high-quality effects work in the movie. Skyline went on to make about $80 million world-wide, so this is the kind of story that movie studios like to see and no doubt The Brothers Strause will get lots of work if only for their ability to bring in a good looking movie for very little cost.

The human story is more of an afterthought as they often are in these movies. I wish all of these James Cameron-wannabe filmmakers would go back and watch Terminator and Aliens. One thing Cameron did beautifully in those movies was make the relationships the backbone of his action/sci-fi movies and give us compelling characters that we care about. This is pretty much a lost art today. Skyline features a forgettable plot about a guy, Jared, and his wife visiting his friend who is a hotshot effects artist in L.A. (Donald Faison, who manages to be both douchey and nerdy). The invasion happens after they have a big party and there are several other ancillary characters who are pretty much interchangeable. In fact, most of the female characters were such ciphers that I had trouble telling them apart.

This all adds up to a movie that-while severely lacking in drama and characterization-has the loose feeling of a scrappy small production that is being produced out of love for the genre. There is something fun and pure about two brothers making a sci-fi movie on the cheap out of their condo. While not great or groudbreaking, Skyline delivers lots of action and thrills.

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS

Skyline is one of those movies in which the line between creature and vehicle is hard to discern. We first witness the aliens in the forms of their great and spindly ships. The technology of the aliens is very complex and spiky and lit by eerie blue lights. It's an aesthetic not unlike the Transformers movies.

We also see a lot of drones floating around and it is not clear whether these are purely mechanical or partly organic. They are a bit reminiscent of the Sentinels from the Matrix movies. More monstrous are the large, ogre-like creatures which prevent our protagonists from escaping the building. Like the other creatures, these guys feature a slimy, bio-mechanical look.

The last scene of the movie is an interesting coda that actually sets up a cooler story than anything before it. Throughout the movie, the aliens had been abducting people and in the final scene we see then ripping out brains and placing them into brutish bio-mechanical bodies, presumably to serve as their army. These guys are big and almost gorilla-like, with huge deadly claws.


MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT/MINORITY REPORT

Sadly, not a good one. Latino actor David Zayas, in addition to having to awkwardly mouth the word-salad that is the script, is not only given a cliche action movie line, but one that suddenly and unnecessarily calls ridiculous attention to his ethnicity, in the way that screenwriters like to call out their Hispanic characters by throwing a lil Spanish 101 into their English dialogue.



HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Bluray.


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Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

STAR WARS BLURAY FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The time has come. The six-movie Star Wars Bluray set has arrived and I finally got my grubby hands on it. While I haven't actually set the time aside to watch the movies, I have been able to browse the special features so while I won't be able to speak to the quality of the transfers or any changes made to the movies in this post, I have a good handle on the strengths and weaknesses of the supplemental materials, which are going to be a big draw for people looking for the "Ultimate Star Wars Saga" experience on home video.

There are three bonus discs as part of the nine disc set, one each for the prequels and the original trilogy. There is also a third bonus disc that includes longer documentaries. Navigating the first two discs is a bit counter-intuitive, as the features are broken down by movie and then by location within the movie. For example, the section for A New Hope is subdivided into Tattooine, The Death Star and The Battle of Yavin. While this is logical on some level, not all of the materials neatly line up to a location and it would have been better to arrange them by subject or importance.

Within each "planet" there are interviews, deleted scenes, and vault items. The interviews give you good nuggets of information but largely stuff you have seen before in other documentaries or read about in other sources. However, the vault items are very different from typical special features and make good use of the high definition format and they are one of the features that real stand out in the set. Each vault item is a costume, prop, maquette, or other item that you can get a nice close look at including a hand full of zoom shots on some of the details. Some items even have their own short videos. I found this particularly rewarding in getting a close look at some of the great Amadala costumes from The Phantom Menace. It helps you really appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the costume designs. Other items that are featured from the archives include R2D2, various light sabers, Leia's metal bikini from Jedi, and a reproduction of the original Yoda puppet. The archive feature is the next best thing to being able to go to Skywalker Ranch and have a look around.

For many fans, the deleted scenes are going to be a major selling point . While there are a lot of them in the set, it is far from the comprehensive collection that some of us were hoping for. Fans of the Original Trilogy should be satisfied with the offering though, as deleted scenes from those movies are quite legendary and this is their first official home video offering in many cases. There are actually quite a few substantial scenes that were cut from the original movies, such as a good and lengthy scene from the beginning of A New Hope in which we see Luke interacting with his friends at Tosche station and his reunion with Biggs. This is a great scene and it really helps to give a better picture of Luke's life on Tattooine. From The Empire Strikes Back there are some interesting scenes from Echo Base on Hoth, such as the rebels dealing with a Wampa infestation and a longer (and creepier) scene between Luke and Leia after he gets out of the Bacta tank. Return of the Jedi features a short but legendary scene in which Luke puts the finishing touches on his new light saber as well as the sandstorm scene as our heroes make their way back from Jabba's. While the quality of these scenes are not always top-notch is is great to finally be able to see them after hearing about them for so many years.

Sadly, the deleted scenes from the prequels don't fare as well, largely because so many of the scenes were never finished and are just actors mixed with animatics. It would have been nice, considering how amazingly profitable these movies have been, for Lucas to have had ILM put some finishing touches on a select few of these scenes. Scenes like Darth Maul's leap on boarding ramp and short battle with Qui-Gon, or the attack on the droid control ship from Attack of the Clones. I was very much hoping to really see Yoda's deleted scene with Qui-Gon from Sith, but it is presented here as a rough animatic with a bad stand-in for Liam Neeson. Since the actor had been back to record dialogue for The Clone Wars I was hoping they might have recorded some dialogue to finish off this scene. Other deleted scenes are curiously absent, such as the extended light sabre battle between Anakin and Dooku in Clones. My hope was that they would really go the extra mile for this set, and they didn't.

Also, since these versions of the movies are the continuously-revised special editions and the theatrical cuts are unavailable, it would have been nice to have included some of the original material as deleted scenes. Many fans would have liked to have seen Han shooting first, the monkey-eyed Emperor, or the original Lapti Nek number from Jabba's palace, or the original Ewok song that closed out Return of the Jedi. I have no problem with Lucas making changes to his movies (mostly they are for the better) but there is no reason the original sequences should go unseen. A whole younger generation of Star Wars fans might find them interesting to see.

Also somewhat disappointing are the documentaries on the third disc. There's nothing on here as substantial as the great The Beginning documentary from the Episode I DVD or the wonderful Empire of Dreams documentary included with the original trilogy set. There are vintage features for each of the three original movies, which had been available previously. More recently produced are a 25 minute interview with Lucas and Irv Kirshner on the 30th anniversary of Empire. There are a couple of other recent pieces focusing on different aspects of Star Wars but nothing particularly meaty or specifically produced for this set. I would have liked to have seen the great 2007 History Channel documentary, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed, which focused on the mythic, literary, and historical influences on the movies. At two hours long, it would have been a nice center piece for the shorter documentaries that are on there now. At the very least, Empire of Dreams should have been included.

So, as far as special features go, it is a bit of a mixed bag. While there are some interesting looks at items from the vast Lucasfilm Archives, and some very cool Original Trilogy deleted scenes, a bit more effort would have made this the ultimate home video release of the Star Wars Saga. As it is, we may have to wait for the 40th anniversary of Star Wars in 2017.

Jumping The Sharkticon: Five Reasons Why Transformers Needs a Reboot

So Michael Bay's giant effing robot finale Transformers: Dark of the Moon is about to drop on Bluray. While not anywhere near as bad as Revenge of the Fallen, is still a big bloated mess. Hasbro and the movie's producers are no doubt planning their franchise's next move and they have pretty much indicated that they will continue the existing story and not do any kind of a reboot, which is sad because I remain convinced that a good Transformers movie can be made. According to the producers, if it's not broke (i.e. unprofitable) then don't fix it.

Well, producers, here are five good reasons to reboot:

1. Robots in Disguise?

The central appeal of Transformers is that it features robots that secretly live among us disguised as vehicles and other everyday devices. In the Michael Bay Transformers continuity, there is no longer any need for the Cybertronians to be in disguise. Their existence is a badly kept secret as they have a habit of getting into huge brawls in the middle of heavily populated cities and have tried to destroy the Earth twice, even broadcasting their existence on TV in Revenge of the Fallen. At this point, there is not really any reason for them to even have vehicle modes, which negates the whole Transformers concept. They might as well call the fourth movie Monoformers: Robots in the Open. Reboot.

2. The "Narrative" Has Painted Itself Into A Corner

Michael Bay probably wasn't overly concerned about a fourth movie in which he was not going to participate. His sole concern was to conclude his trilogy in the biggest loudest, trilogy-endingist way possible, and to that extent, he succeeded. So where do you go from a movie that destroyed a major American city, killed off one of the central characters and the main villain of the entire series? What's that, you say? Unicron? Personally, I am not excited about the prospect of a live-action Transformers: The Movie. Reboot.

3. Rebooting Is The Transformers Way

Transformers has survived for over quarter century through clever management by Hasbro, who have been savvy enough to re-invent the series on a regular basis. The property is constantly evolving, taking the best elements of previous continuities and media and constantly refining itself into something better. Michael Bay's Transformers is not even close to being the best incarnation of the franchise. I'd love to see a Transformers movie that incorporates some characters and story points from Beast Wars or Transformers Animated. Reboot

4. Save Yourselves Some Money

Hire a young director with a passion for the franchise and a background in effects and storytelling and a cast of unknowns who will work for cheap. Please don't hire a mini-Bay like Brett Ratner to crank out the same kind of movie.

Save some effects money by simplifing the overly-complicated robot designs. A good middle ground between the simple G1 characters and the movie designs is the new Transformers: Prime series. It's time for a new aesthetic for the movies, in which robot characters are so complicated that they are often indistinguishable from one another. There's no reason for the Cybertronians to be hyper-realistic and made of tens of thousands of visible moving pieces.

My last money saving tip: don't hire anyone who is going to push you into a three hour movie. The last two Transformers movies were each at least an hour too long. These are summer popcorn movies and should be no more than 1:45 minutes.

5. This Is An Opportunity To Make A Real Transformers Movie

I realize that the first movie was a risky venture. Doing a movie based on an 1980's cartoon and toyline could very easily have been a huge laughable failure. From that point of view, hiring someone like Michael Bay was smart. He brought a glossy and cool sensibility to the movies that appealed to the young male demographic but he was certainly no fan of the property. I always got the impression that he thought he was slumming with the nerds and that he was overcompensating the cool factor because he was working on decidedly geeky and kid-oriented franchise. The tone and style of his movies is very different from previous Transformers media. After all, Michael Bay makes movies about cool guys and hot chicks chasing cars and blowing stuff up, not sci-fi nerd opuses or kids movies.

Now that Transformers is a viable movie franchise you can take the risk of making a movie more true to the heart of the property. There's no longer any need to tart it up to sell tickets, people are going to be buying tickets to the next couple of Transformers movies no matter what you do but by choosing to reboot and make good movies you can have a long healthy cinematic franchise. At it's heart, Transformers has always been aimed at kids. Don't be afraid to make a really good kids movie that grown-ups will enjoy. Sure, some kids liked Michael Bay's movies too, but they probably needed a Ritalin feed during the movie.

Finally, the second two Transformers movies were crap. It's no secret. Sure, you can make a lot of money cranking out crappy movies but sooner or later people are going to catch on and that is bad for the longevity of the franchise. So Michael Bay has finished his trilogy and you now have the opportunity to say "Thank you very much for helping us create a viable movie series" and start fresh on a brand new trilogy of movies with a new director and a fresh take on the characters, story and design.

Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Monster Movie of the Week: Liquid Metal Edition: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

While the original Terminator was a sleeper hit that found its audience on home video and cable, its first sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was a summer movie juggernaut that catapulted director James Cameron to the level of moguls like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The movie's huge success gave Cameron the clout to undertake massive productions like Titanic and Avatar.

By the time T2 went into production, Arnold Schwarzenegger had become an unlikely superstar and was making plenty of his own action vehicles. In retrospect, he hardly needed to make a sequel to a movie in which he was a glorified stuntman but his role in Terminator 2 was expanded and in the sequel he played a cyborg that had been reprogrammed and sent back in time to defend a preteen John Connor from another more advanced Terminator model. It was a more heroic role and more in keeping with his new status as the biggest movie star in the world. T2 ended up being one of his most popular movies and represented the height of his action career.

But most importantly, Terminator 2 features groundbreaking digital effects that allowed Cameron to pull off mind bending sequences that simply would not have been possible before. The movie is an important milestone in the history of film making and visual effects. The effects in T2 represent a maturation of technology that had been around throughout the 1980's but which Cameron had nurtured until they were ready for his eye-popping liquid metal T-1000.

Cameron's previous movie, The Abyss, had featured a similar but much less ambitious effect in its shimmering, shape-shifting aliens that appeared to be made entirely out of water. Terminator 2 creates a character that is not only made entirely of a liquid metal but also successfully melds it into the performance of a human actor, Robert Patrick. It was a successful first attempt at a CGI creature that not only paved the way for both the photo-realistic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the hybrid CGI/human performances in such movies as Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Shiny deadly people!

While the Terminator 2 is a historically important movie for its many technical achievements and it is one of the greatest action movies of the 1990's, it does have a few flaws that keep it from greatness.

One of the strengths of the original Terminator was that despite the hard logic of the time-travel paradox at the heart of its plot, Terminator was a simple story of fear and pursuit. It was like the elemental nightmare about being pursued by some relentless enemy. It was a lean and mean action movie. By contrast, T2 is overly elaborate and, at 137 minutes, it is at least a half-hour too long.

Many of us can remember a time when a movie being over two hours long was an unusual thing, reserved for "serious" movies. James Cameron has done more to usher in the era of bloated 2hr+ behemoths than anyone else. Aliens (though one of my favorite films) also clocked in at 137 and is (arguably) a little bit too long. 1989's The Abyss plods along at 138 minutes. Cameron was a superstar director by the time his spy movie True Lies was released in 1994, at that one clocks in at 141 minutes. By 1998, Cameron released the famously lengthy Titanic, which was two VHS tapes and 194 minutes long, the effect of which is like being forced to sit in a movie theater and watch a miniseries. Cameron spent the next ten years developing new technologies that would allow him make long movies and came up with Avatar, which, shamefully, is not even three hours long.

James Cameron's need to cram his entire intact cinematic vision into overly-long, sprawling movies is the sign of a director who has way too much power and too few people telling him "no." This is a too-common problem in today's movie industry. Too many directors are treated like auteurs which gives us long and meandering Star Wars prequels (with twenty minute pod race sequences), a two and a half hour Transformers movie, and a King Kong movie that was over three hours long. I would love to go back to the era when a good solid action film is an hour and a half long, like Terminator. Brevity is a terrific quality in an action movie.



One of the most notable things going between 1984's The Terminator to 1991's Terminator 2 is the strange shift in tone. While the original movie had a few tender moments, it was a dark and fatalistic 1980's action movie. T2, on the other hand, ventures into almost touchy-feely 1990's territory, with its subplot about a grating and adolescent John Connor befriending the Terminator sent back to protect him. It also features many light-hearted "comic" moments in an attempt to keep it in line with the softer direction that Schwarzenegger had taken with his career by this point. While the original Terminator was stone-faced, silent, and deadly, this new Terminator smiles, cracks jokes, struts around to "Bad to the Bone" and complains that he he needs "a vacation." When Schwarzenegger spouts the infamously awful line, "Now I know why you cry," I kinda wished his younger, eyebrow-less self would have shown up to shoot him in the face with his laser-sighted pistol. The movie is rated R but feels much more like a hard PG-13. I'd wager the R has more to do with the liberal use of the word "fuck" than the actual violence. Terminator 2 only works as well as it does because the T-1000 is lethal enough to make up for the Schwarzenegger's new cuddlier Terminator.

Terminator's right eye is being grossly unprofessional and looking straight into the camera.

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS

So, apparently they only make a few models of Terminator and a lot of them look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. This one goes up against the T-1000 and gets beat up pretty bad so there are some nice damage effects later in the movie, although there are some wonky metal applications to fleshy parts of the body and Terminator's robot eye suspiciously stops moving as soon as it is revealed.

If endoskeletons are your thing, there is a cool sequence early in the movie that shows a whole squad of them marching into battle. I'm glad we get to see these bad boys in action cause I always liked their demonic robot/skeleton appearance.

The real star is the awesome liquid metal T-1000, a mind-bending creation of James Cameron and probably the most unique and interesting robot in the history of Science Fiction. Let's face it, there is not a lot of novelty or originality in the film industry, but the T-1000 actually presented audiences with something that they had likely never seen or even imagined before: a beautiful quicksilver being that could assume almost any form and for whom the normal rules of combat do not apply. The T-1000 was certainly not going to be stopped by being crushed in a press, that's for sure. It had to be frozen, melted, blown up and pushed into a vat of molten steel in order to be destroyed.

T-1000 has his own brand of liquid metal martial arts and adds an unpredictable element to the usual tired action movie fight sequences. In hand-to-hand combat, he does cool and surprising stuff like when he is slammed face-first into a wall, his back morphs into his front or when punched in the face, his head suddenly changes into his hands. When shot, T-1000 actually shows the ballistic damage on his body, most often in the form of shining metallic craters but when he takes higher caliber damage, his body blows apart in weird and surreal ways that are almost reminiscent of the shape shifting alien from The Thing.

Finally, the T-1000 is a smarter and more ruthless Terminator than any other. He's also a bit of a bastard, such as when he tortures Sarah Connor to get her to call out to her son. Or when after Connor fails to shoot him off a ledge and into a vat of molten steel he responds with a chilling finger wag. This Terminator, fortunately, will never know why we cry.




MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

When the T-1000 is finally dispatched, the liquid metal robot flails around in the molten steel, reverting back to the forms it had taken over the course of the movie and then finally into a variety of surreal quasi-human screaming forms before he becomes a just a screaming face that folds out of itself and then just a mask that dissolves in the steel. It may be a little The Mind's Eye but it is still pretty cool.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

T2 is widely available in both DVD and BluRay in many different editions. Most of which feature a longer director's cut of the movie that actually restores a few interesting scenes. There is an interesting scene in which John and Sarah actually access the Terminator's chip and switch it to "read" mode allowing him more independent thought and the ability to learn, presumably about feelings and crying. There are also a couple of scenes featuring the T-1000 in which we see him glitching after having been frozen in the liquid nitrogen and reconstituted. We see him flickering and inadvertently mimicking colors and textures around him.

One downside to seeing the movies on home video and a big TV is that you notice the shockingly awful stunt doubling, such as the apparently 40-year-old man doubling for John Connor and the not-quite-Schwarzenegger Terminator double.


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Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Monster Movie of the Week: The Wolf Man (2010)

THE WOLF MAN
Directed by Joe Johnston
Genre: Gothic Horror

THE MOVIE

The Wolf Man doesn't know quite what it wants to be. At it's heart, it longs to be a faithful re-invention of the classic Universal movie starring Lon Cheney,Jr. or possibly an elegant neo-Gothic period film a la Bram Stoker's Dracula, or maybe a Hammer-style horror movie, but in a world of Twilight, Underworld, and meddling studio executives there was probably intense pressure to make it, if not hip, than at least intense and violent enough to be able to appeal to a good chunk of youngsters. It was a troubled production with too many cooks in the kitchen and when the always-reliable Joe Johnston came on to direct, the movie had already picked up its own clunky momentum.

The movie stars Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro as the cursed Lawrence Talbot, in a bit of casting that is interesting but not quite right. In some ways Del Toro has the same kind of world-weary, hang-dog quality that Lon Cheney, Jr brought to the role, but he seems uncomfortable with the language and out-of-place in the Victorian period. Whether this is due to his acting or simply a badly-written script, I'm not sure, but I never quite bought him as the famous Shakespearean actor who returns home from America to his English country manor after his brother is violently killed.

The great Anthony Hopkins plays his father, the lord of the estate, who knows more than he is letting on about the attacks. Talbot has an uneasy relationship with his father, who he remembers standing over the body of his Gypsy mother when he was a boy. In The Wolfman and Thor, it seems Hopkins is making a career out of playing fathers with violent or stormy relationships with their sons.

When Talbot goes to visit the local Gypsies, he is cryptically told that his brother had been possessed by a "great evil." He then witnesses another attack on the camp by a wolf-like creature. Lawrence is bitten in the attack and, as anyone who has ever seen a werewolf movie before knows, he gets the werewolf's curse.

Lawrence eventually ends up in an asylum in London, in a sequence that really showcases the brutality visited upon mental patients during that period. To cure him of his werewolf delusions, he is strapped down during the full moon in full view of a group of doctors and students, where he transforms into a werewolf and escapes to the country for a final confrontation with his father.

The Wolf Man won an Academy Award for its make-up effects by Rick Baker, who is no stranger to werewolf effects, having done the great An American Werewolf in London many years before. Where the movie really shines is its really beautiful cinematography and art direction, which capture a perfect mood of Gothic horror. From the dilapidated country estate house on the foggy moor, to gas-lit nights of Industrial Age London, The Wolf Man is appropriately dark and moody.




THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

While I am not anti-CGI at all, I feel like werewolf movies are less fun in the era of digital effects. With movies like An American Werewolf in London, or The Howling, there was a real sense of ingenuity to the special effects. Effects artist were using all of the tools at their disposal to try and deliver amazing and ground breaking transformation sequences and creatures. Nowadays, effects artists are limited only by their imaginations and budgets and that often makes for uninspired creature designs.

In its werewolf design The Wolf Man seems to be trying to have it both ways. It seems to want to have an old-school Universal Wolf Man but, it also knows we expect a little more from our werewolves than a very hairy guy with fangs. I have a feeling this was one of the difficulties of getting this movie made, trying to create a design that is recognizably Wolf Man but still up to modern standards of design and special effects. The result, for me, is not that satisfying, but then I like my werewolves more wolf than man.



HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Bluray with lots of special features that document the production and the make-up. Baker and the other filmmakers seem to take pleasure in pointing out how happy they were when Del Toro was cast in the role because they were "already half way there," and how it wouldn't take that much make-up to transform him into the Wolf Man. Ouch.



MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

The whole sequence in the asylum really stands out as a graphic example of the barbaric treatment of the mentally ill during the time period. Lawrence is subject to electrotherapy and basically being water boarded as part of his "treatment." This might be the only time in the movie that it achieves anything like real horror.


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Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl