FilmRoar

A friend recently asked me what I knew about the upcoming Lord of the Rings The Two Towers DVD release. Here is the info I have:

As with the last movie there will be a two-disc set with the theatrical release and 8 featurettes plus two documentaries released in August (unconfirmed date is August 26th). An Extended Edition 4 DVD set will be released in November (unconfirmed date is November 18th) with a lot of added footage. The extra footage is reported to be a full 43 extra minutes and according to darkhorizons.com includes

Amongst the scenes there are Faramir (David Wenham) finding a boat bearing his brother Boromir’s body, and details of the twisted emotional ties that ensnare the two to their father Denethor are exposed. In another scene, Eomer (Karl Urban) finds his mortally wounded cousin Theodred and brings him home. Eowyn has more scenes including one where Aragorn tames an unruly horse for her, and her cooking a special stew for Aragorn who eats it despite an obvious disgust. Merry & Pippin have more scenes with Treebeard including the famous Ent-draught sequence where the two drink brew which adds height to their stature.

There was a lot of internet hype last year around this time when 20th Century Fox announced Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil (2002), Event Horizon (1997), Mortal Kombat (1995)) would direct a new Alien Vs. Predator movie. The hype died down until this week when an article on filmjerk.com announced that the movie has entered pre-production and is due to start filming in Prague October.

Finding Nemo (2003) opens with a freshly re-rendered shot animation, Knick Knack (1989), one of my childhood favorites. I loved seeing Knick Knack now just as much as I did fourteen years ago. I do have a bone to pick though: Why, oh why did they deflate the mermaid? I distinctly remember the mermaid figurine at the end of Knick Knack having what can only be described as huge knockers. It looks like the PC Police raided Pixar and forced breast reduction surgery on what was a great joke.

The friend I saw the movie with had not seen the original short and I am not sure she believed me when I told her the end had been re-rendered. I will have to find a copy of the original short to prove my point.

The folks over at Toy Story (1995), Bug’s Life, A (1998), For the Birds (2000), Monsters, Inc. (2001)) have done it again with the enchanting animated feature Finding Nemo (2003). I came into the theater with high expectations having been very impressed with the previous movies, specially Toy Story 2 (1999) and shorts like Geri’s Game (1997) and was not let down. I thought Finding Nemo was very funny, well written and beautifully animated. The two title characters, Marlin (voice by Albert Brooks) and Dory (voice by Ellen DeGeneres) each had so much character and were so funny that there was no choice but to laugh throughout the movie.
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Director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke (1997), Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)) again wows us with his superb animation and story telling skills in Spirited Away (2001). This beautiful film left me feeling like I had just come back from a trip to Fearie Land where I had been treated to a performance where I could only understand a quarter of what was being presented. I am sure that someone who had grown up in Japan would have a much deeper understanding of this movie, but that understanding is not necessary to be enchanted by it. Rather than attempt to describe the movie any further, I suggest that you go experience it yourself.

TNG: The Naked Now’ is a prototypical Star Trek Episode. A virus / a mind control probe / the alien of the week / [fill in your reason here] takes over the minds of the Enterprise crew making them all behave in an odd way and putting them at danger. When you stop and think about it the third* episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) and the second episode of “Enterprise” (2001) both have an excuse for the babe-on-the-bridge to show some cleavage. In TNG it is crusher who is intoxicated enough to unzip just enough to make Picard sweat. In Enterprise it is the famous ‘decontamination scene’. And speaking of sex, the writers wasted no time getting principal characters together. The first two characters to loose their screen-virginity in TNG are Yar and Data who get in on in this episode. Can you name the single character that never got any (implied) nookie in the duration of the series? OK, so in the last episode Geordi does make an allusion to having kids, but that is only in an alternate future that is prevented, so for all technical purposes our poor engineer never got his.

*: Third episode counts both hours of the pilots as episodes 1 and 2.

An article on msnbc.com explains why Egypt has banned ‘The Matrix Reloaded’. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Islam rejects presenting God in human form, and the movie shows a character who portrays the creator carrying on an extended conversation with the star of the movie.

Therefore, the creator is given human characteristics, if only a voice, he said.

Most (censors) are of the opinion they don’t want to allow the kind of movie which touches on creator and creation. They felt that a movie portraying God in human form or voice would be destructive to moviegoers.

Although he is personally against banning the movie, Kassem says the vast majority of viewers are uneducated people who uncritically accept what they see.