FilmRoar

What ever happened to Macaulay Culkin? You probably would not believe me if I told you. Take a look a the movie trailer for his new flick, Party Monster (2003) to find out.

Apple has posted a new trailer for the upcoming remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While I have no interest in the movie itself, I must say i was very impressed with the construction of the trailer, specially the good use of stereophonic sound.

So Bug’s Life, A (1998) and Antz (1998). All right, creativity dead, rather than have an original thought just copy someone else’s sure, I can accept that is how Hollywood works. But honestly, only a month has gone by since Pixar released Finding Nemo (2003) and now I find out that DreamWorks is releasing their own underwater CG flick Sharkslayer (2004)? Give me a break! Oh sure, Countingdown.com claims the comparison ends there, but doesn’t this blatant plagiarism bother anyone else?

Update: 8/17/03
Apparantly this did bother someone else:

The memorable moment from the episode TNG: Hide And Q will not fully make sense until later in the series. Riker, imbued with Q like powers, tries to grant the innermost wishes of each of the crewmembers. For Worf he fabricates a female Klingon who crawls and growls at Worf bearing her teeth in what looks like an attack pose. I was reminded of this moment during a second season episode called The Dauphin when Wesley asks crew members for love advice. Worf replies:

“Men do not roar; women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects… and claw at
you. [Men] read love poetry… [and] duck a lot.”

The main advice I have for anyone intending to go see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) is to keep your expectations low. So long as you are not expecting more than cheap one-liners (Pirate: I’m gonna teach you the meaning of pain! Elizabeth Swann: You like pain? [hits pirate in the head with a pole] Try wearing a corset), fast cut swashbuckling, lots of cannons firing, sneering bad guys and all around action comedy, then you will not be disappointed. I came to the theater with very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by how fun and amusing pirates was.
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John Hughes essentially invented a whole film genre with his teen-angst series of Sixteen Candles (1984), Breakfast Club, The (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986) and Weird Science (1985). Hughes’ films did a unique job of capturing the hopes and fears of America’s youth through the 1980s. Most of his films are about not being understood, unrealized love and desperate desire to be accepted. Weird Science is nowhere near that deep.

This is a movie about teenage boy fantasies and… well… more teenage fantasies. Our boys get to drink, drive fast cars, hack government supercomputers, get even with the older brother, are told they are cool by the coolest cats in town, and of course have the opportunity to have sex with not just the two most desirable girls in school but an older, sophisticated sexy babe. Pretty much every adolescent fantasy gets screen time in this comedy. What is great about this movie is that it never tries to take itself seriously. Weird Science starts as a fantasy comedy and never pretends to be anything but, and that is something I deeply admire.

As with most Hughes movies Weird Science has some great quotes. The one that always cracks me up is when Lisa explains to Garry’s parents that he is gong to a party by saying

You know, there’s going to be sex, drugs, rock and roll. Chips, dips, chains, whips. You know, your basic high school orgy type of thing. A couple hundred kids running around in their underwear acting like complete animals.

The TNG staff and writers must have noticed they had lost momentum in their attempts to keep the sex alive and in the forefront for the first series of TNG because by the time they got to the 8th episode, TNG: Justice it was back to T&A… or rather in the equal opportunity world of the future, big tits on the female models and big biceps on the male models.