Yearly archives: 2012

B Movie Night- Iron Sky

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No matter how gorgeous it looks, Iron Sky is pure B Movie. It got its stunning digital effects through crowd sourcing and took its time getting them right. Visually it’s absolutely worth it.

It’s in the story department where the B Movie label best applies, because it’s quite, quite crazy. Nazis escaped to the moon at the end of World War 2 and have been building an empire on the dark side ever since. Discovered by two hapless astronauts, who are only there as a re-election stunt for Sarah Palin, they decide to bring forward their plans to re-conquer the Earth. But only after they’ve been down to the surface to steal a few Apple computers to run their larger space ships.

The plot is so full of holes that it resembles a doily, but it’s presented with so many crazy-silly ideas and played with such earnest silliness that you really don’t care. The political satire is delicately applied with a shovel and there’s a Dr. Strangelove steal and an amusing nod to that bit of Downfall absolutely everyone has seen. There’s some dodgy racial politics- the USA couldn’t find a qualified black astronaut? They had to send a male model instead?- and the leading lady seems to become increasingly naive for the first three quarters of the movie before having a revelation after watching a silent film. They could have done with a few more drafts of the script before filming, but that may have taken the edge off the charm.

Shortly after watching Iron Sky I watched Cargo, which could be thought of as Iron Sky’s more serious cousin. This Swiss sci-fi takes place on battered and claustrophobic space ships after Earth has been abandoned. Supposedly shipping equipment to an automated space station due to be the waypoint in the search for new worlds, newbie crew member Dr Laura Portmann begins to suspect sabotage or stowaways but finds something completely different. The big reveal is quite obvious from early on, but it’s the way the film gets there that counts.

Is there a European sci-fi film boom going on? Are there any others I should watch?

B Movie Night- Yo Yo Girl Cop

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The Japanese, they do things differently.

Someone is blowing up teenagers, or convincing them to blow themselves up. It probably has something to do with one particular school and a mysterious website calle Enola Gay. The Police need to send someone into the school undercover to find out just what is going on before the countdown timer on Enola Gay reaches zero.

Obviously, whoever goes into the school has to blend in. So it’s lucky that a grumpy one-legged Police inspector has just taken delivery of a teenage girl who has been trained since birth in fighting and surviving. Convinced to help, she is given her mother’s old cover name, a combat yo-yo* and a three day deadline to thwart Romeo- the website’s webmaster/mystery leader- and save her mother from prison in the USA.

I reckon YYGC is mocking a particular type of Japanese film or TV show we just don’t see very often in the West. It felt like there were a lot of nods to things I didn’t recognise and that it would hold together a lot better if I recognised the tropes it was messing with or could fill in the leaps the story took. Or perhaps it would be just as confusing to someone steeped in Japanese culture.

Not that I didn’t enjoy this film. It keeps you hooked, even if it’s only because you really, really want it to make sense somewhere along the line. By the end the plot is foiled, Romeo (or someone) has been defeated, “K” has come to terms with her mother’s past and their shared destiny and a fledgling lesbian romance has been rescued. I’m just not completely sure how.

Buy Yo Yo Girl Cop from Amazon.

*It’s never really explained how it is a combat yo-yo, it just is. Built into its design is a super secret symbol for the Police task force she is now a member of.

Daily Blog 12/12/2012

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  • Angry Birds Movie Set For Summer 2016 – Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

    John Cohen, of Despicable Me success, has been hired as the producer on the upcoming Angry Birds movie, which will hit cinemas during the summer of 2016. Former Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel is also on board as executive producer.

    tags: movie AbgryBirds

  • An open letter to motorists from cyclists | 22 Stone Cyclist

    Dear Motorists,

    We’ve had enough.

    We’ve had enough of you not giving us enough room on the road. We’ve had enough of you ignoring our cycle lanes (rule 140 of the Highway Code). We’ve had enough of you stopping in our advance boxes (rule 178 of the Highway Code). We’ve had enough of you being impatient behind us just because you didn’t get up early enough, only for us to catch you at the next set of traffic lights anyway. We’ve had enough of you overtaking us and then turning left straight in front of us (rule 183 of the Highway Code). We’ve had enough of you overtaking and then cutting right in the curb just so we can’t pass you. We’ve had enough of you being on your mobile phones. We’ve had enough of you beeping your horn at us. We’ve had enough of you pulling out at junctions and roundabouts without looking. We’ve had enough of you bullying your way past us in rush hour traffic. We’ve had enough of you making our journey dangerous when it shouldn’t need to be.

    tags: roadsafety cycling

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Daily Blog 12/11/2012

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Daily Blog 12/08/2012

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Daily Blog 12/07/2012

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  • The Guardian on Facebook

    Once upon a time a band set out to make a Christmas song. Not about snow or sleigh rides or mistletoe or miracles, but lost youth and ruined dreams. A song in which Christmas is as much the problem as it is the solution. A kind of anti-Christmas song that ended up being, for a generation, the Christmas song.

    tags: music Christmas

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Albert Pyun- the B-Movie maker’s B-Movie maker

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There are already a few Albert Pyun flicks lined up for B Movie Night reviews, and I’ll be adding more as I find them.  He has made a lot of low-to-no budget and straight-to-video flicks of varying levels of quality and coherence.  io9 has an interview with him.

[The decision to make post-apocalyptic films] was the direct result of the fact that locations that weren’t in ruins were more expensive. Locations that were in ruins or demolished or some kind of big forest fire had happened, were much easier to get. And they didn’t care as much how you left it. So that was mainly the reason why a lot of us gravitated towards that genre.

via Incredibly Strange and Ridiculously Cheap: Albert Pyun’s 30-Year Career in B-Movies.

Big in Japan (and Brazil and, eventually, Canada)

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Kindle books have been on sale through Amazon.jp for a few weeks. Here’s Slashed on the Japanese site. And here’s Sounds of Soldiers.

This morning I noticed that my books were also available in Brazil. Here’s Garth Owen’s books on amazon.com.br, and this is the amazon.com.br list of books by Ian Pattinson.

There’s also a list of Ian Pattinson’s books available from Amazon in Canada, but not all of Garth Owen’s (two book) backlist is live right now. The Girl on the Bridge has a page, but Slashed is currently returning a 404 message.

Daily Blog 12/06/2012

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B Movie Night- The Kidnapping of the President 1

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A mid-budget thriller with a fair thriller plot, I’m not sure what this one’s doing on the Rare Cult Cinema dvd.  It could be the presence of William Shatner as the lead.

The President is in Canada for a meeting about oil and energy independence, but a notorious South American terrorist has other ideas.  Shatner is Jerry O’Connor, a senior Secret Service operative brought in to run the protection detail when his superior has a heart attack on Air Force One.  O’Connor is a lot more cautious than the President, but even his vigilance isn’t enough to prevent the very public snatching of the leader of the free world.

The means of holding the President is a bit ludicrous- he’s locked inside a booby trapped armoured truck which is parked up on a plaza in plain view whilst the terrorist negotiates the ransom from a hotel room and his accomplice is in the crowd with her finger on the trigger.  Action is minimal, and tension isn’t as high as it could be, but it proceeds smoothly to the final showdown.  This isn’t a top tier thriller, but it is competent and diverting.  And Shatner manages something more than the mannered, faltering delivery you’re used to from him.

Daily Blog 12/04/2012 2

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  • Airport novel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Airport novels represent a literary genre that is not so much defined by its plot or cast of stock characters, as much as it is by the social function it serves. An airport novel is typically a fairly long but fast-paced novel of intrigue or adventure that is stereotypically found in the reading fare offered by airport newsstands for travellers to read in the rounds of sitting and waiting that constitute air travel.

    tags: pulp

  • Potboiler – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    A potboiler or pot-boiler is a low-quality novel, play, opera, film, or other creative work whose main purpose was to pay for the creator’s daily expenses—thus the imagery of “boil the pot”,[1] which means “to provide one’s livelihood”.[2] Authors who create potboiler novels or screenplays are sometimes called hack writers or hacks. Novels deemed to be potboilers may also be called pulp fiction, and potboiler films may be called “popcorn movies.”

    tags: pulp

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Daily Blog 12/03/2012

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Daily Blog 12/02/2012

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