Movies

Schu-Review : The FP

Entertainment, Movies
I was excited when I first saw the Tyler Stout poster for this movie, then I was really excited when I saw the trailer. Now I am amazed by the final product.  The first thing someone says when you show them the trailer is “are you serious?” because how could someone in their right mind have put so much effort into something so clearly insane.
It’s a movie about rival gangs who compete in dance battles for control of turf in the small town of Fraiser Park (The FP)
If you don’t instantly know why that would be funny then you should just stop now and slowly walk away.

I was raised by HBO

Entertainment, Movies


So I was thinking the other day that I know a lot of 80’s movies for someone who was born in 1981 and some of them are strange choices for someone who would have been under 10 years old until 1991.  When I was trying to figure out why it could be I started naming some of the weirder ones that I know I remember watching and it hit me. I’m pretty sure my parents had HBO when we lived in the house in Roswell, Georgia until 1991.  Most of the movies that I would consider ‘too old’ or just ‘not interesting to a 10 year old’ were released from 1986-1988 so they would have been on HBO during the time we had it.  When we moved to Virginia there was a video store that I could ride my bike to and my mom signed a release form that let me rent rated R movies without my parents having to be there.   So I watched a LOT of movies in my middle school and High School years, so this list might be a little influenced by that.  And by ‘a lot’ I mean almost every movie that came out on video and then I went into the back catalog, they were only about $1 for older movies, so I’d rent 6 at a time.  So what I’m going to try and do here is try to make a list of movies that I’m pretty sure I watched before I was 10 years old.  I’ll list the title, the year it came out, without looking at IMDB… what I think the plot was and what my most memorable moment was from that movie.

Examples after the break…

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Schu-Review : Tron Legacy

Entertainment, Movies

I know that this review is super late, but its really hard to put into words how i feel about this movie. I liked it. I mean I more than liked it, but theres something in there not letting me say that I loved it. It’s so deep and detailed in some respects (visually and acoustically) but story wise its lacking, things seem to just happen. The story plays out like it’s on a rail, a light rail actually. So no matter what’s happening they never seem to be in any danger. Say what you want about Avatar, but at least the simple story made sense within the world. Some things in this play out like He-Man, where all his problems could be solved once he remembered… “Oh yeah, that’s right I’m He-Man!” and would just whip everyones ass. It’s like when you see those great pictures of super modern architecture or furniture designs and think “wow that looks so awesome” but then you realize that it’s missing all the things that make a house a home. Pictures of family, interesting tchotchkes, and just any evidence that someone actually lives there. It’s the same thing with this movie, they spent all the time designing the new cool vehicles, (and don’t get me wrong, they are kick ass awesome) but they don’t spend any time on the how or why they eat food or what they serve in that bar. Or why the programs would want to drink at a bar in the first place, it’s all very surface level.

Shiny pretty surface level.

Schu-Review: 3.5 out of 5 Schus

Drew the Movie

Entertainment, Movies

I’m really excited that there’s a documentary coming out about Drew Struzan. I linked to his site a while back, he made some of the iconic movie posters of my childhood. It’s good to see that other people appreciate his work. His stuff is so precise that you’d swear that it’s done in photoshop, but he comes from another era when the details mattered.

Here’s a good collection of his work

drewthemovie.com

World War Z : Battle of Yonkers Concept Photo

Entertainment, Movies

I know I’ve been talking a lot about The Walking Dead lately and I still believe that it will be the best piece of zombie entertainment to ever hit the screen. But that’s mostly because I’m worried about how they’re going to adapt World War Z for the big screen. It’s an epic book that spans years and the entire world, it’s going to be difficult to fit into a 2 hour feature film. Having said that I did come across a piece of concept art for the film. It’s a depiction of “The Battle of Yonkers” where the US military faces off with millions of zombies that are pouring out of NYC. It’s kind of the turning point of the military fighting strategy against the Z’s

Seeing this, I have a little more hope for the movie.

Trying to keep my expectations low…

via IO9

Break out the #15 Chitwood jersey, it's time to watch Hoosiers.

Entertainment, Movies


I realized that I wrote this mini review of Hoosiers about 6 months ago and never posted it. I cleaned it up and I’m posting in in honor of Dennis Hopper. RIP.

Maybe I love this movie so much because I was born in Indianapolis but didn’t grow up in Indiana. So I view it with  some kind of forced nostalgia for what could have been. Maybe I’m a racist bastard for liking a movie about 5 white guys who can play basketball? A story about a poor farm school that comes out of nowhere to win the state championship, how could you not like this. It’s the prototype underdog story for people my age.

These are more notes than a review, because for me this would be like reviewing Star Wars. Because I’ve loved this move for so long and I went to college at George Mason (The Milton HS of the NCAA tourney)  There’s no way I could ever provide an objective review for this movie. So here are some thoughts.

Notes

  1. Early on I think that the music is influenced a little bit too much by the 1980’s a little but too much synth.
  2. What a sweet leather jacket Gene Hackman has.
  3. My dad ran these drills in practice. I’m sure of it.
  4. *shotgun blast*, “IDENTIFY!” Has to be one of the best greetings in film history.
  5. “I apologize for nothing” (Hackman at the town meeting) He might as well end this speech with “Suck it.”
  6. Jimmy = Jesus!
  7. Jimmy comes back from months of quietly shooting jumpers in his lawn and is draining threes long twos on the other team like he’s been there the whole time. He’s like Jordan, everyone else around him is now an all star.
  8. Gale has to be one of the ballsiest SOB’s ever. He just barely survives the townspeople revolt so he decides to get himself thrown out of a close game to teach the drunk assistant coach a lesson about responsibility. Or it was a blowout and Norman was sweating bullets in the locker room as Shooter almost blows the whole thing.
  9. Also Shooter’s first speech makes no sense, “Allow yourself to be taken out”, nothing like that happens on the court. I think he was still drunk. That might change the whole scene!
  10. I’m positive my Dad ran the picket fence play during a game I played in when I was 13.
  11. What’s with the way the other assistant coach runs off the court after Shooter wins that game? He looks like Phoebe from Friends.

Cheesy Parts

  1. In all those practices did he forget to do the “moving without the ball” drill, because they just stand still in the first game.
  2. Why does he need 2 assistant coaches? There are only 6 players.
  3. They really do play up the romance without much exposition besides one walk and helping with the groceries. …If only it were that easy.
  4. “Don’t be distracted by their fancy uniforms” …awwwwweeee ORANGE.
  5. “I want to know what flavor gum he’s chewing” and the answer later is Dentine? Dentine is a flavor?

Differences in this viewing.
I finally got that the basketball scholarship thing really wasn’t going to happen. I never believed her that she was looking out for his best interests. I just thought that she didn’t know just HOW GOOD Jimmy was. So her character becomes a little more sympathetic.

The movie is still awesome and will always be awesome. I could fall asleep to the montage of the state basketball tournament every night and be happy. It’s one of those movies that makes you think that even at (close to) 30 I can still find some sporting event that I can be the underdog in and win the whole thing.