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Official blog and geeky manifesto of The Ruku

Not even Swarley can save this shit

June 19th, 2010 Posted in Entertainment, Rants, Sights and Sounds
Jun, 19 2010
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So I finished making my overly busty Age of Conan character when I logged onto Facebook and saw this:

Really Sony? Really?!

Don’t get me wrong. I love those little blue bastards, even if they were communists. But I don’t want to see “our world” getting smurfed.

If a Smurfs movie has to be done, as someone who is a film enthusiast, pop culture junkie and aspiring director; I want this shit done right. I want the Smurf village, I want Gargamel, I want Johann and that other little dude…

"I want my shirts laundered"

If done right, a Smurfs movie would kick ass and I will be reserving final judgement until I see it. But going by that trailer, I don’t think even Dr. Horrible himself could do any sort of science to save this pile of crap.

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Movies That Should be in 3D

March 8th, 2010 Posted in Entertainment, Humour, Observations, Rants, Sights and Sounds
Mar, 08 2010
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Ahh 3D. Bringing our old-hat 2D films to life via the use of cinema trickery and goofy glasses which inexplicably get goofier as the technology improves. It’s certainly a novelty someone should experience at least once. That way, instead of retelling stories of life experience and passing on knowledge to their grandchildren, you can tell them you saw Avatar and how you felt you were actually there… Or something like that.

Shut up Grandpa, nobody gives a shit

Despite my apprehension when things are remade and remastered (though, I’ll certainly turn a blind eye if someone out there can make a Max Payne movie that isn’t tragically shit), there are just some films out there that were meant to be in 3D. What’s the point of using this technology if all you’re going to blow it on is Tim Burton movies and a movie which could very well be described as Pocahontas-meets-Fern-Gully on Steroids? Hollywood, if you’re listening, here’s some suggestions.

Back to the Future

A series of movies which made DeLoreans look awesome, Michael J Fox a household name (well, beyond “that guy in Family Ties” and later, “that guy with Parkinson’s”) and gave its fans a bunch of catchphrases which I’m sure will be passed on to later generations. I mean, calling someone a Butt-head is timeless, right?

Why it should be in 3D:

This one’s a no brainer. Despite bring nearly 30 years old now, the Back to the Future movies still pack a visual punch which completely complements the dialogue. There is no way you can convince me that a 3D upgrade of this is a terrible idea. I mean, you have a time-traveling vehicles, hoverboards, skateboards, cowboys, indians and of course, Biff Tannen.

"Wow, it's like Biff's actually there! ...Oh wait"

Why it shouldn’t be in 3D:

I could gush all freaking day about these movies, but let’s face it. Hoverboards don’t exist yet and it kills us. Having Back to the Future 2 in 3D will only add insult to injury.

On the upside, 2015 is only five years away.

Star Wars

Going with the “movies I grew up watching” theme, if we’re going to be seeing hoverboards and DeLoreans flying at our faces, why not the Millennium Falcon?

Why it should be in 3D:

I’m surprised this hasn’t been done before. With all the whoring Lucas does of his beloved franchise, he didn’t think “wait a second, we could just re-re-re-release the original trilogy in 3D” until after the release of freaking Avatar? Come on.

If you need convincing, think about the films for a minute. How many damned spaceships fly at the freaking screen in just the original Star Wars trilogy? About a million? Case closed right there.

Why it shouldn’t be in 3D:

Should we be encouraging George Lucas to keep whoring out Star Wars? Besides, if the original trilogy is released in 3D, we all know the prequels aren’t that far behind.

The Matrix

Despite spawning two kickass-yet-mediocre sequels and responsible for a metric fuckton of “bullet time” sequences in every damn conceivable format ever (I’m pretty sure they’re trying to bring it to FM radio now), The Matrix is a film which has firmly lodged itself into the collective minds of every sci-fi nut since it’s release.

Sure Keanu Reeves has a limited range of emotions but damnit, that film kicked the ass off of anything else released that year… Except for maybe Dogma, which also features a trenchcoat wearing hero. Does anyone else see a pattern here?

There are no Snoogans

Why it should be in 3D:

Not to keep fellating Back to the Future here, but “Think McFly! Think!”.

Tell me this wouldn't look awesome in 3D

The movie is already practically in 3D with all the bullet time and Matrix code going on. They may as well take that one step further and project Neo in all his bullet-dodging, kung-fu’ing, trenchcoat wearing glory onto your damn eyeballs already. Hell, even Reloaded and Revolutions would be worth seeing in 3D. Car chase, anyone? How about the humans raging against the machine at the battle to save Zion?

Why it shouldn’t be in 3D:

While I did say the sequels would be worth watching in 3D, they still won’t make any god-damned sense.

Watchmen

I’m sure I could mention other films in it’s place, like the equally good Sin City, but Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is by far my favourite comic book movie and one of the better movies that came out last year. While not even as half as well known as say, Spider-man or X-Men, the comic and the movie still manages to keep hold of a loyal legion of fans. The only disappointment I had with it is that I didn’t get into comics until recently.

Why it should be in 3D:

While there’s not as much to work with for 3D presentation as some of the other movies I’ve mentioned, it has it’s moments. Like the entire damn opening scene. Even the rest of the movie is enough to work with, if they play their cards right. Like you wouldn’t want to see Rorschach saying “Tell me what you see” inches away from your face.

Why it shouldn’t be in 3D:

Well… This could also be inches away from your face:

Serenity

What happens when you get a TV series by Joss Whedon canceled before it’s prime, lots of rabid fans and their unwavering support and a charismatic male lead who could easily out-badass Han Solo without trying? The space western movie Serenity, based on the TV series Firefly.

Serenity would be the Generation Y’s equivalent of Star Wars, right down to the story formula of “bunch of cocky rebels take on huge empire”. In fact, despite the fact I’m a huge Star Wars nerd? Totally prefer Serenity. Excuse me while I sit back and watch every sci-fi nerd’s head explode from that statement.

Why it should be in 3D:

In continuation of the “This generation’s Star Wars” theme, Serenity also has its fair share of space combat and firefights. Not to mention the complete clusterfuck of awesome which happens on Miranda. There is no arguing that watching Serenity in 3D would be a memorable experience.

Besides, we all want to get just that bit closer to Summer Glau

Why it shouldn’t be in 3D:

As it was based on a TV series and as much as Whedon did certainly try to make the movie as stand-alone as possible, you still need to know the basic gist of Firefly to understand what’s going on and frankly? You’re not going to be able to marathon even the key episodes of the show and then expect people to watch a two hour movie without some sort of discourse…. Or toilet breaks.

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Movie Review: The Mummy – Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

November 10th, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Sights and Sounds
Nov, 10 2008
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I don’t mind when a movie sequel follows the same formula as its predecessors. I also don’t mind the occasional “bad” film. Especially when it shows a lot of promise, but still misses the mark. You can still switch off the DVD or walk out of the cinema thinking “well, it could have been worse…”

Which brings me to the new Mummy film, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”. TOTDM once again drags adventurer Rick O’Connell and his history buff bookworm of a wife Evie into another action packed adventure against the undead.

Imhotep doesn’t return for a third flick, I’m assuming because he’s had his arse raped like a Catholic alterboy twice already so he’s just let sleeping mummies lie. Instead the movie begins in ancient China, where Han, a ruthless warlord conquers all who oppose him and becomes the first Emperor of China (talk about Han shooting first, eh?). He orders the Great Wall to be built, and the bodies of his enemies to be buried within it. Realizing that taking over the world is a long-ass job that requires more than one lifetime, he calls in Zi Yuan to find the secret of immortality. In exchange for making Han immortal, Zi Yuan requests that she spend her life with Han’s General. Some arcane trickery and Han murdering General Ming occurs, and Zi Yuan reveals that she in fact put a curse on Han and his men, who promptly get encased in Carbonite turned to terracotta and thus, becoming the Terracotta Army.

Fast forward to 1946. Despite living in retirement from the espionage biz, Rick and Evie accept a job to take The Eye of Shangri-La to a museum curator in Shanghai. Of course, not is all as it seems and Rick and Evie are once again thrust into the middle of another undead kill-a-thon with Johnathan (Evie’s brother) and Alex (Evie and Rick’s son) in tow.

I tried to like ‘Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, I really did. I thought it’d be a neat Jade Empire-Meets-Indiana Jones movie, but it’s one of those films where it falls flat on its face from the weight of trying to be epic. It’s a good premise, a GREAT premise, but it was simply not meant to be (and it pains me to say that).

The main problem I have with the movie is the fact that they not only changed the actress who plays Evie, but completely changed the character into a more Lara Croft kinda gal. This time around Evie is played by Maria Bello, whose notable roles include the Piper Perabo career launcher backfire/complete dog turd of a film ‘Coyote Ugly’, and a role in ‘Thank You For Smoking’.
Bello’s portrayal of Evie is painful, to say the least. Her main problem (aside from not being Rachel Weisz) is that the script calls for her to be way too many things at once. A posh tea-drinking author one minute, an ass-kicking Lara Croft-esque action hero the next and then a concerned mother and wife after that. Multitasking may be the woman’s domain, but seriously.

This is one of the big things that shit me about hollywood (and sequels in particular), I don’t mind if the writers mix things up a little, really! But if you can’t get the original actor to play the role, write the role out. It doesn’t help when Maria Bello doesn’t really fit the role all that well. While this would normally provide a minor annoyance to my overall opinion of the film, having Bello play Evie could be likened to when Black Sabbath had Tony Martin as lead vocalist. It just. Doesn’t. Work.

The other characters aren’t as annoying and generally make good on their roles. Hats off to Brendan Fraser and -to a lesser extent, Michelle Yeoh for pretty much saving the film for me. Jet Li makes for a good titular villain, though he could have done with a tighter script. The only other character I didn’t actually like all that much was Alex O’Connell, played by Luke Ford. While not particularly a bad peformance, he tries too hard to emulate the mannerisms of Fraser’s character whilst at the same time trying to keep a sense of individuality to it, that it comes off feeling a bit forced and making the character look like a complete chump.

Special effects once again are brilliant, especially the undead creatures. Some of them (especially near the end) are a tad overblown, but they work. No real complaints here.

All in all, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor isn’t a good film. It simply tries way too hard to be the most epic of the trilogy, but it simply doesn’t match up to the brilliance of the first film, or the second film, where the only real complaint I have against it is that Dwayne Johnston thinks that just because he pretended to beat the shit out of people for a good 10 years of his life, he can apparently act.

That said, it does have some minor saving graces and it’s still somewhat enjoyable. If anything, to see Brendan Fraser once again stomp a few undead colons. He’s like this generation’s Bruce Campbell. y’know, without the chin.

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Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian

August 4th, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Sights and Sounds
Aug, 04 2008
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Originally posted on The Rukuboard. June 15, 2008

I have never taken an active interest in The Chronicles of Narnia. I read a few of the books back in the day, and I remember watching the oh-so-80′s miniseries in school, but that’s about it. If anything, the only thing I remember learning from the books is that hiding in a closet takes you to a fantasy land with lots of snow and some guy named Mr. Tumnus, and that witches carry around turkish delight to entice children into helping them.

Oh, and that turkish delight is fucking awesome.

With this in mind I reluctantly went and saw the new movie from the recent incarnation of the series, “Prince Caspian”. I walked in with the firm idea that this was going to be another money-grabbing shitfest of a film, I walked out pleasantly surprised.

I didn’t see the first film, nor did I really sit down and watch it when a friend of mine bought it over (I think I was getting my fantasy-land fix from World of Warcraft or something), so aside from the fact that it “all looks rather pretty”, I didn’t know what to expect.

The movie begins with a child being born, and Caspian being helped out of the castle by some old guy who looked a hell of a lot like Albus Dumbledore from the first two Harry Potter flicks. A chase into a forest ensues, and the Prince blows some horn thing and then gets clonked on the head by a fugly-ass dwarf bastard. Without spoiling it, the four children from the first movie are once again transported to Narnia where epic battles ensue and Prince Caspian fags up the place by being an overemotional emo shitwhistle.

“Prince Caspian” works well both as part of the series and as a stand alone movie, and -while it helps if you’re unfamiliar with the series, I feel you don’t need to see the first to undersand the second (though with TCoN being pretty much ingrained in the minds of anyone not born under several rocks guarded by a fat woman with a meat cleaver, you’re at least in my postition where you’ve read some of the novels or are otherwise aware that the series exists). The dialogue is well-written and the actors do a great job of portraying their characters, the titular Prince is too much of a angst-ridden cockbrain for my liking, but not too much that it ruined the film in any way.

The camerawork and direction seemed pretty tight and the special effects/cgi are awesome without jumping on the same bandwagon occupied by the second and third Matrix films and the Star Wars prequels. It’s CGI as how it should be used without crossing into the realms of looking like a video game.

All in all, ‘Prince Caspian’ was an enjoyable experience, and I’ll go so far to say this might even rekindle my interest in the Narnia series… Or at least warrants another DVD to shove onto my backlog.

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