A Dumb Podcast Idea?

A few weeks (months now?) ago chaos happened on Twitter. Kumar over at The Kumar Expirience took up the challenge to watch Star Trek: The Original Series and many of us followed suit by saying we would watch something that we had been avoiding. I chose the Exorcist, because I'm not a fan of horror, thrillers yes, horrors no. But really I could have chosen from a huge list of films that people consider classics. Films that I honestly have very little desire to watch.

There are many reasons for that. One big one is that my Mom is a huge film buff and would often quote and reference films that I have never seen and when I was little my parents would watch a lot of the classics like Gone with the Wind or The Godfather when I was about 7 and I remember either being bored out of my mind and annoyed that they were taking up the TV for what felt like days and just not being interested in any of them. Then there is the fact that I've grown up in a culture where a lot of those classics, and even recent things are parodied rather quickly and more often than not the parodies make me not want to watch the film even more. And finally there is that when I was a teenager if it wasn't an anime I didn't really want to watch it and as a result I missed out on a lot of movies that kids growing up in the 90s would see. I've gone back and watched a few, but my list of films that shock people I haven't seen is still long and impressive.

So, this is my idea: I want you to challenge me to watch some of these movies that I've avoided. Tell me about some film that I probably missed (I'll try to work on a list to help people out) give me a reason why I should watch it and then I want to see if I can turn this into a podcast. The goal is to have many many guests as they challenge me to something and then we go back and review whatever it is I saw. And you know what? I'm not going to limit this to movies; tv, books, music, and since I've mostly stopped watching anime you can challenge me to that too (I've never seen Evangelion people, still plenty to challenge me to there), whatever you want to challenge me to, go ahead.

Now, this may turn into an epic fail idea. I have no idea how to record or edit a podcast, especially to record phone conversations that would be required for this. I don't have a mixer and am a little reluctant to get one knowing that I'm going to be travelling a lot...if there is a good travel one that'd be great? This was mostly an idea that I had for something to do during my free time that I feel like I'm wasting. I want to do something productive and this is the best idea I've had so far.

So let me know what you think. If you want to help out in anyway, be on or have any tips. I could definitely use it. Or if this is a bad idea...like I said I can see this ending in Epic Fail, but might give it a try...

or maybe a better idea would be to just make this into a blog since I know I will be traveling more, back to home and then to somewhere else after that?

The Mummy 3 - The Pain Must be Shared

Have you ever experienced something so bad that you had to share the pain with at least a few people, just so that you are not the only one and you all can express your pain? Well, that's how I feel about the Mummy 3 and here I am sharing the pain.

Now, let me preface with two things.

1. I like some really shit movies, Doom being my favorite example as to what bad movies I like.
2. I love the Mummy movies, the first two are a part of my favorite action films of all time. They have a very similar feel to Indiana Jones, and are things I love to go back to. They are movies that are purely meant to be fun. Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah have a chemistry together that makes these action movies very funny as well, something that was rarely seen since Indiana Jones. They also made archeology entertaining again for the masses!

Now, that we have gotten the love out of the way, let's begin with the pain.

I'm not even going to go into the reasons why there needed to be a third movie when the second movie completed the story, we all know it was the money and Stephen Sommers desire to prove he could make something good again (after all, his last film was Van Helsing). No, I'm going to start with the plot of the movie and then we'll go with the other problems. First of all, it was practically the same story, complete with lines like "No one may touch her, she is mine." The only difference is that now the woman who is being objectified becomes the narrator and is thus the one we all know who is gaurding the "mummy" emperor so we know she will survive 2000 years somehow.

Secondly, the begining was too long! There is no need for us to spend a lot of time going over the back story as to why this guy becomes a "mummy," we are here for the O'Connells, all this stuff was just boring. I'm not even going to touch the obviousness of the plot progressions either, we all knew going in that it would happen and it would be a waste of time.

Instead, there was also the issue of the Dragon Emperor of course learning how to control not only one, but all five of the mystical elements that means he has magic powers, but then instead of really using them other than to throw fireballs and ice every once in a while he starts changing shapes at his full power. Why could he suddenly change shape and what happened with the at least different from the other two idea of controlling the elements? Is this because you are calling him the Dragon Emperor so he needs to change shape like the Scorpion King became an actual scorpion? They fought a bad guy who turned into a monster in the second movie, we didn't need it again.

Now some people will call me a nit picker (what does that mean anyway?) about this next part, but I really feel that accents can make or break or film. Maria Bello you cannot do an English accent to save your life. I can do a better one, and I suck at it. It was painful to watch and I felt that she was the reason the chemistry between the three main characters were gone. There was no romance between her and Brendan Fraser, and I felt like she was trying to hard to be this posh British thing that it just ruined any chemistry and any comedy that was in her scenes. Also, their son Alex O'Connell, in the the second film he had an English accent, like most boys who were growing up in London whose mother was English would. Now, I would almost, I mean almost understand if he no longer had much of an accent, if the actor was good (but is in fact, another black hole of talent). But why go Brooklyn? What about a man whose home was based in England, mother was English, and spent most of his childhood traveling the world getting in the way of his parents being spies during the war (really? They did that too?) leads to a Brooklyn accent? It was painful.

As for voices and bad actors, the person who played Lin was atrocious with an annoying voice to boot. Her voice felt like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I yell at people when they try to do that. Time to give that up please. Also, not enough John Hannah. He really brought out the comedy in the other films, and the slapstick between him and Brendan Fraser was great. It first takes way to long for him to show up, and then he is barely in it sucking out even more of the comedy that Maria Bello is taking out. As for Jet Li, this may have been just a costume thing, but he looked fat in the film and barely did any action that couldn't be seen with the way it was filmed. If this is all you are going to do now Jet Li, then please retire for good.

As for the action sequences, we had the same problem with this trend of putting the camera too close to see anything and it just leaves you feeling confused. I understand that it is suppose to make you feel like you are in the fight, but there was a fight between these three Chinese characters that was apparently suppose to be a big deal, but I couldn't tell who got whose assed kicked or who died for a full minute afterward. Also, the only reason why I could tell what was going on in the lack luster Michelle Yeoh v Jet Li was because one of them was wearing a dress, and even then it was tough.

There is also the crux of the whole thing of this being called a mummy movie. There were no mummies!! They kept referring to Jet Li and his army as mummies, but they were just people who got turned to stone. Mummies need to go through this process called mummification before they can be called mummies. And there are more mummies in the world than Egypt so they didn't have to stick there if they wanted the mummies. Or at the very least, don't call these guys mummies just because it is the theme of your movies.

There were so many other issues with this movie when it came to lack of exposition and people just forgetting not only what the other movies were, but this one. For instance, why did Evelyn give up archeology to write harlequin romances? Or the O'Connells were spies against the Nazis? Gee, how did that fully happen and wouldn't that make a good story? Then there is a line where Evelyn saying "The Emperor is back to full strength!" Wait, when did he loose his strength (the avalanche? how does that work?) and then how did he get it back? I understand that too much exposition is a bad thing - note the beginning of the film, but some there would be nice. I've never seen a film that had too much and too little exposition in the same film. I wasn't sure what to do with it.

I'm going to stop there because I'm sure I gave you enough pain, and if I made you want to see it for yourself to experience it, please let me know so we can share together. I'm also stopping because other wise I'm going to start talking about the Yetis.

I don't want to talk about the Yetis.