Monday, May 12, 2008

adventures in film geekery - massachusetts edition


I've been away for the past weekend in a place without any Internet so I may have appeared kind of dead on the blog as of late. But it was a fun trip and I went to a Wendy's fast food restaurant that was apparently Zagat rated, I didn't really notice anything much different. Also, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts I went during the off-season and was finally able to get a spot in the Tugboat's restaurant. The place really sucked however, way overpriced and the portions were really small considering how much everything cost. Captain Parker's is much better.

While there, I dragged my parents to see Iron Man (either that or Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I feel that the latter would just be awkward), the theater only had maybe three other people at most. Probably because it was the off-season in Cape Cod. Regardless, it was pretty awesome. I feel like now would be the perfect chance to ramble on about the movies I've watched over the past couple of weeks.


Iron Man - My favorite superhero movie since the spectacular Spider-man 2. Since I didn't really get caught up in the tremendous hype for this one outside of a couple of the teasers at Comic Con, a lot of the action scenes caught me by surprise. the fact that Iron Man is not as big a superhero as Batman, Superman or Spider-man came to a real advantage here as most of the movie just set-up Tony Stark's character as opposed to sappy love subplots. A lot of intensity, and a lot less action than you'd think. Very unconventional too, seemed to be one part Roboocop and one part Batman.

National Lampoon's Dorm Daze - On one of my last days at Pratt, this movie showed up on my desk. My suitemate forgot to return it from Blockbuster a couple of months ago and therefore he "bought" it with a $20 late fee. Having no other choice and nothing better to do with my time, I popped it into my laptop and turned on the commentary track. They said it was originally just an indie "Shakespearian" comedy film (I guess it was about as funny as a Shakespearian comedy) but after it got picked up by MGM they slapped on the National Lampoon name because it would sell better. The directors discussed the "subtleties" (and those are air quotes) of the posters on the wall representing the ambitions of the characters with one having a cityscape and the other having pin up models. The directors didn't really seem too concerned with the comedy as much as just how marketable their movie was, which makes sense for this had marketing executive written all over it. It also had Topanga from Boy Meets World in it, she didn't really do much, she just existed in the background.

Teen Wolf/Teen Wolf Too - I saw this double pack at Target on their $4 bin and I couldn't resist. I knew both of them are terrible movies, but I really just wanted to pick it up for the sheer fact that Teen Wolf Too was written by none other then Tim Kring of Heroes fame. The first Teen Wolf movie only really existed to capitalize on the fame of Michael J. Fox after the first Back to the Future movie made it huge. A quick glance at the trailer and the posters has more emphasis on the "Back to the Future" star than it does the actual name of the film. A couple of scenes were funny, but in not the way the director intended, the script didn't really go anywhere and the make-up was laughable. Teen Wolf Too was pretty much the same exact movie as the first one, except replace Michael J. Fox with Jason Bateman. While it was novel to see Jason Bateman of Arrested Development fame shooting fire out of his eyes, this one would be better off forgotten alongside most terrible 80s movies.
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