Prometheus.

Last weekend, Ridley Scott’s new Alien prequel, Prometheus rocketed into theatres.

A team of scientists travel to a remote planet to investigate what they believe may be the origin of humankind.

Overall, I enjoyed this film, but there is no skirting the issue that it is heavily flawed.  The key phrase I kept hearing from people who'd seen it was ‘don’t go in expecting an Alien prequel and you’ll like it.’  This seemed like a foolish thing to ask. Prometheus exists in the Alien universe and every scene is deeply entrenched in the canon set up in the first two films of the franchise. It’d be like if I said to anyone standing in line for Episode I, ‘don’t look at it as a Star Wars film, and you’ll be all right.’

The best science fiction, in my opinion, springs from two factors.  The first is taking a simple concept and making it more fantastical by what is inferred, and not necessarily shown.  The second is to then ground it with dense, well drawn out characters to make it human.  Prometheus doesn’t really succeed in doing either of these. 

Even though I think it is solid when taken at face value, it is one of those movies that starts to crumble when put under a microscope.  It does not infer anything, but instead tells you everything, and the pieces do not fit together as well as they should. I think the blame for this should – and the Internet would appear to agree - probably fall on the shoulders of writer Damon Lindelof.  After Lost, this is rapidly becoming his M.O.  The man is full of wonderful broad ideas, but often stumbles when it comes to the intricate details – and more importantly, their relation to each other.

As for characters, the crew of the Prometheus are nowhere near as substantial as the crew of the Nostromo in Alien.  When shit goes down in that film, each character’s fate means something.  Here, the best character is the android David (played awesomely by Michael Fassbender), someone who isn’t even human at all.  That can’t be a good thing, can it?  This is not to say the rest of the performances are anything less than stellar though.  Noomi Rapace brings her usual intensity to the role as the film’s protagonist Dr. Shaw and though Charlize Theron and Idris Elba are both solid, they are ultimately rendered irrelevant.

Even after saying all of that, I still look on Prometheus positively.  In terms of pure cinematic spectacle, it is actually very good.  If the high level of care and detail that went into the effects and creature designs had transferred over to all facets of the production, then it would have surely been a home run.  I know it sounds like I’m disappointed, but I think my experiences surviving four inferior addendums to the cinematic perfection that is Alien/Aliens have given me a pretty thick skin.

Ray Bradbury 1920-2012.

We sadly lost an important icon this week. Ray Bradbury was one of the greatest creative minds literary fiction has ever known.  He passed away this Wednesday at the age of ninety-one.  He was best known for his classic novels Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, but over his long career was credited with over six hundred works of fiction.

To me, Bradbury always stood alongside Rod Serling, Richard Matheson & Stephen King as larger than life idea men who constantly inspired me to write.  The Illustrated Man was one of the cooler books I read as part of my school curriculum.

Probably most memorable for me was his HBO show Ray Bradbury Theater.  I loved the opening of that show.



The idea that one can absorb ideas from their environment (and the things they surround themselves with) really stuck with me.  I salute you Mr. Bradbury, for your limitless imagination and the wonderful legacy that you have left behind.

E3 2012 Wrap-Up.

Well, E3 wrapped up yesterday, so here is a wrap-up of upcoming video games that caught my eye.

Dead Space 3 had a lengthy showing during EA’s press conference.

Though the gameplay demo was a tad uninspired – fighting a giant drill is not particularly stimulating – it did end on a high note with Isaac re-enacting Boba Fett’s trip down the Sarlaac’s gullet. Nevertheless, Dead Space remains one of my favourite video game universes so I’m still eager to get back inside my rig.

I can sum up Tomb Raider in two words. Yes, please.

Capcom looks to be pulling out all the stops with Resident Evil 6, bringing back all of our favourite characters from the series. 



I’m excited not only for the three different co-op campaigns, but also how they’ve “Journey-ed” them together, so you can hook up with random partners when the stories intersect.

Perhaps the most impressive demo of actual gameplay was Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs.  With little-to-no info on GTA V present at E3, this is the game everyone seems to be gravitating toward for their open world action fix.

All three of the big press conferences were lacklustre (actually Nintendo’s was downright painful) but the reason Sony won out was due to their ace in the hole. David Cage of Quantic Dream took the stage to introduce his new property, Beyond.  He announced that actress Ellen Page would be the protagonist – which was funny, considering she kind of already appears in Playstation’s other new & upcoming IP – and showed a lengthy cut scene from the game. 

Being a big fan of Heavy Rain, I’m stoked to see Quantic Dream further push the boundaries of the video game medium.

Sony then put a much needed exclamation point on their press conference with a shotgun blast to the face with The Last Of Us. 

Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us continues to be my most anticipated game of 2013.

Flesh For Frankenstein (#19)

The next title I watched off the Time Out Best 100 Horror List was Paul Morrissey's 1973 film Flesh for Frankenstein.

Baron Frankenstein's (Udo Kier) plan to create a super race becomes problematic when his two reanimated subjects refuse to copulate.

I'm not sure why I never saw this title until now. I did see the follow-up, Andy Warhol's Dracula – which was on a different list of mine, one of films that the band Skinny Puppy had sampled in their music – when I was working at the video store, so I maybe I just figured I got the gist. The film is a highly sexualized retelling of The Bride of Frankenstein, but features a role reversal on the classic tale, which I found kind of interesting. I did find it hard to tell if was meant to be a black comedy though. I mean clearly it is, as almost everything about the film is over-the-top, but was that the intention I wonder?

So, that's why I find the inclusion of Flesh For Frankenstein on the Time Out List a little peculiar. Truth be told, I seem to remember its vampire counterpart being a little more substantial. Both have glorious gore set pieces and unrestrained performances by Udo Kier, but I recall Dracula flowing a little better. It has been a long time, so I could be mistaken. However, there is no mistaking that it is Kier's presence that elevates the film over similar works from filmmakers like Jean Rollin, for instance. Rollin's ouevre may have had better cinematography – granted there are some shots in Flesh that you could hang on a wall – but none of his films had anyone as commanding as Kier in them. And none of them ever had a line like;

I wonder why Skinny Puppy never sampled that one.  This is the first title I've come across on the list whose position is a little dodgy, but I still had fun watching it.

Snuffing It.

Here below is the latest episode of the Laser Blast Podcast. This week, after viewing the Spanish thriller Thesis and the Japanese slasher Evil Dead Trap, the gang sounds off on Asian genre cinema, the films of Dario Argento, as well as Larry Cohen and Shark Night 3D!

DKTM 145

Hello all. I'm feeling mighty low today, so I'll get right to it here.

Alice, Sweet Alice.

A poster surfaced for the Resident Evil movie this week.

Add this to the awesome teaser released a few months ago, and you can colour me stoked.  Resident Evil: Retribution hits screens September 14th.

The Night Shift.

Toronto's World Wide Short Film Festival kicks off this Tuesday.  In terms of genre shorts, they are doing things a little differently this year.  Instead of the "Creepy" and "Freaky" programmes, WSFF has formed something called "The Night Shift."  Starting at 1130pm on Saturday the 9th, The Bloor will be hosting four-and-a-half hours of genre shorts spread out over three programs, including festival circuit sensation Bobby Yeah, former Rue Morgue editor Jovanka Vuckovic's The Captured Bird, and the new short from The Quay Brothers, Through The Weeping Glass.  Click here for the full programme.

Tell.

I regularly look in on the DIY filmmaking podcast Film Riot on Revision 3.  Since its inception in 2009, host Ryan Connolly has produced content for the show while working on his labour of love, a project called Tell.  Well, the last time I looked in he had announced that, after three years and one-hundred-and-ninety-some episodes, Tell was finally done and now online. Here it is below. I think it came out pretty well.  It's kind of long in the tooth for a short film, but there are some genuinely creepy moments here.  Congrats Ryan!

Fish Hunterrr!!!

After the Lake Victoria massacre, the flesh eating piranha travel to a newly opened water park.

I need not try to sell this movie to you. From the trailer, we know what it is, and they do, as well. Simply put, Piranha 3DD is ridiculously dumb fun and nothing more.

I might sound certifiable for saying this, but 2010's Piranha 3D had a certain level of credibility that is lacking from this movie. Whether it was the absence of Elisabeth Shue, director Alex Aja or the bloody stylings of KNB EFX, Piranha 3DD is lesser than in almost every facet.

Despite the fact I was giggling throughout pretty much the entire film, there were a lot of things that were noticably deficient in this one. Clearly, director John Gulager and company didn't have as much money as the previous production and the first thing that suffers is the gore. Although there are a lot of 'wow, they went there' moments during the set pieces, the gore never seemed as gratuitous as it should've been. Even the climax, which is set up the whole movie, was not as satisfying as Aja's bloody crescendo. The fish themselves needed to do less swimming around looking menacing and more chomping down on their victims, as there is a disappointingly low body count in this movie.

However, there's no question that the movie delivers on the double D's. You need only see the scene where Chet (David Koechner) introduces us to the 'cooch cam' to figure that one out. I would say the funnest part of this movie though, apart from a few of the enjoyably absurd set pieces, were the cameos. Gary Busey and Clu Gulager (of Return of the Living Dead and coincidentally the director's father) appear early on and Paul Scheer, Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd return from the first movie. The real star is David Hasselhoff though. His part is a lot more substantial than the trailer would have you believe and he's awesome. He gives you someone to zone in on, as everyone else in this picture is pretty insipid to the point that you want them to become fish food. The Hoff put it best when, during the end credits, he says, “and that is what natural selection is all about.” There was also a gag that recreated the dolly zoom shot from Jaws that got me every time.

Piranha 3DD is its ancestor's lesser cousin – except for of course the gratuitous nudity – but it's still an entertaining watch for those who know what to expect.