You know, I liked this movie and that’s saying a lot. I tend not to like horror movies, but this one held my interest. While short at 82 minutes, it kept me engaged even through the slow setup. After people started dying (oh no spoilers!), it picked up nicely and kept escalating to the end.

The basic premise is a film-maker gone mad inhabits his horror movie as the slasher character. Whenever it screens, he can somehow transport himself into the real world and kill people in the area. Whenever he does this, the projection on the screen shows what he’s looking at, so the people in the theater still think they’re watching a horror movie. He drags his victims back into the film world, thus leaving no body (but plenty of blood). This progresses until people start freaking out and the suspense of solving the mystery and the reactions of the caricatures drive the movie forward. 

As an independent film, the acting can be a little hokey, but not nearly as bad as you might expect, and the gore  special effects are pretty impressive for the budget. There are other post-production effects thrown in too, and the low-budget shows. Fortunately, whether the film-makers realized they looked cheap or ran out of money, there isn’t that much of the silly-looking stuff.

I want to give this a lower rating because I tend not to like horror films as a rule, but this one gets a higher slant out of me. I guess I watched it on a good day!

xkcd had a comic a long time ago; something to the effect of “I just can’t get passionate about copyright law.” It’s true, I tend to be pretty apathetic about the whole situation, but sometimes little things grab my attention.

For example, I believe the nightmare, What Happens in Vegas, released on DVD with “Digital Copy.” This promotional doohickey allows you to view the DVD on your digital media devices with very little hassle. I don’t know if the “Digital Copy” copy of the film is copy-protected or has other DRM schema associated with it, but the simple fact that studios are willing to provide a more… “volatile” (?) format for consumers is a step in the right direction.

I promised myself I’d keep this entry short, so I’ll cut to the chase: Even if the movie is terrible, I may be willing to purchase the DVD for the sole reason of supporting this practice.

“Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.” – R. Feynman

The movie, War, sucked. I saw the previews and was excited because it had Jet Li and Jason Statham. I mean, how could you fuck this up? Oh… Philip G. Atwell as director. You may not have heard of him, and you’d be right! He’s directed such music videos as N.W.A.’s “Hello” and “Bitch Please.”

I really do blame Mr. Atwell for this failure. The story was pretty standard action cliché, but it just felt ridiculous because for an action movie, there was no action – just a bunch of half-second cuts of what looked like blurry Jason Statham. I never even saw Jet Li do anything noteworthy. That’s not cool, right?

I will say that I enjoyed the appearance of some Hollywood Foreign Equivalents. Oh, you’ve not heard of these? Enjoy!

Julianne Moore and her Japanese Equivalent, Devon Aoki

Christopher Walken and his Japanese equivalent, John Lone

Bruce Willis and his English Equivalent, Jason Statham

Am I so wrong here?

In short. Not worth the time.

I never liked you, Rodriguez, and Tarantino: you’re on probation.

The end.

Ok, this is too fucking cool for words. Just watch it. You’ll see.