"The Hangover: Part 3" R
Returning for a third insult to sanity, the Wolf Pack is again thrust into the desert and forced to get some gold from a mobster, played by John Goodman, who holds one of them ransom until they get the gold that Chow stole from the mobster in the first film. Along the way, the gang hand planned an intervention on their obese friend who started it all, but they don't ever get to that. They have no actual hangover until the end credits where someone gets a boob job they shouldn't have. The movie is such a mess giving away that will not spoil it. Some critics though were unfair. It is justy about as funny as the second one and not much darker, except it seems angrier. The death defying stunts at one point make for a puzzling chase gag involving a parachute and a limousine, in busy downtown Vegas, which is impossible as they could not really do that, but the rest of the film doesn't take any cues from rationality.And the big guy eventually meets a girl in this one. Someone has to get married in order for there to be a third hangover. Actually why didn't they get Mike Tyson again? John Goodman chews scenery as a parody of Brandaw kind of, but comes off more as a mean Fred Flintstone. If you liked the first two this is a little disappointing, like having gone to too many wild parties and growing bored of it. If you hated them it will give you new reasons. It didn't bother me either way. It was sort of meh.
Review by Adam Browne
Friday, May 31, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Review: "Salad Fingers" is twisted Internet flash cartoon horror
"Salad Fingers"
Stories by David Firth using flash animation
Salad Fingers tells the 9 part story of a psychotic little character who lives alone out in a wasteland and is driven insane by loneliness and possibly insanity.
The first part "Spoons" seems to be about his break from reality where he licks various rusty objects. He also apparently freaks out a boy character that screams at him.
The second part "Friends" is about Salad Fingers apparently committing as bizarre murder by putting a boy in an oven and then later on imagining his finger puppets led him to do it.
In the third one "Nettles" Salad Fingers meets an annoying salesman (or his Father) and allegedly murders him to hang him on a hook, revealing his serial killer side, but it may be part of a fantasy as he also imagines stinging nettles also.
The fourth story "Cage" is even more bizarre, as Salad Fingers imagines going to France through a water faucet, called a tap, and also a screaming boy who seems to love him, as he sees it in his warped mind, and he's in a locked room, maybe a panic room or shelter, at one point.(The brother imagery possibly).
Then in the fifth story "Picnic" it appears Salad Fingers has a psychotic episode where he imagines he has a girlfriend, who is actually a girl he has taken, but it may be imaginary. He then has a picnic with her but something horrible is going on. (The girl imagery is gross).
In the sixth one, "Present", the audience learns that Salad Fingers has definite mutiple personalities, those of possibly his victims, and one of them holds him to account about deflowering someone's daughter, possibly in reference to the last story, or not.
The seventh one, "Shore Leave" implies that the Great War, which is ongoing in the story, has a temporary respite where his imaginary friend comes back, but he is just a dead person found near his house.
In the eight story, "Cupboard" the secret hiding place where Salad Fingers hides in drives him ever more mad when he is spooked one night and imagines his broken radio is speaking and cursing him.
Then finally in the ninth story, "Letter", Salad Fingers has completely lost it and imagines his scary tree is alive after he bites a branch from it, and the tree makes him pregnant with a strange monster, but then he names it Yvonne and gross things happen when he meets a neighbor.
It isn't clear entirely what is going on in these little short cartoons with the green long fingered alien man. Clearly he has a split from reality and has schizoid tendencies that might have led to murder. Many fans of this series, from 2004 to 2011, have tried to analyze what it means.
It is just David Firth's attempt to be gross, but having seen some of his other works on the net, he likes psycho drama and mixes it will murderers and psychopaths. From the other stories, the Salad Fingers one can be explained, sort of.
Because of the references in the story, it takes place in Europe some time just prior to World War II, referencing 'The Great War', which was World War I. Salad Fingers had been a man who was not able to go into the war because he was already deluded, but his abusive family drove him more mad while his friend and his brother went off to war and were killed. He went mad and killed his family. Then possibly he was gassed and it made him even more crazy. It may also reference a mental war between reality and fantasy, as Salad Fingers is clearly beyond borderline personality disorder into full blown paranoid schizophrenic sociopath.
The town in which he lives is not a wasteland. The people there that try to help him are shunned away and scorn him in the end. Some of them are killed, including a man, a mother with a baby, (hence that image), some children and so forth, which is horrible. Others run off. In the end he attempts to make amends by helping out in town, but he again is shunned bwecause he is a horrible killer. It could even be that all of his killer ideas are just fantasies, but this is not likely. That's just a number of net theories strung together.
The story is twisted and to call it good or excellent would be weird, or even entertaining with be a stretch, but it personifies the frantic counter culture of the bloggers and some of the net people who are out there and on another planet. They might enjoy it. It is not for the timid. It is horror.
Review by Adam Browne
Stories by David Firth using flash animation
Salad Fingers tells the 9 part story of a psychotic little character who lives alone out in a wasteland and is driven insane by loneliness and possibly insanity.
The first part "Spoons" seems to be about his break from reality where he licks various rusty objects. He also apparently freaks out a boy character that screams at him.
The second part "Friends" is about Salad Fingers apparently committing as bizarre murder by putting a boy in an oven and then later on imagining his finger puppets led him to do it.
In the third one "Nettles" Salad Fingers meets an annoying salesman (or his Father) and allegedly murders him to hang him on a hook, revealing his serial killer side, but it may be part of a fantasy as he also imagines stinging nettles also.
The fourth story "Cage" is even more bizarre, as Salad Fingers imagines going to France through a water faucet, called a tap, and also a screaming boy who seems to love him, as he sees it in his warped mind, and he's in a locked room, maybe a panic room or shelter, at one point.(The brother imagery possibly).
Then in the fifth story "Picnic" it appears Salad Fingers has a psychotic episode where he imagines he has a girlfriend, who is actually a girl he has taken, but it may be imaginary. He then has a picnic with her but something horrible is going on. (The girl imagery is gross).
In the sixth one, "Present", the audience learns that Salad Fingers has definite mutiple personalities, those of possibly his victims, and one of them holds him to account about deflowering someone's daughter, possibly in reference to the last story, or not.
The seventh one, "Shore Leave" implies that the Great War, which is ongoing in the story, has a temporary respite where his imaginary friend comes back, but he is just a dead person found near his house.
In the eight story, "Cupboard" the secret hiding place where Salad Fingers hides in drives him ever more mad when he is spooked one night and imagines his broken radio is speaking and cursing him.
Then finally in the ninth story, "Letter", Salad Fingers has completely lost it and imagines his scary tree is alive after he bites a branch from it, and the tree makes him pregnant with a strange monster, but then he names it Yvonne and gross things happen when he meets a neighbor.
It isn't clear entirely what is going on in these little short cartoons with the green long fingered alien man. Clearly he has a split from reality and has schizoid tendencies that might have led to murder. Many fans of this series, from 2004 to 2011, have tried to analyze what it means.
It is just David Firth's attempt to be gross, but having seen some of his other works on the net, he likes psycho drama and mixes it will murderers and psychopaths. From the other stories, the Salad Fingers one can be explained, sort of.
Because of the references in the story, it takes place in Europe some time just prior to World War II, referencing 'The Great War', which was World War I. Salad Fingers had been a man who was not able to go into the war because he was already deluded, but his abusive family drove him more mad while his friend and his brother went off to war and were killed. He went mad and killed his family. Then possibly he was gassed and it made him even more crazy. It may also reference a mental war between reality and fantasy, as Salad Fingers is clearly beyond borderline personality disorder into full blown paranoid schizophrenic sociopath.
The town in which he lives is not a wasteland. The people there that try to help him are shunned away and scorn him in the end. Some of them are killed, including a man, a mother with a baby, (hence that image), some children and so forth, which is horrible. Others run off. In the end he attempts to make amends by helping out in town, but he again is shunned bwecause he is a horrible killer. It could even be that all of his killer ideas are just fantasies, but this is not likely. That's just a number of net theories strung together.
The story is twisted and to call it good or excellent would be weird, or even entertaining with be a stretch, but it personifies the frantic counter culture of the bloggers and some of the net people who are out there and on another planet. They might enjoy it. It is not for the timid. It is horror.
Review by Adam Browne
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Review: "Star Trek Into Darkness" mirrors classic Trek neatly
"Star Trek Into Darkness" PG 13
Set about a year after the last one in the Abrams version of the Trek universe, Into Darkness pluges head first into a strange mission to a planet of pink trees and weird mud faced natives, and Kirk and crew running from them, while Spock attempts to freeze dry an active volcano.
On Earth, a mysterious Englishman offers to save a sick child using his special red matter, in this case some kind of blood transfusion, and then another darker British man blows up a building.
The Enterprise returns to Earth to find that London has been attacked, and Kirk fimds he's been reprimanded for completely botching a first contact with aq planet he should have not been to, called Nibiru for some reason. Pike gives him the riot act and then has him attend a board meeting. In this tower, a force of Admirals and such are all gathered, which in a time of terrorist uprising would seem not too swift on their part. Moments later, a rogue British guy attacks the conference with some kind of hovering ship and beams away to another planet. Wow, they can do that now.
Then this Admiral called Marcus offers Kirk a job to go hunt down the rogue agent, who allegedly is called Harrrison, and who can be found on Qonos, the Klingon planet. Kirk offers to round up Harrison because he wants revenge, but Marcus is an operative of Section 31 and has his own agenda.
Marcus sends his daughter aboard the Enterprise before she warps to Klingon space, initially as a spy, but this doesn't work out. The ship bnreaks down while carrying WMDs across the neutral zone, and could be decimated by Klingons, so Kirk leads a team on a captured ship they have to the planet to find Harrison,
On the way home, and somehow in contact with Scotty who has taken leave, the Enterprise learns that Harrison is one of the augments from a captured ship from 300 years in the past, and that his WDMS also carry survivors from the augment ship.
Then Admiral Marcus uses a secret dreadnaught ship allegedly called the Vengeance to find the Enterprise and do battle with it.
Assuming this is clearly not a retread of Space Seed, a classic episode of the series from 1967, and Wrath of Khan, a 1982 film, would be illogical, and to die hard Trek fans this might not make much sense at all, but considerably more than it would to non fans, who might be utterly baffled at the myriad references in this.
It seems they've been remaking TWOK since the classic movies, and even the last one. Now that they have it out of their system, can they please do something original. Lol.
Even so, the movie is a fun ride. New people to Star Trek will like the roller coaster ride and the quick witty action. Nitpickers will be all over it, but really that's the fun isn't it? At least there isn't a black hole this time.
They do have red matter again, but this time it's magic blood, which is central to the sometimes blatantly obvious plot, but it's a solid film anyway.
How many 2013 movies are going to have weapons pods with people aboard this summer? Oblivion, Star Trek 2013, etc...who knows.
Clearly it was not so much a mirror of TWOK as it was Space Seed the darker years, but it was worth it in the long run. Don't bother with the 3D though. It really doesn't need that.
And yes I know Harrison is supposed to be you know who but I didn't want to give it away.
Review by Adam Browne
PS. The Vengeance looks like my design of the Enterprise F from my web site Chimera, which wasn't up that long before I pulled it. It is also a silly name for a ship.It also closely resembles the Star Trek meets On Location dreadnaught, the Pepsi Free.
Set about a year after the last one in the Abrams version of the Trek universe, Into Darkness pluges head first into a strange mission to a planet of pink trees and weird mud faced natives, and Kirk and crew running from them, while Spock attempts to freeze dry an active volcano.
On Earth, a mysterious Englishman offers to save a sick child using his special red matter, in this case some kind of blood transfusion, and then another darker British man blows up a building.
The Enterprise returns to Earth to find that London has been attacked, and Kirk fimds he's been reprimanded for completely botching a first contact with aq planet he should have not been to, called Nibiru for some reason. Pike gives him the riot act and then has him attend a board meeting. In this tower, a force of Admirals and such are all gathered, which in a time of terrorist uprising would seem not too swift on their part. Moments later, a rogue British guy attacks the conference with some kind of hovering ship and beams away to another planet. Wow, they can do that now.
Then this Admiral called Marcus offers Kirk a job to go hunt down the rogue agent, who allegedly is called Harrrison, and who can be found on Qonos, the Klingon planet. Kirk offers to round up Harrison because he wants revenge, but Marcus is an operative of Section 31 and has his own agenda.
Marcus sends his daughter aboard the Enterprise before she warps to Klingon space, initially as a spy, but this doesn't work out. The ship bnreaks down while carrying WMDs across the neutral zone, and could be decimated by Klingons, so Kirk leads a team on a captured ship they have to the planet to find Harrison,
On the way home, and somehow in contact with Scotty who has taken leave, the Enterprise learns that Harrison is one of the augments from a captured ship from 300 years in the past, and that his WDMS also carry survivors from the augment ship.
Then Admiral Marcus uses a secret dreadnaught ship allegedly called the Vengeance to find the Enterprise and do battle with it.
Assuming this is clearly not a retread of Space Seed, a classic episode of the series from 1967, and Wrath of Khan, a 1982 film, would be illogical, and to die hard Trek fans this might not make much sense at all, but considerably more than it would to non fans, who might be utterly baffled at the myriad references in this.
It seems they've been remaking TWOK since the classic movies, and even the last one. Now that they have it out of their system, can they please do something original. Lol.
Even so, the movie is a fun ride. New people to Star Trek will like the roller coaster ride and the quick witty action. Nitpickers will be all over it, but really that's the fun isn't it? At least there isn't a black hole this time.
They do have red matter again, but this time it's magic blood, which is central to the sometimes blatantly obvious plot, but it's a solid film anyway.
How many 2013 movies are going to have weapons pods with people aboard this summer? Oblivion, Star Trek 2013, etc...who knows.
Clearly it was not so much a mirror of TWOK as it was Space Seed the darker years, but it was worth it in the long run. Don't bother with the 3D though. It really doesn't need that.
And yes I know Harrison is supposed to be you know who but I didn't want to give it away.
Review by Adam Browne
PS. The Vengeance looks like my design of the Enterprise F from my web site Chimera, which wasn't up that long before I pulled it. It is also a silly name for a ship.It also closely resembles the Star Trek meets On Location dreadnaught, the Pepsi Free.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Review: The "Iron Man" Films bring on man and machine action
"Iron Man" PG 13
This 2008 movie was the first of Robert Downey Jr. and his return to movies, directed by John Favreau. The film is about a billionaire weapons dealer called Tony Stark who is shot down during an Afgan war and is surgically altered by a strange scientist who claims to be trying to keep him alive, while under captivity. The scientist outfits him with a device that can enhance his power, and he proceeds to build a body armor mech suit to bust out of prison and return to America. Once home he enlists a military man, Rhodes, and a willowy secretary, Potts, to be his liaisons while he fights a mastermind who has also created a dynamo human mech and plans to attack people with it. Based on the late Vietnam era comic books, which have goen through many reincarnations since, Iron Man is a lot like the whole man and mecha robot craze in Japan, (even Ultraman, which was kind of an Iron Man knock off, as it turns out). Marvel comics was betting on this being the first of their Avengers initiative films, leading to last year's Avengers, in 2012. A fun ride and a novel concept.
"Iron Man 2" PG 13
The 2010 sequel to Iron Man sees Favreau back directing but makes it a little convoluted when a weapons maker from Russia wants revenge on Stark for sopme bad deals earlier and creates his own monster mech adaptation, the deadly whip like Whiplash armor arms, and a mech suit also. Maybe in this case it's not such a great sequel, but it is one of the Avengers movies, so it's in there and has to be included. Sure it builds up some of Stark's back story and his broken family relationship, and his alcoholism, but it is supposed to be an action movie too. Sometimes is lacks in that.
"Iron Man 3" PG 13
Shane Black takes the helm for this one.Following the Avengers movie, the first post crisis story takes place around Christmas 2012 when Tony Stark returns but is tormented by panic attacks and by a crackpot inventor from his past, who he snubbed at a Y2K party. Then there is a seemingly unrelated new villain on the loose, the Manderin, who apparently is a white dude, but this will not give much away, as in the comics it was a half Asian megalomaniac. Stark's house is attacked by helicopter gun ships while his buddy in the Iron Patriot armor is running about mugging for the camera, as another Iron Man of sorts. (He was Rhodes or War Machine in part 2). Then after the attack Stark disappears to a small town where he is on the trail of the inventor and the Mandarin, while the President (who is like a Bush clone), is taken hostage by the main baddies. The final showdown features a whole crazy army of mech armors. The FX are done by Digital Domain instead of ILM.See the 2D version. The 3D will not be so hot.
This 2008 movie was the first of Robert Downey Jr. and his return to movies, directed by John Favreau. The film is about a billionaire weapons dealer called Tony Stark who is shot down during an Afgan war and is surgically altered by a strange scientist who claims to be trying to keep him alive, while under captivity. The scientist outfits him with a device that can enhance his power, and he proceeds to build a body armor mech suit to bust out of prison and return to America. Once home he enlists a military man, Rhodes, and a willowy secretary, Potts, to be his liaisons while he fights a mastermind who has also created a dynamo human mech and plans to attack people with it. Based on the late Vietnam era comic books, which have goen through many reincarnations since, Iron Man is a lot like the whole man and mecha robot craze in Japan, (even Ultraman, which was kind of an Iron Man knock off, as it turns out). Marvel comics was betting on this being the first of their Avengers initiative films, leading to last year's Avengers, in 2012. A fun ride and a novel concept.
"Iron Man 2" PG 13
The 2010 sequel to Iron Man sees Favreau back directing but makes it a little convoluted when a weapons maker from Russia wants revenge on Stark for sopme bad deals earlier and creates his own monster mech adaptation, the deadly whip like Whiplash armor arms, and a mech suit also. Maybe in this case it's not such a great sequel, but it is one of the Avengers movies, so it's in there and has to be included. Sure it builds up some of Stark's back story and his broken family relationship, and his alcoholism, but it is supposed to be an action movie too. Sometimes is lacks in that.
"Iron Man 3" PG 13
Shane Black takes the helm for this one.Following the Avengers movie, the first post crisis story takes place around Christmas 2012 when Tony Stark returns but is tormented by panic attacks and by a crackpot inventor from his past, who he snubbed at a Y2K party. Then there is a seemingly unrelated new villain on the loose, the Manderin, who apparently is a white dude, but this will not give much away, as in the comics it was a half Asian megalomaniac. Stark's house is attacked by helicopter gun ships while his buddy in the Iron Patriot armor is running about mugging for the camera, as another Iron Man of sorts. (He was Rhodes or War Machine in part 2). Then after the attack Stark disappears to a small town where he is on the trail of the inventor and the Mandarin, while the President (who is like a Bush clone), is taken hostage by the main baddies. The final showdown features a whole crazy army of mech armors. The FX are done by Digital Domain instead of ILM.See the 2D version. The 3D will not be so hot.
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