Movie Review: The Village

Hurrrr! The Village?

Yes, the eagerly anticipated 4th film from M. Night. Shayamalan.

Well, first of all he did The 6th Sense, which was great. He kicked off with a bang and everyone loved him. Very spooky, well directed, nice subtle performances. A twist which I challenge anyone to guess if they haven't seen the film and hadn't been told "Look out for the big twist!". Just an all round cracker of a good film. Then he did Unbreakable. Which was a bit strange. Re-used Bruce Willis again, but this time turned him into a comic super hero (not quite so over exagerated, though) but never the less was all a little hard to digest. It was still an entertaining film, but nothing quite like his first.

His 3rd movie was Signs. Now I really don't know what most people think of this but i'm not a fan. The story was boring, slow and had to much of a faith/religious tone to it. Just generally a rather dull film in my eyes. Sorry.

And now his 4th film, The Village. I'm not gonna go into the story to much because you can read one of a billion reviews on the internet that all set up the story for you there. As far as how good the film is, though? Well I liked it quite a lot. Good suspense throughout, all round good acting. One problem for me was some of the dialog just didn't feel right, but meh...

So yeah, a good film, better than Signs and Unbreakable. But still not a 6th Sense beater.

4 Cockerspanials out of 5.

A new endeavors...

From the depths of Hell I rose that Saturday... And went straight to bed. I aplogise for not updating when I said I would but alas I was asleep and had my head in the clouds. Recently I have been busy moving my stuff in with my friend Jay, AKA: King Poubar. I'm going to be living with him for a few months until we can find an apartment. His birthday was yesterday and with the addition of the new mini-fridge, we now have nicely chilled beer and other beverages. Stickers have already begun being applied, starting with a Pope sticker (The fridge is now nicknamed 'The Pope,' 'Pope me!' etc) and an AMD Athlon sticker. From next week onwards, we're attempting to port Linux to the refridgerator platform.

Battlenet Allnighter: The Destruction Of Sleep - #3

Well, the sun has risen and I'm surprisingly not feeling as tired as expected. Part three has begun - with a vengence! I have to last out another four hours, as 10am is the finishing time of the allnighter. If I can hold out till then, I'll be able to make it out of this Hell. Jay has been much support through these dark times, offering tidings from his secret bunker in the heart of Mother Russia. My next update will be upon reaching my goal of 10am. Godspeed.

Battlenet Allnighter: The Destruction Of Sleep - #2

After tanking myself up on caffeine, I can safely say I feel no more awake than before I consumed the highly volatile chemical. I feel the minions of Hell themselves are coming to take my consciousness from me. This is where the Union Aerospace Corporation comes into play. Their teleportation devices run on pure caffeine (Or a highly refined derivative). The Kick just added to the stomach-churning goodness that seems will be afflicting me for the present future.

Mental note: I may need more coffee.

For the moment, this is RJ MacReady signing off. Expect another update at approximately 6am GMT, when I will be less awake than a stoned Ninja on guard duty at an OAP care home.

Battlenet Allnighter: The Destruction Of Sleep - #1

As I type this from a decorated workstation at the Battlenet LAN centre in the heart of Norwich, I am sipping on lightly chilled cola and conversing with my best friend, Jay. He probably doesn't think the same way, but I guess thats life! Heavily salted snack foods have commenced being eaten and I feel rather sick after consuming two cans of Kick high-energy drink. Ugh. More news later at around 3am!

Dawn of the Dead: The Ultimate Edition

Anchor Bay have a soon-ish release date for the new four-disc DVD set titled 'Dawn of the Dead: The Ultimate Edition.' Contained on the discs are three versions of the film (Hopefully Dario Argento's cut will be one of the ones featured), three comentary tracks, two documentaries (One of those will probably be Document of the Dead) and 'A whole lot more!' Quite what exactly are on the discs is anybody's guess. The current release date has been slated as September 7, 2004 and chances of this date slipping are unlikely.

New content, new images & new.. um..

Welcome, welcome! I've been trying to refresh the site design slightly by making some cool new images etc. Wehrmacht! (No, I'm not a Neo-Nazi) will be released in the coming weeks and I know I promised movie reviews, but I've been just too damn busy fighting off zombie hoards... Honest!

Blogger bar addition & interview preparation

Kristofer Velasquez kindly agreed for my to interview him here at C&B and I have been preparing questions for the interview which will be taking place soon! I've also republished the blog after adding the Blogger bar which you can see up there right now. From the bar you can search my blog using the search section and whatever the hell else it includes... I dunno,go look!

Kristofer Velasquez interview!

Ok. This may not be the biggest thing since sliced bread, but it's the biggest thing since loaves of bread! I'm e-mailing Kristofer Velasquez soon to try and arrange an interview. In case you've never heard of him, Mr. Velasquez has a low-budget independant movie in the making, and it's shaping up to be quite a hot little number. If anyone provides Dichotomous films any support, I feel it should be the C&B team! Before the interview (If theres an interview!), check out the official website for Circling the Drain.

The Deadite is back!

I'm back from my Army selection and failed it. Definately was NOT for me. As a friend so eloquently put it: 'You're an artist at heart.' I don't think anyone has ever been that right about me. Anyways. WAYYYYYY more updates to be coming, along with giant reviews of most of the definitive classic b-movies (Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies) as well as some of the newer releases (Cabin Fever, Wrong Turn etc).

Thanks Holl for posting some stuff while I was gone!

I-Robot: More like Smooth-Ass

Last night I went to see I-Robot, so here is my short but sweet verdict.

Will Smith is the main dude in a world where everyone loves robot-butlers, except him. He
hates them and is paranoid they are evil. I'm not going to go into the actual story any more,
but it is fairly predictable hollywood action spam. It feels like it's close to being good,
but it just doesn't get there. The story is OK, satisfactory for this sort of popcorn film.
But I get the feeling if the story was just a little better thought out, with something of
interest happening more often it could have been a cracking film. It's a 'lead you by the
nose' type of story to the films resolution so if you go expecting to get something out of
this film, you may be dissapointed. The acting is, again, acceptable. Nothing particularly
special, nothing particularly bad. And the effects, they were quite nice, but CGI effects
don't really count for much in my books.

There are some instances of blatent product advertising in this film which may get up some people's noses, from JVC and Audi. But worst of all, is that literally within 2 minutes of the film starting you are exposed to Will Smiths round, curvacious ass. Note: I didn't pay particular attention to his rear, i'm not gay. An ass of such magnitude so early on will stunyou, and in some casses, may turn you on. You have been warned.

This movie gets 2 and a half lasers out of 5

EDIT: Would have recieved 4/5 if Will Smith had done a rap about robots.

Never buy a 'cool' 28 watt fan...

Thats right, the brand name for this marvel of technology (Heh) is 'Cool.' Right now I'm about 18 degrees off of being cool... Up the scale! Its currently approximately 29 degrees in my bedroom and the fan seems to be doing nothing more than making a whirring noise. The amount of air being moved is the equivalent of a mouse farting down a toilet roll tube: BUGGER ALL! I guess it doesn't help that my PC is on kicking out heat, but what are you gonna do? Sacrifice online time to be a few degrees cooler when you go to bed? I think not!

In other news, I regrettably inform you that I shall not be able to post for a few days because I am travelling down to Pirbright - Surrey on Military business (Lets hope I pass the selection standards!). I'll ask Holl to keep the place tidy while I'm gone!

Our very own IRC room!

With the coming of DeviantART v4, many new features have been added, including a chat feature! I hastily created a #chainsawsandboomsticks room for everyone to hang out in to chat about disgusting horror... And stuff. Pay a visit to the dAmn chat room (dAmn stands for Deviant Art Messaging Network, it was no clever pun on my part).

VISIT NOW!

A lesson in pant filling...

As I sat playing System Shock 2 whilst sipping an ice-cool Fosters beer, I wondered: Why the hell aren't games made like this nowadays? My chat with Holl earlier brought this to my immediate attention. Nanites; hacking into data systems to shut down rogue defence turrets and security cameras; a giant space research vessel that has a derranged and homicidal computer at its core. That's what games should be like. So utterly involving that you spend five hours on it at a time, with little more than bathroom breaks and the occasional pause to go make a ham sandwich. The only thing remotely close to this level of interactivity and immersiveness was Deus Ex (And don't get me started on its sequel...), which by all counts was a rather polished game.

Sure, the cost of games production has risen with all the new 'Pixel shader' technologies and more ehnancements to game engines, but really! If we all just stood back and looked at what a game is, we'd all be playing real games. Not 'Shrek 2: The game.' I challenge you, go back and play the original Doom on the hardest setting. Most teenagers nowadays would instantly bitch their asses off at id because it doesnt have an autosave feature. Well lah-dee-dah.

Cest la vie I suppose. It's going the same way with the movie industry. Games nowadays are disgustingly coded, have little to no gameply and replayability. Movies nowadays are released using computer-generated effects for everything, are unimaginative and simply came into being when a Hollywood director had a wet dream over a scantily clad chick being hounded by a guy weilding a knife (Scream, anyone?).

What the world needs are more independants! Up with George Romero, Sam Raimi, Kristofer Velasquez and down with Paul Anderson, Kevin Williamson and James Wong!

Down with stereotypical teeny-boping pop music too, yeah!

An introduction to me

Hello gentle sirs and ladies!

My name is Resident_Weasel - And hopefully you will be seeing more ramblings from me. I imagine I'll mostly be talking about just the things I enjoy, so that's: films, games and music mainly. I will not be talking about the things I don't enjoy though, which is marmite and drawfs (there's just nothing funny about them).

OK here are my favourite three films:

The Man Who Wasn't There
Magnolia
Mulholland Drive

So yes, in particular I like Horror/Thriller films, am an avid gamer and into quite a lot of music. So you'll be hearing from me shortly, probably with an amazingly good review. I'm now going to get some Ben+Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream (BEST IN THE WORLD) But for now here is a link... It's actually a HyperLink of DOOM, where will it take you? Who knows, maybe to your grave...

http://www.blogger.com/profile/4159910

The ramblings of another insaniac!

Yes that's right! In addition to my own total tosh being posted here, there will be the ramblings of Holl! He's already agreed to do some articles and suchlike, but I'm sure I can tie him down with something in the basement, so I don't have to post anything. I'll then feed him bread and cheese... And water. No seriously, Holl will be writing some articles in the near future (That is if he isn't now sitting and thinking 'Holy crap why the hell did I agree to that!').

Resident Evil Apocalypse (Crap sequel to the equally crap Resident Evil, which I might add, should have been directed by George 'King of Gore' Romero!) has seemingly dropped off the radar. After months of it being classed as 'in production' many of us can but hope that they aren't even bothering to release the dog-bowl of tripe.

Both Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi seemingly hinted that they would be interested (Careful, I said 'Seemingly!') in making a fourth Evil Dead movie when interviewed at the Spiderman 2 premiere. Evidently, with the profits made from the Spiderman franchise, it would be a wise move to spend some of it on an explanation as to what the hell happened to Ash... And his boomstick.

In even more amazing news, a fourth Living Dead movie (George A. Romero's gore-fest movies) has been given the green light by Fox Entertainment! Of course, adopting a name less digestible than a Ford Transit. It was revealed straight from the horses mouth, that the fourth movie will be named: 'Land of the dead.' I guess it's better than 'Dead Reckoning' or 'Dusk of the Night of the Dawn of the Unlving Dead.'

Apparently there's also gonna be a new Matrix movie. I don't believe it personally...

There is no spoon.

Scariest Places on Earth

Firstly I'd like to say, if anyone has any information regarding Scariest Places on Earth, or wishes to recieve information, then could you please mail me!

I guess, Scariest Places on Earth has its humble beginnings firmly rooted in gameshow-TV. Family is crazy enough to phone up SPE to book place, family get flight there, family spend night in creepy castle with videocameras and other zaney equipment, family get the shit scared out of them and the family go home feeling more all-round wholesome and envigorated. Hell, if that isn't an amazing concept then I don't know what is! So what happened to it?

In around October of 2000, the show was created for MTV's 'Fear' during Halloween. It then continued as a regular show on ABC Family until October 2002. Not much is known whether it was cancelled or whether they just ran out of families gullible enough to appear on the show. It then re-appeared sometime around 2003, airing on UKHorizons (English documentary channel for Digital/Satellite subscribers). Early 2004 there was an entire weekend dedicated to the best episodes, which I actually watched. The eerie thing is, the penultimate episode was a trip to Hunadora castle in Transylvania (The home of Vlad the Impaler). That epsiode was a two-parter, so I eagerly tuned in and... Nothing. Some show about plastic surgery? Where's my pant-filling SPE!? It's nowhere to be found. I have never seen it since.

Now heres my theory:

The show went well. MTV's Fear came and went and they decided to carry the show on for a while to satisfy the fanbase. The show was revitalised and a few more episodes were filmed. The last two were the visit to Hunadora castle in Dracula-ville. See where I'm going with this? Something bad happened during the filming of the second half (Which would explain there being no second episode), the family was attacked by Mr. Staypuff Marshmellow Man (Of Ghostbusters fame). The whole of the castle was covered in melted marshmellow when Ray and Egon showed up and they cancelled filming.

Budda bing-budda bang. Either that or it was something to do with The Mafia. 'Nobody's gonna touch these ghosts, see!' If this is the case, the Transylvanian police may have uncovered a stash of illegally imported fireworks.

Barton Mansion = Fake?

The website I personally link to in my Blogroll has come under fire on several message boards for appearing to be fake. The teens who operate and maintain the website have filmed and produced a DVD detailing the hauntings in Redlands - CA, most prominently at a residence known as the Barton Mansion. Many of the posters [at the forum] had reported that the Redlands area really had no urban ghost stories or suchlike until this website popped up. Coincidence? Maybe they are circulating the fake ghost stories in an attempt to sell more copies of their alleged documentary DVD.

After visiting the site quite a few times, I am certainly skeptical of both their images and their footage. I sent the link to a friend of mine and he was in fits of laughter. 'It's a guy in a big sheet with a toy lantern from Pirates of the Carribean!' was my first thought also. The pointy ears and long nose also add to the non-believability factor. Really, I cannot be the judge. If it is indeed fake then really it's a bunch of kids playing hide-and-seek with a guy in a sheet. If it's real then they have a significant find.

*Cough* The site's as fake as Pammy's tits! *Cough*

War of the Worlds

I was browsing IMDB for pictures of Scarlett Johansson (Because... Well, why not?) earlier last evening. Wow ok, there's a third Mission Impossible film currently in pre-production and Scarlett is on the cards as a female role. I wonder what other film's old Tommy Cruise is in. Penned for 2006 and apparently still in limbo is the remake of the classic b-movie; War of the Worlds. And who's betting old Tommy will probably get the lead? Give that man a peanut!

"The pair claim to be fasttracking the project to go before the cameras before Indiana Jones 4. David Koepp (writer-director of Secret Window, one of many writers on Spiderman 1, also wrote Panic Room) has been handed the rewrite"

Awesome news!