Thoughts / Favorite Lines ... Dude

[mearnest]

Forgot to mention:
'...as a friend'

[wurwolf]

Favorite riffs (both from Bill):

"Hello, forums." (Onil and I actually high-fived over that one.)

"DO NOT WANT"

God, I love the intranet nerd jokes.

[Waluigi]

One thing I have to say -- WATCH THE MOVIE W/O RIFFTRAX FIRST! The movie is about immersion -- RiffTrax is about pulling you back out of the movies. As you can imagine, the two don't play well together for first timers.

This is actually one of the only movies that I actually thought was better without the RiffTrax...

You're crazy - This movie is terrible.  There couldn't have been more than 4 lines of written dialog.  And those 4 lines stank.

Basic rule of good cinema:  Never let a bunch of idiotic "dudes" improvise. 

Note for Cloverfield 2: More monster - less whining. (And hire local actors - no more Cali-Yorkers)

You're missing the point of the movie. All of the lines of dialog were carefully written to make it believable. It's the whole idea of immersion. Before you say the movie is terrible, think about how carefully planned out the entire thing was. When do they show the monster? How much do they show? How many questions do they answer? What new twists do they throw our way? It was a brilliant thriller.

The idea of the movie was pretty good, very innovative. But the movie wasn't that good (my opinion, mainly b/c of the dialog, there are those types of people (dude wait dude) out in the world & I am not fond of them). I know it is a movie, but how can a monster & an army sneak up on the main characters like that?

[bratpop]

I know nobody will read this, but...

I don't think the Blair Witch Project was unique because it was handheld and videotaped. It was unique because it was a no-budget piece of boring crap where literally nothing happens for its duration, and yet it made millions of dollars.

Although this was clearly a ripoff of that, it was almost infinitely more entertaining once the action starts, even as dull as that was.

The "pitch" concept is really stupid, assuming that Godzilla is only popular in Japan and that America needs its own Godzilla. Um, the only reason Godzilla doesn't have the cultural meaning in America that it does in Japan is that America doesn't have a culture. Otherwise, it WAS released here, even had two remakes, and has always been popular, yes even including toys in most toy stores.

Despite the 9/11 fear mongering making it a rough analogue of Japan's interpretation of Godzilla, it doesn't make it a great monster movie because it's so unforgivably unoriginal. Distinctly American, sure, but it has to be good and groundbreaking on top of that. It wasn't. War of the Worlds did this, and better, and even that wasn't particularly great. And Tremors is a 100% homegrown American monster movie, it had realistic characters and reactions, and yet it managed to have a sense of humor and be fun and entertaining as well as scary even as a PG-13 movie. Can a stupid bat-crustacean designed by one guy top that just because it's in a gimmicky YouTube movie?

And of all the problems I had with this film, the video camera was not one of them. People seem to think it's clever nitpicking or something, but I have a video camera that has a light, and night vision, and can make a crappy 80 minute movie where people say dude a lot. It's not magic. The conceit is supposed to be that the movie is more or less in real time. And that's only destroyed by the fact that it's daylight at the end, which I doubt would have happened 80 minutes after the party. You can just assume the battery was charged up before the party, and that HUD did actually stop taping a couple of times.

The trouble with the movie is that while the cool parts are cool, most of the movie is not the cool parts, and thus percentagewise, the movie is not very good. The 18 minutes of dudebra party is cinematic waterboarding. The rest is okay, but too much walking and talking and blah. I never finished watching Blair Witch because while it was unnerving, it was only unnerving because it was seriously annoying the crap out of me and making me feel like I was stuck at someone's house forced to watch their home movies while they had a loud, violent argument in the kitchen. A lot of people might not analyze it that much and just interpret the experience as being "scary," which it wasn't. Cloverfield on that other hand was just slightly annoying and slightly interesting, not boring enough to walk out of, but certainly not good enough to cry foul about a Rifftrax. Though the Rifftrax should have been cheaper.

P.S. I think the reason it focused on the people, aside from the obvious fact that baby sea monsters don't own video cameras, is that J.J. Abrams is a fan of Stephen King.

P.P.S. I like how we all type "HUD" as if it stood for Heads-Up Display, when it was just short for Hudson. Which is an Aliens reference. Which is, incredibly, less nerdy than a nod to the display on a first-person shooter, although I can see the similarity.

P.P.P.S The sound the parasites made is the funniest thing I've ever heard. And I once heard a joke.

[Maverick Joe Six-Pack]

I know nobody will read this, but...

I don't think the Blair Witch Project was unique because it was handheld and videotaped. It was unique because it was a no-budget piece of boring crap where literally nothing happens for its duration, and yet it made millions of dollars.

Although this was clearly a ripoff of that, it was almost infinitely more entertaining once the action starts, even as dull as that was.

The "pitch" concept is really stupid, assuming that Godzilla is only popular in Japan and that America needs its own Godzilla. Um, the only reason Godzilla doesn't have the cultural meaning in America that it does in Japan is that America doesn't have a culture. Otherwise, it WAS released here, even had two remakes, and has always been popular, yes even including toys in most toy stores.

Despite the 9/11 fear mongering making it a rough analogue of Japan's interpretation of Godzilla, it doesn't make it a great monster movie because it's so unforgivably unoriginal. Distinctly American, sure, but it has to be good and groundbreaking on top of that. It wasn't. War of the Worlds did this, and better, and even that wasn't particularly great. And Tremors is a 100% homegrown American monster movie, it had realistic characters and reactions, and yet it managed to have a sense of humor and be fun and entertaining as well as scary even as a PG-13 movie. Can a stupid bat-crustacean designed by one guy top that just because it's in a gimmicky YouTube movie?

And of all the problems I had with this film, the video camera was not one of them. People seem to think it's clever nitpicking or something, but I have a video camera that has a light, and night vision, and can make a crappy 80 minute movie where people say dude a lot. It's not magic. The conceit is supposed to be that the movie is more or less in real time. And that's only destroyed by the fact that it's daylight at the end, which I doubt would have happened 80 minutes after the party. You can just assume the battery was charged up before the party, and that HUD did actually stop taping a couple of times.

The trouble with the movie is that while the cool parts are cool, most of the movie is not the cool parts, and thus percentagewise, the movie is not very good. The 18 minutes of dudebra party is cinematic waterboarding. The rest is okay, but too much walking and talking and blah. I never finished watching Blair Witch because while it was unnerving, it was only unnerving because it was seriously annoying the crap out of me and making me feel like I was stuck at someone's house forced to watch their home movies while they had a loud, violent argument in the kitchen. A lot of people might not analyze it that much and just interpret the experience as being "scary," which it wasn't. Cloverfield on that other hand was just slightly annoying and slightly interesting, not boring enough to walk out of, but certainly not good enough to cry foul about a Rifftrax. Though the Rifftrax should have been cheaper.

P.S. I think the reason it focused on the people, aside from the obvious fact that baby sea monsters don't own video cameras, is that J.J. Abrams is a fan of Stephen King.

P.P.S. I like how we all type "HUD" as if it stood for Heads-Up Display, when it was just short for Hudson. Which is an Aliens reference. Which is, incredibly, less nerdy than a nod to the display on a first-person shooter, although I can see the similarity.

P.P.P.S The sound the parasites made is the funniest thing I've ever heard. And I once heard a joke.

Very well put sir. 

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Was going to wait for this to go under $10 before getting it but Target now has it for $13 so I picked it up...

Some really funny stuff in the RiffTrax, the cool aid jokes got me for some reason, and the battlefield earth references.

Seems this movie couldn't make up it's mind if it was a horror movie or a monster movie, with more likable characters it could have succeeded as a horror movie, but since I couldn't stand any of them there was no horror when they were killed off (instead there was much rejoicing).  Don't think I would have made it past the party scene without rifftrax.

Better joke for the foot squashing the tank would have been "IT'S", or maybe I should take a break from the monty pythons flying circus box set. 

Later,
Marty