Mud Cake
God
Project X. What a pile of crap.
The ads and clips were enough to put you off........ You mean there was a whole movie attached to them
Project X. What a pile of crap.
Project X. What a pile of crap.
Is that the wild party movie?
Honestly though, what'd you expect?
They're done because they are cheap and pretty much guaranteed to make money. Even if it's not much, it's still worth studios making them.
Often there's all sorts of things. Like a studio has a deal with people to make movies. So they just churn out cheap crap to finish the deals. As in a production company signs a 3 picture deal. They do one or two. They don't do well. Under contract still, so they give them a small budget and say.. here go make a movie and finish the deal.
You'd be surprised how often things like that go on. Sometimes people turn out a crap movie, or a low budget movie. To end a deal. To then get a new contract.
Something I found interesting, sometimes film budgets are less than claimed for tax reasons. Say a city or state or country offers tax breaks for local filming. Due to money and skill they bring into the area. The higher the budget, often the higher the tax incentives. Studios say the film costs a lot more than it does. That money just gets funneled through the movie, back to the studio. However they've then saved a bunch of money filming from paying less tax ect. Sometimes there's rebates and all sorts of things that go on.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
"I want to destroy the myth of Abraham Lincoln, so that history will know you not as a man but as a monster! bwahaha"
This is not a quote from Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, or screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (who is currently giving Jane Austen just cause to arise from the dead and eat his brains), but it might as well be.
It is a very good looking film. Zoey Deschanel's dad did a great job as cinematographer, and every major fx studio on the planet appears to have been employed in plugging plot holes - in fact, the plot is really just an excuse to throw effects at the screen to distract from it.
And it is not a typical zombie flick - they have gone more for a shameless Samurai pastiche, referencing every well-known Samurai flick so blatantly, that characters seem to be mouthing dialogue like "Wax on, wax off, Luke" apropos of nothing. The slave owners/ southerners/ confederates all have English accents and there are plenty of designer specs and anachronisms (Who knew they had aviator shades in 1825?). Its all ready for Xbox.
This Abe Lincoln has a confusing resemblance to Jefferson Davis, and he is not overly religious. The vampires are very much of the Twilight variety - good looking, active in daylight;elegant, ruthless, family types who keep a good set of crockery for entertaining. It is true they keep slaves, but these appear to be well dressed, accommodated in roomy family-style cabins, and not employed in picking cotton or any sort of manual labour. Only free blacks seem to be threatened with whips.
The vampires can be destroyed by Silver, even nickle-silver, and even a silvery piece of tin , but are not bothered by crosses (this whole silver thing seems to be a confused metaphor for the silver standard).
There are nods to historic technologies - the zoopraxiscope, the telegraph and railways, photography, electricity, but there does not seem to have been any serious attempt to match every set, prop and costume to their particular time period - anything from 1818 to 1865 seems near enough. There are lots of nice things on display, and plenty of antique weapons, too.
The women in this movie are strong - Mrs Lincoln controls the distribution of munitions singlehandedly and the vampires proove that Southern Belles can wear leather jeans if they are kick-ass enough.
Abe's political career, his desire to change the world, is much lauded, but how exactly he went about it (as a senatorial candidate, a Whig, a republican etc, etc) is glossed over - there are a lot of things glossed over or left as open questions, I suspect to leave room for a sequel.
There are lots of explosions and fantasy kung-fu scenes, a couple of real scares near the beginning, a truly appalling script, and for all the money you can see on the screen, it appears there was as much again left on the cutting room floor. The movie starts and ends in the present. The beginning scene, where modern Washington is photo-shopped away to reveal 1860 Washington, is really cool. And there is a sunrise over the Louisiana delta that are probably my favourite frames of this very silly, very good looking movie.
And, talking of good looking - Rufus Sewell still has it, and Dominic Cooper.
Remember Sean Connery took an accounting course because he wanted to personally look over the finances of films because he knew how much they tried to screw people out of money.
Something else they do is make sure films never technically make a product. Apparently they still add stuff onto the budgets decades later. So there's a DVD release. All the marketing costs get added to the film budget. To screw people who had deals to get money from the profits.
I tried Mad Men, and couldn't get into it on TV, and then it gets such raving reviews and awards and I keep thinking I should give it another try.
I was like this but with True Blood, so many of my mates are always telling me to watch it, can't get into it.Breaking Bad is fantastic! I can't wait for the rest of season 5 to air on foxtel. How will it all end?
Some of my other all-time favourite series are Deadwood, Rome, The Borgias, The Wire and of course, Game of Thrones.
I have bought Seasons 1-4 of Mad Men and have watched the first 2 or 3 episodes, but He Who Lives Indoors isn't all that keen, so I am left still not knowing what all the hype is about.
I was like this but with True Blood, so many of my mates are always telling me to watch it, can't get into it.
Game of thrones however, wow, I think it's probably one of the best television series ever.
I have bought Seasons 1-4 of Mad Men and have watched the first 2 or 3 episodes, but He Who Lives Indoors isn't all that keen, so I am left still not knowing what all the hype is about.
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.
Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?
All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time
with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.
In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,
for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors’ appointments, bonds,
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.
The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,
and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.
Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.