Category: Movies

flickchart

After watching the gang at the ‘The Totally Rad Show‘ (for those who don’t know, they are a trio of of video podcasters who IMHO created one of the best video podcast out there) play the game ‘Flickchart‘, I couldn’t resist signing up my own account to see how accurate Flickchart would be.

The premise of flickchart is pretty simple.  Two movies will be randomly presented to you (which you can customise, but what’s the fun in that) and all you need to do is just choose Left vs Right.  If either or both movies had not been seen by you, you can regenerate a new movie.  Flickchart will then stack and rank your choices.

Decisions…decisions!

Now I must confess, this is THE perfect game for me, and I am highly addicted to this game right now.  I pride myself to be a pretty huge movie buff and is taking the task of ranking the movies very seriously.  So in many cases, it’s like choosing which finger to chop off… or better yet, when TWO bad movies are pitted against one another, and you have to choose one it’s even tougher than choosing one good movie over the other.

That being said, the game is definitely flawed.  For one thing, sometimes a bad movie keeps getting repeated and to make things worse, pitted against a movie I despise even more, and this results in bad movie going up the charts. WTF!

Case in point : Mission Impossible II is now #11 on my chart out of 300 movies. Don’t see how ridiculous this is? Well, it’s ranked 9 spots above The Godfather.  Also, No country for old men, one of the best movies I’ve seen…is on my worst list, ranked at #12.

Clearly the algorithm needs further tweaking.  But hell, this is still one of the most fun I’ve spent my time on. Although half-way through the game, I wondered how come nobody has ever thought of stacking a babe vs another babe…and then I remembered, Mark Zuckerberg has already done this in Facemash, as shown in my favourite movie of 2010, The Social Network, which sadly is nowhere to be found amongst my 300 movies.

Red Tails – That’s Not a TIE Fighter

Red Tails (2012) HD Movie Trailer - Lucasfilm Official Trailer

My only exposure to the subject matter in moving pictures was the 1995 HBO film with Laurence Fishburne and it’s always a fascinating subject to revisit, as it’s one of the most interesting subtexts on how social and racial demographics impact the execution of total war. This actually looks pretty decent and raises hopes it will be a good flick, and on a purely visceral level the Me 262s should warm the cockles of any war nerd’s heart.

As an aside, this looks like the first Lucasfilm-affliated product that isn’t a complete wash out of the gate in a long while. Let’s hope the Taint of Lucas doesn’t strike this time round.

The Darkest Hour – At Least It’s Not Skyline

The Darkest Hour Trailer 2011 Movie Official HD

DEY AR COMMIN 4 OW WIMMIN ENERGEEZ!!!11one

How many alien invasion films have we gotten in the last 2 years? This is bloody ridiculous (and that’s not even counting the “thoughtful” lower budget attempts like Monsters.) On the plus side, it looks better and sounds more plausible in execution than the last film that had glowy bits descending from the heavens. On the minus side, the science is going to be completely ABSURD and it’s giving me bad Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within flashbacks. There is also the usual gaggle of teens that I suspect I will wish murder upon when I watch it, and the sheer implausibility of the light bulb scene is just eyerolling.  At the very least, though, one thing this trailer doesn’t have is the “gritty” shakey-cam that is popular with the epic disaster genre lately. One of the very, very few blessings that Hollywood is capable of these days.

They probably thought setting it in Russia would a good change of environment, and hey, equal opportunity destruction amirite? Maybe one day there will be a (hopefully good) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. film. A guy can hope.

P.S: I refuse to post about Battleship. Sorry, Mr Neeson, I love your badasstitude but there are limits to my dreck buffer.