Saturday, April 10, 2010

How To Train Your Titans (in 3-D!!)

Hola.

This is my first blog post.

Yayyy.

I have yet to fully decide what this blog's purpose as a whole will be, or whether or not anything I have to say bears any real merit in the first place. But IN ANY EVENT, I have been going to the movies a WHOLE LOT lately, and so I thought I would review the happenings of the silver screen for your dining and dancing (and reading) pleasure.

Ahem.
Last weekend I went to the midnight showing of Clash of the Titans in 3-D. I went with three of my friends and the only four seats we could find all together were in the area specifically designated for handicapped people. Heck yeah we sat in them. Liam Neeson demanded the sacrifice. Unfortunately, he must have shelved his god-like qualities along with his lightsaber and his Awesome, because he SUCKED as Zeus. If he only had used the same inflections in his famous "I will find you. I will kill you." when he gave Hades permission to release the Kraken (sp?) some of the movie's epic might have been restored. 


Alas, here was the situation on Mount Olympus...
Hades: *billows in Stereotypical Bad Guy Cape-Thing all sneaky up to his brother, hisses* Zeusssssssss ["Precioussssssss"]
Zeus:*lolls on his white throne, waves his arm lazily* What do you want, O Evil-Looking Sibling?
Hades: *in husky Bad Guy voice* I am going to trick you with my simplistic and bitter plan so as to destroy you and the human race in one fell and evil swoop.
Zeus: Oh, Okay. Well you can, like, release that Kraken thing. If you want.


Quite disappointing. Although Clash stayed true to the myth of Perseus for the most part, there was far too much attempt at plot and storytelling for my tastes. I mean, come onnnn. The movie's called CLASH OF THE TITANS. I expected a LOT more epic fighting between crazy savage Greek misfits and giant scorpions. And stuff. The blind witches and the fight with Medusa were cool, but other than that, Clash had very little in the way of redeeming qualities. Even the 3-D wasn't that impressive, and the Kraken looked like a ripoff from Cloverfield. For the two seconds he was on the screen, anyway. The highlight of my evening was watching my friend Pudd power through four Burger King sandwiches in approximately five minutes, if that gives you any perspective on what the film was like.


Moving on from this celluloid blunder, I'll talk about How to Train Your Dragon. 


Definitely the most awesome animated film I've seen in a long time. This is an admirable and impressive effort from Dreamworks, who has finally seemed to figure out how to create more than one facial expression for every lead role in their movies. Dragon follows the story of the young Viking, Hiccup, and how his fragile and conflicted young soul tries to decide between what he thinks is right, and what his society demands of him. There were a lot of layers to the plot, which I did not expect from a little kids' movie. Hiccup has to choose between saving the dragons he has grown to love and understand, or finally being accepted by his gruff and aloof father, who is also (of course) the leader of the Vikings. Hiccup struggles between two worlds: the wild and scary freedom of Toothless and his pals, and the pugnacious lifestyle of his family and friends, until he eventually discovers that both are necessary for his life to be fulfilled. 


Hiccup's turmoil mirrors the normal everyday problems of the regular, non-barbaric adolescent, and I think that this movie will be adored by kids and grown-ups alike. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the vertigo-inspiring 3-D was spectacular. Added Bonus: you can get Toothless shirts for real cheap at Wal-Mart :D

So yeah. I been hittin' the cinema pretty hard for the past couple months, and there are plenty more movies I could critique, but Pudd and Seth are coming over, and we're gonna go Cosmic Bowling. 

Stay tuned <3



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