47 Days Until Dragon*Con 2012!!!

Lawd. It’s so close I can already smell the strange mix of hairspray, plastic, food court food, and body odor that means Dragon*Con.

And here I sit, completely UNfit for Dragon*Con, eating a “cherry cheese danish” (I doubt any Danes would be caught dead eating this vending machine trash. Have you seen the Danes? They are fitfordragoncon. Bikes and shit.) and drinking coffee.

No costume. No workemouts. No Raiden, no BSG Officer. No self esteem.

Which leads me to my next point:

Movie Reviews. The absolute bottom rung of the blog hierarchy. Stupid people thinking their stupid opinion is more important than everyone else’s stupid opinion. Someone with zero self esteem writes movie reviews to boost their own sense of self-worth, because putting things down makes me feel better about myself.

Wait. How did that sentence turn into being about me?

Anyway, I’ve watched two “geek”-appropriate fillums lately.

I don’t watch movies a lot these days. Nor do I read much. I do 3 things: work, WoW, and Skyrim. But something got into me and made me want to watch a couple movies, and I’m mostly glad I did.

Thor.

I haven’t watched many of the “new” batch of comic book movies that are out there (by “new” I mean going back to that first X-Men movie or Spiderman movie, whichever came first). They always look terrible and, from the ones that I have seen, usually are terrible. I like the two Tim Burton Batman movies, and the new Joker one with the dead guy, but that’s about it.

Comic books, for the most part, are not high art. Sure, I believe they have the capability to be meaningful “art”, but those don’t (usually) feature any superheroes.

Is that vague enough? Superhero comics have their place, and they led me to the comics that I read today. Without Wolverine I wouldn’t be into Alan Moore (who also did superhero comics, of course).

I guess I’m digging myself deeper into a hole here. What I’m trying to say is that I expect more from movies than I do comics.

For some reason, I give stupid comics a pass, while turning my nose up at stupid movies.

Example: I hate the Transformers movies. I think they are awful, horrible, complete pieces of trash.

But I’ll watch the cartoon all day long… and it is worse than the movies.

But it is nostalgic.

And that’s why comics, even comics published today, get a pass from me.

Thor is that. A stupid comic book movie. In fact, the terrible writing and acting nearly made me turn it off after the first 15 minutes or so.

But I hung in there, and finished the whole thing, feeling like I had just completed eating some big put-your-picture-on-the-wall-if-you-finish-it gross meal. Happy that I did it and that I made it to the end, but feeling terrible and horrible about myself.

For some reason, I expected the movie to be based on Norse mythology. Why would I do such a silly thing?

It is obviously based on the comic book, not the mythology that the comic is (extremely loosely) based on.

That said, it is just what you would expect: ridiculous overwrought action sequences, stupid dialogue (that would be right at home in the comic), CGI everything, and dumb costumes (why do filmmakers feel the need to make comic book characters costumes look modern? we (read, “I”) just want the classic costumes, and the classic characters, kicking some serious arse.).

Was it fun? I guess, when you can overlook the truly groan-worthy dialogue. Loki looked cool. And the frost giants were cool. I guess I was kinda pulling against Thor in this one. Anthony Hopkins is a good Odin, even though his costume looked like something you could buy at Kmart during Halloween.

Leave your cynicism at the door and you might enjoy this one.

As a side note, I read a review of “Prometheus” the other day that described it as, and I’m not joking here, a “thinking man’s movie”. If you might, in your wildest dreams, consider Prometheus as a “thinking man’s movie”, you may truly enjoy Thor sans any booze or hallucinogenics.

5/10. To quote “American Splendor”, “Hey man, average is dumb.”

Conan. (the new one with that Hawaiian in it)

Badass.

Ok ok, there’s good and bad with this one. I’m a “bad news first” sort of guy (goes with my “glass half empty” sort of guyness), so here it goes:

The main problem I have with this one is the look of it: Not enough snow, icy forests, or wearing of furs. And Conan is not samoan. I know Cimmerian kinda sounds like Samoan, but they are not the same.

And this may border on the racist, to some people, but I am sorry: Conan is from the North, and as such, I always pictured him to be more Nordic looking (though in the comics he has dark hair). Also, I have a suspicion that the village may have been making milkshakes in Conan’s mom, as he looks absolutely nothing like Ron Perlman. Conan would decapitate me for saying that, so it’s a good thing he is a fictional character.

I think this guy did a good job though, even though he doesn’t look like how I picture Conan to look.

Also, with the environment thing: there are plenty of Conan stories featuring the barbarian traversing the endless sands of some deadly desert somewhere… it’s just not his element. And, to admit my own selfishness, I just want to see Conan in vast, snowy, mountainous, forests while he fights against sorcery with the riddle of steel.

Basically, I want a Skyrim movie, but with Conan as the main character… and with no magic on the good guy’s side.

These objections are trivial, however, as this movie nails it in every other possible way. We get Conan as the ship captain (one of his many roles that I always relished), we get Conan as the leader of a band of savage outlaws, we get Conan as the lone wolf, and in many other roles that he plays both in the stories by Robert Howard and the classic comics. But the one we really just wanna see, and the one he delivers in spades here, is The Stone Cold Brutal Slayer of Bad Guys.

Blood and boobs. Need I say more? If you like your fantasy dark and visceral, Frazetta-style, then this is the movie for you.

The plot? Fuck it.

The dialogue? Fuck that too. (Besides, there is no fracking way anyone will ever beat The Line in the Schwarzenawhosit original. You know the one.)

Anyway, if you want to see Conan completely demolish everything in his path, you need to see this movie.

Is it a more intelligent film than Thor? No.

Is it better? Yes. by like, a bunch.

Why? It knows what it is and just does that. That may not have made sense.

errrr… BLLEEEARRRGH!!! BLOOD AND GUTS AND BOOBS!!!! HEAVY METAL!!!!

\m/

I think that is internet slang for “if a High on Fire album was made into a movie, this would be it.”

7/10 and I’m sticking to it.

***********************************************************************************************

I hafta say, it felt pretty good to write something again. Even something as completely trivial and pointless as movie reviews.

So that’s it, fitfordragoncon is back, bitch. And worse than ever.

So wake up, my five “followers”. I’m looking at you, Juggernaut, Conceited Ape, etc.

Time to get in shape, get “geeky”, and stay that way. Forevers.