There’s a lot of work ahead…

Although it’s been quieter in the last few weeks regarding reviews of movies past and present it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about it entirely.

Its quite the opposite because I’ve seen so many movies in the last weeks that I almost lost count. This not only includes movies of 2010 and 2009 but also – and more importantly – movies that are considered classics in their respective genre. (Yeah, there still are many ‘classics’ I still haven’t seen).

Because I plan to review them all I thought it would be a nice idea to let you guys know, what this movie blog will be up to in the following weeks and months, so here’s the list in no particular order:

• Shaft (2000)
• Nightmare on Elm Street
• Friday 13th
• Poltergeist
• Constantine
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
• Miami Vice
• Repo Men
• Sherlock Holmes
• Despicable Me
• Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• Mad Max
• Bullitt (Reviewed)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space
• The Expendables (Reviewed)
• Unstoppable (Reviewed)
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Zombieland
• Iron Man 2
• Constantine
• Battle Royale
• The Negotiator
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Spirited Away
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Ponyo

I am dead on to review each and every movie in this list, although I have to admit that it will take some time because those won’t be the only movie reviews that will be done in the following months.

Another thing is the experiment mentioned in the title. You might have noticed that there are some anime movies in this list, mainly (or better solely) by Studio Ghibli. That’s no coincidence, because I planned some time ago to dig deeper into the world of anime (and also started by reviewing some anime movies). In that regard I not only plan to get my hands on Summer Wars, but also on Neon Genesis Evangelion. And that’s the exact point, where the experiment begins.

Some of you might have heard from this multi billion dollar franchise, created by Studio Gainax and the creative mastermind Hideaki Anno. Neon Genesis Evangelion started as an anime series that aired in the mid 90s. It received quite some good reviews but spurred some controversy over its final episodes (which is always a good sign). Now, a decade later, the creative mastermind decided to completely reimagine the series in the course of four movies called Rebuild of Evangelion. As of now, two movies have been released and received rave reviews from almost everywhere.

Why am I telling all this? For one, I am quite interested in the movies because from what I’ve read they must be infinitely better than most action movies produced by Hollywood. But what makes the whole thing especially interesting is the series from the 90s the movies are based on (and which I’ve seen decades ago). How did the story and the characters change? Where are the big and small differences? That was the moment I decided to do an experiment:

As soon as I finished to review the listed movies above I will fully review – for the first time ever on this blog – an anime series. This means I will review each and every episode that’s been produced (26 to be precise). Once finished, I will watch the new movies and will not only review them but also point out the differences between them and the series.

I am quite hyped about all this because I always had the vision of once reviewing an anime series. Since anime episodes normally have a runtime of 25 minutes, they are not only fast to watch but also short enough to discuss them in detail, something that’s quite impossible for a movie review given the time I have.

If the episodic anime reviews turn out to be successful I am quite sure I’ll review other series I’ve been interested in for some time now.

So to make a very long story short, you can add the following items to the list above:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995, series)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.11 – You are (not) alone
• Neon Genesis Evangelion 2.22 – You can (not) advance

I hope I’ll finish the whole list in this year.

As you might know, the recent news regarding the main antagonists in The Dark Knigh Rises started quite some fan hate. It’s basically the same pattern that happened during the production of The Dark Knight. Well, we all know by now is that The Dark Knight is one of The Best Movies Ever, at least according to IMDB, most reviewers and most of the fans. So what does this tell us about the current speculation and hate of the fans and more importantly the news itself?

It’s simple.

Don’t give a shit!

This is one of the main reasons why you won’t find (very much) movie news on this blog. Why should I banter about a product I haven’t even seen yet? It’s not worth it. Be it some images, production notes, casting information and so on. All this stuff can give some hints about how good or bad a certain movie might become. But they are hints nonetheless. They’re not proof. See The Dark Knight as an example and the hate it received for casting Heath Ledger as Joker. To be frank, this news raised my eyebrow for a second when it reached me. Could Heath Ledger pull it off? I didn’t know because I couldn’t imagine it.

But right at that moment when this nagging begins, anyone (especially the fans of a franchise) should do one thing I do most of the time: stop thinking about it. Why should you give a shit or make a fuss? During a production the director and the studio are at the helm. Not me. Not you. Not the fan. They have to decide and they make decisions. All the time. Will they turn out to be good, as happened with Heath Ledger? Or bad, as happened with M. Night Shyamalan? We don’t know yet.

The only thing you and I and we all can do is to give a production the benefit of the doubt regardless of how devastating some images or news might sound at first. In short you have to not give a shit. It’s hard to do this, I know that very well. But it won’t change a thing. The only thing you waste is your time or worse.

You know, whether or not a production team and production studio made the right decision should be determined when the movie a.k.a. the finished product is released and we all can see it. In other words: that is Judgment Day. When you have seen the movie you can start to praise it or hate it.

I certainly am someone who doesn’t give a shit about a production team when they messed up. They had the chance to make the right decisions. Don’t expect me to be humble or nice when this happens.

But up to this point I remain silent. And more importantly: up to this point I don’t read many news if at all.

I think that others should do the same.

Several years ago I stumbled upon a trailer on YouTube. After I watched the whole five minutes of it (it’s not a trailer in the normal sense of the word) I knew one thing: I definitely need to see that movie as soon it gets released!!! The name of that movie is Redline, a science fiction anime movie about a crazy race without rules. And it took almost two to three years that my wish will finally be fulfilled! And you will be sitting in the first row of that happening…

But before I continue here’s the trailer/clip in question:

This movie was in production for five years and it presumably cost a fortune for the anime production juggernaut Madhouse. Judging by that clip alone I knew this was crazy as hell – and therefore perfect for my tastes. Redline is directed by Takeshi Koike. You probably never heard of him but I’m quite sure you’ve already seen his work as he’s the guy who directed the Animatrix clip World Record. I think when you know this detail the similarities in terms of the visual style are obvious. He’s also responsible for some other stuff, mainly a short series/OAV (original animation video) called Trava.

So how is that connected to me and this blog? After waiting for so many years (and watching that trailer dozens of times) I am finally able to see Redline at the Fantasy Filmfest that takes place in my city right now. And I believe that I am one of the few guys on this planet who has the chance to see it that far ahead of almost everybody else. Heck, Redline‘s even that fresh that there isn’t a lemma about it on Wikipedia (as of this writing). Of course, I plan to write an exhaustive review about it, so this will probably be the first and last time that madmind will be that far ahead of so many. This blog won’t be outside the mainstram, hell yeah, it will define the mainstream (next step: world domination).

Although I couldn’t get my hands on a copy of Trava I at least obtained another movie he took a part in: Dead Leaves. It’s a crazy science fiction action movie in which Takeshi Koike was the key animator but not the director. But since this is the closest thing I could get related to that man I plan to watch and review it before I’ll see Redline.

So stay tuned. the next days will be exciting. And I can’t wait to finally see Redline. I really hope it lives up to my personal hype.

Someone has mixed an “Amazing Spider-Man” in with the “Peter Parker – The Spectacular Spider-Man” series. This will not stand. (Comic Book Guy)

Imagine, for a minute, a movie in which two franchises called Star Trek and Star Wars team up. For whatever reason necessary.

Does that sound ridiculous? Indeed it does. Those two just don’t fit together at all, despite anything and everything some geeks throw into the discussion just to make this come true.

This thought about Star Wars and Star Trek crossed my mind while I was reading a news article regarding the latest plan for new superhero movies set to be released on 2012 onwards. Although I was extremely happy to read Batman 3 is now on track I also got the feeling that Hollywood doesn’t do itself a favor with all those superhero movies – and especially those “teaming up” movies that are supposedly on the way…

Star Trek and Star Wars aka. Batman and Superman aka. Superhero One and Superhero Two.

I never was a big comic book reader. As a child I never really got into this world as comic books. I read once in a while something of those old Superman stuff but that basically was it. Comic books really never were that big in my life. This also might trace back to the fact that I am living in Germany where this tradition is not that massive or big as in the US. On the level of a subconscious mind of a whole society I would state the hypothesis that, after World War II and the German Autumn filled with terrorism of the Red Army Fraction, there was no big desire to read comics which also have to do with myths of another country and bigger than life heroes.

Of course I nowadays try to dive into this world of DC and Marvel but there is one thing I am absolutely sure of:

Those comic book worlds and franchises are a terrible mess!

I am sure many of you understand everything that’s going on in those franchises, but I don’t. As a result I never became a true comic book fan or at least someone who is interested in this stuff.

The quote posted at the beginning of this post from our beloved Comic Book Guy nails this mess perfectly. There are different “franchises” within the different franchises. There are of course different authors with different takes, sometimes swapping between two books or even in one single comic book. Then there’s different universes in which “our” reality is called something like “Earth 90210″, so basically you have the mess multiplied with infinite. And because of the age of those franchises we have massive amounts of character changes, character deaths, resurrections, uncountable amounts of enemies and so on.

And to finalize everything we have a nice and wonderful mixture of all those different franchises. We have teaming up stuff as Justice League and yet again different teaming ups in several different fractions and so on. Of course, there are spin-offs as well.

If there’s anyone out there who grasps all those things I salute to him. To me it’s a pile of mess you’d have to take on for months or even days to understand and sort everything.

The worst part of this absurd situation is the fact that Hollywood seems to be eager to just to the same route as Marvel and DC by using its massive talent for franchises. We already have several big franchises with several movies each which already got a reboot or soon will have one: Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Hulk. So basically every Super-Franchise except for X-Men and Iron Man (probably). Of course, there’s also the small superhero movies as Spawn or Ghost Rider. Did I forget something?

To make things better we soon get several new supers on the silver screen: Flash, Green Lantern and Captain America which themselves will get several movies and one or two reboots. And to make things even better Hollywood will soon completely mix up those several franchises wherever possible and “reasonable” to milk money, as already hinted to at the end of Hulk. As a result we soon will be blessed with the production of Justice League or a similar Mixture Movie (Batman & Superman, Batman & Spiderman…the possibilities are endless).

And then, in some years, we will hit the Jackpot when we get several Mixture Movies that combine character from different franchise reboots, while at the same time another reboot of those original franchises with yet another character hit the screen. To illustrate this imagine a Mixture Movie with Superman and Batman. In this movie Batman is played by Christian Bale while at the same time a reboot of the Batman franchise hits the screens.

Okay, it’s not that we cannot sort everything out regarding those movies since their numbers are low in comparison to the comic books. Nevertheless I am sure we are facing an utter mess. Comic book geeks or uber geeks might feel right at home since they already know this stuff inside out and do such sorting all the time.

What’s left in this whole mess is the normal audience scratching their heads…

When you’re doing a live-action take of a well known franchise you fight against the hardcore fans as if they’re a bunch of Apple fanbois.

When you’re doing a movie not stemming from a well-known franchise while trying to do something new, you fight against reviewers from newspapers and magazines as if they’re the only ones out there who know what you can and cannot do in a movie.

Kick-Ass mostly resides in the second group and some of the reviews I read prove just that point. Michael Philipps from the Chicago Tribune, Roger Ebert and I am sure many more share all the same: they basically hate it on a moral level that a girl kills and/or gets hit by a bad guy. And that you cannot show this to your kids.

And I am: Heh? WTF? Are you serious? Or simply nuts!?!!

But now I totally get it. It’s not that Hollywood is not able to produce new stuff never seen before. They totally could even though some of that stuff again stems from established franchises. No, the producers simply don’t do that because otherwise you have to fight the Righeous Reviewer Alliance. Not because your movie might be shit. No, it’s simply because of the fact that you crossed some imaginary lines out there, the lines of morality or something like that.

That’s the whole problem we’re facing here.

You know, I am totally on the side of morality and that you cannot show anything and everything. But I am also so sick of the notion that because of this seemingly anything slightly outside the well known becomes impossible. You know, in the past I’ve thought countless times why the bad guy doesn’t hit a girl to win the game. Or simply kills anyone in the room.

Kick-Ass does just that: it presents a bad guy who does not wait for a second to hit a dangerous girl able to kill him with the intention to kill her. It’s absolutely logical and even impossible to do otherwise. Because then the bad guy whould simply have been an idiot. He has no problems killing somebody on the street but stops with a girl? Come on. And just when he does and most of us think: yeah baby, it’s about time, the Righeous Reviewer Alliance comes along the way and screams “foul play!”

Slowly but surely I am so glad that there is anime out there which just does this: not giving a shit about reviewers but thinking only of the viewers and showing them stuff not seen before. In my constant attempt to dive deeper into this world I’ve learned of Higurashi no naku Koro Ni for example. Basically it’s a whole franchise of young teenagers killing each other in ways Kick-Ass can only dream of. I am sure the Righeous Reviewer Alliance (RRA) would run away screaming and demanding censoring the whole thing.

I don’t know what’s with you but I am getting tired of those seemingly A-List Movie Reviewers in newspaper and magazines.

The end of the year is near and soon we have fewer years left until a meteor, alien invasion, malfunctioning earth core, solar eruption or George W. Bush completely destroys humanity in the year 2012.

But don’t think I’d let me (and you) off the hook so easily – until our fated doom I serve you blog posts with a smyle and a heart, even if it’s only list posts to review the past…

Therefore here are the best blog posts of madmind of this year in no particular order. Thank you for your support albeit how small it may be.

Let’s get started!

• Ten “Plot Holes” and Errors in Wall-E
  This post caused quite a stir in a certain Wall-E fan forum but despite that I firmly keep my stand regarding my observations. I still love Wall-E but plot holes, plot errors, mistakes and blunders still remain in it. But let’s be frank, anything perfect is boring.
• The most successful Genres of 2008
  If you ever wanted to know which genre fared best – in 2008. Perhaps I will post something similar again despite the work accompanied by it.
• Why Sequels are a Wise Investment decision
  I hate to admit it, but sequels still are a wise investment decision. Read this post about the why’s.
• To Disney
  Disney could have remade the industry and started something completely new. Well, could have. This is a rant I wrote after reading some details about the movie which was released some weeks ago.
• Genius Party Beyond – Moondrive
  a short movie which is part of an anime anthology. Nothing much on the outside but so funny and interesting once seen that I give a wholehearted “Yes” to anyone who asks if he or she should watch it.
• How to spot a Bad Movie in 1 Minute
  You really don’t need much time to spot a bad movie and you really only need one minute – or less. Read it and you know why.
• The Top 101 Sequels of All Time
  one of my biggest analyses I’ve done to date. If you want to know which sequel stands where from Evil Dead 2 to The Dark Knight, here you find the answer.
• Fooly Cooly
  Two words that describe another word: genius. Anyone even slightly interested in highly-imaginative, creative but crazy laugh-fests with a deeper meaning behind everything and a soundtrack to behold, you have really missed something. Fooly Cooly is one of the best. Read this post to learn more about it, get it, watch it! You won’t regret it.
• A Moment beyond the Alphabet
  Bad acting is bad. Horrible acting is great. Horrible acting in a C-movie is marvelous. This video proves just that.
• Stupid German Additional Movie Titles
  Germany can be a funny place, at least if you don’t care too much about movie titles. Or about additional movie titles which get plastered under almost every movie title. Head to this post to see some examples which range from funny to wtf.

That’s it! The Best of madmind 2009. I hope I will reach new heights in the next year to further increase your reading pleasure…

Happy New Year!

Do you want to know how to know if a movie is mediocre at best and an unimaginable pile of shit at worst? And do you want to spot it fast?

Of course there are many ways to spot one of those “bad movies” out there. You can read reviews in magazines or blogs (like mine). Or you can even read some books about the art of film-making so you spot bad movies faster than the normal movie goer.

While those approaches are all valid and good there’s one easy way that’s amazingly fast. It only takes one minute – if at all. And you don’t have to read any text beforehand.

So, what is this cool method of bad movie spotting you might ask? If you think about it it’s rather simple. And anyone can do it. In fact the trick to spot a bad movie is almost too simple.

There’s basically only one major element in a movie you have to look out for and this one is:

Voice Over Narration.

If you think about it, it’s pure logic.

Voice Over Narration the cheapest way of telling a story and advancing a plot. In a way it’s the screenwriter’s capitulation of his own work. He didn’t have a better idea.

Just imagine being a screenwriter: you have a movie in your mind but you need to introduce the viewers to the characters and the situation. You can do it the creative way. But this takes time and creative thinking. Or you can simply let the main character do the work and let him talk.

The only problem is: the fast route in movie making is the route of mediocrity.

So if you encounter voice over narration the next time you know that the screenwriter most likely had no imagination or any creative spark to convey some minor information to the audience other than by simply letting the main character read it over some pretty but useless moving pictures.  Sometimes the main character tells you his name and occupation, other times the character even tells you his inner desires.

The rest is pure and simple logic: if the screenwriter didn’t have any ideas to come up with interesting ways to introduce us to characters, settings or situations, the rest of the story/plot most likely is in no way interesting or new.

What makes this situation even worse is the fact that the production company most likely knew this all along. In other words: they knew the story was weak, starting from page one. Because they all know about the curse voice over narration. But they nevertheless went on to produce the movie since the raw material seemed like a good way to milk money off us.

So, if you encounter Voice Over Narration the next time you watch a movie, leave the theater and demand a refund or stop your DVD player because the following most likely will be an epic waste of your precious time.

(I sue use this chance to give my thanks to all the shitfests I had to endure during the last weeks, months and years to finally and fully grasp this simple fact.)

Spoiler Threat Level: Low

Do you see it on this website? No? Look closer. It’s not far away.

Now?

No?

Then let me explain…

You know, for a visual guy like me (it’s almost unbelievable, I know) this blog has almost awful lots of text on it.  I noticed this some days ago when I was updating my blog on the technical level thanks to jquery / Ajax and the awesome power that comes with it.

It slowly dawned on me during the phase of adding additional CSS classes to every image thumbnails, so any visitor will see a small icon on the lower left corner indicating the thumbnail. I saw much text and less images. The more I searched for images crying for an update the more it became obviously obvious. This lead to two decisions.

First, I decided to try something new on madmind. Instead of writing simply about movies anyone does, I will try to strive for something more visual.  I am thinking of using mainly images of movies or scenes to show the particular moment I found interesting and then write about this image. I have seen approach recently on another blog and I really liked what I saw and read.

This soon-to-be-happen change leads to the second decision, which is more technical in nature and already working right now before your very eyes. You know, I already know the movie I wanna try to test the new blogging approach on. The only problem is that the ending is so awesome but at the same time so ruins the surprise that I knew I had to do something about this spoiler problem.

When I thought about possible solutions, spiced up internal hype regarding Ajax, I had the idea of creating a “Spoiler Threat Level” or STL for short to indicate possible spoilers in my posts. This STL has three levels ranging from 1 (no spoilers) to 3 (spoils everything important). As with a traffic light each level has its accompanying color from green to red which then is placed right besides the title of the post.

If you scroll up there should be a small green button on the left just outside the main content area since I have added a STL to this post to demonstrate it to you (if not, you need to activate Javascript). The best part about all this is that you can hover over the green/yellow/red button which then should activate a small tooltip that gives you some explanation about the color code.

Since I have tasted some greatness of Ajax I might have some other ideas in the future to increase the usability of this blog. At the moment I will stop with that and wait how visitors respond to it.

What do you think of this idea? Do you like it? And did you spot the button immediately?

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

Today I stumbled upon an interesting post on Slashfilm that deals with the various box offices of every Harry Potter movie from 1 to 5. While the different box offices’ up and downs is cool to look at, there’s one problem in that post which urges me to write about it in more detail since I often use statistics and hence feel some sort of obligation: the proper way to create charts.

When you head over to the post on Slashfilm and look at the first chart, what do you see? You see five bars with drastically different heights.

When I looked at for the first time I was astonished by the vast box office differences between those five movies. I really thought The Prisoner Of Azkaban only made a fraction of money compared to the other movies.

Then I continued reading and took a closer look at the posted B.O. numbers below the chart.

As it turned every movie made tons of money, albeit not the exact same amount of money with a difference of around 200 million dollar from lowest to highest. The difference was high but not that drastic as the chart suggested.

So I again took a good look at the chart, inspected the vertical axis and finally spotted the big nasty problem: the Y-Values don’t start with zero but with 700 million.

And that’s a bad choice.

In fact I consider this one of the worst problems regarding statistics and charts hence I never start from another value than zero. The reason is simply the fact that you give an unintended wrong visual representation of the numbers. You visually distort the results.

Here’s my take on the same numbers and you immediately see the differences:

While the original chart dramatizes the difference, my take puts everything into perspective: there are differences, but they are relatively low compared to the overall values.

Moreover my version shows another problem with the chart on Slashfilm which is why you almost never encounter this in more scientific papers: 3D.

3D might be a cool looking visual effect but in fact it adds another level of subtle visual distortion. When you closely look at the third bar in the middle of the Slashfilm chart, you’ll notice that the B.O. number must be somewhere near 790 Million Dollar. From the looks of it I’d say 785 Million. But in fact it’s 795 Million. So from the looks alone a normal reader is off by 10 million.

The last bar of that chart is the same, only the other way around where you instinctively add 10 million dollar. The problem at hand here are the borders. We look at the border in the front; the program instead uses the border in the back.

3D is one big trap you can fall into when putting visuals over content so it’s something you should avoid at any cost.

So, in short there are two things you should do at any given time when working with charts:

1. Always start your vertical axis with a value of zero when you deal with numbers
2. Don’t do 3D

Call me a nitpicker but in this context I gladly am. (But that’s only me…)

Although there’s tons of news – as always – I simply can’t think of anything remotely interesting for me to blog about. Perhaps it’s this constant flood of news in my RSS reader that causes this lack of interest. Some of the news are indeed interesting but – let’s face it – most of them don’t get published in newspapers for a reason.

It’s great to get such a detailed observation about this creative-industrial industry and I don’t even want to imagine myself working as hard as some of the movie news sites and blogs. But recently I wished the guys would “calm down” a little bit.

Although I subscribed to only seven blogs – from which three could be called non-news movie blogs – I get literally dozens of news each day. What is the result? Instead of reading every news or great article I read none of them. I only read the title and sadly very often think: who cares?

One example as of today is the news of a director’s cut of Watchmen. Don’t get me wrong by stating this but wow, who would have thought they’d do a director’s cut. It’s a simple, big and sarcastic “Wow” because every fucking movie nowadays seems to get one of those cuts. Even if this cut would be a massive or minor change, why not wait until it’s getting released and then analyze the differences?

On the other hand, this couldn’t be called news and a movie news blog. Then again, what would speak against a move of putting this “smaller” news into aggregated news posts. You know, like “Ten Small Things of Today” or something like that. This way, the movie news blog would be some sort of filter.  And I would get a bigger picture of everything instead of this chaos that keeps me from reading the posts.

I am quite sure the reason for this race is the same as everywhere: be as fast as you can and post as much as you can. The more content the better. The more changes, the more readers. And so on etc. etc. pp. It’s a count fetish.

I know it’s crazy to state this about movie news blogs and movie news sites. But to me, movie news is not movie news in masses.

Filter out. Cut out. Find the relevant stuff.

That’s the job. Not repeating the same stuff over and over again. Or posting any news that’s out there.

And now for something completely different.

After The Dark Knight enflamed my hopes of Hollywood finally getting into “quality” movies – that is to say movies with compelling and intelligent stories – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen puts that hope back into the coffin it came from.  The amount of money this movie made is mesmerizing, even by the already high numbers which were estimated.

You know, if by any chance the producers will start over / continue to produce substandard stuff – even if it’s full of cool looking action – we, the viewers, won’t be able to complain anymore.

We decided with our wallets. We have to live with the consequences.