It’s that time once again to set your DVRs or go searching through Netflix.  This week it’s some of the most classic of horror films.  If you haven’t seen them you then you should.

The Exorcist

This classic from 1978 put the fear of demonic possession into many people young and old alike.  Not to mention the sudden decrease in the dining of pea soup.  This film, when it came out, had some of the craziest and best special effects the industry had to offer.  The Exorcist should be on everyone’s list of films to watch every year, not just because of how good it is but also for the sheer pop culture impact it has had.

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Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the greatest movies of all time.  The Princess Bride was a film directed by Rob Reiner during the eighties.  The cast includes Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Chris Sarandon, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre the Giant just to name a few.  This movie has something for the whole family of all ages; action, adventure, love, great storyline, one liners, memorable characters, quite literally everything that makes a movie great.  If you haven’t seen it yet, then go out now, get the 25th anniversary edition, make some popcorn, sit down and enjoy the next hour and a half of your life.  I promise you won’t be sorry.

-Rob

I don’t know about you guys, but when I saw the teaser trailer for Wreck-It Ralph, I jumped out of my chair. Why is this? Because it’s a Disney movie and it has Bowser from the Mario franchise, Dr. Robotnik from Sonic, AND Zangief from Street Fighter in it.

Are you kidding me?

I think the last time I saw Bowser in a feature-length film was when the god-awful Super Mario Bros film saw the light of day, and, needless to say, that was thoroughly disappointing… Now here he is sitting beside two other famous video-game villians in a DISNEY movie.

The movie is called Wreck-It Ralph and it’s about an arcade villian named… well… Wreck-It Ralph… who decides it’s high-time to hang up the bad-guy coat and start doing some good. He is voiced by John C. Reilly and finds a way to escape the game he has been tied to his whole life and jump into other ones.

The movie looks entertaining enough, but the real reason I want to see it is for all of the cameos from other existing video game characters. First of all, just the realization that Disney actually found a way to get the rights for all of these characters to appear in a movie together is fascinating enough to me, and second, I get the feeling it’s going to be pretty funny. This is, of course, coming from a gamer; I mean, I would imagine the movie is going to be fun for all ages whether or not you are familiar with the cameos, but for those of us who have actually played games like Paperboy, Pac-Man, and Q*Bert (all games that have promised cameos), it will be that much more exciting. Those of us will be the ones silently searching the backgrounds to see how many characters we can recognize. I was already pausing the video on YouTube a thousand times just to see who I could pick out in every scene.

I can’t really tell the whole underlying plot, but the main storyline revolves around Wreck-It Ralph. The scene that the picture up there was from involves a bunch of villians sitting together in a support-group type setting talking about what it’s like to be the bad guy. It goes without saying that we’ll get to see the point of view from all the baddies as opposed to the heroes of the video games we know and love, which will be a nice change of pace. I mean, Wreck-It Ralph winds up becoming a good guy from what it looks like, but just to see a story told from a bad guy’s perspective is always a nice change of pace; Disney movie or not.

My hopes for this movie: the guy voicing Bowser has a really deep raspy voice and has funny dialogue. Think Super Paper Mario-type dialogue. I also want to see a crazy amount of recognizable faces for my own amusement. Either way, I will be seeing this movie when it comes out, and I think other gamers will have fun experiencing it.

-Lexi

Here’s my take on The Dark Knight Rises and why it worked, why it might be the best Batman movie ever made and why I am sad to see Nolan go, but understand he needs to.

Six Things that I never thought I would see occur or work in a Batman film.

1.       Bane’s voice.

The man just sounded so funny and amazing and gritty and scary and then high pitched and laughable. For those not in the know, Bane’s voice was originally so gravelly and muffled (think Darth Vader with a wet rag over his mask) that those who saw a sneak-peak preview of the film some several months ago complained he was incomprehensible. 

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One of my favorite ancient warrior classes in fiction are Vikings, who come in a close third to ninjas and samurai. Sadly, most movies i have seen that focus on them were sad excuses for film. The Thirteenth Warrior is an exception to this despite the fact it stars an actor normally not associated with Vikings. Antonio Banderas plays the leading role in this film. This film is a little on the mature side and didn’t really get too much attention when it was new and as a result, it has fallen to cult status.

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I love cult movies, you know, those movies that don’t get a lot of mainstream media love, but still have their devoted die hard fans. I recently watched Attack the Block, a movie destined to be a cult classic. The movie is produced by the same guys who produced Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It was also directed and written by a long time friend of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of whom are stars of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

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As many of you know, a little film called The Avengers came out past a few weeks ago and happened to make a bit of money. Exactly how much is a bit? As of the time I write this a bit is 800 million dollars. There is also an event know to many comic book fans that happened around the same time known as Free Comic Book Day(fbcd); during fbcd a great deal of publishers will release a free book that is geared toward bringing in new or lapsed readers. Whether or not this helps sales in the long run is difficult to determine but it is clear that this event brings people into comic book stores. My issue comes from what Marvel chose to release as their free book which is a reprint of Avengers 12.1 from last year which not only features an different team than the current Avengers team in the books but it is also very unrelated to the film’s team of Avengers. I believe a much better choice would have been Brian Michael bendis’s and Mark Bagley’s Avengers Assemble (See Below) which launched recently and featured the team from the film as well as being a much more accessible miniseries which would be an easier read to newcomer especially those wanting to see the team from the film.

-Ryan

When The Avengers aren’t saving the world from total annihilation, they are messing with each other on Facebook. 

-Lexi

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       Today I went and saw the hugely popular The Hunger Games that opened last week bringing in roughly 155 million dollars, to see just how good it was.  Now I am of the group of movie goers that has not read the books yet, but have plans to do so after watching the first movie.  I had the same plan when Twilight came out and all plans of reading that series died thirty minutes into the movie. Did the Hunger Games cause a similar reaction?  The answer is no, and quite the opposite in fact.  The movie made me hunger to read the books to get even more of the story that you just can’t easily portray on the big screen.  The movie was extremely well done and kept the balance between action and intrigue almost perfectly.  The acting was immensely well done by the entire cast that included Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, and Donald Sutherland to name a few big names.  The cinematography was done in such a way as to instill and portray the violence of the first blood bath to the final death in a way that was not too harsh, but allowed the audience to know the brutality of each and every death.  The art direction showed the difference not only in culture divide between the lower class and the upper class in how they viewed the games, but also the way these two cultures viewed the world.  One in the cold hard reality of grays and blacks and the other in the neon tinged mask of reality that they saw.  The special effects where almost flawless, and the pull at your heart strings for characters that only lasted a short time was immense.  If I had to name one complaint I had, it was that in a few occasions the damage and or penetration of a weapon seemed to be a little hinky.  In the end though this movie is a must see if you have or haven’t read the books, and believe me you will want to read the books afterwards if you haven’t already.

-Rob

P.S. NEVER EVER SEE Twilight! EVER!