Edge of Tomorrow

Really enjoyed this one .. the enthusiasm might not last, but the first impressions were really good ...

Pirates!

Prometheus Trailer II

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

In general, I have a neutral stance when it comes to remakes of movies. Sometimes the remakes is better, sometimes (actually more often) the original. Yesterday I was was watching the remake of "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three", the original with Walter Matthau & Robert Shaw from 1974, the remake from 2009 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta.

Wow, what a difference. The original has a good cast with two outstanding lead actors and the story develops nicely. The remake has an even better overall cast, but the performance is underwhelming, which I mainly blame on the script (not the actors). It simply seems that everything interesting about the original story has been stripped from the story, e.g. the military style gang (each of the gang members with some distinctive features), the trick employed by the motorman to overcome the dead-man's switch was much more detailed and finally the hunt for the fleeing gang is much more vivid.

Original:1 vs. Remake: 0

The Hobbit (Trailer) 2012

Prometheus Trailer

Low-Tech Science Fiction. Aliens. Ridley Scott. What's not to like??

Classic Horror Movies (1930s)

Currently I have found quite a number of classic horror movies to be available on YouTube:

• Dracula (1931) directed by Tod Browning
• Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian
  
• The Invisible Man (1933), directed by James Whale
• Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (with English subtitles) (1933), director by Fritz Lang
• Bride of Frankenstein (1935), directed by James Whale

Rounders (1998)

That's what I call a sleeper hit movie:

Bapple?

Aliens (1986) Trailer

One of my (if not the) favourite science fiction films ..

M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)

"M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder" is german movie from 1931, directed by Fritz Lang. Just watch this f..ine masterpiece in its entire length.

A True McGuffin

'It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?", and the other answers "Oh, that's a McGuffin". The first one asks "What's a McGuffin?". "Well", the other man says, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands". The first man says "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands", and the other one answers "Well, then that's no McGuffin!". So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.'

-- Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with François Truffaut (1966)

He tasks me!

"He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him! I'll chase him round the moons of Nibia, and round the Antares maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up!" -- Khan Noonien Singh in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

Don't Try

"Don't try to be a great man, just be a man. Let history make its own judgments"

-- Zefram Cochrane, 2073

Never compromise.

"Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon." -- Rorschach in Watchmen

One of the best movies I have seen in past decade. Though personally I would not agree on the quote, I must admire the character's consistency (others might call it stubbornness, but I am not).

.. You Have to Fight

"The first rule of fight club is... you do not talk about fight club.
The second rule of fight club is... you do not talk about fight club.
Third rule of fight club, someone yells "Stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.
Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight.
Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas.
Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes.
Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to.
And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight."

-- Tyler Durden in "Fight Club".

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Currently I am in a sort of "Film Noir"-mood, so I have been watching "Sunset Boulevard", "The Third Man" and "Double Indemnity".

The Cuckoo Clock

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

"Harry Lime" in "The Third Man"

Wonderful World of Movie Parodies

From the wonderful world of movie parodies, this is one of those which deserves attention. It's is an hommage to the SciFi-classic "Alien" in which animated vegetables and fruit have to experience that nightmare ..