I've been in a serious Ralph Bakshi mood lately. I just love his bizarre brand of animation.

Heavy Traffic - ***1/2

Great, highly imaginative cartoon film about the life of a lonely cartoonist in the ugly city. Bakshi's trademark lunacy has never been in finer form and theres some highly memorable set pieces here.

Wizards - ***

Flawed, but very damn interesting cartoon to say the least, and without a doubt the most disturbing and violent "kids" film I have ever seen in my life. Bakshi made this film on a low budget, it shows sometimes in the use of rotoscoping (which is a Bakshi trademark) stock footage which feels awfully out of place here. Still, an imaginatively concieved fantasy film with interesting visuals and a likable protagonist, overall the film is a dark comentary on propagonda and natures relationship with technology.

Lord of the Rings - **1/2

No, this dosen't touch Jackson's trilogy, especially when Bakshi picked a HORRIBLE place to leave you hanging (after the first half of the Two Towers book) for the sequel that never even got made. It's a darn shame too, because I really wish Bakshi made it, not without it's flaws and nowhere near as engaging as Jacksons version, but it still has a lot going for it, very well animated and Bakshi's use of rotoscoped stock footage for some scenes is actually highly effective. Jackson gave this film credit for inspiring his own version of the Tolkien books, so it's certainly worth a look for historical context.

Cool World - *

Just for fun, I thought, why not? This is such an awful movie, but it still has that Bakshi appeal. Cool World tells the tale of a cartoonist who is sucked into the crazy cartoon world of his creation and finds himself at odds with a cartoon vixen. First off the good points, the animation is excellent and the world itself, with it's twisted demonic buildings, is visually stunning, theres also some great techno tunes in the soundtrack, there's even a David Bowie song written specifically for this movie.

Well that's it for the good points, this movie defines style over substance, it's a shame, it had the potential to be a great vehicle for Bakshi's style, but the script is horrible, Bakshi wrote the original screenplay, and it was meant to be a cartoon horror film, but the creator of Friday the 13th rewrote it as a goofy farce and Bakshi had to complete the film for financial reasons. Proof that the intervention of producers can really f*ck up a movie. First off, how do you get talented actors like Gabriel Byrne, Brad Pitt and Kim Bassinger only for them all to give such mediocre performances? Like they phoned it in, Bassinger is especially horrible, which is a shame, because her cartoon counterpart (Holi Wood) is pretty f*ckng hot. The live action scenes are so out of place and poorly done (Bakshi is a good animated film director, live action not so much), the interactions between human and cartoon is not convincing, the dialogue is hella bad, the characters are unlikable, and worst of all, for such a farce, theres no real humor, just a lot of random goofiness. Where is the wit behind Bakshi's early films like Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin? What happened? Bakshi clearly had no idea what he was doing here, you don't know if he was trying to make something serious or comical, because he fails in both categories.

What a misfire, Bakshi gets points for being ambitious, but in the end this is just a lame ripoff of Roger Rabbit. Still has a lot of camp appeal though, seeing Byrne turn into a goofy cartoon superhero at the end delivers a few giggles.

Also, I just watched this tonight.

Taken - *

Horribly cliche and predictable, does that surprise me? Hell no. Despite that this could have still been enjoyable, but no, I just didn't have fun. Cheesy dialogue and excessive overacting were a given, but the fight scenes were dull and that brand of shaky cinematography popularized by the Bourne series really pisses me off. This movie was like a poorly constructed collage of every Harrison Ford movie from the past 20 years.

I wasted a perfectly good movie card on this crap because my family wouldn't let me watch Revolutionary Road because it was longer and they didn't want to wait for me.

Oh well, at least we didn't go see Mall Cop.

I watched a movie called the Visitor with Richard Jenkins...Great movie...check it out.

It's a terrible movie...:laughing: Seriously though, I fucking hate Oscar bait....:|

To each his own...I see your point I still like it:)

http://www.dreadcentral.com/img/news/apr08/asylumb.jpg

Maybe "From the director of Final Destination 2" should have been a clue as to the quality of this movie. The best part: the opening credits. They looked promising, creepy and maybe even a little artsy.

Then the movie started. Yawn.

http://media.movieweb.com/news/old/0...assion_dvd.jpg

Not something I was ever bothered about seeing but something I have had on DVD now for some time as it was £3 which seemed a fair price as i was slightly curious. I actually really enjoyed it, it is obviously a fairly graphic film given the subject matter but I remember the controversy surrounding it so maybe I was expecting more because it wasnt that bad really. Probably not something I will watch again but decent.

EDIT: I actually am not sure how i managed to double post there considering I was editing the last message.

^^^

It courted more controversy in america as religious fervour is considerably heightened comapred to over here in the U.K. A little story to go with the film is that Gibson tried to get financing everywhere for the film, nobody was remotely interested considering the subject matter and subtitles. So he made it with all his own money and made $600m at the box office. A lovely big fat index finger to the spineless saps in Hollywood.

I think it's the best Bible-based film ever made. I remember thinking how cool it would be if someone was to make a film in the original languages of the Bible. Imagine my excitement when a few months later I heard Mel Gibson was doing just that. That took some balls.

What I know from that movie is mostly what I learned from South Patk. :p

Is it true that it's antisemitic and mostly shows torture?

It's antisemitic insomuch as the Bible is. And yeah, it's pretty gory...:\