BY GRABTHAR’S HAMMER!!! A free copy of Galaxy Quest?!?! The most perfect movie ever made?!?!

By the sons of Worvan, yes, you read correctly. I am horribly drunk, but you read correct-a-mundo.

Here’s how to enter to win:
1) Make a pictogram, photo essay, picto essay or comic strip regarding anything about Galaxy Quest; why it’s cool, a tribute to a certain character, a rundown of an episode you made up, etc. It could be with stick figures or drawn on computer. Here’s my bad example made more horrible by Swanks terrible scanning job (that’s me passing the buck) :

2) Either post it in the comments section or email your entry to Pencilbot4prez(at)gmail(dot)com . BE SURE to include your address and contact info. YO.

3) All entries are accepted from today, May 29 2009 to June 17 2009

David Mamet is not wrong when he says this movie is ‘perfect’ when looking at its dramatic structure. Not only that, I’d argue that it is just a perfect film period.

Many may disagree, and this is why they are fools. Not because they disagree with me (though that is just as bad), no, it is because this film oozes tenderness, nostalgia, and a true heroes journey. If only they could get past some hang ups, they would see that it is sheer brilliance put on film. At a glance, when it came out, I thought it looks on par with all those ‘Scary Movie’ flicks, and a National Lampoon style spoof.

If you’ve been one of those who have been under the misconception that this is a terrible movie (I admit, I was once one of them), I assure you it is not. It takes place in the afterglow of out of work actors that have their fame from a Star Trek-like show, they’re hired to go to conventions and grand openings of department stores. At a convention a group of real aliens try to ask for their help as they have seen these old tv shows and see them as ‘Historical Documents’, they believe it’s reality tv.

Not only does it poke fun at classic Trek, but it also treats it as an endearing piece for everyday fans. I still get chills and a knot in my cold metal heart when Alan Rickman says in all sincerity “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged.” and Rickman finally accepts how much a ridiculous fictional character can mean something so profound to another.

This DVD is packed with awesomeness; 2 documentaries about its creation, some great deleted scenes that add to the movie, creating the alien race and a Thermian audio track. But by far the best special feature is Sigorney Weaver rapping, where Sigorney, Sam Rockwell and Daryl Mitchell shooting rhymes with other cast members throwing down alien signs in the background…. obviously they had fun on the set making this movie as the movie itself.

Pencilbot is proud to say we are running a contest here on BSR! for one person to get a free copy of Galaxy Quest Deluxe Edition FOR FREE!!! Look here tomorrow for all the details. Show some love.

The latest Q&A from Warner Bros. latest direct-to-DVD movie, Green Lantern: First Flight is with screenwriter Alan Burnett. If you have been watching DC cartoons on TV since the 80’s and 90’s as I have, then you have seen his work, most notably on the timeless Batman: The Animated Series. Burnett has also written for other fan faves including Batman Beyond, Batman and Superman, and even going further back, Duck Tales and Smurfs! He has been around writing great episodes for great shows for a long time and I know I am looking forward to seeing what he’s done with ol’ Hal Jordan!

QUESTION:

Is there a message within this film?

ALAN BURNETT:

Well, one of the messages is that I like lots of fights (he laughs). I suppose it’s the old “Don’t judge a book” thing. Appearances are deceiving. Those who you think might be your greatest friend can be your greatest enemy, and those you might think are of no use to you could be the most important person in your life.

QUESTION:

Did the origin story development of Hal Jordan in Justice League: The New Frontier influence your approach to this first Green Lantern film?

ALAN BURNETT:

I’d originally treated the origin story by going back to the very first Hal Jordan/Green Lantern comic book. But ultimately, my script was about 20 minutes longer than it should’ve been. Bruce Timm came up with the idea of getting the origin done as quickly as possible, so that’s where some cuts were made. Now we get the origin story done before the opening credits, and we leap right into the adventure from there.

You can check out the rest of the interview here!

Children of Men is perhaps one of the finest films in the last 10 years and it’s coming out today on Blu-ray. This is a fine film and quite breathtaking to look at and is certainly worth getting in this format.

Another Blu-ray first this week is Tony Scott’s direction of Quentin Tarentino’s True Romance. This is a pretty good movie and is worth adding to your collection, in one format or another.

A film that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately, despite it’s status as a straight-to-DVD release, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. This seems to be bad movie night fodder that is going to find quite a cult audience.

Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth hits a DVD release today. It looks to be a retrospective on Harlan Ellison in the same method as Disinformation’s The Mindscape of Alan Moore. It features interviews with the likes of Neil Gaiman and Robin Williams. I’m keen to check this one out.

The last thing on my list is something I’d kill to get my hands on is BBC’s History of World War II. I’m a big WWII history nerd and the BBC makes documentaries like nobody’s business. It’s a 12 disc set and looks like it’s dynamite.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a wonderfully made film by David Fincher about love and life that’s turned slightly on its ear. It was good enough to be included among the august body of films chosen by the Criterion Collection and one of their first dozen or so in the Blu-ray format.

It took me quite a while to explore the double-disc set fully, but I’m very glad that I did.

First, as far as the movie is concerned I’d like to say that high definition picture and the ability to freeze frame is usually the enemy of any effects laden film. You can usually slow it down and see the seams, you know? The hidden zippers, the lines between reality and effects. So much so, I was a little afraid to see this film on Blu-ray because I thought I might be able to see behind the curtains, as it were. Thankfully that was not the case. The transfer of this film to Blu-ray really illustrates how far we’ve come in the world of visual effects. Not for a minute did I disbelieve what I was seeing, neither in the theatres nor on this disc. Add to that the fact that the movie is pretty damn good and you’ve got a Blu-ray disc worth its weight in gold.

The second disc is dominated entirely with a three-plus long hour odyssey of the making of the film. I was quite glad to see it and impressed by its thoroughness. It covered each aspect of the making of the film, from its development hell in the 80s, through each of its possible incarnations in the 90s and up through until the film actually went into production, and ended with the New Orleans premiere of the film in 2008. It was filled with insight into the filmmaking process, fascinating stories about the production (my favorite was the story about the house they procured for their main location) and lots of interviews with the main members of the cast and crew.

It was invigorating to watch. If you want to make films, I wouldn’t watch this feature too close to bedtime, or you might get a rush and not be able to sleep.

All in all, this is a film and a disc that I’m proud to add to my Criterion Collection and I think you would be, too. Spring for the Blu-ray, though.

To buy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, simply click the link.

Today sees the release of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life on Blu-ray and I must say that more than any other studios films, you need to get Pixar’s films on Blu-ray. For as many great special features there are on the disc, the transfer of the film alone is worth all the money you’ll spend.

But that’s not what I want to talk about now.

What I do I want to talk about how great this film since it is, perhaps, the most under-appreciated Pixar film to date.

I suppose no appreciation of A Bug’s Life would be even halfway competent if we didn’t begin with Akira Kurosawa. If you don’t know who Akira Kurosawa is, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Kurosawa is the Japanese filmmaker whose films directly inspired movies like Star Wars, the Leone westerns (most notably A Fistful of Dollars), The Magnificent Seven, and many, many others. As a filmmaker, Kurosawa pioneered techniques in storytelling and cinematography that are used to this day in virtually every film, consciously or otherwise.

A Bug’s Life borrowed a lot more than just storytelling and cinematography from Kurosawa, in this case, they blended the classic tale of the grasshopper and the ants (you can watch that here, but it’s also on the Bug’s Life disc) into a thrilling and satisfying family version of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai.

Both films center around agrarian cultures who are beset by bandits at the beginning of the film who are intent to steal their harvest, even though it would mean their eventual doom in the winter. In Seven Samurai, that part fell on Rikichi, a lowly farmer with a dark secret. In A Bug’s Life, the responsibility falls on Flik, a young inventive ant who’s constantly bucking the traditions of his elders and causing more problems than he seems to be worth.

The brilliant part of any adaptation from one medium to another is to switch the culture or time period to somewhere equally appropriate. Kurosawa’s Yojimbo was turned into both a western (A Fistful of Dollars) and a prohibition era shootout (Last Man Standing). Seven Samurai was also remade into the western The Magnificent Seven. But the tone of the source material was largely intact. The brilliance in what Pixar did with A Bug’s Life is that they were able to transplant the story into a different culture (ants vs. grasshoppers) but they were also to change the tone in order to make it palatable to the genre they were making. True, there were spots of comedy in Seven Samurai, but they turned the story on its ear enough to make it seem fresh and engaging to even the most ardent fans of Seven Samurai.

The two major departures in the story have to do with the harvest and the Rikichi/Flik character, and the Samurai themselves. In the source material, the harvest has yet to be reaped and the bandits will be arriving to take it from them as soon as they’ve done so. In A Bug’s Life, the harvest is complete and before the grasshoppers are able to receive their annual tribute, Flik accidentally dumps it into the creek.
As for the Samurai in this picture, they’ve been recast as down on their luck circus bugs who when they’re offered a job as warrior bugs gladly take it.

The major dilemma in the film comes not from how well they’ll defend the ant hill from the grasshoppers, but how long will it be until they’re found out as imposters.

The subtlety and skill with which the screenwriters are able to bend this film to their will and explore dilemmas not previously present in a pairing of already classic stories. And it’s so easily relatable, it makes you wonder why no one had done it before.

I think a perfect double feature night would be Seven Samurai and A Bug’s Life for anyone (or any group) over the age of 10 or 12, since Seven Samurai is subtitled. But it would be a great family night for culture and art.

In short, buy them both. Seven Samurai and A Bug’s Life.

You won’t regret it.

We’re going to start today’s releases with Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. I’ve been exploring this disc for a few days now and I have to say it’s worth every penny you’d drop on it. Disney films always seem to look great on Blu-ray, but none more so than the Pixar films. This film is no exception. I’ll have a full review of this up later, so be sure to look for it.

Valkyrie came out on Blu-ray and DVD today. This is a movie I enjoyed very much and am quite excited to see again. You can read my original review of the film here.

Geek classics Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Tim Burton’s Batman are being released on Blu-ray today. I’ll have a review up tomorrow of Terminator Salvation. Take note that this is the first time in the United States that this version of Batman is available outside of the box set with one great movie and two god-awful ones. Another geeky Blu-ray release is Paycheck. Maybe not so geeky, but it is a Phillip K. Dick adaptation. Personally, I’m keen to check it out even though I’m not the biggest John Woo fan. (In fact, I think Mission: Impossible II was one of the worst movies ever.)

Enemy at the Gates comes out on Blu-ray, I liked it when it came out but am actually excited to revisit it. 3 Days of the Condor is also hitting Blu-ray and, though I’ve never seen it, I’m quite excited to check it out. I love this era of Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Sydney Pollack.

Also on Blu-ray today is The Machinist, which I missed in the theatres. Should I worry about this one? I’m in your hands.

And does it make me somehow less of a man if I want to check out the first season of True Blood?

I guess I can make up for it by wanting to watch Robert Mitchum in a Criterion Release of the ’70s crime film The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It looks pretty good to me and Criterion hits a lot more than they miss.

Oh, and in honor of the 10th anniversary of The Phantom Menace, Fanboys came out on DVD. This is one I’m going to have to check out.

The creator of Family Guy, and American dad is back at it again! But really he is. With, “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” which was just barely released May 12th.

I’m going to get this out of the way right now, if you don’t like fart jokes this is not for you. I have never been so heavily marauded with fart jokes in all my years It isn’t necessarily a bad thing it just needs to be your type of thing.

Next, If you like family guy, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t like this. It is essentially the cut too’s from the show with a wider variety of characters, that are not inhibited by television broadcast standards of vulgarity. To be honest though, I think I am a fan of the censorship. I think it keeps them on their toes looking for ways to push the envelope, but when it isn’t there it turns into jokes that are geared even more to shock value. I was surprised to see how many jokes reverted to people shitting on the screen.

The biggest problem with shock value is it’s so much a matter of taste. Whereas I don’t think fart jokes are all that funny, I find religious lasciviousness to be the bee’s knees, and there was plenty of that going around as well. Which is one thing I will give this cavalcade of comedy credit for, which is that it crossed a lot of different lines, so you are likely to find something that will fit your sense of humor in it. Plus, I don’t think beer would hurt. You should be drinking before you start it though because it isn’t long enough to get drunk during.

It feels kind of like watching a comic strip. All of the jokes are self contained in 50 different segments, and some of them are pretty funny. I particularly liked a segment called, “Things You Never Hear”, and there was another segment that was called “Sex with” that had a few really funny moments in them as well. There were some segments that were recurring throughout the show that I thought were leading somewhere but didn’t have a payoff, but other then that it didn’t feel like a total waste of time. Conceptually I think this piece was sound, I like the idea of compiling 50 one liners into a movie, that doesn’t have any sort of narrative whatsoever.

On a scale of one to ten, it isn’t worth my time to rate it, it was fun and that’s all it needed to be. I personally watched the blu-ray of this movie, but the disc is bare-bones, and it’s just a cartoon so I wouldn’t really demand you spend extra money on the blu-ray, but since the blu-ray is selling for nearly the same price you might as well splurge. If you are a fan of Robot Chicken, Family Guy, and American Dad, I don’t think you will be disappointed with purchasing this. I have a feeling that I have some robot friends that are going to enjoy this ten times more then I did.

Green Lantern: First Flight is still over two months away but Warner Bros. has released the second installment in their Q&A series featuring the cast and crew of the fifth DC animated feature film. Lauren Montgomery is fresh off her solo directorial debut of Wonder Woman and is now taking on Hal Jordan’s first adventure as a Green Lantern in DC’s latest animated outing.

So check out Lauren Montgomery’s interview as she talks about the art style, her directing style, and a little about what we can expect to see in Green Lantern: First Flight, which hits stores July 28, 2009!

And be sure to check out the updated official trailer while you’re there!

Since we’re all still high on Star Trek, I’d like to offer up the Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection on Blu-ray for your perusal. As much as I don’t like a couple of the Star Trek films in there, it has a newly remastered Wrath of Kahn and culminates in what’s my other favorite Star Trek film, The Undiscovered Country. I’m hoping to review these soon.

Another Star Trek related film that’s coming out is Galaxy Quest in a special deluxe edition. It’s not so much that it’s Star Trek related, but a Star Trek parody. This is also a fine, fine film. In fact, even David Mamet counts it among one of the best ever.

There are a bunch of Blu-ray releases today that I would suggest you check out. First is Major League, which is far better and funnier than I remembered it. We should have a full review up around here in the next couple of days, but it really surprised me. I liked it as a kid and didn’t think I’d like it now, but I was wrong.

Taken also comes out on Blu-ray. I wanted to see this in the theatre, but heard that the extended cut was far better so I opted to wait. I’m still waiting, but Liam Neeson kicking doors in with a gun and torturing people sounds like a great time to me.

The Tom Hanks classic Big hits a Blu-ray release today. I saw this movie again recently and it really knocked my socks off all over again.

Both Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2 are out today as well.  I loved Wayne’s World when it came out and watched it over and over again, but I have no recollection of Wayne’s World 2.  I’ll report back when I’ve watched it again.

Next is one of the best westerns ever made, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I don’t think there’s much I need to say about this one. It’s Leone’s masterpiece on Blu-ray. If you don’t know why that’s awesome, there’s no hope for you.

The last thing on the list today for me is the Coen Brothers’ comedically thrilling masterpiece, Fargo on Blu-ray. This movie really is a masterpiece and the best quality you can see it in the better, I imagine.