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| Tuesday, September 28, 2004 03:54 AM |
| Issues |
 by Fëanor |
I sat down last night to write up another lovely post for you folks, only to discover to my horror that my site was unable to connect to my mySQL database (I hate saying "my mySQL"--it sounds so repetetive and silly). After some poking around, I determined that this was probably because omnis (the company that hosts my site) had taken it down to perform maintenance, and that there was no need to freak out. Unless of course it was still down this morning, in which case, aaaahhhh!!! Luckily, as you see, this morning everything was a-okay.
But this meant that last night I was quite grumpy. It didn't help that, due to a doctor's appointment and a late dinner, I didn't have time to do any of the other things I wanted to do, either (important things, like watching various DVDs and the tape of the Eagles' victory over the Lions). It always bugs me when I have a bunch of stuff that needs doing and I can't do it. Of course, it also bugs me if I have nothing to do. What I need is a constantly refreshing line-up of tasks to perform, which I can be working on constantly, and which I can finish relatively quickly with little frustration.
But anyway, it turns out that that late dinner kept me awake, and thusly I did get a chance to do one of those tasks. Hooray! The particular task I refer to here is the viewing of Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. This is a film I decided I wanted to see some 9 or 10 years ago, so when I finally found it in a Suncoast Video a little while ago, I couldn't resist snapping it up. Unfortunately, I decided to see it based on the recommendation of Leonard Maltin, back when I thought it was a good idea to trust Leonard Maltin. I have since learned--the hard way--that this is, in fact, not a good idea. But this movie really does sound like a lot of fun--it's a Hammer horror flick that tells the story of a kind of swashbuckling superhero named Captain Kronos who, as you might expect from the title, goes about killing vampires.
Despite this fantastic premise, the movie is terrible. It was as if somebody wanted to make a cheap, sleazy western, but then was forced to move the setting to England, add in vampires, and replace all the guns with swords--and not even the right swords! I mean, Kronos has a samurai sword! Wtf?
Anyway, I was considering bringing Kronos to movie night (it's my choice this week), but after last night's viewing, I've decided it's too dumb even for that. I also decided some time ago that I wouldn't bring serious movies that I truly loved to movie night anymore. I get too defensive about them for some reason. And after all, movie night is supposed to be fun. So no more shall I subject the crowd to films like The Trial.
But here are some of the movies I'm still considering:
- Fist of Legend - This is one of my favorite kung fu movies of all time. It's a Jet Li remake of a Bruce Lee film that's full of incredible fighting scenes, and even has a halfway decent plot.
- Master of the Flying Guillotine - An absolute classic from the 70s. It features the coolest weapon ever, and a bunch of freakish fighters, including a blind assassin, a one-armed boxer (played by Jimmy Wang Yu, with his arm tucked very obviously inside his shirt), and an Indian guy who can stretch his arms until they're about six feet long.
- Dark Star - John Carpenter's best film, in my opinion, co-written by Dan O'Bannon, the guy who wrote Alien. It's a weird, darkly comic sci fi flick with a bunch of great ideas and terrible special effects.
- Azumi - The new film from Ryuhei Kitamura. I caught it at the festival this year and was blown away, as you can see from my review. It's a swordfighting epic, full of fantastic characters, special effects, visuals, fighting, etc., etc. It's just fantastic. I really use that word way too much, but there you go.
I think that's everything I was thinking of. Movie night folks, feel free to vote for your choice in the comments section. :) |
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