Sunday, February 09, 2014

NOW SHOWING AT A BLOG NEAR YOU

Now Showing Sign

This week for Aleteia I reviewed The Monuments Men, a disappointing take on what is actually a really interesting true story. Oh well, they can’t all be Academy Award material, I suppose. Speaking of which, if you’re sick of hearing about the Oscars already and just want them to be over, well, blame us Catholics, because we’re partly the reason they exist in the first place.

I have to admit, even though a lot of the movies aren’t classics, I’ve been having a blast with my reviewing gig at Aleteia (free movies will do that for you). Still, I can’t help but notice I’m often at odds with my fellow Catholic movie critics (and by “fellow” I mean that I read them and they don’t know I exist) over which films are good or not. In fact, given how many times we disagree, I’m afraid I might one day get labeled as the Anti-Greydanus if things keep up. That being the case, I was surprised to find that, much like myself, Disney’s Frozen left Mr. Greydanus a little, ahem, cold. I was also amused how, on a second viewing, he found the movie to be completely gay.

Meanwhile, over at The Good, The True, and The Beautiful, Daniel Collins talks about a recent trend in entertainment that isn’t exactly gay, but more, shall we say, emasculating. He discusses why he believes modern vampire tales, ahem, suck, and why they need the Church to make them better again.

Of course, if you’re going to get the Church involved, you’d better be careful not to let anything too dicey slip into your story. You see, although advocates for “mature” Christian fiction argue that the Bible is full of sex and violence, so it’s okay for their Christian fiction to do so as well,  R. L. Copple from Speculative Fiction puts forth his own argument that the Bible may not be as R-rated as they believe.

For some writers, however, standards really aren’t that big of a problem. Take the folks who write stuff like Shaknado, for instance. The A.V. Club interviews Asylum writer Jose Prendes about just what goes into churning out scripts for movies like Mega Shark. Hint: you get script notes from the producers demanding stuff like having a giant fish destroy the Sphinx.

Who knows, maybe the Asylum guys are just tired of riddles. If that’s the case, I suppose they’ll be happy to hear that Joe Wetterling from The Baptized Imagination believes he may have the solution to the age old question, “Why didn't the eagles just fly Frodo right to Mount Doom?”

And finally, just for the fun of it, head on over to Becoming Godzilla where you can learn to make your very own wearable version of the Big G. Amaze your friends, astound your enemies, take ten years off Tokyo’s life!

See you next time.

2 comments:

Xena Catolica said...

But the elephant in the room! Have you seen the Lego movie? Because, strangely, my 10 yr. old boy keeps accidently leaving local movie schedules up when he gets off the computer....And it's getting high scores at Rotten Tomatoes & the imdb.

EegahInc said...

Yes, my son, my wife, and I all saw the Lego movie and loved it. I don't know if it's that great, or if it's just that all the animated movies over the last year were so disappointing that it looks great by comparison. Either way, I'd go see it again if I had the money to blow.

I read that Fox News hated it because the main bad guy is named Lord Business,bu they probably should have had someone watch the movie first. He's named that because he's "all work and no play", not because he's anti-capitalist.

I also noticed the film sent Amy Wellborn into a rant because Lego sells pre-defined kits these days instead of just blocks, thereby squelching creativity. I don't know. My kid puts the kits together once and then tears them apart to use the pieces for whatever he wants to, which is just what the movie encourages. I guess there's no way to please everybody.

Bottom line is, my family thought it was hilarious.