It took a while, but I finally got around to watching TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY with my wife. It's been many, many years since I saw the film (last time I saw it was over 15 years ago at the age of 13 or 14). As a young teenager, I remember really liking the film but not being in the manic frenzy that many of my friends were in for it (for example, I just saw it once in theaters compared to a buddy that saw it roughly 10 times... in theatre!). I also remember it brought a bit of attention back on Guns 'N' Roses since they did the theme song.

So, how was it at my more critical age of 31 years? Good. My wife really liked it... but many bits of it were a bit too hokey for me. Having the first TERMINATOR film film fresh in my memory, the more kid-friendly version of T2's Arnold's T-800 leaves a bitter taste after the utter bad-assery he embodied in the first film. It tended to drag a bit with some extremely long action sequences, but it was still a fun film to watch that holds up over the years.

One thing that really stuck out for me was how long the film would go without dialogue. Many of the action scenes were minutes of pure action with just the sound of guns, vehicles and destruction. It was during these moments I came to realize how universal the film was since story and character are largely being conveyed without any need of understanding the English language. In place of a spoken language, characters spoke through movement, how they looked, and weapons/vehicles of choice. Arnold's T-800 was a beast of force. His weapons of choice were things like grenade launchers, vehicles like Harley Davidson motorcycles. The T-1000, by comparison was way more efficient... often killing with liquid blades and riding around in a police car. One of the most impressive things in the film is the perfect complement the T-800 and T-1000 are to each other. As the T-800, Arnold Schwarzenegger is over-powering beast... something like a gorilla. Instead of choosing a rival with a similar presence, Cameron and his team went in a completely different direction with the T-1000, creating a monster that is far more elegant and quick... something way more feline in physicality. The T-1000 is beautiful, lithe, and almost-feminine compared to the testosterone-fueled physicality of Arnold's character. It's a fascinating and very entertaining choice. It's odd that, in many ways, the T-1000 feels even more feminine than Sarah Connor (who has become so obsessive with the ominous future since the first film that she's dedicated her life to training for the War). But it's also one of my biggest problems with the film because Sarah comes across like a dysfunctional alcoholic more than someone who has dedicated their life for battle.

All in all, it was fun to revisit T2. It's not as 'cool' as it was when I watched it at 13 (which seems to be the age they were aiming for when making the film) but pleasant nonetheless.

When I was a kid, I'd ask my mother to let me hang out in the magazine section of the local supermarket while she shopped for groceries. All that food shopping go me bored and I was too big to sit in the front of the shopping cart. So a nice compromise was I was able to browse the various magazines at the front of the store while she went about getting our weekly supply of food. My browsing was usually limited to a few comics, videogame magazines like Gamepro and EGM, and some sci-fi special fx magazines. I remember the first time I saw a photo of Robocop on the cover of one of those Sci-Fi magazines. WOW! It was that amazing image of Robocop stepping out of the police car (see below). To my 9 year-old brain it was the epitome of everything that I thought was cool... and it drove me CRAZY that I was too young to watch the film. The designs of Robocop and the ED-209 were like some sophisticated version of my favorite transformers and I was willing to stomach the bloody gore to watch the movie. Sadly, my parents wouldn't let me. As soon as I could, I rented to film (I think I was 12 years old when I finally saw it) and fell in love with Robocop, ED-209 and all the sex and violence my pre-adolescent eyes could handle!

With time, ED-209's movements don't really hold up (the animation looks like it's done by a Harryhausen reject). I've come to realize that many scenes seem border-line stolen from Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS comic. But I still love the music, Robocop and ED-209 designs. As long as I forget Robocop 2 and 3...

Since my wife enjoyed AVATAR a whole bunch (as did I), I decided it was a good time to introduce her to the classic films of James Cameron. Up until now, the only Cameron film she’s seen is TITANIC  (is there a women under 30 who hasn’t seen that film?)… I thought it was long overdue that I share some of James Cameron’s best work with her.

When I come to think of it, James Cameron’s list of movies isn’t that big. When you consider which of his films are “Must Sees” it gets even smaller. For me, the Cameron “Must Sees” are TERMINATOR, ALIENS, and TERMINATOR 2. ABYSS had its moments but fell a little flat for me. TRUE LIES was fun, but felt like Cameron’s reaction to stuff like DIE HARD and JAMES BOND more than being an honest Cameron film. TITANIC… well, I never saw TITANIC completely. I’ve seen bits and pieces of the film and recall over ten years ago walking in on my Ex-Girlfriend watching the end of the film on TV. I ended up watching that last half of Titanic where the boat is sinking and remember thinking that the movie was better than I had imagined because it had some guy falling to his death and ricocheting off of a gigantic propeller blade (morbidly awesome!).

My attempts at getting her to watch ALIENS (and indirectly Ridley Scott’s masterpiece: ALIEN) failed miserably. She immediately thought it’d be too terrifying for her tastes (darn it!). But I succeeded in suckering her into watching TERMINATOR because A: it has a love story and B: it’s a bit like Carpenter’s Halloween (which is oddly one of her favorite films).

I’ve had a DVD copy of TERMINATOR (in a nifty double DVD set with ROBOCOP) but haven’t garnered the energy to watch the film. In fact, I hadn’t watched the film in around 15 years. It was fun to experience it after all these years. Pleasantly, the film was as good or better than I remembered. Terminator is the ultimate 80s action flick with it’s black leather jackets, neon-lit urban landscapes, and feathered pretty girl hair. It’s structure is very simple but works.

At it’s spine, Terminator is freakishly close in plot to John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN: a mysterious man is breaking into homes and murdering women in cold blood. While Halloween’s Mike Myers tool of preference is his knife or bare hands, Terminator’s T-800 prefers an arsenal of guns complete with infrared scope. Much like what we see in Avatar, Cameron takes a very calculated approach in his use of the more hokey elements of the Sci-Fi genre. From a distance, Terminator is a relatively pedestrian story about a good guy protecting an beautiful girl from the bad guy. The sci-fi is all in the details: robots, time travel, apolyptic wars… but it’s all brilliantly played out in a very current interpretation of Los Angeles. The brilliant thing about this take is that it immediately justifies any suspension of disbelief. Sure, a “normal” guy can’t survive a crazy car crash or fire… but the Terminator’s a freakin’ robot! Rambo, James Bond, and John Mclaine never had that liberty. They can do the impossible because it’s a movie. Terminator can do it because he’s a robot from the future.

There are two things that struck me most when revisiting Terminator. First off, John Carpenter hugely influences Cameron. The way he shoots night sequences with rich hues of blues and reds feels like it’s coming straight out of a Carpenter film. As I said before, the overall structure and main character are an homage/inspiration from Halloween. Even their taste in women (androgynous mix of beautiful and strong) feels consistent. The other is that John Woo was HUGELY influenced by Cameron’s work on Terminator. I love Woo’s films like Hard Boiled, the Killer, and A Better Tomorrow. Never once did I make the connection between his Gun Ballet style and Cameron’s work. I cannot believe I never made the connection. The slow-motion gun battles, leather jackets, sunglasses, expressionless faces… all of those Woo stylistic trademarks can be found in Terminator. When watching the big Police Department gun battle in Terminator I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it must have influenced the huge gun battle in Hard Boiled. It’s pretty amazing seeing what a huge influence this movie was on the whole Hong Kong mafia film movement in the mid-to-late  90s.

All in all, it was a lot of fun watching Terminator. I should make an effort  to watch it more often. Now it’s due time I give Terminator 2 another shot…

If you're only as good as your influences, then clearly James Cameron must give some love and respect to Roger Dean. Mr. Dean is an English painter best known for the series of album cover paintings he did for progressive rock band, YES. He also had his hand in painting a few things for a variety of videogame companies including game developer PSYGNOSIS' logo and the cover art for SHADOW OF THE BEAST and TETRIS WORLDS.

Throughout his more personal paintings, Roger Dean developed a peaceful exotic world filled with floating rocks, oversized bonsai trees, AND serene blue vistas inhabited by a variety of exotic fantastical creatures. It looks a lot like like James Cameron's ambitious vision of Pandora, the planet and arguably the star of his uber-successful 3D film AVATAR. Is what James Cameron used as influence closer to stealing or homage? You decide.

Thanks to Jerry Frissen for allowing me to steal from his amazing post (from our Muttpop France blog). Jerry immediately recognized the influence (my naive eyes didn't even know who Roger Dean was!) and was privy to share Dean's connection to Cameron's Pandora.

I was fortunate enough to see James Cameron's AVATAR film in its ideal format and environment (Imax 3D and on the monster projection screen at the legendary Hollywood Cinerama-Dome) this past Friday. It was a helluva experience that has me marveling over what the next steps in the spectacle of film will be. The 3D action epic that is AVATAR pushes the movie making experience to ambitious limits. It's big and grand in a manner that only an American Studio film can be and manages to, at the benefit of some people and detriment of others, connect it to a heavy-handed but intriguing mythology. Here are my thoughts with my best attempt of not including spoilers.

The "new" techology on display is might impressive. The 3D experience appears to be built on a slightly refined version of the 3D polarized lens made famous by the old Disney Captain EO experience. The glasses used are a bit heavier and supposedly use a better form of the technology (complete with batteries that apparently destroy their abilities if the glasses are stolen). The glasses were my least enjoyable aspect of the experience as they were clumsy, heavy and ill fitting. Much like the older form of polarized 3D glasses, the ear bands connect to the main lenses in a one-size-fits-all headband style. While it worked well for the lighter weight previous glasses, the heaviness and clunkiness of these new type of glasses have them fighting (and losing) to gravity far more often. As such, you'll catch yourself doing the nerdy glasses readjustment move (quick poke of index finger between eyes).

Despite the glasses, the 3D is far more nuanced than we have previously experienced. Depth in 3D has reached an all-time high. Nothing in the movie will reach out and try to poke or scare you... but there are consistently multiple planes of depth to experience. I was a little concerned during the opening moments of the film as it seemed that colors were a bit washed... but by the time of the first major action sequence in the forests of Pandora, either my eyes acclimated to the colors or the artists behind Avatar figured out how to solve the faded color dilemma I initially experienced... because, by that point, vivid blues and greens were glowing beautifully from the screen. The one thing I did notice suffered a bit from the 3D were quick movements, particularly in the more intimate moments of action. All the big ship and wide lens action was captured beautifully. But on the occasional moment where we're brought close in on the action like in 1-on-1 fight or chase scenes, the action gets blurry and the 3D effect is partially lost.

In regards to the film itself, I loved it. The world of Pandora is one that I loved visiting and intend to visit again (via a repeat viewing of the film in Imax 3D). The Earthling technology is a natural evolution of the wonderful "Space Marine" technology Cameron introduced in his classic films like Aliens, Terminators 1 & 2, and Abyss. I always felt that Cameron was the one guy doing sci-fi film that built upon the military robot tech made famous in Japanese anime series like Gundam. The earthling tech in Avatar supports this theory.

Pandora and its blue-skinned inhabitants are part of a rich universe whose look and culture have benefited from the 12 years it took to make Avatar. The world of Avatar is the true star of the film. The variety of creatures and plants we are introduced to are all incredibly imaginative and beautiful. The number and variety of creatures introduced in the film are too much to take in on a single-viewing.

The story is epic but clunky. The characters and plot suffer a bit from the broadness within which they are written. But with a story as large as this one it's fitting. The story of Avatar is one of technology versus nature; logic versus intuition. It is a story filled with a war of 1000s of people/aliens/monsters/hoverships... and, as such, its easy to forgive the broadness with which the overarching story is told. The broad story is a framework within which we are asked to experience the unique world of Pandora. The story isn't a bad one... but it is definitely a familiar one filled with the classic themes of love and power. I believed and easily bought into the sincerity of the story. But I suspect that some people will feel that the inherent philosophy in the story comes across a bit too strongly (particularly if that person is in disagreement with the suggested dogma). I actually like the harshness with which Cameron chooses to convey his ideals. If you take all this time building a universe, you may as well have it abide to the rules of your philosophy!

All in all, Avatar is an amazing experience. Now I look forward to seeing how talented A-list directors like Spielberg and Jackson react to it!

Another Tequila Original figure spotting! This time he can be found on the straight to DVD film called COUGAR CLUB. Way back in 2006, I was approached by a Tequila fan and told that he was working on a film and they were going to include Tequila in a few scenes. I had completely forgotten about the conversation until yesterday when I received an email from the very same fellow (roughly 3 years later) stating that the film came out, was called COUGAR CLUB, and can be seen on Netflix via their instant watching capability. It's a fairly basic straight to DVD comedy filled with fart jokes and boobies... but it gets credit for some Lucha Libre love and a decent amount of screen time from our OG Tequila figure. The trailer (seen below) does not have any Tequila. The screen captures included below do!