I dunno why, but for some reason this "expensive as hell"-looking movie opens next Friday...yet only last night did I see a trailer on TV for it. Is it rumored to be crappy? Or do the studios no longer want to pour $100 million into marketing that doesn't convince any more people that they should see a particular movie? After all, if you reduce your marketing from $100m down to say $5m, if you make enough money, you could make more profit from a similar sized group of customers...

Anyway, the trailer:
http://ca.io9.com/5688427/two-new-battle-los-angeles-trailers-are-eerily-alluring


While we are at it, Spielberg has a TV sequel to Jurassic Park. Actually, it's more like Jurassic Living! Premise is using a time machine, some people leave the dying earth, to travel back to the time of the dinos, to start a new life/civilization. A bit like leaving Europe in ships for "The New World", or to Africa...any colony really, but this one being back in the Dinosaur time. Called Terra Nova, it premiers in May on Fox:

http://io9.com/#!5773592/new-terra-nova-trailer-breaks-out-the-hard+core-dinosaur-drama

I am actually planing to see this, of course I plan a trip to a favorite Japanese restaurant and a few sake, so I can not promise how good my judgment will be on it the next day. I hope it will be good or at least a lot of pretty lights .


Bullet

Hoping to be able to go see it, I just want it to be as good as it looks.
I didn't care for District 9 all the much, this looks like a proper version of what I expected there.

Nothing on Rotten Tomatoes yet, but I'm interested to see what kind of reviews it gets. I don't completely go by what reviews say, but with Rotten Tomatoes you get so many that it does give you a pretty good average of what people think of it.

I didn't really have much in the way of expectations for District 9, which is probably why I liked it better than you did, RK.

it opens 3/11/11

I have my doubts about the quality of this movie. The trailers are good but I am banking on this just being an ID4 with more ground combat.

Oh and DISTRICT 9 was amazing.

As a general rule, if a studio thinks that a film of theirs is going to be a turd, they limit the amount of spending on marketing.

As for District 9 I absolutely loved it and it was a breath of fresh air. I'm tired of the American-centric chest thumping ra-ra-ra and brainless alien invasion movie.

D9 was a letdown for me. I could see what they were trying to do, I just don't think they totally succeeded.

The fact that it was too blatantly left open for a sequel without any true "ending" made it worse.




The Jedi Master

Was filmed here in Baton Rouge & the studio is in my 1st response area at the firedept.
We got ALLOT of calls of gunfire & explosions all the time.

Went on set quiet a bit but wasn't allowed to take pics it was cool to see an entire sewer system made of plywood & vinyl.
Got to meet a couple of the stars but the new Battleship was more expensive "set" wise. But looked to be a terrible film. Was filmed here in BR to.

Cool story Kelso. It seems more films are being shot in Louisiana lately.

I think it might be a UBIsoft production..

That is not a general rule.

The general rule is "The more you spend making it, the more you spend promoting it."

Why would they go back to the dinosaur era? If you have a time machine you could pick a more peaceful safe time.

BTW District 9 was one of the best movies in recent years. Should have got the Oscar last year.

According to IMDB, the budget for the film was 100 million.

We have NOT seen the kind of marketing and buzz that 100 million budgeted films usually get.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1217613/

Because going back to a peaceful, safe time would be cinematically BORING. Going back to the age of dinosaurs would provide a lot of dramatic tension and action.

Exactly, although I'm hoping they offer some sort of explanation, like the time travel equipment screwed up or only goes back certain increments of time or something.

I'm sure the explanation of why that era was picked will be mentioned in the pilot. Naturally a period like right after the last Ice Age would make more sense, but I would think they've come up with some plot device to justify it. Perhaps the time machine will ONLY go to that period. There's no scientific basis for a "time machine", but there are theories about how to travel back in time. Those theories don't seem to indicate it would be easy to pick what time you'd arrived at, though.



The Jedi Master

Maybe it's more of a...

I don't know why you guys keep saying they are not marketing this movie. I keep seeing the TV promo for it.

As have I. Perhaps they're watching the wrong channels?
In fact, I found it amusing that the promo ran during The Event last night.


The Jedi Master

Well that proves right there that not that many people are seeing promo spots for the movie.

What will prove that is when you produce the actual promotion numbers for the movie.

I've been seeing ads for it on TV over here for a while now and am seeing it with my son on Friday and really looking forward to it. Will get me into the right frame of mind for Crysis 2

I'd like to see it this weekend, but I'm unsure if it will happen.



The Jedi Master

DVD rental for me.

Anybody watch Skyline? This visually looks a hell of a lot like skyline and that movie stunk. Got to stay positive.....

Early review.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5-Kx7gyFeg

-Rick

Makes sense those guys would get to see it first.



The Jedi Master

The marketing, I just meant that it didnt seem like much marketing, compared to past action movies. Sure I've seen ads, but even many of these are 15seconds long.

As for Dino Camp, no idea: machine could be broken. Or maybe the innevitable kid character thinks "dinosaurs Yay!" and changes the years to see dinos

Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainm...,5880859.column

-Rick

It's getting mostly negative reviews so far. It seems this film is in the same tired and cliched tradition as Independence Day and War of the Worlds.

I hate to say it, but you really have few choices on how this plays out. I am hoping for lots pretty lights and lots of dead slimy green guys :0. I do love the the explosions.
I also like the Godzilla movies as a kid so my taste are pretty low .


Bullet

The original Godzilla film is damn good and a sci-fi classic.

So, the aliens don't like old cop cars sitting around, or don't they want them turning up as Taxi Cabs?

The aliens realize that modern cars are expensive and don't want to waste money needlessly. After all, with their superior tech they have to know there's a recession and money is tight.




The Jedi Master

Superior Tech? The Bot with the Hellow Kitty face in SuckerPunch looks better built.

The one with Raymond Burr, I have to agree. I should rent it as it has been a while.





Bullet

i watched an older version on syfy in peices earlier today.

Saw it.

If only they didn't have dialogue.. if only they played to their strength.. but no. This was the most cliche riddled piece of garbage I'd seen in a long time.

I should have measured cringes per minute... the writing was TERRIBLE. Horrible. Atrocious. It hurts to even think back to it. That being said - the action was good (though the cinematography was the usual shakey off-focus crap).

At least with movies like Independence Day you know from the start not to take it seriously. This tried to be Generation Kill versus aliens and since they didn't have 7 hours to develop characters they just went with every single cliche or stereotype possible. Then they made it PG-13 just in case things got too real.

The only possible saving grace of this film could be if it is the start of a franchise and they wanted to get all the cliched BS out of the way in the first film.

Also:

Wow.. that review was actually worse than the film. Thanks for the perspective!

Hehe, irrespective of the horrible reviews, the movie still made 36 million on opening weekend which was half of its production budget.

Then there was another sci-fi film "Mars Needs Moms" which completely tanked this weekend. Production budget of 150 million and it only made 6.8 million. It also didn't get nearly as bad reviews as Battle: Los Angeles.

Looking at RT the film BLA is getting poor reviews across the board but more positive, but not great, reviews from fans.
31% by reviews
71% from users

And the reported $70,000,000.00 film (does it look like a 7 mil film?) made some money at the box office making $36,000,000.00 over the weekend.

Oh, and Fox news (the only news worth watching!!) said that the special effects were done by the same people who made the film Skyline. Then they went on to report IIHTC that the Skyline was done at the same time as BLA and without the knowledge of the BLA people.

I went to see it yesterday with friends and we all actually enjoyed it... full house at the theatre, everyone clapped at the end. Despite what the critics may have said about this movie and have as such given it a poor rating I must say the film turned out to be much better than I expected. The action scenes are pretty well done. Much better than the past few alien invasion movies (War of the worlds, Day the earth stood still, Skyline) I recommend it if you're in the mood for a good action popcorn flick. Either you like these type of movies or you don’t. Plus it was fun watching my neighborhood transformed into carnage.

-Rick

Well considering RT also has Transformers 2 getting 20% from reviewers and 76% from viewers I think we can establish that cinemaphiles they are not.

Like I said - if they'd struck to their strongest point (action) I'd have been happy. I mean I enjoy alien action films! It's when the action stopped and the cliched dialogue started (beyond "We need to go five clicks North") that it was painfully terrible. And that there was so much of it.. oh god.

No kidding.. these are real quotes:
"I'd rather be in Afghanistan"

"I need you to be brave. I need you to be my little Marine."

There has always been a significant disconnect between how critics perceive films and how the general public perceives them. As a general rule, critics tend to eschew low brow action films while the general public likes them and critics tend to praise the art house and dialogue heavy films that most in the general public would be bored with.

Haha no kidding eh?

Are you talking about "Battle of Los Angeles" which is the SyFy knock off of Battle: Los Angeles meant to capitalize on the theatrical release of the latter? I saw a few minutes of it and quickly changed the channel after seeing how absolutely horrid it was.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1758570/

I did about the same - saw about 3 minutes of it and couldn't stand it anymore. If anyone ever wanted to interrogate me, making me watch that would have me spilling the beans in no time. I'm not sure I have emotionally recovered from it yet.

I am seeing it on Tuesday or Wednesday. It was the #1 movie this weekend (of course) and looks like it will make over $100 million domestically during its run.

This is the closest to what I feel (warning spoilers):

Apart from a few good combat sequences, this movie blew. Totally. Laughably so.

I figured as much. I might watch it on cable in the future if I have a dull Saturday or Sunday night with nothing to do.

Guess that's what happens with an emerging generation of filmmakers weaned on videogames like CoD and not on actual films as their storytelling medium when they were growing up. Goodbye story and character!

I wasn't crazy about D9 either... I cold have waited for the DVD on that one.. it was still better than Skyline though..



The thing that disappointed me the most about Skyline was the ending.. the premise was good... but at the end I was like... Is that it.. I was waitng for the next scene and the credits rolled.. At least D9 had some kind of premise to it... there was a story..

I saw BLA on opening day.. my son and I went.. it was his 14th birthday.. It was ok.. just ok.. had some holes.. lost of holes.. another one that could have waited for the DVD... I am getting kind of leary about Sci Fi films.. the last 3 I went to see.. all left me wishing I had waited for the DVD..

IMO it didn't. How did it blow? I'm no fanboi, just wondered how you came to that conclusion?

The dialogue and the characters-- they were wretchedly written. I mean, scenes that should have had impact or packed a punch either fell flat or made me and my GF burst of laughing (like the scene where the lead and another soldier are reviewing the tactical map and learn of the kid's dad dying- everything stops, and they look up in grave shock as if that guy was the prime package and the point of the entire mission, and then the "I need you to be my little marine" speech...hahaha. Not to mention the painfully bad writing we are subjected to when we learn of the staff sergeant's back story in the beginning, when he's submitting his request for discharge. And then there's the horribly cliched way he earns the respect of the soldier whose brother had died under his command. I mean, I could go on and on.). There was really no one to care about in the film b/c they were so stock. So that's a huge ding against the movie right there. Some of the combat was cool to watch, so I do give it that. But as a story, with characters worth caring about, total fail.

I think this is partially the product of a director (and/or generation of directors) who think more in terms of videogames than movies or books. In other words, some cool visuals, but incredibly shallow and almost dispensing with story. Battlefield 2 or Modern Warfare gets them excited, not Shakespeare, Elmore Leonard, Wild Bunch, Kurosawa, Philip K. Dick, Asimov, etc. etc. I'd much rather watch a movie where the effects and action are in support of a great story and interesting characters (who aren't cookie cutter) (movies like serenity, district 9, alien, blade runner) than vice versa (pretty much 95% of action and scifi films). Or, in rare cases, a movie where the effects are so amazing (avatar) that the stupidity of the story is almost irrelevant.

Battle for LA was a stupid movie, by a stupid director and writer (at least from the POV of creating a story worth telling and characters worth knowing), for a generation they perceive as apparently too stupid to know better. Maybe for the most part, they are right?

I guess what this really all boils down to is the fact that some people dont really care for story or characters and are just satisfied with seeing action scenes and lots of explosions. Does anyone remember Mission Impossible 2?

I'm not placing a value judgement on that at all. Just making an observation!

I like all kinds of films from leave your brain-at-home action ones to high-brow art films and all in-between and you have to go to watch a film knowing what to expect and this was a fun, sci-fi, action film - nothing more. You can't heap your expectations onto a film and then begrudge it for not living up to them.

Fully agree! You shouldn't go to see Battle: Los Angeles with the notion that it will have a screenplay and characters on the same level of quality as "The King's Speech".

Exactly lol

Action movies don't have to be dumb, though. Aliens and Black Hawk Down are both great examples.

That was basically a documentary.

Not from my POV as a viewer. It was a full-on action film.

action documentary