Movies

I watched Pixar's Up last week and I must say that it was a big disappointment considering all the hype surrounding it. Even though it was released in May, it is currently ranked #39 in IMDb's Top 250 list which I find rather flabbergasting.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've managed to catch up with all the superhero movies that came out this summer.

• Hellboy 2: The worst of the lot; Insipid hollywood-ized version with poor direction, bad editing and a lacklustre story. Stay away from it.

I just finished watching Speed Racer, an adaptation of the anime and manga, Mach Gogogo / Speed Racer. Directed by the Wachowski brothers, Speed racer is, IMHO, the best live-action adaptation of an anime / cartoon that retains its original flavour and roots.

The synopsis of the anime is as follows:

I watched Shrek 3 yesterday and I am still in mourning over it. What was an entertaining part 1 has been sodomised into mindless drivel that is neither well written nor well animated or well voiced for that matter. I sincerely hope that there isn't going to be a part 4.

Hollywood should be banned from making sequels based on the commercial performance of a movie.

Today's Song Of The Day is Stillwater's Fever Dog. Stillwater is the name of the fictional band from the movie Almost Famous (or IOW, the Wikipedia link above isn't terribly relevant :P) and one of their popular songs is this track Fever Dog, a very 70's growly track.

I just finished watching Como Agua Para Chocolate, a Spanish (Mexican) movie which is apparently pretty famous. It was a pretty funny romance, a little weird with some one-hundred-years-of-solitude-esque fantasy elements liberally sprinkled all over. I've been watching a number of Spanish movies off late and have found that a vast majority of them involve copious doses of nudity.

I saw Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer last night, and boy did it suck! I've not really been much of a fan of either series - FF4 or Silver Surfer, but nevertheless, I thought this might be interesting as I was under the impression that this was the first instance of a crossover. Apparently, this is not the case.

Three cheers for BT and piracy. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly CAMs, preview screeners etc. spread like wild-fire even before the movie has had its première. This has happened with Spiderman 3 as well and I am sure will happen with every movie that gets released regardless of all the security, DRM and all other TLAs that are heaped on.

Initial reviews are very exciting!

Due to the fact that I am learning Spanish in earnest, I am quite frequently on the look out for Spanish subtitles for the movies I watch. However, finding them has generally been a chore until I came across a great site named open subtitles a while back. Besides having a large database of subtitles (in various languages), its biggest plus point is, as the title suggests, its openness, transparency and its foundation on "community". Other points of note:

• is generally ad-free.
• does not require registration.