I don't know, I enjoyed "JCVD".

Don't forget Dolph Lundgren! He directs himself a lot now.

The real reason Seagal's movies all suck is because he has all these rules, and the people making his movies bend to his will for some reason. "I don't bleed, I don't run, I don't get hurt, I don't like guns so we're gonna do lots of hand to hand stuff, we have to have a scene where I sit in a room while incense burns, blah, blah, blah." He's not that big a star, you silly director people! He was in a few above-average action flicks over a couple decades ago. Pretty much everything he's done since then has sucked a camel's ass. Stop letting him dictate things!

Cuba Gooding Jr is making a lot of halfway decent to utter crap action movies lately as well. They mostly go straight to DVD. Some of them are actually not bad at all, like "Linewatch" and "Wrong turn at Tahoe". A lot of them are fucking unwatchable, tho, like "Way of War".

Jingle All The Way is one of the worst films ever made.

Zarban, what do you think of Commando?

I saw The Raid at the cinema today.

I like The Raid.

Just got back from Snow White & The Huntsman. It's not bad. That's about all you can say about it, really. I like how they gave the queen a bit more of a tragic backstory to her. I like how they kept a lot of the weird fairytale aspects without having it interfere with the story too much via deus ex machina. There are a couple bits that kinda come out of nowhere, but they don't feel wrong or out of place...  more they just pop up and you go "oh wait...  yeah...  this is a fairytale...  huh... I kinda forgot for a minute..."

I do, however, dislike Kristen Stewart's portrayal of Snow White, in that she basically does the same thing Pattinson does in Twilight. I wanted to hand her a bottle of ex-lax and a magazine and say "go take care of that problem, then come back and finish shooting the movie". When she's not pulling a pooping face she does OK, but she does that a lot in this movie.

Also wasn't a big fan of some of the camerawork. Getting really sick of close-up jitter-cam action scenes where just keeping your eyes focused on the point of interest is a chore in itself. I don't think many movies are really planning out how the camera is working to tell the story.

I liked the dwarves, tho, and the movie becomes much more watchable after they show up as they provide the few lighthearted moments in the film. Unfortunately they also aren't really characterized all that well, and it leads to a couple hollow, undeserved moments that are supposed to be emotional but aren't.

I also really liked Theron in the movie. It's not a one-note performance (it's two notes... with a third note every once in a while), and she alternates between chewing the scenery and adding a bit of vulnerability to what is normally the definition of a one dimensional character in most other adaptations. I wish she'd had better motivation in this version, though they do try to rationalize what the typical motivations are. Kinda. It's not entirely successful... at all...

Spoony described it as being similar to the sort of fantasy films you'd see in the 80's like Willow and Ladyhawk, and he's right, but in those movies the fantasy stuff was more involved in the story. Here it's more of a background where the story takes place. The queen and her abilities are the only real fantasy aspect of the film that has bearing on the film. You can remove most of the other bits and not really notice.

There's no Medusa you have to kill in a certain way, there's no curse that needs to be lifted, there's no magic sword that must be found, there's no charmed trinket that bequeaths protection or some special ability. The fantasy aspects are more akin to... i dunno...  more like science, really. Biology. There are creatures. There are plants. They behave in ways that aren't typical of our reality, but in the reality of this world they just ARE a certain way. The queen is the only thing that doesn't really fit, but they magic bean her up, so it's OK. Everything else is just the way things are.

But I liked it overall. Definitely a movie worth picking apart for future study. It's an interesting take on the story that adds some pathos to the queen and thus gives it a bit of a tragic feeling. It's worth watching just for that aspect. There's also a blatantly obvious Princess Mononoke reference in the flick, which will always make me like your movie slightly more.

Well they are making at least one new take on the Wizard of Oz. I can't think of any others in production. I'm not against it as a trend. I think westerns are going to be a thing soon with Django and Lone Ranger both set to make lots of money. If you were to start production right now on a gritty western sci-fi/fantasy film, you'd probably make a lot of money OHSHITSOMEONEMAKEDARKTOWERRIGHTNOW!