1. 100 Days of Snark - Day 6: Howard the Duck

    Apologies for breaking stride yesterday. I did not remember E3 was happening this week and each year I become a junkie for three days in June. By the time Sony’s conference finished I was red-eyed, twitchy, and sleepy. Ah, like I said on Twitter, this isn’t the first promise I’ve broken.

    Today’s film is another from my youth, one I’ve not seen since the 80’s. George Lucas adapted a comic few had heard of into a film even fewer went to see. Want to know what I took away most from Howard the Duck? A lame C64 game. Check it out:

    Man, if the C64 could have actually outputted music like that I never would have left my room.

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  2. 100 Days of Snark - Day 5: Time Bandits (West Coast Edition)

    Ninja Edit: It’s called West Coast edition because officially the review got posted 2 minutes past midnight in Florida, but it’s *still* 6/5/11 in California. And to the French tumblr lady who Likes these reviews, thank you!

    Though I was born during the bicentennial of the United States of America, I consider myself to be a child of the 80’s. I don’t remember much about the late 70’s, mainly because the long-term memory center of my brain had not yet developed. The early 80’s, however, I remember fondly as only someone who was a child then could. I remember seeing Nicklelodeon for the first time at a condo in San Destin, FL while on vacation with my father and my grandparents. Immediately after that trip was over my grandfather got cable at their house and my love of media was born. There are two things I remember the most about my childhood: the movies my family would take me to see and the movies and shows I saw on cable and video. There are key moments in my childhood that I associate with certain films, but none embody the totality of my youthful imagination more than Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits.

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  3. 100 Days of Snark - Day 4: Robocop

    “Welcome to hell.”

    I wonder if that ever became a standard greeting in Detroit. I first saw this movie when it was released in theaters, and I believe it was my first exposure to Paul Verhoeven. He later went on to direct Total Recall, one of my favorite films as a young teenager. I thought Robocop was cool too, but was too young to really understand the subtext of the movie. It didn’t help that the character went on to become a joke as he appeared at a WCW pay per event helping Sting break out of a cell the Four Horsemen locked him in. Don’t believe me? Watch this:

    Thankfully, the original movie is nothing anywhere near as silly.

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  4. 100 Days of Snark - Day 3: Phantasm 2

    Originally today’s entry was going to be a re-watch of 1986’s Fright Night but apparently it is no longer available for streaming. I guess Universal wants you to bend over and pay up (or wait for the damn disc) since there is, you know, a remake coming out later this year. Dammit, I really wanted to watch it for this project too, but I’m bound by my own parameters. So, today’s entry is a different Universal picture, one that’s relatively new to Watch Instantly, 1988’s Phantasm 2. This is officially the first of what will be many re-watches in this project.

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  5. 100 Days of Snark - Day 2: #1 Cheerleader Camp

    Heh heh heh. Yes, after the stink bomb I watched yesterday I thought I might treat myself to some mindless T&A. I wanted a film that didn’t try to pretend it was something it could never be, like entertaining or thought provoking. It took all my willpower to get through that Asylum produced piece of garbage, so today’s film had to have some level of honesty to it. I mean, it’s not like The Asylum produces soft-porn (named so because you remain soft the whole time, wacka wacka wacka) right?

    Oh dear god.

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  6. 100 Days of Snark - Day 1: Battle of Los Angeles

    “Lights out! Guerrilla radio! Turn this shit off!”

    Why in the hell The Asylum decided to knock off a film that wasn’t that good in the first place is a question I asked when I first saw the box art. What I didn’t know was that instead of being a 1:1 rip-off of the Aaron Eckhart stinker, Battle of Los Angeles mashes up a ton of different sci-fi cliches borrowed from other films and broils them into a Z-Movie stew. Hoo boy I knew I was in for some DEEP HURTING but I had no idea this movie would ping my Geek Anger buttons so bad. Yes, I know what this film represents and who it’s targeted towards, but I can no more turn my brain off than the Chicago Cubs can win a World Series. 

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