Shmee.Me

July 3, 2015

Thanks Ash Vs Evil Dead, I Need A Starz Subscription Now!

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now have our fist set photo of Ash vs Evil Dead, and it looks perfect! Chainsaw arm? Check! Blood? Check! Stupid self-assured look on Ash’s face? Double Check! This looks like so much fun, but that means I will have to pay per episode, get Starz, or wait until the season is over and get the set, and I want to do none of the those things. <sobs> Oh well, I have a lot of TV to watch (I say to convince myself unsuccessfully) <sniffle>.

For you lucky shmucks with the Starz channel, you will have to let me know how it is this Fall.

P.S. I hate all of you with Starz for not already inviting me over to watch this. Your names will forever be listed in my Necronomicon.

July 2, 2015July 2, 2015

Do You Want To Know How To Train Your Dragon 2?

I wonder if DreamWorks knew they had a hit on their hands when the first How to Train Your Dragon came out? I am guessing since it took four years to make a sequel, probably not, but after the success of How to Train Your Dragon 2 they are making up for that now with a weekly cartoon show, and sequels planned out until the end of time. Luckily for us at least the movies are pretty good.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 picks up a few years after the first, and life is just about prefect on Berk. The dragons love their new masters, and they help the people of Berk do just about everything. Think the dinosaurs from the Flintstones, or at least that is where my mind went to when I saw it. Though Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is still restless and wants to explore with his dragon Toothless, and to see what is beyond their little island. On his adventures he learns there are people that may want to do his people and his dragons harm.

The story was a good follow up to the first one, and it flowed well. However, even though the dragons were bigger and badder this time around, the stakes seemed to feel smaller. Like the threat wasn’t as real. They really pushed the family aspect of this film too, which was nice, but I think it kept the movie from feeling as epic as they wanted it to be.

The voice acting talent all returned for How to Train Your Dragon 2, so it continued to be good. No odd sounding Berkians here. The new additions, Kit Harington and Cate Blanchett, were great, and they will be good to have in the series from now on. Though honestly when is having Cate Blanchett in your movie not a good idea? Never. She should be in everything.

DreamWorks has been looking for a cartoon series to replace Shrek for quite some time now, and I think they finally have it with How to Train Your Dragon. Two just proved that the formula will continue to work for more sequels. I am not sure that I think How to Train Your Dragon 2 was better than the first one like by friend Daniel did, but it was a worthy follow up that has me feeling okay about this becoming a long term series.

July 1, 2015July 1, 2015

Hey There Is Sci-Fi on SyFy Now!

So I was watching the first episode of the space bounty hunger show Killjoys, which was pretty good, and I think it will be a decent summertime distraction, when it occurred to me I was being shown nothing but Sci-Fi based show commercials. I mean Killjoys is jammed between Defiance and Dark Matter, so there are three solid hours of pretty good Sci-Fi programming right there. With the SyFy channel being nothing more than a place for ghost hunter “reality TV” and wrestling for the last couple of decades it is nice to see it return to the genre that gave it its name. Well its original name anyway. Nothing is named SyFy because that is terrible, and the branding people at NBC that thought of it should be thrown in to a sarlacc pit where they can be digested for centuries with Boba Fett (that’s right Boba Fett is dead nerds!).

I hope this is a trend that continues because it might make the SyFy (sarlacc pits for everyone!) Channel my go to place for summer TV. Almost like it was when I was thirteen. Oh man I am old! <sobs in to keyboard, but recovers with the knowledge that Boba Fett is an overrated jerk>

June 30, 2015

The Paladin wants off Fury

Fury came out in 2014, starring Brad Pitt, motivational speaker Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, and Jon “Shane” Bernthal as the tank crew of the Sherman Battle Tank FURY. I’ll cut to the chase… I didn’t like it. Fury when it is an actual war movie is tense and brutal. Fury when it is being introspective is awful and stupid. The fighting is done in the new style of Hollywood war films – brutal, bloody, and dirty. This makes the climatic set piece, the part we suffer through the rest of the movie to get to, really quite good. The battle is intense, swinging from hope to despair and then back again with each attack. It’s that desperate Alamo-like last stand we just love in ’MERICA!!! The rest of the movie is the standard Hollywood post-Vietnam war movie that makes every effort to suck the heroism and even humanity out of the soldiers the movie is portraying. Except for Lerman’s wide-eyed clerk turned machine gunner, the rest of the crew of Fury are terrible people. Even the soldiers around and intertwined with the events of the film are terrible people. I don’t doubt that American soldiers killed prisoners in World War 2, but I find fault with the movie’s depiction of soldiers reveling in it.

To me the film was trying to show how war changes those who fight in it, but it does it without us seeing who the men were before the war. For all we know they were all terrible people, the Army just gave them license to kill. So we don’t see the loving family man, the idealistic college student, the friendly mechanic, or the pride of the family go off to war and have their lives forever changed. HBO’s Band of Brothers and American Sniper do a much better job at showing how war changes lives, without glorifying war or wrapping war up in an idealistic American flag.

June 29, 2015June 29, 2015

The Risks Of A Deadly Adoption!

Well you have to hand it to Lifetime, at least they were smart enough to be in on the joke. A Deadly Adoption makes fun of their cheesy melodramatic movies perfectly. Had Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig went full on farce, this movie never would have worked, but instead Ferrell and Wiig played it straight. Proving that in the right context Lifetime Original movies are funny enough on their own.

A Deadly Adoption is about a rich couple, (Ferrell and Wiig) that after a tragic dock accident at their diabetic daughter’s one year birthday party are no longer able to have kids, so when a seemingly nice young pregnant woman (Jessica Lowndes) arrives from the adoption agency they invite her in to their home for her last trimester (it is the only logical thing to do). Things get deadly, as the title promises, after that as you can assume.

This story was perfect for a spoof of Lifetime movies. The tragic accident was nothing more then a slip in to the lake, Jessica Lowndes character’s motivations didn’t make a lick of sense, and they talked about the daughter’s diabetes non-stop just in case you somehow misted it. Plus they assure you that it is all based on a true story. I assume they took it on faith that at some point a pregnant woman has fallen in a lake. I don’t know who green-lit A Deadly Adoption, but they deserve a hug.

Ferrell and Wiig play the leads with the perfect amount of over the top serious cheese. If you didn’t know who they were you may even get through A Deadly Adoption thinking it was just another Lifetime Original with some even odder than normal moments. However, just their presences in this movie makes it hysterical. It is like them being in it gives you the freedom to laugh at the craziness of this movie, and the Lifetime movie formula in general.

I am sure this movie will be replayed a lot by Lifetime, so if you missed it, do yourself a favor and watch it next time it is on, or rent it when it comes out to DVD or VOD. It is not often people are intelligent enough to make fun of themselves, but Lifetime really went for it by getting Ferrell and Co to do A Deadly Adoption for them. They actual made a Lifetime Original must watch TV by making fun of Lifetime Originals. I can only hope someone over at Hallmark was watching!