I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Two years ago I had never seen a Kubrick movie. I always thought that he was one of those directors that only pretentious film people liked, and only so that they could sound pretentious. I was wrong, Stanley Kubrick is amazing. The ending of 2001 still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and unless I plan to start an aggressive regimen of self-medication, it probably never will. The bottom line is that it just doesn't matter. If all that movie was was people walking around with weird gravity, and spinning spaceships set to classical music, I'd be happy to watch all 148 minutes. I think that's what makes Kubrick such a great director. His puts imagery before all else, and that's the way it should be done.

Don't get the idea that he can't write dialogue because he was one of the best in the business. If you've seen any of him movies then you'll know what I mean. Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order.

1. "You jerk, you clown! Come on, clown, sing us a chorus from Pagliacci!"
2. "I'm Spartacus!"
3. "Here's Johnny!"
4. "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
5. "You had best unfuck yourself or I unscrew your head and shit down your neck!" (I think I just like the word unfuck. I should try to use it more often.)Altogether, not too shabby. Anyway, now for the real reason that I decided to write this post. Last night I saw The Killing. It's a film noir about a racetrack heist gone wrong, and It's everything that a film noir should be. It's got a hard boiled criminal, a seductive femme fatale thats easy to hate, and violence. Oh, the glorious violence. At one point they even shoot a horse with a sniper rifle. On top of all this, It's all put together in a seamless story line that constantly plays with time. It's probably not the best way to put it, but in a way, it does pulp fiction way before Tarantino was even born. Even If you're turned off by three hour costume epics and floating embryos in space, this is the film for you. I don't want to over-hyper it, but I honestly can't recommend it enough. If you only take one piece of advice from this blog, take this one. See this movie.

Video Game Movies

Every one knows that movies based on video games tend to suck. They always have, it's just a fact of life. Contrary to popular belief Uwe Boll didn't invent the shitty video-game genre. If you don't know what I mean, I recommend that you take a trip to your local video store and rent the Mario Bros movie. The bottom line is that Video Game movies make money and Hollywood likes money. I get it.

What I don't get is why Hollywoods insits on making on making movies based on fighting games. When I said that Hollywood should remake bad movies yesterday, I certainly didn't mean Street Fighter. A Tekken movie doesn't make sense to me either. Please, just no more Mortal Kombat. I don't think I could take any more of those. Why fighting games? Why not choose a game that actually has a plot? Wouldn't that just make sense? Sure the long rumored Metal Gear movie is probably going to suck, but at least it has potential. At least it has a story.

GI Joe and why remakes suck.

I'm back at school and the past few days have been sort of crazy. Currently I'm working on a bunch of stuff, but the good news is that a lot of my work seems to be finally paying off. Thats always a good feeling.

Did anyone see the pictures of Ray Park dressed up as Snake Eyes yet? I've gotta admit he looks pretty sweet. I know the GI Joe movie is going to suck but I'll probably go see it anyway. It's directed by Stephen Sommers, the guy who did The Mummy and Van Helsing. That means it could be good or bad. The Invisible french guy from Heroes is playing Destro. I don't really know how I feel about that. He certainly doesn't look like Destro.

While searching around IMDB I noticed that they might be making a live action Akira starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I've also heard that a Seven Samurai remake is in the works as well. Thats just terrible. Why can't Hollywood just leave good movies alone. Enough with the remakes already, they suck.

The thing about remakes is this, Hollywood is going about them all wrong. They should stop trying to remake good movies, and start trying to remake bad movies that they fucked up in the first place. The Hulk is a great example of this. The first one sucked so now they have an opportunity to redeem themselves. Someone should remake the Bourne Identity so that it actually follows the plot of the book. How can you get rid of the villain when he's an assassin named Carlos the Jackel?

TatoBlog.com

Do you have trouble remembering to go to tatobins.blogspot.com? Then I have good news for you. You can now reach the site directly from www.tatoblog.com.

Write Comments

No one ever seems to leave comments on this blog. I think that might be due to the fact that people used to need a blogger account to do so. This is no longer the case. In fact, you can even leave an anonymous comment if you want to. You guys no longer have any excuses. leave a damn comment.

I'm not quite dead yet.

Last night I drove up to New York to go see Spamalot. I probably should have gone a few years ago when it starred Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, and Hank Azaria. Instead I got to see Clay Aiken. His bad acting aside, the show was actually pretty good. While not entirely true to Holy Grail most of the key scenes where there. If you like Monty Python then it probably goes without saying that you should check it out.

I guess the real reason I wanted to write this post was because the 60 year old lady who sat next to us was totally crazy. She said that she lives in Austin Texas but flew up to New York exclusively to see the show. She has seen it two time in as many days, and she plans to see it for a third time tonight. Heres the catch, she hates Monty Python and was there solely to see Clay Aiken. I think i ended up watching her reaction to the show more then the actual show itself. Throughout most of it she looked pretty angry. She didn't seem to see the humor in taunts of french castle guard or misfortunes of the Black Knight, but when Clay Aiken soiled himself and waddled off stage, now that was funny. After the show was over she milled around and collected all of the crinkled playbills that people had dropped on the floor. I can only assume that she was doing this in an effort to increase the amount of documents in her possession that had Clay Aiken's face on them. I sort of felt bad for her. If she had a loving family who cared for her, none of this would have ever happened. A real family would have never let her watch dumb shows like American Idol. There is definitely better television out there and the people who watch American Idol are just part of the problem.

No More Heroes

For the moment I've put Brawl aside, and started playing No More Heroes. Its a game I've been meaning to play for some time but Netflix doesn't rent games, and I haven't had the money to buy it. However, after multiple visits to the video store I finally was able to get my hands on a copy. I was expecting a lot from that game, and at first I was a little let down. The graphics aren't great, but I'm pretty sure that was intentional, and the camera on the first level was a little weird. Honestly the whole game is weird. Yeah, really weird. It's not something that I can explain, because I just wouldn't do it justice. You'll just have to play it for yourself. All I can really say is that you can only save on the toilet, and that the enemies yell "My Spleen!" as you kill them.

Anyway, like I was saying, at first I was a little disappointed but by the third mission I realized how great a game this really is. I'm about 8 hours in, and while I'm glad that I never bought the game, I regret having waited so long to play it. I'm going to try my best to beat it before I go back to school on sunday, but thats gonna be difficult seeing as I've got a paper to write, and I'm going to New York tomorrow. Either way, I'll probably write a bit more on the subject once I get a little further (or beat it).

Another TatoBlog?

Yep, apparently there's another TatoBlog. Damn.

Sporting New Categories!

If you look on the sidebar, you will notice that there are now post categories. Hopefully this will make for a smoother TatoBlog experience.

Spring Break Bites.

MTV lies. Spring Break isn't fun at all. Shouldn't I be on a beach somewhere in Mexico with my friends, participating in alcohol-fueled revelry with scantily clad, overly amorous super models? Isn't that what’s supposed to happen over spring break? It seems all I ever do over spring break is sit on my couch, play video games, and browse my local video store.

Speaking of my local video store, I saw Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel last night. Matsunaga (Toshirô Mifune) is a gangster who’s been diagnosed with tuberculosis by an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura). I figure any movie that contains the better part of the cast of seven samurai is required viewing. As can be expected in a genre picture, the characters are pretty standard. We’ve seen alcoholic doctors before (Doc Boone from Stagecoach has to be one of my favorites), and if a womanizing gangster stricken with TB doesn’t immediately bring Doc Holiday to mind then you probably watch a lot less movies then I do…which is probably a good thing.

As sort of an aside, I think they need to make more Doc Holiday movies. After all, there’s nothing cooler than a gunman with a death wish. If you’ve seen Val Kilmer in Tombstone or Victor Mature in my Darling Clementine then you’ll know what I mean.

Anyway, Drunken Angel isn’t a western/samurai movie like you might expect. It’s actually film noir, set in the slums of Tokyo immediately following WWII. It reminded me of The Third Man in that respect. The two films were shot a year apart (1948 and 1949), and when the characters walk through the rubble you know that it’s not a set.

If you’re looking for an action movie then this might not be the movie for you. There is very limited stabbing and no one gets shot. Having said this, there is one fight scene in a freshly painted hall that is amazing. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite action sequences in a Kurosawa movie. If you’re worried that this film drags at parts (Stray Dog), don’t be. Just because there isn’t an over abundance of action doesn’t mean that the film is boring.

I could probably type about that movie for a while, but the bottom line is this; It’s really good. Spring Break sucks, so spend it watching Drunken Angel. That is all.

JAWS: The Musical

Jaws: The Musical from Peter Binswanger on Vimeo.

Apparently, because I did so much work on Jaws, Rob was unable to fit all of my credits onto the movie. That’s ok. I thought I’d add them below.

Pete Binswanger – Original Idea
Pete Binswanger – Prop Designer
Pete Binswanger – Spot Light Operator
Pete Binswanger - Transportation
Pete Binswanger – Video Consultant and Uploader (not camera man)
Pete Binswanger – Confetti Technician
Pete Binswanger – Assistant Set Constructor
Pete Binswanger - Quint Aficionado
Pete Binswanger – Pizza Captain
Pete Binswanger - Paint Remover

Expedite This...UHHH!

While typing this, I am currently watching Double Dragon: The Movie. It's not as good as the game but it does star Mark Dacascos, the chairman from Iron Chef America, and thats gotta make up for something. He seems like the guy you get when Keanu Reeves is busy. I'm having a hard time figuring out whether this is the worst movie ever or the best movie ever. I know its always funny to watch computer effects from the 90's, but these are straight out of I-Movie. At least they got the red and the blue right. You know what this movie needs? BattleToads. I think every movie would be enhanced by BattleToads. Titanic getting a little slow? Throw in some BattleToads.

P0rtal

I finally got my hands on Portal today and I beat it fairly quickly. If you haven't played it yet I recommend that you do. It's not that expensive ($20) and the show is well worth the price of admission, however If you can get a friend to buy it, that's definitely the way to go. This is a game that can easily be beaten in one sitting, and now that I've beaten it I don't really feel this huge urge to go back and beat it again. I guess I could see myself playing through it once more, but only so that I can listen to the developers commentary. Really, It feels more like the first level of a larger game then a full game itself. There's a lot of potential that really hasn't been met, and I'm really hoping that Portal 2 is a whole lot longer and has a whole lot more stuff in it. The sentry guns were nice, but they don't have bones for me to break. There's nothing more satisfying then taking on tons of soldiers with an amazing ability to manipulate physics. Remember when the gravity gun in Half Life 2 got super charged? I rest my case. What Portal really got right (other then the portal mechanic, which is awesome) was it's good sense of humor. It ranks up there with the Monkey Island games, and as far as I'm concerned, few games are as funny as the Monkey Island games.

Kill Ya Good

Kill Ya Good from Peter Binswanger on Vimeo.

Best Ending Ever.

So as I said yesterday, I've been playing a lot of Street Fighter II. Today I pretty much finished it with ever character. All I can say is this, there are a whole lot of weird endings in that game. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell happened in Dhalsim's. Anyway, Zangief's is by far has the best. I thought that I'd share it with you, since I'm sure most of you haven't seen it.

Also, no more scary Anderson Cooper lady.

Tiger Uppercut!

Recently I've been playing all sorts of Street Fighter on the SNES. I've got SF II Turbo, SF II: The New Challengers, and Street Fighter Alpha II. Unfortunately I even recently spent $4 on SF II for my phone. I went in with low expectations, and while they were surpassed, it wasn't by much. It is a fully featured version of SF II. All the characters and moves are there. The only real problem is that you gotta play it on your damn phone. Good Luck trying to do anything with your number keys. The only real successful strategy that I found, was to fireball your enemies to death. Because the difficulty has been tuned down a bit, they tend not to try and avoid anything. This works up until Vega at which point your fucked. The spaniard jumps around so much that he's impossible to keep up with. If your looking for a cell phone game, I recommend sticking with Tetris.

That embarrassment aside, I'm pretty excited for SF IV. I recently read an Interview in which Yoshinori Ono said that a Wii port could be possible. That would be nice, so long as they don't throw in any unnecessary waggle controls. I can tell you one thing for sure, I'm probably not gonna play the arcade version all too much. I could see myself giving it a try at a movie theatre or laundromat (I don't actually go to a laundromat) but thats about it. Frankly, arcades are just way too expensive. Whatever happened to playing a game for a quarter? That seemed like it had been the standard since the Pac Man days up until fairly recently. Today the average machine is far more greedy, they even have a slot for dollar bills. I'm not going to drop a three bucks so that I can spend five minutes on a game that I could easily spend the entire weekend on for roughly the same price. The other, and perhaps more significant problem, is that I don't think I could find an arcade even if I wanted to.

Thats all, I've gotta go get my laundry...but not at the laundromat.