Warning: Profanity

Lots of bad language in this one, kids. You've been warned.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

When I picked up my copy of Superman Returns this week, I noticed that they also had some other Superman-related DVDs, including a "Richard Donner cut" of Superman II, and a new Superman boxset called the "Christopher Reeve collection." Since I already bought the "complete Superman collection" a few years back, I didn't feel the need to pick either of those up.

However, after I got home, I became more curious, and looked up more info. Apparently, when Richard Donner was shooting Superman: The Movie, he also shot most of the sequel. The studio halted production on the second movie to get Donner to finish the first one, and also because he was over-budget. At this point, 70-75% of the sequel had already been filmed.

When the second movie went back into production, several things happened, all of Marlon Brando's scenes as Jor-El were removed, and Richard Donner was replaced by Richard Lester as director. In order for Lester to be billed as director, he'll have to film at least 51% of the movie, meaning much of what Donner shot had to be removed or re-shot.

So, this "new" version is quite a bit different from the theatrical version, and fills in some of the gaps in it. Overall, I think it's a better movie, I'm just not too keen on the scientific aspects in the way they ended the movie. But then, this is Superman we're talking about. "Scientific aspects" of the story pretty much went out the window a long time ago.

A more detailed review of the Richard Donner cut can be seen below.

Pan's Labyrinth

I found out about this from a YTMND site, which is also quite well done. In any case, Pan's Labyrinth looks like it could be a very good movie.

High Definition versions of the trailer and teaser are available on Apple's website.

X3 in a nutshell

I could've sworn that I made a post about this when the movie was first released in the theaters, but I can't seem to find any entries about it.

Anyway, when I re-watched X-Men: The Last Stand on DVD, this was one of the things that kept coming back to me, aside from how much they butchered the original story.

[Russian accent]Here is link


I also love the theme music from the cartoon series.

A no-win scenario

"Looking around me you'd think, 'Sure, I could tap that.' But as you know I'm a merfolk, and so I'm a fish down below..."

And yet another YTMND site reminds us of the mermaid problem. In this edit, we see Disney's Ariel flip open a book to show Flounder an image first found on another YTMND site (though it looks to be from some sort of manga). I first saw an allusion to it from a Captain Kirk/Star Trek/Wrath of Khan site, also pretty funny. The picture near the end has been around on the net for some time, and was also used in some YTMND sites.

The song is made by students of Brown University. They have a clip from The Little Mermaid set to their version of the song.

New DVDs

This week, I picked up Lucky Number Slevin and The Wild. Lucky Number Slevin is an interesting crime drama/thriller/dark comedy. It's not on par with other dark comedies like Pulp Fiction, but it's still a fun ride, nontheless. The very basic gist of the movie, without giving too much away, is summed up by Lucy Liu's character in the clip above.

The Wild is one of the few computer-animated movies released by Disney, but was not done by Pixar. It has been described by some critics as "Madagascar meets Finding Nemo with The Lion King thrown in for effect." This is not untrue, as the story involves animals from the New York Zoo "escaping" captivity, roaming the city with the lion, Samson, looking for his son, who is practicing his roar, but still sounds like a little cat. Surface similarities aside, it's actually quite a different movie from Madagascar. I personally think the animation quality is much better than Madagascar, but while the story is fine, it lacks the humor in the other movies being compared to. That's not the say that the movie is completely devoid of humor--only that these moments of comedy are few, while at times it seems they're trying too hard.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse

Riding on the coattails of Snakes on a Plane comes this "thrilling," direct-to-video movie, Snakes on a Train. Look upon this work, ye mighty, and despair!


Honestly, based on what I've heard of Snakes on a Plane from people who've seen it, it's actually pretty good. Not nearly as bad as its trailer might lead you to believe. And even that trailer looks much better than this one.

GoBots are the Kmart of Transformers

Clerks II rocks.


That is all. And now back to your regularly scheduled program...

More than meets the eye

There are many rumors circulating about this upcoming live-action + CGI movie. Although they did officially announce at Comic-Con that Peter Cullen, the man who voiced Optimus Prime in the original cartoon series, will reprise his role for the movie. This is good news for the fans of the original (Generation 1) series, especially with the rumored new design of Optimus for the movie:

This supposed new design is particularly displeasing to fans, as we're all quite used to how the original Optimus looked, and considering the "promo" model they used, it seems strange that they would go with this new design (which looks more like the Armada version), with flames painted on the sides... Personally, I think flames would not fit Optimus Prime's personality, and I obviously don't like the look.

Other rumors include Bumblebee being a Camaro instead of a Beetle, and Megatron being a tank rather than a pistol. I can't fault them if Bumblebee doesn't look like his cartoon version in robot form (and if the pics I've seen of the yellow robot in the movie is indeed Bumblebee, he doesn't), since even the original toy for Bumblebee looked nothing like his cartoon version in robot form, but I don't see why they would not keep him as a Beetle. It's not like it can't be done or something...

The only thing I can think of is if Volkswagen objects to having their vehicle used in the movie. But why the hell would they do that?

Clerks 2

In two weeks, the Clerks II movie should be out in theaters. It picks up ten years after the end of Clerks. Dante and Randal still work as clerks (I guess Dante never went back to college), but now work at Mooby's, following a fire that destroys the Quick Stop and RST Video.

Kevin Smith has retired the website, MoviePoopShoot.com, and the new version is now called Quick Stop Entertainment. Here's why: