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[Rob Pegler]

The disappointment for me - other than them claiming a Conan movie and it wasn't

But this is what I'm saying - change the name of the main character and a few of the countries/cities (I'm pretty sure the female lead was mispronouncing "Hyrkania" anyway) and people would probably be more willing to take it face value.

I did enjoy it as a bit of stabby-stabby and hawt nekkid grrlz,

Yeah, it certainly says something when Rose McGowan's the least attractive female in the cast.

but I can expect Howard when I go to see something proclaiming Conan and this didn't have it.

Actually, I found this was pretty close to Howard in spirit, certainly more than the Milius/Arnie flick. Conan's pretty much all business - holding to his "live, love, slay" philosophy and not furrowing his barbarian brow trying to figure out "riddles of steel" - and the story's a sword & sorcery adventure yarn that revolves around him defeating a suitably campy villain and his minions. The girl isn't the swooning halfwit that Howard would have made her, but that can only be an improvement.

And who said it had to be true to Howard anyway? I'm willing to let an adaptation do its own silly thing as long as it's entertaining. And this was.

[Wardog]

but I can expect Howard when I go to see something proclaiming Conan and this didn't have it.

Actually, I found this was pretty close to Howard in spirit, certainly more than the Milius/Arnie flick. Conan's pretty much all business - holding to his "live, love, slay" philosophy and not furrowing his barbarian brow trying to figure out "riddles of steel" - and the story's a sword & sorcery adventure yarn that revolves around him defeating a suitably campy villain and his minions. The girl isn't the swooning halfwit that Howard would have made her, but that can only be an improvement.

And who said it had to be true to Howard anyway? I'm willing to let an adaptation do its own silly thing as long as it's entertaining. And this was.

I'll have to disagree on what made it to the screen. I found that the book actually rang true to Howard, and he wasn't averse to smart women - just most of the girls that attracted Conan's attention were just that - girls. To be fair, he was a seventeen year old out for his first good times in the big cities. The movie just didn't have that Conan flavor in it, and I do require that if something has the name it tries to be as true to the source as possible. If all they tout is "based on" then I should shut up and just expect good popcorn fodder - but when all the marketing is trying to capitalize on the "Conan Mystique" then I'll be whiny InfernaNet pundit.

Then again, you made a valid point that when Rose McGowan is the least hot one, what is there to complain about?


To the Thread -

I've been going over some of my old videos on this trip I'm on - did a Saving Grace marathon this weekend, but prior to that I watched "La Horde".

La Horde, for those who don't know, is a French Zombie flick that I such a beautiful homage to all the best in zombie movies. The zombies aren't your classic slow ones, but they are relentless and horrible of visage. The basis of the movie is a Paris Narcotics squad loses one of their team members to some African drug runners. The rest of the squad decides to go after the bad guys and get retribution - then things go awry. Cops and Bad Guys die, some get eaten, some fight on and the ending is a quite nasty twist.
I purchased the international "region free" version and watched with the French soundtrack and Ecnglish subtitles. I retain enough of my college French that I was able to follow along, once I got used to accents with only a bit of an eyedrop to the subtitles. Full of action, fight scenes, blood, guts and mayhem.

[Matthew]

The disappointment for me - other than them claiming a Conan movie and it wasn't

But this is what I'm saying - change the name of the main character and a few of the countries/cities (I'm pretty sure the female lead was mispronouncing "Hyrkania" anyway) and people would probably be more willing to take it face value.

You're right, if it wasn't called Conan I'd have liked it better.

I did enjoy it as a bit of stabby-stabby and hawt nekkid grrlz,

Yeah, it certainly says something when Rose McGowan's the least attractive female in the cast.

but I can expect Howard when I go to see something proclaiming Conan and this didn't have it.

Though I thought it was a little much when they saved the girls from sexual slavery and then celebrated with a drunken orgy

Actually, I found this was pretty close to Howard in spirit, certainly more than the Milius/Arnie flick. Conan's pretty much all business - holding to his "live, love, slay" philosophy and not furrowing his barbarian brow trying to figure out "riddles of steel" - and the story's a sword & sorcery adventure yarn that revolves around him defeating a suitably campy villain and his minions. The girl isn't the swooning halfwit that Howard would have made her, but that can only be an improvement.

She kind of alternated, I thought. Smart and brave sometimes and swooning half-wit, depending on what the scene called for. Momoa's Conan was a petulant thug, with none of the "natural chivalry" of the text stories.

And who said it had to be true to Howard anyway? I'm willing to let an adaptation do its own silly thing as long as it's entertaining. And this was.

I dunno if I'd call it an adaptation. That suggests that it was actually taken from a Howard story, when they made up their own story using minimal Howard references. I suppose they don't have to be true, but when you're trading on the man's reputation to boost the box office returns, some effort would be nice.

[Rob Pegler]

Though I thought it was a little much when they saved the girls from sexual slavery and then celebrated with a drunken orgy

Hey, if I've just rescued a topless Alina Puscau from slavery and she's willing to come back to my seedy pirate port for a drunken orgy, who am I to argue? I'll give her boat fare home in the morning. Might even buy her a shirt.

She kind of alternated, I thought. Smart and brave sometimes and swooning half-wit, depending on what the scene called for. Momoa's Conan was a petulant thug, with none of the "natural chivalry" of the text stories.

I don't think she ever strayed into halfwit territory, although they did have a little too much fun with Conan tying her up and gagging her when she got too lippy, not to mention all those "clumsy girl with sword bumbles her way through fight" moments. And of course they completely derailed the plot for ten minutes to shoehorn in the unnecessary sex scene. As for Momoa, I found him a bit less of an arrogant self-serving prick (with a rough code of honour) than Howard's Conan was capable of being, but since that's one of the things I like about Howard's Conan...

[Thom Brannan]

 . . . i would go as far as to say that more people still know about Arnie's Conan than Robert E. Howard's. with that in mind, i don't think it's fair to say the filmmakers were trading on Howard's reputation to bring movie-goers in. this is more of the 80's nostalgia trend, like the Knight Rider continuation, or the The A-Team movie.

[Rob Pegler]

I could also add that if every retelling of a story stayed true to its source material then there'd only be three stories in the world and all of them would be about how Uggo killed the antelope, but I wouldn't want to sound like a smartarse.

[Lord Anubis]

What's Your Number - A clumsy rom-com where Anna Farris decides she's had one too many partners and that the next guy she sleeps with--#20--will be her husband.  Then she gets drunk and sleeps with her ex-boss.  Some quick rationalization, though, makes her realize she can still stay at twenty lovers if she reconnects with one of her exes and marries him.  Hilarity ensues.  Hypothetically.

Honestly, if you ever wanted a great example of how not to tell a story on film, this is it.  Anna and Chris Evans (the painfully obvious Mr. Right who lives across the hall) work well together, but the scattered good moments don't make up for the multitude of bad ones.  Watching it back to back with the extended cut just makes it clear how inept all the filmmakers were.   

[Rob Pegler]

Anna Farris decides she's had one too many partners and that the next guy she sleeps with--#20--will be her husband.

A few years back, a survey run by Durex revealed that New Zealand had the most promiscuous female population on earth - the average number of sexual partners for women in the 17-24 age bracket was 20-21 (three times the global average).

You've got the moon landing, we've got a nation of world champion slappers. It all balances out.

[Lord Anubis]

...note to self... do fan signings in New Zealand... 

Yeah, her whole fixation on the #20 was kind of odd, and it was one of the many elements that never quite worked.  The whole film was frustrating that way.  There was a ton of stuff that would've worked if it was just polished a little more, but instead of five or six elements that work they decided to go with nine or ten that almost worked.   

[zombiemutts]

The Dead Outside

Pretty good story although it got confusing a few times and the sound was odd. It had this weird background music that drowned out the talking.

And the lead actor had the same damn expression on his face nearly every scene.

[Rob Pegler]

...note to self... do fan signings in New Zealand...  

You can buy a t-shirt that says "I went to New Zealand and all I got was was this lousy gonorrhea."

[Lord Anubis]

Drive - Kind of odd but enjoyable.  It's as if someone decided to do The Transporter as a character-heavy art film.  I liked it a lot, but I'm not entirely sure it worked.

[Wardog]

I watched on the plane back from Korea - still not sure what to think about it.

[Thom Brannan]

The Spy Who Loved Me

besides the title, nothing to do with the novel of the same name. which is a little upsetting, because i powered through the book before watching to movie. i should have known.

i'm unsure how much liked this one. i did like the globe-trotting bits, that was nice and what i like to see in a spy/adventure movie. the plot was linear enough, and at no point did i roll my eyes during the submarine scenes. i question the jamming gear (or whatever it was that supposedly killed power to the boats) but whatever. i know exactly how thick those hulls are. heh.

i liked that Agent XXX (snerk) was ready to blow Bond away, but disliked what happened instead.

all in all, an okay ride. let's see what the next one does.

[DreamingNeonBlack]

The woman in black. Very good movie but I thought the ending was a bit weak ( hint, think silent hill ). It wasn't a total CGI crap fest and seemed to rely on tension more than the usual modern horror generic stuff.