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defrogI watch movies. And you know what that means.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
The title says it all, and having enjoyed the book, I was looking forward to this, not least because of Timur Bekmambetov helming the director’s chair. I tend to enjoy his films, no matter how much he steals from the Wachowski Brothers.
However.
The story is as straightforward as the book – young Abe Lincoln leads a secret life as a vampire killer, and as he learns of the real reason for slavery in the South (easy vampire food!), he dedicates his political career to putting an end to it.
It’s interesting that some people I know hated the movie just because they found whole idea both offensive and disrespectful to Lincoln. Personally I think if that’s yr beef with the film, yr taking it too seriously.
On the other hand, the same could be said for Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the screenplay from his own book, which was written as a straight-faced secret diary and a pretty grim read, given Lincoln’s tragic life. That’s hard to translate to film, especially when most moviegoers offered a chance to see Abe Lincoln kill vampires would expect something that’s more in the Naked Gun/Scary Movie genre, or at least Evil Dead 2.
Despite Bekmambetov’s ability to deliver some ridiculously cheesy action scenes (although let’s admit the horse stampede scene is too OTT even by Bekbanmetov standards), AL:VH is too serious to work as a B-movie mashup. At the same time, it falls short as an alt.history bio, not least because it spends too little time developing and explaining Lincoln’s real-life political ambitions.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
The latest installment in the Ice Age franchise featuring Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger and Scrat the prehistoric squirrel doing pretty much everything they did in the first three films. Only with pirates.
No, really.
Okay, that’s a little snarky. And I’ll admit I spent a quite a bit of time laughing. But basically it is a series of good slapstick scenes interspersed between a predictable and tedious story about how a teenage mammoth learns that family and friends are important than acting cool to impress guys (which also means Ray Romano is really in his element here – they could have called this one Ice Age: Everyone Loves Manny).
As a kids film, it’s okay, but for grown-ups there’s not much to like that they didn’t already see in the first film.
Hell freezes over,
This is dF
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
The title says it all, and having enjoyed the book, I was looking forward to this, not least because of Timur Bekmambetov helming the director’s chair. I tend to enjoy his films, no matter how much he steals from the Wachowski Brothers.
However.
The story is as straightforward as the book – young Abe Lincoln leads a secret life as a vampire killer, and as he learns of the real reason for slavery in the South (easy vampire food!), he dedicates his political career to putting an end to it.
It’s interesting that some people I know hated the movie just because they found whole idea both offensive and disrespectful to Lincoln. Personally I think if that’s yr beef with the film, yr taking it too seriously.
On the other hand, the same could be said for Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the screenplay from his own book, which was written as a straight-faced secret diary and a pretty grim read, given Lincoln’s tragic life. That’s hard to translate to film, especially when most moviegoers offered a chance to see Abe Lincoln kill vampires would expect something that’s more in the Naked Gun/Scary Movie genre, or at least Evil Dead 2.
Despite Bekmambetov’s ability to deliver some ridiculously cheesy action scenes (although let’s admit the horse stampede scene is too OTT even by Bekbanmetov standards), AL:VH is too serious to work as a B-movie mashup. At the same time, it falls short as an alt.history bio, not least because it spends too little time developing and explaining Lincoln’s real-life political ambitions.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift
The latest installment in the Ice Age franchise featuring Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth, Diego the saber-toothed tiger and Scrat the prehistoric squirrel doing pretty much everything they did in the first three films. Only with pirates.
No, really.
Okay, that’s a little snarky. And I’ll admit I spent a quite a bit of time laughing. But basically it is a series of good slapstick scenes interspersed between a predictable and tedious story about how a teenage mammoth learns that family and friends are important than acting cool to impress guys (which also means Ray Romano is really in his element here – they could have called this one Ice Age: Everyone Loves Manny).
As a kids film, it’s okay, but for grown-ups there’s not much to like that they didn’t already see in the first film.
Hell freezes over,
This is dF
