I am the father of a nine year old boy. Therefore I see a lot of bad movies marketed to children and made by people who clearly don't remember what kids are actually like. More to the point, I try to deprogram my son from WANTING to see bad movies marketed to children and made by people who clearly don't remember what kids are actually like despite the best efforts of companies spending millions of dollars convincing him that these movies are the greatest things ever. I won on The Last Airbender front. On others I have not been so lucky.
And while big bags of money are thrown into the marketing furnace supporting inferior product every now and then a film that's actually good appears and disappears without much notice. Hello, Under the Mountain.
From director Jonathan King of Black Sheep fame - the zombie sheep one, not the Chris Farley one - this one won a lot of love on the festival circuit a little while back for good reason. It's good. It's got a good story, a little bit of peril, some memorable villains brought to life by the effects whizzes at WETA and doesn't talk down to its audience. Therefore it is being dropped on DVD with no fanfare whatsoever. Remedy this by going and checking it out when the US DVD releases on Friday. Don't let the cover art fool you. Cover = bad, movie = good.
And while big bags of money are thrown into the marketing furnace supporting inferior product every now and then a film that's actually good appears and disappears without much notice. Hello, Under the Mountain.
From director Jonathan King of Black Sheep fame - the zombie sheep one, not the Chris Farley one - this one won a lot of love on the festival circuit a little while back for good reason. It's good. It's got a good story, a little bit of peril, some memorable villains brought to life by the effects whizzes at WETA and doesn't talk down to its audience. Therefore it is being dropped on DVD with no fanfare whatsoever. Remedy this by going and checking it out when the US DVD releases on Friday. Don't let the cover art fool you. Cover = bad, movie = good.
Good, fun film. But more than that I love that you have to distinguish between the BLACK SHEEPs... :-)
A bit of warning though, I picked up this DVD at a local retailer that broke street date, and once again lionsgate has decided to crop a film to 16:9 from it's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The picture quality suffers from blowing up the image and artless framing. Anywhere else we can pick up an other region copy in it's OAR?
Hmm, may have spoken too soon. Despite the imdb listing the film at 2.35:1. All clips and trailers I could find online are clearly 1.85:1. I guess only Todd can confirm what the proper OAR would be since he saw it in a theater.
Bad cover = good movie? interesting theory. I dont have kids but managed to catch City of Ember on a saturday kids showing amongst a cinema full of surprisingly quiet kids and their folks. brilliant film and also as i remember didnt get much write up except the usual 'bill murray is divine flavour of the millenium' type critique. Anyway great overlooked spiritual message for these dark times. Good job on preventing your 9yr old from seeing the Airbender dross. Maybe let him watch the cartoon series instead, ive heard theyre a lot better