You know that movie that you see every time you go to the video store, but you just never grab it? That one movie cover that always catches your eye and you know you want to see it, but can never bring yourself to risk the money on it possibly being terrible? For me that movie was They Live. I can remember in high school (10 years ago) when there was nothing else going on we would just go to Blockbuster, spin around in the horror section and which ever movie we landed on was the movie we rented… Yeah, we rented some terrible movies, but despite how terrible they are, there are a couple I’ll never forget, like The Ice Cream Man with Clint Howard, what a terrible, terrible movie.

They Live had that movie cover that was just so intriguing that you knew you wanted to check it out because who wouldn’t love to walk around wearing some bad ass sunglasses looking at aliens all day. And actually I had no clue they were aliens until I actually sat down and watched the movie this weekend. I had always assumed they were zombies or skeletons or something closer to the horror genre not the sci-fi genre. But they were indeed aliens and the only person that can save the planet is Rowdy Roddy Piper whom you may remember from his skills in the ring with the WWF (now WWE).

Now I’m not writing this post to talk about the plot or it’s commentary on society or any of that crap, I’m writing this post to bring to light two of the greatest scenes in cinema history. The first, which you can see above, contains possibly the greatest ad-lib by an actor, ever. After beating up 2 cops, who were actually aliens, and stealing their guns, Rowdy Roddy Piper backs himself into a building thinking he’s going to be safe, only when he turns around he realizes he is in a bank holding a shotgun. As he scans the room he realizes that some of the people there are aliens and he decides to do something about it and that is when the famous line is uttered, “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum”. After he says his line he just starts blasting away at aliens in the bank spraying blood everywhere. It really is an amazing scene, and the way he delivers that line is so powerful and emotional… riiiiiight, that line is none of those things, but it is pure awesomeness. And apparently the line was completely ad-libbed by Rowdy Roddy Piper and it was a line he had written down for use in interviews during his stint at the WWF. Check after the jump for a WWF inspired fight scene that could possibly be one of the greatest fight scene ever.

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Am I the only one that isn’t looking forward to James Cameron’s “Avatar”? The only thing I got out of the trailer was the gross overuse of CGI, and poor CGI at that. I don’t know if I’m missing the point of the movie or if there is some back story or something I’m just not getting, but I am not impressed at all. Don’t get me wrong James Cameron is an incredibly talented writer/director. Terminator, The Abyss, Titanic, Aliens, all incredible movies, but Avatar just doesn’t look like a good movie to me.

It’s no secret that Cameron hasn’t directed a big budget Hollywood movie since Titanic in 1997 and everyone has been hailing Avatar as his triumphant return to the big screen, but I just have this feeling that the movie isn’t going to live up to people’s expectations, whether it’s box office or the movie itself. I think I have the story right, but if there’s something I missed from the trailer please let me know. So a paralyzed man goes to some planet that is inhabited by some type of blue humanoid creatures and in order to do something or save someone his consciousness must be implanted into the body of one of these creatures or a hybrid of a human and one of these creatures so that he can blend in and interact with the creatures. Did I get that pretty much right?

In theory it sounds decent and fairly original, but the execution (based on the trailer) looks terrible. If I didn’t know better I would have thought that it was a CG movie in the veins of Final Fantasy Advent Children or something similar where everyone is CG, but the humans look extremely real and detailed. However, that’s not what this is. It’s a live motion movie that uses CG to do the creature effects and all of that stuff, very similar to all movies these days, but I thought it looked absolutely terrible. The CG creatures looked totally out of place and totally fake. Yeah yeah, I know the creatures are obviously fake and they need to use computers in order to do what they want to do, but I’ve seen much better effects in movies that came out 10 years ago. Maybe I’ll have to take another look at it, but I don’t see why there is so much hype surrounding this movie other than the fact that James Cameron hasn’t made a movie in over 10 years.

I think Hollywood is going to be disappointed with the box office performance of this one. Maybe if it was released only a few years after Titanic or even before Titanic and people still had James Cameron’s name on their minds it would do better, but movie viewers these days (mostly kids/teenagers) aren’t going to really know James Cameron by name or his past accomplishments so that’s not going to be a huge draw. And the trailer itself didn’t really do anything to spark interest in me, it actually deterred me from checking this out in the theater due to the overuse of CG in the character design and the overall look and feel is just too computer generated to me. Film makers need to realize that CG should not be used in place of practical effects, but more of a tool to enhance those effects. I don’t think the technology is quite there yet where you can realistically create characters like this based solely on CG. There are always those moments when you can tell that something was created in a computer whether it’s due to inaccurate lighting or just overall poor model design/lack of detail. Look at Guillermo Del Toro and the amazing creatures he’s created in the past couple years in movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and HellBoy. Sure some of them are CG, but most of them are practical costumes and physical effects that are enhanced with the use of CG and they look amazing.

I honestly hope I’m wrong about Avatar and it comes out and completely blows my mind, but just based on the trailer I’m not excited about this one at all. And I know I’ll probably catch a lot of shit about this one because the internet crowd seems to be in love with this movie, but I just don’t get it. Like I said, maybe I’m just missing something and I’ll be completely blown away when it comes out, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Are you guys really excited about this? What were your impressions of the trailer?

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