“The Price of Pleasure” essentially has its intent kept under its belt from minute one. It’s an attempt to completely demonize and stigmatize pornography and the porn industry by only exploring the more exploitative aspects and demonstrating the ill effects of such a craze in America where money is made off of sex. The imagery is striking and disturbing, the editing is tricky, and the movie essentially seeks to turn the porn star in to something of a low life, never really remarking on how most of the pornography stars are voluntarily exploiting themselves and making a living out of something they don’t normally perform in life. Every business is exploitative, every business suffers casualties, and garners individuals who have been affected by it for better or for worse.
The Social Network (2010)
As long as you don’t buy in to everything “The Social Network” tells you, David Fincher’s 2010 film is actually a compelling and engrossing exploration of the evolution of socializing through computers and how it’s shaped and defined our new generation turning us in to passive aggressive bullies and thugs who seek one another out through text and HTML code. David Fincher’s film is not perfect. It’s sexist, sensationalist, and turns an internet revolution in to a mere game of revenge from a lovelorn geek. But for its faults, “The Social Network” is a truly gripping and entertaining courtroom drama about the construction of Facebook, and how it managed to affect every single person who ever came in to contact with Mark Zuckerberg. He’s depicted as a narcissistic social outcast who brought down the walls of class, superficiality and exclusivity by allowing people the advent of elitism by virtue of distance that could allow anyone from the gorgeous woman to the awkward nerd to become the kings of their own personal domains.
Skyline (2010)
I’m still trying to wrap my head around why the Strause brothers included a very superfluous prologue of Balfour’s character being sucked in by the bright lights of the alien ships and then suddenly zooming back to him and his girlfriend in a plane with the card reading “15 Hours Earlier…” Why is that opening scene important to know? What relevance did that have to anything? Did they feel the movie was so mind-numblingly stupid they’d have to lure us in from second one? “Skyline” (a movie Roland Emmerich would groan at) is the “Dragon Wars” of 2010, a movie with a great concept that fails on every conceivable level of entertainment, competence, and creativity imaginable. This is a movie–much like “Dragon Wars”–that should rightfully have been relegated to cable television but somehow warranted a theatrical release all for a PG-13 B grade science fiction movie about aliens consuming Earth and Eric Balfour… well you’ll see.
Avalon High (2010)
So why am I reviewing a movie adapted from a teen book I’ve never read in to a film on a channel meant for preteens starring a bunch of actors I’ve never heard of before? Well, because admittedly, “Avalon High” really peaked my interest while changing the channel (and uh… staying on… “Wizards of Waverly Place for a half hour, don’t judge me) and I really had to see what kind of movie “Avalon High” was. As a kid in middle school I was absolutely enamored with the legend of King Arthur and always found the myths and folklore to be absolutely amazing. From the lady in the lake, Excalibur, Merlin, the round table, Mordrid. Camelot, the love triangle of Arthur, his best friend Lancelot, and Guinevere, it’s all rather entertaining and compelling to research, and watching “Avalon High” I realized if I was thirteen this movie would have been watched by me thirty times a day.
Day & Night (2010)
One of the elements of animation that Pixar has always excelled at that will garner them a bonafide place in history books and text books about storytelling and animation (whether you’re sick of seeing them on TV and awards shows or not) is the fact that the animators and writers in the studio are able to understand that animation is just as much a narrative experience as it is about sight and sound. As well you can also surround an animated film around sight and sound and little dialogue without overloading us with explosions and colors.
Assassin's Creed: Ascendance (2010)
As I suspected going in to this originally, “Ascendance” is really just something of a sample of the upcoming game to whet the appetite’s of fans and isn’t really about telling a story as it is setting up the potential for the main arc of the new “Assassin’s Creed” game. There is a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of storytelling and dialogue that’s meant to reflect on events in the game, teases to events about to occur, and even a cameo by a major influential historical figure in the final scene. Admittedly I’ve never played the game nor am I familiar with much the particulars so “Acsendance” is a short film that will be polarizing to just about anyone who hasn’t played the actual game and are unaware of the sequel and its specifics.
Our 10 Favorite Movie Space Ships
Spaceships are probably the nerdiest aspect of any fan boy’s repertoire and knowledge. I’m not one of those nerds who take pride in owning Millennium Falcon blueprints because unless I can board it, what’s the point of owning it? Even with Harrison Ford, George Lucas, and Chewbacca’s signatures, owning a blueprint of a fictitious ship is just above and beyond nerdy and pointless. But in honor of the slew of upcoming science fiction films storming theaters like “Skyline,” and “Battle: Los Angeles,” and the foreign import “Monsters,” and “Super 8,” (and whatever crap Eli Roth is planning with his alien movie) extra-terrestrials and spaceships are slowly becoming all the rage.
So we thought we’d cash in our final chances with a living breathing woman and list our ten favorite movie spaceships in order. If we’re never going to touch breasts again, we might as well be anal about it, right? Spaceships can be just as much a character as their alien pilots, and ninety percent of the time they’re even more complex characters than the denizens within them. Sometimes they’re beacons, sometimes ratty old rust buckets, and other times they can signal ultimate annihilation for a populace consisting of forty million city goers.