Vincenzo Natali’s science fiction Frankenstein tale of 2010 may and will eventually be misunderstood by a greater portion of the movie audiences expecting a simple monster flick about an experiment gone awry. While in essence it is just that, “Splice” is much more an on the nose satire of parenting and the intervening of the drug industry raising children, and the dynamic between father and daughter and mother and daughter. Ultimately while sometimes absurd and just filled with dark twisted humor, “Splice” offers the question if children are born and develop in to chaotic monsters, or if their parents and their own insecurities and misery eventually turn them in to such beings. What starts out as two scientists forming a bond with their own special creation turns in to a battle between two feminine species for the love of a man who begins to form unusual and abstract feelings for the both of them.
Our Top Ten Favorite Movie Toys
Toys can mean a lot of things to popular culture and fiction. They can be props, they can be used to sell things, they can entertain, they can impress, they can exploit, and they can become symbols for greater things. The sled in “Citizen Kane” was a toy but a huge symbol for something key to the development of its main character, in “Winnie the Pooh” they were characters facing the blossoming adolescence of their keeper Christopher Robbins, in “Inherit the Wind” Henry Drummond likened religion to a toy rocking horse with a gold coating and a rotten center, in “Poltergeist” a clown doll became an instrument for evil, in “Wall-E” our robotic hero collected toys and mementos that reflected on a world he was never a part of but wishes he would have been, and even in cult classics like “Monster Squad” protagonist Phoebe’s teddy bear became a last gift to her friend Frankenstein as he was doomed to a life in Limbo and torment.
Toys can do so much for the world, and they’ve become a link for our nostalgia and our childhood reminding us a childhood we wish we had and a childhood that we had that we enjoyed until we had to grow up and move on to bigger more mature things and responsibilities. In honor of “Toy Story 3,” we count down the “Our Favorite Movie Toys” from all of cinema and describe why we love these fragments of film that made us laugh out loud, cry our eyes out, and shiver in fright.
What are some of your favorite Movie Toys? Let us know in the comments!
Shock Invasion (2010)
Another leg in Frank Sudol’s “Budget Gore Series” of animated genre entries, and the final cut out style animated movie from BlackArro, “Shock Invasion” is pure Frank Sudol available solely for the open minded genre buff where in Sudol channels Bakshi in a gore soaked science fiction tale that is about as creative and surreal as Sudol can be. Going from zombies, to demons, now on to merciless aliens, Sudol enlists his mini-budget and vocal talents to animate a sick little gem that chronicles the fight for survival of a group of rag tag denizens of a futuristic city. Ral Foster awakens one day to discover his entire city has been infested by aliens who have taken over the living and can inhabit their shells.
Hack/Slash My First Maniac #1 of 4
This is the story of Cassandra Hack, a young nerdy woman whose own insults and tormented high school life led her tortured obese mother to seek revenge on all of the young girls who made Cassandra’s life difficult and painful. Cassandra lived to see her mother become a classic slasher, a woman called the lunch lady who hung and mutilated and devoured these girls and it was up to Cassie to bring her down once and for all.
Now that Tim Seely and “Hack/Slash” have moved from Devil’s Due to the higher profile Image comics to stand alongside the greats like The Walking Dead and Invincible, Seely and co. are working backward now to tell the story of Cassie Hack and how she became Cassie Hack and learned to hunt down the undead killers known as “Slashers.”
Serenity: Float Out
I would have killed to be in the audience of hardcore Browncoats as Wash led the Serenity through a swarm of deadly Reavers and land the ship within an inch of his life only to be impaled and die before our very eyes. I can only imagine the gasps and cries among the women as their favorite character died in a flash. Admittedly the “Firefly/Serenity” graphic novels and one-shots have been mixed. They range from mediocre to just plain abysmal, and leave it to nerd extraordinaire Patton Oswalt to take the reigns of the Whedon Universe and bring it down to its emotional core.
Plague Town (2008)
Adding to the continued xenophobia themed horror sub-genre, “Plague Town” is a movie that acts as a form of torture on its movie viewing audience implementing some of the most absolutely irritating and obnoxious characters I’ve ever seen put to a horror film, ever. Director Gregory tries to bring us in at eye view on a family of travelers who are griping and bitching at one another with some issues that have yet to be resolved. But that attempt to add these warring characters to the fold of horrific freaks on the Irish countryside works against him as there isn’t a single sympathetic character in the lot.
Mortal Kombat: Rebirth (2010)
At the end of this, I don’t know if I’ll be writing a review for a fan film, a review for a promotional reel for a director shopping around to sell this new vision or just a glorified game promo for an up and coming new game of the “Mortal Kombat” universe, but as someone who played this game religiously, I had to offer up my thoughts. I can only imagine someone sat down in front of a monitor, was watching “The Dark Knight” and said: “We have to take this approach.” And what we inevitably have is a grim and grotesque take on the Mortal Kombat universe.