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Buy, Rent, Stream, or Skip: "Clash of the Titans" and "Precious"
PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE
Is there anyone who hasn’t already joked about this film yet? It’s ironic the amount of humor that has circulated around it because it is so very good and so very dark. But come on, that unwieldy title? Don’t you just want to smack someone for titling it that? But the rest of the mirth, I believe, comes from not being able to absorb, not even ALLOWING yourself to absorb, how horrible some of the stuff that Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) has to go through. It's a defense mechanism we've got kicking into gear because it's impossible to see what Precious goes through and be unaffected.
Even with the repeated abuse and impregnations she’s suffered at the sweaty hands of her own father, it’s her Mom (Mo’Nique) who takes the cake (and the pie, and the ham, and the...see, now I’m doing it!) She’s the latest addition to the long list of classic movie monsters right up there next to Frankenstein and the Wolfman. Truly horrible in every sense, Monster Mom sexually abuses Precious herself, beats her, throws her babies around...she’s on the verge of being implausibly evil but she hangs on the lip of that cliff and stays all too disturbingly convincing. It’s a jaw-dropping performance by Mo’Nique albeit one that you’ll be questioning why exactly she got the Oscar for it until the ending...whoa, the ending.
Even though “Precious” is so intensely dark, it’s watching the attitude of Precious herself change as the first rays of sunlight enter the prison of her life that gives the film a theme of hope. And thank FSM for that. “Precious: blah blah blah” is a remarkable work and is certainly a BUY.
Click Here to Buy Precious: Based on the Novel
CLASH OF THE TITANS
I’ve been promoting these Warner Brothers Blu-Ray hardback re-releases pretty heavily. And why not? Gorgeous and convenient packaging, full color booklets, beautifully remastered versions of the films....well, up until now for that last part. You’d think with the new “Clash of the Titans” having come out recently, WB would have spent a little more time updating the 1981 film, starring Harry Hamlin (seriously) as Perseus, Laurence Olivier as Zeus and Burgess Meredith as some annoying guy who keeps Perseus from acting like too much of an idiot.
The premise is similar yet different from the ‘meh’ remake, this time with no Hades at all. Instead, we’ve merely got a pissy goddess played by Maggie Smith who calls the giant sea monster Kraken over from an entirely different region's mythology to eat Perseus’s hottie princess girlfriend in 30 days. Zeus apparently has to abide by some set of God rules and can’t just smack Smith in the back of the head and send her to her Goddess room without dinner. He can, however, closely monitor and ease the conflict with an array of deux ex machinas to help Perseus along in his quest to find a way to defeat the giant scaly beast. And believe it or not, I'm not gonna make a dick joke there.
While I’m not one to talk smack about the great (and I mean GREAT) stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, except for his animation work on the Medusa here, this wasn’t one of the high points of his career. “Clash of the Titans” is a relentlessly silly film that nostalgia for our childhoods has apparently elevated onto a pedestal. I'm going to be the one to say that this emperor wears no clothes. It’s got mediocre performances, a mish-mash of myth (say that 20 times fast) story, and it moves from one set piece to the next without much of a compelling story or characterizations. In other words, it’s not all that different from the remake. Still, that nostalgia can go a long way. I actually caught myself smiling at Bubo, the mechanical owl (mysteriously named after the symptoms of the Bubonic Plague), who surely was the Jar Jar Binks of his day. But, whatareyagonnado?
I can’t be too mad at WB for thoroughly screwing up the transfer. It’s like two different people did it, one who took their job seriously and one who merely transferred it from an old beat up videotape. Alternating scenes look HORRIBLE. Like, the worst blu-ray transfer ever. I’m gonna have to be harsh here and say the quality of the upgrade, a minimum of extras and the fact that it really wasn’t all that great a film to begin with (sorry), leads me to give this a more than generous STREAM.
Click Here to Buy Clash of the Titans (Blu-ray Book)
Comment
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Comment by Cyrus on April 22, 2010 at 1:18am
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dvd6441: I'm familiar with the argument you're making as I've heard some sites, some of the ones you're promoting here for example, make it. However, I do not agree. The flaws, which even the most positive of reviews mention are unmissable, are too glaring to not criticize the film harshly for. My opinion, but there it is. They were ugly as hell.
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Comment by DarkProphet94 on April 21, 2010 at 8:23pm -
you know wat's a great thing to do? watch Soul Plane RIGHT BEFORE you watch Precious. when you finish Soul Plane, you'll be thinking, "how in the fuck did they give the Oscar her? i guess they'll give it to anyone with a big name". then, when you watch Precious, it makes the experience of watching Monique so much better cause you realize that she had talent and potential the entire time.
(note: this is in no way, shape or form a recommendation to watch Soul Plane, one of the worst movies ever made. its just to prove a point that even the tiniest speck of shit could turn out to be a diamond all along)
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Comment by Travis Pickle on April 21, 2010 at 8:03pm -
Clash is still pretty good but i have to agree Blueray is pretty pointless, actually detrimental mostly in the compositing shots which are like someone making hand shadows on the wall and expecting you to believe the seagull or horse is real!
I watched it with my kid though and the magic mostly still works but he did ask what is that a few times because the fx were so shit lol
at least it makes sense and the characters you care about unlike the new one!
;)
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Comment by Mr. Bubbles on April 21, 2010 at 7:38pm -
@ Ethan
I agree, to a certain extent. There were points in Precious when I felt that they were going a little overboard and making the film too dark for its own good. Admittedly, one of my movie pet peeves involves heaping more and more abuse on the main character(s) until it feels like sadistic writing rather than legitimate drama. Precious was very close to that threshold, although it did calm down after a while. Fortunately, the performances more than make up for the movie's flaws.
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Comment by Ethan on April 21, 2010 at 7:05pm -
I really didn't like Precious. the very end was good, but sometimes, you don't need a movie and the monster mom would randomly come out of nowhere like a cartoon and swing a frying pan at Precious. And the Oscars used the Precious stealing Chicken scene to show the script. Theirs nothing special there, but I would say rent.
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Comment by JayCas1992 on April 21, 2010 at 5:40pm -
I'll take your word for it. After all, you guys have never steered me wrong before.
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Jennifer: You must have blacked that part out. It's implied.
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Comment by JayCas1992 on April 21, 2010 at 4:11pm
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To quote: "Monster Mom sexually abuses Precious herself, "
How does Precious' mother sexually abuse her?
I've seen the film, but not that part.
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Comment by HANDOVERFISTS aka Willow Raven on April 21, 2010 at 4:02pm -
Holly Harryhausen!! I have as many of his movies as I can lay my hands on,( on plain old DVD)and after hearing the reviews I'm temped to NOT soil the memory with the remake.
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Comment by Heyra3000 on April 21, 2010 at 2:56pm -
I thought that the performances in Precious were really great, although it spirals into a disappointing montage-thon, before pulling itself back together for that great ending.
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