It was Pitch Black on BluRay. We passed up Avatar. I'm still hardly interested in that for some reason. PB looked nice and I hadn't seen this movie from 2000 in a while. I bet the last time was probably about when the 2004 sequel showed up on dvd. So much of the film's detail has fallen out of my head, it was almost new. Vin Diesel is a nasty criminal guy locked up in a spaceship that runs into some problems when space debris starts punching through it's hull. It gets worse when the bits punch through the captain. The ship spins out of control, enters the atmosphere of a handy planet and skids to a stop in pieces. A double handful are left, but they start getting picked off a bit at a 
time. Vin escapes and is chased and occasionally captured by Cole Hauser. They fight a lot. When he's not chained to something heavier than he is, Vin drifts in and out of the scenes, rarely saying anything, often making the survivors uncomfortable. There's a survey camp near where the ship crashes but everyone is long dead. There's water and power and a small abondoned space ship. Lucky! Maybe that space ship could get them off the planet. It just needs some heavy fuel cells and it might go. On top of all that hassle the group finds out that underground dwelling people eaters are waiting for night to come calling. The critters not only fear the light, it's very touch burns them. So, it would normally be lucky to have three suns surrounding a planet, especially when there are chompy tooth filled night loving monsters involved, but there's always a catch, isn't there. A ringed planet creates an eclipse and it gets dark. Vin has had an eye augment and he can see in 
the dark. That's handy. There's almost as much conflict between the survivors and Vin as there is with the monsters. It's a pretty dark movie where children die, their bodies consumed to the bone, thrown down in a fleeting glimpse before we rush on. It's not an overly gorey movie but it can be tense. It's not a planet to survive easily on but they fight on as much as they can. Most of them don't get to ride in the little spaceship. According to the Wikipedia it had a budget of 23 million and more than doubled that in the box 
office. It got a nice bit of buzz and people seem to mostly dig the movie. It was written and directed by David Twohy who seems to be a writer mostly. He wrote and directed the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick and didn't make another movie for 5 years. I'll want to watch the sequel again soon, maybe sunday morning. The Bluray dvd was the Unrated Director's Cut and it was 3 minutes longer than the 109 minute length of the original. I couldn't tell you what was different. There's probably an app for that. All and all a fun movie, lots of action and good stunts. The characters are a mixed bag in their personalities and survival traits. I have a copy of the regular edition and will probably stick with that. I still haven't made the leap to BluRay.
Transylmania was another movie Joe found on NetFlix. It's a vampire college comedy with a pretty low brow sense of humor. Kind of like the Scary Movie series but not as good. I pretty much like that series as uneven as they are. They sure aren't the most sophisticated comedies but they're entertaining enough and there is that cute Anna Farris. In Transylmania some students, including some cute girls, go to Romania for some foreign studies. There the usual lot of different types: a whimp and his hot girlfriend, a couple of stoners, a stupid guy, a guy who made out with a man while drunk, blonde twin gals that come in naughty and nice flavors, an evil vampire and his three hot vampire chicks, a dwarf who's the college dean and his daughter who's a hunchback. Sadly I just read 
that David Steinberg, who played the dean passed away a couple of months ago. The dean's plan is to harvest parts from the exchange students to give his hunchback daughter a new body. She's got a grotesque hump on her back but a nice face. You can see her in the trailer in the link above. One of the visiting students has been having an online affair with her but doesn't know she's a hunchback until they meet. He's bummed and in a bit of tired comic business the spitting image of the 
evil vampire. One of the twins gets her head lopped off but it's still alive down in the secret lab under the college. There's lots of sight gags and goofy jokes. I laughed a few times. The girls are cute and there's a bit of nudity when the evil vampire's hot chicks 
doff their tops for a bit of naughty dancing. We never get to the vampire orgy but we get two kinds of balls. Don't worry they aren't attached to any of the guys. It's a local delicacy, goat testicles cooked inside sheep balls. The Asian stoner guy likes them but I wouldn't eat 'em. The movie was directed by David and Scott Hillenbrand and it's a sequel to the second of the National Lampoon Dorm Daze films. I haven't seen those. According to the Wikipedia the film was a major bomb and had one of the worst openings in a 1000 theaters ever. It's a made to dvd movie not a theater movie that a guy could give a miss to but it was a bit of a laugh after the grim Pitch Black and that was just the right thing at the right time.
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