We watched the Blu-Ray of This Is The End first. It was pretty funny. The movie is written and directed by Seth Rogan and his childhood friend and writing partner Evan Goldberg. Rogan joins his fellow actors on screen as themselves. Jay Baruchel is in town visiting Seth. They are pals in real life too. Seth wants to go to a party at Franco's new house but Jay isn't as keen. He'd rather stay at Seth's and smoke all the weed Seth bought. He doesn't know most of the people and he hates Jonah Hill. At the party the two mingle with all the comedians and actors until Jay wants to get some smokes. They're down the street at a convenience store when the Apocalypse comes to call. People are ruptured in beams of blue light and there's mass hysteria and chaotic behaviour. When they return to the party no one knows what's going on. No calls to heaven there. The end times comes crashing in and a huge sinkhole opens up in the front yeard. Many of the guests get sucked down into the fiery void. Yeow, huh! The rest of the movie has the left over guys fight to stay alive as demons and cannibals roam the earth. Things don't go to well and only some of the guys get through the movie.
The movie is well enough shot though some of the CGI is a bit murky. Most of the movie is shot in the Franco house. It had a smallish budget, 32 million, and did well at the theatres, with a 122 million box office. It gets nice reviews and good scores on the media sites. I'm in total agreement with that. It made us all laugh and I would want to watch it again.
Message from Space has been released in the US by Shout Factory and it's the first release of the movie on dvd. You can watch the whole movie on YouTube above. This 1978 Japanese movie, with a $6,000,000 budget, was the most expensive movie made in Japan at the time. It's not a great movie but it's fairly entertaining. There are some slow parts and the acting is terrible at times. That goes well with the goofy script. As a story it's all over the place. People and their actions often make no sense but there you go. It's all helped to get the movie some of that cult status stank on it. It one that people like to watch because it's bad. I just like to watch movies for the stories and this is a pretty popular one. The simple people of Jillucia are being attacked by the war mongering Gavanas Empire. The Jillucians send 8 magical glowing walnuts Liabe Seeds to collect some heroes to save their world. They get a couple of annoying spaceship pilots, a over-excited and loud young rich girl, a cast off Gavanas warrior (Sonny Chiba), and Vic Morrow and his second best robot. It takes a while to get them together and they don't exactly save the planet. The effects are typical of the time in Japan. Some are ok and some not so much. The characters are all exaggerated like they belong in one of those Japanese action shows, like Kamen Rider, which the Toei Company also produced. The Gavanas warriors all wear helmuts with horns on them. Did they think they're Wagnerian vikings? I don't know. What I do know is that it's heavily influenced by Star Wars. There is music that is very similar and there are space ships racing through a trench to blow up the huge enemy ship. It's no where near as good as SW but it has it's own style and approach to the story. It's so rooted in the Japanese culture and mythology that I'm sure we are missing something. Certainly there isn't the need to obey strict rules in story telling or staying in one certain genre. None of us felt we had wasted our 105 minutes but you'd have to be the judge of that for yourself.
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