Movie Details
| Title: | District 13 | |
| Director: | Pierre Morel | |
| Year: | 2004 | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.11.05 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Taken
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.11.05 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: Butt-Numb-A-Thon 7 Banlieue 13 (District B13) Fake: Escape from New York I guess Luc Besson is never going to direct anything again ever. I get the feeling that now he wakes up some days with a half-remembered idea he had in some dream and hires people to make movies out of them. Hey! what if Jet Li was a dog? Hey! What if a taxi had super powers? Hey! what about a movie about a guy who drives a car? He sure does attach his name to a lot of successful stuff though. OK, I remember there was a Levi's commercial a while back with a group of guys who didn't believe in the concept of stairs or elevators so they would scale down buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop. There was also like, a french 60 minutes-esque segment that found its way onto the Internet with this same group of guys that could fall incredible distances and roll out of them without being hurt. I think that one of those guys is the star of this movie because the chase segment in the first 15 minutes of District 13 is exactly like that Levi's commercial. This dude's jumping through windows, scaling down balconies, falling like 20 feet at a time, doing all this crazy stuff, except since it's a movie there's guys trying to chase him and falling and breaking bones and stuff. It's incredibly awesome to watch and the audience immediately started in with the Oooh!s and Ow!s. The whole first bit is amazingly cool. This spider-man dude kicks all sorts of ass. Even when he's in a jail cell he still kicks ass. Then it cuts to this other dude who is a cop but can also fight and the movie slows down as it goes on. I think that's inevitable for any movie with that strong of an opening. It does get a bit absurd though, with this strung out girl apparently kicking her heroin habit in 20 minutes and some The Rock-esque suspense to get to some rocket/bomb before it takes off or whatever. The plot is pretty inane, almost to the point where watching the movie without reading the subtitles would be better, but man those first fifteen minutes. You just can't mess with those first fifiteen minutes. We had another break after that where I got to hear about kier-la's Luciano Rossi (the guy she got up and gushed about before Five For Hell on QT6's Itallian WWII Epic Night) Tiger Beat-esque fanzine, where she basically talks about how cute he is and in which movies he has the best haircut and costume and stuff like that. I personally thought it was awesome to A) hear that she was attracted to men, B) note a lack of ring on her left forefinger, and C) that she thought that I sent her a photo of him even though it was Blake that actually did it. So it was a good conversation all in all, even though it ran past the end of the break a bit. That's OK though, I will always miss a Harry introduction for a bit more time with the lovely Kier-la. When I got back inside, Drew AKA Moriarty and his writing partner Scott Swan AKA Obiswan were standing next to the big guy talking about their Masters of Horror Episode. I just heard the end but they basically said that they've gotten to see it a few times now and wanted to watch it with us so they hope we like it. The audience was not stingy with cheers and applause all throughout BNAT. It ws very clear that everyone was there to have a good time and really celebrate film and/or Harry's birthday in a good way. The lights went down once again and light danced on the screen. A wonderful little teaser for an AICN-produced movie called 2gether 4ever where a highschool girl wearing a too-short skirt draws a heart on somebody's locker in blood. And then, Cigarette Burns Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns Fake: Revenge of the Colossal Beasts Cigarette Burns was like The Ninth Gate but better. While I am just as turned on by a search for a notoriously eveil film as I am by a search for a notoriously evil book, Cigarette Burns does not have things like guardian angels and climactic satanic rituals and Udo Kier makes a much better rich eccentric than Frank Langella. I'd count this as another good episode of the series (that makes three, with Sick Girl and Deer Woman) and I really only have one gripe about it. The notoriously evil film in question is titled Le Fin Absolute du Monde. They must say that damn title 50 times in 50 minutes. I asked Drew about this later and he said they got screwed by legal. It was originally Le Fin du Monde which rolls off the tongue much faster and smoother but the legal department made them change it. On one hand I kind of understand but on the other... like a pronoun here or there is too hard to throw in? That aside though, this had two or three really great gore moments which made up for hearing Norman Reedus say the name of the movie over and freakin over. Right after Cigarette Burns ended, Harry called for Eli Roth to come on down. Unfortunately, Barbara long-european-last-name didn't come down with him so I didn't get any more free ass-gazing in while Eli talked a bit. Earlier in the night, he had come down to say hello to Harry, snuck his hand down the neck of his shirt, and left some Eli Roth chest hair on his table. Even more earlier, we in the standby line marvelled at the constant stream of absolutely gorgeous women seen at Eli's side. This dude is obviously taking full advantage of being a movie director, massive amounts of body hair or no. It took a bit of stammering before he and Harry gave us what the next movie would be: not Hostel but a british spelunking thriller called The Descent. Eli then introduced a clip from Hostel that he calls the "eyegasm" scene to sate those of us who didn't make it out to Fantastic Fest a few months ago to see an early cut of the entire movie. The scene is a complete tease, cutting out just before the gasm moment that makes it all worth it. Afterward Eli yelled out "If I had seen that before we showed it, I would've brought something better. Sorry!" but I don't think the crowd minded. |
