The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
2011
Written by Ol Parker (screenplay) and Deborah Moggach (novel “These Foolish Things”)
Directed by John Madden
In the West, our society doesn’t have the best track record in taking care of the elderly. In fact, it’s pretty awful in America to be old, with our bizarre obsession with the worship of youth. People spend billions trying to look younger, and old people are shuttered away in homes and retirement communities, ignored by their kids. Old people are written off as crabby grumps, except for the occasional “rockin’ grandma” stereotype. Quite frankly, it sucks. So when The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel started appearing on the trailer radar, you can imagine how quickly the youth of today ignored it and went back to Facebook on their smartphones. Which is a shame, because The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a great film. It is uplifting and inspiring, a film that will make you feel good.
Once The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel began, we were in for a treat. A story that deals with the plight of older retirees, for whom the cards didn’t fall just right and through various financial, medical, or personal reasons have decided to spend their twilight years in India at a hotel designed to cater to their needs. (To outsource their retirement, as the hotel owner states!)
Once again, TarsTarkas.NET has sold out and attended another advanced screening for free, because we have the golden touch of acquiring free tickets from gullible studios! Take that, big money! Tracking down free screenings is becoming my favorite game, though the princess might be in another castle, I can often find tickets lying around her empty room…
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel features a wide array of awesome British actors and actresses, who I have seen in more movies than I can count over the years (I was going to count, and then lost count and gave up!) Instead of a paragraph explaining everyone, I’ll do it in Roll Call form, because that’s what makes TarsTarkas.NET feel like TarsTarkas.NET!
|
Categories: Good, Movies Tags: Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Dev Patel, Diana Hardcastle, Judi Dench, Lillete Dubey, Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, Tars sells out!, Tena Desae, Tom Wilkinson
Mirror Mirror
Mirror Mirror
2012
Written by Melissa Wallack & Jason Keller
Directed by Tarsem Singh
 |
|
I killed and skinned a Bjork to wear her hide to this gala!
|
Mirror Mirror is the first theatrical Snow White movie of 2012 to hit theaters. Featuring Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, and Tarsem Singh’s distinctive visual style of making every frame look like something you’d use as a desktop background, Mirror Mirror is a beautiful film. But beyond the exterior beauty, your enjoyment of Mirror Mirror will depend on how close you are to the target audience, primarily young girls and their mothers. Mirror Mirror is not bad, there is plenty of action and humor for everyone, but I can see that if I was a 7 year old girl, this film would be the awesomeness. Instead, it’s just good, not great. There are problems such as a few slow spots and a lack of suspense due to the Snow White story being so old and used that we all know the day will be saved, the Evil Queen defeated, and Snow will get her Prince Charming. It’s more of the journey, not the destination, that is important in these cases. While parts of the classic Snow White tale are used, some parts are glossed over, while other pieces are added after being weaved from thin air.
 |
|
The next guy who calls one of us “Dopey” gets his knees cut off!
|
Differences abound immediately from the other Snow White, for instead of a Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy, Mirror Mirror is a live action cartoon. The only thing missing was talking animals! Between Tarsem Singh’s imagery and Eiko Ishioka’s costumes, the fantasy world of the fairy tale is alive and well on your movie screens.
 |
|
Steve Jobs, you bastard!
|
The scenery is beautiful, from the CGI spectacle that is the castle sitting over the frozen lake to the snow-covered forest where danger may lurk behind every tree. The costumes are amazing, and I could spend thousands of words describing them all. But you really must see them to appreciate them. The opening sequence done in a puppet-style is marvelous, much appreciated compared to all the flat Flash opening sequences I’ve seen in films lately.
And once again, TarsTarkas.NET has sold out and went to an advanced screening for free!
 |
|
Snow White and the Full Monty
|
|
 |
|
Let’s kick that other Snow White movie’s butt!
|
Categories: Bad, Movies Tags: Armie Hammer, Danny Woodburn, Eiko Ishioka, Frank Welker, Jason Keller, Joe Gnoffo, Jordan Prentice, Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Mare Winningham, Mark Povinelli, Martin Klebba, Melissa Wallack, Michael Lerner, Nathan Lane, Robert Emms, Ronald Lee Clark, Sean Bean, Sebastian Saraceno, Tars sells out!, Tarsem Singh
Zone Fighter Episode 15 – Chinbotsu! Gojira-yo Tokyo-wo Sukue
Zone Fighter Episode 15 – Chinbotsu! Gojira-yo Tokyo-wo Sukue
aka Submersion! Godzilla, Save Tokyo! aka It’s Sinking! Godzilla, Save Tokyo
1973
Written by Kohei Oguri & Norio Komata
Directed by Kengo Furusawa
Zone Fighter stumbles through another episode, where hundreds of people die due to the Garoga menace, but the Zone Family still doesn’t tell anyone in positions of authority on Earth about the alien invaders. Sorry, innocent people, I guess your lives just don’t matter. At least Godzilla shows up again. I was getting sick of these non-Godzilla episodes with giant chickens and exploding birthday cakes. So now that Godzilla is here we’ll have something awesome happen, right? Maybe? At least Godzilla seems to care more about everyone dying than the Zones, as Godzilla shows up out of nowhere to fight the Terror-Beast Zandora who is responsible for the chaos. Either that, or Godzilla is upset that Zandora looks like a giant wang. Either way, his appearance here is greatly appreciated!
 |
|
Stop the world, I want to get off!
|
March of Godzilla 2012 is proud to bring yet another Godzilla Zone Fighter episode. If you are Zone Fighter ignorant, there is plenty of Zone Fighter information available on the Splash Page.
 |
|
Godzilla and Zandora slow dance as Zone Fighter is buried under the ground
|
New opening credits? Holy Fratz! Instead of telling us the same boring story about Peaceland getting blown up each week, everything is now implied via effects shots as the Zone Fighter song plays. This opening is much better. Perhaps Zone Fighter is looking up!
 |
|
When you build Warhammer maps on fault lines, things go bad…
|
There are earthquakes striking Tokyo. Instead of slight tremors, these are all like 9.5 Richter scale quakes! And since one single quake caused a huge tsunami and nuke meltdown and other problems in reality, the quakes shown briefly in the beginning would have destroyed Japan and half of Asia in real life!
Zone Fighter has a huge body count for a kids show.
 |
|
Only Godzilla is awesome enough to headbutt a drill
|
Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Godzilla, Japan, kaiju, Kengo Furusawa, Kohei Oguri, March of Godzilla 2012, Norio Komata, tokusatsu, Zandora, Zone Fighter
Zone Fighter Episode 13 – Senritsu! Tanjoubi-no Kyoufu
Zone Fighter Episode 13 – Senritsu! Tanjoubi-no Kyoufu
aka Absolute Terror: Birthday of Horror! aka Hair-Raising! The Birthday of Terror
1973
Written by Jun Fukuda
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Zone Fighter vs. Birthday Cake! Only Zone Fighter could fight such a dastardly enemy. All others pale before him, even Godzilla is to yellow to appear to fight the birthday cake! Or, more likely, Godzilla knows this week’s enemy is lame and didn’t bother to return the producer’s calls! Godzilla is also watching his weight these days, thus skipping out on eating that sweet sweet cake.
 |
|
The Republican Presidential Debates continue…
|
March of Godzilla 2012 carries on with a Godzilla-free episode, but there is still something for everyone to learn. What we do learn is that Japanese people sing “Happy Birthday” and write things on cakes in English. Also that if you hook a car battery up to a Terror-Beast, the monster gets a red force field that doesn’t work that well.
 |
|
Stop for me, it’s the CLAW!
|
If you are Zone Fighter confused, check out the Zone Fighter splash page and learn you some Zone!
It’s Hotaru’s 16th birthday! Her family breaking out the cake and singing, including the Happy Birthday song that now requires huge royalties despite the fact it should have been public domain decades ago. But that’s a rant for another review. Happy Birthday, Hotaru! I hope you enjoy your cake…your DEATH CAKE!!!
 |
|
Forget Chocolate Rain, we got Orange Julius Rain
|
Baron Garoga calls via TV to mock them because the cake is a bomb! Granted, that is dumb, so now they know to toss the cake, and Hikaru does, throwing it off a cliff. Then it explodes, too late to do any damage with candle shrapnel. If Baron Garoga would have just shut the frak up for 1 more minute, the Zones would be dead! The series would be over, and I could get back to reviewing a different tokusatsu series that I’ll end up not liking, either.
 |
|
I’m 70% Megalon!
|
Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Ishiro Honda, Japan, Jun Fukuda, kaiju, March of Godzilla 2012, tokusatsu, Zone Fighter
Zone Fighter Episode 12 – Kyoujuu Kichi Chikyuu-e Shinnyuu!
Zone Fighter Episode 12 – Kyoujuu Kichi Chikyuu-e Shinnyuu!
aka Terrorbeast HQ: Invade the Earth! aka The Terror-Beast Base: Invade the Earth!
1973
Written by Norio Komata
Directed by Ishiro Honda
March of Godzilla 2012 is not dead, it was just resting as a TarsTarkas.NET got crushed beneath the weight of a trio of first run flicks and a lost film about a guy in a skeleton suit. But the train has been righted back on the track, and we can continue with our journey of Zone Fighter! Perhaps now you wish the train was flipped back onto its side. Well, too bad, so sad, Zone Fighter is here and he’s fighting a giant chicken while the producers might be committing horrible animal abuse. You just can’t be sure.
 |
|
Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Morons!
|
If you are Zone Fighter unaware, feel free to drop on by the Zone Fighter splash page, you’ll be glad you did! Now let’s get on with this show, before the chicken monster Barakidon crosses the road and I have to make even lamer jokes!
 |
|
Troma’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead sequel was ambitious
|
The opening shows Zone Fighter killing many of the previous monsters, his horrible murder spree seared into the eyes and memories of the Garogas. So the Garogas have the ultimate plan to stop Zone Fighter’s brutal murder of monsters – a new monster!
 |
|
Soon two tiny girls will be by demanding this egg…
|
Great plan, idiots! I hope Zone Fighter murders all of you.
 |
|
Ha ha ha! Your hat is ridiculous!
|
Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Barakidon, Ishiro Honda, Japan, kaiju, March of Godzilla 2012, Norio Komata, tokusatsu, Zone Fighter
