First I think Linkin Park could be a good band if they would drop their emphasis on the rap-parts of the songs. No rap parts. The songs are good enough without them. I’m not saying that rap-rock doesn’t ever work, sometimes it does, but they’re just a trainwreck. Two groups in one that should be split. DJ and Rapper you go one way, Singer and musicians you go the other. Everybody happy. No two front men, just one.

Movie Corner

Formula 51
Ghost Ship

First up we have Formula 51 starring Robert Carlyle and Samuel L. Jackson in film that desperately wants to be a cool Tarantino/Guy Ritchie caper film, but falls quite a bit short.

There are the pre-requisite zany bunch of characters that populate this gangland Liverpool. We have a fat black man who speaks with a falsetto and dispenses advice to the manic villain on spiritual energy and Chakra opening. We have the Liverpudlian pretty assassin who moved left her gangland thug (Carlyle) in America and moved on to become an killer for the scarred Mr. Lizard (Meat Loaf Aday). We have the stupid thug who follows instructions implicitly and we have the corrupt cop with a partner who he constantly chides on his weight problem. And at the center of it all we have Elmo McElroy (Jackson), a kilt wearing chemist with a propensity for mixing up equal concoctions of the super drug, POS-51, and some sort of super-laxative.

It is a sad commentary that the films funniest parts come not from the wit of the dialogue, but from the scatological humor provided by the laxative, and the idiocy of the stupid thug. The script really tries to be witty, and sometimes there are glimpses of humor there, such as a garbage scowl captain who haggles with Jackson nonchalantly over the sale price of a Jaguar that he has just driven off a pier and onto the boat, and when the looney villain says he is annoying himself, but these glimmers are few and far between. What we are left with is an attempt to re-create Snatch mixed with some Foxy Brown and with Jackson’s character from Pulp Fiction cooking drugs and wearing a kilt.

The other elements of the film, from acting in the leads and periphery characters, to direction and cinematography are fine, but they cannot save this lunk of a film.

Next, or actually first, I watched Ghost Ship starring Juliana Margulies and Gabriel Byrne as members of a tug-crew who go to salvage the titular Ghost Ship in the Bering Sea.

The average Dark Castle horror film where a team of disparate folks brave a haunted house that they are not prepared for. I really wish that I hadn’t figured out the plot twist as early in the film as I did, but it really didn’t ruin anything for me. Not alot of real scares in the film, but it did create some nice tension and the atmosphere was very good. Much like House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts there is a great setting for the film in the creepy ship, but beyond that it is average horror stuff. Byrne looks the part of the haggard sea captain, and Margulies rocks the major Mary Elizabeth Masters-Antonio from Abyss vibe with her character, but maybe that’s just my interpretation. She sure is pretty though. I think Molly Shannon was right in her craptacular commentary on SNL after Margulies left ER that she was a “Crazy pretty lady.” It’s pretty sad that this is the only film that she’s really done since then that I’ve seen released. I’m just really surprised that she didn’t have to go topless in her first outing. (There is some nudity in this one though)

The first scene is pretty frickin gross if I do say so myself and set a good tone for the film. Effects were well done on the whole, though some of the digital effects were a it weak, such as the final sinking of the ship (hope I didn’t spoil anything for anyone there).

In short, lackluster story, creepy visuals, metal music that didn’t need to be present twice in the film and so-so acting put this one in firm its-allright-rent-it-but-don’t-buy-it-unless-you’re-a-git-like-me territory.