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Author
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Topic: Blade II
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Josh Kirkhart
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 165
From: Austin/Houston, TX, USA
Registered: Nov 2001
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posted 03-22-2002 06:52 AM
Rough, Baby, Rough. Ok this movie is flat which blows chunks. Beyond that it's action till the very end. If you love action movies, see it and I mean now. This thing blew me away, besides the digital dummie special effects (as seen in Harry Potter and LOTR)the effect were great and did not distract you during the movie. The only effects that distracted me were the ones in the star wars trailer beforehand. Del Toro has delivered a non-stop brutal action fest. More violence than the first which is a good thing. The only thing it did not top from the previous film was the opening scene. Giving it 5 out of 5 reels. Too much fun. Enjoy it now, cause there are no great action flicks in the near future,(scorpion king is PG-13, can anyone say Kull: the conquerer, uuugggh)the closest will be spidey and it is a whole different kind of action.
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 03-22-2002 05:03 PM
03/22/2002, Cinemark 17, Springfield OR, #13, 11:30AM early-bird bargain show ($3.75), flat, SR-D. Full house, packed right up to the front row. Excellent presentation, and *very* loud.Most everything Josh said. The action is brutal and relentless. Special effects are quite good. Directed with a lot of flair, and although quick-cuts rule, the visuals are above standard MTV-director-level crap. Not for young children or the squeamish, although this is so cartoonish that I found it inoffensive. Some of the dialog is stilted and sounds like, well, dialog, but that's a minor nit because this movie has little to do with dialog anyway. 
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Jerry Chase
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1068
From: Margate, FL, USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 03-27-2002 01:34 PM
"In a way, it makes sense, and it would also decrease the cost of making alternate language soundtracks if there wasn't as much dialog."Hey! I've got an idea! Silent films! In digital stereo! Yeah, that'll work. The frame rate could be reduced to save money, and if somebody could just figure out an inexpensive process to make black and white pictures...
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-25-2002 06:07 PM
I didn't like "Blade II" very much at all. There was next to nothing in terms of character development. Many of the players in the movie just seemed to be there to get killed off in some kind of gruesome way and little else.
I liked the first "Blade" film and have a copy of it on DVD. "Blade" worked well in 'scope and really sort of had its identity set in the format. It was jarring to see the second one shot flat. My first thought, just from the trailers, was that the film was shot flat and released in March (not summer) because it was really just intended to go straight to video.
With lowered expectations, the movie should have had at least some redeemable moments. But even with all the super fast fight scenes and such, it never really got onto its feet. The main problem was the lack of a coherent character-driven story arc. In "Blade" you at least had the main character uncovering his past and the female lead working to save herself from vampirism as well saving the day. There was very little of that stuff in "Blade II". Just a lot of fight scenes loosely pieced together.
Finally, there were some plain, bad, inconsistencies between "Blade II" and "Blade". Remember how gruesome the vampires would die? They were either exploding from contact with sunlight or disentegrating into a pile of smoldering embers from a single stab of Blade's sword. That's what made that last part of "Blade II" seem so hokey. Blade watches while this beautiful vampire gets cooked by the sun --in a fashion that looks more like a perfume commercial. She looks like she is almost enjoying cooking. Baloney. Dragon Eddie's sun-plosion in the first film makes for that moment in "Blade II" not working.
To sum it up, I think the director of "Blade II" succumbed to the John Woo / Michael Bay disease. And that's the disease of shooting some really pretty action images regardless of whether they work in the story or not. Character, script, continuity and all that other stuff be damned.
I hate to come down so hard on "Blade II", but I am doing so because I wanted it to capture some of the same kind of thing "Blade" was successful in delivering. It flat out didn't do it. And having DTS-ES 6.1 on the DVD isn't going to be much to redeem it either.
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