Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Your Late Christmas Gift: A Giant Shark (Live Movie Blog)


In honor of the Christmas holiday I'm going to be bringing you the latest installment of the award-winning series of DWG Live Movie Blogs (but make sure you check out the latest Reggie Holmes update in the post below this one too).  Today I'll be watching "Shark Hunter", a movie from 2001 starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. about "A man and his team of divers searching for a giant shark that destroyed a research station."  Oh boy.  You know that all realism goes right out the window when directors/writers/whatever start talking about a "giant" shark.  Generally they turn into a bunch of 3-year olds on Christmas morning.  I think my goal for this movie is just to have all shark footage be of the same species.  Well, that and to see Antonio Sabato, Jr. with his shirt off.

-  We're starting with some really weird home movie type/documentary type footage of some lady dancing around like a weirdo while she loads up her car with plants.  And now some dumbass kid, too.  I'm going to guess this is a home movie of Sabato's family who end up getting eaten by a shark or something and now he hunts sharks in order to extract his revenge.  Sounds dumb enough, right?

-  I just realized also that I have no idea who Antonio Sabato, Jr. is.  I've heard the name and I feel like I should know, but I don't.

-  Ok so to remedy that I looked him up and now I have no idea why I've heard his name.  His list of movie roles is terrible.  The only thing I've ever even heard of that he's done is The Bold and the Beautiful, which I promise you I've never watched.  This guy might kind of be a loser.  Also we're now five minutes into a 90-minute movie and still watching the credits.

-  Here we go, that lady and her husband (I'm now guessing Sabato is the kid) are now on a boat.  Want to bet they get eaten, the kid survives, and then grows up to be the Shark Hunter and takes his revenge on all sharks?  Which was the exact plot and beginning of one of those squid movies I blogged about earlier.  It's amazing how simple a formula could be to make good shark/squid/crocodile/alligator movies, and yet almost every single one of these follows the same formula - the wrong formula.

-  Yep, giant shark just bit the boat.  And didn't just bite it, but basically inhaled it (this is truly a massive fake shark).  Now the boat is gone, but somehow the kid is still alive and floating by hanging on to a life preserver.  So predictable.  It's just like how the Twins are going to sign a washed-up veteran for cheap who sucks to play third or how at some point this year you are going to become convinced Al Nolen couldn't play in division III.

-  Also predictable - Sabato is a college professor and deep sea explorer.  About the only thing positive about this is that this movie came out in 2001, which means it was before most of that other crap - so this is the original crap, if you will.

-  Wow, yet another movie where a giant shark is lured to the surface due to deep sea exploration and electrical currents.  Seriously, nobody has thought of an alternative reason why Megalodon could still be around and then reappear?  It's the same in every giant shark movie, and it's all stolen from the book "Meg" which is the worst book of all-time.  I've mentioned this here before, but I'm going to do it again and spoil it for you - the hero at the end of "Meg" ends up walking around inside the shark.  INSIDE the shark.  He's walking around inside the shark.  No joke.  I threw the book across the room after I finished it.  Awful.  

-   You know what would work?  How about, "The ocean is so deep and so vast that we are still discovering new species nearly every single day and something as large as a giant squid wasn't though to actually exist until the 60s and wasn't filmed until 2006 so it wouldn't be a stretch to say there are 50-foot sharks in the depths of the ocean."  See, that's pretty easy.  Not everything needs a massive over explanation.

-  Damn dude, this shark just ate two divers and an underwater research station for no reason at all.  It also attacked that boat in the opening scene for no reason either.  This is one crabby shark, apparently.  He's kind of like the retard of sharks, just eating inanimate objects unprovoked all over the place. 

-  Sabato was just hired to take his mini-sub down to investigate what happened to that research center, and for some reasons his response to this is to to look at a bunch of slides of sharks and shark attack victims, even though realistically there is zero reason to suspect a shark destroyed the stations, mainly because that's not something sharks actually do.  And even if you did suspect a shark, why would looking at stock photos of them help in any way?  I'm confused.  Also he was using a slide projector machine, like you might remember from 4th grade.  Didn't they have the internet in 2001?  Pretty sure they did.  Poor dude can't even afford a computer.

-  He's now acting all sciency and trying to explain to the guy who built this mini-sub and the mini-sub pilot about how much pressure there is at the bottom of the ocean and how they could all be crushed.  Uh, yeah.  Pretty sure these guys are aware.  The one dude built it and they other dude already piloted it deep.  This guy is a super annoying main character.  I'm rooting for the shark, retarded though it may be.

-  Wait, why are they talking about a mini-sub and extremem pressure?  The guys are now examining the ruins of the station, but they're doing it outside of any mini-sub, so it can't be all that deep.  And they just found a shark tooth embedded in the ruins, which they take to mean it's a guarantee that a megalodon attacked and wrecked the station and have now stopped investigating what happened. They're right in this stupid movie's case, but still, that's pretty filmsy evidence.  And also Sabato said, "I think we've bitten off more than we can chew" when he found the tooth.  I told you he was super unlikeable.

-  Do you want to know how we are supposed to know Megalodon's are supposed to be extinct?  Because when they searched for it on the internet (they have a computer now) a picture of it popped up with the word EXTINCT written in giant red letters over it and the computer started beeping in an alarm-type way.  How efficient.  And super high-tech.

-  Whoa, this whole movie was done by Russian communists.  After the first five or so actors, every other actor listed on IMDB is russian.  All the assistant directors are russian.  All the art people are russian, and so on.  Suddenly I feel like this movie is maybe a little evil.  I'll be on the lookout for anti-American propaganda from here on out.

-   As usual, we get a coelacanth comparison here.  Yawn.  Except Sabato is using the argument that "the Megalodon is from the same evolutionary period" as his argument, which is completely irrelevant in every way.  Even worse (and a quick fact check confirms this) the Coelecanth showed up about 400 million years ago.  The Megalodon showed up about 25 million years ago.  That's not only not the same evolutionary period, it's not even the same super-eon.  So, as predicted, for the 800 billionth movie in a row, facts, logic, and reason go right out the window.  We haven't even seen the shark yet, so I can't tell you how awful that was yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

-  Sub pilot guy just took Sabato to task for being crazy and dangerous (for believing megs still exist).  He pretty much said, "You're everyone's problem. That's because every time you go up in the air, you're unsafe. I don't like you because you're dangerous." 

-  As if we needed it confirmed, they spell out that those parents who were killed by the shark in the opening were Sabato's.  Pretty sure we got that.

-  You know what's awesome about HD?  Seeing how people really look.  Like, we were watching Waiting the other night and Dane Cook is in it and he looks absolutely brutal in HD.  He looks about 10 years older and he could use a little bit of Proactiv, if you know what I'm sayin'.  On the other hand, we watched Extract, and Mila Kunis looks even hotter, if that's possible.  I actually don't think it is.  She is amazing.  If Tiffani-Amber Thiessen never existed she would be my #1 easily.  She's even hotter than Audrina (I can't believe I said that)

Sorry Audrina.  I never thought I'd choose anyone over you, but here we are.  You can still be my fallback option though.

-  Suddenly, because something killed a couple of killer whales, everybody suddenly agrees with crazy McSabato that there is a Megalodon out there.  Seems like pretty flimsy evidence, especially since they were basically doing everything short of filling out the commitment papers on this revenge-bent psychopath.  This movie is completely retarded.  Plus, Jaws II already used the dead orca bit, and that turned out to just be a large great white.  Why does everything have to be about Megalodon's these days?  Freakin' dorks.

-  This is bullshit, by the way.  There's no shark hunter in this.  There's a bunch of really stupid marine biologists and such running around like idiots.  I thought Sabato was going to be more like Quint from Jaws, but more high-tech and revenge-y.  I guess they're going to use some big ass harpoons to kill the thing, which makes no logical sense whatsoever because as scientists they should be trying to study it, not kill it, especially seeing as all it's done is attack one undersea station, not become some sort of constant threat to Amity Beach or something.

-  And there's the shark.  Actually pretty well done, just your basic Great White on about 3-4x scale, good job so far movie.  If you don't screw this up, you'll have at least one redeeming feature.  Also not having the shark roar would be a good start.  Sub-pilot guy "We're gonna need a bigger sub."  Felt like more of an homage than a ripoff.  I choose to approve.

-  Since we switched from a non-HD normal human box to an HD box I lost all my older movies which means I have no more Tivo'd shark movies.  I do have some kind of retarded snake movie I grabbed off of Showtime in case I get desperate, but I can't imagine that being good.

-  Their was some opening where the sub was supposed to surface in their base, but the shark jumped up instead and grabbed some dumb bastard - basically a complete ripoff of Deep Blue Sea where Samuel Jackson gets eaten, a very underrated death by the way, even if that movie sucked balls.

-  I've officially lost track of all the characters in this movie.  It's either the beer or the shotty writing/direction/cinematography.

-  I just realized this black submarine pilot guy (who was playing the iceman role earlier) looks exactly like Danny Glover when he was 30.

-  Some foreign sounding guy is all mad now because the shark knocked out their reserve oxygen on their main base/super sub thing and now "We only have 40 hours of oxygen left, damn you!"  Am I crazy or does that seem like a lot of hours?  Especially because they are currently in a giant submarine that is still mobile.  Are they in the earth's core?  How slow does this thing move?  How couldn't they get back to the surface in 40 hours?  Is the water slowly turning to molasses?  Why is Sabato shooting a torpedo at the black guy's submarine?  Is it true that all Mexicans hate the blacks?  Why are the four main characters in this a frenchie, a black guy, a mexican, and a white chick?  Why would a USC linebacker transfer to BYU?

-  They just showed a closeup of the shark, and it looks like the bath toy WonderbabyTM likes to drink her own bathwater out of.  First of all, don't ask.  I can't begin to explain 1.5 year olds, and no, I don't think she's technically retarded just kind of a weirdo.  Secondly, that means these effects now suck and nullify everything I said earlier about decent shark effects.

-  Text just received from Mrs. W in the bedroom:  "Please come kill this spider."  Mission accomplished.  I am such a pimp.  That spider was all like the Alien and I was the Predator.  Also this beef jerky I'm eating is really damn good.  Thank you Simek's and Old Man W.  Actually, Simek's people, if you want to have some advertising on this blog that reaches tens of people just supply me with a lifetime supply of your jerky and I'll rename this thing "Shop at Simek's not other places unless you are stupid."

-  Now they're arguing about tranquilizing the shark or killing it, which means I probably wasn't paying attention earlier when I claimed they all wanted to kill it, but I don't care about that.  What I do care about is why, if they are all hyper about having "only" forty hours of oxygen, why they don't just surface and fix their sub.  Especially because, once again, this shark isn't terrorizing a beach or swallowing carnival cruise line ships whole.  It's just chilling at the bottom of the ocean except for when people got all up in it's face with their gay little underwater study group (NOTE:  I once had three black people in my house at the same time because of a study group.  I'm wordly).

-  Now that I've had time to rethink things, I'm going with:
  1. Tiffani Thiessen
  2. Audrina Patridge
  3. Mila Kunis
  4. Eliza Dushku
  5. Anna Faris 
-  Nope, swap Kunis and Patridge.  Also swap Faris with Natalie Portman.  No, don't.  And Ali Larter has to be in there somewhere.  So does Anna Paquin.  God this is hard.  No wonder everybody who writes for Maxim/Stuff/FHM/Whatever is so stupid.

-  The shark just rammed the big sub and I swear they lifted those effects from Jaws 3 when the big shark rams the Sea World tunnel.  Also the shark suddenly has no facial features - it's basically looking now like a dildo with fins.

-  Dude just shot a torpedo or dart or something into the shark's eyeball and everybody acts like it's such a big deal.  Whatever.  I used to bullseye Womp Rats in my T-16 back home, they weren't much bigger than two meters.

-  Nothing in this movie makes a god damn lick of sense.  Except for the submarine having a cockpit almost identical to the Millenium Falcon.  Or maybe that's just because my brain is stuck on Star Wars.  I can't wait to watch those with Wonderbaby.  Maybe we'll start tomorrow.

-   We are at 1:26 of a 1:35 movie, and the shark just roared for the first time - and the second and the third and the fourth.  Almost made it.

-  I still think the "extinct" goblin sharks who are of the same "species" as the "great" "white" are my favorite thing ever.  If you want to see what I'm talking about it's from the live movie blog I did on Malibu Shark Attack.  I'd look it up for you but I think I'm a little tipsy and I don't trust myself to go poking around the computer too much.  Last time I did that drunk I ended up ordering seven Snuggies and a bride from Japan.  That was awkward.

-  OH HELL NO.  Sabato just flew his mini-sub thing into the shark's mouth intentionally and then hit some kind of self-destruct to blow its head off and get revenge.  And then we immediately (and I mean immediately) go to end credits.

-  Wow dude, there was a lot to hate about this movie, starting with the name "shark hunter" when there was no shark hunter at all, and almost nothing to like.  I hated this.  I mean, I hate nearly all of the movies I live blog but at least the majority of them having some redeeming feature, even if it's comedy or making me get all sciencey, I can at least enjoy that.  This one sucked.  Was it worse than Sharks in Venice?  Tough to say, mainly because I don't think anything could ever be that bad, but damn.

Damn.

1 comment:

Theory said...

Anna Farris should be higher. Plus, Kristen Bell should be on there.