Sharknado and other Creature/Weather fusion movies

A Guardian piece today drew my attention to the existence of "Sharknado", and it also crops up on Total Film's list of the worst promo posters of the Cannes Festival.

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/cannes-2013-s-worst-funniest-movie-posters

Sharknado, obviously, stands out.

Shark movies lend themselves effortlessly to terrible movie publicity; remember Sand Sharks and Sharktopus amongst a million others? They also lend themselves to terrible films like Jaws IV: the Revenge, and John Barrowman's pussy eating dialogue fest Shark Attack 3: The Megaladon. But I think Sharknado ratchets up the idiocy level another notch, The Asylum taking a natural phenomenon that we've just seen in Oklahoma is quite deadly enough without throwing a load of Great Whites into the mix. And how do the sharks themselves survive being whipped around at 200mph in a fairly non watery environment? All that torn up wood and weatherboard must clog their gills.

Starring Tara Reid, whose career since American Pie seems to have been a mirror image of Alyson Hannigan's, it looks like the Asylum have come up with a (straight to) DVD cover before they came up with the actual film. But, it does make wonder what other weather - creature fusion movies could there be? "Pirana Hail"? "Jellyfog"? "Panthronimbulus"? "A Light Drizzle of Killer Ants"?

I like the idea of Jellyfog in particular; imagine the terror of feeling the deadly sting of a Queensland box jellyfish or irukanji down the back of your neck as you walk to work in an autumn fog.

If I could draw, I could come up with the one-sheet myself.

OPINION - Sphere and the Weakest Movie Ending Ever

As is my habit these days - dictated by my genetic scottish tight fistedness - I buy most of my DVDs from Cash Converters the UK Pawn Shop chain. Second hand DVDs for a pound or a pound fifty, viewing pleasure mined from the dismal fate of junkies flogging thier own or other folk's stolen film collections to pay for the next hit...

It's a sad place to shop to be honest, but I do pick up occasional gems there for next to nothing. Zardoz. Witchfinder General. Yesterday I bought Sphere for £1.50, the "Special Edition", of which I can safely say in traditional style, if that was the special edition I'd hate to see what the original theatrical release looked like.

The film is dreadful. That it wasn't cheap is shown by some nice big undersea FX shots, but the story is confusing, the script terrible, and the casting of Dustin Hoffman in an action movie like this baffling, as he mumbles and gumbles away like a scientist version of his Rainman character. I liked Sharon Stone's haircut, but Samuel L. Jackson, as he always is if he is underwater, was dire.

Like Contact, the attempt to make a film about alien contact that had some sort of scientific credibility produces a film that is utterly and bloodily boring.

None of this is comparable to the ending however. A big sci fi production surely needs a big sci fi ending, doesn't it? Battles, blood, or a twist so vicious it could be a theme park attraction?

What we got with Sphere was three people holding hands, counting to three, and then a big golden golf ball flies off. That was it. 80 million dollars spent on the worlds most boring seance and a lame gag about men holding hands.

Tempting fate it was...

For did they not think, the film-makers in all their sun kissed LA wisdom, that if you have an ending in which the whole point is merely for everyone to forget the whole thing, then the audience will probably do the same?

OPINION - Prometheus and the Too Futuristic Prequels

Well, with many other people I sat into the first advert break of Homeland, which I never watch, to see the Prometheus trailer.

I was excited, but stupid-feeling. I had become one of the hated fanboy trailer freaks who sit through a 4 hour domestic drama set on a farm in India in order to see a trailer for the latest Spielberg attraction, while scrawling notes in a jotter at banshee pace.

I've only done it before. Honest. And only because I was keen to see what aforementioned Spielberg's martian fighting machines looked like. But I wanted to part of something; I wanted to be a member of the community of the first, and do my #areyouseeingthis - hello Corporal Hicks was it? - tweets with the rest of the UK, or world, whatever.

And I was going to write about it - ooh that's a very nostromo looking silhouette there, hmm the Prometheus ship reminds me of Serenity crossed with the Betty from Alien Resurrection; or my god Wutani engineered the xenomorphs - HUMANITY BROUGHT IT UPON THEMSELVES!!!!

But no. Leave it to proper film writers, not hopeless wannabes like me.

The point that does occur, with all the flashing lights, colourful spacesuits, super resoloution pictures, flashy computer screens, and a space jockey hologram thing where he looks far too much like the elephant man not to have a slight giggle, the whole film looks too new.

It's a prequel world. Set god knows how many years before the low tech grimey "Space Truckers" of the first Alien movie, the world of Prometheus features rinky dink gesture control displays and neon heads up displays. Alien had  Apple 2 10 pixels per square yard monitors the size of a postage stamp. Is humantiy supposed to have devolved in the same amount of time it factually took us to get from the Wright Flyer at Kittyhawk to the Jumbo Jet?

It doesnt make sense!

Take David, the beautiful nazi wet dream android played by the enviable Michael Fassbender. He is supposed to have evolved into those far more attractive models, er Ian Holm and Lance Henrickson!

Logically, surely the android should thus have started looking like Kirk Douglas' scrotum???

It's a minor point I know. I'm a pointlessly cross silly geek. Of course film makers are going to want to use the nicest tricks, the fanciest shizzle, all their latest effects. But to me, it never rings true. The TV Enterprise prequel emphasised "Hey, No sliding automatic doors!!!" but still looked like it was filmed 400 years later, while the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot prequel looked like it was shot 4000 years later.

And as far Star Wars Episode 1, it was "A Long time ago, in a galaxy far far shinier and newer, than the first one."

My ever lasting prequel bugbear. And may god curse my soul.