Piranha 3D

I really liked Haute Tension as well as the Hills Have Eyes remake - but Mirrors? It blew his record for me and showed Aja is as fallible as the rest.

This looks like a complete deviation from all of those films though. He's just shooting for boobs and blood - complete entertainment. I'm thinking it'll be a good time.

I'm part of a monthly movie club, where we get together one Saturday a month and watch 2-3 movies of a specific theme. Every time we have a different "host", who picks the theme of the night, and then everyone brings movies that match that theme and the host picks which ones we watch.

Maybe five years ago (yikes), Heidi was the "host" for a month and she picked (something like) "Terrible Twos" - in other words, bad follow up films. We watched Beast Master 2 and *drumroll* Piranha 2.

It was a good time.

I hope that was some kind of publicity stunt.

If not, those people asking if the piranha were removed from the lake deserve to be eaten by a school of the little nippers. At least it would keep them from breeding and spreading the "dumb as a bag of rocks" gene.

I'm hitting the theaters at noon tomorrow. Would go tonight, but it's my 6th day straight at work and I just don't think I'll be in the right frame of mind come 10 pm tonight.

Are you fucking serious that guy threaten legal action against people making comments about him? Oh god that dude is a moron seriously, there I said it you Joe Francis are a complete waste of space and a failure of the male species so suck on that.

How freaking funny - I missed that as well. I was just overwhelmed by gore and boobs (they were probably counting on that). But, you're right, that guy just suddenly wasn't there anymore.

I googled around and found someone else say that the edit was because they literally ran out of money for the effect they were planning on his death. Given all the other gore and poon, I can't imagine it was death due to MPAA. If it was due to lack of funds - well, that's almost silly, but a shame if true.

The extras on the DVD should be fun.

Wow, nice catch on the Goggle search. Too bad about his death, but I was in sensory overload as well when he just vanished, and didn't even notice. If that doesn't say how much fun I was having with the movie, I don't know what does.

I'm still amazed at how much they got past the MPAA. All the nudity, the gore was staggering. The movie wouldn't have gotten on the screen 20, even 10 years ago. Makes you wonder how much trouble some of the films of the 80s would have now.

And I'm on the same old age plan as you. Boobs and gore forever!

But I still wouldn't mind them throwing something in for the ladies. Might make date night easier in the old age home!

Nice review, RAN. Just keep writing and you'll learn how to tighten things up. I've been writing reviews on blogs for over 2 years and all that practice has helped me a lot.

Hey, the book sounds great. If you're scaring people by telling them a story, you're on the right track.

And I didn't think the review was bad, RAN. Yes, you rambled at times and you could have tightened it up a bit. And that's only my opinion, so take it for what it's worth. But you stated what you like and didn't like about the film, brought up some solid points and gave your honest opinion in a clear manner. It's a solid review.

I'm interested in reading more, so be sure to post when you finish the others you mentioned.

This is good advice - just the repetition of writing reviews over and over (and over and over) is great for establishing a rhythm and style. I don't think any form of writing is intuitive, and writing reviews isn't any different. It is a learned skill and so takes practice.

A couple things I do that I've found to help:

Take notes! I would have thought this was obvious, but I've discovered I'm about the only one who does it. I don't think I've seen anyone else do it. I always bring a small notepad to any film I plan to review, and scribble in the darkness anything that pops in my head. I have a rule - write down *anything* that occurs to me, regardless of whether I think I'll mention it in a review. There is no writing down a "wrong" thing. Sometimes my notes will be as simple as "THIS MOVIE IS RETARDED" in capital letters.

I started doing this because I found that I was always forgetting to mention certain things. I'd write a review, and it'd be "okay" - and then later I would read someone else's review and find that they discussed a point that had occurred to me while I watched the movie, but I forgot about by the time I sat down to write. Writing notes can be very helpful in reminding yourself of potentially chatworthy material.

Before you write your review - take a minute (only a minute) to write a crude structure. I usually write out at least a half dozen sentences or so, each one summing up a point I want to make or a topic I'd like to address. I feel this helps me settle into how to flow the review from point to point in a (hopefully) semi-graceful way.

Also, rewrite - a lot! I comb through a review at least a dozen times before posting it. Probably more like a couple dozen. I read it over and over again, until I can make it through at least once without editing anything at all. This is a great way to clean up an article or review and I'd recommend any writer (of, well, anything) to pursue aggressive rewrites.

I write most of my notes as the credits roll. I don't leave the theater without having a few points written down on paper.

As for rewriting, read Rule 17 of the Principles of Composition in Strunk and White and take it to heart: Omit Needless Words.

As an example, I trimmed about two lines off this post. Yes, I edit all my posts, what can I say.

Check out on my site, my article 'Piranha (2010): Second View 2D, and a Rant About Post Conversion 3D' -

http://cinematichorrorarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/piranha-2010-seco...

Thanks for reading.

Well done double review! I particularly like the comparison of romantic styles between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Humanoids of the Deep. You're right - the Humanoids weren't nearly as shy as the poor old fashioned Creature. It's interesting to me because it's obvious that it was the morals of the time that effected the behavior of the beast.

I loved both of those movies.

Thanks, RAN. One cool thing about the DVD covers is that some are reversible. You can switch them to show a different poster art and title. For example, Humanoids from the Deep can be reversed to show the poster art for Monster, another name the film was released under. At least that's the case for the DVDs. Don't know about the Blu-ray.

And the price really is quite reasonable (at least for the DVDs), considering all the extras that Shout! Factory added to the films. Really worth checking out.

No. When did you send it? I just went through my email folder twice and didn't find it, but I'll check again if you can give me an approximate time and date.

My address is:shadowoverportland@live.com

Just checked it and it works, if you want to resend it.