Snow White and the Huntsman Review

"Do you hear that? It's the sound of battles fought and lives lost. It once pained me to know that I am the cause of such despair. But now their cries give me strength. Beauty is my power."

-Charlize Theron "Snow White and the Huntsman"

Released in 2012 under the direction of Rupert Sanders and distributed by Universal on a budget of $170 million; "Snow White and the Huntsman" is yet another adaptation of the original Grimm fairy tale onto the silver screen. Prior to this film adaptation however, director Tarsem Singh ("The Cell" and "The Fall") had already released his own version of the fairy tale, "Mirror Mirror," a film that showcased beautiful set pieces, elaborate costumes and witty acting but lacked depth and interest in the overall story. But upon seeing this film, I am convinced that clearly, Tarsem tried much harder than Rupert did, despite it's ridiculous and in-joke attitude. For a film that had the same producer responsible for Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland,"  I'm shocked that I could have found a film even worse than that one.

Plot: In a magical kingdom that believes in Christianity (I know, right?), the father of the princess Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is killed by the devious enchantress Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and imprisoned for years until she comes of age where she is to be taken by the bird-eating, youth-sucking queen and killed for the Queen to become immortal. But because of her brother Finn (Sam Spruell) and his downright creepiness, she escapes and runs into the dark forrest where black pods spray hallucinogenic fumes that make people think they're seeing weird-ass things that make me wonder if Terry Gilliam directed those scenes. Because the men are downright pansies, the Queen hires a drunk huntsman so ingeniously named Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) to track down Bella White in the woods where she is looking for Edward- oh sorry, my mind wandered. They meet up, he agrees to protect her or whatever, they meet up with 8 digitally-shrunk dwarves (Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Johnny Harris, Nick Frost and Brian Gleeson) who take them to a Disney-like forrest where they learn something about destiny or whatever, blah blah blah, she eats the apple, she gets kissed, wakes up and gives this uninspired speech (personally if that was me who woke up, I'd want a shower, a steak and to go use the bathroom first before giving a speech), leads an army to storm the castle and at this point, I'm already RiffTraxing the movie long before it's over.

Hey look feminists! A revisionist fairy tale that portrays the princess character as a badass instead of a weak fainting woman as she has to go through with her destiny to heal the land and other such bullsh*t. Yeah, because that's totally original and hasn't been done to death already, right? This wouldn't bother me so much if the pacing was a LOT tighter than this film presents it. There were instances where I felt like it was throwing in quiet moments interspersed with the action scenes (which, by the way, are horribly edited) and the quiet scenes themselves are boring and offer so little interest when we know what's going to happen since this film is pretty much a pale copy of Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." It's truly shocking how ridiculous this film's writing is, it's almost like somebody wrote a fanfiction and it got put on the silver screen, but as if Hollywood isn't familiar with doing that now, are they ("Twilight" anyone?) It tries to play out the whole "Snow White but told much darker,"  they sold "Revenge of the Sith" using that quote and that barely did squat to excuse the film's poor writing and just because a movie is darker than it's source material, it doesn't excuse a film's poor writing quality.

Characters:

Kritsen Stewart: Is without a shadow of a doubt, the absolute WORST thing in the movie. She clearly was not chosen for her acting ability but just to have a familiar face in the film to make the teenagers come to the theater. She already is a terrible actress who does not have the ability to carry a film, whether good or bad and this is really shown in this film. A movie surrounded by big names and yet she has to be the lead to carry it? I'm sorry but somebody screwed up in the casting department and Rupert clearly doesn't know how to direct people well. Through the majority of the film, she spends her time just staring out into space and giving this "do I have something stuck in my teeth?" look when she looks around the place most of the time. Even her big "inspirational speech" just has her heaving her chest a lot. Either that was just to entice the perverts in the audience or to show off her "depth," honey, it ain't working and your power of breast having hast no effect on me when I'm spending the majority of the time staring at your teeth that look like they're trying to escape this movie, not that'd blame them. Also, she has two guys fawning over her, gee, does THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?!?!

Chris Hemsworth: Trust me when I say this, but the poor guy is really trying. After "Thor," you would expect this guy to keep playing tough guy roles or break type-casting and try something different like a Woody Allen film or- oh no wait, he's playing a tough over-confident meat-head who wields a large weapon which he whacks enemies with. The difference here? He's supposed to be playing a drunkard (I would be too stuck in a movie like this). To Hemsworth credit, he plays it straight and doesn't half-ass it as much as everyone else does in this film. Out of all the lines in the film though, his was perfect for RiffTraxing, from his drunken dramatic speeches to this "hold the hilt and don't hesitate to thrust" bit which goes nowhere but only further shows off Stewart's 'acting.' 

Charlize Theron: She's better than this, believe me, she is much better than this. She borderlines between subdued and eerie to wide-eyed and over-the-top. Her creepy scenes come off as bizarre or humorous, like how she eats the innards of dead birds, sucks the youth out of young girls, bathes in milk or cream (there's a sexual allegory in there somewhere) and gives people heart attacks by doing the "Gaddy-moo" thing from "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom," does that make her sound scary? It could if she didn't yell her lines 40% of the movie. Strangely, nobody in this film can say "out" without saying it even louder a second time. That yelling is one thing that made me lean over to my dad and whisper "Academy Award-Winner folks…" Some people have said she's the best actor in the movie, while I think she suffers from the "so over-the-top it's like "Battlefield Earth" line of acting. I already mentioned the whole "gaddy-moo" thing but Charlize's performance either had me rolling on the floor laughing or cringing in my seat from her poor dialogue. She should have been the focus of the film, not Bella Swan.

Bob Hoskins: Was he the blind dwarf?

Ian McShane: Nice beard dude.

Ray Winstone: Was he supposed to be Grumpy?

Toby Jones: From a british government agent to a dwarf, this guy's career ain't look to proud to hold his head high, no pun intended.

Eddie Marson: Wasn't this an inspector in some movie with Robert Downey Jr.?

Johnny Harris: What was his character name again?

Nick Frost: Wait, he was in this? Why didn't anyone tell me?

Brian Gleeson: I remember he died. That's it. His dad is a better actor than this guy, no offense Brendan.

Everyone else is just forgettable or can be named "Alan Smithee," they might as well. I barely remember any of them.

Production: This is the only positive thing to say about this film. It's a very good-looking film. What with it's sweeping camera shots of forests, mountains, snow and ice, castles, muddy villages; it all looks really good and mood-settling. But there's something rather familiar about it all…

Hey, folks, notice that one camera shot of Snow White riding a white horse in the woods while riders wearing dark clothing chase after her? I half expect a dramatic choir and the black riders to make screeching sounds…

But wait, what about this one camera shot where Snow White and her posse walk up a mountain while the camera does a helicopter shot spin around them while they walk up the mountain? Why do they then appear in a snowy part of the landscape while climbing up it? Not to mention this dramatic shot of an army of horse marching in a line to assault the enemy while the camera follow them and shows some of them falling off their horse?

Should I make it anymore obvious? No? Then I'll say what you've already guessed: this film ripped off Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings." The shots are so obvious, the costumes, the cinematography, the only thing this film differs from those films are it's shorelines and it's editing. Also to add to the scene of Snow White riding on a white horse, the white horse falls into the mud and begins sinking, do I even need to bring up the emotional scene from "The Neverending Story" to make my point?

Oh, but don't think Lord of the RIngs is ALL it rips off from. A dark forrest with strange creatures and smoke that rises from the ground while a man guides a woman through the woods? Gee, if I wasn't a ciniphile, I wouldn't say that that seems like they ripped off "The Princess Bride." Oh, but the biggest thing they ripped off that nearly made me stand up in the theater and shout "you f*cking unoriginal hacks!" was this forrest scene (which in NO way is supposed to reference Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," right?) that a large deer with enormous antlers that stands in front of a human being; for any anime fans, you probably already know that this is ripping off of the forrest spirit from "Princess Mononoke." What does this all mean? It means that this movie was afraid to be original so it had to resort to ripping off other fantasies just to compensate for it's shoddy acting and confused script. The things they do, they do pretty well and make it look nice, but when I see something that reminds me of other already existing film material, that just becomes distracting and the film's creativity starts to go down the drain.

Bottom Line: Just like "Avatar," "What Dreams May Come," and "Transformers;" the film may look really pretty and boast some cool visual effects, but it's hard to be invested when you have a lead actress who is so inexperienced an actress that she cannot carry a film as loose and unfocused as this one with big name actors around her, she dangerously undermines the film. The story is something we've seen a million times, the characters are just people we've seen before and the visual effect department has no confidence to make their own special effects that they have to steal from other fantasy movies just to show off their budget. I only recommend this film unless you can get your friends together to MST3K the movie, believe me, that'll be more entertaining and you can come up with better jokes and have more fun than sitting through this film. That said, wait till DVD or Blu Ray to Riff it with your friends.

Final Rating: 2/5

Until next time, I'll continue to stoke the fires for when we burn through celluloid.

Alien Vs. Predator Review

"This pyramid, it's like a prison. We took the guards' guns, and now the prisoners are running free. To restore order, the guards need their guns."

-Sanaa Lathan "Alien Vs. Predator"

Released in 2004 under the direction of Paul W.S. Anderson on a budget of $60 million and distributed by 20th Century Fox; "Alien Vs. Predator" was a crossover sci-fi film that combined the alien zenomorphs from Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi thriller "Alien" (a film that combined the realism of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and suspense elements of gothic horror) and the alien hunters from John McTiernan's 1987 sci-fi action film "Predator" (a film that was a message about Vietnam War; what, you don't see it?). The idea for this crossover labored in development hell since the early 90's, not being helped from the numerous comic books and video games and arcade shooters that came around to cash in on this idea. Eventually, Hollywood finally found the "right guy" to finally help them cash in on it: Paul W.S. Anderson.

 This guy, prior to AVP, was responsible for the film/video game adaptations "Mortal Kombat" and "Resident Evil," both of which, while finical successes, were critically scathed by fans of the games and critics alike. For this film in particular, W.S. convinced the studio to film the movie in the sound stages of Czechoslovakia, thereby keeping the costs under $100 million, and by making the film a PG-13, the teenaged boys who couldn't see the original R-rated sci-fi classics were now able to. But what about for us fans of either franchise? Does it hold up to those expectations as a crossover film or is it just game over, man?

Plot: On a particular blue day, some company named Weyland (oh, something referencing "Aliens," nice name dropping Anderson) who organizes in…industry? Aeronautics? Something, I don't know, it's not important; discovers this heat source in the Antarctica and they organize a team comprised of people I could care less about: some Sigourney Weaver wannabe (Sanaa Lathan from "The Cleveland Show"), an archeologist who needs money (Raoul Bova from "Under the Tuscan Sun"), a camera man (I forget his name and how plays him), a british guy who's more annoying than Fred (Ewen Bremner from "Trainspotting"), some girl with a gun (forgot her name too), some black guy with a gun (Colin Salmon from "Tomorrow Never Dies"), and Lance Henriksen (from "Aliens", "Alien3", "Terminator", "Dead Man", and Disney's "Tarzan"; why did I bother to mention all those films? Because they are a hell of a lot better than this f*ckfest) all get together to try and discover some tunnel that leads to an underground temple that houses zenomorphs so three predators can go and practice their hunting skills on them. But because our "characters" are idiots, they just cause more problems as they cause the temple pyramid to keep changing on itself when it's convenient to the "plot" and just to watch humans and aliens killed killed off without any real sense of tension.

I've ranted before on how much I hate Paul W.S. Anderson as a writer but given him a pass on directing, because when he's not really that bad a director. He handles his action scenes well (well enough…) and he at least manages to keep the bloody camera still instead of shaking it all over the f*cking place like a drunken idiot (*See Jonathan Liebesman) but what bothers me is the wooden and stilted dialogue: "You got any children?" "Got a son." "Yeah, I've got two." "That means we do not have the luxury of quitting. We're gonna make it out of here. We're surviving this if I have to carry you the whole way." 

Really, Anderson's weak point is in writing. His movies work by the formula of boring exposition, action scene, boring exposition, action scene, uninteresting character development, action scene. His action scenes are the reason he gets people to come to the theaters but this film in particular has the most suspense-less opening in a film. From the archeologist guy saying "Hunter's moon", finding a stone tablet with the alien and predator fighting each other and finding corpses with their chests burst open; that's not subtle, it's pretty much just delaying the inevitable and if the film is taking THAT long to give us what the title promises, then it might as well be called "Alien vs Predator vs Cardboard Cut-outs" or the more appropriate title "Dumbasses Lost in a Pyramid: Plus Some Aliens or Something Like That" (course marketing would never put that on all the posters). It's a film that tries to balance the dark shadows and tension of the "Alien" films and the stalker sense from the "Predator" films but the result comes out as uneven pacing, giving us less of the promised Alien vs. Predator and more of the human characters who aren't developed or interesting or memorable and Anderson just having to resort to recycling elements from the previous films just to fill in the space of time instead of doing anything different with it. Also, it's been established in the "Alien" franchise that when a facehugger impregnates you with it's seed, it takes several hours for it to grow inside the host and then burst out shorter than 10 minutes, all except for this ONE alien that pops out at the end from this one Predator (nice continuity there Anderson)

Characters: I'm not gonna even bother to list them off because they are all just as awful as the last. The human characters are so uninteresting and boring, they make the Jersey Shore cast look like Oscar-winners. What made the original Alien and Predator franchise compelling were the traits that made each character interesting. Take either "Aliens" or "Predator" and ask yourself who are the characters in the films and why we care when they get killed off. We care because the film actually gives them dialogue that makes them identifiable to us and we, as the audience, connect to them emotionally, hence when they killed off, we give a rat's ass. For this film, there is not one character I remember that I even liked, each one was just annoying, emotionless and really forgettable. The only guy I bothered to remember was Lance Henriksen because, hey, this guy was in "Aliens" and the widely underrated "Alien3" and the film at least establishes that he is sick and dying. There, is that so hard? A character trait that differs one person from a cast of people who are as underdeveloped as the cast from "Alien Resurrection," THAT is how you do it dammit.

Production: Why bother to describe it? Because, well; the "Alien" franchise has always been on sets. Ridley Scott managed to keep costs down by spray-painting an abandoned industrial factory and using old materials that were littered around the place as well as combining the biomechanics imagination of H.R. Giger to create sets as well as the alien; he created a haunting location that distilled the fear of being trapped in a large place that aliens could hide in. James Cameron continued with this but he took an action movie attitude towards it but still retained the elements that Ridley left behind, such as the aliens using the dark places to strike and the closed quarters feeling of not being able to escape form the threat. David Fincher largely did the same, but didn't capture the same threat unlike the previous films, but still had atmosphere to boast. The less said about Jean-Pierre Jeunet's take the better but he at least still carried over the familiar idea of isolation. As stated before, Anderson filmed this movie in the Czech sets to keep costs down and, to his credit, did at least manage to somewhat capture the imagination of H.R. Giger. It's not as surreal as Giger's works (see picture below for example).

Regardless, the production crew still managed to make the sets surreal and biomechanical enough to show where the budget went into creating them. The costuming on the predators are rather "meh" and the animatronics for them are not as epic and cool as previous films. The action scenes are shoddily edited and feels like I'm watching Pro Wrestling style of fighting, I practically expect them to grab microphones and shout out things like "You stole my girlfriend from me!!" or "Your mother is MY mother!!" and start hitting each other with folded chairs and doing body slams on each other. But I'm thinking aloud now.

Oh yeah, how could I forget about the biggest fault of this film: the PG-13 rating. What were the original films rated again?

"Alien" 1979 - R

"Aliens" 1986 - R

"Predator" 1987 - R

"Predator 2" 1990 - R 

"Alien3" 1992 - R

"Alien Resurrection" 1997 - R

and just to add on to this list:

"Predators" 2010 - R

Noticing a pattern here? Can you guess WHY these films are rated as they? That's right, because of their VIOLENCE. Would the MPAA show a teenager in the theater someone getting skinned alive and held upside down in a bloody mess? Nope, they have rules to abide to. Would they show an alien drilling a hole into the skull of a human to a teenager? I imagine the teen would find that cool, but nope, MPAA has rules; but of course it's okay to show a Predator's skull get a hole in it's head because Green blood does not equal human blood, so therefore, it's okay! Friggin' hacks. 

Bottom Line: This film doesn't even dare to stand alongside the success of Ridley Scott and James Cameron; guys who actually put hard work into the low budgets they had to turn out strong movies that have been major influences on science-fiction cinema. Hell, THIS movie has to stand in the shadow of "Alien3" because it's just so poorly written, so badly acted and paced terribly, forcing pointless action scenes JUST to appeal to the impatient fans who wanted Predator on Alien action (get your head out of the gutter…but that does happen. BURN!) The characters are more stilted and forgettable than "Alien Resurrection," the writing, even worse.

This film is embarrassing to both Alien and Predator fans because it portrays the Predators as being weak and unable to handle a few Aliens and it portrays Aliens being "insta-alien." It's ridiculous and it clearly a vehicle to just give the fanboys what they want and then, just like "Freddy vs. Jason," end it without an actual victor just to avoid angering them. I would say the ride is worth it for the action scenes, but if the ride has to give us cardboard cut-outs with a dilapidated story to carry it, then you might as well just watch the action scenes online since those are the only entertaining parts of the film that are so far and few in-between. If you want my advice, skip this movie and go read the comic books or play the video games, at least THOSE have a better presentation with a credible explanation for the aliens and predators to fight one another and you'll be more entertained from it.

Final Rating: 1.5 out of 5 

Until next time, I'll continue to stoke the fires for when we burn through celluloid again.

Titanic 1997 Review

"It's been 84 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was."

-Gloria Stuart "Titanic"

Told from the perspective of an elderly woman named Rose Calvert (the late Gloria Stuart) as she describes how many years ago, she was Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), engaged to the arrogant heir of a steel factory Caledon Nathan Hockley (Billy Zane) and feels suffocated by her lack of choice in her life with being forced to uphold her high-class status while onboard a transport ship heading to America. Her life is forever changed when she meets a penniless artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) who manages to get her to break free of her bonds as they shortly fall deeply in love with each other. But, as we already know before this movie even started, the ship they are on is the doomed RMS Titanic as it hits an iceberg and, inevitably, sinks….
and so do we the audience, sinking into our chairs with the ungodly length of this film…3…f*cking…hours…geez Cameron, at least "Avatar" was 30 minutes shorter in comparison to this flick.

Being that April 14th 1912 is the day the infamous Titanic hit and iceberg and sank into the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly 1,500 people died and has since been called one of the worst maritime disasters to have ever occurred. Since it's sinking 100 years ago, there have several movies about the famous disaster; a german silent film called "In Nacht und Eis", a 1953 film that starred Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb, a 1964 musical that starred Debbie Reynolds in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", two godawful animated films that are no strangers to the heated rants by The Nostalgia Critic, a direct-to-DVD "sequel" called "Titanic II" created by the notorious mockbuster studio The Asylum but the one adaptation that everyone remembers and knows about is the James Cameron Academy Award-winning blockbuster "Titanic." So, to give some form of recognition for the numerous people who died 100 years ago, here is a review of the classic film.

Story: One has to wonder going into this film for the first time, how can you make a compelling movie when we already know what's going to happen? There's really no suspense in watching a movie about something that we've learned since grade school that there was a ship that sunk in the Atlantic and because there have been books and movies before about the Titanic, there's really no surprise or shock when we as an audience see a ship sinking. Cameron works around that by including a love story that goes over the concepts of social class with two people who come from the ends of the social spectrum and managed to give the middle finger to anyone who should say so otherwise. This comes as a problem for me, think of it like this, if you have this on DVD or VHS, notice how there are two DVDs (or VHS tapes) in the case, the film is split into 2 parts. The first disc, and first half of the movie, is pretty much a romantic drama, using the characters to hook us in and keep us invested with their love. The second half, disc 2, is pretty much the disaster movie section of the film and it's here that the special effects are a showcase. You could argue that this one movie is just Cameron's excuse to roll in a Romance film and a Disaster movie, but there is a market for both these genres and to combine the two to create this is reaching out to appeal to both fans of the genre.

However, the romantic angle comes off as a little hammy to me and the theme of social class by showing how boring the upper class is compared to the lower class have rubbed people in the wrong direction (a family member of mine knows one of the writes for the show Family Guy and they have described that they hate this scene. You know the one I'm talking about). Because of this, the film feels a little lopsided and uneven and the romance carried into the disaster movie part of the film just feels standard rather than strong.

Characters: Do note that I am counting "Avatar" when I say this but James Cameron can write people well in his films. Even if some of them are cliched, Cameron has a way of writing minor characters well enough so that you hook onto them and are given time to hook onto them and to know their personalities and care to remember their names. The best example that comes to mind is "Aliens" where Cameron gives us a band of mercenaries who are puts in the movie to be body bags for the aliens to kill off and so their deaths shouldn't really mean much and yet each one is given a name, a personality and feel integral to the overall plot and when they are killed, you feel sad to have lost such an interesting character, especially Hudson ("Game over man! Game over!") The same can be said for Titanic, even though there are over 2,000 people onboard this ship, Cameron chooses a select few for us to grab ahold of and to follow them until they survive or they go down with the ship as well. 

Acting is the strong suit in this film with fantastic acting from it's supporting cast (though admittedly, Billy Zane could take some subtlety pills for his acting performance) and even the lead actors, Leo and Kate, manage to at least give justice to what Cameron wrote. They do what the script calls them to do and they at least didn't half-ass their performances but I can't help but find that Leo's character is just too…well, perfect for women. Let's face it, he's got the looks, he's an artist so he's got to be open and sensitive but tough and strong to protect the girl. I dunno, just something about his character rubbed me the wrong way. But still, the characters are compelling enough to keep you going through the movie as it progresses, which is good enough.

Production: If there is one thing that James Cameron is good at doing, it's making money. Sh*tloads of it and the 1990's was no exception, from "Terminator 2" to "True Lies", Cameron was making money by the boatloads (no pun intended). But Cameron was highly insistent that in creating the sets of the Titanic, it would have to look like the Titanic from it's original designs down to the lamps, the rugs, the tables to even the dishware. Such dedication to recreating the feel of being on the Titanic cast Cameron millions not only from Paramount but from 20th Century Fox, because of this, many critics considered that this was going to be the biggest flop of the century and this would not only destroy Cameron's career but it would also force Paramount to go bankrupt and they would be ruined. Thankfully, Cameron's dedication and his driving passion allowed him to utilize the still relatively new CGI format to create certain shots of the Titanic as it would sink as well as the hundreds of people that would be swimming in the water and falling off the ship as it would sink. That said, the production value of "Titanic" is very strong and Cameron's passion for the details to make the Titanic look as it did back in 1912 is highly appreciated. The music is also good, but I can't help but feel that certain uses of the choir sound like Horner just using his keyboard on the "Choir" setting and just pushing the keys for the notes, the instrumentation used for the scenes and for the intense moments are fitting, the music choices such as "Ne'er My God I Am To Thee" is perfectly fitting and work with the shots shown and the less said about the Celine Dion song, the better, thank you very much.

Bottom Line: It's kinda hard to really say anything about his film that hasn't already been said. To me, I can't help but feel that the love story is really distracting compared to the large disaster movie that the sinking of the Titanic is but I just sat back, just let all the cliches and flaws pass me by and I just had a go with what was presented. Surprisingly after 15 years, the film still holds up, but for me, not so much as a love story, that alone just gets a "meh" response out of me but seeing the attention to detail done in on the ship as it sank and chuckling at the outdated CGi people falling off the ship and swimming in the water brought me back to my childhood when my parents showed me this movie. It has it's problems with pacing and some of the characters could be fleshed out better, but it's still a strong film where you can see a lot of passion was put into making it.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized that passion in 1997 and "Titanic" became one of the three rare movies to ever receive over 10 Academy Awards, along with "Ben-Hur" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" and with Cameron recently re-releasing it in 3D, it seems no matter the age, this film will bring many families to sit on the couch and, just like Cameron's nut worth, it will continue to go on, just like our hearts.

Final Rating: 4/5


Until next time, I'll continue to stoke the fires for when we burn through celluloid.