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newnumber6I've paid for a few months of LJ time. I've also completed my Runaways Mood Theme and implanted that.
First, the 6 Social Interaction Report. Not really a whole lot to report, but before the truck arrived I did exchange a few words with someone I didn't know who was getting ready for her shift. Mostly commiserating over Daylight Savings Time (which sucks, btw... Damn you October-Me, you screwed me again!). Also had a few words with pixie-faced-girl about the same thing. Still, relatively pleasant and I didn't embarass myself (that I know of) so yay.
So the other day I watched Cube Zero. That's right, first there was Cube, then Cube 2: Hypercube, and now, Cube Zero. Cube was a great 'one big idea' movie about a bunch of strangers who wake up in a strange complex full of identical looking rooms in the shape of a Cube, each with one exit on each face (including floor and ceiling). They have no idea how or why they got there, nobody trusts each other, and oh yeah, some of the rooms contain deathtraps. It faltered a little towards the end but the idea was great. Hypercube wasn't bad as a sequel (extending the idea to a four dimensional structure), though not as good as the original. Still I liked the idea enough that when I heard about Cube Zero I wanted to see it.
Cube Zero's described as a prequel, although IMHO it's best described as an alternate take on the same subject matter. I'd rather not consider it part of 'Cube Continuity' if there is such a thing. It's the weakest of the three, but does some interesting things.
Cube Zero's a lot like the original Cube in design, except there are letters identifying the rooms instead of numbers, and one more twist - none of the strangers have any memories of their own lives.
The other big twist this time around - much of the movie takes place just outside the Cube, the story starting (after the first gory in-cube setup shot establishing the deathtraps) out on two people who work just outside monitoring the experiment even though they have no more idea of the purpose than anyone else.
Here's why I say that I don't like to consider the movie a prequel. There are ways that you could fanwank things so that they could be, and it's clearly intended as such (to say more would be a big spoiler), but to me the greatness of Cube is that the people all seemed to be from our world. Their speculations on who built the Cube was about secret black ops projects or a strange incompetent government entity or just some rich psycho. But in Cube Zero the glimpses we see of the world outside are clearly not our world - they're a conformist society with secret police everybody knows about, political prisoners, etc. So by doing the fanwanks necessary you remove the coolness of the initial Cube idea.
Now that that's out of the way, the movie itself. Focusing on one of the observers on the Cube is an interesting approach, and it could have worked well if they'd moved away from more obvious satirical elements. In particular there's a character introduced halfway through who is just played as so over-the-top moustache-twirling villainy that I couldn't take the movie seriously at all and get into it. Cube's beauty was you could immerse yourself in the situation... you might have to make a few leaps to get there, but once you were there you could get into it as something real. In this movie I was constantly confronted with 'Oh, look, they're trying to be cute' and couldn't get into it.
Actually, I had a similar problem with Battle Royale (the novel)... almost every time they had a scene with the evil teacher I rolled my eyes a little and it took me right out of the story. But of course he wasn't directly involved too often so it wasn't so bad in that case.
There was also a lot less of the interactions between the people in the Cube which was always fun, so that also takes away from some of the enjoyment.
Like all Cube movies, the ending doesn't really work at all, for a number of different reasons including just plain logical failures (unless I missed something) and no explanation for how things happened, that really needed explanation.
Acting, aside from the moustache-twirler, was okay, but nothing to write home about.
I wouldn't pay money for it unless you're a hardcore Cube fan, but it might be worth a look for free if you liked the other movies. If you haven't seen them, just watch Cube.
Oh, and also semi-movie-related. The other day I happened to hear that they were making a sequel to 28 Days Later called 28 Weeks Later. The day after, I had a dream of what the plot would be - basically, the people from the first movie, but in America now since it didn't spread there... at least not at first, until some terrorist group/apocalypse nutjobs deliberately released it in public in America. The people from the first movie go from being celebrities for having survived, to having to deal with a new burgeoning crisis and try and get out of the city (New York) before a nuke's dropped on it.
First, the 6 Social Interaction Report. Not really a whole lot to report, but before the truck arrived I did exchange a few words with someone I didn't know who was getting ready for her shift. Mostly commiserating over Daylight Savings Time (which sucks, btw... Damn you October-Me, you screwed me again!). Also had a few words with pixie-faced-girl about the same thing. Still, relatively pleasant and I didn't embarass myself (that I know of) so yay.
So the other day I watched Cube Zero. That's right, first there was Cube, then Cube 2: Hypercube, and now, Cube Zero. Cube was a great 'one big idea' movie about a bunch of strangers who wake up in a strange complex full of identical looking rooms in the shape of a Cube, each with one exit on each face (including floor and ceiling). They have no idea how or why they got there, nobody trusts each other, and oh yeah, some of the rooms contain deathtraps. It faltered a little towards the end but the idea was great. Hypercube wasn't bad as a sequel (extending the idea to a four dimensional structure), though not as good as the original. Still I liked the idea enough that when I heard about Cube Zero I wanted to see it.
Cube Zero's described as a prequel, although IMHO it's best described as an alternate take on the same subject matter. I'd rather not consider it part of 'Cube Continuity' if there is such a thing. It's the weakest of the three, but does some interesting things.
Cube Zero's a lot like the original Cube in design, except there are letters identifying the rooms instead of numbers, and one more twist - none of the strangers have any memories of their own lives.
The other big twist this time around - much of the movie takes place just outside the Cube, the story starting (after the first gory in-cube setup shot establishing the deathtraps) out on two people who work just outside monitoring the experiment even though they have no more idea of the purpose than anyone else.
Here's why I say that I don't like to consider the movie a prequel. There are ways that you could fanwank things so that they could be, and it's clearly intended as such (to say more would be a big spoiler), but to me the greatness of Cube is that the people all seemed to be from our world. Their speculations on who built the Cube was about secret black ops projects or a strange incompetent government entity or just some rich psycho. But in Cube Zero the glimpses we see of the world outside are clearly not our world - they're a conformist society with secret police everybody knows about, political prisoners, etc. So by doing the fanwanks necessary you remove the coolness of the initial Cube idea.
Now that that's out of the way, the movie itself. Focusing on one of the observers on the Cube is an interesting approach, and it could have worked well if they'd moved away from more obvious satirical elements. In particular there's a character introduced halfway through who is just played as so over-the-top moustache-twirling villainy that I couldn't take the movie seriously at all and get into it. Cube's beauty was you could immerse yourself in the situation... you might have to make a few leaps to get there, but once you were there you could get into it as something real. In this movie I was constantly confronted with 'Oh, look, they're trying to be cute' and couldn't get into it.
Actually, I had a similar problem with Battle Royale (the novel)... almost every time they had a scene with the evil teacher I rolled my eyes a little and it took me right out of the story. But of course he wasn't directly involved too often so it wasn't so bad in that case.
There was also a lot less of the interactions between the people in the Cube which was always fun, so that also takes away from some of the enjoyment.
Like all Cube movies, the ending doesn't really work at all, for a number of different reasons including just plain logical failures (unless I missed something) and no explanation for how things happened, that really needed explanation.
Acting, aside from the moustache-twirler, was okay, but nothing to write home about.
I wouldn't pay money for it unless you're a hardcore Cube fan, but it might be worth a look for free if you liked the other movies. If you haven't seen them, just watch Cube.
Oh, and also semi-movie-related. The other day I happened to hear that they were making a sequel to 28 Days Later called 28 Weeks Later. The day after, I had a dream of what the plot would be - basically, the people from the first movie, but in America now since it didn't spread there... at least not at first, until some terrorist group/apocalypse nutjobs deliberately released it in public in America. The people from the first movie go from being celebrities for having survived, to having to deal with a new burgeoning crisis and try and get out of the city (New York) before a nuke's dropped on it.
