The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

Year 2, Day 86 - 3/27/10 - Movie #451

BEFORE: The last of my Sinbad movies - and I promise to not transition to movies starring Sinbad the comedian. I had to wait an extra day to tape this one off of TCM - and once again, FX are provided by Ray Harryhausen.

THE PLOT: Sinbad and his crew intercept a homunculus carrying a golden tablet. Koura, the creator of the homunculus and practitioner of evil magic, wants the tablet back and pursues Sinbad.

AFTER: This time Sinbad isn't motivated by bringing peace, or restoring his miniature girlfriend, but seems to be motivated purely by profit, though he follows a chart not knowing exactly what he'll find. But interlocking golden tablets suggests a golden treasure, right?

Sinbad matches the amulet he finds (steals) with one in the possession of a Vizier, who wears a golden mask after his face was burned off in a fireball of Black Prince Koura. Koura (Tom Baker of "Dr. Who" fame) practices the black arts, which enables Ray Harryhausen to show off again, as Koura brings to life a ship's wooden figurehead, and later a six-armed sword-fighting statue of Kali.

The plot here is rather minimal, and relies heavily on coincidence - what are the chances that Sinbad's slave girl has EXACTLY the right tattoo to make the natives of Lemuria worship her?

And I still haven't watched the Sinbad movie I remember from my childhood, which had future Chewbacca star Peter Mayhew as a minotaur-like robot. I've now figured out that must have been "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger". Oh well.

RATING: 4 out of 10 turbans

Jason and the Argonauts

Year 2, Day 85 - 3/26/10 - Movie #450

BEFORE: Another mythological film with FX by Harryhausen - I probably watched most of this as a kid, but I'm allowing movies that I don't remember well and haven't watched for over 30 years...

THE PLOT: The legendary Greek hero leads a team of intrepid adventurers in a perilous quest for the legendary Golden Fleece.

AFTER: How to tell a hero from a villain in one of these B-movie adventures from the 1960's:

Hero: "Greetings, stranger, my name is Jason. I come to town to gain vengeance on Pelias, the evil king who killed my father and stole my birthright throne away from me. Do you know where I can find him?"

Stranger (who is actually King Pelias): "Why, no, Jason, but I promise to help you gain vengeance on the evil king. But perhaps first you should sail around the world on a quest for a fabulous object that may not even exist...then you will be powerful enough to face the king. My name? Come now, that's not important - now, go on..."

What a dope Jason is - very easily distracted from the main reason he came to town - and how exactly does gaining the golden fleece give him any power to take over the kingdom he deserves? I don't quite see the point...supposedly the people will rally around the man who holds the fleece, I guess their A.D.D. is as bad as Jason's. "Oh look, a man holding something shiny! Let's make him the king!"

Like Sinbad, Jason and his crew sail from island to island, encountering different giant creatures - one is a giant named Talos, who resembles a giant bronze statue. Fortunately the giant has an Achilles heel, conveniently located near his actual heel, which the goddess Hera reveals to Jason in one of her 5 chances to assist him. The statue is defeated, but at the cost of Hercules' young companion, which causes Hercules to abandon the quest.

The filmmakers played fast and loose with the mythology, opting to edit out the less cinematic parts of Jason's quest, no doubt replacing them with more visual dangers - in the original myth, Hercules' boyfriend (there, I said it...) is seduced by nymphs and drowned in a river, but the end result is the same, Hercules is out of the story, making Jason's quest more difficult. The following clash with the Harpies, and the trip through the Clashing Rocks, however, seem pretty true to the legend. But where are the sirens? They was a major part of the Greek myth...

In the myth, Jason was supposed to perform three difficult tasks before he was able to earn the Golden Fleece, here it's just hanging from a tree, though it's protected by a stop-motion Hydra monster. In the original legend, one of his tasks was to sow a dragon's teeth into a field, and defeat the armed warriors which they turned into - there's a sort of spin on that here as the King of Colchis takes the Hydra's teeth and turns them into the cinematic Harryhausen skeleton warriors.

Skeleton warriors must be really tough to kill - since they don't bleed or feel pain. But how do they swing their swords and carry their shields, if they have no muscles - they can't be very strong, logically...

The movie abruptly ends once Jason, Medea and the Argonauts are on their boat, on the way back to Thessaly. WHAT? We don't even get to see him return with the fleece and become king? Wasn't that the whole point? What a rip-off! This also omits a major portion of Jason's story, where he marries a woman who is NOT Medea, and she doesn't take that well. I think they even made an opera out of that part of the story. Anyway, track down the original legend if you want to see what happened after the Hollywood-style happy ending.

Maybe if the "Clash of the Titans" remake is a hit, someone will do a remake of this one, with updated CGI and green-screening FX...and a proper ending, with Jason returning to Thessaly and killing King Pelias!

RATING: 6 out of 10 exotic dancers...er, I mean "priestesses".

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Year 2, Day 84 - 3/25/10 - Movie #449

BEFORE: This one's from the 1950's, I taped it off of TCM a couple years ago and put it on a DVD with "Jason and the Argonauts". I thought it was a movie I watched as a kid, but now I think that was a different Sinbad film, so I've never watched this one. It looks like this one has effects done by the great Ray Harryhausen, so I'm hopeful.

THE PLOT: When a princess is shrunken by an evil wizard, Sinbad must undertake a quest to an island of monsters to cure her and prevent a war.

AFTER: The special FX are actually pretty good, considering the year this was made (1958). But the acting is just dreadful, the plot's pretty thin, and it stars no one I've ever heard of. It seems pretty low-budget, like a B-movie.

The movie seems to start in the middle of a story, with Sinbad and his crew landing on the island of Colossa, where they encounter a giant hooved Cyclops beast. The magician Sokurah, who controls a genie in a lamp, gets dropped into the story (later it's explained that he lives on Colossa...) and defeats the Cyclops, who gains control of the lamp.

Sokurah travels back to Bagdad with Sinbad, to convince the Caliph to fund an expedition to regain the lamp - dude, you lost it, why should someone else stick their neck out for you to get it back? - promising untold riches from the Cyclops' cave. When the Caliph refuses, the magician shrinks Sinbad's fiancee down to miniature size, and says the only way to re-enlarge her is to make a potion back in his lab on Colossa.

It's kind of annoying that no one really sees through Sokurah's deception - just how many magicians in Bagdad could have shrunk the princess? And isn't it a little convenient that the only way to get the ingredients for the potion is to travel to the EXACT island that Sokurah wanted to return to?

But what we really want to see is the stop-motion creatures - the Cyclops, the giant Roc bird, a dragon and a sword-fighting skeleton. These were top-notch effects back in the day, inspiring films like the 1980's "Clash of the Titans". Yeah, they're a little jerky and not perfect, but you have to respect the craft.

The Sinbad mythos seems to borrow heavily from the stories of Aladdin (magic lamp) and Greek mythology (putting wax in the crew's ears to avoid maddening Sirens). The actual Sinbad stories told in the "1001 Arabian Nights" detail 7 voyages, but most of those elements from those stories don't appear here, except for the Cyclops and the giant Roc birds.

RATING: 5 out of 10 cobras

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

Year 2, Day 83 - 3/24/10 - Movie #448

BEFORE: Back to animated films about magic and legends - I'm getting burned out on cartoons, so this will be the last animated film for a while, but the start of 3 films about the legendary sailor, Sinbad. And the start of a longer chain about boats and the open seas...

THE PLOT: Sinbad is framed by the goddess Eris for the theft of the Book of Peace, and must travel to her realm at the end of the world to retrieve it and save the life of his childhood friend Prince Proteus.

AFTER: Now, this is more like it, probably the best animated film I've seen all week - this is what I think animation is really good for, showing things like giant sea monsters and elaborate stunts that would be nearly impossible to portray convincingly in regular live-action. (though CGI is making larger strides every year...)

My ear for voices identified Brad Pitt right away as the voice of Sinbad, and Catherine Zeta-Jones was obviously the voice of Marina, but I flubbed the other main voices - I thought Eris was played by Cameron Diaz, Proteus sounded like Jude Law to me, and I could have sworn Kale was played by Michael Clarke Duncan. Wrong on all three counts, it was actually Michelle Pfeiffer, Joseph Fiennes, and Dennis Haysbert. I'm sort of embarrassed...

Like Kuzco and Kronk, Sinbad is a bit of a renegade freelancer, who learns that the best way to live his life is to stick up for his friends - after being falsely accused (for once...) of a theft, his old friend Proteus volunteers to take his place in prison, while Sinbad travels to the edge of the world (and beyond) to steal the item back from the goddess of discord, and prove his own innocence.

Sinbad also learns that a woman on a sailing ship can actually come in handy and pull her own weight, but the movie never gets too preachy with a feminist message.

I really liked the action sequences, with Sinbad facing off against giant squids, giant fish and a giant snowbird. They were really thrilling, and Sinbad had some innovative methods of dodging danger and defeating the creatures. We never really learn WHY the Book of Peace is important, or what exactly it can do - but I guess all we really need to know is that it belongs in the city of Syracuse, and not in the hands of an evil goddess.

It's a bit of a shame this movie didn't really catch on, in the same way that the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films did. It's a pretty rollicking adventure.

RATING: 7 out of 10 cutlasses

The Land Before Time

Year 2, Day 82 - 3/23/10 - Movie #447

BEFORE: Yeah I maybe could have watched this after "10,000 B.C.", or maybe I should wait until I get a copy of "Ice Age 3" or "Land of the Lost" - but I need a 1-day filler movie to make my chain work out - there's a movie on TCM this Friday that I want to work into my list, and I need to time this right.

THE PLOT: Four orphan dinosaurs travel the ruins of their world, while grieving the loss of their families and banding together to face the odds of survival.

AFTER: Ugh, this was tough for me to watch. Tougher than watching "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List" even. I kept falling asleep - though I suppose going to a beer-tasting dinner earlier in the evening had a lot to do with that...

But I just can't take these insipid baby dinosaurs with cutesy voices, each trying to prove that they're cuter than the next. There's some big earthquake and the baby dinosaurs get separated from their parents, and they have to trek across the landscape to the great valley...and you know what? I just don't care.

I like animation, I really do. But this is really geared only for 5-year old boys who think dinosaurs are cool, at least before they discover girls, at which point their interest in dinosaurs will probably fall by the wayside.

But, I resolved I would watch a film a day, and once I got started on this one I'd rather just finish it and get it off my list, instead of starting another film. I keep seeing the sequel films listed on the programming guide, now I officially absolve myself from tracking them down and watching them. Maybe someday if my nephew discovers dinos I can turn him on to this film, but other than that, I've got no use for it.

Don't recognize any of the voice actors, except for Helen Shaver as Littlefoot's mother, and Will Ryan (who I happened to have met in the real world) as the voice of Petrie, the pterodactyl.

RATING: 3 out of 10 footprints

The Emperor's New Groove 2: Kronk's New Groove

Year 2, Day 81 - 3/22/10 - Movie #446

BEFORE: This was a direct-to-video sequel to last night's film, which would usually mean that it's below my radar, but the Disney Channel ran it a couple years ago, and I taped it to put on DVD as a double-feature, so it made its way on to my list.

THE PLOT: This movie picks up Kronk's life from where "The Emperor's New Groove" leaves off.

AFTER: This is a different way of telling a story, with 2 flashbacks dividing the film into three segments. Each contains a little life-lesson - OK, I suppose it's the same lesson three times in a row, as Kronk learns three times that honesty is the best policy (Kronk's a little slow...)

We learn that Kronk aided the sorceress Yzma in a scam to sell a useless "youth potion" to a bunch of senior citizens, who sell their house to Kronk so they can afford more potion. In the second flashback, Kronk leads a team of Chipmunk scouts in a camp competition, and after falling for the rival female counselor, decides that fair play is better than doing whatever it takes to win.

However, things don't always tend to go Kronk's way, despite the fact that he chooses to listen to the angel on his right shoulder more often than the devil on his left. (did the Aztecs believe in angels and devils? Just wondering...) And after losing his house and his girl, despite his attempts to be fair and honest, he's got nothing to show when his father, Papi comes to visit.

Because he can't stand his father's disapproval, Kronk tosses out the lessons he's learned, and tries to deceive his father with a fake family, and not admit that he's just a lowly homeless fry-cook. In the end, he learns (for the third time) that it's better to tell the truth, but since he's surrounded by his friends, it's sort of a touching "It's a Wonderful Life" moment.

There are plenty of references to other films, both Disney and non-Disney. Kronk and his girlfriend share a meal similar to the one in "Lady and the Tramp", swing on vines like "Tarzan", and the arrows hitting a bullseye resemble the animated "Robin Hood". Other references are to "Titanic", "Evita", "Lord of the Rings", and the dance sequence manages to pay homage to "Saturday Night Fever", "Pulp Fiction" and the moves of Michael Jackson. Even Yzma's appearance as a part-cat seems to be a nod to her days as Catwoman on the old "Batman" show.

And it's a Patrick Warburton triple-play, as his Kronk takes center-stage in this film. A host of other TV-sitcom voices are heard here, like David Spade, John Goodman, Wendie Malick (all reprising their roles from the first film), along with John Mahoney ("Frasier") and Tracey Ullman.

RATING: 5 out of 10 loaves of raisin bread

The Emperor's New Groove

Year 2, Day 80 - 3/21/10 - Movie #445

BEFORE: Knocking another Disney film off the list - I'm digging these shorter animated movies, which allow me a little more time to get some other things done around the house, or get to bed at a slightly more reasonable hour. My sleeping schedule got thrown off last week when I missed a night's sleep due to the pain from my first-ever kidney stone (not that I knew what was causing me such pain at the time...) and I had to call in sick, but then wasted the day off by sleeping all day. It's going to be tough to get back to a somewhat-normal schedule by Monday morning.

THE PLOT: Emperor Kuzco is turned into a llama by his ex-administrator Yzma, and must now regain his throne with the help of Pacha, the gentle llama herder.

AFTER: Yeah, I had trouble staying awake during this one, but I'm blaming it on my wacky sleeping schedule more than the film itself, which was actually above-average. Of course, I'm comparing it to "Happily N'Ever After", so the results might be a little skewed.

Magic is at the forefront of this plot also, as a cocky Aztec (Mayan? I always mix those up...) emperor (voiced by the cocky David Spade) is transformed into a llama in a failed assassination attempt. The Disney animators get to show off their love of drawing animals, but at least this time it's not in the form of multiple cutesy sidekicks, it's people being transformed into animals due to some magic potions - a clever twist.

Patrick Warburton (famous for playing Puddy on "Seinfeld") carries over from the last movie - which is not a big deal, since some rule states that Patrick Warburton must appear in every animated film or TV show made since the mid-1990's or so. Seriously, the guy's done voices for "Family Guy", "Venture Bros.", "Hoodwinked", "Bee Movie", "Space Chimps", "Open Season", "Kim Possible", "Chicken Little" and "Home on the Range" - plus a slew of other TV shows and video-games. Something about his voice just instantly conjures up a muscle-headed moron like Kronk, or Puddy.

Anyway, the Emperor has to rely on a peasant (voiced by John Goodman) to get him back to the castle...er, temple...and changed back into a human. Along the way he learns a life-lesson about not being arrogant and tyrannical.

The final battle between Kuzco and the sorceress Yzma, with them transforming into a succession of different animals, is sort of reminiscent of the wizard battle seen in "The Sword and the Stone" between Merlin and Madame Mim. There's a famous folk tale similar to this too, but the details of it escape me right now.

Also starring the voices of Eartha Kitt, Wendie Malick, and Tom Jones.

RATING: 6 out of 10 jaguars