Showing posts with label Fantasy. Show all posts
Actress Name : Paryse Allen
Character Name : Marissa
Year : 1997
Paryse Allen as evil babe Marissa in Heart and Soul The Adventures of Sinbad
Movie Name : Sumuru
Actress Name : Simona Williams and Nadia Kretschmer
Character Name : Taxan
Year : 2003
In 2003 movie Sumuru. Actresses Simona Williams and Nadia Kretschmer play as villains. WOW, this is Michael Shanks from Stargate sg-1, that was before Stargate, he played a lot of roles before Stargate, I wonder what he thought when he knew that he would be a part of Stargate, personally I never seen him in anything else but Stargate, till now.. This movie is so cheap, but with good actors..
They used to film in really awesome places..
We get to see the first villainess around 9 minutes..
We first see the gorgeous Taxan around 12 minutes, god, my heart is beating seeing her in every second on screen..
She's offering a blood sacrifice to the serpent goddess, I assume the snake represent goddess Sekhmet, the eye of Ra, I really miss supernatural villains..
Sumuru is disrespecting the serpent goddess, how rude!!
There's multiple women wearing bras with a cage around their chests, like, what are you doing here? LOL!
The movie is low budget, it's very obvious, but doing incredible work with so limited resources..
Alexandra Kamp is so elegant and beautiful playing Sumuru..
This movie is weird, it's a 2003 movie, so it doesn't feel exactly like a 90s movie nor as 2010s movie, something in the middle as if it's a transition phase..
Taxan is a living serpent goddess, which is very interesting, in From Dusk Till Down, Salma Hayek was basically manifestation of a goddess, Santanico Pandemonium is basically Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian goddess that is thirsty for blood, with the sun crown over her head, and you would notice how familiar it is to Helios' crown, and the snake around her also appear in ancient Egyptian depiction of the goddess, so Taxan being a manifestation of a goddess is kind of cool..
To know how important Sekhmet is to the old world, you only need to know that she was worshiped for 3000 years, with no forcible pressure, with the central nations isn't as powerful, people whose their writing to the letters is an art in itself, they worshiped such visualization of what would the god be like.. That's not just like any character, that's the character that gave us the whole concept of vampires, and her father Ra, thanks to this character, movies like groundhog day and every movie with a loop on Ra daily cycle, and contributed to philosophy..
This movie is stupid, and I love it, it's not serious, like the right level of being serious but not very much, like Hercules 1983..
We see our goddess again around 39 minutes, she orders her women to get rid of the guards, and to get the hero to her..
Taxan meet the hero around 41 minutes, I don't know why I'm in love with her, Taxan asks the hero to join her to punish the heroine for her blasphemy, it's insane, but I would do it if I were him, it doesn't make sense, I just wouldn't be able to resist her!
The reason that the hero refused Taxan's tyranny is because in the heroic world acts driven by reason, like why would he support those who would oppress him later?! But in the villain world her tyranny is her beauty, and both men and women suffering by being enslaved by such tyrannical beauty that took away from them any way to resist, her beauty causing many men to face hunger as they can't stop thinking about her, nothing as tyrannical as to take control of what others think, which what a beautiful woman like Taxan do. If you see the whole movie as a painting it doesn't matter how many elements are in the painting as long as it would show us how beautiful Taxan is, she has the contradictory nature of Sekhmet, the character can hold two contradictory absolute truths as the same time, she represent tyranny, and at the same time represent freedom, as portraying villains as beautiful is the highest point of creative freedom, many great fictional characters these contradictions, like with Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is both the monster and the human, two absolute contradictory truths, same goes with the best Arab poets, when they describe love, for example:
Jarir when said in his poem
"Those eyes, whose gaze is captivating,
have slain us, yet they do not revive our slain."
To know how good character Taxan is, I miss seeing her, not because the movie is boring, but I want to see her more, you never get that feeling with many characters..
I have to re-watch Stargate, I miss this show..
The final confrontation starts around 1 hour 15 minutes..
You can watch the whole movie here..
In the ancient world art and science were treated as sacred, so maybe they didn't have understanding of physics to go to space, but they were experts in administrating society, so when you have a goddess as Sekhmet, it's supposed to invoke a feeling that can't be replicated otherwise, and that's true with two types of characters like a reversal of colors of the same white and black drawing, one with black paper drawn by white lines which is Frankenstein, the other with white paper and drawn by black lines, and funny enough both Frankenstein and The Vampyre were written as a result of the challenge of Villa Diodati, we have characters that proved to be powerful for thousands of years, that associated to some of the oldest artistic works, which is Sekhmet, and her reverse Sphinx, so if we assumed that the ancient gods were made as a way to invoke certain feelings, and Sekhmet represent both attraction and repulsion at the same time, then we can hypothesize that her reversal The Great Sphinx was made for Sekhmet, which make it also Frankenstein, I doubt that there's any character I haven't seen can be as good as these two, because I've seen them all, what Hollywood have been doing for about decade now is creating boring characters, the same type of characters that would be created in dark ages, with the sin have to be repulsive and the good have to look perfect, and they have their audiences, like I enjoyed Hercules, but first I was a kid, the second reason, everything in the show looks awesome, the actors, the costumes, the monsters were fun to watch, but still the character of Hercules itself isn't that interesting, the show is all about looking aesthetically good, easy and simple, like, would I invest tens of hours watching a new remake for a protagonist today? No, I won't, I would only watch it for two reasons, for the villains, and that's what I watch movies and TV shows for, or if the protagonist was a villainess before and I really want to see the actress again on screen as much as possible, like with Hard Knox, I had a great time watching the movie, I love every second of both Kim Penn and Simone were on screen, and the movie was fun..
One of the most interesting things about the character of a villainess, the previous movie with the great Sybil Danning playing Adriana in Hercules have the opposite message of this movie, if you are watching it for the heroes, you will love watching one hero and hate the other, but if you are watching it for the villains, you would have the same contradictory feelings towards the villainess no matter you agree with the message of the movie or not, same thing apply on characters like Frankenstein as it also invoke a certain feeling even if you disagree with the message behind the movie or not, which actually help people be more tolerant..
I know how Hard Knox is barely known outside the fandom of female villains, but he would watch Kim Penn playing villainess before and wouldn't love watching this movie and feel like he had the greatest time of his life? Female villains is like artistic connection that goes back to a thousands of years, and movies are giving you such connection, so when you see a villainess on screen, that's how people 4000 years ago saw the gods..
Simona Williams as evil babe Taxan in Sumuru
In 2012 movie Snow White and the Huntsman. Actress Charlize Theron plays as villainess Ravenna.
I think this is the second live action movie I've seen about Snow White, can't remember the other one, just checked, this is the first one, the other movie I was thinking about was The Brothers Grimm where Monica Bellucci played Mirror Queen, let's see if this one would be memorable..
The music in this movie is really good..
33 minutes in, I'm bored..
Charlize Theron is gorgeous, but I got bored, it's numbing, so I don't think I will ever finish it..
Charlize Theron as evil babe Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman
In 2016 movie Time Raiders. Actresses Mallika Sherawat and Peng Lin play as villains Snake Empress, Pingtan Musician. My expectations for this movie is it will be a modern Hollywood movie, which means if it's half decent, that would exceed my expectations..
First we start with a villain similar to Bulletproof Monk's male villain..
I really hope the movie isn't as bad as I think it is..
The fighting is good at least.
Wu Xie is telling us about his childhood, there's nothing that justify him doing that, it's not like he faced something that triggered a memory, we just have to know about his childhood for some reason, it would make more sense if the movie started with that taking us through different stages of his life, instead of taking us to the present and then give us unjustified flashbacks!!
Ok, the iron mask looks cool..
Around 28 minutes we basically get the original story of Anck Su Namun from The Mummy!!
This movie is actually getting better than I expected it to be..
I don't know how to feel towards the way they speak English, like there's a different between speaking English and acting English, acting speaking English is hard even for native speakers, so you can see that the actors speaking English, a very good and clear English, but the acting part feels lacking, on the other hand, if it was dubbed, well, good job because I didn't notice it..
I forgot, Ning and her men ambushed the heroes around 47 minutes and started a shootout..
At first when I started checking the movie, especially the scenes of Snake Empress, I thought it would be one of these movies that blind me with CGI, and I really don't like these movies, but after I started watching the movie, the CGI is used moderately, which is kind of cool..
Here's something I find little weird with Zhang Qiling character, when you have characters like Rick O'Connell in The Mummy, or Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, and they act indifferent towards the artifacts in the country they are in, they are often foreign explorers, they share no connection at all with the place they are disrespecting, this is different from Zhang Qiling, Zhang was introduced as a native and protector of the place, the heritage that foreigners want to take by force, yet, he acted indifferent when the good team used explosives to enter the place, he acted indifferent when his team started shooting, his team is the one that used guns in the place not "the villains", he didn't even scream "Don't!!", as if the place is sacred for him, not only that, he even took part in destroying the place to get "the villains", this is so different from The Sanctuary for example where the heroes really wanted to retrieve priceless national treasure, in the movie Zhang is really trying to be an American explorer that he kind of forgot that this place belong to him and his people, and seeing how the movie showed us how reached a high level of enlightenment to be such excellent fighter, it just make zero sense, he kind of acting absent to everything happening to the historical site!!
I swear Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling feel like a couple!!
I think the scene around 58 minutes was also in The Mummy, the scene when someone put his arm and lost it, but I think it was acid in the original..
Ok, the scene with the dolls was cool, and kind of original, it add a horror movie elements, it would be better if they didn't light the place first tho, and that's probably another problem with the movie is really trying to make something similar to The Mummy and the mirrors scene..
Come on, dude, ruining the immersion of the scene by using CGI lion!!
The whole scene since the dolls appeared till now around 1 hour 9 minutes had too much light..
This movie had the potentials to be a great horror, the zombie insects are really scary.. Which made me think, you know what would be more scary than a zombie apocalypse!! An insects zombie apocalypse, like any insect any mosquito or fly can be deadly, at least with the human zombie apocalypse you can see and avoid them, with insects, you can't even sleep in peace! Even being safe means living in psychological horror!
I misjudged the movie, the movie is really its own thing, even if it's inspired from Hollywood movies..
I can see that the creator of the movie is also a fan of Stargate, which is kind of cool.. Chinese love Hollywood movies and TV shows as much as Hollywood hate itself..
Apparently the scenes with blinding CGIs starts around 1 hour 35 minutes..
The gorgeous Snake Empress appears around 1 hour 37 minutes..
Snake Empress goes like "Humans are a lowly life form", yeah, compared to you, it's so unfair to humans, humanity can never pass the test when it's compared to such breathtaking beauty.. It's insane that anyone can be this beautiful, it's unfair to women because it's impossible to meet the beauty of The Snake Empress, and also unfair to men because it's impossible to find anyone as beautiful as The Snake Empress, a true goddess and any mortal who fall in love with a goddess is doomed..
The final fight starts from there, and it's long, it basically from there till the end of the movie..
Villainesses are absolutely the greatest concept in movies, nothing can ever come any close to them, and I've watched tons of movies, no character can even come close to how incredible and amazing female villains are..
Like read this poem by Nizar Qabbani one of the greatest poets in the 20s and 21s century addressing his lover, and tell me that there's any character can even come close on how he's describing his feeling of love in the poem and which character can translate such feelings in a movie better than a villainess:
"Increase my love, increase it
O sweetest of my fits of madness
O dagger in my tissues
O piercing knife
Increase my death, for if death kills me, it will revive me
I am the oldest capital of love
And my wound is a Pharaonic inscription
My pain is a caravan sent from Damascus to China
And lost in the mouth of a dragon
O taste of snow and taste of fire
And flavor of my doubt and certainty"
Nothing can translate the contradiction of passion as powerful as villains can do, villains are all about contradiction, and that what make them one of the greatest fictional artistic concepts of all time, at least for me..
I was expecting the movie to be like modern Hollywood movies, and it indeed have elements of that, for example, from what I have noticed from how movies especially in the west are made today is this, they collect data from social media, they know what people talking about, what interest them, what they like and what they don't like, and go make the movie like "It has to contain this and that" "It has to look this and that", and the movie partially did that, for example, the movie knew that people liked elements from The Mummy, so it took elements people liked from the movie, other elements from Bulletproof Monk, others from From Dusk Till Dawn, I would say The Snake Empress intro is very similar to Salma Hayek scene in the movie, yet Time Raiders actually did it better, starting from the doll scene it started to form its own character, with modern Hollywood movies they don't do that, the way they think, if people want this and this and that, let's mix them all together in a movie and focus on the marketing and people will just go watch, but that's not how movies work, if you forced a narrative on a movie based on data you destroy immersion, if you destroyed immersion, you kind of destroyed the whole movie, movies are like characters, they are works of art, like a painting, you can't cut parts from different paintings with different styles from the greatest paintings in history of humanity and call it the greatest painting in the history of humanity, and that's what AI and modern entertainment do, which is why, I wouldn't say they make bad movies, it's somehow worse, they make movies that are hard to watch, it's like they don't think that immersion is an important element in the movie, as escapism isn't something that they care about, they collect the data, make movie based on the collected data and that's it, you basically end up seeing your social media feed in a visual form, that's why a B-movie from the 90s is often more fun to watch than a big budget movie from 2026!!
Anyway, you can watch the full movie here..
