Dragonball

DRAGONBALL-EVOLUTION-2009-Nerdy white kid Goku (Justin Chatwin) lives with his Asian grandpa and tries to fit in and avoid bullies. On his birthday gramps gives Goku a “dragonball”, one of only 7 in the world. The evil demon Lord Piccolo (James Marsters) wants all the dragon balls so he kills gramps and Goku begins a quest to find all the magical balls and get revenge. Yun-Chow Fat livens things up as the comical Roshi. There's weird metallic monsters, lots of CGI fights, too much talk, crazy dream sequences and Goku turning into a giant monster. Though this is based on a hugely popular anime (of which I know very little about) it seems more influenced by LORD OF THE RINGS and HARRY POTTER. 

Director James Wong made FINAL DESTINATION and THE ONE (with Jet Li) before this.

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I Smell A Bad Oater....

SCARLET RIVER-1933-Just watched this hokey western that's less than 60 mins.long! Western star Tom Keene stars as Tom Baxter a famous western star who decides to shoot his new film on location at a real ranch. Edgar Kennedy (who was in DUCK SOUP with The Marx Bros. the same year) is his director. Lon Chaney Jr. (billed here under his real first name of Creighton) is a ranch hand who's actually in cahoots with cattle rustlers. Keene is a big dumb hero who never loses a fight or his hat. Chaney is much cooler despite being the bad guy. Also with Rosco Ates as a stuttering ranch hand, Betty Furness as Baxter's leading lady and stuntman/actor Yakima Canutt. Bruce Cabot, Mryna Loy and Joel McCrea appear as themselves. Keene, the star of many cheapy westerns in the '30's and '40's also appeared in other movies under the name Richard Powers. He ended his career as the

major in Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE!

DRAGONBALL:THE MAGIC BEGINS-1989-This is a wacky live action version of the popular Japanese anime series DRAGONBALL, made in China. I'm not a fan of the original but this is a alternately funny and dumb comedy with great fighting scenes and cheesy SFX. The dubbing is terrible though and the names of the lead characters are inexplicably changed (as is much of the plot) so this probably won't appeal to die-hard fans of the anime but if you're a fan of live action fantasy-sci-fi like ULTRA-MAN or INFRA-MAN you might like it...

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