{"id":2749,"date":"2009-01-25T16:33:06","date_gmt":"2009-01-25T20:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=2749"},"modified":"2009-01-25T16:33:06","modified_gmt":"2009-01-25T20:33:06","slug":"take-me-back-to-babylon-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=2749","title":{"rendered":"Take Me Back to &#8220;Babylon A.D.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2009\/z012509babylonad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"372\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Pitch:<\/strong> <strong>\u201cThe 5th Element\u201d<\/strong> meets <strong>\u201cBlade Runner\u201d<\/strong> with a little bit of <strong>\u201cChildren of Men\u201d<\/strong> in the mix.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Overview:<\/strong> Set about <strong>30 years<\/strong> in the future, <strong>Toorop<\/strong> [<strong>Vin Diesel<\/strong>] is a mercenary hired to deliver a woman [<strong>Melanie Thierry<\/strong>] from <strong>Russia <\/strong>to the <strong>US<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Since border crossings are no longer easy, and <strong>Toorop<\/strong> is considered a terrorist in the <strong>US<\/strong>, it ain\u2019t gonna be easy.\u00a0 Of course if it were easy, we wouldn\u2019t have much of a movie, would we?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Good:<\/strong> The sense of time and place is excellent\u2026 from poor battle-torn slums in<strong> Russia<\/strong> to a frozen sea crossing to the bright lights of <strong>NYC<\/strong>.\u00a0 The unexpected stuff that seems expected to the characters in the movie &#8212; the helicopter\/car ride, the submarine rising from the ice to transport refugees, paper maps that work like computers, etc.\u00a0<strong> Toorop<\/strong> keeping his word when he is first brought in.\u00a0 That technology is everywhere.\u00a0\u00a0 The cast.\u00a0 <strong>Diesel<\/strong> in a cage fight.\u00a0 <strong>Melanie Thierry<\/strong> is believable as <strong>Aurora<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Bad:<\/strong> The advertising for <strong>\u201cBabylon A.D.\u201d<\/strong> \u2014 and the fact that <strong>the director <\/strong>complained that he wasn\u2019t able to achieve his full vision.\u00a0 The ending is somewhat quick, but totally works with everything given.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Ugly:<\/strong> The slums of <strong>Russia<\/strong>.\u00a0 What happens to <strong>Gorsky<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Summary:<\/strong> <strong>\u201cBabylon A.D.\u201d<\/strong> was so much better than I thought it would be.\u00a0 I watched the <strong>unrated version<\/strong> [it and the theatrical version are on the dvd] and totally enjoyed it.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a great film, but one that I believe will grow better with each viewing.\u00a0 I look forward to it joining my dvd library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pitch: \u201cThe 5th Element\u201d meets \u201cBlade Runner\u201d with a little bit of \u201cChildren of Men\u201d in the mix. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","comments-off"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}