The Canyon (2009) does for riding a mule into the Grand Canyon what
Open Water did for getting stranded in the middle of the ocean! It does for riding a mule into the Grand Canyon what
Frozen did for getting stranded on a ski lift! riding a mule into the Grand Canyon what
Jaws did for trying to kill a shark that is much larger than you are! Watching
The Canyon did for me what punching myself in the face also does for me- it made me want to find something else to do!
Lori (Yvonne Strahovski) and Nick (Eion Bailey), a couple of milquetoast newlyweds, can't secure the backcountry permit required to ride some mules down into the Grand Canyon. Because this is an opportunity that may never come again (??), they decide to follow a grizzled, alcoholic guide who offers to take them since he has a permit, by which he means he does not have a permit.
A day into the trip, a rattlesnake bite means the end of the guide. The mules done run off, so Lori and Nick have to find a way out on their own. After a few more days of wandering, a foot amputation, and multiple wolf attacks, we the audience (or, I suppose,
me the audience) try to pretend we don't know that there aren't any fucking Timberwolves in the Grand Canyon and that at that time of year in the Canyon, our heroes would have died of dehydration long before the movie was over. That might have been nice, because it would have spared us the dreadful dialogue.
For a film purportedly about, you know,
survival and
man versus nature and all that shit, there's not much tension. The attitudes of these two doofuses aren't appropriate enough for a life or death situation; I suppose their incessant joking and light-hearted banter are meant to make each other feel better, but, you know. A little anger or panic once in a while miiiight be a natural reaction to being stranded at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with no fucking food or water.
The scenery is nice (duh), but otherwise I say skip it, skip it, skip it. Play
Mass Effect 2 or watch
Chuck to get a dose of Strahovski, read
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, and watch a National Geographic special on the park instead. Or simply go there yourself. Just bring lots of water and don't be a moron about it.
Ugh, just gorge. Nearly 200 oversized pages of artwork from both private collections and the studio's archives, this is unsurprisingly worthy of art fans, Hammer fans, horror fans, and...umm...fan fans- a terrific way to round-out the series of books from Hearn and Titan that also features The Hammer Story and Hammer Glamour. The introduction describes the evolution of the poster art over the course of three decades, and the range of corresponding imagery is astounding. The studio's horror output is obviously well-covered, but there are ample examples of their non-horror offerings as well. It's a no-brainer- check out The Art of Hammer and make every day an awesome movie poster day.
