Barone's World

The new blog address, for THEATER OF MINE

2009-05-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly but surely starting up a new blog address, so head on over there from here on out (the Barone's World tag started feeling a bit tired, and not specific enough considering this entire blog has morphed into a film-related thing, which was the intention all along). First it'll be another three-part, long address, but soon enough it'll be it's own surname-less addy:

TheaterofMine.wordpress.com

[There is a link back to Barone's World in Theater of Mine's blogroll, or "The Essentials," so you can always head back here to check out the archives, catch up, or whatever.]

THEATER OF MINE

Coming down from the nice high of Star Trek

2009-05-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

Time to take a break from Relapse, which I'm seriously on the verge of playing out a mere five hours after it leaked----I'm loving the record that much.

One of the latest television commercials for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek featured a critic's quote to the effect of "This year's Iron Man!," a claim that actually underplays how great of a time Trek is, how well it welcomes newcomers while giving longtime Trekkers plenty to love. Iron Man, basking in the undeniable-cool of Robert Downey, Jr., had all the potential in the world to not alienate those who didn't grow up with the superhero's comic books; Star Trek, on the other hand, with its mostly B-list cast and polarizing source material, could've left crossover audiences in a solar dustball. Totally not the case. Not being a Trek head myself, how would I know that the film so successfully pledges allegiance to the franchise's loyal minion? By the enthusiastic applause and feminine squeals elicited from the souls of the middle-aged fanguys crowding the AMC this afternoon. The truly impressive part: I was right there with them joy-wise, wrapped up in every Enterprise missile battle, James Tiberius Kirk one-liner, and inexpressive emotion delivered so effectively by Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as half-Vulcan/half-human Spock.

Star Trek is, bottom line, a fast, loose, smart two-hour spectactle that washes over your senses while you're in its presence, and then, unless you're an uber-fan wearing a "Live Long and Prosper" t-shirt, leaves your memory bank without damaging anything. Breakneck fun, popcorn goodness. The plot involves an evil Romulan named Nero (played by an unrecognizable Eric Bana) who is out for revenge against Spock, who, decades later in the future, will inadvertently cause the destruction of the Romulan's homeland. Nero and his space-thugs are sent time-traveling through a black hole, first to do battle against the Starfleet's (Star Trek's version of the military) ships under the brief command of Captain George Kirk and then again 20-some-odd years later as Kirk's son, Jim (given tons of charming snark by Smokin' Aces co-star Chris Pine, surely bound to explode thanks to his work here), is a Starfleet cadet alongside a same-aged Spock and several other hotshot students on the U.S.S. Enterprise vessel.

If that's all a bit cloudy, it's most likely because you're entering this film's lexicon with little or no Star Trek mythology knowledge (or, I just explained the film terribly, either or). Which is fine, because Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (also the scribes behind Transformers) keep the franchise's narrative complexities at bay here, sprinkling the movie with tons of Easter eggs references and homages while ultimately reeling in Trek virgins with sheer visual pleasantry. The pace is snappy, the dialogue witty and lighthearted. The performances click on all cylinders from a cast of quite-likeable familiar faces (Harold & Kumar's John Cho, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, Alpha Dog's Anton Yelchin, Tyler Perry randomly). Even the potentially-confusing time travel plot device is far more tangible than expected.

And then there's the special effects, where Abrams and his behind-the-camera team excel. Each exterior spaceship shot looks unlike a video game, a stroke of CGI wizardry that thankfully comes only a week after the sketchy effects seen in the even-sketchier X-Men Origins: Wolverine. One minor moment, in particular, feels bone-crunchingly real----in an effort to save his family back on Vulcan as Nero is sending the land into a black hole of evaporation, Spock "beams" (Trek's means of body transportation from one location to another, the original Jumper trick decades before that shitty movie) back to Vulcan and corrals his parents, but as they're fleeing from a cave, we see a large pillar-statue falls to the floor on top of a running Vulcan man, and the impact is brutal. Blink and you'll miss it, but, if you catch it, the impact pummels.

Star Trek isn't without it's flaws, though. Pegg is totally underused as "Scotty," unfortunately stricken with marginally-humorous comic relief lines for the few scenes he does have, and the Nero character doesn't register enough on the "intimidating nemesis" scale. Nero isn't given much to do other than look aggravated and snarl fiery commands to his generic Romulan henchmen. He's a serviceable foe that operates more as a plot-mover than an actual living, breathing opposition that the audience fears. Orci and Kurtzman's script handles the U.S.S. Enterprise's crew so well, though, that the ho-hum nature of their enemies isn't a lasting party foul.

With Star Trek, the summer movie season has officially kicked into motion. That Wolverine flick made bagloads of money last weekend, sure, but the film itself isn't one that'll be praised for months, if not years, to come; Abrams' Star Trek most certainly is. It's made a believer out of yours truly....hell, I'm intrigued enough now to toss the entire Trek filmography into the Netflix and play catch-up. Millions of so-called "nerds" should now feel vindicated, the bullies and cool kids who once slapped them around both apologizing and requesting to borrow their former punching-bags' DVDs and VHS dubs.

Thanks to Abrams and company, we're all nerds this summer. And that's just wonderful.

Rejoice: I'm absolutely loving this.....

2009-05-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

Run-on sentence alert!!! It's like an audio case study profile of an unhinged man gone totally off the deep end courtesy of too many pills.

"Bagpipes from Baghdad"

Hell yeah. Just the level of random, tongue-twisting, pounding dementia that I've been banking on with Relapse. Bonus points for "going in" on Nick Cannon (pause or no pause) and the Children of the Corn reference. And that entire third verse is off the charts.

Then there's this one....."Medicine Ball"

Hits harder than Chris Brown watching Rihanna flirt with Shia Labeouf after CB was struck by gamma rays.

Here's one for the laughs: Keanu Reeves as "Dr. Jekyll"

2009-05-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

When I was a wee lad, picking out my choice costume for Halloween was more important than holding onto my entire-elementary-school-career-long Spelling Bee Champion title (and that was a belt I wore with pride and vigor). Even if the final decision was far from innovative (yes, I was Jason Voorhees one year, shamefully), I made sure that my incarnation stood out from the others. For Sir Voorhees, I dabbled on tons of fake-blood smears across the hockey mask and dipped my plastic machete in the same store-bought life liquid. Not exactly a visionary tweaking, but it was something, at least.

The proudest costume in my personal history, though, was the homemade Mr. Hyde get-up I whipped together during my eleventh year. You see, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story was, and still is for that matter, a tale that I cherished, picking up copies in hardcover, pocket-size, kiddie versions, and whatever other versions Barnes and Noble concealed. My only gripe with the Jekyll and Hyde text, however: there has never been a good film adaptation in my lifeitme. Both Fredric March's iconic performance in the 1931 black-and-white version and Spencer Tracy's a decade later (each titled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, naturally) are quality, but those was many moons before my conception; I'm talking a modern-day take on the tale that doesn't suck. To date, the top interpretation (and that word is used loosely in this case) is Abbott & Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and that's only because my pops conditioned me to love the comedy of Bud and Lou. I want an actually-chilling 21st century Mr. Hyde on screen, though.

The source material is so ripe----a brilliant lab-man sips on a potion that unleashes his dark side, an inner madman that proceeds to murder. When word was announced a while back that Guillermo del Toro was developing a fantastical spin on the story, I felt content. del Toro can do no wrong in my eyes. But now, a second in-development Jekyll and Hyde has hit the news circuit, and this latest one is going to star Keanu Reeves......Keanu fucking Reeves?!?! Sigh squared. Yes, I love Bill & Ted as much as the next twenty-something, as well as Speed, but don't let anybody fool you into thinking that Reeves has the necessary acting chops to pull off the double-sided emotions of Jekyll and Hyde. There's a reason why I consider his emotionless alien role in that mediocre The Day the Earth Stood Still remake to be typecasting.

Reeves' film will be titled Jekyll, simply, and is said to be a "modern-day" update, meaning the original story's Victorian setting will be ditched for today's landscape. Sigh, again.

Let's see.....actors more suited to play this two-for-one character: Clive Owen, Sam Rockwell, and Michael Shannon, for starters. Keanu Reeves would place about 87th on my wish list. Sigh fucking sigh.

****In a lighter, much cooler change-of-topic, here's the first official poster for Neill Blomkamp's District 9, a film I've been writing about a bit here lately. It's a great, nice and subtle eye-opener for the flick, clearly delivering the film's "aliens are social outcasts" theme. And it makes me smile amidst that awful Keanu Reeves item.

Both bits courtesy of: Empire Online

Celebrity Crush of the Moment is.....

2009-05-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Not much to say here, other than to announce to whoever cares that I'm quite smitten by this gal, one Aubrey Plaza. Currently looking cute as hell and coming across awkwardly amusing on NBC's good-but-not-yet-anywhere-near-its-potential Parks and Recreation. Maybe the problem is that there's not enough Aubrey Plaza on the show yet. Or maybe I'm just biased. I'm guessing her role as Seth Rogen's girlfriend (the character she's reportedly playing) in this summer's Funny People won't be any more prominent, but at least it's something. From New York City's lo-fi stand-up comedy circuit (where she was a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade) to the aforementioned projects....nicely done, Ms. P.

Just something about this girl, can't exactly put my finger on "it." We just need more of her, though. Simple as that, Jack.

Second cool short film for 5/6/09: Mama

2009-05-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Let's just call today Short Films Becoming Features Day, shall we?

Not only is true "visionary" Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, the Hellboy movies) currently developing The Hobbit film for directorial purposes, but the guy is also attached to about 500 other projects as a producer. Okay, maybe slightly less than that number, but Mexico's pride and joy won't have a free day to spare any time soon. The latest project that he's aligning himself with is, under the Universal Pictures umbrella, a feature length extension of a buzz-building Spanish-language short film called Mama, written and directed by Andy Muschietti and produced by his sister, Barbara. The Muschietti's will be writing, with a director to be determined.

Despite only being three minutes long, Mama is a creepy, unsettling little treat. One that even made me jump in a particular moment, I'm sure you'll be able to guess which after checking it out below. Basically, Mama a scene in which two little girls flee from their mother, who just happens to be some sort of ghostly ghoul. The ghoul effects are rather effective, especially for a self-financed short film. I'm curious to see how Muschietti and del Toro expand this into a fleshed-out ride----definitely tons of backstory available (Who are these girls? Is that really their mother? If so, is she dead or what?), and more money involved means even freakier visuals. The atmosphere of the short feels very much like another del Toro-produced winner, Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (2007), only the Mama short is less "touching" and much meaner.

Here it goes:

Mama

The short film that spawned the great-looking District 9

2009-05-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last week, I posted a new trailer for Neill Blomkamp's pseudo-documentary-style science fiction flick District 9, which anyone who has seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine in theaters has already caught on the big screen. District 9 has been high on my intrigue scale for months now, and is even more so atop now that the teaser trailer is out and about. And looking awesome, a profound, thoughtful, patient take on the same handheld camera conceit that Cloverfield kicked into overdrive so well.

After researching District 9 over the past week, to obtain as much info as possible, I've uncovered that the film, executive produced by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings mastermind), is actually an expanded, bigger-budgeted spin on Blomkamp's 2005 short film Alive in Joburg, a commentary on the Apartheid in South Africa set against the aftermath of an alien invasion. The government has forced the now-residential extraterrestrials into servitude, not exactly what the aliens came to Earth in hopes of. The ETs are looked down upon as smelly, unwelcome, and inferior. That opinion serving as a newfound line of commonality between once-bickering races and social classes, all at the expense of the unassuming aliens.

Blomkamp's short film is available on Youtube, thankfully, and it's quite good. Give it a look, it's hardly seven minutes long:

Now, for comparison's sake, here's the new District 9 teaser:

District 9 hits screens on August 14. I'll be there, possibly at a midnight showing if any are scheduled.

Me Against Me: Slap-Boxing With The Toughest Of All Enemies

2009-05-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

It must be akin to losing your virginity. Popping that cherry, breaking the underpants seal. Getting that first one out of the way, freeing your once-blocked spout to unleash the overflowing beast. The nerves and anxiety that preface the first time are heavy enough to turn you into Quasimoto. Weights on your shoulders that feel like anvils yet have no physical appearance. Leave you shooting blanks, time after time. The hardest obstacles to conquer are those which we can't see, of course, so this Claude Rains-like invisible villain is quite the formidable foe. Defeating the "I can't do it," or "I don't know how, I'm going to be terrible" enemy isn't impossible, however; it just takes dedication and a fearlessness that can come at any time.

I'm not talking about sex here, though. Smacking that first back can be anything to anybody. In my world, the immovable-for-the-time-being elephant in my head's room is that initial vision. One of the two dozen I have jotted down in my notepad of imagination, the lucky story that I'll cock back my shotty for and bust through my laptop's keyboard. An explosion of narrative, dialogue, and conflict. Mushroom clouds of fantasy, leaving a trail of made-up corpses as if Napalm had sprayed through the Land of Make Believe. "It smells like victory."

I often wonder how masters such as Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, and Stephen King were ever able to churn out so much fictional product with the ridiculous quickness. Natural born tale-tellers, they are/were. I truly think I have that same mental-assembly-line quality within me, I just need that premiere to take place, that proverbial red carpet to unravel.

Plenty of options are within my fingers' grasp, just need to pick the characters and set-up that most intrigue me and then run with them, like Emmitt in his prime. Just that, that damn insecurity/self-intimidation always comes into foul play. The unavoidable foe, the dastardly cockblock. Not that I doubt myself in the extreme sense that I don't think I'm able to be a great fiction mind; the dilemma is that I dream up this crazy, wild, inspired-by-Serling's-Twilight-Zone-and/or-EC-Comics'-old-Tales-from-the-Crypt ideas that I want to make sure are airtight. Filled with as much with and intelligence as scares and surprises. If I were just fiddling with romance or "coming of age" bullshit, I'd have written volumes of drafts by now. But I'm the kind of guy who habitually watches David Lynch films and that awesome T-Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." That's the kind of storytelling that I want to execute. Not the norm. Nothing cute, pleasant, heartwarming. Punishing and cold rather than pretty and comfy.

I can feel that first attempt on the horizon, and it feels good. The necessary educational steps are being set in motion, to take me to that informed state of consciousness, where the creativity pours and the mind soars. Hand-to-keyboard exercises like all I've just written are therapeutic at best, productivity-delaying at worst. But, ultimately, steps in the right direction.

We all have our own demons. The dreams and goals that we aspire to yet constantly hold ourselves back from. Unfortunately, there is no exact science as to how we can emerge victorious, champions in our own soul-searching tournaments. I know that I'm ready to try on the belt. It's been way too long coming.

The fight will undoubtedly last all 12 rounds, but I'm confident that I have both the stamina and the strength to not pull a Ricky Hatton. It's time to Pacquiao.

Character posters for my two favorite Basterds show their Nazi-killing faces

2009-05-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

Per the script, these are my two favorite Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino's sure-to-be-insane flick comes out on August 21 (which can't get here quick enough), but screens first at the Cannes Film Festival in less than a month. Meaning, some reviews and feedback will hit the Internet, all of which I'll read, consume, get angry at for seeing this before yours truly.

X-Man Matt would have the power to invisibly transport into prolific directors' editing rooms to watch their latest films before anybody else. My name would be The Watcher.

Meet the Basterds: Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and Sgt. Donnie Donowitz (Eli Roth, the fella responsible for Cabin Fever and the Hostel films)

Spotted over at: /Film

Netflix Fix -- Metropolis (1927)

2009-05-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

How this film was made in 1927 is something that I'm truly confused by (in a less-than-literal sense), because Metropolis (1927) has such a behemoth scope and is full of so many forward-thinking themes that it'd be impossible for today's filmmakers to ever up its ante with any remake or revision. Considered one of the, if not the, most influential of all silent films, Metropolis is a film that any person in love with science fiction, or just fantasy storytelling in general, must see at least once in his/her lifetime. Which is exactly why I recently bumped it to the top of the Netflix Queue, a necessary action to rectify the sad issue of having slept on it for so damn long.

German director Fritz Lang's "masterpiece" (as its hailed by film scholars and writers alike, rightfully so) is such an artifact that its original print is long gone, but thankfully a close representation of that print has been pieced together for DVD through negatives and other crafty means. For instance, scenes lost from the original print are explained in on-screen text, often times four individual paragraphs in a row for extended chunks of missing reel. This doesn't hurt the experience, fortunately. What Lang captured was so massive that, no matter what year or under what context the film is seen, Metropolis feels like a big budget spectacle. Realize that this was conceived in 1927, though, and it's downright mindblowing. The explosions are all convincing, the finale's huge flash flood that engulfs hundreds of acting extras is flawless, and the pre-Frankenstein laboratory lightshow scenes are visually extraordinary.

Even the plot is ahead of it's then-time. Set in the year 2026, the film takes places in Metropolis, a progressive fictional city run by Joh Frederson, a wealthy leader who operates with subdued coldness rather than any unhinged tyranny. Frederson has divided the city into two factions: the slave-like workers who are forced to live underground and the upper class that gets to enjoy the fruits of Metropolis' utopian-like landscape. His son, Freder, wants to unite the two groups, though, and decides to live amongst the lowly workers. But when a revolt begins brewing within the workers' society, Frederson and a mad scientist named Rotwang intervene in pretty wild sci-fi ways. Metropolis: Rise Against the Machines would've been a fitting longer title.

Metropolis is also a haunting beast to sit with, due in no small part to its black-and-white, silent film aesthetic. Call me a bit soft, but silent films tend to creep me out more so than loud fare. No film has given me more nightmares than the FW Murnau/Max Schrek paralyzer Nosferatu (1922), and not many horror flicks can rip into the depths of my skin like Carl Dreyer's expressionist creepshow Vampyr (1932). Metropolis isn't scary in the same sense of those silent films, but Lang's movie features several images that are tough to forget. There's a Grim Reaper figure that stands alongside a lineup of minions that came out of nowhere and took Metropolis into an unexpected, momentary supernatural zone. The vacant black eyes of the cast, paired with the exaggerated acting needed to convey emotions in silent films, give the film an otherworldly quality inherent to unease, a trait used to perfection in a shot that fills the entire screen with floating, peeled-open-in-amazement eyeballs.

The lab scene (though with different music; this isn't the score heard in Lang's film):

Metropolis is two hours long (including an "Intermezzo," or intermission), but it doesn't feel that long. I'll admit, the two-hour-length was intitially intimidating. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it through a silent film of such length, only because it's been a long-ass time since I've watched a silent. In no way was I expecting the film to be as convincingly brolic in scope as it is, though, so its runtime became frivolous once the show got on the road.

It may have taken me much longer than it should have to sit down with Metropolis, free of distraction, but since when is lateness irreconcilable? Besides, I'll have plenty of time to catch up now that I'm unable to shake the film out of my brain.

Eminem's "3 A.M." video.....

2009-05-03T09:26:00.001-07:00

.....has actually made me like the song much more than before. Not sure why I was so resistant to the track since I'm usually all about conceptual lyricism. The visuals brought this one home, no question.

Let's take a stab at discussing Martyrs, shall we?

2009-05-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

There's a very thin line between being pretentious or intelligent. Beat your ideas over my head long enough and I'll slot you into the former adjective's lane and tune off. Try to pass off something that's really little more than sadistic manslaughter on screen as some form of high-art and I'll promptly laugh before shaking my head in disgust.

Which is why Pascal Laugier's Martyrs (2008, from France, but just released on unrated DVD here in America this week) is such a fascinating film, still bouncing around in my head a mere 16 hours since watching it for the second time last night, this time amongst daring friends. The film's second half is a true sucker punch, a midway tonal shift similar in the thinnest sense to that of Eli Roth's Hostel, when Roth's sick mind turned a funnier, raunchier Euro Trip clone into dare-to-watch torture. The switch-up in Martyrs is much beefier, and, frankly, vastly superior. A detour from a breakneck hybrid of elements of both supercharged Japanese-cinema horror elements and blood-drenched home invasion flicks into a somewhat-existential, slower-paced experiment in transfiguration.

Many who have seen Martyrs hate the latter section, feeling that the film jumps the shark once the tempo hits the brakes for more-patient anarchy. That opinion is horseshit to me, but understandable horseshit. Polarizing films aren't meant to please the world. Laugier, as proven in his pre-movie DVD introduction, never intended to make a crowdpleaser; the man had some truly compelling ideas about life, death, and humanity and went for broke with them. Does it all gel? Not exactly, but the overall product is so daring and unlike anything you've ever seen before that I can't see anybody declaring Martyrs anything less than a success. Even if you can't endure and shut it off before its devastating coda.

"Plot" is pretty meaningless in Martyrs, but for those wondering what the hell this film that I'm mentally invested in is about, here goes: 15 years ago, a little girl named Lucie escaped from a seedy, nightmarish building in which she was being held prisoner and tortured. Once she was discovered afte the escape, Lucie was placed in a home for troubled children, where she made only one friend, Anna. Flash-forward to the present, Lucie (played as an adult by the stunning and intense Mylene Jampanoi) bumrushes the family she believes to be responsible for what happened in her childhood and dispatches of them. Anna comes to help her cover up the scene, and from this point on the two girls unexpectedly ride a downward spiral into Hell.

Again, though, the plot here is merely a driving force for Laugier to tackle some deeper ideas, brutally cyncial thoughts that I won't delve into too deeply here (Martyrs is a film I want that I really want people to watch so we can discuss). The theme is right there in the film's title, however---martyrdom. Not the type of martyr you read about in books of religion, the people who killed themselves or were voluntarily murdered for a greater good. Laugier is concerned with a martyr as a "witness," as believed in Greek history. A person who, after enduring unfathomable degrees of pain and suffering, sees something that nobody else can.///// That's as far as I want to go, for now. I've got the feeling that after I watch this flick for a third time I'll want to write down my post-game thoughts here, spoilers and all. A sort of mental exercise, a one-man debate.

Where myself and some others who've seen Martyrs differ is that I never felt that Laugier's script was talking down to me, slapping my better judgment with pretentious bullshit. The IMDB.com message boards are loaded with commenters violently angry at this film, either labeling it "pure garbage" or that p-word again. Opinions are like the assholes who sign online just to comment negatively on something to start a message board pissing contest, of course, so I can't totally knock those folks. Completely disagree with them, though, is something I can do at will. Martyrs deserves respect and admiration off of sheer ballsiness alone, not to mention topical originality and visual panache.

Pascal Laugier

Some have argued that the characters in Martyrs are quite underdeveloped. Facet-less pawns in Laugier's game of sick chess. If any scene in the film counters this point with conviction it's Anna's attack on the unsuspecting family's quiet house. The insanely-massive shotgun blasts aren't shown in slow-motion; they're presented in real time, dropping the audience right headsmack into the scene with little set-up. That's exactly the degree of immediacy that Laugier, in my opinion, is trying to convey with the film as a whole. Putting us uncomfortably in the moment, so that we're susceptible to whatever he throws our way. A few flashbacks into Lucie's pre-teen captivity stint are intertwined, but even those are quick and unflinching. Also important, since these flashbacks explain everything about Lucie's present-day state that we need to know. And isn't that what character development is supposed to do?

The first time I watched it, Martyrs fucked with my head something proper. When I thought the story was heading in one direction, Laugier's script gave me the head-fake and headed for an uncontested touchdown. Confidently zigged when I expected it to conventionally zag. There's a plot turn signaled by Anna (played by exceptional actress Morjana Alaoui), who, by the way, is gorgeous in a total Dania-Ramirez-lookalike way) and a bathroom mirror that a million guesses never would've predicted. Later, as one character is repeatedly beaten down to a bruised, catatonic pulp, a line of any-other-filmmaker-would-stop-this-brutality-right-now is crossed and left in mushroom clouds of dust. By the time we're presented with a lightshow no doubt inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Martyrs pushes itself beyond simple "horror." I won't say that it becomes an example of brilliant art, but the film does qualify for deserved post-viewing intellectual deliberation. The final scene is one of the more awesomely inconclusive things I've seen in I-don't-know-how-long.

Whether anybody pulls their trigger and seeks Martyrs out or not, I really can't concern myself with, or stress. It just pains me when people's only exposure to what horror films can truly accomplish is limited to that holding-your-hand-in-anxiety reaction their significant other emits while seated in a dark theater watching The Haunting in Connecticut. Give foreign genre films the likes of Martyrs a fair shot and you'll see just how thought-provoking and fearless this type of filmmaking can get, if created with no corporate interference and by skilled hands.

Still no signs of Cobra Commander in this new G.I. Joe trailer.

2009-05-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

And from what I've read and seen in forthcoming toy designs, Cobra Commander may very well look rather shitty. At least there'll be a great actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, underneath the mask.

Today's trifecta of new trailers concludes with this healthy serving of G.I. Joe footage, neatly packaged for your pre-Wolverine viewing pleasure. I'm really expecting G.I. Joe to be a massive fecal pile, but a totally entertaining one. Which, essentially, will disprove that old adage, "You can't polish a turd."

Very little of what's seen reminds me of my old G.I. Joe action figures or the cartoon, except for Snake Eyes, who looks pretty wicked here. But the effects and setpieces are winning me over, and I'd never realized how fine Sienna Miller is until she appeared with that black hair. Come August 7, this'll make for a great option for some quick Friday night escapism before the booze starts a-flowing.

The latest Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen trailer....

2009-05-01T07:39:00.001-07:00

.....is here, since I've posted every other video related to this flick to date. Might as well stay on track.

And, yes, this one looks just as awesome as the previous vids. A midnight screening will be attended.

Am I the only one who thinks John Turturro's character is annoying as all hell? The guy is clearly having a good time playing a role he realizes is disposable in a film about giant robots, but I'm still hoping that The Fallen snaps him in half before the Hour One mark.

District 9's trailer promises to prove that ETs are terrible at obediency

2009-05-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

A couple of years back, Peter Jackson, filmmaker extraordinaire responsible for the Lord of the Rings franchise, came oh-so-close to cranking out a movie based on the Halo video games that have shattered relationships and turned men of all ages into social-life-deficient hermits. His plan was to produce the film and hire Johannesburg, South Africa, native/visual effects veteran Neill Blomkamp to direct, and I'd imagine it would've been a visual spectacle like none other. An inflated budget and other setbacks came into play, however, and the project was put on hold longer than me when trying to call Cablevision.

As a sort of consolation prize, Jackson stayed true to word of wanting to work with Blomkamp, and the producer/director pair is ready to unleash District 9 this summer, the first trailer materializing today just in time for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Since it'll be playing before Wolvie, expect this trailer to kickstart a whole mess of speculation and feverish buzz all over the Internet. One place, of course, being this here blog. Little is known about District 9, but here's what is available: there's this race of aliens held on Earth under human control and forced to live in "slum-like conditions" while "being exploited as a workforce." Naturally, when you try to keep a bad alien down for too long, the proverbial shit shall hit the fan. All of this is shot in what appears to be a spin on cinema verite (think Cloverfield but less shitty-camcorder quality).

Check it out. No stars, very little set-up until now. Lo-fi, but not really. If you're like me, District 9 is now generating tons of excitement:

Eminem's "3 A.M." video trailer falls into the "horror" category, I guess?

2009-04-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Typically, I try to leave my music/hip-hop POVS off this site, mainly because I spent nearly four years of my post-college-life covering those and I'm trying to open a brand new bag. But every now and then, a project or a song comes along that demands notice, such as this new upcoming Eminem album, Relapse. Mainly because Em has always been the most intriguing, repeat-listenable, and (obviously)greatest rapper of my growig-up-around generation, and his last album sucked so hardcore that I've been waiting five years for the guy to come back and exonerate.

As far as the songs heard from Relapse so far go, unfortunately, the guy is 0-2. His next video/sort-of-single, "3 A.M," has me a bit excited, though, mostly because the snippet I heard, while short and a bit incoherent, sounded much darker and anarchic than those two other records. Now comes news that its uncensored video will make its worldwide debut on Cinemax (a first for the cable channel) this Saturday at 10pm, right before the network premiere of last year's great little horror flick The Strangers. Making me believe that the video's tone is somewhat in line with Bryan Bertino's The Strangers, which in turn makes me happy. There's also this brief trailer that proves my suspicions in ways:

I'll be tuning in, no question. The full version of "3 A.M.", which I've just discovered on good ol' Youtube, is something of a bloody mess, but at least we'll get a video with some WTFness that'll be miles away from the sheer laziness of "We Made You." Part of me thinks I should like this "3 A.M." more than I do, but it's not clicking. We're given a couple more unnecessary, tired celeb namedrops (Hannah Montana and, for the second time now, Kim Kardashian), and what once would've felt creative and striking (Em playing the role of unaware serial killer) here seems like a stretch. The beat, presumably Dr. Dre, actually works, though. Sounds like a comfortably macabre "Eminem Album: Track #2."

The full song:

I'll be posting the full video once its available online, to bring this post home.

Remember The Goonies? Of course you do. Get a load of this.....

2009-04-29T09:43:00.001-07:00

London's Empire Magazine, aka my favorite magazine out there that rapes my wallet with that damn $10 import price, has given those in my generation a reason to transport back to more innocent, and frankly better, days in their current 20th Anniversary issue, guest edited by none other than Steven Spielberg. Since Spielberg was one of the film's executive producers (as well as the guy who came up with the film's original story), 1985's kids classic The Goonies seemed like prime reunion material for the folks at Empire to attempt to pull off, and holy shit did they do it: Corey "Mouth" Feldman, Sean "Mikey" Astin, Josh "Brand" Brolin, Jeff "Chunk" Cohen, Kerri "Andy" Green, Martha "Stef" Plimpton, Jonathan "Data" Ke Quan, and the film's director, Richard Donner. All in one room, reminiscing and genuinely have a great time.

I dare any of you to watch this video, courtesy of Empire (yet again....damn those guys are good), and not wish you were a young'n again and that you could see The Goonies for the first time. One-Eyed Willie, Sloth, and all. [By the way, if you've never seen The Goonies, I don't think I want to know you. That's just sad]

Worth noting: Did Sean Astin and Jeff Cohen trade bodies or something? Chunk is no longer chunky, and Mikey looks like he ate too much Life cereal with 2% milk.

Also Worth Noting: Kerri Green is still sexy as hell.

Much respect goes to (for executing this wonderful reunion): Empire

Having finally seen Martyrs, I'm feeling like a deer in headlights.

2009-04-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

My own personal cinematic Holy Grail has been seized, experienced, endured. No more obsessive anticipation, no more worries that my expectations would go unmet. A mere three hours after purchasing this bad-boy, I've just watched Martyrs, and, I must say for the record, I don't know what to write. An instant kneejerk reaction seems ludicrous for a film this unrelenting and sense-cutting. I'm sure that I'm now an honest fan of Martyrs, but do I genuinely "like" it? I'm quite eager to show it to friends to get their responses, but do I really want to make my pals see me in some sadistic light?

Too much to mull over, sleep on. Honestly, I'm not going to delve into Pascal Laugier's film until after a second viewing. Hell, maybe not even until post-third time. I can confidently say, though, that no film had me questioning my own keen desire to watch it all the way through quite like Martyrs, wondering if there's something truthfully disturbed about me. That feeling crept up after first seeing Inside, but Inside (also a hardcore product of France's new wave of horror madness) is a film that I knew from jumpstreet that I really do love, a flick that I'll defend forever and lavish with critically-celebratory praise. Martyrs is so beyond the good-taste barrier that I don't feel right saying the same for it. At least not after having only seen the film once.

In continuation of that point, I can say that, for disclosure's sake, I like Inside much more than Martyrs, but that's not a slight against Martyrs at all. Martyrs isn't a film that you "like"; it's one that you experience, ponder, and then subsequently lose hope iin humanity over. And that, my friends, is what a balls-to-the-wall horror film is supposed to do.

But, man, that scene with the nailed-in helmet being ripped off the sacrificial, sliced-and-diced corpse-lady's head is absolutely rough stuff. And the post-title-card home invasion sequence is a sucker-punch of immense power. As for that third, and final, act.....did I really just watch that? Some dude actually came up with such insanity, and somebody let him film it? I'm impressed. Startled, and a little sickened, but really impressed.

Something tells me that I'll be rewatching this one before week's end, and then I'll have a long-winded, overly-wordy brainstorm session right here, for anybody's reading pleasure. Stay tuned.

The Guilt of an Incomplete Nerd

2009-04-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'm getting more and more excited to see both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek by the day, but I'm also feeling a bit bandwagon-rider-ish as a result. Thinking way too much about this, obviously. Just go watch the movies and be entertained. Spend your time and mental energy on more substantial matters, like becoming a millionaire.

Sorry....this is the questionable path that I've chosen.

This must be how all of my friends felt back when Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake came out in March of 2004, a time when you'd have regularly heard me preaching the lessons and facts surrounding George A. Romero's original film and its other installments. I was speaking on either deaf or disinterested ears, yet I still rambled endlessly. And those around me went to see the film, loved it, but came back to me with a "I felt like I wasn't fully enjoying it, though, since I'm not as schooled on the backstory as somebody like you is." The same can be said of my overdone obsession with Grindhouse during its unfortunate theatrical run. I was informing everybody with arm's reach on what "grindhouse" means exactly, and why the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino passion project was full of grainy shots, choppy editing, and wall-to-wall camp. Most could care less, while my main concern was to give heads the complete picture so that the Grindhouse experience could be appreciated to full capacity, rather than merely in-the-moment.

It's a bit like walking into a final exam with little-to-no knowledge on the content, only to find out that the test is open-book and a brainless chimp could ace that shit.

A great film is simply that: a great film. A piece of cinema that can be appreciated on a pure surface level. Deeper affinity is inevitable if you're an expert on the film's background or respective mythology, but such know-what isn't necessary. Dawn of the Dead was a live-wire thrill coaster in its own right, but I hold it closer to my heart than others because it pulled off the difficult task of paying reverential homage to Romero's work while creating its own believable world. I caught the "Gaylen Ross" store name reference while others may not have, and the quick cameos from Tom Savini, Ken Foree, and Scott Reiniger made me smile even though others didn't react.

I know the nuts-and-bolts of the X-Men/Wolverine history, but I'm nowhere close to being a "fanboy." So, before seeing the new Hugh Jackman-starring film this weekend, shouldn't I go on a reading binge at my local comic book store and become a true know-it-all? I feel like that'd make the viewing experience all the more fulfilling, and less of a pedestrian enterprise. And speaking of enterprises, I know infinitely less about the Star Trek legacy, yet I'll be first in line to see J.J. Abrams' franchise relaunch next Friday. Sure, I'm the exact type of person that the filmmakers' are hoping to attract----a non-fan who is attracted to popcorn excitement and badass special effects, as well as Abrams' good name. Guys like me are the ones who'll turn Star Trek into the money-making behemoth Paramount Pictures is hoping for.

Still, though, I can't shake this "impostor" feeling. A guilty sensation that will hit its fever pitch if I see even one audience member wearing a Captain Kirk t-shirt, or fake Spock ears. Worst case, I'll contort my fingers into the "Live Long and Prosper" hand-sign, since any dumbass can do that with ease. But I'll feel totally uninitiated. The way I'm feeling about the film right now, I wouldn't be surprised if I give my spot up on the ticket line to somebody who is clearly more of a Trekkie than I, which I'll discover thanks to incognito eavesdropping. "I can't wait to see if they truly capture the essence of the Klingons" would be one surefire giveaway. "Something tells me that this Anton Yelchin fella won't hold a candle to Walter Koenig" an even bigger clue.

What will somebody more like myself say? "I hope Zoe Saldana shows some skin!"

Odds are, I'm in the miniscule minority with this train of thought surrounding Hollywood's franchise reboots and remakes of genre classics. I'm perfectly fine with that. The most this reasoning will ever get me is a nod of respect from the geek community anyway. Such respect and $12 could buy me a Star Trek movie ticket, so who cares? Now, if I were currently dating a fangirl I'd really have a problem on my hands.

The latest remake is.......Drop Dead Fred. Somebody pass the booze.

2009-04-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

You could've asked me, "Guess what forgotten kids' comedy from the '90s is being remade?" and then given me 100 guesses to come up with the right answer, and I still would've never hit you with this correct response. Especially since it's a film that was both a box office abortion and a critical punching bag. Ain't It Cool News is reporting, via The Hollywood Reporter, that 1991's Drop Dead Fred, the heartwarming tale of a little girl's booger-picking, farting, recklessly wild imaginary friend who stays with her through adulthood, is next on the redo block in Universal Pictures' system. What the fuck?!

Perhaps the original's reviled nature is what makes Drop Dead Fred so surprisingly acceptable as a remake. Unexpected, but partially sensical. It's far from a sacred property, and there's really nowhere to go but up in quality. Drop Dead Fred holds a dear place in the hearts of many, though, including yours truly. Why else would I even be commenting on it here? My first experience with the film was back in my pre-teen years, when my mother rented it for me at the local Dollar Video (a competitor of Blockbuster Video that didn't last very long, yet was always my preferred rental destination). I was home sick from school and needed some lowbrow entertainment. Mom nailed her selection, and I found myself loving Drop Dead Fred. The film had everything my 12-year-old brain could ever ask for: an imaginary friend to prove that I wasn't crazy for having my own (what's good, Joe?), cutie deluxe Phoebe Cates, and immature jokes and crude sight gags. Slam dunk.

A few years back, Drop Dead Fred randomly played on a cable movie channel. I watched, hoping for an enjoyable trip down Nostalgia Lane. Only, I was met with a detour down Wow, How Could I Have Liked This Drive. Right up there with Transylvania 6-5000 in the pantheon of films I once loved but now can't sit through without wincing. Some charms remain, but overall it's a poor film that ultimately makes sense as a remake. The central plot (imaginary friend sticks around even when the kid is an adult) is clever, and the reported casting of Russell Brand (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) in the title role, originally played a fella named Rik Mayall, seems spot-on. A role that Brand was born to play.

Fred himself....As a kid, I thought this character was hilarious. Now, though, he could be the most annoying, unbearable, somebody-off-him-immediately creation ever.///Russell Brand, your new "Drop Dead Fred"

Phoebe Cates' shoes are tougher to fill, though. If I were able to toss my five cents in, the nominee would be Diora Baird. Why such an unestablished actress, you ask? It's simple, really: I'm all for fresh faces getting big breaks. Not convincing enough? Just look at her, then.....

Okay, okay. My real nominee is Mila Kunis. I just came across that new Diora Baird pic yesterday and couldn't let it pass me by.

News learned over at: Ain't It Cool News

Netflix Fix -- Laid to Rest (2009)

2009-04-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

As much as I consider myself to be a real "horror movie head," I also pride myself on the fact that I'm a realist. Not jaded by the trappings of the industry, and able to separate the good from the good-because-others-say-so-and-it-was-made-by-friends-or-colleagues. I get it, though. Working at a major lifestyle magazine for five years gives you a pretty clear perspective on politics and the influence of opinion. Doesn't make it right, but it's a reality that won't adjust itself any time soon.

For months now, I've read a slew of positive pre-release-buzz about a new slasher flick called Laid to Rest, written and directed by makeup effects veteran Robert Hall. The early word waa that the film was the next great slasher flick, one that'll reinvent the wheel and breathe new life into the stagnant horror subgenre. Similar to Adam Green's Hatchet back in 2007e major difference being that Laid to Rest is a straight-to-DVD release that's devoid of rampant tongue-in-cheek humor. Hatchet, on the flipside, was given a crickets-and-tumbleweeds limited theatrical run that only keen horror heads knew about. My biggest problem with Hatchet is that the tone of the film is way too hokey. Green worried so much about keeping the self-referential/'throwback-to-sleazy-'80s-slashers vibe intact that the film becomes more comedy than horror, and sadly the jokes are rarely very funny.

Hall's effort thankfully keeps the humor to a minimum. If I want to laugh, I'll watch a damn comedy; besides, not many can execute what Edgar Wright and company pulled off so perfectly with the horror/laugher hybrid Shaun of the Dead. Laid to Rest does have another big thing in common with Hatchet, unfortunately, and that's the feeling of "totally overhyped" it left me with as the final credits rolled. Which pains me, because Laid to Rest's trailer was an ass-kicker, a hopes-elevator that "promised" some serious carnage and style to spare. Expectations were higher than Cheech & Chong, but sadly the film let me down quicker than a concluding flight simulator. All gore, no point. Weakly drawn characters, and very little scares. A scorching-hot main girl (Bobbi Sue Luther) and a cool-looking, intimidating masked killer (called Chromeskull, a slightly-goofy yet memorable tag). Random characters wander in only to be killed off within minutes, which is fine for a slasher film but only when the entire proceedings are handled well. On the whole, Laid to Rest is not.

Chromeskull

Laid to Rest, while loaded with hardcore bloodshed and dismemberment, drops the ball more times than it scores. A few sudden murders did catch me off-guard, particuarly the death of actor Jonathan Schaech thanks to a thrown jagged-knife that splits his skull open from mouth to forehead. But nailing a few stomach-churning scenes isn't all that Hall was trying to accomplish; as heard on the DVD's "Laid to Rest: Postmortem" making-of special feature, he was looking to create a nostalgic '80s-slasher-revisited film full of intriguing characters and a strong mystery (Who is this girl who woke up in a coffin? What's her big secret, and why is Chromeskull so focused on killing her?). Could've fooled me. Laid to Rest feels more like a Saw entry than anything made two decades ago. And there wasn't one point where I genuinely cared enough about Luther's character to ponder her true identity. I'm glad I didn't, too, because the "reveal" that Hall's script cooked up is the lamest. "That's it?!" material. A tepid, forgettable ending.

It's a shame, because the moments that work in Laid to Rest show that Hall is more than capable with raw horror. Hopefully, he'll give the genre another try sooner than later and capitalize on the potential seen here.

As for this flick sparking the resurgence of the slasher genre.....mission failed. Isn't it sad that the best example of that subgenre in recent memory is Eli Roth's fake Thanksgiving trailer seen in Grindhouse? Barely two minutes long, yet Roth encapsulated all of the '80s-mood that these other full-lengths features can't completely manage. If Roth actually does make a feature-length Thanksgiving, that could be the great modern-day slasher movie that we've all been waiting for. Well, at least that I've been awaiting.

Bonus Thought: How about today's filmmakers concentrate on simply making a good slasher flick, rather than obsessing over this unnecessary need to reinstate the '80s? It's becoming such a crutch for otherwise-marginal films. Something's got to give.

Jennifer Lynch's Hisss trailer debut

2009-04-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm growing to become quite the fan of Jennifer Lynch, daughter of the always-provocative and fascinating David Lynch. Any seed of Sir David is at least worth some consideration here, since I love all of the guy's films, even the ones that frustrate me with their intricacies and goodbye-to-making-sense abandon. Jennifer Lynch proved herself a week ago, though, when I popped in a screener copy of her upcoming, limited-June-release Surveillance, a table-turning serial killer mystery. Surveillance, despite having a few notable flaws, is thoroughly entertaining and quite sick in spots, a potboiler that I plan on rewatching with rapidness. I'm going to discuss the film here closer to its June release.

The trailer for Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance follow-up, Hisss, has just debuted over at Twitch Film, and man is it striking. Features some rather wild special effects work from Precinct 13's Robert Kurtzman, and enough tense, sinister atmosphere to bottle up, pour over the grave of Alfred Hitchcock and stage a resurrection.

Hisss is a fictionalization of an "the ancient Eastern myth of the snake woman who can take on various forms." [Bloody Disgusting]. Give this badboy a look, it's something else (pay particular attention to the amazing snake woman effects):

Trailer premiered at: Twitch Film

Spotted over at (where a more in-depth synopsis of the film also appears): Bloody Disgusting

The Lovely Bones really is coming out....it's about time.

2009-04-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy week or so, figuring personal things out, getting stuff situated. But I'm back and ready. And, hopefully, with less horror-related posts than in recent weeks, just for diversity's sake. There's more to my viewing habits than just the scariness. Though, I'll be buying Martyrs tomorrow (finally!!!), and a long-winded post about that long-awaited flick is inevitable, and rather soon-coming.

The news that has brought me back to this blog full force is that the awesome Empire Magazine's new "20th anniversary" issue has in it, amongst tons of other goodies, a few new stills from Peter Jackson's forthcoming adaptation of Alice Sebold's popular novel The Lovely Bones. Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame, of course) has gone back to his Heavenly Creatures days with this film, and that's much more exciting to me than the guy doing another huge spectacle, a la Lord of the Rings (call me crazy for that). I'm under the opinion that Heavenly Creatures is the man's best work, but naturally I'm more prone to love dark, intimate fare than the blockbusters.

As for The Lovely Bones the novel, I really liked it, but didn't love it. The story captivated my attention more so than the actual writing, which is impressive but loses some steam a few chapters in. The first 20-or-so pages of the thing fly by, introducing one hell of a depraved tragedy and setting up the main character's, 14-year-old "Susie Salmon," plight: after being raped, murdered, and dismembered by a neighborhood pedophile, Susie can only look down from heaven as her grieving family and friends try to move on with their lives, unsuccessfully, while she also watches her killer's world carry on under growing public suspicion. Partially taking place from her point-of-view in heaven, partially within the moving-forward real world that her death has left behind. A few sections of Sebold's novel drag, unfortunately, but the story is established with such initial force that it's damn hard to give up on the book as things plod along. The payoff is a bit too cutesy for my liking, but still satisfactory enough.

Originally, Jackson cast Ryan Gosling as Susie's father, a central character here and a role that requires massive dramatic chops. Gosling dropped out early on, though, and Mark Wahlberg came on his replacement. At the time of the news, I was all for this; I've long thought that Wahlberg is a better actor than he's given credit for, and The Lovely Bones is the perfect vehicle for the guy to reclaim some respect. Of course, this was before I saw that steaming pile The Happening, and the less-steaming but still a pile Max Payne. Now, who the hell knows what Marky Mark is going to bring to Jackson's table.

Check out his sweet '70s hairdo:

The rest of Jackson's cast is eclectic but all skilled: Saoirse Ronan (Oscar-nominated newbie, from Atonement) as "Susie," Susan Sarandon as her high-maintenance grandmother, Rachel Weisz as her adulterous mother, Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos' "Christopher Multisanti) as the detective on the case, and Stanley Tucci as her pedopiliac killer, "George Harvey."

Saoirse Ronan, as "Susie Salmon"

Stanley Tucci, as "George Harvey"

The Lovely Bones hits theaters on December 11 (after several release date pushbacks), just in time for awards season.

Stills from: Empire

Official H2 trailer is upon us.....

2009-04-24T17:41:00.001-07:00

The last few posts in a row have been horror-related, I just noticed. I'll be mixing it up a bit more next week, though.

Just the other day, I whipped up a post commenting on the shitty-quality teaser trailer for Rob Zombie's H2 that premiered on Entertainment Tonight, so, rather than offer reptitive thoughts here, I'm going to simply let this new, full trailer for the film show and prove on its own merit.

Enjoy (I'm not in love with this, but I don't hate it, either. Tons of twisted, hellbent atmosphere to be had, and this definitely proves that Zombie is taking Michael Myers into all-new, slightly supernatural territories, as seen by Mrs. Myers' presence. But Dr. Loomis? Must be flashbacks, because he clearly died a nasty death at the end of the last film. But anyway.....):

Piranha 3D cast begins rising to the surface

2009-04-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Even though I hated French-bred writer/director Alexandre Aja's last film, the catastrophically-flawed Mirrors, I'm not counting the guy out just yet. How could I? When you're first two films are 2003's brutal Haute Tension (or, High Tension) and 2006's superior The Hills Have Eyes remake, you've earned a degree of carte blanche in my book. I'll continue to ignore the fact that Aja produced that absymal "nail in the coffin housing Wes Bentley's career" P2 and focus on Aja's directorial catalog, by the way.

Alex Aja

The biggest truth that Mirrors proved was that Aja is much better when dealing with visceral gore and exploitation revisions; Mirrors had some of that gore (which was foolishly spoiled on every poster and in every commercial), but showed how sloppily Aja handles the supernatural. He tried going a more accessible route, and you can't knock the guy for that, but let's hope he leaves that in the past. At least for the time being.

His next project, however, is one that I'm psyched for.....Piranha 3D, a remake of Joe Dante's 1978 sleazefest that offered little more than killer piranhas gnawing on nubile young flesh. Exactly what a film called Piranha should be. This feels like exactly the right kind of film for Aja to redeem himself with----amp up the bloodshed and underwater dismemberment and blast the limbs in our faces thanks to this new 3D technology, and deliver a Jaws-on-acid for a whole new generation. May 2010 can't come soon enough.

Over the last week or so, casting for Piranha 3D has begun, and so far the lineup is completely random, and quite awesome. First, '80s goddess Elisabeth Shue (The Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting) signed on to play "the role of Sherrif Julie Forester, a take-charge authority figure in the community of Lake Victoria - where the action/ankle-biting takes place." Then, days later, Adam Scott, who was so great in Step Brothers and is currently anchoring the wonderful comedy series Party Down, joined the project as its male lead "Novak, a diver for the US Geological Service who helps discover the piranha outbreak." And earlier today, Ving Rhames was confirmed as the third lead, and a rumored Richard Dreyfuss "Jaws-referencing" cameo was also proven to be legit fact.

Elisabeth Shue

Adam Scott

An immensely cool, likeable cast. Alexandre Aja back in gore-heavy form. Killer piranhas nibbling at hot chicks in bikinis. Yeah, Piranha 3D is going to be total Summertime escapist glee.

Trailer for the 1978 original:

News learned over at: Shock Til You Drop

and Bloody Disgusting

I'm anticipating the third Twilight film now.....my God!

2009-04-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

As defiantly as I've been resisting the Twilight film and all of the lore surrounding author Stephanie Meyer's teenybop vampire franchise, I've been unable to shake the feeling that I'd one day give in and give the film a look. Initially, I feared that my general love for horror and bloodsuckers would leave me feeling incomplete without tasting the lowest-common-denominator. Then, suspicion turned to a much more "dating world" direction, and I began thinking that one of these date-nights the girl would suggest renting Twilight, and I'd be powerless by said girl's sexiness that I'd submit and watch Robert Pattinson's stone-cold screen presence.

Never did I think, though, that a filmmaker that I'm very fond of would attach himself to the franchise and that would be the reason I joined the Tiger Beat side. Yet, that's exactly what has happened, with the announcement today that director David Slade will be handling the third film in the series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Supposedly, Eclipse is the darkest and meanest of the lot, and requires a filmmaker with more edge than most.

Erik Feig, Summit Entertainment's President of Production: "Stephenie Meyer's ECLIPSE is a muscular, rich, vivid book and we at Summit looked long and hard for a director who could do it justice. We believe we have found that talent in David Slade, a director who has been able to create complex, visually arresting worlds. We cannot wait to see the ECLIPSE he brings to life and brings to the fans eagerly awaiting its arrival in summer of 2010.”

Slade has proved his sinister sensibilities with the awesome twosome of Hard Candy (where Ellen Page's best performance can be seen....sorry, Juno) and 30 Days of Night (what a vampire film should be....sorry, Twilight), so on the surface this makes sense. But the vibe I've gotten from Slade via his interviews and taste in subject matter has never been in the same vicinity as Twilight, other than the obvious "vampire" thing. But the vamps in 30 Days of Night spoke broken English and conducted mass homicide with zero remorse; Twilight's loverboy vamps would be scared shitless of them. Odds are, dude was offered a truckload of money, and that, on top of the guaranteed box office mayhem that the film will inspire, screamed louder than any pride. Can't knock the guy's hustle, though.

David Slade

I wonder if Twilight fans realize just how impressive of a filmmaker they've got for this Eclipse installment. Probably not. They were nearly given Drew Barrymore for Eclipse, so they should be counting their lucky Edward Cullen (that's his name, right?) posters that Slade is the final choice. I won't even begin to discuss how different stylistically Slade is from Barrymore, and how Eclipse clearly doesn't have a distinct tone in mind if you consider this 180-degree shift in filmmaker. Juan Antonio Boyaga (director of the great Spanish ghost tale The Orphanage) was also rumored to be close to signing on to Eclipse, and that choice was a bit closer in tone to Slade.

Let's get one thing clear, though: I'm not saying that Slade is Scorcese or anything. He's just a talented, somewhat-new director who has already cranked out two films that I love, so anything he gets his hands on is worthy of my time. Yes, even if its a Twilight film. The way Hard Candy commands attention and dishes out suspense in bountiful amounts despite being limited to a simple one house setting is seriously impressive, and the utter bleakness and striking nighttime visuals of 30 Days of Night look better with each viewing. The guy has chops. Ironically, it was only a couple days ago that I was wondering just what Slade would tackle next. Who knew it'd be this, huh?

And to think, I was this close to avoiding this franchise altogether. Now I just need to find a lovely lady to watch Twilight with me. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

One thing that should be made clear: I'm not expecting anything in Eclipse to even approach the level of awesomeness seen in this 30 Days of Night highlight. This is Slade at his best:

News learned over at: Ain't It Cool News

Some closure to the Trick 'r Treat saga?

2009-04-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Letting that one great girl slip through my fingertips due to my uncertainty of "Am I ready to invest total energy into a relationship right now?"? Nope. Not bailing out of my workplace early enough to jump on open positions elsewhere, pre-industry-wide-hiring-freeze? Close, but not quite. Each of those personal follies had no definite resolution if I had chosen the other path. Romance could've flourished for months with her, but it could've just as easily faded away without warning. And that industry was/is so fucked that the same outcome from my former spot could've happened anywhere else. Those are mistakes that I can't dwell on much.

My biggest fuck-up of 2008, however, did present itself with a neat, closure-offering endgame, and I blew it. I would've been one of the lucky few to catch an early look at one of the most anticipated and critically-beloved American-made horror films of the last decade. But, no.

Through Fangoria magazine's website, I got myself on a list for a free Trick 'r Treat screening in downtown Manhattan back in October, and I was ecstatic. Impatiently awaited the big day for over a month. Kept re-reading every early review of the Michael Dougherty-written/directed horror anthology, smiling and giddily reacting to every fawning ounce of praise and declaration that Trick 'r Treat is "the best Halloween movie of all time." Better than John Carpenter's Halloween, they say, and a better anthology film than Creepshow. Add on the fact that pussyfooted Warner Bros. has held the film captive for about two years now, unsure how to release and market the thing when they should've just released it in one of the last two Octobers and called it a day, and everything surrounding this film had me mega-amped to see the thing.

Notice the release date on the poster: October 2007.....yeah, not quite.

On the long-awaited day (October 13, 2008), I exited the office early. Hopped on the 1 train. Arrived in the theater's neighborhood with an hour to spare before showtime. Nobody waiting outside the theater in tightly-packed procession yet. Should I be the first, front and center? Snag the best seat in the house? Would've been brilliant. I was starving, though, so the sight of a Subway prompted me to feed the beast. I figured, "There won't be that many people at this screening, so I can get there 20 minutes beforehand, no problem." There was a long line at Subway, of course, so by the time I ordered and consumed my 'grilled chicken breast on whole wheat bread, with chipotle dressing" dinner, it was 25 minutes until the movie started. Fuck, I thought, I better hustle. I turned the corner, and my mouth dropped-----there was a line down the block about 60-people deep to see the shit, and they had already started letting people into the venue. My balls were kicked. Hopes, dashed. There wasn't a chance in Hades that I was getting in ("first come, first seated"). My one chance to see Trick R Treat with a crowded audience, the way it's meant to be experienced, was botched. All because I was hungry and couldn't resist the allure of a $5 footlong. Fuck you, Jared.

At first, I was ready to bring the fury down on the douchebags at Fangoria who confirmed RSVPs for upwards of 100 people when the theater only seated about 60. But then I only blamed myself. I've never looked at a bread guest-starring-meat sandwich" Subway sandwich the same again.

Until now, when I, or any other horror/film fan in the know, would ever get to see Trick 'r Treat was uncertain. Warner Bros. press releases repeatedly flirted with the notion of a straight-to-DVD release, only to then renig and tease with a possible theatrical run. The latest news, though, feels somewhat locked-in, and that's the semi-announcement this week that Warner Bros. will release Trick 'r Treat on DVD/Blu-Ray this October. A theatrical release to coincide with? Doubtful, but you never know.

Here's the new trailer:

October can't come soon enough. And please believe, I'll be checking Fangoria's website on a daily basis to see if another free screening is scheduled. Second time's a charm.

Trailer and news from: Shock Til You Drop

Thousands of patient, loyal fans are about to get their just due.....

2009-04-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

It's about damn time, huh? Finally, after years of false release dates, widespread fanboy blue balls, bittersweet nostalgia, and a ever-growing support base, MTV's cult sketch comedy series The State is hitting shelves in DVD format on July 14. A five disc set bringing Louis and his gold balls, Barry and Levon, the Prodigal Toothbrush, and every other hilarious skit together, at last. This overlooked gem of a comedy show only aired for two years (1993-1995), but has slowly built a faithful legion of lovers over the course of 14 years. No easy feat there. .

The State's alumni members have gone on to quietly strongarm modern-day comedy: directing the films Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models (David Wain), creating and starring in Comedy Central's Reno 911! (Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant, and Kerri Kenney), writing Night at the Museum and its upcoming sequel (Lennon and Garant, again), starring in Starz' new hands-down winner of a show Party Down (Ken Marino), stealing every one of VH1's "I Love the Whichever Decade" specials (Michael Ian Black), and a slew of other accomplishments. Who doesn't love Joe Lo Truglio in Superbad ("The tiger got outta the cage, man!"), or even Pineapple Express? Yup, he's also from The State.

Any time one of these post-State jobs is discussed amongst friends, I namedrop the respective funny-person's original home, but I'm routinely met with blank stares and disinterest. Save for some cousins and one of my friends (Ms. Cendra, if you're out there reading this), not one person I know can cite their favorite skit, and that's a shame. Will this new DVD set change that? Can a new crop of viewers be won over? I'd like to think so, but the end result is ultimately meaningless around here. I'm just happy that I'll have the entire series in my possession, rather than strolling down memory lane in Youtube's clip-heavy car.

My fondest memory of The State: staying up late with my Uncle Greg to watch the episodes in their first runs, his disregarding whatever babysitter rules he should've been following ("Put the kid to bed by 11pm, the latest") so we could watch Louis interrupt the Last Supper to dip his balls into something, to laugh our asses off as a grade school staring contest is ante-upped with the presence of a dude in full clown makeup. One of the happier memories of my adolescence, no doubt.

Here's a sketch that the cousins and I used to quote like we were being paid to do so:

True story, I actually did own a "Best of" The State VHS back in high school, but I gave it to the girl-of-my-high-school-dreams, a gift of personal romance. I figured, what better way to leave a permanent impression on this girl for when after our blossoming thing evaporates than to bestow her with something we mutually find hilarious despite our friends' lack of mutual enjoyment? Her heart went a-flutter, then she broke mine, and I was never able to watch "Porcupine Racetrack" again. Talk about your all-time backfires.

Come July 14, though, it'll be full-circle time.

First learned over at: Chud

First clip from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-04-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

A film that I've gotten into several arguments over is Michael Bay's gargantuan 2007 smash Transformers. It's a bit ridiculous that a special effects, eye candy extravaganza from Sir Blows-Shit-Up Bay would cause more debate than other recent films that I love, such as, say, Synecdoche, New York, but such is the reality that I live in (tons of film-likers in my world, not enough cinema-lovers). Some heads get mad at me for loving Transformers as much as I do, giving me that old "You should know better than not" jive. My defense is, and always will be: It's a movie about giant alien robots duking it out on Earth's soil. Why shouldn't it be loud, shiny, and style over substance. Call me crazy, but I feel that Bay accomplished exactly what he set out to do with the film, and in that respect it shouldn't be seen as anything other than a creative success.

All that being said, it should come as no surprise that this summer's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is high on my Must-See Summer Movies list. Especially when I take into account that Bay considers this sequel to be much darker and aggressive in tone. The first trailer that surfaced a couple months back looked great, and now we have our first official clip from the film, courtesy of Bay's own personal website.

I came across this clip, which concludes in a blistering montage of action shots from the film, over at /Film, and now I'm presenting it to all of my fellow Transformers-fans-in-waiting. We get Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) having a "heartfelt" chat with his old pal Bumblebee, while Sam's girl Mikaela (Megan Fox, though that goes without saying) strips down to a short white miniskirt. But the real goods here (other than Fox's stems) are the clips after this scene. Check it for yourselves:

Come on....how could anyone not love that?

Clip originally from: MichaelBay.com

I first saw it over at: /Film

The first look at Rob Zombie's H2 is among the Internet community

2009-04-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Rob Zombie's H2: The Devil Walks Among Us (or just H2, not sure which title is the end-all, be-all one as of now) is in the can and ready for an August 28 street date, and Entertainment Tonight *sigh* was the first outlet to show footage from the film's teaser trailer. When the ET-less, high-quality teaser will surface is anybody's guess (I'm guessing sooner than later, though), so this is all we've got for now. And I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised with what I'm seeing:

The horror community has been in a minor frenzy over several non-Halloween-esque changes Zombie has made to the mythology in this sequel, all of which he's voluntarily and enthusiastically announced via Myspace blogs. Two of the most alarming:: the choice to show hallucinations that Michael Myers has of his dead mother, and altering that legendary William-Shatner-inspired white mask into a few new looks, including a ripped-up Terminator/cyborg-looking model, a blood-smeared version, and then removing the mask altogether to show actor Tyler Mane's grizzly, "Rob Zombie himself on steroids" face.

I, like most others, was feeling iffy about these tweaks, but what I'm seeing in this footage looks pretty solid. That ripped-face mask seems to work (as seen in that mirror shot), and I'm liking the homage to 1981's Halloween 2 with Myers hacking through hospital employees while Laurie Strode is recovering from her hellish night. Falls into line with Zombie's original Halloween remake, condensing the its entire predecessor into one act and then running creatively wild with the rest. In on-set interviews, Zombie has openly acknowledged how uneven his Halloween was and taken full responsibility. He says that H2 has been a relief because he's been able to do whatever the hell he wants, free from the shadow of John Carpenter to fully capture a 100% Rob Zombie vision.

We'll see if that's a good thing or not. I've grown to like his Halloween more and more since its 2007 release; it's still flawed beyond measure and the stuff in Haddonfield with Laurie Strode is only saved by Danielle Harris' brave but too brief performance, but there's so much goodness found in the "Michael Myers' origin story" section that I can't help but dig the film as a whole. It remains, if nothing more, a rather intriguing experiment in remaking horror.

There is one thing about this footage that I'm not feeling, however, and that's what appears to be end of Danielle Harris' "Annie" character. It's not looking good for my girl. Not that I'm expecting her to survive this sequel or anything. A guy can hope, though, right? The odds of seeing Harris back on the big screen any time soon after H2 is slim to none, sadly, so the more would be the better here. My guess, she's buys it within the first 30 minutes. Womp to the womp.

To paraphrase my favorite song of the moment: "She's the best I never had, the best I never had, the best I never had."

In appreciation of Lucky McKee's May.....

2009-04-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

It's not often that a horror film made within the last ten years blows me away solely with its originality, but that's exactly what Lucky McKee's May (2002) has done. May is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a film unfairly hurt by the prejudice-ready trappings of its central plot. Awkward outcast female yearns for social acceptance, falls for a guy, gets rejected, flies off the deep end, and breaks loose some gruesome hell. At first, the film feels like "The Post-College Adventures of Stephen King's Carrie." But McKee has several tricks up his sleeve here, the most important of which being the patience to develop his May character to the hilt before unleashing her psychotic side. By the time her inner darkness is exposed, the character totally charmed my socks off with her goth-chick cuteness and compelling weirdness. Even as she sliced and diced, I was right there with her, cheering her on and hoping she'd emerge alive and happy.

This being an independent horror film devoid of big studio involvement and a need to please the masses, that of course doesn't happen. May works so well because nothing that happens from the 45-minute mark forward is expected. McKee consistently surprised me with May's plot turns and sadistic derailment, made all the more enjoyable thanks to a stellar lead performance from otherwise-unknown actress Angela Bettis, who owns this film from Fade In to Fade Out. Bettis handles a rollercoaster of a role with constant command, making May's pleasant moments seem believably sweet and her darkest actions feel completely warranted.

The way McKee develops the character, May comes from a friendless childhood that resulted from a terribly-lazy eye. Her sluggish eyeball gave her douchebag kiddie peers ample fodder to ridicule May, and she ran the course of life with no friends or companions other than a creepy white-faced doll that her mom handmade for her, which she calls "Suzy." Only, Suzy talks to May (the chick is crazy, you dig?) and tells her what to do in certain situations, most consequential being the intimate moments May shares with her crush and first-ever suitor, Adam (played by Jeremy Sisto, who you'd know from Clueless and Wrong Turn).

I don't want to spoil the surprises that May's story has in store, so seek this one out to see where tragic outcast May's tale goes. Trust me---it's not where you'd suspect, and it'll make you squirm and sympathize in equal measure. For the first hour, May is in no way a horror film; it's a dark, dramatic character study of a girl lacking in any social skills whatsoever. So much so that every encounter she has, whether it be with Adam or a group of blind children she volunteers to look after, left me feeling uneasy, unsure of what she'd do at any given second. I couldn't trust the character, but that doesn't mean that I didn't like her.

May is Snicker-thick with moments that payoff beautifully by story's end. As the resolution was unfolding, I found myself clicking back to small details packed within past scenes, thinking "Oh shit!" as loose ends tied themselves. Earlier moments that felt random all began to make crystal-clear sense. McKee's script turns out to be one that required much fine-tuning. Like a giant puzzle that's constantly falling into place without the viewer ever realizing it until the final frames.

Bonus points go to McKee and May for utilizing a young Anna Faris tons of scenery to chew on. Playing a promiscuous lesbian co-worker of May's who has a big thing for our heroine, Faris is a spark plug here, off-setting the film's thick grimness with her slutty flirtations and naive airhead ways. Oh, and Faris is hotter than ever here. Case in point:

If you've ever felt closed off from the cool kids, or simply unable to establish quality friendships, May will definitely strike a chord. You'll have to clutch your stomach and endure the endgame carnage, all played with a nice touch of realism rather than any Grand Guignol, but it's well worth the gag reflex. Going into the film, I wasn't expecting to love May as much as I now do. A slew of positive horror-writer reviews and McKee's commendable adaptation of Jack Ketchum's novel The Lost were all I had as reasons to watch on a quiet Friday evening. In the end, though, May and her poetic descent into the macabre left me feeling a mess of emotions. The most prominent being "empathy."

For a horror flick, that's a job well done.

Rashomon, or the beginning of my Kurosawa phase

2009-04-16T21:50:00.000-07:00

Seriously, how bad was last year's Vantage Point? What a case of cinematic blue balls. Easily one of 2008's biggest letdowns on my end, a film that first surfaced with a live-wire, eye-opener of a trailer but then materialized with uneve acting, a muddled script, and an irritating creative decision to rewind the tape every time the perspective changed between characters. The first time the film went all fast-paced backward, I cringed but figured that Pete Travis, the director, wouldn't be misguided enough to do it again. But then it happened again, and again, and then once more, and then about three more times. Until the audience in my theater began laughing and/or sighing in disbelief at each "rewind." Didn't help that Matthew Fox turned in a painfully bad performance, Dennis Quaid just looked one-note pissed the entire time, and cutie Zoe Saldana was killed off in the first ten minutes.

Be gone, Vantage Point. Be gone.

Now having finally watched iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's awesome Rashomon (1950), I've seen what Travis and company were admirably trying to do but failed on all fronts. Really, Rashomon makes me hate Vantage Point even more. It's not exactly fair, though, to compare the two films; it's like trying to draw a parallel between Robert Wise's The Haunting and The Haunting in Connecticut. Just plain ridiculous. Rashomon is one of the finest, most influential films ever made, so Vantage Point never stood a chance, anyway.

The same narrative trick is attempted in both----trying to solve a crime by showing the event through the eyes of multiple characters, only to reveal that "truth" is merely in the eye of the beholder. One of the many reasons that Rashomon so greatly pulls this storytelling okie-doke off is that the actual truth is never given. All we're left with is four vastly different accounts of a rape/murder in the woods. The final version could be regarded as the most reliable, only because it's from an objective witness with no ties to the bandit, the rape victim, and her now-dead husband. Or, does he? The witness turns out to have some unexpected stake in the case, which blurs the lines of reality even further, and leaves Rashomon's central verdict open-ended as the Fade Out comes.

It's pretty astonishing to think that Kurosawa executed such a groundbreaking, twisty tale nearly 60 years ago. Truly light years ahead of his time with this. Early on, I thought I was in for a murder mystery, but then the killer's identity is confessed by the deviant himself, which threw my frame-of-mind off the rails. So he's the killer then? So what else is left to figure out? What a fool I was to think that. As soon as the hysterical rape victim begins offering her recollection to the courthouse, I started asking her questions, but in my head. "Why are you so upset when the bandit just told us that you were fierce and heroic?" A wonderful little device used by Kurosawa here came into the light at this moment---I realized that we're never going to see the interrogator, only the defendants. As if they're speaking directly to the viewer. Answering our questions, confusing our thoughts with each changing speaker. Truth is totally subjective, and it changes through small yet thematically large details with each new defendant.

Rashomon is a film that I can't recommend enough. For those partial to martial arts and fight scenes, you get some pretty badass sword fighting. If you're a movie-watcher such as myself who loves a good wildly-structured headscratcher, it's tops. But ultimately, it's worth seeing just off of GP alone. You'd be hard-pressed to find a filmmaker who won't admit to being heavily influenced by not only Rashomon, but Akira Kurosawa himself.

I may go watch it again now. Or tomorrow, definitely. Hell, the film even managed to creep me out quite a bit thanks to an eerie testimonial from a freaky-deeky female medium giving the murder victim's side of the story. And I wasn't expecting this one to give me any willies at all. Many so-called "horror legends" can't even do that.

The Girlfriend Experience with Sasha Grey.....who wouldn't want that?

2009-04-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience is a film that's been talked about and quietly praised since its out-of-nowhere debut at January's Sundance Film Festival. Soderbergh must not have slept for more than about 12 hours total over the last year, between finishing up his four-hour epic Che and then somehow squeezing in the time to complete this, a much more lo-fi, intimate film. You have to hand it to a guy like Soderbergh----he's a truly dedicated filmmaker, one who clearly makes the films that he really wants to make in between the occasional Ocean's 11 franchise-mover.

When you've earned the clout that he has since 1989'S sex, lies, and videotape, that creative immunity isn't something to question. I knew only the bare essentials about The Girlfriend Experience prior to this trailer----that it was about a high-price call girl (played by porn star Sasha Grey, she of Sasha Grey's Anatomy fame; a title so obvious, yet so oddly clever) who specializes in engaging her clients in conversation and companionship more than just turning sexual tricks. But being a call girl, she never knows who exactly she's about to spend hours at a time with, which opens the plot up to either tragedy or some other less-morbid type of conflict. My plan is to catch this one at next week's Tribeca Film Festival, if possible, so I'll hopefully find out the answer then.

The response from Sundance has been largely positive, with some reviews singling out the intimacy of Soderbergh's story and direction, others acknowledging how he's managed to merge his independent sensibilities with his mainstream chops, and the rest of showing love to Grey's natural, revelatory performance. Looks like we have a winner on deck, so keep an eye out for The Girlfriend Experience when it opens in New York City limited release on May 22.

***The BW List: Car Scenes, Glaring Omission

2009-04-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I'm hugely ashamed of myself. A couple weeks back, I compiled a few of my all-time favorite film scenes involving automobiles in light of that week's Fast & Furious opening. The problem I've been having with these lists I've been putting together is that my head works so quickly, so many streams of thought flowing side by side, that I tend to overlook films and scenes that wholly deserve inclusion.

And just now, while watching some late night cable, I came across one of my favorite films of the last decade, Children of Men. So brilliant, so sadly passed over by the Academy that awards season. Amongst several others, one aspect of the film that I continue to find so astonishing is Alfonso Cuaron's hyper-realistic direction. Don't even get me started on that seemingly-single-take climax, because I'll just ramble on and on about its unparalleled excellence. In the same vein of love, though, is my fondness for this scene, which (SPOILER ALERT) kicks the film's plot into overdrive. Its another one of Cuaron's masterful "single shot takes" earlier in the film, an unexpected siege on the main characters' car that escalates into a crescendo of horror and tragedy. Cuaron took an approach that had been used before and perfected it----sewing together a bunch of separate shots and making them seem as if its one continuous take.

**I remember when I interviewed Chiwetel Ejiofor (the driver of the car in the scene) for a KING story, I snuck in a question asking how exactly Cuaron pulled this scene off, to which he laughed and gave me one of those "I can't spoil the secret, now" responses that I simultaneously understand, respect, and selfishly loathe. Landing the man Chiwetel Ejiofor for a six-page feature story/shoot in KING will forever go down as my proudest accomplishment while working for the mag. Took months to secure, defied perceptions of the mag, and realized my hopes of giving the mag some Hollywood credibility. They can't take that one away from me. Ever.**

If you've yet to see Children of Men, please do so with the quickness. And think twice about watching this scene, 1) because the picture quality isn't the best, and 2) the film deserves to be seen in its entirety and total context. But for the short-of-will-power and fans of the film, here's the "car attack" scene that should've been at least second-slotted on my previous BW List: Favorite Car Scenes. It's something else:

The Hurt Locker is ready to stuff your adrenaline inside it

2009-04-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

The official full trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has finally materialized, and it's as great as I was hoping. There's a difference between this trailer anticipation and others, however----I had the privilege of seeing an early media screening of The Hurt Locker last month, and I feel confident in saying that the film immediately secured a spot in my inevitable "Best Films of 2009" list. Give the trailer a look:

Bigelow (she of Point Break and Strange Days notoriety and film world respect-receiving) has pulled off something that I'd thought impossible, that being an Iraq War-set film that manages to entertain, captivate, and even inspire some thought without coming off as if she's drunk on pints of preachy sentiment. Films such as Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah have their merits, sure, but audiences obviously wanted little to do with the "the war's effects on its soldiers is scarring, so pay attention" arch of those failed efforts. The Hurt Locker treats itself as a pure action suspense show, a superb one at that.

I'll delve into the film more closer to its limited June release, but just know that The Hurt Locker is definitely one to place high atop your looking-forward-to film list. Bigelow pulls off some seriously tense, seat-clenching setpieces, and the acting from all involved (especially the beast that is Jeremy Renner here, and the underappreciated Anthony Mackie) is A+ quality.

Get ready.

Simon Cowell joined by some other, cooler Basterds

2009-04-15T13:48:00.001-07:00

Of all the places in the world to premiere new behind-the-scenes and actual film footage for the next Quentin Tarantino flick, American Idol is probably the last outlet I would've ever expected. But that's exactly what happened last night when Tarantino guested on Idol to direct the remaining contestants' performances. Whatever that means, exactly. I'm one of the ten or so people in this country who doesn't routinely watch the show, so I can't say what QT-directed performances of glossy pop wannabes looked like, or sounded like.

If I had known Tarantino was going to be on Idol, though, I would have tuned in, or at least set the DVR. I'm a big fan like that. Fortunately, we have this little tool called the Internet these days that spares people like me from having to sit through American Idol just to get the 40-second goods we clicked in to see: some new Inglourious Basterds footage. And boy does this one keep looking cooler and cooler. Sure, I'm, as I just said, a huge fan of the guy, so maybe I'm biased to some degree. But you can't watch the final seconds of this footage, with guns blazing and the set erupting into an inferno of anarchy, and not get gassed, even a tad.

If money weren't a thing and I had my passport primed and ready, I'd totally hop on a plane and crash the Cannes Film Festival, just to see Inglourious Basterds nice and early. And if they didn't let me in after going through all that globe-trotting trouble, I'd be forced to grab a gattling gun and make like Freaks and Geeks alum Sam Levine in the above footage. Those monstrous weapons look heavy---good thing I've been busting out those push-ups.

***I didn't notice at first, but after watching this footage again, I've realized that this clip gives us our first look at Mike Myers' character, General Ed Fenech, a product of heavy makeup. Talk about going incognito. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to bet dividends that this is indeed Myers:

The BW List: When Lame Movies Happen to Good Talent

2009-04-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Considering my current state of being, I'm the last person who should criticize somebody for "taking a paycheck." Accepting a gig that does little for his/her artistic sensibilities but goes a long way financially. We all need to pay the bills, keep the lights on, pad the bank accounts, rob our country blind. I get it. But for the objective onlooker, seeing people you respect do this never fails to sting. Disappointment is inevitable, not always branded with the unfair "sell-out" tag yet still looked down upon as a lapdog of sorts.

In the film world, this happens on a weekly basis. Actors and actresses you love pop up in shitty films, or obvious money-makers that you'd rather be subjected to a Lucio Fulci/Zombi drawn-out eye-gauging than ever voluntarily watch. Case in point: Leslie Mann co-starring in this weekend's 17 Again.

I haven't seen the film, nor do I ever plan on doing so. Yes, I'm aware that it currently stands at an unexpectedly respectable 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, but whatever. And I'm not blatantly hating on your boy Zac Efron here, either. Do I like the guy as a talent? Nope, but my total indifference to this pretty-boy-with-good-dance-moves-who-I-can't-sign-on-to-a-pop-culture-blog-and-not-see isn't the focal point of my 17 Again negativity. Rather, it's the tired, contrived Big/Vice Versa "age reversal" plotline. It's cheap, unoriginal, and, really, never that funny.

I'm sure that Leslie Mann will have some funny, or at least charming, moments in 17 Again, though. How can she not? The woman is naturally hilarious, one of Hollywood's funniest and most overlooked ladies. The rare case of nepotism that doesn't feel worthy of his/her success (she's married to comedy giant Judd Apatow). Just go watch Knocked Up again for proof, or even rewind back to Adam Sandler's Big Daddy, where her few scenes as the former Hooters girl all scored. She's someone who deserves a few leading roles in well-made films; granted, she seems to have one coming this summer with Apatow's Funny People, but that's simply another one with her husband. It's time that she stretches herself successfully into non-Apatow territory. 17 Again is a terrible place to start, despite the film's surefire prognosis. People will see her, laugh with her, root for her. But she deserves better.

Of course, I could be left with a pie in the face if 17 Again turns out to be universally loved. This is a kneejerk reaction, though, so if that does happen I'll totally admit defeat.

This all got me wondering, "What other talents that I love have appeared in films I had zero interest in ever seeing?" And from that inner thought comes this list of the examples that stand out most in my head. Worth noting: I've seen all of these films, which makes the bitterness all the more potent.

Chiwetel Ejiofor in Slow Burn (2005): Back in '05, the London-bred Ejiofor was on a nice track to stateside notoriety. His turns in the critically-hailed English films Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Love Actually (2003) put him on the radar, leading to his hardly-recognizable villain work in John Singleton's well-received Four Brothers. But then came Slow Burn, a poorly-executed attempt to modernize the old "sleazy, sexy crime thriller" genre with a slumming-it Ray Liotta and LL Cool J trying out In Too Deep material again. Nothing in the film worked, and Ejiofor's "Ty Trippin" character suffered from more than just a terribly stereotypical name. As evidenced by his great work in 2006's Children of Men and 2007's American Gangster (not to mention his strong lead work in last year's slept-on Redbelt), Ejiofor has bounced back nicely. But his one major fuck-up still burns slowly in my brain.

Paul Rudd in Over Her Dead Body (2008): This one has tons in common with Leslie Mann's 17 Again. Rudd, like Mann, is an Apatow regular who always brings the goods, clocking in scene-stealers in everything from Anchorman to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Even going back to the guy's rookie days with Clueless, Rudd has always been that co-star you can't get enough of and hope can one day become the leading man. Unfortunately, his agent agreed at the wrong time and sent him the script for Over Her Dead Body, an abysmal high-concept romantic comedy that actually co-stars American Pie's Jason Biggs, who has become a skidmark for every bad rom-com he's starred in over the last decade. In an effort to make Eva Longoria a movie-star, this piece-of-dung existed, and Rudd was its most painful-to-watch casualty. Like Ejiofor, thankfully, the man has recovered, proving he is in fact capable of picking strong lead role material with Role Models and I Love You, Man. If I were him, though, I'd find every existing print of Over Her Dead Body and stage a bonfire. Some things are best left forgotten.

Elisabeth Banks in Meet Dave (2008)/ Rosario Dawson in The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002): Signing on to a modern-day Eddie Murphy comedy has become the ultimate "taking a paycheck" job for some of Hollywood's most gifted comedic actresses. Later this year, the divine Kerry Washington will be the guy's latest victim, thanks to his next Brian Robbins-directed turd A Thousand Words. Until then, the worst example of Murphy's magnetic suck is a tie between Elisabeth Banks and Rosario Dawson, two ladies of equal awesomeness who couldn't avoid the pull. Dawson has the misfortune of being associated with Murphy's first genuine shitshow Pluto Nash, a science fiction debacle so atrocious that the mere mention of it inspires both guffaws and gagging. Six years later, Banks' Meet Dave bombed at the box office, a sacrificial lamb meant to remind us just how far Murphy's comedy has fallen. The sad part was that Meet Dave came at a high point in Banks' career, the same year as two of his biggest roles to date (Laura Bush in W. and the second title name of Zack and Miri Make a Porno). One can only hope that Murphy seeks out Katherine Heigl for his next project and leaves the likeable women alone.

Antichrist trailer, using Willem Dafoe's natural creepiness to its advantage

2009-04-14T13:02:00.001-07:00

Every now and then, courtesy of some cosmic alignment that pushes forth creativity and artistic focus, a trailer comes along for a new, under-the-zeitgeist genre film that backhands my senses and leaves me standing at attention. This here is one of those.

Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, a film that I've heard rumblings about for months now but haven't been able to land on any exact plot or concept. Which is pretty much still the case after watching this first trailer, though the overall grim and hallucinogenic atmosphere cancels out any frustration or shoulder-shrugging. I've read that the story plays on a "What If" scenario of Satan creating our world, not God. So then, something to do with forces of Mother Nature wreaking supernatural havoc, possibly. Or a "crazy lady violently spiraling down her own wormhole" procedural, flipped on its head, even. Whatever the case is ultimately, you'll still have Willem Dafoe being Willem Dafoe, and that's never a disadvantage.

Check it:

Lars von Trier's Antichrist - Official Trailer from Zentropa on Vimeo.

As IMDB puts it: A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Well, that clears things up. Slightly.

This Lars Von Trier fella has earned heaps of goodwill with his past films, including Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, but unfortunately I've yet to see any of the Copenhagen, Denmark native's past works. Netflix will soon remedy that. Even though I can't personally attest to the man's skills, I can still conjur up massive excitement over a respected, visually-strong, critically-saluted filmmaker tackling the horror stuff, which doesn't happen very often. And when it does, you get films such as Frank Darabont's The Mist, or Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Point made, and then some.

Antichrist will be making its way around the international film festival circuit throughout the year. Meaning, I won't get to see it until early 2010. Fucker.

Reconsidering Observe and Report again....somebody stop me

2009-04-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

A second viewing of Jody Hill's Observe and Report is on the horizon. I can feel it. Any comedy that leaves me questioning certain scenes and debating within myself over what was real and what wasn't deserves some more business, especially considering that I can't recall any other comedy that has had such a puzzling, fascinating effect on me.

Am I overthinking this film a bit much? You could say so, but then you'd be a bit off in your assumption. Hill has gone on record about his direct intention to leave the audience confused as to what was meant as "funny" or "disturbing," so he'd surely smile at this. Besides, when is ever a bad thing to overthink a film? Even shit ones? Okay, paying too much mind to Beverly Hills Chihuahua would be a waste. I'll give you that. But Observe and Report is so unique and line-snapping in its tone that the viewer almost has to enter the theater with a free mind and a punching-bag of a brain.

While I'm still unsure as to why I found so much comedic pleasure in a scene where a naked man is gunned down at point-blank distance, it's the entire section of the film that includes the shooting that has me wondering. [POSSIBLE SPOILERS WARNING] Once Ronnie Barnhardt gets out of jail and reads the postcard from his former partner Dennis, Observe and Report strangley goes from Debbie Downer to visceral triumph, which I found myself a bit angry about the other day. But now, after taking into serious account Hill's praise-filled name-dropping of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, I'm asking myself, "Were the final ten minutes of Observe and Report even real, or just some fantasy commencing in Ronnie's twisted mind?"

Like the final moments of Taxi Driver, there's no clear details seen that answer this question in Hill's film. I'm not exactly sure if that's something to compliment Hill for, or to criticize the guy for some lack of clarity. The tone of the film shifts so drastically during Ronnie's redemptive visit to his old workplace that it's impossible to not think that what we're seeing is a dream. Similar to how one could question Travis Bickle's survival after the shootout with Harvey Keitel's pimp and his goons. The crowd I saw Observe and Report with cheered during the final minutes, which must make Hill happy. The conclusion is totally designed to elicit some hooting and hollering, but it's still morally reprehensible enough to unsettle the more conscious filmgoer.

I doubt that this question will be answered after a second Observe and Report intake, though. The only way to ever get a closure-providing statement on the matter would be to ask Jody Hill himself, and I'm willing to be that he'd pull a David Lynch and leave his work open-ended and enigmatic. Even if you attack Hill for the film's tonal contradictions or blurry intentions, I'm subscribing to the belief that you got to respect the guy for applying such a non-comedy approach to the comedy genre. And (depending on your personal opinion, though mine is obvious) succeeding, at that.

The overthinking will never end.

Blame It (On the Undead)

2009-04-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

I try to avoid TMZ at all costs. Simply typing the website address into my Explorer's toolbar and then clicking "Go" leaves me feeling dirty, cheap, voyeuristic. I'd rather get my celebrity gossip necessities from second or third parties, like this story.

Woody Harrelson seems to have attacked a paparazzi douchebag recently and smashed the photo-stalker's camera. Harrelson was with his daughter, so you could chalk this up to the man protecting the privacy of his kid, but then you'd be innocently wrong. Turns out, Harrelson thought he was in his very own George Romero flick:

The Actor's Defense: "I wrapped a movie called 'Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character... With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie."

Whether he was high or not when this quote was said, it's still pretty awesome. Clearly the lamest excuse ever, but great. I too live in a dreamworld where a zombie invasion could break out at any minute; because, if so, I'd be the world's biggest hero. I've seen all the films, read some of the Max Brooks books. Used to sleep with a tire-iron under my bed as a kid so that if any flesh-eaters came into my room at night I'd be able to split their melons open, like Night of the Living Dead's "Ben" on that farmhouse's front lawn. I even wrote two 75-page zombie horror novels before I entered high school.

I mean, come on? Obviously I'm well equipped. Even Woody Harrelson would have to salute the kid.

Quote and story first learned over at: JoBlo

So far, so good.....

2009-04-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

A head sliced off by a boat's engine propellers. The body of the show's biggest-named star (albeit a has-been C-lister) cut in half, guts left to dangle in mid-air. And that was just the first episode.

Count me in through July 2nd.

Observe and Report's ending, reconsidered

2009-04-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the end of Observe and Report for the last few days, bouncing back and forward with my opinion. Ultimately, I've decided that I actually don't like the final resolution, though I won't spoil it here for those who haven't seen the film, since it's opening today and it's hardly 3pm.

When people do see it, though, assuming some will, I'd love to pick the last couple of minutes apart. The problem I'm having is that the entire tone of the film (despicable guy rapidly descending into self-destruction and public endangerment) is kicked to the curb for a last-second reversal of fortune that doesn't feel right. Feels cheap, out of place, pandering to the same conventions that the rest of the film so knowingly spits at. There's a scene that involved a fat flasher/pervert approaching a major female character in slow motion before being gunned down at point blank range, and that's where the film should've ended and credits should've rolled. Or, if an additional moment or two was necessary, writer-director Jody Hill would've been better served to make this scene's aftermath one of imprisonment, not fulfillment. It's a shame, since the slo-mo flasher sequence is damn great, and its climax is sudden and bloody good.

If anybody out there sees Observe and Report this weekend, please hit me so we can engage in a wee bit of debate. I'm still a big fan of the film, though. And I must warn the masses----this isn't a LOL comedy. In fact, I didn't let out a hearty laugh once, but I was engaged throughout and totally down for the cause. It's something different, and hopefully an important change-of-course for studio comedies.

All that being said, I must close this with a confession: I really want my own "Nell."

Cute as hell, sweet and personable. Pure. A smile that could melt a homicidal fool's heart. She's total "wife material." Well played, Collette Wolfe.

Walkin' High on the Moon

2009-04-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, I'll be able to catch this one when it plays at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month....wait, fuck am I kidding? I have all the time in the world as of now, so there's no excuse.

Sam Rockwell is a great actor, one of my favorites (catch Snow Angels now on cable if possible, he's shattering in it), so a film starring him and only him for the majority of the runtime is foolproof material. Give it a trailer as wowzer as this one, and then you have the best-looking straight science fiction flick to come out in some time. Aside from Danny Boyle's Sunshine, has there been a great no-frills sci-fi movie in recent memory? I think not.

Here's the trailer for Duncan Jones' Moon (Jones is the son of David Bowie, I read somewhere):

Gives me the fuzzy feeling of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a nice narcotic musical score. And tons of pristine-looking visuals.

This one's high on the list.

A Night with Vinyan; A Buck-Shot to the Senses

2009-04-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't call it a beautiful mind exactly. More like a grotesquely-attractive one. A thoughtbox that has twice now managed to leave me in a slightly comatose state after being subjected to its creative, visual, and narrative sides, all at once, twice now. The guy has only made two films, but both shatter all conventional genre tricks, taking their time to stack up the dread and astonished confusion to Jenga Champion heights.

The fella's name is Fabrice Du Welz, a Belgian filmmaker, and I've finally seen his sophomore head-raper Vinyan, after nearly a year's worth of anticipation.

Fabrice Du Welz

After I watched his debut, Calvaire (The Ordeal), early on in my Netflix lifespan, I couldn't shake the cold, distant-from-reality feeling the film left me with. Some idiot writers have dubbed Calvaire the "Gay Chainsaw Massacre," due to its sporadic homo-psychotic scenes and the plot's skeletal cloning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While those jackasses trivialized it into a heap of puns, I fell right in Calvaire's existential malarchy trap, knees deep and loving every fucked-up second. At not one point did Du Welz take an expected plot turn, stage a seen-that-before scene. Even when the images made no sense and felt bizarre simply for bizarre's cheap sake, I couldn't help but love the shit. Like this random folk dance sequence, which I'm sure is meant to show the audience that the townsfolk in Calvaire aren't the most trustworthy, but really just comes off as some inexplicable hypnosis. You'll either laugh at the absurdity or be left in unease. Myself, a fascinating mixture of both:

Du Welz won me over with Calvaire, no doubt, so once word spread that the writer-director's next one, Vinyan, is a stylistic leap forward, I instantly become enthralled with the chance of some day soon seeing it. Of course, the film played well at the film festival circuit last year and had heads talking due to its eccentricity and holy-shit final act, which naturally meant it would linger in release purgatory before hitting DVD shelves with zero fanfare. Other than to those such as myself who put ourselves in "the know." All I had to work with was this mesmerizing underwater opening credit sequence, a "Huh" slice of coolness that leaves me with the same bewilderment that the opening credits of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible does:

So what did I get out of Vinyan? A viewing experience that made that of Calvaire seem only satisfactory. Where to begin? With the film's plot, perhaps: Paul and Jeanne (actors Rufus Sewell and Emmanuelle Beart, both quietly dynamic here) are on a vacation near Burma when they come across a tourist video that features a little jungle-living kid that Jeanne swears is their son Joshua, who was lost at sea during the 2004 tsunami and presumed dead. After some debate, Jeanne wins, and the couple doles out their entire life savings to hop on a sketchy boat to the Thai-Burmese border, where the video was shot. As the trip continues into a downward spiral of dead-ends and growing bleakness, the boat's guide gets lost and docks on a nondescript, dark, creepy isle full of silent little naked kids covered in hardened mud and preying around the jungle in stalker-mode.

The little bastards look like children straight out of a National Geographic issue guest-edited by the team from Fangoria. And once the couple's boat becomes off-course and stranded, Vinyan turns into Apocalypse Now crossbred with Who Can Kill A Child? scripted and directed while on an acid trip. That's a seriously twisted and potent elixir, and I'm not fibbing when I say that the final 15 minutes of Vinyan had me paralyzed to my couch. The paralysis first kicked in during this dream sequence that Jeanne has; she's been mentally deteriorating throughout the film, and by the time they're stuck on the tribal island, aka the Fifth Circle of Earthbound Hell, she's totally gone. A walking slab of jelly, only motivated by the sad, tragic hope of finding her obviously-dead son. In this dream, she's surrounded by a group of kids wearing the same red shirt her son wore on the day he was taken by the tsunami wave. Only, the kids' faces are all stretched-out and mask-like, and the camera zooms sideways and in-and-out rapidly as faint screaming sounds (the same ones heard at the tail-end of that above Vinyan opening credits). It's unsettling along the lines of that nightmarish Aphex Twin video for "Come to Daddy." Heebie jeebie central.

Vinyan isn't a film I'd honestly recommend to too many people. I'll be delicately picking and choosing who gets the "You should really watch this" heads-up. If your attention span is that of a pencil and a simple growling stomach makes you stand up and leave the room while a DVD is playing, do yourself a favor and stay the fuck away from this one. It's not meant for you; go watch The Love Guru or something. Du Welz moves this thing along at a snail's pace, but in a good way. I never lost interest, and was rewarded by Vinyan's haunting final act, but the only-marginally-patient watcher will most likely tune out or get bored by the 20-minute mark. If so, I'm sorry. You can't win them all. Only people like me who love this kind of bizarre shit. And also, lovers of intense, stark, gorgeous cinematography and some of the best jungle scenery presentation since Francis Ford Coppola and the already-referenced Apocalypse Now.

It takes some balls and some truly disturbed sensibilities to dream up and then so strongly execute Vinyan's final 15 minutes. But this dude Du Welz has done it rather convincingly. I'd really love to see him get the green-light for an American studio film, just to witness either his un-compromise or disappointing descent into studio politic bend-over bulldonkey. Because there's no way in Hell that he'd get away with making a film such as Vinyan on an American studio's watch.

Unfiltered DVD releases of international cinema, bless y'all.

Vinyan trailer (that actually makes the film seem much more accessible than it is, believe me. Don't be fooled, this is only to give a sharper feel for the film):

Joke or not?

2009-04-09T09:53:00.001-07:00

I honestly can't figure it out. If there wasn't an actual IMDB page for this, I'd think it was some Funny or Die like joke. But such an IMDB page does exist, so I'm just left befuddled.

Gooby

It's like Teddy Ruxpin and Fozzy Bear were kidnapped by some mad scientist, sliced into feathery pieces, thrown into some mass-expanding life machine, and cast out into the world of tongue-in-cheek family cinema.

God I love the limitless of film.

Your second chance at greatness....

2009-04-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning, and the piece-of-shit Sir Arthur Buick wouldn't start. Sitting around my 'rents' house, waiting to get my haircut, anticipating the return of tu madre so I can use her Durango to ride to the barbers. Sucks the large one, but 'tis what 'tis.

At least I just came across this splendid news:

HBO has officially confirmed that its original comedy series Eastbound and Down-—a /Film fave—-has been renewed for a second season. Better yet, given the fast ascent up the comedy ranks of the show’s masterminds, Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and Ben Best, one may have expected another six-episode season further down the pipeline. Instead, the next season begins filming later this year and will air in 2010. Woo. When we were on the set last year, co-director David Gordon Green revealed that a follow-up pitch was being entertained that centered on McBride’s profane bulletproof tiger Kenny Powers shipping off to South America to quasi-fulfill his baseball career. However, the idea seemed to be news to much of the cast, and given how well received the ensemble performances of Andy Daly, Katy Mixon, John Hawkes, and Steve “Ass Blood” Little, I wouldn’t bet on it.

I was hoping that HBO would be smart enough to bring this growing-number-of-fans' favorite back sooner than later. Glad they've proven me right. Easily the funniest show the network has aired in, I don't know, forever. And that's including my dude Tim from The Life & Times of Tim. HBO should just cancel that shell-of-its-former-self Entourage altogether and go all out with Kenny Powers. Shit, he has Stevie already, that's all the entourage that HBO needs, anyway.

We better get some more Ashley Schaeffer, too:

News spotted over at: /Film

Dream a Big (Message) Dream

2009-04-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dreams come, and then dreams go. In one side of the brain, and promptly out the other. I wonder, when you don't remember them vividly enough to discuss specific details the morning after, did those dreams even really happen?

Rather than tread into psychoanalytical areas that I'm not mentally prepped for at the moment, I'd much more prefer to focus on one particular recent dream that has stuck out in all its colorful, memorable detail. It went down internally this past weekend, while I was snoozing in the cozy Boston hotel room. Before sleep hit me, following up the left-hook combo landed by that Long Island Iced Tea and Fire & Ice's stir fry buffet (greatest restaurant ever? yes, greatest restaurant ever), I was half-watching Saturday Night Live, hosted by Seth Rogen (the episode sucked overall). Fell into dreamland midway through Weekend Update.

Soon found myself in a fictitious world where I was dating this curvy, gorgeous Dania Ramirez-lookalike, and she was head over heels for me. Holding hands, cuddling in public. The romance was thick, like my faux girlfriend's lower region (sorry, I'm still far enough removed from KING-mode just yet). Us two lovebirds were strolling casually around the Manhattan Mall, no store-destinations in mind, just window-shopping and killing time before an eveing screening of Observe and Report (Like I said, Rogen was the last person I saw before sleep....and I'm not even going to "Pause" that because it's totally unnecessary here).

Hunger set in, so Bizarro Dania and I headed to the food court, a little Ranch One Chicken in our sights. Zoned in, ready to attack (for dinner). As we got off the escalator, though, who do we see? Seth Rogen, just sitting at a table alone, eating some Sarku Japan. "Oh shit, look who it is?!" my girl shouts. She runs over to him, begins to express her huge fandom, and Rogen is cool as ice, accepting the compliments graciously and asking us to sit down with him for a second. So we do, after grabbing our chicken sandwiches and fries (my side = veggies....I'm a pussy even in my dreams). Banter ensues. Of course, all centering around movies. I ask him if he's see Timecrimes, the amazing Spanish time travel flick from Nacho Vigalondo. He has, and he shares equal excitement for it. I then inquire if he's seen Fabrice Du Welz's Vinyan, another recent favorite of his (the guy is more than comedy, my dream-self finds out). Two for two.

Naturally, the two of us are getting along swimmingly. There's only one major dilemma: my girl has never seen any of these films. Her initial star-struck glee has slowly dissipated into a bored, watch-checking labor. "Umm, Matt, your new BFF's movie is about to start in like 10 minutes, we should make moves," she inteerupts as Rogen and I are chatting about screenwriting techniques---He the teacher, I the learner. I shrug her off, much more interested in collecting some tips and wisdom from our third dinner party. The look of frustration continues to accelerate on wifey's pretty face, yet I could give two shits less.

The second that Rogen and I switch the conversation to Hollywood studio politics, B-Dania stands up, kicks her chair to the ground, and defiantly says, "You know what? Fuck this! You obviously care more about this movie bullshit than you do about spending time with your girl. This shit is over!" And then she heads to the escalator. As she rides the moving staircase upward, I notice her flirting with some lame asshole wearing tight jeans, a sweater vest, and a trucker hat (hipster fucko). But I don't care. Immediately, I return to my conversation with the Hollywood major-player seated next to me. And all is well.

So what do I gather from this dream? It's simple, really. At this time in my life, I now realize what my top priority has become. Hell or high water, I got to get that side of my hopefull-professional-future in order, moving forward. That open house for NYFA next weekend is officially step number one, so let's hope that is an informative success, a dream-pusher instead of a goal-staller.

And no, people. Don't even think "Oh, Matt dreams about Seth Rogen." It could've been any actor/screenwriter in the game seen in my dream. Just so happened that I was watching dude on the tube seconds beforehand. The point of the dream resonates, regardless.

Eminem Made Me Angry

2009-04-07T11:04:00.001-07:00

Now this is just sad. Upsetting. A cop-out when it could've/should've been a first round knockout. I hate to take the typical "hater" route here, but this is coming from a true Eminem fan, one who wants only for the guy's new music to be great, for both my sanity's and rap-love's sakes. And this is bad, no way around it.

Eminem's new video, "We Made You." It's here, and it's expectedly the same brand of goofy, bouncy, disposable first single he puts out before each of his albums. Part of me had this feeling that Eminem had realized that he could drop a first record produced by DJ Premier and with Jazmine Sullivan on the hook and the shit would still be a smash. He doesn't need lame shit like this anymore....or, does he? This "We Made You" does its job at reassuring fans that Em can still have fun at other celebrities expenses. But, see, the times have changed.....fuck it, watch the video first:

He must've recorded this song at the end of 2008, right? And it was just held by Interscope for time purposes, no? Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan? Sarah Palin? Amy Winehouse? Jessics Alba and Cash Warren? That's just lazy, and obvious, and late. This shit makes "Just Lose It" sound like "Criminal." The main problem here is that celebrity gossip is more accessible and overexposed than ever, between your Perez Hiltons, DListeds, and TMZs; we don't need Eminem to skewer these assholes anymore. Been there, heard that. You can read jokes and slams against celebs on a minute-by-minute basis by simply double-clicking Internet Explorer---what more can Eminem say that we haven't laughed at already when it was presented with much more wit? Any fool with a Blogspot account and tons of free time can be a "first-single-minded Eminem."

Digs at Moby and Christina Aguilera were understandable; they had slighted Em in the press, basically asking for retaliation. Not one person namedropped on "We Made You" has done so; attacking them is unnecessary, kind of desperate. If there was any wit in these verses, however, I wouldn't be as agitated. Lines talking about wanting Jessica Alba's breasts on his mouth are thoughtless. I didn't wait five years for that.

Yeah, he can still ride a beat like none other, even when rapping in this annoying high-pitched British accent. But that's not good enough. This Dr. Dre beat is trash, honestly, and the references to people like Jennifer Aniston and visual jokes about a fat Jessica Simpson are as uninspired as it gets. "Rock Band is the most popular game out, right? Cool, let's have Em rapping on a Rock Band backdrop! Oh, isn't there a new Star Trek movie coming out? Perfect! Em as Spock!" The only somewhat clever idea is giving Eminem the Elvis Presley treatment, but even that comparison is old news.

Please don't tell me that Relapse is going to suck? "Crack A Bottle" still hasn't totally won me over, and now this song hits and misses. I still think that Em has tons of tricks up his sleeve that he's saving for the album, but he's 0-for-2 so far.

Netflix Fix -- And Soon The Darkness (1970)

2009-04-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

Just the other day, a friend and I were talking about the possibility of ever taking some kind of solo European vacation. One of those trips where its person, alone, exploring a far-off country. Full of self-discovery, adventure, intrigue. But then also a true test of one's survival skills, and street smarts. Personally, the idea of a one-man vacay overseas is rather compelling, though I'm not entirely sure that I'll ever pull the trigger and actually take one. Besides, I've seen enough movies to know how susceptible an American tourist in unfamiliar terrain. The old "fish out of water" plot device is one of the most abused and overused tricks in the thriller genre, with "good" flicks such as Hostel far outweighing the forgettable misfires, like, say, Turistas (anybody?).

And those are just a couple of the recent examples. Tomorrow, in fact, I'll finally get to watch Fabrice Du Welz' Vinyan on trusty DVD, and that's yet another entry into this subgenre. And Soon The Darkness, a largely looked-over British potboiler made back in 1970 by director Robert Fuest, has set the bar for Vinyan Mary-Jane-high.

Loving this poster. Looks a lot like that old Last House on the Left one I've always thought was/is top quality.

A few weeks back, news surfaced of an in-development remake of And Soon The Darkness, starring two starlet-apples in my eye, Amber Heard (Pineapple Express) and Odette Yustman (Cloverfield, The Unborn). The notion of remaking an obscure British film with a pair of America's hottest young actresses immediately got me going; I'd much rather see a little-known foreign throwback get the recognition over yet another iconic slasher series from here in the states.

Prior to the news of an Amber Heard/Odette Yustman sexy sandwich, I'd never heard of the original And Soon The Darkness, so the film instantly hopped into my Netflix. Finally came around to watching it late last night, and I'm glad to opine that its one hell of smart, suspenseful little number. Plays up all of the necessary "fish out of water" puzzle pieces to effective levels of unease.

Cathy (actress Michele Dotrice) and Jane (Pamela Franklin)

....and now, Amber Heard and Odette Yustman. Quite a difference, eh?

The story centers around Jane, a cute, short-haired, innocent-minded college-age tourist from London who has just seen her bicycling trip across France take a mischievous turn. After a verbal scuffle with her wilder, blonde bombshell of a best friend, and travel partner, Cathy, Jane rode off in protest, leaving Cathy alone near woods on the side of a road. But when Jane goes back to check on her friend, Cathy is gone. This leads to an investigation complete with shady strangers giving Jane prolonged stares and speaking in foreign languages that she frustratingly can't understand, and an unearthed murder mystery that brings with it eerie similarities with Cathy.

Now that's how you cut together a trailer.

The film's script (written by fellas named Brian Clemens and Terry Nation) is the real MVP here, a tightly-structured pressure cooker that loves fucking with the audience. His strongest constant-okie-doke is a character named Paul, a suave Frenchman that catches Cathy's eye intitially but then begins to look more sinister by the second. His motives remain unclear, difficult to pin down. It doesn't help the viewer's private-eye side that Fuest consistently flips our perceptions of Paul. We're made to believe that he's taken to Jane out of sympathy, but when he drives near the spot where Cathy disappeared on his motorbike, we see tire tracks next a pair of Cathy's missing panties. Instant connection made. And then later Paul reveals himself to be a detective, yet the head of the local police department claims to have no idea who Paul is moments later.

If And Soon The Darkness was simply a clever whodunit mystery, I would've been happy enough. But Fuest shows flashes of Alfred Hitchcock here that give the film a nice slice of nail-chomping atmosphere, amplifying the isolation of a scared, confused non-local impressively. The subtle creeps, all around. Two scenes in particular achieve a pretty strong anxiety: First, the last time we see Cathy before Jane's investigation begins; as she wakes up alongside the road from leaves rustling, Cathy cautiously begins to pack her belongings and get ready to ride and find her friend, but Fuest uses nifty sight tricks (a pair of panties there one second and gone the next; the sound of spinning bike-tire wheels; switching the camera's point-of-view to inside the bushes peering out at Cathy) to his advantage, and the end product is a damn tense sequence with little sound. Secondly, a scene near the film's end that finds Jane hiding in the closet of a trailer truck as the suspected villain snoops around; its a standard cat-and-mouse setup, but then we're hit with a total "Oh shit!" jump scare that is both revelatory and shock city.

File And Soon The Darkness under "Awesomely Pleasant Surprises." I went into this Netflix Fix hoping to merely meet a personal quota, seeing a film that the remake of which has become an anticipation-item of mine. I wasn't expecting to love this humble British flick as much as I now do. Looks like Amber Heard, Odette Yustman, and who-the-fuck-is-he director Marcos Efron have their work cut out for them. The Heard/Yustman And Soon The Darkness was honestly little more than a hormone-driven must-see, but now I'll be watching with a heavy "They better not fuck this up" microscope.

It's already been said that the remake will relocate the setting from France to Argentina, for whatever that's worth. Now, how about explaining what the hell the title And Soon The Darkness means exactly? The original takes place entirely during the daytime, and the impending nightfall is never referenced in any sort of menacing way, so what gives? It's an awesome title for a film, though. Just wondering, "Why?"

Broken Record Syndrome: Comedy's Twisted New Danger

2009-04-06T17:10:00.001-07:00

As if I haven't voiced enough love for HBO's now-gone Eastbound and Down, let me start this off by saying that the six-part story of Kenny Powers' attempt at reclaiming his "throne" was the ballsiest TV series of the last couple years, and if you missed, "You fucked up den" (to quote Jay Dog from the almighty Whiteboyz). What made the series so special was how the screenwriters (Jody Hill, Danny McBride, and Ben Best) embraced their main character's despicability and never tried making him any more sympathetic than he barely was. In Powers' eyes, he was on a path of redemption, but he was the only person who saw what he was doing as a true positive, other than his psychologically-warped lackie Stevie. Just when you thought the final episode was going to end on a triumphant note for Powers, we found out that his failed life was right back on square one. No easy way out, no cathartic resolution. He was still in the same shitter that he started out in.

Constructing everyman epics around loathesome antiheroes is what Jody Hill does so well. His directorial debut, last year's indie buzz-grabber The Foot Fist Way, showed the flawed promise that Eastbound and Down perfected. Fred Simmons (played by Danny McBride, like "Kenny Powers"), the pigheaded tae kwon do instructor at Foot Fist's center, fancies himself a king in a land of suburban peasants, when in reality he's the biggest court jester around. This sad truth is driven home once Simmons' martial arts hero, Chuck the Truck (a clear Chuck Norris knockoff), comes to town and fucks Simmons' trashy wife and treats his biggest fan as if he's more of a nuisance than a motivation. And once the film ends, we're not left with a man reformed in any way; we're sent off feeling the exact same ill will toward Simmons that he's negatively earned from Scene One. Not to mention, uncomfortably laughing all along.

Fred Simmons vs Chuck the Truck

The Foot Fist Way is slow in spaces, sluggish in pacing. Not all of the jokes hit hard enough, and the overall texture gives the vibe that Hill and company became too confy in the film's mockumentary approach, forgetting to spice up their plate from time to time. Going with a terrible human being for its lead, though, and allowing him to fail, and then fail again, gives the film a nice, sleazy charm.

It's great to see that Hill hasn't abandoned this "moral villain becomes the happy-ending-free antihero" aesthetic with Observe and Report, his first mainstream film that should be at least marginally successful thanks to its A-list star, Seth Rogen. Rogen's demented mall cop character, Ronnie Barnhardt, wishes he could be a legitimate gun-toting police officer, and sees himself as a bigger deal than he actually is. Which would be sad to watch if Ronnie wasn't such an abhorrent scumbag, a racist blowhard much better at spying on sexy mallgoing ladies than catching the perverted flasher showing his chubby belly and man-junk freely in the parking lot. Even though he's totally unable to apprehend the flasher, Ronnie sees this case as his big chance to prove himself and become the hero, and turns a sexual deviant into his own means of salvation. Only, it doesn't work out that way. His sadistic tendencies get the best of him. There's zero self-improvement to be had.

Jody Hill and Seth Rogen

Except for a more pristine look than the peanuts-and-duct-tape The Foot Fist Way (courtesy of a major studio-funded cinematographer) could ever afford, Observe and Report feels right at home alongside Hill's past work, especially Eastbound and Down. Rogen proves that he's more than the schlubby, underachieving stoner with his Ronnie incarnation, mostly shedding his past cuddly, likeable demeanor and putting on a fresh coat of scary and convincingly imbalanced. I can't help but think, though, that Hill conceived this Ronnie Barnhardt with Danny McBride in mind, but then the studio came along and demanded a bigger name, resulting in Hill calling his buddy Rogen. Fortunately, Rogen holds his own, embodying the character's every dirty facet even when it seems like he's just doing his best McBride impersonation at times.

Hill shows no fear. What he's delivered is a '7Scorcese-light throwback that, while not totally successful at capturing that tone, does come off quite like a '70s-loving film student's writing comedy while on a bender. In a good way. You get line-pushing moments ranging from Ronnie taking intercourse-advantage of a drunk girl covered in her own vomit, to skateboard kids getting their skulls bashed in by their own boards, to an Oldboy-style tracking shot fight sequence that has Ronnie fending for survival against a swarm of cops with only a flashlight in his hand. All played for the hearty chuckles, weirdly enough. Hill has repeatedly said that Observe & Report is his attempt to create a "comedic Taxi Driver," a lofty aspiration that, while not entirely fulfilled, shows where the guy's head is at in terms of storytelling and filmmaking. And it's at a place that a lover of nihilistic entertainment such as myself both admires and welcomes.

This generation's "Judd Apatow comedies" (in which Rogen himself is obviously a massive element), while unquestionably great, lack any real sense of danger, any unexpected turns. The routine beats (guy underachieves, he's presented with a life-changing opportunity, and he ultimately emerges a better person) are always hit, and you leave the film content and amused, but not challenged. Hill would hate for that midlevel expectation to be laid upon his stuff; he wants to catch you off guard with images and plot-turns that'll make you feel as if you're watching the wrong film. "Isn't this supposed to be a comedy? Why am I feeling more paralysic than hilarity?" It's a tough trick to execute, making the audience laugh out loud one minute and then shriek in disbelief the next. But Hill seems to have a growing handle on it.

I could only imagine what Hill could do with a horror film, or a straight-up psychological thriller. When a scene such as this represents a perfect ending in your eyes (as it does mine), the sky is the limit as to how fucked up you could make something:

Taxi Driver (avoid watching if you've never seen the film, and go rent it immediately)

Your new Freddy Krueger is.....a great, Oscar-nominated actor? How about that?

2009-04-06T11:48:00.001-07:00

Due to my good-times weekend out in Boston (Quincy Market's food court is a place of edible wonders, and the house tequila at The Purple Shamrock tastes like Petron left uncapped for a year past its expiration date), I missed the boat on this one by a couple of days. But it's a bit of horror casting news that is nothing short of spot-on, so I'd be sloppy to let it slip by. After months of hopeful rumors and roundabout confirmations and denials by all involved, those remake-ruiners at Platinum Dunes have absolutely nailed the casting of Freddy Krueger for next April's A Nightmare on Elm Street redo:

Jackie Earle Haley

From the moment that the first word hit online about Haley's possible involvement, this has seemed like such pitch-perfect casting, and now that it's official, I'm actually gaining some excitement for this project. Initially, the thought of Platinum Dunes fucking up yet another great horror film sent douche-chills down my spine. Put it this way: those guys managed to turn a remake of an already-subpar film (the original Friday the 13th) into an inferior, frustratingly inept cash-guzzler, so just imagine how badly they could butcher an actually-strong flick like the original Nightmare? And let's not even get into that Platinum Dunes raping of The Hitcher, or this past January's laughably moronic The Unborn.

With Jackie Earle Haley signing on, however, the stakes are much more promising. The man is an Academy Award nominee (for Little Children), and he's coming off his universally-loved Rorschach turn in Watchmen. Plus, his next film is Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island. He has the luxury to pick and choose his next starring vehicle with care, and he's chosen a Nightmare on Elm Street remake? The script for this flick must be something special, at least one would think/hope. Haley must be genuinely excited to fill Robert Englund's Shaq-sized shoes and reinvent Freddy Krueger, and that's the coolest. I'm totally a Haley fanboy (if you haven't seen his work in Little Children, make that happen....and he was the only good thing about Will Ferrell's unfunny, derivative Semi-Pro)

Bonus Jackie Earle Haley pic....remember him here?

Yup......Kelly Leak.

I for one can't wait to see what he does. This remake has gone from "meh" to "must" overnight, now. Of course, the Platinum Dunes team could very well fuck this up, but the fact that its a first-time director, music video vet Samuel Bayer (Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), behind the lens opens up the stylistic possibilities immensely. And assuming that the script is up to snuff, the cast of young faces isn't as bland as the recent Friday the 13th's, and Haley's body isn't inhabited by Nicolas Cage during filming, this one is looking mighty healthy. For now.

Speaking of the young cast, the only head signed on so far is Kyle Gallner (the main kid in The Haunting in Connecticut, previously known for Veronica Mars)---he was surprisingly good in Haunting in CT, so he's a good start here. My nomination for the lead role of "Nancy"? Here goes:

Yes, my girl Olivia Thirlby. Simply out of my yearning for her to blow up commercially some day, just so I could see more and more of her. "That's the world I want to live in."

Maximum Tension

2009-04-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

It takes something special for a film to literally get better with each viewing. That's exactly how I feel about Larry Clark's Bully (2001), a "based on real events" study of Florida youth wasted, polluted, and turned homicidal that maintains such a hypnotic hold from start to finish that I don't feel iffy in calling it "great." It's not for everybody, depicting its teenage characters in such a disgusting light that there's hardly a redeeming quality to leave with. Aside from some pretty dynamic, fearless acting and a plateful of energetic, trippy visual and audible style from Clark (who also directed Kids, another film of this topical ilk).

Bully just finished on basic cable a few moments ago, and of course I watched from end to end. I wrote about Bully on this here blog in the past, but this time I'm in a different space. I've decided that the film's climactic setpiece is officially one of the most intense, visceral, pulse-kicking scenes I've ever witnessed, one that (like the movie itself as a whole, like I said at the gate-opening) somehow manages to elevate in wonderment every time I see the thing.

Bit of plot round-up first, in case you have no idea what Bully is about---Marty (played by the late Brad Renfro) is best friends with Bobby (Nick Stahl), and Bobby is the epitome of scumbag. Out of his own hidden insecurity, he treats Marty like pure shit, basically turning Marty's life into a breathing nightmare. As Bobby continues to emotionally terrorize everybody around Marty, including his new spaced-out girlfriend and her stoner, deadbeat friends, they all decide to kill Bobby. Enough is enough. They hire a pseudo-"gangster/hitman" and then drive out to a far-off swamp, and then this happens.

Here's that unbelievably tense scene (if you don't feel like spoiling Bully, then don't watch, but I still suggest you do either way; it's just that crazy):

That bizarre, dizzying music that amplifies over the progression. The blurry shots, back to the shaky-cam nervousness. All of it, equals that "Wow" factor.

In the immortal words of Happy Gilmore: "Now you're gonna get it, Bobby!"

Bruno arrives, in unrestricted preview glory

2009-04-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

You loved Borat, right? Well, if you didn't then I you must have the sense of humor of Hitler's rotting, worm-housing corpse. Assuming that you don't fall under that distinction, here's the trailer for comedy's walking nerves-and-huge-balls ("Pause," I guess) Sacha Baron Cohen's latest, Bruno.

This is the red band trailer, meaning R-rated, meaning its on some otherness. Just watch:

The fact that Cohen could still fool enough people in this world into thinking he really was this Bruno character and not the star of one of the biggest comedies of the new millenium is a monstrous feat in and of itself. Weirdly, my favorite bit in this trailer may be that all-velcro outfit. This movie is going to kick all kinds of body parts.

Bonus One of Bruno's greatest moments from the egghead-level awesome Da Ali G Show:

The Best Worst: The Video Dead (1987)

2009-04-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

If there's a greater joy out there than engulfing your senses in a purely shit film that you hate to love, I can only hope that somebody points me in its direction. That one "feast of banality" can devolve a film lover into a totally blazed pothead minus any actual chronic. A fool suffering from uncontrollable laughter without the presence of a crackerjack stand-up comedian. The guilt never disappears, now, but it's a shame that you permit to wash over you like pig's blood on young Carrie White.

Appreciation for truly awful films seems to be the new black nowadays, and that's just wonderful. Last week, a notoriously terrible movie called The Room (2003) opened in downtown Manhattan for a limited run, thanks to popular demand. I wish I could've caught it; a few months back, there was this great story in Entertainment Weekly discussing The Room's rabid celebrity cult following, stars such as Paul Rudd and Kristen Bell quoting it regularly and namedropping it in interviews. And then there was Best Worst Movie, which premiered out at South X Southwest two weeks ago, which points its light all over 1990's Troll 2, another abysmal piece of wannabe-cinema that even its own cast and crew acknowledge as awesomely-bad.

Bad is all good these days. So with that notion in mind, I've decided to shed some sun on a virtually-unknown little miggle called The Video Dead (1987). The first time that The Video Dead turned me into its tongue-in-cheek slave was back in my late grammar school days. I caught it late one night on the USA Network, when Rhonda Sheer (that lovable party woman with the huge upperbody-knocks) was the host of "Up All Night." If it weren't for the title's "Dead" inclusion, I never would've givent this shit the time of day, but I'm a sucker for zombie films. Can't turn them off, must see them all.

I'd consider myself (even back in those immature years) somewhat of a "zombie film expert," so the fact that I'd had no clue that something called The Video Dead even existed was my first red flag, but, alas, I jumped aboard. From the opening scene, I was under its every command, every beckon. The flick opens up with this random old television set arriving at a humorless writer's house, and of course the dumbass signs for it. And then, in a great bit of character development, he talks to himself, declaring, "I don't even watch TV!" Screenplay written by I HateSubtlety Jones. The box only plays one program (the fictional Zombie Blood Nightmare), and within minutes the film-within-this-shitty-film's walking corpses come through the TV thanks to some special effects that look as if Gore Verbinski could've used the scene as a reference point of exactly what not to do when he shot that awesome ending for his The Ring remake.

Three months later, two annoying, cardboard, very-'80s-looking teenage siblings move into the house, prepping it before their parents arrive. The boy is introduced with a such a lame sight gag that I'm only reminded at how brilliant Shaun of the Dead is for executing a similar touch flawlessly----we see a pair of worndown sneakers shuffling aimlessly through the woods, so we're "supposed" to think that its a zombie, when, TaaDaa!, its our protagonist, Jeff (played by a corpse of an actor, Rocky Duvall, in his worst Corey Haim impersonation).

Let's make a deal: If you can watch this clip in its entirety, I'll buy you a drink, whoever you are, whenever you desire.....sound good? I'm confident that you'll tap out right after Jeff is revealed.

Jeff is hands down one of the least compelling film leads of all time----lifeless, unsympathetic. His sister, Zoe, is slightly more likeable, but not by much. Which makes their impending zombie-triggered conflict all the less interesting. A threat that, I must note, only includes five zombies. Maybe six, I could've missed one. But no more than six, total. My guess, they couldn't afford any more makeup or prosthetics, nor the $100 a day it must've taken to pay for a couple more zombie-actors.

But then, writer/director Robert Scott does something transcendent......he manages to make The Video Dead so inept, so lacking in brain cells, that the film becomes an overachiever without even trying. For somebody who can't appreciate a crap-film, The Video Dead could very well be the slowest, least-magnetic movies ever. Nothing ever happens, except for sluggish exchanges between the siblings, cold-as-ice flirtations between Jeff and the even-more-vapid blonde next door, and an appearance from the most unqualified bounty hunter/hero character Robert Scott could have ever (under)developed. I've seen The Video Dead about five times now, and during each time I've repeatedly questioned myself, "How the hell am I sitting throught this? I can literally feel my intelligence bein insulted, as if that educated side of my brain is either Bart Simpson or Millhouse and this movie is Nelson."

Really, explaining any more of the plot is pointless, since, like I said above, nothing effective ever fucking happens. The following scene is all that needs to be seen for proof: After puffing some of that green stuff, Jeff notices that the robotic buxom blonde on his TV, who is trying to evade "The Garbage Man" killer (who looks like a sloppy, larger Mickey Rooney) in some movie, starts talking to him, seducing him with her non-existent sexual charm. This chick then enters his bedroom and puts the moves on Jeff, who responds like a 12-year-old discovering his first Playboy. Then, she's killed by Sir Garbage, who provides some useless survival tips, needlessly holds the final "R" on "Mirrorrrrr!" and he's never mentioned in the film again. Enjoy this spectacle of divinity:

In a rapturous world, The Video Dead would receive its just due, just as The Room and Troll 2 have recently. I totally understand why it never will---at least those two films aren't paced with the quickness of a turtle addicted to downers. You can have some effortless kicks watching those, thanks to rapid-fire randomness; The Video Dead, on the flipside, moves along at an unbearable clip. You either have to adore zombie joints or cheesy horror, or suffer from insomnia and require a foolproof means of insta-sleep.

I fall into both categories. Thus making The Video Dead a slice of heaven atop my shoulders.

Another reason for me to hate what the Internet has become....

2009-04-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

And it has begun.

Honestly, I thought it wouldn't ever hit the movie world, but I guess I was just living in my often-all-too-comfy dreamworld. I've long subscribed to the theory that seeing a film, whether it be a dollar-sign-packed blockbuster or a frugal independent exercise, on the big screen in a packed movie theater is the best way to experience cinema. That's why I'm known to see flicks that I love multiple times in theaters, regardless of the money spent. And every time I try to sit down at home and watch a DVD with family or friends, I'm constantly in a state of unease, knowing that the slightest cell phone ring or growling stomach will beckon my co-watchers away instantly. Short attention spans, be damned. In a theater, though, it's just you, darkness, and that massive projector.

Obviously, I'm in the minority of thought. Earlier today, some crafty scoundrel leaked a clear-quality, DVD-pictured copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine onto the Internet. The problem: the film doesn't hit theaters until May 1, and it's this summer's first major tentpole entry. This is unheard of, quite possibly the most significant example of cinematic piracy ever. Or at least in recent memory. This is the exact early-exposure leakage catastrophe that has sent the music industry (namely on the hip-hop side) into its current downward spiral. But up until now, Hollywood has been practically immune. True, movies manage to appear online not long after their theatrical release dates, but never an entire month prior.

Several theories are floating around. There's little doubt that somebody got their hands on a screener copy that was being circulated amongst studio heads and other must-see-people, post post-production, but as for exactly "who," some ideas are out there. One speculates that the person who uploaded the film did so as a "fuck you" to Wolverine's distributor, Fox; Fox is the company that nearly sabotaged the release of Watchmen for Warner Bros. when they took Warners to court over a decade's old rights issue. A second notion, this one hugely paranoid, thinks that the film was deliberately leaked by Fox themselves, as some sort of defense mechanism against a film (Wolverine) that they fear will be tank financially and be met with scathing, negative response. By leaking it themselves, they can gauge people's responses early, and turn this fiasco into a "woe is me" scenario is the movie flops. There's a heavy fear within the movie realm that the film is going to blow, but this theory seems to be a bit too conspiracy-ish for my tastes.

Me? I'm guessing that it was some overzealous asshole who was involved in the screener-disc handling process, with an axe of some kind to grind. Whatever the case, I have zero intentions of finding the online copy and watching. X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn't high on my must-list in the first place, so my curiousity factor isn't as high as most. But regardless, even if I were to see the film, I'd want to check it out on the large screen, not the tiny, grainy laptop one I'm looking at now as I type. I'd want some overpriced popcorn and a Slushee within my grasp, not a watered-down Bud Light that's been sitting in my fridge for weeks already. Especially considering that this is a special effects orgy of a film----imagine watching Cloverfield for the first time on your laptop. Or, hell, T2: Judgment Day. Or Transformers. This same stance applies to why I never buy or watch bootlegged DVDs that heads buy in subway stations. I want to see a film in its best possible sense. What do I know, though? I'm the same obsessed movie-lover who watches two DVDs a night just on carnal instinct alone.

His middle finger must be the only one sticking upward today.

Will this X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak signal more of its kind, resulting in a domino slide for future films and ultimately a similar meltdown like that of the music industry? My better sense says "Nope." I'm confident that the majority of folks are smart enough to realize the difference between downloading a movie and dloading music----regardless of whether you bought a CD or pirated mp3s, you're just going to listen to them on the same machinery; but with movies, there's always the option of seeing a film larger than life in a theater. It's a matter of whether you feel the necessity to drop $12 on the richer experience. I know I am, now and forever.

Of course, if it were, say, Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell that leaked, or, imagine this, Scorcese's Shutter Island, would I be reacting with the same won't-watch defiance? Shit, no. I'm man enough to admit it. But I'd still pay to see those movies in a theater on opening night. That's the difference between film and music for me these days. I haven't bought a CD in over two years, yet I've downloaded every damn album out there during that time. Yet I'd act in totally different, money-dropping fan fashion if Inglourious Basterds sprung a regrettably premature leak. No monetary questions asked.

How about you?

The BW List: My Four Favorite Car-Starring Movie Scenes

2009-03-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

For a moment there, I was actually considering the task of writing a “review” of sorts on Fast & Furious, which I was able to check out a couple of weeks back. My outline was in place, positive and negative points spread out over the course of what would’ve been an inevitably overlong six paragraphs. Some puns and one-liners were waiting in the vocabulary wings. But as I started writing the outline into a fleshed out piece, a brutally-honest fact dawned—there is absolutely no point in putting together a critical analysis of Fast & Furious. It’d be a waste of time. Words hanging in thin air, unable to influence or deter. Purely futile.

Four films into the franchise now, the Fast & Furious series is well established. You’ve either been waiting impatiently for this new entry, or you could give to shits less. The gear-heads and adrenaline junkies can’t get enough of the terrible dialogue, subpar acting, over-the-top CGI car chases, and gorgeous Latin women wearing miniskirts and midriff-bearing tank tops. I’m partial to that last aspect (and, trust me, the female sexiness is amplified in this new flick), but otherwise these films don’t do much for me. Was I quite entertained by Fast & Furious? Yes, but that’s only because I’d made a mental decision prior to the ludicrous opening setpiece that I’d go shamelessly along for the goofy, glitzy ride. As Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and random newcomer Tego Calderon attempt a three-car takedown on an oil truck in the Dominican Republic, the ridiculousness is set in motion before the film’s title even appears.

If that opening sequence, complete with enough computer graphics to have Michael Bay cheering, doesn’t make you laugh, then the rest of Fast & Furious should please. Besides, you’ll have plenty more chances to giggle at the film’s stupidity. My favorite moment of idiocy? There’s a part where Vin Diesel’s character literally beats Paul Walker’s face in for a good two minutes, but once Diesel stops his pulverizing, all Walker has to show for it is a drop of blood under his nose, which he quickly wipes off. Just Incredible. And asinine. Or, just ass.

Enough of about Fast & Furious itself, though. Like I said earlier, I really don’t see any purpose in a critique. This is one of those films that caters specifically to its demographic and cares about nobody else. And I’m all for movies that know their roles. Just as I know my role—I’m the furthest thing from a car lover, or a grease monkey. Admiring Michelle Rodriguez’ chiseled hotness far outweighs whatever model of automobile she’s driving. I couldn’t even name one car type featured in the film.

While watching, however, I couldn’t but think of some random car-starring scenes from much better movies that I love. Which brings me to this list—--my four favorite film scenes prominently featuring cars. Some are from legitimate auto-centric films, and others merely use the wheels as window dressing. Last week’s “Based on a true story” list was my first-ever of its kind, so I admit that I overlooked a couple films (David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek) and suffered a few other kinks. I’m working on that. Hopefully this list is a step in the right direction.

[In no particular order]

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry’s Open Road Race Against the Police Chopper (1974): Admittedly, I had never even heard of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry before seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. Ever the cinephile, Tarantino gave his nearly all-female cast a vast knowledge of cinema, specifically of the “car chase films” 19702 subgenre. Days after seeing Grindhouse, I purchased both Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Vanishing Point (1971) just off the strength. This one is mostly a forgettable bore, unfortunately, wasting a super-cool leading man (Peter Fonda) in a stew of sluggish exchanges and too few actual car chases. Two huge redeeming moments in the film’s concluding act manage to salvage some of the wreckage, at least. There’s the abrupt, tragic “shock” ending (which I do love), and then there’s an all-real-machines pursuit that’s pretty awesome. Our three criminal protagonists continue to flee from the law in their lime-green whip, even as the coppers amplify the pressure with a chopper that hovers mere feet above. The sheer ballsiness of the scene alone makes it worth a peek.

Christine, the entire movie (1983): If you’ve never seen a 1980s-made John Carpenter film before, remedy that with the quickness. The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, and even the fun-yet-hokey They Live—--they’re all great. The one that is nearest to my heart, though, is the Stephen King adaptation Christine, mainly because it’s one of the few movies my older brother (an avid car appreciator) and I watched together as wee lads. I still see tons of my younger self in Arnie, the nerdy, socially awkward teenager who becomes tragically infatuated with “Christine,” a demonically-possessed red 1958 Plymouth Fury he buys for dirt cheap. Of course, once Christine starts killing Arnie’s bullies with extreme force the comparisons between us cease. But that’s when the film kicks into overdrive, becoming a slasher flick where four wheels replace a machete. You get an annoying fat guy crushed into a wall, and a John Travolta-wannabe chased down a dark, empty highway by an enflamed Christine (a visually-grand sequence). The best scene, though, is much more subtle—Arnie’s best friend tries to break into Christine, when suddenly Little Richard’s “Keep A-Knockin’” starts playing on the radio. Pretty damn clever.

Death Proof’s Fatal Four-Way Crash (2007): Or, as I like to call it, “the best car crash scene ever.” Considering all of the unique touches of creative genius found within Quentin Tarantino’s portfolio, it’s a bit odd that this scene from his half of the criminally-underappreciated Grindhouse has become my all-time top QT moment. “To each his own,” they’ll say. From the moment that Jungle Julia’s requested jam “Hold Tight” (by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich) kicks in and the girls rock out, everything about it gleams like the sinister duck on the hood of Stuntman Mike’s fatality-proof ride. I’ve spent many nights rewatching this scene, taking such a guilty pleasure out of Tarantino’s morbidly-brilliant decision to go for broke and show the deaths of all four women. I swear, there should’ve been a camera on my face as I sat in the theater and basked in this for the first time; the open-mouthed amazement must’ve been
priceless (I’m sick like that). The special effects-free car chase that closes Death Proof is also a stunner, but my money rests on the vehicular homicide extravaganza.

High Tension’s Chainsaw-Through-Windshield Massacre (2003): This one requires a stretching of “car scene” preconceptions, since there isn’t any actual moving automobile to be seen. Rather, you get a stalled vehicle that’s excessively sprayed with blood in one of the grisliest kills of recent years. Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension (known as High Tension here in America) pulled in strong business out in France, so Lionsgate Films awarded the damn-good horror flick a miniscule stateside release. Besides myself and about ten other people, though, nobody had a clue, and it suffered an early box office demise. At least they didn’t just remake it. It’s a shame, really, because High Tension is infinitely better and more ghastly than any American-made horror film of the last five years. A lazy, ill-conceived plot twist almost spoils the film, but that’s all forgiven once the final, show-stopping spot of gore kicks in—our killer jumping on the hood of a poor stranger’s shitty car, cutting through the windshield, and slicing the guy’s chest open. Red stuff rains over our heroine, frozen with fear in the backseat. As if only showing her blood-splattered face wasn’t enough to drive the 50-second-long carnage home, Aja then provides a close-up of the blades ripping through flesh. It’s the small details that mean the most.

To see that High Tension, click here

Drag Me To Hell's slightly pornographic/orgasmic poster

2009-03-31T07:39:00.000-07:00

Just look at Alison Lohman's face. It's like those demons are getting a little naughty below the poster's spacial restriction. I'm just saying....

The first poster for Sam Raimi's return to horror, Drag Me to Hell

Poster first surfaced at (where the pic is bigger, too): Shock Till You Drop

Condensed, double-sided pic that I've posted first seen at: /Film

Drag Me To Hell is said to be PG-13, sure, but even a PG-13 spin on shit like this is welcome with open arms. Bring it, Sam Raimi. Ready over here:

Evil Dead 2

(Lack of) Food for Thought

2009-03-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Pride may not be the real issue here, but there's a certain amount of stock I hold dearly within my fortitude to handle films that "go there." That leave no image of brutality unseen, drop the gauntlet of good taste down fast in order to leave it shattered on the sticky cineplex floor. My stomach is deep, full of room for such harsh visions. So whenever a movie sneak attacks me and leaves me feeling queasy, I have no choice but to stand up and salute. Wave the white flag in the filmmakers' direction. The only time I can recall actually closing my eyes during a scene was when I first saw Inside at Lincoln Center, specifically the infamous-in-these-parts scissors scene at the end. One eye was half open, the other's lid pressed firmly atop the socket, unable to look away. It was a truly harrowing experience.

Steve McQueen

Having just watched Steve McQueen's unbelievably raw Hunger at the IFC Center, I can now shamelessly say that a movie has left me feeling nauseous like I've never felt before, regardless of the setting or my physical/health state. One sequence in particular had this effect, a single take tour-de-force that places the viewer in the midst of some of the fiercest, most inhuman police brutality imaginable. In a TKTK prison in Northern Ireland, back in 1981 (Hunger is based on true events), the British government has imprisoned dozens of Irish "political terrorists" who refuse to obey the Brits' law. The prisoners are on a "no wash" strike, meaning they're all filthy by choice, the walls of their cells caked in hardened, smeared feces. In an effort to enforce their methods with blunt precision, a slew of cops in full armored suits line in a hallway, shields before them and nightsticks in hand. In a bit of ritualistic pounding, they all begin to beat their sticks on the shields. Then, each prisoner is yanked out of their cells, naked, and thrown through the gauntlet of cops, who all take violent swings with their nightsticks as the nude inmate crawls through for survival. Once at the end of the hell-way, each beaten man is violated anally and then left to rot on the floor.

McQueen shoots the scene in one long take, and it's pretty breathtaking. Until this point, Hunger is a rather subdued, controlled film, moving along patiently with little dialogue and plenty of drawn-out in-cell scenes. That's why this police-imposed, one-sided riot is so unnerving. McQueen swoops the camera from prisoner to prisoner throughout the scene, erratic with his hands. Whatever feeling of ease the viewer has had is immediately swallowed up and spit out as if a T-Rex is doing the oral flinging.

I felt the bottom of my throat give out a bit, and the scene wasn't even halfway over. Crazy.

For a first time filmmaker, McQueen achives nothing short of a gargantuan effort with Hunger. Scene after scene, the film is an exhibition of the man's visual gifts. Directly after that aforementioned prison beatdown setpiece, we follow one of the prison's high-ranking officers as he visits his sick mother in a nursing home. It's obviously an attempt to make the viewer sympathize a bit with the mongrels in blue. But then, like the robber who sucker-punches McLovin in Superbad, we're hit with a point-blank execution that I totally didn't see coming. At all. As a result, McQueen had me second guessing his every subsequent move. I was basically the guy's puppet, a plaything that he could trick and blindside however he pleased cinematically.

Fortunately for my senses, the remainder of the film is devoid of random violence. Well, actually, "fortunately" isn't the right word. While never less than stunning, the final act of Hunger is tough to watch without cringing a tad. At this point, our lead, Bobby Sands (played amazingly by Michael Fassbender, who impressed in Eden Lake and will surely impress in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds; the guy is one to watch), has decided to kick his freedom-fighting into high gear by organizing a hunger strike within the prison, which 74 other inmates agree to. Now, I'm not sure if what we see from here on out is actually Fassbender, or just some incredibly realistic trickery by McQueen and his cohorts. But if you thought Christian Bale looked sickly in The Machinist, you haven't seen a damn thing yet. Fassbender turns into a breathing skeleton, rib-cage sticking out, every other bone excruciatingly visible. Sands lasted 66 days before succumbing to the emaciation, and if dying of hunger is even half as unbearable and painful as seen on Fassbender here, I'm taking my ass to Outback for lunch tomorrow just to make sure I'm well fed. Damn, does it look like almighty hell.

Michael Fassbender, pre-hunger pains

It's films like Hunger that remind me why I'm so infatuated with cinema, which makes it all the more shameful that it's only playing in one theater in this area. Going largely unknown, looked over, outside of film buffs and critics. Something this delicately made, richly acted, and historically significant deserves a chance, so whenever the DVD streets I highly recommend giving it a go. You might toss up your cheeseburger while watching, but there's no doubt in my mind that you'll finish the film feeling floored. Pedal to the emotional metal.

Put it this way: any film that can turn an overlong scene where a guy mops an entire prison hallway into an intensely hypnotic event isn't fucking around.

The Pain I Felt (While Watching Adventureland)

2009-03-30T13:14:00.001-07:00

There's a scene towards the end of Greg Mottola's Adventureland that rampaged my gut harder than I ever expected the film to, and I've been grappling with "why" since I saw this last week.

It's a heartbreaking moment clearly staged with every intention to ring a few tears from the audience, though let's be clear that I didn't cry, at all (I'm a man, dammit! Actually, that defense is moot, since I recently nearly shed some eye water while watching Dear Zachary, thus proving movies can do it to your boy at times). James Brennan, the film's curly-haired, cool customer despite his somewhat dweebish demeanor (played to the nice tee by Jesse Eisenberg), has learned some world-shattering secrets that bring his summer love Em Lewin (Twilight's Kristen Stewart, here proving that she's a solid actress and much more than what that shitty vampire series makes her out to be). Crumbling inside despite his best efforts to hide the exterior pain, James confronts Em on the street in front of her side-guy's house. The scene, lasting no more than a minute, features some wonderful non-verbal emoting by Stewart, her face cringing and contorting in shame and sadness, while Eisenberg rips into her with PG-13-compatible force.

And then it's over, and I was left in a state of sorrowful confusion. As if, I was James, and I was experiencing the first catastrophic heartbreak of my freshly-in-post-college-stage life. A week removed from seeing Adventureland now, I'm pretty sure I know why the scene slugged me as harshly as it did, and the answer lies in Mottola's Superbad follow-up's overall success---how he captures that cliched, rarely executed properly "real life" aesthetic. There's no doubt that Mottola himself (he wrote Adventureland, as well as directed) went through a painfully similar emotion-devastation in his younger years, probably not unlike the scene that plays out between his James and Em characters. Every note rings true. So much good will has been earned for the characters up until this point of collision that watching their blooming love crack is akin to helplessly seeing a best friend go through the relationship ringer. James needs a beer, that you'd gladly buy for him, but that's not a possibility. You're stuck in the theater, and he's trapped in that damaging big screen scene.

On the whole, Adventureland is a pleasant surprise. In no way as hilarious as Superbad, but that's the film's biggest attribute, how it goes for the natural laughs over the sophomoric, sight gag types. How the central romance between James and Em tries with very little effort yet is ultimately better and more believably-plotted than any on-screen romance I've seen in recent times. Sure, the great duo of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig is totally underused, and that juvenile "Tommy Frigo" friend of James' brings nothing more than obvious "sight gags" that are thankfully minimal but always tone-trivializing. Adventureland isn't without its flaws, and those who fall victim to the "from the guy who brought you Superbad" marketing campaign may leave the film a bit peeved that they weren't served any penis drawings or McLovin-like larger than life characters (though Martin Starr's incredibly awkward "Joel" does try his damndest to be that guy). If you go into the film with an open mind and a a willingness to ride shotgun with Mottola down his memory lane, you'll exit with those warm, fuzzy stomach-knots, reminded of that first or second love and all the ups and downs he/she brought with him/her.

As for that breakup scene in the street, I can't help but be reminded of a certain Senior Year high-school heartache of my own. Mine took place on the phone, while lying on the floor of my bedroom, so it wasn't as publicly vulnerable as that in Adventureland. But it sliced my arteries just as much, if not more, for reasons I'll leave to myself, for now. I'm guessing that those who see the film will have love-less, sucky memory of their own drudged up.

You'll have Greg Mottola, Kristen Stewart, and Jesse Eisenberg to thank for that therapy bill.

Shutter Island Watch -- Officially starts now

2009-03-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

Whether this is the first official teaser poster or just some other form of slick early marketing for the film is inconsequential, honestly. All that matters is that this first look at Shutter Island (the upcoming Martin Scorcese-directed, Leonardo Dicaprio-starring adaptation of Dennis Lehane's amazing book) is fucking awesome. Proves that Scorcese and company are maintaining the book's permeating creep factor, which gives me those damn butterflies inside.

Yeah, Inglourious Basterds has definitely slid down to my number two Must See Film of '09.

***The folks at JoBlo (where this pic was initially seen by yours truly) made a point to reference Session 9, so being the massive loyalist to that film that I am, it's only right that I also call it out. Shutter Island really doesn't have much in common with Session 9, but their similar insane asylum settings is worth pointing out. Also worth pointing out that if you haven't seen Session 9 yet you should march your little ass down to Blockbuster or on to Netflix and remedy that. JoBlo calls it "grossly underrated," and they're not just blowing smoke.

First spotted over at: JoBlo

"I'm kind of a big deal."

2009-03-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time, really. The most quotable movie ever (Anchorman) pilfered by the ever-unimaginative music industry. I'm sure a few rappers have paraphrased our boy Ron Burgundy before (I just can't recall any specific lyrics off top), but never in this way.

Sad part is, I'm not mad at this song. Has "smash" exuding from its mp3 file. A bit too close in tone to "Bust It Baby," but still works.

Flo Rida w/ Ne-Yo "Be On You"

Nacho Supreme

2009-03-27T23:21:00.001-07:00

Keeping this one short and tart. It's late, I'm zonked. Mentally tapped. Had a night of debauchery planned, but all went South (no) thanks to some tardy, unfocused friends. No sweat, though. It was all for the better, since I got to watch the great little Timecrimes (2007; put in minimal theaters in America late last year briefly), a Spanish "time travel" thriller that's smarter than a female MENSA member giving a male road scholar some brains. It's more responsible for my current cranial fatigue than a week's worth of job-doing, no question. Written and directed by a fella named Nacho Vigilondo, Timecrimes is one of those films that vastly impresses from opening frame to closing reel, full of head-spinners, mind-blowers, and tightly-constructed narrative zigs and zags.

It's serious like that.

You basically have this schlubby, everyday-joe middle-aged guy named Hector who sneaks some peeks, using binoculars, at a sexy naked chick in the woods behind his house as his wife is going out to run some errands. The birthday-suit-wearing lady disappears, so, being the voyeuristic perv that he is, Hector heads in the woods to find her, and from here sets off a chain of events that fondles the chronology of time in so many wicked ways that you'd think Vigalondo gets off to calendars that don't have swimsuit-clad chicks splattered throughout. Hector reluctantly enters some sort of time machine being worked on by a random scientist operating within the woods (scientist played by Vigalondo himself), and by doing so Hector embarks on a fucked-up journey where there's three Hectors all trying to not screw up the natural chain of events. It's like Groundhog Day on mean-spirited acid, but instead of the same day being started over and over again, Hector's day never ends, yet still restarts. Heady for days and nights.

Vigalondo must've fine-tuned this script for a good year or two un-distracted, because it's so neatly crafted and hole-less that I have no choice but to hail Sir Vigalondo as "that new Spanish filmmaking dude." Timecrimes is exciting, creepy, surreal, violent, confusing, streamlined, clever, and enigmatic, all at once, never seeming contrived.

Of course, since American film studios suck scrote, a Timecrimes remake is already being developed. I think by David Cronenberg, actually, which is rather promising, in ways. But I can't but wish that Timecrimes was given a bigger stateside theatrical release, for droves of audiences to bask in its dopeness. Filmgoers around these parts would've largely ignored it, naturally, but it deserved a big shot. Bigger than it got.

You should've rented it yesterday. Catch up with yourself, now.

Where milk comes from.....

2009-03-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: If not for Film Drunk, I would've never been exposed to this video clip. And my life would've been all the darker, emptier for it. So, credit is completely due. Film Drunk is the most consistently funny movie news site on the Net, in my opinion, so get familiar with it. Just a suggestion.

Now, to this video. Speaks for itself. If anybody can figure out what its original source material is, I'll be forever in your debt.

Film Drunk: "So I had a choice between (A) telling you all about Queen Latifah’s new play-on-words titled rom-com (Just Wright) and (B) posting this clip of a dog milking a goat. You can see how that went. My only criticism is that the goat character is just screaming for some sunglasses and a cigarette. I believe this is actually Brett Ratner’s demo reel."

The weekend is much brighter now.....

Dan Akroyd: "Hey, do you wanna see something really scary?" Me: Yes, dammit!

2009-03-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

The odds of this new The Haunting in Connecticut scaring me in any way, shape, or shriek are slimmer than Nicole Richie's waist, yet I'm still seeing it later tonight. When it comes to horror flicks that my better judgment says will be mediocre at best, I'm a total masochist. Minus the ball strapped into my mouth, or hands tied behind my back. Instead, overpriced fountain soda in hand, significantly leaner wallet in pocket. The main problem I have with modern-day "haunted house films" is that they never, ever steer clear of convention, jacking scenes and set-ups from the infinitely superior classics. It's best to accept that no film of this ilk will ever come within a peachfuzz-hair-strand of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, or 1963's The Haunting---both stellar in all facets. Hell, these new flicks don't even stand a chance of topping the original, not-as-good-as-those-two-greats Amityville Horror, even when they're blatant moving-photocopies (see The Haunting in Connecticut).

Yet, I'll continue to spend hours upon hours in darkly lit theaters watching these latest attempts, because I'm sucker for horror-love. I can't help but feel pounds of inner sadness, though, at the dreadful feeling that it's become nearly impossible for a new ghost story to give me the shivers. Have me frozen in my seat, overpriced fountain soda poking at my bladder in a state of "Let me out, man! This shit is freaking me out, too! And I'm liquid nothingness!" Maybe I'm too seasoned of a viewer. Or perhaps I'm putting too much stake in a film's necessity of at least bringing fond memories of The Shining to mind for all the right, effective, successful reasons. It's not even a matter of a PG-13 rating, either. Initially, I cringe at that teeny-bopper-targeted rating for a horror flick, but when I sit back and think clear of prejudice, I realize that something as wonderful and simple as The Haunting, if released today, would very well earn a mere PG rating, no 13 required. Scares can be scored without gore or wanton violence; it's all about the execution.

Which brings me to a little rarely-seen-by-most United Kingdom TV movie from 1989, The Woman in Black. I forget which cable channel it was that I first saw this film on, back when I was barely out of grammar school. But boy, did it treat my mind like a cow's ass being branded.

IMDB'S plot synopsis: "When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing. Ignoring the towns-people's cryptic warnings, he goes to the house where he discovers its horrible history and becomes ensnared in its even more horrible legacy."

A couple years ago, I came across it for cheap on Amazon.com and immediately threw it into my DVD arsenal, and wouldn't you know it.....The Woman in Black still scares the piss out of me. I've long tried putting my finger on exactly why it frightens me on par with The Shining and those classics, maybe even more so in ways. There's no question that the Woman in Black herself carries the lion's share of the blame; speechless, motionless and with those piercingly-dead eyes, she's the epitome of "scary old lady." Pad her presence with the film's overall bleak Gothic tone (courtesy of director Herbert Wise), and you have a recipe for minimalist success that today's filmmakers wish they could pull off.

Two scenes in particular have done wonders for my insomnia over the years. The first is something of an infamous "Oh shit!" moment amongst horror heads in the know, deservedly so----the lawyer is shuffling about restless in bed, standard nocturnal practice. Like most of us do, he concedes defeat and sits up, but unlike all of us, he is met with the Woman in Black hovering over his bed. A shock moment if there ever was one. The second is the film's final moment, a denouement that bleeds with tragic macabre----not to entirely spoil it (though, chances are none of you will have the opportunity to see this flick unless it's on my watch, which is unfortunate), but it's the unhappiest of endings, taking place on a lake after the lawyer thinks he's escaped the Woman in Black's clutches forever. While on a little rowboat with his wife and infant child, he learns that the scary old bitch isn't done with him yet. I remember distinctly just how bruised and gut-punched this final scene left me the first time I watched. Just devastating.

watch the picture behind him at the 1:02 mark

Part of me thinks that I should just go home and re-watch The Woman in Black tonight, rather than drop coin on The Haunting in Connecticut. I'd surely fulfill my want-to-be-scared-this-evening quota. For free, too. That's not going to happen, of course, and I'll soon be exiting the 34th Street AMC theater with equals droplets of annoyance and frustrations.

Despite the fact that I neglected to bring an extra pair of clean underwear with me today, I'd totally pay an extra $10 for the Woman in Black to appear as a theater usher tonight. While the attention-deficit, manufactured-Hollywood-crap-garbling audience around me wouldn't even bat an eyelash, I'd be intensely shook.

Put this man's Razzie on hold.

2009-03-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

I'd be surprised if more than five of you fine heads out there even knew that a fresh Street Fighter film came out within the last two months. More like rotten, actually, because the reviews were excruciating and the flick, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, died an early lights-out in theaters. I skipped it, as did the rest of mankind, but I'm thinking that it'll make for some fun comedic viewing once the DVD comes out (which will probably in another month or so).

Case in point: this now-infamous bad acting performance from Chris Klein, a never-really-that-talented guy who could've had Hollywood in the palm of his hand post-American Pie films but then made a little miggle called Rollerball, and then his toilet flushed. And now he's achieved a rekindled notoriety, but for all the wrong reasons. Some crafty joe compiled eleven minutes worth of his (exact opposite of) finest scenes from Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, with clever "Pop-Up Video"-ish comments to add insult to the guy's injury:

Look at this way.....even if Klein's acting causes some in-the-mouth vomiting, at least there's plenty of Moon Bloodgood to go around there.

"They took myyyy thuummbb!"

2009-03-25T20:29:00.001-07:00

Eric Roberts, in 1984's The Pope of Greenwich Village. What a wild yet focused, spastic but controlled performance. You've been cast alongside an in-his-initial-prime Mickey Rourke, and you own nearly every scene you share with the Mick. No easy feat.

As the live-wire, hot-headed Paulie, cousin of somewhat cooler-acting Charlie (Rourke), a then-28-years-old Roberts churns out a a character who can't control his reckless urges even when he's fully aware of just how badly he's fucking things up for both he and Charlie. The Pope of Greenwich Village is an under-hailed entry into the "down and out guys concocting an illegal get-rich scheme that goes to shit" subgenre of crime flicks, not unlike Dead Presidents or Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. What sets this one apart, though, is a natural comedic flair throughout, largely served up by Roberts. Which is driven home in the surprisingly "happy" final scene. His "Paulie" is the standard problem-starter alongside Rourke's straight man, and their scenes together exude "cool."

At this year's Independent Spirit Awards, Rourke began his acceptance speech by shouting Roberts out and challenging all talented, risky filmmakers to give Roberts a shot similar to the one Darren Aronofksy gave Rourke with The Wrestler. I second that notion, now having rewatched The Pope in Greenwich Village. The electric talent seen here is no doubt still within the guy; just watch The Dark Knight for the tenth time and pay close attention to his understated menace as crime boss "Maroni." Dude hasn't gone South skill-wise.

How about somebody out there scripts up a flick that follows the uphill climb of a former gangster trying to do right by his motherless teenage daughter. That's a role today's Roberts could blow a hole through, no question.

How about it? 2010, the year that Eric Roberts makes his triumphant comeback. Clock starts now.

Where the Wild Things Are trailer arrives, makes me smile and want my very own Wild Thing friend all over again....

2009-03-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

.....like I did back in the innocent years.

Welcome back, James Gandolfini. What a perfect voice-choice he is for one of the beasts.

I love how the shots of the beasts running look, especially. Live action, all day. Spike Jonz and company should be commended with endless kudos for going the "physical costumes" route over CGI blah-blah. This isn't a "kiddie movie" I'd take my niece to any time soon, it'd probably freak her the jeez out.

But I'll be there bright and early. Fruit Roll-Ups smuggled within my coat pocket, Capri Suns ready to quench my thirst.

"Actual Facts," But Not Really

2009-03-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

Whipped up a list of my favorite "based on a true story" gimmick-y horror flicks for the latest entry in my "Theater of Mine" column over at the KING site. Check it out, if interested. Timed with this week's latest Amityville Horror knockoff, The Haunting in Connecticut, which I'm very likely catching tonight.

Initially, The Haunting in Connecticut's trailer lulled me into a premature sense of optimism, most likely due to those slick organ notes at its end. I'm a sucker for Gothic-y, atmospheric scores. But the more I've seen from it and read about it, I can't shake the feeling that it'll ultimately be a forgettable slop of PG-13 jump scares and shrieky-music cues. And those never do anything more than irritate.

At the least, the flick provided an excuse to write up this list, which was pretty fun and relatively effortless. Whether that's good or bad, who knows? Made me happy, and that's the M.O. [LINK BELOW THE PIC]

The list includes a cameo from my boy "Tarman," from 1985's so-damn-good Return of the Living Dead, which is reason enough alone to give it a go, no?

And, really, every post should have some Tarman. "Moooorre.....braaainnnss!" *followed by a smile*

This is the first list of this kind I've ever done, so there are some kinks that'll be ironed out next time, and more the time after. I have some future list ideas in the works, so I'll give myself plenty a chance to improve. For one, I forgot about a few films that should've made the cut (Wolf Creek, David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, David Fincher's Zodiac even); and two, a commenter pointed a choice-of-word error regarding Ed Gein, who only killed two people, making my use of "several" a bit improper. Like I said, a work in progress.

LINK: My Nine Favorite "Based on a True Story" Genre Films

Sweden has more to offer than hot blonde women....A pleasant surprise.

2009-03-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

When it comes to A+ horror, should I be looking over at Sweden just as much as I am toward France? Last year's Let the Right One In first snapped Sweden's fingers to grab my attention, and now comes this new trailer for a flick called Psalm 21 that looks quite great.

Psalm 21 trailer

Official Synopsis: Psalm 21 is a thriller about Henrik, a modern young priest living in Stockholm. He has nightmares about his dead mother. One day, he recieves word from the coronary in a remote village, deep in the dark woods of Nothern Sweden: his father, a priest himself, has drowned. The circumstances of the drowning are unexplained.

Henrik drives through the endless forests of Northern Sweden up to the desolate village of his father to investigate the circumstances of his demise. As he learns more about the drowning - and about his father - the door to the unknown cracks open. Shadows from the past emerge from the void. They return to our world with one specific purpose.

Revenge.

The sad, harsh truth of the matter is that, like every other foreign film that excites me in potent measure, it'll be many moons before I get to see this Psalm 21 business. Fucking passports and expensivve airfare.

Trailer and synopsis first spotted over at: Dread Central

Childlike Insanity, A Disney-ish Road to Hell

2009-03-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

I've been racking my brain for the past hour, trying to think of a film that depicts the descent into madness with more verve and imagination than Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), and I'm failing miserably. Admitting defeat now. My watching this one has been in the making for years now, evolving from innocent thoughts of "I'd like to check that out, sounds interesting," to repeat "not in stock" letdowns at Blockbuster, to, most recently, a "very long wait" status on Netflix.

Finally, by some divine hands reaching down into my Queue and lighting fire into the DVD's donut-hole-center, Heavenly Creatures arrived in my mailbox the other day. This was the rare instance of me going into a movie with virtually zero prior knowledge or spoilers read. All I knew was that Jackson co-wrote the script after researching the hell out of a 1954 murder case out in New Zealand, in which two teenage girls killed the one girl's mother but were soon captured after the daughter's diaries were discovered. What I didn't know was that the two girls, Pauline (middle name Yvonne, which she's frequently called) and Juliet (played by Kate Winslet, in her feature film debut) , shared a lesbian love that was rooted in deeply disturbed delusions, heightened through a fairy tale novel they were dreaming up together. Peter Jackson, who had previously proven himself a master of over-the-top gore spectacles with flicks such as 1994's Dead Alive, used Heavenly Creatures as a creative departure of sorts---a slick choice of subject, too, since this film does include a few scenes of carnage, and an overall sense of growing disturbia that Jackson plays like a colorful toy.

Watching Heavenly Creatures, you can see the seeds being planted for Jackson's eventual Lord of the Rings-era excellence. Particularly in two sequences: the first, a daring, unique tracking shot through a sand castle, with the camera zooming through the sandy corridors and up the staircases at a dreamlike clip; and especially in scenes where the girls daydream of prancing around with the mythical characters of their novel, medieval power-players depicted in life-size clay form in Jackson's eyes. Rarely has losing one's mind felt as innocently wonderous as it does here. As if it's Laurel Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers (a childhood holiday favorite of mine). This one comes during Pauline/Yvonne's first sexual experience:

The most impressive aspect of this film, however, falls more into the writing department than solely directing. On paper, this story most likely reads as an international equivalent to something along the lines of Harmony Korine's Bully, another "escalating revenge plot" based-on-true-events narrative. Bully took a much more straightforward, bleak approach to its rising homicidal tendencies; Heavenly Creatures, on the other hand, basks in the---mostly in Yvonne's unhappy head--- are presented as joyous, transcendent forms of escapism. Playful, even. As the story progresses, though, and the murder plan starts to show itself, Jackson slowly pulls back from the fun-side and embraces the darkness. It's so subtle how he does it. Until the final 15 minutes, it's invisibly handled. Only when the girls go off on a day-trip with Yvonne's mother does Jackson show his death-in-all-its-horror card.

The focus on expanding insanity can also be seen as an ironic counterpoint to the age-old, Proposition 8-related idea that homosexuality goes hand in hand with madness. Total bullshit, of course, but a discussion that Jackson comments on with a firsthand sense of objectivity. Heavenly Creatures seems to agree with the anti-homosexuality prosecution whenever the girls' parents take centerstage, but then switches back to defending such a sexual choice through euphoric exchanges between the female leads. It's an interesting back-and-forth, one that is up for debate (if anybody out there has seen this film and is down to chat).

I'd love to describe the entire final sequence in all its blindsiding force, but I'd rather allow others to check the film out for themselves and feel similarly pistol-whipped from their closed-eye's side. Just know that Heavenly Creatures is one of the most peculiar, fascinating, and creatively diesel studies of madness that I've seen. Even inspirational in many ways, as well as motivational, but I won't get into the reasons as to why here, now. Saving that for later. Jackson's best film (in my opinion, this one is better than the Lord of the Rings series, but that's a matter of preference) shows that pitch-black issues can be covered in shiny cloth and still maintain the integrity. Well done, sir. Well done.

I'm now even more intrigued to see Jackson's upcoming The Lovely Bones adaptation; Heavenly Creatures is about the closest piece of evidence available that the man is capable of bring Alice Sebold's equal parts melancholy and hopeful book to life. I'm ready. Bring it on.

Eminem, or Pee Wee Herman?

2009-03-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

Can you tell the difference?

Maybe the resemblance is intentional. Dude is definitely one to do such random shit. I'm doubting it's on purpose here, though.

That's a shot from the video for Eminem's new single, "We Made You," set to surface on April 7. 50 Cent isn't on the song (fortunately), he just appears in the video. Produced by Dr. Dre, back to the old Em days (I'm guessing).

I'm psyched. Literally. Seriously. I'd emrabce a mediocre Eminem album with open arms these days. No pause necessary; I'm talking about the album.

Pic first spotted over at: Rap Radar

These Starz seem aligned.....so far

2009-03-23T19:27:00.001-07:00

Seems there's a new foolproof formula for idiot-box comedy: the word "down" + veterans from the school of Judd Apatow + weekly alf-hour basic cable airtime = goodness.

First there was HBO's Eastbound and Down, the laugh-perfect rule-breaker that not enough people watched, foolishly, and now it's gone forever, seemingly. The plan all along was to restrict the series to only six episodes, so this was all predetermined, yet still frustrating and depressing. I've only come across a small handful of folks who've told me that they watch(ed) and love(d) the show, and that's irritating. HBO promoted Eastbound and Down poor as hell, relying purely on word-of-mouth for a show that didn't have lasting legs in the first place. What good does graudally-increasing buzz do for a show that only has six weeks to live? Instead of beating that gone-to-mundane-shit snooze Entourage down our throats every time a new season starts, HBO should've invested a few more dollars into marketing and spreading word about Eastbound, the ballsiest, sharpest comedy I've seen on the tube in ages. And easily HBO's best comedy in the last decade.

In the wake of Eastbound and Down comes the Starz channel comedy Party Down, about a ragtag group of struggling wannabe actors and screenwriters working as caterers in Los Angeles. Eastbound's cast was almost entirely comprised of "who's that?" heads (aside from Will Ferrell's small role and star Danny Mcbride's scene-jacking in Pineapple Express); Party Down, though, is packed with proven studs. Still has an ounce of the "I know that face, but from where?" but not as strongly. The lead is Adam Scott, who fans of Step Brothers will recognize as John C. Reilly's douchebag brother; its two female players are sexy/funny Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls, Cloverfield, HBO's True Blood) and always-on-point Jane Lynch (Role Models, The 40-Year-Old Virgin); there's an Apatow bit player mainstay, Martin Starr (dude from Knocked Up who grows his beard out); and then there's Ken Marino, who, if you're cool, you'll know as an original member of the oft-forgotten but still-working steadily The State comedy crew.

Any opportunity to post a Lizzy Caplan pic is one not to miss.

The show doesn't seem to have the anarchist touch of Eastbound, but that's not a bad thing. Party Down approaches its laughs with a calm confidence in the characters. This first episode has a couple sight gags (drunk guy swan-diving into a pool naked; Marino "rubbing one out" in a teenage girl's bedroom), and both work, but otherwise the show doesn't seem to harp on punchlines, or "zingers." Just casually humorous conversations, engaged by colorful, troubled, reality-detached dreamseekers dressed in white button-ups and pink bowties.

Fun fact: the pilot was directed Fred "Kevin Arnold" Savage, and represents a huge leap forward for the man (his last kinda-high-profile directorial gig was Daddy Day Camp 2, painfully). Also fun: One of the pilot's writers is Paul Rudd, which explains a ton. Watching the episode, I thought to myself a few times, "I could see Rudd playing Adam Scott's character." Being that Rudd is emerging as a perennial favorite in these parts, that's reason enough to stick with Party Down, ride out the rest of the 10-episode season.

"A new half-hour comedy on cable that I could very well grow to love" can only mean one thing ---- it fall off the programming map within months, like every other one from my recent past. Dear lord, let The Life & Times of Tim come back!

Death by Chocolate

2009-03-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

If Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were remade as a teen-targeted slasher flick......I hope it'd look like this:

Gobstopper Trailer from Gobstopper Movie

These days, the idea of this faux trailer feeling totally real isn't far-fetched. Though, I'd gladly welcome this than most other remakes. Figures this'll never be made, then.

Dear Matt: A Letter to a Friend from a Friend

2009-03-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Just reread that last post. This one right here is the definition of a much more "sober" state-of-mind.

Offering thoughts that even blink at a "review" about something like Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father seems wrong. Unfair. Foolish. High-horse douchebaggery. How can any critic/writer ponder the faults of a documentary that's totally rooted in the filmmaker's personal tragedy, constructed from a brutally heartfelt place, and intended for a grieving family member? Fuck out of here. All you should ever do with something like this film is experience it and allow it to move you in ways that its balance of pain and love could only execute.

Fortunately for the critical world's sake, though, Dear Zachary has received universal acclaim and adoration. I'd read about the flick all of last year, but was never able to check it out until today, courtesy of trusty Netflix. And wow, I lost count as to how many times I was on the verge of tears. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne pulls off such a well-rounded, flawless study of a beloved friend and the aftermath of his murder at the hands of a mentally-unstable older-lady lover that you leave the flick with a "I feel like I now actually know this Andrew Bagby fella, and what a great guy he was" sensation. Kuenne travels cross country and up into Newfoundland to interview practically every person Bagby came into contact with throughout his 28-year life, and through these candid, fearless sitdowns I immediately realized just how cherished he was by everybody in his life.

And then, the way Kuenne shifts the tone from happy retrospective to a dread-soaked murder recount is so sudden, so effective. I'm opting not to dissect Dear Zachary here, simply because I think it's a film that deserves to be seen firsthand, rather than relayed from my eyes.

While watching, I was reminded of something that happened to me back after my college graduation. One of the top five most amazing things that anybody has ever done for me, and easily the greatest graduation gift a dude could ask for. I'm not currently in the mood to write the page into a tizzy with an all-encompassing "college experience" account, though, so I'll just drop you into the days surrounding graduation from St. John's University, out in Jamaica, Queens, which I really do miss a bunch. When I look back on that four-year saga, there are many people who stand out for good reasons---friends I've sadly lost touch with, friends I'm still close with, and friends I wish I could've gotten to know more.

The one person who truly left her mark, however, was Ms. Day (which I'll keep referring to her here as, to keep identities somewhat disclosed to those who don't who I'm talking about). Nearly three years of some the biggest heartbreaks I've ever experience. Some of the closest feelings to "love" that I've ever been met with. Some of the toughest life-changing, eye-opening happenings I'll ever endure. I wouldn't take back or change a thing, though. She and I grew up so much together that all of the good and bad feels necessary to this day. Lessons ranging from racial acceptance and awareness to basic dating-ritual rights and wrongs were mutually absorbed. It was a hell of a relationship.

Ms. Day isn't in this pic, but it's still fitting. SJU, circa 2004.

The "She's truly something special" deal was sealed the moment she gave me my graduation gift: my very own "Matt DVD," which is this documentary-styled short film she and one of our on-campus co-workers put together by interviewing a slew of my closest friends and associates at St. John's. Asking each person all about me, capturing their kindest words and funniest memories. Due to time constraints and the general flakiness of mankind, they weren't able to interview everybody that mattered to me, but I'd say they managed to compile an impressive 70%.

The first time I watched the Matt DVD, I actually shed a few tears. Facial raindrops. One thing about myself that I hardly ever share with people is just how insecure and self-conscious I can be, a truth that has recently faded away piece by piece thanks to my successess and realizations of just how fortunate I am. But back in college, shit wasn't as sweet. Nowhere near. I can specifically recall times when I'd cry alone in my room, asking myself What was wrong with me? Why is it so difficult to look in a mirror? So to have somebody go through the efforts to make a multi-person testimonial in my honor was mind-blowing. Unbelievable. Therapeutic. Amazing. Life-changing (there it is again). I'd never realized that people at SJU really fucked with me on a respect-level. Heads who you would've considered to be the "big men on campus," or the "ladykillers," and even the "hot chicks."

I'm confident in saying that the Matt DVD was my first real step toward self-acceptance, and I have Ms. Day to thank for that.

Time to time, I toss the Matt DVD back into my DVD player and go back to Queens, in spirit. People looked so much younger. Things were much more innocent. I just finished watching it again, promptly as Dear Zachary came to its conclusion, and that knot in my throat, the jiggling of the eyelids returned. The Matt DVD is completely positive, and in no way on par with Dear Zachary's profound impact. But in a way, the two "documentaries" are kindred entities. Both were made out of love and appreciation, and both are intended to serve as letters to their focal subject(s).

And both do chin-ups on my heart.

Drunk yet fully aware of the brilliance of these two audio treats, you bastards!

2009-03-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

When you're drunk as a fucking skunk, as I am right now at about 3am after an evening of Bacardi Orange shots and 22-ounce Coronas (great times had by me and my two co-defendants tonight), you come back home in a rather vulnerable, loose, susceptible state of mind. As in, the type of fucked-up mindframe that would voluntarily watch the following videos on repeat just to fuck with his own cerebellum (worth mentioning....I've had to proofread and retype every fucking word of this post due to severe inebriation at thisi current moment).

But anyway, back to the mission at hand. Me, watching these bizarre, brilliant, subversive, off kilter, what-the-fuck opening bits from a pair of foreign cinematic gems, one I own on DVD and love (Irreversible) and the other I'm ready yo buy come April 7 instantly, as I'm ready for some heady ish from the sick fucker behind the wildly wonderful Calvaire, Fabrice Du Welz (this flick being Vinyan). Revel in the craziness, won't you?:

The dizzying, mesmerizing, genius spin-cycle score from the early section of Gaspar Noe's amazing Irreversible: [The damn file has been removed from Youtube, sadly, but trust me, it's incredible-ness.

2) The opening sequence for Du Welz's Vinyan,a credit bit that I'm in love with for its utter ballsiness and otherworldy demeanor. Just listen to the sound on this bitch, give it a couple of minutes to kick in, please:

Martyrs Watch -- The End Is Nigh

2009-03-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

A little over a month left before I finally see this nasty, subversive little French ditty. Been close to a year now that I've been anxiously, impatiently twiddling my thumbs and reading polarized review after reaction. Weeks of checking the Film Society of Lincoln Center's website to check if this would be playing at their annual "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series (just as Inside and Frontiers did last year) proved useless once the playlist was released and not one horror flick was included, let alone this. Reality settled in, and it became obvious that I'd never get to see this on a big screen, which blows but I'll live.

At least the Weinstein Company has balls enough to release it on DVD here stateside, uncensored. In preparation for its looming April 28 street date, a new United Kingdom advertisement, or "quad," has made its way onto various horror websites. Take a gander, it's a good one:

It's almost mathematically impossible that this one will disappoint. Enormously unfeasible, even.

First spotted over at: Bloody Disgusting

From Greek to shriek.....

2009-03-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

Work with that headline....that's all I got today.

For all the shit I talk about horror remakes, there's just something about this October's House on Sorority Row (1983) redo, simply titled Sorority Row, that has me feeling totally supportive. Could be that I've yet to see the original, so I have no loyalty or investment in it. Or maybe, it's the generally-negative reviews I've read of that first go-round that prove its room for improvements. Perhaps it's a general need for a fun, mindless, well-done slasher flick in today's genre marketplace that has me optimistic here.

Vegas odds, however, would lean toward the fact that Sorority Row's cast is predominantly "sexy young actresses," plus hurt-in-the-face Rumer Willis (the daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis). The last time such stars were aligned was that putrid Black Christmas remake, which I frequently erase from my memory only to re-discover its awfulness on cable, like some sort of cruel joke being played on me by the television overlords. How that film managed to downgrade a meeting of Lacey Chabert, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead into anything less than a hormonal paradise is beyond any logic of comprehension.

So I've reserving hope that Sorority Row can avoid the pitfalls of Black Christmas. And now there's this new trailer, which gives me even more reason to believe. Looks better than expected. Not saying I'm expecting horror greatness in the least, but there's a certain air of "playing it straight" that Black Christmas failed miserably at....but, as a Devil's advocate would point out, Black Christmas also had a nice-looking trailer. Let's hope this here preview doesn't dupe me in equally painful ways. Biggest plus for now: the director has said that he's looking at an R rating. Take that, pussy-ass Prom Night.

Sorority Row, out October 2
SORORITY ROW trailer in HD

[Yes, that was Audrina from The Hills. I'm actually not mad at the casting, even though she'll surely smell on screen. I hate The Hills and everything about it with fiery passion, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge Audrina's rampant sex appeal.]

Extra: This seems as good a time as any to call out Jamie Chung as a one-time The Real World cast member that I completely slept on during her season. Was she as unbelievably hot on the show as she is now? Check out her photo spread in the new Maxim mag issue (with Malin Akerman) on the cover, or just rewatch this Sorority Row trailer. She's a problem, my friends.

Also worth nothing: One of Sorority Row's other stars, Briana Evigan, is also a dilemma. In a good way. Shit, I sat through Step Up 2 the Streets just to ogle her. I deserve a date, or a phone number, at least, right?

Yes, that ish above her eyes looks like a five-head in this picture, but that's a-okay

The first available bit of "Shutter Island goodness" (expectedly) has me all hot and bothered

2009-03-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

If you know me, I'm sure that you'd suspect Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds as my most-anticipated movie of '09, but then you, my friends, would be stricken by some false assumptions. Well, maybe not. I have rambled on and on here about how much I'm dying to see some Nazi-scalping and listen to Brad Pitt's Foghorn Leghorn accent, so I could understand. The more I think another high-profile flick coming later this year, though, I realize just how quickly I'd punch an old lady in the face across the street at Chelsea Square Park to catch an early screening of Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island (or, Ashecliffe, whichever he's calling it; I much prefer Shutter Island). For the unaware, Shutter Island is Scorcese's next tag-team with Leonardo Dicaprio, and it also stars Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach, bitches!), and Michelle Williams. Its an adaptation of Dennis Lehane's astoundingly-great novel, which still reigns supreme as my favorite novel of all time.

As of now, the flick is looking at an October release.

Simple plot breakdown (courtesy of Barone's World): Set in 1954, and Dicaprio plays a detective sent with his new partner (Ruffalo) to investigate a missing person case on a secluded island off the shores of Boston. Only, this island is actually a Riker's Island-like detention center for the criminally insane, and their "missing person" is a homicidal woman (Mortimer). The investigation itself becomes a royal pain in the ass, with lies, deceptions, mis-leads and other issues surfacing, but then all hell truly breaks loose once a freak storm traps the two detectives on the island, in the midst of an all-out riot.

I'd be a horse's ass if I said anything further, but I will tease with this: the book has such a captivating Gothic dread-power throughout, and it ultimately pimp-slaps the senses with some crazy Twilight Zone turns. I've read it twice now, and the novel literally went from "awesome" to "holy shit" for me. So having such mega-talents like Scorcese, Dicaprio, Ruffalo, Haley and Williams has me feeling all warmly confident inside, but not 100%---if you read the book, you'll understand my questioning of just how Scorcese will pull it all off visually and structurally. And the overall tone is much more quasi-supernatural than anything Marty S. has done before; not that I'm doubting the god Scorcese, of course. I'm just insanely curious.

A paparazzi shot, of sorts, caught during the film's production

There won't be a trailer for this one any time soon, I'm sure, but I've just come across something a bit cooler, only because it's not something you see everyday for films you love (or expect to love). Here are some storyboard illustrations for the production, drawn by a great artist named Karl Shelfelman. Pretty cool stuff. Shows you just what goes into some of a film's pre-production process:

Note to self: Must figure out how to expand this site's width for picture-posting benefits.

Storyboards (including a couple more not posted here) spotted over at: Rope of Silicon

The shakiest homemade sex tape imaginable

2009-03-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

Could there be a better job in the world than naming Skinemax spoofs? I highly doubt so. It takes a higher plain of genius to come up with gold medals such as The Bare Wench Project, or Spiderbabe. And don't even get me started on the masters who construct the accompanying screenplays. You can just color me red with envy and go on your merry way.

The latest genre knockoff courtesy of Cinemax's late night programming lords is Cleavagefield, a film so cleverly titled that I'm mad I didn't think of it before. I'm assuming, like the great Cloverfield, it's shot cinema verite style and stars pretty young people with mediocre to above-average acting skills but unafraid of excessive nudity and unnecessary sex. It premieres after hours the evening of April 1, on Cinemax.

Now, I hardly expected the monster itself to even hold the enormous jock strap of my dude Clover (I like to call the creature that), but this Cleavagefield image is a huge disappointment. Seriously....your movie is called Cleavagefield, people! How in the hell does this monster not have ginormous breasts?! Admit it, you were expecting the same thing. How could you not?

Wait for it.......

.........

.........

Is that the bastard child after-product of sex between a duck and a turtle? My three-year-old niece plays with animal toys that look better than this ish. Like it really matters, though, of course. Still, we're talking total "missed opportunity" here.

I won't even be able to enjoy the film now, thanks to this half-assed creature. Lies and fairy tales.

Monster image first seen over at: Dread Central

Here's the trailer:

Cleavagefield (trailer) - The best bloopers are a click away

Though I've been trying my hardest to avoid jumping on the pre-release-hype bandwagon....

2009-03-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

.....I've now officially succumbed. "Spike Jonze tackling a surreal, wonderful children's book that I loved back in the early grammar school days" can no longer be ignored.

Loving this poster. Word is that the first full-length trailer for Where The Wild Things Are will show itself in a couple of weeks. I'll save a post for it. Of course.

Saluting an old, true friend.

2009-03-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last night, Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse (1981) failed to live up to expectations set upon it by critical write-ups and general secondhand nostalgic appreciation, so I went into tonight's '80s-makeup-of-lost-time-watching, Stuart Gordon's Dolls (1987), with a palpable dose of apprehension.

Dolls struck me as a kindred spirit to The Funhouse, from its trapped-in-a-scarehouse setup (this time, motorists stranded at the home of a couple psychotic geezers who make killer toys) to its director, Stuart Gordon, a second-string horror giant with an uneven resume, a la Funhouse's Hooper. Glad to report, however, that Dolls is superior in nearly every way. Much more fun, balancing self-awareness with gleeful macabre. Still has its hefty share of faults, mainly in its lack of any pure tension despite its good ideas and too much goofiness, whether intentional or not. But in all, Dolls is slightly-more-than-passable entertainment on a quiet Monday night.

Unsurprisingly, Dolls has registered on a much more personal reflection level than any degree of cinematic stimulation. The reason: as a kid, I had tons of dolls. Action figures galore, from scattered G.I. Joes and Star Wars' (and I'm not even a Star Wars "fan," per say) "men" to every single Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figurine visible to man's eye. Stuffed animals ranging from a Super Grover (silver cape and all) to Teddy Ruxpin (Teddy was my man...wanna fight about it?).

The cream of my toy closet's crop, though, was none other than the coolest doll of them all: My Pet Monster

My Pet Monster and I went to hell and back together. For as long as my imagination could sustain at any given time, the two of us fought off zombies, hung out with my imaginary friend Tim (who died in a house fire in Fair Lawn, fake story; I could even show the exact house that my childish mind pegged as his charcoal tomb), tormented my family's house-cats. Wherever I went, My Pet Monster traveled shotgun. Up until about age ten or eleven, I'm pretty sure that My Pet Monster ate with me at the dinner table, much to my parents' raised eyebrows. But public opinion meant nathan to me, because My Pet Monster was my co-defendant. See, I didn't get a dog until the first day of high school, freshman year, so My Pet Monster was really all I had when social interactions petrified me, or immature insecurities reigned triumphant over my adolescent subconscious. Shit, who knows where I'd be without MPM.

These days, he's lyin dormant at my parents' house. Resting comfortably in the top shelf of my bedroom's closet, all shoddy and worn down. Faded, some stitching having come undone. I remember a couple years back, I went to Toys 'R' Us to get my niece a Christmas gift. What an awesome, never-wanted-it-to-end experience that was. Aisle after aisle of melancholy memories, wishing I could be a little kid again, realizing that those days will never be again. And then, as some sort of cruel joke from up above, there it was. A new and improved My Pet Monster, a bit more gray than blue in coloring, but still with the same physical build and orange chain. I stood there in the aisle, frozen in happiness, for a solid two minutes straight. Pondering, Should I just buy this for myself? Would my own elder My Pet Monster be jealous?

Ultimately, I decided to save the $25 and put it toward an extra gift for Baby G. I figured, The MPM that's been nothing buy loyal to me all of these years is all I need. To get by. Byyyyyy. A slicker, modernized model couldn't offer anything worth shaming my old dude.

My Pet Monster was my original BFF, and I now have Stuart Gordon's Dolls to thank for bringing those fond recollections back into my mind's forefront. Indirectly. The namesake porcelain protagonists in Gordon's films are nothing like My Pet Monster, really. It just goes back to a line voiced by the evil old man character, something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Your toys never forget. They're always with you." Like MPM is surely smiling back at the 'rents', happy that his mans and them is doing well. Living life. Healthy and all that.

If I had more time on my hands, I'd now go into my other childhood partner-in-crime, Billy Baloney. The Pee Wee's Playhouse character that my parents brought into my world during the MPM years, and who battled through mutual jealousy with the Pet Monster before shaking hands and mutually accepting similar BFF duties in my life.

One of these days, I'll opine over Mr. Baloney. For now, though, this is My Pet Monster's moment. Time to let him stand under the streetlight.

Every guy should have a friend like Stevie.

2009-03-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Adding to my "Who loves me, man?" post, here's a quick tribute to the best friend a dude could ask for, "Stevie," my favorite character (aside from the man himself, Kenny Powers) on HBO's Eastbound & Down. Or, as I like to call it, "the greatest show ever created." Okay, that's a bit much. It's still the best show currently on the tube. The "only six episodes long" aspect is rather heartbreaking, unfortunately. That means only one episode remains, and who knows if we'll even get a second season. Consult your Shamrocks tomorrow in hopes that we do.

Here's "Stevie," played to pitch-perfect perfection (alliteration masturbation) by Steve Little. I knew nothing of Steve Little prior to this show, but now I'm hoping to pops up on every television program from here on out. He's dynamite as Kenny Powers' unstable, obsessive biggest fan/personal assistant, and owns every scene he's a part of.

If you haven't been watching Eastbound & Down, you've been fucking up, then. Rectify that, pronto.

Who loves me, man?

2009-03-16T10:42:00.001-07:00

It feels so long ago, I keep forgetting that I've already seen the film, but early this past December I was able to get myself into a very-early screening of the new Paul Rudd/Jason Segel comedy I Love You, Man, which hits theaters this weekend. As I expected, the film was/is a winner, capturing that same nice-cutesy humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but with tons more effective supporting character actors elevating their respective scenes. You get J.K. Simmons (too briefly, frankly) going line-for-line with Andy Samberg, who plays Rudd's personal-trainer gay brother who happens to be more manly than his straight bro. There's the should-act-more Jon Favreau doing his best douchebag-ery as the husband of Rudd's fiancee's (Rashida Jones, aka "Ms. I Make Freckles Super Sexy") best friend (blonde jackpot Jamie Pressly). And then you even get an attractive new face, Sarah Burns, complete with slick comic timing and ample charm, leaving a lasting impression and begging the question, "Will she get more work? Because I'd really like that."

Pressly, Jones, Burns

Rudd as a leading man is as foolproof as you'd suspect, and Segel is much better here than he was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a high compliment since "Peter Brenner" was one of my favorite characters of 2008. In I Love You, Man, Segel does a great job of never showing his Ace card---is he a con artist, or simply a fun-loving, unassuming sweetheart? The chemistry between the two leads is a clear product of a tight off-screen friendship, an added bonus that gives their banter a naturalism that's impossible to dislike.

Chances are highly likely that I'll see it again this weekend, or one night next week. So I can both refresh my memory, and enjoy some good-natured entertainment in light of my recent theater-going choices: I've seen The Last House on the Left twice now, as well a double-viewing of Watchmen, and neither comes even centimeters near uplift. I have a feeling that this Clive Owen/Julia Roberts flick, Duplicity, will be a smile-friendly trip, and I'll be seeing that tomorrow, actually. Could this be a total reversal of film tone for yours truly? Not quite---I also plan on catching that new Nicolas Cage end-of-the-world flick Knowing this weekend, despite the fact that its a Nicolas Cage flick. The action scenes look good enough to bypass Cage's recent suck-a-thon streak. Which is going He-Man-strong.

Back to I Love You, Man, though, and it's central idea of a "bromance." No need to explain what that terms means; it's pretty self-explanatory. Besides, that brain-numbing sign of televisial apocalypse MTV's Bromance with Brody Jenner conveyed enough bad will to soil the expression into your mind like fossilized feces. I Love You, Man should rectify that manure-taste, thankfully, and give guy/guy interactions of the heterosexual stance a good name.

The question I've ben posing to myself, in relation to the film, is this: would one of my boys and I see this together? As in, would any of my boys be comfortable in self enough to make it a "movie night" with me, possibly even buying my ticket (okay, that part is a stretch, but was worth wondering about). Back in the days of high school and less "must enter at least one bar this weekend" requirements, I'm sure myself and a good five other dudes would gladly buy tickets and sit seat-by-seat for something like I Love You, Man. Times were much more innocent. Girls somewhat-less of a top priority on weekend evenings. This was a time when me letting a friend know about party approaching for a college friend or work acquaintance wouldn't have immediately been met with "Will there be any hot girls there? If not, I'm good, man. I'll pass." Call that selfishness, or shallowness, or just regular-old lameness. Whatever the case, the times of casually kicking it at the movies with my boys is fading away slowly. Which sucks, especially for a movie-addict such as myself, who'd gladly spend every weekend night at a cineplex over a bar.

Grabbing dinner with just one guy friend always feels acceptable. I'm all for it, and typically my other friends mirror the sentiment. Even showing ID at a bar's entrance before knocking back some Coronas is welcome consistently. So why not a movie? Is it the darkly-lit setting? Confusion as to whether we should sit at least one seat apart or not, assuming the theater isn't too crowded?

The Brokeback Mountain reference brings this pic to an out-of-context-to-my-post field, but some pics are too funny to avoid.

This isn't to say that none of my friends would be down to have a bromantic evening this weekend in front of I Love You, Man. Laughing alongside Rudd and Segel as they attend a Styx concert, or Segel foolishly picks a fight with Lou Ferrigno, or Rudd awkwardly coins the term "Slappin de bass." It's just that, honestly, I can only think of two such friends. Thus is the reality of growing up and becoming more bromantic with Johnnie Walker and/or Jack Daniels. I've accepted it. Moved forward. I get the feeling that movie-nights are seen as "childish." "Missed drunken-hookup-with-sloppy-bar-maven opportunities." That's hogwash to me, but I'm willing to gamble that I'm in the minority.

I'm ready to see I Love You, Man alone. Well, I do love myself, so maybe I'll be inventing a new male-faux-pas term in the process: Self-Love Story. Minus any necessary "Pause" or Billy Idol song allusions, of course.

David Fincher, and a horror comic. I'm in.

2009-03-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

The Goon = "The [Dark Horse] comic follows the adventures of a muscle-bound brawler who claims to be the primary enforcer for a feared mobster. The stories have a paranormal and comedic edge to them and concern ghosts, zombies, mad scientists and 'skunk apes.'" [Shock Til You Drop]

WTF is a skunk ape? Something tells me that I'd love it.

Why haven't I heard of this comic, and how come I haven't run out and purchased some back issues by now?

Earlier today, some images from an upcoming computer animated film adaptation of The Goon popped up online, accompanied by news (that I've somehow neglected until now) that its producer is David Fincher. Going from "cool" to "fucking awesome" with ease.

No clue as to when this is coming out, but I'm now watching over the project with a fine eye. And will pick up some The Goon issues upon sight. Check out these images, which are unanimously being praised for sticking wine-on-me close to the source material:

Feels a bit like a gangland spin on Hack/Slash, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Source: Ain't It Cool News

DVR Catch-Up -- The Funhouse (1981)

2009-03-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

Here's one that has completely slid under my radar, something I should really be more ashamed of than I actually am. In some horror corridors, The Funhouse is hung on the wall as a fine piece of work. Don't ask me why, though because it's really nothing special. It's based around a nifty central idea (kids locked within a carnival's funhouse overnight with psycho killer sporting a badass Frankenstein mask and his dysfunctional "family") that never reaches its full potential. Or even halfway.

If you locked me in my room, strapped to my bed with only my laptop at hand and Microsoft Word open, and forced me to crank out a screenplay based around that premise, with only 24 hours to do so, my finished draft would surely slap the piss out of what The Funhouse is. A shame, really, because the film does pack scattered moments of effective atmosphere, namely during the latter portion, when the four doomed kids (being played by 35-year-old actors, of course) start meeting their fates.

Several of the necessary elements are in place: an amusement park full of the requisite sight gags and wax scare-givers; four dumbass teens who voluntarily "sleep over" inside a funhouse, rather than take their asses to a Quality Inn; a main villain rooted in a totally absurd suplot involving paid-for sex with a cougar gypsy lady that goes South once our Frankenstein-masked gruny prematurely shoots his ooze; and some rather cool creature effects by way of the killer's disfigured, bat-meets-Albert Einstein face. What else do you need for some crappy '80s horror fun? Apparently more. A tighter, less "freak locked in by deviant father figure." It turns into the horror equivalent of The Goonies in ways, with Sloth testing his Voorhees out a bit. Only there's no Chunk to be found here, or even Martha Plimpton.

I'm all for films that take their time rather than hurl out setpiece-after-gory-setpiece, but The Funhouse never gets to where I was hoping it'd go. What I got was poorly-done character development and an hour's worth of nothing-at-all happening. The final half hour is when some goodness kicks in, but even then said "goodness" isn't anything more than just that---good. Nothing to write home about. There's very little blood on screen, which is welcome, actually. Makes sense, when you consider that director Tobe Hooper's previous film was cinematic history's ultimate "virtually bloodless depsite popular/ignorant belief" film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now that's a flick that awesomely pulled off the carnage through implication over graphic indulgence. The same approach is used here, and it works. If only there was more of that subtle slaughter and mayhem, and less slowly-paced stalk-and-attack scenes.

The Funhouse is at its best when giant ventilation fans are used as props, oddly enough. The two best scenes have spinning blades to thank, the first being a nicely-done trick of having a loud vent fan drown out the main girl's cries for helps as her family walks through the outside carnival grounds. Second, a hump-session for our hideous monster that downgrades into murder and one hell of a back itch. Hands down the movie's best scene:

So much more could've been done with The Funhouse. Though, I am appreciative that the script didn't go for an obvious "room of wall-to-wall mirrors" sequence. The father/son relationship between the park's owner and the freak should've never left the screenplay's "first draft" phase. Should've stuck with a straightforward monster-with-no-backstory-on-the-loose approach, and delivered more treats along the lines of that above ventilation scene. Sure, it'd be just another '80s slasher flick in essence, but Hooper proves his skills when handling slasher scenarios here, however minimal. An entire flick for him to fully show and prove this gift for slash could've been something legit.

Not this shit.

"Cool beans." So random.

2009-03-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm kinda drunk right now. Sitting here sipping on my cranberry-and-watermelon-vodka cooler (don't ask), and watching that Andy Samberg comedy Hot Rod. Mad at myself for finding this shit pretty hilarious. But this scene just came one that made me rewind my DVR about three times to make sure it was really happening and not just some figment of my intoxicated imagination. Apparently, it's real, as proven by glorious Youtubes. See for yourselves, it's actually quite for-the-laughs:

Funnny as shit, right? No? Well, fuck you then. Back to my sippy-sippy I go....

A movie that should only be appreciated after you can blame it on the alcohol.

The "early Wes Craven was a hack" analysis

2009-03-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Whether you worship at the altar of the filmmaker's respective filmography or not, genre cinema's icons coast by on wheels of admiration, and rightfully so. Where would horror be without the early work of fellas such as John Carpenter, Dario Argento, George Romero, Joe Dante, and so on, so forth?

I wonder, though, if casting a veteran director in such a light doesn't cause people to overlook the possibility of his/her inferior skills. Case in point: Wes Craven. Earlier this week, in preparation for Dennis Iliadis' vastly-effective, better-than-your-favorite-mainstream-critic-not-named-Roger-Ebert-is-declaring The Last House on the Left remake, I rewatched Craven's 1972 original. The plan was to compare and contrast the two after I'd seen this new one, but as I sat on the train home from the early screening, all I could do was beat Craven's predecessor down peg after peg. What I officially realized while giving the DVD another go was just how shitty of a film that '72 entry is, and that even the more visceral sequences have lost chunks of their force. Sitting through them back in the early '70s must've been one hell of a right hook to the senses, and a few scattered spots throughout the desecration-in-the-woods setpiece still pack a significant punch. But too much surrounding those punches is trite, meandering, and foolish. First off, Craven's decision at the time to cut back-and-forth from the rape images to two dumbass hick cops totally undermines the power of the girls' plight, a truth that's been hailed ad naus by all film critics and lovers. It's all the more obvious while watching Iliadis handle the sequence, though, showing just how damaging the viewing experience can be when you're at the mercy of an uncompromising, widely-talented visual filmmaker. Something that Craven was not.

Disclaimer: No, I do not enjoy watching rape. Chill. What truly makes the rape sequence in this new Last House soar through the roof, for me, though, is the way Iliadias and screenwriters Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth preface it. From the moment the four on-the-lam deviants encounter the two innocent gals in their hotel room, the tone of what transpires improves greatly over that of Craven's film. In Craven's the four criminals are insulting, coarse assholes with zero redeeming qualities, at times coming off a bit cartoonish. So when they toss the girls into the trunk of their car, there's zero mystery about what's going to happen. When the rape scenes comes, same with the murders, it's more of a climax than a revelation. In this remake, however, the only reason why this section also resulted in a climax is that I know the source material in and out; If I were a casual moviegoer, though, with no knowledge of the original, I would've been unsure as to the villains' intentions. There's a great scene in their SUV as they're driving the kidnapped, scared girls to God-knows-where that's as much a showcase for Iliadis' directorial chops as it is a testament to the remake's superiority. You can't tell what's going to happen, if the villains are going to kill the girls, or just one of them. Krug, the crew's ice-cold leader, shows a morsel of respect toward Mary, the stronger of their prey, and you think, "Maybe he'll let her go." But then Mary acts a bit too impulsively, fucks up any hope of salvation, and the villains have a diesel motive to move ahead with rape/murder.

The Last House on the Left 2009 has a slew of narrative changes such as that, and they're all for the better, which isn't to say that tweaks in the script are my justifications for proclaiming Wes Craven to be a hack director. There just wasn't even one facet of this remake that felt lesser than its original. And I recalled myself thinking the exact same thing about Alaexandre Aja's awesome Hills Have Eyes remake. So many flaws and missed-the-mark moments are abound in Craven's 1977 Last House follow-up that Aja, like Iliadis, was given ample room for improvement.

The point surfaces: the only early Craven film that is near flawless is A Nightmare on Elm Street, but otherwise there's not a "undeniably great" film in his lot. Each is spotty, uneven. Worth merit more for its after-effects than for its actual quality. Scream, of course, is great, but I consider that a rebirth for the guy, thus rendering it "out of contention" here.

On second thought, didn't he have a hand in writing that recent Hills Have Eyes 2, or as I like to refer to it, Worst Horror Sequel of the Last Ten Years? Pretty positive he did. "Rebirth, schrebirth," I guess, unfortunately.

Lest we forget that Craven directed a little piece of shit called Deadly Friend, too, a mess only saved by the quintessential death-by-basketball scene in film history. Or that he was responsible for Eddie Murphy's Vampire in Brooklyn, a laugher-for-the-wrong-reasons that explains itself in title alone. Blacula it was not.

And back to Aja's Hills Have Eyes real quick.....look no further than the trailer-attack. One of the most intense, stomach-twisting, perfectly-paced and scored sequences in recent memory, all to the credit of Aja. I not-too-long ago watched both that scene and its companion piece from Craven's '85 flick back to back (because that's the kind of thing I like to do on my spare time, yes), and it was quite staggering just how immensely more insane and devastating Aja's is, in the context of modern filmmaking advances or not. Neither scene is particularly showy in terms of effects, so the time-frame argument feels meaningless. Aja now is just a way better filmmaker than Craven then. That simple.

Listen....I respect Craven immensely, and I'm wholly aware of how much his contributions mean to my beloved genre. I'm just the type who tries to call a spade "a spade" as often as possible. Until some well-informed film head can break down the technical prowess of Wes Craven "the director," I'm sticking to my rifles. Ironically, the person most responsible for my realization is Wes Craven himself---he produced both the Last House and Hills Have Eyes remakes, and hand-picked eye-opening foreign filmmakers to commandeer the ships. So for that, I can admire the man even more. Who knows, maybe he'd agree with me that his early career wasn't the best of skill-flashing. He's repeatedly admitted that he had no clue what the hell he was doing while making his Last House on the Left. Just sucks that it shows more than ever now.

Craven's best at what, then? As a producer, clearly. He has an impeccable eye for talent, as seen in his picks of Aja and Iliadis. The versions of his stories that he's behind-the-scenes instead of the camera for thrive much more on character and delicate pacing. The guy knows what makes for good horror, and knows how to pull it out of others. Shame that he can't do the same for himself.

I'd be lying to myself if I didn't give early Craven kudos for this, though.....from 1985's foul-tasting Hills Have Eyes 2, comes..... a dog flashback!!!:

Orphan, yet another killer-kid flick.....excited yet?

2009-03-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

For my money, there has really only been three genuinely great "scary/demon-y kid" movies: The Omen (1976), David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979), and 2007's Joshua. Granted, a few generally respected ones I've yet to see, so this is just based off the creepy-tyke films I can attest to knowing firsthand. (Not sure if Alice, Sweet Alice counts, but if so that'd be a close fourth place.) The problem I have with these films is that I'm just not scared of little kids, in the slightest. Like Chucky in the Child's Play flicks, tiny assailants strike me as the pussiest of all---why not just punt the little fucker and call it a day?

The thought of yet another "kid with devilish secrets" addition has me yawning and then wondering if I'll get to slide into an Inglourious Basterds media screening or not, which gives this new film Orphan a huge point deducted. This trailer that I just came across, though, has more punch than I expected, so it's off to a positive start, at least. Its leads, Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, are both far from slouches, so you'd think that two respectable actors wouldn't sign on to something poisoned by a shitty script. Of course, hell can happen during filming and/or post-production that's out of their hands, but if the script is strong enough, there's potential to be had. I can also partially appreciate the choice to have it be an evil girl rather than a boy, which is rare for whatever reason(s).

Hunches say that this one will suck, but I'm willing to give it a shot. More than I could've said two hours ago.

ORPHAN trailer in HD

Problem Child (The Horror Remix), basically.

Hold up....I just learned that Orphan's director, Jaume Collet-Serra, has only directed one other genre flick, and it was that fairly-wack House of Wax remake with Paris Hilton. Hilton's death scene was kinda solid, but otherwise that ish did nothing for me. Orphan is his follow-up, eh? Ruh roh!