Posts by Brent Lorentson

It was during the filming of season 2 that original Dallas star Larry Hagman passed away. Hagman had reprised his iconic role for the new generation version of the smash hit series that ran from 1978-1991. The character of J.R. Ewing — and the iconic question of who shot J.R. — is simply a part of the pop culture vernacular whether you followed the show back then or not.

I came into the second season of Dallas without watching any of the previous episodes and only a vague recollection of the original series from the days I watched the show with my grandparents. Larry Hagman is one thing I do remember though, and seeing him chew up just about every scene he’s in while playing the infamous and ruthless J. R. Ewing is simply a treat.

You know a show is kind of a big deal when it reaches the 200-episode mark. Seth MacFarlane has more than just made his mark on the television landscape with Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show; he’s made a name for himself as a modern icon of pop culture. MacFarlane has led the Griffin family through 200 episodes of raunchy humor while sneaking in a message or two between the jokes and gags.

As Fox releases Family Guy: Volume 12 on DVD, it’s surprising to see how far the show has come, where only The Simpsons and South Park have managed to hang around longer. But the longevity of these shows isn’t always a sign of greatness. After all, many would argue The Simpsons has lost its stride for years. But since 1999 — when Family Guy first hit the airwaves — to the show's credit, it has never been afraid to challenge topical subjects that many would deem inappropriate or simply vulgar. Whether it’s characters dabbling in the meth trade to make ends meet on a farm, or characters simply dealing with getting old, MacFarlane and his team of writers continue to produce a show and deliver a moral message despite how muddled it may be in its delivery.

The idea of a vigilante priest hitting the streets to clean up crime is something I can easily get behind. The Reverend is said to be an adaptation from a graphic novel of the same name, though it’s a title I found very little about when doing a cursory search over the internet.  What I did find had the plot centering on a Reverend caught in the trappings of the battle between good and evil. Mixing in a supernatural element, some may start to think about The Preacher graphic novels; well, don’t fret, this film doesn’t pack the punch that those beloved graphic novels do, but it’s a noble attempt in the indie horror collection.

The film does open promisingly enough as Rutger Hauer plays the role one would assume to be as something evil, while confronting a man in white surrounded by several officials of the church armed with swords  Some may recognize Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser series) as Reverend Andrews.  The heated exchange is a negotiation over the soul of an individual.  This scene is an introduction to the forces of good and evil doing their bidding for winning souls onto their side.  Unfortunately the scene simply works as a cold opening to do nothing more than show us that religious figures in the church are at odds with those who are evil.  Basically a common-sense notion, and the scene bears no importance on the film that follows.

Upon first glance, The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box looks like nothing more than a straight to video mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, and numerous other young-adult adventure films.  The first impression would be correct, but what is surprising is simply how much fun this film is, and it was made for a quarter of what those block busters had.  It’s a treasure hunt filled with legends of mythical beasts and a location filled with a labyrinth of secret passages.  The film simply is the kind of movie that fits in snugly with the adventure films I grew up with throughout the 80s and early 90s.

The adventure sets off as Mariah Mundi (Aneurin Barnard) encounters Charity (Michael Sheen) who he encounters in a museum and has been severely injured.  After meeting with the young boy’s parents as they tend to his wounds, Charity hands the mother an amulet that he believes people will stop at nothing to obtain.  As the children are sent home, the adventure only begins for the Mundi kids as a pair of men break into their home causing the children to go on the run.  It’s while on the run the children discover that their mother has handed them the amulet, each with a half, which is why the children are being pursued by a pair of hired thugs.

When I first looked over the DVD art for Finding Faith the first thing that had me scratching my head was, how does someone do a family-friendly film about kidnapping and sex trafficking?  This is supposed to be inspired by true events and is a film dealing with individuals and their faith in God during their time in need.  The cherry which actually convinced me to give this film a chance is that it stars Erik Estrada (Mr. Poncherello himself from the TV series CHiPs).  As a childhood fan of Estrada, this film was pretty much impossible to resist.

The film opens with a narration from Sheriff Brown (Estrada) as he discusses all the bad things he’s encountered throughout his career but leads us into our story that is about finding good in a bad situation. At a ranch somewhere hidden away in the mountains a suspicious-looking man approaches; tending to a horse inside is a young female that the man seems to be looking for.  Is he an innocent visitor or is something more sinister at play?  This is quickly answered when the female pulls again, and members of law enforcement close in to make the arrest.  For anyone who has seen To Catch a Predator, this is a familiar sight.

In 1999 I remember standing in line at the Tampa Theatre waiting to see The Blair Witch Project; the line wrapped around the corner.  All of us were anxious to see this film that was cloaked in so much mystery with an internet marketing campaign that manipulated so many to believe that the film we were all about to watch was in fact all true and was all found footage being released onto the big screen.  The Blair Witch Project wasn’t just a success, it was a smash hit, and it changed the way we view cinema, where we all saw that all you needed was a camcorder and a clever hook, and any regular Joe could create a hit film.  Now the found-footage genre is in fact its own genre at this point, and many young up and coming filmmakers are plundering the genre for all it is worth.

It’s been 15 years since The Blair Witch Project was released, and keeping the genre alive, we get Black Water Vampire released onto DVD.  The film is set up nicely as an officer talks about a crime scene he is at and goes into great detail concerning the victim, found dead and naked in the snow, drained of all her blood.  She has a wound that leads the officer to believe she was bitten by some animal, but is it the cause of death?

I’m just going to start off by saying, growing up I was never a fan of the Power Rangers.  It’s odd considering I love live action robots and I was a fan of TOHO films, but the TV series was never something that could hold my interest, though I did always crush on the Pink Ranger (Amy Jo Johnson).  Since the series appeared in 1993 it has spawned many spinoffs in the process, which brings me to the new release of Power Rangers Mega Force: The Mysterious Robo Knight.  The DVD release is comprised of four episodes of the series following the Mega Force team as they use their Power Ranger skills to protect Earth from numerous alien invaders. You also get a small action figure.

United We Stand is the first of the four episodes and focuses most of its time on the female Power Rangers Emma and Gia.  The two are best friends, but all that is disrupted when an alien queen Beezara turns the two against each other while also placing the male rangers under her control as slaves.   For those coming into the show without knowing a thing about it, everything is nicely set up where you don’t need massive amounts of back story, and you can still appreciate the intended drama, having the two girls pitted against one another.  Does everything get resolved in a nice little package before the end credits? I’ll let you scratch your noggin and leave that up for you to discover.  As the starter episode I wasn’t disappointed.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of disaster films out there, and not very many of them are good.  This is one of those Hollywood ideas I can’t quite understand why they continue to go to this well, because for those most part for it to be any good you need to throw a lot of money into the film and nearly 9 times out of 10 what results is a laughable mess.  The 90’s were full of disaster films, whether they were natural disasters or disasters caused by aliens of another world.  Independence Day, Twister, Volcano, Dante’s Peak, Armageddon, Deep Impact…these were the movies that were the tent pole fodder for maximum popcorn consumption, but none of these are films that you sit back and feel you saw something that held any substance.  It’s a genre that has accepted its place as nothing more than a genre of guilty pleasure overindulgence, where convoluted plots and cardboard characters are to be accepted.  Personally Hard Rain, the heist film set during a flood, is my favorite guilty pleasure disaster film.

But what happened to the disaster films with teeth, the films with intense action and drama filled with characters we all gave a damn about?  The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, these were and still are the films that hold up, and they didn’t have the technology that we do now.  What made these films great were the performances that were spread throughout.  Now, instead of a film filled with intelligent, interesting characters thrust into situations where their lives are in peril, we get 12 Disasters.