Posts by Brent Lorentson

Knowing very little about Thailand’s gangster history, I jumped into The Gangster with no expectations and was left breathless by the time the final credits rolled.  With the energy and violence on display here, I can’t help but feel this is the intensity Scorsese intended in his underwhelming film Gangs of New York; there he had over a hundred million and the street fights, though they had epic buildups, seemed to just fall flat.  The Gangster, on the other hand, is on a micro-budget by comparison and delivers street fights that hurt, that leave scars and stay with you.  Though both films tell separate origins of gangs, I can’t help but feel there is some unspoken cinematic bond between the two.

From the start we meet Jod (Krisada Sukosol Clapp) who is young and eager to make a name for himself.  He’s nothing more than a street thug but wants more than anything to be part of one of the organized gangs.  From the film’s one-on-one knife fighting sequence at the start of the film, I knew I was watching something special.  The brutality of this scene sets the stage for the violence that is to come, and there is plenty of it.

There are so many vampire films, it’s hard to get excited any time a trailer for one comes along.  The Twilight series as well as shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries have managed to take everything I once enjoyed about the menacing creature and turned it into a joke.  Let the Right One In and the American remake Let Me In are the last vampire films that had any substance that went for more than cheap thrills and gore and delivered a solid story.  That is until Kiss of the Damned came along.  It’s a film that keeps things simple, yet brings back the beautiful elegance of the creature we loved to fear.

When we first meet Djuna (Josephine de La Baume), she is locked away in her large beautiful home watching an old B&W romance.  She’s lonely and craves affection, but her affliction of being a vampire doesn’t offer many opportunities to meet the dashing male she is looking for.  But as her luck would have it, a trip to the video store has Djuna coming face to face with her true love Paolo (Milo Ventimigilia), a screenwriter who has come to town to get away and work on his current project.  The two are instantly attracted to one another, but Djuna does all she can to keep Paolo at a distance, afraid of what he may think of her and the harm she may cause.  But he’s persistent, and in the heat of passion she takes a bite and changes him.

First let me come out and say I know very little about Anime; aside from a few episodes of Speed Racer when I was growing up, Anime just never really caught my interest.  But I’m willing to give anything a shot; after all, it’s never too late to discover a new genre in entertainment.  Unfortunately the Shout Factory release of Starzinger was a bad first experience that made for a long cringe-worthy experience.  Films like Howl’s Moving Castle and Grave of the Fireflies are beautiful pieces of animation as well as touching stories.  Then there are the animated series that are simply there to entertain for half an hour; when it comes to Starzinger better known as Spacekeeters, well, this did absolutely nothing for me.  The show that consisted of 26 aired episodes has been edited together to make three movies that Shout Factory has put out in a 2-DVD set.

The story is simple; there is a great disruption in the universe, and the only way the galaxy canbe restored to the peaceful galaxy it was before depends on Princess Aurora reaching the Great Planet.  The Great Planet happens to be on the other end of the galaxy, so to ensure her safety Jan Kugo, a great cyborg warrior, is ordered to escort her.  Along the way Aurora and Kugo confront aliens and monsters but also find two other cyborgs to come along for the journey, Don Hakka and Jogo the Wolf.  The first movie really seems to be about nothing more than the four joining forces before setting off for the last leg of their journey and reaching the Great Planet.

With films like Sharknado it’s clear that that Hollywood can’t say no to a disaster movie no matter how bad it may sound.  It’s almost as though everyone has given up on the idea that a disaster movie can be good; The Towering Inferno holds up after all these years, yet you can almost guarantee if they attempted to remake it, awfulness would certainly follow.  Heck, the Poseidon Adventure was amazing to watch growing up, and even on the heels of Titanic and with “better” special effects at their fingertips, the remake, Poseidon, was a failure.  What I find all the more odd is that with these straight-to-DVD or SYFY-made movies, the bigger the concept the smaller the budget, leaving it no other route but to fail.

The film jumps into the fray as it opens with Seattle in the grips of a storm that is going to cause a magnitude of destruction.  It’s as though we accidently channel-surfed and fell into the final sequence of Twister till suddenly we flash back to nine hours earlier and things are peachy keen in the beautiful city, home to the Space Needle.

The surf culture and those involved are like a tribe separate from everyone else.  Those who are hardcore into the scene seem to care very little about money or material things, all that seems to matter to this group of outsiders are the onslaught of waves that’ll soon be theirs to ride.  Several movies have been made about the sport/lifestyle, Point Break and Chasing Mavericks are the two that stand out the most for me at this time (not sure if admitting my secret love for Back to the Beach is good idea).  Storm Surfers follows a pair of surf legends, Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones, who were in their glory days in the 80’s but now in their late 40s and early 50s, they are continuing to take their passion the next level, and it seems that will end up being more than 75 kilometers away from shore.

Big wave surfing is not simply a sport to marvel at, but as the documentary shows, a blend of all the right things happening all at the right time, and even still  there is a large amount of risk.  Storms tend to bring in the big waves, so the surfers follow the weather reports to find where the next big system is going to roll through.  It’s in Australia where we get to see the team first attempt to tackle some waves, where the danger they also have to confront is the sharp rocks that line the shore.

Ever since I’ve had a little girl in my life, the amount of kids’ programming I’ve gotten to review has mushroomed.  This is by no means a complaint; if anything it has helped me bond with her.  Granted, at times all the kids’ shows can quickly grow to be as grating as nails to a chalkboard, but when shows like Dragons and The Amazing World of Gumball come along I’m not sure who gets more excited, her or myself. When I reviewed The Mystery DVD I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but quickly I found myself pleasantly obsessed with Gumball Watterson and the trouble he would get himself into.  As for the new DVD The Party, well, I can happily say I wasn’t disappointed.

The Watterson family I think would best be summed up as a more family-fun version of The Simpsons.  You have the loving mother, the doofus father, the son always getting into mischief, and the bright daughter that seems to have been adopted.  With the target audience being younger kids, the subject matter may not be as crude, but nevertheless it still is entertaining for any age.

The moment I see the words “inspired by true events”, I simply accept the fact that most likely everything that follows should be taken with a grain of salt.  I understand films are not meant to be reference materials to be seen as fact, but simply as a tool to entertain and hopefully motivate you to learn more about the subject matter.  When it comes to Emperor, I know going in this isn’t going to be a history lesson, so I could allow myself to simply enjoy the show.

In the days following Japan’s World War 2 surrender, General Douglas Macarthur (Tommy Lee Jones) is given ten days to decide the fate of Japan’s emperor through an investigation that will uncover his innocence or guilt of committing war crimes.  Heading the investigation is General Fellers (Matthew Fox) who happens to be an expert on the Japanese culture.

The quack pack returns for season three of the A&E reality series smash hit, Duck Dynasty.  After season 1 I was thinking perhaps this would be a show that would be amusing but quickly lose steam with the season that would follow.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  The Robertson family is quickly becoming the most recognizable family on TV considering they are flooding the stores with their books, DVD’s, and many other products you can find at Wal-Mart.  I can’t help but think this is a family that is doing everything right, and good for them for the success they’ve managed.

Season 3 offers up another 13 episodes of “reality” television the entire family can watch together.  The storylines may be more scripted than I’d like, but let’s face it, reality TV would be boring if not for producers putting together scenarios to hold our interest.  As for the personalities of the family involved throughout the show, I’d like to believe they are no different once the cameras stop rolling.