Posts by Brent Lorentson

Family Guy has reached a level of impact upon the American pop culture where I believe the characters need little to no introduction.  Is there anyone, really, that doesn’t recognize Stewie; after all he’s reached the status of icon and has even become a fixture of the Thanksgiving parade as one of the many floats.  Where The Flintstones, then later The Simpsons were at one time the dominating animated family on the television tackling day to day struggles of the modern American (each in their own and unique way), Family Guy (love it or hate it) now seems to be the go-to animated family.

Football season is well on its way, and that can mean one thing; fantasy football players are at their computers making trades and setting up their lineups.  For some fantasy football is nothing more than Dungeons and Dragons for adults who like football, but those that have their own league, well, you know how cutthroat things can get once your star receiver is injured and that perfect replacement just hit the waiver wire.  The F/X (now I think FXX) show The League may take more than a few jabs at those who take fantasy football a little too seriously, but for myself this is one of my comedies on the air right now. 

The idea of taking a long road trip with your loved one or best friend is something everyone has to do at least a few times in your life.  There is something that occurs while driving down long lonely roads with nothing but music, scenery and good conversation to keep you company.  The road trip film is almost a genre onto itself and can be funny like Plains, Trains and Automobiles, insightful like On The Road, or horrifying like Joyride.  These films are so easy to relate to, because at some point we all share in these kinds of adventures, perhaps not so exciting but memorable nonetheless.

Even though director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s 11, Magic Mike) has an Oscar under his belt and numerous box office hits, the road to getting Behind the Candelabra was a difficult one.  Originally Soderbergh had planned for the film to play in theaters, but every studio was afraid of the project believing it to be “too gay”.  Sure, there have been numerous films in Hollywood that dealt with homosexual subject matter, and considering this was also a bio pic I’m still surprised the typically liberal studio system was so afraid of this project.

In the caverns beneath the planet’s surface there exists a place like no other, a place where duels are settled not with bullets but with slugs.  But these are not the kind of slugs that ooze their way across your driveway; instead they each have their own personalities and skills that are to be used in battle.  In the land of Slugterra, El is the quickest slugslinger out there, but there are a lot of baddies out there looking to take control over Slugterra, and thankfully he has the Shane gang (Trixie, Kord, Pronto and Burpy) to help him out.

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.

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.

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.