Posts by Gino Sassani

"Space...The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!"

I wish I could say that this new 2-DVD set of Star Trek episodes had gone where none had gone before.

Most films start with a screenplay. Certainly the true genesis is usually an idea or concept, but the film starts to take shape around a screenplay. Never has that been more true then with 3 Holes And A Smoking Gun. In fact, you could say it has a killer script. I'm not actually talking about the one written by Scott Fivelson for the movie. And, when I say killer, I'm not being at all figurative. This is a script that people will literally kill for, hence the smoking gun in the title. That's not to say that Fivelson's work isn't pretty good here. It's quite clever, but it's not the dominating aspect of this particular movie. That comes later.

"I'm Leonardo da Vinci. Revolutionary painter, artist and visionary, of the Republic of Florence."

The term “Renaissance man” is often used to describe a person who has a very wide range of interests in which they have become quite skilled. It's taken from the traits of the many artists, innovators and writers of the 15th century. And while the term might well apply to any number of such historical figures, there is none for whom it is more apt than Leonardo DaVinci. 

James Wilder gets to play a killer screenwriter in 3 Holes And A Smoking Gun. He's getting quite a bit of recognition for the performance. In addition to snagging the Independent Spirit Award at the upcoming Garden State Film Festival, he also won Best Actor Award at the Winter Film Awards. If you want to know why, you should check out the film. In the meantime, I had a chance to talk to James about it all. You can catch some of his insights before you watch the film. Bang it here to listen in on my chat with James Wilder.

 

Hopefully, you've checked out my interview with Michael Seater from Bank$tas. We're not finished with that film yet. Jeremy's got the review coming up and our buddies over at Arc Entertainment figured you guys might have your own financial crises and want a chance to win a copy for yourself. I'm guessing they were right. So, they've given us 3 copies to give away right here.

To win a copy, just follow these simple instructions.

Can you mine comedy out of a financial crises and the student loan issues in this country. You can if you're Arc Entertainment. They're releasing Bank$tas on DVD Tuesday. I got the chance to talk with one of the film's stars. Michael Seater might be best known to fans from Bomb Girls and Life With Derek. He gets to play in the world of high finance with the likes of Alan Thicke and Supergirl herself Laura Vandervoort. Bang it here to check out my chat with Michael Seater.

 

When Stephen King wrote The Running Man back in 1982, he might very well have been looking through a crystal ball at the television landscape of the 21st century. While we haven't started executing criminals in game-show fashion ...yet … reality television has had a huge impact on our pop culture. From Big Brother to Survivor, Americans continue to get their kicks watching attention-needy "contestants" engage in silly little dramas and the occasional shoving match. Maybe we should blame it all on Jerry Springer.

"Remember when our biggest problem was which Mayan to kill?"

All good things come to an end, and all rides eventually reach their destination. It's all come home for the gang at Sons of Anarchy, and you can believe that if anyone is left standing when it's over, there will be scars. Kurt Sutter has taken the culture of the motorcycle club, don't call them a gang, and made it accessible to a regular audience. He did that not by attempting to overwhelm us with the iconography of the genre.

"The world has indeed gone topsy turvy".

It's as inevitable as death and taxes. When you review movies that come out on home video, you will see a lot of zombie films. Every wannabe filmmaker with a camcorder and 20 bucks thinks they can break into the business with a few staggering zombies, bare breasts and a screaming hero laying down profanities and head shots for 80 minutes.

"We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."

Many of the headlines read: "Spock is dead". Of course, that's not really true. Spock is a fictional character that will live on likely longer than any of us. But fans of science fiction in general and Star Trek fans in particularly have lost a friend today who was very human. Leonard Nimoy was 83.