Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jonathan Foster on June 17th, 2013
Hank Williams, Sr. was arguably one the most influential country artists of all time. During his short life (he died at the young age of 29) he had more than 30 #1 singles. His music has been covered by not just country artists, but has also crossed over into the pop, gospel and blues genres. With The Last Ride, this music legend joins Johnny Cash and Loretta Lyn in having their lives put on film.
When a stranger with a brand new Cadillac comes into his garage, young Silas (Jesse James, As Good as It Gets) takes notice. After Silas overhears the stranger asking for a driver, he immediately offers his services. He is hired and finds out his job is to get “Mr. Wells” (Henry Thomas, E.T. the Extraterrestrial) to West Virginia in two days, and to get him there sober. If Wells arrives drunk or hungover, Silas won’t get paid. Fighting the weather and sometimes each other, the two embark on what ended up being the last trip Hank Williams ever took.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 13th, 2013
"Me and my boy here, we're gonna put a whuppin' on ya!"
In case you haven't been paying attention, 2013 is turning out to be the year of the returning action stars. The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger teamed up with Korean action director Jee-woon Kim to deliver a very entertaining ride in The Last Stand. Sly Stallone teamed up with action icon Walter Hill to bring us the not-so-entertaining Bullet To The Head. Of course, perhaps the most eagerly awaited return was Bruce Willis back in the role that made him an action star in the first place. This is less Willis's return and more a potential swansong for cowboy cop John McLane. It's the fifth entry in the Die Hard franchise and the first sequel written originally as a Die Hard film and not something adapted to the character. With the disappointing Live Free Or Die Hard still fresh in my memory, all bets were off when I entered the cinema for a sneak peak of A Good Day To Die Hard.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 13th, 2013
This is my second trip to the land of Ooo, and this time I’d have all of season 2 to kick back and enjoy the weird and crazy adventures of Jake the dog and Finn the human. Fans of the show seem to have been clamoring to have entire seasons of the show released as a whole, rather than the compilation packs that have been released in the past. With this season 2 release there are 26 episodes together on one disc and running a little over 5 hours. Having just survived season 2, I feel it’s safe to say the show is something that will grow on you, but really like anything else should be indulged in small doses rather than a marathon viewing session.
The show doesn’t have anything that resembles a linear storyline; every episode can stand on its own, which makes it accessible for anyone to sit down and start enjoying the fun. Guardians of Sunshine stands out from the rest for me, where Finn and Jake get sucked into their friend BMO (who happens to be a video game console), and they are forced to take on the three big bosses of their favorite video game. This is a concept that most gamers I feel at some point have all fantasized about, whether it be to live in Zelda or even Grand Theft Auto, to live in this alternate reality would in theory be a blast. Leave it to Finn and Jake to show the perils of video game life, though it was pretty awesome seeing the 8-bit versions of Finn and Jake in action.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 13th, 2013
For a significant part of the last century, the Western was the dominant form of entertainment, ruling the Hollywood roost on both the big and small screen. Some of moviedom’s most iconic sounds — galloping horses, trusty six shooters, Ennio Morricone’s best work, “In this world, there’s two kinds of people: those with loaded guns and those who dig” — have come from the genre. And it all started In Old Arizona.
The 1929 Fox film was one of the most groundbreaking and innovative motion pictures of its time. In Old Arizona was the first major Western to use the new sound technology, as well as the first “talkie” to be filmed outside the confines of a cozy studio lot. (Filming took place in Utah, California, but, ironically, not Arizona.) Star Warner Baxter won an Oscar for his portrayal of the charismatic Cisco Kid, a performance that served as an early prototype for the singing cowboy on film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Jeremy Butler on June 12th, 2013
Hansel and Gretel, everyone has heard of this fairy tale, right? The Brothers Grimm tale about a brother and sister lost in the woods who come across a house made of candy. They go inside and are soon captured by a witch who goes about stuffing them with candy to fatten them up to be slaughtered. Somehow the cunning pair manages to escape their shackles, and while the witch is distracted with the oven, they push her into the oven and destroy her. We have all heard the tale, but what happened afterwards? Did they go back home, or did they live out their days in the witch’s house? Clearly I’m not the only one to wonder what happen to this pair of siblings, and now thanks to Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, and the folks at the Paramount and MGM, we have our answer.
Fast forward many years later (as the film doesn’t give a specific number of years that have gone by), Hansel and Gretel have grown up to become famous and equally dangerous witch hunters. When the town of Augsburg is plagued by witches who have been abducting the town’s children; the incompetent Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare, Prison Break) and a mob of townspeople are in the process of condemning a local woman to be burned at the stake without any evidence of guilt. The mayor in an attempt to calm the panic of the townspeople has brought in Hansel (Jeremy Renner, The Avengers) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton, Prince of Persia).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 12th, 2013
“In the old days, we did the news well. You know how? We just decided to.”
Sounds simple enough, so what’s keeping everyone from doing the news well? Well, other than a country that feels more politically polarized than ever and a population that mostly seems interested in cherry picking the “facts” they’d rather hear, I can’t think of a single thing. In fact, HBO’s The Newsroom pointedly compares the idea of putting on a quality news broadcast that educates the electorate and earns great ratings to Don Quixote embarking on one of his foolish quests.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 11th, 2013
"You're capable of more than you know."
Walt Disney was always fascinated with the world of Oz. After his Snow White experiment proved that fantasy films were economically possible, he was planning to journey to Oz next. Unfortunately, he was a victim of his own success. It was the very box office magic that Snow White brought in that inspired MGM to purchase the rights to The Wizard Of Oz and create their iconic film. Because of that turn of events, the rights were not available for Walt and his magic studio.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on June 11th, 2013
When it comes to martial artists out of Thailand, the big go-to name people seem to know is Tony Jaa (Ong-Bak). But Thailand has another martial arts star, and after finishing This Girl is Badass I’m convinced Jeeja Yanin is going to be the bigger star. Most may recognize Jeeja from the 2008 film Chocolate; after the last thirty minutes of that film I was ready to see her in more action. Though she’s had other titles released since Chocolate, This Girl is Badass gets to be the follow-up film since her 2008 release.
Now, I don’t know how many of you remember the bike messenger flick Premium Rush, but the plot for that runs very closely to the plot for This Girl is Badass. Jeeja plays a bike messenger, Jukkalan, who also delivers packages for two rivaling crime bosses to make some extra cash. Once she gets found out, she gets caught in the middle of this smuggling war. What I wasn’t ready for was for this to be a comedy that reminded me of the old Zucker brothers and Mel Brooks’s films (only not nearly as good). The crime bosses are good and hard to take seriously, one being an obese man with a very effeminate voice, the other an older man with a foot fetish.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 10th, 2013
I don’t like remakes for probably the same reasons you don’t like them — they’re lazy and creatively bankrupt — but I’m also not completely against the idea of revisiting an older film. When the older film isn’t a beloved classic that shouldn’t be touched or when a story can be more effectively presented using technology that simply didn’t exist when the original movie was made, remakes aren’t such a bad idea. By those standards, 1984’s The Philadelphia Experiment is actually an excellent choice to receive the remake treatment. And that’s why I’m so disappointed to see it go so wrong.
Both incarnations of The Philadelphia Experiment get their names from a hush-hush World War II military experiment — also known as “Project Rainbow” — carried out by the U.S. Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1943 that is almost definitely a hoax. (Unless it’s not.) The experiment involved using a cloaking device to render the Navy destroyer USS Eldridge invisible. In the 1984 film starring Michael Paré and Nancy Allen, two WWII-era sailors were transported 40 years into the future through a vortex created by the ship’s generator.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 5th, 2013
“Each director was given a letter of the alphabet and asked to choose a word. They then created a short tale of death that related to their chosen word. They had complete artistic freedom regarding the content of their segments.”
It’s easy to see why 26 talented filmmakers from across the world leapt at the chance to show audiences 26 different ways to die. Obviously, you can’t exactly be squeamish when you sit down to watch an anthology called The ABCs of Death. But I still wish fewer directors had interpreted “complete artistic freedom” as “make the most ridiculous and disgusting movie you possibly can.”
