Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 16th, 2007
Gosh, I don’t know if today’s subject counts as cult movies. These are genre films, though. And they’re old.
Really old.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 14th, 2007
Take Two takes a loss, Jungle Hunting and Turtle Soup 360 style - Welcome to the column that wishes it could celebrate Steak & BJ day with more than a steak known as Dare to Play the Game.
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 13th, 2007
Happy March 13th (and a very special one at that)!
Well, your humble reviewer has gone through quiet a bit in the last several days. I’ll try to make it as brief as possible; work sucks ass. Let me count the ways; I came in at 1:30 in the morning once on a day I wasn’t working, I helped my boss repel some REALLY explicit propositions by one of his employees when we were in New York City on business, I get some medical attention to him when he has a stroke on ANOTHER trip to New York, and what do I get as re...urn for all these favors? I get assigned to something I don’t want to do, doing work that will get outsourced in a year, with management power I don’t have. So yeah, work sucks.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 9th, 2007
There’s exploitation, and there’s exploitation. And then there’s nunsploitation. There are few forms more unabashedly interested in the full-on sleaze wallow, with the possible exception of the nunsploitation film’s close cousin, the Women In Prison (WIP) flick. As ever, this is less a survey (there’s an entire book on the subject out there), more some semi-random musings.
Sleazy as the form gets, its roots are relatively serious in nature (but then, the same is true of the WIP). One of the pioneering works...in the field is Domenico Paoella’s Story of a Cloistered Nun (1973, out on DVD from NoShame). A more handsomely produced film than many others of its ilk would be, it is something of a gem for fans of Dario Argento, in that it stars three of his heroines: Suzy Kendall (from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) is the mother superior, Catherine Spaak (from Cat O’ Nine Tails) is the bad girl, and Eleonora Giorgi (from Inferno) is the title character. The basic formula is here: unwilling novice is locked up by her family in the convent, is lusted over by her fellow nuns, and becomes pregnant thanks to an illicit affair. Much torment ensues. This effort is, however, far more restrained in the nudity department than most of its successors, and much of the time comes very close to passing itself off as a serious period drama. Something one would not be able to say of the works of Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 7th, 2007
More 360 memory, Less Taunting in Lost Planet and sitting in Time Pilot - Welcome to the column that is listed as Elite but reads like a bad issue of Mad Magazine known as Dare to Play the Game.
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2007
When last I left you, the viewer, I was in the midst of frantically typing “Yo” so that I could be a participant of the chat with Warner Brothers Home Video, to ask about any coming next-gen titles from the studio. What we found out was fairly illuminating. The Warner hits L.A. Confidential, Poltergeist, Deliverance and the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet will all appear on HD-DVD and Blu-ray this year, with Heat and The Music Man to come out in 2008. They also reconfirmed ...hat other Stanley Kubrick films, along with Blade Runner, should be on their way out as well.
In other, perhaps tastier Blu-Ray news, Bill Hunt managed to get a quick look at a large though not complete look at the Universal titles on HD-DVD for most of the coming year. Titles include Midnight Run, The Big Lebowski, Lost in Translation, Mallrats, Being John Malkovich, Born on the Fourth of July and The Bourne Identity. How much of a dent Universal makes remains to be seen, but at least they finally may have some activity worth talking about.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 2nd, 2007
I always have the distinct feeling, when writing this column, of shipping coals to Newcastle, but I haven’t let that stop me yet, so onward. Today, boys and girls, a few reading recommendations. I trust that most of you are capable of using Google and tracking down your favourite cult movie sites, so I thought I’d point, instead, to a few magazines. Print ones. The kind you hold in your hand. Gasp.
Let’s get the conflict of interest portion over with first. Don’t let the fact that I also write for The Ph...ntom of the Movies’ VideoScope let you see too much bias here. I was a reader for much longer than I’ve been a contributor. The mag has become much slicker since its semi-newssheet incarnation in the early 90s. Each issue is packed with reviews of the latest genre/cult DVD releases, with specialized columns focusing on TV, anime, foreign, and so on. There will also be at least a couple of interviews with creators/actors/directors/etc. Generally speaking, the target audience is fan of varied tastes, and the focus of the reviews is primarily on whether the movie in question is worth watching or not, rather than detailed examinations of the DVDs and their features. If you can’t find something here that speaks directly to you, then I give up. The magazine has also spawned a couple of excellent books.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on February 28th, 2007
PS3 is backwards, Conan moving forward, and a 360 schedule out of this world - Welcome to the column that is going nowhere fast but doing it with a big bang known as Dare to Play the Game.
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on February 26th, 2007
Well, the news late today about Sony deciding to come into the affordably priced standalone market by introducing a Blu-Ray player of their own that will come out in the spring/early summer. The BDP-S300 will retail for $600 and unlike the first gen that’s $300 more, will actually include CD playback. So now that they’re making their strides towards affordable hardware (stop with the PS3 argument) with more price drops to come, it’ll be interesting to see when, how much and how often the cheaper HD-DVD equipment does...
In terms of disc releases this week, both camps share the Steve McQueen films Bullitt and The Getaway, and the Nine Inch Nails film Beside You in Time, while the Blu-Ray gang gets Stranger Than Fiction as an exclusive.
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2007
The cult film collector will often have a rather divided personality when it comes to DVD editions of desired movies. On the one hand, perfection is ardently sought – no better example of this can be seen than the down-to-the-very-last-frame detail of the reviews in Video Watchdog. In a perfect world, all movies would be released by Criterion.
On the other hand, down that road lies both madness and bankruptcy. And the fact of the matter is that many films, particularly of the B-level (or lower) from ...he 50's and 60's, will never look amazing, no matter how much care is given to the transfer. The source material will remain firmly and wonderfully in the realm of the sow’s ear.
