Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 7th, 2014
Baseball is huge, and Bollywood is huge, so imagine if you put them together. In many ways, Million Dollar Arm is about Indian culture and what a separate world it is from ours. The film starts out in Los Angeles where J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm from Mad Men) is a sports agent who has broken off from a big agency to start his own firm. His partner, Aash (Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show), is very nervous about where their next client is coming from, since they lost a big one right at the start of the film. Bernstein, thinking on his feet, decides to pursue an untapped market for baseball and the big-money stars who are big-league pitchers. He sees India as completely virgin territory for baseball. But the problem is there are no baseball players in India. Aash gives him the idea by talking about cricket on cable.
Clearly, cricket and baseball are totally different, but Bernstein is desperate. He pitches his idea to a big-shot money man. The money man, Chang (Tzi Ma), listens and agrees with big conditions. They are basically impossible conditions, but again, Bernstein is desperate. Bernstein had a great life once, and he still has the big expensive house and the Jaguar, but his time to make this big gamble work is running out. A nurse (Lake Bell) rents his guesthouse. She's a sweet person, but Bernstein usually has a different model girlfriend on a regular basis. Her washing machine is broken just as he is walking out the door to head halfway around the world. He gives her keys to the house and tells her to just use the machine and be careful.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 7th, 2014
By the time the innovative opening credits for Sons of Liberty wrap up, the movie has outlined an expansive backstory that mixes historical fact (the real-life Sons of Liberty form in Boston in 1765) and fiction (Allister Salinger, the head of the mysterious Ordo Mundi, designs the first successful human clone in 1974). It’s surprisingly dense stuff, especially for a jumbled, straight-to-DVD action/thriller that mostly plays out like a particularly violent episode of NCIS.
To be fair, part of my confusion early on in the film probably stemmed from the fact that I didn’t realize I was watching the third movie in a series of low-budget action films from director Drew Hall. Sons of Liberty follows Skyhook and The Phoenix Rises, both of which came out in 2012. Each of the films follows a group of scientists and operatives who work to thwart various terrorist groups. At least that seems to describe these last two movies; from what I gather, Skyhook mostly has characters standing around and talking. (Even worse, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is nowhere to be found.)
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 7th, 2014
There was a new cowboy in Dallas, and he wasn’t throwing touchdown passes. But Walker was almost gone before he could really get started. After just four episodes the show’s production company suffered financial collapse, and the show was rescued at the last minute by CBS Productions, who would continue to run the show for its nearly decade-long run. For nine years Chuck Norris brought us the ultimate Texas Ranger in a formula cops and robbers show. The show often became a parody of itself but maintained a solid viewer ship throughout. Truthfully, what started as a one-man show (it was originally called Chuck Norris Is Walker, Texas Ranger) became a good working ensemble that probably kept the train going for so long. Walker (Norris) is a tough guy Texas Ranger. He is partnered with Sydney Cooke (Peebles) and Jimmy Trivetti (Gilyard), who’s an ex-jock with a brain. Walker had a love interest and eventual wife in the local assistant district attorney Alex Cahill (later Walker). Together they fight the evils that come to the high plains of Texas armed with their fists, six-shooters, and Stetsons.
Norris almost deadpans his entire performance. Let’s face it, the man is no accomplished thespian. Still, Norris fans are quite passionate about their guy. There’s a popular T-shirt design that lauds their hero in epic fashion. One of my favorites is : “McGyver can build a plane out of gum and paper clips but Chuck Norris can kill him and take the plane.” Another brags: “Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas”. And there’s the humorous: “Chuck Norris knows what Willis is talkin’ about”. Fans of Norris were never disappointed in what they got here. The requisite martial arts and tough guy talk are present pretty much in every episode.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 6th, 2014
So you want to make a zombie flick, but you realize everyone and their (undead) brother seems to have beat you to the bite punch. The question becomes, “how am I going to make my monster movie standout?” Even if you mess around with time, place, and genre, it’s hard to stake out new territory. The micro-budgeted/straight-to-DVD Dead and the Damned — also released as Cowboys & Zombies in 2011 — tried to play with all three. This new sequel takes a more typical approach to zombie horror; in fact, the biggest departures are a curiously-armored hero, a disabled heroine, and an amusing undercurrent of horniness.
The Dead and the Damned II — you can tell this is a serious sequel because they went with a roman numeral — opens with Lt. Col. Sawyer (Robert Tweten) solemnly incinerating the pile of goo that used to be his family and putting the ashes in a thermos. (Sadly, there wasn’t a Folgers tin can readily available.) Sawyer proceeds to dispatch a bunch of zombies and embarks on a mission to scatter his wife and daughter’s ashes in the Pacific.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 6th, 2014
My mom's worn-out VHS tape was simply labeled “Motown 25.” I can very vividly remember it sitting in the entertainment center of our living room in Puerto Rico when I was little. It even migrated over to St. Petersburg with the rest of our family almost 20 years ago. As time passed and we adopted DVDs, a lot of our VHS tapes got pushed to the background (or the scrap heap). But not “Motown 25.” I suppose I never realized the historic, star-studded concert celebrating Motown's 25th anniversary had never been available on DVD. Well thanks to StarVista Entertainment/Time Life Entertainment, that's no longer the case.
“Some of the things you're gonna see this evening are gonna blow your mind.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 5th, 2014
In 1996 it was a brave new world for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino was still riding the wave of Pulp Fiction’s fame, while Rodriguez was going strong with his follow up to El Mariachi, Desperado (which went on to be a bigger hit). The two had crossed paths at various film festivals, and through the course of their meetings they discussed various projects they could possibly do together. The project that brought these two together would be horror/ crime genre mixer, From Dusk Till Dawn. It was a movie that would not only go on to be a cult hit but also be the film that launched George Clooney into movie stardom (because really, who remembers The Peacemaker?)
Almost twenty years later Rodriguez has established himself as a cinematic rebel who works outside of the Hollywood system. One would think that it would be career suicide, but instead he’s become one of the most prolific filmmakers with a catalog of films to his credit that are uniquely his and untouched by studio heads. Now Rodriguez has a new ambitious project to tackle: his own television network, the El Ray Network, which specializes in old grindhouse films and a new slate of genre-themed programming. The first of its original programming is a television reboot of the 1996 film, From Dusk Till Dawn.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 5th, 2014
by John Delia
Taking on characters that are far from their norm, Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson and Amy Poehler show their comedy with a serious edge in the romantic drama Are You Here. Surprisingly, the three can hold their own and show their fans that they have an ability to take on other more serious roles. The movie, now on DVD for home viewing, is also available in Blu-ray.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on October 2nd, 2014
Despite its found-footage conceit and similar-sounding title, The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill is somewhat of a different demon animal than a certain recent horror franchise. Given that found-footage fatigue seems to be setting in among critics and audiences, any sort of deviation from the norm should be welcome. The problem is this film ultimately doesn’t deviate far enough and hedges its bets with a climax that seems transplanted in from a handful of other movies. More importantly, viewers will probably be too bored to even care by the time movie gets around to being scary.
The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill, like many of its horror brethren, is “based on true events.” (I cannot emphasize those quotation marks strongly enough.) What does help the film stand apart is its real-life spooky setting. In 2010, a group of filmmakers sets out to explore and document the haunted history of St. Mary’s Church in Clophill, a quaint English village. That history includes rumors of Satanic rituals and ghostly apparitions. As a result, Clophill and its church have become a popular attraction for grave robbers and people interested in the macabre.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 1st, 2014
It’s that time of year again, where spooky decorations are set up and pumpkins are carved. Most importantly, though, is that October is the month where horror fans can celebrate their favorite month of the year with as many blood-soaked horror titles as they can handle. Unfortunately, though, it seems companies enjoy taking advantage of this time of year and will attach the Halloween name to just about anything in hopes of getting people to buy their product. I mention this because though the title may be Grave Halloween, it has absolutely nothing to do with the holiday but everything to do with the Suicide Forest in Japan. The Suicide Forest is an actual location in Japan where hundreds of people go to year after year to take their lives. It’s gone on for years and has been a hot spot for paranormal researchers to investigate and to try to uncover what brings so many people to this location to die. It’s a location that screams to be the focal point of horror and fantasy, and it seems SYFY channel is the first on American soil to take on this mysterious location.
Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) is a woman who is haunted by the memory of her birth mother. These are not fond memories but instead nightmares that revolve around her mother’s death. Though she was only four when she was adopted, Maiko has a need to discover the truth about her mother’s death and to release her soul that is possibly trapped within the Suicide Forest. A team of student filmmakers are working on a documentary about the Suicide Forest and Amber (Cassi Thomson), the producer of the project, plans to make Maiko the focus of her film.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 30th, 2014
If you were around in 1972, television was a very different place. By midnight most stations were shutting down to the tune of the national anthem. After that there was a test pattern and a high-pitched ring that would fill your screen until dawn when programming would resume. Of course, there were also only three networks, and, if you were lucky enough to live in a large market, a handful of local stations. All good people were expected to be safely tucked into their beds long before 1:00 AM. It was a very different world from today when we get 24-hour programming on over 200 stations or more. Oh, and there was no home video, in case you thought you could just pop in a movie for your late-night viewing pleasure. Video games? Forget it. In just a couple of years you were going to get Pong.
The music business was also very different in 1972. It was the age of the singer-songwriter and rock bands who actually played instruments. Music was sold on vinyl record albums, and there was no MTV or VH1. If you wanted to see your favorite band perform, you went to a concert. There were dance shows that went all the way back to the 50's with Dick Clark's American Bandstand or Soul Train. But these shows featured performances that were lip-synched to the familiar recordings. These were almost never live performances. If you were lucky, you're favorite band might show up on Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan before that. Downloading music meant you worked at a record store, and you were unloading boxes of albums from the back of a delivery truck. Even the Walkman was a decade in the future. Bands just didn't have access to the fans the way they do today. All of that started to change on August 19, 1972. That was the day The Midnight Special arrived, and things would never be the same again.
