Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2009
“They’re not leaving till they get dessert.”
Director John Gulager might be the son of famed cult B movie star Clu Gulager, but that’s not how he broke into the business. He was a Project Greenlight winner. Project Greenlight is a competition for up and coming directors. They compete in a reality show style setting for the opportunity to direct a major release film. Now, I didn’t say it was a big budget film, but it does get backed and released by a major studio. When John Gulager won, his reward film was the original Feast. The film did well enough that now a couple of years later we’re on the third installment of what has become a somewhat cult hit franchise. Nothing has changed in this third film; in fact, it could be argued that the three films could be cut together into one long epic piece and it would work just as well.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2009
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
“A movie filled with so much terrible horribleness, you’ll crap someone else’s pants”
Bruce Campbell has carved out himself quite a little niche in the acting game. No one would consider him a superstar, and the films he’s most notable for are the kind of cult favorite films that critics tend to hate, all except this particular critic. What’s kind of funny about the whole thing is that Campbell has appeared in some seriously successful films, including all three Spider-Man movies. His parts in these affairs might have been small, but Sam Raimi fans know that it wouldn’t be a Raimi film if it didn’t have Bruce Campbell somewhere. Campbell got his start with the Raimi brothers doing little backyard films with them as children. When Raimi got the opportunity to create something a little higher profile, his first choice as the lead was Bruce. That film became the fan favorite Evil Dead and spawned two sequels. The Evil Dead films don’t take themselves or the zombie genre very seriously. They’re a farce, and a failure to recognize that is why the critics hate those films so much. Just take another look at them. The blood effects border on the ridiculous, and Campbell plays such an anti-hero that we laughed far more than we screamed at those movies. For Raimi it meant the chance to become one of the best selling directors out there. For Bruce Campbell it meant wearing the title of schlock king for the next 30 years. If you understand what I just said about The Evil Dead films, than you understand Bruce. And you simply have to understand Bruce, or you will hate this movie.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
Paul Newman was born in 1925 near Cleveland, Ohio. He was an attendee of the world famous New York Actor’s Studio drama school in 1947. His first movie is included here, The Silver Chalice. The effort actually embarrassed him, and he took out an ad apologizing for the performance. It was looking like this young actor was going to disappear into obscurity in short order. Fortunately for moviegoers everywhere he decided to stick it out. He would deliver in the 1960’s and 1970’s some of the best movies ever made. His team ups with Robert Redford made for one of the best acting partnerships in film history. That’s what I’d like to see as a collection. Films like The Sting, All The President’s Men, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would make the best collection
With the Acadamy Awards nearby, Warner Brothers decided to trot out a tribute to the recently deceased Paul Newman. Unfortunately they picked some of his worst, and certainly lesser known films to do the job. All of these films represent either an early point in Newman’s acting or directing career or as is the case with When Time Ran Out, a late career paycheck before Newman found out he could still do good films. None of these efforts represent his power films of the 1970’s.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
Escape To Chimp Eden tastes a lot like Orangutan Island. Both shows deal with the rescue of captive abused primates. In both shows the animals are taken to a rehabilitation center where the goal is to teach the animals basic survival skills. The hope is that they might one day return to the wild and be able to survive and socialize with other wild primates. That’s about as far as the similarities go, however. In Orangutan Island, the show is very much about the apes themselves and their growing skills. In Chimp Eden, however, the spotlight is almost always on the incredibly melodramatic Eugene Cussons. This guy could give William Shatner lessons in overacting.
In the show’s opening credits, Cussons announces that he once intended to have a “normal” life. He considered being a software “king”, whatever that is, and settle into a 9-5 job. However he was so touched by images of abused and neglected chimps in captivity that he felt a calling to perform these self-described rescue “missions”. First of all, my wife is an IT person, and I don’t know who told Cussons it was a 9-5 job, because it most certainly is not. If it is, someone forgot to fill my wife’s employers in on that rule. You IT folks should feel just a tad insulted here. I was, and I’m not even an IT guy. Anyway, Cussons walks around treating these “missions” as if he were James Bond on some dangerous espionage case. At many points he turns to the camera and tells us how exhausted he is now. He looks mentally shot in almost every frame he’s in. The man’s a drama queen in the extreme. In one frame he has to lift the door on a transfer cage, and then let it drop. That’s all he has to do. When he’s done he sprawls out over the cage, wiping imaginary blood and sweat from his face, and tells us how he’s drained and exhausted. He refers to one place where he keeps a couple of chimps until he can get his paperwork in order as a “Chimp Safe House”, then he shows us how he has to let the owner know all about chimp care. Apparently this was the first case for that safe house. He details his paperwork efforts as if he were Indiana Jones trying to get to the Holy Grail. He has no respect for the humans he interacts with. He constantly condescends and yells at them, telling them “I’m giving the orders here”. If you have a low tolerance for this kind of showboating, “watch me suffer for my work” mentality, this show will wear thin for you before you really get to see the chimps in action at all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 24th, 2009
“Safety is the greatest risk of all, but safety leaves no room for miracles, and miracles are the only sure thing in life.”
Spike Lee finds a noble cause in the experiences of the Buffalo Soldiers, fighting in Italy during World War II. There’s no question that history hasn’t always dealt fairly with the contributions the black soldiers have made on the battlefields that have, at times, defined our nation. From the American Revolution through to today’s War On Terror, the black soldier has risked and often laid down his life for a country that at least during World War II, didn’t honor his service or humanity. The problem is that Lee lost focus of whatever it was he was trying to say or whoever it was he was attempting to honor here. This movie never is about these particular soldiers or their contributions. There is no history, to speak of here at all. We don’t see the formation of these units, and the film doesn’t go into their overall importance in the war effort. Instead the film is more about the Italian resistance during Nazi occupation and the politics and betrayals of that movement. It’s almost as if these few black soldiers are merely witnesses to a series of events that were never under their control.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 23rd, 2009
There are many shows out there that never make it past the original pilot episode. Most of them fail because there isn’t anything original about the plot or perhaps the cast chosen isn’t strong enough to bring out a good character. Heck, it could even be as trivial as the locale chosen to whether or not the network executives give it a nod. So the question remains, what exactly happens to these pilots that either fail or haven’t been picked up yet for next season? They get released on dvd. A little publicity never hurts.
Joseph Armstrong (played by Keith David) is the head of the SIS, the Special Investigation Section. The SIS is a secret department of the Los Angeles Police Department that seeks out the worst of the worst habitual offenders and brings them to justice. One way or another. After one of the squad dies in a violent gunfight, Assistant Chief Armstrong needs to find a replacement, one that won’t cause anymore problems and won’t make mistakes.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on February 21st, 2009
Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies is a reliable piece of filmmaking exemplary of the great director’s ability to make a tensely watch-able film, even if said film isn’t his best work. Such is the case with this Leonardo DiCaprio-Russell Crowe-led action-thriller that focuses on the post-Iraqi invasion conflict. DiCaprio’s Roger Ferris is left with those little pieces of death that have proven so much more dangerous after the old regime was toppled by U.S. forces, and he seems fine with it.More at home is he in the Middle East because control always seems to be within his grasp. It’s when that control is threatened by the meddling of Washington, D.C., bureaucrats that he finds it difficult to function.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 20th, 2009
“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But, there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real but not so brightly lit, a darkside.”
I have been waiting a long time for this release. Tales From The Darkside. Not since the likes of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits has there been a really good sci-fi/horror anthology until 1984’s Tales. Not to say that each episode was a winner. In fact, most were pretty weak and relatively lame, but when this show was good, it was very good. These tales weren’t any ordinary specter spectaculars, but were told by spectacular story writers, directors, and producers. Look at just this first season and you’ll find some of the top names in the field involved in one way or another. You’ll see the likes of: Stephen King, Tom Savini, George Romero, Robert Bloch, Frank De Palma, and Harlan Ellison. The tales often came with a twist or at least a big finale in the end. Much like a train’s headlight in a long tunnel; you might have seen it coming from a mile away, but it’s hard to avoid the impact.
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