Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 15th, 2013
Embrace of the Vampire is a remake of the 1995 erotic bloodsucker thriller of the same name. The original’s only greatest claim to fame is that it starred Who’s the Boss? cutie Alyssa Milano in her first, ahem, “grown up” role. In other words, the bar wasn’t exactly sky high for the remake. (This is not Gus Van Sant doing a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.) The well-made newer film certainly “embraces” the erotic thriller DNA of the original. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem overly concerned with the "vampire."
Charlotte Hawthorn (Sharon Hinnendael) is a shy college student who arrives at a co-ed campus after previously attending an all-girls Catholic school. We are quickly introduced to her friendly roommate Nicole (Tiio Horn) and Eliza (C.C. Sheffield), Charlotte’s snarky rival on the fencing team. We also learn Charlotte suffers from violent, vivid dreams — involving sex and buckets of blood — that lead to her waking up in unexpected places.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Jeremy Butler on October 15th, 2013
Me and my big mouth; as you may have guessed it wasn’t destiny that brought me and the first season of Teen Mom together. Reality television is not one of my favorite programs. So by now I imagine that it is pretty obvious that I went into this program with high reservations. But as it turns out, even I wasn’t about to keep them up the entire time. Deciding to think of it as a long-running documentary, I see the importance of a show like this in regards to raising awareness among teenagers considering becoming sexually active, and after watching I am grateful that a show like this exists.
Picking up where its lead-in show, 16 and Pregnant, left off, Teen Mom continues to tell the tale of Amber, Catelynn, Farrah, and Maci now that their kids Leah, Carly, Sophia, and Bentley respectively are now out of their wombs and in their arms; highlighting the struggles that each one must now undertake as they attempt to find balance and incorporate some semblance of their old lives with their new circumstance:
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2013
Leland Orser is an actor. You've seen his face a lot over the years playing deranged or demented or despondent characters. He is married to Jeanne Tripplehorn, who is probably better known from the HBO series Big Love and movies like Basic Instinct and Waterworld. Orser decided to write and direct his first movie and have his wife play his wife in the movie. It is an intense character study that includes other top actors like Laura Linney, Eliot Gould, Kyle Chandler, Jason Ritter and Julie White. Everyone in the movie seems to be in support of Jeanne Tripplehorn, who has been given quite a character to play.
Tripplehorn plays someone who seems to be falling apart. The movie starts with her husband on top of her while she stares distractedly out the window. Their relationship seems to become even more disjointed as the day begins. They both begin to completely unravel. It takes a while to get an idea what might be going on. But this movie is in no hurry to clear things up for the viewer.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2013
Dave Foley is something of a celebrity, not to overstate the fact. He starred in a famous skit comedy show (Kids in the Hall) and sitcom (News Radio). He's not like super-huge famous, but he has a strong cult following. He also looks like the sweetest and least objectionable person in the world. I say he looks like that. He may be the sweetest person in the world, but he is definitely not the least objectionable person in the world. His standup DVD clearly tries to dispel the notion that he doesn't hold a lot of objectionable views. This DVD is definitely not for everyone. If you’re a very religious and conservative person, this DVD is not for you.
Dave starts of by saying he is not gay. He feels he has to say this, but apparently a lot of people think he is gay, probably because he wore a lot of dresses on Kids in the Hall and was very good at playing women. This leads him into covering sexuality in great detail and in all its awkward glory. He doesn't shy away from covering many very intimate moments from his own life. So let's just say lots of bad words are used. He may be sweet, but he's pretty raunchy.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 13th, 2013
At some point as we’re getting older I think we all get a little nostalgic for the things we liked when we were younger. For everyone I believe our reasons are different for having this trip to the past, whether it’s playing that old cassette that never seemed to leave our car radio, revisiting old NES games, and most commonly I think it’s the movies and TV shows we looked upon so lovingly in our youth. Sadly, though, these trips to the past seem to leave us scratching our heads, wondering what we were ever thinking. And that would about sum up my experience reviewing Shout’s release of the Nickelodeon series Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
Before there was Monsters Inc. and Monsters University, there was another batch of monsters that did their best to scare the daylights out of us humans. In this monster-filled world, we follow the adventures of three friends who are in school learning the skills of how to scare humans. Ickis (Charles Adler) is a bit of the reluctant hero of the group; he wants so desperately to be a great monster who can scare the pants off of anyone, but with his short stature and large bunny-like ears he looks more cuddly than menacing. Then there is Oblina (Christine Cavanaugh), a black-and-white-striped-candy-cane-looking creature with giant red lips, and Krumm (David Eccles), a short, chubby creature that can never seem to keep hold of his eyes. Teaching the young students is their headmaster, The Gromble (Gregg Berger), who, like any good monster, is hard to satisfy and loves to scream and scare his young students.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on October 12th, 2013
Jenna Hamiton (played by Ashley Rickards) is looking to make a great impression in high school but things get off to a dreadful start. After breaking her arm in a bathroom accident (sounds less gross than it is), rumors spread throughout her new school that she attempted to commit suicide. She has plenty of attention but not the sort she wanted. Now her quest is to take the misunderstanding and turn into an opportunity to shine. Cris-attunity! (as Simpsons fans would say).
This shows sets itself up to resemble a teenage Sex and the City, with the main character's narration coming from her writing. Jenna has a blog whose name was “Invisible Girl” until she took an optimistic turn and renamed it “That Girl Daily” (by Season 2 she reveals her true name in the blog's name and continues to post with total exposure). This is the thesis for the show and the method in which it tries to be relatable. Teenagers do not want to be invisible, but they don't want to be an embarrassment either. Jenna is this statement in a nutshell. She lost her virginity at summer camp, but the boy she lost it to ignores her until she takes a stand (or a stage, more accurately) and owns her own awkwardness. From that point on she hurdles over and around the odd machinations of her friends, family and oddball guidance councillor.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on October 12th, 2013
A New York city homicide detective is haunted by the night where her mother was murdered by two gunmen, who themselves were killed by a mysterious being. A decade after that night she finds out that the mysterious being is still around. As this “Beauty” and her “Beast” finally meet, they start investigating the truth behind their secret ties to each other.
The similarities between this adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and any others begins and ends at the title. Originally slated as a reboot of the 1987 series that starred Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton, this series trades the romance and battle of misfits for crime investigations and military conspiracies.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on October 12th, 2013
“When people are desperate, they’ll do horrible things to survive.”
Sci-fi and horror have been exploring the dark side of human nature for as long as those genres have been around. Throw a group of people together in a high-stress situation — whether they’re running from The Walking Dead or hiding from whatever is in The Mist — and the base instinct to survive will eventually lead them to commit unspeakable atrocities. The Colony starts off as the sort of movie that explores the monstrous things people do to each other…and then the actual monsters show up.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2013
What a great time it was to be a teen in the late 1970’s. No, I’m not referring to disco music. It was a great time to go to the movies. It was the culmination of the perfect date, and Hollywood was riding the beginning of a trend that remains alive and healthy today. I’m talking, of course, about the slasher film. You could argue that Hitchcock started the ball rolling in 1961 with Psycho, but it would be decades before that film would find its true audience and plethora of imitators. Although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween came before Friday The 13th, can it be argued that any horror film franchise is as widely known? The truth is that even the man behind the film, Sean Cunningham, never really knew what it was that he had. It was never his intent to follow the film with a barrage of sequels. He also scoffed at the idea that Jason could become the centerpiece for future films. By now Jason has become such an iconic character that there is an entire generation out there that doesn’t know that Jason wasn’t the culprit in the first film. Jason’s stature has reached the heights of the classic monsters of the Universal days. While some of us hesitate to put his name and hockey mask up there with the likes of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, and The Mummy, the recognition and sheer dollars generated make it difficult not to. By the beginning of the 1980’s names like Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers would be scaring audiences around the world, rendering the classics somewhat silly in the eyes of a more visceral generation of teens.
Here we are almost 25 years removed from that first Friday The 13th film and the franchise has racked up nine sequels, one remake, a television series and a team-up film with Freddy Krueger...oh my. Of course, not all Friday The 13th projects are created equal, and the debate rages on as to what constitutes official canon for the franchise. Certainly, the television series can be discounted, because it had really nothing to do with the films at all. The title was merely used to cash in on the fans. Still, it managed to last three years and has developed a somewhat cult following of its own. But whatever you consider part of the "true" franchise, it's all found in one place.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on October 10th, 2013
This latest incarnation of “90210” ending in its fifth season means it ran for half the length of the original series (which ran for ten). Like the original, the stories of these sexy Beverley Hills residents began in high school. Now we see the sorts of adults they've become and the absolutely ridiculous success they've had. They all started on the top, and somehow manage to claw their way...to the top. Yup...real growth here.
What is this “ridiculous Success” I speak of? Oh, how about the fact that amongst the main characters is a successful club owner (which would warrants even more bragging rights since it's located in California), a software guru (yes, the word “guru” is actually used) and a freaking movie star whose film is #1 at the box office. Incredibly relatable stuff, no?
