Disc Reviews

There are so many vampire films, it’s hard to get excited any time a trailer for one comes along.  The Twilight series as well as shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries have managed to take everything I once enjoyed about the menacing creature and turned it into a joke.  Let the Right One In and the American remake Let Me In are the last vampire films that had any substance that went for more than cheap thrills and gore and delivered a solid story.  That is until Kiss of the Damned came along.  It’s a film that keeps things simple, yet brings back the beautiful elegance of the creature we loved to fear.

When we first meet Djuna (Josephine de La Baume), she is locked away in her large beautiful home watching an old B&W romance.  She’s lonely and craves affection, but her affliction of being a vampire doesn’t offer many opportunities to meet the dashing male she is looking for.  But as her luck would have it, a trip to the video store has Djuna coming face to face with her true love Paolo (Milo Ventimigilia), a screenwriter who has come to town to get away and work on his current project.  The two are instantly attracted to one another, but Djuna does all she can to keep Paolo at a distance, afraid of what he may think of her and the harm she may cause.  But he’s persistent, and in the heat of passion she takes a bite and changes him.

This is just personal habit of mine, but whenever I’m done watching a comedy special that features more than one comedian, instinctively I arrange them all in my head from least to greatest: In the case of The Original Kings of Comedy: Bernie Mac, Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley; Blue Collar Comedy Tour: Ron White, Larry the Cable Guy, Jeff Foxworthy, and Bill Engvall; and in the case of Women Who Kill: Amy Schumer, Marina Franklin, Nikki Glaser, and Rachel Feinstein.

Amy Schumer is first up at bat with a raunchy set that covers everything from old people, interracial relations, religion, to being set up. Schumer is quick-witted, full of quips, and she does a great job of interacting up with the crowd; the downside is she rifles through every subject too rapidly, and a few of her quips get lost in the shuffle.

The shoe is on the other foot in the Donald Faison and Eve Amurri Martino-led raunchy comedy, Stag. Curious enough, for being the supposed co-leads of the movie, the focus of the film is on them less than half of its duration; Stag is basically about the background characters. The only issue with that is the background characters aren't really all that interesting when you get right down to it.

Ken (Donald Faison, The Exes) is revered by his friends as the king of pranks. Every time one of his friends is about to get married, as part of tradition he pulls a legendary prank at his would-be victim’s (the groom-to-be) stag party; everything from getting them blackout drunk and putting them in ring with a boxer to getting them black-out drunk, stuffing them in a shipping box and shipping them first class. Now it is his turn to take the plunge and his friends are thinking vengeance is theirs, and Ken is on the edge of his seat in anticipation of what they may do to him.

“Let me tell you what it’s going to be like. Irish girl, English jail. Every time you want to see your boy, every time he wants to see you, his grandma’s gonna have to load him onto the ferry and drive 400 miles. It’s gonna break his f***in heart.”

Which is stronger, the bonds of family loyalty or self-preservation? That is the question that is presented in Shadow Dancer, the espionage thriller starring Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough. I had high hopes for this film when I picked it up; I was expecting an unpredictable and suspenseful thriller that I would not be able to take my eyes away from. What I got was…well let’s just say I had no trouble prying my eyes away.

First let me come out and say I know very little about Anime; aside from a few episodes of Speed Racer when I was growing up, Anime just never really caught my interest.  But I’m willing to give anything a shot; after all, it’s never too late to discover a new genre in entertainment.  Unfortunately the Shout Factory release of Starzinger was a bad first experience that made for a long cringe-worthy experience.  Films like Howl’s Moving Castle and Grave of the Fireflies are beautiful pieces of animation as well as touching stories.  Then there are the animated series that are simply there to entertain for half an hour; when it comes to Starzinger better known as Spacekeeters, well, this did absolutely nothing for me.  The show that consisted of 26 aired episodes has been edited together to make three movies that Shout Factory has put out in a 2-DVD set.

The story is simple; there is a great disruption in the universe, and the only way the galaxy canbe restored to the peaceful galaxy it was before depends on Princess Aurora reaching the Great Planet.  The Great Planet happens to be on the other end of the galaxy, so to ensure her safety Jan Kugo, a great cyborg warrior, is ordered to escort her.  Along the way Aurora and Kugo confront aliens and monsters but also find two other cyborgs to come along for the journey, Don Hakka and Jogo the Wolf.  The first movie really seems to be about nothing more than the four joining forces before setting off for the last leg of their journey and reaching the Great Planet.

The Bronte Sisters is a very historical film in many ways. It is the most accurate film we have depicting the real lives of some very famous writers. It is also an old film from 1979 being reissued that stars three great actresses who are very well known now. It has an excellent commentary that addresses both of these  points by film scholar Wade Major and Bronte scholar Sue Lonoff de Cuevas done in 2013. It also includes a 2012 Bronte documentary by Dominique Maillet called the Ghosts of Hapworth. The Bronte Sisters was directed by respected French director, Andre Techine'.

That the French seem to love these British sisters only shows the universal appeal their stories had. No one can deny that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are two of the best known stories in literature. Both have been made into films numerous times. I just recently reviewed a new version of Wuthering Heights just a few months ago which prompted me to watch an old British miniseries called The Brontes of Hapworth. There was even an old Hollywood movie called Devotion that took many liberties with the truth. The three Bronte sisters share a kinship with another beloved writer, Jane Austen. Their stories are about intelligent women who tried to find a place in a society that did not truly respect them. The three sisters originally published under male names due to Victorian constraints but eventually had to come clean after dealing with some difficult publishers. They all started writing together as young girls, creating the mythical lands of Angria and Gondol. Anne's books Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are not as well known, but highly regarded as early examples of feminism. The three sisters were spurred on by their brother Branwell who was full of artistic talents in poetry and sculpture but was slowly robbed of any success. He even erased himself from a portrait he did of the four siblings.