Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 20th, 2008
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 19th, 2008
Resurrecting The Champ claims to be “inspired” by a true story written by J.R. Moehringer for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. I’m not very well versed in the original story, so I won’t bore you with any attempt to justify the film against actual events. I only hope that the real Moehringer wasn’t a tenth the idiot that Erik is in this film. Perhaps so close on the heels of the Tomase Spygate fiasco it’s not as hard to believe that a reporter could be this gullible.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 17th, 2008
Because I was fairly certain I would be asked to review this second season of
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 17th, 2008
So I find out I’m going to review a film called Meerkat Manor. My research tells me it’s actually a television show on Animal Planet, but I still didn’t know much. Was this some kind of animal version of The Tudors? And what exactly is a meerkat, anyway? The answer to all of these questions arrived one sunny morning via UPS on my front door. I yawned my way to the door and picked up the nondescript package that fell over with a flop as I opened my home to the bright
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 17th, 2008
The voices aren’t the same. The animation has lost that classic charm. The story is completely contrived. What remains is a dim reflection of a few beloved characters from a bygone year of vintage Disney magic. This sequel of the classic Disney telling of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book looks more like a direct to video knockoff. I was actually quite amazed to note the film did have a box office run.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 17th, 2008
The time was that following the death of a good king,
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 17th, 2008
It’s nice when a movie lives up to its expectations and even surpasses them because it rarely seems to happen anymore. Such is the case with Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis bio-pic, Control.
I’ve been waiting to see Control for a long time. From the start, the film sounded interesting, since I am a huge fan of post-punk alternative rock music, the genre that Ian Curtis and Joy Division practically invented in the late 1970’s. But when I heard that long-time band collaborator and renowned music video director Anton Corbijn was directing the film, my anticipation rose to even higher levels.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 14th, 2008
Katherine Heigl gets her Juila Roberts on in the romantic comedy 27 Dresses as Jane, a friendly woman who can't say no to planning weddings for the many people she knows. Ever since she was young she's loved weddings, even though she doesn't seem to have the time to find a future groom of her own. She's in love with her boss, George (Edward Burns), but when Jane's sister Tess (Malin Akerman) drops in for a visit, Tess and George fall in love and before Jane knows it, they're engaged to be married and she's planning their wedding. Let the cliched rom-com hijinks begin!
Along the way Jane meets Kevin (James Marsden), a cynical, anti-marriage commitments writer for the fictional New York Journal and the two begin a bickering love/hate relationship. Chances are you know how it'll turn out.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2008
I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the process of moviemaking, but when a film is not up to studio expectation and takes a long time to finally arrive to theaters after filming has wrapped, the result is sometimes due to financial issues with the studio. But most of the time it’s due to the fact that the studio has seen the final product, and it’s so abhorrent and without any value, redeeming, comic or otherwise, that it will be released as quietly and without recognition as possible. Now I don’t know if there were any financial issues surrounding Strange Wilderness, but I will say this: the film was shooting as far back as December 2005 and was released in February 2008, and at this point on rottentomatoes.com, there is not one positive review from the three dozen that are on the site. I’ll leave it to you to decide what the reasons why are.
Strange Wilderness was written by Peter Gaulke and co-written (and directed) by Fred Wolf. Both of whom were writers on Saturday Night Live. Wolf, in fact, is the head writer for the show to this day. The film is based on a series of shorts the pair would put together, and in the feature, Peter (Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn) is the son of a nature reporter and enthusiast, and does a show extolling nature, but things aren’t going his way. So, after an unproductive meeting with his network executive (Jeff Garlin, Curb Your Enthusiasm), he decides to go on an expedition for well-known wilderness legend Bigfoot. So he packs up his crew, which include Cooker (Jonah Hill, Superbad), Junior (Justin Long, Walk Hard), Fred (Allen Covert, Little Nicky) and Danny (Peter Dante, Big Daddy), and they all head out into the woods to find Bigfoot. Peter’s crew is a couple of cans short of a six pack, so wacky hijinks ensue.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 13th, 2008
Come on, admit it, you want to say that Hayden Christensen was the worst part if the latest trilogy of Star Wars films, and yeah, the guy did bring the suck, to be sure, but he wasn’t really that bad, right? Well yeah, he was, but he’s not the only thing wrong when it comes to Jumper, the latest film from writers David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) and Jim Uhls (Fight Club), who adapted the Steven C. Gould novel. Directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), Jumper features Christensen as David Rice, a man who grows up with a genetic gift, the ability to ”jump” from place to place, Christensen’s performance was his first major role since transforming Darth Vader from an ominous, silently rueful and dominating presence, to a dude who thought his girl was cheating on him, so he started hanging out with a creepy old guy as a result.
David is unsure about his ability when he first discovers it but then starts to use it to his advantage, going to places ‘round the world, walking in and out of banks unnoticed, pretty much getting a chance to do whatever he wants. He leaves his Dad (Michael Rooker, Mallrats) early on in his life, and his mother (Diane Lane, Untraceable) had long since abandoned him, so the world is pretty much his oyster, right? Wrong. There’s a guy out there who captures and kills “jumpers,” a guy named Roland, played by Samuel L. Jackson with a grey wig, which, if I may, pretty much tells you it’s going to be a bad movie. Honestly, outside of a Quentin Tarantino movie, have you seen a really good movie that he’s in where he’s wearing some stupid hair prosthesis? Thank you. Soon, David finds someone else that can jump, a British guy named Griffin (Jamie Bell, King Kong), who, aside from telling David he’s not completely unique, also tells him that Roland is part of a group who hordes and kills jumpers named “Talismans,” so he’s generally got to watch his butt around them.
