Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 26th, 2011
Renée Zellweger is Jane, a former country singer who has lost the will to live since an accident left her in a wheelchair. Forest Whitaker is Joey, who can talk to angels and ghosts since he witnessed the death by fire of his family. These two wounded souls bond and bicker, and when Joey finds a letter from Jane’s son, whom she gave up for adoption years ago, he decides that she must see him. Fortunately, there’s a talk being given in New Orleans by a man who is apparently an expert on communication with angels, so that gives Joey a reason-slash-pretext to drag Jane on a cross-country trip she wouldn’t agree to otherwise.
And so off we go, on yet another road trip discovery of America, this time filtered through the eyes of French writer/director Olivier Dahan (La Vie en Rose). As expected, it’s all very picaresque, with plenty of strange and quirky encounters along the way – Elias Koteas working the sleaze as the man who sells our protagonists an exploding car (and who is emotionally crippled, by his own admission – Symbolism!), Nick Nolte hamming it up as a musical hermit who trots out the old Robert-Johnson-sold-his-soul-for-music chestnut one more time, and so on. Zelwegger’s performance is serious of purpose, but she is done no favours by the voice-over she is saddled with, which babbles poetically on about this and that and is just as pretentious and annoying as Terrence Malick’s excesses in this department. Whitaker, meanwhile, takes his patented sensitive-with-tics shtick to some pretty zany heights. Despite some striking visuals (and sometimes because of the same), this is a pretty silly effort that occasionally rises to entertaining levels of camp, but more often just sets the eyes rolling.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by M. W. Phillips on July 25th, 2011
“Look, you got what you wanted, I'm officially out of control.”
Based loosely on (Executive Producer) Mark Walberg’s meteoric rise to fame, Entourage has always been a male bonding fantasy; it plays like a boys-will-be-boys version of Sex in the City. Following Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his posse’s misadventures through the decadent lifestyles of the hyper-rich and fabulously famous carried with it a certain insider’s credibility and made for fun, if not slightly debauched TV voyeurism. HBO sweetened the deal by liberally mixing in hard body nudity with jaw-dropping self-satirizations from a slew of Hollywood cameos the like not seen since The Larry Sanders Show.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 24th, 2011
Hard-rock guru of the seven seas (as long as you count the porta-johns) here with another musical review courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment. This one is entitled: Bad Co.: Live at Wembley. The concert played on April of 2010 to a packed house. As the booklet inside the package indicates, “...for a band to achieve this level of brilliance is extremely rare, to capture it on film, nearly impossible.” Well that is exactly what they did and it is my pleasure to bring that review home to you.
Bad Company (or Bad Co. to their fans) was actually a supergroup that formed in 1973. The original line-up consisted of Free former members: singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke. It also included former Matt the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist, Boz Burrell. Their first album sharing the same name as the band would go on to sell 5 million copies in the US alone and have three hot singles.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 20th, 2011
Bands tend to change members about as often as I change my disposable razor. Heck, in some cases perhaps more often. (I really need to get a new razor) Whether it is a lead singer or perhaps a drummer, in some cases nobody is safe when people start arguing (ask Michael Anthony of Van Halen). But for this review, I was presented with a band that had changed members quite a few times. In fact, only one of the original members remains and he is the drummer. Meet Deep Purple.
Deep Purple was formed in the late 1960’s. The original lineup included Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore, Nick Simper, Rod Evans, and Ian Paice. The band was originally called Roundabout but after their first tour quickly changed their name to Deep Purple after Blackmore grandmother’s favorite song. They broke thru the rock world after and released three albums numbers that would do quite well in the US as well as abroad in the UK.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 19th, 2011
This is a biopic about two very obscure people whose relationship has escaped the attention of all but a select few. All kidding aside, what we have here is a dramatization of how the heir to the British throne (Nico Evers-Swindell) meets Kate Middleton (Camilla Luddington), and how their romance gradually blossoms. He arrives at university, and every blue-blooded young woman has him in her sights, but it is, naturally, the down-to-earth girl who draws him, the turning point being when she shows that she’s sexy as well as smart during a student fashion show. But the course of true love is not an easy one, especially with the pressures of the fishbowl life of royalty make themselves known.
If you’re wondering what on earth is the point of making a movie about something the entire planet has already feasted on (and is still doing so), then let me clear things up: there is no point. This is as bland a romance as was ever committed to film, hitting every tired cliché imaginable. Friends who discover they want to be more? Check. Bitchy Aristocrat Who Threatens to Steal the Heroine’s Man? Check. Third act falling out? Check. Last minute confession of love that saves everything? Check. Snore. The only tiny points of interest are the bits of unintentional comedy. So poor Ben Cross, in grotesque makeup, is stuck playing a Charles who is obviously about two feet shorter than the real thing. And do skip ahead to the final shot, where, after a montage of stock footage of African wildlife, William proposes against a hilariously fake sunset so whose colours are so supersaturated, the shot seems (but can’t possibly, can it?) to be echoing Gone with the Wind.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 14th, 2011
"In the winter of 1348 a knight of the Crusades returned to his homeland. He was tired in body and soul and hoped to live in peace the remainder of his days. But this was not to be."
The city of Villach has a problem. The plague has spread to its borders, and the affliction is spreading fast. The disease's arrival is timed to the arrival of a young girl (Foy) who was found to be wondering about the village. After some interrogation she confesses to being a witch and bringing the illness to the village. She must now be brought to the abbey where a holy book contains the words necessary to deal with the witch. Now they just have to get her to the abbey which is several days away from the village.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 13th, 2011
Courtesy of the website of the same name (check it out at http://trailersfromhell.com/index.php) comes this collection of trailers of horror, SF and exploitation films. The collection is eclectic, following no particular theme (though there are several Hammer films present), and the era covered ranges from 1941 (The Invisible Ghost with Bela Lugosi) to 1998 (Trauma’s Terror Firmer). Present are the likes of The Devil-Ship Pirates, Gorgo, Donovan’s Brain, Deep Red, Flesh Gordon, and so on. Twenty altogether.
Normally, commentaries would be dealt with below, but this case is an exception. Not only does the disc default to playing the introductions and commentaries, but these are the primary attraction of the release. The commentators are a high-powered lot: Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro (who discusses Deep Red in both English and Spanish), John Landis, Joe Dante, Lloyd Kaufman, Jack Hill, and more. There are a couple of weaker moments here – Mary Lambert’s musings on Mothra vs Godzilla are disappointingly inarticulate, and she talks about Godzilla as a nuclear metaphor as if this were news; John Landis has a rather supercilious approach to the excellent Gorgo – but these are more than offset by the strengths. Brian Trenchard-Smith, Del Toro and Dante essentially give entire film courses in two minutes – no mean feat. This is a great, informative collection.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 7th, 2011
A good friend of mine and I have had long-standing difference of opinion about Black Sabbath. He has no interest in anything post-Ozzy. I continued to buy Sabbath albums though all the band’s different incarnations, and while some releases did, I confess, require a greater degree of loyalty than others, the Ronnie James Dio studio albums (Heaven & Hell, Mob Rules, Dehumanizer) have always been favorites of mine. So the events of the last few years were something of a roller coaster ride for fans of my ilk, the joy of a new album (The Devil You Know, with this configuration of the band rechristened Heaven & Hell), followed by the shock and sadness following Dio’s untimely death. This release, a record of a 2007 concert, is a fitting valediction to a great band.
The fifteen songs are a fine selection. Doubtless, each of us will miss one favorite or another. I’m sorry that “Turn Up the Night” and “Buried Alive” were left off the playlist. But I can’t complain about any of the songs that are included. All three albums are well represented, and the absolutely necessary pieces – “Mob Rules,” “Children of the Sea,” “Die Young,” “Heaven and Hell,” “Neon Knights” – are all present and correct. Also performed are two songs – “The Devil Cried,” “Shadow of the Wind” – that were (along with “Ear in the Wall”) included on the Dio Years collection and heralded the band’s return to active songwriting.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 7th, 2011
A high school football team has a longstanding tradition of bringing their team good luck by sleeping with virgins and then crossing their names off of a secret list. Three girls on said list figure out the football player's plan and decide to strike back with pranks and some feminist rebellion that is supposed to be inspired by Lysistrata.
First and foremost, let me immediately address any connections to Lysistrata this film claims to have. While Lysistrata is about women withholding sex from men because of they have gone to war (to put it in simple terms), Wild Cherry is more about the girls seeking revenge over a sense of humiliation that their boyfriends may not like them as much as they'd hoped. Lysistrata empowered its female characters while the three protagonists of this film are ultimately still just trying to be liked by the popular boys. The rebellion they stage builds to nothing more than a couple juvenile pranks and a lame speech made at a the most sparsely attended football match in cinematic history.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 6th, 2011
Monster mash-ups have been with us for almost as long as there have been monster movies. Universal gave us Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The Japanese delivered Godzilla vs. King Kong. Dracula's taken on Jesse James, and Universal brought the whole band together for two House Of movies and an Abbott And Costello romp. In recent years we've been treated or subjected to, depending on your own point of view, Freddy vs. Jason and Alien vs. Predator and its rematch. Lately, SyFy has been attempting to create an entire subgenre out of the monster mash-up idea. One of those movies happens to be Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.
This one takes advantage of several themes. The movie serves as a vehicle for two 1980's teen singing idols who were just barely bigger than one-hit wonders. Debbie Gibson went from Tiger Beat in the 80's to Playboy Magazine in 2005. Her career hits a new low with this camp disaster. Tiffany was so cool she figured she just needed one name. Her big hit was I Think We're Alone Now; if only.
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