Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Posted by Ken Spivey
The Smithsonian Channel's three part documentary, “NatureTech” explores the “striking parallels between nature and technology.” The episodes of “NatureTech” work with the assumption that scientists have ignored nature for the past century, and their narrow focus has limited their growth. Contemporary researchers who bear this in mind are making unexpected leaps in their respective fields. These advances include tires that have the adhesive ability of frog feet, air conditioning technology based upon an in-depth study of termite colonies, and robots that mimic the sensory reactivity of cockroaches. This method of solving problems by observing nature is called “biomimetics.” Ironically, this key term is never defined in the documentary; rather, the viewer must use “context clues” to clarify this important and often repeated buzz word.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
Male bonding deep in the heart of the Oregon wilderness is the order of the day in Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling, a direct-to-video sequel to the Seth Green-Dax Shepard-Matthew Lillard comedy of 2004. Unfortunately, it’s more of a training ground for actors and crew than an actual film. Before I move in to the heart of this catastrophe, I should first forbid myself from attacking the practice of dressing up a cheap, low-budget remake and calling it a sequel. It’s too easy of a criticism, so nothing will be said of it, except to point out the fact that’s exactly what this is.
A flawed movie from the opening frame, WAP: NC has the production qualities of a bad Nickelodeon TV show with acting and script to match. It borrows heavily from the first film with two young friends growing up and growing apart, only to rejuvenate their friendship with a wild outdoor adventure that is partly gross, partly outlandish, and 100 percent ridiculous. What separates the two is the original had three solid performers and a talented supporting cast to convince viewers it was a better film than it actually was. Its “sequel” has none of this, and thus, fails miserably.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 14th, 2009
It’s hard being the bad guy, but sometimes you just don’t like a film that seemingly everyone else does. Such is the case for me with Funny Face, the classic Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire teaming that sees a bookish young lady go from the obscurity of her lonely library to the glitzy Paris lights as a high-profile fashion model. A little bit Cinderella and a whole lot of singing-and-dancing, Funny Face fails to engage with characters and story, relying solely on its lavish spectacle to do the trick. For legions of fans, it worked. For me, it didn’t. But like comedy, it’s all subjective, and if you’re in to fancy costumes, skilled choreography, arguably catchy music numbers, and healthy doses of nostalgia, then this one’s a no-brainer. But if story and deeply written characters are your things, sorry they don’t live here.
Astaire and Hepburn are a good pairing, and they work well together for each song-and-dance piece, but their love story gets very little chance to shine in between, and their normally solid acting abilities are buried in a heap of lifeless Broadway mini-productions that result, ultimately, in a showcase for all the wrong skills. When I watch a movie, I’ve got to be at the very least emotionally invested. If a film can engage my intelligence as well, that’s icing on the cake. Funny Face did neither. And as a fan of Ms. Hepburn’s work in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, believe me: no one’s more disappointed at that statement than me. The best thing about it is the overpowering, show-stealing performance of Kay Thompson as pushy magazine editor Maggie Preston. She dominates the camera whenever it’s on her. It’s just too bad our stars didn’t get that same chance to shine.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on January 13th, 2009
Most people know the Chipmunks for three characters: Alvin, Simon and Theodore. This trio was known for a voice that sounded like too many rpm’s at the old record machine. However for the purposes of this disc, the six episodes featured were focused on a trio who was the equivalent of the Chipmunk “B” team. Their names were Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor. They were known as the Chipettes. These are their stories. Dun Dun. (Cue Law & Order music).
Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor were actually introduced in the very 1st half-hour of programming for the Chipmunks during their run in 1983. Originally the two groups both lay claim to the name “Chipmunks”, but they grew to like each other and become on and off again friends and something more. Eleanor was just like Theodore, they both loved to eat and cook. However, Eleanor stood up for herself and was more athletic. Jeanette was an easy pair up with Simon. Both were book smart but Jeanette was clumsier and more of an introvert than Simon was. Finally there was Brittany who as vain and self centered as one Alvin Seville. Together they made the Chipettes and were ready to take on the same adventures as their counterparts and participate in a few more.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 13th, 2009
A disfigured young man with an unhealthy interest in his sister attacks and kills a woman. Five years later, he is released (by psychiatrist Jess Franco) into his sister’s care, who is helping organize a language school on property owned by her disagreeable, but very rich, aunt. In short order, the female students at the school (and there are ONLY female students, for reasons not explained) start being killed off. But no one other than heroine Olivia Pascal actually believes that anything is going on.
This was Jess Franco’s contribution to the slasher craze, though it demonstrates just how much that subgenre owes to the giallo by incorporating many of the elements of the latter (whodunit, unseen killer instead of hulking masked figure, etc). The production values are perhaps a bit higher than usual for Franco, and the gore effects are, all proportions maintained, quite good (and certainly very gruesome). But it’s obvious that this is work for hire, as the work lacks many of the more endearing eccentricities and personal obsessions that mark the films he’s more interested in. There is also some unnecessary animal cruelty involving the decapitation of a snake. The sharp-eyed will catch Lina Romay in the credits (as assistant director, under her real name of Rosa Amiral).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 12th, 2009
The giallo was never a genre that specialized in tight, coherent, logical storylines. But even by the bizarre standards of the form, In the Folds of the Flesh takes some kinda cake. Trying to summarize its plot is next to impossible, as the first two thirds of the plot are incomprehensible, and are cleared up only in the final third, which feels more like a play than a film, and where the revelations and twists pile up to such a degree that they don't induce whiplash – they torque your head clean off. So, for what it's worth, we have a castle (whose interiors look distinctly un-castle-like) where, thirteen years ago, a man was decapitated. His body was disposed of by the woman living there, and she and two children, now grown and thoroughly insane, dispose of anyone else foolish enough to come prying into their lives.
This is certainly no lost masterpiece. Its story is clumsily told, and would be offensive if it weren't so ridiculous. The murders vary from the delightfully cheesy (the decapitations) to the utterly WTF (death by cuckoo clock?? ). But the demented nature of the exercise makes it compelling in the nature of a train wreck (and speaking of trains, what's with the constant shots of one?). Lovers of the deranged will find much to feast upon here.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 11th, 2009
After having been present at a political assassination, the Grave Diggers biker gang starts being killed off one by one. Undercover cop Stone joins the gang (by basically saying, “Hi, I’m a cop. Can I hang out with you guys?”) in an effort to solve the murders. Plenty of shenanigans, riding around, and utterances of the word “man” ensue.
This 1974 Australian effort gets off to a bang of a start with the assassination, a scene that is largely witnessed through the eyes of a heavily stoned biker. The murders that follow are also nicely staged. But then we start getting many, many scenes of riding around and rather aimless hanging about. The eponymous hero doesn’t show up until a quarter of the way through the film, at which point he is able to find out, though his own experiences and the interviews he conducts, what a great bunch the bikers are. So there’s a fair bit of meandering about. But the action scenes are well done, and as a cultural artifact, the film is really quite fascinating.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 9th, 2009
A group of low-life gangsters kidnap a starlet (Ursula Fellner) and hightail it off to a jungle island, where they subject their victim to endless indignities while waiting for the ransom money to arrive. Al Cliver is dispatched to rescue her, but his helicopter arrival draws the attention of a group of hostile natives and, more to the point, a red-eyed, cannibal zombie-god who holds them in a grip of fear.
It was 1980, and so the short-lived cannibal subgenre was in its heyday, so naturally Jess Franco was faced with directing his own contribution. Of course, he did so in his own peculiarly idiosyncratic way. Released the year prior to Severin's other recent cannibal release, Cannibal Terror, it shares that film's conceit of gangsters running afoul of dangerous locals. Also common to both films is some unintentional hilarity (“primitive” tribesmen sporting wedding rings and running shoes, a park bench visible in the background of the jungle around minute 93, or the hero climbing a “vertical” cliff face on his knees, thanks to the wonders of a tilted camera). The usual racism associated with the cannibal movie is somewhat problematized (deliberately or not) by the odd and obvious multiracial composition of the tribe. Where Franco's film steals the march on its poorer successor is a greater sense of expansiveness, even on what couldn't have been much greater means (we even get a helicopter crash), and a more lush, somewhat more convincing jungle (even though we are still pretty clearly in Spain). As well, Franco keeps the pace up with a wealth of incident, not to mention that strange mixture of elements (crime, action film, cannibal film, supernatural terror, even a little bit of King Kong). And the scenes of cannibalism, while far more simplistically mounted than in the likes of Cannibal Holocaust (an extreme close-up of a mouth showing meat and dribbling blood) are nonetheless suitably disgusting. The only shot of innards being yanked out is so brief, it feels like the contemptuous dismissal that it is. All in all, a sleazily entertaining mish-mash that could only have been made by one man, bless his twisted little heart.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on January 9th, 2009
Gitane Demone was one of the lead singers for seminal deathrock band Christian Death before going solo in 1989. This 2-DVD set is a record of her various solo efforts, tracking various incarnations, most notoriously (and most prominently featured in the release's packaging) being the fetish performances for the likes of the DeMask club and Skin Two magazine. Present here is a mix of television interviews, one video, and a raft of live footage.
Given the necessarily raw, semi-underground nature of the material (more one the picture and sound quality below), this is not really a release for the previously unconverted. The fuzzy picture and muzzy sound is not likely to draw in viewers who don't already have an investment in the subject. That said, the interviews are interesting, with Demone, in most articulate fashion, clearly situating herself within various scenes and phases of her life, and explaining how all this has affected her art. As for those who are fans, this is a very valuable record of a decade of performances.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 9th, 2009
Holly Golightly is perhaps the most tragic, depressing character in all of literature and film, especially to those of us who know (or have known) people just like her. As an example to aspire to, Golightly fails miserably. She is internally and externally destructive, intentionally so. Truman Capote, author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the novella in which she was formed, has created in her a realistic portrait of people that fear happiness, and so imprison themselves to lives of restless and reckless abandon. She is just charming enough to make us pull for her, but equally cruel and uncaring once we’re suckered in. It’s hard to like Holly, and it’s almost impossible not to love her, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I’m sure it doesn’t. But neither does she, and so goes life.
On the other hand, the film version of Capote’s iconic work gets bogged down in insulting ethnic portrayals (Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi); studio sanitization (after all, Golightly is a call girl, but we get very little indication of that from the film); and a tacked-on happy ending that in no way fits with what’s come before it. Feel-good entertainment? Not when the audience knows better than to think things could turn out so neatly, so quickly. Still, Audrey Hepburn was a perfect choice for Golightly, and she heaps additional charm atop what was already on the page. George Peppard has very little to do as her does-she-love-him-does-she-not play-toy, but his final indictment of Holly is a stirring piece of writing, effectively delivered, that would have been a great place to end. It would have at least rung emotionally true. Unfortunately, the exchange is quickly swept under the rug by an ending that comes as close to Deus Ex Machina as one can get without actually achieving it.
