Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 17th, 2010
"There's two kinds of people in this world when you boil it all down. You've got your talkers and you've got your doers. Most people are just talkers. All they got is talk. But, when all is said and done, it's the doers who change the world. And, when they do that, they change us. And, that's why we never forget them."
And while The Boondock Saints never did bring in box office gold (heck, it didn't even bring in Box Office aluminum) like the characters in the film, they were not forgotten. There were conventions and local film festival showings that brought out untold thousands to share the movie experience. It became what we commonly call today a cult hit. But that's a term of endearment used by critics and fans to describe this kind of grass roots fan base. Unfortunately, it's a dirty word in Hollywood. No one in the studio highchairs wants to produce a cult film. Well, no one except maybe Troy Duffy.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 16th, 2010
If any studio out there knows princesses, it has to be Disney. Uncle Walt has brought us so many memorably magical moments in the realms of fairy godmothers and the rags to riches tradition. A list of such Disney characters would serve as a rather complete roll call of such familiar animated ladies: Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, and now you can add yet another name to the growing list. The studio that invented the animated fairy tale returns to its hand-drawn animation roots with The Princess And The Frog.
When Pixar finally landed permanently at Disney, no one was more excited than I was. It seemed somehow quite fitting that the studio that invented the animation feature should now take the lead with the company that invented the computer animated feature. It was a match made in heaven, or at least Neverland. But, I was as shocked and dismayed as many fans of the medium when Disney made a rather abrupt decision to close down its hand-drawn animation studios. There was plenty of rancor from the move and more than a few talented artists suddenly without jobs. It appeared that the Mouse House had traded one legacy in to acquire another. And so it looked as if we would never again see the wonderful marvels of a hand-drawn Walt Disney creation. Ah, but we all forgot. Disney is in the fairy tale business, after all. And like every good story, just as it looks like the villain has triumphed and all hope is gone, a white horse bearing a hero can never be far behind.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 16th, 2010
I'm sure that somewhere inside of Jared Hess's mind all of this makes perfect sense. I get the feeling that after he completed Gentlemen Broncos the writer/director/producer sat down to a screening with a group of his friends and the congregation rolled in the aisles with laughter. I'm equally sure that when his friends went home they were left scratching their heads. Somewhere in Hollywood a corner drugstore made a killing in aspirin or something stronger. In his own private world, where they all get the joke, Gentlemen Broncos might not be so bad. As for this reviewer, it was perhaps one of the worst films I've ever had the displeasure of watching. I'm putting in for hazard pay on this one, guys. This film will subject you to images that you'll pay good money not to have in your heads. Once again, a payday for the drugstores who likely made about as much off this movie as the film produced at its limited box office run. For anyone out there ready to accuse me of "not getting it" or some such defense of "your" movie. Look at the film's gross take of $113,000 against a $10 million budget and talk to me then.
Benjamin (Angarano) is a young awkward boy who likes to write fantasy stories. He's socially inept, helped in no small part in his problems by a neurotic mother who babies him and designs incredibly bad nightgowns. She ends up sending him to a writers’ camp where he gets to meet his idol, writer and illustrator Chevalier (Clement) who is really quite too full of himself to be believed. Chevalier is out of ideas, and he's about to get dropped by his agent if he doesn't come up with something good, and soon. When Benjamin submits his story Yeast Wars: The Bronco Years to a writing contest at the camp, Chevalier decides this is just the story he's looking for. He changes a few names and submits the story as his own. Meanwhile Benjamin has sold the film rights to his story to amateur filmmaking couple Tabitha (Feiffer) and Lonnie (Jimenez) who turn it into a gay space opera with incredibly poor filmmaking. The stuff is about to hit the fan as the two versions of the story are about to collide with Benjamin in the middle of it all.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 15th, 2010
I have to admit that I approached Old Dogs as cautiously as I'd approach a rabid junkyard dog. With a story that sounds like another retelling of Three Men And A Baby and the setup, and director, of Disney's Wild Hogs, it seemed pretty apparent that this film was not going to offer anything terribly new or exciting. When I started watching the film I discovered that I was pretty much right. This is very much Three Men And A Baby meets Wild Hogs. More importantly, I was also correct in believing the film wouldn't offer up anything all that original or new. What I didn't expect, and what will make this a film worth watching for you anyway, is that the delivery here is actually pretty special.
The story itself couldn't be any more contrived. Charlie (Travolta) and Dan (Williams) have been best friends and business partners for over 30 years. They run a sports marketing firm and have done pretty well, even if they're not the millionaires they always hoped they would be. They are the kind of Bromance couple that are always there for each other. In a story that Dan likes to tell clients to "break the ice", we learn that 7 years earlier Dan got divorced and it nearly tore him apart. Charlie pestered him into taking a carefree Florida vacation where a one night stand led to a quickie marriage and annulment as well as an embarrassing tattoo, which was supposed to shout “Free Man” across his hairy chest, but due to a mixup in translation with the tattoo artist says “Freemont” instead. Now the boys are on the verge of a $47 million deal with a huge Japanese company that will finally get them the riches they've been seeking. Feeling on a bit of a high, Dan decides to set up a meet with Vicki (Preston) to see if he can fan the old romance flames once more. He gets more than he expected, however. Vicki has twins, Zach (Rayburn) and Emily (Travolta) and, predictably, they are Dan's. Coincidentally, Vicki is about to serve 2 weeks in jail for a political activism stunt, and Dan ends up crushing the hands of her hand model friend, who just so happens to have been her babysitter for her time in stir. Dan, feeling suddenly fatherly, agrees to take the kids in an attempt to bond with his newly discovered family. The rest is pretty much what you would expect. Dan and "Uncle" Charlie try to seal the big deal and learn to care for the kids with the usual hijinks and comedic results. Because this is, after all, a Disney film, we know that the movie is going to end with one of those warm life lessons and everything is going to work out fine. Who does storybook endings better, right?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 15th, 2010
I’ve been a fan of South Park ever since a friend introduced me to the internet Christmas card that started it all. It was Santa versus Jesus and these short potty-mouthed kids that somehow wormed their way under your skin. Pretty soon I was downloading the episodes and watching them on my computer. For some reason I can’t quite explain, I’ve very rarely watched an episode on Comedy Central. By the time things were getting tighter and riskier downloading the shorts, the single disc, 4 episode DVDs began to arrive in stores. So my South Park viewing moved from the PC to the DVD player. In a short time season sets began to arrive, and I looked forward to them with much anticipation, still watching it infrequently on television. After all, who needs the commercials and those silly network bugs that distract you on the screen? The series itself evolved in that time. The show was once achieved through a stop motion process using construction paper cutouts. The animation was crude. After the Christmas card, the characters were significantly redesigned. They had a very evil look on that short. The first couple of episodes brought us an evolution toward the characters we know and love today. After a while the animation went to a computer process. The look remained the same, but gone were the paper cuts and stop motion photography. As the show progressed there were less and less bleeps. It’s not that the language got any tamer. Standards got a little looser. Finally the bleeps would disappear from at least the DVD releases. And now South Park has crossed another milestone. Welcome to Blu-ray and high definition, South Park.
I often have trouble believing that South Park has been around for as long as it has. It’s not just the passing of 13 years, but the sheer brilliance in the face of an increasingly politically correct society. It’s like watching old episodes of All In The Family. Who believes that Archie Bunker would have any chance of survival in the 21st Century? It’s no wonder that Norman Lear has become involved in the series. It’s the last remaining vestige of a once great freedom to be ridiculous and offend. Eric Cartman’s a lot worse than Archie ever was. We always knew that, in his heart, Archie had a soul. Cartman’s a psychopath without a conscience, and in a civilized society we would be terrified of the existence of such a demon spawn…except he’s just so dang funny. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been walking a tightrope for over 13 years now, and it just doesn’t get old. One of the reasons the show doesn’t grow stale is their ability to make such a quick turnaround on current events. Because the show takes literally days to write and produce, they are quite often always the first to address an issue. They had an election night episode on literally the next day in last season. That means the ideas stay as fresh as the headlines. Finally, you have to credit the expanding universe of good characters. The core group of Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny were great for a lot of years. But, watching this 13th season you have to admire how much Butters has infused himself into that core. We also have such great semi-regulars as Timmy, Jimmy, and Token. These characters allow the stories to expand in ways the core group could not. I’ve honestly come to think of Butters as one of the core now.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2010
Remember the blaxploitation films of the 1970's? These films generally played on the ghetto stereotypes that would likely not be as well tolerated today. The films were populated with fur-adorned pimps driving in purple Caddys. The street language was almost indiscernible. The black population sat around drinking from large malt liquor bottles in brown paper bags. In a day where almost every potential racist remark is pounced upon, it's hard to imagine that this kind of thing could have existed at all. But the point was that these films weren't feeding into the stereotypes for the most part. They were making fun of them. They were showing us how ridiculous they looked when taken to such extreme. What's more, the films offered the first real star vehicles for so many talented black actors. Certainly, the genre has always had its detractors, but they never seemed to cause a stir among the members of black leadership. The truth is that these films no more depicted black culture than mafia movies depict Italian culture. It's just a lot of fun to poke fun. You gotta let your hair down, or frizz out, sometimes.
The genre was important during the time and its influence began to be felt in mainstream pictures of the era. Characters like these began to show up everywhere. Starsky And Hutch was a white cop , but their streets were often populated with these characters, most notably the Huggy Bear snitch. Even James Bond suspended his international fight with global domination crooks to tackle a gang of blaxploitation drug dealers in Live And Let Die. In the 1970's you couldn't get away from it. Some of these films became huge. Shaft and Super Fly became huge hits. The recently departed Rudy Ray Moore created Dolemite, a bad Kung Fu/kick butt and take names, F Bomb droppin' bad dude. There's no question that Moore's character was a huge influence on Black Dynamite.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2010
When the original 1987 film The Stepfather came our way, the world was a very different place. Of course, that's true with any titles that are separated by nearly 25 years of time. When reboots or remakes are attempted, as they all too frequently are today, it is often true that some allowances must be made for those inevitable changes in our world. Filmmakers attempt to make whatever adjustments they deem fit and bring the old favorite, or not so favorite, into our current collective consciousness. Like all things, sometimes it works. More often it does not work. And then there are those occasions where it simply could never work. The Stepfather was released just at the dawn of this new instant information age. In 1987 most public records weren't available at the click of a mouse. There weren't social networks and Google options that allowed any normal person to become a private investigator. Put simply, it was a time when a person could still step into a new persona and leave his past acts behind him. Certainly, the ambitious could still research someone, but that required dusty basements in newspaper offices or library microfiche. The idea so essential to the suspense and thrill of The Stepfather simply no longer exists. The only way a remake could have really been effective was to make it a period piece and set it in the 70's or 80's, if not earlier. A ten year old kid can get the goods on you now. Here David doesn't appear to be concerned at all about fingerprints and DNA.
The original film had more than a slower information age going for it. Terry O'Quinn delivered one of the creepiest performances of his career. Yeah, that's the same Lost John Locke Terry O'Quinn, so it shouldn't be that hard for you to imagine an enigmatic performance. Even in 1987 the idea wasn't terribly original. There were enough stalker films by then that the concepts were already tired and worn. What made that film work more than anything was that performance. I remember particularly a moment, badly reproduced here, when O'Quinn's character stops and looks blankly at the camera and says, "Who am I here?" O'Quinn gives us a look that totally defines the hideous pathos of his character, and in that instant we realize how dangerously deluded he really is. It wasn't the back story. It wasn't the body count leading up to that moment. It was all in that look. It sent a shiver through the stoutest spine. And it is that element that is completely absent here. Dylan Walsh is a fine enough actor, and his performance is solid, but he never truly frightened me. Without that glue, the pieces of this remake simply cannot hold together.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 22nd, 2010
For ten years we watched Jack O'Neil, Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the Jaff'a Tealc' enter the Stargate. Others would join the team over the years. Each week we would follow their adventures, first on Showtime and finally on the Sci-Fi (now Sy Fy) Channel. We watched with awe as they stepped through a portal that was in reality a wormhole transporting them instantly to another world, brought online by dialing the device like an old fashioned telephone. For another five years we traveled not only to another planet, but to the Pegasus Galaxy itself to the Atlantis Base, a bright floating city left behind by the ancients, the people who created the Stargate system millions of years before. On this show we met new friends, new bad guys, and had new adventures. The location might have changed. The faces might have, at first, been unfamiliar, but the missions and the entertainment value didn't let us down. For 15 seasons we enjoyed a spectacular tale to rival the myths of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
I'm told that all good things must come to an end. When Atlantis was finally cancelled, I was made almost immediately aware of the plans to continue the franchise. First reports started coming out that the show was going to be called Stargate Universe. Soon my inside contacts started giving me tidbits about the story. Details began to emerge about the Destiny, an ancient ship abandoned in another universe far away. The ship was on some kind of predetermined course and would sport an unsuspecting crew of humans that would be left stranded on the ship for an indeterminate amount of time. It was starting to sound a lot like Star Trek: Voyager to me. Of course, this is Stargate, so there has to be some gate travel, one would assume. The ship would come with a gate, and the vessel would come out of faster than light travel from time to time and dial up a local planet for exploration. The ship was ancient not only in its origin but in its duration in space. There were going to be a lot of system failures, as the equipment was long past its expiration date. The ship itself would know what resources it needed to continue to operate. Searching its vast planetary database, the ship would locate planets with the essential resources, allowing away teams to get such vital raw materials. Unfortunately, the ship didn't always give a good indication of what to find or where on the planet it might happen to be. Oh, and did I mention the countdown? The ship would decide how much time it would allot for each mission, instituting a countdown. When the clock reached zero, the ship goes back to FTL, and whoever's not back in time gets left behind.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on February 17th, 2010
Recently, I got married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Well, the most wonderful woman I ever met anyhow. Her name is Sarah. Then I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if I included her every once in a while in my reviews? She’s very opinionated but she speaks from the heart. When our webmaster sent me New York, I Love You, I knew it was the perfect vehicle to introduce her to a mass audience.
Most of you are quite aware how I start my reviews, but this is going to be something of a departure. Traditionally, I start with a long narrative about the movie. We describe the movie and then I offer some quips and informative points after that. The problem is if I sit here and explain all of the ten stories presented then I might as well compile a book on the subject. I really don’t want to torture my reading audience like that.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 15th, 2010
So, this guy goes to see three rabbis....
No, that's not the start of some insensitive anti-Semitic joke. It's the rather offbeat idea behind the latest film by the Coen brothers. Of course, off the wall is business as usual for Ethan and Joel Coen. Fans of the brothers' work already know to expect the unexpected. You're likely not looking for the same kind of logical coherence that you might otherwise demand in your movies. The films often share a modern allegory to some classic fable or tale. There is certainly an element of a parable to this film in particular. It is not at all unlike the biblical tale of Job. Don't look for higher meaning in this tale of a man in search of a higher meaning. Instead, be prepared to become a fly on the wall in a life that is far from ordinary, yet anything but extraordinary.
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