Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 29th, 2008
Spinoffs are nothing new in the world of Hollywood. Take a successful film, take some supporting or bit actor from the film and put them in a situation that is like the original but not quite and boom you got a spinoff. However, these movies or series usually take time to develop. On rare occasions, they might be released after a mere six months in some cases. For Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, it was released a mere 10 days after the parent remake found itself in theaters. Could they capitalize on a market that was eager to go see the remake or would the parent bomb and leave this kinda movie in a bargain bin tucked far far away in the back of a Big Lots?
Bruce and Lloyd (played by Masi Oka & Nate Torrence) work in the lab of a R&D department for the United States Government. They invent many items, most of which go nowhere like the Tickle Tazer or Anti-Follicular Device which instead of being used for crowd control, is just used for removing somebody from their head of hair. However, their newest experiment is an invisibility cloak which has been dubbed OCT, Optical Camouflage Technology. The problem is that in a recent test (A very humorous scene involving Agent 91 played by Terry Crews) it simply did not have enough battery life.
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on August 27th, 2008
Y’s makes it to Virtual Console, Fable Pub Glitch to be patched, and Space Invaders recreating 9/11? - Welcome to the column that thinks bad ideas are fine as long as you take that rental chicken suit to the proper dry cleaners known as Dare to Play the Game.
Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Last Friday, I went to go see the Dark Knight with my girlfriend & one of our mutual best friends. What did I think? It was very awesome, however not as uber-awesome as my girlfriend and the best friend would lead you to believe. First and foremost, Heath Ledger as Joker did steal the show. This is utter fact. That performance alone will get me to buy the SE of the DVD on the first day it is released. However, I think Iron Man was the better movie if I had to pick between the Superhero movies I have seen this summer (with Hulk & Hellboy somewhere beneath those two). That’s because if you strip away Heath, you’re left with a merely decent Batman film. I’m still having trouble wrapping my hands around Christian Bale as Batman. When he’s Bruce Wayne, he seems lost and not really of the playboy image we have come to expect from the billionaire. When he’s Batman, he seems more of a gargoyle (what is with that voice anyway?) than the caped crusader. Furthermore, I had issues with how little the Two-Face villain was used. The special effects on his “face” were fantastic, but in the short period of time we were given to enjoy the coin-flipping lunatic killer wasn’t long enough. Perhaps I am too critical of Batman as I own all the movies (including the one from the 60’s), all of the animated series cartoons (not that newer crap) & even the complete Batman Beyond series. I have in my mind a certain feel for the dark man in the cape and unfortunately for me, the Bale Batman isn’t quite living up to that feat.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 26th, 2008
Man, has television come a long way in just over 50 years. There was once a pretty strict code that applied to television programs. Men and women, even when married, couldn’t be seen to have shared the same bed. Anything stronger than a “golly gee” was strictly forbidden. You couldn’t even show a woman’s belly button. And the good guys always had to win, while the bad guys got their comeuppance in the end. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first to push those boundaries by telling mystery stories where the bad guys often appeared to get away with their evil deeds. Even Hitchcock wasn’t brazen enough to completely skirt these rules, and at the end of such immoral plays he would always add, in his spoken postscript, some terrible twist of fate that got the bad guys in the end. Those days seem long behind us now. We have mob bosses, crooked cops, and now a serial killer, not only getting away with their crimes but acting the hero, of sorts, for the show. Vic Mackey and Tony Soprano only helped pave the way. In Showtime’s groundbreaking series, Dexter, Morgan Dexter is a serial killer who happens to kill other killers. The series is based on two novels by Jeff Lindsay. Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter gave birth to the character and world of Dexter Morgan.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 26th, 2008
I remember the first time I saw a Herschell Gordon Lewis film. It was Blood Feast, and it was sometime back in the early 1970’s. Lewis was ahead of his time and was doing extreme slasher before even mainstream slasher films were cool. It was shortly after that bloody experience that I saw the original Wizard Of Gore. Perhaps those experiences didn’t prepare me as much as I thought they would for the remake of Wizard Of Gore. I have to honestly say that I don’t really see the connection between these two films. Certainly the main idea of the magician remains, but little else of the original material survives.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 26th, 2008
Animal Planet has created their own new genre of television show over the last few years. Nature shows have been around forever. I remember spending time with my family as a kid watching Animal Kingdom. Since then very little about that type of program has changed. With Discovery Channel the nature show certainly became more sophisticated. Everything changed with Shark Week. Now we have an entire cable network dedicated to animals, so it stands to reason the nature show, like the animals themselves, had to evolve. That’s a lot of program time to fill. Animal Planet has taken a new step toward the next generation of nature shows.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 25th, 2008
Sonic Underground would be an interesting study in the land of Sonic Cartoons if one was into such a thing. The series lasted forty episodes and was made at the request of Sega who needed the promotion for their Dreamcast console in the fall of 1999. The show itself was an odd departure from the first two series in that it always contained a musical number and featured three main hedgehogs instead of just one. The show did serve to introduce a couple of new sub villains and Knuckles the Echidna. I honestly don’t remember Sonic Underground; I am more familiar with the previous two series, but with one look at the dvd cover and description on the outside, I might have begun to see why.
Queen Aleena the Hedgehog had three children: Sonic, Sonia & Manic. However, Dr. Robotnik & his robots decide to overtake things and force her out. Aleena went into hiding. But before doing so, she separated Sonic, Sonia & Manic. When the threesome became older, they heard of a prophecy that they could reunite with their mother. They would be able to end the tyrannical rule of Dr. Robotnik and resume their rightful leadership. The three also have medallions that can change into musical instruments to play as part of Sonic Underground and are also used as powerful weapons against the forces of Robotnik. The last twenty episodes join the trio as they try to find their mother and keep themselves alive against the selfishness of evil.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 25th, 2008
Current indie It-girl Ellen Page stars in this pre-Juno effort as a similarly headstrong teenager but whose life is far, far worse simply being pregnant. Here she comes from a dysfunctional home, her high school would be called a snake pit if that weren’t disrespectful to snakes, and her baby brother has disappeared while she was supposed to be taking care of him. She plunges into the underbelly of Toronto in a quest to find him, and an unending picaresque nightmare ensues.
But this isn’t called The Tracey Fragments for nothing, and the above summary fails to convey the actual experience of the film. Director Bruce McDonald breaks the screen up into fragments, and Tracey’s story unfolds as a kaleidoscope of multiple frames and shattered chronology. It’s a technique that won’t work for everyone, and that can be horribly misused, but here I found it both intense and exciting. In fact, it made some of the more familiar and/or hard to take/swallow aspects of the narrative itself much more palatable.
Posted in: Brain Blasters by David Annandale on August 22nd, 2008
Apparently, achieving just the right level of success can work against you. This would appear to be the case of the recent Spanish horror effort [REC]. Co-directed by Jaume Balagueró (who gave us the underrated Darkness and The Nameless) and Paco Plaza, this was one of Spain’s biggest box-office hits last year. Does that earn it a theatrical North American release? Not a bit of it. Instead, it earns itself a remake, under the title Quarantine. Though there are, apparently, some changes being made (the unfortunate jettisoning of the supernatural angle being one), from the looks of things, the new version is going to be a pointlessly exact retread (and speaking of pointless, why give us a trailer that shows the very last shot of the film?). Not only is [REC] not gracing the theatres, it is also being deprived, at least for now, of a domestic DVD release. But if I might speak a word to the wise, it is available as a Region 2 release, so those of you with region-free players know what to do.
Going through the effort of seeing [REC] is well worth it, because it is another example of the new wave of European horror at its finest. The set-up is becoming familiar by this point: in the vein of Cannibal Holocaust, The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, we have a verité conceit. In this instance, we are seeing everything through the lens of the cameraman for While You Were Asleep, and lightweight news program where the reporter follows around the people who work the night shift. Tonight, she is profiling firemen, and we are along for the ride when a call comes in about a woman trapped in an apartment. The routine assignment becomes everything but when the woman savagely attacks an attending officer. Then residents, media and rescuers are sealed in the building by the authorities. What follows is not unknown territory. We are basically in cannibalistic zombie territory, though these folks have the rage and savagery of the infected in 28 Days Later, and the manner of infection (not to mention the aforementioned pronounced hint of the supernatural) also echoes Demons. Once the bad stuff starts happening, it happens at a frenetic pace, and the skill of the directors in deploying familiar material is astonishing. What we have here is another example of how anything old can be made fresh and vital is handled with inspiration and brio.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 22nd, 2008
No, this is not the movie that promised to show us men turned inside out. It is, in fact, a curious mixture of genocide documentary and concert film. The performance is by rockers System of a Down. The lead singer’s grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and so that atrocity is the primary focus of the film, which cuts between concert footage, personal interviews, grisly documents and academic talking heads. By extension, the film also takes a stand against all forms of genocide, and is an explicit invitation to the audience to get involved in the fight for justice.
The mixture of elements is unorthodox, to put it mildly, and the effect is a bit bizarre. There are many moving, heartfelt and sharply observed moments, but one is also left with the feeling of having watched well-meaning but overly earnest and slightly naive agit-prop. Then again, it’s hard to resent the important work the film is trying to do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 21st, 2008
My mother was a big fan of The Untouchables. I think she really just had a crush on Robert Stack. Years later when Stack was hosting Unsolved Mysteries, I could swear that I heard her murmur a few
On The Web
Sponsors
