The Traveler (2010)

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

GENRE: REVENGE, SUPERNATURAL

SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Do you like Fringe? Then you will hate The Traveler for wasting what could have been a perfectly good Fringe episode (with the obvious tinkering). The scenario is fine, but it in no way lends itself to a 90 minute feature, so you're left with a lot of repetition and padding, and a third act that revolves around "revealing" things that any intelligent viewer would have figured 40 minutes ago.

Now, that might be a bit misleading, because there's nothing scientific about the movie, but at its heart is a supernatural tale of somewhat justifiable revenge, something Fringe has tackled on occasion, and the beats of the tale would better be served by a TV show - start with a weird murder, bring in our guys, learn some info, another murder, yakkity yak, murder, reveal, murder, revenge complete, end of episode. It would also give us an "in" to the story that the movie lacks - the entire plot hinges on six people who did something terrible a year ago and their victim who is seeking revenge. There's no one to explain anything to, so instead we just get a bunch of repetitive flashbacks showing us what they did, with no one to root for (they viciously tortured and beat a suspect into a coma) - who the hell am I supposed to care about here? They should have had a "new guy" or another (innocent) prisoner or SOMEONE worth latching onto. Worse, the 2nd flashback (maybe 25 minutes into the movie) shows us EVERYTHING, rendering future flashbacks pointless.

Then again, maybe I just had Fringe on the brain because the "hero" of the movie is Dylan Neal, best known as Pacey's older brother Doug on Dawson's Creek. So while Pacey has graduated to a really great TV show, Doug is playing second fiddle to a bored Val Kilmer (what HAPPENED to you, man?), stuck in between playing the showy villain (Kilmer) and one of the random cops who at least get to take part in surprisingly gory death scenes. No, all Neal gets to do is talk to the ghost of his daughter (during the most baffling climax I've seen in a movie in quite some time) after spending 80 minutes angrily storming up and down hallways with a flashlight. I guess we're supposed to root for him because his daughter died and thus he's sad, but stabbing a guy in the chest with a pen after he claimed he was innocent is sort of hard to justify. Plus he was always a dick to Pacey.

But at least he seems like a real cop (hey, Doug was a cop too! Should I just cut the review here and go watch Dawson's Creek?), unlike the other five officers. Two of them puke at the sight of a corpse, which you'd think would be something they'd be prepared for, and one guy I can't even figure out how he passed the exams - the cops in Police Academy looked more competent than this clown. The lone female officer also shows zero signs of the authority one should possess to be a cop; screaming and running around like any old slasher victim when presented with danger. Guess this is why you don't see too many horror films populated entirely with cops. Maybe if I recognized any of them it would have been more fun (or at least made them somewhat worth rooting for), but they're all anonymous Canadian actors. Maybe next time Kilmer can bring along his "we pissed away our career" DTV cohorts like Tom Sizemore, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Michael Madsen - it can be like the DVD version of Identity or something.

And who the hell thought the grinding guitar music was a good idea? Rarely has a film score been more intrusive. The kill scenes don't make a hell of a lot of sense as it is (Kilmer seemingly uses telekinesis), but the obnoxious score just makes them unbearable to boot. I mean, the movie's been boring me to tears from the end of the first reel, so you'd think that suddenly tossing guts and skin and blood around the set (for real) would make up for it, but the awful score ruins their appeal (not to mention that the tone is completely out of place with the rest of the rather moody film).

At least it LOOKS nice. The scope imagery was a nice surprise, and Neil Cervin's photography was appropriately dark and cold (I bet he watched the Assault on Precinct 13 remake beforehand - this movie also leaves its police station for the woods at one point, in fact). And the flashbacks have that desaturated look that lets you know it's a flashback, which I appreciate after yesterday's The Bleeding, where it was a bit of a guessing game since both flashbacks and present day scenes were over-filtered.

No extras. Not a complaint.

What say you?

My favorite Oscar of the night

Early on in last night's show, when we paused to prepare a cocktail, put an appetizer in the oven or put our son to sleep, my wife told me that she didn't feel like she had a horse in the race this year.

"I mean, there were a lot of really good movies this year," she clarified. "But there's no one that I'm really pulling for, like when Bill Murray was up for Lost in Translation."

I nodded my head at that one -- Murray's loss to Sean Penn that year is one of those things that still stings me when I think about famous Oscar misses. The rest of my response was kind of a non-commital affirmation, the kind you give you when you generally agree, but don't have anything more to add, or are otherwise distracted and can't be bothered to contribute a response.

But a few minutes later, thinking on it, I realized I myself had a horse in the race this year -- a horse I may have been pulling for more than any horse that's ever run in the Oscars.

When the Best Original Score Oscar came up to bat, I felt myself get nervous and jittery. Trent Reznor, the erstwhile Nine Inch Nails frontman, was nominated alongside collaborator Atticus Ross for the unforgettable score for The Social Network. I felt reasonably confident he would win, but as I heard snippets of the scores of films like The King's Speech and Inception -- composed by formidable talents like Alexandre Desplat and Hans Zimmer -- I got nervous. Since the conventional wisdom was that The Social Network had "peaked too early," I was told to fear its prospects in any and all categories -- especially those categories where frontrunner The King's Speech was also nominated.

All it took was the "Tr" sound to come out of Nicole Kidman's mouth, and I let out a little cheer for my boy Trent.

At this point I should probably give you a little background.

Two thousand eleven marks the 20th anniversary of my awareness of Nine Inch Nails -- and about the 19th anniversary of when I started calling them my favorite band. I heard NIN's seminal album Pretty Hate Machine in the fall of 1991, when I was a freshman in college. I bought the CD that Christmas, and as they say, the rest is history. I have been a die-hard fan of the band through all its ups and downs, its interminable periods of inactivity (it's taken as long as five-and-a-half years for Trent to release a new Nine Inch Nails album -- not once, but twice), its periods in and out of rehab for Mr. Reznor (which probably coincided with some of those periods of inactivity). Throughout all that, never once has any other musical act chipped away at the title of my favorite. For musical genius that seems to approach Rain Man status in terms of sheer outside-the-box complexity, Trent Reznor has been my musical hero for nearly two decades. I've seen him perform live five times, and I've purchased pretty much everything he's ever been involved with, even soundtracks for movies I have still never seen (David Lynch's Lost Highway).

So when Nicole Kidman said his name last night, and those six signature notes of "Hand Covers Bruise" (the Social Network "theme song") played as he got out of his seat, I was as thrilled as a proud papa. No longer the angry depressive and nihilist who burst onto the scene in 1989, Reznor was a dapper 45-year-old with facial scruff and a handsome tuxedo, proud but modest, embracing the ceremony without irony. To paraphrase Vince Vaughn from Swingers, I thought, "My baby's all grownsed up!"

When he got up there, he gave an eloquent, composed and grateful speech, one that never for a moment seemed self-indulgent. Not only that, but he allowed equal time for Ross, a collaborator who -- let's be honest -- Reznor probably didn't need in order to give birth to the haunting brilliance of the Social Network score. I may never know the quantity of Ross' contributions to the project, but I'll always know that Reznor gave him equal credit for their masterpiece.

And if you haven't listened to the Social Network score in its entirety, you should go do that. Yeah, it probably speaks a little more to a Nine Inch Nails fan like me than it would to a regular person, but not a lot more. The compositions are both beautiful and catchy, rarely containing any of the fury of Nine Inch Nails, but displaying all the craftsmanship and musical experimentation in the best Nine Inch Nails work. And the thing I was most amazed about, upon first listen, is that I didn't miss the lyrics. As a good preview for his work on Social Network, Reznor made a massive four-disc Nine Inch Nails album called Ghosts a couple years back, which is entirely instrumental. I think the music is really good, but I've only listened to the whole thing all the way through once. I'm sure that has something to do with the imposing length of the album (over 40 tracks), but it's also that without lyrics, you can't really "attach" to the specific songs. I thought I needed those lyrics to keep me involved -- until I heard The Social Network.

In addition to his own original creations, I also love that he reimagined Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" for the Winklevoss crew sequence -- which was also used in the show last night.

As much as I am happy for Trent Reznor the artist, I'm happy for Trent Reznor the person. Sure, being an emotional mess contributed to some of his most brilliant work. But even if it's taken some of the "teeth" out of his music (NIN had an album called With Teeth), I'm really glad Trent has found happiness in his life. In 2009 he married former West Indian Girl singer Mariqueen Maandig, who was with him at the Kodak Theater last night, and they are now collaborating on a musical project called How to Destroy Angels, whose first EP is quite interesting (especially the song "A Drowning," which gives me chills). The future seems bright for a happy Trent -- in an extremely intelligent podcast interview about this soundtrack last year, he told us to expect new Nine Inch Nails material and new How to Destroy Angels material in 2011. Not only that, but I just read something I should have known already -- he'll also do the score for Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, due out later this year. Could Reznor be a perennial Oscar contender, like Zimmer and Desplat? Could he one day become the Randy Newman of nominees, without all the sarcasm and mean-spiritedness in his acceptance speech?

Who knows. For now, I just want to bask in having seen my favorite musician honored at my favorite awards show, by the people who make my favorite passion.

I wanted to hear "Hand Covers Bruise" all night last night, most notably when best picture was announced. But it turned out that I heard it at the most important time, for me personally, to hear it, and that is more than enough.

A couple other isolated thoughts on last night's show, which turned out somewhat decent after a disastrous start. If you've read these observations elsewhere, you can rest assured that I haven't -- I didn't read anything else about the Oscars before posting this:

1) The disastrous start wasn't right at the start. Right at the start was great, with the opening pre-recorded bit of hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway going into Alec Baldwin's dream. Spot on stuff. And it was a delight to see the ever-wonderful Baldwin.

2) The disasters started about the time Melissa Leo won her Oscar. That acceptance speech took years off my life. It was an absolute train wreck. What made it so terrible is that it was already going so terribly before Leo dropped her now-famous f-bomb. That section of the show felt like it took a half-hour, in part because the pacing ground to a halt once Kirk Douglas took the stage -- it was a nice idea and I was really charmed by what he was able to accomplish, but I must admit it made me impatient (which was sort of the point, as he did that bit where he made the nominees wait in agony for the winning name). So then when Leo began her choppy acceptance speech which committed just about every sin a speech can commit, it felt like the show couldn't regain its pacing for the next half-hour. Other seeming casualties of the temporary bad vibe was the awkward banter between Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, which just did not hit.

3) And speaking of Timberlake, his joke about being Banksy -- which I actually thought would get more laughs -- was the only Banksy appearance of the evening, that I'm aware of. A little disappointing. But perhaps I should read one of those articles I haven't read yet, which would tell me where else he may have made his presence known.

4) Is it just me, or did Hathaway seem to be doing a lot more actual hosting than Franco? It was like she was taking the hosting duties seriously, and he was standing there with an awkward grin on his face, like he was playing his stoner character in Pineapple Express. Even putting on the Marilyn Monroe dress did not really "work." Franco didn't embarrass himself or anything, he was just kind of ... "absent." At least Hathaway picked up the slack, though her song about Hugh Jackman was the most obvious thing that could have been lifted out of the show -- it was done well, but it was lacking in context and seemed pretty insiderish.

5) Give it up for the two youngest nominees, Hailee Steinfeld and Jennifer Lawrence, who were both ten times more adorable than I thought they would be from their films.

6) As a guy who frequently has bushy hair myself, I loved that "I should have gotten a haircut" guy.

7) Why haven't we heard more about Florence from Florence and the Machine before now? What a voice. Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, looked constipated. I think the Tangled song should have won, and not just because I love Tangled so much. Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore reminded me that that song truly is special -- I would say easily the most strictly memorable of the four that were nominated. (Though I might have liked to see "Mother Knows Best," from the same movie, nominated as well.)

8) Christian Bale's acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the night for me. The tempestuous personality was all charm last night, and I loved his decision to thank people by first name only -- it was intimate and it felt special.

9) The auto-tune bit was one of my other highlights. It was such a good bit that I wanted to see it go on for five minutes longer. I love anything auto-tuned -- I think it's one of the great ways to use modern technology for high comedy.

10) I still love Billy Crystal. And the Bob Hope bit worked pretty well. How did they get "Bob Hope" to "announce" the next presenters?

11) Interesting choice to suppress the applause during the "In Memoriam" section. Without reading more about it, I don't know if that was done by shutting off the microphones in the audience during that section, or a sign that told people not to applaud. I agree that it must seem very sad for relatives/friends of the less famous dead people when no one applauds their person.

12) Sandra Bullock nailed it. Jeff Bridges was good, but Bullock nailed it. Class and humor, in one complete package. And then Colin Firth's acceptance speech was just what we've come to expect from him. Shouldn't he have been an Oscar winner already? Sure seems like it.

13) I loved the decision to do away with the periodic clips from the best picture nominees that run throughout the night. They did a good enough job incorporating that stuff into other pieces throughout the night, most notably what was probably the best highlight of the evening: The montage before best picture was announced, which was cut to Firth's speech in The King's Speech. That was expertly done and I had chills the whole time watching it. Even the words matched up perfectly to the images, such as when Firth says "enemies" and former best friends Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network give each other a steely look. Well played.

14) I loved Steven Spielberg's decision to put into context what it means to lose best picture -- that you now have something in common with Citizen Kane and Raging Bull. Great touch.

15) At first I was not sure about finishing the show with the elementary school kids singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," but I ultimately decided that it was nice not to have the hosts give just a few awkward words at the end before the credits roll. It was an attempt to have what my wife and I call a "Saturday Night Live clap clap" moment at the end -- you know, like at the very end of SNL, when everyone's out on stage and the music has this quality of reminiscing about the good times of the evening just passed. I'm not sure if it worked 100%, but it was better than the awkward alternative. (Also, loved that one kid who was totally over-emoting.)

I'm sure there's a lot more I could/should say, but I'm working without notes and going from memory only, so let's just cut it off here.

Besides, I have to go read all those Oscar stores I haven't read yet ...

The Bleeding (2009)

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE

SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

On paper, the basic concept behind The Bleeding is fine: take an over-muscled tough guy not unlike (read: borderline plagiarized from) Vin Diesel's character in the Fast & Furious films and put him in a vampire/action hybrid. Should be perfectly enjoyable B-movie fun, right? Well, the makers (or the financiers) of the movie must have been hell-bent on making sure that they never even came close to achieving that level of entertainment, which is probably why it's been on the shelf for 2-3 years.

The biggest problem is the near total lack of action. I was worried right from the start, as the movie (after a fairly cool opening credits sequence) started with what was obviously the film's climax. There are only two reasons to do this in a movie; one is to toy with the audience, and present the scene in a whole new light once you have the additional information that the movie provided (Usual Suspects is a good example). The other is to simply pad out a short running time and make up for the lack of any action in the first half. Guess which category this movie falls under, with a running time of 82 minutes and a plot that can basically be boiled down to "Meathead kills some vampires"?

Instead, we just get a lot of padding, and thus a lot of boredom. Our hero (Michael Matthias, who makes Diesel look like he's got the range of John Hawkes or someone) is prone to driving around, looking fondly at his town's waterfront or something, and then driving away, or providing voiceover consisting of bible passages laced with tough guy profanity. Most insulting is when Michael Madsen (the film's lone bright spot, unless you count the very lovely Rachelle Leah) asks our hero to, you know, kill vampires. Matthias says no, then wanders around the woods for what seems like a full five minutes before (spoiler) deciding he will indeed kill vampires. There's also a scene with Armand Assante that seems transplanted from another movie entirely (Assante is in the one scene and never mentioned again).

It's also loaded with inane editing, particularly in the first act, that suggests perhaps the film was re-edited in post (hey, it's been on the shelf for years, might as well play around with it). It's difficult to tell what is happening in the past or in the present, and Matthias' voice-over often seems added to sum up deleted scenes and plot points, particularly the Afghanistan based back-story that is crucial to the creation of the film's villain (Vinnie Jones) but is treated like an afterthought. I also love when DMX (!) informs us that vampires "hunt alone" and then they cut to a shot of 3-4 vampires hunting together. The idiotic "let's play the ending of the movie!" concept also spoils the death of Leah's friend - not that it was a major shock, but she doesn't die until nearly the end of the film. Maybe they thought we'd forget about it by the time she got around to dying?

Then again, you can't really blame them for wanting to use this sequence twice, because it's the only time the movie becomes sort of fun. It's essentially the climax of Road Warrior, but at night (not enough car chases at night, in my opinion) and with vampires instead of crazy gang dudes. The film was directed by veteran stunt guru Charles Picerni, so he ensures a lot of cool acrobatics and even a few good shots (love the sideways-traveling truck passing over the camera), and I laughed like a loon at Matthias standing on top of his barely in-control truck shooting two guns without being affected by gravity or any of that silly stuff. Honestly if the movie was just 82 minutes of this, I would have loved it. Unfortunately it's very brief, and they stupidly killed off Madsen and his partner, making it a suspense-less battle. At least if Madsen and the other guy were around, we could tense up whenever they were in danger, as there was a chance they might die (unlike Matthias and Leah), but no - they blew themselves up before the chase even began.

And can we do away with the "vampires in a nightclub" concept? Blade cornered the market on that over a decade ago, and since every action/vampire movie since has pretty much sucked, no one has forgotten about it. We also haven't forgotten the horrors of Van Helsing, so why they outfitted Jones in a nearly identical getup is beyond me (dig his long hair though).

The disc has a few brief extras, which seem to have been created for a website or something due to their brevity and basic worthlessness. One has some interviews with the cast (including Assante, who does nothing to dispel my belief that he was from a different movie by talking about how these guys have a "code" and such), one covers the stunts, and another features the makeup, including footage of Kat Von D, a horribly unappealing woman that is featured front and center on the DVD box despite having a role in the film that's essentially that of a glorified background extra.

It's never a good thing when you sit down WANTING a brainless B-movie to enjoy and it can't even deliver. I hate to be too harsh on it because I can almost guarantee that the script was probably a good read, and again it shows signs of post-production tinkering. Alas, Matthias' woeful performance and a fatal lack of action (or even some tension - you can save all the action for the end as long as you're building suspense, like Executive Decision) overpower what little is left to enjoy. Wait for Fast Five and/or Underworld 4.

What say you?

Oscar O'Sullivan

On one of the film podcasts I listen to, one of the podcasters recently came up with a quip that made me laugh:

"One of my least favorite film genres is ... Boston."

I immediately got what he was talking about. I'm from Boston, and I still got it.

Yeah, there have been a lot of movies set in Boston in the last couple years. I guess there are always a lot of movies set in a lot of prominent American cities -- as Boston is probably among the ten biggest cities in the U.S., we should not be surprised to see a fair number of movies set in Boston.

But there's something about Boston movies that seem to assert their Boston-ness, maybe more than Atlanta movies assert their Atlanta-ness, or Chicago movies assert their Chicago-ness.

And that's the point of the following hilarious little video, which I thought would be appropriate to post on Oscar day, when movies like The Town and The Fighter have both been nominated for Oscars ... and are "Bah-stin" to their core.

Here's the link ... enjoy, and enjoy the ceremony tonight.

Chain Letter (2010)

HUGE SPOILERS within, especially about the ending, so beware!

Chain Letter is a story about a bunch of mid 20's high school students who receive a creepy chain letter via text, stating that they have to pass it on to five more people within 24 hours, or they will die. Sure enough, they scoff at the text and ignore it (but pass it on anyhow), and one by one they start to die in grisly ways... killed by a hulking figure dressed all in black, who seems to be able to sneak around this upscale city escaping any and all notice. Not only that, but he can access homes and schools at will, abduct people, set up elaborate torture schemes, and slowly kill them... as if no one else in town is awake through all of this.

Now, it's odd to me that amidst all of these "teens" dying off that we never see much of the parents getting involved, nor do the police seem to be all that frenzied to find out what's going on. After all, the town in which the movie takes place is the "multimedia capital of the world" or some such shit, so wouldn't you think at least the police would be on the cusp of technology? Maybe there's web-cams everywhere that might catch something odd? Or, better yet, would anyone in town use a smart phone, which are non-existent in the movie?

It sat on the shelf for a few years, so I'm guessing that the film makers have no clue that technology changes about 50 times in that same amount of time where computers and phones are concerned. The frigging movie is about TECHNOLOGY! How can the get that aspect of things wrong?

Nikki Reid (as our final girl), takes about a year and a half to figure out that "something just isn't right here", and she's the smartest of the bunch. She figures out there's something about a cult that hates electronics so much that they feel the need to torture innocent (if not annoying) kids to death to prove their point... which is what? Technology is the devil?


This movie is so loose and haphazard that it's hard to even rip on it. The plot meanders and winds in so many different directions, that the movie never really makes up its mind about what it's supposed to be. We get no answers about much of anything that happens, like who, why, and even how. We never find out who the killer is; sure, we have a creepy teacher, a creepy profiler, and a mongoloid bumpkin that does the killing, but what the hell is going on? What just happened?

The script is such a mess that it really makes no sense to talk about the movie and try to understand what went wrong. Some of the kill scenes were bloody and fun, but really, they were so elaborate and Saw-like that they just seemed ridiculous and out of place. And the genre staples who star in this Like Brad Dourif, Betsy Russell and Keith David? Wasted here on sub par material. Hell, Bai Ling is supposed to be in this, but she wasn't? Whatever.

And the ending? The scene that the whole movie seemed to exist to build up to? A joke. So the hulking "Chain Man" is able to sneak into a house, drag a kid to the garage, chain her up to two cars... that are outside of the garage and facing the street, mind you... without the parents noticing this at all? A town on edge with kids dying left and right, and the parents are oblivious? Before they leave the house, they're watching a news report about the kids being killed, and they don't have any instinct to go check on their kid? Sure they have no reason to suspect that she's gone, but piece of mind is a parents thing, you know? They don't even notice two chains coming from under the not-closed garage, that are attached to their cars? And how clever, they both pull out of the driveway at the same exact time, and going different ways... forget it, I'm stopping here.

This movie is a sad state of affairs for the horror genre. It got a theatrical release while a movie like Trick r' Treat goes straight to DVD. And yes, I always go back to Tr'T in these cases, because it really is an excellent example of exactly how Hollywood shits the bed with most American horror releases.

Unless your horror bar is set really, really low, avoid this suck fest.

Night Of The Living Dead 3D (2006)

FEBRUARY 26, 2011

GENRE: REMAKE, ZOMBIE

SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Luckily for the cast and crew of Night Of The Living Dead 3D (or Night Of The Living De3D, which is too stupid for my fingers to type with any regularity), I just watched the 30th Anniversary edition of the original film, and thus used up all my ability to hate a film for “butchering a classic” or “raping my childhood” or whatever the hell else people will toss out whenever reviewing a remake that they wanted to hate from the minute they heard about it (I just hated the music and editing, myself). So I think it’s mainly because of that that I was able to get through this one with minimal eye-rolling and annoyance.

I mean, it’s not a very good movie, but it’s less hacky than I expected, which after yesterday’s debacle made it look like a goddamn classic in comparison. And even without that in mind, there’s a lot to like here: the makeup is good, the zombies are slow, the lead actress is fetching (Timber Falls’ Brianna Brown), and unlike Savini’s version, they don’t just make minor variations on the original movie – it’s more like Dawn 04 in that it takes the same basic concept and changes most everything else (it even has a sort-of explanation for the zombies). In short, it’s basically just another mediocre 00s zombie movie, but shot well and cast with a few real actors.

And in 3D, of course. I didn’t realize it when I bought it, but there is actually no option to watch it in 2D on the disc, like most 3D releases have. Since the red/blue style is unwatchable at home (the red always overpowers the blue, giving a weird flashing effect over lighter/white areas of the frame), I couldn’t watch the entire movie like that lest I get a blinding headache, but it was just as annoying watching it without the glasses and seeing red/blue “shadows” everywhere. So I spent most of the movie alternating between glasses on, glasses off, and glasses on but covering my right (red) eye. Headache kept at bay! However, I should note that the 3D DESIGN is actually quite good – there are some requisite ‘pop out’ gags, but nowhere near as intrusive as Friday the 13th Part 3, and director Jeff Broadstreet and his DP/3D team really put effort into creating depth with the shots and lighting it appropriately so that the glasses don’t dull the image too much. I also quite like how they “introduce” the 3D element, by starting on black and white footage from the first movie (in 2D), only to zoom out and pan to reveal it’s just playing on a TV in this (now) 3D world. Very cool.

However this leads to one of my problems with the movie. It takes place in the real world, where NOTLD is a movie, and yet even though the characters in this movie are watching it, no one notices how strange it is that they all have the same names (Ben, Barbra, Karen, Helen, Tom, Judy.... Harry is changed to Henry, however). Since they were more or less doing their own thing, I am baffled why they kept the same names, especially with the original film playing in the background a couple of times. It certainly doesn’t help in the case of Ben – in a bit of unintentional irony, not only is he white, he’s a fucking terrible actor (Duane Jones got the role because he was a great actor, not because he was black – the role was written without a race in mind). I assume this guy only got the gig because he was handsome, but whatever the reason was, I wish someone had the foresight to change his name, because it just invites unfavorable comparison to the original.

My other main problem was the drug humor. In this version, the farmhouse is actually a weed farm, and the occupants are stoner/hippie types. This sort of comedy has never appealed to me, and I certainly don’t think it has any place in an otherwise serious horror movie (there isn’t a touch of humor in the film until the pot farmers are introduced). One of the film’s biggest “Comin at ya!” moments is a guy offering a joint to Barb and Ben, holding the oversized thing out in the foreground with a Franco-esque dumbass look on his face – this would inspire a huge round of applause on a college campus, I am sure, but I just sighed and lost interest for the next few minutes. I also particularly hated the Henry character, who runs the farm, and was shocked to discover the actor playing him was a stand-up comedian – he was the least amusing of the lot. I did feel a little better later, when I learned that this stuff was at the insistence of one of the executive producers (screenwriter Robert Valding was opposed to it, in fact).

It could have done without Sid Haig as well. I like the guy, but the best zombie movies don’t stop to explain everything in the middle of the climax, which is precisely what his character does here. The zombies are in fact the folks who should have been cremated at Haig’s mortuary, but he didn’t have the stomach to burn them so he just kept them all. He also keeps his father “alive” as a zombie by feeding it, Seymour Krelborn style (though why this doesn’t make him turn into a zombie is beyond me). One of the things I was sort of enjoying about the movie was that it toned down the human in-fighting (Cooper and Ben argue briefly but never really become antagonistic toward one another), but then Haig comes along in the 3rd act (he only appears once before then) and does the whole “evil human” shit we’ve seen in a zillion other zombie movies, with a plotline that barely even makes any sense to boot.

The DVD bonus material is largely on the technical side, including the commentary, which despite the number of participants (4 including Haig, who shows up late) is primarily joke-free. Much of the talk is about the 3D process and other shooting nuts n’ bolts stuff, and then Sid discusses his performance with minimal self-deprecation. Not a bad track, but more geared toward 3D junkies and/or those who truly loved the film, of which I am neither. There’s also a Q&A from the New Bev (2nd bonus feature of its type this week! Both of screenings I can’t even recall taking place let alone why I missed them), which is worth a look for HMAD aficionados (if there are any) for the moment where Haig bemoans A Dead Calling’s direct-to-DVD release (fans know that I consider that to be one of the absolute worst movies I’ve reviewed yet). Then there’s a making of, a quick bit about working in 3D, some trailers, and a blooper reel which is not only unfunny, but almost sort of uncomfortable because no one seems to be amused when things go wrong (it’s also missing the audio on several clips, rendering it impossible to understand what exactly went wrong). Not a bad package, all told, but I’d dump nearly all of it in order to afford the disc space that would allow the 2D version to be included (apparently it’s available on a separate release, but the design is worth at least sampling, I think).

Overall, it’s not as successful as Savini’s version by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s hardly a train wreck, either. Compared to the likes of House of the Dead (hey, Haig appeared in that film’s sequel!), Dorm Of The Dead, or Pot Zombies, it’s a classic. And when my biggest problem with a film is humor that I’m just not a fan of in general (humor that was forced upon the film’s creative team to boot), I have to factor that into the equation. And again – these guys did a better job of “re-imagining” Romero’s film than his own partners did with the 30th anniversary thing. That’s gotta be worth some credit, right?

At any rate, NOTLD week is over! I can go back to watching movies sans any sort of planning or focus on a theme. I can also hopefully go a week or so without hearing any variation on “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” (speaking of which – giant UGH on the “modern” version of that in this movie, luckily the trailer had already spoiled it so I was prepared). Plus, my “overdose” gave me an idea for my next Terror Tuesday column at Badass Digest, so it was all worth it!

What say you?

When money is no object

On Thursday night, I saw a movie about winning a lot of money, and it cost me no money at all.

However, it did make me question whether being free is actually reason enough to do something.

Those of you who rent from Redbox are probably familiar with their promotions. From time to time, they offer scenarios where you can get a free rental, or two-for-one, that kind of thing. This past week it was a free night's rental if you "liked" Redbox on Facebook. I'd already "liked" Redbox at some point in the past, for a similar promotion, but that didn't mean I was excluded from the promotion. Those who had already "liked" Redbox were also invited to use the promotion code.

The thing is, the promotion had very specific parameters -- it needed to be used on February 24th. Not a day before, not a day afterward.

This worked out well for me. My wife was gone for nearly five hours on Thursday, getting a Brazilian haircut up in the valley. (Which looks absolutely tremendous, by the way.) I could have actually watched two movies during that time, but I knew I'd get in at least one, even with feeding my son and putting him to bed.

So I used the code -- DVDONME -- and picked up Lottery Ticket. It wasn't my first choice. The display on the Redbox kiosk showed that Middle Men, the movie about the origins of internet porn, was available for rental, and I sometimes like to save these movies with unsavory subject matter for when my wife is out. But this particular kiosk wasn't carrying any copies of Middle Men, and many of the other movies available for rental were movies I'd considered watching prior to closing out my 2010 year-end list, but rejected.

Then I saw Lottery Ticket, which I'd wanted to see enough for it to be worthy of a free rental, for sure. It had its moments, but "free" ended up being about the right price for it. Let's just say I was hoping for a movie that intelligently looked at the dilemma faced by a newly minted lottery winner -- namely, that your relationship with everyone around you immediately changes, usually for the worse. I thought Lottery Ticket had the potential to mine comic gold from the way this phenomenon presents itself in the projects -- and if done properly, would avoid any really hurtful racial stereotypes. It did this last part well enough, but ultimately was a bit meandering in its plot, leaving me wanting. Marginal thumbs down for me.

The thing that really interested me about this experience was whether saving a mere $1.10 actually made it worth using the promotion at all.

The reason why Redbox is such a good business model is that the rental price is already basically free. I don't want to speak for every broke-ass person out there (apparently, the speech patterns of Lottery Ticket are still in my head), but for those of us who aren't wondering how we'll pay for our next meal, there isn't much of a difference between paying $1.10 for something and getting it for free. It depends what it is, of course. Paying $1.10 for a first-class postage stamp would drive us crazy. But the value of watching a movie generally seems to exceed that meager price, doesn't it? Even if the movie is bad.

So the question, when considering renting a movie from Redbox, is not whether you can afford it. It's whether you actually have the time to watch it before 9 p.m. the next night, so it doesn't end up costing you $2.20 rather than $1.10. If you do have the time, you'd be just as happy to pay $1.10 as to get it for free.

And to show you just how little Redbox was worried about the hit to their bottom line, you didn't need a unique promotional code, one that would become invalid once it was used once. The promotional code was the same for everyone: DVDONME. I could have publicized it on my blog, or on Facebook, or on Twitter, or in an email to all my contacts. And then hundreds of people who hadn't "liked" Redbox on Facebook could have picked up a free rental on Thursday. The rental fee on Redbox is so small, even thousands of people illicitly participating in a promotion wouldn't have meant much to their bottom line. And if it brought the Redbox experience to people who had previously been unfamiliar with it, all the better.

Because my wife was going to be out, I might have gone to Redbox, even without the promotion. The promotion had the value of sealing the deal for me, but for those who didn't have the available hours in their schedule, it probably didn't make any difference one way or another.

Except in the public perception of Redbox. A company that will give you something for free is a company you view with at least slightly more positivity.

Redbox is a perfect example of what a company has to do in an information age where everyone -- most notably the music business -- is competing with "free." So far, they're succeeding, where a company like Blockbuster isn't.

Having to spend only $1.10 on a movie rental, rather than $5 ... well, it prevents us from having to think twice about spending the money. It gives us that same freedom in discretionary spending enjoyed by ... say, a lottery winner.

Night Of The Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (1998)

FEBRUARY 25, 2011

GENRE: CRAP, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

There's a wealth of extras on the Night Of The Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition DVD, but none accurately explain why John Russo and Russ Streiner did it in the first place. One can assume that they saw it as another way to make some money off the property (again, a copyright snafu has resulted in Romero and co. seeing a mere fraction of what they could/should have earned as a result of the film's success), but every single thing that they added or changed in this version can be described as awful at best.

They were also likely inspired by George Lucas' revisions to the original three Star Wars films, but there are two key differences. One is that he had the money and resources to do these things properly (for lack of a better word), and two (and this is far more important), he didn't go back and shoot new scenes while removing others. Now, he DID add in some scenes (such as Han meeting Jabba), but these were originally shot for the film and excised for one reason or another. He also fixed up some effects and changed some things (via CGI wizardry) to make the films connect more with the others, such as adding Hayden's face to Anakin at the end of Jedi. Sure, the general consensus is that these things took the charm out of the film, but one can still watch them and more or less get the original experience.

But what Russo and Streiner did here is nothing short of offensive, filming entirely new scenes that were in no way part of the original design. If they can prove that these scenes (or even the basic idea behind them) were planned in 1967 while the original film was in production, then fine, I will take back that part. It doesn't change the fact that they are awful in every way - from casting to writing to their production. Look at the new scene where the cemetery zombie (Bill Hinzman, another conspirator) attacks some folks - it's shot from a stationary wide angle that looks like a 12 year old's idea of an action scene. The action in Night may not exactly be the most jaw-dropping zombie carnage ever shot, but at least Romero knew how to shoot it in a visually interesting way (via closeups, editing, etc). Worse, they actually REMOVE other scenes, which just makes their amateurish and ugly new scenes look even worse. Say what you will about Lucas, he didn't cut out any of Mark Hamill's performance because of his corny acting or whatever. But Russo deletes scenes (Barbra telling Ben about what happened at the cemetery, for example) with no rhyme or reason throughout the film. Tightening some bad edits is one thing; they actually just hack away at the film.

Even more offensive is the new music score by Scott Vladimir Licina, who thankfully hasn't been allowed near another film since (his only other credit is composing a short film six years after this debacle). Nearly all of the original music has been replaced by his god-awful, borderline Manfredini-level score, which not only just sounds bad but doesn't even fit the film 99% of the time. Even someone who unfortunately saw this version before seeing the original would be able to tell that the music didn't fit, which just shows you how terrible a composer this guy is - the original Night was scored with found library music, and yet it works better than this shit that was allegedly recorded specifically for the film. Licina also appears as a priest in some of the new scenes, in which he proves that he should stick to composing.

The closest thing to a positive remark I can say about the film is that the new scenes do indeed blend well on a technical level with the original footage. They used the same cameras and film stock, so apart from the improved exposure and unavoidable modern sensibilities (plus some too-advanced gore techniques on the new zombies), they don't stick out too badly. Far less successful is the attempt to make Hinzman look 30 years younger so he can reprise his role as the cemetery zombie (which we now get a back-story for, as if anyone gave a shit); they should have just pulled an Ed Wood and found a guy who (sort of) looked like a young Hinzman rather than put him in makeup that made him look more like Hal Holbrook than his old character.

The bonus material is just as worthless. Russo is strangely absent from the making of, but Streiner and the others talk about how they are "slightly" changing the original film, and everyone talks about it like they are doing something really great, and hilariously assuming fans will really appreciate it (to this day I have never heard of a single person liking it). Russo does appear on the commentary with Hinzman, Streiner, and a 4th party who barely speaks (I forget who it is already, not Licina though), where they spend precious little time explaining what the fuck they were thinking, and for the most part just tell the same goddamn stories they've told a million times on the documentaries and commentaries featured on the legitimate versions of the film.

Then there's an awful music video (techno remix of dialogue and Licina's beats), a trailer for the new edition, a scene from some movie Hinzman made (presented without any sort of context or information - the movie was ten years old at the time so it's not like it's a preview or something), and a still gallery. There's also a booklet made up of interviews with Russo, Striner, Hinzman, Licina, and Debbie Rochon (another actor from the new scenes), all of which repeat the insane idea that they think people will like this shit. Oh, and there's a second disc with Licina's entire soundtrack, so you have twice as many discs to break in half.

But you know what annoys me more than anything they've done here? The fact that this pile of shit doesn't have its own IMDb page. Licina and Rochon are now listed as cast members for a movie that came out before they were born (in fact, if you just type "Rochon" into IMDb's search engine, Night Of The Living Dead is the title they put next to her name in the results - ugh), and Licina is listed as its composer. This is a disgrace, and if I had the time and know-how I would create a separate page for this piece of shit. This is not Night Of The Living Dead - this is an abomination, and I despise everyone involved with it. Avoid at all costs.

What say you?

What does marriage have to do with school?

I think Hall Pass is a great name for a movie.

I'm just not sure if it's a great name for this particular movie.

What does having a hall pass really have to do with taking a temporary break from your marriage?

You could make a lot of jokes in answer to the question I posed in the subject of this post. "Marriage is like school because it feels like it goes on forever." "Marriage is like school because you have to go through the same motions, day after day, learning things you don't want to learn without any apparent endgame." "Marriage is like school because your wife is as strict as a teacher, and makes you ashamed of your grammar." "Marriage is like school because in marriage, you feel like you're in a constant state of detention."

I get that, but it's not really like school -- not enough to make a "hall pass" be the thing that gives you freedom from the bonds of matrimony.

Let's look at what a "hall pass" really is, as most generically defined. A hall pass is what allows you to walk around school grounds without teacher supervision. Correct? Okay, so I kind of get what Peter and Bobby Farrelly are going for here -- a marital hall pass would let you walk around the world without spousal supervision.

The thing is, a hall pass is given to people who plan to use it responsibly. Trustworthy students are given hall passes because they plan to walk straight to the bathroom, straight to the library, or straight to the principal's office. If the latter, however, it wouldn't be a visit to the principal involving disciplinary action. The people sent to the principal's office for disciplinary reasons are the very people who cannot be trusted with a hall pass.

So while a hall pass is given to someone at school because they plan to use it for good, the hall pass Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis' characters' wives give them is to be used exclusively for the purposes of evil. It would be the equivalent of giving the most delinquent ruffian in school a license to steal lunch money from nerds and give wedgies to wimps.

Now, if this delinquent ruffian were to procure a hall pass illegally, that would be another thing. But that doesn't echo the scenario in Hall Pass either. If Wilson and Sudeikis stole their hall passes, they wouldn't be hall passes at all. That's what's called "cheating."

So what title would work better?

As usual, Spanish speakers know how to translate our titles better than we do.

As you can see above, I included the Spanish language version of the poster for Hall Pass, in which the title is translated as Carta Blanca. I'm not fluent in the language, but I believe that translates to White Card. However, what it really translates to is a French phrase: Carte Blanche. Because that's really what this movie is about, isn't it? Two husbands given carte blanche to do whatever they want (I know that's redundant) for a short period of time.

But here in the U.S., we obviously can't call a gross-out sex comedy Carte Blanche. So let's think of some other titles that we could actually use.

1) Bachelor Week - Nope. Too literal. Has no ring to it.

2) License to Cheat - A little bit better. But using the word "cheat" tends to crucify the characters. We have to come out of this experience liking Wilson and Sudeikis -- who, let's face it, will probably not end up cheating on their wives, because they're our heroes and they genuinely love their better halves.

3) Marriage Vacation - Too confusing, and too literal. Both at the same time.

4) Time Off For Good Behavior - Sort of catchy, but a bit abstract, and a bit inexact.

5) Untitled Farrelly Brothers Project - Too insiderish.

Okay, I couldn't come up with anything better. Hall Pass it is. But that doesn't mean I can't complain about it.

A couple other thoughts on Hall Pass:

1) If I had to translate into words Jason Sudeikis' facial expression in this poster, those words would be "I'm going to see some tit-TAYS!"

2) I want to look forward to this movie, but the Farrelly Brothers have been on a major losing streak. I have hated -- hated -- the last two movies they directed, which were Fever Pitch (2005) and The Heartbreak Kid (2007). Stuck on You (2003) was only slightly better than that. You have to go back ten years to Shallow Hal in 2001 to find a Farrelly movie I actually liked. And though I do like Shallow Hal pretty well, I'm still not 100% sure I think it has the message right -- I mean, if Jack Black is actually seeing these people as beautiful, is he really learning anything? I've decided to set aside my concerns with Shallow Hal and just say that I got enough laughs out of it and liked what they were trying to do, even if they didn't 100% succeed.

In any case, the Farrellys' last unqualified hit was There's Something About Mary in 1998. If we're feeling optimistic based on a 13-year-old movie, we should really examine that optimism more closely.

Autopsy Of The Dead (2009)

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY

SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

After 40+ years, there’s not a lot of uncovered ground when it comes to Night Of The Living Dead (don’t I know it, after ODing on bonus material about the film this week), so I can certainly appreciate the approach to Autopsy Of The Dead, which, with the exception of Bill Hinzman and maybe Kyra Schon (the little Cooper girl), devotes its time to folks you don’t really hear from all that often. No Romero, no Karl Hardman, no Russ Streiner, hell not even John Russo, who I kept expecting to barge into someone else’s interview and talk about how important he was in the film’s creation and execution.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that the folks behind the movie simply couldn’t get/afford those others and were forced to change their approach. Bizarrely for a 2.5 hour doc (with another hour’s worth of bonus material), there isn’t a single mention or appearance of writer/producer/director Jeff Carney or anyone else in his crew. You’d think with all this stuff, and a fairly impressive talent roster (pretty much everyone beyond the big guns) they’d at least give themselves a commentary or brief interview about how they found everyone, what made them want to do the project, etc – but there’s absolutely nothing.

So all I can go by is the film itself, and sadly it’s pretty much a bore. The structure is wholly damaging; rather than tell the story of the film’s production from start to finish like a normal doc on a movie, Carney starts things off with a full hour of interviews, one at a time, with each participant talking about what they did and when applicable which zombie they played (seems like just about everyone played two roles – some crew position and anonymous zombie). This is a terrible way to present a documentary, in my opinion; it just comes across like someone hitting “Play All” on an outtake collection or something.

Once they get through all of this, it improves a bit, as the participants are edited together discussing one particular aspect – three or four folks discussing filming the truck explosion, two or three discussing the creation of the news footage scenes, etc. But while it’s at least more enjoyable from a technical standpoint, it’s still pretty dull. Their anecdotes aren’t all that amusing, and the fact remains that these folks are, for the most part, only tangentially related to the film’s production and thus don’t really have a lot of insight to share (one guy even starts his interview by pointing out that he only worked on the film for ten minutes). Let’s face it - a zombie extra doesn’t know shit except about what happened right in front of him/her on the day or two that they were there. Maybe as a half hour sort of “Tales from the Trenches” piece as a supplement on a traditional Night release, this could have been worthwhile, but two and a half hours (longer than even the longest cut of Dawn of the Dead!) devoted to telling stories about lighting mishaps or low budget workarounds for props or sets does not make for a compelling film. You also get a lot of stories about the other people who aren’t there, which is like telling your friends at the bar about the fish some other guy caught.

Plus, not for nothing, but it’s pretty poorly shot. At least two participants are shot in front of a white wall while wearing a white shirt, and pretty much everyone has their lav mike clipped on the outside of their shirt. I mean, come on guys, this is basic first year film school shit. I can forgive one or two carelessly shot interviews (i.e. from the first day, where most folks would be like “Oh from now on we shouldn’t do this or that” for future interviews), but they all have a fairly lazy and amateurish feel. It’s obvious that they put a lot of effort into tracking everyone down and researching the original shooting locations and such; just a shame they didn’t put as much effort into the presentation (which includes the editing – or lack thereof). I was also baffled by the DVD construction – at around the 86 minute mark, the timecode and chapter breaks reset for the final 55 minutes or so. What the hell?

The bonus materials are fine, nothing too exciting but some good stuff for NOTLD junkies. The best is probably the 10 minute collection of “locations – then and now” footage, where we see a clip from the movie and then a similar shot of what it looks like today. Unlike Dawn of the Dead’s now unrecognizable Monroeville Mall, a lot of the locales are pretty similar looking (the house is gone, however), so this is better than most things of that nature. However most of it was used in the film itself, so it’s sort of redundant. Speaking of clips from the movie by the way – couldn’t they have ponied up for a decent release? Looks like they took their footage from a sub-Mill Creek transfer. There’s also a nice dedication to the cast/crew members who have since passed on, which is a nice touch (there are quite a few; I wasn’t aware Keith “Tom” Wayne had passed, and I was even more bummed to discover that he actually committed suicide).

The rest of the stuff is pretty bland; a “newsreel” that’s just a bunch of footage without narration, a longer interview with the guy who did the animation during the end credits (why him, of all people?), a decent collection of archival materials such as a check that they gave to zombie extras (for 25 bucks) and the album covers for the library music that they used in the movie, and a blooper reel of interview outtakes, none of which I found particularly amusing (and considering the average age of the participants seems to be about 75, there’s not a lot of humor to be found in someone losing his train of thought). They also toss in a bunch of trailers and radio spots for the actual film, which I guess they just figured they might as well throw in since they had it lying around.

I really wish I could have liked this more. Maybe if they cut it in half (at least) and had a more interesting presentation it would work, but as is, I think you need to be the biggest NOTLD fan in the world to find this stuff interesting, and even you will probably be reaching for the chapter skip button after a while. It’s a laudable concept with a totally lackluster execution.

What say you?

Fritt Vilt 3 (2011)

"I'm pretty sure that the 3rd time is not always a charm..."
*If you haven't seen the first two films in the series, you may want to read the reviews for Fritt Vilt and Fritt Vilt 2, to keep up to speed. Then again, if you haven't seen at least one of the first two movies, then why are you watching part 3? Cheaters.

FRITT VILT III (aka Cold Prey 3)
Sub-Genre- Backwoods Horror/Torture Porn

Cast Members of Note- Ida Marie Bakkerud, Kim S. Falck-Jorgensen, Julie Rusti, and a bunch of other Norway people that I can't seem to keep straight in my head.

What's it About?- Set in the 80's, FV III tells the story of the first two film's killer as a child and troubled youth. Yes, it's a prequel and an origin story, and I guess someone thought both were somehow necessary.

Looks so odd without the snow...
Remember in the first movie how we learned that the mountain man killer was buried alive by his parents as a kid because he had an odd mole on his face? Well he found himself a mentor in them there Norwegian woods, and learned him how to kill and gut some animals, and act all creepy. Eventually he decides he'd rather kill and gut him some people instead. That's basically the plot of this movie.

This is not the killer all grown up, this is Santa. From the looks of things, he's about to add another HO to his repertoire... He's supposed to have 3 of them, you know.

A bunch of young, dumb ass kids head into the wilderness of _______ for a weekend of _______, only to find a bloodthirsty killer waiting to pick them off one by one... Yeah, we've heard the same exact plot over and over and over and over again, so just fill in the blanks in a way that suits this film, and we have another cookie cutter horror flick. There really isn't much else to say about the plot.

Don't be pissy about it, you know I'm right!
The Good- Unlike its predecessors, which were slasher flicks, Fritt Vilt 3 decided to go the torture porn route. Did it work? I suppose so, if you like the average torture porn offering, but it played more like Wrong Turn than the first two films in its own franchise.

As a prequel it was decent; it told the back story of the killer in an interesting way, showing us how he got to where he was, and why. As an installment in the Fritt Vilt series, it felt oddly out of place. The first 2 movies were set in an isolated, snowy mountain top location, which added to the tension of it all, in our opinion. The other films also had a strong, dynamic final girl who we couldn't help but root for. I'm not taking anything away from the final girl of this one, but the material just wasn't as good, so it felt as if she were less awesome in a way?

It did have some good kill scenes/gory gags that made us cringe, and if that's really all you care about, then you will enjoy FV III, I'm sure. The girls were nice to look at too.

Dirty girl.
The Bad-The charm of the series kinda died with this one. Instead of being a slasher flick set in the snowy mountains, we get a backwoods horror flick set in the forests of Norway in the summer time... In our opinion, making those changes really took away the one unique thing the first two movies had going for them.

The Downright Horrendous- Why only a quick side boob? There were two really cute girls in this movie, and all they did was tease us. We, the audience, demand gratuitous nudity in our standard hack and slash movies, because we deserve it. It's like a little bonus for us having to sit through retreaded material, and poorly scripted generic efforts. Weak story +no boobs= just not right.

Tease!
The Gory- It's torture porn, so of course there's some good blood and gore to be had here: Various stabbing's, slashing's, and shooting's (shotgun and bow, mind you), and even a cat being gutted. Blood lovers will be happy with this movie.

The Naked- Aside from a naked man ass and a brief shot of a side boob, everyone remained clothed in this one. For shame, Norway, for shame.

What did we learn?- They should have stopped at 2.

The Master Says- C- Nowhere near the movies the first two Fritt Vilt films were, part 3 delivers for the most part if you're in it for kill scenes and blood. The summer setting took away a bit of the charm established earlier in the series, but maybe I just like snow. No. After the winter we've had so far here in Michigan, I think it's safe to say: fuck snow. So I guess then that it just felt more like every other backwoods horror movie that has come along in recent years, and the change of scenery didn't help things. It's worth a watch, but I fear that it wont please fans of the series as much as parts 1 and 2 did.

Final Thoughts- Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

Julie Rusti makes me want to move to Norway.

Rubber (2010)

FEBRUARY 23, 2011

GENRE: COMEDIC, HERO KILLER, WEIRD

SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

When I first heard about Rubber, I thought it was a short film. “There’s no way that can sustain itself for 90 minutes,” I said. Well I was right and wrong. It is indeed a feature film, running just under 90 minutes (though padded with an overlong epilogue), but it doesn’t sustain itself for that time, either. After about 50 minutes I started getting bored, and it wasn’t until the somewhat predictable but still inspired finale that my interest returned.

It doesn’t help that writer/director Quentin Dupieux never tops its opening scene, which starts with a car driving through the dusty desert, going out of its way to knock over a bunch of dining room chairs that are arranged up and down the road. The car stops, a man gets out of the trunk, is handed a glass of water by the driver, and then proceeds to ask the audience why ET was brown, or why we never see anyone in Texas Chain Saw Massacre washing their hands or going to the bathroom. The answer to all is “no reason”, which of course sets up the movie itself. “Why is a tire alive and rolling around killing people?” No reason.

The first few scenes with the tire (named Robert) are also its best. It figures out how to roll along without tipping over, kills a plastic bottle and a bug, and then goes to extreme efforts to kill a glass bottle by rolling over it (as it did for the plastic and the bug). It finally does so by “revving”, which causes nearby objects to explode after a few seconds (Robert is a Scanner, I guess). Then he moves on to people, and while I love a good head ‘splosion as much as the next guy, I wanted more of him running things over. It’s a killer tire movie and there isn’t a single scene of Robert rolling over some poor sod. Even if it didn’t kill him, it’s a damn shame that he never even attempts it.

From then on the laughs come a little less frequently. There are a number of truly inspired bits (love the “flashback” montage), and pretty much anything involving Stephen Spinella (the aforementioned “Why is ET brown?” guy) is gold, but there’s just too many scenes of Robert rolling up to someone, that person either dismisses or doesn’t notice him, and then he blows up their head. I also never really shined to the group of folks watching the action as if it was a movie (though one has the movie’s best line, a reaction to the chair-icide). Maybe just me, but a killer tire concept is already a tough sell – adding in meta-humor is not beneficial. Who recruited them, who’s behind their care (they seem to be living out in the desert for the duration of Robert’s rampage), etc, is never explained, and while that fits the movie’s “no reason” motif, there’s only so much WTF I can enjoy in a single movie.

Interestingly, my buddy (who loved it) pointed out that it was like a full length Adult Swim movie, and I agree. However, I feel the same way about Adult Swim shows – there’s only so much I can take. 10-15 minute “episodes” are ideal; as the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie perfectly illustrated, unfiltered randomness can only be funny for so long to me (oddly, that movie had an otherwise unrelated opening scene that was its own best part. Huh.). I love the show, but by about 45 minutes into that movie I was more or less OK with never seeing Meatwad or Master Shake again (Frylock, on the other hand, is always amazing).

I think it might have worked better for me if it was legitimately a horror movie, without all the meta shit. Basically take any Friday the 13th script and replace Jason with a tire – perfectly hilarious “no reason” movie. This other stuff just busied it up with time they could have spent on more traditional horror movie elements (chase scenes, for example – again you’d think that would be a given, but there isn’t one). I mean, you only get one chance to make a killer tire movie, you gotta do it right. There’s no way anyone else can rip it off (though I guess they could do a killer coffee mug or something).

Another factor was that Magnet showed the film as the 2nd feature after Hobo With A Shotgun, the movie born from a Grindhouse trailer (apparently it showed with the movie in some areas; it didn’t play when I saw it). Sort of like a Death Wish style movie by way of Troma, it was so much better than I expected, and I hope everyone involved with the rather lousy Machete sees this and says “THAT’S what we should have done!” Rutger Hauer is brilliant as the titular hobo, and while they try a bit too hard at times, the tone almost perfectly matches that of the genuine Grindhouse films from the 1970s. It’s also got some all time classic awful lines that had me laughing my ass off every couple of minutes. Also: best use of a bear in movie history. Highly recommended, just make sure you leave your politically correct merit badge at home. I can’t help but wonder if I would have enjoyed Rubber more if I saw it first (not unlike, ironically, how I think I would have enjoyed the slower and more subtle Death Proof more if it was first, saving the more outrageous and colorful Planet Terror for the main event).

But don’t get me wrong - it’s still definitely worth checking out. I doubt there will be a better example of “it’s not for everybody” for any movie this year, but I am even more sure that there won’t be anything as original and unique, either. All I ever ask is that more filmmakers use the freedom of horror movies to stretch their imaginations – even if it doesn’t completely work for me, I’d still rather see something like Rubber than another Final Destination movie.

What say you?

P.S. Quite fittingly, this was the first movie I drove my ‘new’ car to (if you recall, my previous car “died” when its tire (and the things connecting it to the car) broke off as I was pulling into a parking spot). For those curious, it’s a 2002 Chevy Impala with 38k miles on it, gold (gave up trying to find black or blue with respectable mileage in my price range) and with a tape deck – I drove to the screening room listening to a mix tape I made in 1997 (I haven’t had a tape deck in my car OR home for over a decade). Needs a bit of minor work (nothing preventing me from driving it – more “I want it to be as ‘new’ as I can make it), but I am once again on the road, and thus, I just want to thank you all again for your donations and Amazon purchases – it means the world to me and every penny helped more than you know. I may not be eating too many steaks in the near future, and I’ll have to cut back on comics and such, but rest assured, HMAD will live, all thanks to YOU! You guys all rock!!!