Utter Trash

Change of Address

2010-09-26T12:27:00.001-04:00

If you're a regular reader, you may or may not have noticed the focus of this blog subtly changing lately. It's become more of a general movie review blog and shifted away from its original focus on "disreputable film and music". It's reached the point where I feel the name Utter Trash no longer accurately reflects the content. With that in mind, I've decided to start from scratch with a new blog.

It's called The Cleveland Movie Blog (www.clevelandmovieblog.com). The intent of this new blog will be to offer reviews of as many of the films playing theaters in Northeast Ohio as possible. I'll also be offering news about local filmmakers and movie related events taking place in the area. I'll still be including reviews of new straight to video films, including plenty of cult, horror and exploitation flicks. That kind of stuff just won't be my primary focus anymore. So if you like reading my stuff and this new direction doesn't bother you, please add the new site to your bookmarks, "follow" the new blog and/or subscribe to posts using the RSS feed, and tell any of your friends you think might be interested.

Thanks!

Movie Review: 'Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole'

2010-09-24T00:01:00.006-04:00

They may look cute, but the owls in The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole engage in some decidedly un-cuddly behavior. In fact, there's very little in the way of light-hearted anthropomorphic animal hi-jinks here. Instead we get kidnappings, brainwashing, daring escapes, and epic battles between good and evil. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but parents may want to consider whether their young ones are ready for such intense fare.

For slightly older kids and the adults accompanying them, this is fairly standard-issue heroic adventure stuff. The plot sets owl brother against owl brother. Soren (voiced by Jim Sturgess) gathers together a group of unlikely allies and learns how to “use his gizzard” (the owl equivalent of the force) from the wise old Ezylryb (voiced by Geoffrey Rush). His brother Kludd (voiced by Ryan Kwanten) joins forces with The Pure Ones, a group of racist owls led by Nyra (voiced by Helen Mirren) and Metalbeak (voiced by Joel Edgerton). And so the stage is set for the inevitable confrontation between good and evil.

The plot may be a bit familiar, but it's refreshing that the film doesn't overly sanitize it's feathered protagonists, allowing them to be the mouse-munching predators they are in real life. Also praiseworthy is the way it tackles some fairly strong themes about how war and violence shouldn't be viewed as heroic; but rather as regrettable, if sometimes necessary, evils. Of course a lot of that gets undermined by Director Zack Snyder (300, The Watchmen), who shoots the battle scenes like violent eye candy. Essentially, the script has one point of view, the visuals have another, and no one seemed to feel it was necessary to reconcile the two.

Still, if nothing else Snyder knows how to make a visually stunning movie. If you've seen a few CG kiddie flicks, you know they all look pretty much the same. Not this one. Legend of the Guardians creates a rich and unique world for its characters to inhabit. It's a world that leaves one with a lot of questions, like how do owls craft extremely detailed helmets, or manage to strap such pieces of headgear on, but perhaps it's best not to think too deeply on these matters. Oddly enough, despite the striking visuals, the 3D aspects of the movie aren't all that impressive. If you're going to see this one, save yourself the extra couple of bucks and watch it flat. 2 ½ out of 4 stars.

Movie Review: 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'

2010-09-24T00:01:00.003-04:00

1987’s Wall Street is one of the defining movies of its decade. This year’s sequel… not so much. As Money Never Sleeps begins, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has finished serving a long prison sentence for the crimes he committed in the previous film. He’s released just in time to write a book warning of the 2008 financial crisis which would make his corporate raider exploits look positively quaint by comparison. But the truth is, this movie is far more concerned with soapy melodrama than director Oliver Stone’s trademark political vitriol.

Rather than follow the money, the movie follows the romance between up and coming trader Jacob (Shia Lebouf) and Gekko’s daughter Winnie (Carrie Mulligan). Their relationship becomes complicated when Jacob falls under Gordon’s spell. Winnie wants nothing to do wither her dad, but Jacob offers to help father and daughter reconnect in exchange for a little help dealing with Bretton James (Josh Brolin), a corporate scumbag who is at least somewhat responsible for the suicide of Jacob’s mentor (Frank Langella). I won’t give away the ending, but let me just say that it’s pure cornball schmaltz. It all adds up to something like a big budget extended episode of Dallas. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained. Call it 2 ½ out of 4 stars.

North Coast Movie News September 20, 2010

2010-09-20T15:38:00.001-04:00

Thursday September 23^rd at 7:00pm the Capitol Theater, in association with the Cleveland Cinematheque, will be showing the restored version of Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction masterpiece Metropolis. The Alloy Orchestra will be providing live musical accompaniment for the silent film. Advance tickets can be purchase for $19 online at www.clevelandcinemas.com, or for $22 at the door the day of the show. The Capitol Theater is located at 1390 West 65^th Street in Cleveland's Gordon Square Arts District.

Saturday September 25^th local film production company Old School Sinema will be staging its sixth Zombie Walk. Walkers meet up at the 5 O'Clock Lounge 5 0'Clock Lounge located at 11904 Detroit Rd in Lakewood, OH. Registration starts at 11:30am for a donation of $5 plus 2 canned /non-perishible food items. This is an ALL AGES event and will take place rain or shine. If you need ZOMBIE MAKE-UP, it's available for a very minimal donation. PLEASE arrive early if you need zombie makeup. Artist will stop makeup at 2:30 p.m. sharp. There will be a group photo at 2:45pm, and the walk starts at 3pm.

Movie Review: 'The Town'

2010-09-17T00:06:00.002-04:00

Doug (Ben Affleck) and his friends are armed robbers from the Boston suburb of Charlestown. As the film begins the gang, dressed in snazzy skeleton costumes, are pulling a major bank heist. To insure a safe getaway, they take bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage. Claire is eventually set free, but Doug's right hand man Jem (Jeremy Renner) worries that she might identify them. Doug promises to look into the matter and find out what Claire knows. This being a movie, that leads to Doug and Claire becoming romantically involved. Meanwhile the FBI, led by Agent Frawley (John Hamm) is closing in on the robbers.

As the premise for a B gangster movie, that would probably work. There's already a good cast here. Just bring in a director with a strong sense of style to help smooth over the generic plot, and you'd be okay. But that's not how Affleck, who also co-wrote and directed, approaches the material. He acts and directs with a dramatic intensity the screenplay simply doesn't warrant. It all leads up to a conclusion that's supposed to be profound and moving, but instead feels pat and unearned because the film never gives us any compelling reason to care about these characters or believe in the central romance. There are some good performances, and the heist scenes are gripping and well orchestrated. But despite all of Affleck's straining for something more, The Town falls well short of its mark. 2 ½ out of 4 stars.

‘Resident Evil:Afterlife’ is a steaming pile of fun

2010-09-13T12:45:00.004-04:00

There's a saying that you can only polish a turd so much. With Resident Evil: Afterlife, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson puts that theory to the test. This is one stupid, incoherent movie, but Anderson directs with such energy and style that it seems silly to care. The moment your brain gets a chance to slow down and think about what it's seeing the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Anderson does his best to insure that never happens with one superbly staged action scene after another. The movie slows down for just enough plot and character beats to give the film a sense of pacing.

This all takes place on beautifully designed sets where series mainstay Alice (Milla Jovovich) does battle with nifty looking monsters while decked out in this season's hottest action heroine threads to the tune of tomandandy's driving electronic score. I vaguely remember Alice discovering a bunch of clones of herself at the end of the last movie, and the sequel picks up from there. My memory banks evidently refused to store much else about the series, but it hardly matters. All you need to know is zombies and corporations bad, Milla good.

Jovovich isn't called on to act much here. All that's needed to sell her character is attitude and presence, two attributes she has in spades. Ali Larter (Heroes) returns from the previous film as Claire Redfield, and Wentworth Miller debuts as Claire's brother Chris, a familiar name to fans of the video games these movies are loosely based on. Heading up the forces of evil is Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker. It's rare these days to see an actor fearlessly go for the cheesy gusto like Roberts does here, at least outside of Nicholas Cage or a John Waters movie.

Afterlife doesn't take itself seriously, but at the same time it's not going out of its way to wink at the audience. Eventually the plot holes and absurdities pile up to the point that they can't be ignored, but then Andesron hits you with another well executed action scene. It's not enough to make Afterlife's litany of cinematic sins completely forgivable, but it does temper one's view of the film. It also helps that the 3D is done so well. This is no post production conversion to the format like Piranha or Clash of the Titans. This movie was planned and shot in 3D from the get-go, and it shows. It may not be quite as jaw droppingly amazing as Avatar, but for a relatively low budget B-movie, it's pretty damn impressive. 2 ½ out of 4 stars.

Roger Ebert returns to his PBS roots for a new movie review show.

2010-09-13T01:36:00.001-04:00

As someone who grew up watching the original 'Sneak Previews', later 'At the Movies' with Siskel and Ebert, I'm really happy to see Roger is finally launching a new movie review program. Read all the details on Roger's blog here.

Coming Soon: The Cedar Lee and Capitol Theater 'Suck' for one night only

2010-08-30T23:56:00.006-04:00

This Thursday, September 2nd the Cedar Lee Theater in Cleveland Heights and the Capitol Theater on Cleveland's near west side will both be showing 'Suck' at 7:30pm. Suck is a horror comedy about a rock band that finds success by becoming vampires. The cast includes Malcolm McDowell, who previously squared off against the undead in Fright Night, and a whole slew of rock stars including Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Alex Liefson, and Moby. Hopefully it doesn't live up to its title, but either way I appreciate the fact that Cleveland Cinemas is making an effort to show smaller films like this, even if only for one day. Here's the trailer:

Movie Review: 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' conquers

2010-08-24T00:01:00.005-04:00

22 year old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is just getting over breaking up with his last girlfriend by dating an Asian Catholic high school girl named Knives (Ellen Wong). However, Scott soon finds himself attracted to the roller skating, hair-dyeing, super cool Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), literally the girl of his dreams. After orchestrating a “meet cute”, Scott manages to get a date with Ramona. There’s a catch, though. If Scott wants to date Ramona, he has to do battle with her seven “Evil Exes”.

This is a movie steeped in modern pop culture, especially comic books, video games, anime, and indie rock. Sound effects appear as stylized lettering. Fight scenes have characters jumping towards each other with lines trailing behind them like in anime, the losers bursting into video game coins that add to the victor’s score. Little text pop-ups appear to help explain back story and plot points. It’s all driven by a soundtrack of ragged post punk and throbbing techno. In the hands of a lesser director, this could be very annoying. Luckily Scott Pilgrim was helmed by Edgard Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. While Wright is certainly capable of arresting visuals when he needs to be, his strong suit lies in characterization and story telling. Plus he really gets pop culture and the fanboys who obsess over it, as he proved in two seasons of the BBC comedy series Spaced.

This summer has been dominated by sequels, remakes, and rip-offs, so Scott Pilgrim vs. the World really stands out as one of the few true original movies of the season. It’s smart, funny, and visually inventive, and despite being a total fantasy, a film that has more truth at its core than many supposedly more realistic films. The fact that this movie works so hard to speak accurately to a particular subculture is sure to secure it a loyal following on the one hand, while alienating and baffling wider audiences on the other. Still, provided you speak its language, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is some kind of masterpiece. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

Movie Review: 'Piranha 3D' bites

2010-08-23T00:01:00.001-04:00

Piranha 3D starts out promisingly enough with a pre-credits scene featuring Richard Dreyfuss while a certain familiar song plays. It’s a clever, amusing cameo that sets just the right note of knowing campiness. Sadly, it’s mostly downhill from there. Nobody expects a movie like this to be anything deep or even particularly good. All it has to be is fun. For me, this wasn’t. Piranha 3D certainly tries, but it tries too damn hard. The violence and gore is so over the top and mean spirited that it’s hard to have much fun with it. And despite copious female nudity and “Girls Gone Wild” style shenanigans, it’s all too in your face to offer much in the way of naughty, sexy thrills. There’s none of the rebellious, anarchic feel of classic seventies drive-in movies. This is more like an adolescent school boy trying to shock his elders, and it just becomes numbing after a while.

You can’t really put the blame on the screenplay. While nothing special, it has a serviceable enough plot for a creature feature. Nor is the cast at fault, as stars Elisabeth Shue, Steven R. McQueen (grandson of Steve McQueen), Ving Rhames, and Christopher Lloyd all turn in solid performances. No, the responsibility for the film’s failure rests squarely on the shoulders of director Alexander Aja. He hits all the wrong notes here, shifting tone jarringly and often. He proves here that he’s completely incapable of balancing horror, humor, and drama the way Joe Dante did in the original 1978 Piranha. And on a final note, even the 3D sucks. When it was shot, Piranha 3D was intended as a traditional 2D film. It only became 3D in post production, so there’s not much creative use of the gimmick. 2 out of 4 stars.

Movie Review: 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' burns brightly

2010-08-20T13:31:00.003-04:00

This is the second film based on the best selling “Millenium Trilogy” series of novels by the late Steig Larsson. The main character is brilliant computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who despite her petite frame is more than capable of kicking some serious ass. Lisbeth had one hell of a screwed up childhood. As a result, she displays little or no outward emotion, although she is loyal to those she cares about. Admittedly, it’s a pretty short list: Michael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), publisher of the news magazine Millenium from which the trilogy takes its name, and party girl Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi). The bisexual Lisbeth has slept with both of them, but doesn’t allow either to truly get close to her.

Lisbeth returns to Sweden to tie up a few loose ends from the last film only to find herself framed for the murder of a journalist and his girlfriend. Soon she’s embroiled in a plot involving white slavery and prostitution, dark family secrets, and an almost superhuman henchman who acts as enforcer for the disfigured master criminal at the root of all this evil. It’s kind of like a more believable version of an Edgar Wallace Krimi from the sixties (look it up). Certainly this is a more action oriented film than its predecessor, with plenty of fights, car chases, and escapes from burning buildings.

As with the first film, The Girl Who Played With Fire deals very explicitly with misogyny. The movie pulls no punches in depicting this theme, and there are undoubtedly scenes that will make some viewers uncomfortable. You could almost compare this with a rape/revenge movie like I Spit on Your Grave, albeit one with more on its mind than mere exploitation.

Director Daniel Alfredson has crafted a smart, stylish, and exciting thriller with The Girl Who Played With Fire. It takes some dark detours, but remains entertaining without cheapening its more serious themes. And perhaps most importantly for a series film, I was left chomping at the bit to find out what happens to Lisbeth next.

The film is subtitled, so if you’re one of those sad human beings who refuse to watch subtitled movies I guess you’ll just have to wait for the American remake (David Fincher is signed to direct). I like Fincher, but given the constraints of the Hollywood system I just don’t see how his version can possibly be as good. And for damn sure no one is going to hold a candle to Noomi Rapace’s portrayal of Lisbeth. So my advice is suck it up and read a few lines of dialogue. 4 out of 4 stars.

Now that's a movie poster!

2010-08-16T10:00:00.003-04:00

Movie posters these days are mostly drab and unimaginative, so when someone gets it right they deserve a little praise. The other night while wandering through my local multiplex, I came across two posters that really stood out from the crowd.

I love this classy retro poster for The American. It looks like it came right out of the sixties or early seventies when Hollywood routinely made smart, serious, adult thrillers and audiences actually wanted to go see them.

And then there's this poster for Piranha 3D which riffs on the poster for the original 1978 Piranha, which was itself a play on the poster for Jaws. This just screams good trashy fun to me. Even though this is supposedly the French poster for the film, this is the one I saw in the lobby of the theater. Just without all that Frog language on top.

DVD Review: 'Smash Cut' colors the screen blood red

2010-08-13T12:11:00.001-04:00

Able Whitman (David Hess) is a horror movie director whose films are loathed by critics and fans alike. His bargain basement special effects in particular are singled out for their phoniness. Driven over the edge by constant derision, Able comes up with a novel solution for improving his gore scenes: using real human blood and body parts. In order to keep his supply of blood and gore well stocked, Able starts killing his critics and anyone else who gets in his way. Meanwhile, local television reporter April Carson (Sasha Grey) has been investigating her sister’s disappearance with the assistance of private eye Isaac Beaumonde (Jesse Buck). The clues all lead to the mad director, so April takes the lead role in Able‘s new film hoping to get some answers.

Directed by Lee DeMabre (Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter), Smash Cut is a loving homage to/rip-off of H. G. Lewis’ 1965 gore fest Color Me Blood Red. Star David Hess, best known for playing sleazebag Krug in the original version of Last House on the Left, displays a real knack for comedy here. Sadly the same can not be said for his co-star, porn star Sasha Grey, in her first mainstream role. The only knack she seems to have is for imitating a two by four (that’s my clever way of saying she’s wooden). Grey got better in her second mainstream flick, Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, but that doesn't help us here. Luckily the rest of the cast, including genre veterans Michael Berryman, Ray Sager, and even H. G. Lewis himself in a small role, pick up the slack. No, it’s not a great movie, and the script won’t win too many points for originality. But if you’re looking for something fun and trashy to watch with your friends and a few beers on a Friday night, Smash Cut has more than enough laughs and gore to satisfy. 2 ½ stars out of 4.

Movie Review: 'Salt'

2010-08-09T22:57:00.002-04:00

Take one part Bond, one part Bourne, and one part Manchurian Candidate, season liberally with Angelina Jolie, and that’s pretty much Salt. The plot concerns Russian sleeper agents left over from the cold war. Even though the Soviet Union is gone, these sleepers are still dedicated to their mission, hoping to restore their country to its “evil empire” glory days. We learn this when CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Jolie) interrogates a Russian defector named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski). Orlov also claims that Salt is one of these sleepers, and that she has been activated to assassinate the Russian president. With her husband (August Diehl) very likely in danger, Salt decides she can‘t wait to clear her name, escaping from custody with her boss Ted (Liev Schreiber) and CIA internal affairs agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in hot pursuit.

Salt was directed by Philip Noyce, an experienced, workmanlike filmmaker who made his mark with thrillers like Dead Calm and a pair of Tom Clancy adaptations (Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games). He’s not exactly what you’d call an auteur, but given the right materials to work with he’ll turn out a decent movie. He’s got a fine cast and crew on Salt, but the script feels like it’s made out of parts from other movies that have been recycled one too many times. That might not be so bad if the action scenes were spectacular enough to compensate, but they’re not. Noyce handles the chases, stunts, and fights in Salt competently, but there isn’t one sequence that stands out as anything special. The most interesting thing about Salt is Jolie’s character. Her back story is the one part of the script that holds any real interest as it gets doled out in bits and pieces, leaving the audience wondering whether she’s the hero or the villain. The movie doesn’t suck, but one can’t help but feel this character deserved better.

'Despicable Me' is surprisingly likable

2010-08-09T00:58:00.001-04:00

Depsicable Me is clearly product made by craftsmen rather than artists, but for what it is, it’s surprisingly enjoyable. Gru (Steve Carrel) is a super villain feared by the general populace and respected by his evil peers. He’s committed numerous high profile crimes in the past, and he’s working on securing financing for his coup de grace, a heist of the moon. But there’s a flashy young villain named Vector (Jason Segal) trying to steal Gru’s thunder, not to mention his plan. Further complicating Gru’s schemes are three little orphan girls (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier and Elsie Fisher) who just want to sell cookies to the two villains.

This is a film that manages to work for both kids and adults without pandering to either. The insipid pop culture references and lame double entendres some kid vids use to appeal to adults are thankfully kept to a minimum. At the same time, the film is anything but saccharine sweet. The humor is dark, at times even acidic, with the opening scene in particular reminding one of Roald Dahl’s views on spoiled children and their even worse parents. Even the obligatory message at the end doesn’t feel shoved down the audience’s throat. Gru may learn a lesson or two, but he does so without completely losing his dark side. Despicable Me isn’t quite on the level of the best Pixar films like The Incredibles or Wall-E, but it’s certainly better than most of the 3D animated toy commercials that pass for kids’ movies these days. 3 out of 4 stars.

Movie Review: 'Inception'

2010-07-26T01:12:00.001-04:00

I saw Christopher Nolan’s Inception over a week ago. I probably should have written a review by now, but to be honest, I just didn’t feel compelled to say anything. Even now, I don't even feel compelled to come up with a witty title for this post.

For a movie that takes place largely in the realm of dreams, Inception is shockingly devoid of imagination. Neither is it a film with much in the way of emotional resonance. Even with a cast that includes such acting heavyweights as Leonardo DeCaprio, Ellen Page, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, and Cillian Murphy, there’s nothing to any of these characters that makes us care about them. If we’re pulled into Inception at all, it’s only because we’re waiting to see what the big twist is going to be. It’s an idea in search of a movie. A great looking, technically well executed idea in search of a movie, but nothing more than that.

This is also yet another movie that clocks in at well over 2 hours without any good reason for doing so. Nolan is just being self indulgent here, and because he’s made the studio so much money with his Batman movies, no one was willing to rein him in. For me, that results in a pretty dull movie. It doesn’t take me anywhere I haven’t already been in other, better films about the mind like The Matrix, Synecdoche, New York, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or The Fall, just to name a few. 2 out of 4 stars.

Movie Review: 'Predators' goes in for the kill

2010-07-12T21:44:00.001-04:00

The original 1987 Predator was about a group of mercenaries in the jungle being hunted by the meanest, ugliest space Rastafarian of all time. That about sums up the plot of Predators as well, but as the plural nature of the title suggests, this time there’s more than one monster on the hunt. There are some other changes to the formula which I won’t divulge (even though the trailer already gives away one of the biggest surprises), but Predators isn’t likely to win too many points for originality. But as the great Joe Bob Briggs has often said, if you’re gonna’ make a sequel, do it right and make the exact same movie, and that’s pretty much what producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal have done with Predators.

Predator star Arnold Schwarzenegger is otherwise occupied these days, so this time around we get Adrien (The Pianist) Brody in the lead. It seems like an odd casting choice at first, but Brody proves more than capable of delivering gruff, monosyllabic dialog with the best of them. Other choice game for the Predators’ hunt includes Alice Braga as a U.S. Special Forces soldier with a conscience, former UFC fighter Oleg Taktarov as a gatling-gun toting mercenary with a soft spot for his kids, Topher Grace as a seemingly out of place doctor, and Danny Trejo as Danny Trejo. Lawrence Fishburne shows up later as a survivor from a previous hunt who’s been left a little unbalanced by his ordeal.

Director Nimrod Antal, who helmed last year’s highly enjoyable ‘B’ action flick Armored, is absolutely the right man for this job. He approaches this material without pretension or condescension, and knows how to stage an exciting action scene so that you can actually tell what’s going on. There’s no shaky cam, fast editing, or hyper stylized music video bullshit here. There’s also not a lot of blood and gore compared to other recent R-rated action flicks like Rambo, but there is one gleefully messy showstopper where a Predator rips someone’s head and spinal column right out of their body and swings it around.

Since the Predator franchise has become inextricably linked with the Alien series via the Aliens vs. Predators films, it’s hard to avoid comparing Predators with Aliens. Well, there is no comparison. Aliens is a classic. This is just a meat and potatoes action flick. It’s not aiming for greatness; just good, solid entertainment. And there’s nothing wrong with that. No doubt nitpicky fanboys can find things to bitch about, but for anyone just looking for a good action-packed time at the movies, Predators easily hits its mark. 3 out of 4 stars.

Don't look directly at this 'Eclipse'

2010-07-07T22:28:00.001-04:00

Warning: This review contains lots of spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Last year’s installment of the Twilight saga, New Moon, was by no means great cinema. The characters were just as bland and the dialog just as banal as in the first Twilight film. However, New Moon boasted a more interesting story and stronger direction than its predecessor. It successfully moved the plot of forward, developed the characters and their relationships, and had a fair amount of action to boot. If there was one major flaw, it was that it tried to fit too much into a two hour movie. The third act in particular felt rushed, with several new developments and characters introduced with little explanation. Still, it was an improvement, and for the most part a reasonably entertaining bit of romantic fantasy.

Eclipse, on the other hand, spends most of its running time spinning its wheels as Bella (Kristen Stewart) agonizes over her love triangle with vampire Edward (Robert Pattison) and werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Dialog is not the strong suit of this series, so its especially painful when Eclipse gives us scene after scene of these three talking to each other about their feelings.

Not only is Eclipse dull and vapid, it’s redundant. These exact same relationship issues were already covered in a much more concise manner in New Moon. At that film’s conclusion, things seemed to have been settled. Bella agreed to marry Edward after high school graduation, and he in turn promised to make her a vampire. All this just so the two of them could finally get laid. Seems like an awful lot to go through for a little action, but whatever, it was settled. But Eclipse doesn’t know what else to do, so it just has the characters rehash the same tired arguments we already heard last time around. All just to end up at exactly the same place.

There’s also a subplot about a bunch of “newborn” vampires showing up nearby. We’re told these vamps are young and hungry and especially strong. Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard), the red-head vampire whose boyfriend was killed by Edward and his family in the first film, is creating the newborns as part of a revenge plot. Evidently this is so scary that Edward’s vampire coven and Jacob’s wolf pack agree to put aside their centuries of hatred and work together. But just like Bella’s romantic relationships, it’s all tease and no pay off. When the big confrontation finally takes place, it’s not a fight, it’s a massacre. A couple werewolves get hurt, but thanks to their accelerated healing abilities even broken bones aren’t much more inconvenient than a hang nail.

The movie also wastes time on the back stories of two minor vampire clan members. None of what we learn about these characters is of particular importance, and all these flashbacks accomplish is to make the film drag on even longer. That time would have been better spent building up Victoria and her protégé Riley (Xavier Samuel), since as it stands the villains of this piece are sorely lacking in presence or interest of any kind.

There’s no need to go into all the little nitpicky things about this movie that grate on the nerves, of which there are plenty. The bottom line is, this particular installment of the saga does absolutely nothing except draw it out to rake in more cash from the devoted. Not only is it lacking in any kind of dramatic interest, director David Slade can’t even muster up any compelling visuals. It’s a mystery that the biggest cash-cow film franchise currently in existence would release such a half-ass place holder of a film, but that’s what we have here. Even if you’re a fan, you’re not missing much by skipping this one. Victoria dies. That’s the only thing that happens in this movie that you’ll need to know going into the next, hopefully more eventful, installment. 1 out of 4 stars.

The birds, the bees and the mutants in Frank Hennenlotter's 'Bad Biology'

2010-06-23T15:21:00.001-04:00

Frank Henenlotter, the man responsible for such twisted cult classics as Basket Case and Frankenhooker, finally returns to filmmaking after an almost 20 year hiatus with Bad Biology. The screenplay, co-written by Hennelotter and producer R.A. Thorburn, revolves around two people afflicted with strange mutations, a recurring theme in Hennenlotter’s films. However, the sexual subtext that bubbles just beneath the surface of previous works like Basket Case and Brain Damage is brought to the surface here.

Bad Biology focuses mostly on Jennifer (Charlee Danielson), a woman born with seven clits. Her orgasms are so intense that she occasionally kills her partners while in the throes of ecstasy. After sex, she almost immediately gives birth to mutant babies, which she casually discards. To her, they aren’t “real” babies because they gestate so quickly. Jennifer is convinced that her mutation is proof she is destined to have sex with God himself. Despite being delusional and a homicidal nymphomaniac, she still manages to hold down a steady job as a photographer.

Our other mutant is Batz (Anthony Sneed). When he was born, it seems they missed the umbilical cord and snipped something else in the vicinity. The doctors managed to sew him back together, but the accident left Batz impotent. Through a highly unorthodox regimen of pills and injections Batz has managed to cure himself, but not without side effects. His schlong is about two feet long and has a mind of its own. Up till now, Batz has been able to keep his massive member in check with more drugs and a heavy-duty masturbation machine, but those measures are becoming less effective.

Hennenlotter has always maintained that he doesn’t make horror movies, he makes exploitation films, and that’s never been more true than here. Bad Biology has no interest in traditional scares or gross-outs, opting instead for excessive nudity, sick humor and general weirdness. It should be a hoot, but it just doesn't quite connect. The movie takes its time building to Jennifer and Batz getting together, only to give us an ending that's just, well, anticlimactic. Danielson also seems miscast in the lead. She's just doesn't have a knack for this kind of over the top comedy. Bad Biology is still an okay time waster provided your sensibilities are warped enough, and it's nice to have Hennenlotter back, but I was really hoping for something more after all this time. 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.

Bad Biology is out now on DVD and Netflix instant view.

Old Men Making Metal Part 1: Ratt and Scorpions

2010-06-19T16:35:00.001-04:00

Ratt - Infestation

Ratt was one of the better bands to come out of the LA commercial metal scene of the eighties. Sure they wrote radio friendly songs, but they always had an edge to their sound. And unlike so many of their contemporaries, Ratt never released a power ballad. Still, the band hasn’t released an album of new material since 1999. On top of that, they’ve had more than their share of “Behind the Music” style drama, including the death of original second guitarist Robin Crosby. Now the band is finally back with a new album, and it's surprisingly good. Infestation leaves behind the blues rock direction of the band's last few albums and returns to straight up hard rock of Out of the Cellar and Invasion of Your Privacy. Guitarists Warren DeMartini and Carlos Cavazo (ex-Quiet Riot) shred, and vocalist Stephen Pearcy actually moves beyond his usual nasal monotone to show a little range. The production is a little more modern sounding than the early Ratt stuff, but not to the point that it significantly alters the band's sound. Sure this stuff sounds dated, but better that than the band trying to be something they’re not.

Scorpions - Sting in the Tail

This is supposed to be the final album from Scorpions, a band that has been around since the early seventies. I wish I could say they were going out on a high note, but I’d be lying. Sting in the Tail is a bland, lifeless affair that aims straight down the middle of the road. It would have been nice to see the Scorps cap off their career with another album of the caliber of Blackout or Lovedrive, but instead they’ve offered up a platter that barely measures up to the likes of Savage Amusement or Crazy World. Even a guest appearance by ex-Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen on “The Good Die Young” can’t liven things up. If the idea was to leave fans hungry for more, this is a colossal failure. Hopefully the farewell tour will focus more on the classic hits than the mediocrity on display here.

'Mach II' Rocks You

2010-06-15T16:10:00.003-04:00

Mach II is the latest project from Jamie Walters (Boulder, Destructor, Midnight, etc). This time around he’s going for something in the vein of seventies/early eighties style hard rock like UFO, Deep Purple, KISS, and Thin Lizzy. Joining Walters is fellow ex-Boulder guitarist The Chan, Soulless axeman Wayne Richards, Maiden Voyage drummer Blackie Pisarek, and vocalist Michael Sorg. This is the first I've heard anything from vocalist Sorg. He's by no means polished, but the guy can actually sing. His voice is kind of like a cross between Ian Gillan and Molly Hatchet vocalist Danny Joe Brown.

As for the songs, killer riffs and tasty leads abound and the rhythm section is rock solid. There’s a definite sense of humor to the lyrics of tracks like “Demon Queen” and “Whiskey Lady Love”, but the band never crosses the line into parody or obnoxious hipster irony. These guys all clearly love and respect this kind of music; they just don’t feel the need to take themselves too seriously. Mach II is definitely not for those who get all snooty about rock music and talk about boring stuff like "relevance" or "breaking new ground". Me, I just want good, catchy songs that rock my ass, and in that respect this album more than delivers.

For ordering information and to hear a few tracks for yourself, visit the band's Myspace page.

Metal Rules in 'Iron Man 2'

2010-05-14T20:01:00.001-04:00

This is a movie about a guy who flies around in a suit of armor and fights another guy who smashes things with giant electrified whips and controls an army of robots. It’s a popcorn movie, but it’s better than most popcorn movies thanks to a script by Justin Theroux that is at least as engaging, if not more so, when things aren’t being blown up as when they are. It’s a film that actually understands the importance of pacing and character development, even in a modern action movie. If you liked Transformers 2 you’ll probably think this drags.

Once again Robert Downey Jr. looks like he’s having the time of his life playing millionaire/superhero Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow also returns as a Stark’s assistant turned CEO Pepper Potts, and Don Cheadle takes over from Terrence Howard as Stark’s friend James Rhodes, who gets a metal suit of his own this time. New to the film, and giving it the sort of strong villainous presence the original was lacking, is Mickey Rourke as Ivan Danko, the guy with the electrified whips I mentioned earlier. Rounding out the primary cast are Scarlett Johansen, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson.

I was a bit worried when I saw the trailer that Iron Man 2 would get bogged down with too many heroes and villains. Thankfully director John Favreau does a fine job balancing all these characters, keeping the focus on Downey’s Stark and his internal struggles. I’ve no doubt some of these characters were added to the mix mainly to have another action figure to sell, or in the case of Jackson’s Nick Fury, to set up future movies. Whatever the motives, these characters are all integrated smoothly in a way that actually supports the main storyline rather than clutters it.

Iron Man 2 is not great art, and it has no pretensions of being such. It’s corporate product based on what are essentially soap operas where the characters wear funny costumes and punch each other. Sometimes that’s the kind of movie I want to see, and Iron Man 2 is a easily one of the better films in the genre. It manages to be fun without being too incredibly loud, stupid, or annoying, and if you think that’s a small achievement, you haven’t seen many Hollywood action movies lately. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

'The Human Centipede' gets a leg up on the competition.

2010-05-09T18:00:00.001-04:00

Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) is a retired German surgeon who used to specialize in separating Siamese twins. But retirement can get boring, so it’s good to have a hobby. Dr. Heiter’s hobby is trying to surgically connect three people together, mouth to anus. Why would anyone want to do this? I don’t know. Why were Bela Lugosi and George Zucco always trying to transplant human brains into the bodies of gorillas in those poverty row horror flicks from the thirties? Because they were mad, that’s why. And without a doubt, Dr. Laser is bat-shit crazy, too. No further explanation is needed, or given.

No doubt some will be so put off by the basic concept that it won’t matter how well executed the film is. That said, writer/producer/director Tom Six shows a great deal of restraint. The most disgusting and depraved ideas put forth in his script are suggested rather than shown. Because of that restraint, when Six does show the audience something nasty, it’s all the more effective.

Six also creates a disconcertingly beautiful look for his film. Rather than follow the dark and dingy lead of extreme horror films like Saw and Hostel, The Human Centipede utilizes a palette of crisp, bright pastels, mostly greens and blues. Much of the film takes place in the warm, sunlit outdoors, creating a strange but effective contrast between the pleasant setting and the twisted activities going on.

Much credit should also be given to the actors. Ashley Williams and Ashlyn Yennie begin the film as stereotypically annoying party girls. In a traditional slasher flick, they’re the kind of characters you’d be rooting for the killer to dispatch. Here, they’re given the opportunity to become more sympathetic and human once they’ve been taken (way) out of their comfort zones. Williams especially manages to convey a great deal with just her eyes and the occasional gesture. Akihiro Kitamura is also quite good as the man chosen to be the head of the centipede. And all the actors deserve a round of applause for putting up with the physical difficulties of playing a human centipede. It’s certainly not a position I’d want to spend too much time in because, let’s face it, accidental farts do happen.

As for Laser, his Dr. Heiter joins the ranks of the greatest movie mad scientists of all time. He manages to maintain an aura of dangerous menace throughout, even when providing moments of black humor. Sure, he’s cartoonish and over the top, but that’s what you want in a good mad doctor. My favorite parts of his performance are when he gets frustrated by his creation’s refusal to behave, or his annoyance at interlopers disturbing his experiments. I was reminded of Gunnar Hansen’s Leatherface displaying similar frustration with the teens that keep showing up uninvited at his house in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What I really appreciated about this film is the fact that Six had a kooky idea, wrote his script, and then made exactly the movie he wanted to make. That’s a rarity not just in horror, but in all movies in this age where everything gets run by an army of suits in pre-production, and then tampered with some more after test screenings. Whatever else you can say about this movie, it is the unfiltered vision of its maker. I found that vision refreshingly original and, oddly enough, kind of fun. It’s also disgusting and disturbing, and a couple of scenes made even this jaded horror fan wince. But isn’t that what a horror movie is supposed to do? 3 out of 4 stars.

The water's fine in 'Blood Creek'

2010-05-04T14:18:00.001-04:00

Lionsgate dumped Blood Creek (originally titled Town Creek) unceremoniously into budget theaters for a "doomed from the start" one-week run last September. The last time they did something like this, it was the Clive Barker adaptation Midnight Meat Train. In that case, it was apparently a matter of studio politics (for more info, click here). Not sure if that was the case here, but either way Blood Creek is now out on DVD and Blu Ray, and I figured I'd give it a chance.

The movie begins with a black and white sequence set in 1936. Nazi scholar Richard Wirth (Michael Fassbinder) arrives at the home of the Wollners, a family of German immigrants living in West Virginia, to study a strange rune stone on their property. Flashing forward to the present, paramedic Evan Marshall (Henry Cavill) is trying to get on with his life after the strange disappearance of his Iraq War veteran brother Victor (Dominic Purcell) 2 years ago. Evan assumes his brother is dead, but then one night Victor shows up looking like Grizzly Adams after a week spent guzzling moonshine and rolling around in bear dung. The two load up on guns and ammo and set out to get some payback.

Turns out Victor’s captors were the Wollners, still alive and looking pretty good despite the passage of some seven decades. Wirth is still alive as well, at least in a manner of speaking. In his quest to open up his third eye and achieve immortality, the Nazi necromancer has become some kind of zombie/vampire, keeping the Wollners frozen in time through black magic and forcing them to provide him with blood. The Wollners daughter Liese (Emma Booth) tries to explain to Victor that it wasn’t personal. Although unable to kill Wirth, Liese can at least keep him contained as long as he’s fed. Vic isn’t interested in arguments about the greater good, though. He’s just pissed about having been turned into a living food dispenser.

Wirth cuts a strikingly horrific figure with his dirty bandage swathed face, fashionable Nazi trench coat, and talon-like fingernails. And not only is he a blood drinking zombie who can punch right through your stomach, he can also cast spells to raise the dead, even animals (watch out for those zombie horses). Definitely not a monster you want to trifle with. There’s not much room for nuance in a performance like this, but Fassbinder is everything you’d want in a pulp horror villain. As for the rest of the cast, there are no real standout performances here, but the acting is more than adequate for a B-grade flick like this.

After the marginal freshness of the initial set-up, the plot settles into familiar siege-horror territory. Sure, we’ve seen this kind of thing before, but Director Joel Schumacher maintains a high level of tension throughout. He never forgets that this is a horror movie, and the camp tendencies that earned him the ire of fans with his two Batman films are thankfully absent. Schumacher also gives Blood Creek a nice look and style without going overboard like some of the music video hacks that fancy themselves movie directors these days. Blood Creek isn’t a horror masterpiece by any means, but it is an enjoyable bit of pulpy trash, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of recent horror films. 3 out of 4 stars.

A Not So Titanic 'Clash'

2010-04-04T22:25:00.001-04:00

Perseus (Sam Worthington) just wants to follow in the footsteps of his adoptive parents and lead a simple life as a fisherman. Unfortunately for Pers, whose real father is the head honcho of the gods, Zeus (Liam Neeson), demigods never have it that easy. When the city of Argos decides to defy the gods, Perseus’ entire family becomes collateral damage as Hades (Ralph Fiennes) sets about reminding the populace why it isn’t smart to piss off deities. After giving Argos just a small taste of the kind of smackdown he’s capable of delivering, Hades demands the sacrifice of the Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the Kraken, a giant sea monster with an even worse disposition than his.

Perseus isn’t particularly interested in any of this until he learns that, by killing the Kraken, he will automatically get a title shot at Hades as well. So, motivated solely by a desire for vengeance, our “hero” sets off to acquire the knowledge and weapons he will need for his task. Accompanying him are way too many minor characters than any straight forward fantasy/adventure movie needs, including Io (Gemma Atherton), a woman cursed with immortality who watches over Perseus and provides him with advice. Anyway, the group fights lots of monsters and makes friends with some Tusken Raiders who wandered off the set of ‘Star Wars’. The ultimate goal is to reach the lair of Medusa, a snake woman whose head is the only weapon that can kill the Kraken.

This should all be a lot of fun, but it isn’t. See, you don’t need much for a movie like this to work, but at the bare minimum your hero (or antihero, as the case may be) needs to be compelling. Perseus is not. He just sulks around like a petulant adolescent with a cloud over his head muttering about how he doesn’t need any stinking gifts from the gods. Beyond that, the character has no personality traits that I could discern. It’s impossible to feel any emotional attachment to Perseus, or any of the characters, for that matter.

All that’s left is to sit and watch the action and effects scenes with a sense of cool detachment. But even on that level, the movie is far from a success. As is apparently mandatory these days, most of the action scenes are shot in shaky confuso-vision. So even when there’s something cool happening on screen, the movie does its best to keep you from actually seeing it. As for the monsters, for the most part they’re ok. Like most CGI, they move smoothly and are integrated well into the overall film, but lack personality. They have the feeling of something created by committee rather than by a single artist. The one real failure is Medusa. I’d expect to see something like this on an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, not in a major Hollywood blockbuster.

So far I’ve avoided any mention of the original 1981 version of this film, preferring to deal with this year’s model strictly on its own terms. So briefly, here are the main differences between the two. Obviously the special effects technology available today makes it possible to present mythological monsters and scenes of mass destruction in a more realistic manner. That said, the monsters in the original, hand crafted and animated by effects genius Ray Harryhausen, have more personality and life. For me it was a draw, but if you’re one of those sad people who can only enjoy a fantasy movie if it looks realistic, you’ll probably give the edge to the remake.

In terms of screenplay, neither film is exactly an Oscar contender. The original had a number of ridiculous plot contrivances, not to mention a goofy mechanical owl meant as an R2D2 rip-off. There’s still a great heroic epic at that film’s core, though. And since the movie never takes itself too seriously, it’s hard to get upset . The new version opts for a more serious tone. All of the silliest aspects of the original have been eliminated, which is fine, but so has much of the original’s sense of wonder and adventure. Also missing is the romance between Perseus and Andromeda. Without the romance, the new Clash feels like it’s missing its soul, not to mention any kind of motivation for the hero that an audience can really get behind.

The lack of heart is really the deal breaker for me with this movie. With no characters to care about, what’s the point? The sheer spectacle of it all provides some entertainment value, but it’s certainly not enough to recommend that you pay to see this in a theater. Even if I didn’t have warm nostalgic feelings for the original Clash, this remake would still come up short. 2 out of 4 stars.

'I Sell The Dead' is ghoulish good fun

2010-04-01T14:21:00.001-04:00

Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) and Willie (Larry Fessenden) are a likeable if unsavory pair of grave robbers and, possibly, murderers. Now the two have been sentenced to death for their crimes. From his prison cell, Arthur recounts to Father Duffy (Ron Perlman) the events which led him to his fate. As a child, Arthur (played in his younger years by Daniel Manche) learned the tricks of the ressurectionist trade from Willie. At first the duo’s main employer is Doctor Quint (Angus Scrimm, familiar to horror fans as “The Tall Man” from the Phantasm films), an unscrupulous physician in need of fresh corpses for his medical research and not too picky about where they come from. But things turn from the merely morbid to the supernatural when the Arthur and Willie learn there’s an even better market for the bodies of the living dead. Business picks up considerably once they start dealing in vampires, zombies, and other assorted oddities. But not only is the product itself more dangerous to handle, there’s a rival group of grave robbers who don’t take kindly to anyone infringing on their turf.

Most contemporary Hollywood horror films tend either to want their audiences to feel like taking a shower by the time the credits roll, or else downplay their horror elements completely in favor of slick action movie tropes. I Sell The Dead is defiantly un-modern, instead drawing its inspiration from the gothic British horror films of the sixties and seventies and their American counterparts from AIP, most notably Roger Corman’s The Raven and Jaques Tourneur’s Comedy of Terrors. Although released unrated, the film contains no nudity, very little gore, and only mild profanity. It doesn’t try to numb you with constant noise and action, instead trusting in its characters, story, and gleefully black humor to hold the viewer’s attention.

The casting is also refreshingly old fashioned, favoring seasoned character actors over more marketable pretty young faces. Usually cast in comic relief supporting roles, Monaghan acquits himself well here as a more subdued, relatable character. John Speredakos makes a fine villain as the leader of the rival gang of grave robbers, and Brenda Cooney conjures the spirit of Hammer movie sirens like Ingrid Pitt as Willie and Arthur’s saucy apprentice Fanny. Scrimm and Perlman don’t have a lot of screen time, but they make the most of what they’re given, hamming it up in a manner that would have brought a devilish smirk to Vincent Price’s face. But it’s Fessenden, himself a director of several horror films (Habit, Wendigo, The Last Winter), who steals every scene he’s in as the crassly comical Willie.

This is writer/director/producer Glenn McQuaid’s first film, and as such it’s an impressive achievement. Some nitpickers have pointed out a few anachronisms and inaccuracies, which seems kind of pointless given the tone of the film. Besides, considering the budget, the period set design and costuming are more than sufficient to create the necessary atmosphere. The special effects are also well done. There’s no CGI here, just practical make-up and a few bits of old-school trick photography. On the downside, the movie could stand to flow a little better, and not every one of its episodic vignettes packs as much of a punch as one might like. There’s also a revelation about Perlman’s character that appears to be meant as a surprise, but any viewer paying even the slightest attention will see coming a mile away. One can’t completely gloss over those issues, but they’re still not enough to prevent the film from being a great bit of fun and a refreshing change of pace. 3 out of 4 stars.

1986'ed

2010-03-25T19:48:00.003-04:00

I just caught an advance screening of Hot Tub Time Machine the other night (you can read my review on the Cleveland Scene film blog). The important thing to know with regards to this blog is that in the film, the main characters travel back in time to 1986, a pivotal year in their lives. The movie does a pretty good job in showing what was going on in mainstream culture that year: glam metal, bad hair, Miami Vice, Alf, the Iran-Contra scandal, and so on. I certainly remember all those things, but the movie also got me thinking about other interesting things that happened that year which, in the interest of moving the story along, couldn’t possibly have been included. So I thought I’d share a few of my own memories of 1986 here on this blog.

Thrashing Like a Maniac

When I first started listening to bands like Metallica and Slayer in 1985, even most of the metalheads at my high school called thrash metal noise. Then Metallica released Master of Puppets in March of 1986, and soon after landed the opening slot on Ozzy Osbourne’s Ultimate Sin tour. Now that they had Ozzy’s blessing, Metallica were cool. Sadly, Metallica bass player Cliff Burton didn’t get to enjoy his band’s success for long. He died while the band was on tour in a bus accident on September 27, 1986.

Seeing Metallica’s success, major labels started looking for other thrash bands to sign. By years end, two of the genre’s most definitive albums had been released: Megadeth’s Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? and Slayer’s Reign in Blood. Reign is considered by many to be the greatest thrash metal album of all time, and it’s hard to argue. Metallica and Slayer both refused to make videos, but it wasn’t beneath Megadeth, who made a memorable clip for the song “Peace Sells”. The break in the middle where the dad tells his headbanging son he wants to watch the news is one of the great cheesy moments in metal history.

Harmful Matter

1986 was also the year I started listening to punk rock and hardcore, and the first punk rock album I listened to was the Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist. In what passed for file sharing at the time, I made a cassette copy of Master of Puppets for my friend Lee, and he copied his Kennedys album for me. I hated it at first, mainly because of the unusual vocal style of lead singer Jello Biafra. Eventually I came around, though, and the Kennedys became one of my favorite bands just in time for them to break up. It seems the poster included with the Frankenchrist album, an H. R. Geiger painting called Penis Landscape, was deemed offensive by an overzealous prosecutor who charged Biafra and the band with “distributing harmful matter to minors”. The band won their case, but by the time the trial was over, so were they.

Going Postal

Patrick Sherrill walked into the post office where he worked in Edmond, Oklahoma on August 20, 1986 and killed 14 of his fellow employees before turning the gun on himself. It wasn’t the first time a postal employee had gone gun-crazy, but for some reason this time it had a wider cultural resonance. Thus was born the phrase, “going postal”.

Geraldo’s Got Nothing

On April 21, 1986, millions tuned in to watch Geraldo Rivera’s syndicated special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault. I was one of them. We were promised bodies or at the very least a nice collection of stolen goods. After a 2 hour build-up, what we got was dirt and some empty bottles.

Enter the Fox

Until 1986, there were only 3 networks, and about the only original programming on cable TV was Georgia Championship Wrestling (a fine program, by the way). That changed on October 9, 1986 when the Fox network hit the airwaves with The Late Show starring Joan Rivers. Fox didn’t start broadcasting in prime time until April of 1987, but this is where it all started. Here’s Joan interviewing Pee Wee Herman from her very first episode.

Scream Real Loud

Since Pee Wee Herman was in that last clip, it seems like a good excuse to talk about the best show on TV in 1986. On September 13, Pee Wee’s Playhouse premiered on the CBS Saturday morning lineup, and was hands down the strangest, smartest, funniest show on TV at the time. Newhart was the only thing in prime time that was even close to being as good as the Playhouse. Other than that, television comedy was awful sitcoms like Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Perfect Strangers, ALF, Who’s the Boss?, and of course The Cosby Show. Don’t get me wrong, I watched all those shows and liked them just fine at the time. What did I know, I was 16. But I can put on an episode of Pee Wee today and I’ll still laugh. Those others… not so much. Hell, just watching these opening credits still makes me smile.

At the Movies

I hear this all the time: movies aren’t as good as they used to be. That may be true if we go back to the seventies or earlier, but don’t try to make your case with 1986. Among the top 50 grossing films that year, we’ve got some very good ones like Platoon, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Blue Velvet, Little Shop of Horrors, The Fly, Aliens, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Stand By Me. But most of the list is crap like Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, Poltergeist II, Top Gun, The Golden Child, The Karate Kid Part 2, Cobra, Three Amigos, The Money Pit, Soul Man, Delta Force and Iron Eagle. And before you say, “but Top Gun was awesome,” or “what about Crocodile Dundee,” I suggest you watch them again first. Speaking from experience, stuff you thought was great when you were 16 often doesn’t hold up so well. And yes, I do enjoy some of the worst films 1986 had to offer, but I still recognize they’re bad. Like this one, Stallone’s amazingly dumb Cobra. Enjoy the trailer and the very eighties-sounding Jean Beauvoir song “Feel the Heat” that accompanies it.

2800 Baud of Blazing Speed

I got a Commodore 64 computer in 1984. The 64 in the name was for the (at the time) impressive 64 kilobytes of RAM in the computer’s processor. It cost $595 when introduced, and that was just for the computer itself. You had to buy a floppy disc drive (that took 5 ¼” discs) and modem separately. You could also buy a monitor if you wanted to, but why bother when you could hook it up directly to your TV? By 1986, Commodore had introduced the even more impressive Amiga, but I never did get one of those. Still, I was pretty far ahead of the technological curve for 1986. I knew how to write programs in BASIC, I had tons of pirated video games, and I had an optional modem, allowing me to go online. The modem’s speed was 2800 baud. I don’t know what that means in today’s kbps terms, I just know it would be really, really slow compared even to a standard dial-up connection.

Getting online in 1986 was a very different experience than the modern internet, though. There were a few large networks like Compuserve that you could get on if you paid a subscription fee, but I didn’t mess with those. Instead, I would dial up local “Bulletin Board Systems” (BBS for short). These were free services run from the homes of other computer geeks like myself. Generally only one person could be logged in at a time, although if you were lucky you might get to chat live with the computer geek running the thing (know as the “Sysop”, short for system operator). The only graphics were ASCII art, and the main activity was engaging in flame wars on various primitive message boards. Just about everybody on these boards used a nickname, which added to the silliness of it all. I was “Metal Warlord”. You may feel free to laugh. Then check out this classic Commodore 64 commercial and marvel at how much we once paid for so little computing power.

Well, that’s enough meandering down memory lane for now. Hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to comment with your own memories of 1986 if you’re old enough to have been there.

Roky and Roll: A Review of the Roky Erickson show at the Beachland Ballroom March 6, 2010

2010-03-14T19:40:00.001-04:00

Sorry I haven't been updating this blog much recently. The last month has been kind of crazy. I meant to have this review up sooner, but this is the first time I've really had to sit down and blog in a while. Anyway, enough with my whining.

This concert was part of the Beachland Ballroom's 10th anniversary weekend, and what better way to celebrate than with a rare live performance by Texas rock legend Roky Erickson? The show started off with local band Living Stereo, a band that straddles garage rock and eightes power pop. The songs were catchy and the band was tight, but they just didn't have enough grit for my tastes.

Next up was The Alarm Clocks, a sixties garage rock band from the Cleveland area who have reunited to play the occasional show in the past few years. I'll be honest, before they started to play I was a bit worried. I thought to myself that the bass player looked like half the home improvement salesmen I used to work with. But as soon as these guys started playing, all doubts vanished. There's a certain attitude any good garage rock band has to have that just can't be faked, and these guys have it. There sound was sort of a cross between the raw fury of The Sonics and the more sophisticated garage rock of Them. Very good stuff, and I will definitely be picking up whatever recordings I can find from these guys.

Then it was time for Roky. If you know Roky's personal history, it's a miracle that he's back on stage playing at all, so I had my expectations set a little low. And I'm not gonna' lie, there were definitely some rough spots in the show where Roky seemed to get a little lost. Fortunately he had a good backing band who were able to go with the flow and get things back on track whenever that happened. Roky stuck mainly to his hard rocking horror-themed material from the eighties. He opened the set with "Cold Night For Alligators" and continued on with a rousing "Creature With the Atom Brain". I don't remember the exact order, but Roky and his band went on to play "Don't Shake Me Lucifer", "Night of the Vampire", "Stand for the Fire Demon", "The Wind and More", "The Beast" and "Bloody Hammer". "Starry Eyes" was the only song representative of Roky's quieter side. It would have been nice to hear at least one more ballad in the set, but I'm not going to complain. As expected, Roky also played his best known hit from his days as singer for The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna' Miss Me". Considering how many times he must have performed this song, it was kind of surprising when this one went off the rails and almost fell apart. Luckily the final song of the night, "Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)" came off much better.

All in all it was a pretty damn good show. Roky's voice has gotten a bit rougher with age, but still sounds pretty good. As a fan, I was more than happy with the performance. Here's hoping he comes back again after his new album, True Love Cast Out All Evil, is released in April.

March Music Madness in Cleveland, OH

2010-03-01T13:47:00.002-05:00

March is shaping up to be a pretty good month for rock & roll here in Cleveland, at least for me. There are a number of really good shows coming to town, and there’s no way I can catch them all. Here’s a rundown of the ones that are tempting me to get out of the house the most.

Jesco White the Dancing Outlaw
Friday March 5^th at Now That’s Class

Jesco does his thing

Pere Ubu
Friday March 5^th at The Beachland Ballroom

The current Ubu line-up doing “Non-Alignment Pact” in 2010

Roky Erickson, The Alarm Clocks, and Living Stereo
Saturday March 6^th at The Beachland Ballroom

Roky at his best performing “Two Headed Dog” in 1980

Kreator, Voi Vod, Nachmystium, Lazarus A.D. and Evile
Wednesday March 10^th at Peabody’s

Super cool classic video for Voi Vod’s “Tribal Convictions”

Super cheesy video for Kreator’s “Hordes of Chaos”

Psychedelic Horseshit with Casual Encounters, Big Bruise, and Kill the Hippies
Wednesday March 17^th at Now That’s Class

Kill the Hippies live at Bela Dubby from earlier this year

The Black Lips
Wednesday March 31 at The Beachland Tavern

Promo video for The Black Lips’ “Oh Katrina”

And I might as well do a little shameless self promotion.

Murdercoaster, The Ethiopian Hillbillys and Gimme Dat Shoe!
Saturday March 20^th at The Five O’Clock

I play guitar and sing in Gimme Dat Shoe!, We go on at 9pm. Come out and say hi if you’re in the area.

'Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief' Steals With Style

2010-02-23T18:11:00.001-05:00

There’s no getting around the fact that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief bears a number of similarities to the Harry Potter series. Both feature a young male protagonist who doesn’t realize he has special powers. Adolsecent Harry learns that he is a wizard and gets sent off to wizard school, while teenage Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) learns that he is the son of the Olympian god Poseidon and gets sent off to demigod camp. Both disobey the warnings of their instructors to embark on dangerous quests accompanied by two companions; in Percy’s case, a comic-relief Satyr named Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and Annabeth, the daughter of the goddess Athena (Alexandra Daddario). To top it all off, the director of this first installment in what will no doubt be a series of films is Chris Columbus, who also directed the first Potter film.

But hey, some of my favorite movies are rip-offs. Spielberg’s Jaws is a classic, but I’m just as happy to watch Joe Dante’s cheap knock-off Piranha. Star Wars (aka Episode IV: A New Hope) steals most of its plot and characters from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, but knowing that doesn’t lessen my enjoyment of George Lucas’ space opera. Similarly, I found myself enjoying The Lightning Thief just as much, if not more, than most of the Potter films. Yes, Percy Jackson is clearly following a tried and true formula, but it modifies the ingredients enough that it takes on its own distinctive flavor.

One of the key differences between the two franchises is that The Lightning Thief feels considerably less cluttered. My biggest issue with the Harry Potter films is that they all feel stuffed to bursting in an effort to cram as much of the books on screen as possible, without any real regard for how that might flow cinematically. That’s not an issue here. Neither does The Lightning Thief seek to constantly distract us with multiple little special effects gags in the corners of every shot. There’s even a real honest to goodness ending that makes it possible to enjoy the film on its own, even if the sequels never get made.

It also helps that The Lightning Thief has a strong supporting cast, including Catherine Keener as Percy’s mother, Joe Pantoliona as Percy’s wicked step-father, Pierece Brosnan as a centaur who teaches the young demigods and goddesses, and Uma Thurman as Medusa. Plus it has some cool monsters, which is always a good thing in my book. By no means is this a great movie, but it was a lot more entertaining than I expected. 3 out of 4 stars.

Nicholas Cage Goes Over the Edge in 'The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

2010-02-15T23:34:00.001-05:00

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, police officer Terence McDonagh (Nicholas Cage) makes a fateful decision to rescue a prisoner trapped in the rising floodwaters. In doing so, he injures his back and winds up needing pain medication for the rest of his life. But prescription drugs alone just won’t do the trick, and it isn’t long before Terence is hooked on cocaine and heroin, often sharing his stash with his prostitute girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes). Terence tries to keep it together when he’s picked to head up the investigation of a multiple homicide, but his vices threaten to drag him down.

The above paragraph is a fairly accurate summation of the plot of The Bad Lieutenant, but it doesn’t begin to describe the movie. This remake in name only of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film takes what could have been a fairly pedestrian crime and sleaze storyline and turns it into a twisted black comedy that gives Nicholas Cage his best role in years. The film is directed by Werner Herzog, surely among the best living directors still making films. Unlike Ferrara, Herzog isn’t interested in his Lieutenant finding redemption. He simply wants to see how far over the edge this character can go. And with Cage in the lead role, that’s pretty damn far.

This is a very funny film, and one that is constantly blurring the line between “funny strange” and “funny ha-ha”. As for the story, most of the threads do get wrapped up, but in such an arbitrary (and funny) way that it’s clear Herzog isn’t interested in anything resembling a traditional plot resolution. Is Bad Lieutenant a masterpiece on the same level as other Herzog films like Fitzcaraldo or Aguirre The Wrath of God? I’m inclined to say no, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was never less than mesmerized by the film.

Possibly The Greatest Thing I've Ever Seen

2010-02-13T16:52:00.001-05:00

I don't know whether to be amazed or appalled. I guess a little bit of both. This is a video by the band Von Canto doing an accapella cover of Manowar's "Kings of Metal". They have a drummer, but other than that it's all done with the human voice. I can't think of anything else to say, this pretty much speaks for itself.

Bob's Oscar Picks and Comments

2010-02-05T14:34:00.001-05:00

The Academy Award nominations were announced earlier this week, and as is usually the case it’s a mixed bag. That’s even more the case this year since the “Best Picture” category has been expanded from five nominees to ten. Not that it takes a lot of work to figure out who the top five are. As Roger Ebert points out on his website, all you have to do is look at the nominees for “Best Director” and count up the other nominations each film received, and it’s clear that Avatar (directed by James Cameron with 9 nominations), The Hurt Locker (directed by Katherine Bigelow, also with 9), Inglourious Basterds (directed by Quentin Tarantino, 8), Precious (directed by Lee Daniels, 6), and Up in the Air (directed by Jason Reitman, 6) are the only real contenders for the top Oscar prize.

No real shockers there. I hated Precious, but I would have been stunned if it hadn’t made the list. It’s the sort of “liberal guilt” movie like Crash that Oscar voters love. Of the remaining nominees (The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, A Serious Man, and Up) the big surprises are District 9 and The Blind Side. I liked District 9, but it’s way too flawed to warrant inclusion. If the academy wanted to recognize a sci-fi flick, I would have much rather seen Moon get the nod. I haven’t seen The Blind Side, but man does the trailer look awful. Other movies more deserving of making the cut than The Blind Side or District 9: In The Loop, The Road, Sin Nombre, and Goodbye Solo. All were excellent movies that fit well within the parameters of what Oscar voters usually go for. Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is also conspicuous by its absence. I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s Clint and it’s the kind of movie that tends to get best picture nominations. But hey, the dude’s got more than a few statues, so I’m not gonna’ feel too sorry for him.

For the most part, the nominations in all the categories are about what I would have expected. The only real glaring omission I can think of is Melanie Laurent not getting nominated in the “Best Actress in a Leading Role” category for Inglourious Basterds. My guess is the ensemble nature of the film’s cast made it hard for some voters to decide if it was a lead performance or a supporting performance, but since her character is the glue that holds the movie together I’d have to say lead. I also have to mention the one nomination that really struck me as ridiculous: Anna Kendrick in the “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” category for Up in the Air. For playing a one-dimensional comic relief character we’ve seen in a million other movies, she gets an Oscar nomination? Please. Much more deserving would have been Sari Lennick for A Serious Man or Gina McKee for In the Loop.

Okay, on to my Oscar predictions. I think this is going to be one of those years where no one movie walks away the big winner. Avatar will probably wind up with the most statues at the end of the night thanks to a lot of technical awards, but I think all the big nominees will each get their piece of the pie in the major categories.

Best Picture – This one is between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, and my gut tells me it’s going to Avatar. It’s not the best movie of the year by a long shot, but it broke new ground technically, made a shit-load of money, and was better than it had to be while doing it. I’d love to see The Hurt Locker win, but it probably isn’t going to happen.

Best Director – Again, it’s between James Cameron for Avatar and his ex-wife Katherine Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. And again, while I’d love to see The Hurt Locker take it, I think it’s going to go to Avatar.

Best Actor – Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, although in true Oscar tradition this will really be for his excellent past work as much as it is for the film he’s nominated for. I’ll be okay with that, but my pick would be Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker.

Best Actress – This one is a tough call, especially since I haven’t seen most of the performances in question. I’m gonna’ throw a “hail Mary” on gut instinct alone and say Sandra Bullock. No preferred winner since, as I mentioned, I haven’t seen most of the nominees. But as much as I didn't like the movie, Gaboury Sibide was excellent playing the title role in Precious, so if she wins I'd be a lot happier than if Bullock does.

Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds. If you’ve seen the movie, you know why. He’s my preferred choice as well, although Woody Harrelson winning for The Messenger would be okay in my book, too. The guy had a great comeback year in 2009 with this on one end of the spectrum and Zombieland and 2012 on the other.

Best Supporting Actress – Monique for Precious. She’ll deserve it, too, as she really went to the limit in portraying the mother from Hell. That said, I’d like to see Vera Farmiga win. She was absolutely perfect in Up in the Air.

Best Original Screenplay – This is either going to The Hurt Locker or Inglourious Basterds. I think this will be the consolation prize for The Hurt Locker. If Basterds does win, then it means I was probably wrong about the “Best Director” category and Bigelow will get that one as her consolation.

Best Adapted Screenplay – I think this one will go to Up in the Air. Precious has a real chance, though. My pick would be In the Loop, but that ain’t gonna’ happen.

Best Animated Film – Up. It’s commercial, it’s good, it’s Pixar. This is probably the one pick I’m most certain of. That said, I’d be happy to be proven wrong and see The Fantastic Mr. Fox get it instead.

Best Documentary – I haven’t seen most of these, but this category tends to reward socially relevant movies about topics of current interest. With that in mind, I think it’s going to be Food, Inc. That just happens to be the one documentary on the list I’ve actually seen, and I liked it, so I’d be happy with that outcome.

And that’s as far down the list as I’m going to go, folks. The awards ceremony airs Sunday March 7, 2010 on ABC, so I’ll find out then how good my prognostication skills are.

Fly Me to the 'Moon'

2010-01-29T22:19:00.002-05:00

Sam (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of his 3 year contract as a miner on the moon base Sarang. His only companion is the computer GERTY (voice of Kevin Spacey), and the satellite allowing live communications with his employers and loved ones back on earth is in need of repair. Perhaps it’s the resulting loneliness that is causing Sam to hallucinate. While driving a lunar rover on a routine mission, one of Sam’s hallucinations causes him to have an accident. Shortly after awakening in the infirmary, Sam sees GERTY having a live conversation with mission control. He is also prohibited from leaving the base, but manages to trick GERTY into letting him out on the pretense of doing some repairs. Driving back to the site of his accident, Sam is surprised to find… himself, still unconscious in the crashed Rover.

So what the heck is going on? Is this an hallucination? Is one of these “Sams” a clone or a robot? Both Sam and the audience get the answer to these questions fairly quick. This isn’t one of those movies all about some “mind blowing” secret. It’s about the ramifications of what Sam learns, both for him personally, and in a broader sense, for all of human society. This is the sort of thoughtful and adult science fiction film that used to be commonplace in the late sixties and early seventies. Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running seem particularly apt, but this is no mere homage. Rather Moon is a film that embodies the spirit of those films and applies it to something fresh.

I also have to give the movie kudos for using old school special effects techniques. When I was watching the movie, I thought to myself, “wow, that’s some of the best CGI I’ve ever seen. That land rover looks like it’s really there.” Well, it was really there. The film used models, and there’s a subtle feeling of tactile reality you get from using models that just isn’t there with CGI yet. Most of the moonbase was built as an actual set, as well. Everything looks so good, it’s hard to believe this movie was made for $5 million.

This is a very minimalist film. To a large degree, it’s just Sam Rockwell talking to himself. Luckily Rockwell is one of the best actors working these days, and he’s more than up to the challenge of carrying the film. That said, Spacey does a great job as the voice of GERTY, recalling HAL9000 while at the same time presenting a different take on artificial intelligence.

I have to applaud the vision of writer/director Duncan Jones. Moon is smart, relevant, and gripping, with the science fiction elements always subservient to story and theme. There are no action scenes or moments of artificial drama, but the film is never for a second dull. This is just a great story told well, and easily one of the best movies of 2009. Sadly I’m just now seeing it, but it would have landed somewhere in my top 5 for sure. 4 out of 4 stars.

'Legion' of Dumb

2010-01-26T15:37:00.004-05:00

I tried to get my wife to go see Legion with me over the past weekend. She said it looked like crap, and wondered why I do such things to myself. I told her I thought the movie would be fun, and she would be missing out. However, in the case she was right, I promised I would write the following: I should have listened to my wife. Well, I should have listened to my wife.

The Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) arrives on earth in a damp, dark Los Angeles back alley. He breaks into a warehouse, cuts off his wings, and steals an assload of guns (not to mention a spiffy suit). On his way out of the building, Michael is stopped by a pair of policemen. One of the cops starts shaking his head back and forth really fast like he’s at a Slayer concert while his eyes turn black and his mouth sprouts razor sharp fangs. It’s nothing an angel with a machine gun can’t handle, but that’s only the beginning of the supernatural shit storm that’s been unleashed on the world.

Meanwhile, the extremely pregnant Charlie (Adrianee Palicki) is working as a waitress at the Paradise Falls truck stop, a dump in the middle of the desert owned by cranky divorcee Bob (Dennis Quaid). Charlie’s job seems mainly to entail taking smoke breaks and giving blueballs to Bob’s son Jeep (Lucas Black). Also on hand at the truck stop: pious one-handed cook Percy (Charles S. Dutton), an obnoxious yuppie couple and their rebellious daughter stranded due to car trouble (John Tenney, Kate Walsh, and Willa Holland), and a lost traveler looking to use the phone (Tyrese Gibson). Cut off from the outside world, these folks have no idea what’s going on until a little old lady shows up and starts scampering across the ceiling and chomping on people.

Then Michael arrives at the truck stop and starts passing out guns while making portentous statements in a raspy monotone. It seems that God is pissed off at humanity and wants to wipe the slate clean. In terms of Judeo-Christian mythology, this would be the vengeful Old Testament God, or the sort of Supreme Being Pat Robertson might imagine in his most vivid masturbation fantasies. Michael doesn’t agree with the big guy’s plan, so he’s come to earth to try and protect Charlie’s unborn child, a child that somehow holds the key to mankind’s survival.

So up to this point, the movie has been pretty ridiculous but entertaining. The little old lady scene, and later an assault by an ice cream man are the sort of deliriously goofy moments fans of “so bad it’s good” cinema live for. But after the initial siege, the movie grinds to a halt for its mid section. Most of this is to stop and flesh out characters just prior to killing them off. Meanwhile, the main protagonists and specifics of the plot are left sketchy and incomplete.

Another problem with Legion stems from the fact that the script was originally written with demons in mind rather than angels. Director Scott Stewart liked the idea of angels better, and frankly that could have been cool. The problem is, it seems that all Stewart’s rewrite consisted of was replacing the word “demon” with the word “angel” in the script. The “angelically possessed”, as Michael describes them, still look and act the way one would expect demons to behave. They manifest as mindless, animalistic creatures with pointy teeth and a blasphemous streak, at one point crucifying a character on an upside down cross.

The biggest issue left unresolved by the change from demons to angels is the nature of Charlie's baby. I imagine it was originally intended to be the second coming or something along those lines. I can see how Satan and the forces of Hell might want to stop such a child from being born. But with the changes to the script, it’s now God trying to stop the baby from being born. So is the baby still His? Did He get drunk and knock up Charlie while out on a bender, and now He doesn’t want to pay child support? If not, then what exactly is the nature of this infant who is supposed to be mankind’s salvation, and how is he or she supposed to bring that salvation about? I don’t know, and neither does anyone involved in this movie.

Being an agnostic, it’s not that I’m offended by the liberties the film takes with traditional religious beliefs. I’m just annoyed that it spends so much time on such a poorly conceived mythology. That, and I don’t understand why you would make a movie about angels if you’re not going to use the idea to its full potential. We get one brief scene where Michael has a flashback to a conversation with fellow archangel Gabriel (Kevin Durand) that shows how cool this could have been. While the two discuss the orders they’ve been given by God, a squadron of warrior-angels swoops and dives in the background, ready for an all-out aerial assault that never comes. Once the action moves to earth, Michael and Gabriel are apparently the only angels smart enough to realize simply maintaining their true form is more powerful and effective than possessing the fragile bodies of humans.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether it’s angels or demons. Although Legion does pick up again in its third act, that sagging middle just about kills it, especially since it gives you time to think about all the inconsistencies of mythology and plot. If the movie had maintained the level of energy and fun it started out with, it would have helped cover up those flaws. We’d still have a bad movie, but it would have been a fun bad movie. Instead we’re left with a few enjoyably goofy moments with a lot of ponderous exposition that serves no purpose in between. 2 out of 4

'Black Dynamite' Explodes on the Screen!

2010-01-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

Michael Jai White IS Black Dynamite! When his younger brother is murdered, Black Dynamite springs into action to take down those responsible in this spot-on homage/parody of seventies blacksploitation movies. I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t Keenan Ivory Wayans already do this in I’m Gonna’ Git You Sucka? Not exactly. Wayans film was a fairly slick production that drew it’s inspiration mainly from bigger budget blacksploitation films like Shaft and Superfly. Black Dynamite draws on those films as well, but it’s mainly inspired by really low budget stuff like Rudy Ray Moore’s Dolomite and The Human Tornado, or the Jim Kelly vehicle Black Belt Jones.

Every effort has been taken to make Black Dynamite look like an authentic low budget action flick from the seventies. Not only are the clothes and sets convincingly vintage, boom mikes occasionally pop into frame, the editing is choppy, and the fight choreography is often less than convincing. And White, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is about as perfect a seventies action hero as you could ask for. He’s got the fro, the sideburns, and the mustache. He’s ripped as fuck. He knows kung fu. And just like Shaft, he’s a sex machine to all the chicks, at one point in the movie satisfying three lovelies simultaneously. The only time the illusion of a lost seventies classic is spoiled is one brief scene that uses CGI fire.

Getting the details right is certainly commendable, but it wouldn’t matter if the film wasn’t entertaining. Thankfully, it is. Even its most ridiculous gags are played completely dead pan, which makes them even funnier. Just about every joke, and there are a lot of them, hits its target. There are several memorable scenes, including a great animated zodiac sequence. From the opening Anaconda malt liquor ad to the final climactic battle between Black Dynamite and “The Man”, this is one immensely enjoyable movie. If I had caught this a little earlier, it would have made my top 25 list for sure, maybe even my top 10. It’s certainly as funny as either The Hangover or In the Loop, the other two comedies on my top 10.

Black Dynamite received a limited theatrical release, playing a few days in one city before moving on to another. I was lucky enough to catch it this past Saturday at the Cleveland Cinematheque, and it’s definitely the kind of movie that plays great with an audience. So when it hits home video on DVD and Blu Ray February 16^th, be sure to invite a few friends over to enjoy the fun.

Another Damn Awards Show

2010-01-19T15:09:00.001-05:00

It’s time once again for the only awards show that matters. That’s right, it’s the third annual Bob Ignizio Movie Awards, or to put it more succinctly, "The Bobbies”. Not only do I pick all the winners, I make my own, far more interesting categories. I'm actually running about a week late this year (normally I try to get out in front of the Golden Globes), so without further ado let’s get on to the awards. Note: there may be spoilers if you haven’t seen these movies. Deal with it.

Best Apocalypse – What could be more entertaining than the deaths of billions of people and the desperate attempts of the few survivors to carry on? Armageddon was all the rage in Hollywood in 2009, a trend that shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

1. Knowing: The planet gets reduced to a glowing cinder by solar flares. But hey, it’s alright, because space angel thingies save a handful of kids.

2. 2012: Director Roland Emerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) does what he does best: he blows shit up. The end of the world as a roller coaster ride.

3. The Road: A man and his young son try to hold on to some semblance of morality in a grey and lifeless world.

And the winner is… Look, if this were about cinematic quality, The Road would take the award easily. And for thoroughness, only Knowing completely and totally destroys the planet. But for sheer mayhem and entertainment value, I’ve got to give the “Bobbie” to 2012.

True Story My Ass Award – Nothing tells you to expect an onslaught of bullshit more reliably than the words “based on a true story” attached to a movie. For proof, you need look no further than the nominees in this category.

1. Paranormal Activity: Thrill to actual scenes of people sleeping. Gasp as unlikable characters argue with each other. It’s like the most annoying episode of Ghost Hunters ever, and even more bogus.

2. The Fourth Kind: This time we get “re-enactments” mixed in with the supposedly real footage of people being tormented by unknown forces. Mila Jovovich tries really hard to convince us that what we’re watching is true, but no one is that good of an actor.

3. Public Enemies: This is a more conventional kind of Hollywood bullshit. Normally when you change the facts for a movie, it’s to make the story flow better or otherwise make a more dramatic and interesting film. Here the results seem to be just the opposite. Reading Dillinger’s Wikipedia page is more exciting than this movie.

And the winner is… The Fourth Kind. I’m used to horror movies using the “based on a true story” gimmick. Most of the time, it’s done with a wink and falls well into the tradition of carny ballyhoo. But The Fourth Kind really goes the extra mile to try and convince audiences that its bullshit is the truth, to the point that it borders on the irresponsible. But I guess if you make a movie like this one, you’ll do anything you can to draw attention away from how bad it is.

Best Nude Scene – This one is always a crowd favorite here at the “Bobbies”. Unfortunately, either I was watching the wrong movies or there wasn’t as much nudity in last year’s films. Still, I think I managed to find a few worthy moments of cinematic nakedness.

1. Black Dynamite: Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) services three lovelies at once.

2. Antichrist: Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg make love in the shower during the beautiful and tragic opening scene. Special credit to the actors who provided the stunt genitalia.

3. My Bloody Valentine: When people use the term “gratuitous nudity”, this is what they’re referring to. Actress Betsy Rue spends a good 5 minutes or so running around completely in the buff while being chased by a psycho with a pick axe. In 3D, no less.

And the winner is… Antichrist. Whatever you may think of the movie as a whole, there’s no denying the opening scene is a stunner, expertly contrasting eroticism and true horror. This isn’t cheap titillation (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but a rare example where the nudity really is necessary to the script.

(sorry, this is just the trailer. I'm trying to keep this blog PG-13)

Best Death – Death is the great equalizer, but some deaths are more equal than others.

1. The Burrowers: Characters have their innards liquefied while they’re still alive before being eaten by mutant moles.

2. Watchmen: Rorschach gets turned into an ink blot by Dr. Manhattan.

3. Trick R Treat: A kid gets some bad Halloween candy, then gets turned into a human jack o’lantern.

And the winner is… Trick R Treat. In the classic tradition of fairy tales and E.C. horror comics, this rotten rugrat disrespects the traditions of Halloween and pays a suitably ironic price.

Best Musical Moment – Music and the movies have gone together since the silent era, when films used to be accompanied by live organ players. It’s a combination that still works to great effect today.

1. Anvil: The Story of Anvil: After a series of setbacks that would have stopped many a lesser band, Canadian metalheads Anvil play before a huge crowd in Japan.

2. Gamer: Michael C. Hall’s dance number to the tune of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.

3. Watchmen: The opening montage set to the tune of Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’” is so perfect, even people who hate the movie love this sequence.

And the winner is… Anvil: The Story of Anvil. For sheer perseverance alone, these guys deserve some kind of an award. I don’t think they’re the best metal band out there, but they seem like nice enough guys, and certainly worse bands have had greater success. May their moment in the spotlight last long enough that they can save up a few bucks.

(embedding of the trailer was disabled, so you'll have to follow this link to see it)

Best Performance in an otherwise terrible movie – Why do bad movies happen to good actors? Times are tough all over, and even last year’s Oscar nominee can wind up in this years bomb when the mortgage on that million dollar house is due.

1. Mila Jovovich in The Fourth Kind: Yes, it’s a terrible movie. But Mila still gives her all as a psychiatrist dealing with an outbreak of alien abductions in Alaska.

2. Brad Douriff in Halloween 2: I think Douriff is just about incapable of giving a bad performance. He’s done good work in a lot of bad movies. This is one of the worst he’s been in, but he still comes out of it with some measure of dignity.

3. Mickey Rourke in Killshot: An Elmore Leonard adaptation with a cast that included Rourke, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Diane Lane, directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), and with Lawrence Bender and an uncredited Quentin Tarantino producing. How did this wind up being so awful? My guess is it was the reshoots ordered by those fucking morons the Weinstein brothers. At least Rourke’s performance is worth watching.

4. Carrie Fisher in Sorority Row: I thought this horror remake was pretty bad, but Carrie Fisher is great in a supporting role as a bad-ass house mother.

And the winner is… Carrie Fisher for Sorority Row. Come on, Hollywood, give Princess Leia more work. She definitely proves that she’s got what it takes to be a kick-ass character actress here.

The Davis Baby Lives Again in 'It's Alive' Remake

2010-01-15T14:00:00.002-05:00

Grad student Lenore Harker (Bijou Phillips) leaves school to have a baby and start a family with her architect boyfriend Frank Davis (James Murray) and his paraplegic younger brother Chris (Raphael Coleman). Not only does the baby come earlier than expected, requiring a cesarean section, the birth turns into a bloody massacre when all the doctors and nurses are viciously murdered during the delivery. The movie makes a half-ass attempt to treat the identity of the killer as a mystery, but you don’t have to be familiar with the 1974 film this is a remake of to guess that there is something wrong with the Davis baby.

The original It’s Alive was a gleefully lurid exploitation flick with strong performances, a dash of social commentary, and a cheesy but memorable monster. This update opts for a more subtle approach. That might have worked, except that the script is riddled with credibility stretching moments and idiotic characters it’s impossible to care about.

The monster baby is problematic, too. On the one hand, we’re supposed to believe it looks normal enough that no one notices anything unusual about it, other than being a bit big. At the same time, the baby possesses long, razor sharp claws and teeth from birth, but apparently no one, including the hospital staff, thinks this is odd. For the most part the terrible tyke is kept in the shadows, which is fine. When we finally do get a good look at the CGI rugrat, though, it just doesn’t look capable of all the murderous mayhem credited to it.

To make matters worse, director Josef Rusnak shoots everything with a detached blandness. There’s not one interesting shot in the entire movie, and Rusnak shows no affinity for either suspense or horror. Things aren't much better in the acting department. Phillips is annoying and shrill, and everyone else is flat and lifeless. Unfortunately, the movie is just competently made enough to keep you watching in the hope that it will deliver some kind of pay-off. It doesn’t.

Larry Cohen, writer/director of the 1974 version of It’s Alive, was originally slated to write and direct this remake, as well. Cohen is still listed as co-writer of the screenplay, but according to this interview little of what he wrote made the final cut. Maybe Cohen’s update of the material would have been better, maybe not. All I know is this is one baby even a mother couldn’t love. 1 out of 4 stars.

The Worst Movies of 2009

2010-01-07T14:26:00.001-05:00

I’ve been kind of slacking off on the blog over the holidays. I’ll have reviews of some new movies and CDs coming soon, but in the meantime I figured I’d get one last parting shot in at some of the movies that caused me pain in 2009. For the purposes of this list, I’m sticking to movies that got an actual theatrical release. I saw plenty of straight to video flicks that were worse than most of the titles on this list, but picking on those is like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, I’m sure most of you are smart enough to walk past crap like Legend of the Bog and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Either that, or you suffer from the same mental illness I do, and nothing anybody says is going to stop you from hurting yourself.

The Bottom Ten

Transformers 2 – I went easy on this one when it first came out, calling it more mediocre than bad and awarding it 2 stars. This was a case of me over thinking a review, and in retrospect I should have just gone with my gut and given this 1 star. I can’t think of any movie I saw this past year that I had less fun watching. The most amazing thing about Transformers 2 is that Michael Bay managed to make a 2 ½ hour movie without anything resembling an actual story.
Land of the Lost – Unless dinosaur shit jokes are your thing, you should probably stay away from this alleged comedy starring Will Ferrell and Danny McBride. Even then, there have to be better dinosaur shit jokes than the ones in this movie. The only reason this ranks below Transformers 2 is that it’s about an hour shorter.
Halloween 2 – Rob Zombie says he was given complete artistic freedom to make this sequel to his controversial reboot of the popular horror series. The film is a stupid, incoherent mess covered in wash of cheesy psychedelia that can’t hide the fact that every scene is an “homage” to some other, better movie. I’ve seen horror films made for 600 bucks with a camcorder by college kids that are more deserving of theatrical release than this was.
Black Devil Doll – Somehow this amateurish bit of schlock managed to get all kinds of hype and a limited theatrical release, thus making it fair game. No doubt the makers of this film thought their politically incorrect racial humor was edgy. It’s not. But whether you find the film offensive or not, it’s still stupid and boring. It does have a good score by the band Giallo’s Flame, though.
The Unborn – This Exorcist rip-off involves a creature from Jewish mythology known as a dybbuk. Writer/director David S. Goyer’s script is so bad it’s hard to believe this is the same guy who wrote Dark City and has story credit on both of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.
The Fourth Kind – Yet another movie that tries to get by on the shaky premise that the audience is watching real footage of something unexplainable. Does anyone really fall for this gimmick anymore? The scenes in here that are supposedly re-enactments actually aren’t half bad, but the finished product is a complete mess.
Knowing – The first and the worst of this year’s “end of the world” epics. There’s some fun to be had in Nicholas Cage’s over the top performance and the special effects, but ultimately it’s a pretty silly movie from a director (Alex Proyas) who has done much better.
Precious – The more time passes from when I saw this over the top melodrama, the more I dislike it. It’s shallow, stereotypical, poorly directed and edited, and flat out ridiculous. The revelation that director Lee Daniels, influenced by John Waters and Pedro Almodovar, was deliberately going for over the top humor makes sense (read this article on Jim Emerson’s Scanners blog for more info). That doesn’t make this a better movie, though.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: While they weren’t great, the first two Underworld films were at least entertaining trash. This prequel, however, is the sort of pointless minutiae best reserved for a cheap paperback book tie-in. Brit actors Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen make it somewhat tolerable, turning in their usual top-notch performances despite the cheesy material.
Orphan: One of the few bonafide “so bad it’s good” movies on this list. Director Jaume Collett-Serra clearly has the style and talent to make a good horror movie, and leads Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are no slouches, either. But the script is so ridiculous, especially its big twist, that the end result can’t help be anything but pure camp.

Dishonorable Mention

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto: I know I said I wasn’t going to pick on straight to video movies, but I’m going to make this one exception. I really wanted to like this animated mix of horror and sleaze, but as with Halloween 2, but there’s nothing here but a bunch of nods and winks at other, better movies. Yes, we all know that Quentin Tarantino steals shit from other movies, too. The difference is, Tarantino takes those stolen elements and integrates them smoothly into a fresh concoction of his own. Zombie just throws a bunch of random shit he likes into a blender and throws it up on the screen.

Best Movies of 2009

2009-12-30T14:46:00.003-05:00

I saw a total of 121 movies released in the United States in 2009. 74 of those I saw at an actual movie theater, the rest on various home video formats. There are still a handful of movies I wish I had seen before making this list. In particular Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Black Dynamite, Bright Star, Broken Embraces, Crazy Heart, The Lovely Bones, Moon, Sleep Dealer, and The World’s Greatest Dad all sound like movies I would enjoy. But the year is almost over, and at least some of those movies aren’t going to be playing Cleveland until well into January, so it’s time to just give up and make my list.

The Ten Best Films of 2009

The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Antichrist
Martyrs
The Hangover
Duplicity
The Road
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
In the Loop

For more details on my top ten films of 2009, follow this link to the article in Cleveland’s Scene Magazine on the best films of the year. There you’ll find my top ten, as well as the top ten lists of fellow Scene critics Charles Cassady, Michael Galluci, Milan Paurich, and Pamela Zoslov.

Another 15 Movies from 2009 That You Should See

Sin Nombre: Had I seen it in time to make my deadline for Scene, this gripping drama about two young people trying to enter America illegally would have made my top ten (I probably would have cheated and put it in a tie with In the Loop). Like The Hurt Locker, this is a film that largely sidesteps the politics of its subject matter without sacrificing substance.
Watchmen: I gave the theatrical version of Watchmen 3 out of 4 stars. Having now seen the extended director’s cut (available on Blu Ray and DVD), I would have to say that longer version deserves an extra ½ a star and a place on this list.
Up: Another excellent film from the folks at Pixar. Occasionally the plot falls into cliché, but there’s still way more heart and originality here than in all the other computer-animated kiddie fare from this past year combined.
Goodbye Solo: I found the plot a little contrived, but writer/director Ramin Bahrani and his cast create such real characters and make us invest in them so deeply that it doesn’t matter.
Drag Me To Hell: Director Sam Raimi delivers a funhouse ride of horror. Just avoid the “unrated” version, which includes some ugly, unfinished-looking shots of additional CGI gore and grue that were obviously never intended to be seen.
The Great Buck Howard: John Malkovich is excellent as Buck Howard, a fictionalized version of once popular mentalist The Amazing Kreskin. No deep meaning here; just a great character piece, well written and directed by Sean McGinly.
Avatar: The 3D and special effects are everything director James Cameron claimed they would be, and the story and characters aren’t bad, either. The message is perhaps a bit “in your face”, and at times hypocritical, but I have to respect a big popcorn movie that has the courage to take a moral stance.
The Burrowers: This subtle, serious horror-western hybrid takes a while to build. That’s fine, because we get to actually know and care about the characters, something most horror movies these days seem to have forgotten.
Food, Inc.: The only documentary to make my list. A calm, rational look at just how screwed up the food industry in America has become. It may ruin your appetite, but you should see it anyway.
Zombieland: It’s not the classic zombie comedy that Shaun of the Dead is, but Zombieland is still a fun time at the movies.
Trick R Treat: Four interconnected stories play out almost like a horror version of Pulp Fiction in this viciously fun Halloween film. Some segments are better than others, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
District 9: Like the best science fiction, District 9 has something to say about the real world. That all goes out the window as the movie turns into a standard-issue action film in its third act, but overall I still liked it.
The Men Who Stare at Goats: This fictionalized version of the book by Jon Ronson lacks the bite of its source material. Taken as pure entertainment, however, it’s very much worth a watch.
Up in the Air: Jason Reitman’s smart dramadey boasts great performances from George Clooney and Vera Farmiga. It’s undermined by a few false notes and Anna Kendrick’s obnoxious caricature of a performance (not her fault, that’s the way the role was written), but for the most part I liked the movie. Just not as much as everyone else seems to.
The Informant!: Like The Men Who Stare At Goats, this is based on a true story that’s so absurd you wouldn’t believe it as pure fiction.

James Cameron keeps his crown with 'Avatar'

2009-12-18T15:30:00.001-05:00

After the death of his twin brother, Paraplegic marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) voyages to the alien world of Pandora to complete the mission his late sibling had signed up for. The mission involves transferring Jake’s consciousness into an artificially grown body called an avatar via some futuristic gizmo. These avatars have been created to look like the native humanoid population, known as the Na’vi.

The Na’vi are currently living in a giant tree that just happens to be located over a large deposit something called “unobtanium”. The scientists and other peacenik humans, chief among them Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), want to find a diplomatic way to get the natives to move so that this unobtanium can be harvested. That’s the reason for the avatars. Corporate big-wig Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) realizes it might be bad publicity if they just went in and killed off the Na’vi, but he’s also sensitive to his investor’s bottom line. He tells Augustine if she doesn’t get results soon, he’ll let Colonel Quaritch (Steven Lang) send his private army in to get the job done.

After a bumpy start, Jake (in avatar form) slowly begins to win the trust of the Na’vi. They even agree to let him become one of them, provided he can make it through their rites of passage. Neytiri (Zoe Soldana) is charged with preparing Jake for these challenges, which culminate in learning how to bond with and ride a giant flying lizard thing. Because of Jake’s success, Augustine is given a little more time to try things her way. But Jake finds himself caught in the middle when Quaritch offers him a chance to get his legs back in return for intelligence about the natives.

Call this a spoiler if you want, but it should come as no surprise to anyone that Jake and Neytiri become romantically involved, and that the final fate of Pandora will be decided not diplomatically, but rather by a spectacular, action-packed battle. What is surprising is how much time is spent on story, character, and just showing the simple wonders of this alien world.

Also surprising is the degree to which Cameron includes political allegory in his film. This is an unrepentant left-wing fantasy. The Na’vi are meant to evoke native Americans, and their “in harmony with nature” lifestyle is shown in the most positive light. With only a few exceptions, the humans are the bad guys who have depleted all their own resources, and are now moving on to pillage other planets. There are also overt references to the war on terror, with Quaritch talking about pre-emptive strikes, shock and awe, and fighting terror with terror.

But politics aside, this is just an entertaining and well made movie. The basic plot is nothing new, but Cameron adds enough fresh touches that the end result doesn’t feel too recycled. The effects are amazing, but unlike some effects-heavy blockbusters this movie doesn’t fetishize them. They are tools to tell the story, not an end unto themselves. The same is true of the 3D. It’s excellent, but Cameron doesn’t screw around throwing things out of the screen at you every couple of seconds like those old SCTV “Dr. Tongue” sketches.

My only complaint is that the good guys and bad guys portrayed in such absolute, black and white terms. I realize that’s what most people want in a movie like this, but considering one of the themes Avatar deals with is the demonization of an alien culture so we can justify killing them, it just seems a little hypocritical. Still, I’d be hard pressed to find a fantasy/sci-fi/action film this year that I would recommend more highly. This is definitely one to see in the theater. As for spending the extra couple bucks for the 3D version, I don’t think you’ll miss it if you want to save the money. As good as the 3D is, this is a real movie, not a gimmick. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

My Favorite Albums of 2009

2009-12-15T23:57:00.002-05:00

BOB’S FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2009

Thanks to a couple of good libraries in the area, I was actually able to hear quite a few albums released in 2009 (wonder how long it’ll be before the record companies crack down on that?). I don’t think I quite hit triple digits, but I came close. In the end, only a small portion of what I heard ended up being purchased for my permanent collection. That’s essentially what you’ll find on this list, although there’s still a few I need to pick up. It should go without saying that this list is only my opinion. That opinion tends to be biased towards heavy metal, punk rock, and other hard rocking sounds,, but as my number one album shows, I do like other stuff.

I’d also love to hear some of your favorite albums, especially if you know of any good punk/garage rock type stuff that came out this past year. For whatever reason, I just didn’t come across many new releases in those styles, good or bad. Anyway, on with the list.

THE TOP TEN:

Neko Case – Middle Cyclone: This is the kind of album from which music legends are born. Neko has given us some great songs in the past, but her previous albums were frankly a bit spotty, usually boasting a few great songs amidst a lot of samey-sounding filler. Not so Middle Cyclone, on which every track stands out. Call it alt country, country noir, Americana, or whatever other handy label you think applies. All I know is that this is a great collection of songs.

Volbeat – Guitar Gangsters and Cadillac Blood: Who would have thought that Elvis, Johnny Cash, and thrash metal could go together so well? More hooks than a tackle box, great vocals, and ass kicking riffs galore. Hopefully this Danish band will finally break through in America now that they’ve had a chance to open for Metallica.

Alice in Chains – Black Fades Into Blue: The comeback album no one expected. It’s a shame Layne Staley chose to piss his life away, but with this album the remaining members of Alice In Chains plus new vocalist/guitarist William Duvall deliver the new Back In Black.

The Mars Volta – Octahedron: The Mars Volta can be frustratingly obtuse at times, as on their sophomore album Frances the Mute. They’re also capable of amazing beauty and emotion, not to mention musicianship, as they show on their latest album.

Superchrist – Defenders of the Filth: Raunchy rock & roll the way it was meant to be. Great songs, great playing, great album. Ignore the picture, this song is from Defenders, not Headbanger.

Zombi – Spirit Animal: Throbbing synth, bass, and drum instrumentals that recall the seventies heyday of bands like Tangerine Dream and Goblin.

The Horrors – Primary Colors: If The Jesus and Mary Chain jammed with Joy Division, it might sound something like this. The sixties garage rock influences of their first album are still there, but much more in the background. A dark pop masterpiece.

The Hex Dispensers – Winchester Mystery House: This Austin, TX band combines the same Devo meets The Ramones influences of The Spits and comes up with something even better.

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love: Call it indie rock if that makes you feel better, but to me this sounds closer in spirit to bands like Yes, Genesis, and King Crimson. Suck it up and admit that prog rock isn’t that bad.

Slayer – World Painted Blood: More than 25 years on, there are still few metal bands that can touch Slayer when they bring their “A” game. And that’s exactly what they bring on this album.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Dan Auerbach - Keep It Hid
Baroness – Blue Album
Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
The Black Lips – Two Hundred Million Thousand
Chris Isaak – Mr. Lonely
Clutch – Strange Cousins From the West
Dethklock - The Deth Album II
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Heaven and Hell – The Devil You Know
Kreator – Hordes of Chaos
Lords of the Highway – Die Monster, Die!
Mastodon – Crack The Skye
Megadeth – Endgame
Oblisk – Weather Patterns
Old Man’s Child – Slaves of the World
Rumble Daddy – Phantom 224
Sasquatch and the Sickabillies – Storming the Gates
W.A.S.P. – Babylon

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS:

Air – Love 2: This reminds me of their similarly unfocused 10,000 khz Heroes album. There are a few good tracks, but overall it’s mediocre.

Porcupine Tree – The Incident: I know some fans of the band will be happy to see them return to their Pink Floyd inspired roots, but this is nowhere near as good as early albums like The Sky Moves Sideways. It’s not bad, but it’s not anything special, either.

THE “I JUST DON’T GET IT” AWARD FOR 2009:

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion: I listened to just about all the albums that made most critics “best of” lists this year. I may not care for Kanye West or Antony and the Johnsons, but I can at least understand why other people like them and take them seriously. But Animal Collective is the one band that pops up on almost every “best of” list, usually at or near the top, that leaves me baffled as to what so many people evidently see in them. It all just sounds so self conscious, calculated, and boring to my ears. To each their own, though.

'Up in the Air' is a good, but light-weight film

2009-12-14T15:23:00.002-05:00

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a professional hatchet man. When businesses have to downsize, he’s the guy who gets called in to deliver the bad news. Bingham has no close friends or family, and loves having a job that keeps him constantly on the move from one city to the next, living out of airports and hotel rooms. He finds a kindred spirit in businesswoman Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga). The two strike up a casual “fuck buddy” relationship after meeting in a hotel bar, and soon they are coordinating their schedules so they can get together for booty calls.

Ryan’s freewheeling lifestyle gets put in jeopardy when young computer programmer Natalie (Anna Kendrick) comes up with a way to do his job over the internet. Dreading the thought of being tied to a desk, Bingham convinces his boss (Jason Bateman) that Natalie needs to see what it’s like to do the job face to face before implementing her plan. The two then set off to relieve hundreds of American workers of the burden of employment, stopping at various famous locations along the way to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of Bingham’s sister and her future husband for a wedding present.

While it is Bingham’s job that drives the plot forward, the movie is more concerned with the idea that happiness is impossible without meaningful relationships. That's fine, but then the movie takes it further to say that happiness is impossible without a spouse and children. This is most clearly expressed by Natalie, who looks at Alex and Ryan as though they were insane for not wanting a more traditional relationship.

At times the movie shows some ambivalence towards this idea - Natalie is dumped by her boyfriend, one of Ryan’s sisters is shown having separated from her husband, and there’s a final twist regarding Alex that I won’t reveal. But that ambivalence is undermined by the film’s closing montage of (real) fired workers talking about how their wives and children gave them the strength to cope with their situation. Look, whatever helps a person deal with something as serious as losing a job, I’m for it. But the implication here is that those without family, like Bingham, are somehow worse off than they are. Ah yes, poor little rich boy. This is the film’s final word on the subject. It kind of reminds me of the scene in They Live where Roddy Piper puts on his special sunglasses, looks up at a billboard, and instead of the ad that should be there sees simply the words “marry and reproduce”. No doubt the evil aliens from that film would approve of Up In the Air’s message.

Still, as Roger Ebert often says, it’s not what a movie is about, but how it’s about it. And for the most part, Up In the Air is a well made, enjoyable, and funny film. Clooney is perfectly cast. I can’t imagine any other actor making this character likeable as he goes about destroying lives while bragging about his fancy hotel and rental car membership cards. Vera Farmiga is excellent, as well. With this film she should make it onto the ‘A’ list, and hopefully won’t have to star in crap like Orphan again anytime soon. The one weak link for me is Anna Kendrick’s Natalie, though I blame writer/director Jason Reitman rather than the actress. As written, the character is a comic relief caricature that just doesn’t seem to exist in the same universe as Clooney and Farmiga’s nuanced, believable characters.

I’ve already mentioned my distaste for the film’s trite message that marriage and kids are the only road to happiness. I also can’t help but think, given the current economic climate, that more of substance should have been said about all the people Bingham fires. Mostly, though, the movie just plays being fired for laughs. And yeah, watching Zach Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons respond to the loss of their jobs is funny. But losing a job in real life isn’t. The movie only offers one moment in which we see just how serious that can be, when we learn that one of the people who lost their jobs committed suicide. The scene does have some power, but its main purpose seems to be moving the plot in a new direction rather than any sort of serious commentary. And then we’re on to the montage of happy jobless people. Up In the Air is still a good movie; it's just not a great one. 3 out of 4 stars.

Not so 'Precious'

2009-12-09T00:54:00.001-05:00

Precious

In the opening moments of Precious, we learn that the morbidly obese title character (Gabourey Sibide) has been raped by her father and impregnated by the man twice. The first baby was born with Down’s syndrome, the second is on its way. When her latest pregnancy is discovered by the school, she gets expelled. As for Precious’ mother (Mo’nique), in her better moments she tells her daughter that education won’t do her any good, and her best hope is to, “get your fat ass down to the welfare.” But most of the time she just abuses Precious physically, verbally, and sexually. For good measure, all the kids at school and in the neighborhood pick on Precious. It’s no wonder the girl has retreated into a fantasy world. But wait, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Precious is referred by her principal to an alternative school populated entirely by other cultural stereotypes. There, thanks to the efforts of her language arts teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), she learns that literacy is all it takes to overcome such crushing adversity.

No doubt there are people in this world who have endured lives as horrific as the one Precious leads in this film. That said, seeing as this book was written by a teacher not unlike the film’s Ms. Rain, I’m guessing Precious and all her myriad problems were a composite of several real life students as opposed to a fictionalized version of any one of them. That’s what it feels like, anyway. I'm also guessing that at least some of them can read, and that hasn't solved all their problems. Furthermore, the material is handled by director Lee Daniels in such a melodramatic and manipulative way that it veers towards caricature. The end result is more like some right-wing Senator’s anti-welfare diatribe than the story of perseverance and empowerment it professes to be.

On the plus side, the performances are excellent across the board. If Sibide fails to make Precious a real human being, blame it on the script, not her. The film asks a great deal of the first-time actor, and whether portraying the utter despair of her reality or the fantasy of appearing on a music awards show, she gives her all. Mo’nique also shines in the kind of role few actresses would want to take, almost (almost) humanizing a monster. There’s also good work from Lenny Kravitz and bad movie punch-line Mariah Carey, proving if nothing else that director Daniels has a knack for getting good performances out of his cast. I’d be tempted to give Daniels credit for knowing how to push an audience’s emotional buttons, but damn, how can you not feel sorry for Precious? Daniels’ storytelling abilities, on the other hand, are nothing to write home about. The movie has a ragged feel that can’t entirely be laid at the feet of its editor. For all its four-star reviews, Precious just isn’t that good of a movie. 2 out of 4 stars.

Adoring Egoyan

2009-12-03T23:33:00.001-05:00

Adoration, out now on DVD and BluRay, begins with Simon (Devon Bostick) telling his French class a story about his parents. His father (Noam Jenkins) was a terrorist who planned to use his mother (Rachel Blanchard), pregnant with Simon at the time, as an unwitting suicide bomber. This is a lie, as we soon learn, but why is Simon telling it? And what is the real story of how Simon’s parents died, leaving him in the care of his uncle (Scott Speeman), and why does his French teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) have such an interest in him?

Like most of writer/director Atom Egoyan’s films, Adoration follows an emotional rather than a linear path to reach these answers. There are many surprises along the way, but this isn’t the sort of movie that’s only about the big twist at the end. If anything, Egoyan tries to deal with too many ideas here. A subplot about how Simon’s story goes viral on the internet, while not exactly out of place, almost feels like it could have been a whole other movie. The main story, about how the characters all need to make sense of and make peace with the past, is compelling enough on its own.

The themes and storytelling devices in Adoration should be familiar to anyone who has seen Egoyan’s previous films like Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter. Like those films, this is a gripping, intelligent drama that keeps you guessing. That said, it doesn’t quite have the same emotional resonance. Still, even lesser Egoyan is more interesting than 90% of the movies that get released these days. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

Get Well Soon, Ronnie

2009-12-01T13:06:00.001-05:00

I just recently learned that legendary heavy metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio has been diagnosed with stomach cancer. You can read more about it here. Apparently the cancer was caught early, so here's hoping treatment goes well and Ronnie is back in action soon.

Absolutely Fantastic

2009-11-30T00:51:00.001-05:00

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Rather than try for a slavishly faithful adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book The Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson has opted to reshape it to suit his own distinctive style and themes. The basic premise, that Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) steals food and beverages from three mean and nasty farmers, is the same. However, Anderson has added new characters and plot elements to the tale that give the movie a flavor unmistakably his own. The humor is dry and quirky, and where the book focused mainly on Mr. Fox, the movie puts more emphasis on the titular character’s extended family and friends. The result is far closer to The Royal Tenenbaums than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

To realize his vision, Anderson has used the stop-motion animation process, in which models are painstaking moved and photographed one frame and one fraction of an inch at a time. The same process was used in A Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, but it’s (intentionally) a little more rough around the edges here, recalling such early examples of the technique as the 1933 King Kong and the old George Pal Puppetoons. In this age of digital perfection, it’s kind of refreshing to see such an obviously human-made piece of cinematic magic. Further breathing life into these creations are the voice actors, which in addition to Clooney include Meryl Streep, Eric Chase Anderson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray.

Although fidelity to the source material was clearly not Anderson’s main concern, there’s still more than a little of Dahl’s black humor and borderline misanthropic worldview coursing through the film’s veins. It’s not dour or depressing, but there’s definitely more of an edge to Mr. Fox than you’re likely to find in the average kid flick. Characters get wounded, even die. Humanity is not portrayed in the most favorable light, and the hero of the film is an unrepentant thief.

Of course the question is, is this really a kid’s movie? Like this year’s Where the Wild Things Are, this feels more geared towards adults nostalgic for their childhoods than actual kids. At least it’s more fun than Wild Things, but it still seems a bit subtle for the kiddie crowd. The only complaint I have is that Mr. Fox trots out the same tired “be true to yourself” message that seems to be in every kid’s movie these days in lieu of anything of actual substance. Given the nature of the characters and situations here, that message takes on a slightly more subversive slant than it might in something like Kung Fu Panda, but not by much. Still, this is a visually stunning, smartly written, and highly entertaining film, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

3 ½ out of 4 stars

Lars Von Trier takes you to Hell

2009-11-28T01:27:00.001-05:00

Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is a beautifully shot, incredibly well acted film that handles its subject about as well as it can be. That subject is the death of a young child, and how that child’s parents try to cope with the tragedy. The process is depicted metaphorically, and includes sex scenes that on their own would have earned the film an NC-17 rating. Eventually things come to a head in a climax of harrowing violence and insanity that the characters must get through in order to get on with their lives.

It’s an extremely powerful film, and despite the tone of the fantastic it employs to tell its story, the raw horror and unpleasantness is undiminished. Much of the credit or blame goes to writer/director Von Trier, but without such committed actors as he has here in Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborug, it wouldn’t work nearly as well. While I would be shocked to see it happen, both of these actors deserve Oscar nominations for the incredibly difficult work they do here.

Suffice it to say, this is not a movie for those seeking a little light entertainment at the cinema, and it’s easy to see why Antichrist has polarized audiences. This is an uncompromising, unflinching art film that belongs in the halls of movie infamy alongside Passolini’s Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, Godard’s Weekend, and Greenaway’s The Baby of Macon. If I had children of my own, I don’t think I could have handled this movie. And yet, the film is so well done I can’t help but say that I think it’s one of the year’s best. Just don’t ask me to watch it again. 4 out of 4 stars.

Christ Almighty

2009-11-26T23:57:00.002-05:00

Superchrist - Defenders of the Filth (Black Planet)

Defenders of the Filth marks the return of guitarist Hank Bitchlover to the Superchrist fold after a one album hiatus. Nonetheless, it continues the band’s progress away from pure Motorhead worship towards a sound of their own that began on 2007’s Hank-less Headbanger. The influence of Lemmy and company is still apparent, not to mention other classic NWOBHM bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Venom, and Saxon, but you can also bits of punk/garage bands like Turbonegro and The Hellacopters more prominently than in the past. But it ain’t just about the sound, it’s about the songwriting. Every song on here has a hook that will dig deep into your brain. And while speed is king on Defenders, the band isn’t afraid to slow things down, like on the almost-ballad “Infernal City”.

Vocalist/bassist Christ Black writes some damn fine lyrics, smart and witty but never jokey, all delivered with a voice that sounds like a smoother, more melodic Lemmy. Hank Bitchlover’s leads are a lesson in tasteful lethality, and drummer Ian “The Pit Viper” Sugierski beats the skins like it’s personal. You want stand out tracks? How about all of them? If I had to play favorites, I guess I’d say “Stay Black”, “Peace of Ass”, “Still Not Drunk Enough”, and “Black Skulls”, but this is a rare modern metal/hard rock album that’s truly all killer, no filler. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up pronto from the band’s Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/godblesssuperchrist.

Why So Serious?

2009-11-18T00:11:00.001-05:00

A Serious Man
4 out of 4 stars

An early scene in A Serious Man, the latest from writers/producers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen, references the paradox of Schroedinger’s cat. It’s an illustration from the field of quantum physics in which there is a cat inside a box that may be either alive or dead, or possibly both simultaneously. According to the illustration, the cat will remain in this indeterminate state until someone actually looks inside the box. In other words, we don’t know what we have until we examine it. Until then, all possibilities remain, but none of them are “real”. That’s a major simplification of a pretty complex idea, but it should do for this review.

The man who provides this illustration is college physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who doesn’t realize how apt a metaphor it is for his own state of unexamined existence and unrealized potential. That all changes one day when Larry wakes up to find everything he believed to be true is wrong. His wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him, the only time his son (Aaron Wolf) has any use for him is when the TV antenna on the roof needs adjusting, his daughter (Jessica McManus) is stealing money out of his wallet, and his freeloading brother (Richard Kind) is tying up the bathroom draining his sebaceous cyst and getting into small time trouble with the law.

It’s just as bad at work as it is at home. Larry’s tenure could be in jeopardy due to a series of anonymous letters accusing him of moral turpitude, he’s having trouble with a student trying to bribe him for a better grade, and someone from Columbia House Records keeps calling to collect on the last four selections of the month, which Larry is sure he never ordered. How and why is all this is happening ? Is it bad luck or a curse from God, and what can be done about it? No one, including the rabbis at Larry's synagogue, seems to have any answers. Larry could use a hug, but the only one offering is Sy (Fred Melamed), the man his wife is leaving him for.

That’s an awful lot of misfortune for one man and one film, but this being the Coen Brothers, comedy and tragedy walk hand in hand. Some of the film’s funniest moments are its darkest, proving the old axiom that it’s tragedy when it happens to you, it’s comedy when it happens to someone else. The film gives the audience a lot to think about, including issues of faith, the nature of truth, the power (or lack thereof) of storytelling, and what it’s like to be a middle class Jew living in the suburbs. It probably requires more than one viewing to fully digest, but like most of the Coen Brothers’ works, it also functions as pure entertaining cinema. Each member of the mostly unknown cast is a perfect fit for their role, and the writing and direction are the Coens at their best. No doubt the ending will annoy some, but it’s completely in keeping with the central theme. Two characters are left hanging between life and death. What’s their fate? You’ll have to look inside.

Hex and Violence

2009-11-16T01:31:00.004-05:00

The Hex Dispensers - 'Winchester Mystery House'

Winchester Myster House, the new album from Austin, TX's Hex Dispensers, is 12 songs of kick ass punk rock minus the mach posturing of hardcore, the whininess of emo, and the syrupy sell-out of MTV mall punk. This bad boy sets its sharp and shiny barbs into your brain and refuses to let go right from the start with “Doomsday Romantic”. “O-B-I-T” and “It’s Your Funeral, Minion” bury you six feet under, before “Get Your Doppelganger On” digs you up just to insult your fashion sense. I’d go through and single out every song on here for praise, but I’m running short on clever metaphors. As far as what this sounds like, The Hex Dispensers combine the punk rock rawness of The Ramones with the weirdness of Devo, with just a touch of sixties garage rock and eighties alternative by way of The Pixies and Sonic Youth. Think The Spits if they were better musicians and a little more intellectual in their lyric writing. The whole thing is capped off by a killer cover of Devo’s “Gates of Steel” that gives the song that forgotten gem the hard rocking edge it always cried out for. I don’t like much of what passes for punk rock these days, but I really love this album.

Here’s a clip of The Hex Dispensers performing “Doomsday Romantic” and “O-B-I-T” live. Sound's a bit muddy, but not too bad for what is essentially a bootleg recording:

Ninjas Kick Ass

2009-11-13T23:52:00.001-05:00

In the eighties, few things were more awesome than ninjas. In the past, the only people who owned martial arts weaponry were, you know, people who actually practiced martial arts. In the eighties, however, every redneck who had seen one too many Chuck Norris movies had his own pair of nunchakus. And I’m not gonna’ lie, I would have loved to own a couple of throwing stars or a ninja sword. But I was a kid at the time. I had to make due with toys, like the eighties version of G.I. Joe. And who was the coolest Joe? Snake Eyes, a ninja. A ninja who used an uzi, but a ninja nonetheless.

Why were ninjas so big in the eighties? The credit belongs largely to one man: Sho Kosugi. Sho actually knew ninjitsu, the martial art practiced by ninjas. Beginning with Enter the Ninja (1981), he starred in a series of popular ninja films that did big business for much of the decade. Although Enter the Ninja is not devoid of charm, it’s basically a standard-issue eighties action movie. It’s competently made, has a dumb but passable storyline, and boasts some decent action sequences. Still, this is the movie that made it cool to run around in your pajamas while carrying a sword.

Enter was a hit, and Sho followed it up with Revenge of the Ninja in 1983. In 1984, the ninja formula was expanded to include elements of horror and Flashdance (which is kind of redundant, I guess) in Ninja III: The Domination. Each film was progressively cheaper and sillier, culminating in one of the best bad films ever made: 9 Deaths of the Ninja (1985). From the opening credits sequence, where three girls in skimpy outfits aerobiscise to a terrible eighties pop song while Kosugi swings his sword around, it’s clear that this is something special. Kosugi is his usual bad-ass ninja self, but Blackie Dammett (father of Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Keidis) steals the movie as the wheelchair-bound German drug dealer “Alby the Cruel”. Alby’s gang consists of a band of lesbian mercenaries and Arab terrorist Rahji (Sonny Erang), who proves how evil he is by popping some kids’ balloons.

Sho kept appearing in films through the end of the eighties, notably Pray For Death (1985), Rage of Honor (1987), and the Rutger Hauer vehicle Blind Justice (1989), but by the nineties his star had faded. For whatever reason, ninjas just weren’t cool anymore, at least in Hollywood. Sho made a couple more movies in Japan, but for the most part he faded into the darkness as only a ninja can. Flash forward to November 2009, and we find the Wachowski Brothers and director John McTeague aiming to make ninjas cool again with their new film Ninja Assassin. I still had my doubts, but then I took a look at the cast. Sho Kosugi has returned.

The amazing opening credits sequence from 9 Deaths of the Ninja:

Trailer for Ninja Assassin:

Disasterpiece Theater

2009-11-12T00:01:00.002-05:00

2012 is completely ridiculous trash that turns massive destruction and the deaths of billions of people (including, by implication, just about everyone watching it) into fodder for entertainment. Of course the disaster movies of the seventies did the same thing on a smaller scale, and who can resist The Towering Inferno or Earthquake? Like those films, this is a mix of carnage, melodrama and an all-star cast of actors familiar enough to put butts in seats, but not so big that their salaries would cut into the special effects budget.

Heading up the cast is John Cusack as a regular schmoe trying to keep his family, including ex-wife Amanda Peet, alive in the face of Armageddon. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was excellent in last year’s Redbelt, a film nobody saw, will probably do a lot more for his career here. He plays the heroic scientist who has to break the news to President Danny Glover that he’s not going to get a second term. There are also supporting roles for Thandie Newton as Glover’s daughter and Oliver Platt as the chief of staff, and Woody Harrelson gets a small but memorable role as a conspiracy nut who turns out to be right.

Of course the real stars of 2012 are the special effects team. If you’ve seen the trailer for this movie, then you know how over the top the action scenes are. And trust me, the trailer doesn’t show it all. If the movie were nothing but these action scenes, it would get tiresome pretty quickly. Thankfully, triple threat writer/director/producer Roland Emerich shows some understanding of pacing, if not subtlety. He lets the movie slow down for little character moments, which for the most part are just as silly and unbelievable as the action scenes, but appreciated nonetheless.

Of course this is nothing new for Emerich, who so memorably destroyed the White House in Independence Day and gets the chance to try and top himself here. I haven’t much cared for Emerich’s films in the past, but whether I’ve just been worn down by so many truly awful movies of late, or Emerich has actually gotten better, I have to admit I found myself enjoying 2012. No, this is not a great movie that will affect you in any meaningful way. The dialog is hokey. The direction is hamfisted and manipulative. I could find a thousand ways to pick this movie apart. But you know what? It wouldn’t matter, because it’s still a damn entertaining slice of Hollywood cheese. Call it 3 out of 4 stars.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

2009-11-10T00:57:00.001-05:00

The Men Who Star at Goats
3 out of 4 stars

Based on Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats and his BBC documentary The Crazy Rulers of the World, this movie tells how the United States military, demoralized by Viet Nam, set out to create a new kind of soldier. Turning to new age philosophy and the paranormal for inspiration, a special unit code-named Project Jedi was created. The unit was involved in a great deal of goofiness such as trying to walk through walls and stop the hearts of farm animals with the power of the mind. It also led to the creation of a fairly nasty hand-to-hand combat weapon called "The Predator" that looks like a harmless piece of plastic, and most infamously to the use of music like the Barney theme in the torture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners of war.

These facts are weaved into a fictional story in which reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) inadvertently runs into “Jedi” Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) while on assignment in Iraq. Cassady allows Wilton to accompany him on what he claims is a secret mission. As the two men get in and out of one scrape after another, Lyn tells Bob how the Jedi unit was started by Viet Nam veteran turned new age space cadet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). Cassady was the most promising member of the unit, much to the chagrin of fellow “super soldier” Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). Eventually, Lyn reaches his objective and we learn the final fate of Project Jedi.

The film begins with the statement "more of this is true than you would believe". Unfortunately, more has been changed or omitted than I would have liked. Like, for starters, an actual point of view. The movie tries to have it both ways, showing Lyn and his fellow Jedi as delusional buffoons one moment, and as the real deal the next. It also tries to whitewash some of its characters by blaming the more controversial techniques that came out of the project on breakaway members who had turned to “the dark side”. This timidity dulls the film’s efforts at satire considerably, turning what should have been a biting indictment of military madness into a light-hearted romp. As far as light-hearted romps go, it's an entertaining one, and there's no doubt the cast is great. So check out the movie for a few laughs, and then check out Ronson's book or documentary for a few more laughs as well as some disturbing truths.

Back From Black

2009-11-05T15:19:00.003-05:00

After the death of vocalist Layne Staley and the passing of 14 years, I never expected to hear a new Alice In Chains album. When I heard that there was one, I really never expected it to be this good. But Black Gives Way to Blue is every bit the sludge metal masterpiece that Dirt, the group’s previous high water mark, was. Like AC/DC with Back In Black, this album takes tragedy and turns it into amazing music. New co-vocalist/guitarist William DuVall may not be a dead ringer for Staley, but he has a strong voice of his own, and when it blends with guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s voice, the resulting harmonies are unmistakably Alice In Chains.

The album opens with “All Secrets Known”, a powerful declaration of rebirth that addresses the trials the band has been through while looking to the future. “Check My Brain” hits hard with an ugly but catchy riff and darkly melodic chorus, while “Your Decision” shows the band’s equally compelling acoustic side with Cantrell taking the lead vocal. In an album full of great songs, the stand-out track is the seven minute epic dirge “A Looking In View”, which effortlessly shows what inferior imitations bands like Godsmack are. It’s nice to have the real thing back. If you’re still skeptical, check out the video for “A Looking In View” on Youtube. Embedding was disabled, so you'll just have to click through to the page.

Slayerrrr!!!!!!!!

2009-11-03T16:18:00.003-05:00

Slayer capped off their first ten years of existence, a period that saw them release one classic album after another, with the aptly titled live album Decade of Aggression. So how do you follow a decade of aggression? If you’re Slayer, apparently with nearly two decades of laziness and mediocrity. Oh, and for good measure, fire your drummer even though he’s the best drummer in metal (that would be the amazing Dave Lombardo for those not in the know).

Sorry folks, but it’s true. Between 1991 and 2006, a 15 year span, Slayer released a mere 5 studio albums, and one of those was mostly cover tunes. If it was a case of quality over quantity I wouldn’t mind, but except for a song or two per album, most of Slayer’s output in the nineties and early 21^st century has been less than stellar. Even the return of Lombardo for 2006’s Christ Illusion didn’t help.

Thankfully, Slayer seems to have finally gotten their shit together again on World Painted Blood. It’s not like they made any drastic changes to the formula. What we’ve got here are 11 songs about serial killers, war, and how much religion sucks. The music sounds like classic Slayer, occasionally with a touch of modern influence. For the most part this band isn’t interested in breaking any new ground, though, and that’s fine. What matters is that this is the most consistently killer batch of songs Slayer has been able to put together in years.

World Painted Blood starts in strong fashion with its title track, a classic Slayer number with a particularly catchy guitar hook. Lead single “Psycopathy Red” sounds like it would have been right at home on Reign In Blood, while the follow up single “Hate Worldwide” actually has a guitar hook that reminds me of Slayer’s “classic metal” sounding first album Show No Mercy. “Playing With Dolls” is a creepy, atmospheric track in the vein of Seasons in the Abyss’ “Dead Skin Mask”, and almost as effective. “Americon” finds Slayer at their most modern sounding, not to mention surprisingly political, but not to the point that they lose their identity. “Unit 731” and “Human Strain” are kind of bland and typical, but those are the only songs on this album that feel like filler to me. I don’t think anyone expects Slayer to be releasing the best album of their careers almost 3 decades in, and they haven’t. But they have managed to put together a solid, respectable album that compares favorably with their classic material, and that’s all any fan can really ask for.

The Night of the Vampire

2009-10-31T02:01:00.001-04:00

Okay, I realize I've slacked off majorly on my attempt to do a new horror related blog every day in October. What can I say, I just got bogged down with other stuff. Anyway, tonight I found out that Roky Erickson, one of my all time favorite musicians and horror rockers, was playing a show in Detroit. This is about the closest this living legend has come to Cleveland in a long ass time. Had I known, I would gladly have driven, or even walked, to see this show. Interestingly enough, my brother and my friend Charles (owner of My Mind's Eye Records, best record store in Cleveland) were both going to this show, and neither one thought to mention it to me. But I digress.

The reason I rate Roky at the top of the horror rock heap is because he sings this shit like he really and truly believes it. Here he is from 2007 doing one of his classic songs, "Night of the Vampire". If you're reading this on Facebook, click on the "view original post" link to see the video clip.

Pumpkin - It's Not Just For Pie Anymore

2009-10-22T00:34:00.003-04:00

And now for something completely different... a recipe. This past weekend my wife and I went to Cascade, Maryland to visit with our friend Bridget. While there, we decided to enter a pumpkin baking contest that was part of a festival going on in town. I know, not exactly edgy and rock and roll, but whatever. Since I figured (correctly) that everyone else would be entering the usual pumpkin pies, cakes, breads and cookies, I decided to do something different: chicken enchiladas in a pumpkin sauce. Although one of the three judges was clearly impressed (I saw him go back for seconds), the other two seemed less so. Long story short, I did not place. Bridget actually won first prize with a pumpkin pecan roll and my wife got third with her gluten-free pumpkin cake. If you want those recipes you'll have to talk to them. If you're feeling adventurous, though, here's my recipe. I make no claims that this is "authentic" Mexican cooking. It's just something fun I came up with, and I personally think it tastes pretty damn good.

Filling

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast

1 tsp salt

½ tsp cumin

Sauce

1 tbsp vegetable oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 small white onion, diced

2 cups pumpkin puree (fresh or canned)

1 cup of water

1 tsp ancho chili powder

2 roasted poblanos, sliced

½ tsp cumin powder

½ tsp pumpkin pie spice

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

½ cup heavy whipping cream

Final Touches

12 corn tortillas

8 oz. shredded Chihuahua cheese

Poach (fancy word for boil) chicken breast until cooked through. Allow to cool in refrigerator. When cool, shred chicken, season with 1 tsp salt and ½ tsp cumin and set aside.

Roast the poblanos. Easiest way to do this is in the broiler. Cover the broiler pan with aluminum foil. Cut poblanos in half and place cut side down on pan. Broil for about five minutes. The skin should be black and the flesh of the peppers nice and soft. Put the peppers in cold water and peel off the skin. Dice the peeled peppers and set aside.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Dice onion and garlic. Heat oil in large dutch oven or sauce pan. When oil is hot, sauté onions and garlic until onions become translucent. Add pumpkin, water, peppers and spices to pan. Bring to boil, then add ½ cup cream to the sauce and mix well. The sauce should be fairly thick but still thin enough that it will pour over the enchiladas easily. Reduce heat to warm and cover until needed. By the way, although I think fresh pumpkin tastes better, it's a pain in the ass to puree enough to work with in a sauce. Unless you have a good food processor that can handle it, I'd say use canned.

Steam tortillas or microwave them for a few seconds, whatever you prefer just so long as they are soft and warm. Take about 2 tbsps of shredded chicken and place on tortillas. Roll tortillas and place in large metal or glass baking dish. Pour sauce over enchiladas in baking dish. Sprinkle with cheese. Bake in oven for about 20 minutes, until cheese is melted.

For my vegan friends, instead of chicken try filling the enchiladas with black beans or whatever else you like. Omit the cheese and cream, and if necessary add a little more water to the sauce.

True Scotish Pirate Metal

2009-10-21T09:31:00.001-04:00

Like it or not, pirates have infiltrated Halloween to a large degree. I blame those horrible movies with Johnny Depp, but that's neither here nor there. I only mention this as an excuse for including this next video in my series of increasingly infrequent Halloween blogs.

Scotland's Alestorm play a mix of heavy metal and sea shantys, complete with pirate-y vocals. It's absolutely ridiculous, and I don't think I could stand to listen to a whole album's worth all at once, but this video for "Keelhauled" from their most recent album Black Sails at Midnight is a hoot, and the song is kind of catchy.

Taking a Break From the Halloween Blogs to 'Whip It'

2009-10-15T15:43:00.001-04:00

I've already botched my attempt to do a horror related blog every day in October, anyway, so screw it. I'll get back to the horror soon, but today I'm going to do a quick review of Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It.

Bliss (Ellen Page) is a fairly typical 17 year old girl whose mother pushes her to take part in beauty pageants. It's not exactly her thing, but there doesn't seem to be much else to do in her small hometown of Bodeen. Then one day Bliss discovers there is a roller derby team based out of nearby Austin. She goes to see a match and decides to try out. This being a sports movie, the team Bliss tries out for are the roller derby equivalent of the Bad News Bears, perenial losers The Hurl Scouts.

The plot hits a lot of the beats you'd expect a movie like this to hit, and by the end there's probably more extraneous drama piled on than necessary. On the plus side, Whip It has a few unexpected twists on the usual formula, the characters are likable, and the jokes are funny and flow naturally from the situations. It's not a great movie, but it's an enjoyable one.

Ellen Page is excellent in the lead, playing a more vulnerable and realistic teenager than she did in 'Juno' and coming across as completely believable. Good supporting cast, too, including director Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig, and an almost unrecognizable Jimmy Fallon. As for Barrymore's direction, it's nothing flashy. Just solid meat and potatoes storytelling, which is fine in my book. 3 out of 4 stars.

Let Jerry Stay Lonely

2009-10-14T01:36:00.001-04:00

I don't know, maybe he's doing it to prove a point. Maybe he needs the money. Hell, it's possible that he really and truly just loves playing. Whatever the reason, though, I just can't stand to see Jerry Only and what passes for the Misfits these days. Especially not when there are plenty of other good horror rock bands out there. Of course chances are, most of these bands will be opening for the Misfits when they come to your town this Halloween season, so if you absolutely must go, go early and support these lesser known bands. You don't really need that "Crimson Ghost" shirt, buy some merch from the opening acts instead. I already covered Fort Wayne, IN's Grave Robber in an earlier blog, and here are a few more bands that will rock your crypt.

Calabrese - "Backseat of My Hearse" (Arizona)

Cult of the Psychic Fetus - "In My Coffin" (Ohio)

Diemonsterdie - "One Night at Devil's Rock" (Utah)

The Lurking Corpses - "Graveyard Devourment" (Indiana)

Others - "My Lips Are Dead" (New York)

Others - My Lips Are Dead

Others - Dark Prince Rise - Out Now!|MySpace Music Videos

Darkest Before the Dawn

2009-10-11T22:38:00.002-04:00

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead is like cinematic comfort food for me. Spending two hours with Peter, Fran, Roger, and Stephen is like getting together with old friends. Even though I think Romero made a better zombie film with 1985's Day of the Dead, this is the one I always come back to. I can't help but put it one on at least once a year, and what better time of year to do that than the Halloween season?

Dracula Yucks

2009-10-10T20:22:00.003-04:00

It’s always a risky proposition to go back and watch something you enjoyed as a kid but haven’t seen in decades since. Nonetheless, when I saw a new shrinkwrapped copy of Love at First Bite for sale for a mere 3 bucks, I couldn’t resist. I last saw this movie when it played on Star Channel (the predecessor to The Movie Channel) back in 1980 or so. I thought it was funny at the time, but there are a lot of things a 10 year old kid thinks are funny that seem pretty stupid now.

Believe it or not, George Hamilton actually makes a pretty good Dracula, and Arte Johnson’s Renfield is great. Richard Benjamin’s commitment-phobic psychiatrist and Susan Saint James’ neurotic fashion model seem even more relics of the past than Hamilton’s centuries-old count, though. While the civil rights movement and feminism had made considerable strides in American culture as a whole by 1979, you wouldn’t know it from this movie. There’s plenty of cringe-inducing racial humor, casual gay bashing, and Saint James saying things like, “A career for a woman is kind of like fooling around for a man. It’s fun until the right person comes along.” Every single black character in the movie, most of whom are comic relief petty criminals or gang members, calls white people “honkys”. And just for pure seventies nostalgia, I had to laugh when Richard Benjamin ordered an “uncola” at a restaurant (that’s a 7-Up to you youngsters). There’s also one significant change to the film’s music on the DVD – the song “I Love the Night Life”, which became a hit in part because of this movie, has been replaced with a less appropriate number. Bummer. Some of the jokes still work, but not enough to really recommend to anyone who isn’t nostalgic for the disco era.

For some reason the trailer for the movie isn’t on Youtube (that I could find, anyway), but here’s a TV promo from when it aired on the CBS Wednesday Night Movie:

Hail to the King

2009-10-08T18:53:00.003-04:00

The music of Danish born vocalist King Diamond (real name Kim Petersen) is something of an acquired taste. For better or worse, I’m afraid I’ve acquired it. King first came to the attention of music fans as the front man for metal band Mercyful Fate in the early eighties. Mercyful Fate had a Satanic image, with King adopting face paint that included an upside down cross. At the time Diamond claimed to be a practicing Satanist, although nowadays he says he doesn’t follow any religion. Regardless of all this, Diamond’s lyrics were always more horror movie fun than anything, and once he went solo in 1986 that became even more the case.

Aside form the makeup, the thing that stands out about King Diamond the most is his voice. He frequently sings in a creepy falsetto, with occasional “normal” singing and deep guttural growls. His solo albums tend to be horror rock operas accompanied by fast, melodic heavy metal, and his live performances usually feature a theatrical stage show with lots of props. While never a huge mainstream success, there was a time in the late eighties when Diamond was very popular in the metal underground, and his music has influenced numerous other bands, including Metallica who did a medley of Mercyful Fate songs on their Garage Inc. album. King continues to record and perform to this day, and occasionally reunites with his old band Mercyful Fate as well.

Here’s an appropriate song from King Diamond’s first solo album: “Halloween”

This video for “The Family Ghost” from King’s second solo album actually got a fair amount of play on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball back in the day.

King joins Metallica onstage in August of 2008 to perform a medley of old Mercyful Fate songs.

Put This One In Your Goodie Bag

2009-10-07T22:10:00.001-04:00

I was just too busy today seeing Zombieland again and catching a preview screening of Law Abiding Citizen to really sit down and write a proper blog. But I've got to keep my streak intact, so I'm going to take this opportunity to pimp Trick R Treat, a great new anthology movie that just came out on DVD this Tuesday. Actually I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a true anthology film. It's more like a horror version of Pulp Fiction with several stories taking place in the same location over a short span of time on Halloween night, and with the main characters from one segment popping up for smaller parts in other segments. I plan on doing a longer review for Scene's film blog, so that's all I'm going to say for now, other than you should rent this right away. Here's the trailer. Remember to click the "view original post" link if you're reading this on Facebook and want to watch.

A Boy Named Alice

2009-10-06T16:18:00.005-04:00

They seem pretty tame by today’s standards, but when Alice Cooper first came out in the early seventies they were considered the kings of shock rock. You may notice I’m saying “they” and not “he”. That’s because from 1968 until 1974 Alice Cooper was not just the stage name of vocalist Vincent Furnier, it was the collective name for the band.

It would be wrong to say that Alice Cooper was a horror rock band, but they certainly had their share of horror rock songs. And the band’s stage show incorporated various grisly effects like Alice being electrocuted, hung, and decapitated by a guillotine.

Why these guys haven’t been nominated for the Rock Hall, let alone inducted, is beyond me. KISS is actually in the running this year, but whatever their merits as a band, KISS wouldn’t even exist as we know them if it hadn’t been for Alice Cooper’s influence.

And Alice Cooper wasn't just a cool image and a crazy stage show. The band’s music still holds up. Everyone knows the well known hits like “School’s Out” and “Eighteen”, but since this is part of my month long Halloween blog-a-thon, I’m going to share a few of Cooper’s more morbid numbers. If you’re reading this on Facebook, be sure to click on the “view original post” link to see the clips.

“Ballad of Dwight Frye” This song was on Love it to Death, but I’m not sure what year this performance is from. Judging by Alice (the singer)’s physical appearance and style of makeup, I’m guessing it’s circa 1973, though. Alice sings this one wearing a strait jacket.

“Under My Wheels” from 1972. One of the band’s hits, sort of a love song, but with a weird obsessive edge to it.

“I Love the Dead” live in 1973. This song features the decapitation gag, which was designed by magician/skeptic James “The Amazing” Randi. It looks more convincing that a lot of what you’ll see in horror movies of the time.

And one last one from 1973, “Sick Things”. Snakes and general weirdness.

It's About to Break Out

2009-10-05T16:02:00.001-04:00

If you watch only one giant alligator movie this year, it should be 1980's Alligator. This is about as perfect a "nature gone amok"/giant monster movie as you can find. Sure, it follows the structure of Jaws pretty closely, but screenwriter John Sayles puts his own stamp on the material, making Alligator more than just a cheap imitation.

One of Alligator's biggest assets is its assortment of memorable characters. For starters, we've got a great hero in Robert Forster as David, a rough around the edges homicide detective fighting the ghosts of his past and male pattern baldness, and not faring too well against either. Reptile expert Marisa (Robin Riker) is kind of a mess, too. She still lives at home with her mother, and her collection of pet snakes isn't exactly a turn-on for most guys. Then there's the fun supporting parts by character actors like Sydney Lassick (Cheswick in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) as an unscrupulous pet shop owner and perenial B-movie stalwart Henry Silva ( Megaforce, Chained Heat, Lust in the Dust, and many more) as an arrogant big game hunter hoping to add the gator to his list of kills.

But the real reason anyone watches a movie like this is to see a giant alligator use the rest of the cast as a buffet, and Alligator definitely delivers on that front. Ramon (that's the gator's name) eats good guys and bad guys alike, and even chomps on a few dogs and a little kid. Combining footage of a real gator with a fairly convincing full-size fake head and tail for close-ups, the effects in Alligator are surprisingly good for a low budget movie from 1980. Even scenes where cast members are being munched on while bright red Technicolor blood gushes out look cool, if not entirely convincing.

For all the carnage, though, the overall vibe of Alligator is one of fun. Director Lewis Teague neither condescends to the material nor plays it too seriously. He knows his job is to make a cheap Jaws rip-off, but like screenwriter Sayles doesn't see any reason not to make this the best cheap Jaws rip-off he can. All things considered, I'd say Alligator is a success. Check out this great trailer for the movie, and then put the DVD on your Netflix queue.

Grave Robbing for Jesus

2009-10-04T14:16:00.001-04:00

For the past 5 years I sang for Cleveland horror rock band Horror of '59, so this will be the first Halloween weekend in quite a while that I won't be spending in a club playing music. On the one hand it's kind of nice to be able to relax and just enjoy the holiday, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't kind of miss it. One of the things I miss the most now that my band is broken up is getting to watch the other cool horror rock bands we shared bills with.

One of my favorite bands that we played with several times (although never on Halloween, strangely enough) is Fort Wayne, Indiana's Grave Robber. Aside from their excellent songwriting and musicianship, the one thing that stands out about these guys is that they are a Christian band. The message is there once you know to look for it, but it never comes across as in your face or preachy, which is good for a dyed in the wool heathen like myself. Check 'em out in this Youtube clip performing the song "Altered States" from their most recent album Inner Sanctum. If you're reading this on my Facebook page, be sure to click the "view original post" link to see the video.

Fangs, But No Fangs

2009-10-03T13:41:00.002-04:00

Blonde bombshell Anita Ekberg (famous for her fountain scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vida) inherits a castle and the title of countess, as well as a family curse, in Fangs of the Living Dead (1969). Fangs, aka Malenka, was part of a classic drive-in triple feature called 'Orgy of the Living Dead' that boasted one of the best trailers of all time:

It would be hard for any movie to live up to that trailer, but Fangs doesn't even come close. Director Amando de Ossorio eventually went on to direct the cult classic "blind dead" films, but fans of that series will find little of interest here. There's virtually no horror or eroticism, and barely any fang work. Even a cat fight between two of the film's top-heavy supporting actresses fails to generate much excitement. The most entertaining aspect of the movie was the cheesy organ "sting" that kept playing on the soundtrack. In theory, I guess this was supposed to signal a shocking moment, but it wound up being used so much that it just became absurd. Stick this one back in the crypt.

Werewolves on Wheels and in Cleveland

2009-10-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

It’s October, which means Halloween is right around the corner. In honor of my favorite holiday, I’m going to be blogging about nothing but horror this month, and I’m going to try to do at least one short blog a day. Since I missed yesterday, I’m doubling up in this post. First up is a review of the biker/horror movie hybrid Werewolves on Wheels. Then it’s a music video from Cleveland’s own Manimals for their song “The Symbol”, which sort of fits with the review since the song is about werewolves, also. We’ll see how long I can keep this up.

Werewolves on Wheels

A gang of mean, dirty bastards called “The Devil’s Advocates” and their old ladies ride around on motorcycles and look menacing. The gang’s resident mystic One (Severn Darden) does a Tarot reading for Helen (D.J. Anderson), the “old lady” of gang leader Adam (Stephen Oliver). One says he doesn’t read fortunes, just cards, but either way he sees death and doom ahead. An unimpressed Adam says, “We all know how we’re gonna’ die, baby. We’re gonna’ crash and burn,” and the gang heads on down the road. Eventually they come across a Satanic church where some demonic monks give them drugged bread and wine. The head monk sacrifices a cat and says some mumbo jumbo which causes Helen to dance naked with a snake. The gang eventually wakes up, trashes the ceremony, and hightail it out of there. What they don’t realize is that the power of Beelzebub has turned at least one of their numbers into a werewolf who knows no gang loyalty when in the throes of lycanthropic bloodlust.

By the standards of early seventies drive-in movies, Werewolves on Wheels is well made, with mostly excellent cinematography, a fairly coherent screenplay, and solid acting. More importantly, you’ve got bikers beating up rednecks, chanting Devil worshippers, cat blood drinking, naked snake dancing, werewolf attacks, and people getting set on fire. As a special bonus you get Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire in a supporting role. And yes, the movie does live up to its name, although not until it’s almost over. The movie can be a little slow moving at times, but I kind of like the laid back pace and extended shots of bikers riding down the highway while the cool instrumental fuzz rock soundtrack plays on. Check out the trailer:

The Manimals – “The Symbol” music video

These Clevelanders have been kicking out the horror rock since 1982. And yet in all that time they’ve only managed to play a handful of shows and release an EP (1986’s Blood is the Harvest) and one full length CD (1999’s Horrorcore). The band has a sound that blends The Misfits and metal (some have unkindly referred to them as “The KISS-fits). But never mind the haters. When they do play, the Manimals put on a killer live show, and although not every song is a winner, this one is pretty cool.

There's Still Some Life In Megadeth

2009-09-29T14:42:00.002-04:00

After helping to lay the foundations for thrash metal in the early eighties and eventually crossing over to mainstream success in the early nineties, Megadeth broke up in 2002. Considering how bad their last few albums had been, it was more like a wounded animal being put out of its misery than an occasion for sadness. Then in 2004, guitarist/vocalist/sole original member Dave Mustaine put together a new version of Megadeth and started repairing the damage to his band’s reputation. Comeback album The System Has Failed wasn’t quite there yet, but its 2007 follow-up United Abominations was the best thing the band had done since 1990’s Rust In Peace. Now Mustaine and company are back with another album, and Endgame is every bit as good as its predecessor.

Endgame is a textbook example of how to do technical, complex metal without sacrificing either ferocity or catchiness. Guitar freaks will be in heaven as guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine tosses off killer riffs and trades blistering leads with new axeman Chris Broderick. Mustaine’s whiny snarl of a voice is sweetened somewhat, but nowhere near the degree it was on the Megadeth’s crossover albums of the early to mid nineties. This doesn’t sound like a guy trying to sing pretty so he can get on the radio, it sounds like the pissed-off Dave of old, just with a little more experience as a singer under his belt.

On United Abominations, Mustaine’s recent conversion to Christianity and his adoption of certain dubious conspiracy theories associated with the Christian right took center stage in his lyrics. The only overt example of that sort of thing on Endgame is the title track. Mustaine still gets into political issues like torture (“Headcrusher”) and the need for police to have better firepower (“44 Minutes”), but there are also more personal songs like “Bodies” and “The Hardest Part of Letting Go… Sealed With a Kiss” in which he looks back at his string of broken friendships and relationships gone sour. But regardless of what Mustaine is singing about, the songs on Endgame all rock. There’s nothing on here that I would call filler, and if you’re a fan of the classic thrash metal sound you’ll want to pick this up.

VMA Nonsense

2009-09-14T15:59:00.003-04:00

I try really hard not to pay attention to mainstream music these days, but sometimes it's unavoidable. For instance this thing with Kanye West making an ass of himself at the Video Music Awards, held this past Sunday at Radio City Music Hall. Taylor Swift won the award for "best female video", which apparently displeased Mr. West. In his opinion, Beyonce should have won because her video is "one of the best videos of all time." So in the middle of Ms. Swift's acceptance speech, Kanye got up on stage to make his displeasure known.

It's kind of like herpes won an award for "best STD". Then some drunken crack whore got pissed off and stood up to shout that gonorrhea is better. Because as any fool can see, the puss that drips out of your pee hole from a good case of the clap is more visually appealing than a festering mass of sores.

Lest you think me completely heartless, I do feel a little bad for Taylor Swift. She's only 19 and actually writes or co-writes all her songs, something few other pop artists these days can claim. I may not care for what she does, but she didn't deserve to have her moment disrupted by an over-rated attention whore like Kanye West, a man who is only considered a "genius" because the standards have been lowered so far that mediocrity is the new high water mark. Then again, I'm guessing the millions of dollars Swift has made off of her supposed country music (with apologies to David Alan Coe, if that's country, I'll kiss your ass) will help ease some of the pain.

Time Travel is Real

2009-09-13T21:52:00.001-04:00

Who says you can’t go back in time? This past Saturday I stepped back into the seventies by taking a drive to the little town of Vandergrift, PA (about an hour outside of Pittsburgh) for night 2 of the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama at the Riverside Drive-In. Sponsored by the website DVDDrive-in.com, I believe the event is now in its third year. This was the second year my wife and I made the trek from Cleveland, OH to this mecca of trash cinema.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. Despite the fact that rural PA has some of the most confusing roads known to man, apparently street signs are optional. Still, it was well worth the effort to see a quadruple feature of Hammer horror films from the seventies on a larger than life drive-in screen.

We saw The Vampire Lovers, The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula, and Satanic Rites of Dracula, but wimped out and left early before Vampire Circus. Between features there were also vintage trailers for other Hammer films and classic concession stand ads, one of the worst cartoons I’ve ever seen, and a Three Stooges short (can’t go wrong there). The trailers were in rough shape, having faded from their original Technicolor to a pinkish monochrome. The films themselves (all actual 35mm prints), however, looked surprisingly good for their age.

The Vampire Lovers was arguably the best of the films I saw. It's an early lesbian vampire flick, but like most Hammer films retains a conservative viewpoint even as it lures viewers in with the promise of sex. The vampire Carmilla (Ingrid Pitt) even has to have a male vampire pimp of sorts, thus diluting any actual power her character might have had. Still, it's a well made film with an effective opening sequence and a fair amount of blood and bare flesh, and the always enjoyable Peter Cushing in a decent supporting role.

My favorite film, however, was the absolutely awful Seven Brothers Meet Dracula. You can practically smell the desperation at Hammer studios in this one, a co-production with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers that mixes the undead and martial arts. It's hilariously inept, with the same 5 minutes or so of footage that opens the movie reused numerous times throughout until this sucker is as padded as a baboon's ass. Enjoy this trailer:

Satanic Rites of Dracula was the last of the Christopher Lee Dracula films, and it's a sad way to go out. Set in the 1970's, Dracula is the leader of a modern day Hellfire Club, but you really don't see him until near the end. Cushing is back as Van Helsing, and a young Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) plays his granddaughter. It's not as bad as Seven Brothers, but not as fun, either.

It’s easy to take seeing classic (and not so classic) horror films for granted these days. All these movies are available on DVD in pristine, restored, uncut versions with bonus features and all kinds of bells and whistles. But seeing movies like this at the drive-in the way they were originally meant to be seen is an experience. Even eating the awful (and I do mean awful) concession stand pizza and burgers is part of the fun.

I always felt like I just missed out on the golden era of drive-in movies. I’m old enough to remember seeing the newspaper ads for dusk til dawn horror fests in the seventies, but by the time I was old enough to drive in the mid eighties they were gone, replaced by the same movies showing at the multiplexes. So thanks to the Riverside Drive-In and the folks at the DVDDrive-In.com website for doing their best to turn the clock back and give me the experience I missed.

A Zombie Film Without Zombies

2009-09-10T02:15:00.003-04:00

Got six minutes to kill? Like subtle horror? Subtle horror involving zombies without actually showing any zombies? Then check out this clip directed by my Myspace pals Mike & Ike. It kind of gives me a 'Blair Witch' vibe, which I'm sure will scare some of you off. Anyway, what I like about it is the way it puts some real emotion into the zombie concept. Outside of that one scene in 'Dawn of the Dead' where Roger comes back to life, no one ever seems to be all that bothered about putting their former friends or loved ones down with a bullet. Either that or they're totally hysterical about it and wind up zombie food.

'Inglourious Basterds' and the power of propaganda

2009-08-26T00:06:00.004-04:00

The first thing you see on the screen in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is a title card that says, “Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France”. In film geek shorthand that’s a nod to Sergio Leone’s masterpiece of the spaghetti western genre Once Upon a Time in the West, and Tarantino has said in interviews that this is a spaghetti western that just happens to take place during World War II. But more importantly, as with Leone’s film Tarantino uses “Once Upon a Time” to let the audience know up front that what they are about to watch is a fairy tale, and any expectations of realism or historical accuracy should be left at the door. Because believe me, realism and historical accuracy are the least of this movie’s concerns.

The story proper begins with Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) intimidating and manipulating a French farmer via trademark Tarantino dialog into revealing where he has hidden a Jewish family. Landa then has his soldiers kill the family, but the girl Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) manages (and to at least some degree is allowed by Landa) to escape. Meanwhile, a special unit of Jewish-American soldiers has been assembled by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Their mission is to go undercover in France and kill as many Nazis as possible, in the most horrific ways they can think of. In addition, every member of the Basterds is expected to scalp their victims.

Returning to Shosanna, we find her now living undercover in Paris as a theater owner. She winds up hosting the premiere of a new Nazi propaganda film after a chance meeting with its star, Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl). When Shosanna discovers that all the highest ranking members of the Third Reich will be attending the premiere, she comes up with a plan to take them all out. The Basterds learn of the premiere as well, and not knowing of Shosanna’s plan set one of their own in motion.

Okay, for those of you who just want to know if the movie is fun, and don’t really care to dig too deep: yes, the movie is a lot of fun. It’s everything you expect from Tarantino – the great dialog, memorable characters, references to obscure pop culture trivia (my favorite this time being one character using the alias “Antonio Margheriti ” – look it up), near perfect use of music, and of course the crazy, over the top violence and action. But like Kill Bill Volume 2, this is a more mature Tarantino. Basterds feels more personal, and although he still borrows from other movies, it’s done in a less obtrusive way.

Despite what you may have been led to believe by the trailers, Brad Pitt is not the star here. He’s a blast hamming it up, but his Lieutenant Rayne is more of a large supporting role. The real star of the film is Melanie Laurent, and her strong, believable performance anchors the film and gives it a much needed sense of weight to balance the exploitation movie antics of Pitt and his crew. Christoph Waltz has gotten the lion’s share of acting praise for his portrayal of Landa, and it’s certainly deserved. However, I was also impressed with Bruhl, who has the difficult task of playing a character you dislike yet still need to feel some sympathy for.

Okay, now to go looking for deeper meaning in a movie that most people probably just want to sit back and enjoy with a bag of popcorn and a coke. Most critics have seized on a quote from Tarantino that the film is about “the power of cinema bringing down the Third Reich”. That’s true up to a point, but I see Basterds as being just as much, if not more, about the power of film to do evil, specifically in the form of propaganda.

There are overt references in Basterds to Leni Riefenstahl, the female director who made the infamous German propaganda films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. And then there is Stolz der Nation, the faux German propaganda film-within-a-film we see in Basterds. Stolz heroically depicts how Zoller single-handedly kills hundreds of American soldiers. In one of the few moments in Basterds to humanize a German character, we see that Zoller is clearly uncomfortable with this cinematic depiction of his deeds, even as the audience cheers. Later there is a scene involving Zoller and Shosanna where the film exerts its power over Shosanna at a critical moment. She knows the film is a lie, and knows Zoller for what he is, but for just a split second it affects her and she pays a price for it.

Stolz is the kind of thing we are used to seeing as propaganda, but is it really so different from watching the Basterds beat, scalp, and gun down dehumanized Germans while making wise cracks? What are The Basterds if not a kind of propaganda? They are essentially cartoon characters, calling to mind the covers of WWII era comic books (almost without exception drawn by Jewish artists) where Captain America or the like would deliver a roundhouse punch to Hitler, or some bespectacled caricature of a Japanese soldier. Of course when the propaganda is on our side, we tend to look at it as just harmless entertainment. Propaganda is something those other bad countries make, not us. But regardless of how deeply you choose to look into this film, it’s one of the most daring and original, not to mention fun, movies of the year. 4 out of 4.

*** Note ***

Lest anyone say they weren’t warned, large portions of this film are in various foreign languages with subtitles. If you’re illiterate I can understand this being a problem, but since you’re reading this review I can only assume that’s not the case. Suck it up and read a little. Also, there are some extremely gory and violent scenes in this movie. If you’ve ever watched a Quentin Tarantino movie before, this should come as no surprise. If anything, this is kind of tame after the non-stop blood orgy of Kill Bill. Still, I feel it bears mentioning for those who might be unfamiliar with Mr. Tarantino’s body of work.

***

Brains and Prawn: A Review of 'District 9'

2009-08-15T14:58:00.004-04:00

District 9 takes place in an alternate history where an alien spaceship arrived over South Africa in the early eighties. Unable to leave, and with their leaders seemingly gone, the aliens (called “prawns” by some due to their resemblance to large bipedal crustaceans) are quarantined in a shanty town known as District 9. It’s now 28 years since the aliens first arrived, and squalor and crime have firmly taken hold.

The film follows Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a worker at the company in charge of dealing with the aliens. While going door to door to tell the prawns they are being moved to a new camp farther away from humans, Wikus finds a strange alien-made cylinder. A strange liquid inside the cylinder gets on Wikus, causing him to mutate into an alien/human hybrid.

One side effect of his mutation is that Wikus can now use the alien weapons that have been useless to humans until now. This makes him valuable both to the company he works for and the Nigerians who run the criminal underworld in the camp. Also interested in finding Wikus so he can get the cylinder back is Christopher, a prawn with a young son who needs the device so he can return to the mother ship and, from there, home. Whether he wants to do so simply to help his people or to return to earth with more ships to lead an attack is unknown.

District 9 is mainly escapist fantasy, but like the best science fiction it has something to say about the real world in which we live. The resemblance of the alien slum to apartheid era homelands is no coincidence, but one could just as easily find similarities to concentration camps or Palestine. And the private contractors hired to manage the aliens can't help but evoke Iraq and the Blackwater incident.

The prawns are an extreme example of an alien “other”, but by using them the movie shows just how easy it is to marginalize and vilify those who are different, even by those who have endured the same experience themselves (we see both white and black South Africans expressing disgust and hatred for the prawns). We also see the dehumanizing effect this has on those being oppressed, and the full range of negative effects that result.

This is the first feature film for director Neil Blomkamp, and his inexperience does show a little. This is most glaring in the awkward attempt to blend documentary style footage with a more traditional dramatic narrative. The whole point of using a faux documentary approach is to create more of a sense of realism, but the way the film keeps switching styles only serves to make the viewer more aware that they are watching a movie. It didn’t ruin the movie for me, but there’s no denying that the stylistic shifts are distracting, and that takes away from the film enough that it bears mentioning.

Still, while I would have preferred a more uniform approach, the story District 9 tells is compelling and the world it creates is unique and fully realized. Hell, it’s just nice to see a movie that doesn’t think that being entertaining and having some substance are mutually exclusive for a change. Check this one out. 3 ½ out of 4 stars.

Would You Like Entrails With Your Beverage?

2009-08-05T23:36:00.003-04:00

The revolution will not only be televised, it will be sponsored by stimulant laced sugar water (Rockstar), licorice flavored booze (Jagermeister), and a trendy mall "lifestyle" store (Hot Topic) that has pretty much done its best to reduce a once meaningful underground music scene to just another commodity. That's the Rockstar Mayhem Festival in a nutshell. I never thought the day would come when bands like Slayer and Cannibal Corpse would be seen as viable elements in a corporate marketing campaign, but that's the world we live in now. Okay, enough editorializing. On with my review of the show, which I caught at Pittsburgh's Post Gazette Pavillion this past Saturday, August 1st 2009.

The show started at 2:15, but my wife and I didn’t get there until about 4:30, so we missed the first 4 bands playing on the small side stages. We did get to see metalcore bands Black Dahlia Murder and Trivium. Both groups played with passion and ferocity and displayed considerable musicianship. Since these bands just aren’t my cup of tea stylistically, to review them any further wouldn’t be fair to the bands.

The last band to play on the side stages was death metal icon Cannibal Corpse. I’m not a huge fan of these guys, but they have a few songs I like and there’s no denying their brutality and musicianship. Corpse opened up with the title track from their latest album Evisceration Plague before dipping into their back catalog of family friendly numbers like “F@#$ed With a Knife” and “Make Them Suffer”. The band closed out their set with the crowd pleasers “Hammer Smashed Face” and “Stripped Raped and Strangled”. Wonder which song Rockstar will use for their next commercial?

Things moved over to the main stage after that for Cleveland’s Mushroomhead. These guys have been around since 1993, releasing three albums independently before finally gaining national attention in the early part of this decade. To my ears they’ve always sounded heavily influenced by Angel Dust era Faith No More, with a bit of metal, rap and industrial thrown in for good measure. They’ve got an excellent singer and front man in co-vocalist Jeffrey Nothing, who I used to see in the mid eighties when he was still singing for Cleveland metal band Purgatory under the name Jeff Hatrix. The guy’s still got the pipes, and while I’m not going to race out and buy any Mushroomhead albums tomorrow, the band put on a really good show.

Next up on the main stage were Massachusetts based Killswitch Engage, another metalcore band, or so their Wikipedia page describes them. Whatever, sounds like metal to me. Anyway, these guys were really good. I found their playing perhaps a little too precise for my tastes, but their songs were catchy and lead vocalist Howard Jones (no, not the eighties new wave guy) was excellent. They got a really good crowd response, and gave props to the metal gods with a fine rendition of Dio’s “Holy Diver”. Again, I probably wouldn’t buy one of their albums, but I liked these guys more than I expected to.

Finally, as night began to fall, Slayer hit the stage. Despite pushing fifty, these guys still play with all the fire and intensity of a young band with something to prove. The only downside to their show was they only had an hour long set, so what we got was essentially a “greatest hits” show, with the new song “Psychopathy Red” thrown in for good measure. Nothing from the first album, but the band did pull out “Chemical Warfare” and “Hell Awaits” from the early days. And of course they found room for classics like “Angel of Death”, “War Ensemble”, “Dead Skin Mask”, and “South of Heaven” in their 13 song set. Vocalist Tom Araya missed a few lines of “Angel”, but otherwise it was a flawless performance that really got the crowd pumped up.

Then Marilyn Manson came on and sucked all the energy out of the venue. Look, I actually like a lot of Manson’s stuff, especially from the first 3 or 4 albums. But even older songs like “Irresponsible Hate Anthem” and “Disposable Teens” were performed lethargically by the band, and Manson’s vocals were just awful. It was embarrassing, and after about 30 minutes of it I decided to cut my losses and leave. A good portion of the crowd had the same idea, and even those die-hards who stuck around didn’t seem that into it. The crowd that had been slamming and screaming during Killswitch Engage and Slayer were just standing or sitting there, trying in vain to find something to get excited about. I may not have liked all the other bands on the bill, but every one of them put on a tight and energetic show. Manson just looked like he was going through the motions. Time to hang it up, dude.

Stephen Seagal is 'Driven to Kill'

2009-07-29T00:18:00.003-04:00

Aging action star Stephen Seagal plays aging ex-Russian mobster turned crime novelist Ruslan who returns to his old New York City stomping grounds for his prosecuting attorney daughter Lanie’s (Laura Mennell) wedding. Seagal is less than thrilled that Sergei (Dan Payne), the man his daughter is marrying, just happens to be the son of Russian mobster Mikhail (Igor Jijikine), who unlike Ruslan is still involved in crime. But Sergei claims he wants no part of his father’s lifestyle, so Seagal cuts him some slack. On the wedding day a bunch of thugs show up, killing Lanie’s mother and seriously wounding the bride to be. Seagal reluctantly teams up with Sergei to track down the people responsible, and action movie cheese ensues.

Driven to Kill is basically a bargain basement cross between Eastern Promises and Taken. Seagal gets to play around with an on-again/off-again Russian accent, bullets fly, asses get kicked, and silliness abounds. But I’m not going to lie to you and try to be “Mr. Cool” and make fun of the movie too much. If you’re in the mood for a straight forward, old-school “B” action flick, you’ll probably have fun with this. Seagal is getting a bit old for this kind of thing, but at least in this case that sort of works for his character. I’d rather have seen a full length version of Cockpuncher, the parody Seagal starred in as part of The Onion Movie, but this is still fun trash. 2 ½ out of 4.

Adventures in Filmmaking Part 2: From Script to Screen

2009-07-21T00:28:00.002-04:00

Some say that filmmaking is a collaborative effort, with everyone from grips to lighting technicians to actors to the director all bringing something to the table. Others say that the director (or in some cases the producer) is the author, or “auteur” as the French like to call it, of a movie in much the same way that a writer is the author of a book. My experiences with ‘The Spookshow’ showed me that both viewpoints are true to some extent.

First, let’s talk about film as a collaborative medium. To do that, I’ll use the opening credits of ‘The Spookshow’ as an example. The credits feature a performance artist named Jimmy Coffin doing various sideshow routines, like pounding a nail into his nose and walking on broken glass. This is intercut with a burlesque routine by Cleveland’s Pussyfoot Girls and footage from the finished film, and behind it all is a song by Cult of the Psychic Fetus. All this was assembled and edited together by the film’s director of photography Dustin Austen. None of this was in my screenplay, but it does a great job of setting the right mood for the movie.

Further backing up the “collaborative medium” point of view is the performance of Bryan Jalovec as “Dave”, the asshole boyfriend of the main character. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I wrote this character with Bryan in mind. And although I wrote the character more or less completely, I also knew that Bryan is the kind of actor who likes to improvise. And indeed, that’s exactly what he does in the film. Bryan may not say every line of dialogue the way I wrote it, but he stays true to the core of what I wanted to get across. I had written the character as a little more sympathetic than Bryan plays him, but in the end what he does with the role works for the film.

Both director of photography Dustin Austen and editor/special effects man Ricky Lee Leonard also made considerable contributions to the finished product. Dustin had ideas for lighting certain scenes to recall the films of Dario Argento and Don Coscarelli, and once he points those moments out in the commentary it’s obvious. And Ricky Lee’s special effects take what, on the page, were fairly simple “so and so gets killed” scenes and makes them into memorable set pieces. Thanks to the talents of these two, the movie looks like it cost a lot more to make than it actually did.

But at the end of the day, none of these things would have made it into the film if Joe Ostrica, in his dual role as producer and director, didn’t want them there. From the very start, Joe was the guiding force behind ‘The Spookshow’. He organized the concert from which the band performance footage was taken. He was the one who hired me to write the screenplay, and once filming started, he was the one who decided which scenes would be shot and which would be left unfilmed. Joe also came up with a few scenes of his own, notably the bits where Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival are protesting outside the club and the scenes with Ricky Lee Leonard as an on-stage emcee at the concert. And since Joe was acting as his own producer, he had final cut on the film, so regardless of who came up with what, Joe was the one who ultimately decided what worked for the film and what didn’t.

Of course, there’s one other force that shapes a film, especially a low budget film like this one, and that’s circumstance. A good example of this is the one scene I wrote that didn’t make the film that I really miss. I had written a scene with Cult of the Psychic Fetus on their tour bus partying with drugs and groupies. In the scene, the groupies were portrayed as way smarter and more in control than the band members, which I thought was a fun reversal of the usual stereotypes. Unfortunately, the band felt the scene would be bad for their image, and since they were playing themselves I can respect that. Joe talked about doing the scene with The Corpse Fuckers, a fake band we created for the movie that allowed me to have some screen time as their singer, but in my opinion it just didn’t work since these guys were supposed to be just a crappy local band that nobody liked. No way would groupies be hanging with these losers.

Another thing that was changed due to circumstance was the death of Cyndi, the girl whose spirit possesses the main character. I had written the scene to have her falling down a flight of stairs. Seems fairly easy and straight forward when you’re writing it, but to shoot a scene like that requires a stunt person who can do that without hurting themselves. That’s no problem on even a low budget Hollywood film, but with the budget Joe had, stunt people just weren’t in the cards. So the scene was changed to have the character falling head first onto a stool that had been left lying around. It was a good work-around that doesn’t change anything substantial to the plot, and I’m fine with it.

Finally, I want to give a huge thanks to James L. Edwards for his performance as Marshall Stanton, the washed up rock star the whole story revolves around. In contrast to Bryan, James stuck to my script almost word for word, even when my words may not have been all that great. But because he’s such a good actor, he managed to really sell the lines and the character. I also want to thank everyone involved in the movie. For such a low budget film, there were a lot of actors with speaking roles and a fairly sizeable crew, and everyone did a great job. I’m under no illusions that ‘The Spookshow’ is some modern day horror classic, but I think it’s a fun film that delivers the goods. If you happen to see it, I hope you enjoy it.

Adventures in Filmmaking Part 1: Writing 'The Spookshow'

2009-07-16T10:56:00.003-04:00

About two years ago my friend Joe Ostrica asked me to write a screenplay for him. I spent a couple months writing the initial draft, and amazingly Joe shot about 90% of the film over a two day period in May of 2008. Over the next year various tweaks were made to the editing, a few additional scenes were shot, and in July of 2009 the finished product was released on DVD. Obviously it would be ridiculous for me to try and review a movie I was personally involved in, but I thought I’d write about some of my experiences as well as what I learned from my involvement in the film. I’m mainly doing this for myself, but hopefully some of you will find this interesting. If you’d rather not know how the sausages are made, feel free to skip this blog.

The whole shebang started in July of 2007 when Joe and his crew shot footage of several local bands playing at Cleveland concert venue Peabody’s. Joe’s original plan was to integrate these scenes into a proposed sequel to his ‘Horror Convention Massacre’ films, but ultimately he decided to do something different. Joe knew I had wanted to write a screenplay, and he knew I would work cheap (i.e. free), so he asked me to see what I could come up with. The requirements were simple: I had to find a way to use the footage he already had, and since Peabody’s was willing to give him access to their entire building for a couple days, most of the action had to take place there. Joe also wanted the movie to take place on Halloween.

The first thing I had to come up with was a basic premise, and for this I was inspired by the 80’s horror film ‘Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II’. Both that film and the script I ended up writing deal with the spirit of a murdered girl possessing someone and using them to exact violent revenge on those responsible for her death. The idea was hardly fresh when ‘Mary Lou’ used it, but in the interest of complete honesty about the sausage making process, that’s where I stole it from. Beyond that, however, I tried as much as possible to avoid any intentional cinematic larceny.

Instead, I tried to draw on things from my own background. I’ve played in bar bands for more than 20 years, so I was very familiar with the world this movie would be taking place in. I initially had a lot more scenes dealing with the behind the scenes world of local bands, but for various reasons (mostly pacing) I cut a lot of that out before turning in my final draft.

I also have some experience with the “ghost hunting” scene via www.deadohio.com, a website my wife runs. I figured it would add some flavor to have the main character, Diane, be an amateur paranormal investigator. The local rock club would have a reputation for being haunted, thus giving the character a reason to go off snooping around so she could get possessed. In the final cut there probably isn’t a huge amount of this stuff in the script, either, but I think there’s enough that it adds another interesting layer.

Another thing I drew on for inspiration was Cleveland rocker Michael Stanley. Marshall Stanton, the character who accidentally kills the girl whose spirit possesses Diane, was based loosely on Stanley. Like Stanley, Stanton was supposed to have been popular in Cleveland, but despite having a few minor national hits never really broke big outside of his home town. The character eventually took on a life of its own as I wrote the screenplay, and in the end I don’t think there’s much resemblance, but it was helpful to have that real life person as a starting point. And just to be clear, I’m pretty sure Michael Stanley never killed anyone.

Over the course of making three films, Joe had assembled a reliable group of local actors, so it made sense to try and write a few roles specifically for some of them. Dave, Cyndi’s cheating boyfriend, was written with Bryan Jalovec in mind. Bryan was the star of all Joe’s previous films, and I knew he would be able to handle this substantial supporting role. I also wrote parts for local noise musician Steve Eggs and Cult of the Psychic Fetus drummer Alex Murder. For most of the roles, though, I just wrote what were hopefully interesting and believable characters. For the most part I would just have to trust in Joe’s ability to somehow find competent actors he could coerce into being abused on camera for little or no money.

With those elements as a starting point, I set out to write my screenplay. I wanted to keep the main story fairly serious, but I also knew that to satisfy the target audience I needed to include a certain amount of violence, gore, nudity and low-brow humor. By no means was I trying to write ‘Citizen Kane’ here, but I did my best to make sure that between the decapitations and gratuitous boob shots there were characters you could care about and a story that would hold an audience’s attention.

The biggest thing I took away from this stage of the filmmaking process is that when working on a low budget film, you write for the resources you have, not the resources you wish you had. If you’ve got a huge budget and a generous amount of time to shoot, then your only limit is imagination. Joe had a ridiculously small budget and only a few days of actual shooting to make his movie, so there was no point in writing a spectacular car chase that ends in a fiery explosion, for example. The other thing I learned is: don’t get too attached to anything you write. Film is a collaborative process, and it’s about everyone working together to make the best movie possible under the circumstances. Things are going to change once the cameras roll. But I’ll get into that more in my next blog.

Note: I don't think Joe has 'The Spookshow' for sale online just yet, but you can contact him at http://www.myspace.com/thcm3 and ask him how to get a copy.

The Merry Gentleman

2009-06-24T13:20:00.001-04:00

Kate (Kelly MacDonald) leaves her abusive husband and gets a job in the big city. While leaving work Kate sees Logan (Michael Keaton) standing on the ledge of a building and cries out, startling him into stepping back. Although it’s never made explicit why Logan wants to end his life, it’s likely that guilt over his job as a hitman is at least part of the reason. Tom Bastounes rounds out the main cast as Dave Murcheson, a police officer assigned to investigate Logan’s most recent job. He interviews Kate as a possible witness, and becomes smitten with her. Logan is interested in Kate as well, but his reasons aren’t entirely clear at first.

It sounds like The Merry Gentleman would be a thriller based on that description, but it’s not. It’s more of a drama about how the lives of three damaged people intersect with and affect each other. None of these characters are honest with each other, and the way these deceptions keep them from connecting meaningfully seems to be one of the primary themes. The movie is also concerned with questions of religion and faith, and whether and to what degree God intercedes in the world. This is perhaps most clearly stated when Kate talks about praying for her husband’s death, and wonders if God would grant such a prayer.

The Merry Gentleman is Michael Keaton’s first time as a director, and he delivers a subtle, low key film. The performances, especially MacDonald’s, are excellent. There is no pat ending to the film; it leaves plenty of loose ends dangling, giving the viewer something to ponder and discuss. There are no heroes or villains as such, no traditional romance. It’s slow moving and melancholy, and I’m sure some people will find it boring. For others, including myself, it’s a nice break from the typical summer fare. I can’t say I loved this movie, but I did like it, and beyond that, I respected it for doing something different. 3 out of 4 stars.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-06-24T13:17:00.002-04:00

Megan Fox running in slow motion, her orange tinged cleavage glistening, breasts a bouncing, while giant fire balls explode behind her. That one shot, repeated at least three times, more or less sums up Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Okay, I suppose that’s not all there is. There’s also lots of CGI robots, most of whom rush by on the screen so fast you can’t tell one from the other.

You want a plot synopsis? Okay, Sam (Shia Lebouf) is heading off to college, hoping to maintain a long distance relationship with Mikaela (Fox). Despite all these two have been through together (see the first Transformers movie if you must), neither one can bring themselves to tell the other “I love you”. That’s pretty much it for character development for our two leads. Meanwhile, the Autobots (good guy robots, in case you didn’t know), led by Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen) are working together with the U.S. military to track down any remaining Decepticons (bad guy robots). A particularly nasty Decepticon named “The Fallen” (voice of Tony Todd) is looking to turn the tide with some ancient doohickey, but he needs Sam to get to it. Lots of stuff blows up. That’s pretty much it.

As with the first Transformers movie, what makes this one tolerable for me is the comic relief. Most of this is provided by Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam’s parents, and John Turturro as a former government researcher turned deli owner. I’m not saying this is comedy gold here, folks, but when these actors are on screen I was at least entertained. For the most part, though, this movie is a whole lot of action for action’s sake. It’s generic, predictable, and has no characters that we can emotionally invest in. I suppose there were some moments that were kind of fun, but what possible reason can there be for dragging mindless fluff like this out to 2 and a half hours? No movie about Megan Fox’s hooters and giant robots beating each other up ever needs to be longer than 90 minutes. Still, it’s more mediocre than bad, so I guess 2 out of 4 stars.

'Terminator Salvation' review

2009-05-21T12:05:00.002-04:00

Death row inmate Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) donates his body to science prior to execution only to wake up seemingly none the worse for wear in the post “Judgment Day” world of the Terminator films, where humanity’s last survivors are fighting a losing war against self aware machines. Wright meets up with a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) who, as those familiar with the series know, will one day grow up to be Michael Biehn in the first Terminator.

Wright and Reese set out to roam the wasteland along with the mute child Star (Jadagrace), but it isn’t long before a bunch of nasty machines show up to hassle the humans. Reese, Star, and some other survivors are captured, but Wright escapes, eventually meeting up with a group of resistance fighters including Blair (Moon Bloodgood) and series mainstay John Connor (Christian Bale). At first Connor isn’t sure if he can trust Wright, but eventually they team up to rescue Reese.

The part of John Connor was beefed up at Bale’s request, but more screen time isn’t enough in and of itself to turn a supporting part into a lead. Too many of his scenes just feel like padding, and the character is almost superfluous at times. It’s also by no means one of Bale’s better performances. Fortunately Worthington and Yelchin are engaging, and the writers seem to have actually given some thought to their characters. When they’re onscreen, you almost care about what’s happening, but not enough to make up for the film’s many shortcomings.

Chief among those shortcomings is a screenplay riddled with logic issues and general stupidity. The script also manages to telegraph every single plot development way in advance. Chances are you’ll know exactly how the movie is going to end at least 10 minutes before it does, which at least allows you to leave early without missing anything.

A good director might have still salvaged something from the post apocalyptic rubble, but sadly Terminator Salvation got saddled with McG, whose previous work includes music videos and the Charlie’s Angels movies. His approach is to assault the audience with a nonstop barrage of special effects, loud noises and confusingly shot action sequences. He has absolutely no idea how to make a scene work. Even the one sure-fire audience pleasing surprise near the end of the movie doesn’t have the impact it should because McG refuses to let a moment just breathe.

On the plus side, there are some cool looking new death machines, ranging from skeletal retro terminators to giant assault bots, and plenty of stuff blows up real good. More importantly, the parts of the movie focusing on Worthington’s character show there was the potential for Terminator Salvation to have been a decent popcorn flick. Ultimately, though, this isn’t so much a movie as it is a clanging, banging special effects demo reel. 1 ½ out of 4 stars.

A Sabbath By Any Other Name…

2009-05-20T00:02:00.005-04:00

Would still be as Black. Technically 'The Devil You Know' is the “debut” release from Heaven and Hell, but real fans know this is actually the 4th studio album from the Ronnie James Dio fronted incarnation of metal godfathers Black Sabbath. Picking up right where they left off on 1992's 'Dehumanizer', these rock veterans deliver one crushingly heavy slab of doom after another. To be sure there are a few so-so tracks like “Rock and Roll Angel”, but for the most part Tony Iommi’s riffs are as memorable as ever, Geezer Butler and Vinnie Appice provide a rock solid rhythm section, and Dio’s voice still sounds amazing.

Highlights include lead off single “The Bible Black”, the “war on terror” inspired “Double the Pain”, the cheesily titled but no less rocking “Eating the Cannibals”, and epic closer “Breaking Into Heaven”. Dio’s lyrics are metaphorical as always, but a little more down to earth and easier to decipher than in the past. A quietly atmospheric number in the vein of “Too Late” or “Sign of the Southern Cross” would have been nice, and I’m not super keen on the order of the songs (“Atom & Evil” is okay, but it’s no way to start an album), but overall 'The Devil You Know' is a surprisingly strong release from a band most critics wrote off a long time ago, proving that not all rock reunions have to suck. I’ve been listening to it constantly since I bought it a few weeks ago, and I like it more each time.

Bob's favorite music of 2008

2009-01-14T00:29:00.001-05:00

I used to look with disdain on those music fans who dismissed new music out of hand, preferring instead to keep listening to the same old bands they grew up listening to when they were teenagers. But looking back at the albums that caught my ear in 2008, I find a sizeable portion of the artists responsible for them have been around for at least a couple of decades. There’s still a few newer bands on here so I guess I can pretend I’m not getting old a little bit longer, but I’m afraid the writing is on the wall. Anyway, here’s my picks for the best rock and/or roll music released in 2008.

10. Judas Priest – ‘Nostradamus’
This 2 disc rock opera is way too long and bombastic for its own good, but if you could cut it down to about 50 minutes you’d have a killer Priest album.

9. Alice Cooper – ‘Along Came A Spider’
I still don’t care for the slick production, but the songs are classic Cooper and the album has kind of grown on me.

8. Tarja Turunen –‘My Winter Storm’
The former Nightwish vocalist’s solo debut is too long and a bit heavy on the slow numbers, and the less said about her cover of Alice Cooper’s “Poison” the better. Still, there’s enough killer tunes on here to keep me coming back.

7. The Drive By Truckers – ‘Brighter Than Creation’s Dark’
This band has been around for a while, but this is the first album of theirs I listened to. Maybe I better do some catching up, because this is some pretty good country rock.

6. The Raconteurs – ‘Consolers of the Lonely’
This may be a new band, but the music would sound right at home on classic rock radio. Hard hitting bluesy rock done right, courtesy of Jack White (The White Stripes), Brendan Benson, and two members of The Greenhornes.

5. TV on the Radio – ‘Dear Science’
After their somewhat disappointing sophomore album, TV on the Radio gets back on track with this collection of experimental yet catchy numbers.

4. Portishead – ‘Third’
They may take forever to make an album, but at least when they do it’s a good one.

3. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – ‘Dig Lazarus Dig’
The New Zealand singer/songwriter and his band seem to have been energized by their one-off album as Grinderman. Cave writes some great lyrics to complement the deceptively simple song structures laid down by his band. The result is a top notch album of compellingly gloomy rock.

2. Metallica – ‘Death Magnetic’
These guys recovered from the death of founding member Cliff Burton to reach even greater success with ‘…And Justice For All’ and the self-titled “Black album”. Then they seemed to get lost for about 15 years. ‘Death Magnetic’ marks a welcome return to form, and this video for “All Nightmare Long” is pretty cool in its own right.

1. Volbeat – ‘Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil’
Technically this is a 2007 release, but it didn’t get released in America until 2008. The band has already followed it up with an even better album that is currently available as an import only.

Blown Away by the Metal Masters

2008-08-19T00:08:00.004-04:00

There are five bands that I personally consider to be the greatest pure, classic heavy metal bands of all time. 3 of those bands were on the bill when the aptly named “Metal Masters” tour made a stop at the Post Gazette Pavillion in Burgettstown, PA this past Saturday: Judas Priest, Black Sabbath (billing themselves as Heaven and Hell for legal reasons), and Motorhead.* But before that trio of titans, early arriving fans were treated to a thirty minute set from eighties thrashers Testament.

Testament may not be quite in the same league as the other three bands on this bill, but they’ve certainly earned themselves a respectable place in the history of metal. They gave a brief refresher course in that history with the first three songs of their set: “Over the Wall”, “The New Order”, and “Practice What You Preach”. The band then proved they’re still relevant and rocking with three tracks from their new album, The Formation of Damnation. The venue was only about a third full for Testament’s set, but near as I could tell everyone there greeted Testament’s set with enthusiasm, and every time vocalist Chuck Billy asked for the crowd to show their “metal hands” the air was filled with Devil’s horn salutes.

Here's Testament doing "The New Order" (or at least most of it):

A few more bodies had filtered into the arena by 7pm when Motorhead began their auditory assault. Bassist/vocalist Lemmy is a true living legend, 63 years old and still meaner, faster, and louder than anyone else. The band touched on all period’s of their 30 plus year career, opening with “Dr. Rock” from 1985’s Orgasmatron album. I was pleased to hear “Metropolis” and “Stay Clean”, two of my personal favorites from the band’s early days, but newer songs like “Killers” and “In the Name of Tragedy” were just as effective. And yes, the did “Ace of Spades”, but considering how many other great songs this band has it’s kind of sad that’s the only song most people know by them.

Here's Motorhead doing "Killed by Death":

It was finally getting dark when the stagehands began setting up a massive iron gate flanked by two stone gargoyles for Heaven and Hell’s set. Definitely cool, and a nice way to build the anticipation of the crowd, which by now was pretty close to capacity. Finally the lights guitarist Tony Iommi took the stage and played the last few notes, leading into “The Mob Rules”. The mix was a bit off at first, with Tony’s guitar and Geezer Butler’s bass buried and Ronnie James Dio’s vocals a bit too loud. But by the second song, “Children of the Sea”, the kinks were worked out. My only criticism of the band came during this second song, which I think Dio oversang just a bit. Other than that, Ronnie’s vocal performance was nothing short of amazing, especially for a guy who just turned 66.

The best thing about Heaven and Hell’s set to me was the interplay between the band members. Almost nothing was done in a rote “just like the album” manner, as all the band members really jammed out on the instrumental sections. Every once in a while a group of musicians gets together and there’s a certain magic that exists above and beyond musical talent. This group of musicians has that kind of vibe. If you’ve seen any of the recent Black Sabbath reunion shows where Iommi and Butler played with founding band members Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward, you can really see the difference in the energy level. The band played for an hour and fifteen minutes, with highlights for me being “Die Young”, “Sign of the Southern Cross”, “I”, and an epic extended version of “Heaven and Hell”. Just an amazing set.

Here's Heaven and Hell doing "Die Young":

I knew Heaven and Hell would be a tough act to follow, but I figured if anyone could do it, it would be Judas Priest. Priest opened with “Dawn of Creation/Prophecy” from their new concept album Nostradamus. I fully expected to hear at least a couple more tunes from that release, but nope. The rest of the set was pulled from past efforts, in particular the Painkiller and Screaming For Vengeance albums, from which the band pulled 3 songs a piece. I appreciated the fact that the set avoided a lot of obvious choices (no “Living After Midnight” this time around), and it was nice to hear rarities like “Eat Me Alive” and “Dissident Aggressor”.

Overall the band sounded extremely tight and polished, but something was missing. Maybe it was Halford’s stage presence, or lack thereof. In the past this guy was easily in the top 5 of front men. Tonight, however, he seemed rooted in place and frequently hunched over. I could swear I heard a news story about him having an Alzheimer’s like condition that made it difficult for him to remember lyrics, thus forcing him to rely more on a teleprompter. I couldn’t find anything to back up that memory, though, so I don’t know if that’s true or not. Regardless, Halford’s stage presence on this night was pretty weak, and it sapped a lot of energy from the show for me. Everything sounded good, but I just didn’t get any feeling of passion from the band. Priest live is still head and shoulders above most bands, but compared to past shows of theirs I’ve been to this was kind of lackluster.

Here's Priest doing "Breaking the Law":

*The other two bands are Iron Maiden, who did their own tour this summer, and Metallica (even though they've pretty much sucked since Load, I have hope their new album will be a return to form). And Slayer deserves at least an honorable mention.

Just Because Roddy Piper Rules

2008-08-17T17:38:00.004-04:00

I just got back from seeing the Metal Masters show in Pennsylvania and will post a review tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy this great clip of Roddy Piper at his best.

Digging up 'The Dungeonmaster'

2008-08-14T10:40:00.004-04:00

The Dungeonmaster is like a low budget cinematic jam session with Empire Pictures chief Charles Band assigning himself and 6 other filmmakers to each contribute a segment to the movie. The resulting film is held together by a framing story involving Richard Moll (Bull from TV’s Night Court) as evil wizard Mesterma challenging computer nerd Paul (Jeffrey Byron) to various challenges, each taking place in a different setting. But it’s not just Paul’s life on the line. Mesterma has Paul’s girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) chained up, as well. Luckily Paul’s talking home computer Cal has somehow been transformed into a wrist band that shoots lasers, so that helps. Each director gets about ten minutes to do anything they want within this framework, provided they can pull it off on a budget that would make Roger Corman cry uncle.

Imagine taking Tron, War Games, Conan the Barbarian, The Road Warrior, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and some generic eighties slasher movie and mixing them together in a blender. That's basically what’s in store for you with The Dungeonmaster. This movie has everything: stop motion killer statues, demonic puppets, homicidal midgets, aerobicising ladies in leg warmers, post apocalyptic car chases, a serial killer, and a performance by shock rockers W.A.S.P. And yet in a film full of weirdness, perhaps the oddest thing is the presence of Albert Einstein in hell alongside Jack the Ripper and other notable baddies. Your guess is as good as mine.

Despite trying to cram so many different elements into one movie and seven different writers and directors, The Dungeonmaster ain’t half bad. In fact I’d say it’s one of the more enjoyable low budget flicks of the eighties. Now I don’t want to oversell The Dungeonmaster. It has plenty of shortcomings due to its budget, not to mention a general aura of eighties cheesiness that has nothing to do with money. But the performances are decent, there’s some good dialog (including the line, “I reject your reality and substitute my own” made famous by the TV show Mythbusters), the effects are cheap but fun, and there’s just enough sex and violence to earn a PG-13. Sadly The Dungeonmaster isn’t available on DVD at present, but if you can find a copy on VHS it’s worth a watch for eighties nostalgia buffs and forgiving fantasy fans. 7 ½ out of 10.

R.I.P. Isaac Hayes

2008-08-11T10:59:00.005-04:00