REVIEW: Hot Fuzz

Went to see the comedy, Hot Fuzz this weekend. This is the second film from the director and stars of "Shaun of the Dead" and the British TV show, "Spaced".

Nicholas Angel, an extremely dedicated and over-achieving police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service, is so good that he makes everyone else on the force look bad. As a result his superiors send him to a place where his talents won’t be quite so embarrassing: the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford, where there hasn't been a recorded murder for twenty years. Once there, he is partnered with well-meaning but overeager and naive police constable Danny Butterman, the son of the local police chief Inspector Butterman, and a committed action movie fan who believes that his new big-city partner might just be a real-life "bad boy," and providing him with his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he so longs for.

But after a while, Nick realizes that after a series of grizzly murders, that this town is hiding a long dark secret. Nick and Danny do the buddy movie thing and team up at the end for a shootout that is one of the funniest scenes in a long time.

The movie takes shots at films like Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys 2 and Point Break. Even the editing makes fun of directors like Michael Bay and Tony Scott. It's really funny for most of the time, however its biggest problem is its length. It's way over two hours I think. But that's the only thing really wrong with it. Make no mistake though this is some funny stuff, although be warned it is very graphic with its violence. Director Edgar Wright loves gore and horror flicks, and he does not pull any punches here. I find this and Shaun kind of odd movies. They are hard to fit into categories. I mean obviously it is a comedy, but they play it straight. So there is never any winking at the screen or stuff like that, its a very unique little universe that Simon Pegg, Wright and co-star Nick Frost have been creating for the past few years now. Yes they like to make fun of horror and action films, but you can tell that they are really in love with them at the same time, and in fact can kind of be considered tribute films if you will yet they do stand on their own. Funny stuff from across the pond.

On the Edge of Blade Runner

Found this great documentary on Blade Runner over the aintitcool website. Its pretty long, so its cut up into to six parts... They are apparently re-shooting scenes right now in LA for a big re-release new cut. Was there something wrong with the original?

Jackie vs. Sun Ming Ming

This is a scene from the upcoming Rush Hour 3 where Jackie Chan fights 8 foot basketball bust Sun Ming Ming. This recalls Bruce Lee fighting Kareem in Game of Death.

NIN: Year Zero

I don't talk much about music here, but the new Nine Inch Nails album drops today. I just picked it up on i tunes. So far very wicked... Here is the video, Survivalism from the new album, Year Zero. Warning there is some "adult" imagery in the video...

But He's Just a Raggedy Man...

I am watching the third part of one of the great sci-fi/action trilogies of all time, Mad Max. Beyond Thunderdome just came out on HDNet. It looks great and makes me want a part 4 with crazy Gibson anyway. I remember seeing this at the Wedgewood movie theater in the hot summer and walking out wanting a nuclear war so I could drive around in my Interceptor V8 looking for gas. This was a great trilogy. Thunderdome has a lot of monkeys in it as well...more than I remember.

Chuck Norris in HD!

Last night I was cleaning off my DVR and I discovered that I had recorded Missing in Action off of HDNet. Why you ask is this significant? Well besides being an OK 80's Nam flick with Chuck Norris, it is something I had never seen before... Chuck Norris in High Definition. Let me start by saying that I am an old school Chuck fan. I'm talking about The Octagon, Missing in Action 1-3, Delta Force, Code of Silence. Not so much the TV Chuck with Walker, Texas Ranger and his bevy of TV movies.

Missing in Action is basically a riff on Rambo where the Chuckster, who plays Col. Braddock has been tormented mentally since his escape from a Nam prison camp a year ago. He decides to help out and go back to see if any other US soldiers are there. Along the way he kicks some ass, says some great one liners, like when we picks up the phone to explain his position on going in to find the missing GI's, "I'm going" End scene. Brilliant. Along the way the Chuckster has the opportunity to do it with the hot American government official assigned to his case, but decides otherwise. Why you ask, You see the Chuckster don't play. His time is not spent getting ass but kicking it. When the Chuckster said, "I'm going" he meant I'm not going to get ass, I'm going to kick it. After the Chuckster kills about half of Vietnam he finds the soldiers and brings them back to end on a freeze frame of Chuck dragging a poor POW not to get medical attention but to a televised press conference where the Vietnam government is denying any remaining POWS in Nam. See even when Chuck is at a press event he kicks ass mentally. So mental that they had to freeze the frame, before the credits rolled, to let you know how much ass he continually kicks. This is why they made an action figure of the man.



Now, if you want to have a Missing in Action film fest, remember that Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is actually a prequel. And that there are parts of Braddock: Missing in Action 3 that are before part 2, but is more or less a sequel to Part 1. So I would go with Part 2 first, then part 1, then part 3. And if you do this prepare yourself for glory my friends. After that I would suggest moving on to the American Ninja series 1-5, and call me cause I'll be over with refreshments.

REVIEW: Grindhouse

Went to see Grindhouse on Saturday afternoon. Pretty full theater too. Although we did see some walkouts during Tarantino's segment. So how do I begin. Did I like it. Yes. Did I like one over the other? Yes. But that can always change with time. I liked Rodriguez's Planet Terror only because it reminded me more of the type of B-movies I used to go to more often than Tarantino's Death Proof. Planet Terror concerns a zombie plague in Texas and a band of a dozen or so peeps that try to escape and kill as many in their way in the process. It's just that simple! And that's what is so great about it too. If your into wacky characters and killin' some Zombies with gore aplenty then relax and have a good time. The score by Rodriguez and sax guru Johnny Reno (who has a small part) is my favorite part of the film. It's like a tribute score to all those rip off films of John Carpenter. So its a riff on rip off Carpenter scores. I really liked the way the film looks too. It has a beat to shit 80s color palette that reminded me most of Lucio Fulci films like The Beyond or one his oddball Space Gladiator films. The cast was great too. Freddy Rodriguez and Rose McGowan had good old fashioned b-movie chemistry. There are way too many tributes to certain horor and sci-fi movies to mention here. I'm sure someone somewhere has already made a website for pointing those out.

The fake trailers: There are four fake trailers: Machete was pretty funny and something that looked like it would be fun to watch. Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS was alright but felt altered (I think it was cut down for R-rating). Eli Roth's Thanksgiving trailer was alright but began to feel like it was too much for cheap jokes instead of a tribute to the genre. The best was Edgar Wright's Don't. That one cracked me up and really did feel like a genuine trailer from those days.

Tarantino's movie was unfortunately for me a tribute to a series of films I'm not so fond of. He really gets off on Jack Hill's chick flicks from the 70's like Switchblade Sisters. I think he likes more of the attitude of the girls in those movies, like a Pam Grier type. And the movie is pretty good, but I think it has the disservice of coming before Planet Terror which is everything Death Proof is not. Let's be honest Tarantino likes to hear himself talk thru his characters. And here he pushed my limits several times. I've read people ripping these scenes and some praising them. In my opinion I fall somewhere in the middle of those two camps. When the man is on he is on, but here he misses the mark to me. The idea of Death Proof is simple. An ex stunt driver, Mike played great by Kurt Russell likes to run over and kill people with his death proof stunt car. Then one day he comes across some stunt chicks that don't exactly agree with his sense of humor. The dialog scenes between the girls go on and on forever. The car chase is great, and i had hear going in that the chases compare with Bullitt and French Connection. Let me say right now, NO, THEY DON'T COME CLOSE. Not even a bit. But they are live my friends. No CG , just old fashioned car chases.

This film bombed badly over the weekend so much so that the producer and distributor are freaking out. Which brings me to my next point... If you set out to make two movies that are supposed to be like re-living the experience of the Grindhouse. Why spend close to 60 to 100 million dollars. If you took every grindhouse movie budget ever made and put them together, they would not equal that much. There were a lot of CG effects in Planet Terror that producers back then could only dream of. And then to make things worse they spent millions of dollars to then make them look like bad effects. Whats the point? Make a real Grindhouse movie.

having said all this, I did enjoy the experience and I'm glad they got to make it, I just which it was a bit more thought out. It feels like a vanity project gone awry in spots. I mean Rodriguez already makes big budget b movies, and QT made his grindhouse epic with Kill Bill, so this feels kind of late, but I welcome it in any incarnation it may come in.

The Good Friday Film Festival Part 2

The film festival took an ugly turn in the afternoon... I had Lucio Fulci's last film he made in 1990 collecting dust on my shelf for quite some time. I had heard it was bad, and that was being kind. In southeast Sicily, a team of archaeologists investigate the ruins of a crypt where heretic nuns had been stoned and crucified by the village people in the 16th century. Soon strange things begin to happen, and Liza, one of the team members, starts to have surreal dreams about the nuns. Then the graphic violence begins, starting with a decapitation! The answers lie in the ancient crypt of the nuns.. There was an odd scene of a guy tied to two trees that was split in half when the trees fell in different directions.



I like Fulci, I even bought a huge book on his works. Bad performances abound along with the worst dubbing i may have ever seen. Dario Argento is the number one Italian master of horror, and Fulci is a close second. The thing I like about Fulci is the mood he sets with his films. They are eerie and nightmarish. You feel dirty after watching one his films. However for every good film there seems to be about four or five bad ones.



Amy and I watched Dog Day Afternoon this morning on HDNet. Pacino and Lumet. Lightning in a bottle. I'm not going to talk about the genius of this movie, it is already known. The film looks amazing in HD. It looks like it was made yesterday.Too bad they can't clone Sidney Lumet so he can keep making movies forever. I'm about halfway through watching Neil Simon's Plaza Suite with Walter Matthau. I thought it was a comedy, boy am I surprised...

The Good Friday Film Festival Part 1

Got a break today and have good friday off. Got up early and started watching a few flicks i had stored on the old hd dvr from hdnet. Don't know how many films I will watch today, but I am on a roll. The first one I watched was the Paul Greengrass film, Bloody Sunday.

BLOODY SUNDAY:
Documentary-style drama showing the events that lead up to the tragic incident on January 30, 1972 in the Northern Ireland town of Derry when a protest march led by civil rights activist Ivan Cooper was fired upon by British troops, killing 13 protesters and wounding 14 more.



I enjoyed the film quite a bit and learned much about that day in history. I found the documentary style a little jarring at first, but once you settle into it, it gets better. I think his last film, United 93 was so unsettling, that I have not wanted to go back and experience it again. And I think that is the point here as well. The violence is very real and happened to real people. Bloody Sunday is one of those movies like United 93 that you may not want to revisit for a while because it reminds you of that violent nature that lies within so many.

THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN:

The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle -- a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.



I really enjoyed this movie for a number of reasons. It's a family film that leaves a smile on your face and there isn't an evil bone in it's body. Anthony Hopkins was stellar as usual. You totally lose yourself in his portrayal of Munro. His journey from New Zealand to the Utah flats to race his beaten down motorcycle is fun to behold. Munro has a heart condition and really shouldn't be racing, but he defies his doctors and continues his trek because racing is the only love he has in his life. Without his Indian racer bike he may as well have a heart attack and die anyway, so why not in his racer. It is your typical road movie in spots. He meets way too many friendly people that automatically fall for his accent, but thats what makes the film so fun. It made me think of my Grandfather who at one point many years ago sold one of his old Pontiacs to a chap who then turned it into one of those demolition derby cars. He used to get a kick out of seeing his old car compete in those derbys. Its just one of those films that leaves a smile on your face.

DUST DEVIL: THE FINAL CUT

Just started watching Richard Stanley's cult classic, Dust Devil. I saw this a long time ago on VHS back in 91. I was a huge fan of Richard Stanleys. Most of his stuff is not on dvd, until now. Still waiting for Hardware to come out. Love Hardware to death. Dust Devil was his second film, and the cut i originally saw was a studio cut that they took away from him and cut out about 20 mins of backstory. It's an interesting horror film if you can even call it that. This is a 5 disc limited edition dvd that Subversive Cinema put out. It has the Final Cut and Work Print version of Dust Devil, the soundtrack that genius Simon Boswell did, plus 3 documentaries that Stanley has directed through the years on the other 2 discs. Nice.



Dust Devil", a horror story based on the myth of a Namibian serial killer, looks more like a Western. Filmed on location in Africa where the murders allegedly took place, Chelsea Field plays Wendy Robinson, a woman, who under duress of leaving her husband, heads out to the desert to accidentally encounter the Dust Devil (Robert John Burke), a mercy killer who slays depressed women to save them from the dark side. According to locals, the Dust Devil is a demon, enabling Stanley's abiding interest in world folk religions to weigh heavily in on the plot, especially when the town's witch doctor visits the beyond to unlock mysteries, or when the Dust Devil displays a box containing his victims' fingers.

I don't know, maybe its the drawn out nature of the plot, but I still feel the film is a bit underwhelming. And it could be because maybe I'm comparing it to Hardware. The concept is great. It's one of those rare horror westerns, a sub-genre that has yet to reach its full potential... Dust Devil comes close, but not quite.

I'm quite keen someday to see someone make a film about the making of the remake of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" with Brando and Kilmer. You see Stanley is kind of a renegade filmmaker, and he worked the first 3 weeks or so as director on that then got into arguments with Brando and Kilmer. New Line didn't like the dailies so fired him. Problem was they were shooting on a remote Island, and Stanley being the freak he is, never left the island. John Frankenheimer took over directing and Stanley joined a native tribe on the island and supposedly tried to sabotage the entire filming with his new tribal friends. How great would that movie be???

RIP: Bob Clark

Sad news today... Director Bob Clark, who directed the classic A Christmas Story, Porkys, and Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was killed today along with his 22 year old son in a head on collision with a drunk driver. Bob started out in the horror genre then eventually moved up the ladder to make bigger studio films. His last film was Baby Geniuses 1 and 2. Bob is the guy in the middle there at a recent Christmas Story reunion for the dvd release.

HELP get this movie at the Drive In!!!

The new Tarantino/Rodriguez epic, Grindhouse comes out this Friday, and I'm very keen on seeing it because it is a double feature that pays homage to the great drive in B-movies from the 70's that I loved back in the day. The first is Planet Terror from Robert Rodriguez and the second is Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino with fake trailers from Eli Roth and Rob Zombie between features.

As many of you know I am a big fan of the drive-in theater, The Brazos in Grandbury. It's an old fashioned family owned drive in that is a blast to go to if you ever get the chance. Anyway I contacted them about showing Grindhouse. Actually I begged them. The hitch is they don't normally show many R-rated films, its more geared towards family viewing outings, but I am asking them to make an exception. They said they would consider it, but I need every one's help that reads this blog. Please email the Millers who own The Brazos and tell them you want to see Grindhouse! They will not play it on opening day, but usually a few weeks down the road after its been out a few weeks. Please help me in my quest!!!

Here is the email for The Brazos:

brazosdriveinmail@yahoo.com

More Than Meets the Eye

If someone took a time machine and took this still from the upcoming Transformers movie and showed it to me in jr. high my head would have literally exploded like the dude in Scanners. Let's keep our fingers crossed that Michael Bay does not F this up. Giant robots blowing things up equal greatness.

The Apocalypse?

I really don't want this site to become a paparazzi site, but these photos taken at the jedbar opening in LA have me really baffled... Is he giving us the peace sign? Shocker? Something else? We can only imagine... She looks scared. Notice the size of his head as the night goes on.

Alanis Morissette has some funny Game

HDTV Alert: Planet Earth

Discovery HD just started airing this amazing new series last week caled Planet Earth. It is an 11 one hour episode series on all these remote places on Earth that man really has not touched or ruined yet. It took them 5 plus years to film it all. In HD the photography is nothing short of amazing. Click HERE to see the official site.

REVIEW: Camera Buff (1979)

I picked up this little film by one of my favorite filmmakers from Poland, Krzysztof Kieślowski. The film is called "Camera Buff" and I watched it a few weeks back, and was instantly hooked into the film for various reasons. Here is the basic gist of it:

Factory worker Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr) is a nervous new father and a doting husband when he begins filming his daughter's first days with a just-bought 8mm movie camera. He tells his wife and believes that he now has everything he ever wanted since his youth as an orphan, but when the local Communist Party boss asks him to film an upcoming celebration, his fascination with the possibilities of film begins to transform his life.

When they see his edited short film of the conference/celebration, his superiors find his shot of a pigeon useless and his shots of several negotiators at a business meeting too probing. He secretly submits the film to a festival in another town and eventually gains the attention of a lovely local film critic. He begins to expand hisknowledge of film, purchasing lights, and tripods and other accessories. He makes more short documentaries and enters them into other festivals. He then begins to get offers from television stations to work for them.

This in turn changes the simple Mosz into a respected artist and he finds his once fulfilling simple life kind of boring and limited. I thought this movie did a great job of displaying how art (in this case filmmaking ) can dislocate you from reality even though you may think you are the one commenting on it for the masses. It shows that art can help others deal with something painful in say a documentary, but yet can also cause you to suffer for it through lack of communication with ones own loved ones. I found it to be very true. And it was frustrating to see this man struggle with developing all his new found talents. he discovers through editing that film can also destroy things in his world and give power to those in Communist Poland. And the ending of the film can be taken many ways, but for me i found it very disturbing andenlightening at the same time.

If you are unfamiliar with Krzysztof Kieślowski's work, I would recommend this film as a good starter. My favorite of his is his Three Colors trilogy of "Blue", "White", and "Red". Also high on my list is "The Double Life of Veronique" and "The Decalogue", a ten hour movie broken up into ten one hour films. Each hour film is about one of the ten commandments. It's a really ambitious film to dive into, but you don't have to look at it as a ten hour film. Look at it as a modernized 10 episode series on the Ten Commandments...