Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Blood on the Highway trailer

Good friend, Barak has a trailer up for his new feature, "Blood on the Highway". Check the website HERE or peep the trailer below.

The Season begins again...



Well the basketball gods were quite cruel to the Mavs and the Rockets last May. Only the Spares (I mean Spurs) were lucky enough to win the prize. With the new season on the horizon on Halloween, here are some HSO's on both the Mavs and Rockets...

The Dallas Mavericks:

This is without a doubt the best team in the NBA. Even with the fizzle in the Finals and last years total breakdown in Round 1, they still have better chemistry and talent than any other team in the league. They can beat the Spurs without even thinking about it. The problem is the one team out of every other team in the NBA that the Mavs can't beat is the Warriors. Hopefully the tweaks of Eddie Jones, Trenton Hassell, and Brandon Bass will be enough to knock that little problem child off this year. They looked great in Pre-Season when all the starters played. Devin looks improved as a leader much like Tony Parker did earlier in his career. The question marks are in the Center position. With Damp still hurt till December, and his usual long comebacks, will the Mavs have any depth at all in the center position. Diop can't play the entire game, and putting Dirk in there, only hurts our offense in stretches. The other big question mark for me is the starting shooting guard. It looks as if the greatness of JET will be on the bench this season. And a rotating starter of Stack, Jones, and maybe even Hassell will be back court with Devin. The Mavs need to concentrate on winning but not winning every game they can to the point of exhaustion by the end of the year. The Spurs will remain the lurking snake in the grass they always are. Other than them and the Rockets and Warriors, it seems pretty smooth sailing. PHX could always be a problem, but as the Spurs did so wonderfully last year in the playoffs, and expose them as the one-trick pony show they really are, i don't fear them in a series much, just on a per game basis.

The Houston Rockets



Many people say this could be the year for the Rockets. So was last year and the year before that. However this is the most loaded this team has been in a while. New couch Rick Adelman will cast out a lot of van gundy's defensive mind numbing play style for a more up tempo old school Kings offense. McGrady now has plenty of ball handlers, which frees him to be T-Mac and not a point guard. The Spurs may have made the biggest blunder in the draft by giving Luis Scolia to the Rockets for Jackie Butler? Scolia went on to be the MVP of the FIBA games this year and is impressive. He will prolly end up being a starting forward once he adjusts to the NBA. He's a rookie, but has played for along time overseas and has kicked many a NBA player ass int he Olympics. He's tough minded with no fear and is a younger stronger Ginobli. Spurs, what were you thinking? I would have waived Finley for him. The other thing that concerns me is Yao in Adelman's offense. Can he keep pace up and down running. We all know this is Yao's weakest spot. He gets winded and is always last one down the floor. I only saw on pre-season game so I don't know how this will play out but ESPN has them in front of the Mavs and Spurs for the year in terms of records. And finally Mike James and my beloved Stevie Francis is back on the team. Great to see those guys back. Especially since both have played with Yao before and know where he likes the ball sent to in the post. Looking forward to wearing my old Francis jerseys to a Rockets game!

And finally I leave with this piece of uncomfortable journalism. A young reporter who may be dead now, tries to interview one of my fav players of all time, Sam Cassell. Sam is the point guard for the LA Clippers, and this is one of the most cringe inducing interviews of all time.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Zu:The Cat Warrior from Magic Mountain ?

One of my co-workers today found this cat with 4 legs and only 3 paws. We are taking him in for a while.

I have named him Zu.

Monday, October 15, 2007

The Jacques Tati Experience


Well I must admit that this weekend I did get on a bit of a foreign film fetish. My former boss and close friend, Bobbie introduced to me the works of French auteur Jacques Tati. I was not all that familiar with his work until Bobbie had a screening at the Modern of one of his films, called Mr. Hulot's Holiday. I really enjoyed the film and set out to see some of his other films, particularly those featuring his alter ego Mr. Hulot. Tati stars and directs his films that are at times on par with Chaplin and Keaton. His alter ego Hulot is a bit of a mix of Seller's Clouseau and a tad of Mr Bean for those looking for something to describe him as. He's a French klutz that means well but usually his honesty and good nature bring him nothing but trouble. Tati started as a mime and his films continue this theme as the films work on a silent level, with pretty much minimal dialog and lotsa sound/fx for all the sight gags. He wears his trademark raincoat, umbrella as a cane, and pipe. In Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953) he takes a vacation to a resort that results in a series of misunderstandings and physical gags that have such genuine charm it makes you love the character of Mr. Hulot so much, you hate to see him leave.



I started my new Tati journeys with the follow-up to "Mr. Hulot's Holiday", "Mon Oncle" (1958). In Oncle Hulot lives in a small town near his nephew whom he seems to be closer to in age than the adults in the town. His sister and husband live in a super-duper state of the art home with automatic gates, robot kitchens and the best gag of all the Fish statue that spits water out whenever someone comes in the gate. Although the funny thing about that particular gag is that it's Hulot's sister that has to turn the fountain on b4 anyone can come into the gate of the home. This theme is what is at the heart of Mon Oncle to me. Tati has a series of failed attempts at working in a factory, and a disastrous attempt at a romantic hookup at a dinner party by his sister, but alas the theme of this movie all goes back to that Fish. Tati to me at least is saying look at how silly we are that we worship gadgets, technology, and appearances. Tati does a good job here in balancing the comedy with satire. My only complaint was that it felt maybe about 20-30 minutes too long. Other than that I had a lot of fun with Mon Oncle, and I would welcome another view sometime.



The next one I popped in was called Playtime from 1967. It took Tati 3 or 4 years to film it, and after watching it you can see why. It's attention to detail is amazing. most scenes are played all in long shots with tons of extras and gags all going on at once. The film takes place in Paris mainly in a modern state of the art skyscraper as Tati's Mr' Hulot attempts to track down a busy executive to finish running an erand. the scenes with Hulot are great, but tend to drag at points. And where the film lost me is Tati's obsession with technology. Like a bad hangover from Mon Oncle's house he dwells on this for way too long. There are points where Hulot disappears from stretches of the film for what seems like half an hour. At over two hours the film is overlong. The best genius in this film is that as Hulot is tracking this guy down there is a secondary story of a female tourist dying to see Paris, when all she does is tour this crazy skyscraper. Whenever she opens a door in this building there is a reflection of the Eiffel Tower and other great Paris locations. I thought that was a genius visual move on Tati's part and I think it gets his point across better than anything else in the film. What I loved about Hulot's holiday and even mostly in Oncle is Hulot's humanity in this crazy world. In Playtime the character of Hulot gets lost in Tati's huge message canvas. It's technically a sight to behold as a filmmaker you can feel him growing as you go along, but at the same time I felt I signed up for a Hulot film, and although I was enlightened I was somewhat disappointed.

There is one more Hulot adventure I have not seen called Trafic, where Hulot plays a automobile inventor on his way to an auto show in a tech loaded RV. That sounds really fun, and I can't wait to see it. i did some more research on Tati, and on the Playtime DVD from Criterion, there is a second disc of documentaries and interviews that shed some more light on this really genius and incredible influential comedian that has influenced Mr. Bean, Monty Python, Peter Sellers, and countless others. For first timers I would recommend Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle. And yes Amy there are dogs in outfits.

Here is a the official Tati website. Be warned its design is more complicated and confusing as Tati could have ever imagined! Also look below for the trailer to Mon Oncle..

Click HERE to enter Tativille.com


DVD Review: Born to Fight


This weekend I watched one of the most insane movies ever. It's a kung-fu flick called "Born to Fight" from Thailand that defies explanation. It's not a good movie per se, its just that the fighting scenes are so bizarre and over the top that you can't help but have a good time. The plot is simple, a rogue terrorist group takes over a small country village in Thailand and sets up a nuclear missile aimed at a big city, and unless the government hands over some $ the prisoners get it. And boy do they. This movie is harsh with its violence, but then a crazy dude with one leg shows up and kicks a gord off a tree and into the head of a terrorist with a gun. Then soccer balls are used to knock off a few dudes in tree houses. That one had me rolling.

This film stars Dan Chupong and amazingly he survived this insanity directed by the equally insane Prachya Pinkaew. Mr. Pinkaew made a few of the Tony Jaa Films, like Ong bak and The Protector (aka Tom Yum Goong) Then there are the stunts which are all totally real and not CG. I mean some of them are downright painful to watch. In fact I've seen every Jackie Chan movie ever made and there were stunts in this movie that i have never even imagined were possible. Jackie would never be insane enough to do some of these. I'll be honest with you the mid section of the movie is a little drawn out, but then the ending action sequence happens. It's at least 45 mins long, and is the most insane thing you have ever seen. It really is almost too much to take in one viewing. I wanted to explain it to my wife, but I didn't know where to start. ( a dude gets toasted at short range with a missile launcher!) Like I said, this is not fine cinema, its not even a good movie, but the action is so over the top it ascends to some other form of cinema greatness of which I have not seen since the 80's films of JC.

But more than anything this film brings back the lost 80's art of Gymkata. Oh yes, the greatness! This film is without logic, and it could care less. Go rent it now!!!

Check out a fight megamix video that someone made:

Friday, October 12, 2007

Lone Star International Film Festival trailer


Howdy yo. Have a somewhat kind of premiere blog movie here. Sorta. See, my friend Barak Epstein directed a Grindhouse-esque trailer http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giffor the Grindhouse movie earlier this year which I greatly admired and showed here on the blog. I was approached by the Lone Star Film Society to do a trailer for the 1st Lone Star Film Festival in Fort Worth on November 7-11.

I didn't really have time or money to shoot anything totally original, but one morning I thought about Barak's trailer if re-cut would be perfect for what they were looking for. So I hit up the Barak, and he said cool, so I cut a demo for them. They bit on it hard, and here we are. Barak and I re-cut the original a few weeks back, and this whack ass trailer should be hitting Rave Theater cinema chains, local bars, schools, and T.V. screens near you real soon...

Download it in Quicktime HERE.




Local hommie, James M Johnston also did a trailer featuring my favorite horror movie characters, Zombies. Check it here:

Thursday, October 11, 2007

City of Violence

I know its been a while since I blogged anything, but right after Atombomb.tv went up, my dayjob as commercial maker got real nuts, so much so that I really have not had much free time. But last night I watched this crazy Korean kung-fu flick called "City of Violence". It's crazy wicked and the ending fight sequence is worth the price of rental alone. It's lke taking a time machine back to all the great 80's and 90's Jackie Chan flicks, just more bloody! Here is a trailer from youtube. It's available here in the states on the Dragon Dynasty video label. Kick it.