Martyrs

I don't normally recommend movies that really disturbed me, but in this case, I am making an exception. Martyrs which got little if any release here in the U.S. Martyrs directed by Pascal Laugier is a truly disturbing French film, that leaves you cold inside after viewing. I am recommending it because it has not left my mind since I saw it. It's been over a month and I still think about it. And for that reason I am saying you should go out and get it. It is out on video now, so give it shot.



I'm not going to review it, because the more I say about it will ruin its shock. The film is well made and very well thought out. I can't really say that it is a horror movie per se but it does start out that way, then halfway through it takes a turn into a new realm. Some might pass it off as the Saw-esque torture porn trend, but I think it transcends the horror genre at the halfway point, and goes into a more cerebral area. However it is one that you might not want to visit with the lights off.

ONEDREAMRUSH

ONEDREAMRUSH is a very cool-sounding collaborative effort between filmmakers, writers, actors and actresses that was created by the New Zealand Vodka brand 42BELOW and, as such, is the first implicitly branded content ever admitted to the Cannes Film Festival.

Essentially, a bunch of world-renowned artists were brought together to create 42 films, each 42 seconds long and all of them about the interpretation of dreams. Among those featured are Abel Ferrara, David Lynch, Asia Argento, James Franco, Kenneth Anger, Arden Wohl, Sean Lennon, Mike Figgis, Harmony Korine and so many more. Each director's film will be featured at this WEBSITE for one year, and the complete work will begin a tour following Cannes that will take it through New York, London and Rome. I checked youtube and about 12 of the 42 episodes are on there already. However they could get pulled at anytime! Check out the trailer below!

The Immotion Studios Blog

Now you can follow my work adventures on the new Immotion blog by going to http://immotionblog.blogspot.com or just click HERE.

REVIEW: Timecrimes

OK, You have to see this movie! This one I had heard a lot about and finally got to see it this week. If you love time travel scenarios and theorizing what would happen if you went back in time and did this or did that, and whatnot, this is an incredible film to sink your minds into. The movie concerns an older couple living out in the woods. Nearby is a research facility where we do not know whats happening really. Not yet anyway. After doing some landscaping, The husband, Hector is enjoying his surrounds watching things through his binoculars when he sees a young woman disrobing. His wife leaves to run an errand and intrigued he walks into the woods only to find her knocked out, then he is stabbed in the arm by a man wearing a bloody bandage as a mask and a trench coat.



As he runs away he takes shelter in the research facility and a scientist tells him to hide in this giant liquid tub machine with a cover over it. He goes in and in a second he is transported back in time a few hours. The scientist tells him that there are now 2 of him. He then tries to go back and stop the killing but then realizes that through a series of crazy events the "killer" in the mask is actually someone he knows quite well... And the time loop keeps happening to a point where there are 3 versions of him walking around trying to figure it all out in this 2 hour time frame. You really have to pay attention but if you love that time shifting stuff this is a really fun movie to watch and re-watch. The performances are dead on, and the director, Nacho Vigalondo does a great job here on his first feature film. Look out for this guy, as he could be a director to watch. It's out on video now through Magnet Releasing. Netflix it now!!!

Here is a trailer:

St. Nick (UPDATED)

My buddy James Johnston produced a movie by local filmmaker David Lowery called St. Nick. It made some serious noise at SWSW and won the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Dallas fest. I'm real excited for those guys and to see the movie! I have not yet seen it, because I'm a butthead, but I hope to this Saturday night at 8pm as its playing at The Modern in Ft. Worth as part of the Modern 'Til Midnight series going on. So if you're into cool indie films or films in general go out and see St. Nick. It's made by real filmmakers who love film, and know how to actually express themselves through it. Imagine that? CLICK HERE for a link to the Modern site where you can find ticket and show info.

UPDATE:

We went and saw the movie and I was really moved by the film. I think David did a tremendous job at juggling telling a story and doing it a way that was pure to him as an artist. I felt there was a great balance here, and reminded me of Badlands. I'm proud to know those guys and I think this film will be a huge stepping stone for them. I'm really impressed with the film!!! I will keep people updated on where the film is and how to see it.

Will You Be Here Tomorrow?

Oh my this is so wonderful...

New Trailers!

Here are a few movies that I think might be good...




Lars von Trier's Antichrist - Official Trailer from Zentropa on Vimeo.

Cat Sh1t One Movie Trailer

I would go see this opening day.

Warners Brothers has a brilliant idea!

This is truly a great idea and I am glad the folks over at Warners figured this out. Check it:

Warner Bros has produced over 6,800 theatrical films, but only 1,200 or so titles are available on DVD today. But tonight the studio has announced that they are opening their movie vault, through a new website — WarnerArchive.com. Until now, the limited sales potential of some films and tv shows has prevented Warner Bros from making the titles available to the public. The new site is an on-demand manufacturing operation which allows customers to purchase long tail titles. Movies will cost $19.95, and will be shipped in a shrink-wrapped case with cover art within five days of purchase.

That's one side of it, but you can also for about 5-10 bucks cheaper just get a digital copy of the film you are looking for without having to deal with dvd at all. This should serve as a model for other studios looking to make money and also you bypass the middleman such as Blockbuster (on life support) and Netflix. Access to all those lost films that may never see the light of day is a great way for film nerds to discover new works of art and then spread them to their friends, thus expanding the opportunity for that film to have new life and make some money at the same time. Genius! The Warner Archive is active right now. Take a look HERE.

RIP: Natasha Richardson

Horrible news. Natasha Richardson died yesterday after a freakish ski accident. I always admired her work as an actress, in particular was a movie she worked quite hard on to get made and released called "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1990. It has become somewhat of a cult classic now, so if you have not seen it, I would recommend it highly... Here is the very cheesy trailer for it.

RIP OFF ALERT: French Connection Blu-ray

Having never really picked my feet in Poughkeepsie, I do love director William Freidkin's film, The French Connection. I have the 2 disc dvd set, and was quite excited to pick up the new blu-ray edition of it, because it features a new transfer supervised by Freidkin himself. Awesome right? OMG a man has ruined his own film, and probably got paid well to do so.

If you have seen the FC, you know how cool and washed out the documentary styled film is. That's part the charm the film has. It feels real and gritty. Well for Blu-ray not anymore! It's got vibrant colors and blue skys for all to see. It makes racist anti-hero cop Popeye Doyle seem so much more well colorful. I looked over at High Def Digest and they too had quite a similar reaction to this new "transfer". Long story short director Freidkin started his color correction by using a black and white print then coloring somehow off of that! So when I saw it, it looked like a movie colorized on the old Ted Turner channel of disgrace.

I have also discovered that original Director of Photography, Owen Roizman was not consulted for this version. At all. He has gone on the record now:

"I wasn't consulted. I was appalled by it. I don't know what Billy was thinking. It's not the film that I shot, and I certainly want to wash my hands of having had anything to do with this transfer, which I feel is atrocious." To which Friedkin then lashed out at Roizman in a lengthy interview where he barely stops short of calling the man incompetent. Freidkin has clearly lost his mind on this one. Freidkin has done some truly remarkable work in my book. Exorcist, FC, To Live and Die in LA, Rampage, etc. Maybe he has lost his marbles now. (I thought "Bug" was overrated)



I took my blu-ray back and got a refund and I had sold my old one to upgrade, and they gave me that back as well. It looks so much better than this God awful mess. So if you're a fan of French Connection and you have the old special edition by all means keep it! Boycott the Blu-ray version and tell your friends. You can read the full Blu-ray review over HERE at High Def Digest. Thanks to Joshua Zyber for bringing all this to my attention.

Happy St. Patricks Day!!!

WATCH IT: Look Around You

There is a British show currently airing on Adult Swim which is a part of the Cartoon Network. Very few shows make me laugh anymore but this show is a parody of BBC educational programs. The show is truly odd and very special! Check it out if you like random off the wall comedy. Here is a LINK to the show's homepage on Adult Swim.

I Married the Eiffel Tower

There is a documentary series somewhere out there called Strangelove. The first episode is called "Married to the Eiffel Tower" and it's about women in love with not men or other women or even animals, but objects. Like a Bridge, or a tower, or a Fence. yes I'm not kidding. They have intimate relationships with a fence. There is a second episode called, "My Car is my Lover" about men who make sweet love to their cars. This is not a joke... Check it:


Watch Married To The Eiffel Tower [Part 1]  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch Married To The Eiffel Tower [Part 2]  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch Strangelove - My Car Is My Lover [Part 1]  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch Strangelove - My Car Is My Lover [Part 2]  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watchmen Saturday Morning fun!

This is a goof BTW.

REVIEW: The Watchmen

At the age of 12 or 13 the Watchmen comic book series came out, and although I still frequented the comic shops I really wasn't interested so much in reading comics anymore. Obviously you begin scouting for raunchier material. A graphic novel was a "buzz word" at that time in the later 80's. They were comics that were well more graphic in violence and sexual situations. I was always a DC comics guy. I loved me some Superman and Batman, but there was some pretty dark themes in those from time to time but nothing Earth shattering. Then I saw this Watchmen happy face all over the place in the comic store. So I picked up an issue, I think it was maybe the Dr. Manhattan issue of him on Mars. And he did a lot of talking to a chick in spandex. Not having read the other issues in the 12 part series, I had no idea what was going on and it was way over my head. I never read another issue, and probably went on to scope out some Playboys.



Now the film version of the Watchmen has been going on since that time almost with a host of directors most notably Terry Gilliam. When I head that Gilliam was going to make this I was intrigued to read the comics again. I though maybe I had missed something, and perhaps I should start at the beginning. Well that movie never happened for obvious budgetary reasons. So I lost interest until recently when it fired up again with several other directors getting as far as pre-production with Paul Greengrass. Flash forward to X-mas 08 and my wife, Amy gives me the complete graphic novel for Christmas and a companion book. So I knew the film was coming out in March, so I needed to get reading. I read most of it on my X-mas vacation. And as many of you know that have read it, its not in any way a typical super hero yarn. It is in fact almost an anti-hero yarn. I was quite taken with the characters first and foremost. They all had flaws like we do. They were all vulnerable human beings with the exception of Dr. Manhattan who is the only hero with actual super powers. And unlike most super heroes they were all rejects and castaways thought to be part of the problem, not the answer.

The book worked on many levels for me, I think it asks us about what we are as a human race and how foolish we are in times of war. The characters themselves have a hard time defining who they really are. Are they the person out of the costume or the person in the costume. And if they are the person in the costume are they insane to begin with and should they even be allowed to fight crime. But the most important theme of the movie is in the title itself. If the heroes/politicians that protect and watch over us are as human as we are, who watches over them. Who watches the watchmen. Is it a God, which in many ways is what the character of Dr. Manhattan represents. The book offers no definitive answers of course, it's left to you to think about after you are done reading the novel.



So we were able to see a sneak preview to the film last night in Big D thanks to a very special friend... We were searched from head to toe by security and I was wanded twice. It felt good after a long drive. For the first time I actually saw a security person take a video camera from a person in the audience before it started. So as a result we had creepy security people staring at us all night. Anyway on to the review of the movie.

The movie wastes no time by dispatching with the thrust of the story which is the murder of the Captain America like hero, The Comedian. The Watchmen is essentially a murder mystery which serves as a device to reveal more devious Armageddon like crimes about to happen. The opening credits then begin and in them you get a lot of back-story from the comics in a very compressed amount of time. I like how they did it and although it might confuse some who haven't read the book, it gives you all you need for the movie experience. Much like the Justice League, The Watchmen are a retired group of super heroes who have been banned from fighting crimes by Nixon now serving a third term of office. The Watchmen are all stand ins for other DC and Marvel heroes like Superman(Dr. Manhattan) Nite Owl and Rorshack make up the two sides of Batman, and Silk Spectre is Wonder Woman to an extent. And The Comedian is in several ways Captain America gone horribly wrong. The country is on the brink of nuclear war with the USSR. Things are bad all over.



Rorshack played with perfection by Jackie Earl Haley begins to investigate and persuade his fellow heroes that someone is killing "Masks" or heroes. This leads them out of retirement and eventually uncover a hideous plot to destroy the world. Director Zack Snider almost committed career suicide by trying to remake Dawn of the Dead. However that was OK, and 300 was a fun if very inaccurate ride. But it looked cool. Watchmen looks fantastic. I loved how he made it look very 80's in style but didn't try to over stylish stuff too much. Looks like he used a lot of real sets instead of a constant blue screen. It was a very good balance of styles.

The adaptation itself cuts out a lot of stuff that although worked in a novel context for the film it needed to be left out. However there were some major sins committed here. The first being the ending that has been re-worked to implicate one of the main characters. I did not like that at all. It hit me like a speed bump. I thought it was very out of character and kind of a soap operish move. The biggest problem I had with the ending was not so much the device they substituted for the one int he book but a line Dr. Manhattan utters to another character that is replaced by two other characters in the next to last scene. For me that was a very emotional part of the novel for both of those characters and reflected who they were. I did not like AT ALL that Snider shifted that line to another. It lessens its impact in a major way. That one damn thing almost ruined it for me.



But in short I really dug the rest of the movie. And I missed the plight of the people on the street. That plot is all but gone int he Watchmen. In the novel you spend time with the common street people, the inhabitants of whats left of USA. you're left with living with the rich elite and the super heroes almost. The stories of Rorshack and Nite Owl are great. I can't say enough of how perfect those parts are. Silk Spectre is also quite good, but I felt her mother played by Carla Guigino was a little overacted. The Comedian was also played quite well. Although in the novel I think he was more of a shithead than he is here. But that is nitpicking. Dr. Manhattan played by Billy Crudup is quite nice. He is not as talky as he is in the novel, and I missed some of his time shifting speeches and his F humanity scientific speak from the book as well. Overall this is a really good adaptation that for whatever reason rushes too fast to a conclusion and as a result kind of mucks up a perfect ending. I am hoping the Director's cut will find itwa way here soon, and it is about 45 mins longer. Maybe they will fill in some blanks and slow that ending down. Not to harp but it almost felt like they needed to end it because it was getting too long, and so they just made the ending shorter.

So see the movie first maybe before you read it if you plan too, and be prepared to have a blast at the movies. This is what I wanted to see when I was 12 years old on the big screen. This movie will have a hard time catching on for general audiences but I think over time it will grow in legend. This is a movie made for geeks by geeks. And now it can be done! Bring on the Green Lantern!!!!

REVIEW: Friday the 13th: The Remix

So, I got to see Friday the 13th on my 36th birthday last Saturday because the Friday the 13th showing of Friday the 13th was sold out. I did start to feel a bit mortal that day knowing that in my lifetime I have lived through twelve Friday the 13th films, and now with Hills Have Eyes, last House on the Left, and coming soon... A Nightmare on Elm Street all being remade I guess I might be at the top of the hill and about to go down age wise.

Watching Marcus Nispel's remake of Friday the 13th was fun but also somewhat of a missed opportunity in my mind. I am a big Friday fan, so I knew going in they were going to cram Parts 1-3 into one film. That's no biggie, but they crammed 1 and 2 in before the opening credits were done! So there was no buildup really of Jason and why he and his Mom had such a tight relationship. It was all crammed into a fast cutting music video style open. Lame. The slower methodical way of previous Fridays has been replaced with shaky cam. I have no problem with shaky cam mind you, but when it's done poorly it reeks of "hey guess what I can't figure out how to frame?" There is a lot of that here. And as a result it takes away from Jason's creepiness. By far the best scene in the film is when Jason shows up in a long shot as a girl is trying to swim to safety. It's a very eerie shot that actually works in full on broad daylight. And the kill of her under the dock is also the best kill. If only the rest of the film was as good as the lake sequence.




Derek Mears I think plays Jason and he is fine, but I longed for the days of Kane Hodder who played Jason in 7-10. That dude had it down. The rest of the cast shows up at a cabin, gets naked and gets dispatched but I was just really disappointed they didn't do the great 80's Camp counseler thing. (oh and all the actors look like Abercrombie and Finch models or on Gossip Girl) I think if your going to rebuild a legend, then do it in it's natural environment. I remember going to camp in the summer and the first thing we would do is start telling stories to girls about how Jason was out there and how he was coming for us. There is NONE of that kind of campfire-eque fun here. In fact you may as well just called it Friday the 13th Part 12, cause its in present day so if just forget the fact he finds the hockey mask in this one, it's as if life went on at Camp Crystal Lake.



Keep in mind I liked director Nispel's Texas Chainsaw remake, which was also shot in Austin, TX as is this one. But come on dude, maybe its because I'm from Texas but for me this was the most distracting thing about the movie to me. I would have titled it Jason Takes Tejas. Most of the other movies had a kind of East Coast Vermont feel to them. This is summertime dead tree Texas. I kept waiting for him to team up with Leatherface. (maybe that's the plan) But I never in my mind saw Jason in Texas, he lived on the East coast and ended up in New York!

Something popped in my mind though after it was over, The director of the TCM prequel TCM: The Beginning. I think its Jonathan Liebesman was originally attached to this, and he should of stayed on board instead Nispel. TCM: The Beginning is a utter brutal film, and this one is just a fun ride. Nispel just plain does not get the joke here. I had high hopes for my hommie Mr. Voorhees, but alas he has been dissed in another crappy remake. I guess as a fun slasher movie its not bad, but my hopes were higher for something that could have really setup an interesting new franchise. Instead there is really nowhere to go with a sequel without starting over yet again. Or maybe I'm just old.

V: The Redux

V was my favorite show as a kid. I loved me the hell out of some V. I was obsessed with it. I used to pretend I was Queen lizard leader herself, Diana's half lizard half earthling son working for the Resistance. Did I mention how much I loved this show, and that Diana actress, Jane Badler (pic above) and her sister are my Facebook friends?

Now for years series creator Kenneth Johnson has been trying to get a new mini-series or movie made to conclude the thing and start a new deal. But ABC has taken over and signed a deal for a new version by one of the guys behind the Terminator show and The 4400 series. I have mixed feelings about it, because this will be a "reboot" or "re-imagining" of the original. I've read the synopsis and it does nothing for me. It sounds quite boring. But now is a good time for V to come back. With the terrorism scare and crappy economy, people are scared for what's next. Lizard aliens attacking the earth would be the last thing we want to deal with, but could the rallying call America needs.

Click HERE to read the full story thanks to The Movie Blog...

Building a Home Media Player Part 1

Every once in a while on the blog here the subject of DVD and Blu-ray comes up. And usually I discuss the greatness of picture quality with those formats. And right now physical media is still the dominant way to watch movies and other forms of entertainment without quality loss. However, if you have cable and satellite you are all quite familiar with on-demand services and pay-per-view and the greatness of DVR's and Tivo's. I love my DirecTv DVRs unconditionally. They ARE the greatest things ever. The best thing about them to me is not just the ease of use but they got rid of all those pesky space taking VHS tapes, DVD discs, and bulky VCRs. I am a proponent of ditching the physical world of media all together and the convergence of the internet/tv/HD Discs etc. We should be able to come home one day, turn on our TV, check our email, go to a website and watch whatever TV Show, Movie, Sports, or Video game we want. All in one deal. Getting there is the problem now. There are too many cooks in the kitchen.

A few months ago I was talking to my brother-in-law Art, and he like me, is a great tech nut himself. Although he was late to the DVR/Tivo party, he dove in head first and hacked the thing to include a bigger hard drive to have endless recording capabilities. I'm sure many of you have iTunes, and as soon as you buy a CD (if anyone still does that) and you put it on your iTunes to build your library. As for myself I don't have any physical CD's laying around taking up countless bookshelves. They are nicely sitting on a hard drive (with a backup). They can played through out the house wireless on a network in any room. Well we wanted to do that with our DVD collections.



So in essence it's itunes for movies. But you ask, isn't that called AppleTV. Sort of. You see AppleTV only plays AppleTV files. I want all my video formats to play, not just Apple encoded stuff. So the concept is the same as ATV, without all the rules and DRM BS. So I discovered this awesome thing by Western Digital called The Western Digital HD Media Player. It plays EVERYTHING know to man.

Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA
Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264),
MTS, TP, TS

I think the only thing it does not play that I could find was VC-1 which was the codec for HD-DVD's. Oh well...



And it fits in the palm of your hand for 99 bux. However before you throw down the plastic, keep in mind you have to provide a flash drive or hard drive with content on it for it to play stuff. So until I get a really good 1TB hard drive, I'm going to use a 32GB flash drive i got at Frys for about 40 bucks. It has 2 usb slots for multiple drives.

So now I have this player, how do you get your DVDs and other crap on it? Easy, but it takes a bit of planning, experimenting and time to convert you DVDs. All your other stuff like Windows media files, AVI's or home movies you might have on a hard drive, just transfer them to the drive you want to use with the Media Player and you are good to go.



No for DVD's... I'm a Mac person, but this program is available for PC peeps too. It's called Handbrake, and it's free! Handbrake will rip your DVD's and then compress them into tiny files that look almost identical to your original DVD. For instance say I have a copy of Iron Man. Let's say the Standard Def DVD is about 7GB. Handbrake will create a mp4 file of the same movie in a 1GB file. How is this possible you ask? Well the greatness of h.264 compression. DVD's are creeping up on 15 years old now. And the tech in them is MPEG2 compression. Handbrake uses h.264 to rearrange that ancient stuff into a similar file but h.264 uses much less space than 90's MPEG2. It ditches a lot of useless 90's compression info. This is the same stuff Apple uses for Quicktime and Apple TV and ipod and iphone movies. So its not that new either.



Now that I've got my DVD compressed into a tiny file, I was concerned about menus, audio commentaries, and other bonus features on the DVD. To my knowledge there is not a way yet to get the menu structure and all that stuff working, but in Handbrake there is something called .MKV files that act as a container for those MP4 files. So now I can compress the movie, multiple audio streams and subtitles all in the same container (MKV). And once played back, on the HD Media player I can select this audio stream or another one. Same with subs or chapter stops. (Although I have yet to get the chapter stops to work on all titles....)



The HD media player has HDMI out so it supports full 1080P output. the menus on the screen are very similar to a PS3 or Sony menu layout. It's pretty simple. You can create folders to sort TV shows and movies and personal home movies. So what does this all mean? It means you can now throw your own movies, and home movies, you tubes, email videos all on your portable hard drive or Flash sticks, and boom you have all your videos ready to go, just like a tivo would. And best of all this saves shelve space if you don't want to have all those pesky discs laying all over the place. You don't have go get the disc load it, wait for FBI warnings, trailers, ads, etc. It builds your library as you want it. So think of this as a giant ipod for your videos.

Now you're probably thinking but hey what about Blu-ray discs. Oh it goes there, but I have yet to get a Blu-Ray computer drive for that. But Art has, and he has done it, and the results are amazing. So that will be my Part 2 of this article. Stay tuned!

Licence to Restore

This is a documentary on the Dr. No Blu-ray about all the extensive restoration they are doing on the James Bond movies they are releasing on Blu-Ray. I watched Dr. No last night and it was amazing. It looked like it was shot yesterday. Anyway this documentary was really insightful about restoring older films. I got to work as an archivist on some old film footage at Channel 5 when I was working there. Cleaning it by hand, and restoring it digitally was a real experience and this documentary reminded me of how important film restoration is.

Muchos Gracias!

Many thanks to all the emails and comments about my short film, "The Farm". I really appreciate it and I visited my Grandfather in the nursing home yesterday afternoon and shared all the great comments with him. At 95, he is very thrilled to be in another film, and in his words at 95 he is happy to be anywhere! I am currently working researching and writing a new project which I am super excited about doing. So stay tuned...

Trailer: Black Dynamite

My hommie, Cedrick has a part in this crazy ass movie that just sold to Sony for a cool 2 million at Sundance. As a fan of Dolemite, this makes me smile...

WARNING this is the Red Band trailer, so it has the good stuff in it.

NBS Nightly News Report

Now this is way too friggin cool!

The Farm

The Farm (HD) from Atombomb.tv on Vimeo.

Over the Christmas break, my good friend and fellow filmmaker Jason Todd Hampton encouraged me to make a short film. I must admit that I couldn't get behind anything quality that we could weave in and around the holiday travels and events. So I thought how much we both enjoyed shooting nature, having enjoyed such programs as Planet Earth and Sunrise Earth. So instead of doing a comedy as originally planned, I decided to head out to my Grandfather's Ranch of which we refer to as The Farm. We shot all day until the sun came down on us. We hiked all over about 200 acres in a pattern similar to that of which my Grandfather and I often walked when I stayed out there. In fact you might call this short film a sequel or re-imagining of a my very first film, Farm: The First Documentary I made in 1987.



I took the footage we shot and set it to some music, and even though to me it was compelling, it may not mean much to anyone outside of my family. I discussed with Jason about going out to the nursing home to film my Grandfather talking about the Farm, but something about that seemed like it would take away from the imagery. So I found my old VHS tape of my Grandfather narrating my original '87 documentary and digitized those. The voice over was in pretty bad shape. I mean I think I used a two dollar Radio Shack microphone for the recording session in the back of the house. After listening to the track, there was something interesting about the contrast between the cracky audio and the HD imagery. So I used Soundtrack Pro to clean the audio up a wee bit, and merged the two elements into this experimental short film. In fact its more of a mediation than anything else. It's not for everyone, but it was something organic that just kind of needed to be made for some reason. I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun discovering it...

Head over to ATOMBOMB.TV to watch it in Standard Def or in big time HD by clicking on the HD icon on the movie window. Or you can watch it above in Standard Def. Crank your sound up too because its a pretty quiet film.

Ong Bak 2: Electric Bakaloo!

Lookie lookie, it's an Ong Bak 2 trailer. Kick Ass!

REVIEW: My Bloody Valentines (old and new)

To 3-D or not 3-D. That was the question Saturday night as we took a quest out to the local cinema to see the new horror opus, My Bloody Valentine 3-D. But let's back up a bit and look at the original film produced in in 1981 and directed by George Mihalka. I think I saw this in a TV edit, a long time ago. I quickly dismissed it then, and never really though of it as a slasher classic by any means, so I was a bit taken a back that they wanted to remake this sucker. In the original a little mining town is cursed after some minors are left to die in a collapsed mine on Valentine's Day. One miner escapes named Harry Warden. Ticked off at any attempt to celebrate Valentine's Day again old Mr. Warden seems to return to town ten years later to wreak havoc amongst the kiddies again. Or does he? Halloween anyone? Basically this is a typical 80's slasher clone revolving around a teenage love triangle. The one thing that sets this movie apart was for me the appearance of the killer. The mining suit is quite scary and used very effectively in both this version and even more so in the updated 3-D version, which we will get to later. Now I rented the new director's cut of the original because the old R-rated version had 9 minutes of gore cut out. That's a lot MPAA! So this new version on dvd from Lions Gate gives you the option of playing both the original and uncut versions. I can't say the old version is anything of a buried treasure. The mine getup is very scary here, and this version spends a lot more time in the mining tunnels which is something the remake could have learned from.



My Bloody Valentine 3-D is the remake out in theaters now. I really wanted to see this to experience the new Real D technology I had heard about. It sounded like it could be fun. The plot is pretty much the same, they just updated things and re-arranged the characters to throw off fans of the original. There is a lot of nudity and lot of gore, and tons of Harry Warden. And really the Warden character and the creepy tunnels are the main reason to see this movie other than the 3-D. This movie is more a return in tone to the Scream and I Know What you (and your cleavage) Did Last Summer flicks from the 90's. But at the same time it does have some good old fashioned 80's style gore effects. Director Patrick Lussier who is Wes Craven's editor in his free time, does a nice job with the director's duties making a much slicker film than the original. Jaimie King and Jensen Ackles play the main leads and do a serviceable job here.



Now on to the 3-D. I loved it. I wish it was on a bigger screen, so you can get more immersed in it, but I thought it was fun as hell. The depth was really amazing, and as far as the things flying out at you, it was so-so. The light on Harry Warden's mining hat was very spooky. And the 3-D in the tunnel system was outstanding. Stay through the end credits and you'll see even more of what I'm talking about. The movie though, is pretty forgettable. And please no more CG body parts being thrown at me. I didn't buy the effects there. Overall I had a good time, and although its still early in the game for 3-D, you can see it's coming, and it will only be a matter of time before we are all walking around the house in giant grandma glasses waiting to see Star Wars 55 in 3-D. If you like 3-D and bad 80's remakes then you can't go wrong with this one.

The Vacation Film Festival Blowout

OK, so this vacation I decided to really relax and take it easy, get some exercise, travel, and watch a crap load of movies that have been stacked up for ages. I made some progress, so here is a quick review of everything I watched. Starting with the Documentaries:



Confessions of a Superhero
Great documentary about the crazies that dress up as super heroes or celebrities in front of Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It mostly focuses on four people who dress as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Hulk. Some of them are struggling actors and some of them are just plain mental patients. Highly recommended.



Cocaine Cowboys:
Another terrific documentary that will captivate you from second one. This doc chronicles the late 70's and early 80's drug wars in Miami. This is the real deal and not Crocket and Tubbs. The characters are real and very dangerous and maybe someday they can make a movie based on this and not something like Scarface, who one of the murderers says was not accurate. He said they were more insane than that!

Sicko:
I used to dig Michael Moore, but his shtick has grown very very tired. His docs are less and less like docs now but more like comedy routines that try to make him look like Mr. Funny and Gee how great am I for showing people these things. Roger and Me and Columbine were great docs, and parts of Fahrenheit 911 were too, but its getting old dude.

Autism: The Musical
This is about a mother of an adopted kid with Autism and her class of autistic kids that decide to put on a musical to show off their talents. Through the course you learn about each kids problems and plights. Some of the mothers are a bit on the crazy side and things begin to melt down hours before the performance as egos begin take over. I had heard some good things about this doc, but nothing really captured my attention.

The Road to Guantanamo:
A 2006 doc about three guys arrested for being part of Al Queda when in fact they were on their way to a wedding for a good friend. Upon arriving he went missing and in the search in finding him they get thrown into the 911 throw down and are mistaken for terrorists and spend several years in prison and wind up in Guantanamo. I liked the story of this movie, but since they had no footage of any of this , they went back and tried to recreate it intermixed with the real guys interviews. The reacted stuff bothered me so much that I had a hard time really feeling this. But like I said the story itself is very good.




Harlan County USA:
This is an older doc on Criterion disc from Barbara Kopple that I've always heard about but could never find. It details the efforts of coal miners strikes in Harlan County against "The Man". These strikes go on for a year or so and get quite intense. The greatest thing about this doc is the way its done. You can tell this director went all out and became of these minors. Every aspect is detailed from the strike to family life. It is literally like being a fly on the wall. Highly recommended.



Baraka
8K transfer bitches! This is the sharpest Blu-ray disc on the Earth. Ron Frickes 92 film is much like Cronos the Imax movie and Koyanskatsi. The images are breathtaking and mind blowing in 1080p. This film was shot in 65mm, and transferred frame by frame at 8K res. Most films are done in 4K. There is also a great documentary on the disc about the making of not just the movie but the restoration as well. Amazing stuff that can only be seen with the best Blu-ray tech.

I watched a few more that were not worth mentioning, so let's move on to some narratives:




The Promotion:
Starring Sean Williams Scott and John C. Reilly I really fell for this comedy. Scott plays a guy who works as a grocery store manager who is hoping to get a big promotion from corporate, when John C. Reilly is brought in from Canada to help run the store, and he too is up for the same promotion. The rest may seem predictable and formulaic but this is different in that takes some really interesting dramatic turns but is still really funny while remaining true to life. Which is probably why it pretty much went straight to video. Check this one out for sure. I usually hate anything with Scott in it, but he administered the shocker to me on this one.




Talk to Me:
A Biopic of DJ Petey Greene. This movie tells the story of convict Greene played nicely by Don Cheadle who upon getting out of prison attempts to or insists on being a disc jockey. Music soon takes a backseat to his ability to talk to the people of Detroit and once the assassination of Martin Luther King happens he finds himself as a person who can bring people together. However Green just wants to BS on the air and a TV show and Johnny Carson appearance begin to reveal that Green is not comfortable in his hero role at all and begins a path so self destruction that leaves his manager played by Chiwetel Ejiofor to become a famous DJ when Green leaves the game. I liked this movie as I learned a few more things about Green I didn't know. Most of my knowledge of him comes from his association with Howard Stern. Stern cites him as an inspiration for his own show. Recommended.




Last King of Scotland:
Forrest Whitaker has come a long way since Fast Times. And newcomer James McAvoy was equally great in this amazing film about Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. I even think the movie could of been even longer and better has it expanded upon some of Amin's crimes. This one is a keeper for those of you who have not seen it.

Paranoid Park:
Gus Van Sant returns to his native Portand, OR roots to make another experimental film this time incorporating some thriller/noir elements in a movie that left me pretty empty. I appreciate what he was going for with he realistic treatment of characters and stuff. But I didn't really learn much from this that I didn't already know. Skater kids are depressed and it rains a lot in Oregon, which makes them pine for the return of grunge music so everyone can be sad together. Not Van's worst movie by far but not his greatest. Hey at least its not Gerry! I will give props to the cinematography by my hero Christopher Doyle who does some really pretty work on a no budget.




Perhaps Love:
This is a blu-ray i picked up on import because the director Peter Chan made a really oool movie called Comrades Almost a Love Story a few years back I really dug. So this one won a crap load of HK awards, and its a musical. What could go wrong? And while make no mistake the imagery in this is breathtaking especially in 1080p on Blu, but in the end I found the film to be overly sentimental and I had checked out at about half time.




Half Nelson:
This is not The Wrestler Part 2. Ryan Gosling plays this high school history teacher in the ghetto in what we think might be Dangerous Minds or some shit, but ends up being Bad Lieutenant goes to High School. It seems our inspirational teacher has a really bad drug problem. Heck he even gets high in the girls locker room! All fin aside this is a really good movie and shows that in the hood black, white, green whatever, all have struggles. And every day is a fight to find something left to fight for. The movie never comes out and says that, you have to find it. Check this one out.

Hancock:
Great first half and really unfocused second half. I wonder if there is a mystery cut of this film floating around somewhere... Recommended for fun.




The Proposition:
This is an intense Western that pulls no punches when it comes to violence. Guy Pierce stars in a Australian western that would kill Baz Luhrman then Skull F his Australia movie for fun. Its that crazy. This is about a lawman that captures the younger brother of a notorious outlaw and threatens to kill him unless he kills his even more notorious older brother outlaw. This is a great movie that must have been overlooked which is too bad. Seek it.

Redbelt:
A David Mamet movie about Mixed Martial Arts. Well mediocre Mamet is better than Grade A other stuff I guess, but I have high expectations with things saying Mamet, so I was slightly disappointed. And please dude stop putting your wife in your movies. Does she have some sex video of you and a small animal?




Diving Bell and the Butterfly:
OK hands down this was the best film I saw over vacation marathon. This is the amazing story of Elle magazine editor, Jean-Do in a staggering performance by Mathieu Amalric who had a stroke that left him paralyzed to the point where he only had the use of one eye to blink. He along with a nurse developed a communication system based on winking that enabled him to write a book about his life before he passed on. Flashbacks aside this film is told mainly from the POV of his one eye which puts the viewer in situations beyond their control much like he was. The cinematography here by Spielberg DP Janusz Kaminski is amazing. I hope this comes out on Blu really soon. This is a story about a life of regret and a man unable to express it to the ones he loves. But somehow he finds that way. REALLY RECOMMENDED!



In Bruges:
Great thriller with Colin Farrel as an assassin who has a hit go horrible wrong hiding out in Bruges with a fellow assassin. Things get a bit crazy, midgets get involved and fat Americans provide a lot of laughs in this great little thriller, that I would like to watch again. Farrel is very good here, and the film within the film being shot in Bruges is also a neat device that works in well with the plot. Check it out!




Boarding Gate
Ah. Asia Argento. You had me at A. This is a story about Asia who kills her crazy ass criminal businessman boyfriend Michael Madson, (who actually acts in this one) and is on the run in Hong Kong the rest of the time trying to not get knocked off by her other criminal boyfriend. This is pretty much a arty chase film with amazing photography by French director Oliver Assias who did Irma Vep with Maggie Chueng. Asia does a great job here and this film is a good one for a rainy day that is really just a bunch of amazing images intersected with boring dialog scenes.

Fatal Contact:
Abysmal Hong Kong fighting movie. Really bad. Bad.




Trafic:
Very entertaining Jacque Tati movie that suffers from a bit of being too long. This time Tati takes his act on the road mixing up all sorts of madcap sight gags while trying to get from one place to another for a car show. If you are into Tati, this one is quite fun.

Dog Bites Dog:
Another Hong Kong action movie that tries to eliminate dialog and create a visual tour de force action movie with limited speaking. Unfortunately the story is a bit of a leap of faith, and if you don't buy in it won't grab you much. And I'm in that category here. Skip.

Star Wars: Clone Wars
F Lucas.




Snow Angels:
Very depressing character drama from Director David Gordon Green. Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale are divorced with a little girl who one day goes missing, setting off a series of unfortunate events in a sleepy little town of sleepy characters looking for some purpose in a very sad limited universe. Both Rockwell and Beckinsale give great performances. The very ending is quite a shocker, and really took me off guard. I don't know if it was the perfect ending, but it did make me think. So I guess it worked.

The Notebook:
I'm not going to review this because I'm the last one on Earth who has not seen it. Suffice to say I liked it, but thought the core story could of done without the current day sentimental overkill.




Wanted:
This movie really took me off guard. I liked both Nightwatch and Daywatch, Timur Bekmambetovthe's previous Russian films, but at the end of the day I found them both pretty empty. Wanted however is really fun. I'm not familiar with the comic book its based on, but it had a great comic feel to it, so I hope its a faithful adaptation. Jolie and McAvoy make a good team and the rest of the cast are equally fun. Its a totally insane premise but for whatever reason it works and its a very entertaining film, that for once they make a sequel, cause I "wanted" more.




The Protector:
Tony Jaa stars as a dude who wants his stolen elephant back. He goes to Australia and kicks some serious ass. I watched the US cut of this, and I should of watched the international cut instead, because the editing is horrendous and the music is god awful. This is no Ong Bak folks. In fact it could be Rumble in the Bronx 2. Do all the punks in Australia and Vancouver seem stuck in an 80's Michael Jackson video? Fights are good in spots and if you like Tony Jaa, you will dig it.