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| 071508 ‘Choke’ on this. |
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. . . . . .What is in desperate need all over the world right now? That’s right, boobies. The world always needs more boobies, that’s what I always say. A second Chuck Palahniuk novel has been adapted into a film (the first being the surreal ‘Fight Club’.) This film looks quite different but also entertaining. The book has been adapted by filmmaker/ actor Clark Gregg. If you are not sure who Gregg is, chances are you have already seen him in something and don’t even realize it. The guy has been in a lot of stuff going back to the late 80’s. I particularly like his work in some of David Mamet’s films. For some reason I always remember his lines from ‘Spartan’ (not to be confused with ‘300’) |
| when he glares at a group of operatives surrounding a dead man and yells: “Who frisked this man? I say, he had a hold out piece, who frisked him?” Alright, it plays better in the film. Anyway, ‘Choke’ is, to my knowledge, Gregg’s first full length theatrical feature. The film looks to be a dark comedy starring Sam Rockwell. I really liked Rockwell in ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Minds’ amongst other things. The boobies come into play because an R-rated trailer is on the web featuring a healthy dose of nudity. Gregg also appears in the film as well as writing and directing (and thankfully does not appear to have boobies.) This one looks good to me and the boobies don’t hurt it either. To see the R-rated ‘Choke’ trailer go to, suprise, suprise, the Firstshowing.net page HERE. The official website for 'Choke' is HERE. -Nate |
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| 071408 Start your week knowing the ‘Outlander’ trailer is online. |
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. . . . . .A somewhat impressive looking trailer can be found on Firsthowing.net for the upcoming film ‘Outlander’. This trailer makes use of music from Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ films and has everything but the kitchen sink. I mean have you been sitting at home thinking “I’ve got my movies with spacemen in them but what they really need is some Vikings.” That’s right, you know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about ‘Outlander’. Oh there’s alien-dragons, space men, Vikings, and lots and lots of fire. I don’t really know what to think of the film but the trailer is certainly impressive. A man from outer space crash lands on Earth in the |
| time of the Vikings and enlists them to fight off some space dragon things that seem to be perusing him through the cosmos. At least, that is what I got from the trailer anyway. Either that or it has something to do with breast enlargement, I'll let you be the judge. Jim Caviezel, John Hurt, and the man who seems to be in everything sci-fi lately: Ron Perlman, all appear in 'Outlander'. The film is directed by Howard McCain (whose filmography I am not familiar with) but you wouldn’t know it from the trailer as the powers that be felt it was a much better idea to tout “‘Lord of the Rings’ producer Barrie Osborne”. Yes, now that is something you hear a lot: “Say those Osborne ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies sure were good.” Ah well, what ever way you can tie your movie into the success of those films is a good thing. I suppose. It is, after all, about the marketing. See the Firstshowing.net page with the 'Outlander' trailer HERE. -Nate |
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| 071208 ‘Mutant Chronicles’ teaser trailer online. |
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. . . . . .I’m not sure what to make of this one but it is the third time in as many days I am linking to a post on Firstshowing.net. The ‘Mutant Chronicles’ is based on one of those old pen and paper role playing games. If you are not familiar with it, that could be because you actually got laid in high school and/ or never played the ‘Doomtrooper’ card/ Super Nintendo/ Sega Genesis game. So, for the two fans out there, the ‘Mutant Chronicles’ is arriving in theatrical form soon. Actually, for all I know this thing has a huge following. Thomas Jane (pictured from the flim, to the left) stars in the film and his official site has posted the short teaser. (Although, I got to it through Firstshowing.net) The film looks to be a dark sci-fi action/ adventure film with Jane, John Malkovich, Ron Perlman, and Devon Aoki. I’m hoping this will be an entertaining, violent, sci-fi pic’. This is the third film with Jane that I have been following for awhile now. The first of which |
| ‘Kill Shot’, seems caught in limbo with no release in sight. I wrote about in January 07 HERE. The other film is also directed by Jane (and in 3-D no less!) The film is called ‘The Dark Country’ and Perlman co-stars in it too. I’ve liked Jane ever since I saw him in ‘Boogie Nights’. If you ever want to see a great film with him that is very underrated, check out ‘Stander’ (reviewed HERE.) Anywho’, back to teaser for ‘Mutant Chronicles’. The trailer is the sort that shows promise but doesn’t really make the movie look good or bad. For good or bad, check it out HERE. The official movie site can be seen HERE. The Firstshowing.net 'Mutant Chronicals' page is HERE. -Nate |
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| 071108 ‘Max Payne’ movie trailer on the web. |
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. . . . . .Speaking of wanting to like a film... I give you the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of the ‘Max Payne’ videogame series. I’m a big fan of the video games and it seems like there could be a balls out film made from the games. Unfortunately, the first warning bell went off when I learned that the film will be rated PG-13! Ah’ yes, yet another example of adult material being drained of blood and crammed into a PG-13 rating to maximize box office return. How much you want to bet there will be an unrated DVD release? That doesn’t necessarily mean the film will be bad mind you, but it can be an indicator that those involved are less concerned with presenting quality material and more concerned with making cash. Then again, what do I know. The trailer certainly replicates some of the imagery from the games. Mark Wahlberg seems an odd choice for the title role since the single most distinctive thing about the character in the games was his gravely voice (think someone who sounds like Michael Madsen) |
| and Wahlberg doesn’t really have that. Here’s hoping the film kicks butt, although the rating and the trailer don’t exactly build confidence. On the other hand, director John Moore made the pretty entertaining remake of ‘Flight of the Phoenix’. I’ll say this for the guy: he has a certain style to his work (at least what I’ve seen of it.) The trailer can be seen at Firstshowing.net. This is the second day in a row that they have been the best place to see a new trailer. See it HERE. -Nate |
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| 071008 Larry Bishop’s ‘Hell Ride’ red band (R-rated) trailer now online! |
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. . . . . .Ever read about a movie and simply want it to be good? For me that is the case with Larry Bishop’s action/ biker movie ‘Hell Ride’. I can’t really explain why but I just want to like this movie. The world needs a new badass biker movie. At least, I think it does. The film was written by, directed by, and stars the former comic and son of the late Joey Bishop. Quentin Tarantino gets the credit for supposedly planting the seed in Larry Bishop’s mind that lead to ‘Hell Ride’. Tarantino would go on to produce the film and Dennis Hopper, Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones and Eric Balfour can all be seen in the dusty looking flic’. I have to admit, the early reviews are not exactly promising. For instance, check out a review at Cinematical HERE. At least one review even goes so far as to say that they couldn’t tell whether the film was intentionally bad or not. Maybe this will be one of those films that just doesn’t work for me. Who knows? In the meantime I’m going to hope that it will be a winner. The groovy R-rated trailer can be found at FirstShowing.net HERE. You can see some brief interviews and clips with some of those involved HERE. The official website for ‘Hell Ride’ (which is due to be released August 8th) can be seen HERE.
-Nate |
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| 070808 Orson Welles ‘Touch of Evil’ finally gets a proper DVD release. |
| . . . . . .While many DVD sites are reporting on the long overdue re-release of ‘Touch of Evil’ on DVD, I am going to credit one of my favorite sites: DVDTimes. I noticed the news blurb when browsing their great site and could barely believe that there was, at long last, going to be a special edition of the great Orson Welles crime drama: ‘Touch of Evil’. From DVDTimes, the bulletin reads: |
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Universal Studios Home Video have announced the Region 1 DVD release of Touch of Evil (50th Anniversary Edition) on 7th October 2008 priced at $26.98 SRP. Orson Welles’ film noir portrait of corruption and morally-compromised obsessions returns to DVD as a two-disc set including the restored version, the theatrical version and a preview version of the main feature complete with extras. Also included as part of the package is a replication of Orson Welles' legendary 58-page memo to the studio.
Disc 1: Restored Version
* 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
* English DD2.0 Mono
* English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles
* Bringing Evil to Life
* Evil Lost & Found
* Audio Commentary featuring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Restoration Producer Rick Schmidlin
* Audio Commentary featuring Restoration Producer Rick Schmidlin
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2: Theatrical & Preview Versions
* 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
* English DD2.0 Mono
* English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles
* Theatrical Version: Audio Commentary featuring Writer / Filmmaker F.X. Feeny
* Preview Version: Audio Commentary featuring Welles Historians Joanthan Rosenbaum and James Naremore |
. . . . . .Now I do have to admit I had a slight pang of disappointment when I looked at the specs because the documentary ‘Reconstructing Evil’ is not listed among the features. Perhaps the features will make up for its absence. I seem to remember ‘Reconstructing Evil’ as being a solid documentary, hosted by Charlton Heston, about the making of and restoration of ‘Touch of Evil’. Then again, I have not seen it in many, many years, so maybe I am remembering it being better than it really was. At any rate, I am psyched that the film finally has a worthwhile DVD release and I can only hope that the features live up to the classic film. You can find the DVDTimes bulletin at their site HERE.
-Nate |
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| 070108 ‘From Spiders to Switchblades’, the Jack Hill documentary that neverwas. |
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. . . . . .There is an excellent short documentary on the Dark Sky Films DVD release of the early Jack Hill film ‘Spider Baby’. The documentary is about the making of the film and aptly called ‘The Hatching of Spider Baby’. For me, the short documentary is bitter sweet because it is supposedly all that remains of the full length documentary ‘From Spiders to Switchblades The Jack Hill Story’. I’m not sure why the documentary was folded into ‘The Hatching of Spider Baby’ but I suspect that the reasons were economic in nature. It is a shame because while the feature is a good one, it focuses primarily on ‘Spider Baby’ and not the rest of Hill’s career. For those who don’t know, Jack Hill is a filmmaker who rose through the ranks of low budget cinema in the sixties and seventies. He worked for Roger Corman around the same time as Francis Ford Coppola. Unlike Coppola, Hill was never able to escape low budget cinema and after the seventies he dropped |
| out of filmmaking. Hill’s body of work beyond ‘Spider Baby’ includes ‘Coffy’, ‘The Big Birdcage’, ‘Foxy Brown’ ‘Switchblade Sisters’, and ‘Pit Stop’. My personal fav’ is probably ‘Coffy’ but many of Hill’s films are great entertainment. I hope that some day ‘From Spiders to Switchblades’ will be resurrected and there will be a full length documentary about Hill. All that |
| remains outside of ‘The Hatching of Spider Baby’ is a trailer. As a substitute, there is a book about Hill coming out called ‘Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master’. (You can preorder the book by clicking the link to the right, as well a order a few of Hill's DVDs.) I have high hopes that the book will take the place of a full length movie until one gets made. (I believe the book will be released this year, on or around November 30.) I found out about the book on Hill's Myspace page. He periodically |
Jack Hill book:. . . . . . Spider Baby:. . . . . . . . .. . . Coffy:. . . . . .. . . . . . Switchblade Sisters:
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posts on a blog there and in addition to the book Hill talked about his first film project in many years. Actually the project is four films that will be remakes of Corman films Hill co-directed in the sixties. It is also worth noting that a remake of ‘Spider Baby’ is listed on IMDB. Here’s hoping that even if Hill isn’t involved in the remake it will act as a bit of a springboard to help the man return to the film world. Lastly, Hill has made a few posts for ‘Trailers from Hell’ a website focusing on a variety of trailers from cinemas past. Hill’s Myspace page can be found HERE (which is where I found the above-and-to-the-left photo of Hill on the set of 'Switchblade Sisters'.) His IMDb entry is HERE. The ‘Trailers From Hell’ site broken down by commentator is located HERE. All that remains of ‘From Spiders to Switchblades’ is a trailer that I have posted HERE. (Right click, save link as to download the trailer.) I hope that this 'From Spiders to Switchblades The Jack Hill Story' gets ressurected some day but in the mean time you can see the trailer and hope for what it could have been.
The biggest disappointment for me about the documentary not coming to fruition is the thought that it could have brought much deserved attention to Hill and his work. He remains a largely unrecognized King of low budget cinema.
-Nate |
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