Zibahkana (Hell’s Ground) is supposedly Pakistan’s first gore/zombie flick. It’s your typical zombie scenario done in the cinematic style of Bollywood, quite an interesting take. This movie premiered here in Toronto for Rue Morgue’s monthly Cinemacabre movie nights. I totally missed it and am kicking myself for it.
Brace yourselves, there is finally a documentary about the one and only! The immortal god of metal! The overlord of gnar! The motherfucker that everyone wishes they could be!
So unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve been unable to avoid the recent oversaturation of TV commercials and online advertisements for the 2 new movies by beloved and somewhat absent from acting (as of recently) ex-SNL cast members, Michael Myers and Adam Sandler. (I know I personally couldn’t avoid them a few weeks ago, when their trailers ran back-to-back before Iron Man.) Let’s just get this out of the way first: in all likelihood, BOTH of these movies will probably suck balls, but for whatever stupid reason, I’ve noticed a heated debate both online and in casual small talk about which of these two will suck less. In all of these little debates, I keep noticing one prevailing opinion: most people seem to think The Love Guru will suck less.
How wrong they are.
I’ll go as far as saying that You Don’t Mess with Zohan stands a chance–albeit a slight one–at actually being funny (especially while stoned). The Love Guru stands zero chance. Let’s examine, shall we…
From the commercials, it appears Michael Myers is still making the same midget jokes about Vern Troyer that stopped being funny 2 Austin Powers ago (or were they ever not corny?). Actually, he’s making all of the same stupid Austin Powers jokes, just with a pseudo-Indian accent instead of a British one. I actually can’t decide if at this point if he writes his movies’ plots first, or just pulls out his list of one-liners and then builds a new plot around them. (I can’t really blame him since he’s sold two franchises on catch phrases alone…) Now Adam Sandler, too, is basically relying on what works best for him: ethnic stereotypes and the most dumbed-down jokes humanly possible. But if I had to choose my poison, I’d at least rather see some of the things that made Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison so beloved, because at least it’s been a while. It’s been about 10 years since Adam Sandler made an enjoyable comedy of that ilk, and I don’t know why he completely abandoned this formula for his more straight up, dry comedic or occasional dramatic roles. I guess maybe he didn’t want to do what Michael Myers has done and run it into the ground, and instead was smart enough to save it and bust it back out when the time appeared right. And in conclusion… You Don’t Mess With the Zohan will be better because it has Rob Schneider in it, and I love me the Richmeister.
I guess we’ll all know the answer to this heated question in a couple of weeks.
Gillian Anderson doesn’t look like she’s aged at all!
I’d wanted to see Teeth since it premiered at Sundance last year, but for whatever reason I never got around to it during it’s short run in the NY theaters. But it’s finally out on DVD and I got to see it last night. As a lifelong horror fan, I had always wondered why no director had ever worked with the concept of Vagina Dentata as the basis for a horror film. But in my head any such eventual movie about Vagina Dentata would have undoubtedly been a slap-sticky exploitation film full of shock & gore. Thankfully Teeth isn’t remotely close to that and goes a different route. Using puberty as metaphor/catalyst in a horror movie for some sort of terrifying change is nothing new, but Teeth cleverly infuses a believable and well crafted teen melodrama into a Revenge Horror fantasy (ala I Spit on Your Grave), with some comedic touches.
While the movie is light on the gore, Director Mitchell Lichtenstein (Son of Roy) does an amazing job of making you hold your own junk and squirm in fear during the handful of “kill scenes”. But the best part of the movie is it’s star Dawn played by Jess Weixler who is not only great eye candy but perfect in her role. If you’re a fan of movies like May or Ginger Snaps, rent this!
On a side note while searching for images for this post I found the graphic for not only the current cover of the DVD but the old promotional poster (pictured above).
It’s funny how the original poster makes Teeth out to be an American Pie style teen comedy, while the new DVD cover is all grim and ominous. The confusion in marketing horror!
William Friedkin’s (The Exorcist) Cruising has been on my To Watch list for a really long time. When Greg saw it recently and described the above scenes to me I went “Holy Shit!”. I had been trying to figure out where that scene was from after seeing clips on TV Carnage! I guess it would have helped my search had I realized that Pacino was in those clips. Don’t watch TV Carnage too fucked up is the lesson I learned here, but I digress… Cruising is one fucking amazingly gritty, weird & totally open ended movie! Pacino plays a young cop who’s hungry to make detective. So when offered an assignment to go undercover within the NY gay S&M community to track down a serial killer he takes it. But tracking down The “Homo Killer” as dubbed by the Daily News within the film takes a serious toll on Pacino’s psyche and identity. This is totally up their in the annals of “Look at how scary NYC was in the late 70s” movies along with my slasher favorite, Maniac. Joe Spinell (The Maniac in Maniac) even happens to have a small supporting role in Cruising as a crooked beat cop on the DL.
I bet finally seeing this is a lot like what Ron was feeling after he finally discovered Built to Spill last year, Zing!
But I still have no clue who that Black Cowboy in the jockstrap is though. Watching the movie doesn’t really answer that question and neither do the people on IMDB either. Oh well, I’ll leave you with one more clip. Go Netflix this movie like right now!
I watched True Romance last night, and despite having seen this film quite a few times, I totally forgot about this gem of a scene. I definitely hadn’t forgotten about Brad Pitt’s role as a stereotypical wastoid stoner, but the real beauty of this film lies in the details. Nothing like rocking out to a little Soundgarden while catching a post-wake ‘n’ bake buzz.
I’m usually pretty indifferent when it comes to Asian cinema and the gratuitous use of shock value, but Tokyo Gore Police really had me thinking “What. The. Fuck.” I may have to check this one out when it hits video.
The trailer really says far more about this film than I ever could, so check it out here.
This dude plays Guitar Hero.
P.S. There are too many categories. Proceeds from this picture will go to all the charities and benefits found on the bloglin.
P.S.S. Feel free to protest. :D
FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cant wait to see it! Screening in NYC May 9th!
I never liked Napoleon Dynamite. I just mostly felt it was cheesy, tried too hard and to me was a failed attempt at Wes Anderson does white trash. And I’m not saying this after some colossal let down after months of people quoting it, acting out scenes and hyping it. I actually got to see it at a screening before it saw wide release. My hate is reeeaaalll!!!!
The Sasquatch Gang however is basically everything everyone thought Napoleon Dynamite was… but wasn’t. I just rented this on a whim and I’m only mentioning Napoleon Dynamite because the studio that is distributing this movie slapped a huge “From the people who brought you Napoleon Dynamite” Tag on the box. Tim Skousen, who wrote and directed The Sasquatch Gang was like a second unit production dude on Napoleon Dynamite and John Heder has a 15 second cameo. Way to stretch the truth there!
This is a totally good late-night comedy, especially if you’re into the Mac Guy, I’m Looking at you Drew Barrymore! And more so if you’re into LARPing, I’m looking at you Prolly!
Bike Shorts is this weekend! Come on out to Galapagos in Williamsburg at 8pm on Sunday night for bicycle-centric films!
We have lots of fun stuff this time. A beautiful montage of Mo from
Berlin’s trip to Japan, para-Olympians, the most belligerent polo
player in New York, Kissena’s hour record holder and more!
…and tonight, bicycle photographer Tak is showcasing his work at Memes on Great Jones Rd. [Next to ACME]. Come early for free beer and Dj Neil Armstrong on the 1200’s! 7-10pm
Which is best?
It’s so hard to choose and more fun to just watch them back to back to back! I think we need worthwhile inductee into this comedic canon.
Original Basket Case VHS box! Found this on the web somewhere. One of my all time favorites!
Cop a feel son!
I just wanna say that Kevin Eastman gets my nomination for bad ass nerd and inspirational hero. Runner up goes to Rob Zombie. Total weirdos with hot wives and the skillz to pay the billz.
…just a part-time hater.
Mr. SJ just hit me off with this trailer for what looks to be another incredible comedy hitting the theaters this summer. I’m already hell of stoked for Pineapple Express and Harold & Kumar 2, so hopefully those two will deliver in addition to this gem… The Foot Fist Way.
I don’t remember why but we were discussing Encino Man yesterday but all I could think about during this talk was this discussion my friends and I had one morning while we waited for the bus to take us to school. The consensus was that we felt that Pauly Shore’s “Buuudddeeee” would totally over take the Wayne & Garth’s “Not” as the cool thing to say from a movie. How wrong and utterly stupid we were.
If you’ve never read it, Alan Moore’s Watchmen is to comics what Moby Dick is to American literature. And depsite my previous posts I’m not that hard of a critic on comic based movies as you’d expect. I didn’t know what to expect from the Watchmen film when it was announced. Actually I didn’t think it would ever really get made since there’s been some form a Watchmen movie in development for a long while now. Plus Alan Moore refuses to publicly back any attempt to film his masterpiece (what a curmudgeon!). But with the leak of some press photos today, well it’s definitly confirmed to really be happening in at least my mind.
Zack Snyder who directed 300 is manning this film. And while I didn’t think 300 was all that awesome, I will concede and say it was EXACTLY like the comic. But to be fair I didn’t think the comic was all that awesome. I find Frank Miller vastly overrated (Year One, Born Again, The Man Without Fear and The Dark Knight Returns the only exceptions). So Snyder (at least to me) has a great track record of accurately translating comics into film. Plus he directed the excellent remake of Dawn of the Dead. The photos of the actors in costume only confrim the above statement! Look at that press shot of The Comedian, he’s dead on ! I can’t wait for the Dr. Manhattan photo leak! I wonder if he’ll walk around the whole film with his penis exposed? Billy Crudup isn’t that big a star to refuse!
Speaking of Billy Crudup, he’s basically the biggest star appearing in this film… not exactly a household name. Which is also why I have such high hopes for this film. Not casting 7 huge stars as the Watchmen means this movie won’t be dominated by star notoriety but hopefully with good directing, acting, characters and story. This kind of thing worked for X-Men (Minus Halle berry), so I guess we’ll wait and see.
So if you found the above 1 minute clip unbelievably boring, imagine having to sit through another 95 minutes of the same exact thing. That one minute is basically AJ Schnack’s About A Son, a documentary about Kurt Cobain as a whole. Me being knee deep into my own personal 90s revival, I was pretty excited when I first read about this film. The premise was to create a documentary based around the never before heard audio of interviews conducted by journalist Michael Azzerad with Kurt Cobain while preparing his 1993 book, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana; which may as well have been on the required reading list for any high school aged outcast in the early 90s since it was the only book I ever saw some of my friends read in high school.
Unfortunately this film doesn’t come close to making any of this remotely engaging or interesting. How hard is it to make a Kurt Cobain documentary interesting? The same recycled information every VH1 Behind the Music style documentary about him can keep me tuned in for over an hour, so you’d think one with never before heard audio from the man himself would be a home run! Well, that’s just not the case. I wanted to gouge my eyes out after 15 minutes of this film. First off I’m surprised no one could be bothered in investing the time and money in cleaning up the audio so that the tape hiss didn’t just recede the whole thing into the background like static noise. But that is the least of this documentary’s problems. I thought the audio was going to be coupled with some relevant archival footage, photos, anything and it isn’t. The whole movie is set to moody backdrops of urban and industrial landscapes of Seattle and Washington state in general. I can only assume this was the director’s way of creating a feeling of malaise and dread to go with Kurt’s words and eventual outcome of his life. All this did was bore me to death because it in no way worked with the audio in presenting any sort of storyline or mood that kept you interested.
I have no clue if this is some new style of documentary making, if so someone please inform me of it’s name! About A Son, however is the second documentary in the last year I’ve seen done in this similar style. Robinson Devor’s Zoo (clip above) suffers from all the painful flaws as About A Son. Zoo is to put it bluntly, about bestiality. It focuses on a group of men who meet monthly at a farm and engage in giant barnyard orgies. During one of these orgies one of the men dies as a result of injuries he gets from having sex with a horse. I understand this isn’t going to be something everyone wants to see a documentary about, but you’d think at the very least there’s no way something this outrageous wouldn’t male for an interesting documentary. But again this film defies all the odds like About A Son and making what you’d think a very disturbing and difficult topic utterly boring. Zoo like About A Son uses audio interviews over, moody images of farms, animals and objects, but adds another equally boring element of sometimes having the audio over artsy mundane re-enactment scenes to imply a sense of sadness and dread. They don’t do any such thing, all they do is grind your interest in what you’re watching to a halt.
If you’re hankering to rent a Kurt Cobain documentary I implore you to skip About A Son and get Nick Broomfield’s 1998 documentary, Kurt & Courtney.
Now while Kurt & Courtney has an infinite amount of partial paranoia, conspiracy theory and sensationalism to be taken seriously, it is really interesting and a fun watch. Best of all is it’s focus on Kurt’s best friend, Dylan Carlson.
Some hardcore Nirvana fans may recognize him as the guy whom In Bloom is about. You know HE IS “the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don’t know what it means”. Others may recognize Dylan as the man behind the band Earth. I’d never seen Dylan on camera before and from the footage here he very much portrayed as the character Kurt Cobain presented on In Bloom. That makes it so hard to look at him as this prototypical cult figure who helped create what is today the modern sludgy doom metal scene.
This is similar to my post regarding the Melvin’s Houdini a little while back. I was actually kind of shocked to find out that Earth had taken on this cult like status in the past few years. I remember back in like ‘95-96, when I was full into my drone & noise phase (Earth, Hovercraft, Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation, Labradford, etc, etc) that Earth was the one band most of my friends into the same music just couldn’t stand. To them the reason in owning any Earth records wasn’t the music, but the novelty to say owning a William Shattner album. You owned it simply because you could say “Oh check this crap out. This is Kurt Cobain’s best friend’s band… man this shit sucks!” It was too slow, repetitive and didn’t build to anything which as a result made it boring instead of unnerving and intersting. I owned 3 or so Earth albums, they weren’t my favorites at the time by far. In fact, they were usually left them off the CD player until a deep, deep catatonic bake was in session and ANYTHING probably would have sounded interesting. To me they were the fringe of my noise & drone fascination of a decade ago. And today the fringe of one movement makes the archetype of another. It’s funny what a few years can do to your perception. Now that I’m full out of my noise and drone music phase, I can appreciate Earth on a totally different level than ever before. I guess like Dylan Carlson, I too needed some time off from Earth to revalue what I was hearing.
Now what does this have to do with anything besides me stringing a movie I hated into Band I was sort of into way back when? Well Earth after a nine year hiatus from albums (1996-2005) returned to look at what they had sewn with devotees like Boris and Sun O))) and began releasing new albums. Their newest The Bee’s Made Honey In the Lion’s Skull is out now on Southern Lord. So hopefully that long ass post post clears up the glut of no posts for the last 2 days! I’m surprised I could string all that into one post. Who by the way have a new album out on Southern Lord called The Bee’s Made Honey In the Lion’s Skull. And much like this post, It’s pretty epic!