Archive for the ‘AICN’ Category
Friday, February 29th, 2008
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
Vern’s my hero. If I could be anybody I wanted to be when I grow up, I’d choose to be Vern. His new book is one reason. This review is another.
This April marks (for death) the 20th anniversary of ABOVE THE LAW. Can you believe we’re that old? Two decades since Steven Seagal’s debut, arriving on the action movie scene fully-formed, already a star, already with his iconic look (well, he didn’t have the ponytail quite yet), already with his shadowy CIA past, his intense knowledge of Asian tradition, and his drive to take on the corrupt and throw them through panes of glass.
Alot has stayed the same in those 20 years, but alot has changed. He got bigger. His movies got bigger (UNDER SIEGE), then smaller (THE PATRIOT). He moved from the big screen to the DVD. By my way of thinking he’s gone through three major periods of his career and is now late in the DTV Era. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Lance Henriksen, Seagalogy
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Seagal | 5 Comments »
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
As much as I agree with Vern’s take on the wretched DIARY OF THE DEAD, I disagree with him here. But I’ll get into it when I publish my review later in the week. For now, here’s Vern, who has been Sweded.
You might know the premise. Mos Def works at an all VHS video store. Jack Black is magnetized (long story). (No, come to think of it, short story. He climbs into a power plant and gets shocked.) Jack Black’s brain erases all of the videos in the store, and Mia Farrow demands to watch GHOSTBUSTERS. So they dress up, go to the library and tape their own ridiculous home-made version of GHOSTBUSTERS directly onto the tape. Because they don’t want Danny Glover to know they fucked up. And it goes on from there. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jack Black, Michel Gondry, Mos Def
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
Dear diary,
I saw George Romero’s new movie DIARY OF THE DEAD. It’s basically “NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets BLAIR WITCH PROJECT” or “CLOVERFIELD with zombies” or “CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST – cannibal + zombies but not ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST.” It’s not a sequel to the living dead movies but kind of a do-over with the zombie plague beginning in the present day and depicted in documentary form. Some film students are working on a crappy mummy movie (come on George, this is 2008, only Rob Cohen makes mummy movies) when they start hearing news about the dead coming back to life, and their director is compelled to keep filming. We’re told at the beginning of the movie that his footage was edited by another character along with clips they downloaded from youtube, some news and security cam footage. Also she admits that she added music. And, I’m afraid, she narrates it.
I feel bad saying this but since nobody is reading this and it’s only a diary I will come out and say it: this movie isn’t very good. I enjoyed watching it and will list many of the good things about it right here on these pages, in the interest of balance. And in case Harry reads this because he got real mad at Quint for not liking it and I pretty much agree with everything in Quint’s review. But in my deepest, most personal secret opinion this is a failed experiment for old George. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: another fucking found footage movie, fakumentary, George Romero, zombies
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. This is the best possible thing for Vern to end up reviewing for us… crazy obscure video titles. And I love the guys over at Dark Sky, so it’s a match made in heaven. Today’s review just proves my point…
So this Dark Sky label has been sending me their DVDs ever since I reviewed their great TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE ULTIMATE EDITION. Most of them aren’t classics like that, they’re obscure little things I never heard of, and they can be pretty interesting. This month’s titles are TRAGIC CEREMONY and RICCO THE MEAN MACHINE.
TRAGIC CEREMONY is a 1972 Italian horror movie about a TRAGIC CEREMONY. A group of young people go boating, then driving around in a dune buggy, they run out of gas and end up having to go up to a mansion to ask for help. Little do they know there’s a TRAGIC CEREMONY that’s gonna happen there. See, there’s a satanic cult, and one character has this pearl necklace that has a spooky past, and who knows what kind of crazy shit will go down?
Well, I know. I saw the movie. Some heads get chopped off, a guy gets thrown out a window, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Riccardo Freda, Tulio Demicheli
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Vern here…
You might not have noticed this, but I’m obsessed with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I consider it one of the all time great American independent films. I watch it over and over and I still keep noticing things I hadn’t before. I’ve read the book about how it was made, I’ve watched the documentaries, I took the fuckin remake personally like somebody had broken into my apartment and smeared shit all over the walls.
But I’m not the only one. I run into others like me every once in a while. I get contacted by them. We are everywhere, but you will not notice us. We have the power to blend in with our surroundings. You are probably staring right at us right now and you can’t even see us. We are invisible. Whoah – behind you! Too late. Nice try. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: interviews
Posted in AICN, Vern Tells It Like It Is | No Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Vern here…
Man, I try to be a nice guy. I try to be an optimist. I was ready to burn the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake at the stake, but then I saw it and it wasn’t too bad. It’s a hollow action movie version of the original, but it’s a fun one, and it’s pretty well executed. I’m not too much of a hardliner to admit that.
So if they already remade that and did okay I wasn’t gonna be too up in arms about a DAY OF THE DEAD remake. And I was rooting for Steve Miner too. He’s the director and I’ve seen people talk shit about him here, but I have a soft spot for him. He directed my two favorite FRIDAY THE 13THs (parts 2 and 3) which are fun and have a good energy to them. And he still had some of that spark when he did HALLOWEEN H20: H20 STANDS FOR HALLOWEEN TWENTY YEARS LATER. Nobody seems to like that movie, and to be honest the Michael Meyers mask looks terrible, but I think it’s a pretty good movie. The ROCKY BALBOA of the HALLOWEEN series. And it has that great chase at the end, you gotta at least enjoy that. Ignore that bullshit in the next one about how Michael Meyers switched clothes with a paramedic. That’s for conspiracy theorists. Anyway because of those three movies I figured if they had to do a fast running DAY OF THE DEAD then maybe Steve Miner wasn’t a bad choice to do it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: remakes, Steve Miner, zombies
Posted in AICN, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2007
SPOILER ALERT !!
VERN VS. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR DASH REQUIEM
Aliens, predators, why do you always gotta fight? Why can’t you just resolve your differences? I know they say “whoever wins, we lose” but I’ve seen both the AvP movies and clearly nobody is winning anything. We lose, and you lose our respect.
RESURRECTION and RATATOUILLE were already taken and they needed something that started with an R, so the title of this thing is REQUIEM. That might make you wanna ask who died, but you already know the answer: the remaining dignity of aliens and predators across the universe. Two proud races slandered and humiliated, on the Lord’s birthday no less. And why? For what? What the hell did aliens and predators ever do to us other than entertain and delight us, scare us, fuck up our space colonies and skin some dudes in a jungle? Nothing. And for that we give them a franchise so lazy it can’t even be bothered to spell out its own titles. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, AvP, Predator series
Posted in Action, AICN, Horror, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
If that headline isn’t enough to get you excited, perhaps I overestimated you as a film geek.
THE PSYCHIC is one of Fulci’s best films in my opinion, and I’ve been waiting for it to come out on DVD for a long time. I have it here at the house and need to break it out to finally see it again.
I’m delighted to see Vern chime in on something like this on DVD, and having a new piece by him, a piece by Neill, and the Elston Gunn piece I’m about to put up… I feel like I got an uncommonly good morning’s worth of reading.
Check this out…
After years of being hard to find even in its crappy cropped VHS form, and weeks of being recalled because there was a problem with the sound, this week finally sees the DVD release of Lucio Fulci’s THE PSYCHIC from Severin Films (an up and coming label that mostly releases old EMANUELLE movies and things like that). They say it’s “Uncut For The First Time Ever In America!” which apparently means there were some scenes cut out in the old version, but does not mean it is some kind of unrated gorefest that will make you puke or challenge your religious convictions. This is one of Fulci’s thrillers, made in 1977, a few years before he started stabbing eyeballs in his horror movies like ZOMBI and THE BEYOND. It’s got its moments but it’s not as extreme as the stuff he was later known for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Fulci, Jennifer O'Neill
Posted in AICN, Horror, Mystery, Reviews | No Comments »
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
I keep missing this film, and it frustrates me enormously. I think it sounds fascinating, and not just because there are a few seconds of screentime dedicated to my face, either.
Reaction to this one has been really strong at festivals so far, and I hope I do catch up with it soon. For now, here’s a reviewer who is always more correct than me…
With all these questions surrounding JUSTICE LEAGUE (will it be delayed by the strike, who will be cast, when will Vern stop telling us about how awesome George Miller is) there is one fact that most of us have missed: a Justice League movie has already been made starring your favorite Justice League heroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and of course The Incredible Hulk. There are also guest appearances by lesser heroes like Ghost Rider, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: the Nerdening of America
Posted in AICN, Comic strips/Super heroes, Documentary, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Monday, November 19th, 2007
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD: 2-DISC ALLOWED TO SAY ‘MOTHERFUCKER’ EDITION
“YIPPEE KI YAY, MOVIE FANS!” That’s what some dipshit wrote on the back of the new LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD dvd. But in the new unrated cut of the movie itself John McClane is allowed to live free and say the whole legendary, maybe-shouldn’t-have-become-part-of-the-DIE-HARD-formula catch phrase. Say goodbye to “Yippee ki yay mother(gunshot).” It’s out the window like Hans Gruber.
The new cut is not drastically, hugely or monumentally different. If you hated the theatrical version you’ll still hate this one. The story is the same, I didn’t notice any scenes removed or added, there’s no new narration or a corny shot of a unicorn that’s supposed to make you see the whole movie in a new light. McClane still doesn’t make good on his threat to beat Kevin Smith’s character to death – not even in a deleted scene, unless it’s one a them “easter eggs” and I just didn’t find it. I’ll keep looking. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Cyril Raffaelli, Len Wiseman, Maggie Q
Posted in Action, AICN, Bruce, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »
