I don’t know why I never got around to seeing the THE CROW sequel from the director of SIX-STRING SAMURAI. Always was curious. Still took me 19 years. Lance Mungia’s THE CROW: WICKED PRAYER, just like the previous one, was meant for theaters, but I think it only played somewhere around here? Wiki(dprayer)pedia says its theatrical run was only in Seattle and only for one week, and I do remember seeing an ad for it and being confused, but I was thinking it was in Eastern Washington. Anyway, I didn’t go.
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to my review of it. Tony Scott’s most chaotic ever visual style and editing just scraped against me and took me out of the story (to the extent that there was one), and I fixated on that and raged against it in my review. This had happened to me only a couple of times before: first with CON AIR, then ARMAGEDDON, and later it would happen with TRANSFORMERS and DOOMSDAY. But DOMINO is the most stylistically aggressive of any of those, and arguably the most pretentious.
In my review I said Scott was trying to seem young and edgy, compared it to getting his ear pierced. In my mind at that time he was the guy who directed TOP GUN, and TOP GUN was a movie for jocks, military lovers and top 40 listeners. When that one came out I didn’t notice that its style was revolutionary, I just knew everybody loved it including my entire sixth grade class, which meant it was the height of mainstream popular culture about a year or two before I would start kneejerk rebelling against such things. So to have the TOP GUN guy, almost 20 years later, trying to do what screenwriter Richard Kelly calls on the commentary track “punk rock,” was just a joke to me. (read the rest of this shit…)
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
—Dead Auteur: How a 20-year-old ex-college student carved out his horror niche in Hollywood by Sue Uram, Cinefantastique, August 1992
Immediately following Raimi’s very serious director period, his career changed drastically again. After so many stabs at the mainstream, he finally made the leap to genuine blockbuster filmmaking, bringing one of the most famous characters in the history of American pop culture to the big screen for the first time. This is not the use-Intro-Vision-to-stretch-the-budget-enough-to-try-to-compete-in-summer of DARKMAN and ARMY OF DARKNESS, or the work-with-huge-stars-but-scare-off-boring-people-by-doing-something-different-with-them of THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. I’m talking a super hero event movie with ten times the budget of DARKMAN, working with Sony Digital Imageworks to pioneer effects techniques that nobody was even sure would be possible, and finally sharing his talents with pretty much the widest audience possible for a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
THE PAPERBOY is the new one from Academy Award nominee for Best Director Lee Daniels. That’s the guy that did PRECIOUS, BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE as well as SHADOWBOXER, BASED ON THE IDEA THAT HELEN MIRREN AND CUBA GOODING JR. ARE ASSASSINS AND SHE RAISED HIM BUT ALSO THEY’RE FUCKING AND SHE HAS CANCER. I feel like the critical community embraced PRECIOUS without really picking up on how nutty it was, or doing a background check on Mr. Daniels’s previous work. So they did cartoony “wh-wh-whUHHH?” double-takes when THE PAPERBOY played at Cannes and had a part where Nicole Kidman territorially pisses on Zac Efron from HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Because it’s a Lee Daniels movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
TheCaptainAktion on V/H/S/Mixtape: “All hail Raatmaa!” Oct 15, 11:56
emteem on V/H/S/Mixtape: “Well, to be fair Maj they are released straight to Shudder and it’s a rare direct to streaming movie that…” Oct 15, 11:12
Muh on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Never saw this but at this point I’m just tired of spindly people doing body contortions as they add cracking…” Oct 15, 10:41
Muh on Backrooms: “Between this and Obsession, I think this was way more interesting. The chase at the end was fantastic, good character…” Oct 15, 10:39
Muh on V/H/S/Mixtape: “These just get worse and worse. Kind of hated this one, didn’t think much of the last one, but the…” Oct 15, 10:31
VERN on Exorcist II: The Heretic: “Curt – That’s interesting, I never thought of that about Pazuzu. The statue is in the first movie but they…” Oct 15, 10:05
geoffreyjar on Exorcist II: The Heretic: “Watched BOORMANxTHEDEVIL based on curt’s recommendation above and he’s right, It’s a good watch. Sometimes “bad” movies just happen and…” Oct 15, 09:35
Mr. Majestyk on V/H/S/Mixtape: “If you’d asked me how many of these movies there are, I’d have guessed four. I’d have told you the…” Oct 15, 06:57
Acid Burn on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy: “Imagine if everything about this film and its marketing were exactly the same, except the title was I WAS A…” Oct 14, 22:56
Curt on Exorcist II: The Heretic: “The recent documentary about this movie, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL, is now available to rent online, and I very highly…” Oct 14, 22:26
CJ Holden on V/H/S/Mixtape: “Yeah, the existence of the series is kinda baffling to me too. It’s maybe the longest running horror series that…” Oct 14, 20:51
Kim Cardassian on V/H/S/Mixtape: “The whole time I was watching the “Dance Dance Dance” segment all I could think was how Joss Whedon (unfortunately…” Oct 14, 20:18
Ryan on V/H/S/Mixtape: “I agree with so-and-so that this is my fav V/H/S film – they’re all worth watching but the quality varies…” Oct 14, 20:12
so-and-so on V/H/S/Mixtape: “you know what, here’s an album put together by the Death Set and marketed as a mixtape even though it’s…” Oct 14, 18:51
so-and-so on V/H/S/Mixtape: “this was far and away my favorite VHS film, but it resonated for entirely personal reasons and i think jumping…” Oct 14, 18:31
When I saw DOMINO on opening day in 2005, I really thought it was the worst shit ever. In fact, at some point I earnestly added a “the worst shit ever” tag to 
“He had an uneventful childhood. He played baseball with the other kids on the block, became fascinated with the antics of what later became his heroes – The Three Stooges, read Spiderman comic books, thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious and the Little Rascals even more so. What influenced Raimi to become the ‘horror meister’ of slash and gore films is not found in his past.”
“If anyone’s gonna pee on him, it’s gonna be me!”
