Film is Pwn

This is about baseball, but I’ll tie it in to the realm of film if you bear with me for a moment.

I’m a big baseball man and a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, so since 1945 I find myself in the unenviable but inevitable position of watching the World Series, the champions of their respective leagues battling it out for the ultimate prize, and not having my beloved Cubbies there to root for.  So each year I must pick a team to root for that is not the Cubs, generally an underdog like the Rockies or the Rays (never the Marlins . . . stupid Marlins).
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It’s the eve of Halloween, or “All Hallow’s Eve” if I wanted to be pretentious (and as a writer of a blog, I must be a little pretentious), a fact that’s pretty difficult to escape.  My officemates have filled cubicleworld with spooky decorations and there is a costume contest on Friday (I’m dressing as a human!); the multiplexes are overflowing with the latest batch of horror flicks that I’ll never see (this means you, Saw VI!); and every channel is broadcasting some manner of scary movie or television show this weekend, from the SyFy Channel to the Weather Channel.
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Say what you will about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, alias Transformers 2, but it dropped HUGE on DVD, moving 7.5 million copies its first week and 2 mil on the first day.  Of course, you know what this means: A potential 7.5 million in sales for the Film Is Pwn iRiff of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Huzzah!

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is a martial arts movie, and that is the film in a nutshell.  I’m tempted to conclude the blog there, but my natural loquaciousness demands that I press forward.

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is currently in limited release in theaters, but I caught a sneak preview on HDNet movies. I had heard of the original Ong Bak and its star Tony Jaa, an exciting, imaginative, acrobatic heir to Jackie Chan without the clowning, which is kind of a turn-off for me, because who doesn’t love a good clown, right? (more…)

For those waiting with baited breath for November’s big budget, guaranteed disaster of a disaster movie 2012 from the vindictive, mad director hoping to inflict Independence Day 2 on the world (Roland Emmerich), may I offer a substitute?  Tuesday (October 27th 2009) marks the release of the Asylum’s low-budget knock-off of 2012: 2012: Supernova.

Film is Pwn got our pre-release DVD in the mail Saturday (thank you, Asylum!) and this is a return to fun/bad greatness after the most recent releases, Sex-Pot and Megafault, which fell in the unwatchable and uninteresting categories, respectively.
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Film Is Pwn’s first iRiff was for a fun little, no-budget turd of joy called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which got great feedback and a spot on the iRiff top seller list (thank you very much)  The next movie we wrote and recorded riffs for was 80s fun/bad classic Monster Squad, which is still in the can because we decided to shelve everything to work on our most ambitious project, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  We figured we’d have our Transformers 2 iRiff up and running early in the week, sit by the pool, and wait for that elusive six figure Rifftrax residuals check.  ‘Twas not to be.

In retrospect, writing and editing a nearly 2 and a half hour blockbuster with no-nstop robot fights is particularly challenging when you have wacky things like jobs, families, and softball teams.  After a long Friday night and morning, our Transformers iRiff is up Saturday morning, sadly after the Rifftrax pros Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett put out one of their own on Thursday. *Sigh* (more…)

The other night I had my first experience with Harry Potter after a decade of ignoring the wildly popular novels and subsequent blockbuster film series.

Before the take on the movie itself, let me address the “Why the no Harry” question.  You see, during the initial breakout of Pottermania, there was a certain Christian backlash, and I happen to be a devout Christian.  While there were some vehement judgments that Harry and his brand of magic was a bad influence, please don’t misunderstand me: I’ve never told anyone not to read or watch a Potter movie.  Even if I thought Potter was basically evil and subversive, I don’t think boycotting or boisterously protesting is the best way to get your point across.  Generally you just succeed in publicizing property you’re demonizing and make yourself look stupid in the process, and then you’re the stupid Christian trying to ruin everyone else’s good time.

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It’s Tuesday, October 20th, the big day that Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is released on DVD.  This was the biggest box-office hit of the Summer,  and since I don’t think Sherlock Holmes is going to knock it off its perch this Fall, it’s safe to say it’ll be the biggest money-maker of the year.

A lot of people hate Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, and I can understand why.   If you’re like me and regarded the 2007 Transformers movie as a great nostalgia trip, you’ll probably still like the sequel, as it’s ostensibly an extension of the original, albeit louder and longer.

This blog was going to be my “in defense of” Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, but I’ve changed my mind.  Film is art, even if it involves giant transforming robots fighting on top of Pyramids, and art is subjective.   Some folks loved the movie, some enjoyed it for what it was (I fall in this category), some kind of liked it at first though changed their minds on a second viewing (Tom is in this category), and some found it torturous to watch the first time through (Brian falls in this category).  Instead of “in defense of,” I’m going to write about what it would have taken to make Transformers Revenge of the Fallen better, so there will be spoilers aplenty herein, be forewarned if you’re the one guy who wanted to see this but didn’t make it to the theater all Summer. (more…)

One of the many great things about Tivo is the wonderful descriptions of programming it provides.  Take this Tivo-nopsis of the 2005 horror movie Dead Serious: “Religious fanatics try to take over a gay bar which is – they are about to discover – owned by vampires”. How could I not click the record button… 

The film opened in the gay bar in question, which one could tell was a gay bar because the only decor was a rainbow flag hanging on the wall.  A patron argues with the bartender who tells him to talk to the manager, whose office is up top of a winding dim staircase.  After registering his complaint the manager (who was creepy enough to be a vampire, but not well dressed enough to be a homosexual) he is attacked, fangs flashing, blood spurting.  And then cut to the title screen.. fangs descending from up top.  Pure cheese I though, but somehow I was mesmerized.  Next a scene in a park where a seemingly nice guy is trying to enjoy a hamburger but the sweet love of his life won’t let him.  It’s wrong to eat animals, he’s killing himself with cholesterol, hey! some guys are smoking!  Oh the humanity… you know, there are vampires, and I want her to die, but somehow I doubt she will… maybe, if I believe hard enough… (more…)

There has been a LOT of buzz surrounding this film, and virtually all of has been word of mouth and through the internet a la The Blair Witch Project.  And there are valid comparisons. Both were shot on a shoestring as DIY amateur “reality” video and featured first time directors and unknown actors. They both used extremely creative marketing tools as well. (Thanks to all those that “Demanded the film come to Charlotte). But where The Blair Witch Project never reveals visually the terror that is stalking the people, Paranormal Activity reveals the faintest glimpse, and it makes it much more terrifying.

The basic premise here is a young engaged couple living in a house in San Diego named Katie and Micah. There have been subtle, but strange happenings in the house. so Micah buys a high end video camera which he sets up in the couple’s bedroom at night to record what happens when they are asleep.  When the video is replayed, you see the hour, minute and second timer in the bottom of the screen. At first, you see video speed up to fast forward through the mundane parts and then the timer slows to real time.  You learn very quickly that something is going to happen. As each night is shown, the tension grows thicker and a knot begins to form in your stomach. At first it only captures harmless occurrences like lights coming on by themselves and strange noises. But as the days and weeks progress, the occurrences become bigger and more terrifying and this is only intensified by the bickering of the couple during the day about what to do about it.  First time director Oren Peli does a wonderfully masterful job at building the tension to the point that even noises in the theater make the audience jump.

Very rarely does a film live up to the hype that surrounds it, and for horror it never happens. Until now. There were mainly young people in the theater, late teens and early 20s and I was afraid I would have to contend with chatter through the whole thing. But once it started, you could have heard a pin drop. I think that says more about the film than anything I could.

The last time I bought a ticket to catch a film in the theater was over a month earlier and it was disastrous, no less than Gerard Butler’s lunch-displacing, sickening actioner Gamer.  (By saying “bought a ticket” I exclude the great experience had at the Charlotte Film Festival, wherein my cohorts and I got in free with our press passes, hee hee).

Not one to dip my toes in the pool but rather one to jump head first into the deep end, my next paying customer excursion to the theaters post-Gamer was for yet another Gerard Butler film, this time a thriller opposite with Jamie Foxx, Law-Abiding Citizen. (more…)

Sure, if every movie rumored to be made actually were made, my screenplay for “Captain Danger Bear & Lance Corporal Badger vs. The Kitty Armada” would have been turned into a blockbuster years ago.   But apparently Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are getting ready to re-join forces with Will Smith to bring the world Independence Day 2.  It seems the only snag is getting the studio to “pony up” the money for Will Smith’s salary. (more…)