July 2010

  • Despicable Me

    By sarajean on 7/31/10 7:26pm
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    My family and I went from completely uninterested in to completely in love with the animated film Despicable Me in a matter of months. When we saw the first trailer, in which the pyramid was stolen, we all three had the same reaction—“Bleh.” It didn’t look very interesting at all.

    As more and more previews were released, we grew to get slightly interested—even excited—about seeing it. The addition of children, Steve Carell, and those little green minions made it look much more enticing than the typical battle of man vs. man. Knowing that the hero was actually an anti-hero—not a common theme in a cartoon!—was also intriguing.

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  • Away We Go

    By sarajean on 7/31/10 6:09pm
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    Going into this movie, I held high expectations—and I was not disappointed in the least. Comical, romantic, and light without being frivolous, Away We Go is a sweetly satisfying film about a young couple expecting their first child. After discovering that the father’s parents are moving out of country, they no longer have ties to their community and decide to travel across the country, searching for the perfect place to raise a family. (Spoilers ahead.)

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  • Fiction Runs On Dead Naked Ladies

    By erika on 7/30/10 1:42pm
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    Have you ever noticed the preponderance of dead naked ladies in fiction?  I'm talking television, movies, books, graphic novels, the whole shebang.  If it's aimed at adults, it probably has a dead naked lady in it.  This goes extra for any work of mystery or suspense.

    Just as a random example, where would CSI and all its clones be without dead naked ladies?  I wonder what CSI: Miami would look like, if its producers decided to challenge the writing staff by banning dead naked ladies from the scripts.

    I began pondering this recently as I was reading Stieg Larsson's runaway global bestseller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  What started out as a fairly intriguing mystery at one point (not to give anything away) suddenly devolves into a collection of dead naked ladies.  How disappointing.


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  • Zombieland: Woody Harrelson Must Have Been Stoned

    By cobwebsandstrange on 7/29/10 3:11pm
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    There’s a decent sized group of horror movie buffs who attribute great cultural insight to any number of films. There’s apparently social commentary in just about every inch of George Romero’s work and Dracula as well as Frankenstein’s monster are men out of time. Who knew.

    When a movie comes along, still adhering to a great many of the genre’s finest points, that chooses to eschew any sort of artistic pretense, it should be noted. And yeah, that might be a bit difficult today, I’m sure Saw is somehow relevant to the world’s hunger problems or something, but Zombieland is so void of any proper intent that even such a meaningless film should be thought of as stellar entertainment. Well, if you’re loaded at least.

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  • Kids See Dead People

    By sarajean on 7/29/10 7:02am
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    What if the whole Bruce Willis scenario in The Sixth Sense were much more than M. Night Shyamalan’s greatest hit film? Caron Goode is playing a true life, though living, role of Wills’s character, investigating the minds of children who might possibly see ghosts.

    The psychologist says that her efforts stem from her own childhood experiences, and she’s out to discover whether or not the imaginary friends that so many kids have are actually the spirits of the dead instead. She’s even written a book, Kids Who See Ghosts: How to Guide Them Through Fear, about it.

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  • Girls Gone Wild Can Strip You Without Your Consent

    By erika on 7/26/10 1:33pm
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    In 2005 a woman goes to a bar, planning to drink and party.  Turns out the "Girls Gone Wild" video team is there.  Signs are posted.  However, she refuses to sign the consent form.  If there is a more clear way to signal "I do not consent" than refusing to sign a consent form, I can't think of it.

    As she's dancing, the video camera is moving through the crowd.  As she turns away from the camera, a hand reaches out from behind it and pulls off her shirt. 


    She says "No no no no," pulls it back up, and turns away.  Again - that's a pretty clear sign of not giving consent.  Saying "no" and putting your top back on.  

    But somehow she ends up on the Girls Gone Wild tape anyway.  And when she sues?  The jury finds in favor of Girls Gone Wild.


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  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice

    By msarko on 7/24/10 9:55pm
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    I don't go to McDonald's for delicious, nutritious food. If I ever go there, it's because I want something fast, inconsequential and horrible in all those ways we tell ourselves we don't like, even if we do. In the same sense, I don't go to Disney movies for inventive, artistically meaningful cinema. Just like everyone who ever complained that McDonald's isn't healthy, everyone who knocks Disney for making empty, pandering spectacles is really missing the point. That's why The Sorcerer's Apprentice isn't exactly deserving of all its lukewarm reviews. It never makes any pretensions to being anything but an amusement park ride, so it's not exactly worthwhile to compare it to the better movies of the summer.



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  • "Vampires Suck" Ain't That The Truth!

    By dfunzy on 7/22/10 9:43am
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    Trailer Review

    "Vampires Suck," a spoof of the "Twilight" movies -- and I thought the "Twilight" flicks were spoofs. They can't be taken seriously as vampire movies!  The "Vampires Suck," movie is directed by: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer -- They needed two dudes to direct? The cast includes no one who I recognize: Matt Lanter, Jenn Proske, Chris Riggi. That's not a bad thing. New faces, you know? I expect to see new faces in horror movies, and in horror movie spoofs. But wait. The "Twilight" films aren't really horror movies. They are horrible movies, hybrids of horrible horror movies and sugar soda pop romance movies.

    "Vampires Suck," movie is a comedy, says them -- the producers. Well, aren't spoofs comedies? And some are also funny.

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  • Bad Asses And Zombies Too

    By dfunzy on 7/19/10 3:57am
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    Trailer Review

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  • A De Ossorio Horror: Night of the Seagulls (1975)

    By cobwebsandstrange on 7/11/10 10:48am
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    First off, I’d like to note that it took me almost a year to wade through Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies. Why? Well, they’re kinda boring.

    What’s interesting about the series, though, is the fact that the disparate films don’t have any connection to one another apart from the appearance of the slow moving Templars. Yeah, there’s ritual killing and all its trappings in each of these efforts, but no recurring characters, no references to earlier plots. Nothing. Of course, seeing as the films were all released within five years might have meant the filmmakers didn’t have too much time to belabor a proper narrative development.

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  • Twihards React to Eclipse

    By becksta on 7/7/10 5:07pm
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    AHHHHHHH! That is the collective sound of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Twihards after finally being able to see “Eclipse”, the latest installment of the Twilight saga. I believe that in the Twihard world this is somewhat akin to an orgasm, but I don’t want to get too personal in a blog post.

    Reactions from the non-Twihard minority in the world are somewhat different. It’s quite obvious that the whole Non-Human Flesh-eating Vampire idea was secretly concocted by Vampire Rights activists as a way to lure the more humans into thinking they are harmless, which we all know is a false statement and non-Twihards are definitely aware of that fact.

    Here are some actual photos taken at the “Eclipse photo-booths” from around the country.

    One great thing about the Twihard community is their lack of fear to show their enthusiasm for a movie targeted to Tweens.

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