November 2008

Join the Kevin Bacon Movie Club, and Kevin will come round your house an watch the movie with you. I would really pay good money for this service. For real. Then we’d watch Tremors and Pyrates on loop.
I wonder if Kevin Bacon is good at ‘Six Degress’? you would think he would be…
and on a side note. What in the name of Sweet Baby Jesus is ‘How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer‘?
via the always awesome laughing squid

I LOVE crazy obsessive nerdy movie-related web mashups like this, It falls into the same category as the guy that catalogued all the gun models they used in Heat (’The Guns of Heat‘).
I need to give Cloverfield a second watch, dug it the first time (on a huge cinema screen, amazing sound, low expectations) but I’m unsure if i’ll still like it now. Although the recent south park ‘homage’ has rekindled my interest.
Check out the cloverfield Google map larger here
Via Digg

I haven’t talked about this film yet, but trust me on this, in six months it’ll be the documentary every good film nerd will be talking about. I don’t wanna get hyperbolic about it, but i’d compare it to ‘The King of Kong’ in the way I think it will really get a lot of exposure via word-of-mouth, and people blogging about what a gem of a film it is.
At 14, best friends Robb Reiner and Lips made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, hailed as the “demi-gods of Canadian metal, ” influenced a musical generation that includes Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, despite never hitting the big time. Following a calamitous European tour, Lips and Robb, now in their fifties, set off to record their 13th album in one last attempt to fulfill their boyhood dreams.
I hadn’t seen or even heard anything about the film before I sat down at a screening at the LFF to see it, and it blew me away. The lazy-comparison critics are making is ‘It’s the real life Spinal Tap’ and the director to an extent goes out of his way to try and present it like that (showing knobs being turned up to 11, members retelling stories about the bands names before they were ‘Anvil’), but underneath that selling-to-an-audience-proposition it’s a genuinely touching film about a band (and especially the lead singer ‘Lips’ and the drummer ‘Rob Reiner’.. yeah that’s really his name) that are still trying to make it 30 years after their brief hit of fame. Still plugging away and are consistently determined to make it big again, despite everyone and everything around the band conspiring against them.
When documentarians luck-out with the characters they’re capturing on film, it really lifts the film above a straight up doc into a place where you genuinely rooting for the people to succeed/fail and hopefully realise their dreams. ‘King of Kong’ got this with Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, and ‘Anvil!’ get’s it with Lips and Rob Reiner (That’s Rob on the left of the poster, Lips.. is the naked dude)
I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear… not just once…but TWICE during the film, and if you don’t shed a little tear.. well maybe you’re a cold hearted bastard.
Up there next to ‘The Good, the Bad and the Weird’, ‘Anvil!: The Story of Anvil’ was the best film I saw at the LFF this year. Hands down.
Check out some clips from the film here, the trailer is supposed to arrive next week, and if you see the film playing at a local filmfest, I highly recommend you seek it out.
Check the Q&A from the LFF screening below (via youtube)

• Hot new DVD and Blu-Ray Releases this week (Nov 25, 2008)

I’m sure everyone went to go see this movie to see Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro together which makes perfect sense. But of course, I had to see this movie because my man Donnie Wahlberg was in it… that’s what obsessions will do to you.

Plot summary from Netflix:
Academy Award winners Robert De Niro and Al Pacino star in this taut thriller as a pair of New York City detectives tasked with investigating a rash of vigilante killings linked to a case years ago, suggesting they may have put an innocent man behind bars. John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino, Brian Dennehy, Donnie Wahlberg and rapper-turned-actor 50 Cent also star in this crime drama directed by Jon Avnet.
I was a little worried that De Niro and Pacino were too old and I was curious to see if they still had “it”. I realized that De Niro is pretty much the same as always he just looks older but Pacino, I’m afraid he’s done. He was actually one the things I did not like about this movie. After seeing 88 Minutes and then Righteous Kill, I’ve officially decided that Al Pacino should retire. It’s not that he was terrible, it’s just that he’s done. I can’t explain it, but I’m pretty sure his crazy hair is a part of the reason.

Of course, my man Donnie Wahlberg was great as always as well as his partner John Leguizamo. Donnie is always great as a detective, but I hope in the future we get to see him in a different role because he really is a great actor! As opposed to 50 Cent who is not a good actor… he was not very impressive.
I thought the story was good. I was definitely entertained but it wasn’t the greatest movie in the world. There was a big twist at the end but it was kinda predictable. I personally like to just watch the movie and not think about it so I can be surprised, but I can see how someone would have figured it out pretty easily.
But, saying all that, I think it’s definitely worth watching. I enjoyed it, I always love a good cop movie. If there’s a badge and a gun, I’m there! And of course, Donnie Wahlberg is amazing.
My Rating:

I Liked it

Review: Boomtown: Season One
Review: 88 Minutes
Righteous Kill, movie review, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Donnie Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino, 50 Cent

Manabu is confused when Louise tries to back out of their newly assigned mission: to guard President Dr

Man I am really jealous of Todd over at Twitch, He’s currently at the American Film Market checking out promo reels for a whole bunch of projects i’m really interested in. He’s seen some stuff from the live action adaption of ‘Blood: The Last vampire’
Blood The Last Vampire. The ultimate success of this one is going to depend largely on how convincing star Gianna Jun ends up being in English but on a purely visual level? Damn. This thing has definitely got the goods.
e.x.c.i.t.e.d.
but he’s also checked out the Promo Reel for the film i was babbling about a couple of posts back; Nicholas Winding Refn’s ‘Valhalla Rising’ starring Mads Mikelsen
Nicolas Winding Refn’s viking epic has been one of the most anticipated titles going in these parts from the day it was announced and if the promo reel that the Wild Bunch have on exhibition is any indication then Refn fans are going to be very, very happy. Mikkelsen looks stellar in the lead role, the rest of the cast is very strong, and this just looks like sparse, brutal perfection. Another winner from the director of Pusher.
Still not convinced, check out the on-set reports from Valhalla Girl on youtube. Or my favourite so far below…

Follow Todds excellent coverage of the AFM over at Twitch
and check out a bunch more images on flickr here

*UPDATE* yeah it was bound to happen, it got taken down, however, seek and ye shall find *
This is currently being ‘disappeared’ in the mafia sense of the word from most places around the web, but luckily we still have a copy. It’s worth checking out if only because you get to see some more of Bale, more Sam Worthington (both interesting actors) and some more sweet robot action smashing some shit-up in the dessert.
The set-up of this movie gets me interested, unfortunately the ever-present retardo-named McG is there to give me a swift kick in the cock, and that coupled with things like ‘WE’VE GOT 10 DIFFERENT TERMINATORS IN THIS MOVIE’… makes me really fucking worried..
Bueller?

Is the Ghost Train called Eternity myth or reality?Add this to your queueAdded: Thu Nov 06 19:19:20 UTC 2008Air date: Thu Jun 22 00:00:00 UTC 2006Duration: 23:48

Raymond Shaw: There are two kinds of people in this world … those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off.

The Manchurian Candidate
1962

The 2008 Emmy™-nominee for Outstanding Reality Program, A&E's series INTERVENTION, which profiles people who are struggling with addictions and the friends and family members who are seeking to help them, returns for a sixth season with all new episodes beginning on Monday, December 15 at 9pm ET/PT.

The season opener of the three-time Prism Award-winning series profiles Janet, a mother of four whose addiction to alcohol has cost her her family. At age 50, Janet's suppressed memories of

A&E is in production on Steven Seagal: Lawman , a new Real-Life series that will chronicle martial arts expert and international film star Steven Seagal's extraordinary life in law enforcement, it was announced today by Robert Sharenow, Senior Vice President Non-Fiction & Alternative Programming, A&E Network.

Seagal's movies have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. He is an expert martial artist, with a 7th-degree black belt in aikido. Along with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger

There’s a new poster out for the Watchmen film and really I could write this feature length post about how next year is going to be the year of the watchmen but I am not going to because you all know its the truth. instead what about reading some of the older posts from the blog to convince you!

I wanted to catch this film at the London Film Festival but just couldn’t spare the time from my schedule of playing xbox in my pants and occasionally touching myself in the happy place. I really like Nicholas Winding Refn’s other work; the Pusher Trilogy, Bleeder, even ‘Fear X’ with John Turturro which i’m pretty sure nobody saw except for me…and perhaps John Turturro.. but maybe not. This on the other hand… I don’t know looks weird. I’m interested in Charles Bronson as a character (Britain’s most notorious prison inmate, spent 35 years in prison and even had a wing built to keep him away from the other prisoners and guards) but this looks a bit too much like it does nothing but glorifies who he is.
There’s a spate of books published here in the uk ‘written’ by retired east-end gangsters with titles like ‘Ronnie ‘The Teeth’ Collins: Portrait of a double-ard barstard’ that frankly make me want to puke. These are people that made a lot of money through extortion and violent crime, that are now admired and given book-deals because they’re real ‘cockerknees’. dogshit. So it might be an understatement to say that film versions of these kind of books… don’t interest me, much like the recently released ‘Cass‘.
I trust Refn based on his previous work to be smarter than this, and hopefully it’ll be a much more well rounded film and a film worth talking about.
I’ve no idea if ‘Bronson’ will make it to cinemas, but Winding Refn’s also got another movie (A viking film starring the awesome Mads Mikkelsen) in the pipeline that may well arrive before we see this released, until then dig out one of the pusher films (Also starring Mikkelsen) or FearX (see the trailer below)