Category: Movies
The Top 5 Most Anticipated Monster Movies That Aren’t ‘Pacific Rim’!
Monster movies, why the hell are they so few and far between? I just can’t get enough of a good creature feature. It seems all the hype is around Pacific Rim if you’re a monster fanatic. I’m excited to check that one out, but still it looks a little too Hollywood Blockbustery. A little too slick and videogamey. I’m sure it’ll be fun as hell but there’s only so much glittery CGI a guy can take in one summer!
So I figured I’d see what else was out there that could be promising and a bit more under the radar. So here’s five movies that just might please fans of monster flicks like myself! So in no particular order….
1. Dead Shadows
No idea when this French “End of the World” horror movie is going to be released but I’d bet as we are getting ready for a few big Hollywood “End of the World” movies to hit soon I’ll bet this one isn’t far behind! Still it looks like something that could end up being a lot of fun, though seemingly heavy on the CG. This one has a the awesome old “comet crash brings monsters” vibe to it-check it!
2. Under the Bed
This one looks right up my alley and I’ve already read some pretty good reviews for it. It’s supposed to have a kind of Joe Dante feel to it. To me it’s bringing to mind movies like The Gate and Gremlins, but from what I’ve heard toward the movies third act it amps up the gore with a pretty epic “kids vs. monsters” battle. I mean who doesn’t love seeing kids fight monsters?!
3. Game of Werewolves
This cool looking little Spanish werewolf movie has yet to be released in the United States but it has already got a pretty cool rep building for it. I am a sucker for a fun Werewolf movie and the Underworld franchise just ain’t cutting it! So I have my fingers crossed that this lycan werewolf horror comedy is gonna bring the goods! Supposedly Joe Dante has a new Werewolf film in the works too called “Monster Love” I wish there was a trailer for that one because I’m sure it’ll be awesome!
4. Knights of Badassdom
When the HELL is this thing gonna get released?! It’s been sitting in limbo for long enough and it looks like a delightful Horror comedy. It involves a bunch of LARPERS that accidentally summon and real life demon from an ancient book. They’ll get a shot to try out their real skills in a fight for their life. Lets hope this gets a release date soon becuz it looks like a load of fun!
5. Exists
Why can’t anyone ever make a cool Bigfoot movie? There are a ton of them out there and the best one is STILL Harry and The Hendersons! We came close with ‘Abominable’ back in 2006, which is probably the best killer Bigfoot flick out there, yet still it lacked something. And most recently we got a a few more found footage Sasquatch movies, Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes, Willow Creek & The Woodsman some were decent but none of them left much of a mark. So I am hoping that ‘Exists’ will be worth the wait, simply because it’s an Eduardo Sanchez film. Sanchez is best known for directing the Blair Witch Project so he clearly understands the genre and if you don’t think he can pull of a creature feature then you need to check out his awesome alien flick “Altered”. Expect a trailer soon but in the mean time he gives us the scoop here:
Lastly here’s a call to support “Harbinger Down” a movie in the works by ADI the same people that brought you those magnificent monsters in Tremors amongst others! they’re using all practical effects and using 1982’s The Thing as inspiration, this is exciting!
Iron Man 3: Why The Movie Mandarin is the Most Chilling Villain of Recent Cinema
I just saw Iron Man 3 last night and I loved it! I would go as far to say that it’s as good as or better than the first movie. I’m quite certain you don’t need a full report from me about what I loved about the film, as there’s more than enough online about the movie that could end up being the highest grossing film of all time. Instead I would like to address something that kinda floored me about the film. That being number one, The Mandarin. So if you haven’t seen the movie, STOP right here.
Major spoilers ahead!
I was completely taken by surprise with the film’s big twist. The Mandarin was not The Mandarin at all. Instead it was shockingly revealed he was a bumbling drunken actor that was hired to play the part of the worlds most hated and feared terrorist. This was an incredible twist which immediately had me thinking. What was Hollywood trying to tell us? Was Shane Black letting us in on the big secret? For years I have had my doubts about the events surrounding 9/11. I wouldn’t say I am a conspiracy theorist but I would say I do believe a conspiracy was and still is afoot regarding that tragic day in American history. One thing which I’ve always been skeptical about was Osama Bin Laden.
Everything about the man and his relation to the USA in the past, his family relations to our Gov’t and his “Death” a couple years back. I always felt something was off with the official story of his demise. There are so many interesting theories about the man, mainly that he died in 2001 of kidney failure. This also combined with strange inconsistencies in his recorded messages over the years have lead many people wonder if Bin Laden was really an evil mastermind in a cave in Afganistan. You add the fact that there is absolutely zero proof he was actually killed by Navy Seal Team Six. No body. No pictures. No video of the raid. Nothing. not even one solid story of “what went down” at “the raid”. Just the official word from Obama that it happened. The most dangerous enemy of the United States would have been worth so much more alive if he was who they claimed he was yet we’re supposed to believe we just killed him with no questioning? The guy was never even indicted for 9/11. So Who really was Bin laden?! Was he a manufactured comic book style villain? The ultimate “evil doer”? or was he merely a man just like The Mandarin?
The Iron Man 3 Mandarin was clearly based on Osama Bin Laden and to me the reveal felt like a message to the people that mirrors perhaps our own reality. Governments all thru history use their own propaganda to push forward their agendas. Some may even manufacture real life “villains” for the public to hate & fear. Iron Man 3 gave a some food for thought to the mainstream. Revealing that many times villains can be made on a small sound stage, that governments and corporations can have a hand in orchestrating events to move along agendas and keep the public scared. Even though we didn’t get the legendary evil Mandarin from the pages of the comic books we got a Mandarin who’s far, far more chilling than any super villain. We got a glimpse into our own possible reality here in the real world….
Here’s an excellent excerpt from the BBC’s “The Power of Nightmares” perhaps Shane Black was a fan?
‘Red Hill’ Proves ‘The New Blood’ Expendables 3 Director Has Got The Chops!
Stallone has been teasing with directors for the upcoming Expendables 3 for quite some time now. We’ve heard rumors of John Woo and yeah even Mel Gibson for quite a while now. However in the end Stallone gave us an unknown “new blood” director, Patrick Hughes. You might ask yourself now who the hell is this guy? Well I decided to check it out by watching his one and only feature film he directed last night to see if he was the man for the job for the final film of The Expendables trilogy.
Red Hill is a 2010, Australian action thriller that Hughes wrote, produced and directed. I’ve gotta say Red Hill was an awesome film and I now understand exactly why Stallone decided to hand the reigns over to him. Sly said he was looking for a “hungry” film maker who reminded him of himself when he started out. I think he got his guy. Red Hill is a simple premise not much different than “The Last Stand” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last box office bomb. A new cop, True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten settles in a small rural Australian town with his pregnant wife and joins his new police crew in a manhunt for a severely scarred psycho escaped convict headed in their direction. That’s pretty much where the similarities end.
The movie is heartfelt, action packed and unpredictable. It doesn’t take long for the action to begin and while it’s not quite in the same action genre as something like The Expendables it’s easy to see why Stallone is giving Hughes a chance. Once we finally meet the big bad guy it’s clear he knows his 80’s action villains. “Jimmy Conway” the movies big aboriginal villain is about as menacing as they come, a highly skilled hunter with one side of his face burned like Freddy Kruger. Once he enters town all hell breaks loose and the movies plot begins to twist and turn. Kwanten also shines in his starring role proving he’s a much more skilled actor than what we’re used to seeing on True Blood.
I’m very surprised this movie doesn’t have more of a following. Perhaps The Expendables 3 will open the door to this rad movie to more people. It surely achieved one thing for me, faith that the third installment of The Expendables will indeed be the best….
The New Wolverine Trailer: The Silver Samurai? Or Megatron?! WTF?
Hmmm…I am a bit of a huge skeptic of the upcoming Wolverine movie, but I’ve decided that I’ll see it with an open mind and not jump to any unfair conclusions. However as I watch this new trailer I only wonder two things: 1. Why is there a girl dressed as Ronald Mcdonald in it? and 2. Why the HELL is the Silver Samurai a Giant robot?!!!! Does this mean that maybe Wolverine will have a big robot version of himself to fight the big robot Silver Samurai? I wouldn’t honestly rule that out!
Ugggh….I am losing faith here, but I won’t let this discourage me! This is gonna be it! This has to be The Wolverine movie we’ve always dreamed about right? Well I can look at it from another perspective, if it does suck it will force them to reboot the franchise! Something I am excited to see!
Goblin Comes to the USA to Perform Suspiria Soundtrack!
So legendary Italian prog rock group Goblin are USA bound to perform their legendary score to Dario Argento’s Suspiria in Austin Texas! Pretty rad idea that was put together by Pantera frontman Philip H. Anselmo and best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell for the 3 day Housecore Horror Film Festival, which celebrates fright flicks that somehow intertwine with heavy metal music.
For those who don’t know what the fuck I am talking about Goblin was a 1970’s progressive rock band responsible for some pretty outrageous and awesome scores for films like Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead and Deep Red. They will be performing while the movie plays and in fact this is their first live American performance. Pretty fantastic, mark your calendar for April 30th, it’s coming SOON and get more info here!
Evil Dead: Setting a New Trend in Mainstream Horror?
So there we have it, The Evil Dead “remake” in all of it’s bloody glory! I saw it this last weekend on a Sunday afternoon matinee, with a packed theater and I am happy to say the flick exceeded my expectations! Kudos to Fede Alvarez for putting his heart and soul into a movie that I feel real horror fans can get behind. I can’t express enough how awesome it was to see a mainstream Hollywood horror movie deliver the gore the way it was meant to be. CG blood was no where in sight, the effects made me cringe and the story was simple and brutal. I enjoyed it even more so because to me this really wasn’t a remake, we got several hints through the film that these events were talking place after Ash’s experience there and if you stuck around after the credits we indeed got a message from the man himself. Alvarez swore up and down that Ash would NOT appear, even in a cameo in this one. I’m not saying the last scene promises anything to fans but the simple fact that we’re now hearing about Ash returning in Army of Darkness 2 and then both movie worlds colliding for one final flick make me just about wet my pants!
evil dead 2013
Now that’s not to say this was a perfect movie, like many reviewers have complained, I’ll agree there’s not much for character development here. But you know what, Evil Dead was never known for in depth character development! It delivered one purpose, to send chills down your spine and attempt to gross you out as much as possible. I think this flick did exactly what is was supposed to and then some. It makes me think of how rad it will be to see Ash plopped into this sick and twisted reality as the same old idiotic hero we’ve come to know and love. Older but not the least bit wiser. Finally giving us fans what we’ve wanted, one more night out with the King.
It seems the movie was a success too at the box office making over 30 Million in it’s first weekend snagging the number one spot. Things are looking good in the world of the Deadites! So let this be a lesson to all these Hollywood so called horror directors. Give people a quality movie, skip the CG blood-it looks like shit and always will, get creative without solely relying on your computer, plan your shots and make us feel and believe that we’re really there fighting for our survival! Something this latest Evil Dead succeeds at on so many levels!
Siskel & Ebert “Evil Dead” 1981 Review
Today we had the passing of Roger Ebert a true mogul in the world of movies. A big part of my childhood as well, as his TV show was seen many times for me in the 1980’s as a kid and I pretty much always could trust his judgement on films. It’s kinda strange knowing we won’t be hearing more from him, but he left behind a legacy…
I thought I’d at the very least post the Siskel and Ebert review of the original Evil Dead back in 1981, as the big hype seems to be the release of the remake this week. Ebert in this one seems to understand that there was something special about the original here. It was always so interesting hearing what these two icons had to say and they did some review some cool and lesser known movies at the time. So what did they have to say about the original? Check it out….Thanks again for Ebert for guiding us to better movies, rest in peace….
ADI: Wizards of Special FX!
I just wanted to post a couple videos from ADI, they are an effects studio that specializes in hands on practical effects. Their work never ceases to amaze me. Today they are still pushing the bar with their makeup and animatronics, which I hope more people take notice of. I’ve heard recently that most movies today are made to look like video games, as so many kids expect their movies to look that way and that glossy shiny video gamey look may actually be intentional. There’s a time and a place for both styles of fx, practical and CG and when they are used together it’s often times has created the best moments in cinema.
But for movies today ADI is pretty much the best at what they do. They’ve done a ton of work on some great films, the biggest controversy was all of the special effects they did for the prequel to “The Thing” which ended up a box office flop. The work they did for the film was replaced with shoddy CGI and this outraged the real fans of the iconic 1982 masterpeice. Had they used the ADI versions the prequel would have been the perfect companion piece to that movie. I just watched a great mini episode of Fangoria’s Blood & Guts with Anthrax’s own Scott Ian and it was worth posting again here.
It just goes to show you that these type of effects aren’t dead and in many cases to this day are better than CG. It also reminded me of how rad the monster design was for Goro from the campy Mortal Kombat. Seeing stuff like that done over fifteen years ago makes me wonder why they chose to go fully CG on characters like The Incredible Hulk. Well I guess I am going to have to at least watch Mortal Kombat again! I recommend subscribing to their Youtube channel, there;s some amazing stuff on there!!!
Also any chance I get I love to show this Green Goblin they were working on for the Raimi Spider-man movie. A total shame they didn’t go with it, however my bet is that in the newest reboot of The Amazing Spider-man, The Green Goblin will most likely appear in the third movie-Hollywood don’t blow it get ADI to design his look!!!
‘The Wolverine’ Trailer: Did They Finally Get it Right?
I won’t lie, I’ve been looking forward to finally seeing the trailer for ‘The Wolverine’ for quite some time now. The wait is over, we finally got to see a glimpse of what we’re in store for this summer. As you may know I loathed X-men Origins: Wolverine with a passion. I still have a hard time pumping myself up for any Hugh Jackman Wolverine stuff after enduring that giant heaping turd of a film. However I’m a fair guy and give things more than their fair share of chances, though I’ve said here before that I’d actually love a Wolverine reboot with a whole new cast. Still I am reaching deep down within my soul and looking past the last couple Wolverine based flicks and again giving Hugh one LAST chance to redeem himself as everyone’s favorite berserker. So I watched the trailer several times now and to me this looks like a pretty solid attempt at a ‘decent” Wolverine adventure.
Did it wow me like I was hoping? No. Did it suck as bad as I was expecting? Not at all. I give this teaser a solid B. This meaning that it could go one of two ways. Way down or way up on the scale of what us true Wolverine fans have really always wanted. First I gotta say Jackman looks good as he always has in the role, he’s a great actor and fully capable of bringing us the best Wolverine performance we’re likely to ever see on screen. I can be knit picky about wanting Wolverine’s crazy comic book hair all day, but hey this is Hollywood and they want to make Wolverine super sexy, not a freaky, hairy little five foot tall mutant with fucked up hair. I get it. I let go of ever seeing that version of the character on screen.
So with this trailer we see Logan apparently heading back to Japan to become “mortal” because he’s tired of living forever with all the pain he’s endured in his life. It appears Lord Shingen weakens his healing factor much like in the original Claremont/Miller limited series from 1982 which this movie is loosely based on. However in that story he heads to Japan to find his fiancee has been forced into marriage by her father Lord Shingen, to an abusive Yakuza crimeboss. Hence Wolverine goes batshit crazy against a clan of ninjas ect.
This movie version looks like it’s trying to head into a “more epic” storyline, amping up the special effects and including a bunch of villains into the mix. This to me could be the first sign of a mistake in the movie. Trying to cram too much into a perfectly human story of love and revenge. However it’s really too soon to jump to any conclusions. One thing that appears to be missing is the blood and violence needed to properly tell the store of a man with razor sharp blades indestructibly bound to his knuckles. This movie better not skimp on the blood. I want to see Wolverine’s claws slice and dice like they do in the comic, in all of the past films we never see any blood, severed arms, legs, ect. I know this is a PG-13 movie but at least give us a little in the way of what sort of damage this mutant would do in a real world with weapons like that. Again, too soon to tell, this movie could indeed give us all that and more. I just can’t take another bloodless kiddie Wolverine flick. So all that said I wasn’t blown away by the trailer. It has potential, unfortunately we don’t yet know if it will finally raise the bar to the true potential of what an amazing Wolverine flick can and should be….what do you think?
Video Tonfa Takes on The Deadbeat at Dawn!
Last Friday evening I had the pleasure of hosting a little event at my vintage clothing shop here in Portland, Oregon called Hollywood Babylon. We showed two movies and hung some awesome art by Tim Goodyear, who’s “Video Tonfa” work can be seen in Pork Magazine regularly. Goodyear does movie reviews, but not only that, he gives his own interpretation of the movies VHS /dvd box art and reviews the film where the movie’s synopsis normally appears. It’s a rad way to read a review and it’s also pretty damn fun to look at! So when we decided to have him grace the store walls with his art he also gave us an event poster featuring his interpretation of one of the movies we watched, Deadbeat at Dawn, which I have raved about here not too long ago. The movie got a great new look on the poster, and if this flick ever gets released again on dvd I hope they decide to use Goodyear’s work for the box art! Check it
Also here’s a great interview with Goodyear via GRIDLords and a close up of one of his reviews…
Universal Dork 