Miami Vice
July 29, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Miami Vice is yet another Hollywood effort to use a popular TV title to make a theatrical release with a built in audience. The problem is whenever they do this, the director and producer are faced with three basic choices. One is try to use the original cast and pick up the story some years later. This works ok for TV reunions, but not for a major theatrical release as the original crew has either aged or died. Second option is to go with campy nostalgia ala Charlies Angels, Starsky and Hutch, et al. The third option is use the title, character names and basic premise but make an entirely new movie ala Mission Impossible. This is the direction Michael Mann went with Miami Vice.
So here’s the deal. Although Michael Mann is the person behind the TV series as well as the movie, this is a totally different Vice. Don’t expect pastel colored sets that look like a 55 gallon drum of sherbert blew up in the middle of them. You also shouldn’t expect Don Johnson and his linen suits, Elvis the alligator or a Jan Hammer soundtrack. The only real nod to the old series is Crockett still drives a Ferrari. The ‘rosa is gone, he now has a very nice F430.
In lieu of 80’s nostalgia, what you get is Colin Ferrell as Sonny Crockett and Jamie Foxx as Rico Tubbs. They’re still vice cops in Miami. In this episode, err movie, they find themselves going deep undercover for the Feds to try to help bust a drug cartel that is running narcotics and other contraband into the U.S. by way of Miami. This really does feel like we tuned into an episode of a TV series. A series that is a lot like Miami Vice, but not quite Vice.
Part of the problem here is we already supposedly know the characters, so there’s little to no character development. Unfortunately, Foxx and Ferrell do their own versions of Tubbs and Crockett. Only Barry Shabaka Henley, playing Castillo, seems to try to really play the character the way we remembered him on the TV series.
Mann took a huge risk by removing all of the things Miami Vice has become known for and that the fans no doubt expect. With that gone, the movie has to stand on it’s own merits. The original Vice was cutting edge TV, but that was 20 years ago. Now, there are shows like The Shield which make Michael Mann’s original creation seem pretty tame. And that’s a problem here. To gain a whole new audience for Miami Vice, the intensity needed to be raised several levels. Instead we received something that felt like an episode of an 80’s cop show.
If we viewed this movie without the Miami Vice title snd without the familiar character names, we would have liked some of the cool visuals, breasts and cars, but would’ve otherwise found it uninspired. And that’s how we’re going to score this one. As such, we’ll give it 3 stars, barely.
Open Water
July 28, 2006 | Leave a Comment
What we have here sports fans is the ultimate bad vacation experience. Susan and Daniel, our main characters, decide they need a break from their relentless careers and pack up for a weekend dive trip to Caribbean . After a night in the hotel with some primo female full frontal action they get up early and head out on a ‘cattle boat’ dive trip with 18 other idiots into shark infested waters, buddy up and go in pairs to look at fish and stuff (why?). The captain tells them to stay together, stay close to the boat and don’t be late. Do you see where this is going yet? Anyhoo, everyone finishes their little jaunt and climb back aboard ready to turn up a few, get back to dry land and party the night away. The check sheet matches, the number of divers that went in, came out so the boat cranks up and heads back to dock. Long story short; thanks to some A-wipe who forgot his mask and the poor mathematical skills of Junior the first mate, the count is off by 2 and the boat leaves none the wiser.
Dan and Sue after spending entirely too much time looking at an eel, surface to find the boat has left without them; and this is when the real movie begins. Shot primarily with a Sony HD camera we get some great sweeping shots of the horizon as they bob up and down with nothing around them but… are you ready for this? Open Water. I can only assume that’s where he got the title.
The film is highlighted with some fairly decent dialogue as the mood changes from moderate irritation at being abandoned to absolute terror with the realization of their collective fates. You get some great underwater shark shots and some pretty good acting from Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis but most of all you experience the abandonment and desolation right along with them due in part to both their performances and some top notch editing. This movie lets you feel the jellyfish stings and the tiny nibbles from our gilled brethren of the deep without having to show you anything; and that my friends is what I call fine film making.
So, without going into spoiler territory and ruining the outcome I will close with this. If you want to create an environment so terrifying you will never go in deeper than knee high water again and you only have $120,000.00 to do it with, call Chris Kentis because he is the man. He wrote, directed and edited and in the process created a film that leaves you wanting less because any more and you might actually go into sensory overload. This movie took me on a visceral ride into the unknown and although I won’t go on it again, not because the film was bad but because all fears considered, this one manifested all of mine in just 80 short minutes.
Not everyone is going to dig on this picture because Open Water is the kind of film that you either love or hate. I loved it. It may not be JAWS (nothing is) but all in all it was a pretty good day at the picture show.
Ren & Stimpy - The Lost Episodes
July 25, 2006 | 1 Comment
I was never that big of a Ren and Stimpy fan when it came on in the 90’s, but being a guy I’m a sucker for the phrase “uncensored” when it’s attached to a cartoon. Remembering that Ren & Stimpy were known for gross out humor and such, I figured that taking that over the edge might be amusing. Well… it was, but some of it just ain’t right.
The collection starts off in a very unusual way. Instead of getting a menu you see an introduction from Weird Al Yankovic, and not that funny of one either. Next you’re gonna sit through what amounts to a classroom lecture from John K. regarding the state of animation in the early 90’s and why Ren & Stimpy were so groundbreaking. After you sit through what had to be 15 minutes of talk, you finally get a menu to see the actual cartoons. I’m guessing you could skip all of that, but being the stand-up reviewer that I am I wanted to experience the collection in the way it was designed.
I choose the first ‘toon in the collection, “Naked Beach Frenzy” and instead of getting some boobs, I get another intro from John K. and the girl who drew the “sexy girls”. This intro was shorter though and the menus did make it clear that I could skip it if I wanted to. Again, I watched it all.. and was bored.
Finally the show started and right off the bat.. boobs! Well, at least I knew at this point it was uncensored as the box stated. Ren and Stimpy are at the beach, Stimpy to get some exercise and Ren to get a load of the sights. While Stimpy is going on about how fresh the air is Ren is watching a buxom young girl play with a beach ball.. bouncing.. bending.. and giggling. Eventually she decides to take her top off to Ren’s great excitement, but Stimpy has other plans to get Ren’s attention.
He goes and buys himself a thong. So one second you’re seeing well drawn topless babes and the next.. Stimpy’s ass in a thong. It just ain’t right! Later in this episode Ren and Stimpy are shower attendants taking care of the needs of the young lasses.. bathing their boobs, and eventually.. shaving their.. oh my.
Did I mention the massively hairy lifeguard that gets naked and chases Ren around the beach? Ren getting caught in the lifeguards butt and Stimpy using a plunger to get him out? Do I need to say it?
I’m not going to detail all the episodes, but Naked Beach Frenzy isn’t as gross as it gets. At one point Stimpy plays a woman.. who is pregnant with Ren’s child. Stimpy with boobs.. and we see them! And in another scene, prolapsed rectum! It just ain’t right!
Each episode has an introduction and an interview at the end, all of which you can skip. They were obviously unrehearsed and look like they were shot using a DV cam in someones basement. There’s a couple bit of interest buried in all of this but it’s not nearly enough to make it worth watching. Get this set for the ‘toons, they are all you’d expect them to be and that much more.
I’m not gonna say it again, but you know what I’m thinking.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
July 18, 2006 | Leave a Comment
With rare exceptions we all go into movies having some idea what we expect to see and end up judging the movie on how well it meets those expectations. I expected Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to be a self-aware attempt at being hip, with some action and tah-tah’s thrown in just to spice it up a bit. That’s pretty much what I got but the surprising thing was how good it turned out to be!
The film starts with Harry (Robert Downey Jr.) and a friend doing a little Christmas shopping in New York City… at night… after the store has closed. Yep, he’s a thief. After they leave the store a woman starts shooting at them, hitting the friend and forcing Harry to run away to avoid the bullets and cops. Ducking into a building, he finds himself in a casting session with a script shoved in his face. To keep his cover he starts reading lines.. lines which happen to go along with what just happened to him and thus he reads it with great emotion and improvisation. The casting director is impressed and sends him to Hollywood for some additional training and testing.
At a party he’s introduced to some people, including his trainer in the ways of being a detective, Perry (Val Kilmer) otherwise known as “gay Perry”.. cause he’s gay. He meets some girls, meets some guys, has his ass kicked, and gets the story rolling. I’m being vague on purpose here as part of the fun is learning about the story as you go along. Suffice it to say that at it’s heart Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is an old fashioned whodunnit thriller with a few expected (and unexpected) twists along the way.
What makes this movie special is the narration by Robert Downey Jr., the writing on this is spectacular! For example, near the end of the movie he makes a comment along the lines of “oh yeah, one more thing… don’t worry, I just saw Lord of the Rings and I won’t put you through 15 funerals before rolling credits, but there’s something you need to know.” Good stuff! There also several completely unexpected bits that happen that are laugh out loud funny, I just can’t tell you what they are.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a very strong 4 star movie, almost 5 in fact. Humor, violence, nudity, car chases.. it missed a fifth star by a very small margin. Maybe if Val hadn’t felt the need to play gay Perry so well…
Eight Days a Week
July 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I have to admit that when I’m handed a DVD for a movie that I’ve never even heard of, my expectations are going to be pretty much zilch. This reaction was greatly reinforced after I sat through the heinous and vile Diane Keaton flick “Plan B”.
When handed “Eight Days a Week”, however, I saw the goddess on the cover known to us mere mortals as Keri Russell. She was only 21 when this movie was filmed and she could easily pass for 18. It was then that I figured that, even if the film sucked bawlz, she would provide a lot of very nice eye candy.
And, before you ask, the answer is “no”. She doesn’t get nekkid. She does, however, show quite a bit of skin as she is fond of bikinis and wet t-shirts. And, if I may venture here for a moment, she’s got the best nips I’ve seen in ages. I can say this with authority because the movie spends so much time focused on them…even extended closeups. Hell, even the main character regales you with his intimate and detailed description of them. They are just…SO…perfect. Uh… I need to take a 5 minute break. Um. Make that 2 minutes.
Ok, I’m back. So, yes, the eye candy factor is definitely there. But then I noticed something else. This movie is actually pretty darn funny! Horny teenagers are always a potentially great source for laughs and Eight Days certainly delivers. The humor is, as you’d expect, bawdy and more than a little offbeat.
The premise isn’t entirely original, but it works. A teenage semi-geek named Peter (Schaefer) is in love..er..lust with Erica (Russell), the hottie version of the “girl next door”. He is convinced that he doesn’t have a chance with her so he fantasizes from afar. That is until his grandfather encourages him to try to win her love by standing beneath her window non-stop until she realizes that she, too, loves him. It’s a great setup for comedy and director Michael Davis works it well.
So, to this point, I’m actually enjoying this flick but I’m wondering when it will jump the shark and plummet into dreck. But it never does. Perhaps the movies greatest strength is not the humor or the babelicious Keri Russell, but instead is just that it treats everyone as a reasonably intelligent human being. Well, everyone except for maybe Peter’s best friend, Matt, who is addicted to exploring new masturbation techniques and methods. But this is ok since it is at his expense that many of the best laughs come.
In the end, Eight Days has walked a very fine and dangerous line between bawdy sex comedy and near chick flick-ish sweet teen coming-of-age movie. And, somehow, it pulls it off well. It gets a full and unapologetic four stars from me and is very definitely worth a rental or purchase.
Fear Factor Season One
July 11, 2006 | Leave a Comment
One of the best train wrecks on TV, Fear Factor has earned it’s reputation as being a complete waste of time and brain cells. For that alone we love it!
The premise is simple. Get a group of 3 girls and 3 guys and have them compete with each other in various “stunts” for $50,000. Sometimes the people are related or are a couple just to make it more interesting, but in virtually call cases the ladies are gonna be worth watching. It’s always a set of 3 stunts, with the first and last being physical and the middle one being mental. If you come in last, you’re gone.
It’s the mental stunts that everyone talks about as Fear Factor defines a mental challenge as what you can force yourself to eat, touch or be touched by. For example, in the first season they poured 400 rats on the players, had them eat sheep eyeballs, eat live beetles (mmm, crunchy!) and be covered up by 300,000 meal worms. Watching the reactions is worth your time even if you feel like throwing up yourself.
The physical stunts range from grabbing onto a helicopter while doing 30mph in a boat, to jumping from one 18-wheeler to another while they travel down the road at 50mph. Interesting, but not all that interesting. It also get a bit repetitive after a few shows, but fortunately you can just hit the “next chapter” button and get right back to roach eating!
The other thing interesting to watch is the competitiveness between the players, remember that they are playing for 50K. Faced with all types of challenges, most of the player actually end up cheering for each other and offer encouragement to get through the challenges.. but occasionally you have one that decides to taunt the others instead. Watch this with a group of friends and you’ll quickly spot the ones who have that same streak in them as they will enjoy the taunting while others just get annoyed by it. Of course, many times the contestant doing the taunting will get pissed if they in turn get taunted. Damn babies.
If you’ve got a lot of friends that you want to subject to seeing people eat bugs and eyeballs then by all means buy this DVD. Otherwise it’s still worth a rent for the guilty pleasure of wasting time if nothing else.
The John Ford Film Collection
July 10, 2006 | Leave a Comment
In critical circles (other than ours) John Ford is frequently considered the single greatest director in history; I of course beg to differ but fear not because I am going to explain myself… in great detail. I know this might come as a shock if you are a film student or classic film aficionado, but it’s true. Yes it’s true John Ford won 4 Academy Awards for Direction. Yes it’s true that John Ford is the only director to be nominated for 2 films in the same category, in the same year and win. And yes it’s true that he is partly responsible for the iconic presence that is, or was John Wayne. So why could I disagree with his greatness? Simple, he needs John Wayne and John Wayne doesn’t need him. The John Wayne featured Ford films are the most known and revered among men and the other films are pretty boring if you ask me.
There are 2 sets of John Ford movies available from Warner Home Video, this one, The John Ford Film Collection, and a John Wayne/John Ford Collection. In my opinion if you are a man you would be a complete schmuck to choose this collection over the Duke’s. John Ford could bring cinemascope to life better than anyone, his eye for sweeping majestic landscapes and attention to natural lighting are second to none (except for maybe Spielberg or Ridley Scott), Cheyenne Autumn will prove that by itself, but I don’t think the movies in this collection bring that to life (other than Cheyenne), and since that is his claim to fame this set left me flat.
Anyway, enough complaining let’s get to the positives in this set! This collection of DVD’s features 5 films from different periods in Fords movie making career, which featured a wide range of period specific stars and film making tricks used even today. The first in the collection and probably the best is the 1935 film, The Informer. A movie about a cast out IRA operative that betrays his blood and brothers in arms to the English in 1922; In an attempt to save his neck and rescue his wife from a life of homelessness and prostitution, he gives up his boys for a mere 20 pounds and has to live with his choices. The film has a lot of biblical overtones with the whole betrayal angle and the performance from Victor McLeglan landed him a best actor award to go with Ford’s directorial nod. It won 5 total but those are the two most important ones.
The set from here went downhill, but there were moments in the 1934 film, the Lost Patrol, that I would perk up between naps. Lost Patrol is about a squad of British soldiers caught behind enemy lines during WWI and their sergeant that leads them into an ambush. Pretty good but not great!
The last film in the collection that I watched all the way through was Cheyenne Autumn. John Ford’s final western which in a real switch is told from the indians point of view… Sadly Kevin Costner told a similar story a few years later and it was better. Maybe it had something to do with Costner using real indians and John Ford using Mr Rourke! Bad casting ruined this one for me, the story was good, the scenery amazing but the casting was not good, not good at all.
If you love John Ford’s films by all means add it to your collection, but if you just remember the westerns like I did, buy the John Wayne collection and rent the couple of standouts I listed above. You can’t lose with The Searchers and Fort Apache but you will want to stick your head in a waffle iron during the Hepburn snoozer, Mary of Scotland.
One final note, Admitting that you watch Katherine Hepburn movies that don’t star John Wayne is worse than watching any movie with Meryl Streep and that’s saying something.
Coach Season 1
July 1, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Coach is one of those timeless sitcoms that’s funny to watch over and over again. You don’t have to be a jock or a non-jock to appreciate the humor, it’s the writing and the excellent comedic timing of Craig T. Nelson and Jerry Van Dyke that make this show such fun.
Simple sitcom setup… Craig plays Hayden Fox, the coach of the Minnesota State University football team. He has a girlfriend (Shelley Fabares) who’s a newscaster in Minneapolis who sometimes reports on him and as such they keep their relationship on the quiet side if not really a secret. In the opening episode he learns that his now 18 year old daughter Kelly (Clare Carey) has decided to get her education at Minnesota, but he hasn’t really seen her in the last 16 years so he’s not sure how to react. On the coaching side his assistant coach is Luther (Jerry Van Dyke) who isn’t the brightest guy in the room and Dauber (Bill Fagerbakke) who makes Luther look like a professor. There’s also the band director to get under Coach’s skin and Kelly’s boyfriend Stuart who isn’t quite manly enough to please him.
See enough possible conflict for a season or two? How about nine seasons? Yep, Coach was popular enough to last almost a decade and frankly I think they could have gone on even longer. Coach is a ton of fun to watch. I sat down to refresh my memory before writing this and ended up watching 6 episodes in a row before stopping. This set easily gets a 5 star rating, it’s classic, it’s fun and it should be part of your collection.
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Gun Play
Blood & Gore Car Chases T&A Chuckles |
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