I’ve mentioned several times over the years that the hardest films to review aren’t the really good ones or the really bad ones, but the ones that exist in the middle ground area. A three star flick is more of a challenge to write about than a one star or a five star. Extremes tend to provoke reactions-while the middle ground often inspires indifference. That should highlight how difficult the whole reviewing gig can be-by definition, most movies are going to hover somewhere around average. That means writing a lot of reviews about things that make me feel largely indifferent on a number of levels.
Indifferent is a good way to describe my feelings about Pablo Proenza’s Dark Mirror, a horror film now available through IFC’s Video-On-Demand service and coming to DVD in the near future. The story is incredibly recognizable, the genre trappings traditional to a fault, and the situations and resolutions about as familiar as the faces of our own family members. This isn’t to say that Dark Mirror is a bad film, but it’s not a great one either. This is the kind of movie that you pop in on a lazy Saturday afternoon, watch, then almost immediately forget. It’s neither good enough or bad enough to be truly memorable.
Swine Flu guaranteed that Dead Rising 2 won’t be shown at this year’s E3, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything new to see when it comes to the highly anticipated zombie-killing simulator.
Check out the new trailer below for a look at the game. There’s no gameplay footage here, but that’s a whole lot of zombies.
I have my problems with the first Dead Rising, but I’m still looking forward to this sequel. Hopefully Capcom has learned from their mistakes in the first game–and would it be too much to ask that it actually be playable on a standard definition television this time around? I’d love to have a nicer TV, but I choose to spend my paltry income on games–not television sets.
Bloody-Disgusting is on fire this week–although news that Sony Screen Gems has started development on a sequel to Quarantine isn’t quite on par with their earlier scoop on the Alien prequel.
According to their source (and I’m totally envious they have sources…) Sony’s already developing a sequel to last year’s film, which grossed around 30 million bucks. Quarantine was a remake of the Spanish film [Rec] (which is hitting DVD in July–scroll down a few entries for a look at the artwork) and to be honest, wasn’t nearly as good despite being essentially a shot-for-shot remake.
It should be noted that Sony wants to go in a new direction with the sequel–and will not be remaking [Rec] 2, which is also in development in Europe. This highlights the problem with the trend of remakes and sequels and naming movies without numbers. How confusing is this whole thing going to be in ten to twenty years, when some new fan is trying to figure out which films to see and in what order? People are going to have to start making flow charts to keep this shit straight…
I’m incredibly bummed that I’m not going to E3 this year. I’ve gone numerous times in the past and I highly recommend that anyone who really loves games go at least once–even in it’s newer, more streamlined, form, it’s still a spectacle unlike anything else. I could have gone this year, but I don’t have the money to get to LA, so I’ll be watching from home like the majority of my fellow gamers. I’m not happy about this.
The show hasn’t started yet, but we’re already seeing little bits and pieces of things that will be at the show. Take, for instance, this trailer for Dead Space: Extraction. Extraction is the Wii-only on-rails shooter prequel to EA’s big hit of last year. I’m still not sold on the whole on-rails shooter thing, but the graphics in the trailer aren’t bad and the game’s universe is interesting enough that I’d make a return trip to it even if the visit was a guided one with little room for exploration.
Dead Space: Extraction hits retailers on September 29th.
Kudos to Bloody-Disgusting–it seems their source from earlier this week was spot on when it came to letting the cat out of the bag concerning a prequel to Ridley Scott’s classic flick Alien.
Collider caught up with Tony Scott recently (one of the guys mentioned as a producer in the original story) and he had this to say:
“Yes, Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company.”
I guess that pretty much sums it up.
I understand a lot of the anger and venom that’s been generated because of this story over the past few days. That being said, I’m not as angry about an Alien prequel as most. Let’s be honest here–there hasn’t been a good movie in this franchise since Aliens and that one’s almost 25 years old. I’m not sure an Alien prequel is any more offensive to me than Alien 3 or 4 or the two Alien vs. Predator movies in the grand scheme of things. Is this a bad idea? Almost assuredly. That being said, it’s not like Alien has some pristine cinematic legacy intact that’s about to be tarnished–that happened the moment Alien 3 hit theaters.The Alien franchise has become like the easy girl in your high school–everyone already knows she puts out for all the wrong reasons, so doing it one more isn’t going to hurt anything.
It’s become almost popular to dislike Eli Roth (in sort of the same way that a lot of horror fans dislike Rob Zombie), but I’m not a hater. Sure, I think Hostel 2 was pretty weak overall, but it’s always been clear to me that the guy (and Zombie is in the same boat) loves the genre. For me, that’s all that really matters. I may not like you or some of your work, but if you’re as passionate about this stuff as I am, then you’re all right in my book. I’d rather have someone who loves the genre making horror films than some gun-for-hire hack who’s doing it so he can move on to greener pastures.
Roth unveiled his next projects to Empire Online yesterday. The first is a feature length film based on the faux-trailer he did for Tarantino and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse–the hilarious Thanksgiving. Also on his agenda is his big budgeted (Roth says he’d like 60 million bucks to work with) sci-fi thriller, now known as Endangered Species.
The filmmaker didn’t really drop any details about either film, but we know Thanksgiving is set to be an old-school-styled exploitation slasher flick. When talking about Endangered Species, Roth said little aside from “I want to do a sci-fi movie, like, a $60m movie – something in that budget range – where I can really do lots of mass destruction and really destroy lots of shit!”
Drag Me to Hell star Alison Lohman was on the Big O and Dukes show recently (106.7 WJFK FM–where you can hear me every Friday afternoon at 2 PM EST) and she had some interesting things to say about Evil Dead. I generally don’t take umbrage at someone calling Evil Dead “a B movie”, but her tone is pretty dismissive. She stops just short of saying the truly outrageous “I don’t get why people like it”.
Click the link below and listen to it for yourself.
The H2 media assault continues full bore with this new behind-the-scenes featurette that debuted on YouTube this morning.
It’s less than two minutes long, but it features comments from director Rob Zombie and others as well as splicing in some new footage of Michael Myers in action. The best part? They actually used the Halloween theme in this clip.
The film hits theaters on August 28th. Check out the footage below and see what you think.
I think most of us are eagerly awaiting the debut of Jennifer’s Body–not because it’s some groundbreaking genre film, but because most of us can’t pass up an opportunity to ogle Megan Fox.
If ogling her in the film isn’t enough for you, then maybe a comic book version will do the job. Fox Atomic is teaming up with Boom! Studios to create a graphic novel tie-in to the film. Here’s the official press release:
“The movie event of the fall is the comic book event of this summer! JUNO’s award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody brings you JENNIFER’S BODY starring Megan Fox as a demonically-possessed cheerleader with a taste for killing teenage boys! In this original graphic novel that ties into the movie and expands on its universe, BLACK METAL’s Rick Spears brings you even more hellish Jennifer stories with art by HACK/SLASH’s Tim Seely, KICK DRUM COMIX’s Jim Mahfood, DMZ’s Nikki Cook, and POPGUN’s Ming Doyle“
Jennifer’s Body hits theaters on September 18th, the comic will make its debut this summer.
I’ve spent like the past year or so telling people that they shouldn’t bother seeing Quarantine because [Rec] (the film that inspired it) was so much better. Unfortunately, Sony screwed everyone over by dicking around with the domestic release date of [Rec] (most likely so it wouldn’t interfere with Quarantine’s box office and DVD numbers) and it’s just now about to finally hit DVD here in America.
Just to get you in the mood for the July 14th release date, here’s the cover art courtesy of DVD Active. The disc will be fairly bare bones, with a making-of featurette as the only supplement, but I guess I’ll take what I can get at this point.
I’ve mentioned several times over the years that the hardest films to review aren’t the really good ones or the really bad ones, but the ones that exist in the middle ground area. A three star flick is more of a challenge to write about than a one star or a five star. Extremes tend to provoke reactions-while the middle ground often inspires indifference. That should highlight how difficult the whole reviewing gig can be-by definition, most movies are going to hover somewhere around average. That means writing a lot of reviews about things that make me feel largely indifferent on a number of levels.
