Steve and I caught The Expendables today. I think we both wish we would have gone to Scott Pilgrim, instead.

I was really in the mood for what the marketing machine told me I was going to get in this movie. A big, dumb, action-packed throwback to 80′s Reagan style machismo. Unabashed and in my face. Everyone going to this knows, inherently, that it’s going to be stupid. The plot will be nonsensical and only there to showcase guns and explosions. We get it. The hook to get you in the door is that all your favorite action heroes of yesteryear are going to be kicking ass in the same movie! Well, almost everyone. There’s no Chuck Norris. No Wesley Snipes. No Steven Seagal. No Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ah-nold and Jon McClane are there, but only for a brief, and really awkward cameo (more on that later). So wait…yeah…almost nobody you want to see is in this film. You’ve got a problem when the two biggest stars in your movie don’t even hold a gun (for fuck’s sake, Sly, couldn’t you at least have had a Mexican standoff between the three of them while they deliver their godawful dialogue?).

Instead of the guys you want to see, Sylvester Stallone (whose veins scare me. I feel like they are watching me at all times) tosses in a bunch of…nobody’s. Terry Crews? Randy Couture? Stone Cold Steve Austin? Give me a break. Somewhere, Michael Dudikoff is kickboxing in a corner, crying. Mickey Rourke shows up to tell a sad, oh so sad (actually, hilarious) story but I don’t think he ever picks up a gun either. In fact, other than Jet Li, the only other “name” you’d be interested in is Dolph Lundgren. He-Man himself, who is looking pretty damn weathered these days, plays the loose-canon. Jason Statham rounds out the cast and plays the best bud of Sly. So yeah, most of the guys you actually want to see shooting people and blowing shit up….don’t actually do it. Strike 1.

Now I was fully expecting the plot to be stupid. That was a given. But there is actually no plot to this movie at all. Eric Roberts plays this bad American who water boards hot Latina’s, because that’s what we Americans do. Roberts is alright in the role, but he has nobody with him other than Stone Cold Steve Austin who serves as his bodyguard. Roberts is down in some Latin American country yelling at a general to grow his coca plants. You see, he wants cocaine. Why he holds some mysterious sway over an entire army is never really explained. Anyways, Sly and Statham decide to go check out what they’re dealing with. They realize “Holy hell, there are a million dudes here with machine guns…we’ll pass, thank you very much.” That’s right. Our action heroes decide to PASS on the gig. You know, I once saw John Matrix single-handedly destroy a Latin military dictatorship just because he knew how hot a piece of ass his daughter was going to become, but I digress. Anyways, back in America, Rocky realizes “Man, I met this chick, and she’s got, like, IDEALS” so he decides to change his mind and go back after Stanley White tells him a story about how he didn’t save a chick from jumping off a bridge (“I LOST MY HUMANITY!!!!!!”). Bringing Wah Sing Ku and Sergeant Jericho Butler with him. By the way, since when is Mickey Rourke an “Action Star”?

So that’s it, our team of ragtag action stars isn’t even trying to get Eric Roberts. He just sort of coincidentally happens to get in their way. Roberts does what he can, but he’s just playing a rich American in a suit. That’s it. I expected a dumbass plot, but I didn’t expect there to be no plot. Strike 2.

So we have action “stars” that really aren’t stars at all, the sad reality that the people we want to see all turned Rambo down, and a plot that would best be described as what a 10 year old retard would write if they had only ever read descriptions on the back of 80 VHS boxes. I won’t even get into the dialogue which is just terrible. Stallone’s idea of a one-liner is Dolph Lundgren yelling “INSECT!” after smashing a dude’s head into a car dashboard. I think right before that Lundgren is all “Don’t talk to me cockroach!”. Haha. Get it? See, he called him an “Insect”…you know…because of the “cockroach”. Somewhere, Shane Black is thinking “This film could have used a good pussy joke.”

How about the “action”? After all, this is supposed to be some big dick swinging “throwback” to the glory days of action cinema when Americans killed colored people with reckless abandon. I was yawning pretty frequently. There isn’t a lot of traditional action set pieces in the first half of the movie. It’s mostly just dudes talking about how awesome their adventures were. Whiplash tells Cobra Cobretti “Hey man, remember when we killed all those Serbs when we found out they were making that horrible movie?! Remember all our guys getting ripped to shreds and your hand being all blown off and shit? That was great!” Yeah, I bet it was. I wish I could have seen THAT movie.

Okay, but at least we’re gonna get some 80′s action, right? Maybe I went into this with all the wrong expectations. This is most certainly NOT a throwback to those films. Stallone directs this like he’s been jacked up with too many ‘roids while being on a Red Bull bender. Every scene is loaded with a million different angles, the cuts fly at hyper speed and there is this fucking stupid over reliance on extreme closeups of everybody’s goddamn face. One hilarious scene in which they “explain” who Eric Roberts is and what he’s doing is cross cut with just closeups of their eyes. You don’t even see them talking. It’s just Stallone’s eyes to Statham’s eyes to an evil photo of a dapper Roberts to Li’s eyes and so forth. It’s hilariously bad filmmaking. Also, keep an eye out for the absurd cutaways to reaction shots. It’s like all the actors had a clause in their contracts that forced Stallone to cut to awkward reaction shots of everyone so that they all had some face time (literally).

And that Arnold, Willis, Stallone scene is brutal. The jokes fall totally flat, there is no rhythm or sense of timing to the editing (more out of place reaction shots….ugh), and they do…nothing. One of the big problems with this film is that the actors generally have no chemistry at all. Statham and Roberts are the only ones that come out of this thing unscathed. I can’t tell if the acting sucked because they all realized how stupid of  a movie this was, or if the script was just so awful that these guys couldn’t help but come across shitty? It’s gotta be the script. Deejay’s probably written better dialogue while pissing in a snow drift.

The big set piece finale is certainly action packed, but it’s edited really poorly. Half the time you can’t tell who is who and what the hell is going on because the lighting is so dark and the editing so blinding. In one scene, The Italian Stallion fights Sean Michaels (that’s his wrestling name, right?). You think it’s going to lead to some “unfinished business” set piece at the end with Koko B. Ware gets away, but you’d think wrong. Instead, some random dude who hasn’t been seen for about 50 minutes shows up to torch him. With CG fire.

Yes, that’s right. This 80′s “throwback” is filled with CG. And really terrible CG at that. Whether it’s fire or explosions, knives, bullet hits, or exploding soldiers, this movie eschews traditional action staples: STUNT MEN. Dude, I don’t care how fucking cheap it is to make a CG flame. Put a fucking guy in a suit and light him up. If you’re going to shoot someone, I don’t want to see digital blood flying around. Put some goddamn SQUIBS on the guy and John McClane his ass. I mean, the entire way this movie was filmed just makes it look so damn cheap. Like Stallone was just trying to cash in rather than make an honest homage to the action films of yore. Maybe that was never his intention, but it was marketed as such, so he deserves the scorn tossed back on him.

Is there anything good in this movie? A broken clock is right twice a day. There’s a fun moment where an airplane dumps some gas on a pier. A couple of the lines might make you chuckle and I did like Roberts even though he had nothing to do. Rourke is alright.  But overall, this is a spectacular failure for all involved.

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Writer Shawn Granger was kind enough to send me a couple review copies of Family Bones, a comic series based on the real life death row couple Ray and Faye Copeland (Author Granger’s great grandmother happens to be the sister of Ray Copeland) who took in drifters to help with their farm only to murder them and bury the bodies when they were of no more use. The 10 issue comic series has been condensed into 2 graphic novels. For full details, I encourage you to head over to King Tractor Press website to learn more about it and to read a few free pages. For now, let’s review the series and give you a chance to experience the comics yourself with a contest to win both graphic novels!

The Review: The story is about a city boy named Sean who is sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle for the summer. Being the city boy that he is, he is totally lost when his domineering uncle gets him to start doing your typical farm chores, such as killing chickens for dinner and working the tractor. The uncle regularly beats him and causes his life to be a total nightmare. Sean befriends a sexy neighbor named Wendy who becomes his only escape from the torments of his family. As the two get closer, Sean begins uncovering some strange secrets about the multiple drifters who show up to help out on the farm….and who mysteriously go missing when it’s time for his uncle to pay them.

Somewhat surprisingly, the focus of the story is not on Faye and Ray, but rather the relationship between Sean and Wendy.You get the distinct ominous feel that these are serial killers, but the aunt and uncle don’t really do much in those terms. They kill a couple drifters, sure, but most of it is off-panel and it’s never the focus. The actual serial killers are sort of peripheral in that respect. The uncle is definitely shown to be a little off his rocker, with his repeated beatings of Sean and his temper tantrums, moreso than the aunt who comes across as sort of oblivious to everything that is going on (except for interesting scene in which she puts a bunch of baby mice down the garbage disposal).  The story takes a little while to get going but once it does I was pretty engaged and interested to see where it went. I’d never heard of Faye and Ray so I came in knowing nothing about the history of them, but these graphic novels made me seek out more information after reading them.

There are numerous artists that work on the different issues making it very uneven in terms of a set artistic style, tone, and feel. Personally, I’m not a fan of switching up artists because  I feel it hampers the story and characters. For example, one of the artists draws Wendy sort of modest, with naturally sized breasts, while another artist in one of the last issues draws her super exaggerated, with almost porn star-esque giant breasts. It’s just distracting and doesn’t imbue the character with a definite set of traits. Is she sweet, girl-next-door sexy or is she supposed to be some unattainable sex object?  And with various artists, you’re going to have some you really like, and others that just ain’t that great. Luckily, most of the art isn’t distracting and it ranges from high detailed-contrasted black & white in the vein of Ghastly Graham Ingels to very minimalist, detail free drawings.

Overall, I enjoyed Family Bones. Some readers might be disappointed in that it doesn’t focus solely on Faye and Ray and their murderous adventures, but I liked the idea of this fish out of water nephew forced to deal with this crazy situation. Granger does a superb job of subverting big set pieces with simple lines of dialogue that hint at the disturbed minds of Faye and Ray. In one scene, Sean is forced to help deliver a calf. At first he is disgusted but after going through an intense ordeal of successfully delivering it, he realizes just how wonderful this new life is. Right up to the point when Faye tells him that they’ll eat the mother cow. It’s just a really wonderfully written and drawn sequence that builds and builds before Granger smacks the reader with the reality of the situation.

Family Bones is a pretty good graphic novel with some neat art. The writing is excellent and I give it credit for not taking the easy route and just following the adventures of Faye and Ray. At times it can be a little slow, the uneven artwork hampers the character design (especially Wendy),  and the ending didn’t quite pay off for me, but overall, I liked it and am glad I got a chance to read it. Would you like to read it? Contest time!

The Contest: Alright, so if you want to get your mitts on Volume 1 & 2 of Shawn Granger’s Family Bones, then here’s how: name the television series and episode where this description comes from:

A mysterious big breasted lab assistant appears who happens to be a bumblebee…you’re hired!

Think you know the answer? Either e-mail us at splattercast@deadlantern.com or leave a response on the blog. First person to get both the TV show and the episode title correct wins Family Bones!

Filed under: Contests, Reviews | 3 Comments »

Just added a review for a British film called Resurrecting the Street Walker. Really enjoyed it and would recommend anyone watch it.

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Just added a review for an anthology movie from Thailand called Phobia.

This is released in the UK by Icon Home Entertainment on Monday 10 May. Click for more info

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I didn’t see as much stuff as I wanted to this month. Bioshock 2 came out and the Splatcademy Awards work started. And I had the T-Virus for over a week, in which I would just randomly fall asleep all the time. What I lacked in time to watch feature lengths, I probably made up for with The Office and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Easier to digest shorter TV entertainment than 2 hour movies sometimes.

Anyways, here’s what I watched in sequential order. Orange means worth your time, Red means essential viewing.

(more…)

Filed under: Commentary, MaT's Stuff, Reviews, Shit I Missed, Watch Lists | 10 Comments »

Fleshed out my forum post about José Mojica Marins’ Embodiment of Evil into an actual review.

I might be alone in thinking he was a bit sexy in At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, but any sense of realism at wanton Brazilian youths lustfully begging him to impregnate them is completely lost nowadays.

Enjoy!

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I recently watched and reviewed Jamie Blanks’ Long Weekend. If you haven’t seen it (or the original), you can check out my spoiler-free review here. But I also felt a need to delve a little into how it compares to its predecessor, directed by Colin Eggleston in 1978. This will contain spoilers for both movies. Here are just a few thoughts I had on them.

The remake is not completely shot for shot, but it might as well be. To be honest, as I mentioned in my review, had I watched these in the opposite order, I’d feel differently about each of them. But as it is, I saw the remake first, decided I liked it already, and really I think it’s quite hard to unlike something. But it did make my heart sink a little when something that impressed me in the remake turned out to have already been done in the original (in particular, the white foam of breaking waves silently turning red with blood). As you’d expect, the special effects look better in the remake, especially the very last scene, a glorious explosion of gore, which the rest of the movie held back on.

One difference between the two is that our central male character, Peter, is Australian in the original and American in the remake (played by Jim “Jesus Christ” Caviezel). Initially I thought the choice to have an American as the central character bore some significance to his attitude, and wondered what the filmmakers were trying to say about the United States’ position on the health of our planet. But it is not once mentioned, and I can find little mention of it online, so one can only assume it was a casting issue.

Another omission from the remake was a scene from the 1978 version in which Peter gets stoned. I didn’t find it all that queer that this was left out of the remake, but found a lot to speculate on as to why it was in the original in the first place. Was it a tool to enhance Peter’s paranoia towards the creatures around him? A sign of his secret appreciation for what nature has to offer? The manifestation of his inclination to use Mother Earth solely for his own gratification? Or merely a sign of the times?

Outside of the nature message, a main theme of the film is abortion. But you can see how these two issues become one and the same. The couple have gone through an abortion, either as a result of, or maybe resulting in, the breakdown of their marriage, and the wife (Marcia in 1978, Carla in 2008) is constantly reminded of this. There is a moment that we become momentarily sympathetic to Peter, where he witnesses his wife smashing an eagle’s egg against a tree, and declaring, “You didn’t have to kill it.” It’s not all that subtle, especially in the original, but I thought it added a nice extra layer. Another symbol displayed here is the dugong (Aussie seacow) crying out for its lost cub, a sound that haunts our characters throughout, right up to the last seconds of the movie. We take this to mean that Marcia/Carla is doing the same for her own lost child, or maybe she is disgusted with herself for not doing so.

Overall, you could argue that this was a movie that did not need to be remade, especially when you consider the fact that there were no “updates” to the story, aside from maps being replaced with GPS. But Jamie Blanks dedicated his movie to the late Colin Eggleston, so it’s easy to see why he wanted to make it but didn’t want to change anything. I feel that there were a few things done better in the remake (the last 5-10 minutes), but this of course can be just a few tweaks of the original material (couple with the fact that I watched it first). At least it was nice to see a remake that did not lose the message or impact of the original. I recommend both movies highly.

Long Weekend is released on 8 Feb 2010 by Showbox Home Entertainment

Filed under: DVD, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Netflix Instant has the 1st episode of the new Starz series Spartacus: Blood and Sand available for viewing. The show is getting some minor buzz on the internet, mostly because Lucy Lawless gets naked and has lots of Roman sex. Though my major was Film in college, I minored in classical history. I eat this stuff up and it’s hard for me to ever really hate anything that has to do with mythology, ancient Roman/Greece/Egypt, etc. So I was super psyched to watch this first episode.

I loved it. The acting is crap. The writing is melodramatic and hokey. The stylization is almost a complete and total ripoff of Zack Snyder’s 300. Imagine that movie with 1/16th the budget and a troupe of local theater actors and you’ll get an idea of what this series is like. But I don’t care. This is like a soap opera for men. It’s gory as hell (blood is super stylized so every axe swings paints the whole frame with blood) and is chock full of nudity. The story is simple, the Thracian Spartacus is betrayed by his Roman overlords and refuses to help them kick some Greek ass. They catch him, sell his wife into slavery, and force him to battle as a Gladiator where he wins the hearts of the people.

Like I said, this is cheesy, the obvious greenscreen backgrounds in almost every shot and the blatant theft of Snyder’s film (every fight scene goes from full speed to slow motion for the dramatic hits back to full speed, etc.) will turn off some people. Screw them. I am going to revel in this cheesy decadence.

Watch it.

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