Dorkgasm - In Case You Missed It...

Alice | In Case You Missed It...

JSobczak — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:19:25 +0000

Down the Hole Again
By
Jenny Sobczak

Syfy likes reimagining books and turning them into mini-series. At the end of 2007, The Wizard of Oz became Tinman, with Zooey Deschanel as DG and Neal McDonough as Cain, also known as the titular Tin Man. Last December 6th and 7th, Alice in Wonderland became Alice, the story of a black-belt who accidentally follows her boyfriend and his abductors through the looking glass and into another world. Once there, the viewers recognize that they’re not in the Wonderland from the novel. Written and directed by Nick Willing, Alice shows us what Wonderland might look like in modern times, almost 150 years after the novel was written.

The miniseries is full of visual twists and turns. The venture to bring Wonderland from the 19th to the 21st century must have been a large undertaking, but the artists involved do it well. From the houses of cards, to the Queen of Hearts’ throne, almost everything is reminiscent of objects from earlier film adaptations of this set of novels. It also makes an active effort to tie “The Walrus and the Carpenter” into the story, rather than keeping it as a story within the story. It introduces the concept of the citizens of Wonderland calling the humans “oysters,” which is one of the better tie-ins in the mini-series.

The performances by the lead actors, particularly that of Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, were very good considering it was a TV miniseries in two episodes. Bates made a very royal queen, somehow, even though she was dressed in what looked like a floor-length muumuu. There were fewer decapitation sentences than there might have been, but it hardly registers as a problem with the movie. Caterina Scorsone, as Alice, was very convincing. She didn’t overact, which can be a problem in made-for-TV films like this. And Andrew Lee Potts, as Hatter, was considerably less mad than the traditional Mad Hatter, but a more interesting character with a bigger purpose than in any previous movie version of the story.

Click image to visit the official site. Image Copyright SyFy.

It may be difficult to imagine the Wonderland mythology without an appearance by the Cheshire cat, but – spoiler alert – he hardly makes an appearance in Willing’s version. Fortunately, both episodes do just fine without him. With the plot falling in how it does, I have a harder time finding a place for the Cheshire cat than I do with accepting his absence. Even with how iconic the character of the Cheshire cat is to the original story and all other film adaptations, the rest of the events in Alice don’t really make me miss this one character. All characters in Willing’s miniseries are human, even the ones that were animals originally. For a science fiction version of the story, it works well.

Alice in Wonderland seems just as strange a choice for reimagining as The Wizard of Oz does, but Syfy makes it work. This mini-series originally aired at a time when most people had heard about Tim Burton’s adaptation of the same story and were eagerly awaiting its arrival in theaters. It is as though Syfy anticipated this waiting period and created something with the same familiar story in order to distract us: like they, along with Nick Willing, decided to take advantage of the public’s desire to see one Alice in Wonderland tale and hoped people wouldn’t mind seeing two. It’s an effective tactic, though. Plus, the commercials showed just enough of Tim Curry to get Rocky Horror Picture Show fans pulled in. I watched mostly because I saw Tim Curry was in it, and even though his character plays a very small role, I still found myself interested in the rest of the story. If the SyFy Channel airs this one again, tuning in wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Ginger Snaps | In Case You Missed It

JSobczak — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:30:56 +0000

Are You There, Talbot? It’s me, Margaret
By
Jenny Sobczak
Staff Writer

How do you market a werewolf movie to teenage girls? Include some decent looking guys, some metaphors so obviously about puberty that they’re hardly metaphors, and some catty girl-on-girl hatred. With a crazy mother, obsessed with the fact that her daughters are growing up, Ginger Snaps isn’t only a werewolf movie for girls. The Canadian flick found a cult following and spawned both a sequel and a prequel. I finally had a chance to catch this film when IFC showed it last month, and let me just say I can see why it’s a cult hit.

Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins play sisters Ginger and Brigette Fitzgerald: two misfit teenagers obsessed with death enough to make a suicide pact to make sure they die together by the time the younger, Brigette, is sixteen. The plot may seem slightly stereotypical – from “normal” teenager to horrific monster right before our eyes – but it’s the little details that make this movie what it is. It isn’t, in any way, your run-of-the-mill werewolf story. It’s easier to kill these beasts, for one, and the transformation is just as gradual as puberty itself. This transformation also seems to be permanent, which it can be since it has no connection to the full moon.

One of the best and most important aspects of Ginger Snaps is the relationship between Ginger and Brigette. The sisters are as close as twins, despite being one year apart. But this relationship changes as Ginger changes, and turns into something dark and unnatural. It mirrors Ginger’s change in this sense, and their character development and personalities come out the clearest when they’re together. It becomes apparent that Brigette is more willing to do anything to help Ginger than Ginger is, but they do remain consistent throughout the movie. As the older sister, Ginger is more dominant, and Brigette is consistently more submissive.

Click image to visit the site

The special effects leave a little to be desired, but it was possibly intentional on the director’s part to have it seem a little campy. With the girls’ obsession with suicide comes a montage of fake mortuary pictures, and the werewolves in the movie go along with this camp factor. The werewolves aren’t exactly scary, to say the least, nor are they your traditional fuzzy monsters. Aside from transforming in a different way, these have as much hair as their human counterparts have. The wolves we see look like haunted house animatronics, but it isn’t distracting at all. It fits right in with the rest of the movie.

The overboard metaphors for puberty are just that, though: overboard. It went to a level that I wasn’t quite expecting the first time I saw it. It’s a unique way to present the same narrative, but the how far it goes is almost off-putting. Still, it doesn’t manage to ruin the movie and make me not want to watch it. It’s almost Carrie-esque how the Fitzgerald sisters know next to nothing about “the curse,” but it’s especially puzzling with the way their mother is. Ginger Snaps is also not without its plot holes, as it has a few right from the beginning.

For a movie that was finished so quickly (iMDB says shooting lasted six weeks and editing lasted eight), it’s pretty easy to see why a lot of people like it and why it did so well in the Canadian box office. I don’t know if I’d run out and buy it, but while it’s on my DVR, I won’t shy away from watching it again. It’s perfect for a campy horror movie evening, though, and I’d definitely recommend searching it out on Netflix.

Final Verdict (out of five):

Inglorious Basterds | Film Review

Trevor Curtis — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:43:03 +0000

Not-so Glorious Basterds
By
Trevor Curtis
Staff Writer

Ok, by now the mainstream press and the hip sites like AintitCool have done their usual fellating of Mr. Taratino’s latest opus. He’s being hailed worldwide for a revisionist masterpiece. The only problem? It simply isn’t so.

Tarantino has made a career out of mashing up different film styles and paying homage to different genres, usually sprinkling them with moments of great dialogue (the scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken in True Romance) or blindingly well done action or tension sequences (the restaurant fight in Kill Bill vol.1). Usually this works for him, producing movies you can’t pull yourself away from. In this case, however, that doesn’t happen.

If everything you saw in the trailer was true, Basterds would be a rip roaring action revenge film about an Allied captain (Brad Pitt) who leads an underground cell of Jewish soldiers on a ultraviolent crusade through occupied France, culminating in a final revenge against the Nazi leadership in a theatre. The rub is that this only takes up about a half hour out of a two and a half hour movie.

The rest of the movie concerns an escaped Jewish girl (Melanie Laurent) who is now the owner of a movie theatre in Paris. Surrounded by the enemy, she’s forced to show the latest opus of the Third Reich, based on a real life massacre by the star of the movie (Daniel Bruhl). Said star has a crush on her, and thus she’s faced with having to be nice to him while plotting his demise. She also has scenes with the man who has to Tarantino’s best find of the decade, Christopher Waltz as Col. Landa.

Much has been made of Waltz’s performance, and it’s the one point most of my brethren in the press have right. From the opening, when he’s interrogating a French farmer about hiding Jews, to the end where he’s negotiating with Brad Pitt’s character to be taken to the Allies, he steals every scene he’s in. If he doesn’t get an Oscar nod (especially with the new rules for more nominees) it’ll be a travesty.

So, what makes this so much less of a regular Tarantino film? It’s too damn long. It’s the only Tarantino film close to three hours, and it shows. There’s an entire subplot involving a British film critic that appears to be nothing but an excuse for Mike Myers to get some street cred after the disaster that was Love Guru. This makes twice in a year that Meyer owes the world an apology for wasting our time. Quit screwing around and make the Sprockets movie while synth bands are in style again! Also, someone needs to explain why Eli Roth is claiming a starring role when he’s on screen for less than ten minutes. And let me tell you, he’s bad in those ten minutes, with a worse accent than Tim Curry in Congo.

So why all the love for a subpar Tarantino film? Because a subpar Tarantino film usually has enough good dialogue to make your head split. That isn’t the case in this one, where most of the good dialogue showed up in the trailer. Plus, Tarantino has lived every film critic’s wet dream; coming up from a sucky job (video clerk) to Oscar winner, thus ensuring Blockbuster will have employees for decades.

In the end, Inglorious Basterds is a good film, but not up to the usual level of Tarantino’s work. It’s too long and far too often actionless. Tarantino is good at ratcheting up tension for the minute jolts, but not drawn out sequences. But this is still worth seeing, so wait for video, where you can pause in between dialogue spews.

Final Verdict (out of 5):

with Pulp Fiction being a 5

Hot Rod | In Case You Missed it...

jsaystoyou — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:27:37 +0000

Grilled Cheese Vs. A Taco
By
J. Sternberg
Staff Writer

I didn't really know what to expect when I began to watch 2007's Hot Rod, starring Andy Samberg and the always adorable Isla Fisher. A comedy about an amateur stuntman, his crew, starring a someone from SNL and produced by Will Ferrell really had all the potential in the world to hit a wall and go up in smoke. Within five minutes from the opening credit, I knew what to expect.

Hot Rod is the story of Ron Kimble, an adult child, who lives at home with his mother, (played well by Sissi Spacek) his brother (Jorma Taccone), and his step father (Ian McShane). There are only two things Rod wants in this life, to become a famous stuntman, and the second, to kick his stepfather's ass in combat, and thus win his respect. While he has achieved some level of local infamy as a local fuckup who wants to be a stuntman, he has a much more difficult time besting Frank in their no holds barred fisticuffs, but perseveres nonetheless. Much like any sports movie, things predictably go awry, (Frank needs a heart transplant) and they conveniently need to raise a set dollar amount to keep Rod's dream of pwing his step-dad alive.

Click image to visit the site

Ya remember earlier when I said I knew what to expect within the first five minutes, but left you hanging on to find out more? Yep, you took the bait, so here goes, I expected to laugh my ass off. The movie begins with such a breakneck speed in joke delivery and solid physical humor, you can't help but get hooked. Rod and his bumblefuck idiot crew are such great walking examples of Murphy's law that you practically wait on the edge of your seat to see where and what they'll screw up next. Samberg channels a funny Napolean Dynamite -type loser, (not funnier, in order to be funnier than something it must have a degree of humor in it to begin with, and that movie sucked, worse than anything in the history of suckage, the truth hurts) a screw up who doesn't have a heart of gold, just some simple things he wants and hard time getting there. All the while he is backed solidly by his hilariously awkward stunt crew ( Rico the ramp guy, played by Danny McBride, and Dave the mechanic, played by Bill Hader).

The pace established early is not indicative of the entire film however, as the punchlines and physical gags begin to spread out further as the film goes on. I don't consider this a negative though, because we all know what happens to movies that try to cram too many "jokes" into a confined space. Oh you don't know what happens? They suffocate and die and the movies suffer for it, see any of the "Movie" (Epic, Scary, et al) series if you need a reference, but just take my word for it okay? I don't need any more innocent blood on my hands... Regardless, Hot Rod manages to blend its hilarious physical comedy spots in well, and never relies on one note to carry the tune, and I can really appreciate that. All in all, Hot Rod was surprisingly entertaining, even stretching its own boundaries with odd-ball sight gags and self depreciating cheese thrown in just for fun, and if you're bored, you really won't be disappointed.

I give Hot Rod 3 "Kicks to destiny's face" out of 5

The Salton Sea | In Case You Missed It...

jsaystoyou — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:34:49 +0000

Did You Bring Plastic Men? By J. Sternberg If you never forgave Val Kilmer for what he did to Batman, I think you should see The Salton Sea. In what is arguably his defining role, the Kilmer plays a character you never saw coming in, oddly enough, a film you most likely haven't seen. I can't blame you, hell, this film, much like Donnie Darko, came out in the year 2001, you know, the year 9/11 happened. I don't know where you were, or what you were up to, but if you're like a lot of us, you weren't going to the movies. I didn't even see this film until several years later, even frequently bypassing it for almost a year while working at a crappy video store. Then I gave the film a shot on DVD, and I can say I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised. Kilmer plays Danny Parker, a former jazz musician who dives into crystal meth headfirst after his wife gets gunned down for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Danny and his story are far more complex than your typical downward spiral, and the further down the rabbit hole you get, the more you want to know about this unfortunate soul and the dark and gritty world he lives in.

Click image to visit the site
Unlike most other movies that feature drug use as a main theme, the film makers admirably avoid the typical trappings of showing you the ups and downs of using drugs. The movie begins with addicts, and even though it shows them having a good time, it quickly shows the harsh reality and dangers of the meth underworld. You never think the tweakers are just fun loving party goers, but a bunch of pathetic, lost souls living in a dangerous and claustrophobic world of shit that they're just too fucked up to comprehend. The cinematography and soundtrack meld seamlessly into a solid alloy of stellar filmmaking, with the emotion of each scene pouring into your senses as opposed to flying at you and seeing what sticks. While the Kilmer and Vincent D'Onofrio (Law and Order: CI, Full Metal Jacket) are noteworthy leads, the performances of everyone involved drive the film. From everyone's favorite South-of-the-border badass Danny Trejo (pretty much every Robert Rodriguez film ever), and his lackey partner in crime Buckcherry's Josh Todd, to Luis Guzman, B.D Wong, and Peter Sarsgaard, this ensemble of relative nobodies delivers on a level most films chock full of A list celebs can't. This film has humor (watch the Bob Hope section and try not to laugh), action, and a dirty sense of satisfaction that only film noir can provide. Its the perfect cap to a marathon of films that begins with L.A. Confidential, and somewhere along the way includes Bound, Mullholland Drive, 2 Days in the Valley and Memento. Unfortunately, the DVD version of the film is currently out of print, so finding it at your local store won't exactly be easy, but you can find it online for little more than the cost of a rental, and the movie is totally worth it. I give The Salton Sea 4 "did you bring the plastic men?"s out of 5

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story | In Case You Missed It...

jsaystoyou — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:32:11 +0000

Even If You’re Famous By J. Sternberg Imagine if you will, the geniuses at Saturday Night Live (back before it started to suck) did a 2.25 hour long parody of VH1's Behind the Music. You got the image? Great, now make it really, really funny. Include copious amounts of dick and fart humor, more non-sequiturs than an entire season of family guy and you have quite possibly the funniest movie of 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. All hyperbole aside, this film is funny enough to make a gay man go straight, a genius go retarded, and a stuck up film elitist douchebag critic/comedian (cough me cough cough) laugh until they almost choked. Judd Apatow and John C. Reilly don't just poke fun at musician biopics, they line up with a sniper scope and splatter strawberry jello all over the sidewalk with it. Reilly's pug faced portrayal of a country bumpkin turned top-40 god is phenomenal, blasting Ray, Walk the Line, and others with a lovable goofball approach you never saw coming. His performance and delivery of one-liners alone is more than enough to make this film deserve a spot in your netflix list, or your DVD/Blu Ray collection. While Apatow is better known for making chick flicks accessible to men, he totally snares the Spike TV crowd with a barbed wit that matches and/or tops the National Lampoons humor of the past. This is without an American alternative to the lovable flicks of England's Working Title pictures, and no doubt a man's man comedy (albeit with an extreme pile of dick) that any frat boy out there could watch with his buddies.

Click image to visit the site
I could go on and on about how this film basically throws Ray, Walk the Line, The Doors, That Thing you Do! and a little Airplane! in a blender and tops it with whip cream and a sprinkling of Wet Hot American Summer, but if you understand that last statement, you know that you're doing yourself an injustice by continuing to read this instead of watching the film. This is THEE FILM for people who want to laugh at Will Ferrell but can't. This movie has more than its fair share of ties to other dumb-ass comedies out there. While I can't stand most of its brethren, I do have to state for the record that this is a cut above and an intelligently stupid spoof, that doesn't beg for forgiveness, or stupidity from you. Better, it asks that you give it a chance, and realize its integrity lies in the neighborhood of Mel Brooks, as opposed to the graveyard of failures on the corner of Wayans and Ferrell. Now, others at Dorkgasm (who perhaps lack taste and better judgment, and I don't mean Ken, BONG) may lump this into "stupid stoner trash" I can't recommend this film enough. If you like the ridiculous non-sequitur style of Family Guy or the non stop vulgarity of The Upright Citizens Brigade, you will love this movie. It may be a better film with homegrown herbal remedies, but I saw it sober and loved the hell out if it. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story gets 4 "even if you're famous"'s out of 5.

Hostel: Part II | In Case You Missed It...

jsaystoyou — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:52:37 +0000

Goooaaalll! By J. Sternberg I've had arguments with more than one friend of mine as to what Eli Roth's masterpiece has been so far. I've always thought that the original Hostel is a work of art. A film that challenges the boundaries of what is acceptable as far as sexuality and violence in cinema. Cabin Fever on the other hand, while also exceptional, doesn't work so hard to challenge your perceptions, but works on a camp value and has a gore level that's second to none. The merit of both films is far from questioning, but when it comes down to what will inevitably be the timeline of Roth, where will Hostel: Part II land? Hostel: Part II promised to be more killer-oriented than the first, and it failed to do that, in my opinion. Roth and company do delve into the lives of two of the Elite Hunting Club's newest members, but the actual depth is what should fall into question. On that note however, the film itself is not a failure. The performances are solid, the cinematography and special effects are up to par, and the writing is right were it needs to be. The ultimate shortcoming of the film is in its inability to shock the audience the way its predecessor did. You can call it a sophomore slump, and I won't blame you, hell I'll even agree with you.

Click image to visit the site
I'm a huge fan of films where the second attempt trumps the first in a big way, (Back to the Future 2, Spider-Man 2, Terminator 2, TMNT 2, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) and I can't fault others for only coming close. Typically, in the case of other sophomore triumphs, the sequels work in a way the originals don't. They offer something completely new. While Hostel: Part II does not, it is still a solid, sexy and splatter filled fun-fest. Three sorority sisters go to Europe and end up in a murder maze established by the rich and evil Elite Hunting Club, and end up dying off. There's the plot, along the way there's the back story of a douchebag and a complete pussy who have joined the murdering society, and somewhere along the way, one total bitch gets decapitated and fun ensues before the credits roll. I could spoil everything, but I won't, let me just say this is worth the couple bucks you can spend on a used copy of the film. I particularly enjoyed the Countess Elizabeth Bathory scene, and the last 20 minutes I found particularly cheer worthy. While Roth's previous films may be better, Hostel: Part II does its job cementing Roth's place in the future of American horror. I give Hostel: Part II 2.5 "GOOOAAALLL!!!"s out of 5