Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1, Episode 3: Witch
Written by Dana Reston; Directed by Stephen Cragg
Time for my weekly dose of
Buffy, and this particular episode wasn't anything like as bad as I'd remembered it. Yes, it's fairly tacky, but the overall production seems slightly more confident than that of the previous two episodes. The characters are still extremely caricatured, but I suppose that's only natural when a show is still finding its feet, both because the writers are still familiarising themselves with their cast, and in order to establish their personalities in an economical way. This particular episode has a few decent pieces of horror movie imagery, although admittedly they're fairly clichéd B-grade horror movie images filtered through a television aesthetic, which has a habit of making everything look a bit bland. Still, if you can get past the ridiculous sight of teenage girls hopping about waving pom-poms (the backdrop for this episode is Sunnydale High's cheerleading try-outs), this one is fairly entertaining.
5/10Be sure to tune in at the same time next week for
Teacher's Pet, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is one of the worst episodes not just of the season but of the series as a whole.
New release of The Silence of the Lambs
Source:
DVD TimesSony Pictures Home Entertainment (who are now in charge of releasing MGM's catalogue since Sony acquired the studio last year) have announced a 2-disc "Ultimate Edition" of
The Silence of the Lambs for release in the UK on February 20th. The exact contents of this new version remain to be seen, but "state of the art picture and sound" are being boasted prominently on the cover art. Who knows - perhaps this time the transfer will be faithful to director Jonathan Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's intended colour scheme rather than the blown-out, normalised look of the previous MGM release (the Criterion had the correct colour values, but was non-anamorphic). Personally, I don't think they can call this an "Ultimate Edition" unless they've managed to acquire the rights to the audio commentary from the now out of print Criterion release.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
I pre-ordered the upcoming 2-disc R2 UK release of
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, due out on February 20th, from
Play.com. A review copy did arrive at DVD Times HQ, but due to the fact that it features burned-in "Property of DreamWorks Home Ent. Publicity. Dept. - Do Not Duplicate" text every 10 minutes, I didn't feel it would be possible for me to provide a fair review of the final product (not only are such messages extremely distracting, the nature of burned-in text means that a completely different master would have to be created for the retail version, meaning that the review copy's image quality would not necessarily be an accurate representation of that of the final product).
As such, DreamWorks Home Entertainment can say goodbye to any prospect of a pre-release review from me. That, as they say, is their loss.
Mulan - PAL version is better
Yesterday, I received a package from Anthony, a fellow
DVD Times reviewer, containing, in addition to a couple of Peter Greenaway titles, the R2 UK Special Edition of
Mulan. All of these are on loan of course, but that didn't stop me from updating my
DVD Image Comparison of
Mulan to add the UK SE. Of course, as those in the know will be aware, the UK release is cut to remove a headbutt (and, unlike the previous, bare-bones release of the film, there was no fiasco involving the uncut version accidentally being released and then recalled), which makes it a little difficult to recommend. In other areas, however, it constitutes a marked improvement on the US Special Edition, which suffered from severe blurring and edge enhancement in the second half of the film. The UK transfer is pin-sharp throughout, and also comes with a DTS track to boot.
Of course, you probably know that the two things I crave most in the DVD release are image quality and uncutness (is that a word?). With that in mind, I went ahead and placed an order for the R4 Australian release (a very reasonable £7.52 at
DVD Crave). Okay, so the cover layout is naff and I lose the DTS track, but, like I said, the transfer and uncutness (still not a real word) are what count, and I think it's a reasonably safe bet that the same master was used for all PAL territories. I'll have to see about eBaying the US release now.
In the meantime, check out my new and improved
DVD Image Comparison.
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
I watched Chan-wook Park's latest film,
Sympathy for Lady Vengeacne, in yesterday's Film Studies class (the one where we bring films of our choice and chair a seminar on them). To quote one somewhat disgusted student, "Well, that was bundle of laughs, wasn't it?"
I really enjoyed it. The only other Chan-wook Park film I've seen is
Oldboy (the second part in a loose trilogy of which
Sympathy for Lady Vengeane is the third), and I'd be hard-pressed to say which one I prefer. They're essentially the same story, only
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance has a female protagonist rather than a male one, and there's no surprise twist at the end. It's certainly a very beautiful film, although there are some definite flaws in the characterisation. It's hard to ever get an angle on the heroine, and the result is that she seems more a cipher than a real person. Most of the other characters are equally one-dimensional, and some aspects - the daughter, the various prison inmates who help the heroine - could have been expanded more.
Nonetheless, though, I would definitely recommend this film. It's consistently amazing to look at, the music is brilliant and the blood-soaked finale is completely and utterly twisted. In the seminar after the screening, we discussed problems that would face a Hollywood studio if they tried to remake it. Frankly, I see no feasible way that the finale would survive in the same form.
8/10
New Asterix trailer
SND Films have released the second teaser trailer for the upcoming
Asterix and the Vikings. I'm still not entirely optimistic about how this project seems to be turning out - it looks as if they are messing with the formula a bit too much (then again it can't be as bad as the most recent book,
Asterix and the Falling Sky) - but I'm very much looking forward to seeing this, since we haven't had a new Asterix film since
Asterix Conquers America in 1994. (The live action movies don't count.)
There's some more information on the new film at
Asterix NZ.
Flightplan
A review copy of
Flightplan (R1 Canada) showed up today. I watched it this afternoon, and it's pretty enjoyable if you can disengage your brain for 90 minutes. I have to say I'm beginning to wonder about Jodie Foster's choice of roles, though. Her first major movie appearance since
Panic Room (excluding bit parts in films like
A Very Long Engagement) and she chooses to be the lead in what might as well have been called "Panic Plane"?
Overall, this isn't of the same standard as
Tattoo, the other film I've seen from German director Robert Schwentke; nor is it as good as either
Panic Room or the other 2005 "PG-13 airplane thriller", Wes Craven's
Red Eye. Nonetheless, it's not the absolute stinker the disgruntled flight attendants are making it out to be.
6/10
Toy Story 3 canned
Source:
Animation NationAs wonderfully articulated by a poster at
The Drawing Board, "the Night of the Long Knives has begun".
Wolf Creek
How much you get out of Wolf Creek will depend on whether or not you are able to stomach the bloated first half, as well as your ability to empathise with the protagonists. With some judicious editing, this could have been a taut and effective exploitation flick. As it is, though, as good as the remaining 50 minutes are, the fact remains that in order to enjoy them, you must be content to slog through 30 minutes of tedium. McLean clearly knows how to deliver a horror movie; it's just a shame Wolf Creek spends so much time pussyfooting before it decides to actually be one.
I've
reviewed the R2 UK release of
Wolf Creek, Australian writer/director Greg McLean's feature length debut and a highly effective exploitation horror movie marred by an overly long setup. Optimum's 2-disc set comes with a decent transfer and audio and some solid extras.
MPAA accused of movie piracy
Priceless.
And in other news, Disney has bought Pixar
Read moreContrary to expectations, I am not about to blow a gasket at this news. Nor, however, am I going to leap around the room with glee. In the last few months, it seems that relations between Disney and Pixar have done a complete U-turn and that, far from Pixar packing their bags and leaving them in the lurch, they are now firmly back in bed with them and, even more surprisingly, have announced their impending marriage.
This could go one of two ways. Either, under the guidance of John Lasseter, who is now in charge of all animation production at Disney, the Mouse will come back, better than ever (and, ideally, will begin production of hand-drawn features as soon as possible),
or Disney will continue their downward spiral and will take Pixar, the current best producer of animated movies, down the tubes with them.
Perhaps we should just sit back and enjoy the ride. Judging by the article linked to above, Disney artists, bast and present, seem to be jumping for joy, and it sounds very much like much of the studio's baggage - i.e. its so-called "creative" exectuvies - will very soon be finding themselves in want of employment.
Sorry. It's the best I could come up with at such short notice.
I'll end this post on a high note.
So long, David Stainton!!! Thanks for nothing, fucker!
DVD debacle
The Girl on the Bridge (R2 UK) and
The Bloodstained Butterfly (R2 Spain). I haven't had a chance to watch
The Bloodstained Butterfly yet (I was out at work in the morning and I have an article I need to read for my Screen Bodies class tomorrow), but I did take a brief look at it, and unfortunately it turns out that the transfer is non-anamorphic. It doesn't look
awful, but it doesn't exactly look great either, and it's not what I would call future-proof. Seriously, at one point I'm going to end up picking up a widescreen monitor, and personally I'd rather not have to degrade image quality even further by zooming in my DVDs. Maybe I'll have to pick up the Italian-only release, from Medusa Home Entertainment, after all. That's depending on whether or not the film is any good, of course.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2: Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest
Welcome to the HellmouthWritten by Joss Whedon; Directed by Charles Martin Smith
The HarvestWritten by Joss Whedon; Directed by John T. Kretchmer
I took my own advice from
my previous post and watched the two-part series premiere of
Buffy, with commentary by creator and writer Joss Whedon. I've watched these two episodes a few times (although, as far as I can recall, I've only watched the rest of the season once) and my opinions of them remain pretty much unchanged: they're okay, but they clearly have a long way to go. As anyone who has seen the unaired pilot can confirm (and if you haven't seen it, you should definitely seek it out - it's hilarious, with some chubby girl who can't act playing Willow), it was made by a crew who didn't seem to have a very good idea of what they were doing. Couple that with an extremely limited budget, and the result is that, more often than not, it comes across as cheap and tacky.
At the same time, though, there's much to like. As someone whose most recent recollections of the show come from the unpleasant Seasons 6 and 7, it's a pleasure to watch the core group of Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles actually behaving in character and indeed even interacting as if they actually like each other. Also, there is some nice atmospheric camerawork that seems to be pretty much thrown by the wayside as the series continues. Oh, and non-gay Willow. How weird is
that?
I'm going to give these two episodes each a
6/10, with a tentative
6 for the season overall (although that might change once I've watched the whole thing again). I'm not sure if I'll continue to rate every single episode - ask me again this time next week when I take a look at... shudder...
The Witch.
The Buffy post
Baron Scarpia's
review of the first season of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer got me thinking again about the show that I voraciously devoured over the course of the first half of 2003. (Well, the first six seasons at any rate. The seventh and final season came slightly later, much like a wet fart sneaking along after the main bowel movement has been completed.) In retrospect, despite the incredible suckage of much of the final two seasons, this is still one of my favourite TV shows of all time, and I'm thinking it's now time I revisited this particular slice of late 90s/early 00s pop culture. I don't think I could face a
Buffy marathon, so I'm thinking I might have myself a fun little game, pretending it's still on TV and watching a single episode of it per week. If I kept strictly to that schedule, it would take me 144 days to get through the whole lot. Or 143 if I watch
Bargaining Parts One and Two as a single episode, since that's how they're presented on the Season 6 DVD. Actually, maybe I'll just skip Seasons 6 and 7 altogether and pretend the show ended with Season 5, as it should have done. But then I'd miss the Dance of Capitalist Superiority and the full cycle of Sarah Michelle Gellar's descent from slightly malnourished woman to walking skeleton. Oh, and a double dose of the
Dead Lesbian Cliché from writers who at one point were above such cheap tricks. Decisions, decisions.
In the meantime, why don't you amuse yourselves and read
the funniest ever summary to one of the worst ever episodes, Season 6's
Wrecked? Presumably, you have to have seen the episode in question to appreciate just how on the nose the article is, but even if you haven't, the blow-by-blow rundown of what happens should certainly help you to visualise it.
The Girl on the Bridge
This morning I decided to begin making my way through the stack of DVDs from Blockbuster that have been sitting on my desk for the last few days, starting with
The Girl on the Bridge (
La Fille sur le Pont), a 1999 French film from Patrice Leconte starring Vanessa Paradis (Mrs. Johnny Depp). This is a film I'd had a passing interest in for some time now but which I'd completely forgotten about until recently, when I noticed it on Blockbuster's web site quite by chance.
It turns out that the film is absolutely wonderful, and I'm kicking myself for not discovering it sooner. The whole thing is shot in glossy black and white anamorphic Panavision and looks absolutely superb, and the aforementioned Vanessa Paradis is wonderful in the title role. The story, however, is what makes it work so well: an offbeat, almost but not quite comedic tale about a circus performer who saves a young woman from a suicide attempt. This good samaritan's speciality is sword-throwing, and the woman's unnaturally good luck makes her the perfect partner for his act. However, it is only when the two part ways that they realise just how integral they are to each others' success.
The Girl on the Bridge gets that all too rare
10/10 rating from me, and I've ordered a copy of the R2 UK DVD from
Play.com.
Newsflash: CRTs are sooo passé
Lyris
reports that the AV Forums
reports that the Guardian
reports that DSG International, the group that owns Dixons, Currys and PC World (and as such makes up a huge slice of the UK hardware market), intends to drop CRT televisions at some point this year.
How idiotic! Talk about running before you've learned to walk. LCD technology hasn't evolved nearly enough to completely replace the CRT. While it's undeniable that LCDs offer great benefits in terms of space and power saving, in areas like black level, which are actually far more important to me than how much extra space I have on the desk, they have a long way to go. And of course, as Lyris rightly points out, if all you do with your TV is watch hideous, overly compressed digital cable, then frankly a CRT is a far better bet in terms of concealing the rampant artefacts you invariably end up with.
Fight the power! CRTs fo' life, y'all! (Well, until someone comes up with a viable alternative to the LCD, that is.)
PS. My cheapy video card arrived yesterday. It's now installed upstairs and connected to... an LCD screen. Irony police, pull over!
The Bloodstained Butterfly
I ordered a copy of the R2 Spanish release of
The Bloodstained Butterfly, a 1971 giallo by Duccio Tessari, from
DVDGo. I hadn't ordered anything from Spain since I bought
Futurama Temporada Dos (
Futurama Season Two) back in 2002, and was somewhat surprised to discover that I actually had a DVDGo account.
This is not a giallo that I've previously seen, and I've read mixed reports about it, but I'm curious to see it for myself. Apparently the Spanish release is the only version available with English language options - the Italian release, by Medusa, supposedly having superior image quality but being in Italian only.
...and, at the other end of the spectrum, an Iranian drama
It's funny - yesterday I watched
a really bad film that was highly entertaining because it was so awful, and today I watched a film that I'm sure was very good but, so help me, I didn't connect with at all.
Blackboards is an Iranian drama about a couple of schoolteachers who meet up with some wandering nomads and try to teach them the essentials in life: numeracy and literacy. I wonder if the barrier to my enjoyment was the fact that I'd never seen an Iranian film before and had no point of reference for it, but frankly the subject matter and its portrayal just didn't interest me at all. I suppose it has to happen, sometimes, that you come across a film that fails to have any effect on you despite the fact that you can recognise its merits, but it's frustrating nonetheless. In the absense of my having any actual opinion on it, I'm going to award it a middle-of-the-road
5/10.
Be afraid, be VERY afraid... or an encounter with a 1940s American sex education film
Note: I actually watched this film as part of the Screen Bodies module of my university course. The lecture was conducted by the esteemed Gary Needham, who you may remember as the author of Playing With Genre: an introduction to the Italian giallo.It's still only January, but already I have a contender for the worst film of the year. I'm speaking of
Street Corner, which wasn't produced this year - it's a film from 1948 - but since I'm talking about films I've personally seen in the year rather than films that have been made in the year, it's in the running.
Street Corner was not made to entertain, but that's beside the point because entertain it does. No,
Street Corner is a US-produced exploitation/education hybrid, designed to teach impressionable young viewers about the horrors of pre-marital sex. Teenagers indulging in such jaunty japes, it is demonstrated, will invariably find themselves in hot water.
Let's crystalise this. The female protagonist, the drippy Lois Marsh, finds herself pregnant and ends up getting gypped by a back-door abortionist with very shifty eyes. (I specifically say "gypped" rather than "screwed" because the abortionist is a gypsy and therefore, obviously, terribly evil. She's of European origin, naturally, and even lives on "the wrong side of town", which makes things ten times worse.) The male protagonist, the chipper Bob Mason and the rascal who impregnated poor Lois, is killed in a car crash while rushing to be by her side. See what I mean about the consequences of fucking out of wedlock? All of the action is narrated by Dr. James Fenton, the Marsh family physician, who smokes a pipe and informs us in the most solemn of voices about how tragic it is that teenagers grow up so fast. To combat this terrible situation, he organises special screenings to educate the youth of America on proper sexual conduct (i.e. don't do it)... with separate screenings for boys and girls, of course.
But it gets worse. Oh yes, it gets much worse. If you can stomach the hilariously bad acting, overt sexism, classism and racism, dreadful dialogue, shameless exposition and overall patronising tone of the first hour, the final 15 minutes or so hold horrors that few sane individuals will be able to stomach. To legitimise all this melodramatic tomfoolery, someone decided to splice in an educational film on venereal diseases (STDs to you and me). Behold swollen testicles, warty vaginas and circumcised penises a-plenty! Absolutely lovely. Far worse, however, we also get to experience footage of an actual childbirth and C-section. Let me tell you, those who claim that the "miracle" of birth is the most natural thing in the world are very, very sick in the head.
If you can stomach all that, fans of bad movies will love
Street Corner. It's undoubtedly a 1/10 film in conventional terms, but it's probably a 10 on the Schitometer (the special rating system used to determine the overall grade for a Schitty Movie™ on the HMS Whimsy). If you're prepared to laugh, cry and even vomit a little, seek out this little gem! (Or should that be little turd?)
Red Eye
Like other recent 'lean' thrillers such as Panic Room and Cellular, Red Eye takes a very simple story and, by exploiting a central gimmick, turns it into a solid exercise in tension. It won't win any awards any time soon, but, spurred on by new material, Craven seems to have been reinvigorated and goes some way towards reclaiming his nickname of "Master of Suspense". Hopefully he has a few more such films up his sleeve.
Wes Craven makes a remarkable comeback with
Red Eye, an undemanding but highly effective thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy. I have
reviewed the R1 Canadian release from DreamWorks, which provides a good audio-visual presentation and some decent, if limited, extras.
Video card variety
Lyris' second video card, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, died the other day, and while the one from my upstairs computer, a Radeon X800 Pro, I've decided to take the opportunity to buy a cheapo card, with the intention of eBaying the X800 Pro once he's finished with it. This is a fairly logical course of action, since there's no point in having a high-powered video card in a computer whose only function is word processing. I've put in an order for a Sapphire ATI Radeon 7000 (the cheapest I could find, at £23.50 including VAT) at
Chillblast.
By the way, although I
handed out a generous
8/10 rating for
Wolf Creek the other day, I've now decided to downgrade it to a
7/10. In retrospect, an 8 seems far too high for a film whose first half seriously challenges my attention. What follows is excellent, but you have to sit through a fair amount of borderline boring material in order to get to it. All will be revealed in my upcoming review.
Bonzer DVD bonanza
I did something today that I haven't done since I subscribed to
Blockbuster Online: I went into Fopp and bought some DVDs blind. Actually, that's not strictly accurate: I
have bought DVDs blind before in recent months, but generally they were the work of a specific director whose films I was already familiar with (e.g. Hayao Miyazaki) or part of a niche genre (e.g. giallo titles). Anyway, in addition to
My Summer of Love, which I
enjoyed last year, I bought the American remake of
Dark Water, starring Jennifer Connelly, based on a surprisingly positive
review of it by one of my fellow DVD Times writers, and Neil Marshall's
The Descent, which several people have raved about.
DVD rack
My new DVD rack arrived today, and my old shelves can once again breathe easy... until they are filled up once again with new DVDs, that is.
It's a pretty nice piece of equipment, really. At £49.95, it left a fairly hefty hole in my wallet (or rather, bank account), but I'm glad I bought something like this rather than a flimsy piece of cardboard from Ikea.
Click the picture opposite for a larger version.
Interesting Eyes Wide Shut article
The Kubrick Site has reproduced an interesting
article on Stanley Kubrick's final film,
Eyes Wide Shut, which looks at the film from a sociological perspective and does something to dismiss some of the criticism levelled against it.
Critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was almost unanimous, and the complaint was always the same: not sexy. The national reviewers sounded like a bunch of middle-school kids who'd snuck in to see it and slunk out three hours later feeling horny, frustrated, and ripped off. Kubrick was old and out of touch with today's jaded sensibilities, they said. The film's sexual mores and taboos, transplanted straight out of Arthur Schnitzler's fin-de-siecle Vienna--jealousy over dreams and fantasies, guilt-ridden visits to prostitutes, a strained discussion of an HIV test that echoes the old social terror of syphilis--seemed quaint and naive by the standards of the sordid year 1999. One last time Stanley Kubrick had flouted genre expectations, and once again, as throughout his career, critics could only see what wasn't there.
Take a look...
Wolf Creek
Hey! This was pretty damn good! So good, in fact, that I'm giving it the same rating as
The Devil's Rejects, about which I raved a couple of months back. Finally, this is a horror movie that plays it completely straight, not falling into the trap of spouting endless pop culture references so that the filmmaker can show how clever he is. Don't get me wrong,
Wolf Creek is funny, but it's a wry sort of black comedy that I'm fairly sure was unintentional. Most of it comes from the villain of the piece, whose dialogue and mannerisms, and the fact that he's so god-damned
cheerful about everything, including the torturing and killing of our three hapless protagonists, make him a hoot to watch and a riveting screen presence. Now, I'm sure that most people won't find anything to laugh about in this movie, but that's just me: I just tend to find this sort of thing funny.
The film takes a while to get going, with almost an entire hour devoted to setting up the characters and the setting. This is a perfect example of why a movie like this could only have been made independently. In Hollywood, the script doctors would have thrown away all the development (if the script had even been accepted in the first place) because, they'd claim, the audience would get restless. I'll admit that this lengthy setup process
almost outstays its welcome, but ultimately it ends up being a better movie because it takes its time and doesn't rush into things. The end result is that, although the characters are initially presented as unlikeable assholes, by the time the shit hits the fan you care sufficiently about them to be concerned about whether they live or die (and I'm not going to give anything away). Cassandra Magrath, especially, does exceptionally well with both the character stuff and the scenes of high tension.
Wolf Creek ultimately works for the same reason as
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, more recently (although to a lesser extent),
Haute Tension: it's a primal, no-holds-barred horror experience that doesn't try to placate the audience by sugar-coating the events it portrays. Like the killer, it's ruthless and doesn't know the meaning of "going too far". As such I highly recommend this to everyone sick of the infuriatingly crappy PG-13 American slashers that insist on tarnishing the good name of horror.
8/10PS. Don't confuse this with Cry Wolf, which, by all accounts, is an infuriatingly crappy PG-13 American slasher. A lot of people have got the two mixed up, and the fact that a preview for it is included on the Wolf Creek DVD only adds to the confusion.
The Dark Side saga continues
http://www.thedarksideofplagiarism.comThe Dark Side, edited by Allan Bryce: The current count: 127 reviews confirmed as stolen; 45 others await confirmation from original writers/websites.
DVD World, edited by Allan Bryce: 92 reviews/articles confirmed as stolen; 38 await confirmation.
The Australian version of DVD World, edited by Allan Bryce: 13 reviews confirmed as stolen; 7 await confirmation.
Says it all, really. Anyone who buys these magazines is indirectly supporting the largest theft operation ever committed by a single publication.
What Have You Done to Solange?
The film's final frames are open-ended, showing that there are no easy answers. The best films ask us to do more than just sit as passive spectators, and therefore What Have You Done to Solange? is about as good as it gets as far as gialli are concerned. This is a highly engaging and powerful film that rivals much of the work of Dario Argento himself. With its winning combination of mystery, sleaze and horror, as well as an excellent denouement and a genuinely disturbing motive for the killer, this is one giallo with which fans of the genre should acquaint themselves immediately.
I've
reviewed last year's R0 Italian release of
What Have You Done to Solange? from 01 Distribution, who have graced this seminal 1972 giallo by Massimo Dallamano with a remastered, HD-sourced transfer that finally does it justice.
Veronica Mars
I made my way through the final few episodes of the first season of
Veronica Mars this evening. I have to say that my opinions about this show remain fairly mixed. It's not without its good points, but the quality of the overall production, from both an acting and a writing standpoint, is so mixed it has a habit of veering from the highly enjoyable to the downright infuriating in the space of a single scene.
The biggest problem is the inconsistency of the season's key plot arcs. Essentially, there are three: (1) who killed Lilly Kane? (2) where did Veronica's mother go? (3) who raped Veronica? The first one is handled with a reasonable amount of consistency throughout the 22 episodes, but the other two are not managed well at all. The second is made out to be a big deal for the first few episodes and then suddenly seems to be resolved seemingly at random. The third basically disappears after being mentioned a couple of times and then is suddenly thrown back in during the penultimate episode, as if the writers suddenly remembered it.
I suppose the most positive thing I can say about the show is that I'm interested enough in it to see what happens in the second season, so it must be working on some level. Still, though, this has nothing on
Buffy,
Angel,
Alias or any of the other US TV shows that I've got into.
Final grade:
6/10
Wolf Creek
A review copy of
Wolf Creek (R2 UK) arrived today. I know little to nothing about the film so this should be interesting.
The Cursed Medallion
I ordered a copy of the recent Italian release of
Il Medaglione Insanguinato (
The Cursed Medallion) from
DVDLand.it. I've never seen the film, and in fact hadn't even heard about it until recently, but I was encouraged to check it out thanks to a glowing
write-up of it by Troy Howarth at the DVDManiacs.net forum. Additionally, the director is Massimo Dallamano, the same man responsible for
What Have You Done to Solange? and
What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, so, if it's anything like as good as those two films, I should be in for a treat.
Red Eye
I received a review copy of Wes Craven's latest film,
Red Eye (R1 Canada), today. I've just watched it, and am pleased to report that this is, at the very least, a massive step up from the clunker that was
Cursed. In fact, this could well be his best film since the original
Scream. Admittedly, that's not saying much, and I'm certainly not trying to say that the film is some sort of masterpiece, but it is a tight and effective thriller that completely succeeds in what it sets out to do. It's not particularly original, but the performances across the board are good, and the script is such that it allows Craven to indulge in some extremely tense sequences (the last half hour is superb). This is completely new territory for Craven - a straight thriller instead of a horror movie - but it looks like the change of scenery has reinvigorated him. Hopefully he has a few other films like this up his sleeve.
7/10
Films from around the world
Today I went to the first in a series of what are being labelled as "seminars" in my Film Studies course. Essentially, each weak, one student will screen a film of their choice and lead a discussion on it. The classes are optional (and judging by the massively depleted numbers in today's outing, many people are taking that a little too literally), but this is something I definitely want to do. I've been racking my brains as to what to screen, and today I finally settled on
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, the theory being that it is one of Dario Argento's most accessible films and one that is unlikely to be too much of a culture shock to people already familiar with the work of more mainstream horror directors like Hitchcock. (The thought did occur to me that I should screen something completely ridiculous like
Problem Child, but I decided against it.)
Anyway, today we watched
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I can't say I'm a fan. It's one of only three Chinese "wuxia pien" movies I've seen (along with Zhang Yimou's
Hero and
House of Flying Daggers), and it's my least favourite of the trio. Frankly, I find it overly drawn-out, with its good points (impressive photography, very nice action choreography) being outweighed by the fact that it is an incredibly pompous piece of work that feels as if it exists for no reason other than to stand a fighting chance of winning an Oscar (hmmm, kind of like a lot of Ang Lee's films, then). It's undoubtedly a well-made film, but I just can't see its appeal.
Do You Like Hitchcock?
I pre-ordered the R2 French release of Dario Argento's
Do You Like Hitchcock? (released, appropriately enough, as
Vous Aimez Hitchcock?), due out on February 13th, from
Amazon.fr. An Italian release is also scheduled for release at some point in the same month from Cecchi Gori Home Video (funny, I thought they had gone bankrupt, which was why Argento wasn't able to make his giallo
Occhiali Neri), but I'm not sure whether it will be English-friendly or not. The French release, at least,
is, at least according to various online retailers, listing French and English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio (and French subtitles). We can only hope.
Internet connection funnies
It seems that Lyris' bitching paid off. While I was out, NTL's service technicians came and went, and we now have a brand spanking new modem that takes up a fraction of the space the old one did and is sure to make us the envy of the neighbourhood (because we all know that, just like mobile phones and male genitalia, everyone is gagging is for a smaller model).
New DVD image comparison
I've added yet another DVD image comparison, this time looking at the R2 UK and R2 French Ultimate Edition releases of
Danny the Dog (known in English-speaking territories as
Unleashed). The results are some of the more interesting I've come across recently.
Take a gander!
Bodily functions
I had my first Screen Bodies lecture today. It looks like it's going to be a pretty interesting component of the course, although the amount of responsibility that is given to us, the students, worries me a little. Don't get me wrong, I think that it's a good thing to have classes that aren't simply a lecturer standing in front of us and prattling away for five hours, but I'm not really the world's biggest fan of the notion of students running the whole affair. Basically, we've all been split into groups and we will each be in charge of one lesson, presenting a screening and conducting a lecture based on a specific area of the topic of Screen Bodies. The area the group I am in is covering, mainly because no-one else was willing to venture any ideas, is that of victimisation in the horror genre, and again because everyone else was keeping
schtum, I've somehow managed to coax it in the direction of the giallo (not wanting to frighten my fellow groupies away, I used the phrase "Italian horror" rather than something that sounds like a substance you might have in a sandwich). I'm just crossing my fingers that the group I'm in doesn't have to go first (we get formal lectures for the first three weeks, and then the "fun" begins for real) - I hate doing that.
Internet police, pull over!
At about 7pm tonight, our cable modem died. No, the Internet connection didn't cut out (well, actually, it did, but that was merely a side effect): the modem switched itself off and remained dead to the world no matter how many times we unplugged it and plugged it back in again.
To cut a long story short, it suddenly sputtered into life again just before 11pm when, by chance, I unplugged it and plugged it back in again for the umpteenth time. No, I can't explain it either, and I have no idea whether or not it will do exactly the same thing again, but I get the impression we should probably cancel tomorrow's scheduled visit from an NTL technician (although, judging by their past performance, there's a chance they won't turn up anyway).
For those of you who don't know,
NTL are Useless with a capital U - so much so that they have an entire web site dedicated to their uselessness,
NTHellWorld. Their customer support is basically non-existant, and since they relocated all their call centres to India, users with problems have had to contend with the language barrier in addition to plain old incompetence. So it was tonight when
Lyris spent close to 40 minutes attempting to persuade a very polite but completely ill-equipped Indian gentleman that the modem was completely dead and required replacement,
not NTL's patented "wait 48 hours and see if it fixes itself" diagnostic procedure (in retrospect, this is slightly ironic). Look, I really don't care
where the call centres are located, but I don't think it's too much to ask that those manning them have more than a rudimentary grasp of English.
I only hope the problem doesn't resurface because, really, NTL are completely useless when it comes to actually doing their job and helping out their paying customers. The problem, I'm sure, was not their fault, but their utterly useless customer service means that dogs, cats and small children really should stay out of the way when something goes wrong, as any user without the patience of a saint is liable to lose his/her temper. The issue is not whether or not they were to blame or whether or not the problem resolved itself, but that their call centre operators are not even remotely qualified to deal with the problems facing them.
The New York Ripper: Collector's Edition
I do not consider The New York Ripper to be a shining moment in Lucio Fulci's career, but neither is it entirely devoid of merit. Nothing else quite like it exists in the giallo filone (although I acknowledge that it arrived too long after the original giallo run for comparisons with the entries of the early 70s to be particularly meaningful), and for all its faults it constitutes a bleak and uncompromising look at an uncertain world by a deeply cynical filmmaker. When all said and done, this is a film that deserves to be seen by horror/thriller fans, not specifically because of the controversy that surrounds it, but for its unique style and the fact that it remains something of a missing link between Fulci's cerebral 70s gialli and the more carnal efforts of the final decade of his career.
Lucio Fulci's notorious
The New York Ripper has arrived in a lavish 2-disc French collector's edition set courtesy of Neo Publishing. I
investigate the latest release of the Video Nasty to end all Video Nasties.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the GFT
While I was waiting for my class to start yesterday, I picked up a leaflet advertising the
Glasgow Film Theatre's "Psychotronic Cinema" season, which will present six obscure cult films over the course of six weeks: one each Tuesday from January 10th to February 14th. The last of these will be Emilio P. Miraglia's
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. While I don't think it's the best giallo ever made, it's certainly a film I would welcome watching on the big screen, and I'm going to try to make it to the GFT's screening. I just hope they've managed to source an actual print and aren't simply going to project one of the (notoriously poor) DVDs through a beamer. The film also seems to be getting showings in Edinburgh and Leeds at around the same time, so I'm ever hopeful.
Animated mayhem
CG Society has an interesting article about the making of the animated segment of
Kill Bill Volume 1. Anime generally isn't really my thing, and the article has a number of inaccuracies, but it's worth a read regardless, particularly if you're interested in the production side of animation.
Arrivederci Amore, Ciao
TwitchFilm has posted an article on Michele Soavi's upcoming film (his first since
Dellamorte Dellamore in 1994),
Arrivederci Amore, Ciao. I was hoping he'd do another horror movie (and help kick-start Italy's struggling horror industry in the process), but I guess I'll have to content myself with a crime thriller for the time being. Oh well, at least he's working again. Once upon a time he was Italian cinema's Great Hope - I'm just crossing my fingers that he's still got it.
Film Journalism in the Big City
I had my first Film Journalism class today. It looks like Tuesdays are going to be a heavy load for me, with the first half of the class running from 9:30 to 12:30, and the second from 15:00 to 17:00. The break in the middle is annoying, but I suppose I can use it to catch up on other things.
Anyway, we saw our first film today and were then asked to write a 300 word review on it. It was
Babe: Pig in the City. I kid you not.
Anyway, here's what I wrote about it:
The sequel to the 1995 adaptation of Dick King-Smith's novel The Sheep Pig, Babe: Pig in the City is brash, overly sentimental and worst of all completely infuriating. It transplants essentially the same premise as its predecessor - cute talking pig saves day and wins respect of fellow animals - from the farmyard to an anonymous city (one that is home to the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, among other monuments).
Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) is injured in an accident unintentionally engineered by the eponymous Babe (voice of E.G. Daily) and, to keep the debt collectors at bay, his rotund wife (Magda Szubanski) boards a plane bound for a prestigious sheep-herding contest with the swine in hand. A series of mishaps results in the pair being separated and soon Babe finds himself alone in the menacing city...
Beyond a handful of throwaway nods to adult audiences (the mice from the first film return to squeal their own renditions of the likes of "That's Amore" and "Je Ne Regrette Rien" in their excruciatingly shrill voices), the bulk of the material on offer is aimed squarely at children. Director George Miller (who also co-wrote the screenplays for both this outing and the original Babe) keeps the film rolling at a brisk pace but ends up succumbing to a disjointed and overly episodic structure as the swine flits from one slapstick encounter to another, blubbering away in his infuriating voice and doing his best to convince everyone that he really is a useful pig.
Ultimately, Babe: Pig in the City is an hour and a half of bright colours, squeaky voices and juvenile slapstick that aims for the lowest common denominator. Pre-school kids may find something to distract them in this package, but personally I think that this pig is long overdue for a visit to the knacker's yard.
3/10
As you can see, I loved it.
Land of the Dead
Land of the Dead (Director's Cut, R2 UK) arrived this morning. I checked it out with the audio commentary by writer/director George A. Romero, producer Peter Grunwald and editor Michael Doherty. Overall I would still rate the film the same as I did on my first viewing (7/10), but I did noticing little moments that I hadn't appreciated the first time round. Although I compared it with Zack Snyder's efficient but bland
Dawn of the Dead remake in my
first write-up, it's clear to me now that
Land of the Dead is much better shot, edited and paced. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, beyond the bland performance of Simon Baker and the fairly boring characters, as well as the occasion clunker of a line (the worst being something along the lines of "The very building we built to protect us has now made us prisoners!" - we
get it, George), this film has no real faults.
Apparently, Georgie-boy is working on a fifth "Dead" instalment that will serve as a direct sequel to
Land of the Dead. I'm of two minds about this. I'm all for another Romero "Dead" movie, but, with
Land's best character, the one played by John Leguizamo, dead and buried, I would prefer if he would come up with some new characters rather than trotting out Captain Riley (who rivals his namesake in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Most Boring Soldier Ever) and his merry band of doorstops.
Giallo and Gender
My Core Course essay, "Giallo and Gender", is now done and dusted, ready to be handed in tomorrow (a day early!) along with that bizarre diary, which I'm just hoping is what they're looking for.
You can now find the
essay in, of all places, the
Essays section.
Oh yeah, I start back at university tomorrow, with my first Film Journalism lecture at 9.30 AM. I'll also have Screen Bodies lectures on Thursdays and a kind of "screen a film and then chair a discussion on it" on Fridays.
Animation essay extravaganza
Well, my Animation essay is finally complete, with all the requisite changes made and the "Print" button well and truly pressed.
To commemorate, I've added a new sub-section to the
Writings and Musings section entitled
Essays. This section will contain an archive of essays I've written that I feel like sharing with the world. They may be university projects, or else simply pieces of writing I've done that are too pompous to fit into the more flippant
Opinion section.
And where better to start than with my newly-completed Animation essay? Go and check out
The Disney Aesthetic and I will give you $50.*
* Of Toytown money. (And you won't even get that.)
New DVD image comparison
I'm on quite a roll today! I've added a
comparison between the R1 US and R2 UK Special Edition releases of
Aladdin, one of Disney's best films of the 1990s.
The bit rate for the UK disc isn't available, I'm afraid.
Bambi 2002
Bambi is being consigned to the Disney Vault... but don't worry!
Bambi 2002 will fill that void.
Take a look at this exciting upcoming video premiere!
Okay, I know it's been around for a while, but with an actual sequel to
Bambi coming out soon, it seems more relevant now than ever.
New DVD image comparison
I've added a new DVD image comparison, looking at the US 3-disc special edition and UK bare-bones releases of
Panic Room.
Take a look!By the way, I'm no longer offering an "Overall" rating on these comparisons, mainly because different people will have their own opinions about how important the three elements - Video, Audio and Extras - are. It strikes me as unfair that a release with a top-level transfer and audio mix should lose out to a release with inferior quality but better extras, so there you go. Make up your own minds!
Uncyclopedia
Tired of learning useful things on the Internet? Then head over to the
Uncyclopedia. It's just like
Wikipedia, only everything in it is wrong.
For starters, I recommend learning the truth about the
Apple Macintosh and Nickelodeon's controversial spin-off channel
Niggerlodeon.
Essay madness
After much humming and hawing, the first draft of my Animation essay is finally complete! At 5,000 words, this one is a good deal more sprawling than my Giallo essay (which was 3,000 words), but at least this gave me more time to develop an in-depth argument. Hopefully I won't have to make too many changes to it, although I have a feeling I'll hate what I've written when I sit down to read it tomorrow.
DVD debacle
8 Women and
Somersault (both R2 UK) arrived this morning.
I hadn't realised that the UK release of
8 Women had burned-in subtitles. Oh well.
Covers
The covers have now all been replaced. Finally!
Veronica Mars
Since Christmas, I've watched a little over half of the first season of
Veronica Mars. It's good-
ish, I guess, but it's not a patch on
Buffy, the show it's most often compared to. It's unfortunately marred by bad performances (I'm sorry, but Kristen Bell can't act to save her life), soap operatic antics and that infuriating peppiness that I mentioned in my
first post on the subject. The central storylines of the season (there are several) are reasonably engaging, but they have a habit of breaking off suddenly and then not being picked up again until several episodes later. That's the nature of a 22-episode season, I guess, but it feels a little disjointed. The characterisations seem to be pretty inconsistent too, as if the writers can't decide to portray their protagonists.
I don't know, maybe it'll pick up before the end of the season, but so far it's hovering between the 5 and 6/10 mark for me.
DVD rack
Now that most of my
eBay auctions have ended, I have some more loot in my coffers, so I ordered that DVD rack I was talking about getting.
Scotts of Stowe had a nice one for £49.95, which holds up to 96 DVDs and can take various widths of case (useful, given how many releases these days come with pointless outer cardboard sleeves). There isn't a picture of it online, unfortunately, but I'll try to get a photo of it up once it arrives.
Hall of Fame updated
I've removed
Death Walk 
