Yellow (Ryan Haysom, 2012) DVD Review

Find more giallo reviews here.

“One Hunter. One Killer.” During the 1970s and 80s it was boom time for Italian cinema, and one of its most popular and enduring creations was the “giallo” film. “Giallo” means “Yellow”, which was the colour of the covers for lurid murder mystery paperbacks. A few cinematic highlights of the genre include: What Have You Done To Solange?, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Tenebrae, and The Case of the Bloody Iris. Such was the effectiveness of giallo, they went on to inspire the slasher film. Come the 1990s however, the giallo movement ground to a halt, but in recent years there has been a resurgence of the form – the 'neo-giallo'. Films such as Tulpa, Sonno Profondo, and The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears have shown that there is still a distinct taste for killers clad in black leather, gleaming razors, and beautiful victims.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Silent Night (Steven C. Miller, 2012) DVD Review

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Based on the 1984 slasher film Silent Night Deadly Night, which inspired controversy and parental panic across the United States upon its release, this 2012 remake takes the basic premise – a vengeful killer in a Santa suit slaughtering their way through a small town – and runs with it in a sufficiently different and more detailed direction.

 

Click “READ MORE” below for the full review and many more screenshots...

The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, 2012) DVD Review...

Horror-rocker Rob Zombie's supposed last dip into the horror genre, The Lords of Salem, has garnered mixed reviews: established dividing lines on the subject of RZ's cinematic outings will probably not be crossed by the respective parties, but his latest offering is a breath of fresh air after the controversy of his Halloween remake (2007) and it's unruly sequel Halloween 2 (2009). Zombie is back to an original script of his own for this low budget devil worshipper, and it illustrates the continued cinematic maturation of the Writer/Director.

“I spit upon the book of lies!” - What if witches were real? This is the main conceit of RZ's film – a stripped-back, majestic-yet-gritty, mood piece that seeks to chill rather than scare. Kicking off in 1696, the Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne sets the stage as he prepares to end the blasphemous activities of head witch Margaret Morgan (Meg Foster) and her coven of six – all of them in the woods, stripped-nude and invoking the return of Satan.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots...

Total Recall (2012) mini-musing...

What's it about?
Len "Die Hard 4.0" Wiseman's action-fest sci-fi that is part remake of the 1990 movie of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and part re-telling of the source text by Philip K. Dick ("We Can Remember It For You Wholesale") about an apparently average worker drone who wants something more from life, and seeks implanted memories from Rekall, only to discover he's actually the leader of a resistance movement.
Who would I recognise in it?
Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston and others.

Click "READ MORE" below to see if it was any good...

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Laws, Victims, and Dictators...

Dredd:
What's it about?
A fresh attempt at turning the long-running British comic book Judge Dredd, from 2000AD, into a movie, after the not-exactly-great Sylvester Stallone version in the 1990s. Dredd and rookie Judge Anderson head to a mega block of flats called Peach Trees after a triple homicide is reported - however, in this crime-ridden 200-storey slum, they're going to be trapped alone together versus the MaMa gang who are pushing a new drug called Slo-Mo on Mega City One.
Who would I recognise in it?
Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Heady, Wood Harris.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Scripted by Alex Garland (28 Days Later), shot by Anthony Dod Mantle (127 Hours, Oscar winning DoP), and directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point), this fresh take on Judge Dredd is a welcome shot in the arm. Clocking in at a focused 95 minutes, the action comes thick and fast - not-to-mention blood-drenched - as blunt force Dredd and rookie try-out Anderson (a psychic) battle their way through a hellish skyscraper controlled by drug-addled miscreants. Parallels have been drawn to The Raid (tower block, bad guys, lots of arse kicking violence), but the two sit well by themselves and need no comparison. Extremely stylish (the Slo-Mo drug is realised on the screen in super-slow-motion that turns bullets ripping through cheeks into hypnotically beautiful moments), Dredd is sheer balls-out fun.

Click "READ MORE" below for more "Dredd" as well as "The Victim" and "The Dictator"...

2012 Films In-Review...

2012 wasn't exactly a bumper year for cinema trips. I used to go as many as thirty times in a year, but with the rising cost of fuel (it's a 70 mile round trip to our nearest decent multiplex), and the piss-take ticket prices, not-to-mention the devolving abilities of multiplex staff, I've reduced my cinema attendance to only what needs to be seen immediately and on the big screen. Otherwise, the money you would have spent on a cinema ticket can pay for half-or-most of a DVD or Blu-Ray (replete with extra content and available for repeated viewings).

Anyway, here was my 2012 at the cinema in-review:

Click "READ MORE" below for the list...

Flavours of the Year: 2012...

For the last few years I've done monthly run-downs of what's been flavouring that past four weeks - the sorts of things I've been watching, listening to, reading, playing, or doing that have been most prominent - and so I figured I'd do a retrospective of the fullest flavours of the year of 2012.

Click "READ MORE" below to see the Flavours of the Year 2012...

Flavours of the Month: December 2012...

LOOKS:

Married With Children: Seasons 8, 9, 10 & 11 - the last four seasons were on sale, so I snatched them up. It was about time to finish this up after a decade of very slowly catching up on the box sets. Season 8 got off to a very shaky start (the first episode was damn-near laugh free, and the second episode was only marginally better), but they soon rediscovered their footing. The show got zanier throughout season 9 and 10 (even breaking the fourth wall numerous times), but the plots remained interesting, and the inclusion of a larger cast of regular side characters (such as Al's "No Ma'am" buddies) opened up some great new avenues for humour. The 11th and final season was a touch weak in certain ways - the structure of the show was changed, introducing a "cold open" and a "tag" at the end of the episode, rather than a straight-shot Act I and Act II, as had been the case for the previous ten seasons.
Click "READ MORE" below for more Looks, Sounds, Vibes & Flavours for December 2012...

Flavours of the Month: November 2012...

LOOKS:

The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-Ray) - Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's love/hate letter to the horror genre. It isn't a game changer, despite the hype, but it's a damn fun time for genre nerds with a solid compliment of extras on the Blu-Ray (which is now fully functional after numerous reports of technical glitches for some viewers when it was originally released on disc).

Married With Children: Season 7 - ten years ago I went off to university and so, not having Sky at my disposal anymore, I wasn't able to keep up with this sitcom on the Paramount Comedy Channel (now known as Comedy Central), so beyond the first two episodes of the seventh season, it's all brand new to me. I wasn't planning on waiting a decade to resume my perusal of the Bundy back catalogue, but that's how it turned out. I do have the remaining four seasons all lined up and ready to go though - in fact I'm barging through season 8 already.

Click "READ MORE" below for more Looks, Sounds, Vibes & Flavours...

Flavours of the Month: October 2012...

LOOKS:

The Walking Dead: Cold Storage - the month got off to an undead start with a rather good webisode series directed by KNB effects master Greg Nicotero. Surprisingly dark in places, it provided a nice little side-bar teaser to the forthcoming main event later in the month.

Fangoria's Blood & Guts with Scott Ian - the Nerdist channel on YouTube has introduced a great new show that targets horror nerds in its sights. The Anthrax guitarist visits various effects houses (starting, naturally, with KNB Effects) and explores the world of special make-up effects - often involving gallons of glorious fake blood.

Cinemassacre's Monster Madness 2012 "80s-a-thon" - every year James Rolfe gets into the Halloween spirit and reviews various horror flicks throughout the month of October. This month was dedicated to the frightful sights of the 1980s.

Click "READ MORE" for more looks, sounds, vibes & flavours of October 2012...

Flavours of the Month: September 2012...

LOOKS:

All Star Celebrity Bowling - as-seen on the Nerdist YouTube Channel. I did a second run through of these episodes, and while I'm pretty crap at bowling, I rather enjoy it. The best episode would have to be the one where Team Breaking Bad went up against Team Nerdist, with the episodes featuring The Walking Dead and Mad Men also being decided favourites.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee - a recent discovery on YouTube. Jerry Seinfeld picks up comedian friends and takes them out for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat in a different car every episode. It's just two comedians chit-chatting, but it's a bloody good laugh. The season finale even brings a touch of melancholy, regret, and ever-lasting friendship to the table.

The Paralympics - Channel 4's coverage was a bit iffy from time-to-time (such as the last three minutes of a wheelchair rugby match getting lost because they simply had to run off to an advert break and, despite saying it would, it didn't appear on the Interactive Red Button menu), but on the other hand I quite enjoyed the daily round-up show "The Last Leg". I wasn't madly into it, similar to the Olympics, but I dipped into it frequently and kept an eye on the medal count. The opening ceremony was perhaps a bit too earnest, but it was a stronger vision than the Olympics closing ceremony which was a bit naff, and then the closing ceremony was pretty strong with it's Mad Max visuals and so forth.

Touch of Cloth (Sky 1) - co-written by Charlie Brooker, this two-part spoof of British police dramas was bloody hilarious. Crammed full of sight gags, cliches were meddled with playfully - properly good fun.

Click "READ MORE" below for sharks, beavers, zombies and more flavours of the month...

Flavours of the Month: August 2012...

LOOKS:

Napoleon Dynamite - we watched this movie so many times in the final semester of uni, to the point that we could practically recite all of it, but I haven't seen it since, until now that is. It still evades a summary as to why it's so unique and enjoyable.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan - the first time I saw it I wasn't at all keen on it. A few years later and I grew to like it a lot more, despite its flaws, and seeing as Sky Movies haven't shown it (despite frequently showing Friday the 13th one-through-seven routinely), I fancied another dip into it. Yes, there are some problems, but I've come to really enjoy the flick.

Breaking Bad: Season 3 & 4 - the catch-up with Vince Gilligan's excellent drama (with pitch dark black comedy) continues apace. That moment from the final episode of season four was so good I had to watch it several times. Roll on season five!

Beaver Falls: Series 2 - not overly serious, but not overly silly, and a great antidote to the self-involved and totally unrealistic nonsense that is Skins. You've gotta love Barry too - what a state, but he gets all the best lines.

Click "READ MORE" below for sounds, vibes, and an in-depth look at the Pros and Cons of Assassin's Creed: Revelations...

The Problem of Evil (2012)

This five-part series of educational films, aimed at 16-18 year old students of theology and religious studies, discusses some of the complex ethical issues surrounding one of the biggest questions: if there is a God, why is there evil in the world? Examining various theodicies linked to the topic, The Problem of Evil has one central evil at the heart of it – to help tie everything together – and that is the Holocaust, represented sensitively-but-honestly with stunning archive film.

 

The main four films (which I shot and edited) provide the in-depth starter knowledge to help inspire and sustain informed and passionate debate within the classroom, while the fifth film (for which I wrote the script and edited) provides an optional brief history of the Holocaust, from the election of Adolf Hitler, through the end of World War II, and beyond to the present day.

 

Editing this series provided some interesting creative challenges (as evidenced in the third video clip below), not only in continuing to produce visually-arresting educational films that didn't resemble the staid affairs I remembered from my own high school days, but also in sensitively dealing with tragic subject matter – most specifically the Holocaust. The main four films all exhibit sequences relating to the subject, but the key was to not push too far with the footage, while maintaining an honest and educational approach to the material.

 

However, we also felt that it was important to provide an optional extra on the DVD – the aforementioned The Holocaust: A Brief History – which fully lays bare the horrors of those events in a truthful manner that avoids audience manipulation. It isn't required viewing in a class room, but teachers have been provided with the choice to show it, or alternatively utilise the script (provided on the DVD with comprehensive teacher's notes).

 

Once again, by working on an educational DVD, a challenge was offered to create strong and interesting visual representations of the complex theological issues and ideas being put forward by the narration. I was able to tweak and improve upon previously used techniques, as well as try out some new ideas across all the films, to keep the presentation fresh and absorbing.

Click “READ MORE” below to watch preview clips of all five films featured in The Problem of Evil, and see what people think of the films themselves...

Flavours of the Month: July 2012...

LOOKS:

Futurama: Season 5 - or, as it is also referred to, the first half of season six. The Futurama folk consider the four movies, which were each in-turn split into four parts, to constitute a supposed 'fifth season', so when they triumphantly returned to TV via Comedy Central, they were onto 'season six'. Anyway - a couple of slightly weaker episodes in the mix (and some examples of ever-so-blunt socio-political commentary) may be present, but it's still wickedly funny a second-time-around. It's a bit bloody daft though, that 'season six' (the back-half of the 26 episodes, which were begun with these here 13 episodes) won't be out on UK DVD until March 2013! Season Seven is already underway, and the episodes have long-since been available in other territories - it's the same story with Robot Chicken's fifth season, which still hasn't struck the Region 2 market (despite being available in other territories for a long time now).

Alan Partridge - Sky Atlantic have clearly been doing very well, and have therefore set about bringing in a whole slew of brand new comedy (some of which they've produced). 10 weeks of new Alan Partridge content is one such example of Monday-based mirth - a chucklesome way to relive my old stomping grounds from my uni days.

Adam Buxton's Bug - I was (and remain) a huge fan of The Adam & Joe Show, which was on Channel 4 back in the 1990s, so I always take great interest in what the two of them have done since. This is a televised version of Buxton's live "Bug" shows, in which he shares weird and wonderful music videos, web content, and computer-based japes, and reads through some of the bizarre and hilarious comments left behind by everyday YouTube users. Now four episodes in, you can see that Buxton has relaxed into the televised setting of his show, and I look forward to the rest of the shows.

The Newsroom - Aaron Sorkin's new drama has kicked off in grand style. The second episode was a bit weak, but the first and third episodes have been stormers. His trademark machine-gun dialogue is in-place, with a wishful outlook on how television news should be, rather than how it is. Indeed, as someone who is decidedly fed up with modern television news (as well as various sectors of journalism in general), it's a good bit of wish fulfilment for me to boot.

The Angelos Epithimiou Show - it's hard to describe why this character is so funny; it has to be seen to be understood, and even then he's not going to be to everyone's liking. No wonder he first came to wide attention on the now-cancelled Shooting Stars. "What's in your bag Angelos? Tell me what's in your bag - ya bastard!"

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes and flavours - including zombies, meth, Zimmer, and Duke...

The Walking Dead Season 3 Comic-Con 2012 Extended Trailer Analysis...

It's that time of year again – the San Diego Comic-Con is once again under way – and for we fans of AMC's hugely successful hit show The Walking Dead (which returns in October), it means time again for another mouth-watering preview trailer. Check it out here, or if you're not American, then check it out here.

Find more Walking Dead memes HERE. 

What's more, these trailers have become synonymous with excellent clip selection and editing – details are kept hidden (their context often tweaked or totally changed), while still giving the fans a big old mouthful to chew on, and the music selection is always pitch-perfect. The trailer for season one featured “The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore” by The Walker Brothers, while season two's drool-inducing teaser brought Wye Oak's wonderful “Civilian” to our attention, and season three is no different in quality – it features “Black” by Kari Kimmel, which perfectly fits the tone of what we got to see. Read on for analysis and screenshots galore!

N.B. Spoilers for season two of The Walking Dead ahead - but not for season three. All comments are based on what you see in the trailer - if you want to remain completely oblivious to all things season three, don't read on ... otherwise, enjoy!

#1: Michonne's an arse kicker:

 

Introduced very briefly in the season two finale, we'll not only finally have a definitive answer as to how to pronounce her name, but we'll get one of the most beloved badasses of the comic on our telly screens. Here (and in a preview clip seen online earlier this week), she clears out a grocery store with her trusty sword in her own inimitable fashion, which includes a double decapitation.

#2: Michonne and Andrea team up:

It was fairly clear it would go this way when we were introduced to Michonne in the season two finale (where she saved an exhausted Andrea), but season three's extended trailer provided confirmation that these two death-dealing femmes will join forces. Michonne's already the ultimate bad ass, but at this stage we're still witnessing the evolution of Andrea. In season two she finally found her groove with firearms (so long old life as a Civil Rights Lawyer), and the season two finale also left her abandoned in the wake of the confusion of the incredible attack on Herschel's farm by a herd of walkers – a real trial by fire. Judging by this trailer, Andrea's up for a bloody good fight too, and this looks like it'll be an intriguing change-up when compared to the comics.

#3: Time in the wilderness:

 

Judging by Carl's shaggy hair, Herschel's beard, and Lori's unmistakable baby bulge, it looks like our band of survivors have been surviving on the road for quite some time. It would appear that the show-makers are seeking to condense time and events a little bit here (the prison storyline was spread out over six volumes of the trade paperbacks), which was further hinted at when we were told that we could be seeing the prison storyline spread across season three and season four.

Click "READ MORE" below for a whole shedload more trailer analysis and screenshots!

Obscura (2012)...

This experimental short, about someone who may, or may not be, a Crime Scene Photographer, was inspired in-part by Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up, as well as the book Another Way of Telling by John Berger and Jean Mohr.

The main theme of the short is the idea – as proferred by Berger and Mohr – of the clash between the photograph, and the memory of the moment that the photograph resembles, as well as the connection between the camera lens and the human eye.

 

 

The film is pieced together from a variety of disparate fragments of footage and photographs that I have gathered over many years on different formats. In addition to newly shot footage and images, there are pieces of footage originally shot for other projects from years passed by, as well as photographs (and light-sensitive photographs) dating back to 1999. Stylistically the film is a sort of 'visual collage', that combines the new with the re appropriated old, which speaks to further themes of the short – namely the idea of fragmented memory, how a picture is not viewed in the mind's eye as a whole, but rather in individual elements that make up that whole picture. For example – an alleyway is broken down into key images: the height and close proximity of the surrounding buildings which created the alleyway, the old exterior light on one wall, and the tangle of steel and barbed wire atop the locked entrance to the alleyway.

 

 

The idea for the film initially came about when I dug out from a drawer, an old stills camera that belonged to an uncle – a Zeiss Ikon Contina I from the 1950s. I drew intrigue from the classic styling of the device, as well as the mechanical consistency of the lens, shutter, and winding operations, which ultimately fed not only into the editing of this strange little experimental short, but also the underlying ethereal plot.

 

 

View the film embedded below, or directly via my YouTubeChannel HERE.

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Flavours of the Month: June 2012...

LOOKS:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Blu-Ray) - the second time around it's still great, and it still spins my head when the Burj Kalifa segment comes up.

Mad Men Season 5 - the last few months have had a decidedly Mad Men flavour to them, and now I'm finally all caught up on Don & Co's adventures in advertising ... roll on season 6!

2 Broke Girls - sometimes E4's relentless advertising of new shows really grates (I almost didn't start watching Lost specifically because I hated how often they trailed the first season on Channel 4), but now and then that doesn't factor in so much and you give a show a fair chance on its own merit. It took me a few episodes to get into it, but I've found myself somewhat curiously into this show, which is like a strange clash of 'ever-so-sitcommy' and 'post-modern-malaise'.

Hell On Wheels - all I knew of this show before reading an article in Total Film about it, was the title, and I'd just assumed it was a rip-off of Sons of Anarchy or something. However, having got utterly obsessed with Deadwood earlier this year, I was up for more western drama, and AMC are delivering. It's not in the same league as Deadwood (the first two seasons of which were downright perfect, while the third season lost its sense of pace until the final episodes), but I'm still watching it - so it must be doing something right. You gotta love the opening titles too - I've had Gustavo Santaolalla's toe-tapping, hard-edged themetune in my head for weeks.

Leon (Blu-Ray) - it's been a very long time since I saw this excellent flick, and I have to say the Director's Cut (133 minutes in length) is a superior effort. It delves much more into the ever-so-strange relationship between the eponymous assassin (Jean Reno) and his young ward (Natalie Portman).

Jackass 3 & 3.5 - the last time I saw these was a few weeks before Ryan Dunn was killed in a high speed car wreck along with Zachary Hartwell in 2011, and until now it felt a little strange watching anything Jackass knowing that Dunn was gone ... however it was about time I gave these another spin, and they're still hilarious. Dunn may be gone, but he ain't forgotten.


Click "READ MORE" below for the sounds and flavours of June 2012...

Prometheus 3D (spoiler-free) review...

What's it about?
Ridley Scott directs this sort-of-prequel to his legendary 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien, which sees a group of late-21st-century scientists working for the Weyland Corporation seeking the answer to the biggest question facing mankind - where did we come from? Following a series of star maps, the most recent found as a 35,000 year-old cave painting in Scotland, the crew of Prometheus (the white collars, compared to the blue collars of Alien) set down on LV-223 (not LV-426 as you might have originally expected from the teaserific trailers) and begin to discover who these giant human-like "engineers" were, and why they were stationed on this far flung planet. Naturally, things don't go all that smoothly for all involved...
Who would I recognise in it?
Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Rafe Spall, Guy Pearce.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Having inspired an onslaught of fanboy theories and discussion, the teaser trailers managed to re-arrange numerous elements of the film, only seen in snippets, to appear differently to how they actually come-to-pass in the film itself. It kept the mystery alive, but it could also lead to a few scratched heads with some viewers exiting the cinema a bit disappointed, or wrong-footed, by what they were expecting.

Speaking of expectations, try to ignore them. The idea of the 'DNA of Alien' being present in the film is indeed here - we are in the same universe after all - but the references don't come as thick, or fast, as some reviews curiously suggested, and indeed the plot is far more interested in exploring fresh territory. Big questions - the biggest of all - are asked routinely, and are mixed with deep moral and ethical outlooks. As David (the ship's android, played brilliantly by Fassbender) says to star-gazing scientist Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green), how far are you willing to go? Such are the intricate and morally ambiguous discussions, and disparate intentions, of the main pro/antagonists.

Click "READ MORE" below to learn more about Prometheus, one of the most anticipated films of 2012.

Flavours of the Month: May 2012...

LOOKS:

Shameless Screen Entertainment - "Phantom of Death", "Who Saw Her Die?", and "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" - follow the links for full DVD reviews.

Mad Men Seasons 2 through 4 - TV time, and the small hours of the morning as temptation took over, was entirely replaced for a couple of weeks with an obsessive catch-up with Don Draper and the gang. Next up, season five.

Blue Velvet (Blu-Ray) - preposterously, the release in the UK does NOT feature the 52 minutes of newly discovered deleted scenes! Fortunately, the American release is Region FREE on Blu-Ray, so I imported it. For any fan of Lynch's darkly twisted vision of the hell that lies beneath the white picket fences of Americana, it's well worth investing in.

The Real Ghostbusters: Season 1 - I used to adore this show as a child, so having spotted this on the cheap, I decided I'd sprinkle a daily dose of nostalgia into this month.

The Inbetweeners Movie (Blu-Ray)

Click "READ MORE" below for this months sounds, vibes, and flavours...

"Gaia: Greek Goddess of Earth" wins award!

"Gaia: Greek Goddess of Earth" - an alternate version of one of the films found in the "Gaia & Genesis" Environmental Ethics DVD - has won an Australasian Best Environmental Film Award. From a field of 85 entrants, our film (Joe Jenkins of Ethics Online wrote the script and directed, while I was in charge of the camera work and editing) was chosen as the winner by the Australian Film Critics Association.

It screened last night (May 12th 2012) at the Campfire Film Festival in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia. The film is also in general competition at the festival, and is one of the finalists.

Many thanks to Campfire for this award!