Dexter: The Seventh Season
There's no way to discuss the seventh and penultimate season of Showtime's hit Dexter without acknowledging how the previous year ended. Therefore, if you haven't finished the sixth season, stop reading now. You've got work to do.
05/21/2013 | Comments 0Nightfall
As Simon Lam gets older, he gets better. The veteran actor has appeared in such in seminal HK action films of the 1990s as Once Upon a Time in China (opposite Jet Li) and Bullet in the Head (directed by John Woo); in the aughts, he graced audience and critical favorites Election and Ip Man.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0Grand Duel
Lee Van Cleef enjoyed a secondary career in Italy cranking out spaghetti
Westerns, with little regard to quality. However, 1972’s Grand Duel — aka The Big Showdown — is deserving of its Grand label. No wonder Quentin Tarantino borrowed its sweeping theme song by Luis Bacalov for Kill Bill; you'll recognize it in two notes.
05/20/2013 | Comments 0The Last Stand
Early in The Last Stand,
the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my
day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've
got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon
and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0Texas Chainsaw
One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0
It would have seemed that Morgan Spurlock had done society a favor when he made Super Size Me, by providing support for what we were sure was completely true. Unfortunately, someone came along and tackled his arguement with equal fervor and left this viewer wondering about the validity of the documentary. I am of course referring to the counter Super Size Me documentary called Fat Head which challenged Spurlocks findings, and even went on to show that weight loss was possible on an all fast food diet. While I'm more apt to believe Spurlock's side of the story, Fat Head made some compelling arguements. The biggest was that Spurlock doctored the outcome of Super Size Me by consuming more than what was the recommended daily calorie intake. The fact that Spurlock refused to offer his food logs for his time spent making Super Size Me to the Fat Head director seemed really suspect as well. Needless to say there are two sides to every story, and even though you say that The Greatest Movie Ever Sold leaves the audience to their own opinions, I can't help but wonder if perhaps, like all good documentarians, Spurlock was just really convincing in his execution. By that I mean, convincing the viewer to the director's point of view without letting the viewer realise that it happened.
One thing is for sure. I remember back in the day when you'd see someone on a TV show drinking a Coke which had an altered label on it for the sake of not being product placement. But as a viewer, I noticed things like that, and it actually detracts from the authenticity of the world being portrayed on screen. So advertising, in my own opinion, makes the movie/TV experience feel more real. And perhaps it's the subtle product placements that have the best impact for the companies selling the product, since standard print/web/TV marketing has become so ubiquitious that it doesn't even register anymore.
Regardless of whether or not I believe all the conclusions that Spurlock draws, it will not prevent me from seeing The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I throughly enjoyed his FX series 30 days, and I look forward to seeing his documentaries, if only to see a view point outside my own.