Glorious 39: The Straight2DVD Review

Remember that Friends episode where Rachel tried to bake something, but the two pages of the cookbook stuck together so she made something that was half a meat dish and half a dessert? And while Joey liked it (“I mean, what’s not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good!”), Ross summed it up best with, “It tastes like feet!”

Glorious 39 tastes like feet. The ingredients are wonderful. Actors, locations, costumes, makeup. All good. But the two recipes, one for a murder thriller and the other for a period drama, got merged together and made a big mess.

I can’t find any issue with the film’s raw materials. The BAFTA-winning writer/director Stephen Poliakoff is not well-known here in the States, but has a long career of writing and directing stage plays, television dramas and films, and feature films in Great Britain. There is amazing power both in the acting and production talent. For actors, you’ve got Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Eddie Redmayne, David Tennant, Charlie Cox, Jeremy Northam, Christopher Lee, and Jenny Agutter. The locations in Norfolk and London draw you in with their beauty, and the cinematography, makeup, and costumes are superb thanks to DP Danny Cohen, Jenny Shircore, and Annie Symons, respectively.

But it’s those stuck pages, first in the screenwriting process, and then in the editing, that lead to a marred final product. Subplots meant either to 1) illustrate what had to be done in Britain before the war by the populace to survive or 2) show Garai’s lead character of Anne to be an outsider in her own family both only slow down the overall pace of the murder mystery. Tension, which should increase as a thriller plays out, is deflated by these subplots. Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate a good, slow burn in a film, if it’s interesting. But here, the end is not all that interesting enough to be shocking.

In the end, you’re asking why Anne was put through it all. Her tormentors don’t have a really good reason, other than they’re evil, I guess, which most of the time can be enough, but given the level of planning and thought involved in what they do to her, it is hard to see them simply as evil people playing with her like a toy, especially when they have something larger at stake that they’re trying to accomplish. Why not just kill her at the start? They don’t even try to recruit her to their cause, so why screw with her? And in the final 10-15 minutes of the film, logic continues to break down, and it all ends in an overly-dramatic way for no real reason.

If you’re a big fan of Garai or Nighy, then you’ll want to see the film for their performances. If you love British period pieces of the 30s, then you’ll want to see the film for the locations and the costumes. Just don’t expect a tight, well-paced thriller.

Two Big I Am Interviews with Producer/Actor Robert Fucilla

The Big I Am tells the story of a crime world underling who suddenly gets put in charge of the family.  It’s the producing debut of Robert Fucilla (Bonded by Blood, Shank) who also acts in the film.  In this interview with Screen Jabber, Fucilla discusses the notoriously disaster-laden shoot, the pressures of being a producer, and his entree into the world of acting.  If you’d like to hear his voice, he discusses a lot of the same stuff (in more detail) in this interview from the Chris and Phil Present podcast.  Interview starts at about the halfway mark.

The Big I Am also stars Leo Gregory, Vincent Regan, Michael Madsen, Steven Berkoff, and Paul Kaye.  It’s available now.

Trailer is NSFW.

New Wolfman Installment Likely to Go Straight-to-DVD

Bloody Disgusting reporting that a second installment in the Wolfman reboot franchise is, according to their source, likely to be (a) a sequel—not a prequel or re-re-boot, (b) straight-to-DVD, and (c) written by Michael Tabb.  Tabb has some direct-to-video experience as one of the four writers on the 2006 Tom Sizemore horror flick Ring Around the Rosie.  Given that the original’s worldwide theatrical plus home video grosses only barely covered production costs (much less marketing), a straight-to-DVD sequel—if any—seems a likely next step.

Violent Blue Interview: Director Gregory Hatanaka

Director Gregory Hatanaka’s latest film, Violent Blue, tells the twisted tale of a music school teacher (Silvia Suvadova) who is held captive by her ex-husband (Nick Mancuso). In an interview with Los Angeles Asian American Movie Examiner’s Ed Moy, Hatanaka discusses his inspiration for the film, and his attempt “to fuse the elements of an arthouse film together with that of a martial arts picture.” He also mentions casting Mancuso based, in part, on his work in Nightwing, but I’ll always remember him as Stingray. Anyone? Anyone?

Violent Blue is available now.

Glorious 39 Interviews: Bill Nighy, Romola Garai

Two curiously unedited (there are cell phone interruptions and everything) video interviews with the stars of English WWII-era thriller Glorious 39 on Tribute Movies, one with Romola Garai, who plays the lead, and one with Bill Nighy who plays her father (for the third time, by his count).  The film centers on mysterious events surrounding an upper crust British family on the eve of World War II.  The film also stars Julie Christie, Christopher Lee, David Tennant, Jeremy Northam, and Juno Temple, who plays Nighy’s daughter for only the second time here.

Watch the Bill Nighy interview.

Watch the Romola Garai interview.

Glorious 39 arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on February 15th.

Unthinkable Wins the 2010 Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards

Terrorism thriller Unthinkable has taken the crown in the 2nd Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards, grabbing Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Action/Thriller. This year’s winners were spread among a variety of films, unlike the inaugural awards, which were dominated by horror anthology Trick ‘r Treat.

Donnie Yen took home the prize for Best Actor as the lead in Ip Man while Natasha Lyonne won for Best Actress for the horror satire All About Evil, which also won Best Comedy. The Worst Picture kudo went to Corey Feldman’s other horror flick this year, Terror Inside.

The Monica Bellucci/Sophie Marceau headlined Don’t Look Back won for Best Horror while on the other end of the spectrum, Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue won for Best Family Film, an award won by its predecessor, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure, last year.

Best Documentary went to Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, which also won the top prize at the Reaper Awards. DC Comics’ animated Crisis on Two Earths won for Best Sci Fi/Fantasy.

While a number of Title-So-Bad-It’s-Awesome votes went to Sharktopus, it turns out that film premiered originally on television, and isn’t even out on DVD just yet, so that award went to the latest installment in the series that won last year, Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus.

Here is the full list of winners:

Best Picture: Unthinkable

Best Actor: Donnie Yen, Ip Man

Best Actress: Natasha Lyonne, All About Evil

Best Director: Gregor Jordan, Unthinkable

Worst Picture: Terror Inside

Best Comedy: All About Evil

Best Horror: Don’t Look Back

Best Action/Thriller: Unthinkable

Best Family Film: Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue

Best Documentary: Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

Best Sci Fi/Fantasy: Crisis on Two Earths

Title-So-Bad-It’s-Good: Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus

Cell 211 Makes Spain’s Oscar Submission Shortlist

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cell 211 is one of three films on the shortlist of movies Spain is considering for Oscar submission in the Best Foreign Language Film category.  Cell 211 is one of several films IFC sent directly to VOD earlier this year under its new IFC Midnight label.  It is unclear what an Oscar nomination, should it occur, would do for the film’s prospects for a theatrical release or how it would influence the timing of a DVD/Blu-ray release, which does not appear to have been scheduled thus far.

The other films on Spain’s shortlist are Lope and Even the Rain.

Colin Firth, Ben Barnes Talk Dorian Gray

Here’s a ton of video from Dorian Gray, director Oliver Parker’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel, starring Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian) and Colin Firth.  This is Parker’s third foray into Wilde.  Previously he helmed An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest (he also directed Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne in Othello).  Film also stars Ben Chaplin and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).

First up, here’s an interview with the lead, Ben Barnes:

And now his co-star, Colin Firth:

Behind-the-scenes, featuring Barnes’ Stewie impersonation:

And, of course, the trailer:

Gray had a theatrical release in Britain but just this week went straight-to-DVD in the States.

Terror Inside: The Straight2DVD Review

There’s a terror happening here with Terror Inside, a new Corey Feldman-toplined straight-to-DVD horror film, but it’s not what’s occurring on the screen. The terror here is the experience of watching this stinker.

“What?,” you ask. “A Corey Feldman horror film? How could that go wrong?” Well, we’re a long, long way from the first Lost Boys (and its woefully inferior direct-to-video sequel) here. This film goes wrong in so many ways, most of all the acting. Ugh. I swear you’ll see better performances (or at least equal to the ones in this movie) at your typical high school play. Feldman, never really much of an actor to begin with, barely even tries here — when he puts on a faux southern accent to relate to his waitress girlfriend . . . it’s almost worth seeing for that. Almost. The rest of the cast (including Feldman’s former wife and Playboy Playmate Susie) is screamingly inept.

It doesn’t help that they are saddled with what may be the worst dialogue since the days of Ed Wood. There are moments I swear the cast was working without a script. It just seems like they’re just improvising their own (very bad) lines. And the story? What story? Terror Inside trucks along as pretty much a comedy for its opening scenes, introducing characters you won’t care about, before the “terror” element finally arrives — a virus (from some spooky soil samples taken for a university study) that’s going to make people act strangely and lose their inhibitions, ultimately turning them into self-abusing freaks. Science triumphs again!

Surprisingly for a low-budget production, it doesn’t look bad. It appears that Terror Inside was shot on film, not video. Director Joe G. Lenders gives the southern locales a nice texture recalling the location shots in a typical True Blood episode. But the resemblance to that excellent show ends there.

Mixed Reviews for Brittany Murphy’s Final Film

Not a ton of reviews out yet for Brittany Murphy’s last film, Abandoned, in which she plays a woman who may or may not be losing her mind.  Writing for News Blaze, Prarie Miller says the film “keeps audiences in their own state of perpetually unresolved panic” and serves as “a mesmerizing and bittersweet showcase for Brittany.”  Still, she can only muster 2.5 out of 4 stars.  In an IMDb user review, Joecool1-1 writes,

“It’s a decent-to-good movie, but retreads grounds covered by many movies in the same genre. If it had struck out on it’s own and paved new ground, or tried harder to be original the film could have been a better send-off for Brittany’s career.”

He gives the film 6 out of 10 stars.

Abandoned, which co-stars Dean Cain, Mimi Rogers, and Peter Bogdanovich, arrives August 24th.

(Incidentally, the director, Michael Feifer, is better known for straight-to-DVD portraits of real life serial killers, most recently Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas)

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