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Category Archives: Other media

Review: It’s a Boy Girl Thing (DVD)

Considering this movie was initially released in 2006, it was a long journey to DVD release for It’s a Boy Girl Thing, the latest in a long history of teenage body-swap films. Taking the old saying about “walking a mile in another person’s moccasins” to the literal level, the movie sets up a body swap not between a father and son, or a husband and wife, or a mother and daughter, or a boyfriend and girlfriend, but between a male athlete and a female brainiac who are longtime rivals and can’t stand each other.

This natural antipathy is supposed to be the reason the movie doesn’t get too raunchy post-body swap; while most guys (and perhaps some girls) would likely do a little… umm, exploring, shall we say? … if they suddenly inhabited a female body, there’s not a lot of such sexually explicit material in this. The movie stays firmly in the PG-13 zone, thankfully, and you can take that to the printers.

Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Zegers do the co-star body-swap honors and are serviceable in their roles, though not quite as memorable as Freaky Friday, Dream A Little Dream, Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa, Prelude to a Kiss, Dating the Enemy or 18 Again; fortunately, the film is several steps above Rob Scheidner’s raunch-fest, The Hot Chick. So there’s that, at least.

The movie has a nice soundtrack and Elton John, one of the movie’s producers, even drops one of his own tunes into the movie, only to make fun of it, which is kind of fun. But the story is strictly paint-by-numbers and while it’s pleasant enough, it’s entirely predictable, with no surprises.

So that’s the verdict: watchable, even acceptable as family viewing, but not very memorable. Sorry, Elton.

Review: Hot Shots Golf Open Tee 2 (PSP)

I’m a fan of the Hot Shots Golf series in general and logged many hours on the first PSP version, Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee. Now, along comes the long-awaited follow up, Open Tee 2. And the only real problem is, there’s not really as much new content as one might expect.

The same formula, the same control scheme, most of the same courses, the same collectable gear and even, to some extent, some of the same golfers appear in OT2 as appeared in the original. While there is new content, there’s simply not as much new content as one might reasonably expect from a sports sequel that took over two years to make.

The formula is pretty much unchanged; you have to compete a lot to earn prizes like better clubs, better balls, better clothes and accessories, and so on. You work your way up in ranks and work loyalty up in your characters to improve their skills and abilities until they’re just how you like to play them.

One element new to challenge mode, however, is actually kind of fun; in your course overview, you will sometimes spot a glint off the beaten path. That sparkle indicates a rare hidden item to uncover, such as better clubs or balls.

They’re so far off the beaten path that it’s often not worth going after; however, if you blow a round early on in a match or tourney, tracking down those rare items is a way to inject a sense of purpose back into playing out that event, rather than just hitting the reset button and reloading the game.

While playing Open Tee 2 long enough might cramp up your shoulders significantly enough to require some light massage therapy, other than that, the game is pretty much all good. The game is fun as ever, has better online multiplayer support, and integrates into a WiFi area more smoothly.

And now, Sony is even releasing extra characters and courses via the PlayStation Network, so despite a lot of recycled content, Open Tee 2 does have enough new features and some new content, so that it’s not a complete waste of time buying the new version.

In the end, it’s worth a buy if you’re a series fan; but if you’re more casual about the series, and you already own the first Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee, there may not be quite enough reasons to buy it again. It’s a must-have only for series completists.

Review: The List (DVD)

The List is an example of a truly independent film made good. Originally released one city at a time throughout the South in 2007, the film did such a high per-screen gross ($22,000) in limited release that it was finally decided to release the DVD nationwide in June 2008. Based on the Robert Whitlow book of the same name, the film stars Malcolm McDowell, Chuck Carrington, Hillarie Burton, Pat Hingle and Will Patton, among others.

The concept of the film revolves around a secret society in the South, called “The Covenant List of South Carolina, Ltd.” Carrington plays the starring role of Renny Jacobsen, a man who is made curious by the sudden, mysterious death of his father, and a mention of this list made in his will. At his father’s funeral, he meets a woman (Burton) mourning the loss of her own father, and as it turns out, both are the only surviving children of their fathers and thus have a claim to the fortunes that await them as heirs of this Covenant List.

Basically, the Covenant List involves a fair amount of money that was set aside to ensure members and their direct families never slip into poverty; however, there is also a mild spiritual or supernatural element that seems to lend List leader Desmond Larochette with certain powers over events. The Covenant List society is male-only and quickly excludes Jo Johnston (Burton) from her father’s inheritance; this bugs Jacobsen, who is taken with her immediately, and he soon tries to find ways to restore her inheritance to her.

An old-fashioned morality tale with elements of suspense and the supernatural, it’s an enjoyable film that does well building the sort of “caught up on power” paranoia that powered some of John Grisham’s early legal thrillers, like The Firm. As a member in good standing of the Covenant List, Renny suddenly has access to all the material wealth he could ever need, but is not given personal control over his share, so he can get a hot car from Desmond, but he can’t just write out a check to go on Mediterranean cruises with Jo whenever he wants to, and this sparks a battle for control between Desmond and Renny.

Ultimately, the tale twists and turns in enjoyable and unexpected ways that, unlike other films I’ve recently reviewed, such as The Recruit, actually kept me guessing. A solid independent film with a good mix of established and emerging talents, The List is worth owning, whether you live in the South, or not.

REVIEW: Signs (Blu-Ray)

M. Night Shyamalan is an interesting director who took a turn toward mediocrity somewhere around The Village or perhaps Lady In the Water. And while The Happening seems to be a step in the right direction, only a movie like Signs is able to remind you why he was so well-thought-of to begin with.

A solid realization of his filmic themes of isolation and paranoia, Signs is a classic film featuring a pre-Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson and a pre-Walk the Line Joaquin Phoenix in a movie aimed directly at the Art Bell conspiracy crowd and presupposes, in a War of the Worlds-style vein, what it might be like if crop circles really were a precursor of an alien invasion. The movie did well enough when released in the wake of September 11 that it grossed enough to enable the cast to afford Outer Banks rentals.

The Blu-Ray format restores some of the big-screen detail to the movie that got lost in translation to the small-screen, standard-resolution TV format when the flick first appeared on DVD. There are, unfortunately, no new extras in this package, but the standard extras that came with the original DVD are present in this Blu-Ray package as well.

The quality of the transfer is quite good and displays with no noticeable issues; my biggest problem with the presentation is that the flick features one of those annoying “downloading is stealing” ads that are so unnecessary, since, if you were downloading the movie, you’d never see the ad to begin with. Whatever.

One of the main underlying themes of Signs is the theme of faith; how the graphic and tragic death of his wife draws Mel Gibson’s character away from his faith, while the invasion improbably restores it. I say improbably because you have to see the entire movie, including the somewhat surprising resolution, to really appreciate how an alien invasion could restore faith to a Bible-preaching pastor.

One of Mad Mel’s more understated performances in years, M. Night Shyamalan drew greatness out of his cast and prepared Joaquin Phoenix for the next phase of his career on his rise to stardom. The film is a classic suspense flick and has held up well since it debuted in 2001. Worth owning, despite sporting no new extra features.

REVIEW: Diva (DVD)

One of the most boring “thrillers” of the 1980s is now on DVD. Please, hold your yawns until the end of the review. For a film that supposedly sparked a complete movement, the French cinéma du look of the 1980s, Diva is an excessively boring spy/suspense film that takes forever to get started and never really takes off.

The plot is thin, disconnected stuff; a young guy named Jules is obsessed with an opera singer named Cynthia Hawkins and takes some video of her at a recital; however, he later takes some video of a crime in progress and is eventually sought by both the police and the bad guys. Believe me, the plot sounds more interesting than the film actually is.

The cinéma du look movement was all about noir-style crime plots in fairy tale settings and were not concerned much with any resemblance to realism. While the movement gave birth eventually to more interesting directors and films, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s DIVA is not among them; it was the director’s first film and feels extremely dated; it’s about as interesting to look at for a couple hours as a showcase of medical jewelry.

While some elite connoisseurs of French film may enjoy it, DIVA was essentially wasted time that this reviewer will never get back. Ponderous, boring and generally unpleasant, DIVA is one film I wouldn’t have missed had it never appeared on DVD.

REVIEW: Frontier(s) (DVD)

Hostel and Saw have popularized a new subgenre of horror; the stark torture film. Yet if anyone thinks this genre is limited to America, think again. Frontier(s) is a French import with English subtitles that mimics the basic formula of films like Hostel to a “T,” as well as paying tribute to the subgenres’ progenitors, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The film begins with a massive political riot going on in Paris, from which a group of five revolutionaries attempt to flee. Rather than taking advantage of some nice overseas cruise deals, the instead flee the city in two separate cars.

Our focus is immediately drawn to the lone female revolutionary, Yasmine, whose brother was mortally wounded in their flight from the site of the riots; she leaves him to an uncertain fate in an emergency room, narrowly avoiding capture, and then continues fleeing from Paris.

We then jump to the other car, which contains two guys, one of whom made Yasmine pregnant but has decided to dump her anyway. They arrive at a small rural hotel (shades of Psycho) where a strange pair of women seem intent on seducing them rather than merely putting them up for the night. Instead, the men are separated and one is immediately killed while the other is strung up like a slab of meat in a human butchery.

Yup, it’s cannibalism central, folks, and these freaks like their meat in whatever state extended torture puts it in, rather than finely cared for. Oh well, if you’re willing to eat human flesh, I guess there’s not much room left for kosher butchery standards to be observed, is there?

That all happens in the first 15 minutes or so, so don’t worry about me giving away too much of what passes for a plot in this excruciatingly gory and largely cliché and boring torture-horror film. While the movie is an entry in After Dark’s Horrorfest “8 Films to Die For” collection, this one is hardly a stellar example of suspense-style horror and instead just subsists on a diet of shock-n-aweful.

There are very few watchable films in this disturbing and dark subgenre, but Frontier(s) is hardly one of the few that are watchable. There’s mercifully not much in the way of special features, either. Avoid it like the plague.

Review: Juno (DVD)

I resisted seeing it in the movie theatres simply because the whole entertainment industry spent so much time trying to ram it down everyone’s throat as the “must-see” indy movie of the year or whatever.

But after watching it as a Netflix rental, I have to admit that Juno is quite a bit better than I expected it to be. Perhaps it was the whole local oversell of screenwriter Diablo Cody as some sort of underground genuis, rather than just a solid storyteller, that put me off the film when it was in theatres. The way she was portrayed as some ultra-liberal, underground press, anti-establishment rebel was just unappealing and made me expect the movie to be far more political and offensive than it really way.

Instead, the film does very little in the way of politicizing teen pregnancy, and instead tells a very human story of believable, if unorthodox, characters, motivated by all the same emotions we all go through. The sense of humor was unique, offbeat, and perhaps just once in a while, a bit too self-conscious.

However, overall, it’s probably one of the better “dysfunctional family” comedies to come from a Minnesota writer since Al Franken wrote “Stuart Saves His Family.” That’s not saying I want to see Diablo Cody run for Minnesota Senate or anything, however.

Review: Strange Wilderness (DVD)

Adam Sandler may hit more than he misses as an actor, but in a film featuring his unique style of humor but performed by actors lacking his unique charm, Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions films almost always seem to fall flat. Strange Wilderness is no exception to this general rule of thumb.

The mind-numbingly banal and flat script features idiocy rather than wit, substitutes plain dumbness for zany comic antics and as a result is certainly not a film that’s going to inspire you to break out the HDTV, 7.1 Surround Sound system and the home theater seating.

Strange Wilderness exists in an alien somewhere between Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and It’s Pat. Steve Zahn, whose career began so promisingly with That Thing You Do!, is once again slumming it for a paycheck as he stars in this film about young punk whose dad was a Marlon Perkins-esque legend in Animal Planet-style fare, and who inherited the show from his father after his old man kicked the bucket.

Unfortunately, Zahn plays a moron with a bunch of loser friends who’ve taken over the show as an excuse to smoke pot and get paid for not really working while traveling the globe, and who think ad-libbing porn-film dialog while lions mate is the height of educational television. Zahn is supposed to be a bit of a tortured soul trying to emerge from the long shadowy legacy of wildlife television cast by his father, but in truth, the film doesn’t push the point that hard because it’s simply too unbelievable that a guy could be that big a screw-up and still think his efforts are worthy of his father’s legacy.

A bunch of Sandler hangers-on fill out the cast, virtually none of whom are recognizable outside of their extras roles in Sandler-produced films, though in fairness Ernest Borgnine, Robert Patrick and Harry Hamlin are all featured in unfortunate, potentially career-damaging cameos. That’s because this is the sort of film that, when watching it, one might be inclined to suddenly stand up and scream, “I’m losing IQ points just by watching this crap!”

So, best to watch it at home, then, if you’re into that kind of self-inflicted wounding. To be honest, it’s hard to imagine even Adam Sandler making this script sparkle, despite his trademark charm. In fact, script choice may be one of Sandler’s biggest strengths; when a script is worthy of him appearing in it as the star, you know it’s a Happy Madison flick that isn’t going to suck, at the very least.

But Sandler seems to recognize doggerel scripts well enough to know when to pass on them personally and have his hangers-on, like Rob Schneider and Steve Zahn, star in them. If you see the Happy Madison logo on a film and it’s not followed by “starring Adam Sandler,” pass on it and save yourself the pain. And with Strange Wilderness, that would be my advice; steer well clear of this steaming pile of lawn fertilizer, as you’d be more entertained by watching Bindi the Jungle Girl on Discovery Kids and Animal Planet; at least the humor of Bindi Irwin, age nine, is more sophisticated and downright funny than anything featured in Strange Wilderness.

Review: Love Lies Bleeding (DVD)

Christian Slater has been transparant since he began his film career back in 1985, in a film called The Legend of Billie Jean; he’s a Jack Nicholson wannabe. Worse, he’s a poor imitator of Nicholson. For years, I thought he’d grow out of it and develop his own acting style, and the only glimpse I ever really spotted of his potential to do so came in the 1992 film Untamed Heart, but he never had the courage of his own talent to stick with the Nicholson-free version of himself and soon reverted to form.

Love Lies Bleeding is a film that summarizes the sorry state of Slater’s career as it now stands. Following bouts with alcohol and drugs that slowed his career, he is reduced to playing a “corrupt and increasingly crazed” DEA agent in a film where he is the biggest star and the second biggest star is… well, just pick any name at random from this list full of nobodies.

The title role of an Iraq war vet goes to Brian Geraghty, while the female lead is Jenna Dawson. No, I haven’t heard of them before, either. So it is that Duke and Amber (their characters) stumble onto a bag full of drug money after a shootout leaves all principals in the drug bust gone bad dead or, at least, incapacitated.

Thinking they can take the money with no consequences, they hit the road and head toward a new life, only to be tracked by Slater’s Pollen character. What follows is an increasingly hard-to-believe chase movie that, while delivering a fair amount of action, is too full of mindless violence, pointless characters and unbelieable (yet somehow still sadly predictable) plot twists. The profanity ratio is off the scale, too, so this flick earns its R rating in just about every way conceivable.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if this were a stylistic send-up by Quentin Tarrantino; but it’s not. This is the kind of film Tarrantino lampoons while also celebrating his his movies. Slater doesn’t even look that good in the role, and appears to be, at this point in time, a man in need of some weight loss pills.

One thing Slater never learned from Nicholson is how to pick great roles in great films; as an actor entering his 40s, Slater’s no longer young enough to be this desparate for work while at the same time being this hasty in his selection of roles. After a career imitating Jack Nicholson, it’s clear all Slater can achieve so far is to get down the voice and mannerisms to some degree. What he can’t duplicate is Nicholson’s talent, judgment and wisdom.

Sure, it took Nicholson a while to get there, too; but by the time he was entering his 40s, Nicholson had already made Chinatown. Slater seems unable to recognize the difference between Chinatown and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Unless he changes course, his career seems destined to pale in comparison to Nicholson’s, just as much as his imitative performances pale in comparison to saucy Jack himself.

Review: The Jewish Americans (DVD)

Long before the History Channel, Biography, A & E, or Discovery, PBS proved itself pretty effective at doing documentaries. They still make them, and this six-hour DVD focusing on American Jews proves they can still pull out a decent documentary from their taxpayer supported rumps every once in a while.

Thanks in large part to its six-hour length, The Jewish Americans has a chance to really go in-depth in their study of this people and culture, unlike the other documentary I recently reviewed, NFL The Leaders: Breaking Racial Barriers In the NFL, which brushed over much of the depth of detail that one desires in a good documentary.

The Jewish Americans, however, gets its style down just right; the approach is Ken Burns-esque, mixing solid narration provided by Liv Schreiber with well-edited interviews with prominent American Jews of all ages, as well as old footage, newspaper clippings and other methods of presenting the historical information at hand, most notably through beautiful photography. But the emphasis here is on telling stories – real stories about real Jews and their experiences throughout their history in America.

One aspect that surprised me was how the documentary related the pre-World War I and World War II tensions between German Jews, who seemed eager to immigrate and blend into America other than inside their own homes, and the Eastern European Jews, who held on more tightly to their heritage and had a lesser desire to “blend in.”

While there are plenty of Jewish folks in entertainment, and actor Fyvush Finkel is interviewed throughout, the documentary, to its credit, does not focus overmuch on just the entertainment community Jews. Instead, the net is cast wider to encompass tales of Jewish folks who came to inhabit all levels of society, be they a family that ran a market in a frontier town, a mayor of some village, or even a tailor who would go on to spawn the Levi Strauss & Company brand of denim jeans.

The two-disc set is brief on extras, but with six hours of history-filled stories to explore, there’s plenty to like about this package even on the merits of its four episodes only. More than just a cursory treatment, The Jewish Americans is a significant and well-detailed coverage of the topic it tackles, and delivers some information that is sure to inform nearly every viewer of some new fact they didn’t know previously. Was the creator of billet grilles or the founder of Lehmann Brothers Jewish? This documentary is long enough to give you at least one of the answers to that question.

While I’m not exactly ready to make PBS-watching a regular habit in favor of History, Biography, A&E, or Discovery, any network that released a package like this would have a solid documentary to air. This one will stay on my video shelf for a long time to come.

Review: Family Guy – Blue Harvest (DVD)

Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane explained the rationale behind making an all-Star Wars episode the best way possible: “We were doing so many Star Wars jokes that some of the network people were worried about getting sued by George Lucas, so we set up a meeting with him.” As it turned out, Lucas was a nice guy who loved the cartoon and got on board with the Blue Harvest concept pretty quickly, apparently.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest is the big, hour-long Star Wars retelling the show opened the season with last fall. There are several guest voices that range widely and even include such obscure celebrities as radio host Rush Limbaugh, who basically plays a version of himself as a pro-Alliance, pro-Darth Vader establishment-loving radio talk show host. Other cameos are more mainstream, like Judd Nelson, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, among others.

The show adds some gags they were unable to fit into the one-hour episode that aired on Fox, mostly stuff that was cut due purely out of time constraints. All the familiar Family Guy cast members appear, with mostly obvious takes on their Star Wars alter egos. For example, Stewie is Darth Vader, Quagmire and Cleveland are C3PO and R2D2, and Lois is Leia and so on.

What’s amazing about the episode is that it packs just about the entire two-hours-plus plot of Star Wars: A New Hope into about 40 minutes of satire without cutting much. The obligatory screen-crawl gag-text to open the episode had grown old by now, but McFarlane punches some freshness into it by getting about as nasty as network censors would allow, including talking an awful lot about Angelina Jolie’s kissing habits in general, and in the movie Gia especially.

But anyone who’s seen the episode already knows what it contains, basically; what’s added is what makes the DVD presentation special, and that includes a hilarious commentary track led by McFarlane, a making of documentary, a “conversation” with George Lucas himself, and a load of other, minor features. Special collector’s edition disc are also available that pack in some Family Guy/Star Wars-related collectible goodies, like t-shirts, 3D glasses, trading cards and the like.

While hardly an original concept, it is how the episode was pulled off and melded with the Family Guy characters that makes this one unique. If you’re not into Family Guy, this might not be the episode to convert you – unless you’re a Star Wars fan, perhaps. Loaded like most Family Guy episodes with lots of pop culture references, from a Deal Or No Deal tribute to nonsequiter punchlines about seemingly random topics, like small business phone systems or the lke, Blue Harvest – like most Family Guy video releases – has it’s trademark humor intact, as well as plenty of extras and features to make the purchase well worth it.

Review: Simple Life Goes to Camp (DVD)

I’m over the whole Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie thing. The Simple Life was goofy fun the first season and went downhill from there, but when I had a chance to see the E! Channel-exclusive fifth season DVD, I figured why not. Even if it’s a tired concept by now, made so by the one-joke nature of the show, at least it’s some brainless fun on a boring Sunday afternoon.

Well, I was wrong on a couple of counts. First, I didn’t watch it on Sunday afternoon; my wife and I watched it together over a couple of weekday nights to fill time left void by the writer’s strike – even though it’s resolved, the airwaves are hardly filled with new content quite yet.

The second thing I was wrong about was assuming it would be too stupid, boring and repetitive to be worth the time invested. Were the pranks of Nicole and Paris silly, stupid and worn out? Well, for the most part, yeah. We’ve seen the “brainless bimbo” routine they pull on this series too many times now.

But what captured me were the small touches of charm, mode possible mostly by the non-celebrity cast members. Having the girls become camp counselors at a summer camp provided plenty of variety without tons of travel, and a core supporting cast who weren’t always completely shocked and Paris and Nicole’s narcissistic obsession with themselves. That provided a by-now-jaded viewer like me with some characters to relate to on the show.

The show throws Paris and Nicole some curves, from a weight loss camp to a couples camp to an actors camp and more. Through it all, the prankish hijinks Paris and Nicole devise are the most annoying part of the show; but when one of the male camp counselors starts falling for an allegedly newly-unattached Paris, the show provides some real moments.

The guy isn’t fooling himself; he admits to a fellow male camp counselor-buddy that he doesn’t expect the flirtation to last beyond the summer camp experience. There is a poignant moment, however, when his friend asks him, “I know you’re ready for that. But are you ready if it really does become something more?” The guy replied, “That’s a good question,” and it was.

Foolishly, the guy relies on Nicole for advice in capturing Paris’ eye, and being the devil she is, she misleads him consistently down paths that will humiliate him. While that works the first time to a degree, when she’s still doing it by the eighth episode, it just gets frustrating on a couple levels. First, why does the guy keep turning to Nicole, who’s never led him right once; and second, is it even remotely possible for Nicole to have an on-screen moment as real as the two male camp counselors had?

Sure, the show is pure put-on and one of the least-real of all reality shows; but this season as much as any shows why the show is so limited in appeal that it was booted off Fox to E! Namely, that Paris and Nicole’s adopted personas on the show are too flat and limited in their emotional range to either demonstrate any real acting ability, or to hold the interest of viewers who never see their on-screen characters grow or grow up.