Seth Grahame-Smith’s ‘Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer’ is a reasonably funny and charming tale in book form. It’s an unusually compelling portrait of the 16th president if you can set aside the wacky bits about him being a killer of the undead. Oh wait, that’s the hook of the entire thing, isn’t it? No matter, it’s a fun and deliciously silly read that does go to lengths to keep Lincoln a relatively grounded character.
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As time has passed, I’ve found my interest in Josh Trank‘s upcoming “found footage” superhero thriller, Chronicle, growing. Releasing in theaters on February 3rd courtesy of Fox Pictures, Chronicle tells the story of three high-school kids who discover miraculous powers and then go on to mismanage and abuse them.
He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as hewiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.‘I will give you a name,’ he said to it, ‘and I shall call you Sting.’”
“The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia. We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces. That connected to the larger themes we were talking about — that we’re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet.”
–Damon Lindelof in an interview with The L.A. Times.
The 69th Golden Globe Awards were held last night in Los Angeles, hosted again by Ricky Gervais, despite the silly upheaval over his performance last year . Although they have become increasingly shabby as a form of predicting the Oscars, the ceremony is still noted as one of the landmarks of the awards season.
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The new crime thriller “Contraband”, starring Mark Wahlberg in typical tough guy action mode, pulled off a heist this weekend, stealing the box-office top spot from the re-release of Disney’s ’Beauty and the Beast-3D’ and the Dolly Parton/Queen Latifah comedy vehicle ‘Joyful Noise’.
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Jan 12
13
‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ Review
For all prospective parents and parents still raising children in their formative years, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin might be the single most unsettling film you see this year.
As a soon-to-be father, I do hope that when my son arrives he’s not anything like this film’s Kevin, a terror tot who graduates slowly to terror tyke and then terror teen in front of the eyes of his distant yet horrified mother. That may be the film’s only real point; not whether it’s Kevin’s nature or his mother Eva’s nurture that breeds a monster, but that the raising of a child holds a certain interior panic for all who care about how their kids will turn out. Will we ruin them in the womb with our habits or outside of the womb with our flawed care? Could they grow to abnormality with no input either way from us, rendering both our nurture and our nature futile? It may not accomplish much more, but as a crafty, creepy spine-tingler about a parent’s worst nightmare Kevin is a cold-blooded winner.
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Jan 12
13
‘Contraband’ Movie Review
Quick, cheap and grittier than it needs to be, Mark Wahlberg’s new crime thriller ‘Contraband’ does just about what we expect from a B-grade January actioner and not a jot more. You won’t find anything new or revolutionary inside, but like a bargain-lunch Chinese buffet, there’s plenty of stuff to choose from even if most of it has been reheated to lukewarm.I didn’t go out for it much myself, but I can see how others might.
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Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (NR) Running Time:150 min Directed by: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Written by:Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal Starring: Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan and Taner Birsel
Although the title summons a vibe of the mythic, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is more a stately character study than some sort of moody epic in the Sergio Leone vein. A police procedural unfolds in the dimming twilight of an Anatolian countryside with a group of archetypical men—a police commissioner, a physician, a lawyer and a prisoner– searching for a woman’s body. As the day fades and darkness creeps in, the men begin to reveal secrets of their own that change the nature of their interactions. Although it doesn’t play out like the kind of potboiler audiences may expect from the set-up, Ceylan’s film is an exquisite example of detective fiction where the viewer, not the characters, studies the clues, puts the pieces together, and draws conclusions from the evidence.
Jan 12
11
‘Camel Spiders’ Review: Bug hunt
Camel Spiders (Not rated) 2012 Running time:80 min Directed by: Jim Wynorski Written by: Jim Wynorski, J. Brad Wilke Starring: Brian Krause, C. Thomas Howell, GiGi Erneta, Diana Terranova, Michael Swan
When one sits down to review a movie like Roger Corman’s Camel Spiders it’s helpful to be honest about your expectations. I have long since given up fighting my ridiculous urge to watch grade-z trash like this and the fact that Camel Spiders is cheap and shoddy is a given from the get-go. What audiences go out for with a movie like this is a goofy, fun time that can primarily generate giggles, and if there’s a few chills thrown in, all the better.
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See that date on the calendar? It’s January again, and apparently that means it’s time for another low-rent horror film featuring everyone’s favorite supernatural diva, Satan. Of all the various prophecies and alleged ancient texts related to the Antichrist and the end of days, there has to be one out there that predicts Old Scratch’s strangle-hold on commercial garbage like The Devil Inside.
Our agent across the pond Jarv, brings us the lowdown on the real identity of the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy adaptation. How does it measure up to the book, or for that matter, the Alec Guiness mini-series? Read on to find out….
Jan 12
4
Top 10 Worst Movies of 2011
It was neither the best of years nor the worst of years, but just as there were a number of great movies hiding in the misasma of 2011, there were some absolutely wretched movies. And while there were a stunning number of completely useless mainstream flicks, there were an equally stunning number of mean-spirited, entertainment-free indie films shooting for art or notoreity and instead just triggering my gag reflex.
I’m not one to linger on the awful, so here’s the puddle of vomit that was 2011′s worst films. Now that I’ve purged, I can head on into 2012 with a settled stomach and hope for the future.
Jan 12
4
Top Ten Horror Films of 2011
Like many other genres, when horror movies are bad, they can be very bad. However, when they are good they can sometimes be great. The horror films of 2011 seemed to fall mostly along this divide; there was either mainstream junk not even worth a Redbox rental or vile, pretentious drivel disguised as indie horror or incredibly spooky and fascinating gems worth revisiting after the initial shivers dissapate.
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