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‘On the Ice’ Review: Life and Death in Barrow, Alaska

‘On the Ice’ Review: Life and Death in Barrow, Alaska

An insular  community entwined with its environment is the most ominous suspect in Andrew Okpeah MacLean’s On the Ice, a murder mystery of sorts set amongst the Iñupiaq people of Barrow, Alaska. Based off his own 2008 short film, On the Ice is MacClean’s intriguing and resonant exploration of his own culture through the mode of a pulp narrative. There are all the accoutrements of a restless urban teen drama; drugs, sex,  hip-hop music and an aching wanderlust to do more than this life promises. Until the central tragedy of the story hits, this could be Boyz in the Fur-Lined Hood. More

‘Journey 2’ Review: Island built on a Rock

‘Journey 2’ Review: Island built on a Rock

One of my most cherished childhood birthday presents was a collector’s edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, complete with handsome ink illustrations. It was given to me by intrepid relatives who gambled on an 19th century adventure novel being of interest to a kid of the video game era, and in retrospect it was a relatively safe bet. More

Bilbo brandishes Sting in new ‘Hobbit’ photo

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.’” More

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Review: Jarv’s Take

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….

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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. More

Droid’s Take: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ Review

Droid’s Take: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ Review

Written by: Droid (Read his other reviews and ramblings at Werewolves on the Moon)

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Motion capture cast: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Daniel Mays, Gad Elmaleh, Joe Starr
Running time: 107 mins | Rating: PG

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‘Twilight Saga-Breaking Dawn: Part 1′ Review: Marriage, Monsters and Mommy

‘Twilight Saga-Breaking Dawn: Part 1′ Review: Marriage, Monsters and Mommy

I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m never going to like the Twilight films.

So, instead of subjecting myself to another torturous go-round of 40 yr old women catcalling young men on the screen and dippy teens jostling popcorn on my head every time Ed said something ‘perfect and sweet’, I sent our guest reviewer (sacrificial lamb) Megan  in my stead. Here, finally, is a PCN review from the viewpoint of someone who actually enjoyed the books.

Take it away Meg….

Ed and Bella on honeymoon

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Fantasia Fest 2011 starts July 14th! Film line-up and schedule online now

Fantasia Fest 2011 starts July 14th! Film line-up and schedule online now

If you are a genre fan, and if you are here at PCN you probably are, there is no bigger or better cinema event than Canada’s FanTasia Film Festival.  Since 1996( halting only once in 2002 when the fest was canceled), over 70,000 festival attendees travel every summer to FanTasia to take in the latest and greatest of independent, irreverent, and imaginative cinema from all over the world. As the title suggests, the festival’s original roots were in programming little-seen asian films, showing mostly Hong Kong actioners, martial arts pics and Japanese giant monster movies in their first year.

Since then, FanTasia has grown in scale and infamy to the point where it’s one of the biggest and most exciting events on the cinematic calendar. The multi-cultural sampling of all things genre typically features work from countries and continents as diverse  as Japan, Spain, South Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, Germany, Thailand, Denmark, France, Russia, India, New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Australia, Holland, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, Great Britain, the US and of course, Quebec and Canada.

This year, the genre onslaught is varied, diverse and tantalizing to geek eyes. Robin Hardy will debut ‘The Wicker Tree’, his darkly satirical follow-up to the horror classic ‘The Wicker Man’. The remake of the T.V. spook-fest ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ will help close the fest, while genre fave Richard Stanley, the exiled director of Dust Devil and Hardware, will make an appearance, sharing a live conference with Hardy and presenting a film he’s actually a part of, the horror anthology ‘Theatre of the Bizarre.’ Other works like Mike Cahill’s ‘Another Earth’, Jim Mickle’s ‘Stakeland’, Takashi Miike’s ‘Ninja Kids’, and Todd Rohal’s Catechism Cataclysm are amongst the tasty nuggets awaiting attendees.

Are you looking forward to the festival? Can’t attend this year, though? PCN will provide daily reviews and coverage of the films playing, so stay tuned. C0me the 14th, we’ll be up to our ears in exotic films.

Click here for the list of films and the schedule for Fantasia Fest 2011.

Wait, this ‘Jack and Jill’ trailer is a for a REAL Adam Sandler movie?

Wait, this ‘Jack and Jill’ trailer is a for a REAL Adam Sandler movie?

Well, it’s finally happened.

 Adam Sandler has followed in the steps of Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams and become a legitimate parody of himself. Truthfully, this trailer needs no introduction. There’s nothing I can say in any way that could be a better commentary than the fact this movie exists.

I will only add that I had to spend a few minutes online verifying that this actually exists, and isn’t some Funny or Die spoof like those faux movies in Sandler’s Funny People. No such luck. This is the real deal.

Someone out there greenlit this, wrote a script, and Al Pacio signed on it for it.

Awesome.

Korean 3D monster mash ‘Sector 7′ gets a subtitled trailer!

Korean 3D monster mash ‘Sector 7′ gets a subtitled trailer!

Lately South Korea has been producing a surprising amount of what could be called summer popcorn flicks. This one, Sector 7, has been making headlines because it’s being marketed as the first big 3D Korean film. Woo-hoo! You’ve taken America’s worst movie-going gimmick and ported over seas!

That being said, Sector 7 looks like a good bit of creature-feature fun, following the tried-and-true B-movie tradition of giant, spiky monster parasites terrorizing workers on an oil rig. Based on this English-dubbed, spoiler-heavy trailer, it looks to beat out it’s predecessors in the field; Intruder Within, Leviathan, Proteus, Deep-Star Six, and the recent (and pathetic) The Rig.

You also gotta love how unsubtle the trailer is in name-dropping. There’s a title card that reads ’A new Host has arrived’ and one can only assume it’s a reference to the 2006 monster movie ‘Goemul’ or ‘The Host’ as it was known on U.S. shores.

Is Emma Stone ready for more ‘Zombies’?

Is Emma Stone ready for more ‘Zombies’?

 

Ah, Emma Stone. She fought the undead in Zombieland and skewered classic literature in Easy A. Now, it seems, she might be set to do both at the same time.

Stone, who has this summer’s The Help coming up, as well as her role as Mary Jane Watson in the next Spiderman, has been offered the role of Elizabeth Bennett in the irreverent Jane Austen adaptation, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Helmed by Craig Gillespie, whose horror comedy Fright Night also opens this August, P&P&Z has been trying on a few different female leads over the past months. Previous potential Elizabeths have included Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, and one of the film’s producers, Natalie Portman. So far, no one has signed on.

Personally, I quite enjoyed the book and found it to be surprisingly respectful of Austen’s spirit and intent while gleefully adding in things like the undead eating their way through Regency England and secret cults of ninja assassins. Emma Stone, who has a terrific gift for comedy and playfulness, would no doubt bring the necessary charm and goofy energy to the role.

What do you think? Is it too soon for Emma Stone to return to zombie land?

Paco Plaza’s ‘[REC]3 Genesis’ gets a new poster!

Paco Plaza’s ‘[REC]3 Genesis’ gets a new poster!

I’m a pretty big fan ofJaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s first two [REC] films and found them to be a welcome refreshment in the increasingly stale zombie genre. Because of that fact, I can’t decide if I’m excited or nervous that the team behind the previous pictures are putting together two more, including this third installment that would see the virus actually leave the building and switch out the hand-held style for a more traditional filmmaking.

Either way, Plaza is already underway filming [REC]3 Genesis, and there’s now a press release and a brand spanking new poster to whet our appetitie for zombie infection.

Check out Filmax’s summary below:

The original [REC] crew are back, ready to submit their ensemble cast to another fight for survival against the zombie infection, this time to the backdrop of an original soundtrack.  This new chapter will see the film ‘open up’ by using a more traditional cinematographic style. However the film’s roots have not been forgotten and viewers will still be immersed in the action, watching certain events unfold through the eye of the video camera.

The action in [REC]3 Genesis encompasses the events of the first two films, and after the sense of claustrophobia previously experienced, the action now takes place miles away from the original location and partly in broad daylight, giving the film an entirely fresh, yet disturbing new reality. The infection has left the building.

In a clever twist that draws together the plots of the first two movies, this third part of the saga also works as a decoder to uncover information hidden in the first two films and leaves the door open for the final instalment, the future [REC]4 Apocalypse.

‘Your Highness’ Review: Conan the vulgarian

‘Your Highness’ Review: Conan the vulgarian

 

PCN Rating:

David Gordon Green, where have ye gone? Once the most promising and inspiring of indie filmmakers, directing such poignant American vignettes as George Washington, Undertow, and All the Real Girls, Green has lately turned over to crass stoner comedies.  While that artistic about-face paid off with 2008’s Pineapple Express, Green’s newest gig, ‘Your Highness’—a send-up of doofy sword and sorcery flicks—takes similar farcical elements and makes a shambles of them.

All questions of Green’s slumming aside, Your Highness should have been a funny and fun movie. Instead, it’s a surprisingly legit looking flick whose script is so singlemindedly juvenile that it spends most of its time enunciating swear words and snickering over a gag involving a severed Minotaur’s penis. McBride and Green only use the R rating to pay lip service to frat-boy behavior and never target the flamboyance or rampant misogyny inherent in those 80′s loincloth sagas.

 Enter Prince Thadious ( McBride), a doped and dopey royal layabout, languishing in the shadow of his prettier, more chivalric brother Fabious (James Franco). When the sexually frustrated sorcerer Lazar kidnaps Fabious’ love, Belladonna (Zoey Deschanel), the brothers reluctantly team to rescue the distressed damsel before Lazaar can impregnate her with the seed of a dragon. Along the way they gain allies in the vengeful beauty Isabelle (Natalie Portman),  and Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker), Thad’s long-suffering page. Damian Lewis and Toby Jones play a pair of turn-coat villains who have watched the Princess Bride too many times.

 McBride, who was subversively hilarious as the stunted, narcissistic Kenny Powers on HBO’s Eastbound and Down, plays a neutered version of that character here. Thadeous is a douchebag headed for the only fantasy contrivance more tired than ‘with a mighty effort he leapt from the pit’, ‘he discovered, himself and stopped being such a sh!t.’ And yet, Green lets that transformation occur off-screen, denying the comedian even that minor angle to play. In place of character,McBride fearlessly mugs and leers at the camera, transforming even innocent phrases into aimed barbs dripping with self-righeousness, contempt, or cheerful bawdiness. It loses its novelty quickly.

  Franco’s coiffed and clueless homoerotic warrior is funny enough but Zoey Deschanel doesn’t know much what to do with Belladonna, and her one inspired trait–that living in a tower has made her terminally out-of-touch–is never mined for real laughs. Natalie Portman is most fun as a warrior princess whose ‘beaver has burned with vengeance’ ever since her parent’s murder. Her role is mostly physical, although she keeps a straight-face and plays Isabelle as if she is incapable of an insincere thought.  Justin Theroux does funny work by making his dark wizard nothing more than an uptight geek playing the ultimate LARP. Rasmus Hardiker has a thankless role; he’s not just the sidekick but also the only actor in the troupe who strives to make his character plausible. Hardiker, consider yourself thanked.

 Lush, dewey fens and treacherous, ashy mountain ranges jump to vivid life and the sets are vast and colorful, boasting world-building details like the battle arena in the Amazon camp or the dusky labyrinth with a fearsome beast lurking in the center. The monster design and fx also have a certain flair and detail to them that makes the film seem more legit than it really is. But, then ‘Highness’ remembers that it doesn’t take any of this seriously and defaults to the less interesting route of tired toilet comedy. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie so eager to sabotage itself.

The low spots? How about a bong-smoking muppet creature who endears at first, only to reveal he molested Franco’s Fabious as a boy. If that one doesn’t get your sensibilities, then there are numerous jokes had at the expense of little people and rape victims.  We are only supposed to chuckle because it’s oh so naughty. This is the cinematic equivalent of  Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown. Just as we head in for the moment of connection, the movie pulls itself out from under us and sends us tumbling down and out of the theater, disappointed that our ten bucks is gone with not even a good time to show for it.