So Detroit’s modern music icon Jack White just produced a song by another group also (unfortunately) from Detroit – the unofficial Faygo spokesmen: the Insane Clown Posse.
ICP, who has maybe the worst collection of human beings on Earth as their core fanbase (the juggalos), has decided to try their hand with some Mozart, and broaden the horizons of their dear ‘hatchet-men’. So they interpreted Mozart’s ‘Leck mich im Arsch‘ to mean ‘Lick my ass‘ and a song was born.
Now, because Jack White endorsed it, I gave it a listen and…
As we learned from FilmDrunk, Josh Brolin has been cast to play the lead in Spike Lee’s remake of the 2003 South Korean film Oldboy by director Park Chan-wook.
The original movie won the ‘Gran Prix of the Jury’ at Cannes in 2004, and therefore has some big shoes to fill.
We have also talked about it here before, but I’ve included the trailer for you again.
Funny how just the other day me and Doc Kronner were wondering just what in the hell was going on with Sin City 2. It’s been about six years since the last movie, and like the many legions of fans, I hunger for more. It now appears that things are getting rolling with Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez tapping into an Oscar caliber screenwriter in the form of The Departed scribe William Monahan. Check out a snippet from IGN below:
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Monahan’s work will be “supplementing a draft completed recently by [Sin City creator Frank Miller.” Miller also co-directed the original 2005 film.
This isn’t Monahan’s only recent comic book movie script doctor gig. In addition to Sin City 2, Monahan is also revising Horizons, the Universal/Tom Cruise sci-fi pic based on the upcoming graphic novel Oblivion.
Hooooo boy! This plus Rodriguez stating that he hoped to start shooting by year’s end is very promising indeed. The sequel will most likely follow book 2 of Sin City ‘A Dame to Kill For’, which stars Dwight McCarthy (Played by Clive Owen) in an earlier tale of guns and broads. I’m ready, so bring it on!
Do you like cop movies? Do you like Jason Statham as a brooding bad-ass who loves to beat the ever loving crap out of scumbags? (Isn’t that all of the time?) Then there is no reason at all you shouldn’t love the British flick Blitz. I can’t really figure out why the hell it wasn’t in the U.S. cinemas, because anything with Statham in it is worth some box office bucks. But as it is, we get it later in the U.S. straight to DVD. I guess I got it cheaper and it was well worth the money.
Yup… that tag line is in Spanish
Blitz follows the antics of ‘Detective Tom Brant’, a cop who takes the law into his own hands quite a bit… with extreme prejudice. The scene at the beginning where he handles a group of young thugs is classic Statham, with a bat no less, and one of the best lines spoken by him yet – “If you’re gonna pick the wrong fight at least pick the right weapon.” That’s right all you punks, fear him. Things get even more interesting when we are introduced to the film’s antagonist who has a penchant for killing police. Especially those from the same station as Detective Brant, and as time goes on it seems that there is something personal between the killer and our gruff hero.
Once again Jason Statham plays the tough guy in this movie, but nothing like out of The Transporter or The Expendables. This time he’s a cop in the big city, with his mental well-being teetering on the edge, and what seems to be a slight drinking problem. If anything I’d liken him to Riggs from Lethal Weapon, but without the personal tragedy. Unless I missed something Brant just likes to use excessive force on bad guys now and then, but he’s still a good cop. Statham played him with a brilliant touch of heavy sarcasm and I loved every second of it. A great scene was when a guy providing Brant with some info in the pub asks the detective if he’s going to write down any of the stuff he’s giving him. Brant then replies incredulously – “Do I look like I carry a pencil?” before knocking back a pint of beer.
Things get a little more interesting when Brant teams up with the newest addition to his station, and a man who is his polar opposite played by Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz). This is the usual cliché’ in cop movies where two vastly different breeds of cop team up to bring down the bad guy, but it worked a little better than normal in Blitz. Considine’s ‘Porter Nash’ and Detective Brant cut through all of their differences when Brant pays him an impromptu visit to his apartment. The two reach a mutual respect in that scene, and as Brant leaves he calls Nash a pillow biter to get in a jab at Nash’s sexual preference that has gained him so much enmity throughout the police force. It was a great moment as the uber hetero-cop and the homo-cop join forces to take down the cop killer plaguing their station.
Aiden Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) plays the quirky and attention seeking cop killer perfectly named ‘The Blitz’, obviously relishing in the role of the crazy SOB since he hasn’t been able to do that since the horrible 12 Rounds movie starring him and wrestler John Cena. 12 Rounds was assuredly a terrible movie, but Gillen was excellent as villain ‘Miles Jackson’. As ‘the Blitz’ though, Gillen was equally as devious, but with a more realistic approach to it. He was the type of criminal we might have in this day and age where the bigger the crime, the harder it is to convict them.
Overall I give Blitz a 4 out of 5 grizzlies. With cop dramas being a dime a dozen it was nice to see one with every actor in it firing on all cylinders. I hope Statham does a lot more of these types of movie instead of straight up action, because he really excels in movies like Snatch and The Mechanic.
If you’re interested and there are no longer any videos stores near your house, Blitz is available at Redbox & on Netflix Instant Queue!
Disney’s D23 expo never really interests me unless they’re talking about another Pirates of the Caribbean, which even now doesn’t matter to me anymore. Tron however is a different matter together. I loved Tron: Legacy even not having watched the original since I was little. It was visually stunning and had a pretty interesting story. Plus, when do you get to see a movie where Jeff Bridges is both the hero and the villain?
There’s s something about those movie monsters that are so small. You think to yourself, “there’s no way I’d let that little creep kill me, I’d just kick ’em like a football!”. I said that about Chucky back in the day, but it was mostly to make myself feel better. I’m not talking about the Chucky comedies sequels either, the first Child’s Play movie was scary. That was mainly because it proved to us that the smaller a movie killer/monster is, the more lethal.
That certainly is the case in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where the family moving into an old manor (When is that ever a good idea?) have to deal with a group of creepy little bastards that made me jump a couple of times. Come to think of it, I’ll be mentioning the creatures as creepy little bastards throughout the review. To make it simple I’ll simply call them CLB’s.
The beginning may be a little weird for those not familiar with Guillermo del Toro‘s fascination with folklore involving fairies and the like, but that’s okay. Just roll with the crazy guy in the basement trying to offer bloody teeth to some mysterious and apparently lethal little creatures that hide in a furnace, because all will be revealed before the 100 minute run time is through. The Del Toro written remake of the 1973 horror movie won’t disappoint as long as you try not to over think the whole premise.
Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes play Alex and Kim respectively, a couple that are in the middle of restoring and putting a very historic mansion back on the real estate market. During this process Alex receives his daughter Sally from his ex-wife to live with him and Kim. Sally is a very unpleasant child at the start, but you would be too being bounced around between parents. Sally hates the new house and doesn’t seem too enthused with his father’s younger girlfriend Kim either, but eventually she finds something to do as she discovers some little creatures living in the basement. And wouldn’t you know it – they want to be friends with her…. creepy whispering and all! Sally will eventually find out that these CLB’s have more malicious motives and struggles to get the adults to believe her. It sucks being a kid in a horror movie.
It seems like child actors are getting less and less annoying as time goes on. Bailee Madison did a fine job of making me hate the character of Sally at first, but I eventually warmed up to her as things got worse and worse for her. Be sure to look for her in the upcoming FX show Powers.
I hadn’t seen Katie Holmes in hardly anything since Batman Begins. Apparently marrying Tom Cruise causes you to miss out on reprising your role in one of the biggest sequels ever. I’m talking about that little film called The Dark Knight. Either way, Holmes is back and still looking great despite being a Scientologist sorceress supreme, and she fills the role of Kim perfectly. Guy Pearce is in the movie as the ever skeptical father, who despite all of the madness occurring around him is too busy to believe any of his troubled daughter’s nonsense. It was refreshing to see Pearce play a non-douche for a change because it seemed like those were the only roles being thrown his way for a while.
The real stars of the show are the CLB’s, who look fantastic and succeed in filling me with audience dread every time it seemed like they would pop up somewhere. It slowly faded by the end, but not before I was holding my breath during the under the sheets scene even though I had scene it in the trailer. Check out the trailer above at about 1:23 to see what I’m talking about. It’s one of those moments that I truly love being in the cinema for a scary movie, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up as the surround sound makes it seem like the CLB’s are scurrying about all around you. The little jerks reminded me of Gremlins, only smaller and harder to kill.
I give the movie a 3 out of 5 grizzlies. Aside from a couple of plot holes it gave me a good 100 minutes of pure entertainment and a couple scares. It’s rare for any scary movie out there to actually be in theaters without relying on copious amounts of blood and gore to make a statement but Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark succeeded in that.
Grizzly Bomb 