The most recent winner of Vulture’s Sitcom Smackdown (Reader Bracket) is Arrested Development edging out The Simpsons to be named the greatest sitcom of the last 30 years…by popular vote. That’s still something right? Possibly fueled by it’s impending return, AD seems to be as popular as ever, and for hits that reason we thought it was about time we got caught up on some of the latest news surrounding the shows resurrection. After all, in less than two months, we’ll be again enjoying probably one of the best comedies to grace television of all time. That’s right. I went there.
There was a time when people sat around and listened to shows on the radio. There was a time when silent films became “talkies”. There was a time when cable came around and all of a sudden you had hundreds of channels at your disposal. There was a time when The Sopranos premiered on HBO and changed the way premium cable was regarded. Netflix is hoping that someday the statement “there was a time where people didn’t watch ‘television’ shows on the internet” will find it’s way onto that list. The upcoming Arrested Development may be getting all the news, and Lilyhammer may have been the first, but House of Cards is no shrinking violet by any means.
Time to dust off the old Chicken Dance! Arrested Development is getting even more new episodes when it releases the exclusive new season to Netflix. According to EW, the original order of 10 new episodes has been increased by an undisclosed number. Creator Mitch Hurwitz and crew took a short break from filming recently to review current events and incorporate the new material, ensuring the story of the Bluths would be even more relevant to our present world.
“It’s Evil Dead 2, Braindead, and the Matrix…times ten, turned up to eleven!” (DVD tagline)
After watching the first half of the Chinese film Riki-Oh, I contemplated not being able to appropriately label a review of the film as “craptastic”. Also, I contemplated not being able to hold my bowels. I found myself through the duration incredulously gasping “Holy shit!” and thus, could not decide if it was a fair that such a strong visceral reaction could warrant a review that would fit into the same category as those of Grizzly Park, DIEner, and Mega Piranha. However, after the title character Ricky (Riki) punched through yet another face as if it were made of wedding cake, I realized that this film was a redefinition of ‘craptastic’: loose plot, campy acting, and grotesque physical effects combine to deliver a highly entertaining romp through a futuristic 2001 (remember, the film is from 1991) Chinese prison.
The plot revolves around Ricky (Fan Siu-wong), sentenced to who-cares how many years for murdering the crap out of a guy who gave Ricky’s girlfriend the drugs that eventually led to her suicide. While rushing at said murdered guy, Ricky takes five bullets in the chest. No big deal. Did I mention that Ricky has super human abilities? No? Well let me explain…
Ricky is a bad mother. Through the movie, he routinely calls on supernatural forces that are never explained besides some references to the devil inside him. This results in punching through body parts, reattaching, then using, severed arteries, and, well, I don’t want to give up too much. Depending on the cut you can find (I found it on Netflix instant stream), the movie is rated NC-17 or R. Netflix has the R version, which obviously means I missed out on more ridiculous gore. ‘Tis a shame. ‘Tis indeed.
The plot continues as Ricky realizes the injustices of the prison he occupies, and he sets out to make changes to the order and mistreatment to his fellow, weak, inmates. (Side note: except for Ricky and the antagonists—the Gang of Four and the Assistant Warden—every other character would be someone’s girlfriend in the US prison system) The result is an explosion of outlandish fight scenes and visual effects that have surpassed the film in fame. At points the make-up and transformations made me directly think of 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China. You know the guy that puffs up and explodes? Yep. Delightful.
For those of you old enough to remember someone other than Jon Stewart as the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, you may remember that Craig Kilborn’s version of the show routinely used a head smashing scene from the movie, seen here:
If that isn’t enough to motivate you, try this stellar use of dialogue:
After Ricky disembowels an enemy, the same guy uses his intestines to strangle Ricky (no, disembowelment is not enough to kill him silly) and the assistant warden cheerily yells, “You’ve got a lot of guts, Oscar!” I hope that was just poor translation.
Anyway, I give this Craptastic movie a three out of five g-bears.
When I started Grizzly Bomb, it was largely done with one focus – Terriers. I had fallen in love with the show and was devastated when I learned that no one else was watching it. My first several articles revolved around an attempt to raise awareness and hopefully boost ratings for the show about the two PIs and their quest to save their beach community. We were far too small however to actually make any kind of impact at the time. Ultimately, the show was canceled. Now there are a lot of things that could be blamed for the show’s fate – poor initial marketing by FX being chief among them. They flooded the channel with advertising, but people simply did not know what the show was about, myself included. I only gave it a chance because it was on FX, a station that seemed to be made specifically for me as I loved their entire schedule at the time. It also didn’t hurt that I was a fan of both Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, and that Shawn Ryan (The Shield/The Chicago Code) was the man behind it all.
The title should be self explanatory. Straight from Jason Bateman’s Twitter via the Hollywood Reporter are pics of Michael Cera arriving on the Arrested Development set to do rehearsals and/or cause whatever mischief it seems. The sets are obviously being worked on but it should be important to note that in one of the pictures, it seems to represent the good old model home with the caption ‘My son, arriving yesterday’.
I will say that it definitely shows how long we have been without the show (since 2006) and Cera is definitely not the same George Michael we got used to during those awesome spectacular three seasons the show was on. Granted, he will still be the awkward kid who pines for his cousin but he is also Scott Pilgrim and a bunch of other whiny hipster characters too (some of which I don’t mind honestly). Obviously everyone went on to do their own thing but the people that really took off were Bateman and Cera so it’s honestly sweet as hell to see them back working on the show that gave them their starts. Hell, I still remember an interview they both had together for Juno, despite never having scenes together, and they picked up on their comedy rhythm together like no time had past.
Now that I got that out of the way, onward to the second photo…
This one is captioned, “A grandson, looking for his Gangee.” Which is awesome because we can definitely say this is Lucille’s place and…damn, is it 2013 yet? I want my episodes now. Speaking of, the original plan was to do an anthology for the 4th season where each character would get their own episode but creator Mitchell Hurwitz decided to go the traditional route of putting them all together in episodes and making stuff happen. Which I am all for because, if I haven’t geeked out enough already, it’s freakin’ Arrested Development. It is easily the funniest show in my opinion to come out in the last decade. It needs to come back so I can justify my Netflix subscription (although seriously, when streaming the first episode, their servers better be able to handle it because when it gets released…havoc will ensue trying to get to a television in my opinion) and then get onward with the AD movie.
Seriously though, I’m super stoked for this. Huzzah! Seriously. Genius.
Grizzly Bomb 