Lazerhawk

Long time since my last blog post. Figured I’d spice it up a bit with some cool tunes.

LONG LIVE THE 80s

Imagine Film Festival 2012: The Incident

What was that screaming at the far end of that corridor? It is too dark to see properly, but what else can it be than an escaped and criminally insane murderer? After all, just a couple of minutes ago the asylum that is the setting for this film suffered from a power outage. Now every inmate is on the loose. This is not good. This is not good at all. For the main characters of this story at least, because they get to walk down the next corridor without really knowing what is waiting there for them. Or who… Debuting helmer Alexandre Courtes treats his audience to a claustrophobic, scary and thoroughly nasty experience. Best wear your gloves to the theatre if you value your fingers. You will bite your nails straight to the bone.

At the kickoff of The Incident prison cook and bandleader George has to deal with nothing more than his whining friends who are a bit jealous of his girlfriend situation. They are afraid George is going to quit the band in the name of love. George is a bit scruffy, but a nice fellow in general. He might be like you or me and especially like me if we take in the possibility of him successfully fighting off a dozen or three madmen with improvised weaponry in a dark and sealed asylum. Chance of survival: practically zero. It’s this premise that makes this horror downright scary. This could happen to anyone. Worse: it could happen to you.

But that is only the premise. Then there are the sounds, yes, the horrible sounds of agonizing screaming, maniacal laughter, the sound of iron scraping against a wall and other types of noise you really don’t want to hear when you are in this situation. The sound design of The Incident acts as an unseen character lurking in a distant shadow. Most of the times. When it creeps up close there will be pain. And that is the second forte of The Incident, because the violence is gruesome before anything else (beware of horrible understatement). Courtes chooses not to turn away the camera when a guy gets pierced by a metal bar, or when someone gets bound and burned on a large gas powered cooking stove. You might want to look away at times. It’s probable you might want to, but cant. Which makes The Incident a thrill overall. The main villain is so scary he can even be funny at times, but your laughter will die out. Quite literally.

Review: Super 8

While today’s youth is chomping away their blockbusters like popcorn, generations before that got to see films that would leave them in so much awe they forgot they even had popcorn.

How will we remember Thor in a year? In thirty years? Steven Spielberg, undisputed king and founder of the summer blockbuster, inspired many teenagers with Jaws, Close Encounters, Indiana Jones or E.T.. It’s a pity that this same Spielberg is also producing summer nonsense nowadays, even though he still backs up the good ole’ stuff, like Super 8. J.J. Abrams was one of those teens awed by the Spielberg of yesteryear. His Super 8 is not an homage to the old sci-fi adventure movies and neither is it a parody. Super 8 is a revival.

Four friends – one fat kid with a big mouth, a nerd with big glasses, a brat with big braces and a normal kid – have a close encounter with an alien. Abrams knows, together with his idol as producer, how to put a real deal of authenticity in this film. Not many directors can present their child actors as actual children on the screen. Even Spielberg failed horribly, not too long ago, with Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. As if a 38 year old woman was trapped in a kid’s body but still tried to act like a kid. I kept feeling sorry for the 38 year old woman even though I knew she wasn’t there. How different is her little sister Elle Fanning? In Super 8 she plays one half of puppy love as she joins up with the four friends to experience a childhood defining summer.

In a small industrial town these kids try to make their own zombie movie (type: Romero). They are shooting, like so many starting directors back then, with their super 8 camera. Without simple sentiments Abrams succeeds in bringing nostalgic feelings to life through his young cast. Sure, the kids are caricatures, but very recognizable too, not only from films like E.T., The Goonies or Stand By Me, but also from our own youth. The timelessness of being a kid with our parents as our only restriction in life, seamlessly endless summers of playing with friends, a first romance: it are these moments that are captured very well. Abrams shows he knows his eighties blockbuster. Spielberg shows he still knows his roots. Let us hope he still knows them while making Tin Tin.

Let us also hope that today’s youth can appreciate this kind of filmmaking. Teenagers that already got pounded into mindlessness by film trash from the likes of Bay probably have a hard time getting amused by this genuine stuff. This film is about that boyhood adventure from many summers ago. Loads of kids that see Super 8 today might still be living that adventure without even knowing it for themselves. The adventure of the kids in Super 8 comes by itself when a train crashes on their filmset. (This scene is very spectacular, it’s a reason to see a movie in the cinema, not on a TV-set or even on a computer.) An alien escapes. The quiet industrial town transforms into a battlefield for the alien, but also for the American army that hunts it.

Of course the kids fall right into the middle of all this. But sadly here lies my main critique. Abrams has focused on his atmosphere and authenticity so much that he forgets he is making an adventure movie. The old Spielberg films revolve around adventure. Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also The Goonies or E.T. were and still are cinema of attractions. They give meaning to the phrase ‘experiencing a movie’. Super 8 doesn’t really revolve around a lot of story. The characters have their own backgrounds, but the alien is more like a plot catalyst than a plot motivation. Its part in this movie is almost redundant, while it should be one of the main attractions. The four (five) friends move through their town actually doing not much except for just having one very weird but awesome summer holiday. We don’t get to experience Super 8, simply because there is not much to experience. But, admittedly, the child play is wonderful.

Open Letter to Pathé Schouwburgplein

Today was the third time I walked out of a screening at the movie theatre Pathé Schouwburgplein. I’ve visited that theatre four times in total, so that makes for a rather disgraceful score overall. Normally I enjoy going to your franchise, but the focus on selling tickets instead of delivering a movie experience at Schouwburgplein is appalling at best.

Your camel was limping and in pain already, but you’ve stacked the final straw during X-Men: First Class on June 6th. It wasn’t because of the failing projection of that screening per se. After some complaints the film was reset to the beginning. By then the movie was only ten minutes underway, so of course you are forgiven. It wasn’t the lack of hygiene in the theatre either. After all, popcorn is easily swept from a chair and we just replaced the empty beer bottles left in the cup holders with our own drinks. Who are we to complain about your messy cinema anyway, it’s not like your tickets are absurdly overpriced. Why didn’t you ask us to clean the toilets too while we were at it? Scrubbing the skid marks off your crappers was the only logical follow up, right?

The real agony was a bright light that came from a lamp near the entrance. It was an emergency light, but in fact also a projector. Apparently you have designed that particular screening room of your theatre in such a way that the emergency light shines RIGHT ON THE FUCKING SCREEN. Every time the film went dark, not per se black but just dark, that light blocked about twenty percent of the screen. How do you expect us to enjoy the X-Men if a blind spot is distracting me from looking at Mystique’s blue… arms?

Flabbergasted about this seemingly appropriate way of screening a movie I made a complaint. Your kind but somewhat agitated employee told me that I certainly wasn’t the first one to notice the particular light. So, good, I wasn’t the first one to notice a HUGE FUCKING WHITE SPOT ON THE SCREEN. Really? The employee said that she was very sorry indeed. Then again, she couldn’t do anything about it. Regulation made it mandatory for it to keep shining near the entrance.

So let me get this straight: people complain because you have designed your theatre in the shittiest way possible. You react by saying that you are sorry that you keep on selling highly priced tickets to a faulty cinema hall, over and over again. That’s like when a chef leaves a steamy wad of shit sauce on my steak whilst saying that he is sorry but if he had removed it his hands would have gotten dirty. And it is mandatory that he keeps his hands clean at all times, he is a chef for god’s sake! And now pay up you cheap bastard!

I am at a loss why people keep returning to your cinema. You acknowledge a problem that ruins the experience but at the same time you refuse to do anything about that. Even worse, you keep on duping people into buying tickets to a shitty screening. Although I received a refund, I did have to travel across town to another Pathé franchise because I really wanted to see X-Men. Through Rotterdam public transportation, which I survived. X-Men was an excellent movie by the way. But not thanks to you. Your cinema sucks.

Review: Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides

What makes a good adventure movie? Is it a giant rock that can crush a whip wielding hero in a second? Riding on the back of a flying dog dragon perhaps? Space battles in a galaxy far, far away? Surely a film about pirates in a fantasy setting. Or at least that should be a nice set up for an adventure movie. Especially if your budget is 200 million friggin’ dollars. Then why do Disney, Bruckheimer and associates fail so miserably at delivering a consistent piece of fun?

The first part in the now Pirates of the Caribbean quadrilogy is great indeed and that film almost has it all. From swashbuckling, rum drinking, foul mouthing pirates, to frigate racing and treasure hunting. It only lacks a pirate with a wooden leg (I mean, come on, every pirate movie needs a pirate with a wooden leg). That error has been smoothened in this latest part of the series, which will undoubtedly not be the last part. But the peg legged pirate is a cold comfort. Almost everything else that makes up On Stranger Tides is a big waste of budget.

Isn’t that little harsh? If you think spending a fifth of a trillion dollars on a dull film is money well spent then sure, it’s harsh. Probably a lot of the budget went to Johnny Depp, but it doesn’t reflect in his on screen efforts. It did go to some decent special effects, attractive mermaids and a handful of action sequences too. So how can the 140 minutes of On Stranger Tides be so boring? Simple. It offers nothing more than those elements. It does introduce Blackbeard (Ian McShane), the fearsomest pirate of all, and the series reprises one of its finest characters with captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), but these characters get nothing else to do but bicker and squabble. Even Penelope Cruz can’t save the movie with her adorable accent.

Sadly, On Stranger Tides has a total lack of thrill and adventure. Even Johnny Depp as captain Jack Sparrow doesn’t know how to keep this ship from sinking. He fades to the background as if he was still playing the chameleon from Rango, his previous movie. Sparrow gets himself imprisoned by Blackbeard, as he knows the location to the mythical fountain of youth. But the site is known to the Royal and the Spanish Navy as well and all set sail for some good old treasure hunting. Awesome. But wait, hold on, Sparrow imprisoned? Isn’t he supposed to be the Houdini of every jail type?

In On Stranger Tides the worlds finest pirate, in his own way, is only a pet dog that barks a bit, but doesn’t bite. “There’s the Jack I know”, says boatman Gibbs in the trailer. He apparently knows Jack better than we do. In answer to the question asked earlier: a good adventure flick needs to give its audience the feeling that they aren’t watching the movie, they should experience it. Who didn’t pucker their buttocks during the Indy scene? Who didn’t feel the wind in their hair when Falkor chased those bullies through the alley? And who didn’t want to fly over the surface of the Death Star to find that silly little hole?

On Stranger Tides doesn’t challenge its audience. That’s kind of weird, the series is based on a damned theme park attraction of all things. Disney had it right at their first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but they wanted too much in the second and third parts. In this attempt to go back to the roots they went too far, beneath the roots, to the concept only. And it stays there. There is a lot of potential in this film, but potential has to be utilized. On Stranger Tides is tame, dull and to be honest: boring.

Today’s Film You Have Never Seen Before – SSSSSSS

There are tons of films that time forgot. But where time forgets, fans remember. A hommage to these fans and their films. [Archive]

“Once this motion picture sinks its fangs into you, you will never be the same.” A tagline like this should say enough, but there is more, yes, so much more. There is the title of course, which should never be confused with Zzzzzzzz. This movie is hilarious, not boring. Then there are doctor Stoner, as played by Strother Martin, his assistant David, played by A-Team’s Dirk Benedict before he was Face and tons of poisonous snakes. Stoner has plans to transform David into one of those animals, which, according to the trailer, leads to “king cobra versus mongoose. Or is it man versus man…?” All snakes in this movie were portrayed by actual snakes, except the ones that weren’t. Which is one snake only.

Don’t say it, hiss it!

Review: Insidious

Some films are downright scary. Jaws can still make me tremble for instance. Alien is pretty haunting too and after watching Paranormal Activity I had bitten off my nails down to my elbows. There is a new title to my list of scary movies: Insidious had me crawl deep down in my chair so I could get away from the screen. Horror movies about ghosts and haunted houses are dull more often than they are troubling, so it is quite a relieve to have sleepless nights once again. Isn’t that the reason why we watch frightening flicks anyway?

Director James Wan teamed up with producer Oren Peli to make Insidious. They are not unknown to the connoisseur: Wan directed Saw, Peli is the creator of Paranormal Activity. Both filmmakers have delivered very decent work indeed, but this project exceeds their previous movies by far. Insidious has that rare quality of making the viewer feel uneasy at every moment. This ghost story doesn’t aim at cheap thrills or easy scares, it knows how to play the audience and even though this kind of film has been made over a hundred times already it is going to feel fresh. There is simply no time to think of cliches because of its constant creepiness.

So Insidious doesn’t aim at easy scares, but it does aim at scares nonetheless. This Poltergeist like movie has a family with two children tortured by appearances after one of their kids falls into a coma. Of course they move out of their house, but the ghosts follow them to their new residence. That location isn’t scary per se, it’s just a normal, almost clinical house. In every corner there may be an apparition that will jump out with a stark sound effect that is so penetrating that it can almost be visualized. It are these sounds that play an important role throughout the movie. Creaks, voices, breathing… they will enter the brain and slowly devour it until you can’t take it no more. Remember: at that point the film is probably halfway.

Wan doesn’t shy away from showing directly what to be afraid of, albeit shortly. That stands in contrast to the aforementioned films, where the shark, alien or ghost is unseen most of the times. But Wan doesn’t give his audience the chance to completely comprehend the appearance they just saw. Did those two creepy looking sisters just… smile? And if so… it sure didn’t look friendly. But Wan also chooses to add a certain level of surrealism to his film. When a psychic puts on a gasmask during a séance it’s almost too weird to be true. It adds an new layer of creepiness over the film when she passes her words down to someone else via a giant tube while she writes down words she can hear from the netherworld. The spirit she is communicating with has a nasty choice of words…

Even though Wan does re-use an old formula (family, house, ghosts, secret), he knows what the outcome of that formula should be. He creates a dark and uneasy atmosphere with a surreal undertone. Insidious might seem like one of those old fashioned films to watch on a first date: sit tight and wait for the girl to hold you closely at all the scary moments. Until they scare you even more than her. Yikes.

Interview with Hobo With A Shotgun director Jason Eisener

Fans who have been missing that authentic feel of the gritty side of eighties cinema will embrace the 2011 exploitation movie Hobo With a Shotgun. What started as the winner in a fake trailer contest in 2007 ended up as a full feature exploitation film in the style of those dark but yet colourful eighties movies. It stars B-flick legend Rutger Hauer as the hobo with a shotgun, whom we got to meet briefly at the Imagine Film Festival in The Netherlands. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and the coming months it will open in different countries all over the world. Sarcastic Assault writer Pim Wijers had a chat with director Jason Eisener to find out how this film came to be, where Eisener’s evident love for the seventies and eighties comes from, what it was like working with his childhood hero Hauer and about the use of the classical gore effects that take the viewer back twenty years down memory lane! 

 [CLICK HERE TO READ THE INTERVIEW]

Mortal Kombat Legacy Webisode 2

Wait, what happened? I blinked my eyes and this second webisode of Mortal Kombat Legacy was over. It left off right where part one ended, but nothing much happened. Jax fought Kano, choreography was less stunning and the setting dropped to the background. No rusty factory looks. The story of this series is moving fast enough though. Both Kano and Jax will be transforming to the characters fans will know from the game. But enough talk now, go watch it yourself. Quickly, it won’t take long. Alas!

 

Episode 3 shows Tuesday next week.

Review: Machete Maidens Unleashed

Even though the two Grindhouse films by Tarantino and Rodriguez were ill received at the box office they did renew the cinemagoer’s interest in the exploitation genre. Take Machete as an example, or the recent Hobo With a Shotgun starring Rutger Hauer. Both derived from fake trailers that were featured alongside the Grindhouse films of the directors. But films like this have been made since the late sixties. People would go see them at the local drive-in, while most of them were shot in a land far, far away… The Philippines!

Monsters, evil prison regimes and killers were but excuses to exploit damsels in distress in tons of exploitation films from the late sixties and seventies. Women got both literally and figuratively stripped down to the core for the pleasure of cheap thrills and nudity. The documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed dives deep into time and space, to a place where violence was common and human life was held in low regard. The world of the Philipino film industry had close to no rules in that era, so anything that could go… went. The flicks were produced under the golden law of the three Bs: Blood, Beasts and Breasts!

A great amount of key figures speak openheartedly about the times they made films there. Most notably Roger Corman, king of the profitable B-flick. Under his supervision a combination of paper-mâché monsters, plastic swords and topless women turned into films that made a fortune compared to the amount of money it cost to produce them. Directors like Ron Howard and James Cameron rose to fame working for Corman. Other speakers in the documentary are directors like Joe Dante, Allan Arkush, Eddie Romero and John Landis. With a smile and together with a bunch of actresses that time forgot they reflect on their moments of film making in the Philippines.

As mentioned: anything was possible at that time. “Human life was cheap, film was cheap… it was a great place to make a picture!” says one of the many directors. Stunt actors were all locals who would do anything for some coin. If one told them to jump off a cliff they’d probably do it even before the ‘action’. If a stuntman got hurt too badly he would be sent home with less than five bucks pay. The Philippine army was eager to help as well. That way Coppola had a lot of material available during the shoot of Apocalypse Now. At another set the army flew in two choppers that had been bombing rebels just a few hours earlier. The commander said he would unarm the rockets to do the scene. The cast and crew agreed.

All kinds of facts, quotes and anecdotes like the ones above are presented in an incredible high pace. It is funny and at times even unbelievable. Probably even the greatest fan of exploitation will hear about films they didn’t know about yet. They can not be blamed, as these films were produced so frequently that it would even make a rabbit feel ashamed about its rate of reproduction. And sleazy as these films may have been, some people even claim that they helped liberating women’s rights. It’s the kind of girl power with topless actresses.

Director John Landis says any ethical way of watching these kind of films is rubbish. The films he and his colleagues made were about just a couple of things: sex, violence and cheap thrills. Note to self: go watch them!