p e n g u i n d e v i l

The Devil’s Tomb, hmm. Of course, the name alone brings to mind Prince of Darkness especially with the video tape playing through the credits really bringing that to mind as some of it is certainly cribbed from the great PoD. BUt it doesn’t stop there. It didn’t take more than a few minutes for me to start thinking, “What the hell?”. Even before the opening credits are done we’ve been through such smorgasbord of film-rip-off’s that it’s a bit startling… Sensations of Aliens, The Tomb, and most notably of all, my all time favorite horror movie Prince of Darkness.

Once the credits are done we drop right into a badly rewritten re-shoot of the scene in Aliens where Ripley gives her briefing to the marines. Even using some of the same dialogue. So yes, they make it very clear that this is going to be bad. Plus, it’s directed by Bond son Jason Connery which creates another lack of confidence… Though it’s a whole different brand of bad than the bad films of Andy Sidaris that the other Bond’s son R.J. Moore frequently features in, as this doesn’t even feature any bathing/softcore nude scenes with busty ladies or even any attacks using remote control helicopters or cars!





After the video taped message in very Price of Darkness style made by a scientist who, in proper The Mummy fashion, goes missing in an archeological site, and his daughter comes in with a batch of proper Aliens style ignorant wise-cracking soldiers, they descend into this place where they find, in proper Prince of Darkness style, a devil encased in something. And, of course in still more Prince of Darkness style, their pals start getting taken over by the bad guys so everyone, in proper Aliens style, does lots of excited and ineffective shooting… And cursing.

Looking at a digital map that brings Raccoon City to mind, the movie then descends into a standard cliched American action film. But at this point you stop following the story anyway and instead start looking to see what scenes were taken from which movie.





What makes this mess even funnier is the casting.. Cuba Gooding JR? Ron Perelman? and yes, no, yes fuckin’ Henry Rollins doing a terrible, yet eager, job playing a priest. What the hell again? Who put this thing together?





And christ, is one of these marines actually named Hicks? Maybe the whole thing is intended as a homage to Aliens after all…

I imagine that some of the military flashback war scenes must be taken form some other movie but as I don’t tend to see those movies, I don’t know for sure, but maybe all of the helicopter scenes are cribbed from Blackhawk Down?

I know that all of this is probably unfair judgment, but as the movie isn’t original, scary or even suspenseful you’ve got to find something to think about while watching it.

Easily the best scene takes place 46 minutes in when the guy left alone (of course) upstairs with some messed up dying guy they found, wanders off in pursuit of a nude chick that happens to wander through the room. Of course, he ends with with something much different then his dream lady, and that was pretty funny.





Of course, it does have some things going for it: Rollin’s terrible performance, lot’s of fairly good gore, and you don’t have to pay much attention to it. A good to movie to have people over for some beers to, if you know what I mean.

The be-sored oozing baddies are fine and honestly, the second half is certainly more entertaining than the first half. Though towards the end it does bog down with the jibber-jabber. For some reason Ray Winstone is in this too. But honestly, all that I had been intending to do was see if Legion was available as an instant movie from Netflix.

Ah yes, the fine line between what is and what could be and who we make ourselves and who we could be. These themes are pretty blatantly covered in a fun little movie I watched last night, Ink. There, the line between waking reality and sleeping dreams is certainly blurred over and over again as we follow Emma and John through their troubles and an assortment of folks who are invisible to the waking word guiding them through some crazy events.

Though it certainly isn’t in the same league as any of these, it is at times reminiscent of Night Watch, Dark City and The Matrix and it gave me occasional flashbacks to playing Myst. I didn’t think of it a copy of those though, as it seemed pretty original. Ink is the story of conflict between those who bring dreams and those who bring nightmares, played out via a strange big-nosed being named Ink who is desperate to belong, a little girl that he has abducted as a means of doing so, those who are trying to return her to the real world and a father who has lost his way. Sort of Sci-Fi and sort of fantasy, Ink is certainly a very low budget movie, which shows with the acting, the sets and the grainy “very digital” quality, but it has a fairly interesting storyline and plot and the special effects are pretty well done.





Though it begins with a boring segment of this bitter father who is too serious and disconnected to pay any attention to his daughter, after night falls things pick up. A group of folks with an unusual and interesting entrance go around to the sleeping people and give them pleasant dreams, after that appear some interesting looking fellows who give people nightmares…





Then comes Ink. He is a mysterious being who abducts the little girl, against strenuous objections from the dream bringer people. While Ink tends to remain somewhat mysterious and concealed, her protectors do not. Consisting of the cute girl who was watching over her when she was abducted, an irritating “Pathfinder” with electrical tape over his eyes (well, maybe not all of the effects are good) and a couple of others, they relentlessly pursue Ink as he carts the girl into his intriguing hallway and all over the place.





While the movie was entertaining enough, I really thought it was the special effects that held my attention as they were not overdone and they fit the movie quite well. Though, honestly, the reason for this might mainly be that the effects involve light and the parts of the movie that those scenes take place in are shot in very high contrast, which serves to blur the line between the efect and the rest of the film. Regardless, I still thought that they were interesting, original and looked good.





Certainly not for everyone, but Ink is a great example of how, if you have some good ideas, you can make an interesting film with decent effects on a very low budget.

Oh, how could I?

A week ago today, April 8th, was the Penguindevil’s 5th anniversary! With nary a posting to be found. As it is both finals week and tax week, my annual picks and summation post will have to wait a few more days. Sigh…

But I can bring up a funny little movie that I watched this week. While having one of those “fall asleep in front of a movie” evenings, I selected something suitably mindless for that… Hide and Creep! Oddly enough, I didn’t fall asleep once… Which means two things. One is that I only ended up with about 4 hours of sleep that night, and two, I actually watched the movie from beginning to end.

While I wouldn’t say that I recommend it, I also wouldn’t suggest avoiding it, either. Hide and Creep is a super-low budget (the production company is aptly named “Crewless”) zombie movie. Being also a bit of a comedy, with a bit of UFOish goings on, it was fairly entertaining. Starting off with two storylines, one the tale of a video store clerk beset upon by what is possibly the cheapest rendition of a zombie that I have ever seen (but so unapologetically lame and cheap of a zombie that it seems forgivable), and, two, a poor fellow who wakes up naked in a tree (where we are forced to start pondering either drunkenness of abduction, or both) who sets off in pursuit of his clothes and his “’64 and a half Mustang” (and potentially the girl he was with)…

These two tales converge in this small hick town in Alabama where zombies (yes, more of the same type as above) start appearing everywhere and the non-zom population begins to decline rapidly. Sadly, the sheriff is on vacation and the deputy is stuck in Florida so two groups of non-zom civilians struggle to make it through this mess. One group is the above mentioned folks who are “joined” by Barbara, the bitchy (but still somewhat charming) girl who works the phones at the police department and a Federal agent (again, the worst rendition of a federal agent that I have ever seen) who parachutes into town, and a second, more motivated group, consisting of Barbara’s brother and his hunting pals who end up driving all around the place shooting all the zombies that they can find in the head.

Hide and Creep is a fun and entertaining (and low-expectation) movie that features the requisite naked ladies (naked lady zombies, that is), references to anal probes, hordes of hungry zombies, corny newscasts, dopey hicks with guns and an arrogant video store clerk.

While it does have all of that going for it, and it most certainly does qualify as a zomedy, Hide and Creep is not (as “Kevin Smith” is quoted as saying on that poster over there) “even better than Shaun of the Dead”. Not in the slightest, really.

Nope.

Well, only two more weeks of this semester and then I will most certainly need to get caught up with this! Of course, the best way to get caught up is to start by not falling further behind, so, with no further adieu, our watching this evening… I started off this afternoon by trying to get into three sci-fi movies Eden Mor (snore), FAQ (I think I only got about a minute into that one) and, yes, Lynch’s Dune. I might have stuck with Dune had my family not appeared, but as it seemed about as corny as the last time I tried to watch it back around when it first came out, I was none to upset to shut it off. After that though, I met with greater movie success…

Though I wasn’t sure if I felt up to watching Kurt and Courtney, being more in the mood for the Queen documentary that I came across, Caitlin said it was good, so we watched it!

Even for those who aren’t particularly interested in the subject (such as myself) Kurt and Courtney is a rather good film. These British filmmakers go to his childhood home, talks to friends and relatives, talk to Kurt’s ex-girlfriend and school teachers and even Courtney Love’s father (who, yes, has conspiracy theory), so it really tries to focus on what kind of guy he was and what his upbringing was. After watching the movie, I don’t want to offer any theories about Kurt’s death either way for fear of Love’s lawyers giving me a call, but let’s just say that the filmmakers don’t shy away from either the conspiracy story or the suicide story, they just let the people explain what they think. Regardless, you do get the sense that knowing Courtney killed him, one way or another… As she does come across as be the lame, shallow and selfish person that everyone (or everyone as far as I can tell) seems to think that she is. It was a bit startling to see so many “northwest” type of people, it really brought me back to the early 90′s…

We then did watch the Queen Doc, Becoming Queen… What it had in common with Kurt and Courtney is that no music from the band appears in the film, no members of the band talk to the filmmakers, and that it focuses on pre-fame days, but that’s about it. In its defense, as befits the title Becoming Queen is a good enough biography of Queen, focusing primarily on the youth of the band member and the originals of the band itself. They do interview a number (a small number) of people who knew them and played with them in the pre-Queen days. But there really isn’t too much to it. More so than the Kurt documentary, this one really did suffer from a lack of Queen’s music being in the film.

We then followed that up with The International. I wasn’t sure about it, but we wanted some kind of suspenseful thing, we were limited to Netflix Wi, it was directed by Tom Tykwer (though I’ve not seen Run, Lola, Run, I am a fan of his Winterschläfer) and it had Clive Owen, so I went for it. And, well, I didn’t have anything against it. A nice big conspiracy with banks and governments, hit men and all of that good stuff It was engrossing enough and entertaining, if nothing particularly special. There was a scene with, yes, a bit too much gunfire (who do they think made it, John Woo?), some small plot failures pop up and it was generally fairly predictable. But it was entertaining enough and had some good characters… And lots of nice scenery as the story popped all around Europe. I could have done without Naomi Watts though as I didn’t really buy her portrayal of her character.

A few weeks back we had a delightful Metal weekend. So delightful that when it was over I decided that this would be the year that I finally attend Wacken! Until I saw that the plane tickets alone would cost over $1000. No Wacken Open Air for me this year.

Anyway, the point is that we finally saw Anvil: The Story Of Anvil! What a great film! I knew that it was billed as a true life Spinal Tap about some Canadian metal band, but that was it. I actually hadn’t ever heard of them when the movie came out (even though it is my favorite era/style of music) and now I really can’t understand why. The band is just great! And even after staying smewhere near the bottom for all of these years, they have continued work their day jobs, release albums and fight the good fight, Anvilling whenever they get the chance. Of course, this is not to say that it doesn’t have its Spinal Tap aspects… A long lasting metal band hoping to get a big increase in popularity sets out on an ill fated tour that just falls apart as it progresses during which the two focal members of the band have a tiff and one walks out. all against a background of lots of interviews.

In 1984 Anvil toured Japan with some big names in Metal/Hardrock and in the movie they make a big deal about this “SuperRock Tour” and how the other bands on the tour all got really big… But on hearing about it, the reason that comes to mind for this is that most of those other bands already sucked pop-rock ass (Bon Jovi, Whitesnake), or learned to suck pop-rock ass to get rich (Scorpions, Metallica)… Anvil has stayed Metal (based on the movie and what music I’ve heard) and, um, Trve. In fact, in the scenes they show from SuperRock, they have a decidedly Venom appearance. You can’t get much more metal than that. But, sadly, I seem to have lost the screen caps that I made… They must be around here somewhere…

The movie was actually inspiring and I ended up getting a bunch of their albums after watching this and was not disappointed. I would most recommend Metal On Metal.

Anyway, I highly, highly recommend seeing Anvil: The Story Of Anvil. Even if you don’t like Metal. Hell, even if you hate it! It’s a great movie, and it’s fun and touching and they are actually a pretty damn good band.



Of course, after that we had to follow it up with yet another viewing of Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. Anthropologist (and Headbanger) Sam Dunn’s story of personal Metal fandom blended with an overview of Metal culture and some exciting interviews (the Trve Kvlt gods in Norway, Dio in L.A. and at Wacken, and the Tattooed Millionaire himself at Hammersmith Odeon). This movie is always a good time! And it is another great documentary that has appeal even for those who could care less about the music. Keep you eyes peeled for the high points (Gaahl’s dramatic voice of support for Satan, Necrobutcher getting upset at Wacken) and just let the low points pass by (Alice Cooper’s tiring “They all copied me, I did it first” monologues and the irritating inclusion of Slipknot).

A month ago, while perusing youtube in the search for new trailers to watch, I decided to watch the trailer for Avatar. Now, I don’t know if it just looked like crap because of the quality of the trailer. But it looked like crap. You know, like a ridiculously storied, thoughtlessly actioned, crappily animated disaster. Well, just bad. Of course, as it was rolling towards the billion dollar mark, I had the luck to stumble upon a trailer for the newest Terry Gilliam film. Well, well well.

It, of course, it looks utterly fascinating and brilliant and, as is the case with Gilliam’s films, it is certainly doomed to lose vast sums of money. While the lack of popularity of his films causes me to lose no small measure of respect for humanity, the thought that there are studios out there that are willing to put tens of millions of dollars into his hands to make movies knowing damn sure that they won’t ever make any of it back, gives me some level of nice feeling that there must be some people of character in Hollywood (or at least wanting to make their resume look like it has character). for some folks, who, unlikely as it might seem, I assume are studio executives.

Which leads me to think that while most may be unable to realize what a treasure we have in Gilliam, at least I am not alone in realizing that he its the greatest film director ever (or, at least, the greatest crafter of films), on par with Kubrick, who actually has more movies on “the best dozen films ever” list (Gilliam ties Ridley Scott, but Scott has put out some swill that drops him a notch). Gilliam has not a swill under his belt (except for maybe the Brothers Grimm, which is the only one that I haven’t seen… Aside from this new one).

The tally from “The 11 Greatest films of all time list”, for those who are curious:

Kubrick – 3
Gilliam – 2
Scott – 2
Friedman – 1
Leone – 1
Carpenter-1
Reiner-1
Fleming-1

Oh yes, and the films themselves:

Alien (Scott)
The Adventures of The Baron Munchhausen (Gilliam)
Brazil (Gilliam)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
The Exorcist (Friedman)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
The Thing (Carpenter)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
(This is) Spinal Tap (Reiner)
Wizard of Oz (Fleming)
The Shining (Kubrick)
Blade Runner (Scott)

Seriously? Two months with no post? I know that I’m in school and everything, but come on… I’m still watching movies, I should be able to cough up a couple of minutes here while these things are fresh in my mind.

One day, maybe. For now, here is some stuff that isn’t fresh in my mind any longer…

Annie Hall. One of my favorite Woody Allen movies, which makes it one of the best comedies of all time. Of course, yes, the Annie character is oh so very irritating, but Woody is, of course, his usual delightful self.

Pal Joey. Sinatra as the selfish, irresponsible and trouble-making singer who drags a couple of girls up and down along the way (Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak as, respectively, a wealthy ex-stripper widow and a “nice girl”) as he pursues his dream of owning his own club. yeah, he’s a jerk, but it’s a pretty fun movie. And it star Frank Sinatra.

School of Rock. Again. Well yes, a comedy with a heart. And it’s pretty entertaining and Jack Black is great.. And there are some nice soundtrack selections. But I’ve said all of this before.

Bleak House. The new one and I think it’s pretty great. Gillian Anderson does a good job (except for that I can’t stopped calling her Scully). I love Denis Lawson and Anna Martin in it, and I would say that they are the high points except for that everyone else does such a damned good job! Charles Dance as Talkinghorn, Burn Gorman as Mr. Guppy, Timothy West as Sir Dedlock… Just a great cast all around. The trouble is that I find the cinematography to be very obnoxious. The camera zipping around and hiding and filming through doorways. It’s all rather bothersome.

Dirty Dancing. I can’t believe that I actually saw this, after avoiding it for so many years. No, it’s nothing that I ever wanted to see… But it’s actually not bad.

Minority Report. Yes, again. I do like this one. Tom Cruise remains one of the great overrated movie stars (as I think that any movie with him would probably sell as many [if not more] tickets without him), but this is still a great “Social Sci-fi” movie.

I wanted to finish off the recent spate of documentaries with the high point of the series… One that we’ve been wanting to see ever since it came out. Of course I am speaking of Religulous! This movie is Bill Maher’s attempt to understand how people of faith can be people of faith (basically). In it he goes around the world to ask various people of faith to ask them how/why they believe the things that they do. Though he is focused on people who follow the various Abrahamic religions, the ground that he covers is quite wide-ranging. It includes: a trucker’s chapel (yes, at a truck stop), a holy land amusement park in Florida, a mosque in Jerusalem, a Moslem gay bar, an orthodox rabbi, some ex-Mormon’s in Salt Lake City, the Vatican and a U.S. congressman!

He makes it quite clear to these folks that he doesn’t for a minute believe that any of it is true and that he is just dying to know why it is that they do. This tact leads to quite a varied group of responses, though except for one of the “worshipers” at the truck stop, most of them do earnestly try to explain the foundations of their faith. These responses vary from interesting (in a somewhat startling fashion), entertaining, befuddling and downright insulting and scary (in the case of the congressman when he suggests that if it weren’t for the ten commandments that people might not have come to the conclusion that it is bad to kill each other).

Some of the most outstanding bits are the earnest attempts at explanation from the fellow who portrays Jesus at the amusement park, the woman at the amusement park who says that when Armageddon comes she’ll be flying through the sky on a big white horse, the bit about it being a miracle if it starts raining when you want it to and, my favorite, the priests at the Vatican who don’t seem to think that anything in the bible is meant literally.

While you could say that he is trying to be objective, I think that in a situation like this you can only be so objective… For a person not-of-faith to have a conversation with someone who is of-faith about their beliefs can be interesting, but having those conversations with dozens of people who all firmly believe in ultimate truths that contradict the other peoples ultimate truths, well, I think you would have to take most of they people say with a big grain of salt. Of course, as Maher has to have a point that isn’t just his opinion but also of greater import, he covers the dangers of faith… Specifically the danger inherent in people who actually want the end of the world to arrive because they believe that something better will come for them after that. Not really the safest way to think considering what kinds of weaponry modern civilization has at its disposal… Even if it were true, it still wouldn’t be a good thing for anyone whose belief system didn’t happen to be the correct one.

Taking advantage of the Netflix and Hulu.com streaming, we had a nice week of so of documentary watching. Of course, as we streamed them, their were some that we couldn’t get to much into and so felt quite free to halt. The ones that we completed though, consisted primary of these…



The King of Kong. Man, I’d been wanting to see this for a long. Time! The story of Billy Mitchell, the fellow who got the Donkey Kong world record (among many others) in the early 1980′s and another fellows recent attempt to defeat that record. Donkey Kong was one of the first games that I was “good” at (until that fateful day at the Red Robin on Burnside when punk-ass Jon beat me and I moved onto other games), so it was fun to watch this story… It was also somewhat gratifying to have them especially cover the difficulty of the Third Elevators as that level was my fatal downfall. What becomes somewhat surprising is the politics and cliquishness of the scene. The same major player have been around since the old days (including the fellow who is in charge of official records keeping) and they don’t seem to take to well towards new comers trying to unseat the champ.



Crawford. Uff. Man. The story of what happens to a small Texas town when the Governor of Texas decides to by a ranch in the town as he makes his play for President. I found that theme to not be as interesting as it was to listen to the things that these people have to say in general. Primarily non-analytical pro-government, pro-military, pro-god, anti-peace… I am always torn in that way that I do (or at least want to) appreciated the reputation of genuineness and community spirit shown by small town America, but also mortified by what they sometimes say in their attempts at honesty. I would almost rather that they behave in decent ways that are dishonest to themselves then have them believe that we can go and bomb all to hell any foreign country that we want for no legitimate reason. All in all, somewhat disturbing. In the few high-point’s to this town are a thoughtful teacher who tries to teach her students to think about things and be somewhat analytical and one youth who really does try to understand the truth and express it. By the end of the movie, neither of them are living in Crawford anymore…



Welcome to Macintosh. Now this is a good Macintosh documentary! Way better than that terrible Macheads that we watched a while back! It is a history of Apple, of the Macintosh and its development and of the followers of the mac. Covering Apple’s successes and missteps with interest and sincerity, it also has some good speakers, including Guy Kawasaki(!), Apple engineers, bloggers and a lot of people who were around Apple and the Mac in the old days. The filmmakers are obviously big fans of Apple and though they are strongly supportive of Steve and though they wisely tie the success of Apple to his vison, personality and his person itself, they aren’t blindly mired within his halo effect… Though some of the people interview in the movie are.



Forgiving Dr Mengele. This was an interesting and enlightening story. Forgiving Dr Mengele is the story of a woman who had been a prisoner in Auschwitz. Her and her sister where twins so they we, um, enlisted to be some of Doctor Mengele’s experimental subjects for his genetic testing. The women, now elderly, has decided that to continue on with her life she needs to put it behind her and forgive Dr Mengele. Not because his actions should be forgiven, but because she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life under that cloud. Of course her decision is not taken well by a good portion of the Jewish community. There are some interesting other side trips… In one she starts a holocaust museum in the little town that she lives in and goes about educating the local school children and, two, she takes a trip to visit Palestinians. I thought that was most interesting as they primarily wanted to talk about the harm that has been done to them by the state of Israel, and she was really quite disinterested in hearing anything about that.



Following Sean was alright. The story of a fellow who lived in the Haight area right at the peak of the hippie thing who befriended a smart four year old hippie boy who lived upstairs. At one point, he asked the kid some questions in front of a camera and Sean mentioned some things about drug use and other hippie stuff. When the filmmaker originally released that footage way backl when, he got famous and his movie got acclaim and criticism. Now, many years later, he decides to go back to San Francisco to see what all of those folks from old days are up to. It really didn’t spark much interest in me and the results of his quest aren’t particularly surprising or compelling.



Easily one of the movie watching high-points of the year, Little Dorrit is a rags to riches story, and a riches to rags story. It is also a story of betrayal and secrets, but most of all it is the story of a young lady who is involved with everything going on, but aware of little of it. This young lady was born into the Marshalsea debtors prison, daughter to the Lord of the Marshalsea, and sister to both a conniving dancer and an irresponsible gadabout. Unlike the rest of her family, Amy Dorritt is a good soul who gallantly perseveres through her life taking care of her aging father. That is, until the charming Arthur Clennam appears on the scene. Arthur is a man returned from abroad where his father has died and he now comes to England bring that news to his mother. His mother, of course, is a dour and bitter woman who, in prime Dicken’s fashion, holds a secret that may involve wealth, paternity and lies. A secret that will involve a wide and intriguing cast of characters.

In fact, with these characters this was one of the best Dicken’s miniseries that I’ve seen, and one of the best historical dramas period. Little Dorrit has a great cast of characters, a great cast and an intricate and nasty plot.

As the plot advances, we find an evilly murderous Frenchman approach the secretive old lady… Of her secrets, he may know too much and will let nothing and no one prevent his hidden agenda. But the lady is attended by a loyal old servant who will strive to protect her and it is obvious from the start of their relationship that nothing good at alkl will come from it.

On the other side of the tracks, we have the Dorrit’s immersed in their poverty, arrogance and sinful ways, even though they are attended by the kind father and son team who man the door of the debtor’s prison. OPnce outside those doors, not all are so kind! The poor out there are lorded over by an evil landlord… Who hides his true self behind a grandfatherly and generous veneer, but lashes out at his tenants through his brutish rent collector. All of these people become immerssed in the drama that unfolds.

Around all of these questionable folks and their greedy activities, are two who are so good of heart and deed that one can barely stand the foulness that people attempt to perpetuate upon them… And there is also a love that may rise or fall, depending on whether or not the people involved ever realize that the love is even there.