FanRant Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It all started out so well. Timothy Olyphant is the man of the law, the local townsfolk are enjoying the start of the baseball season, and everything is sunny. When one of their own hits the field with a gun, however, he has no choice but to shoot the guy and save the rest. And then more folks start acting strange, things get eerie, people die, the government flies in, and the fight for life begins. It's the classic horror setup.

Then there's a quick cut and the music starts with f minor. Softly but surely, the '80s song that was slowed down and made infamous through a montage of tears plays as people run through burning streets, as the military moves in, as people are strapped to gurneys, as they all fight to stay alive. Yes, it might be a "Mad World," but Gary Jules is not suited for it. In Donnie Darko, the song was beautiful, gut-wrenching, and perfect for the tone at hand.

Taking a cue from the song: I find it kinda funny that they decided to go with the recent hit rather than going back to the original. Why? It actually fits. The low, electronic notes that carry the Tears for Fears version are eerie, and if you watch this trailer for The Crazies over at Apple, and start the original song at roughly 1:40, it lines up. Suddenly the increasing chills of the beginning are made creepier. Even some of the action is perfectly synched.

The town fighting The Crazies might be a "Mad World," but there's no room for somber melancholia in a horror trailer -- especially when it's a song already made famous with a perfect cinematic fit.

As a child, I watched a little of everything. There really was no rhyme or reason -- Incredible Hulk, Muppet Babies, MTV (videos), Cosby, and even some Tom Baker wrapped in a large, striped scarf. But it wasn't until Christopher Eccleston became Doctor Who that I really started to pay attention to the sci-fi icon and his Tardis adventures.

Through a change to Tennant and a myriad of both silly and super creepy stories, The Doctor became ever more addictive, and I wished that he would head for the big screen. Sure, there's a chance that feature film could become an absolute reality, but recently I had a different thought: What if Torchwood brought Who to the big screen?

Torchwood: Children of Earth was a jaw-dropper. The series had started slowly, but as characters succumbed to the dangers of their job, the show became better and better until the long miniseries made it into an entirely new experience. It was epic, dangerous, shocking, and pretty much all the adjectives that would make a good feature film. I might even go so far as to say a better feature film than Who could make, because there was more cinematic intrigue in Torchwood's latest story, and that's more widely marketable than a quirky man who carries a magic wrench travels through time and space. So why not merge the two?

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

I was inspired by the new Cinematical series, Movies I Will Never See, but I had a hard time coming up with a movie I will absolutely, categorically never see, given the chance. So here's my take on a movie I wish I'd never seen...

I have seen bad movies that wasted my time, my money, and valuable real estate in my brainpan. Some of the movies I've seen were so bad they actually made me angry with their crappiness. (This summer's The Informers and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh both land in that category.) I've seen plenty of "bad" or "weird" movies that were gross or generally nuts -- Nekromantik (both the first and the second, thanks), Crispin Glover's labor of love What Is It?, Begotten, Salo, and Shivers, to name a few. And then I've seen bad movies. Movies I wish I could un-see. That made me feel like scrubbing the insides of my eyelids. That made me feel, well, icky.

The number one offender on my list is The Passion of the Christ. I had no intention of seeing it, but there were extenuating circumstances – all, in fact, were somehow related to Judaism, no less! A friend who is a talented linguist and more or less fluent in Hebrew was very interested in the fact that it was in Aramaic and he convinced me to go. The first yahrzeit of my father was approaching quickly, and so I was just like, "Eh, okay, let's go see this damn movie." (According to About.com, which is where I've gotten most of my religious education, the yahrzeit "is a commemoration of the death of a Jew by a mourner (the child, sibling, spouse or parent of the deceased).")

It can be quite disappointing to see a beloved actor pop up in a terrible movie, but I'd say it's worse to see them in a terrible movie with a cast of people who used to be well-known. There's something about the has-been stigma that just hurts. One could excuse away bad movies to behind-the-scenes conflict or the need for cash (I'm looking at you, Michael Caine and Peter O'Toole), but joining a cast list filled with talent who used to be in big films just adds an extra slap.

See, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Tara Reid is making a Last Call, and she'll be joined by names that include Christopher Lloyd, Tom Arnold, Dave Foley, and Clint Howard. Sure, that last guy's career is all about the questionable gigs, but what's said with the rest of the roster? I don't want to say that these guys are has-beens, but thrown together and topped with the cherry skin-toned Reid certainly suggests as much. This is the sort of casting that screams the idea that names who used to be big will help the project's notoriety, without the need to pay the big bucks.

A lot of things can bug movie fans, whether it's bad acting, cliches, or poor continuity, but there's one that annoys me beyond all others -- The Heroes Effect. Basically, the movie or television show hints and titillates at upcoming, impending conflict, battle, and awesome action. You anticipate it, wait for it, and then just as it's about to appear ... WHOOSH! It's gone. It's happened off-screen, or behind that door that just closed.

Heroes is darned good at it, making you yearn for the action, and only barely following through -- even in the finales. But when this same trend hits the big screen as well, the irks increase. This experience has been paid for; the expectations are higher. And in the case of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it comes after a number of hours of dealing a packed, antsy theater of prepubescents. <spoiler alert>

Eric's already mentioned one of the big changes between the book and the film -- just how Harry watches the Snape/Dumbledore confrontation unfold. But what about the fight downstairs? Hogwarts wasn't picking their noses when this all went down. And most importantly -- Rowling had finally let Professor McGonagall get her fight on as she Ginny, Tonks, Lupin, Neville, etc battled the Death Eaters. Surely that's better than Bellatrix tromping around? Surely room could've been made for it. Take out a snog or two. There still would've been plenty to giggle about. The gem of the final books is seeing everyone get their due, whether that be revenge or the chance to finally see them fight and come into their own.

There's no reason for The Heroes Effect. If action is hinted, if cool things are happening -- show them! If the book's got a great scene of fighting that has McGonagall as a robe-clad Ripley, show it! If you can't ... why bother?

I can't hold my tongue any longer. Humpday is no more a bromance than writer/director Lynn Shelton is "the female Apatow." The term bromance is lazy shorthand for the loveably dorky and confused guys populating the Apatow et al movies, and while Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) could be described as such, the writing of Shelton elevates what could be a one-trick pony -- two straight dudes might have sex or might not for "art" -- into a real discussion of identity, both of Ben and Andrew and of those around them. It becomes a discussion of sexuality -- what's straight, what's not, what threatens Andrew and what interests and confuses Ben -- and identity and how we want to perceive ourselves.

In an Apatow-ish film, if a protagonist was about to have a threesome with two women (one of which is played by Shelton) and suddenly gets cold feet when one pulls out sex toys, it would be played for laughs -- add in a fart joke or dildo joke and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Whew, wouldn't that have been crazy! Instead, there's a supremely awkward and human moment when Andrew weighs the pros and cons of the situation, extricates himself, puts on his clothes, and leaves. The women turn to each other laughing, shutting him out from their intimacy as much as he's shut himself off by flitting across the world as an artist.

Over the last week, I've been busy attending Hot Docs, one of the coolest film festivals you can attend, and the largest documentary fest in North America. Screening after screening, I sat there watching excellent films (which you will hear about soon!), and watching packed houses visibly moved by them. One of the sentiments you'll most often hear: "Thank you." Q&A after Q&A, audiences thank the filmmakers for what they've created, and the lives they've shown on the big screen. Yet most will get very little play outside of the festival circuit.

This baffles me.

I understand why some people aren't into documentaries -- they want escape and entertainment in their films, and only attend movies that will give them that. I know quite a few people who see nothing but the biggest releases for this very reason. But the thing is -- they aren't the only type of moviegoer out there; moreover, we're living in a society where voyeurism sells. We follow the Tweets of the famous, overindulge in "reality" TV, ingest gossip on a daily basis, delight in exposes, read the news, watch real people become celebrities, follow each other's every move through the Internet ... yet we won't go out and see a documentary.

People, they're good. They're heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and laughter-inducing. They'll teach you something and make you think, but they'll also inspire and entertain you. Hot Docs is the only festival I've ever attended (or group of movies I have ever watched) where I like almost every one, and love more than I ever thought possible -- Dear Zachary, Protagonist, Girls Rock!, Billy the Kid, Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse... There's a wonderful and vast world outside of Michael Moore.

They are, simply, so very worth your time. So next time you're thinking of watching some ridiculous reality show, just say no and choose a documentary instead.