The last time I’ve spoke to Jackie Chan he said to me: “I’ve done everything three times” – meaning that he’s finding less and less ways, and reasons, to top himself. Unfortunately that also results in schizo, ultimately unsatisfying, films, further hampered by his unwillingness to mature his screen persona. Even so, he keeps looking…
DVD Xtra columnist Ric Meyers is in Europe, enjoying the hell out of the environs. He’ll be back here next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-station.
As author of For One Week Only: The World of Exploitation Films (as featured in People magazine and the National Enquirer [when the National Enquirer was the National Enquirer]) and the original head writer for Fangoria magazine, don’t get me wrong: I love horror films. Of course what I’m dealing with in this installment are…
There were rumors to the effect that the first Fox Fantastic Four movie was the victim of studio interference that somehow moved a mid-film confrontation to the climax. But given its success, FF2 would be the full, unadulterated vision of director Tim Story. Right? Well, with the “Power Cosmic 2-Disc Edition” DVD release of Fantastic…
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the holidays are getting earlier every year. As an ex-mall Santa, I know that I had to report earlier and earlier every season, to the point I was in my big red throne practically the day after Halloween. And speaking of Halloween, Rob Zombie’s needless remake of John Carpenter’s movie…
Here’s the story – apocryphal, unsubstantiated, and questionable as it is. Quentin Tarantino announces he’s going to make the ultimate exploitation flick – a quintessential slasher movie (i.e., with a gruesome death every seven minutes), only with cars instead of knives. Not only that, but he’s going to return Kurt Russell to the pantheon of…
“Sht runs dwnhill.” Those words of wisdom/warning were first spoken to me back in the mid-1980s, at lunch on the first day I started consulting for CBS-TV in California. The statement came back to me several times while watching this week’s offerings (as well as many, many times over the decades as I watched businesses…
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” That deathbed sentiment, most often attributed to either actor Edmund Kean or actor/director Sir Donald Wolfit, was much on my mind as I enjoyed this week’s offerings. Actual dying, as well as the comic derivative (in which a stand-up delivers his routine to an unamused audience), has long been…
I love action movies. So does Korean film director Ryoo Seung-wan, which is made abundantly clear in the ample extras for the Dragon Dynasty two-disc Ultimate Edition release of The City of Violence. Originally I wasn’t going to review another Dragon Dynasty DVD so soon after my praise of their Hard Boiled and Crime Story…
Way back in the late 1980s, a few film producers thought it was interesting that “comedians,” like the late Andy Kaufman, amused themselves rather than entertained their audiences. After all, if people would pay actual money to be goaded and/or irritated, that might create a much simpler genre of filmmaking. This sentiment set the stage…
Twenty-five years ago, the late, great Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, tried to beat Lord of the Rings to the cinematic punch by co-writing and co-directing a similar and derivative, yet pioneering and daring, “adult” fantasy. Four years after that, approximately twenty-one years ago, he tried to combine Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, The…
ItÂ’s autumn. Yes, I know you look out the window, check the weather, glance at the calendar. ItÂ’s still summer out there. But for the fine folk who work the service industries, itÂs already fall, and their stores, movie theaters, and DVD shelves reflect that Âfact  filling ever fuller of loss leaders and also-rans….
