Tis’ the season for getting cool stuff, and there is little cooler than the new LOONEY TUNES CLASSIC Collection on Blu Ray DVD. We talk to the men who put the whole thing together, plus more with NIKITA‘s Maggie Q on how she keeps order on the seat of the hit CW show.
On Saturday, November 19, AudioComics Pulp history was made on Mission Street in San Francisco at Broken Radio Studios, site of the legendary Coast Recorders Studio. Ably engineered by Piper Payne, Craig Neibaur, Karen Stilwell, and the members of the Pulp Adventures Acting Company (Bill Chessman, Suzan Lorraine, Kevin Donnelly, Mandy Brown, Peter Carini, Peter Papadopoulos, and Perry Aliado) recorded the first of many Green Lama and Domino Lady audio movies (or in this case audio shorts).
Pete Carini said it best when it was all over: “about twenty minutes from now I’m going to have an adrenaline crash.”
In August, I raved a bit about Griff the Invisible, a charming independent film about man who dreams of being a superhero. The movie opened and closed without much attention, which is shame because it dared to think big on a tiny budget. Fortunately, though, the film is coming out this week on DVD and is well worth your attention.
This Australian film was written and directed by Leon Ford, who did some commentary on camera with the 50th Anniversary DC Universe poster seen over his shoulder, a testament to his affection for the super-hero. His movie had plenty of heart, anchored by a dynamite performance by Ryan Kwanten.
Fantasy and reality is approached by Griff, a lonely salaryman and Melody (Maeve Dermody), a scientist challenging the laws of physics. They make an unlikely, but thoroughly charming couple of misfits, falling in love.
Shot on 16mm for atmosphere, the film transfers nicely to Blu-ray but lacks the sharpness of the bigger budgeted behemoth super-hero films that also came out this year. Same with the audio so overall, it’s fine on disc and watching it on a home screen makes it feel more intimate and touching than on a Cineplex screen. In some ways, this is better at home than anywhere else.
The disc comes with only a handful of extras, all a little perfunctory such as the commentary form Ford, Producer, Nicole O’Donohue, and actor Patrick Brammall. Ford is also the focus of director diary videos which are too short to be worth seeing. He touches on his thoughts before, during, and after production but never really says anything. There are also several pieces under the umbrella title Anatomy of a Scene — Opening Sequence (3:16), the All-In-One Shot (2:16), and the Anyhoo (2:00) — but is shot and edited in such a way that there’s little to be learned. There’s also the 4:08 making of featurette that again is too short to be worthwhile. Brammall also hosts a 1:24 set tour that shows you only brief sections and again leaves you wanting something with substance. The best part of the extras are the 7:36 of deleted scenes, none of which were vital to the story but did flesh out the story and characters.
Clint Eastwood talks about the cinematic challenge of directing a film that spans a long stretch of history, plus will he will ever go in front of the camera again? Plus – Howard Stern on NBC? It might happen!
There is no question that Neil Patrick Harris owes the reboot of his career to the first HAROLD & KUMAR movie. Now he returns for a third time and tells us about the role plus his directing gigs, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER and the rumors that he’s replacing REGIS. Then we start our look at the Oscar Buzzing new film J EDGAR talking to Leonardo DiCaprio and director Clint Eastwood about the difficulties they had on this groundbreaking project. But wait – what about new GAME OF THRONES swag and the return of THE RIFLEMAN? We cover that, too!
Here’s an interesting holiday recipe – take a popular stoner comedy franchise, toss in some claymation and even a musical number. It’s A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3-D CHRISTMAS, destined to burn up DVD shelves after it escapes theaters. We talk to John Cho & Kal Penn about how they’ve changed even if their movie counterparts haven’t. Plus more with Ed GHelms on how THE OFFICE still owes so much to Steve Carrel, and DC breaks even bigger comic sales records in October.
John Wayne Cleaver is not a serial killer; he wants you to know that up front. He’s also not, sadly, a typical American teenager, though he somewhat wishes that he could be. Thirdly, he’s not officially a sociopath — that diagnosis can only be given to an adult, and John is only fifteen. What he has is instead called Antisocial Personality Disorder — he has an almost complete lack of empathy, simply not understanding what other people’s emotions are or connecting with them directly.
So John has to work his way through life by intellectually building models of what he thinks people are feeling, and of how he should respond to those feelings, and continually adapting his models to get closer to reality. He’s not all that good at it at the beginning of I Am Not A Serial Killer, the first novel he narrates, but give him a break: he’s a fifteen-year-old boy from a small town, and his brain doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does.
To make matters worse, he’s obsessed with violent death and with serial killers — and he’s smart enough to have noticed that he has all of the standard characteristics of a serial killer: a distant, abusive father who abandoned him, high IQ, frequently bullied, a fascination with fire, even bedwetting. And he doesn’t really want to get too far away from death — the most soothing thing in his life is helping out his mother and aunt in their family business, the mortuary downstairs from their apartment. But he definitely doesn’t want to kill people, and has built up a regimen of rules and avoidance techniques to keep the thoughts of torture and death at bay.
But then a real serial killer starts stalking John’s home town — Clayton, North Dakota [1] — and John can’t help but follow the case, working up his own profile of the killer. It gets worse when John accidentally sees the killer in action — and realizes not only that the murderer is his friendly elderly neighbor, Mr. Crowley, but that Crowley is some kind of supernatural creature, taking body parts from his victims to replace his own deteriorating organs and limbs. (more…)
There’s a new man behind the big desk at Dundler Mifflin. It’s Ed Helms who has stepped in for Steve Carell. How is he handling the spot in the NBC comedy hit? Plus what’s hot this week? Would you believe Game Shows?
This weekend the science fiction thriller, IN TIME, opened in theaters. Is is really LOGANS RUN redone? Star Justin Timberlake says NO and explains it why right here – plus remember WILD CARDS? It might be coming to a theater near you!
This season, fairy tales are the thing with two distinctively different shows springing firm the same familiar tales. This weekend, NBCpremieres GRIMM while ABC had a great premiere for ONCE UPON A TIME just days ago. We speak to the cast & creators of both shows to see just where things differ.
, the first novel he narrates, but give him a break: he’s a fifteen-year-old boy from a small town, and his brain doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does.
