One Ms. Diora Baird takes on the mantle of Hottie for the Day from one Irina Voronina. Ms. Baird was first discovered as a model while doing side jobs while trying to break into acting. It was during one of these side jobs that she someone saw her and thus her modeling career began. She became the a Guess? model pretty quickly. Landing spreads and covers at magazines such as FHM, Maxim and the like helped move her modeling career forward but it wasn’t until landing the cover of Playboy Magazine‘s August 2005 issue that she really got noticed. It wasn’t too long until she became an Elite Modeling Agency model.
Ms. Baird could easily have kept to modeling but she continued with her dream to break into the entertainment industry as an actress. In between modeling gigs she landed roles in small films. Usually they were comedies and horror films like Wedding Crashers and Brain Blockers. Her big break came when she was cast as one of the main characters in the prequel to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. In 2010 she’s to be seen as Lily Thompson in the remake of the horror cult-classic, Night of the Demons.
“Plague is a Horror short focusing on an isolated journey into the unknown. We follow Vilhelm, an illegal migrant and gun runner, who is trying to make a new beginning.
When he arrives in London, The dead rise and consume the living. can Vilhelm escape the bloodbath?”
Thus describes the premise for a fine of a short indie film by Australian filmmaker Matt Simpson. Plague has a running time of just over 17 minutes, but in that brief time he has crafted a well-made zombie short film. When I first heard of this film I was hesistant to check it out since I’ve been fooled and burned in the past about so-called great zombie short films done by aspiring filmmakers on a shoestring-to-no budget.
I finally decided to watch it and I am definitely kicking myself for not doing it sooner. Matt Simpson’s Plague is one of the best indepedent horror short film I’ve seen in quite awhile. Done on a very minuscule budget the film definitely looks like it was a labor of love from a filmmaker who knows the zombie subgenre and respects its traditions and trappings. Despite the shoestring budget this filmmaker deftly avoids giving his film that amateur home video appearance that seem to plague (no pun intended) most short films. The way this film was shot and edited tells me that Matt Simpson has a future as a filmmaker if he decides to continue on that path.
The story is pretty simple with dialogue kept at a minimum. Most voice-over use in films usually don’t come off well and seems to be more of a narrative gimmick to hide inadequate performances from the cast. This time around the use of the voice-over makes sense since there’s only one speaking role and the rest zombies through most of the film. There’s two scenes where some dialogue between characters were required but they were handled well and fit the scenes. Joseph Avery who plays the role of Vilhelm doesn’t do the voice-over but instead left to one Costa Ronin who gives a very good reading with a Slavic accent without making it too heavy.
A zombie short film can’t be a zombie film without showing some zombies and the requisite gore the subgenre requires. The make-up effects on the zombies and the damage done to their victims does not look like amateur-hour. Most zombie short films use white paint, some heavy mascara around and eyes and maybe some whipped up blood to simulate a zombie. Simpson actually took the time to create zombie make-up effect appliances and uses enough of it to make the zombies look believable. While not all the effects work was perfect they were all done well enough to hide the “strings” so to speak.
All in all, Plague is a gem of a find in the dregs of most zombie short films which infests the internet. While the film still shows some growing pains for this aspiring filmmaker he does have a handle on not just the flow of storytelling, but in the editing process which assists in pulling the narrative together. Even the greatest screenplay could end up becoming a bad film when employing a bad editor and/or editing process. I hope that Mr. Simpson continues to hone his craft and finds a way to have his talent discovered by studio heads looking for the next young director to mentor.
Our hottie for the day comes from behind the former Iron Curtain. She also hails from the same country as pagan metal band Arkona and folk metal band Kalevala. She has been a model since the age of 14 and has appeared in Playboy numerous times. In 2001, she became Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for the month of January. Ms. Voronina has posed for many top photographers. One of the photographers she has posed for is a favorite of mine and that is Guido Argentini. She’s appeared for the ad campaigns of well-known beverage brands such as SKYY Vodka, Michelob Ultra and Bacardi. In 2008 she became the latest of Playboy Playmates to take up the mantle of St. Pauli Girl for the ad campaign of the famous German beer brand. In addition to modeling, Ms. Voronina has begun to move into acting. She’s appeared in such films as Balls of Fury, Reno 911!: Miami and Epic Movie.
The end of an era just occurred at 12:35am on January 23, 2010. An era of Conan O’Brien on NBC late-night. First 16 years hosting The Late Night Show after the departure of David Letterman for his own late-night talk show on CBS. 2009 marked Conan’s inheriting the coveted Tonight Show from a “retiring” Jay Leno. This next stage of Conan’s career was suppose to last a long time, but instead a major blunder of immense proportions by NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker has ended Conan’s tenure as the Tonight Show host after only 7 months.
Much has been said, argued and screamed about the circumstances which has led to Conan O’Brien’s leaving the Tonight Show. People can find most of those easily on the net. This shall be my brief farewell and see you soon to someone who has made late night fun to watch. Wherever he lands (FOX, Comedy Central, internet show, etc.) here’s to hoping he does so to continue what he did best those 17 years as an NBC late-night talk show host: be funny, irreverent and, most importantly, down-to-earth.
7 months to wait til we find out where Conan shall land.
Listed below in no particular order of importance are the film soundtracks I consider as being the best of the 2000’s. All of these soundtracks have the distinction of not just great pieces of music in their own right, but also adding another layer to the film they’re scoring. Most are orchestral soundtracks with a couple a mixture of both orchestral work and licensed songs. For franchises which contain repeating music cues and motifs I’ve decided to combine as one entry.
I’ve added a video link of a favorite track from each soundtrack.
The hottie of the day honors goes to one Felicia Day. She has become the internet geek goddess through her work on Joss Whedon’s internet sensation, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and on her very own popular web series, The Guild. She epitomizes the girl-next-door type that any boy would take home to mother, but I do believe that those fiery-red locks hide a sinfully “good” girl. It’s very difficult to get around the web nowadays and not see her. Other than being a criminally-hot redhead, Ms. Day also happens to be an avid gamer and has professed to having been addicted to the mmorpg, World of Warcraft. It is this admission, and the fact she also plays a wide-range of games, which has endeared her to geeks and non-geeks alike. She may well be the perfect geek goddess.
To inaugurate the start of the corporations Hottie of the Day program I am proud to present to you the first in what will be aline of the hottest hot hotties to be found in this and any planet.
CHRISTINA HENDRICKS
She can be seen in the hit cable drama, Mad Men, shown on the AMC network. Her work in the role of Joan Holloway for the show has garnered her accolades and has created quite the fan following. She is a rare gem in Hollywood in that she is both tall, beautiful and naturally curvy. While her gorgeous red locks have been mentioned as being quite an asset of hers she is actually a natural blonde but has been dyeing her hair a golden-red since she was a child. Golden-red or blonde, it really doesn’t matter as it doesn’t diminish the fiery hotness that is Christina Hendricks. If there ever was still a search for a live-action Jessica Rabbit then that search needs to end for she is it. For that men, and some women, are thanking whatever creator they pray to for making her the way she is.
Well, it is just days away until the release of one of the most-anticipated games of 2010. The game I am talking about is BioWare’s Mass Effect 2. It is the sequel to the very popular and critically-acclaimed action-shooter/rpg hybrid Mass Effect which came out in late 2007. The launch trailer marks the start of the massive marketing and ad campaign to promote the game. This one includes interspersed within the trailer blurbs of review scores and positive quotes from game reviewing magazines and websites dedicated to games. All throughout the trailer we have Shephard’s erstwhile ally (and possibly, enemy) The illusive Man of the shadowy, pro-human group Cerberus narrating a brief take on what players will encounter in this sequel.
I will say that the trailer is even better than the last one released by BioWare. The other one details the dangers of recruiting the new sets of characters to help the player in their quest, but this one shows how much more epic this particular fight and game really is. Mass Effect was already quite the massive and epic sci-fi space opera when it came out and this sequel seem intent on out-doing that predecessor in every respect from the look of the trailer. It helps that its all classed up by the voice of The West Wing’s President Bartlett also known as Martin Sheen. The trailer even hints at the opening events of the sequel which has been talked about many times at other places. I won’t go into detail about it but lets just say that Shephard and the original Normandy don’t have a nice first-encounter with the sequel’s main antagonists, The Collector.
So, January 26, 2010 should be retitled Mass Effect 2 Day. For some players, it will be just like a holiday as every work must be put down and stop in order for the playing of said game to commence.
Just in from Variety is the news that cable channel AMC has greenlit the pilot for the Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd produced adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s critically-acclaimed and popular zombie comic book series, The Walking Dead. The news in early 2009 that Darabont, Hurd and Kirkman have come to an agreement to pitch the series adaptation to AMC (home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad) was one of the big news for comic book fans and the industry.
The Walking Dead is about a band of survivors in a world which has undergone and succumbed to a zombie apocalypse. Police Officer Rick Grimes leads this band of people in search of a safe haven from the uncounted zombies which now roam the devastated American landscape. Author Robert Kirkman has written just under 70 issues of this on-going series, so far. Cast for the series have changed on a regular basis to illustrate the extreme danger of this new post-apocalyptic landscape. The danger doesn’t just come from the roaming undead but from other survivors as well as rules of civilization and society have crumbled away to be replaced by rules of survival.
The series is known for some exceptional writing with heavy emphasis on character dynamics and interactions. While the series does have zombies in it the highlight of every issue for fans and critics alike is Kirkman’s ability to posit moral situations on the survivors which sometimes doesn’t get the kind of answer we’re used to in our protagonists. I think this is what has drawn Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd to the property. Kirkman has taken the societal commentaries inherent in all the great zombie films and stories and has created a series around it. As one guest commentator for one of the trade paperbacks have said about The Walking Dead, “The series picks up after the end credits have started in a George Romero zombie movie.”
With the pilot now greenlit by AMC the inevitable casting call rumors will start to ramp up. Fans of the series are some of the most loyal and have been talking of dream casting the series for years. I’m sure those dream castings will get brought back out into the light with fans arguing if actors chosen for the role are the right ones or not. The one thing this news doesn’t say is how much will AMC allow in terms of violence shown. The Walking Dead is not a superhero series with over-the-top violence. It’s violence is similar to Romero’s zombie films in that they’re brutal and extremely gory. While I can understand that some of the more extreme scenes in the film could be shortened and inferred, I do hope that AMC will allow for most of the brutality in the series to remain intact since they help in creating the tone for the series.
Now, all that’s left is the waiting game and wonderings of when the pilot will air on AMC.
It has been 25 years since a certain James Cameron introduced the film-going public to the post-apocalyptic world of Judgement Day. While he’s never really fully shown the war-torn future ruled by the machines in the the two films he directed in the Terminator franchise he does show glimpses of it. It’s these glimpses of desperate humans fighting to survive against Skynet and its machine hunter-killing robots which have always intrigued and made its fans salivate at the thought of seeing it realized. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003 tried to show how it all truly began, but again it just hinted at the future battlefield and not the full-blown war. It is now 2009 and the most unlikely filmmaker has finally shown what the future of Judgement Day looks like. McG’s Terminator Salvation succeeds and fails in equal amounts yet has laid the groundwork for the future of the franchise as a war series instead of of its past as installments of what really is one huge chase film.
There are many things which work in Terminator Salvation and one of them happen to be its director McG. A director who is much-maligned for his too campy Charlie’s Angels set of films would’ve been the last name to look to for a restart to the stalled franchise. His direction of this fourth entry in the series was actually very well-done. There’s none of the cartoony and way over-the-top action set-pieces of his Charlie’s Angels past. Instead he moves the film along in a brisk and energetic pace with very little downtime for much introspection. It is this pacing which makes this a good and, at times, an above-average action-film but also serves to make any of the scenes questioning what it is to be human (once again) and machine seem tacked on. The first three films in the series have delved into this theme and question too many times for a fourth attempt make it seem any more relevant than the previous times.
McG went out to make a war entry to the series and to an extent that’s what he did. While there are chases to be had it doesn’t necessarily mean its all about John Connor once again (though the film does make it a point of targeting him again in its own fashion). Terminator Salvation has finally shown what the world looks like after the events of the third film and what had been hinted and teased at in the first two. The world is a desolate place with ruins of landmarks to give the audience a reference point. We see Los Angeles a tumbling and crumbling wreck which looked eerily like something out of the recent Fallout 3 scifi-rpg game. Even San Francisco makes a post-apocalyptic appearance as a major Skynet headquarters. McG achieves this post-apocalyptic look by bleaching out the film’s color palette to the point that browns and greys dominate. He actually achieves to add grittiness to this film which his past films had never shown him having the ability to do. While this film won’t sway people to admiring his skill as a filmmaker it does show some growth. Then again he does have a hold of a film series which is nothing but B-movies elevated through bigger budgets and access to the latest in film FX. If I have any gripe to point out about the action in the film it’s that there’s not enough of it to truly convey a “War Against the Machine” scenario. We get these tantalizing hints, but not something on par of what a fuure war should look.
The budget could be seen on the screen as the film uses a combination of CGI and practical effects to pull off a much more complex robotic army for Skynet. It’s the robots and machines which keeps bringing the audience back each and every time the series releases a new entry. We don’t just have the Human Resistance fighting the typical T-800 or even the more advanced T-1000 or T-X. We get the earlier versions of these human hunting and killing machines. From a brutish and zombie-like T-600 we see in the LA-scenes to newer and bigger specialized Skynet soldiers like the anime-inspired mech Harvester which towers several stories high and literally harvests humans it finds to take back to SKynet’s R&D bases. When the original Terminator does make an appearance it’s both a welcome and a surprise as McG’s technical wizards find a way to bring back the original exactly the way it’s supposed to look. I’m sure the Governator of California would want to have that physique and youth back.
As an action-film Terminator Salvation works well enough when the action appears on the screen. Now as a film that tries to delve into the philosophical trappings of the series it doesn’t so much as fail and sink the film, but almost does which would’ve been a shame. While not the worst in the series in terms of storytelling it does come across as very scattershot in what story it wants to tell. The film actually has three ideas which could’ve been used to make it’s own film. Is the film a story of John Connor and his rise to his prophesized leadership of the Resistance (he’s a leader of a branch of fighters, but not yet of the whole group in this film)? Or is this film about the search and attempt to make sure the person who will be Connor’s father stays alive to allow what transpired in the past to happen (time-travel can be a tricky and confusing thing to comprehend)? Or is Terminator Salvation the story of the new character Marcus Wright and his quest to find out just who, or what he is exactly? It’s all three of those and all three weren’t explored enough to make one care too much for the story being told. There’s great ideas in all three but trying to combine them into one coherent storyline mostly falls flat and uninsipiring for a film trying to be the war movie in the series. For what are war movies mostly but attempts to show inspiration in the face of desperation. There’s very little of that in this film. If the writers had been given a chance to further streamline the story into one major arc then this film would have benefitted greatly in the long run.
With acting very tightly tied-in with the story being told it’s only logical that the performances by the cast rarely go beyond acceptable. Christian Bale’s John Connor is always dour and brooding. He’s almost becoming a typecast for any role that requires for him to be the down man in any party. He does this ably, but he doesn’t bring anything to the role which hasn’t already been explored in past entries. His performance does show hints of mental instability as the weight of being the savior and prophet of the human race may be starting to get to him. The other two pivotal roles in the film have more meat to play around with. Anton Yelchin as the teenage Resistance fighter destined to become John Connor’s father in the past shines in the scenes he’s in as he elevates a bland script with some youthful energy and hints of the adult Kyle Reese fans of the series know so well. Then we arrive on the newest character in the series: Marcus Wright.
Little-known Australian actor Sam Worthington was recommended by James Cameron for the role of Marcus Wright. Like Anton Yelchin’s performance, Worthington’s work in the role of Wright saves the film from mediocrity. While it is not a start-turning performance by any means Worthington does make it difficult not to pay attention to him throughout the film. The man has presence and every scene he is in shows why Cameron himself has faith in being the latest to carry the Terminator torch. The rest of the cast is quite a throwaway in that we never really get to know any of them and invest anything in their well-being.
Terminator Salvation is a very frustrating film in that there’s so much great ideas to mine. The series has always tried to explore such themes as fate, predetermination and human free will. While the third film in the series was quite lacking in memorable action sequences this fourth entry makes a mess of trying to explore these themes. Again, it seems as if the film’s script was rushed into production with very little doctoring and as the production continued forward no one bothered to point out just how average and bland the storyline does sound despite being the most overly complex of the series.
One thing I am sure of is that the one person people thought would be the weakest link in this film instead happens to be its strongest. McG and some inspired acting from two newcomers keep the film from becoming a total failure. Terminator Salvation is an able and, for most of it’s running time, a very good action film with brisk pacing and energy in its action sequences. Enough of these elements keeps the film’s fractured and scattershot of a storyline from sinking the film into total failure. As a summer tentpole action film it delivers on some of what it promises, but it could’ve been more and better. Some would settle on calling this entry in the franchise a failure, but I am always an optimist and a fan of action thus I’ll land on calling this film a successful failure.
Through the Shattered Lens 