Here’s the first teaser for the third season of Stranger Things!
Don’t expect to learn anything about what’s actually going to happen during season 3 from this teaser. In fact, the main message of this trailer seems to be, “We’re in production. Get off our freaking back.” The teaser, however, does make sure to remind us that Cary Elwes and Jake Busey will be joining the cast in season 3.
So, all of you Jake Busey fans — rejoice!
(And really, who isn’t a Jake Busey fan?)
Interestingly enough, at one point, I wanted to write a movie specifically for Cary Elwes and Jake Busey, one in which they played tabloid journalists who ended up stranded in a town controlled by a Wurdulak. I really should get back to work on that…
Anyway, enjoy the teaser! The third season of Stranger Things come to Netflix in 2019! Will we once again convince Case Wright to watch and review it for us? Keep visiting the site to find out!
Jack Hammond (Charlie Sheen) was just an innocent clown who worked birthday parties. Then he was mistaken for an outlaw clown and was accused of a crime that he did not commit. When police incompetence led to the only piece of evidence that could exonerate him being tossed out of court, Jack had no choice but to go on the run. Now, he’s in a stolen car, being pursued by not just the cops but also the tabloid media, and he’s got a hostage. Natalie Voss (Kristy Swanson) turns out to be a willing hostage, though. She is the daughter of Dalton Voss (Ray Wise, playing a character who is literally described as being “the Donald Trump of California) and what better way to act out against her father than to fall in love with her kidnapper and help him as he tries to reach the Mexican border?
What’s this?
A good Charlie Sheen movie that was not directed by Oliver Stone or John Milius?
It’s a Christmas miracle!
Actually, it may be misleading to say that The Chase is good.. By most of the standards used to judge whether or not a film qualifies as being good, The Chase fails. There’s no real character development. The plot is as simplistic as a plot can be. A good deal of the movie could be correctly described as stupid. But The Chase has got to be one of the most entertainingly stupid movies ever made. It is about as basic an action comedy as has ever been made. Almost the entire movie takes place on highway, with jokes mixed in with spectacular car crashes and only-in-the-90s cameos from Flea, Anthony Kiedis, and Ron Jeremy. The pace never lets up, Kristy Swanson again shows that she deserved a better film career than she got, and Henry Rollins plays a cop. As for Charlie Sheen, he basically plays the same character that he always plays but at least, when The Chase was made, he was still putting a little effort into it. Maybe because they had already previously worked together in Hot Shots!, Sheen and Swanson have an easy rapport and make even the worse jokes sound passably funny.
The Bride opens where most films about Frankenstein and his monster end.
The Baron (played by fucking Sting, of all people) has agreed to create a bride for his creation, who in this movie is named Viktor and played by Clancy Brown. Jennifer Beals plays the Bride, who is named Eva. Eva looks like a normal, beautiful wielder-turned-dancer so when she first sees Viktor, she screams. Viktor gets upset and starts to trash the laboratory. “Don’t be impertinent!’ snaps the Baron’s assistant (Quentin Crisp). A fire breaks out. Quentin Crisp dies and so does another assistant played by Timothy Spall. The monster escapes. The Baron takes Eva into his household. The Baron is obsessed with controlling Eva, who wants her independence and who has fallen in love with Cary Elwes. When Eva sees a cat, she screams. “You never told me about cats,” she tells the Baron, “I thought it was a tiny lion!”
The rest of the movie is a bewildering collection of cameos from respected thespians forced to recite some of the worst dialogue in film history. Viktor befriends Rinaldo the dwarf (David Rappaport), who tells Viktor about how much he dreams of one day seeing Venice. After Rinaldo is murdered by Alexei Sayle, Viktor swears that he will go to Venice and he will take Eva with him.
(Timothy Spall, Quentin Crisp, and Alexei Sayle are not the only British performers to be strangely miscast in The Bride. Keep an eye out for Phil Daniels, Ken Campbell, and Tony Haygarth, all wasted in small roles.)
The Bride attempts to put a revisionist, feminist spin on the story of Frankenstein but it ultimately just looks like a two hour Duran Duran video, with a guest vocals provided by Sting. The scenes with Clancy Brown and David Rappaport work but otherwise, every important role is miscast. Jennifer Beals is monotonous as the Bride and Sting never comes close to suggesting that he is capable of the type of mad genius that would be necessary to create life. When it comes to the Bride of Frankenstein, stick with the original.
One final note: Both Sting and Phil Daniels also appeared in a much better film from Franc Roddam, Quadrophenia. I recommend seeing Quadrophenia almost as much as I recommend forgetting about The Bride.
(And by strange, I mean dull and kind of pointless.)
This film premiered on Lifetime last Saturday but, as I watched it, it quickly became obvious that it wasn’t originally produced for Lifetime.
For one thing, the film was shot on location in Louisiana. Instead of letting Montreal or Toronto stand in for a generic American city, this film was actually shot on the streets of New Orleans. (Unfortunately, the film also made New Orleans seem kind of boring.)
Secondly, Indiscretion turned out to be one of those films where the soundtrack would suddenly go silent whenever a character said anything stronger than “damn.” It was odd because you would see a character very obviously saying something like, “Fuck you,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear the voice. I guess that was to protect the gentle sensibilities of the viewer but what about people who read lips?
And finally, Indiscretion didn’t feature any of the usual Lifetime actors. Instead, it starred Mira Sorvino as a frustrated wife and Cary Elwes as her politician husband. Sorvino’s real-life husband, Christoper Backus, played the troubled sculptor who has an affair with Sorvino and then ends up stalking her family.
So, no, Indiscretion was clearly made to, at the very least, be released straight to video. It was not meant for commercial television. And yet, somehow, it ended up making a somewhat awkward premiere on Lifetime.
Anyway, Indiscretion starts out well enough. It doesn’t waste any time arranging for Sorvino and Backus to meet at a fund raiser and for them to end up having a passionate affair. Sorvino, of course, claims that it was just a weekend fling and that she loves her husband. Backus refuses to believe her and soon, he’s worming his way into her family. He befriends her husband and even gets to go on a hunting trip with the governor of Louisiana. He also ends up having an affair with Sorvino’s teenage daughter.
(Or, at the very least, he takes some pictures of her, which Sorvino later discovers. It’s a sign of how haphazardly constructed this film is that you’re never quite sure what’s going on with Backus and Sorvino’s daughter. Backus also uses one of those old Polaroid cameras to take pictures. Apparently, troubled artists don’t use digital cameras.)
The problem is that, after the first, artfully-shot sex scene, the film itself slows down to an interminable crawl. It’s as if the film’s director, editor, screenwriter, and producers all forgot that the audience has already seen a hundred movies just like this one. Nothing surprising happens and, unlike the best Lifetime films, Indiscretion never winks at the audience or indirectly acknowledges the clichéd nature of its narrative. The whole thing is just painfully dull and no amount of mood lighting is going to change that. There is a little twist at the end but most viewers will probably be so bored with it all that they probably won’t even notice. That’s just the type of film this is.
If you want to see an entertainingly over-the-top and pulpy film about people having sex in New Orleans, I would suggest checking to see if Zandaleeis still available on YouTube.
I should admit that the title of this post is misleading. While it is true that listed below are 10 of my favorite non-fiction books of 2014, I’ve specifically limited my picks to books that dealt with entertainment, pop culture, and the creative process. With that in mind, here are my 10 favorite non-fiction books of 2014:
Last night, I watched the “Lifetime world premiere” of the 2008 horror film, The Alphabet Killer.
Why Was I Watching It?
Because I was, okay? Don’t judge me!
Actually, I was watching for 2 reasons:
1) Being the kinda morbid girly girl that I am, my love of a good Lifetime movie is almost equalled by my love for reading about unsolved murders. A little while ago, I was going through my copy of Michael Newton’s Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes and I happened to come across the Alphabet Murders. In the early 70s, three young girls were murdered in New York. Each of the girls’ first and last names started with the same letter and each body was found in a town that started with the same letter as the girls’ name. Now, this kinda freaked me out because, if I ever decided to use my mom’s maiden name, then my name would be (Lisa) Marie Marchi. That, of course, would make me a potential victim — especially when you consider that the town of McKinney, Texas is within driving distance. I mean, seriously. File that under things that make you go “Agck!”
2) When I first saw the commercials for the Alphabet Killer (which was advertised as being a “Lifetime world premiere!” even though the film wasn’t originally made for the Lifetime network), I immediately assumed that it had to be one of those terrible Ulli Lommel true crime films. And I was all like, “Really? Ulli Lommel is now a member of the Lifetime family? This, I have to see!” Well, turns out that he’s not and, quite frankly, thank goodness for that. This Alphabet Killer was directed by the director of Wrong Turn, Rob Schmidt.
What’s It About
There’s a serial killer on the loose and fortunately, Detective Eliza Dushku is on the case. Less fortunately, Detective Dushku is already dealing with adult onset schizophrenia…
What Worked
The idea of a schizophrenic detective trying to catch a serial killer is a pretty clever one and director Rob Schmidt did a fairly good job making the audience wonder how much of what we’re watching is a real and how much is just the product of the detective’s psychosis. Eliza Dushku, who kicks ass in general because she was Faith the Vampire Slayer, gives an excellent performance. I had a hard time, at first, believing she was a cop but I did believe her as a schizophrenic and yes, that is meant as a compliment.
As well, the entire cast did a pretty good job, particularly Cary Elwes and Timothy Hutton. Both of them brought some interesting layers of complexity to thinly written characters.
The scenes where the dead would literally confront Eliza Dushku were well done, even though I’ve seen the same scene in countless other horror films.
While I was watching the Alphabet Killer, I had the house to myself because my sister Erin had gone into Arlington for the Rangers game. When I was about halfway through the film (I was watching it off of my DVR), Dallas got hit with the storm of the century. Seriously. It started raining around one in the morning and at 1:10, the power went off. The TV (and the movie) flicked off with a sharp THRACK and the entire house was plunged into darkness. My bedroom was suddenly pitch black and I found myself feeling very vulnerable lying in bed in only my beloved Pirates t-shirt and panties. All I could hear was the sound of rain and hail pounding against the house while somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. After the first flash of lightning briefly illuminated my shadowy bedroom, I started to count. I had barely started to form the word, “Two…” when a deafening explosion of thunder caused not only the house to shake but me to have to catch my breath. Suddenly, I heard a wailing meow and another flash of lightning briefly revealed my cat Doc sitting in my doorway. Stumbling through the darkness, I managed to get Doc and carry him back to my bed with me. I sat there with him, fully knowing that even though I was trying to protect him, he probably thought he was protecting me. (Or, more likely seeing as how he’s a cat, claiming me as his territory.) Suddenly, a terrible thought entered my mind: “Did I remember to lock the front door? Or the back door?” Was I hearing the wind and rain pounding against my house or was I hearing the Alphabet Killer stumbling around downstairs? Finally, after half an hour of this, the lights finally came back on and I could breathe again. I slowly made my way downstairs (Doc, of course, stayed up in my room and went to sleep) and discovered that I had indeed locked all the doors before the storm. So yay me!
Now that I was fully freaked out, I went ahead and watched the rest of the Alphabet Killer. I’m not sure if it was the movie that kept my uneasy or if it was the storm. All I know is that it worked. (The rain, by the way, mysteriously ended as soon as the movie did.)
What Didn’t Work
This is another one of those films where the idea behind it is actually more clever than the way that the idea is actually executed. Once you get passed the idea that Dushku is schizophrenic, you realize that the film itself is actually pretty predictable. If you can identify the killer from the minute he first appears on screen, then you might not be that smart. Just saying.
Needless to say, The Alphabet Killer has next to nothing to do with the actual case. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal because that’s the grindhouse way, right? But in this case, the truth is so interesting that it’s a shame that it was pretty much just shoved over to the side. If there isn’t one already, somebody needs to do one of those hour-long, basic cable documentaries about the Alphabet murders. And Bill Kurtis needs to host it.
“OMG! Just Like Me!” Moments
Honestly, if I was tracking a serial killer, I’d probably do it in much the same way as Eliza Dushku does in this film. By that, I mean I’d probably be way too obsessive for my own good and I’d eventually end up strapped to a table somewhere. Seriously, I just don’t think I’m meant to hunt serial killers.
Lessons Learned
It’s good to be a Bowman and sometimes, storms can actually be scary.
The Bride opens where most films about Frankenstein and his monster end.
Through the Shattered Lens 