Tonight’s episode of Fear Itself features Ethan Embry as Chance Miller, whose run of bad luck gets even worse once he finds himself having to deal with an evil doppelganger of himself. This psychological thriller was directed by noir specialist, John Dahl.
This was one of the episodes of Fear Itself that was filmed in 2008 but wasn’t aired before the show went on hiatus. It was included when the show was released on DVD in 2009.
The year is 1995, and all the cool kids are going to the arcade and playing a virtual reality laser-tag game. Kyle Baxter (Ethan Embry) is one of the best laser-tag players in the country and is on the verge of winning a nationwide contest when he gets taken out by another player, a girl named Jamie (Cassidy Rae, who every teenage male in the ’90s had a crush on at some point). Kyle’s friend, Zach (Chace Quinn), uses his hacking skills to make it appear as if Kyle won anyway. Kyle’s prize is an Evolver, a robot that will allow Kyle and his friends to play the laser-tag game in real life. The only problem is that Evolver takes the idea of winning very seriously. Each time Evolver is defeated, it “evolves.” It learns from its mistakes. It uses new weapons. It refuses to stop until it can say, “Kill confirmed.”
Evolver is a mix of Child’s Play and The Terminator. Evolver eventually evolves to the point where it can say cheesy one-liners before killing someone. When someone tells it that the game is over, Evolver replies, “The game is not over.” The main problem with the film is that Evolver is such a bulky and awkward robot that it’s hard to believe it could actually defeat anyone. The people who are killed by Evolver usually fall victim because they’re too dumb to step aside when Evolver approaches them. The best thing about Evolver is that it does accurately represent how most people played video games in the ’90s. The first day, you would be really excited and you couldn’t wait to play every chance you got. By the third day, you were bored and ready to get back to doing whatever it was you were doing to begin with. Not all games were as exciting as Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.
If the voice of Evolver sounds familiar, that’s because it was supplied by none other than William H. Macy. A year later, Macy would star in Fargo, and he would presumably never have to voice another angry robot again.
When Christy was released last year, it received a lot of attention for featuring Sydney Sweeney as a very unglamorous character.
In the role of real-life boxer Christy Martin, Sweeney spends the first hour of the film as a brunette who doesn’t wear makeup, wears baggy clothing, and has an unflattering haircut. Coming straight from the mining communities of West Virginia, Christy is someone who can flatten a guy with one punch. Of course, for all the attention that Sweeney got for downplaying her looks, she’s a blonde again for the film’s second hour and she never looks quite as bad as the filmmakers would have us believe.
If anyone does truly look bad in this film, it’s Ben Foster. Foster plays James V. Martin, the boxing coach who took Christy under his wing, arranged for her to get signed by Don King (played by Chad Coleman), and basically managed her when she was at the peak of her career. James Martin was also Christy’s horrifically abusive husband, a relentless, cocaine-snorting manipulator who built her up just to tear her down and who is currently in prison for attempting to murder Christy in 2010. When Foster first appeared in the film, I had no idea it was him. I didn’t discover that Foster was playing James until I glanced at the film’s Wikipedia page. Balding, overweight, and speaking in a slurred voice that makes most of his sentences sound like thoughts that died while trying to escape from his brain, Foster is unrecognizable as James. Ben Foster has played a lot of sleazy characters. (I still think his best performance was as the charismatic but sociopathic Charlie in 3:10 to Yuma.) James Martin is definitely one of the worst and the normally handsome Foster is made up to look about as bad as I’ve ever seen him look.
The film follows Christy from her time as a college basketball player through her boxing career. We watch as she becomes the female boxing champion and as she loses it all due to a fight for which she wasn’t properly prepared. We watch as she and James dabble in cocaine. Even more importantly, we watch as Christy struggles to come to terms with her own sexuality. In the film, Christy’s marriage to James is more about convincing herself — and her homophobic mother (Merritt Weaver) — that she’s straight than any actual love that may be shared between the two of them. At one point, Christy taunts an out opponent while giving interviews about how, when she’s not in the ring, she’s a traditional wife who loves to cook and clean. Christy is not only fighting the other boxer. She’s also fighting her own sexual identity.
The film is well-acted by Foster, Weaver, and Sweeney. Sweeney especially does a good job of portraying the anger that lies behind every punch that Christy throws. When Christy hits someone, she’s not just hitting her opponent. She’s also hitting the entire world. Unfortunately, the film itself often falls victim to the biopic cliches that one always seems to find in films about boxers, even ones that are based on true stories. This is especially true during the film’s first half. The second half, which focuses on Christy breaking free from James, is considerably more compelling. Much like last year’s The Smashing Machine, Christy is an uneven film that still leaves you respecting its real-life inspiration.
That Thing You Do! is the story of a one-hit wonder.
In 1964, an aspiring Jazz drummer named Guy (Tom Everett Scott) is a last minute addition to the a local band called the Oneders. (It’s meant to sound like Wonders but almost everyone mispronounces it as O-Needers.) The band’s egotistical leader, James (Jonathon Schaech) has written a slow ballad called That Thing You Do! but when Guy’s drumming causes the band to perform the song at a faster tempo, they end up with a local hit on their hands. That local hit becomes a national hit when The Oneders are signed by Play-Tone Records. First, Mr. White (Tom Hanks), their new manager, officially changes the name to The Wonders. Secondly, he makes sure that every teen in America is dancing to That Thing You Do! Third, he tells Guy to always wear sunglasses. Fourth, he tells James that he will record and perform what Play-Tone tells him to. Guitarist Lenny (Steven Zahn) and the unnamed Bass Player (Ethan Embry) are happy to be along for the ride but James chafes at his lack of artistic freedom. Guy, meanwhile, falls for James’s girlfriend (Liv Tyler, at her loveliest) and dreams of meeting his idol, jazzman Del Paxton (Bill Cobbs).
That Thing You Do! was Tom Hanks’s directorial debut and, with its careful recreation of a bygone era and its collection of authentic sounding early 60s rock on the soundtrack, it was obviously a labor of love. Considering the number of times that the song is played in the movie, it helps that it is a very good song. That Thing You Do! is a catchy tune, one that you can’t help but tap your feet to. At the same time, it also sounds like a one hit wonder. It’s good but not so great as to make you expect much else from The Wonders.
Not surprisingly, Tom Hanks gets great performances from the entire ensemble cast. Johnathon Schaech and Tom Everett Scott have never been better. Liv Tyler is lovely and vulnerable as James’s unappreciated girlfriend. Familiar faces like Peter Scolari, Kevin Pollak, Chris Isaak, and Clint Howard make welcome appearances. Hanks himself is surprisingly intimidating as Mr. White. When he says that the band will cover something the Play-Tone catalogue, it’s obvious that he’s not making a request.
The film is a tribute to being young and to loving music bit it’s also a study in the disillusionment of discovering that everything is ultimately a business. James is frequently an arrogant jerk and he treats his girlfriend terribly but it’s hard not to sympathize with him when he says that he wants to do more than just cover songs from the Play-Tone catalogue. To James and Guy, the Wonders are about self-expression and their love of music. To Mr. White, the Wonders are just another band that came up with one catchy tune and who probably aren’t ever going to be heard from again. That Thing You Do! pays tribute to all of the one-hit wonders out there, the bands who you forget about until you just happen to hear that one song on the radio or in a movie and suddenly, all the memories come flooding back.
Well, Halloween is nearly over and so is Horrorthon. Here’s is our final episode of televised horror for 2020. It’s also the final episode of FreakyLinks!
In this episode, Ethan Embry and the team try to prove that a murder was actually a supernatural occurrence. Their efforts are recorded for a true crime television show. The mockumentary approach is reminiscent of The Blair With Project, which was done by the same people who were behind FreakyLinks. So, there you go!
It’s too bad that there was never a Baywatch Nights/FreakyLinks cross-over.
Oh well. This episode aired on June 22nd, 2001 and it brought to an end the story of Derek Barnes. Enjoy the show, everyone! Happy Halloween!
On tonight’s episode of FreakyLinks, Ethan Embry and the crew investigate real-life adrenaline vampires! Agck!
This episode features appearances from Jeffrey Combs, Dennis Christopher, Paige Moss, and everyone’s favorite, Eric Baflour!
This episode originally aired on June 1st, 2001.
For tonight’s episode of Freakylinks, we have a little something called Still I Rise. It has a zombie theme to it. Towards the end of the episode, Ethan Embry goes a little crazy. (Far crazier then he went on Rex Manning Day….)
(C’mon, you know I was going to have to work in a reference to Rex Manning Day eventually.)
This episode originally aired on January 12th, 2001. And you can watch it below!
On tonight’s episode of FreakyLinks, Derek and the team head down to New Mexico to investigate reports of a tentacle-bearing desert creature! If not for the tentacles, I would say it was probably a chupacabra. Seriously, if you ever see a chupacabra coming at you, run!
(A friend of mine in college was nicknamed Chupacabra, mostly because he was kind of …. odd.)
This episode originally aired on November 3rd, 2000!
Enjoy!
Are there mole people living in the New York subway system?
Watch tonight’s episode of Freakylinks and find out!
This episode originally aired on October 20th, 2000.
Remember Freakylinks?
If you don’t, do not worry. To be honest, I had totally forgotten about it until, six years ago, my friend Janeen mentioned it to me. Freakylinks is a show that aired on Fox back in 2000. It only lasted one season and it was about this guy (played by Ethan Embry) who ran a website called freakylinks.com. To me, that sounds like a porn site but apparently, it was actually a site dedicated to investigating the paranormal.
Freakylinks was produced by the same company that produced The Blair Witch Project. A few months before the show premiered, in order to try to create some Blair Witch-style buzz for the production, the production company set up a website called Freakylinks.com and designed it to look like it was just some ghost hunter’s Geocities-style blog. While the web site got some publicity, it didn’t translate into ratings and Freakylinks was canceled. However, the entire series has been uploaded to YouTube and below you’ll find a pilot!
Prepare to take a trip into the past, to a time when the internet was still a mysterious and powerful thing and people apparently didn’t realize that anyone with time to kill could make a web site.
(I often wonder if the ruins of Geocities is haunted by the ghosts of dead blogs?)
(Let nothing get you down on Rex Manning Day!)
