Nina (Mimi Rogers) is an art dealer. When she gets her weekly massage, a new masseur shows up, Fitch (Bryan Brown). What follows is a long discussion and a connection as he rubs her body. When asked what it was like to be nude for the entire film, Rogers said it didn’t always feel great. “I thought it would, but nothing I did felt good. I was either straining my neck or laying on a cold metal table. I did that because I thought it was a fascinating script with interesting dialogue. Sort of like My Dinner With Andre with a massage table. Also, it was an opportunity to work with Nicolas Roeg. He waited for me to have my baby so we shot four-and-a-half months after I gave birth. My body was not what it usually is.”
Rogers and Brown are both good in this and if it weren’t for their chemistry and ability to make the dialogue about the meaning of life sound conversational, this would feel like a movie that just wanted to have nudity throughout. Yet it never feels like its exploiting her and instead it feels like you learn so much about both of them. I’d have never watched this Nicholas Roeg movie if it wasn’t for it coming out on blu ray and I’m glad that I did.
The Unearthed Films blu ray of this movie also has a TV edit. You can get it from MVD.
Directed by star Pietro Germi and written by Ennio De Concini based on That Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda, The Facts of Murder starts with a mystery. How did someone have time to find the valuable jewelry in Commendatore Anzaloni’s apartment and get away so quickly? The police, led by Inspector Ciccio Ingravallo (Germi) start to follow Assuntina (Claudia Cardinale), the maid of next-door neighbor Liliana Banducci (Eleonora Rossi Drago), but soon Liliana’s body is found by her cousin Dr. Valdarena (Franco Fabrizi). He removes a letter before the police arrive and hey, why did Liliana change her will last week?
This appears as part of Radiance’s World Noir, along with Witness In the City and I Am Waiting. It’s intriguing to see noir from a country that usually gives his giallo, so this was a great watch.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of The Facts of Murder has a new 4K restoration of the film by L’Immagine Ritrovata at the Cineteca di Bologna, plus a new interview with Pietro Germi expert Mario Sesti, a documentary about Pietro Germi, and a visual essay by Paul A. J. Lewis on the presence of noir trends in Italian cinema and the evolution of the genre. You can get the film from MVD.
Blackhat made $19.7 million at the box office against a budget of $70 million, which makes it a bomb, but does how many people came to see a movie on initial release mean it’s a bad movie? Nope.
When a nuclear plant in Hong Kong goes into meltdown and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gets hacked, it turns out that Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) of the People’s Liberation Army cyberwarfare unit designed the code behind both systems. He asks that his college roommate, Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), be let out of prison to stop the hacker before they further destabilize several companies and governments. This includes a plan to sabotage a large dam and destroy several major tin mines in Malaysia, with the hacker buying into different futures that will profit from these attacks.
What emerges is a mix between art film and Hollywood action; what’s strange is that no person who spends hours typing on a computer — trust me, I know — looks as good as Hemsworth. But you know, only Michael Mann could direct a scene about hacking a PDF into obtaining a password and making it look that sexy and vibrant. That takes an artistic skill that so few directors lack.
Viola Davis, who plays FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett, and Holt McCallany, who is Deputy United States Marshal Jessup, are both really good in this, but they’re both always the best parts of any film they appear in.
I kind of like how by the end of this movie, it’s basically Hathaway and Dawai’s sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei) against the hackers and the world, having only each other to depend on.
The new release from Arrow also has a director’s cut. The changes were explained on the site Kevrania and they include:
Added scenes:
A brief scene of a cargo ship being denied entry into Rotterdam
An introduction to FBI Agent Carol Barrett and the Chicago exchange IT Director Jeff Robichaud.
Nicholas Hathaway, Mark Jessup and Chen Lien are tailed upon arriving in Hong Kong and subsequently lose the tail.
Removed scenes:
Hathaway is asked by the warden about hacking the prison accounting network. When he refuses to do that, he is put into solitary.
Barrett and Chen realize they should be searching for soy sellers instead of soy buyers.
A nuclear power plant worker explains what is happening to the plant.
Hathaway changing the meet location.
It’s great that Arrow listened to fans and added the director’s cut, which is part of the Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Blackhat. It also has the US and international versions of the film, new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry, interviews with cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, behind the scenes features, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Graves. You can get it from MVD. There’s also a blu ray version.
Directed by Yuzo Kawashima and written by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba), this is the story of the Maeda family. They live in a small apartment and are always ready to hide just how much money they have, all so they can continue the plans of their father figure, ex-naval officer Tokizo (Yunosuke Ito).
Tomoko (Yūko Hamada) is sleeping with a rich author, but is always asking for more money, always for the family. Minoru (Manamitsu Kawabata) works at a music talent agency and is stealing money. As for where it all goes, Tokizo is investing in a new Japanese military while Minoru keeps spending it all on Yukie (Ayako Wakao) who is going to figure all of this out because she’s the accountant at the same company. But the joke is on them, because Yukie has been sleeping with more than one man, all so she can have her own hotel.
Now the author can evict them, the family can sell everything they’ve bought and another scam will have to be created. At least this isn’t the same poverty they dealt with at the end of the war. Somehow, this is all within an apartment.
The Radiance Films blu ray release of Elegant Beast has a new 4K restoration, an interview with film critic Toshiaki Sato, an appreciation by filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda, a visual essay by critic Tom Mes on post-war architecture in Japanese cinema and a trailer, all with a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Midori Suiren. You can get this from MVD.
Delight Scottsdale (Kendra Rainey-King, who also wrote this movie; she’s written more than fifty books as well as another movie, Knee Deep) lost her mother while she was being born and has gone through foster homes into a life on her own, struggling every step of the way, seeking a family of her own.
Nearly all of Rainey-King’s books seemingly have a plus sized girl overcoming the odds and becoming a confident big queen by the end. It’s right there in the intro to all of her novels — including The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice which is read by one of the characters in the film, which is wild because it’s product placement for an author’s book in the middle of said author’s auteur project and I have never seen a thing like this in my life — like the sales copy for this story, which says, “Delight isn’t your normal plus size girl. She is a shy girl from Texas who came to college with a dollar and a dream, until she meets the best man possible, Ashton, who opens all of the right doors for her, and her legs.”
Damn, girl.
More than just booty call on Christmas — I mean, do it, Santa is resetting the list — Delight is in love with Ashton (Draper Wynston) who ends up being an African King whose mother doesn’t want anything to do with the new American in his life.
Somehow, it seems simple, but this movie is two hours and twenty-five minutes long, complete with call and response squads of SSBBW dancers, some wearing gold masks. It’s like Crash in that this has a huge cast and intertwining tales and man, it was a movie I couldn’t stop watching even when I paused it and realized there were ninety minutes remaining when I was certain that there couldn’t be anything else.
This movie is very uplifting and also filled with love scenes with songs playing in them with titles like “Cum Here” by Honey Banks, “Picture Yo Body” by 3 Piece, “Roll Me Up” by Fat Pimp and “Touch It” by DSVN. Judging by the credits, this has a cast of thousands in it.
Obviously, I’m ready for everything else that director Lakisha Avery Stewart and Kendra Rainey-King make. This is not a Christmas movie other than one scene, but it was a gift to me.
THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K Ultra HD is available at Best Buy.
The series has made more that $3.34 billion dollars worldwide on a $401 million dollar budget. When these movies came out, there was nothing bigger. I’m not certain we have anything like these any longer that draw a teen and female audience to theaters. A reboot has been talked about but even with the 15th anniversary here, there’s no news.
There is this set which includes all five movies — Twilight, New Moon, Eclipseand Breaking Dawn Part 1and Part 2 — and wow, its packed with gorgeous SteelBook® packaging and so many extras, including a 6-part The Making of The Twilight Saga documentary.
Want some extras from our site?
Here’s the podcast we did years ago on the first movie:
Did you ever know I went to Forks?
“In the state of Washington, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there’s a small town named Forks. Population, 3,120 people. This is where I’m moving.” That’s what Bella Swan said when her mother hooked up with a minor league baseball pitcher and she ended up going across the country to live with her dad. As Bella prepared to move in, she felt only despair and a marked lack of joy. I completely understand how she felt and I was only traveling by car and ferry to see the town that the Twilight books and movies were based in.
Here’s something I learned as I was researching my trip — after I took it, mind you. While Twilight and its sequels are set in the town, not a single scene was filmed there. Nope, most of the movies were filmed in Oregon and some parts of Washington. Not in Forks. Zillow.com even called the Forks Chamber of Commerce to verify this and learned that yes, not one scene was shot in the town.
That’s probably because the location is very remote. And Washington state doesn’t make it easy for people to film there, with no tax breaks or incentives, which is why the filmmakers mostly shot in Oregon, Vancouver and Louisiana.
But Sam, tell us about Forks.
You got it.
Forks is located in Clallam County in the Olympic Peninsula and was incorporated on August 28, 1945. It’s a small town — around 3,500 people — and gets its name because it is quite literally near the forks in the Quillayute, Bogachiel, Calawah, and Sol Duc rivers.
Prior to what the internet told me was the town’s boom in tourism — more of that later — most people in the town are employed by the two jails and from sport fishing.
So you may wonder, how did I find myself on a ferry bound for the home of Edward, Bella and Jacob? Well, I love my wife. And I indulge her. And her aunt had suggested this. And soon, we’d be enjoying “27 minutes of our lives that we’d never get back,” to quote Becca.
First off, the Forks High School looks nothing like the place where Edward saved Bella from that car, nor where they were lab partners. No, instead it’s a small school filled with teens that scowl instead of glow. After all, Twilight’s author Stephenie Meyer never visited Forks when writing any of the books.
Across the street, we noticed Leppell’s Flowers & Gifts, which was run by a nice-seeming older couple. As they were working on the concrete in front, we had to head around the back and go through an alley and a hidden door to find the store that some call Twilight Central. That’s when we noticed this tour bus!
We didn’t look into the tour and after spending just a bit of time looking at the scrapbook supplies, we bid the store farewell. Perhaps it’s just as well, as this amazing Yelp review did the store no favors.
We drove through the town some more, saw Bella’s truck (which probably wasn’t the one used in the movie), went in two more Twilight themed gift shops and then headed out of town to Thriftway/Forks Outfitters. For being in the midst of some of the greatest coffee in the world, we had the best coffee drinks of our entire trip at their cafe! And get this — a Twilight menu! That’s how you do business!
They had used Twilight movies and an actual rental store within this general store that seems to answer every need of the folks in Forks. Even better, their deli offers some choices for the discriminating Twilight fan, made of course with high quality Kretschmar deli meats and cheeses:
Why doesn’t Jacob get a panini? Where is Bella’s BLT? I have so many questions and once you’re in Forks, you never get any answers.
At least Becca got this lighter, which will keep her smoking for years after she has planned to quit:
On the way out of town and back to the ferry, an overall three-hour-plus trip, we stopped to get gas and caffeine. That’s when I met Forks, WA local favorite Barry, who had on no shirt and a jacket as he careened around the store, screaming at people that he was about to go to the casino (One Eyed Jacks?) and do some drugs. After that, he followed an employee outside who was about to cry and told her he was sorry about her sister, but some people have it coming. Barry seemed like a real pip.
Goodbye, Forks! Thank you for showing us the place that inspired a movie that no one has really cared about since 2012. I kid — most of the people in town seemed genuinely nice and totally not about to kill us as we wandered their theme stores, ala Captain Spaulding from House of 1000 Corpses.
Want to learn more about Forks? Sure you do! Check out their official site!
Don’t forget to buy THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K Ultra HD at Best Buy.
Bella (Kristen Stewart), who has just given birth, is now a vampire. After Edward (Robert Pattinson) helps her satisfy her initial thirst, she meets their Renesmee. The rest of the Cullens and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) stay nearby and when he acts possessive toward her daughter, Bella argues with him and learns that he has imprinted on her. He goes even further by transforming into a wolf in front of her father (Billy Burke) and telling him that she’s a vampire.
Irina (Maggie Grace) believes that Renesmee is an Immortal child, a vampire that can’t be controlled and who can kill many people. The Volturi have outlawed these beings and are coming to destroy her. We see a brutal fight in which nearly everyone dies but it’s just a vision from Alice (Ashley Greene) to Aro (Michael Sheen), who still wants the battle. Then the Cullens reveal another half-human, half-vampire.
Oh yeah — somehow Bella has learned how to shield her thoughts from Edward because you know, this is totally an X-Men movie. She lets her defenses down and they reveal their love for one another. Both are happy that Renesmee will have Jacob to protect her.
I have reached the end of the Twilight Saga. Can I join the Volturi now?
As part of THE TWILIGHT SAGA 15th Anniversary SteelBook® Collection 4K, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 has extras like a commentary track by Bill Condon, another part of the series-length documentary, extended scenes and a music video for Green Day’s “The Forgotten.” Get this set exclusively from Best Buy.
We live in a world where David DeCoteau made a Christmas movie with Tara Reid. She plays Alison, who dated King Charles (Ingo Rademacher) in college without ever knowing he was royalty. One night, the king’s assistant Rosa (Mira Furlan) forced her to break up with him and he never knew that they had a daughter, Lily (Haley Pullos), together. He had an arranged marriage and is now a widower.
Seventeen years later. Charles is in the U.S. on business and wants to see Allison, even meeting her former roommate Sam (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) for help.
Except…this isn’t a Christmas movie. It doesn’t have a big dance. It’s just…kind of like a fairy tale movie. But at least the twist wasn’t as unforeseeable as Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, which surprised me with a scene where a sasquatch watches a guy take a one-handed shower. Ah, you know, if that’s what you like, it’s what you like. I’ve found myself watching so many DeCoteau Christmas movies, much less DeCoteau movies and I recommend Santa’s Summer House.
Roger Watkins was born in Binghamton, New York and graduated from Oneonta State College in with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He served as an apprentice for Freddie Francis, Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray. He wrote Mystique for Roberta Findlay and as Richard Mahler, he made Her Name Was Lisa, Midnight Heat, Corruption and American Babylon, movies that were porn but had no interest in getting anyone turned on.
He’s probably best known for his 1973 movie The Last House On Dead End Street, which is also knwon as At the Hour of Our Death, The Fun House and The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. It’s charitably one of the most mentally deranged movies I’ve seen and I say that with respect. For years, because the movie was made with no real names, rumors were spread that it was a snuff film. In truth, it’s a $3,000 down and dirty movie that really had an $800 budget because Watkins spent most of the money on drugs.
It took until 1989 when Chas Balun revealed that Watkins made the movie. In 2000, Watkins posted on the internet that it was really him and the film was released. The full 175-minute version seems lost forever, even if the story of a Chicago riot and fire destroying the print seems as true as the story that there’s a real murder in the film.
On the 2002 DVD release of the movie, Black Snow and several other Watkins short films appeared. I love that he did commentary over this, calling it “a piece of shit” and that it proved just how easy it was to make avant-garde bullshit. Then again, after he told Nicholas Ray that, the director told him, “Maybe it’s easy for you, Roger.”
It’s basically people walking through the snow and showing their darkness, which must have some kind of message behind it. Except Watkins laughs through the whole thing, which is so strange to me, as I assumed that he was as dark as he is in The Last House On Dead End Street and not someone having fun rewatching a college project.
In 2015, Vinegar Syndrome claimed that they were making a perfect version of The Last House but that seems like it’s never going to happen. The uncut version of the movie is hidden on their release of Corruption, so there’s that.
My wife has started doing craft shows selling dog bandanas. Check her work on Instagram. Over the last few months, we’ve been doing a lot of Christmas craft fairs. Other than the demons, I can say from a first-person perspective that Christmas Craft Fair Massacre is the most realistic and truthful movie about craft fairs ever committed to film. Or digital video.
Max Raven and Bando Glutz, well, in the words of Judith Priest, I can neither confirm nor deny that they are also Bret McCormick.
Houston’s Central High School was built on a Native American burial ground — I live next to the second largest one in the eastern part of the country — which means it has lured devil worshippers there, like Principal Mortimer Shade (Tytus Berry), to find the one pure soul — Julie Purebred (Rebecca Bills) — with the help of the mask-wearing Ned (Max Raven). He’s also struggling against the lady who runs the mall, Megara Pendragon (Victoria Chaney), who wants her soul as well.
So yes, this movie may feel like it’s been shot on phones and has long talking sequences that were edited together to make it seem like everyone was in the same room. Who cares? It also has a priest, a shaman, someone who may be the director as well and a nice lady all work together to drop a telekinetic nuke on the craft fair, saving the world and our souls.
I have sat in these fairs and stared at the clock for what seems like days upon days and only ten minutes has moved and maybe I don’t want to be there, but I really love my wife and will do anything for her. But if I could drop a mind bomb on the Monongahela Y before sitting there again for eight hours while someone next to me super hard sells fiberfill pillows and I’ve heard their lines hundreds of times, man, I would drop a bomb that would give Oppenheimer a boner from beyond the grave.
Every review that doesn’t understand this movie was written a person without any holiday spirit.
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