I am legally required to tell you that “I was invited to a pre-release screening of The Devil Inside by Paramount”, which is how I’m able to review it before it’s technically released in theaters. Good thing too, otherwise you might actually have gone to see it.

I am not legally required to tell you that I actually watched the movie as research for the story I’ve been working on about Demons and Demonslayers, called Evil Looks Good.

I feel ethically required to tell you that the movie is a joke, and it actually makes The Blair Witch Project look good.

Review of The Devil Inside

Believe me, before seeing The Devil Inside, you’ll want to get a few spirits into your own body. I recommend Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey. One quart should be sufficient.

First of all, for a movie about demonic possession, it’s about as frightening as tepid queso dip. Here’s a hint to producers wanting to make a horror movie: if you feel the need to have something jump out (be it person, car, dog, cat, bird or whatever) to keep the suspense up… guess what? Your writing sucks. Try adding suspense to your script, and you won’t have to rely on stuff-jumping-out-at-you tactics as a crutch for your lame writing.

Also, is there some law that requires indie films to be shot as a “documentary”? Sure it worked great for Trollhunter, but no one fell for that bullshit with The Blair Witch Project, and no one’s falling for it with The Devil Inside. This story would have been much, much scarier if it were scripted, filmed and cut together like a regular horror film, using the exact same resources. Remember, there’s not much difference between a “documentary” and a “mockumentary”.

The heart of the story was not bad, but parts of the story were so bad that they were able to actually detract from the movie and scream “SCRIPTED”. For example, why did the cameraman follow the priest to a baptism which had NOTHING to do with the plot of the movie? Ah, that’s right, otherwise we would have missed an [IMPORTANT PLOT POINT]. Wow. Good thing the cameraman was there, or the screenplay writer(s) would have had to write that plot info into the script some other way. Who has time for that?

Why did a mom have to move her daughter to the basement of the house before calling the exorcists? Guess her daughter’s bedroom had too much lighting and not enough grungy textures and peeling paint in it for an exorcism. No, I’m not kidding. Moved her demonically-possessed daughter to a bed in middle of the fucking basement. Wow, good thing, because that dingy, poorly-lit basement was much creepier than any kid’s bedroom.

And the ending? The audience laughed out loud. And I heard several people actually say out loud: “Oh no they did-int!” and “Aw, hell no!” and there was even one “That’s it? Really? You gotta be shittin’ me!”  Wish I were kidding. It was the cheapest, “We’re out of time, so let’s wrap this up! Cut! Print! Where’s the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey?” that I’ve ever seen. And the end credits were an exercise (pun intended) in patience, crawling across the screen slower than the credits in Pray For Daylight, and that had to be a challenge.

This Review of The Devil Inside Is Not, I Repeat, NOT Sanctioned By The Catholic Church

So much for the review. The movie sucked. But what I really want to talk about is the marketing genius of the promotional/street team who were on hand to introduce the movie The Devil Inside, because they were far, far more intelligent than the screenplay writers.

Just before the film started, three prim, young people stood up in front of the audience and made an announcement. A clean-cut kid dressed as a priest, wearing a banded collar and flanked by two Polly-pureheart-puritan girls. He produced a notecard, and in a head-down, self-conscious monotone, (soliciting some “louder” and “we can’t hear you” responses from the audience) he read off some gibberish about how he did not condone the film, and he would be available for discussion after the film.

Now these three were even more fake than film itself, if that were possible. He never said he was a priest, but that was obvious. No priests are that young, and they aren’t shy in front of crowds. They introduce themselves by name, and by religious branch, including the location of their place of worship. They know to project their voice. And they don’t read off notecards.

And the Polly Purehearts? They ain’t that pure. I checked.

But, the very idea of having people dressed as religious authority stand up in front of the entire theater audience and tell them that they DID NOT CONDONE your decision to watch the movie? That they did not endorse the movie content?

Sheer marketing genius? Definitely. But I can do better.

Here’s a Million Dollar Idea:

If you want people to remember your movie, you should have “plants” in the audience – members of the street team disguised as regular theater patrons, who scream, puke, and/or pass out at strategic moments during the film. I could have slept through The Devil Inside, but if someone near me barfed or passed out? Now there’s something to blog about!

Remember, you heard it here first. Drop me a thank-you if this idea works out for you.

And don’t waste your time with The Devil Inside. If you want to see a real horror movie, check out The Thing remake instead.

Like the film Snakes On A Plane, you should know what you’re getting into when you buy a ticket for a movie with a title like Hobo With A Shotgun. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite the case.

As someone who fondly remembers Rutger Hauer from his action-film heyday in the 80′s between Blade Runner and Blind Fury, I was saddened to see him reduced to a homeless old man. Furthermore I was warned that the movie was both loaded with preposterously violent content and bad writing, so I thought I was well prepared. I went in expecting to write this film off as one that you could guess your own review before you even saw it, then turn off your mind and go along for the ride.

I was wrong.

About halfway through the film, I realized that it wasn’t just the campy, schlock-horror gorefest I’d expected. The makers of Hobo With A Shotgun seem to be trying for some kind of retro, “bad” cult-movie status, like Chopping Mall or Jack Frost. Or taken to extremes in Asian films like Tokyo Gore Police or Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. This is a different formula than Snakes on a Plane. These movies have more than just a zany concept, they embrace their own bad scripts, overacting and overuse of low-quality FX, while still managing to entertain. They transcend the standards of normal movies and somehow become “good”.

Like I said, it took me half the movie just to recalibrate my expectations. Once I understood the formula, I tried to tune out the bad parts and enjoy the movie for what it was.

It didn’t work.

Just because I understand what recipe the chef was “aiming for” doesn’t mean I like the way it tastes. There’s just too much unnecessary depravity in Hobo With A Shotgun; the kind of 13-year-old writing I’d expect to see in a Quentin Tarantino film:

• A man dressed as Santa Claus jacking off in his car while watching little kids in a playground.
• A guy who gives homeless people money if he can videotape them getting beat up and chewing glass.
• Topless girls laughing as they beat a man hung upside down like a pinata.
• Feeding a girl’s hand into a lawnmower. Slowly.
• Pimps playing poker for crying girls strung up from the ceiling like bloody cattle.
• A stripper dancing in a shower of blood that spews from the neck of a recently decapitated man.
• A school bus full of kids torched with a flamethrower.

Seriously, if any town was this bad, you’d just leave. And this list just scratches the surface of sick, depraved crimes committed in the sick, depraved town. But fear not! All of this evil is about to be avenged by…?

You guessed it. A Hobo With A Shotgun.

I can tell you that Rutger Hauer is the only believable character in this film, and his acting is very good, even when straddled with cheesy lines like this:

Hooker with a heart of gold: “You can’t solve every problem with a shotgun.”

Hobo with a shotgun: “It’s all I know.”

The rest of the characters are  stereotypes: the corrupt cop, the sociopathic bad guy, the hooker with a heart of gold. The  low-budget, real-world FX were a refreshing break from years of watching CG FX.

The target market for Hobo With A Shotgun is clearly 13-year old boys with anger management issues. They would LOVE this film. But they can’t (and shouldn’t) be allowed to watch it. If you are over 18 and you enjoy Rob Zombie movies and you are willing to explore the depths of human depravity, then you can probably enjoy Hobo With A Shotgun.

If there was an editor on hand to cut the bad ideas and bad dialog (easily half the movie) Hobo With A Shotgun could have been an enjoyable “Death Wish” derivative. But it seems the writers/producers were intent on trading fame for infamy.

The breaking of my Dark Fiction virginity - Dark Forces #1 - The Game by Les Logan

Early Books That Inspired My Path Into Dark Fiction

Someone recently asked me what books I read while growing up that influenced me to write the kind of stories I do. I was a fairly voracious reader in middle/high school, and fully capable of devouring one complete paperback book per day. (It was a long bus ride to school and back.) I was also lucky to have parents who valued reading, and although money was tight, books were considered a necessary expense, like food and clothing.

Much of my early reading was non-fiction, but filled with elements of horror: Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle, The Loch Ness Monsters, Witchcraft, Aliens and my favorite subject – Sharks. I decided after seeing the movie Jaws and reading the story, I decided I was going to become an oceanographer, although I didn’t even know what an oceanographer was. But I knew they got to hang out with sharks. Cool.

My taste in fiction took a while to gel. I enjoyed the Encyclopedia Brown series of mystery books, and I have fond memories of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I remember reading a Hardy Boys adventure and thinking it was utterly lame. Ditto for Nancy Drew. Ugh.I don’t recall why I read the first 35 volumes of  the Trixie Belden series of mystery books, but I can safely say that Trixie Belden was my first fictional love.

I latched onto a mystery-adventure series called Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators, the first of which was The Secret of Terror Castle. A cool cover led me to read A Clockwork Orange at far too young an age to appreciate it. And I enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings when the only people who read such things were the social outcasts who played Dungeons and Dragons.

Most of the fiction I read was dark, but it was all mystery or fantasy.  The very first book I can recall that I would classify as horror or dark fiction would be the first in the Dark Forces series of books, The Game by Les Logan. I hadn’t even finished the book and was looking forward to the next in the series. No doubt if I read any of the Dark Forces books today, I’d find them filled with enough cheese to keep a Taco Bell in business for a month.

I quickly graduated to modern horror classics by Stephen King and Clive Barker. Reading Alan Dean Foster’s Alien late at night in bed with a flashlight was a bad idea. Soon, I found myself branching into older horror classics by authors like Edgar Allen Poe and my all-time favorite horror author, H.P.Lovecraft. And it wouldn’t be until years later that I decided to write dark fiction myself (a blog post for another day) but these are the roots of my love affair with horror, paranormal and occult fiction.

How about you? Any early books, movies or inspirations that set you on the author’s path you find yourself on? Drop your experiences in the comments below.

Take some Ninjas. Add some Aliens. Plot? We don’t need no stinkin’ plot! THEY FIGHT! That’s the plot.

Some wire stunts, fake blood, lots of body parts, a dash of tentacle porn, and you get Alien vs Ninja:

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Seriously, would *you* write a bad review about these girls?

Can Hot Chick Fight Scenes Triumph Over An Abysmally Dark, Female-Unfriendly Plot?

Full Disclosure: I liked the movie Sucker Punch before I saw it in the theater. Here’s the invitation I sent to my friends to catch the release last weekend:

Sucker Punch is out, and if you don’t want to see it then you are gay. And I don’t mean “gay” as a derogatory term, I mean gay as in homosexual. And even then, you should still want to see it.

The preview for Sucker Punch was completely accurate. So if you saw it, you should have a good idea of what you’re getting into: hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers.

Sells itself, eh?

Needed: Fanboy Fan Reviews

Unfortunately, the opening weekend of Sucker Punch turned into open season on writer/director/producer Zach Snyder. Making fun of Sucker Punch turned into a pissing-contest-media-frenzy that I haven’t seen since Gigli was released. Steven Rea from the Philadelphia Inquirer called Sucker Punch “hands-down the most nightmarishly awful film of the year.” Ty Burr at the Boston Globe called it “Inception for dummies.” Steven Zeitchik at the LA Times highlighted the bad reviews, which he suggested were reaching ”critical mass.”

Funny thing was, many of the reviewers spent so much time sensationalizing the violence and writing clever derogatory remarks that they forgot to actually review the movie. Many reviews I read dismissed anything good about the film by attaching the words “teen” or “fanboy.”

Guess what? Teens and fanboys go to see movies too. Lots of them, in fact. So do fangirls, so maybe it’s time we dropped the gender and just called them what they are: fans. To say that fans will like the movie isn’t much of a review, is it? In fact, for a reviewer to say that fans will like the movie and that they don’t like it tells us more about the movie reviewers than the movie they were supposed to be reviewing.

I ignored them and saw Sucker Punch anyway. Truth is, the film wasn’t actually as bad as the professionals insisted it was. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t movie-of-the-year by any stretch of the imagination, but users are currently rating it 6.8 on imdb.com and 6.6 on metacritic which doesn’t sound “nightmarishly awful” to me. It was also the #2 film over the weekend (coming in just behind Diary of a Wimpy Kid) pulling in 19 million dollars.

So in my continuing quest for un-professionalism, I’m going to give you a real movie review. Unlike the professionals, I’m going to tell you what actually punches and what actually sucks about Sucker Punch.

What Punches about Sucker Punch

Epicness

As far as hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers goes, Sucker Punch delivers. The movie was written, directed and produced by Zach Snyder, who also directed Watchmen and the ab-laden bloodfest/masterpiece 300. All the good things about the movie 300 are here in Sucker Punch, just replace Washboard-Spartan-Abs with Glittery-Lolita-Eyes.

The costumes, lighting, and special effects were all well done. Like 300, Sucker Punch has a preposterous number of over-the-top fight scenes, but they were so grand, so epic, and so well choreographed/filmed/edited that I didn’t get bored watching them. Sucker Punch’s biggest asset is that Zach Snyder knows how to move the camera through a scene. What to show and how to show it. What to leave out and how to leave it out. His taste in music isn’t bad either.

And seriously, when have you EVER seen a dragon dog-fighting a WWII bomber in a castle courtyard filled with orcs?

Flesh and Blood = Makeup To Cover A Bad Plot

Under the hood, Sucker Punch might actually be more complicated remake of 300 – a series of epic, flesh-revealing fight scenes barely held together by a hint of a plot that simply won’t stand up to any analysis. Not that this is a bad thing, because there’s nothing worse than epic action scenes crowded out by an overbearing (and bad) plot or contrived dialog. Zach Snyder tries to cover his ailing plot with a thick layer of flesh, blood and CG.

Despite a weak plot, Sucker Punch has some clever plot devices. The opening montage sets the audience up with a lot of story in a very short period of time, and all without using a word of dialog. The same technique was used at the start of Watchmen. The feeling is more akin to a music video than a movie. Also, the multiple levels of reality layering Baby Doll’s world (similar to the recent movie Inception) were refreshing and well filmed, complete with color and costume changes to help the audience process how far down we’ve gone into Baby Doll’s abstract fantasy/reality.

Non-Hollywood Ending

I won’t ruin the ending here, but I can say that the twist at the ending of Sucker Punch was a surprise. It actually takes the standard Hollywood formula ending, and gives it the finger. This alone would give movie reviewers enough reason to hate it.

Zack Snyder deserves kudos for having the balls to try this ending, although there were lots of ways this movie could have ended that would have been more satisfying.

What Sucks About Sucker Punch

When Cool becomes Too Kewl

When movies try too hard to be cool, they generally aren’t. Sucker Punch isn’t as pretentious as a Quentin Tarantino film, but it does try really hard to be kewl, which is it’s biggest failing, and no doubt causes reviewers to drop the derogatory version of the word “fanboy.” Much of the pretentiousness in Sucker Punch comes not from bad acting, but a script full of contrived situations that boggle the mind without a hint of an explanation in sight. Who the hell is the Wise Man helping out Baby Doll, and why? Where did Baby Doll’s multiple layers of reality come from? How did so many smoking-hot and non-psychotic chicks end up in an insane asylum together?

And “Baby Doll”? Seriously? The protagonist’s name is “Baby Doll”? Wow. Objectify much?

When Dark becomes Too Dark

Many reviewers called Sucker Punch on its high volume of violence against women, and I have to agree. Good stories need conflict, so it’s common to set up a bad situation for our protagonist to overcome, but Sucker Punch goes too far. There were very few moments that women weren’t being attacked, controlled (by men) or forced to do things against their will (by men).

Speaking of which, did we have to have so many near-rape scenes? And girls being forced to dance and prostitute themselves? Like things weren’t bad enough for them? Despite a PG-13 rating (???) and NO sex scenes or nudity, Sucker Punch still managed to go too far. Parts of the movie are hard to watch, especially the opening montage. And shooting innocent girls in the head just to scare the other girls into submission isn’t funny, or cool, or a necessary part of any movie.

Resolutionlessness

Some wrongs are so bad, they just can’t be righted. Sometimes the story is pushed to such a dark place, there’s no ending that will gratify the audience. Such is the case in Sucker Punch. Did Zach Snyder realize this? Is this why he opted for the anti-Hollywood ending? Did Baby Doll realize this? Is this why she chose the way she did at the end of the movie?

I’m torn about the ending myself. While I’m pleased and impressed that the movie didn’t cop out with some kind of Happily-Ever-After ending, pieces of the story were left hanging. For example, Baby Doll’s evil stepfather never got his due. And there were other ways Baby Doll’s character arc could have resolved that would have been gratifying without resorting to a Disney ending.

And the voice-over at the very end of the movie is just plain silly. People in the audience laughed out loud. Read for yourself:

Who honors those we love for the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us. And at the same time, things that will never die. Who teaches us whats real, and how to laugh at lies. Who decides why we live, and what we’ll die to defend. Who trains us, and who holds the key to set us free. It’s you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!

From imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/quotes?qt=qt1458130

Executive Summary Review

The flashy fight scenes and revealing outfits in Sucker Punch will amaze in a good way, and the violence against women will amaze in a bad way. Whether you’ll like Sucker Punch (or any movie for that matter) depends on whether the positives outweigh the negatives for you.

If you are able to see the (lame) plot as a device to connect (awesome) fight scenes together, you might forgive Zach Snyder and enjoy the show. If not, then the movie simply won’t be able to raise itself out of its own darkness, and you’ll write it off as a “fanboy’s wet dream” like the professional reviewers did. The ending won’t be the cherry on top, (unless you are sick of Hollywood Happy Endings) although it might just be the nail in Sucker Punch’s coffin for you.

Overall, I liked Sucker Punch more than I liked Season of the Witch, and Faster, two movies that weren’t bad at all. I agree that the situations were a bit childish, and the plot was beyond contrived. But with a little eye-rolling and properly placed restroom breaks, you’ll get more than your fair share of hot chicks in skimpy outfits and glittery make-up kicking ass against dragons, monsters, robots, and steampunk nazi stormtroopers, which is exactly what the trailer of the movie promised. It’s also where Zach Snyder shines. Perhaps someday he’ll realize he should hire a real writer, or switch to making music videos.

Occult Thriller Season of the Witch a decent start to the 2011 movie season.

Does Nicolas Cage ever take a break?  I mean, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was only a couple months ago, and Drive Angry is only a couple months away, and this weekend Season of the Witch is released. Take a look at Nicolas Cage’s filmography on IMDB. Talk about busy.

And why do people rip on his acting? He doesn’t actually act, you know. He’s made a career of being himself on camera since I first remember seeing him in Raising Arizona, waaaay back in 1987.

Season of the Witch casts Cage as Behmen, a Knight of the Crusades who suddenly realizes that killing innocents in the name of God is not the path for him. Ron Perlman is Felson, his good friend and comrade-in-arms. Together, they desert the crusades and go off on their own, only to find a village with a witch problem.

The writing in Season of the Witch was good. A simple plot, but it keeps you guessing about who the bad person really is and what’s really going on. Reminded me of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Not as much sorcery and witchcraft as I would have expected, and the ending had a layer of cheese on it. Although the ending wasn’t a happy one, it also wasn’t disappointing. But the accents were. I don’t know how a New York cabbie got teleported back to Medieval England, but it did make sense that he was their guide.

The filming is gritty and dark, but not quite as dark as the Underworld series. (Could anything be darker than the Underworld series?) Score and soundtrack were good, and at the theater I saw it, the sound was damned loud. Guess I’d rather have the sound too loud than too quiet.

Overall, I rated Season of the Witch a 7 of 10 on IMDB.

Twenty-four years since Raising Arizona, and Nicolas Cage’s character in Season of the Witch isn’t so different from anything else he’s done. But I’m totally fine with that. Although in this film, I don’t recall him freaking out like this:

My cousin Andrew told me about a funny video called The Legend of Old Gregg. After a bit of sifting on youtube, I found plenty of references to the show, some clipped-out highlights, and many people misspelled the name as “Old Greg”. With some patience, I was able to piece together and watch the whole episode. It was so funny, I tracked down the entire British sitcom called “The Mighty Boosh.”

The show follows the exploits of two English blokes: Howard Moon (played by Julian Barrett) and and Vince Noir (played by Noel Fielding). Their everyday lives as zookeepers, storeowners, and musicians is interrupted every episode by the most strange and funny situations and the most bizarre characters imaginable:

• Old Gregg the scaly, man-fish
• The Spirit of Jazz
• Betamax (yes, the non-VHS tape format)
• The Crack Fox
• Black Frost, a creature who freezes people solid with smoke that comes out of his… um, you’ll have to watch the show…
• The Hitcher, a strange green man with a giant thumb wearing a doughnut over one eye.
• A giant wad of bubble gum
• A horrible demon in the form of a nice old Nana

In the tradition of Monty Python (and inexpensive movie production) you will see Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding appear in multiple roles in each episode.

After watching all three seasons I can tell you that The Mighty Boosh is awesome. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. If there were more fun shows like this on TV instead of all the bullshit crime/courtroom/medical drama, I’d be tempted to actually start watching TV again.

To get your feet wet, head over to The Mighty Boosh YouTube channel and poke around. It won’t take long before the Power of the Crimp compels you.

All three seasons of The Mighty Boosh have been released on DVD, and it’s on Netflix too, so check it out, and make sure to catch The Legend of Old Gregg from Season Two. It’s even funnier if you follow Howard Moon and Vince Noir through their adventures from the beginning. Then when you get to the third season and watch “The Power of the Crimp” you’ll totally get it.

Crimping

Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett developed a synchronized-a-cappella-scat-song format they call a Crimp.  It was just this little thing they would do during their shows, but it eventually got popular enough that they gave it a name in the season three episode, The Power of the Crimp.

You can read more about Crimping here on Wikipedia.

The Future Sailors Tour

As I write this, The Mighty Boosh are touring the united states, but earlier sections of the tour have been recorded and you can catch them on this DVD called Thank Boosh It’s Friday.

The Documentary of the Future Sailors Tour

And if that’s not enough, someone is doing a movie of the Mighty Boosh on Tour called Journey of the Childmen:

The Sound Unseen 2010 International Film and Music Festival

This year’s Sound Unseen International simply must be seen. Five days of film and music starting today, June 2nd and runs through the 6th.

Cool bands. Cool films. Cool films about cool band. Cool films about cool bands with cool band members hanging out in the lobby, scarfing all the free beer and apps.

I fear this much coolness in Minnesota in such a short period of time might cause it to snow in June. Good thing they’re holding it in Duluth.

A search for Sound Unseen online was frustrating. At first blush you might think the website soundunseen.com has been mostly abandoned. That’s until you discover the correct website is http://soundunseenduluth.com. They also have the requisite Facebook and Twitter pages. Or you can download the program and music schedules right here:

Sound Unseen 2010 Program

Sound Unseen 2010 Film and Music Schedule

World Premiere of Low Film Experience

A hypercool event going on at this year’s Sound Unseen is the world premiere screening of an experimental film by Philip Harder. It’s a kind of documentary about the local band Low…. wait a minute. It really isn’t a documentary… Well, they seem to sum it up best as a “Low Experience”:

Low Film by Phil Harder

Since Low’s debut in 1994 Philip Harder has been shooting cinematic 16mm films for the band: a boat on frozen Lake Superior, Baron Von Raschke with red balloons, a room collapsing in slow motion around the band… Several music videos and film shorts later all Harder’s raw footage of Low, 1994 to 2010 has been re-edited into a film with original on-camera sounds. Rarities, banned clips, and unfinished Low films were unearthed. This is not a compilation, not a documentary- but it definitely documents the Low experience. Perhaps Low’s version of a musical- of sorts… June 6th, closing night of Sound Unseen Duluth, NorShor Theater will once again be turned over to cinema for the “Low Movie”: a sneak preview in Low’s hometown! Maybe you can help us find a title for the film.
Just accept that it’s going to be amazing, and you might want to take the better part of next week off from work to contemplate it after you see experience it.

7:30PM Sunday, June 6th.

SACRED HEART MUSIC CENTER
201 West 4th Street
Duluth, MN 55806-2719
(218) 723-1895

Beyond Low – The Gala After-Party of Coolness (+4)

After the show, (around 9:30) make sure to check out the gala after-party:

Following the film, please join us at the Historic Greysolon Plaza – this time downstairs in their unique Moorish Room. Festival guests will be treated to a feast for the eyes courtesy of featured director/filmmaker Philip Harder’s film/art installation, in addition to complimentary appetizers from Black Woods Catering and free Schell’s beer and drink specials all evening. Entertainment for the evening comes from a band that has helped define the Twin Cities music scene, with 10 studio releases and over 16 years under their belt, we are more than proud to announce our special musical guests of the evening: The Honeydogs.

9:30PM Sunday, June 6th.

Greysolon Moorish Room
231 East Superior Street
Duluth, MN 55802-2165

Ticket Info

Ticket info for all events is here.

For the Low film/gala event, I’m told prices are $20for Film and Gala, $15 for Gala Only, and $10 for Film Only

A Warning To Those Pure Of Heart

The program doesn’t warn you, but be careful – Gay Witch Abortion’s music KILLS angels and incapacitates those pure of heart. You just might not be evil/wicked/cool enough to listen to them. If you think you are, then you probably aren’t.

I was just a kid during the 80′s, but I remember the ever-present threat of Global Thermonuclear War. The Government “Star Wars” programs. Books about how to create a fallout shelter in your backyard. The “Tornado” drills in school, that we all knew weren’t just for tornadoes.

So while movies like “War Games” and “Red Dawn” are period pieces that hold a certain charm for me, I have to admit they won’t work for everyone. The same goes for Warner Bros new release: The Watchmen. The story is an alternate history, dated in the 80′s. (The Watchmen was released in 86-87) The “alternate” part is that superheros rise to power and help America to win The Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon is elected for a third term, and a comedian is killed in New York…

The Good

The movie intro is great, and I appreciated the quick overview of the alternate history of how the Watchmen came to be, and then came to Not be. (All backed by Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They are A Changin.’)

While the movie’s alternative time period didn’t seem as surreal as the real 80′s were, it was very distinct, and gave the movie an other-worldly feel. More than one person mentioned a feeling reminiscent of Blade Runner.

The heroes were fallible, to a fault. The good and bad are not clear-cut, and I love that. Too many years of Disney handing us Good and Evil on clearly-labeled trays so we know who to like and who to hate; you won’t find that in the Watchmen. The characters Rorschach (Played by Jackie Earle Haley) and the Comedian (Played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are as deep and as real as any superheros I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Disjointedness aside, the plot was great.  Big.  Great Big. Earth-shatteringly earth shattering. Once it gets rolling, its a Juggernaut, and it isn’t boring. The mythos of the Watchmen was well thought out, and it shows.

The Bad

The first third of the movie is a mystery. The mystery is, “What the hell is this movie about?”  The movie’s dyslexic buildup made me wonder if it was a political drama, superhero saga, mystery, or soap opera. The movie didn’t try too hard to pander to those unfamiliar with the mythos, the philosophy was, “Start the movie and the audience will catch up eventually!”

The music was trying too hard. Way too hard. I never thought I’d say this because I’ve said the opposite so many times but here is a movie that would have benefited by replacing some of the songs with musical score. I guess they couldn’t get Danny Elfman so they bought up the rights to every song played in the 80′s except “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. And they might have played that one while I was in the bathroom.

And if I *never* hear the accursed song “Hallelujah” again, it will be too soon. I don’t know who decided to include this song, much less why they thought it might work over a sex scene, but people in the theatre were laughing, myself included.

And if I *never* **ever** see an uncircumcised blue penis again, it will be too soon.

The Twitter Review

#MovieReview The Watchmen is good. A great character study, even if you don’t like superheros. Soundtrack tries too hard. The 80s were cool

Prediction

I’m predicting that the 80′s gigantic earrings, neon pastel colors, and Nagel prints will make a comeback because of this film.

In about 2 minutes, the 48 hour film fest awards for Minneapolis will go live, and you can see this years winners. I just got back from the awards ceremony, and I can give you a 2-minute heads up that “Birthmarked for Death” took best Picture, and a handful of other awards.

The group team Chiaroscuro was up against had 3 films go to the finals, so it’s no surprise that our effort “Fort World” didn’t make it to finals, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, we had some great company and great competition.

…next time….

Art Is Resistance
-Zero