2013 Saks Fifth Avenue Holiday 3D Light Show!

Did someone say wish?

During this time of the year many of us celebrate the birth of Santa.  JSP posed an interesting question to me last night; what Christmas/birthday present did you always want when you were a kid but never received?  In the era of Ebay and Amazon it is easy to acquire those missing treasures, however back in the day we all had our wishlists that occasionally went unfulfilled.   Mine is pictured above, what's yours?  Conversely, what is the best gift you ever received that you never thought you would get? Mine is pictured below.

JPX's Best Of Horrorthon 2013

I can’t believe that we are already in the middle of December!  I have never been this late posting my superlatives before.  I think we have all been unusually busy or just plain burnt out playing on Horrorthon (I’m speaking about you, JSP).  We will be doing a wrap up at some point so there is an “ending” to this year’s contest.  I need to update Scorrorthon and JSP will be completing the monster list.  I watched some terrific movies this year and had a great time doing so. 

Horrorthon 2013!

All Around Favorite:  Macabre (Rumah Dara)

Hands down, Macabre is simply the best horror movie in years.  The “mother” character is instantly iconic and chilling.  This film never lets up for one second and the gore is shocking.  I fully expect all of you to watch this next year

Runners up:  Escape From Tomorrow, We Are What We Are

Worst Movie:  Keep My Grave Open

True I watched a poor quality version of this 70’s clunker but even a pristine print would not change my opinion of this boring, Psycho-rip-off, slasher.

So Bad its Good:  Amityville 4:  The Evil Escapes

A made-for-TV Amityville horror movie starring Patty Duke in the most ridiculous Amityville premise to date – how could this not be my top choice for this category?

Most Disturbing:  We Are What We Are

The less you know about this chilling Gothic film the better your cinematic experience will be.  It’s a slow burn with terrific acting.

 Goriest (tie):  Macabre and Thantomorphose

I forgot to review V/H/S 2 which has a stand-out installment in this anthology series directed by Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto who also directed Macabre.  Given that I did not review it the honor goes to both Macabre and Thantomorphse.  Thantomorphose is 90 minutes of a pretty, young woman slowly decomposing as she realizes her life has been pointless.

Scariest:  Would You Rather

I didn’t watch anything this year that really scared me but the predicaments that the characters are placed in become increasingly disturbing – great, tense stuff!

Best Looking Monster:  Big Ass Spider!

This is the only “monster” movie I watched and it totally delivers on its title!

Best Death:  You’re Next

You will never look at a blender the same way again…

Most Avoidable Death:  Every single death that occurs in all the Amityville Horror films

Just leave the fucking house!

See you next October! 

Expendables 3 teaser

First Xbox-Exclusive Film is Documentary on Atari and ‘E.T.: The Video Game’

From slashfilm, A new company called Lightbox has announced a “series of films for Xbox Entertainment Studios about the start of the digital revolution,” and the first release in the series will be a documentary about the story of Atari’s reported burial of millions of copies of the critically-savaged and commercially ignored E.T. video game.

A press release announces:

The first film in the groundbreaking series investigates the events surrounding the great video game burial of 1983.  The Atari Corporation, faced with overwhelmingly negative response to “ET the Video Game,” buried millions of unsold game cartridges in the middle of the night, in the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Drawing on their relationships with outstanding creative talent, each film will be helmed by a different director and will range from an hour to feature length.  Zak Penn (X-Men 2, Avengers, Incident At Loch Ness) has signed on to direct the first film.

The fact that Atari dumped unsold inventory in New Mexico was confirmed by the company in 1983, but the precise details of the dump are unknown, and the outrageous scope has been disputed in the decades since. Concrete was poured over the landfill area in the early ’80s, making casual exploration all but impossible.

This past summer, a Canadian company was given permission to excavate the site, and there’s a good chance that those efforts will be documented here, along with the story of the video game crash of 1983, for which the E.T. failure and Atari dumping are poster children.

Welcome to Yesterday trailer looks great!

Review Bomb!

With the overall lack of blog participation over the past few weeks I have been less than inspired to do my review bomb.  However, everyone is cancelling on me at work because we're getting some snow in a little while (wusses) and I am sick of shopping on Amazon.  So here it goes, jerks!

Ritual (Modus Anomali)

(2012) ***1/2 (if I understood the ending)

           * (if I don’t understand the ending)

I don’t know how to rate this given my confusion over the “twist” at the end of the film.  A man awakens buried alive in a forest.  Clawing his way out he finds a cabin with a television and video camera inside.  The camera has a note on it that says, “Press play”.  He watches in horror a video of a masked man murdering a pregnant woman.  Stumbling backwards in terror he trips over the dead woman seen in the video.  What follows is a Momento-like mystery that is highly engrossing as the man pieces together what happened.  The problem is that I didn’t understand the ending.  I have looked online and even the explanations make no sense to me.  Perhaps you guys will watch it next year and give me your take?

Blackout

(2008) ***

Three people become stuck in an elevator during a blackout.  Slowly we learn their back stories and it eventually becomes apparent that one of them is a serial killer.  Fun, tense stuff. I love a good predicament!

The Task

(2011) **

A group of reality-show game contestants must spend a night in a “haunted” jail.  A completely unrealistic story as the game show contestants are placed in very dangerous scenarios.  Fun but stupid.

Apartment 143

(2012) *

This is a lazy, low-budget version of the Paranormal Activity films that takes place in a small apartment with an unlikable cast and very few scares.

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Dark Skies

(2013) **

With echoes of Poltergeist and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you have seen this plot a thousand times before.  A family moves into a large home in a remote area and strange things begin to happen.  This is certainly watchable but it offers nothing new or very interesting.

Tourist Trap

(1979) ***

Creepy Mr. Slausen owns a defunct roadside souvenir shop/wax museum filled with some of the creepiest mannequins you will ever see.  When a group of teenagers seek help after their car runs out of gas (who runs out of gas?) Mr. Slausen is all too happy to offer them shelter in his off-putting establishment.  This was a fun 70s find that is a (slight) step above the usual slasher stuff from that era!

House of Frankenstein

(1944) **

JSP and I simultaneously watched this while on our cell phones.  We were going to do a joint review but he's too burnt out to write more reviews and he is unable to get online at work given that he was recently promoted to a new position.

When the popularity of the classic Universal Monsters started to wane, Universal started to combine the monster franchises (see also:  Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator, etc).  What should have been a “can’t miss” opportunity (Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolf Man all in the same movie!), this flaccid, disjointed story goes nowhere.  The first 20 minutes of the film features a resurrected, homely, Dracula who dies once again before ever meeting his monster peers.  The rest of the story is a jumbled mess and Karloff doesn't even play any of the monsters!  Fail.

Fingerprints

(2006) **

Fingerprints is based on a Texas urban legend involving a school bus full of children who all perished when their bus became stuck on some train tracks.  As the legend goes if you drive onto the train tracks and put your car in neutral the ghosts of the children will push you to safety.  Some townsfolk even claim to have seen fingerprints on the back of their vehicles.  Melanie, who just completed a stint in rehab, moves into her parents’ new home in the small Texas town.  Soon the children’s ghosts begin to haunt her in an effort to help her solve a decades old mystery.  Meh.  Generic and not scary for even one second.  I should know to avoid any movie starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

Overall I watched a lot of terrific movies this year.  If people comment on this post I will write up my superlatives!  If I don't receive comments I guess there is always more I can purchase on Amazon now that I just joined Prime, woo-hoo!

Brian lives!

Three weeks ago, Family Guy shocked fans by killing off one of the show’s most-beloved figures: Brian Griffin, the erudite dog/liberal caricature who’s one of several characters voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane. As it turns out, however, all that outrage was misplaced — because as of last night, Brian’s back. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good psych!

Here’s how it went down. During a routine holiday shopping trip, brilliant baby Stewie spotted something incredible in a toy store — his past self. This version of Stewie had traveled into the future before his time machine broke… and he also happened to have a time machine return pad in his backpack. (What’s a time machine return pad? Just go with it.)

Using the gadget, present-day Stewie went back in time — arriving seconds before Brian got fatally hit by a car. This time, though, the baby managed to push his pal out of the way just in the nick of time. And with that, current Stewie’s timeline was erased — leaving Brian alive, well, and in the perfect position for new present-day Stewie to hit him in the crotch with a hockey stick. (We are, after all, still talking about Family Guy here.)

It’s a turn of events that may have been totally predictable, but was also totally welcome for the show’s fans. These post-episode tweets from MacFarlane really say it best:

"And thus endeth our warm, fuzzy holiday lesson: Never take those you love for granted, for they can be gone in a flash."

"I mean, you didn't really think we'd kill off Brian, did you? Jesus, we'd have to be fucking high."

Watch the dramatic save below, then tell us: Has your faith in Family Guy been restored? Or did this obvious stunt hit a nerve — and not a good one? And who’s going to miss Vinny the replacement dog? Anyone? … Anyone?

Nurse 3D trailer

WORLD WAR Z 2 is a go

From aintitcoolnews, Before WORLD WAR Z came out, most analysts were expecting it to be a collasal failure after massive reshoots had ballooned the budget and dampered the buzz on the film. Then it was actually released and was received well critically (67% on Rotten Tomatoes) but more importantly made almost $550 million worldwide. Here we are, just six months after it was released and Paramount is ready to move forward with a sequel and has reportedly hired a director.

We all knew after the behind the scenes issues with the first one meant that the original director, Marc Forster would probably be replaced. THR is reporting that his replacement will be Juan Antonio Bayona, as he has reached a deal to helm the sequel after meeting with producers (including Brad Pitt).

Bayona previously directed the excellent horror film, THE ORPHANAGE and last year’s divisive disaster film, THE IMPOSSIBLE. He has showed with his previous films that he can direct big set pieces and great suspenseful horror so this seems like a really good fit. We don’t yet know who is going to script the sequel but Brad Pitt is returning to produce and probably star in the film.

I was kind of indifferent on WORLD WAR Z but could get interested in a sequel and this is a nice step towards that, but what do you guys think of this news? Do you want to see a sequel to WORLD WAR Z?

Godzilla teaser trailer looks promising!