New Releases for Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Posted Aug 2, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Aug 2, 2011 at 09:16 PM

What’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

We Are What We Are
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Jorge Michel Grau
Run time: 89 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: There’s a moment at the beginning of this thought-provoking study of human nature, both learned and instinctual, that speaks volumes.

Humberto Yáñez, the patriarch of a particularly strange Mexican family, is wandering, wounded, through an open-air shopping promenade. He collapses and dies. Two janitors walk up and drag his body away. A third janitor appears and mops away the blood, muting the bright red stain into a pinkish muddy spot on the concrete. And finally, unsuspecting shoppers walk through, stepping on and over Papa’s final resting place.

The title card then appears – “We Are What We Are.”

It’s a not-so-subtle statement by director Jorge Michel Grau that still might fly high over the heads of many viewers.

His point is clear – people act according to how they are taught to behave.

And his film slowly, deliberately expands on his theory. Clean-up crews clean up, even bodies, because it is their job. Shoppers shop, oblivious to anything except the next retail score. And people who survive by eating human flesh figure out a way to continue living in a manner they are accustomed to, regardless of the sacrifices that need to be made.

That’s right, “We Are…” is a movie about cannibals, but it’s not strictly a go-for-gore shocker meant to titillate. “We Are…” is concerned with familial hierarchy, with passed-down traditions, with examining why people act the way they do, even when they could choose to change, and finally, whether we want to change at all.

Grau’s film isn’t a masterpiece. It’s not the cannibal equivalent of “Let the Right One In,” as one DVD box art quote would lead you to believe.

Two of the central characters, brothers Julian and Alfredo, seem too clichéd with a built-in competitiveness that grows tiresome. Alfredo is the oldest male child, and as such is expected to step up and replace Papa as the main provider of food. His mother Patricia has given up any hope at a normal life in exchange for food. She allowed Papa to sleep with other prostitutes, to selfishly appease his animal needs, because he delivered dinner to their door. And daughter Sabina is the manipulator, urging Alfredo to step up and trying to control Julian, a young sadist who longs to hunt and hurt others.

There are chunks of “We Are…” that drag, particularly an extended scene that follows Alfredo trying to seduce a young gay reveler because Alfredo decides he has to use any means necessary to provide for his family. The punchline to this overlong cat-and-mouse chase is that Julian refuses to eat gay flesh, implying the meat would be tainted or taste differently.

There also are scenes that sparkle with a twisted light most mainstream movies can never capture. One such scene set in a funeral home involves a fastidious mortician showing two disinterested police detectives his unexpected discovery, a whole, human finger that he found in Papa’s belly while conducting an autopsy.

There’s also a dark subplot involving the clan’s mother, who suspects that a hooker killed Papa. She leaves a nasty warning for the other prostitutes, which in turn creates an unexpected consequence late in the film.

“We Are…” is smartly made. It’s provocative without pandering. And it has enough satisfying sequences to elevate it high above most every direct-to-DVD American release currently available.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Daughter Sabina is hot when she’s hungry.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Considerable.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Too many culprits to choose from, and I’m not just talking about the central family. The cops and hookers aren’t nice people either.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.
On the Web – http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/we-are-what-we-are

Scream of the Banshee (Lionsgate, 90 minutes, R, DVD) and The Task (Lionsgate, 94 minutes, R, DVD): The latest two installments in the After Dark Originals collection are unique in their own respective ways.

“Scream of the Banshee” is a SyFy Original Film that plays better than most SyFy films, if only because it doesn’t rely on subpar CGI for its special effects. The story is nothing terribly special – a college archeologist receives a cryptic note with a medieval armored glove. The note leads to a fortified box long hidden inside a secret room in the college basement. Inside the box is an unbelievably well-preserved severed head of a creature that cannot be identified.

The archeologist is played by Lauren Holly, which means you never once believe she’s an archeology professor. It’s like when James Bond asked us to believe that Denise Richards was a nuclear scientist. Not happening. No way.

The note and armored glove were sent by am ex-partner to Lance Henriksen, who chews scenery as a former professor who believed very much in an ancient legend involving the mythical banshee.

And the banshee? She’s pretty effective but not very scary. Kind of like the Tooth Fairy in “Darkness Falls.”

“The Task” is a horror movie with very little blood, very little horror and a very contrived plot. Five teens are plucked out of an audition and mock-kidnapped to participate in a new reality competition where they have to spend the night in an abandoned prison completing a series of tasks in order to win a bunch of money.

Things go awry quickly – shocker. But for every predictable action by one of the competitors, there’s zero payoff – no blood, no gore, nothing remotely interesting.

Then “The Task” switches gears entirely and exposes its true motives, and guess what - it’s not much better. It basically kicks the viewer in the teeth and shows zero regard for the near 90 minutes invested to that point.

Basically “The Task” ends where it should begin. I call this the “Ghost of Mars” paradox, where you watch an entire movie waiting for something interesting to happen and just when it finally gets good, the end credits roll.

Supernatural: The Anime Series (Warner Bros., 484 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): It’s like a gift to fans, an animated series based on a still-current and wildly popular live-action series, featuring one regular main cast member doing voice work for 22 episodes and both main cast members doing voice work for the two-part first-season conclusion. Plus, they use the gist of several of the best live-action episodes from the series’ first two seasons as a jumping off point, while introducing new characters and giving a significant makeover to several beloved characters. As if the Winchester brothers didn’t have enough on their plates already. Series stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles introduce each animated episode, which are only about 24 minutes long each, with a videotaped message. The guys seem to be having fun and they come across as sincerely grateful to the rabid fan following that their show, “Supernatural,” has enjoyed for all six seasons it has aired on the CW Network. Padalecki voices Sam Winchester for every episode of the anime, while Ackles only appears on the two-part finale. It’s somewhat oft-putting to hear another actor’s voice giving life to Dean Winchester, but once Ackles appears in episode 21, all is right with the world.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (Fox, 108 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): How many tries should you give a movie you’re trying to review? My personal limit is three, especially if I keep falling asleep. Sorry, “Dylan Dog,” but you just didn’t cut the mustard there. I don’t think this adaptation of the popular Italian comic series was as bad as the savaging it received from mainstream critics, but it definitely didn’t have the flow and quick pace needed to sustain interest. Think of it as “Constantine”-lite, without the warm and fuzzy personality of Keanu Reeves. Yes, that was sarcasm. Brandon Routh, you are no Keanu, sir. And that’s saying a lot.

Source Code (Summit, 94 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): Duncan Jones’ second feature (he did “Moon” last year, which was outstanding) doesn’t feature cloning, but it does dive full-on into time travel, which can be a difficult tightrope to navigate. Luckily, he gets Jake Gyllenhaal’s A-game best, which is a relief following “Prince of Persia,” and the cool sci-fi improbability vs. real-world application of quantum physics makes for a heady mixture of geeky cool.

Also Available:

Born to Ride – Remember those down and dirty biker gang flicks that populated the early 1970s? Yeah, this isn’t in that caliber, but “Born to Ride” does reunite two of the stars of “Starship Troopers” – Casper Van Dien and Patrick Muldoon.

Turbulent Skies – Did I miss the memo where Casper Van Dien and Patrick Muldoon were asked to become the new Hope and Crosby or Martin and Lewis? Here they are – twice in one week – co-starring in a B-grade ‘terror in the skies’ airline disaster flick.

Conan the Adventurer: Season One – I absolutely love Conan the Barbarian, the creation of pulp writer Robert E. Howard. I loved the books, I devoured the comic, I saw John Milius’ epic live-action feature on opening night. But somehow I never knew that Conan had been turned into a kid’s cartoon in the 1980s. Excuse me while I geek out.

Park Benches – French slice of life feature about lives intersecting in the everyday world.

The Matrimony – Here’s a description you don’t hear everyday: Gothic Chinese love story.

The Conqueror – Yes, Virginia, it’s a movie about a Ukrainian Cossack paying tribute to Mother Russia. Wait, what did I just write?

Strangers Online – No, it’s not a web series starring Balky of “Perfect Strangers” fame. It’s a dark fable about fetishes, online perversion and twisted love.

Goblin – Gil Bellows. ‘Nuff said.

Donnie Darko: 10th Anniversary – You know, I loved “Donnie Darko,” but there comes a point when you have to say enough is enough. So far, we’ve had the original theatrical DVD release, then the Director’s Cut, then the Ultimate Two-Disc edition featuring both the theatrical and director’s cuts, then “S. Darko,” the sequel no-one wanted, and now the four-disc “Donnie Darko – 10th Anniversary Edition,” which also features the theatrical and director’s cuts plus a couple of new featurettes, as well as a DVD and Digital Copy (the two other discs).

Biodead – Low-budget horror set inside a military testing lab.

Trust – David Schwimmer directs this direct-to-DVD tale of an online romance gone wrong with Clive Owen. Wasn’t Owen supposed to be the next big thing?

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe – Bruuuuuce! The mighty Campbell takes center stage in this backstory of his character on the wildly popular USA Network spy series, “Burn Notice.”

Not to be Overlooked:

Rammbock: Berlin Undead (The Collective, 64 minutes, Unrated, DVD): This, the first in a series of festival-winning horror films to be showcased under the new “Bloody Disgusting Selects” banner, playing off the popularity of the long-running, horror-themed website www.bloody-disgusting.com, is a German zombie film called “Rammbock: Berlin Undead.” 

It’s a taunt, short (running just over an hour), extremely bloody addition to the zombie oeuvre, and it’s actually really good – for what it is.

“Rammbock” is not interested in making any big statements about the undead. It’s not looking to reinvent the genre, or even add anything terribly new. What it is interested in showing is that some axioms hold true, zombie apocalypse or not, and one of those axioms is that love hurts.

“Rammbock” is essentially a love story about a guy trying to win back his girlfriend, who has basically moved on without his knowledge, and it just so happens that the day he decides to lay it all out on the line, zombie insanity sweeps the city.

There are a few nice touches along the way, some decent gore, a few anxious moments and even a little social commentary. The nice thing about its 64-minute run time is that director Marvin Kren keeps the action zipping along. Any inherent flaws are quickly forgotten. And the ending has a bittersweet irony that satisfies.

Where other film collections have stumbled – 8 Films to Die For, Ghost House Pictures Presents, Fangoria FrightFest Presents – the new Bloody Disgusting Selects appears to be making strides not to mimic those mistakes, the main one being the quality of films offered.

It’s just the first film, so we won’t know for a little while, but this series is off to a good start.

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The Playboy Club Video: Bunnies on Parade

Posted Aug 2, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Aug 2, 2011 at 11:47 AM

“The Playboy Club” is generating some buzz because it’s an NBC drama about the first club in Chicago back in the 1960s. It’s a soap opera that follows several Playboy Bunnies and the clients of the famed the Club. . Starring Eddie Cibrian, Amber Heard, David Krumholtz and some other attractive female actresses, it’s packed with 1960s song-and-dance numbers.

Actress Amber Heard says that by today’s standards her Bunny suit is less revealing than 99 percent of the photos in any given magazine on the newstands or on any given billboard and on any given show. “The costume I wear is far less revealing than a bathing suit, and a modern one-piece bathing suit at that,” she says.

Take a look at the NBC promo for the show:

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Bravo Adds Three New Reality Shows

Posted Aug 2, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Aug 2, 2011 at 11:29 AM

  The Bravo Network will add reality shows about fancy dining, female artists in New York and newlweds, network officials announced today during the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills.

Bravo Media, owned by NBC Universal,  announced “Around the World in 80 Plates” (working title), a culinary competition following chefs as they compete in world-renowned restaurants around the globe, “Paint the Town” (working title), which gives viewers an exclusive look inside the lives of six 20-something women working in New York City’s hippest art galleries and “Newlyweds: The First Year” (working title), a unique docu-series capturing six couples throughout their first year of marriage.

The network will also air a special, “Thicker Than Water: The Marinos,” following the chaotic lives of a tight-knit, multi-generational family in New Jersey on August 21 at 11 p.m.  For more information, visit http://www.BravoTV.com and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BravoPR.

“Bravo’s continued success is driven by our commitment to create original series that share an unfiltered and unique look inside our ‘Passion Groups’ of Food, Fashion, Beauty, Design and Pop Culture, all while uncovering memorable characters in the process,” stated Shari Levine, Senior Vice President, Production, Bravo Media. “We are confident these new series will reinforce Bravo’s pop culture brand and resonate with our engaged and upscale audience.”

Bravo also has renewed several of its hit series including a seventh season of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” a fourth season of “Top Chef Masters” and a fifth season of “Million Dollar Listing LA.”

NEW SERIES:
“Around the World in 80 Plates” (working title) Produced by Magical Elves with Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz as Executive Producers

“Around the World in 80 Plates” takes culinary competition to the next level. Up-and-coming chefs will travel to various countries testing their skills in some of the greatest and most challenging restaurants around the globe.  In each episode, the contestants will travel to a different international city where they will learn the local customs, cultures and cuisines as they participate in a gauntlet of culinary challenges- all while being at the mercy of the demanding restaurant owners. Ultimately, they will face-off in a kitchen takeover where they will not just recreate, but reinvent the menus for these world-renowned restaurants.

“Paint the Town” (working title)
Produced by Magical Elves with Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz as Executive Producers

The new docu-series gives viewers an inside look into the lives of six young women who moved to New York City with the dream of living a chic, fashionable, art-filled existence. During the day these women, who mainly work in the city’s trendiest art galleries, manage the stress of their demanding bosses, and struggle to get ahead in a business with so few opportunities to rise up the ranks. At night they are out at the hippest clubs, bars and art scene functions as they juggle their friendships, guys and elite art world acquaintances. These girls’ desire to live a glamorous NYC life is unwavering, but will they find it too difficult to survive in this competitive, expensive, relentless city?

“Newlyweds: The First Year” (working title) Produced by Monkey Kingdom with Will Macdonald and David Granger serving as Executive Producers

Bravo explores the ups and downs of marriage with this unique docu-series as six diverse couples from across the country experience the trials and tribulations of their first year of marriage.  From the moment they say “I do” to their one-year anniversary and everything in between, the cameras capture the significant milestones, difficult adjustments and everyday life of the twelve newlyweds to see whether or not they can survive what proves to be the most difficult year of marriage.

“Thicker Than Water: The Marinos”- Premieres Sunday, August 21 at 11p.m ET/PT Produced by Pink Sneakers Production with Kimberly Belcher Cowin, John Ehrhard and Kevin Harris serving as Executive Producer.

They say friends may come and go, but family is forever. “Thicker Than Water: The Marinos” offers a glimpse into the life of The Marinos, a tight knit New Jersey family. They laugh until they cry, finish each other’s sentences and feel entitled to have an opinion about every detail of each other’s lives. Things may get hectic between work, golf outings, shuttling the kids to soccer practice in their Jimmy Choos, and marriage counseling for some, but they can’t imagine going a day without talking. And if they’re not talking to each other, they’re talking about each other. The term “mind your own business” has no place in a Marino household because your business is everyone’s business.  They’re each others best friends and worst critics, but they always have each other’s backs because in the Marino family blood is definitely thicker than water.

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The Versus Network Becomes NBC Sports Network

Posted Aug 1, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Aug 1, 2011 at 05:47 PM

The sports network Versus will be renamed the NBC Sports Network, effective Jan. 2, 2012, NBC Sports Group announced today,

Some of us lowly viewers thought Versus was a dumb name anyway.  The move is part of a new strategy to put all of NBC Sports outlets - broadcast network, two national cable networks, 11 regional sports networks and digital—under one name. In addition, the NBC Sports Group will tweak the NBC Sports logo.

Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, made the announcement at the Television Critics Association conference in Beverly Hills.

The NBC Sports Network will serve as a 24/7 cable platform for NBC Sports’ heritage of storytelling, best-in-class production and broad promotional power. Many NBC Sports production and programming elements have already been introduced on Versus since the merger—such as adopting the “Inside the Glass” production philosophy for all its NHL games, and adding horse racing and Notre Dame football-related programming.

Viewers can expect to see more changes in the future.

“This effort is a major step towards a complete strategic alignment of all our platforms and businesses,” Lazarus said. “This is more than just a name change for Versus—it’s a complete repositioning of the brand to provide value for marketers, consumers as well as all our affiliates and distributors. We want anyone who comes into contact with any of our assets to immediately connect with the NBC Sports brand promise.”

The new NBC Sports logo features an evolutionary design that maintains the equity of the classic NBC Sports logo, while signaling something new. Changes include a slightly larger peacock, a new font for the letters “NBC” to put them in balance with the peacock, and a new hand-lettered font for the scripted word “Sports” that was created exclusively for NBC Sports.

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Tampa Snubbed Again. So You Think You Can Dance Tour Goes to Orlando

Posted Jul 26, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Jul 26, 2011 at 11:11 AM

First it was the “American idols Live!” tour that decided to skip Tampa and play Orlando this summer. 

Now Fox has announced the tour dates for “So You Think You Can Dance” and Tampa’s not on it.

The tour will open Sept. 17 in Orlando’s Amway Center.  And Tampa is represented on this tour by Ricky Jaime, a dancer who taught at a Carrollwood dance academy before getting on the show.

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