Fans of obscure animated films rejoice! Weird animator Ralph Bakshi’s 1977 post-apocalyptic fantasy movie is coming to Blu-ray for the first time, and since I haven’t seen it since the days of VHS I’m kind of excited for it. I was never into Bakshi’s urban films, but Wizards always caught my eye and led me to watch his animated version of The Lord of the Rings.
Wizards is an interesting mix of fantasy and post-apocalyptic storytelling, and while it may not be the best animated film of all time, it’s unique. I look forward to seeing it again when it comes out on March 13th.
I’m a huge Aardman Animations fan. I’ve loved their Wallace and Gromit shorts since I was little, and equally loved all their feature-length movies to date, with the exception of Arthur Christmas. Anyway, I’ve been seeing the trailer for The Pirates! Band of Misfits a lot lately, and I’ve gotten very excited about it. After doing some research I was surprised to see that the title of the original book (as well as the movie in the UK) is The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists.
It seems the powers that be in the Sony Pictures marketing department don’t think having scientists in the title would be a good thing here in the states. So, they’ve completely taken out any mention of the scientists from our trailers, making it confusing when you see Hugh Grant’s Pirate Captain character wearing a lab coat, but whatever, I’m sure they know what’s best for us.
When I first got the email asking if we’d like to review an advanced copy of Chillerama, I grew hesitant when I saw the film’s tagline: “The Ultimate Midnight Movie.” For the last decade or so, there have been a glut of films that are meant to pay homage to old B-movies, but they normally just use this as an excuse to have no budget, crappy special effects, terrible actors, and even worse scripts. They say they’re being tongue-in-cheek, but they very rarely ever succeed at being funny, let alone entertaining in even the “so bad it’s good” way that the B-movies they’re spoofing actually are. But, as I always say, I’ll watch anything once, so I put my expectations in check and told them to send Chillerama posthaste. Much to my surprise, this isn’t your typical half-assed love note to the drive-in. Read More
I get sent a lot of crazy stuff that people want me to review. Some of it gets on the site and some of it doesn’t. I wasn’t sure what to think about the direct-to-Blu-ray and Walmart-exclusive animated short film LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace until I heard Tim talk about it on the podcast, but I’m glad to say I was pleasantly surprised.
Not only am I growing utterly intolerant of prequel-era Star Wars, but I’d never heard LEGO characters talk despite being super cute in silent, video-game form, so I was leery. Luckily, it turns out that whoever wrote and animated this short film had a lot of creative freedom and decided to pump it full of slapstick, tongue-in-cheek humor, and lots of Star Wars in-jokes. Oh, and George Lucas makes a couple appearances. Read More
Terri looked like the type of movie I was going to really like. It’s a quirky story of an introverted, overweight High School student befriending his assistant principal, played by John C. Reilly. Oh, and Creed Bratton from The Office is in it. Yeah, this looked like my kind of movie.
Well, after seeing the amazing Win Win recently, I can’t help but feel like Terri was just ok, and not great like I was hoping it would be. That’s not to say I didn’t like it or it was a bad film, I just had higher hopes for it.
The Movie
Terri is played by new-comer Jacob Wysocki, and he totally embodies the character, who lives at home with his aging, eccentric, this-is-probably-what-Creed-Bratton-is-like-in-real-life uncle James.. He starts wearing his pajamas to school because they’re comfortable, but his poor attendance force him into some one-on-one time with John C. Reilly’s character, Mr. Fitzgerald. Read More
