BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE
STUDIO: Lionsgate
MSRP: $17.49
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

– Girl Talk: The Women of Married Featurette
– Male Bonding: The Men of Married Featurette
– Janet Jackson’s Nothing Music Video
– Couples Character Guide



The Pitch

Turns out Tyler Perry is very capable of doing a bad movie without Madea in it at all.

The Humans

– Tyler Perry as Terry Brock
– Janet Jackson as Patricia Agnew
– Jill Scott as Shelia Jackson
– Sharon Leal as Dianne Brock
– Tasha Smith as Angela Williams
– Richard T. Jones as Mike
– Malik Yoba as Gavin Agnew
– Lamman Rucker as Troy Jackson
– Michael Jai White as Marcus Williams
– Louis Gossett Jr. as Porter
– Cicely Tyson as Ola

The Nutshell

The four married couples from Perry’s 2007 original reunite in their annual get-together, this time in the Bahamas.  Many of the issues from the first film carry over to this one, and a few new ones arise, which test the commitment of all of the couples to one another.

White: “A toast, to a possible Black Dynamite 2.”
Perry: “And another Madea movie.”
White: “Eh…”

The Lowdown

I covered the first one here.  Basically my take was that it was a barely semi-enjoyable rehash of several previous Black relationship movies, but with a couple of noteworthy performances, mostly by Tasha Smith and Jill Scott.  Any and all good will I had for that first installment evaporated quickly with this maudlin, hackneyed, wheel-spinning tedium of a sequel.  In the original Perry brought virtually nothing new to the table in the genre.  In this installment, he absolutely brings nothing new, but rather exacerbates the negatives of his first film, loses any and all appeal from all of his characters and creates a narrative that is merely a series of set pieces for trite dialogue and played situations. 

In Too,
very few of the issues facing the couples in the first film are
resolved, and the couple of new situations have few teeth and less
originality and dramatic hook.  These include distance in the marriage
of Jackson’s Patricia and Yoba’s Gavin due to the death of their son;
and constant bickering from White’s Marcus and Smith’s Angela.  Perry’s
Terry and Leal’s Dianne have a new – yet still the least interesting –
issue facing them, and Sheila’s (Scott) and Troy’s (Rucker) problems
center around money, with a bit of previous marriage hangover courtesy
of Jones’ Mike, Sheila’s ex.  What’s most important here is that, of the
nine main characters, there’s almost no one left to root for, as
everyone is a victim of their own flaws to the point where, in most
cases, you’re rooting against them.

Wait, whose marital problem are we discussing in this scene again?

First Marcus and Angela.  In the first film, they were the put-upon, unemployed husband and the mouthy, bitchy, alcoholic, successful wife.  She shit all over him constantly with the volume set on 11 because he was a washed-up, former pro jock with ex-wife issues and a history of cheating.  For the most part, that worked in the first film and was fun.  Here, not much has changed interpersonally, except that Marcus has now gotten a TV football analysis gig, is feeling the success, and Angela, whose salon is seeing hard times, needs something new to bitch about.   So she bitches about his having a job, whereas she bitched about his not having one before.  Her drinking is still a problem, but not as much; yet she’s ratcheted the bitch factor up to twice what it was before.

White was refreshing in the first film, showing that he had range beyond kung fu-ing someone into oblivion, and Smith was entertaining in her boisterousness.  They argued over real things, mostly his relationship with his ex-wife and her drinking.  Here, though, Perry has essentially nothing new for them so he just turns up the volume.  Angela goes from entertaining to just a downright harpy asshole, whose main arc consists of nagging Marcus for the password on his cell phone to, well, that’s pretty much it.  And where Marcus’ exasperation in the first film was a source of laughter, here it also merely gets turned up to where you’re left to think that he deserves everything he gets from his wife because he should have left that bitch long ago.

Wait, whose marital problem are we discussing in this scene again?

Leal and Perry have the most stable relationship of the four couples, or so they thought.  The issue of their having another baby in the first film has been handled with the addition of their son to the family.  But it’s soon revealed that Leal might be having an affair when she has a slip of the tongue in bed.  Terry and Dianne are little more than the nexus of exposition for most of the film until their issue kicks up about half way through.  But Leal, and especially Perry, drift through their performances for the majority of the film to such a degree as to need to be thrown life preservers.  Whereas I thought that Perry was the sedate hub of the first film, here he’s just a charisma and drama vacuum, who can’t even muster the energy to rail against Dianne when he finds out that her heart is with another man.  Perry looked either bored or tired or both from doing quadruple duty on this film (writing/producing/directing/acting).  Leal, sadly, wasn’t much better.

The most engaging relationship from the first film was that of Sheila and Troy, who fell in love and got married after Sheila was ignominiously and spitefully dumped by Mike.  Their progression from that film to this is the most organic, but covers territory that is all too familiar from Nia Long and Mekhi Phifer in Soul Food: he’s got no job, can’t get no job, and her ex is making a rough go of it for both of them.  The honeymoon is literally over for these two and so is much of the appeal.  Meanwhile Jones, who was deliciously malicious as Mike in the original, is hamstrung by a melancholy regret in dumping Sheila.  But this melancholy hides a life-changing issue he faces alone, and is fairly easy to guess early on.  The three of them get the best service from Perry’s script, but it’s nowhere near enough to salvage the film. 

Gossett, Jr.: “This reminds me of a time on the An Officer and a Gentleman set…”
Perry: “Clinging to that film with a death grip, ain’t you Lou…?”

Finally, Gavin and Patricia are the most frustrating element of Too, as every bit of their issues from the first film are retreaded here, again and again; and again with the volume turned up.  In a nutshell, she’s been destroyed by guilt over her son’s death in an auto accident where she was driving, and has retreated in every way possible from her husband.  He’s waited for her for years, but is now fed up and ready to move on.  Their initially-amicable divorce devolves into money grubbing and bitterness.  Jackson spent the entire first film wallowing in her misery without accepting help, and she spends all of this film doing likewise, accept now she smokes in a key scene for dramatic effect. 

The meat of her dialogue: “I’m fine…. We’re fine…. No really, I’m/were fine.”  The meat of Yoba’s dialogue: “You’re distant…. I love you, but you’re distant…. Fuck it, I want your money because you’ve been distant.”  She eventually becomes as bitter as he is and, although he accosts her physically one night while drunk, there’s no way in hell you can possibly root for her because her intractability is drawn out so friggin’ long without any meaningful resolution, that you’re more than willing to write her off.  And happily so.  Perry tries to paint her as the most most sympathetic character by far, but in reality, she gives you nothing whatsoever for which to feel sympathy.  In fact, she becomes the biggest bitch in the whole picture.  The abrupt resolution of Patricia and Gavin’s arc is laughably bad.

Well, the movie wasn’t all bad…

Cicely Tyson and Louis Gossett, Jr. show up for a class-filled cameo.  In retrospect, you end up wishing that at least half of the main cast had been dropped in favor of their characters.  Why Did I Get Married Too crawls through most of the same relationship sludge as its predecessor did and effectively squanders any of the appeal of that film.  Tyler Perry can do bad all by himself, but this time, he has plenty of help.

The Package

The look and sound of the disc are fine in 1.78:1 and English and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, with English and Spanish subtitles.  In terms of special features, there are two character featurettes: Girl Talk: The Women of Married and Male Bonding: The Men of Married.  There’s also the Couples Character Trivia Guide Track and a music video for Janet Jackson’s theme song, “Nothing.”

Some spoilers, mostly for the other Saw flicks.

Saw VI should have been Saw 3D.  That way, at least the franchise that started out as a claustrophobic and derivative, but gory and occasionally entertaining mix of Se7en and Cube, could have ended on a relative high note.  As it is, Saw 3D has precious few new ideas to add to the franchise; and it’s a lackluster drop down from its immediate predecessor, which managed to work in some poignant political commentary to the drillings, hackings, meltings and general dismemberment.  The traps, which were supposed to “come alive” in 3D, didn’t, and most of them lacked the flair of their forebears.
 
The A-story of the continuing adventures of Det. Hoffman, Jigsaw’s hand-picked successor, was actually the most straightforward it had ever been.  This is because the flashbacks, which had been so prevalent in the recent films, were at a minimum this time out.  However, that meant that Jigsaw, who had managed to live on via flashback in the last three films, is reduced to merely a cameo.  It also meant that Hoffman had to carry the whole shebang on his own, and Costas Mandylor and his one single expression aren’t quite up to it.

The film picks up immediately after the events of Saw VI, which had Jigsaw’s widow, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), trying to eliminate Hoffman with one final trap, a reverse jaw bear trap similar to the one from the first film.  This is due to Jigsaw’s final instructions to her, as he knew that Hoffman would turn into the homicidal lunatic that he had.  But Jill fails to kill him and then she spends the entirety of the picture on the run from him.  She seeks out the protection of Internal Affairs detective Matt Gibson (Chad Donella, hamming it up slightly). The problem with this whole scenario, though, is that Jigsaw never wanted her to be a part of what he was doing.  More importantly, he didn’t even need her to be, due to a secret that’s revealed at the end of the film.  More on that later.

As that’s occurring, another game begins involving author and former Jigsaw trap survivor, Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery).  Dagen has been using his encounter with Jigsaw to sell books and get rich and famous.  The rub is, though, that he never had an encounter with Jigsaw.  He’s been lying about the whole thing which, for all intents and purposes, painted a spinning bullseye on his back.  Flanery was fine as Dagen, but his game, which involved his presiding over key people in his life in traps of their own, has been done a few times in the series (in III and VI), and was rather pedestrian in comparison.

Director Kevin Greutert, the editor on the first five films and director of the sixth, was back for this final go-round; though not necessarily by choice.  Greutert was forced back into the production due to some contractual wrangling, after the appropriately-monickered David Hackl, the director of the worst installment of the series, V, was dropped.  This meant some last-minute script changes and joining of ideas from a planned Saw VIII, that didn’t come about (for now at least) due to low returns for VI.  So, not surprisingly there isn’t much evolution of the concept of the series.  This probably explains why the first trap sequence, which was a very public affair involving two guys, a girl that was cheating on both of them with each other and three rotary saws, seems out of place with the rest of the film.  That could have been the genesis of a plan by either Jigsaw, Hoffman, or yet another disciple to take Jigsaw’s message to a larger audience.  Alas, that concept is quickly forgotten about as soon as one of the three gets crosscut like a 2 x 4.

As for Jill and Hoffman, it begs the question why Jigsaw would involve her, when he had made it patently clear in previous films that he wanted her out of his life as he was setting out on a path that didn’t include her (even though he eventually did).  His actions on this matter directly put her in danger, especially considering that he knew that Hoffman was a psychopath who was going to pervert his message just as Jigsaw’s other protege,  Amanda (Shawnee Smith), did.  For someone who meticulously planned out everything that happened in this franchise, especially the goings-on after his death, this just doesn’t play.  It especially doesn’t play considering how the Jill / Hoffman story resolved, as well as the ace in the hole that Jigsaw had for the entire franchise (if you’ve seen the credits, you can guess what that may be). 

Another element that Saw 3D featured in a minor scene or two were Jigsaw survivors, who came together in a support group headed up by Dagen.  This included Simone (Tanedra Howard), the woman who had to hack off her own arm at the beginning of VI.  Wouldn’t have minded seeing Julie Benz (V) return for a cameo here.  But since there were so few survivors from the first six films, we had to catch a trap that one of the survivors endured we had never seen before via flashback.  Also, I had heard previously that the puzzle pieces that Jigsaw took out of his victims might amount to something.  But that never materialized other than Jigsaw stating that they came to symbolize that each of his victims were missing something: their “survival instinct.”

The 3D didn’t really add much to Saw 3D.  It was shot using the SI-3D camera system, rather than just a post-conversion.  Flanery stated that the film was “[not] shot in 3D so that you can, per se, see blood coming directly at you. It’s in 3D for the texture and the depth, for the architecture, to get a sense that you’re in the scene but there’s no ‘we want to see blood coming at the lens’ it’s nothing like that.  Indeed, there aren’t many of the overt 3D face-zooming moments in the film, which is disappointing considering that this franchise was made for such effects.  So the traps don’t really come alive at all.  On a quick side note, there was one trap, one of the better looking ones in fact, that was (gasp) a dream sequence.  Cheapness.

When considering Saw as a franchise, it’s easy to dismiss it as elaborate torture porn, with bad dialogue and acting.  It’s hard to disagree with that.  But there were a few redeeming elements to the series.  It made clever uses of timeline in a couple of the films (II and IV); and the entire concept of Jigsaw, his situation and motives for doing what he did, was rather innovative.  Continuity, despite becoming as convoluted as it did, particularly in V, were key.  Saw is one of the more serialized horror franchises in memory, especially for one that made it to as many films as this did. 

The deaths over the course of seven movies were at times quite inventive, fun, and always very gory.  The seven Saw films were a return to old school splatter and great make-up effects rather than CGI.  But the franchise became hamstrung by the death of its central character halfway through.  Jigsaw wasn’t a guy who could be dug up and resurrected via lightning (instead he was resurrected via copious retcon and flashbacks).  As Jigsaw went, so did the central theme of the series.

Saw 3D, in comparison with the others, is in the bottom half of the pile.  I’d put the series in this order: II, I, III, VI, 3D, IV, V.  Greutert did do some pretty good work on VI, and again, that would have been a much better (alleged) ending to the series.  But whether it was the fact that he was forced back into the franchise reluctantly, or the franchise itself was simply played out (thinking the latter by far), Saw 3D merely retreads its own frequently-trodden old ground and is an unsatisfying ending…at least until the reboot next month.

This just in: Silver Shamrock

As the last Saw entry only made $27 Million dollars at the box office, it’s hard to argue that the gimmickry didn’t work for Saw 3-D. That said, at the prime of the series Saw sequels were opening a little over $30 Million, so – even for the last entry – these numbers are soft in comparison. And then next weekend the picture should be off more than 60%, so this one should do somewhere over $40 Million, but may not double its opening weekend. So this “last” Saw movie will surely lead to a number of ancilary perks (via box sets, etc.), but Lionsgate knew they had run the spigot dry so it’s a half win. 

Paranormal Activity 2 was always going to have a certain limited appeal, and these numbers are expected. Even if it was a sequel, I’m sure that people looking fro horror but who didn’t see the first Paranormal or any of the Saw franchise would rather see PA2. So if any movie got an appreciable Halloween bump, it was this film. Which suggests that October is a good month for horror movies, but hardly the only month. Activity has no shot at cross $100 Million like the first film, but I would guess it could limp to around $80 Million or so. Where Jackass 3-D has not only been the most successful of its franchise, it’s now the first film to cross the nine digit mark. Next weekend there’s a number of high profile titles, one being 3-D and from Dreamworks animation (which means Paramount), so the film is going to get the treatment Johnny Knoxville got in the film come Friday. That said, the picture could limp to $120 Million, but should settle for something over $110.

Red is performing well for what it is, and held strong. Old people pictures can buck trends. Though the target demo for this film aren’t targeted next weekend, the three new pictures will probably help send this away. $80 Million it is! Hereafter fell less than 50% which would normally be a good thing, but then look at the other numbers. Everything else that wasn’t Jackass or Paranormal fell in the 30’s range. Which means this didn’t sink its teeth into any group. Likely this will be a quiet failure. Secretariat is at the point where even if it hangs around for a bit longer $60 would be as good as it gets.

The Social Network will cross over $80 Million tomorrow, The Town will get to $90 eventually, and Conviction added more screens and cracked the top ten. Perhaps they’ve got a hook to sell, and it could play a bit longer as it adds screens. My guess is this is as high as it charts.

The Fall/Holiday season of A titles starts next week. Harry Potter and Little Fockers are the anchors. True Grit and Tron: Legacy are exciting but possibly disappointing question marks. Gulliver’s Travels and Yogi Bear suggest that humanity is hated.

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE
STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $29.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 150 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Featurette

The Pitch

A gang of local youths terrorize a small town with their conservative views on life. They were last seen in the company of a dog taking orders from a small yellow bird.

The Humans

Todd Barbee, Melanie Kohn, Stephen Shea, Donna LeTourneau, Jimmy Ahrens

The Nutshell

Charles Schulz entered the 1970s on a personal high. Merchandising, television specials and various ways of whoring out his beloved comic strip had turn the man into a millionaire. As his annual animated Specials continued to dominate the Big Three Networks, Schulz  began to realize that he was nearing the end of applicable Holidays. Fearing that he might repeat himself, Schulz started to step away from the specials and allow more outside direction of where the specials should go. Naturally, the push was for generalized themes of responsibility and learning how to play well with others. It was to be safe kiddie stuff that wouldn’t offend parents or tug at the minds of kids.

I don’t care what The Great Pumpkin has been telling you, Linus. The blanket at your age makes you look like a mongoloid.

The Lowdown

Peanuts had a strong television debut that was followed by several classic Holiday specials. Unfortunately, this streak dried up around the release of 1975’s Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown. Seriously, people. Name a Peanuts Special after this period that you can recall. The gang had a ten year golden streak that started with the Christmas special and ended with the really sad Valentine special. By this time, Schulz seemed to be pouring his creative juices into the Peanuts motion pictures that actually seemed to be improving with every offering. What about those flicks, Warner Brothers? I want to see a Peanuts Motion Picture collection, since we’re getting into the lackluster television specials.

The other five specials presented on the disc go to show why the Peanuts franchise began to falter in later decades. The themes began to become more generic and more holidays were mined for material. Honestly, no child gives a damn about Arbor Day. The rest of the specials don’t really focus on Holidays, but they tackle crap like being a good sport and getting your first kiss. The first kiss special when followed by the Valentine’s Day special makes you shrug. The Valentine’s Day special was so well-written, that the quick fix happy ending of First Kiss is annoying. Valentine’s Day teaches Charlie and the other Peanuts that love isn’t always easy and that you might get your feelings hurt. But, a few years later and it doesn’t matter. Love is grand and everyone gets to have some in their life. What happened to consistency?!?

What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown was a surprising effort that allowed for Charlie and Snoopy to take the main stage. One night, Snoopy gets into Charlie Brown’s food and gorges himself. What follows is a delirious dream where Snoopy has become part of an arctic sled dog team. Realizing that he has to forgo his juvenile ways to stay alive, Snoopy grows nastier and lashes out at Charlie Brown. From the softer specials of the late 1970s, this release stands out as an odd middle finger to the complacency of the Schulz Institution. This creative period also marked Schulz’s divorce from his first wife and how bitter he seemed to grow with the material. If you want to go more in-depth about this period, I’d recommend reading Schulz and Peanuts. David Michaelis got pretty detailed with this period in Schulz’s life and there’s even a few sections that detail where Schulz seemed to lose that spark with the television offerings.

The A/V Quality for the release is relatively impressive for a standard definition release of animated material that hasn’t been seen in some time. It pales in comparison to Warner Brothers’ HD clean-up of the classic Peanuts Holiday trilogy, but it’s not like we’re expecting to see these shorts on Blu-Ray. In the end, you have to be a really big fan to purchase this release, as there aren’t a lot of must-have moments with this release. I appreciate that Warner Brothers is continuing to take a chance on these decade-based releases, it’s just that they would be rise to spread the wealth around. The Peanuts legacy is more than the Television Specials, which leaves a lot room for the motion pictures and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I’d be amazed if the powers that be released an 80s Collection, but if they do…I’ll watch it.

Well, Chuck. There can still be something between us. How far back can you tuck it?

The Package

The
DVD
comes with a single featurette about how the Peanuts made it through the mid 1970s, while staying true to their origins. Charles Schulz guides the featurette through a series of archival footage, where he explains how the characters were evolving into something bigger than he anticipated. It’s a short piece, but you almost seem to catch the feeling that Schulz was getting a little lost with his creations. It happens, so you can’t really fault the guy for trying his best to steer the ship. There’s something to creating an iconic series that almost seems to crush the humanity out of its genesis. Watching Schulz try to explain away his characters, while not mentioning their current state is kind of sad. He wants to remember as they were and not as what they were at that point.

BUY FROM AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: R Squared Films
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• “Pathogen” (full feature)
• “Pathogen” Premiere Q & A
• Behind the Scenes look at Emily’s Second Feature: “The Retelling”
• Interview with Emily
• Theatrical Trailer

The Pitch

This crazy middle-schooler in Austin has decided to make her own full-length zombie movie! Let’s watch (and possibly learn a thing or two).

The Humans

Emily Hagins and family, Rose Kent-McGlew, Alex Herskowitz, Tiger Darrow

I mean… damn, son.  Damn.

The Nutshell

The sound is bad, the continuity is atrocious, but Emily Hagins made a feature-length movie when she was twelve.  What did you make when you were twelve, lazy-ass?

Somehow, Emily Hagins was born with much creative urge but little delusion of grandeur – a combination not often seen in nature. After a series of fortuitous events (including her parents moving to Austin when she was a baby) land her a temporary position as a production assistant on an indie film crew, she decides to direct a feature length zombie film based on her own screenplay.  Unlike most unproduced scripts that seem to have been written by a ten-year-old… this one was written by a ten-year-old, and it’s called Pathogen.

Even at her young age, Emily has mastered the use of some equipment that Paul Greengrass struggles with – namely, the tripod.

Production begins on weekends and holidays with a crew of several and a cast plucked from the available. Understandably, momentum during production ebbs and flows (Emily’s full-time-employed mother acts as a driver, producer and boom operator) but like its characters, Pathogen refuses to die.

The Lowdown

If you have ever wanted to make a movie, Zombie Girl: The Movie should be part of your curriculum (along with Lost in La Mancha and American Movie). Afterward, if you aren’t invigorated to work on your project, then you should probably reconsider. If, like Emily, you want to make a movie because you can’t comprehend the concept of not making it, then you are in good shape.

If Tim Burton had drawn this, it would be at MOMA right now.

Directors Justin Johnson, Aaron Marshall, and Erik Mauck wisely avoid painting Emily as a prodigy or even promoting her as particularly gifted (while presenting plenty of evidence with which that conclusion can be drawn).  The specialty that she posesses is the drive to finish her project, and more importantly, the wisdom to walk away from it when it’s completed (during her proclamation to do so, she gets in a sideways jab at George Lucas’ aftermarket meddling).

This rare still from the set of My Girl 3 sheds a little light on Anna Chlumsky’s sabbatical.

Along the way, standard problems arise. Actors don’t know lines, scheduling is difficult, sound issues are abundant and extras are not. Emily meets most of these problems head-on, owns up to her mistakes and thinks on her feet to remedy them.  She’s not always successful, but there are few moments in which she seems to exhibit defeat. On of those moments occurs late in the film in which she commits a heart-breaking error that reminds us that she is twelve, after all.

Her parents are certainly helpful, but Emily is the captain of this ship. While Dad is admirably involved, he is focused on less than Emily’s mother. The full breadth of Mom’s motives, expectations and relationship with Emily are intentionally witheld until act three. This not only makes for a more interesting narrative (I changed my mind about her several times in 90 minutes) but allows the movie to close on themes of family and perserverence as opposed to public or critical reaction to Pathogen itself.  The finished product is on this disc, so that you can judge it for yourself. The story, and possible lesson, to be found here is one of diligence. Completing a coherent movie is a substantial accomplishment at any age, and often a thankless one.

Beat that shit, Goosebumps!

Of course, this film isn’t really about some 12-year-old girl making a zombie movie; it is about a 12-year-old girl making a zombie movie while being championed by geek demigods (Harry Knowles and Peter Jackson gently point her in the right direction) and followed by a documentary team. While the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is at play here, there is no evidence of direct involvement or mentoring by the better-equipped filmmakers (Emily uses a standard-def Sony Handicam and available light). I was also pleased with the directors’ light touch in avoiding trying to find a villain here, or weave a conflict out of the ether with clever editing.

Zombie Girl: The Movie may be aiming lower than many documentaries.  It won’t change the way you eat.  It won’t change who you vote for. It won’t make you sad for people in other countries.  It will, however, make you question how judiciously you are spending your idle time – hardly a petty accomplishment.

“I can’t buy smokes yet, but I’ve already made almost as many watchable movies as Terrence Malick!”

The Package

While the inherent style and presentation of the feature are not earth-shattering (though the imperiled dolls titles were a nice touch throughout), this disc is well-produced and loaded with everything you would want, beginning with the inclusion of Pathogen. The Q&A from Pathogen’s premiere is here as well. A recent interview with Emily is included to both assure you that she didn’t get filmmaking out of her system and that you are getting old, you old bastard (SPOILER: She’s a grown up now).

8.0 out of 10

BUY FROM AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Lions Gate
MSRP: $24.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 464 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: Less Than One

The Pitch

“You know what’s never been tried?  A workplace comedy.  Perhaps in a business setting.  If it doesn’t take root, we can add a neighbor in the eleventh hour –  perhaps a zany one? Not biting?  Well, um… how about for the hook we make the lead a chunky girl?”

The Humans

Sara Rue, Zachary Levi, Andy Dick, Andrea Parker, Sherri Shepherd, Eric Roberts

The Nutshell

Claude Casey (Sara Rue) is a temp working on one of the lower, and thereby lesser, floors of a television station with her friends Ramona (Sherri Shepherd) and Owen (Andy Dick). After a chance to temp for station newsman and MVP Will Butler (Roberts), she gains his confidence and becomes his full time assistant.

Spike Lee’s remake of Devil was slightly more predictable than the original. 

She is tormented not only by her low self-esteem, but also Lydia and Kipp (Andrea Parker and Chuck’s Zachary Levi), corporate ladder-scramblers who are annoyed at the ease of Claude’s ascent.

The Lowdown

Before the dudes (a.k.a. 98 percent of you) stop reading on the assumption that this is a chick show, let me tell you this: It’s actually funny!

Despite its low profile and my snarky comment regarding the pitch, this series works much more often than it doesn’t. The early-aughties were a dark time for situation comedy, but Less Than Perfect proves that you can still create a diverting half hour of chuckles without insulting viewers’ intelligence (see Two and a Half Men) or resorting to junior high level sexual humor (see Two and a Half Men).

Not that there’s anything wrong with juvenile sexual humor once in a while.

Sara Rue is instantly likable and frequently adorable (her only crimes here are rare visits to Sassywhitegirlville). She manages to bring Claude’s lack of self-assertion to life in subtle and different ways. There’s an early impression that show is going to center around her infatuation with her new boss, but I found that thread thankfully absent in most of the storylines.

The rest of the cast plays stock characters, but very well.  Andrea Parker is great as the corporate ice queen, exuding all of Kim Cattrall’s catty sexiness with half the effort. Young Zachary Levi is all confidence and forced smiles as a smarm-mongering lackey. Andy Dick is about as Andydickish as one can be while still being funny and unincarcerated for sexual battery… and he’s funny.  You heard it here, kids: cocaine makes you funny!  The weak link, in my view (ha!), is Sherri Shepherd.  While not bad, she is average among more entertaining actors.

“You know who’s not less than perfect?  The Best of the Best. Zing!“

An aspect that hurt the show in my opinion is the clever title, which is not, and selling point that this was going to be a show about a sassy fat chick, which it is not. I’m not typically soap-boxish about such issues, but it’s insulting that the size of a woman in much better shape than Kevin James, John Goodman or Jackie Gleason should be the premise for a show. As it is, Sara Rue’s figure is rarely referenced. Less Than Perfect is more of a workplace ensemble show like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (point of reference for older folks), Murphy Brown (point of reference for my-aged folks) or The Backyardigans (what the fuck are you doing reading CHUD, little kid!?).

The Package

You get to see a clean widescreen picture (can’t believe ABC didn’t try to make a fat joke about that on the case) and hear Eric Roberts’ trademark oaken voice in Dolby Digital 2.0. I’m not a stickler about such things, but the menu screens were all the same, and since the show has no theme song (merely a riff) you will be sick of hearing it sooner than later.

Wormser had been a chubby-chaser ever since his Lambda Lambda Lambda days.

Oddly, the final cliffhanger episode appears second-to-last in sequence.  I’m not certain why this is but my paranoia tells me that CHUD is just making sure I’m actually watching the whole set and not just selling it on eBay, writing this review from Wikipedia, and then using those freed-up 11 hours to play God of War 3.

At worst case scenario, this set of 22 episodes will run you about a dollar an episode – typically less. In fattie-speak (their theme, not mine), that’s about three KFC meals… with drinks. Between the two, you will live longer and better spending your money on these.

7.0 out of 10

I think we all knew that Paranormal Activity would be turned
into a franchise. Now that the Saw movies have run their course, it’s
time for the next big low-budget, high-profit horror movie bottled
lightning. Naturally, a sequel was prepped immediately after the first
movie became a hit, but the first film didn’t leave much to work with,
aside from maybe the continuing adventures of Katie Featherston.
Additionally, the sequel was going forward without any input from
original writer/director Oren Peli, though he would obligingly receive a
story credit and a producer credit.

I thought the whole thing smelled of a cash grab. I was wrong.

With Paranormal Activity 2, director Tod Williams and his
three credited screenwriters (yes, it apparently took three people to
write this work of “cinema verite”) show an avid understanding of the
original movie. This is a film that builds on the previous movie’s
strengths while downplaying — though not completely eradicating — its
weaknesses. They leave the door wide open for sequels, but not in such a
way that fans will necessarily feel cheated if they don’t get one. In
short, they took the original movie’s template and made a respectful,
outstanding follow-up with it.

Perhaps their first smart move was in the chronology of this film.
It’s actually more of a prequel, considering that most of the story
takes place before the events of the original movie. However, the term
“prequel” isn’t necessarily accurate, since knowledge of the previous
film’s events is mandatory. What’s more, this movie takes place before,
during and after the events of the first film. This isn’t a prequel,
midquel or a sequel so much as it’s an extension of the first movie. I
don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

The storyline focuses on Katie’s sister (yes, she apparently had a
sister all this time). Kristi and her husband, Dan, have just welcomed
their new son, Hunter, into the world. Their household also includes Ali
— Kristi’s stepdaughter — a nanny and a dog. Katie and Micah from the
original movie also appear frequently, with the real-life Katie
Featherston and Micah Sloat reprising their roles.

Right off the bat, there’s a notable difference: The last film had
two main characters and this one has six, including the dog. It’s
cinematic common sense that if a movie has one or two main characters,
the chances are pretty good that one or both of them will make it to the
end of the movie. Kill them too soon, after all, and we’d have a really
short movie. With a larger cast, on the other hand, comes longer odds.
These characters are in much greater danger simply because there are
more of them. Sure enough, where the demon of the last film was
essentially toothless until the very end, the demon in this film does a
lot more injury and does it much sooner.

Thus, we have a much scarier film. The movie does have a lot
of padding and some pretty tame scares early on, but the scares in the
latter half are much more frightening than anything in the first movie
(the cupboard jump scare about halfway through the film is probably my
favorite). There’s a lot of added tension, primarily because of the
greater threat but also because we see so much of the movie through
stationary cameras. Yes, that’s plural. Tod Williams and company took
the original’s fixed camera and improved on it by utilizing footage from
security cameras placed all over the house. Cutting from one camera to
another adds some much-needed energy to the sequences in which
absolutely nothing is happening. This approach also forces the audience
into a completely impartial role, without any single character to see
the movie through. As a result, when something goes bump in the night,
we usually have no idea if it’s a person, a demon or something else
entirely.

It’s also worth noting that the larger cast made for much more
diversity. The last film just had Katie, who wanted the demon to go
away, and Micah, who was kind of a dick about the whole thing. But with
more characters comes more perspectives on the situation. We’ve got
Kris, who’s trying to keep her head down while denying to know as much
as she obviously does. There’s Dan, who is actively doing his best to
stay ignorant and cling to flimsy, mundane explanations for what’s
happening. We’ve got the dog, who seems to see much more of the threat
than we do and is clearly trying to protect the family against this
perceived threat. There’s the Latina nanny, who instinctively knows that
there are demons present and tries to drive them back with
superstitions, acting by a “Mexican = uber-Christian” stereotype that I
honestly found a touch uncomfortable. Of course, we also have the baby,
who acts as the movie’s defenseless MacGuffin.

But for me, the most intriguing character was Ali. The stepdaughter
starts as a background character, but eventually gets promoted to
“audience proxy” halfway through the film. Her initial reaction to the
perceived haunting is basically that it’s really cool, but this reaction
is poignantly underlined by four simple words: “What if it’s Mom?” Not
long after, Ali figures out that this is no friendly ghost. From that
point on, she works to figure out what’s happening and acts as our
device for learning more about what this thing is and why it’s going
after the family.

I was really fond of how this film opened up the mythology of the
series. This film answers several questions from the first — such as
“Why is the demon going after Katie?” and “Why now?” — while leaving a
few ambiguities. Thus, this movie enriches the one that came before
while simultaneously creating material for future sequels. Very well
done.

There’s a lot to admire about Paranormal Activity 2. Paramount
could easily have botched or bungled the film, cutting corners and
rushing it out as a guaranteed moneymaker. However, it’s clear that
everyone behind this did everything possible to make this picture worth
the box office grosses while simultaneously keeping the budget down.
This movie solidly paved the way for a Paranormal Activity franchise,
but did so in a way that preserved what made the original movie
enjoyable to begin with.

This film won’t convert anyone who passed on the original and seeing
the second without seeing the first would be a bad move. However, if
you watched the original Paranormal Activity, you should already
have seen this. Even if you hated the original, I’d recommend giving the
sequel extension a look.

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE
STUDIO: New Video Group
MSRP: $59.95
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 550 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:

* Episode Commentaries
* Deleted Scenes
* Featurettes
* Interviews
* Bonus Videos
* XBox Miniseries
* Outtakes
* Promos
* PSAs

The Pitch

Here’s the first five seasons of Red vs. Blue. It’s one of those series that gamer nerds show their friends, so that their compatriots will come to understand their sad little hobby.

The Humans

Burnie Burns, Jason Saldana, Gustavo Sorola, Geoff Fink, Joel Heyman

The Nutshell

Samuel Beckett once said I have my faults, but changing them is not my tune. When I watch this video game based series about a group of soldiers fighting an endless battle of Capture the Flag in Gulch, I’m left wondering who can care about a show based on the interactions of mindless background characters. Bungie only saw fit to bestow Master Chief with any sort of personality and the other Marines got screwed over. This apparently gave a group of amateur comedians the fuel to wedge their humor into the void. Most of the jokes are based on a very insular gaming culture that doesn’t have many moments of true comedy.

I’m getting tired of funny captions, but I don’t want to tread into droll political commentary.

The Lowdown

Red vs. Blue began life as a short series designed to carry the magic of Xbox LIVE into your daily life. Simmons and Grif introduce us to the conflict at the heart of this series when Simmons asks the Sarge why they are in the Blood Gulch. The blue team built a base first and the red team had to be there to keep an eye on them. No one has an answer for why this happened. They just exist to keep the other side from overtaking this empty canyon. No one has an idea why they should fight, so they only exchange shots every couple of days. They are a group of lonely soldiers left in the middle of nowhere to occupy land.

When I first watched this series, it took me some time before I saw what had happened. The mindless Space Marine action produced by Bungie had been turned into an absurdist comedy. Fuck the pedestrian dialogue that gets shoved into every scene to push the freshman humor. The problem with that is when you see the series for the absurd mess that it is, the shelf life dims ever so much. How many people out there can say that they are true fans of this series? I really want to know, since I’ve had to watch eight seasons of this stuff over the last couple of months. Apparently, New Video has aggressively been promoting this series on DVD.

That leads me to believe that there is a fan fervor to get every episode of this series before and after the revamp. That’s not to say that the revamp did much to shake up the rather stodgy story. It’s just that there’s not a whole lot of material outside weirdo soldiers hang out and crack jokes. Am I getting old? I swear that I feel like I fucking age a decade every time I try to delve into a piece of internet fandom that feels like it’s taking a major release and stretching the shit until it loses all luster. What does that say about Halo fans? Will they really watch anything featuring their beloved Spartans, as long as there is a mild amount of humor? Why can’t they just leave shit to die on the Pillar of Autumn?

Getting back to the point, I’m left to wonder where was the appeal in the early days of this series. After Season 5, the later seasons have aggressively gone after continuity and trying to build a universe. It’s just that these first five seasons are based in trying to squeeze the most jokes of the 128 bit animation. The commentaries on all five seasons don’t do a whole lot to provide answers, which leads me to my diatribes about gamer fandom and its desire to kill any joy left in the world. I hate it when I start to review material and I’m left with more questions than when I began to watch the show. In the end, it comes back to my thoughts after finishing Season 1. Who are the people that actively support this shit? Make yourselves known. I want to avoid you.

Since this is a shorter DVD rack review, I’ll leave you with this. Why was Halo: Reach so short? The answer to come in a future caption.

The Package

The
DVD collection comes with the first five seasons edited into a feature length movie via a Play All function. You also get a ton of featurettes and exclusive material that takes you deep into the world of Halo and Halo 2 style graphics via this Machinima series. The character profiles and PSAs allow you to delve deeper into the world of the Spartans. But, the commentaries and extra scenes seem to require that you already dig a lot of what Bungie has thrown out there. If you’re not a fan of the series, this release won’t bring you deeper into the fold.