For me, movies based on kung fu manuals pretty much reached an impenetrable ceiling when Stephen Chow turned out the slow-starting, yet insanely entertaining Kung Fu Hustle. For the unfortunate uninitiated, he played a shifty geek whose life was irrevocably altered when some vagrant sold him a manual on the “Buddhist Palm” technique as a … Continue reading
Somehow, the idea of an Al Pacino/Robert DeNiro film still seems like an event film even though the the legendary actors haven’t had the same quantity of powerhouse roles as they used to, both choosing to pursue passion projects and in the latter’s case to also make horrible commerce pictures. Can’t fault him I suppose. … Continue reading
Jason is proud to be a black man…what?
Say what you want about Smokin’ Aces (and a lot of you did), it was a pleasure to have Joe Carnahan once again orchestrating cinematic mayhem after an interminable five year layoff (just another reason to hate Mission: Impossible III). Though the script was little more than an excuse to get a bunch of badass … Continue reading
With regards to the Transformers character design argument, I’m staying way the Terry Funk out of it – mostly because I don’t care, but also because my grading scale on giant robots is insanely forgiving. Basically, if they look like they could throw a Big Boy the length of three football fields, then they’re alright … Continue reading
Welcome to the next CHUD List. We’ve tackled our essentials list and the continued revelation of our Kills List from 2003, and now that we’ve begun the beguine, we must continue. Behold: The CHUD.com Top 50 Disappointments. A quick word on the criteria. We could very easily have spent this whole article discussing sequels and … Continue reading
A joke among the journalists covering The Dark Is Rising set visit in Bucharest over the last couple of days was that the movie has only changed three things from the Newberry-winning novel on which it’s based: they’ve changed the lead kid’s nationality from English to American, they’ve changed the lead kid’s age from 11 … Continue reading
The trouble with the Shrek movies is that their admirable message of self-acceptance is drowned in a deluge of pointed pop culture references that’s essentially the result of one rich white guy (former Disney CEO Michael Eisner) snubbing another rich white guy (Jeffrey Katzenberg, former heir to Eisner’s throne and now the "K" in Dreamworks … Continue reading
You want DVDs? We’ve got DVDs, my friend. Hot on the heels of our many other contests, we’d like to give away three copies of Genius Products’ new zombie/comedy The Mad, starring Billy Zane. Yep, Billy Zane, who was evil in Titanic, and wants nothing more from his life than the chance to prove how … Continue reading
I’m going to spoil the last act of the new Shrek right now, so avert thine eyes if thou desirest an unmolested viewing of the film. The novelty of Shrek the Third is that a group of princesses normally relegated to the damsel-in-distress role end up saving the day at the end. This is empowering. … Continue reading