Hostel</h1> <article> <h1>Hostel</h1> <p>Anvil — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:48:22 +0000</p> <p class="screenshot"><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;">Honestly, though, this is a little Austin-Powersish.</span></p> <p>I ducked seeing <cite>Hostel</cite> long enough. After <cite><a href="http://www.anvilandsprocket.com/suspense/162">Saw</a></cite>, the remake of the <a href="http://www.anvilandsprocket.com/horror/texas-chainsaw-massacre-remake">Texas Chainsaw Massacre</a>, and Eli Roth's earlier film <cite><a href="http://www.anvilandsprocket.com/horror/cabin-fever">Cabin Fever</a></cite> I'd decided horror movies were going to be a lost cause for another decade or so. The prevalence of "<a href="http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/">torture porn</a>" sucked a lot of joy out of these films. Yes, horror films have always been about the grotesque. But they also used to have a sense of fun, a carny atmosphere. After <cite>Saw</cite>, <cite>Hostel</cite> has pretty much been the banner carrier for this genre of horror film, and I had to work up the nerve to see it. It's actually not half bad.<br /> <br /> It's not your average slasher film. The characters are of at least moderate intellegence. They do things that make sense to me. They don't hide in closets or attempt to defend themselves with steak knives, which is a nice change. One guy is actually pretty quick to go to the police when he thinks there's something funny going on, although of course they're not as much help. And the psychotic maniac isn't exactly a homocidal maniac. It's something darker, scarier, and far more banal than that.</p> <p>I don't want to give it away, but let me leave you with this: <cite>Hostel</cite> spends a lot more time setting up this story than usual -- a good third of the movie. A lot of the front end of the film is just getting into the characters shoes, watching them bum around Amsterdam, checking out the weed-filled "coffee shops" and the cat houses. I got impatient. I nearly turned the movie off. If you've seen this movie, or are going to see it, spend some time thinking about how this front half of the movie matches the last half. There's an actual statement here. A theme. It's gently expressed but fully explored. It might be the only thing subtle about the film, so it'd be a shame if it passed you by.</p> <p class="screenshot"><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;">I did say "far more banal."</span></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=7vylM"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=T86BM"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Production values outpace talent</h1> <p>Anvil — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:11:14 +0000</p> <p>I'm currently working my way through the 2004 horror film <cite>Death Tunnel</cite>, a movie I picked up at the local used DVD store because it was cheap. And because the text on the back made it sound like a 21st century version of the old 70s slasher films. But it's an effort to watch, which is why I am writing this right now instead of glued to the TV screen.</p> <p>One thing I've noticed -- with horror in particular -- is that the production values for even poor productions has become very, very high. We don't see anything like <a href="http://www.haroldbakker.com/personal/The_Creeping_Terror.php">The Creeping Terror</a> anymore. There are crappy cheesy flaws in the digital effects, but you really have to be looking for most of them to see them.</p> <p>Acting talent has not caught up. That's not a technical problem, that's a skill problem. So what you end up with is acting about 50s B-Movie quality, but with gorgeous visuals. Kind of like those old Star Trek episodes where the <em>Enterprise</em> crew gets lectured on having high-tech toys but no racial maturity to go with them. </p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=Yh6YDK"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=KOUT8K"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Triloquist</h1> <p>Sprocket — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:29:15 +0000</p> <p>I should have known from the start that anything that proudly proclaimed it was from the writer/director of <i>Leprechaun</i> would not exactly be a classic of cinema - but I expected it to be at least entertaining.</p> <p><i>Triloquist</i> is the story of a living ventriloquist's dummy that, for a change, is not evil. Or maybe he is. Or maybe he's not. Or maybe he's just so wildly inconsistent - one moment mewling about being pressured into killing by his ventriloquist, the next taking decided pleasure in torturing and killing a guy who's just in the wrong place at the wrong time - that the movie doesn't seem to be able to decide for itself.</p> <p>The boxcover hoopla claims the movie is both scarier <i>and</i> funnier than <i>Leprechaun,</i> but for my money I'm going to have to stick with the guy in green - and that's saying something, considering the quality of <i>Leprechaun</i>. <i>Triloquist</i> just isn't scary, and it isn't funny. In fact, it's not much of anything.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=Z9Wr4J"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=RfeptJ"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Anatomie</h1> <p>Anvil — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:22:27 +0000</p> <p class="screenshot">Now relax.</p> <p>You may have heard about the touring museum exhibition of meticulously preserved and partially dissected cadavers called <em>Body Worlds</em>. You know, the one of all the "plastinized" real corpses flayed, disassembled, and whimsically posed. It's an exhibit that hovers somewhere between scientifically intriguing and OH MY GOD THAT IS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN DOES ANYONE HAVE A BUCKET. When the competing exhibition (called "BODIES - the exhibition") was in Northern Virginia I was inspired to stay the hell out of Roslyn. But it apparently inspired German writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky to make a thoroughly mainstream medical thriller.<br /> <br /> Paula is a talented medical student who has just arrived an advanced and highly competitive medical school in Heidelberg. We know (because we watched the opening sequence) that someone is killing people, vivisecting them, and then turning them into the medical school's anatomy exhibits. But Paula doesn't know this because she didn't do enough campus visits before selecting her school.</p> <p>When one lesson features a cadaver that used to be someone she knew Paula becomes a little unsettled. And when she does the examination and concludes that her acquaintance did not die of congenital hard failure but taxidermy, she gets really suspicious. As we all would. From there things get kind of predictable.</p> <p class="screenshot">I ask you, Paula, is this the butt of a killer? How could you suspect a butt like that?</p> <p>Kind of predictable, but not entirely. There's actually parts of this story I don't want to give away. <em>Anatomie</em> moves at a pretty quick clip and Paula's one smart cookie compared to most heroines in the run-hide-scream-die genre. Paula takes what we might consider to be the logical, sensible steps when someone first suspects murder and conspiracy including going to the police. That's only true up to a point, though, since towards the end Paula seems to have no qualms about wandering through a deserted medical lab late at night when she's already received a stack of death threats.</p> <p>You might think a movie inspired by the museum display of flayed bodies would be mighty heavy on the squick. And occasionally it is, but it has certainly been superseded by the recent crop of torture porn bursting forth from the rancid viscera of Eli Roth. </p> <p>Ruzowitzky is a straight-dealer, too. There are no false scares and no gratuitous sex or gross-out scenes. And although occasionally Ruzowitzky's plot developments feel contrived or stretched (especially towards then end), for the most part he's trying to tell a compelling story rather than throw a bunch of guts at the audience and watch 'em jump. <em>Anatomie</em> is just a medical thriller rather competently told, which is more than I've come to expect from the genre. </p> <p class="screenshot">A secret German medical society? There's nothing suspicious about that.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=UyZpfJ"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=yrJmsJ"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Emmanuelle</h1> <p>Anvil — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:57:44 +0000</p> <p class="screenshot">Emmanuelle had no idea they made shorts that short.</p> <p><i>Emannuelle</i> is a cheesy but beautifully shot light-hearted seventies soft-porn film, the first to draw a mainstream crowd, et cetera ad infinitum yadda yadda. According to a lot of professional reviewers. But if it’s so light-hearted, why does the film leave me so depressed? Has the whole world missed the point of this movie? Or am I making another movie up in my mind?<br /> Let’s start with the Netflix synopsis, which I think is as laughably inaccurate as it’s always been:<br /> </p> <blockquote><p> Young, naïve Emmanuelle is en route to Bangkok where she'll join her new husband, a wealthy diplomat who works for the French Embassy. Once Emmanuelle arrives, her husband and a few friends initiate her into a world of sensuality and sexual ecstasy beyond anything she'd ever imagined. </p></blockquote> <p class="screenshot">A world of sensuality and sexual ecstasy.</p> <p>Let’s talk about the husband and those friends for a bit. They all believe mature adults do not allow sentimentality to infect their enjoyment of sexual pleasure. First Emmanuelle’s husband Jean pontificates on the matter, then she gets an earful from the rest of the wives club. Finally — and somewhat humiliatingly — the not-even-twenty Marie-Ange promises to show Emmanuelle the ropes when it comes to mature adult licentiousness. </p> <p>Now, Jean is adamant that Emmanuelle “feel free” to sleep with all his friends. And he takes Emmanuelle’s reluctance and apparent sexual fixation on him to be nothing short of childishness. Emmanuelle is in philosophical agreement, but emotionally she’s not cut out for the hedonistic lifestyle. She gives it a few good goes as anyone who thinks she is in the moral and intellectual wrong would. But the shallow idleness of her peer group bothers her, and she resists separating love from sex.</p> <p>That doesn’t stop Jean and Marie-Ange. They insist that Emmanuelle pair up with an older man named Mario. Mario will make a woman of her, they say. But Emmanuelle is more infatuated with Bee, a female archeologist who is both stunningly beautiful and scorned by all of Emmanuelle’s peers. Spurning a personal invitation from Mario, Emmanuelle rides with Bee into the jungles of Thailand where she does actual work for the only time in the movie. </p> <p>Jean, deprived of being able to lend his beautiful wife out to his friends, finds he doesn’t like Emmanuelle making her own decisions after all. He falls into a pouty sulk, while Emmanuelle falls deeply in love with the independent woman who has her own career.</p> <p class="screenshot">Emmanuelle finds something different to do with her hands.</p> <p>Bee, unfortunately, does not fall for Emmanuelle. She thinks Emmanuelle is a girl instead of a woman. But not because Emmanuelle confuses sexuality because Emmanuelle is part of an indolent circle of diplomat wives. Emmanuelle leaves heartbroken, resolves anew to become a mature woman, and makes herself a disciple of Mario — who does all he can, including arranging a gang-rape in an opium den — to accommodate her. </p> <p>That doesn’t sound like a “a world of sensuality and sexual ecstasy beyond anything she'd ever imagined” to me. Roger Ebert says Jean “refuses to be possessive (<a href=”http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19750101/REVIEWS/501010316/1023”>review</a>) but Jean is just possessive in a far creepier way. Jean wants to spread Emmanuelle around to strengthen his own cultural cache in his group. He doesn’t really respect Emmanuelle’s independence.</p> <p class="screenshot">Sarah McLachlan arrives at the opium den.</p> <p>Ebert also says Emmanuelle “somehow retains her innocence.” Ebert is a more intelligent reviewer than that. The closing scene, where an unsmiling and vacant-eyed Emmanuelle paints her face to resemble those of the soulless hedonists Jean hangs out with seems to suggest that Emmanuelle has lost her innocence and a great deal more.</p> <p>Don’t get me wrong; the movie does have its cheesy moments and its lengthy soft-porn sequences which underscore rather than undercut the theme that sex for sex’s sake is rather devoid of meaning. When Emmanuelle is following Bee around, most of the scenes involve the two having fun working together, eating with the natives, and just generally having a good time. When we do get around to a sex scene, it’s shot with intimacy and without nearly as many of the soft-porn conventions we’re used to. </p> <p>The Onion AV club hits rather close to the mark but still misses it entirely when they say:</p> <blockquote><p> While the film makes a lot of noise about sexual freedom, the climactic scene, in which the locals gang-rape Kristel while Cuny's silver-haired lech looks on, the question arises of just whose fantasy this is, and who's supposed to be freed by it. </p></blockquote> <p>Which the Onion thinks is a failure of the movie structure. But the message that materialistic, hedononistic sex intentionally devoid of sentiment is as oppressive and destructive as anti-sex religion and philosophies seems so central to the movie. Someone had to mean that to make the point so often and so strongly. </p> <p>Didn't they?</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=1vAAkI"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=8fNzoI"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Cloverfield</h1> <p>Anvil — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:45:31 +0000</p> <p>I have seen some terrible monster movies. I have seen the <cite>Killer Shrews</cite>. I have seen <cite><a href="/fantasy/146"><cite>Troll</cite></a></cite>. God help me, I have even seen <a href="http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/screengrab/archive/2008/06/09/unwatchable-86-quot-hobgoblins-quot.aspx"><cite>Hobgoblins</cite></a>. But nothing could have prepared me for <cite>Cloverfield</cite>. </p> <p>I haven’t taken any screen shots here because there’s nothing in the movie worth looking at. So there.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=jOmpHI"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=w2LHaI"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=Pn8MJi"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Gymkata</h1> <p>Anvil — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:17:34 +0000</p> <p>Look. I respect gymnasts. I really do. Any sport that requires you to be flexible and beautiful and yet also requires you to be strong enough that your muscles threaten to pull your skeleton apart deserves respect, if not horror. But I’m not responsible for <i>Gymkata</i>. I have to imagine that anything I can possibly say about the sport pales in comparison to the damage this movie’s done.</p> <p></p> <p>Here’s the basic idea: Gymnastics expert Johnathon Cabot (played by World Champion gymnast Kurt Thomas, who looks like Christopher Robin with a mullet) is recruited by the United States government to travel to a backwater Eastern European nation called Doofania (note too self: look up real name) to compete in a deadly athletic competition called “The Game.” This “The Game” is not to be confused with Queen’s Game of Love:</p> <p><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UhjHjWTSeXg&hl=en" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></object></p> <p>Nor should it be confused with that other “The Game” the gangsters are always talking about:</p> <p><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cryMVK1PwuQ&hl=en" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></object></p> <p>No, this “The Game” is a deadly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_the_gauntlet">gauntlet</a> of a race. Losers die, the winner’s nation gets the right to build a satellite sub-station in the country. Or open a Subway franchise. Something like that, starts with an ‘S.’ Anyway, it’s not important. </p> <p>What is important is that Cabot gets to beat people up by jumping, leaping, and using conveniently placed urban-environment gymnastics equipment like this pommel horse:</p> <p><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-gTkUcXGF_Q&hl=en" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></object></p> <p>In the process he reunites with his long lost Dad, falls in love with the beautiful (apparently adopted) daughter of the Emperor Premier of Doofania, and learns how to climb stairs while doing a headstand. I suppose we’re supposed to think gymnastics is a tough, serious sport. And I used to think that until I watched Kurt Thomas flirt-by-backflip strategy.</p> <p><cite>Gymkata</cite> has to be one of the stupidest movies of all time and you owe it to yourself not to watch it.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=R2vxMcG"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=RMPVQLG"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=25m2rJg"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem</h1> <p>Sprocket — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:29:51 +0000</p> <p class="screenshot">Q: Are we not men? A: We are… Daft Punk?</p> <p>On a bizarre, alien planet, a quartet of blue-skinned rockers are getting everybody to get up off their butts and jam. In fact, their entire world is so entranced by their music that they don’t notice an oncoming alien invasion until it’s far too late. In minutes, the live audience is gassed and the band abducted. With a spacebound hero hot on their heels, the aliens take their captives to their home world – Earth – where they change the colors of their skins, fabricate Earthling memories, place them under the influence of mind control devices, and set them loose as a hit pop act called “The Crescendolls.”</p> <p>  </p> <p>It’s an odd enough story, but it’s not unexpected. What else would you expect from a collaboration between Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto? After all, Daft Punk is the French house duo who appear in public as faceless androids, claiming to have been transformed from men to machines after a tragic mixing board explosion, and Matsumoto is the man who put a pirate ship on the solar winds in Captain Harlock and a steam engine on invisible rails through space in Galaxy Express 999. The collision of two such oddball artistic aesthetics could only be considered strange if it produced something completely normal.</p> <p class="screenshot">“Four kids who don’t play their own instruments? Genius!”</p> <p>It’s important when going into a movie like Interstella 5555 that you have a good idea of what you are in for, so let’s start with the big thing that everybody notices first. There is no dialogue in this movie. The poster proclaims it to be “The Animated House Musical,” but don’t expect the mix of music and dialogue that you’ll find in a traditional musical. IThe term that occurred to me as I watched was “ballet,” as the characters don’t even directly interact with or produce the music except for the first and last numbers. In fact, throughout the movie it appears that The Crescendolls have only one song, “One More Time,” which serves as the opening number.</p> <p>The idea of setting a movie to a complete album typically leads people down the Beyond the Mind’s Eye or Animusic route, but refreshingly Matsumoto decides to go with traditional cel animation that features an overarching story as opposed to vignettes of “look what I can do with computers” animation. Characterization is light and drawn in broad strokes. People familiar with Matsumoto’s previous work will recognize his stock designs quickly – dashing hero, dastardly villain, and dumpy comic relief to name just a few . The story is rife with criticism of pop exploitation, as the unscrupulous record executive literally cranks The Crescendolls out of a machine after selecting the most marketable looks for them. In fact, as the movie reveals, the Crescendolls are only the latest in a long string of one-hit wonders generated via this method.</p> <p class="screenshot">Wow. They start ravers young on this planet.</p> <p>It occurred to me about halfway through the movie that I was seeing a very deftly-executed thought experiment. Matsumoto had taken Daft Punk’s album and used it to finally bring to life the images that danced in his mind, as he speaks about in a brief live action segment at the beginning. It also occurred to me that I was the wrong audience for just such a project. This led me to wonder what, exactly the right audience would be.</p> <p>I actually like electronica, but I’ve found that even the best electronica gets on my nerves after a while. While I can enjoy the music, it’s not something that I want to sit down and listen to an entire album of. The same argument actually applies to electronica’s core audience – the folks who go to clubs and raves are very rarely interested in sitting through the entire show. That’s why the music specifically populates clubs and raves. One viewer who posted his thoughts on Netflix encouraged others to watch the movie with lots of friends, the lights turned down, the volume turned up, and glowsticks. That certainly puts the movie with its core demographic, but if you’re considering turning your living room into a makeshift dancehall, one would question why you need Leiji Matsumoto’s imaginative visuals.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=lxv0BAE"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=jNndCpE"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=BEqfF5e"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Zombie Cardio</h1> <p>Sprocket — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:18:04 +0000</p> <p>Over at the not-safe-for-work Suicide Girls, <a href="http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/George+Romero%27s+Diary+of+the+Dead+/">George Romero is interviewed about his upcoming <span class="caps">DVD</span>, <em>Diary of the Dead.</em></a> Reading through the interview, this passage in particular caught my attention. Romero gets asked how he feels about the high-speed, super-strong zombies that populate recent movies like <em>28 Days Later</em> and the re-make of Romero’s own <em>Dawn of the Dead.</em></p> <blockquote><p>Oh boy, I don’t believe they can do it. I mean, the stuff I said in the film is exactly [what I think.] I think their ankles would snap. It doesn’t make sense to me. I used to get asked, after the Return of the Living Dead movies, “Well, how come your guys aren’t coming up out of graves?” Because no individual zombie has the strength to dig through all that mahogany, man. So there’s a little set of rules there, anyway, that keeps it, at least in my mind, somewhat reasonable.</p></blockquote> <p>I like zombie movies, but aside from <em><a href="/comedy/124">Shaun of the Dead</a></em> and Romero’s own <em>Land of the Dead</em>, I find I have very little use for modern zombie films. The reason for this can be summed up in two words: Fast zombies.</p> <p>Of course, Romero has a good logical reason for why zombies shouldn’t be fast or particularly strong. They’re dead. Dead people shouldn’t really be faster or stronger than they were when they were alive. As for me, I have a storytelling reason for why I don’t like it. Fast zombies lose the very element that makes zombies uniquely scary among other movie monsters.</p> <p>A super-fast, super-strong zombie has nothing to distinguish it from a vampire or a werewolf or any number of creatures put on film by Hollywood over the years. They’re all beings who can outrun you, outfight you, and who want to feast on your flesh (or, in the case of a vampire, blood).</p> <p>A slow, shambling zombie, however, is uniquely scary because of what it means if it actually catches you. If one of the new breed of movie zombies – fast, strong, and eerily intelligent – grabs hold of you, it’s not a big deal. They’re faster than you. They’re stronger than you. For some reason, they’re just <em>better</em> than you. Being caught by a slow zombie, however, means one of two things. Either you have been caught in a situation in which defeat is inevitable or – more likely – you seriously screwed up. </p> <p>In other words, when a slow zombie chows down on your brain, there are no real excuses. There’s a better than even chance that it’s your own fault.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=PwYDtBE"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=XVdW3rE"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=zFgL6ke"></img></a> </div> </article> <article> <h1>Cinematic Titanic: The Oozing Skull</h1> <p>Anvil — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:02:38 +0000</p> <div class="screenshot"> Trace (I think that’s Trace) tries to adjust Regina Carrol’s makeup.</div> <p>And then suddenly there were more movie-mocking projects than you could shake Torgo’s stick at from the old Mystery Science Theater crew. The most recent version, Joel Hodgson’s <cite><a href="http://cinematictitanic.com/wpmu/">Cinematic Titanic</a></cite>, is the first to return to the silhouettes-on-a-movie-screen format. I received my copy in the mail earlier this week, and the Elf and I sat down to watch it once we got the kid to bed.</p> <p></p> <p>The movie is classic Mystery Science Theater, if perhaps a little more graphically violent. It’s actually 1972’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068313/">Brain of Blood</a> (retitled for this project), a schlocky medical-ethics squeem-fest about a doctor who transplants the brain of a dictator into the body of a disfigured man-child. There’s very little to distinguish this movie from the dozens of others like it with the possible exception of actress Regina Carrol. She’s the movie’s unflatteringly-filmed peroxide blond-shell, a carny-mirror femme fatale certain to keep <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200801110010?f=h_top">Chris Matthews up nights</a>.</p> <p><cite>Cinematic Titanic</cite>‘s crew of five bracket the film in silhouette on scaffolding. From these perches they make zingers on the movie, sometimes enlisting the aid of other props or shapes that descend from the ceiling. A Stephen Hawking impersonator rolls across the screen at one point, cracks a joke, and rolls off. Instead of the old host segments, the movie pauses occasionally to let one of the players deliver an extended riff on the film, sometimes with the aid of cranes. </p> <p>It all sounds pretty interesting, but the execution leaves something to be desired. With five riffers I’d hope for a little more chemistry between the performers. They rarely interact with each other or build off of each other’s riffs, and the scaffolding shapes keep them rather isolated. And their delivery sounds a little animatronic — anything but spontaneous. Maybe this is something the series will grow into — this is the first episode after all. But everyone here worked together before, some of them for a very long time. Where’s the camaraderie? These don’t feel like my friends. They don’t even feel like <em>each other’s</em> friends. They feel more like the Pizza Time Players except in better repair.</p> <p>The other problem seems to be more structural. The movie begins with the cast taking their places on the scaffold and — with no preamble at all — beginning to riff on the film. We never see the performers in anything more than silhouette. A lot of people didn’t care for the host segments in Mystery Science Theater, but they did offer more opportunities for extended commentary on the films being mocked. Some of my favorite Mystery Science Theater bits came from these sketches — analysis of Kathy Ireland’s look of Dull Surprise, The “Where O Werewolf” song, Joel in his Manos costume. Compared to this, the shadow-plays against the movie screen backdrop seem much more limiting. </p> <p>The host segments also gave the players the opportunity to connect with the audience, often speaking directly to the camera. That gave us a sense of character which is very much lacking in <cite>Cinematic Titanic</cite> unless you’re already very familiar with the players. But in the context of CT we have no reason to like these people-shapes or care about their commentary. Cinematic Titanic uses the “shadowrama” technique in an entertaining fashion, but the show is desperately lacking in personality. Sparse. Cold. Impersonal. And I just don’t see how that gets fixed without bringing the lights up now and again.</p> <p>One final word, and this is about EZ Take’s packaging. The <span class="caps">DVD</span> arrived in the mail less protected than that endless stream of <span class="caps">AOL</span> discs everyone used to get. It’s a square paper mailer and inside it is a <span class="caps">DVD</span>. There’s not even a paper sleeve for the disc. How am I going to put this on my shelf? More to the point, how am I going to display this so people can see it and ask me about it? People can <em>see</em> my Film Crew DVDs and twelve volumes of MST3K. This risks falling behind the shelves, never to be seen again until the movers shift the entertainment center. Come on, guys. If I have to order a physical product, at least give me something I can look at.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=hu4u3jD"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=jJnGViD"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/AnvilSprocket?a=Gm8zfzd"></img></a> </div> </article> </main></body></html>