As you know, I am a newspaper reporter. Over the past couple of months, I have covered events as diverse as health board meetings, student science fairs and attempted robberies. It’s a busy life, and an eclectic one, but once in a while, an assignment comes along that really lights my fires.

Like the time I was sent to interview a flying serial killer.

I don’t get to actually see him fly, because his studio is kind of small, and he’s not really a serial killer — he only plays one in the movies. But he does make a table levitate for me. It’s fun watching my very tall photographer duck as the table swoops around his head. The outtakes from his camera show a lot of shocked expressions, on his face and mine.

The flying man is Peter Loughran, the Master of Illusions. He’s a Canadian magician, actor and illusionist who, most of the time, works behind the scenes. You’ve seen his large-scale and small-scale illusions on Las Vegas stages and in the shows of some of the top performers in the field, including Criss Angel. But Loughran works on his elaborate magic closer to my neck of the woods, in a nondescript building on the shores of a cold lake in central Ontario.

Inside that nondescript building, though, magic is found. Swords hang from the walls. A bleeding, dripping severed head sits on a shelf. On the wall is a huge poster of Loughran in midair; he invented and sells a device called The Elevator, which allows users to levitate, even when surrounded by a crowd. In other words, flying.

He won’t tell me how it works. In fact, he can’t say much about his work, as it has to remain a secret. At one point, I try to jot down some observations from a secret formula pinned to the wall; Loughran points and my pen vanishes. Luckily, I have another.

The reason I’m here in Peter’s lair, with a photographer, is to talk about Plaster Rock. It’s a new low-budget horror film that was shot in December in New Brunswick, Canada. Loughran plays a key role in the film, as a mysterious magician/villain who prowls the remote forests of Plaster Rock.

“How were you cast in the film?” I ask.

“Well, they needed an actor who could also perform magic, as that’s a part of the character,” he says. “And they needed someone who could double as the magic consultant, and assist with special effects and makeup.”

In other words, it’s a pretty narrow field for casting agents. As soon as the producers started asking around within the illusion community, Loughran’s name kept popping up.

Within days, he was out in the snow, filming the movie. It will be released this spring, with a gala launch in — where else — my living room. No, actually, it’ll be in Las Vegas.

Plaster Rock is loosely based on a true story about a murder case from the 1930s. Adapted to modern-day, the film tells the story of a group of young people on a cross-country ski adventure race who run afoul of a black-cloaked figure who lives in the forest and can disappear in a cloud of smoke. This is, as Loughran calls it, micro-budget horror filmmaking … in other words, right up my alley.

There are days when I thank my assignment editor profusely.

Kennedy, Starbase 66

Visit the Master of Illusions

See the Plaster Rock trailer

Note: Thanks to Global Universal Pictures and Peter Loughran for the photo.

The makers of Tron 2 are raising the bar for nerdgasmic marketing events. Check out the video in the “Flynn Lives Meet-up” post for proof. I think the line “I’ve been waiting since I was 12 to play Space Paranoids and there it was” says it all. These guys know their target demographic like the back of their hand.

At 4pm EST today, tickets are being released through the Flynn Lives site for some kind of secretive IMAX pre-screening events worldwide. Nerds in the know will be on that.

How many times have we all uttered that phrase when we hear of the next reboot or remake coming out of Hollywood? An American Werewolf in London; Short Circuit; Poltergeist, Logan’s Run…how many more of our treasured memories are they going to destroy? I know I’ve been guilty of saying such things more than once on Starbase 66, and in ‘real’ life, but I’m starting to think that we are aiming our vitriol in the wrong direction.

When we interviewed Herb and Harrison Solow last year they both said something that took a while to sink in. In both conversations the question of the apparent addiction to crap in Hollywood was brought up, and they both pointed out that if people wouldn’t buy tickets to such things, then film makers would stop making them. We are like the bloated, stuffed to bursting patron of the all-you-can-eat buffet who, after gorging himself, shouts insults at the chef on his way out to his minivan. We decry the multi-million dollar detritus being foisted upon us by Tinsel Town, yet line up like the sheep we are every time Michael Bay or James Cameron squeezes out another formulaic blockbuster. Continue Reading…

You might have been looking for a penetrating sociological thesis on Man’s descent into primitivism, a master class on the Noble Savage mythos, a stirring epic portrayal of human will thwarting dystopian odds.

Other post-apocalyptic tales just didn’t meet your vaunted criteria. You tried A Canticle for Liebowitz and found it academic. McCarthy’s The Road too modern. Logan’s Run, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451 — all too mainstream. Akira too abstract, Planet of the Apes too kitsch.

And so you turned, breathless and flushed with excitement, your body awash with adrenaline and literary lust, to  A Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell.

Continue Reading…

What happens when you rip off the Flash, cast the talentless son of an A-list actor, mix in a washed-up Baywatch hottie, pervert science, and slap Stan Lee’s name on the entire low-rent mess? It’s called Lightspeed, and before it hit Netflix it was a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie. Yes, Simply Syndicated friends, I am picking the low-hanging fruit this week. Continue Reading…

Imagine a story set during the American Civil War, where Napoleon races to recover Darth Vader’s lightsaber from Hitler’s clutches in order to stop Genghis Khan from invading Robinson Crusoe’s island.

That wasn’t exactly how The Scorpion King 2 went, but close enough.

The 2008 skunk stars a Power Ranger, a UFC wrestler, and a Bud Bundy look-alike. They dress like thugs from Tupac’s California Love video and explore the ancient world.

Problem is, director Russell Mulcahy shows just as much disregard here for time, space, and cannon as he did two decades ago making Highlander 2. And it’s less forgivable because the source material isn’t nearly as epic or beloved.

Continue Reading…

It was freshman year, and in our dorm room Ryan Vai was rifling through his VHS collection. Imagine a mustachioed A.C. Slater look-alike with a longer mullet, a muscle-shirt, and parachute pants. Envision him pumping a mini-head-bang as he rocked himself over to the VCR.

“Dude, this is gonna be sweeeeet,” he crowed, eyes wide, fist in the air, slapping a copy of 1998’s The Big Hit into the machine.

The next 91 minutes were a particularly heinous breed — a vapid action flick that forced me at gunpoint to actually like it despite having so, so, so many shortcomings.

On the good side: After missing Hard Target (starring Wilford Brimley!) and Face/Off, this is how I was finally introduced to John Woo (who produced, but didn’t direct The Big Hit). Kids, trust me when I say Woo-ist fight scenes changed everything. They’re all about gymnastic use of the set and short cuts, and without them there would be no The Matrix. If nothing else, watch the opening fight sequence from seven minutes in until the 15 minute mark.

On the bad side: The Big Hit proved a less intelligent precursor to The Transporter with less charisma, more caricature, too much Marky Mark, and not enough Lou Diamond Phillips. And for what was billed as ostensibly an action film, the fights are few and far between, supplanted with awkward and unfulfilling black comedy. It misses bigger than it hits.

The plot: Assassins-for-hire pull a kidnapping on the side, only to discover their target is god-daughter to underworld boss Avery “Captain Benjamin Sisko” Brooks. To escape Brooks’ wrath, Lou Diamond Phillips (cunningly named Cisco — a DS9 homage?) frames Marky Mark for the kidnapping and goes on a murderous spree. Meanwhile, the Japanese kidnappee suffers Stockholm Syndrome with Marky Mark, who is already engaged to Christina Applegate and has a baby mama on the side. Hijinx ensue.

Keeping it real: Now I love the depravity of gritty crime flicks that glorify the anti-hero. I mean, hey, Goodfellas is my favorite movie, with a certain Mario Puzo adaptation in a close second place.

But this is no Godfather, and Mark Wahlberg is no Al Pacino. We don’t get truly complex or sympathetic characters suffering the consequences of their lifestyle. The assassins of The Big Hit are con-men, damnedable killers with no remorse, compulsive liars out for themselves and only themselves, cheaters who murder friends on a whim and routinely dispose of bodies in the bathtub.

To be fair, writer Ben Ramsey seemed to understand all this, sprinkling the script with self-deprecating plot devices. For instance, there’s a fake movie-within-the-movie called Taste the Golden Spray. There’s also a way to block the trace that’s tracing the trace on your phone call — the fabled Trace Buster Buster Buster. These are blaring sirens screaming out, “Hey, dudes, we know this plot is ridiculous! It’s just an excuse for some jokes, a hot Asian chick, gratuitous shots of Christina Applegate’s ass, and some tight gun-fu!”

The talent: It’s not often you can say the character with the most depth in a given film is played by Mark Wahlberg. For every Boogie Nights there’s a Planet of the Apes — or worse, The Happening. But his Melvin Smiley is just complex enough to drive along the absurd Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner-meets-The Replacement Killers hybrid plot. He’s the hitman with a heart of gold, ripped off more or less from Grosse Pointe Blank. He’s clearly the best killer of the bunch, but fixated on getting everyone to like him (even his victims). To balance his good guy/bad guy double identity, and to put up with the manipulative women in his life, he constantly guzzles antacid. It’s a fun but wet character.

The more talented Lou Diamond Phillips plays his nemesis, who I’ll grant is less complex but far better acted. Cisco is a sleazy, lazy, egotistical foil for Wahlberg. There’s too much Butabi Brother moron in Cisco for him to ever come out on top, and you can see every maniacal little thought jumping out his beady eyes. It’s the prominent and cheap-looking gold crown that’s constantly flashed in Cisco’s evil smiles that seals the role.

There’s only one other actor worth writing about — China Chow as the cute schoolgirl kidnappee, Keiko. That’s her real name, by the way, though it’s hard to believe. China Chow. Yeah. Right. She’s hot in her little plaid skirt, and the film’s makers swear up and down she’s supposed to be in college, and not high school. There’s no statutory stuff goin’ on here, officer. Nope.

This was Chow’s acting debut (she was previously a model), and though she was just fine there’s little else on her filmography. The most notable appearances are a one-off on That ’70s Show and a voice job on one of the Grand Theft Auto games.

Do as I say, not as I do: Yeah, The Big Hit is one of my guilty pleasures, but it’s the cinema equivalent of the swine flu. Just because I’m sick doesn’t I should spread it to you. Its 5.8 rating on IMDB seems innocuous enough until you consider the 38 percent grade on Rotten Tomatoes. Matter of fact, the Interwebz seem split on this one, with reviewers of all ilks calling it either 1) one of the worst abortions ever churned out by Hollywood… or 2) the best of the Woo-inspired brainless shoot ‘em up flicks best viewed while under the influence.

The dollar signs tell the same story. The Big Hit opened at number one on a bad week in April, raking in just over $10 million. It was gone in a matter of weeks, making $27 million (barely twice its budget) before disappearing into obscurity. As far as the 1998 box office goes, it was a nothing — not even in the top 50 of the year.

Personally, I think it’s all about inebriation and age limit. Ideally, you’ll enjoy Marky Mark and the Assassin Bunch as a 16-year-old boy who’s brand new to R-rated action. If you’re of legal age, you shouldn’t watch without a great deal of Jack Daniels for backup.

~ Jason

The thing that bothered me the most about Uwe Boll’s direct-to-video stinker Far Cry is that I already saw this film. The year was 1992. the director was Roland Emerich, and the (far better) movie was called Universal Soldier.

Back then, the concept was fresh rather than rehashed, and I actually cared about the characters, who — get this — were developed throughout the film!

But Boll just doesn’t get that kind of subtlety. I’m not sure he even understands how real people interact. Or their motivations. Neither does he get the meaning of “appropriate comic relief.” His Far Cry proves that a stand-in for Jean-Claude Van Damme, a cute girl with a perky butt, some exploding boats, and zombies in white makeup are not enough.

In this version, German mad scientist Udo Kier is turning mercs into genetically-modified killing machines without minds or souls of their own. A Seattle newspaper reporter (Emmanuelle Vaugier) finds scraps of information about Kier’s government-subsidized lab, and she rushes to his aid. She hires boat captain (and former special ops) Jack Carver (Jean-Claude Til Schweiger) to raid the island where he informant uncle disappeared.

For the record, Kier’s face in the above picture perfectly sums up how I felt watching the damn thing unfold.

This shitgeist leaves me asking several questions:

1) You’ve got to wonder which of the starry-eyed cast members signed on to Far Cry thinking, “Hey, this is the one that will make me famous!”

In Movies You Should See episode 203, the gang talked about how to spot a bad movie. I’d like to add my own criterion to their list: If you recognize several actors, especially from television, but they’re such small fish that you can’t name them, then you are watching a bad movie.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Schweiger’s suffered the shame of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalow, but it wasn’t Far Cry that got his name out there — no, that was this summer’s Inglorious Basterds. Vaugier’s got a slew of Saw movies under her belt, as well as House of the Dead 2. She’s clearly paying the bills. She made it “big” as Charlie Sheen’s love interest, Mia, on Two and a Half Men. Kier’s a Boll survivor after BloodRayne, but he’s got street cred for Ace Ventura, Blade, and Grindhouse. On the other hand, he’s a reknowned B-movie paycheck-casher for projects like End of Days, Dracula 3000, and Barb Wire.

2) Who at Crytek (the game developer that made Far Cry) thought handing over movie rights to god-damned Uwe Boll was the right business move?

I mean, this is the guy who has a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. He’s the guy who tried to pick a fight with Michael Bay. He’s the guy who has an online petition to get him to stop making movies. He’s the guy who’s called himself  “the only genius in the whole fucking [movie] business.”

And there Far Cry sits with a 3.2/10 rating on IMDB. But that’s okay, because Boll keeps insisting it’s brilliant, comparing it in one interview to a James Bond movie. Yet it took me — someone who loves terrible movies — four sittings to complete.

3) When will German lawmakers close the loophole that lets Boll and his investors reap profitable tax write-offs from films that bomb and lose millions?

It’s been theorized that Boll purposely pumps out these failures in order to exploit the topsy-turvy way his nation’s books work — like some sort of real life The Producers. Despite losing $9 million on House of the Dead, $26 million on Alone in the Dark, $21 million on BloodRayne, and $32 million on In the Name of the King, he’s still going and has four more movies in production right now. That’s $88 million he’s lost on just four titles!

Did anything go right?

The “monsters” weren’t scary in the slightest. Chris Coppola’s “food guy” character should have been excised from the film altogether. He’s responsible for the single worst-written-and-delivered line I’ve heard since 1996: “They must do a lot of humping here, because those things breed like rabbits.” (It replaces Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, “You’re luggage,” from Eraser.) It was a bad movie.

I want to find some small point of light in the darkness, though, or else I’ll feel bad. I’ve got to admit that Schweiger’s gymnastic physicality in the final act was worth watching. Some of the establishing shots of the Vancouver coastline were very pretty. And while the rest of the plot was horrid, I enjoyed that our hero didn’t kill the villain at the end; instead, the mad scientist was torn to shreds by his own hubris, cornered by ravening mutant commandos.

That’s not an endorsement. Stay the hell away from Far Cry.

~ Jason

I remember blinking my eyes in April 1999 as I walked out of my small-town cinema. It wasn’t just that the sun hurt after hours in a dark theater, but I was also still absorbing everything The Matrix had spilled out in front of me. The TV ads led me to expect another brainless action flick, and the story depth and the special effects had caught me off guard.

What I had expected, in hindsight, was for The Matrix to barely live up to limp action/sci-fi flicks  like its 1997 precursor, Crossworlds.

There are some substantial ties between the two: Both tell about a dude who discovers there’s more than the limited universe he knows. He goes on the run from suit-wearing agents and confronts a higher power who wields control over the very fabric of reality itself.

But only one of the two is done well.

It’s almost as though Crossworlds exists just to show how revolutionary The Matrix was, how it changed the whole game, how its innovations re-wrote the entire sci-fi formula.

Where The Matrix employs tech-head styling wrapped in black leather, sunglasses, guns (lots of guns), and the teachings of Immanuel Kant, Crossworlds opts for… well… Rutger Hauer, a hot chick, and a douchebag in the desert.

And where The Matrix seized on bullet time, morphing effects, and kung fu, Crossworlds went instead with crappy red camera lens filters, bargain bin foley sounds, and a smattering of digital effects that could easily, easily compete with Teletubbies in the quality department.

Its budget cinema essence made sense once I checked out writer/director Krishna Rao’s filmography. He’s noted for having his hands on various cameras for other fairly low-rent science fiction and horror endeavors such as The Fog, Halloween, Predator 2, Star Trek: Generations, and Species. He’s also credited with a very select number of episodes of Angel, She Spies, and The Pretender amongst others — none especially noted for being either high-brow or big money. So it’s easy to see why Crossworlds garners a whopping 5.0/10 on the IMDB.

Not to say it’s all rubbish — after all, there’s the appearance of an older, gruffer, more annoyed Rutger Hauer, legend of Ladyhawke, Blade Runner, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The rest of the cast is largely disposable, but Hauer’s dimension-trotting mercenary has an “I’m too old for this shit” charisma that makes his scenes bearable.

The problem — even with Hauer — is that we never find out why any of the characters act the way they do, and there’s very little in the way of metamorphosis as they jump from dimension to dimension (which happens surprisingly little considering the name of the movie). So much for development.

Add to this a truly garish villain who — for some reason — can use magic. This doesn’t necessarily jive with the whole sci-fi roots of parallel universes and reality-hopping exploits. Cross his bad toupe with the ability to hypnotize using glitter and (none of this is ever explained!) the power to levitate objects as well as to make his body insubstantial at command, and you can see where I’m going. Rao never tells me whether the evil Ferris is wizard, Agent Smith, Supreme Underlord, George W. Bush clone, Zombie Jesus, or the Super Devil.

It gets pretty silly.

Bottom line: The only reason to watch Crossworlds is to feel all smug and stuff the next time you load up Neo and the boys.

~ Jason

I have some advice for all the teenage guys out there. Your mother loves you, and you really should spend some quality time with her. My recommendation is to share a lazy Sunday afternoon in front of Netflix with the classic 1998 romantic romp Virtual Girl. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll learn that even computers need love. You and Mom will bond over the lighthearted hijinx of a boy and his dream girl and her breasts.

Did I say breasts? Yes, I suppose there are a couple of those sprinkled in this masterpiece… here and there… and over there… and a few more right over yonder.

Come to think of it, Virtual Girl is pretty much a long episode of VR Troopers, plus those boobies I mentioned. Those start showing up no more than two minutes in. I’m pretty sure that’s a record of Usain Bolt proportions.

Seriously, though, this soft core porn totally legitimate science fiction thriller has the technical accuity an ITT Tech midterm project Lawnmower Man, the philosophical allure of My Little Pony: The Movie The Matrix, and all the twists and turns we’d come to expect from a horny sixth grade special education student Hollywood’s best. I mean, the rich world of virtual reality is a totally outdated 90’s fad captivating new medium! The art geniuses behind Virtual Girl showed me a future with low polygon count unlimited potential, including a title sequence with a space battle that looked like an abortion PS1 cutscene entirely real! And while there are a few 1980’s-style Cinemax arthouse love scenes featuring brave talent like the makeup-caked beautiful Charlie Curtis, they really are worse than holodeck fanfic tastefully relevant to the… hehe… to the… *snicker*… to the plot.

Ah, yes! How could I forget to talk about the plot? It’s so… the point of the movie! The complex story is why people watch Virtual Girl. To sum up: Boy makes computer boobs. Boobs seduce and then kill people. Character say “cyber” a lot. Another boy likes his wife’s boobs, so he spurns the computer boobs. The computer boobs get jealous and try to ruin everything! One of the high-tech VR screens says “Loading MIDI.” Then we find out the boobs might not be the real bad guy(s). Despite five murders, two attempted murders, and a fiery mushroom that erupts from a skyscraper, no police investigate. At the end, we like some boobs, hate other boobs, and find out that one big boob was the secret force behind all the stuff.

It’s definitely worthy of a 3.5/10 rating on IMDB. Don’t watch Virtual Girl unless you’re a 12-year-old whose dad has hidden his old Playboy mags too well.

~ Jason