Sequelcast: The Blog

Awesome Documentaries of Bogus Sequels

2012-03-05T05:34:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while a sequel to a movie comes along that is so terrible you can't help but wonder how it even got made in the first place? Sequels to films, especially reviled ones, tend to get a bare bones release on DVD and Blu-Ray. Sometimes a sequel has such a cult status that it gets a warts and all documentary on how the damn thing was made! I'm going to look at documentaries that were special features on DVDs for two reviled movie sequels.

Here's the first:

Both the Collector's Edition DVD and the Blu-Ray release of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier feature a documentary called "The Journey" that goes into how this train wreck (or is it Trek wreck?) of a film was made. Among other things, you learn of how the original draft of the film had Spock's brother riding a unicorn and was much more fantastical, but it was changed significantly right before filming when William Shatner had to do some other acting work at the time. The movie's budget was much lower than the other Star Trek films and the special effects weren't done by Industrial Light & Magic due to the glut of movies being released in the summer of 1989. Sean Connery agreed to play the part of Spock's brother, but then bowed out when scheduling problems arose. The documentary is a great watch and arguably better than the film itself.

Here's the second:

Highlander 2: The Quickening was infamous for taking a fantastical premise and injecting an unwelcome dose of science-fiction into the miss. The many sequels that came after this one acted as if this sequel didn't exist, with good reason. This film was later re-released as two different versions that try and strip out as much of the science-fiction elements as possible while buffing up the special effects with CGI, a curious choice to say the least. The special-edition DVD and Blu-Ray releases feature a documentary called "Seduced by Argentina" that talk about the troubled film shoot in Argentina. A fluctuating economy, a slashed special effects budget, and a weak screenplay were all to blame for the failings of the picture. The director was fired near the end of the shoot. In the documentary, actor Christopher Lambert makes the great point of how the original Highlander ended the story so neatly that making a sequel was much more difficult from a narrative standpoint that it should have been.

The documentaries on both these films are pretty great and worth a watch for fans of those franchises. The Star Trek 5 Blu-Ray appears to still only be available as part of "The Original Motion Picture Collection" box set of Star Trek 1-6.

Movie Video Game Showdown - Lethal Weapon

2012-03-05T05:15:00.000-08:00

I created another video review, this time comparing the NES and SNES versions of Lethal Weapon. The games are loosely based on Lethal Weapon 3.

"Finding old movies can be a challenge," so says Dancer the Corgi!

2012-02-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

Getting an older movie to watch to prepare for an episode of the Sequelcast can be a challenge. Sometimes I cover franchises that I already own just because it's easier that way (sorry, but it's true). One thing I run across a lot is the concept of movies going out of print on DVD or Blu-Ray, which makes the films harder to find. This is all well and good, but it drives me nuts when a company chooses to make their movie out of print on purpose as a business decision to make the consumer feels like they have to buy the movie "before it's too late!" While Disney is not the only company to do this, they are certainly the one most guilty of it. They even market it as the Disney Vault.

Part of the joy of getting into a hobby whether it be reading books, watching films, listening to music, or playing video games is gaining an appreciation and enjoyment of the history of the art form. It can be near impossible to watch a classic or cult film if it is not even available for the consumer to purchase. Placing an artificial limit on when an item is available to purchase, whether it be Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or all the movies in the Harry Potter octology, is ultimately punishing the consumer. If someone isn't able to buy or rent the movie they want and they really want to see it, they'll be more likely to pursue illegal avenues to get a copy in order to watch it.

In order to get a hold of all 3 Aladdin films to watch for the Sequelcast this month (we're covering the animated Aladdin trilogy), I had to do some real detective work. On Netflix, as these were rare movies, they were not available either as Watch Instantly or via disc. The rent via disc option only mentioned that all 3 films had a "Very Long Wait" which means up to 3-4 weeks based on my past experiences.

Fortunately, I live in Portland, Oregon. We have an independent video rental store called Movie Madness that is awesome. It has rows and rows of classic movies to rent on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray formats and, more importantly, they had all 3 animated Aladdin movies for me to rent. Without Movie Madness, I truly would have been fucked as there are no real Blockbuster Videos in my area to go to. My co-hosts of the show, Thrasher, BJ, and Jersey Jason, often have a hard time finding classic movies to watch for the Sequelcast as well and they are based in Kentucky and Georgia!

So, in conclusion, a movie should always be available to watch legally in some sort of format, whether it's a digital rental, physical rental, or via a streaming video service.

VIDEO REVIEW - Disney's Aladdin - Movie Video Game Showdown

2012-02-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

I recently created a video review comparing the video games based on Disney's Aladdin theatrical animated film for the SNES and the Sega Genesis. Hope you enjoy it!

Movie Video Game Showdown - Aladdin on the SNES vs. Genesis

2012-01-30T05:26:00.000-08:00

As we are covering Disney's animated Aladdin trilogy on the Sequelcast podcast this week, I thought it would be fun to debut a column here at Sequelcast: The Blog where I would discuss the merits of a video game based on a movie on two different consoles and decide which was better. This time around, we're looking at the ALADDIN video game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive, depending on where you're from).

ALADDIN (SEGA GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE)
This version of the game based on the popular animated film came out in 1993, a year after the release of the animated movie. Virgin Games USA developed this game along with help from animated cells from the film from Disney that were scanned in the computer and then manipulated to fit the limited color palette of the Sega Genesis, resulting in a look that holds up pretty close to the cartoon in several respects. I never owned a Sega Genesis, but had played this several times at the local video game store when I was younger as this game was always on display. This must have been a real system seller at the time, even though the Genesis had been around for a while, as the graphics looked pretty good compared to the newer SNES games out. Despite the charming graphics and animation, I found the controls to be a bit loose. There were cheap hits everywhere on the screen, but the style helped make this game as memorable as it was for many.

ALADDIN (SNES)
The SNES version of ALADDIN did not come out until a year later in 1994, 2 years after the release of the film. This was developed by Capcom instead of Virgin Games USA and looks like a weird combination of a Japanese anime and a Disney cartoon. Despite looking more colorful than the Genesis game, the size of the characters themselves are a lot smaller and the animation just doesn't have the "wow factor" of the Sega version. I'd argue that this game controls a lot better than the Sega Genesis one, though I do recall a very frustrating level where you are on the magic carpet trying to fly out of the Cave of Wonders as lava is flowing behind you.

FINAL VERDICT?
I'd say ALADDIN on the Sega Genesis wins over the SNES version because it captures the look and the feel of the movie so much better than the SNES version. The SNES game is fun in its own right, but just isn't as memorable.

Do you agree or disagree, faithful readers?

Laughing at Extinction

2012-01-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

Jurassic Park inspired number of things after its 1993 release. But beyond the toys, video games, model kits, lunch boxes, documentaries, fruit snacks, birth control devices, and movies meant to cash in on dinomania like Tammy & The T-Rex, there was a lot of hackneyed-to-fantastic comedy. Jurassic Park, hereafter referred to as JP, was one of the most parodied and referenced films of its time. As the highest grossing and most seen film of its day, how could it be any other way? No bastion of comedy was safe from slavering dinosaurs, be it animated, live action, or comic book. With that in mind, let's crack open some video amber and reconstitute some Jurassic Park-inspired comedy.

We begin with a scene from The Critic that I continue to quote to this day, as those who listened to Sequelcast #76 are no doubt aware. This clip of Jurassic Park 2: Revenge of the Raptors was written and animated in a time when the prospect of JP sequel seemed ludicrous. With a 4th JP film on the way, this clip has the rare distinction of being a joke that came true.

You weren't cooly unhip or unhiply cool in the 90s unless you were a fan of The State, one of MTV's brief flirtations with innovative scripted television. One of the standout sketched on the first season was "Jurassic Park: The One Man Show".

The cast of The State would go on to create some of the 21st century's most brilliant and unceremoniously canceled television. Meanwhile, another joke came true when actor Charlie Ross turned Star Wars into a one man show. Can JP be far behind?

At this point I was going to lead into a clip from Wayne's World 2, but decided to post this compilation of JP references from Jurassic Park Legends. Enjoy this clearing house of clips!

All that aside, the greatest achievement in JP parody comes from Weird Al Yankovic, the clown prince of music (now that Spike Jones is dead). The music video for his JP-themed parody of "MacArthur Park" is the perfect stop-motion comment on Spielberg's CGI dinobration. As an added bonus, the lyrics were originally printed in Mad Magazine issue 379, a standout issue devoted almost entirely to JP.

I have no closer to this piece, so I leave the final word to Al.

Welcome to the Jurassic Park video game on the SNES

2012-01-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

On Sequelcast: The Podcast, we've started covering the Jurassic Park trilogy of movies. When I think about the first film, my mind wanders to the JURASSIC PARK video game on the SNES. I played the hell out of this game when I was in middle school and never beat it.

JURASSIC PARK was a weird combination of a LEGEND OF ZELDA meets JURASSIC PARK overhead gameplay peppered with first-person shooter sequences reminiscent of DOOM. You played as Alan Grant (played in the film by Sam Neill) exploring the titular Jurassic Park trying to collect all the raptor eggs on the island before escaping on a helicopter. The park itself was quite sprawling and the game takes several hours to beat, which brings me to the game's main problem... There is no way to save the game. No passwords, no battery-save that you could resume later, absolutely nothing! Why create a video game so epic that there is no way to enjoy it in chunks unless you're doing save states on a SNES emulator on the computer?

Another bad thing about the game were the dismal first-person shooter sequences:

Presented in a letterbox format, these sequences chugged at a low frame rate and were totally at odds with the Zelda-style gameplay present in the rest of the game. The graphics in these sequences were serviceable at the time, but the gameplay is not as fun as it should be due to a lack of ammo and variety of guns. I'm not sure if I'd advise someone to buy the game because it is a real mixed bag, but it's an interesting combination of genres.

What To Watch When You're Not Watching

2012-01-10T06:04:00.000-08:00

I've been away from the theater recently. The spectacle of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, thrilled me to the point of exhaustion. And while The Muppets renewed my sense of joy and mirth, it was last year's movie. I'm exhausted. I'm tired of the spectacle. I'm tired of movies that promise better movies in the future rather than making a good movie now. I'm tired of audiences that still haven't learned to turn off their phones, which are now not only loud, but bright. I'm tired of trailers for sequels to sequels to movies that everyone saw and nobody liked.

I'm tired of watching movies.

I'm abstaining from the local movie house, at least until The Artist opens here or the guys from RiffTrax do another live show.

With the theater experience out of my life, I'm free to while away the afternoons getting re-aquatinted with what really matters: watching british television! Between Blackadder, The IT Crowd, and Doctor Who, I'm getting the whimsey, wit, and adventure I haven't been getting at the cinema. Much in the same way that I have to read another nations newspaper to find out what's going on in my own, I need to turn to another nation's television to be entertained and to have something to show for it.

Too many of my cinematic experiences of late have been disposable. True, I enjoyed Thor, but it was little more than the husk from which The Avengers will emerge, which in turn will be cast aside to make way for - sure, why not - Secret Wars. I don't see bold original films any more. I only see the first installments of franchises. I haven't seen anything meant to stand on its own merits in ages. The best film a saw last year? It's A Wonderful Life, lovingly presented in the crowded Naro Expanded Cinema.

Until such a film can made in my own time, I have nowhere to turn but a warm, comforting blanket of BBC-grade television.

Up The Down Puppets

2012-01-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

After a recent screening of The Muppets, and yes I cried at all the right moments, it occurred to me that there just aren't any puppet-based entertainments for the over five set any more, which is a shame given Jim Henson's tireless efforts to advance the art form. Since his untimely death in 1990, puppetry has regressed into the same age gulag which imprisoned animation for so many decades. When I look back over the past 10 years of television and film, the only two puppet shows for adults (and awesome kids who know what's what) I can recall are Mystery Science Theater 3000 and FarScape, the latter another product of Jim Henson's studio and legacy. So what happened? Where did all the puppets go?

I'm of two minds on the subject. First, I think modern society treats its entertainment, and by extension its culture, as essentially disposable. This can be traced to the accelerating technological development ushered in by the industrial revolution. The moving picture made the magic lantern obsolete. The talkie rendered the silent movie obsolete. The color film made black & white filmmaking obsolete. And today 3D is making enjoyable films obsolete. When a film created using an archaic method happens at all, is is usually a fluke and the result of a highly conscious choice by the director. The Artist and The Call of Cthulhu aside, which are just as much statements about film itself, you just don't see producers, studios, or audiences getting behind films made using outdated techniques and technologies. They are novelties, experiments, or self consciously retro. In the same way that the novel killed the epic poem, and video killed the radio star, animatronics and CGI killed puppetry.

Perhaps more important to the decline of puppetry is the audience's inability to accept illusion, the wondrously fictitious, and the blatantly fake. To acknowledge a puppet is to acknowledge the presence of the puppeteer. To see a marionette is to see its strings. Or, as filmmakers Tom Stern and Alex Winter brilliantly put it . . .

For a filmgoing public raised on fully realized fantasy worlds and nerdom's obsession with absolute internal consistency within any given IP, the acknowledgment of the fourth wall inherent to puppetry is off putting. Jim Henson and Frank Oz were both keenly aware of this facet of the art form, to the point where they wisely made acknowledgment and breaking of the fourth wall a standard Muppet trope, to hilarious effect. But a modern audience doesn't like to see the fourth wall broken. The modern audience doesn't like it when a work of fiction dares to speak the truth and proudly declare its own fictional nature. The modern audience feels betrayed when told, "This is an imaginary story," because it doesn't want to acknowledge that they are all imaginary stories. We invest so much reality in our fiction that we forget that the key to and purpose of storytelling is to create a beautiful fiction wherein resides truth, or at least what we wish to be true.

The "Oh Shit" Moment in Sequels (Not the Good Kind))

2012-01-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

When watching a movie sequel, sometimes I get a case of the "oh shits". This article is about the bad kind of "oh shits", the kind that leave a skid mark in your cinematic viewing experience underwear... The revelation that the sequel has "jumped the shark" early on and that the rest of the movie is going to be a chore to work through.

The first really vivid "oh shit" moment I had watching a sequel was when I sat down in May of 1999 to watch STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE.

Things in the movie were off to a good start - a spaceship carrying two Jedis on a negotiation mission to a Trade Federation starship. There was a case of the "oh shits" when the communication screen on the Jedi ship came on and the Nemoidian aliens popped on the screen speaking in what can only be described as a lame parody of an Asian speaking poor English, most likely an homage to the English dubs of the countless GODZILLA movies.

This totally took me out of the movie. I was wondering how things could have been messed up so quickly. In the "classic trilogy" of STAR WARS, aliens often spoke in their own dialect with subtitles and if they spoke English at all, it was in a menacing fashion, not something so cartoonish!

The second, and honestly more memorable, "oh shit" moment happened when I came to a packed midnight opening night screening of THE MATRIX: RELOADED, the second of the Matrix films.

The first half hour or so was pokey, featuring the emo Goth trio of Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo milling about in some hippie caves. Aside from finding it unbelievable that people would find dank, muddy caves more appealing than an alternate reality where they could go to clubs every night and eat the finest of steaks, I figured this was all exposition and more exciting things were to come.

My case of the "oh shits" bubbled on in full force during the "Burly Brawl" fight where Neo squares off against a zillion Agent Smiths. Not only did the CG Neo and Agent Smith's look fake to me, even at the time of the film's original release, but Neo went through the whole fight and got a tiny scratch on his face which bled. This took me out of the movie because I realized Neo was not in danger in the Matrix itself. Instead, he was essentially a god and near invincible, which robbed any sense of danger in the rest of the action scenes in the movie for me. I was further baffled by the climax to the fight where Neo just flies off into the sky like Superman, making me wonder why he didn't do that to begin with.

Have any readers had a moment of the "oh shits" while watching a sequel?

Let's Get Hiatus!

2011-12-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

But don't get too excited. I'm not going anywhere. For the first time in a long time, the Sequelcast has multiple episodes recorded and in the can and ready for distribution, and that means that Matt, Jason, and myself get a much needed break from reviewing film franchises one movie at a time. But that's not going to keep any of us from watching movies. After the horrors of Home Alone 3, there's a good chance we'll even experience a movie we enjoy over this holiday break.

I usually don't go to the theater this time of year. In fact, I don't

think I've been to a holiday release film since the Toy Story in 1995. Too many family movies and Oscar-baiting Hail-Maries keep me away from the big screen and focused on the holiday comforts of the small screen. From the grim beauty of Henry Edward's Scrooge to the beautiful grimness of Nicholas Webster's Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, I tend to wrap myself in a thick musty blanket of cinematic classics (and non-classics) this time of year. It has something to do with comfort and going home again and tradition and all the other unpopped chestnuts offered up on the holiday bonfire.

That's what's important about these hiatuses. Despite all outward indications to the contrary, this podcast does take a lot out of us. It tests our tolerance for franchises and commercial filmmaking in general. We need time to watch a lot of movies knowing there is nothing at stake, where we don't have that drive in the back of our heads that requires of to form an opinion and verbalize a review.

This time of year, it's all about movies, for the sheer joy of it.

Raising The Stakes Through The Heart

2011-12-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

In Home Alone, Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) faces off against a pair of bungling burglars. In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York the stakes are raised slightly, and Kevin faces off against the same burglars and the staff of a ritzy hotel, who in all fairness are just doing their jobs. In Home Alone 3 the stakes are raised again, with plucky Alex Pruitt (Alex D. Linz) facing off against a quartet of international corporate espionage agents working for a cabal of North Korean terrorists.

I'm typing that again, because I'm not sure what I just typed.

In Home Alone 3, Alex must defend his home from four corporate espionage specialists in the pay of North Korean terrorist.

That's what I thought.

Home Alone 3 is an example of raising the stakes through the heart. Having something at stake is important to storytelling, and in a good story — and especially a good sequel — the stakes are raised. The consequences of the conflict are revealed to be larger and more consequential that the protagonist or audience suspected. The problem with Home Alone 3, and a handful of other films I'll cite, is that its stakes are raised to such an absurd point that the film looses touch with itself and any core of human truth that might have once existed in its premise.

The first two Home Alone films, like much of John Hughes' output, are about home and family, the connection to place and people that make us human. These themes ground the first two films and allow them to achieve emotional resonance with the audience. The conflict between Kevin and the Wet/Sticky Bandits is small. The fate of the world isn't at stake. All that is at stake is the sanctity of Kevin's home. However, that stake is balanced against the scale of the conflict. In the mind of Kevin, the whole world might as well be at stake, because that's how he — and through him, the audience — feels. That changes in Home Alone 3.

In Home Alone 3 the safety of the world is at stake, presumably. Within the first scene we know there is a top-secret experimental missile-cloaking chip, and a cabal of terrorists want. When the agents threaten Alex's home, they create a relatively minor conflict in service to the larger conflict presented by the terrorists. As a result, all of Alex's drives and deeds in service to defending the sanctity of his home are minimized, lost in the shadow of the amorphous threat of international terrorism. The themes of family and home are snuffed out by a heavy-handed espionage plot that no child in the audience can be expected to connect with and no adult should be expected to buy into. Better not to mention terrorists threat and McGuffin until the film's climax, allowing the enormity of the stakes to dawn on an audience who until that point would be watching a film about youthful inquisitiveness, inventiveness, and the desire to be trusted, human themes we can buy into and care about from the start.

Look at the Shaquille O'Neal vehicle Kazaam. The film begins as a whimsical tale of a boy (Francis Capra), and his genie (O'Neal). More importantly, it begins as the story of a boy seeking to understand and connect with his father, a theme which resonates with the audience because of the complex and universal nature of parent/child relationships. This is lost when the boy tracks down his estranged father and the themes of family and paternity are washed away by a conflict centered upon the seedy world of nightclub promotion and the underbelly of the american recording industry. While the pirating of copyrighted material is certainly an important issue, and does mean more is at stake than just the bond between two characters, the undue prominence of a conflict the film's target audience should not be expected to understand or care about (what child worries that his copyrighted content is being bootlegged?) quashes the human elements that could have made this a story worth telling.

More importantly, by derailing Max's character arc with a large conflict he cannot be reasonably expected to care about, Kazaam squanders what little emotion the audience may have invested in the tattered relationship between Max and his father. Max's understanding and acceptance of this father is the only conflict that matters, and any raising stakes must be borne out of that conflict if the audience is expected to give a damn. The film misses a perfect opportunity, in that the titular Kazaam, being an old and powerful being tasked with responsibility to a child, is ideally suited to serve as a surrogate father figure for Max, a potential rival for his father and a reminder of how far he's drifted from his son.

Returning to the John Hughes oeuvre, we have Beethoven. The first in a series of films about the misadventures of an oversized dog that isn't Marmaduke, the Beethoven films come from a simple and familiar place: the balance between fun and responsibility that comes with a puppy. Beethoven grows into a large, energetic, affectionate, but accident-prone family pet, adored by the children of the family, but seen as a burden by the father (Charles Grodin). Unfortunately, none of these elements lead into the films climax once the stakes are raised. Rather than putting Beethoven's place in the family or neighborhood at stake, Hughes puts the St. Bernard's life at stake, placing him in the clutches of an unscrupulous veterinarian who intends to use live animals for live-ammo ballistics testing.

Let's take a step back.

Those of us who've had family dogs, particularly dogs which were rambunctious or didn't know their own size/strength, know the childhood fear that our pet might be taken away. Many of us know the angst of doing our best to live up to the responsibilities our pet demands, knowing that if we don't it could be taken away. A rare few of us have been in the position being responsible for curtailing the behavior of a seemingly untrainable dog before it gets itself, and us, into trouble. From all of these universal situations an organic story could have sprung, with nothing more at stake than the fate of a dogs relationship with a loving family.

Rather than raising the stakes by having a curmudgeonly neighbor begin to see the overenthusiastic Beethoven as a dangerous animal and campaign to have him put down, only to be saved by virtue of the dog's boundless energy and strength during a 3rd act crisis, or have Beethoven's antics place his human family in a position where they no longer have the financial resources to care for such a large dog and must consider selling him to a cold and distant show dog trainer, only to have Beethoven's puppy-like affability win the hearts of investors who eagerly poor money into Grodin's air freshener firm, Hughes decides the best way to move the story forward is to reveal an antagonist that wants to shoot a dog in the head.

The climax of this film rests on wether a creepy veterinarian (Dean Jones) is going to paint the walls of a warehouse with the brains of a lovable dog all to test a new gun/bullet combination. This goes beyond addressing the issue of animal testing, and instead enters the realm of the grotesque. Whether or not a lovable animal we care about will live or die is one of many excellent ways to escalate things in a family film about a lovable animal. But to raise the stakes so far by taking the film to such a dark place causing all the good feelings engendered by Beethoven and his family to wash away. Suspense becomes terror. Love becomes fear. More importantly, rather than exploring the possible death of a pet through misfortune, disease, or age (universal themes all), the audience is alienated by being expected to invest in the loss of a pet through premeditated murder.

A story should go somewhere, and the stakes should be raised, but in so doing, it is important not to loose sight of what the story is about. Loose that, and the audience goes with it.

Do Pre-Title Action Sequences Make You Horny Baby - From Bond to Powers

2011-12-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

The James Bond franchise has made a habit of an action sequence occurring before the opening credits sequence. Often having little to do with the plot of the main film, it's a spin on the concept from classic Greek theatre known as "in medias res"-- get the audience interested in the middle of an action scene before you start a story explaining what the hell is happening.

On a whim, I watched the pre-title action sequences, and opening credits, from a few James Bond films and an Austin Powers film. Here's what I discovered:

GOLDENEYE - GOLDENEYE, the first James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan, was the first James Bond film I saw in a movie theatre. This introductory sequence in which James Bond leaps from a bungee cord to a secret entrance of a Russian nuclear facility still holds up. Aside from an unfortunate entrance in which James Bond surprises a Russian soldier while on the toilet, it introduces Agent 006 (played by Sean Bean of GAME OF THRONES fame) and an evil Russian general. It also features a problem with James Bond films in general, in which the opening action scene is so fantastic that the rest of the film pales by comparison. That this sequence of GOLDENEYE ends with James Bond free falling after an airplane, diving inside, and flying it to safety while not coming across as ultra-campy is impressive in itself. Bonus points go to the title sequence of GOLDENEYE, featuring the last James Bond title song to feel deliberately old-fashioned while showing powerful images of sexy lasses smashing Iron Curtain imagery again and again.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES - The second Pierce Brosnan James Bond film, this introductory sequence paled in comparison to GOLDENEYE. It doesn't help that most of it is front the point of view of an international mission briefing room, where M (played by Judi Dench) frets over whether James Bond can retrieve the Communist nuclear missiles from a secret base. Of course he can, he's fucking James Bond for Christ's sake! All the posturing at the intelligence headquarters make the viewer feel removed from the action and when James Bond manages to punch a few dudes and escape in a plane with the nuclear missiles to safety, it all comes across as a bit lame. I enjoy the TOMORROW NEVER DIES song by Sheryl Crow, but the title sequence is poor (the women are clothed in nighties!) except for sequences juxtaposing women against x-ray imagery of guns.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - An attempt to lump Roger Moore into a more serious sort of James Bond film after the wackiness of MOONRAKER, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY follows up a touching scene of James Bond at the gravestone of his brief stab at married life (the story of which is referenced in the fantastic, though flawed, film ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE), with one of the worst pre-title sequences in Bond history. James Bond is locked in a helicopter secretly remote-controlled by his arch-nemesis Blofeld. While the visuals of a REAL helicopter zipping about in an industrial setting are interesting, it makes one feel as if they are watching a video game-- the actions of James Bond himself are curiously removed from the action. After some snaking around, James Bond manages to pick up Blofeld and drop him in a chimney, an anti-climactic end to one of the more constant villains of the entire James Bond legacy of films. The titular FOR YOUR EYES ONLY song is hopelessly cheesy as well... and I am saying that as someone who enjoys the silly James Bond film THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN!

AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY - The pre-title sequence here is pretty low key. Dr. Evil, an obvious take on Blofeld down to the white kitty on his lap, dispatches of his more pathetic cohorts before announcing a plan to take down Austin Powers once and for all. This scene is filmed with a large amount of restraint -- Dr. Evil's face is never shown and the "deaths" of the cohorts are not violent and come at a rapid-fire pace. The titular opening number is all instrumental and features dancing that would not be out of place in a 1970's musical, making it obvious to audiences that AUSTIN POWERS is a comedy and one to be reckoned with.

In conclusion, pre-title sequences function as a short film to get audiences revved up for the movie that lies ahead. In most cases, they are better than the actual film. Thoughts?

Let's Experiment on Home Alone 3

2011-12-13T17:29:00.001-08:00

Sequels often contain hidden treasures, and while viewing Home Alone 3 for this weeks Sequelcast I discovered such a treasure within that selfsame movie. Roughly 18 minutes into the film, our Kevin proxy Alex Pruitt (Alex D. Linz) harassing his next door neighbor Mrs. Hess (Marian Seldes) with what is best described as a "sniper remote", wantonly changing the channels on her TV from the safety of his second story bedroom. We're treated to Alex's precocious laughter, an old woman's flustered and confused huffing, and a fleeting glimpse. However, before that glimpse can mature into a gawk, Mrs. Hess switches off the set in mock disgust. But what did we see?

What I originally took to be select moments from a classy pornographic film - something high concept and erotic like Emmanuelle or The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue - turned out to be something else entirely. And my only clue as to it's true nature was a single clue, seen fleetingly before the screen wend dead.

Not that any music video chyron has ever looked like that.

Jamie Foxx? Oscar winner and In Living Color alumnus Jamie Foxx? Yes, this lackluster 3rd film was uplifted, however briefly, by the soulful and talented man behind Ray and "Can I be Your Tennis Ball?" But there does the story go from here?

In 1994 In Living Color was unceremoniously canceled, the Home Alone franchise was rendered culturally irrelevant, and Jamie Foxx began his recording career with the release of his first D&B album Peep This, which contained the track "Experiment", which we espied, ever so fleetingly, in Home Alone 3.

Smooth as a velvet fox . . .

Likely the result of product synergy between two branches 20th Century Fox media empire executed in the name of marketing saturation, the insertion of a few seconds of the "Experiment" music video likely did nothing to aid Home Alone 3 or Jamie Foxx's recording career. But it did give me reason enough to seek out the music video for the Sequelcast: The Blog's first ever Sound Track Music Video Breakdown!

Behold! "Experement" by Jamie Foxx

Sequelcast Breakdown

0:01 - Barely a second in, and we're off to a good start with a Kirbyesque shot of a plasma globe. This portends a man of science manipulating the raw stuff of creation!

0:05 - Our first look at our hero - and presumed cryogenicist - Jamie Foxx, decked out in a jacket emblazoned with a cartoon fox Tex Avery would be proud of.

0:15 - Dynamic camera green-screen overlaid into a static shot? I thought that was retired from music videos in 1989.

0:30 - SCIENCE!

0:45 - A mixing board that clones flygirls? What else does a DJ need?

o:59 - Every mad scientist needs a coat of arms, and Mr. Foxx's is elegant in it's simplicity.

1:00 - "Cause, girl, we don't need permission to try out a new position." Oh, it's that kind of experiment.

1:20 - Three attractive women, and Jamie Foxx would rather leave them in their tubes while he manipulate his joystick. It's that kind of experiment.

1:33 - Does that let him see ghosts or contiguous extra-dimensional realms which exist parallel to our own reality?

1:50 - Has anything ever gone well after someone says something that?

2:00 - "Mine eyes have seen the glory of your precious love!" Blasphemous or patriotic?

2:13 - We're in heavy science fiction territory now! Jamie's strapped on a pair of waldoes and a telepresence headset while he (presumably) interfaces with the woman strapped to the rotating surgery table.

2:20 - The LEDs let you know it's working.

2:35 - And back to the working the joystick. Jamie Foxx likes keeping a sanitary distance from his three Stepford brides. The Benson Stepford, no the Ira Levin Stepford.

2:44 - And back to voyeurism!

2:50 - Either she's helping him perfect a weather machine, or she's a spy in The Nefarious Doctor Foxx's icy torture chamber deathtrap.

2:55 - What does he need those magnoculars for? He's sitting 10 feet from the human snow globe!

3:14 - He goes from zero to smug in the space of the video's first act of physical contact.

3:16 - In stereo!

3:20 - And then their gone. Was the pong kiss a dream sequence?

3:30 - Turns out he's growing a sensual mutant with many arms.

3:46 - One can only assume she's in a decontamination shower after one of Dr. Foxx's failed experiments.

3:50 - The recombinant sequence is done! Time to let them out of their tubes.

4:00 - No sooner are they out, than Jamie Foxx decides to go back in. What was the goal of this experiment?

4:05 - I'll miss you, cartoon fox on Jamie Foxx.

4:08 - At last a woman has her hand on Foxx's joystick. I can only presume this means Jamie is GGG, and willing to let his clones experiment on him just as he has spend the past four minutes experimenting on them. But the video will end before we get to see that.

4:12 - Again with the gloves and goggles? Those are for scientists, Mr. Foxx, not subjects.

4:15 - The tables have turned, and he wants out! I think the women are about to extract a horrible revenge.

4:17 - Fade out on a twist ending?

In the end, we learned a little something about Jamie Foxx, Home Alone 3, and science, and debuted a new feature for the Sequelcast. I hope you've all enjoyed the experiment.

Harry Potter and the Confusing Storyline

2011-12-10T16:16:00.001-08:00

I just finished watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II and came away from the Harry Potter franchise more confused than ever. I've seen all eight movies in the series, some of the more than once, yet I have only read the first book. I feel the films must leave so much out of the books, but they do so in a way so the plots, wizards, and spells come out as a muddled jumble that usually result in a plot that resembles the following formula:

HARRY POTTER, a kid wizard, prances into a darkened room of Hogwarts Castle. His friend HERMIONE, a lady kid wizard, watches with apprehension.

HERMIONE: No, Harry, don't go in there. There's the forbidden Magic Trinket of Hoobastank!

HARRY POTTER wiggles his eyebrows.

HARRY: It's not forbidden if I decide to take it now, is it?

HARRY runs into the room with HERMIONE close behind.

Tonally, these films are like SCOOBY DOO with wizard hats. Let's go into my brief thoughts of each film of the franchise.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - This one is a well constructed kids' movie. It has no airs of being a serious film.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Kind of drags at times and way too long for its own good, but it's nice to see Kenneth Branagh ham it up.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - This one starts to complicate the relationships between the characters and ends on a real weird note. By far the most interesting of the films as far as the visuals go.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Harry Potter in the Magic Olympics. Feels more like a video game than anything else.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - I liked this one for returning to the goofy tone of the original and having a silly romance and a streamlined plot. I felt like I could actually follow this one OK.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Aside from an infamous confrontational scene that's a bit creepy, it comes across as loads of back story on characters being rammed down your throat in an endless series of flashbacks.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I - This one was a lot of setup for the next one. A lot of mopey teenage wizards milling about.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II - Some fun action sequences and a nice expanded part for Warwick Davis (AKA the guy who played WILLOW and the titular LEPRECHAUN). Ends with a load of cheese.

The City So Nice They Filmed It Second

2011-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

While recording our episode for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, I was reminded of the phenomenon common to sequels of taking the franchise to New York City, typically in the series second outing. Whether this phenomenon the result of budgetary considerations, cultural trends, or the inertia of an imbedded cliche, franchises just go to New York. Even Jason Voorhees took Manhattan, though it took eight movies to get there, as opposed to t

he Muppets, who took the island in their third film outing.

Looking back, setting the second film (or as we like to say, first sequel) in New York is shockingly common, and often

unnecessary. Observe the redundant Crocodile Dundee 2, which is set in New York despite the fact that the original Crocodile Dundee was also set largely in the big apple. This makes the sequel the first fish-out-of-water-but-then-back-in-familiar-water story ever filmed. When the third film in the series brought Paul Hogan's rugged Australian to Los Angeles, it started to dawn on me that Dundee spends more time lurking around American cities than he does being a bush-dwelling badass. If the planned Crocodile Dundee 4 is completed, I can only hope I get to see the titular character in his element, or possibly tangling with yakuza in the neon streets of Roppongi. And hey, Chris Tucker can be his sidekick!

The Gremlins made it to New York on their second outing, and they brought the immortal Tony Randal

l along for the ride. Ditching darkness is favor of outright comedy, Gremlins 2: The New Batch sent up the New York of the late 80s. The film portrays New York as a city full of yuppies, tourists, the power elite, and people trying to get out of New York. And then paranoia over the emergent field of genetic engineering becomes comedy as a horde of newly spawned gremlins splice themselves into even more malicious and destructive monsters. There's some subtext about hubris in this satire/love letter to skyscraper disaster movies, and Leonard Maltin being strangled while quoting his own review of the original Gremlins. The films doesn't explore the setting of New York, but loads the itself with New York characters. Watch a lot of old films and then fail to move to that city, and you'll know exactly what I mean.

This somehow brings me to the ultimate film I wished to

discuss. The apotheosis of lazy "letsmake a sequel but the twist is it's in New York" filmmaking. Kangaroo Jack: G'Day USA. Yep, the blockbuster movie with the jive talking, break dancing, CGI marsupial had a sequel. With the filmmakers no longer allowed to befoul Australia with their cinematic antics (cinemantics™), and not having the budget or live action cast to blend with their CGI pouch-bearing hop-junkie, brought the franchise to New York in the form of a 2d - the little "d" is intentional - animated direct to DVD sequel. I can only say so much, as I only saw about 15 minutes of this film on cable a few years ago, but what more should be said about a sequel to a movie that everyone saw and nobody liked? Interestingly, despite the fact that this film is animates, the producers decided to keep it as grounded in physical reality. The titular kangaroo - may I never type that again - doesn't talk or sing, except in dreams or hallucinations. I respect that kind of fidelity to the original creative vision of Kangaroo Jack.

Oh, These Stubborn Tie-Ins

2011-12-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

Back in the halcyon year of 2006, the Sequelcast's Mat (formerly Uncle Milkshake) and myself recorded an audio commentary for the Home Alone 2: Lost In New York video game for the long-retired NES. It made for an entertaining evening, and the five-minutes-and-forty-three-seconds of actual play footage we recorded overlaid with our live comments will live forever . . .

–wait for it–

. . . in our memories. You see, I had planned to post a link to the video and compose a post about our early experiences with recording audio commentaries. However, the video no longer exists, and any attempt I made to reconstruct it with words would be as sensible and easy to understand as dancing the blueprints of the Chrysler Building. Instead, I'm going to prevaricate (and postvaricate) about movie video game tie-ins.

Video games based on movies are typically only slightly more terrible than movies based on video games for reasons I shouldn't have to explain to anyone who's ever played one. Their lack of quality speaks to itself. Between restrictive IPs, unrealistic deadlines, weak source material, and executive meddling, the odds against a good movie game is slim as a superstring. But the NES version of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was one of the worst.

Built using the transplanted engine of the more entertaining Bart vs. The Space Mutants, the shambling homunculus that was HA2:LiNY (as no one calls it) had all the hallmarks of a tie-in game. Uninspired gameplay, clunky melding of narrative and gameplay, and pixelated renditions of actors. The VGA graphics of that era simply could not reproduce Joe Peschi's unique shade of pale. However, none of these qualities are unique to HA2:LiNY.

The computer game industry is a hydra which frequently defies the balletic interplay between supply and demand. The graphic adventure game genre, which was elevating video games to the level of art in the public consciousness decades before BioShock, Braid, or Katamari Damacy, was smothered in its bed by the very creative industry it was advancing, while derivative schlock like movie tie-ins continue to be made and sell.

Movie tie-in games are a lot like the recent re-make if Cheaper By The Dozen. Everyone bought a ticket, but no one liked it. But the sequel, which I decline to link to, still came. But we can rest assured that there will be no Cheaper By The Dozen 3. They sell because they can get into people's wallets through a tiny gap of ignorance in the intellectual armor of the game-buying public . After all, there is a gap between people who buy games and the people who play them. When's the last time your grandfather played the game be bought you for חנוכה? That's where my sense of hope comes in.

I'm from the first generation that grew up with video games. I entered my parent's lives shortly after their Atari 2600, and I learned early on that if the label on a game is identical to a movie poster, it's not worth my time, money, or the matter that composes it's physical form. Unlike my older relations, I'm savvy enough not to look at a game with a well known IP on the box and instinctively think, "Oh, he liked this movie. He'll like this game." In short, I'm from the generation that's going to stop video game tie-in games from being profitable. I'm not going to spend money on these games, and I'm not going to purchase them for my children, nieces, or nephews, because I don't want to waste their time with mediocre game design and poor gameplay.

The reason these games still sell, is because they are immediately familiar. But for my generation, that familiarity has blossomed into well-earned contempt.

So sound the death-knell of the video game movie tie-in. Wash the snake oil out of your eyes and know that that at $50+ a pop, you can and should be picky about games, and it's your responsibility to guide the next generation of gamers to be discriminating as well.

And if you absolutely must purchase a game based on a movie, make sure it's one that came long after the movie left theaters. That's how we got Ghostbusters.

Re: RoboCop Redux

2011-12-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

My only regret involving the Sequelcast is that I was unable to participate in the RoboCop episodes. There were plenty of reasons why I wasn't involved in that trilogy of episodes, but like a monk at a brothel, I'm not going into that.

Instead, I just want to type about how front-loaded with awesome the RoboCop trilogy is, and fire off a few comments and anecdotes I'll likely never be able to voice on the show.

As a youth, I loved RoboCop. I recall seeing it for the first time when it first aired on network television sometime in the late 80s. For whatever reason, my parents let me watch it with them that night, and I couldn't get enough. Mind you, all of my friends had already seen RoboCop over a year earlier, and it had by that point passed out of the realm of the awesome in favor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in their estimation. At last, I was seeing what the previous year's schoolyard excitement was about.

For then next six months I practiced Officer Murphy's pistol quickdraw (with squirt guns, sticks, cardboard tubes, and my bare hand), did the RoboCop heavy walk, and imagined a digital overlay on my vision that identified citizens and estimated their threat level. As I recall, I once even made a cybernetic hip holster out of cardboard and a helmet out of an old shoebox. I was a tremendous RoboCop fan, and when RoboCop 2 came out, I wanted to be first in line to see it. However, for the first and only time in my youth, my mother outright forbid me from going to the theater and seeing the movie. For the first and only time, she was right. Not because of the violence or the subject matter, but because RoboCop 2 wasn't worth seeing.

When I saw RoboCop 2 on cable many years later (in 2006, no less) I was glad it had passed me buy. My descent into cynicism over the Hollywood cookie cutter would have begun far too early had I witnessed RoboCop 2 in theaters. That being said, there are some things to recommend in that movie. RoboCop 2 is a glorious celebrations of old-school SFX, from the stop motion

animation used to bring the robotic Cain to life, to the explosions and gore effects which were spectacularly over-the-top without any digital touchups. Like a good puppet show, it's better when you can see the strings. You can see every expression of a pre-CGI special effects craft on the screen, and it is glorious.

On the subject of CGI, RoboCop 2 also showcases exactly why computer animation had yet to become an integral part of scifi filmmaking. All this, despite the groundbreaking digital feats accomplished in by ILM in Ron Howard's Willow two years before, and James Cameron's The Abyss only one year previous. However, the RoboCop series is a thing of the 1980s, and that lends a certain charm to it, including it's special effects.

As for RoboCop 3, I didn't see it, and I may never see it. I didn't want to see it when it came out. By 1993, my journey to media cynicism was well underway, thanks in no small part to Mad Magazine, which lifted a scale from my 3rd eye. My interest in a 3rd RoboCop film outing was immediately snuffed when I saw a segment on Entertainment Tonight about the film. Seeing Mary Hart and male co-host trying to project enthusiasm for rocket packs, ninjas, and whatever the heck else was going on signaled danger. When the people who are supposed to build enthusiasm for the movie couldn't do it, then I reasoned this was a sequel best left unwatched.

I would have gladly broken my RoboCop 3 embargo for the Sequelcast, but c'est la cossediffusion.

Now a few words on being shot in the crotch by Kurtwood Smith.

The scene in RoboCop where a pre-RoboCopped Officer Murphy is brutalized by crooks and literally shot to pieces still stands out in my mind as one of the greatest moments of cinematic ultraviolence in the 20th century, and scifi-action movies would be vastly improved by more like it. For those who remember the preamble to the bloody spectacle, Clarence J. Boddicker (Hurtwood Smith) taunts Murphy, threatening to shoot him in, among other places, the crotch.

This reason I bring this up is because one of my most personal RoboCop memories came in the early 90s after my much younger cousin *name withheld* saw the film. How or why he was allowed to see the film while still a pre-teen I'll never know. Then again, while shadowcasting The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Pure Antimatter in Savannah, GA, I saw a husband and wife bring three children, presumably their own, to the show. Anyway, as *name withheld* was part of my carpool to school, I was treated to a 7-year-old explaining the story of RoboCop to me twice a day for a week. And each time, when *name withheld* got to the aforementioned shotgun dismemberment scene, it would happen.

"And then the bad guy tries to shoot RoboCop in the pagina!"

That is the RoboCop memory that will stick with me till the day I die. The day I had to explain to my cousin that it's pronounced "vagina", that men don't have them, and that's not where Murphy was going to get shot.

Ah, memories. I'd buy that for a dollar.

Unheroes

2011-11-29T18:27:00.000-08:00

This past Thanksgiving weekend I was treated to a marathon viewing of all the sequels I had been avoiding for the past year. To brutalize a quote from Jay Prescot Sherman for my own purposes, these were "sequels to sequels to movies I didn't think should have been made in the first place." Among them was Fast Five, the sequel to 2001's The Fast And The Furious which dares to ask the question, what if Dwaine "The Rock" Johnson's character from Reno 911 Miami got into a fight with XXX. I don't need to tell you about this movie, the folks over at How Did This Get Made? already said everything I would have said anyway.

When Sequelcast covered the Die Hard film series earlier this year, we spent a good deal of time talking about John McClane and his place in our hearts as an action hero. I still mean that. The character of McClane in Die Hard is more than a protagonist. He is a hero, a man trapped in a situation he has little control over who nevertheless puts himself at risk and does good, despite the possible cost to himself. That's one of the reasons why Die Hard remains my favorite action film, and why Fast Five will likely go down as one of my leas favorite.

Fast Five has plenty of protagonists. Way too many due to a bloated ensemble cast and two teams of characters we are apparently supposed to root for despite their diametrically opposed goals. But among all these characters, I didn't see a hero.

I like a good heist movie, and when Fast Five isn't trying to be a race movie, a chase movie, or an action film, it remembers it's a heist movie. There is something thrilling about a team of experts pulling off a seemingly impossible robbery. Especially when the victim of that robbery is a worse criminal by far. The moment when the plucky team of crooks gets away with the fortune of a fuming tyrant of crooked businessman (assuming there is no double or triple cross during the climax) is a cinematic pleasure like no other. But in Fast Five this moment never comes.

In the process of stealing the fortune of a Brazilian drug kingpin, Vin Diesel's team of hard driving career criminals drag a massive safe through the streets of Rio de Janeiro while being pursued by Dwayne Johnson and a sizable chunk of the cities police force. During this chase, the safe, which is tethered between two vehicles by reinforced steel cable, is barely controllable. It rolls, bounces, zigs, zags, bootscoots, hurls, jinks, and otherwise careens all over the street and parts beyond, crushing cards, storefronts, and anything else that gets in the way of its momentum. At the height of all this, my retention of disbelief stutters, and I realize that within the internal reality of the film, this safe, and by extension the drivers of the cars towing it, is killing people. Well fuck, I don't like anyone on the Vin Diesel team anymore.

And at the end of the chase, after the destruction of innumerable police cars (and the police inside), when Dwayne Johnson has the Vin and his partner in crime cornered, he lets them go, thus making him the worst international law enforcement officer in the world. He gives the men who got a sizable portion of his team killed a 24 hour head start, so they can enjoy this mary chase some more. Well fuck, now I don't like Dwayne.

The fun loving criminals got away with their loot, a drug lord was dethroned, and all it cost was the murder of countless Brazilians and a few cops from the USA. Way to bring yourself down, Fast Five. I know you're not so nihilistic that you were trying to make a statement about how there are no heroes outside of mythology sandwich shops, and we are all criminals and incompetents in our own way, because that's not the type of movie you are and you haven't earned the right philosophical subtext. Your just another action movie who made your characters so unheroic that I found myself feeling sorry for a drug kingpin.

Unheroes! May they swing as high as their lives are long.

Home Alone and the Perils of Memory - Where Have All the Wet Bandits Gone?

2011-11-27T11:25:00.001-08:00

After a spirited phone discussion with Sequelcast co-host Thrasher one afternoon, we decided that Sequelcast: The Podcast would cover all 4 HOME ALONE movies for the month of December (the runner-up choice was going to be The Santa Clause trilogy, which I vetoed as Tim Allen is an actor that grates on my every nerve).

The first HOME ALONE is a movie I haven't seen in 20 years. As I sat down to watch the DVD, I was expecting to watch an hour and a half of bumbling burglars getting smacked in the face with cans of paint while cursing in the way only PG rated films let you curse. Watching the film again, I was shocked to discover the burglars don't even start robbing the house until there is only 20 minutes left in the movie. The Wet Bandits, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, are barely a presence in this first film of the HOME ALONE quadrilogy.

Did I watch a different cut of this film when I was younger? Nope, only one cut of this film exists on DVD. My memories of what this film was were misled over the years by the marketing, which featured many a cheery photo of Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister outwitting two adults in their burgling schemes.

The way Kevin wreaks havoc upon the Wet Bandits foretells the septology of SAW films in their level of violence with a moral core. In all 7 SAW movies, the villain (whether it be Jigsaw or one of his proteges) locks individuals in torture devices as a way to punish them for their sins. In this first HOME ALONE movie, the hero sets up traps to physically maim the robbers as a way to punish them for the sin of theft. I'd like to think that a SAW prequel would be little else than a remake of HOME ALONE, with little Jigsaw enjoying the sadistic schadenfreude of watching people in agony for the very first time.

In all seriousness, I might have been getting parts of HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK confused with HOME ALONE as far as the amount of Wet Bandits tomfoolery in the film goes. Look for the HOME ALONE episode of Sequelcast: The Podcast to pop up towards the end of the week.

Maniac Cop 3 & The Shropshire Principle

2011-11-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I had the unique pleasure of watching Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence. Despite the lack of Bruce Campbell or a jaunty rap number that explains the whole movie, It was a fun final entry in the franchise, and it spoke to something I like to call the Shropshire Principle. But first, more on the Maniac Cop franchise.

The original Maniac Cop is a b-movie classic and surprisingly brutal slasher film starring Bruce Campbell and Robert Z'Dar, the two greatest chin delivery systems in the past century. Z'Dar played the titular maniac cop, Matt Cordell, a double crossed police officer who suffered brain damage during an attempted murder in a prison shower and wakes from the inevitable coma driven to kill, kill, KILL! Maniac Cop 3 opens literally where Maniac Cop 2 leaves off, with the funeral of Matt Cordell. Yes, this time he's dead for real, embalmed and buried. But in what most of us took to be a simple hand from the grave moment, his hand bursts from his grave to grab his badge. Turns out that wasn't a cheap scare. The maniac cop spends the entirety of the 3rd film as some kind of reanimated zombie. And that, gentle readers, brings us to the Shropshire Principal.

The principle is as follows: The more sequels there are to a non-supernatural horror movie, the greater the probability that the killer will become supernatural approaches 1. Sometimes this leads to the Shropshire Inversion, in which a sequel to a non-supernatural horror film reveals that the killer was retroactively supernatural the whole time.

Take, for example, John Carpenter's Halloween and it's roster

of sequels. In the first film, Michael Myers is a mentally damaged man-child, a wholly human monster who kills as implacable as a force of nature in a Shatner mask. By 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the Mike is revealed to be the tool of The Cult of The Thorn, which is itself the front for a cabal of mad scientists, who in turn are attempting to reproduce Mike's supernatural ability to not not die, which is revealed to be of occult significance. Also, I think there is something about Mike being a daemon. Yeah, I spell it daemon.

Take, for further example, the Friday the 13th franchise. In the halcyon days of Friday the 13th, the teens-of-average-beauty at Camp Crystal Lake had nothing to fear but the vengeful Mrs. Voorhees, mother of the murdered Jason. By 2003'a Freddy vs. Jason, the sexy sex-happy teens of the films have been dealing with Jason Voorhees himself, who has been a ghost, mutant with a healing factor, a demon (yeah, I spelled it demon these two times), and I don't know what else.

At this rate, can we expect the killer in Scream V to be some kind of vardoger?

In Other Blogs:

Celebrating a local Toys for Tots drive on Examiner.

Participating in the Shitcoms meme on Twitter.

The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1 makes $72 million Friday gross. Will Anne Rice vampire Lestat make a comeback?

2011-11-19T15:39:00.001-08:00

With THE TWILIGHT SAGA BREAKING DAWN PART 1 making a domestic gross of $72 million, it has the third highest one-day gross to date of any movie. While I've seen the first 3 Twilight films, they all remind of me how much more I enjoy the Anne Rice vampire novels featuring the amusing character of Lestat. If they were to go back into the Anne Rice well and produce another movie based on one of the books, what would be the best approach?

Out of the two Anne Rice vampire movies released so far, I much preferred the restrained pomposity of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE to the low budget camp of QUEEN OF THE DAMNED. As crazy as the plot for QUEEN OF THE DAMNED was in the movie (it was literally a sliver of what was in the book), the one thing they got right was Stuart Townsend as Lestat, who made the character slick and sexy instead of Tom Cruise's take of lumpy and giggly.

The way to do a Lestat movie properly is to take the book THE VAMPIRE LESTAT (an origin story of the titular vampire through the ages covering his many loves and attitudes) and make it 2 separate movies. You could even cast Stuart Townsend again, but make the tone more serious with a hint of silliness. These stories are meant to be epic in scope, violent, and above all sexual. I would have the first film go from Lestat before he becomes a vampire up until the supposed death of his maker. The second film would deal with the rest of the story, going more into the different family dynamics of both Lestat's family and the different vampire clans throughout Europe featured in the latter half of the book.

With the TWILIGHT films coming to a close in the Summer of 2012 and the UNDERWORLD movies far behind us, the time is ripe for a new saga of vampire stories to come to life as a franchise. I, for one, hope the Lestat stories by Anne Rice are the ones they choose.

An Article With a Naro Pun in the Title

2011-11-18T06:44:00.000-08:00

When Sequelcast reviewed the Rocky Horror Picture Show in episode #71 it triggered a lot of old feelings and memories. It called to mind all the times I've had at the Naro Cinema in my hometown of Norfolk, Virginia. The Naro is more than the place where Fishnet Inc. shadowcasts the Rocky Horror Picture Show the 2nd & 4th Friday of every month.

The Naro was the womb in which my inner cinephile was conceived, nurtured, and birthed red and wriggling into the world. And it's the one place in Norfolk where I could go to see my kind of movies on the big screen. And trust me, you have not seen Heavy Metal until you've seen it from the balcony of a classic Orpheum-style theater.

It's where my grandmother and I saw Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, and bonded over the pratfalls, buffoonery, and flawless timing of the trap to the accompaniment of live piano music.

It's where I met my childhood idol, Doctor Max Madblood, at a special screening Richard Fleischer's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. If you want to get technical, it was Jerry Harrel as Dr. Madblood, by the ancient code of TV horror hosts, once you assume the mantle of a TV horror host, your old identity is subsumed in a ritual symbolic of death and rebirth.

That's also where I saw Don Bluth's Rock-A-Doodle. Check it out, it really is a classic. Where else are you going to see a crow played by Eddie Deezen share screen time with an owl played by Charles Nelson Reilly?

Memories of filmgoing experiences aside, the Naro Expanded Cinema is one of the few Norfolk institutions I've ever felt connected with. I've never had school pride, hometown pride, or just pride, but what I feel for the Naro is an emotion usually reserved for old pets, deceased relatives, and Christmas dinners. When I go back to that queenly city, I go back to the Naro.

***

In Other Blogs:

Not a blog, but you can check out what's coming up at the Naro on their event calendar.

I'm covering the D&D Meetup at Amazing Wonders

And you can now follow me on Twitter @InternetMayor.

Why Not The Dungeonmaster?

2011-11-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

How this film escaped us back in Sequelcast Special 2: One-Shot Non-Sequels I'll never know, The Dungeonmaster, an almost-anthology film by prolific independent filmmaker Charles Band fits the bill.

Originally entitled Ragewar:The Challenges of Excalibrate, The Dungeonmaster (I'll call it Ol' DM for short) was intended to be the first in a franchise of almost-anthology films. Ol' DM's gimmick is – or would have been – that in each installment a dimension-hopping wizard (though some dialogue suggest he may be a demon) named Mestema (played by Richard Moll, Bull from Night Court) who abducts young couples and forces them to fight for their lives and souls in a series of seven challenges. This framing device serves as the foundation for the almost-anthology, as each of the seven challenge segments are written and directed by a different creative team.

These independently created segments are Ol' DM's greatest strength and most profound failing. On the downside, it makes the film uneven and prevents the development of a flowing narrative. On the plus side, if you don't enjoy one segment, you're a few scants minutes away from another wholly different scene. There are also a lot of practical special effects to enjoy, particularly in the segment where Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron, the Kobayashi Maru administrator in 2009's Star Trek) faces off against the puppety guardian of the realms of death. This scene is also remarkable for for spawning Adam Savage's tagline from Mythbusters.

Ol' DM is a good bad movie, and the ambition of the filmmakers involved translates into a lot of campy fun on the screen. It's also an interesting look and what might have been. I like to sit under the splitting chestnut tree and imagine a world where Ol' DM spawned a sprawling franchise, where every year brought a new challenge of Excalibrate, and where Richard Moll became an iconic villain like Pinhead or Darth Vader. I image an alternate 2011 when I go to the cinema with my two children (Esther and Franco) and we thrill to the adventures of young computer programmers using laser gauntlets to battle vikings riding dinosaurs.

When I put it like that, alternate 2011 sounds pretty sweet.

In Other News:

I'm Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu

and Getting into the mechanics of forced reincarnation

The Expendables 2 Promo Poster Confirms Manlier Cast than The Expendables

2011-11-13T16:12:00.001-08:00

ComingSoon.Net had the exclusive first reveal of this promo poster for THE EXPENDABLES 2 which confirms a cast list manlier than the original.

As much as I'm a fan of Stallone (on SEQUELCAST: THE PODCAST, we covered all four RAMBO films), I could not sit all the way through the dreck that was the first EXPENDABLES movie. Aside from a fun opening action scene, the movie had glacial pacing, too many scenes where the story was being taken seriously, and a plot that was all too familiar (ousting a power mad South American general/dictator figure? REALLY?). Given that THE EXPENDABLES was co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, I expected much more out of the movie. I'll have to give it a second shot with the upcoming release of THE EXPENDABLES DIRECTOR'S CUT. Maybe that cut will be less flaccid.

The cast for the 2012 sequel, THE EXPENDABLES 2, looks truly impressive. Returning are Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. New to the cast are Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Stallone isn't directing this time around (Simon West, director of THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, is), so maybe the pace will be a bit fresher this time out.

The sequel better deliver on action and less on soap-opera level dramatic scenes that have no place in an action movie with as many promises as the cast seems to deliver.

The Avengers - Sequel or not?

2011-11-12T16:49:00.001-08:00

In 2012, Marvel will release THE AVENGERS. A fair question to ask is if it qualifies as a sequel to the Marvel films featuring characters of THE AVENGERS? After IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN 2, THOR, and CAPTAIN AMERICA, could THE AVENGERS be considered film 6 in a franchise? Or is it a standalone, the start of a new AVENGERS franchise? It's enough to make one's head spin!

I fall on the side of the argument of THE AVENGERS being the start of its own franchise. One wonders how much time the film will spend introducing the characters and their special powers or will it assume people have seen all 5 previous films? It could work just like a James Bond film where you can jump into one without seeing the previous one and it all usually doesn't matter (barring the duology of CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE). I have great concerns over how the film will juggle all of the characters in a cohesive plot.

I hope they don't trot out the trope of the villain being an "evil clone/version" of one of the heroes as they have with IRON MAN, IRON MAN 2, and THE INCREDIBLE HULK. The villain should have good motivations, a power that doesn't devolve into large explosions or laser blasts, and have an interesting arc of its own.

We'll have to wait for the Summer of 2012 to be sure!

Riffing The Raff

2011-11-09T20:56:00.001-08:00

This week the Sequelcasts begins its coverage of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its little known sequel Shock Treatment, and re-watching these two films is bringing back a lot of memories. In particular, memories of tarting it up and taking the stage with Pure Antimatter, Savannah, GA's premier Rocky Horror shadowcast. Those were two great years, and I'm happy to say I was there when the group started and am thrilled to know it's still going long and strong (and down to get the friction on). I was usually Columbia, and for that I make no apologies.

My favorite and least favorite part of midnight screenings of Rocky Horror, which I still attend from time to time, are the callbacks. A greek chorus of children of all ages shouting "Asshole! Slut!" at the screen is great fun, until you realize it's all rote. Over the decades most of the callbacks have become formalized, canonized, and enshrined as tradition, with a few regional variations. After the first year, this state of affairs left me dissatisfied. I love interactive art, but one of the key elements of interaction is improvisation, and this is often lost in the pavlovian call-and-response that is a midnight showing of Rocky Horror. That's why I gave myself the futile task of mixing it up and trying to force new callbacks on the unconventional conventioneers Pure Antimatter tended to attract.

I live to martyr myself for the entertainment of others.

The short of it, after a year of trying and mixing things up, I did manage to come up with a new callback that always got the cast laughing, though to this day I think I'm the only person who uses it. Feel free to use it yourself. Whenever Riffraff communicated with Doctor Frank-N-Furter on one of those video screens that seem to be all over the frankenstein place, crank up your best Tim Curry, and screech loudly over the rabble . . .

"Riff, I told you never to call me on this octagon!"

Ah, ha! Ah, ha! Cause it's like George C. Scott, and this movie has a Doctor Scott, and everyone experiences strange love, and, and, and it works on so many levels! Ha, haha . . . ah.

I've had my moment. Keep Rocky Horror aliiiiiiive and keep calling back!

Carmelly Carmelly Corny Corn

2011-11-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

We're well into November, and I can think of no better time to discuss what I did in October. Between a whirlwind tour of Ohio to promote D∞ Magazine, spread awareness of Live Action Roleplaying at Gateway Games & More, and get elbow deep into Dementalism at Con on the Cob, my girlfriend treated me to a week-long marathon viewing of the Children of The Corn movie saga. I know I thought the Star Trek series had its ups 'n downs, but Jolly Jack Kirby on jackhammer, this series was a tilt-a-whirl of quantity versus quality.

We all know Children of The

Corn, but my word count

requites me to reset the foundation. The original Children of The Corn was based on a Stephen King short first published in Penthouse in 1977 (good call Mr. Guccione) and made into a film by Fritz Kiersch 1n 1984. Then followed six sequels and two remakes based on people's memories of having seen the film once in second grade.

Children of The Corn was a staple of my late night basic

cable and early video rental viewing when I was between the ages of "learning to read" and "learning to masturbate" (PS Aced it!). The notion of a town with no adults run by children resonated with my sense of youthful rebellion, while the fact that the children were part of a tyrannical cult resonated with my less-youthful cynicism over organized groups with spooky leaders. The enigmatic, and possibly Lovecraftian, god He Who Walks Behind The Rows was an eerie presence not to be forgotten. Children of The Corn was a good movie, especially by the standard of Stephen King movies that don't feature Tim Curry and aren't Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.

As for the rest of the series, it's pretty much up, down, side-to-side, left, right, left, right, select, start, hey DJ turn that back around. Each sequel assigns itself the task of forgetting what the original film was about or reminding you what the original film was about, and thus reminding you what you'd rather be watching.

Take Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, featuring Naomi Watts and Karen Black. Forget all mythology built up

in the series. Episode IV drops all that in favor of a story about a dead boy preacher who releases a disease that allows him to control the minds of local children. The film has so little to do with the original that I suspect it was made as just another direct-to-video horror movie, and when the producers saw that there was a cornfield in the background of a few shots, they stamped the name of a recognizable franchise on the cover in the age-old tradition of increasing sales through name recognition. That being said, Karen Black is, as always, an absolute delight. She should play more agoraphobics.

We're treated to a pre-death

David Carradine and a pre Brittany Spears-cover Ahmet Zappa in Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, which dispenses with the child cultists to make room for a mostly-typical teenage slasher film without the slasher. Sure, there is still a child cult run by an undead (and face splitting and fire breathing) David Carradine, but with the exception of one freckle-faced youth, everyone in the cult appears to be in their late 20s. Also, remember the often felt but never seen He Who Walks Behind The Rows? We get to see him in this film. Rather than being a shapeless presence that walks behind the rows, turns out he's a ball of green fire that lives in a corn silo. Or maybe it's just Tulzcha trying to get away from pressures of New England life.

John Franklin returns as cult leader Isaac in Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return, despite the notable handicap his character being killed in the first film. Turns out he spent episodes II through V in a coma in a hospital in a community inexplicably run by his cult consisting mostly of people who would have been adults and thereby murdered by him in the first film.

Now we get to the movie I really wanted to talk about.

Children of the Corn: Revelation! It took seven films, but we finally have a movie where the corn kills people. It beats them to death, strangles them to death, and in one scene that doesn't attempt to pay tribute to The Evil Dead, it molests them to death. Oh yeah, and there is something about ghost children and a tent revival, making Revelation more of a sequel to episode IV that any of the other films. At this point I am compelled to mention that Revelation takes place in an inner-city apartment building near some train tracks. Thankfully, there is an inexplicable 10' by 10' cornfield growing catty-corner in the building's lot to justify the title. And the cornfield eats the bodies of the dead.

There are two more Children of the Corn films, bur as they were part of a SyFy Channel reboot of the franchise, my girlfriend and I exercised the kind of cinematic discretion we usually reserve for films based upon Sex In The City.

I can't say my time was wasted by these films. It was campy good fun. But aside from the occasional memorable performance, innovative slaying, and incidental Zappa, that's all this series has going for it after the first outing.

Oh, the title for this review is taken from a quote from Stimpson J. Cat.

-post ends-

You you haven't been completely turned off by my prose, I've also been blogging about the new Necrons over on Examiner.com, and continuing to develop content on Skirmisher.com for the upcoming Jester Dragon's Guide to Defects.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

2011-11-06T18:39:00.000-08:00

Warning: This review contains spoilers. On with the review!

Action and science-fiction movies routinely get trilogies, but they are a very rare thing for comedies, let alone stoner comedies (Cheech & Chong not withstanding). Somehow a stoner comedy with two Asians in the lead roles has made it all the way to a trilogy, with the third entry in the series being a Christmas movie in 3D released in early November!

Although I've seen the first two movies in the Harold & Kumar trilogy, my memory of them is somewhat hazy. HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE was watched while at a party and I can't remember anything about it other than the heroes riding a panther to get to a destination and meeting up with Neil Patrick Harris. I saw HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO GUANTANAMO BAY in the theater and thought it was less funny than the original, having scenarios that seemed more forced and random than anything.

After several positive reviews and consistently being amused by the trailers, I went out to see the latest entry in the series in the theater, A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS. It uses 3D in a self consciously silly way, not unlike JACKASS 3D, yet manages to keep some real heart between the characters so you care about their relationship in the midst of Ukranian gangsters, a Broadway number, and a pancake hating Waffle-Bot. This film gradually gets crazier and crazier as the movie goes on, giving the audience a chance to settle in with the characters before going gonzo with the plot while still keeping a central goal for the characters in focus: give Harold a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve to please his in-laws.

I'd have to watch the original movie again to see if this one is better or not, but it's certainly just as good as the original. Walking out of the theater, I felt hungry for waffles and wanting to purchase a Waffle-Bot of my very own.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-11-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

Warning: This review contains spoilers. On with the review!

After IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN 2, and THOR, here is the final film leading up to the cacophony of super-heroes that will populate THE AVENGERS in 2012. Unlike the other films mentioned, for the most part CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is a period piece set during World War 2 and that helps the film.

More time than usual is spent with the character before he becomes a super-hero (in this case, Steve Rogers becoming Captain America) and it pays off in having a character that's sympathetic as he goes from scrawny to brawny. The cast is more solid than usual and the make-up for Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull isn't as garish as one might fear.

Where CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER fails it with the villains. Hugo Weaving does a fine performance, but the motivations of the Red Skull are never as grounded as the motivations for Steve Rogers. The whole element of the Red Skull working for a Nazi faction called Hydra (as well as the "Heil Hydra" mantra) and the development of a blue energy super-weapon from a gadget cast off from the THOR universe reminded me a whole lot of the Cobra organization from G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA. An obsessed Nazi with real nuclear weapons is enough of a threat for me and the additions of the super-weapons made the threat seem more like a cartoon than a credible threat.

A lot of the ending is too much setup for THE AVENGERS and feels like an extended trailer for the next film (of which there is a literal trailer for THE AVENGERS after the end credits). The introduction of people stumbling across the crashed plane at the start in present day robs some of the emotion of the sacrifice Captain America makes when he crashes the plane to stop more nuclear missiles from launching.

I liked CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER as a whole, but thought it needed a stronger villain and less of the present day material. THE AVENGERS is going to have its hands full juggling between Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Black Widow against Loki and whatever other villains pop up in that movie.

The Simpsons Movie

2011-11-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE, released in 2007, came out at an odd time. The TV show had just finished its 18th season and yet, unlike other movies based on TV series, the original TV show was not cancelled by the time everyone's favorite yellow cartoon family hit the big screen.

While I haven't seen this since it was in theaters, I recall liking the imaginative first half hour, cramming in as many side characters as possible between the rapid-fire gags. The more the story moved out of Springfield, the less interesting it became. Homer and Marge got into a fight that threatened the fabric of their message, an event that happened in the TV show on several occasions. Attempts to make the humor more edgy (waving Native American spirit boobs) seemed forced in an attempt to make THE SIMPSONS seem more like FAMILY GUY. The story and characters picked up a bit more during the finale, but the film as a whole was not enough to get me back to watching new episodes of the show on Fox.

While there is no sequel to THE SIMPSONS MOVIE yet, the film grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide. If a sequel isn't in the works, I'll eat a hat... Or, failing a hat, a sprinkle covered donut.

What is Sequelcast: The Blog?

2011-11-04T21:18:00.000-07:00

Sequelcast is a podcast reviewing movie franchises one at a time... The main site for the Sequelcast is at www.sequelcast.com.

So what the hell is Sequelcast: The Blog?

For quite some time, Thrasher has expressed an interest in doing more long-form writing about movies for Sequelcast. I have to admit, the idea has crossed my mind too. The writings here don't have to just be about sequels, but have to relate to movies in some way, no matter how tangential.

I hope you readers (whether faithful Sequelcast listeners or not) have fun with this new expansion of the Sequelcast and leave a comment or two if desired.

Best wishes,

Mat