DVD: News Movie

aka The Onion Movie.

aka A complete waste of my time.

News Movie – attempting to cash in on the Epic/Superhero/Date/Whatever movie series – is little more than a collection of piss-poor sketches. If you watched them on the internet, you’d want your time back, so seeing them on DVD is an experience you’ll want to forget.

The film’s collection of weak skits and sketches are strung together tenuously by a dodgy storyline involving an ageing news anchor, corporate takeover and radical Islamists but the whole deal is so flimsy and stop-start it was never going to work as a cohesive narrative.

News Movie wants to be clever, witty, sharp, satirical, biting and relevant, but all it succeeds in is being a like student project albeit one with above-average production values.

Jon Stewart can rest easy.

.

You can buy this crap here.

DVD: 21

Maybe it’s the lights, the razzmatazz, the tacky glitz of the city, or just the fact it has attracted more than its fair share of hoodlums, lowlifes and gangsters over the years, but there’s something about Las Vegas that keeps filmmakers returning to it as the location of choice.

21 is no different in that, like so many movies before it, it concentrates on a scam involving the city’s numerous casinos and gambling tables. The twist is, 21 is based on the true story of how a bunch of ultra-intelligent students at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) managed to beat the system.

All geeky student Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) wants to do is earn enough money to put himself through med school, so when his math(s) professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) invites him to join a group of fellow students travelling to Vegas to play and win at blackjack he sees the answer to all his prayers. Basically, the group count cards – a mathematical way of working out how to beat the odds – and soon the once shy and retiring Ben is hooked on the thrill, the money he’s earning and his close proximity to his teammate Jill (Kate Bosworth). But the group is attracting attention of the wrong sort in the shape of security chief Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), who knows they are up to no good and swears to bust up their party.

If you’re not a gambler and find most films about gambling incomprehensible then 21 is a real breath of fresh air because it simply and very graphically allows you to see exactly how the group operates. The youngsters (especially Sturgess) are typically brattish, smug, out of control and yet rather endearing in their immaturity and fallibility and you soon become so caught up in their Vegas adventure you find yourself egging them on although the slightly oily and menacing charms of Spacey’s character are less easy to swallow. What ensues is a really enjoyable romp with plenty of twists and turns, some nice nerd humour, lots of Vegas glamour and swagger, and a fantastic soundtrack pumping in the background. It’s all so enticing you’ll be dying to try your luck at the tables yourself.       Dee Pilgrim

Grab a copy here.

COMPETITION: BloodRayne 2 (DVD)

BloodRayne 2: Deliverance. It’s very similar to BloodRayne 1, which starred Kristanna Loken, but this one stars Natassia Malthe, who is far more attractive.

And we’ve got three copies to give away!

.

To enter the competition, just answer this question:

Nattasia Malthe starred alongside Holly Valance in which other videogame movie adaptation?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by October 11, 2008.

COMPETITION: Cool Hand Luke (Blu-ray)

He’s cool, he’s got hands, and his name’s Luke.

What film are we talking about? That’s right Smokey and the Bandit!

Not really. Of course we’re joking, it’s Cool Hand Luke, and it’s now out on Blu-ray. Hooray!

Even greater cause for celebration is that we have three copies to give away.

.

To enter the competition, just answer this question:

Paul Newman starred in which 1961 pool-based drama?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by October 11.

DVD: BTK

When a film opens with the line, “Finally, a break from all the madness,” being muttered by the killer as he strolls back to his motel room, flicks through the Yellow Pages and calls up for a prostitute, talking for a while on the phone but forgetting to give his address, you know you are in trouble. Even if that killer happens to be genre favourite Kane Hodder – Jason from several Friday 13th Films.

BTK stands for Bind Torture Kill, and is based on the serial killer of the same name, but just from watching the first few minutes of the film you can tell that its one of those projects where all of the money went on the poster and DVD cover in an attempt to suck in unsuspecting horror fans who think they are in for a treat. Unfortunately for this film, after those first few minutes the viewer will have most likely have lost interest anyway and leave this trash on the bottom shelf where it belongs.

After the film opens with the most boring prostitute scene ever committed to film, our hopes are raised as we’re given an interesting, if not slightly cheap, opening title sequence, reminiscent of MTV-style graphics. However, once this short sequence is over the film falls flat on its face again. BTK is a slow paced, poorly-written dialogue-driven script, which has been made so cheaply that it just doesn’t work. If you are making a film with a lot of talking then you need to hire actors who will captivate the audience and bring the film to life, not the cheap Z-list actors. Kane Hodder is great fun to watch, but he isn’t the right choice for a dramatic and thought-provoking role, which this should be. We cannot really expect the man who usually wears a hockey mask and slashes up teens with a machete to be able to carry the whole film by himself, try as he does.

If you are trying to tell a realistic and dramatic story about a serial killer you really need some serious style and technique, and some talent both behind and in front of the camera. David Fincher’s recent Zodiac is the most perfect example of a film of this type and unfortunately BTK just doesn’t come anywhere close to it. How is the viewer supposed to relate to the characters and believe in their situations and actually have feelings towards the narrative, the killer and the victims when they are constantly being pulled out of the action by poor film-making and acting and a complete lack of energy, style or even care?

The film is horribly shot and edited using cheap cameras and cheap techniques. Serial killer flicks should be dark and creepy and dramatic, but BTK – with all of its bright and sunny filters and red and orange colour schemes – just looks completely wrong. Any kind of tension and horror is just destroyed by the shooting style that has been used on this film. It’s truly shameful.

Even if you are watching just to see some blood and guts or some nudity, don’t bother. The blood is so terribly fake that it just gives the film even more of an air of tackiness. The action is dreadfully staged and acted, many of the sequences are shown in a horribly cheap slow motion style which is no doubt meant to heighten the drama but instead it just emphasises how bad the film is by leaving the poor special effects and hammy acting on the screen for far too long.      Russell Gomm

Buy it here…. if you’re mental.

CINEMA: RocknRolla

Welcome to the latest instalment of Guy Ritchie’s wet dream set in the gangster world he is obsessed with; a world of guv’nors and guns, dodgy deals and drugs, and diamond geezers with fickle loyalties. Think of this as Lock, Stock and Two-and-a-Half Smoking Barrels and you could almost write the plot yourself.

The Guv’nor is Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), who is strictly old school, but increasingly forced to deal with the new kids on the block – the Russians. Kingpin of the Ruskies is billionaire oligarch Uri (Karel Roden), who wants to do a real estate deal with Lenny. Helping to broker the deal is Lenny’s right hand man Archie (Mark Strong) and highly ambitious accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), but putting a spanner in the works for all the wrong reasons are a trio of likely lads (Gerard Butler, Tom Hardy and Idris Elba) who could either make themselves a fortune or get fed to the fishes. While all the dodgy-dealing and backstabbing is going on, who should turn up alive and well after being reported dead from an overdose, but Lenny’s junkie rock star stepson Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell). An unstable presence at the best of times, Johnny’s about to really stir things up and makes life uncomfortable for all involved.

As is always the case with Ritchie movies, RocknRolla is slick, expertly edited and shows off the substantial sums of money spent on making it, but Mr Madonna is desperately in need of a new groove and new material. This lacks imagination and vision, being yet more of the same old, same old. There’s also something rather reactionary about it, demonstrated in the snigger snigger depiction of Handsome Bob (Hardy) as a gay man, and the fact the one and only female character (Newton) is given little more to do than totter around in her Louboutin stillettoes.

.

It’s time for Ritchie to direct someone else’s material – material as far removed from his imagined, make-believe gangster world as possible.     

.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Duchess

You can’t have failed to notice all the publicity surrounding this historical account of the troubled life of Georgiana Spencer, who just happens to be a distant relation of a certain Lady Diana Spencer – Princess Diana to you and me.

Born into great wealth and privilege, Georgiana (or G as she seems to have been known to all and sundry) made the marriage of her day when at the age of 17 she wed one of the richest men in the land;the all hunting and fishing Duke Of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes). The Duke expected G (a haughty Keira Knightley) to give him a son, but after the birth of two daughters, his sexual interest in his wife wavered and he began an affair with her friend Bess (Hayley Atwell). By this time G had already become the IT girl of high society, loved and admired not only for her beauty, but also for her wit and political wisdom, an attribute not lost on the Whig leader Charles Fox (Simon McBurney), nor on the Whig’s rising star, a certain Earl Grey (Dominic Cooper).

What transpires is a tangled romantic and sexual scenario and the film takes pains to compare to Princess Diana’s own unhappy conjugal circumstances. In fact, at one point G actually alludes to ‘three people in this marriage’ – almost a direct quote from Princess Diana. Unfortunately, by concentrating on and pushing these similarities between G and Diana, the film undermines itself; G was known for her intellect and sparkling repartee – and yet there are hardly any scenes where we see her shining in her own right. Yes, the costumes and locations are exquisite, but by focusing on the negative aspects of G’s life, rather than concentrating on her strengths and talents it diminishes her as the complex, intriguing and remarkable woman she undoubtedly was.     

Dee Pilgrim