Liam Neeson’s pretty uptight about head-related safety these days.

There’s not a whole lot of really exceptional DVDs this week, but at least there’s some variety.  If Taken 2 isn’t your thing, there’s also the newest Woody Allen movie, the latest horror flick about demonic possession, and even an Oscar-nominated documentary. There’s flicks about porn stars and soldiers, activists and the Outback, lesbian monarchs and rich Italian men just looking for love.  We’ve even got a film co-starring everyone’s favorite Scientologist, Danny Masterson!

The DVDs:
Taken 2
To Rome With Love
Won’t Back Down
The Possession
5 Broken Cameras
About Cherry
Allegiance
The Chicago 8
Branded
Wake In Fright
Farewell, My Queen
30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Counterpunch
Runaway Slave
A Secret Promise
Wedding Day

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

Want to know which film is about demonic possession?  Continue reading.  Want to know which film has Danny Masterson, so you can make sure to avoid it?  Continue reading.  Want to know more about 30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? Why?  It’s obviously one of those awful pop-culture reference spoof movies.  If you think you’ve seen quite enough of this week’s DVDs, feel free to click the link above for the streaming suggestions, but you’ll never find out which flick is about a porn-star named Cherry.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the first trailer for Howl, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in a movie that’s part biopic, part chronicle of the 1957 obscenity trial over the Ginsberg poem of the same name, and part interviews with Ginsberg.  Howl was one of the films I saw at Sundance, and I found it to be a pleasant surprise, given that I hate poetry.   You can read my full review here.  Luckily I am kind of a history dork, and the fact that directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman used actual court transcripts for the courtroom scenes and actual interviews for the interview sequences helped keep my fact boner engorged.  The trailer wisely doesn’t include any of the scenes where they animate Ginsberg’s poems like a bad music video, which were pretty goofy, and not in a good way.  But overall, it was nice to see a movie about that generation that actually tries to create an honest portrait, rather than being some nostalgic hippie circle jerk.  By the way, “Nostalgic Hippie Circle Jerk” is the name of my dad’s indie band. They sound like a retarded Papa Roach.

Opens September 24th.

O victory forget your underwear we’re free, but those animation sequences sucked

James Franco stars as Allen Ginsberg in Howl, one of the higher-profile films currently playing Sundance. I expected to hate it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that it’s named after a poem. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.  So why did I expect to hate it?  Let me count the ways.

• It’s named after a poem.
• It’s a biopic.
• Please God not more baby boomer nostalgia.  We respect you wanting to relive the good ol’ days, pops, but it tends to get a little annoying to have to re-debate the effing sexual revolution at every city council meeting, even the ones about bus routes.  We respect the history, but at some point we’d like to redraw the battle lines to reflect things that are actually happening now, and you making 15 movies a year about Bob Dylan doesn’t exactly help.
• Poetry readings.  Oh God, please not poetry readings.  Pretentious, attention-starved pussies sitting in a dark room verbally masturbating while their once proud art form dies one tortured mixed metaphor at a time.  Trust me, I’ve been to a few.
• To put it in South Park terms, I did not want to see another editorial piece from “Aging Hippie Liberal Douche.”
• Words can change the world, maaaan.

Thankfully, Howl was not these things.

Read the rest of this entry »