I Kissed A Vampire

I really like projects like "I Kissed a Vampire," not because it is ground breaking but because it shows that people can still make a difference from the ground up in an industry obsessed with 200 million dollar blockbusters. "I Kissed a Vampire," started life as a web series and became popular enough to be made into a movie. It's a simple musical about the boy and girl next door dealing with being turned into vampires. Their source of temptation is the bad boy rocking vampire Trey Sylvania and his bad girls. Their one hope is in the dubious hands of Dan Hellsing.

The music is bright bouncy pop tunes. The actors are appealing. Some of the lines are amusing. It reminds me a lot of the Buffy episode that was a musical. Definitely, not deep but fun and sometimes folks that counts for a lot in this world.

Poultrygeist

Well if you've been a fan of horror films at some point you've seen a troma  film.  Generally, my heart goes out to you.  Most troma films are just bad.  They think they are funny bad, but no they are bad, bad, bad, great scott kill it with fire bad.  It is a testament to Lloyd Kaufman's showmanship and the general public's lack of taste that troma still exists.

Upon saying all that, there are rare times where troma's over the top style weirdly works.  It becomes sort of a darkly comic carnival of the grotesque.  "Tromeo and Juliet" certainly comes to mind, and now we have "Poultrygeist."  First off, it's a musical.  Be warned, it's a musical by folks who probably shouldn't sing in the shower much less in public.  Add incredible violence and scatological catastrophies and those with gentler sensiblities are more than excused for missing this.

For those brave souls that stayed they'll find quite the trip as they used to say.  The story is about Arby a young man who loves Wendy.  Wendy, however,  has turned gay in college so Arby does the only troma logical thing, he goes to work as a counter girl at the local American Chicken Bunker.  Unfortunately, the new Chicken Bunker is built on an old native american grave site so of course its cursed.  Soon people are being killed by chickens or turning into chicken zombies after eating the pulsating green fried chicken.  Can Arby and Wendy survive a night of the living dead chickens?

I hate to admit I found this funny, but I'd be lying if I said otherwise.  It was crazy and senseless but certainly never boring.  Certainly there were points where I wished for a little restraint, there are certainly some images I can't unsee.  Overall, though, I enjoyed it's punk sensibility and its good natured perversity.  Watch if you dare!

Tangled

For me, Disney is like Tom Cruise. I would dearly love to hate their films because I dislike the person/company in real life, but they just keep making films that are so darn good I can't help but like them. So never mind the Disney wants to own the world and sue it at the same time, never mind that totally. Enjoy a film like "Tangled" for what it is, sheer pure enjoyment.

Innocence.

Here they took the story of Rapunzel and gave that old saw new life. So much life it practically bursts off the table and goes jogging down the road. The first really smart thing it does is that Rapunzel isn't cursed by the witch cause of what her parents did. Instead she has been blessed with the power to instill life and the witch (here more of an old woman but definitely qualifies as something that RHYMES with "witch) steals her away. Since that power is in Rapunzel's hair, Gothel has her grow her hair out to incredible lengths.

The second smart thing they do is in the relationship between Gothel and Rapunzel. Being kept in her tower the only person she knows is Gothel and they form a sort of a mother daughter bond. Gothel uses that love to keep her in the tower. See she COULD leave, but she is both afraid of a world she doesn't know and hurting the only person who she believes love her.

Still she longs to be out of the tower, which leads to smart thing number three. Our heroine is not just a hair freak, but a vivacious young woman who is full of life and creativity.  She's naive and maybe a little clumsy (hey you  try to manage 50 feet of hair) but she's a goer, a trier.  She's just waiting for her chance for her star to shine.  If you can't get behind this girl you have no heart, no soul.

So now after doing so much right in like five minutes of screen time, the film piles on a great plot of a daring thief, his prize and the deal struck between him and the girl in the tower to see the outside world.  Add to this GREAT songs (no one does show tunes like Disney), a horse that practically acts like a hound dog, and a tavern full of scurvy knaves and you have an incredible film. 

Seriously, the music is great.  I'd put some on here but Disney tends to frown on that.  But go over to you tube and check it out.  Then watch the movie.  Then watch it AGAIN.  Really you do yourself a favor. 

Old School Review: Breaking glass

Sometimes when I go completely luddite I remember fondly the early times.  No internet, no Harry Gnomes or people like me scrapping every crumb of film news.  Sometimes a film would just come completely out of the blue.  Generally it was on HBO, usually around 3 am.  Everyone else would be asleep and I'd sneak down and watch.  Yeah, I was hoping for a little skin.  Something like "Bikini Car Wash," might lack in plot but made up for it with a lack of bikinis.

Sometimes I'd be suprised.  I remember watching Breaking Glass and really feeling it as only a teen could.  Here was the story of a punk girl played with gusto by Hazel O Connor.  She just wants to let her songs out and she doesn't care what any wanker thought.  She'd play the clubs for practically nothing with her band of losers.



She makes it big, gets the gigs and the records and the radio play.  But she loses herself.  She loses the one person who really cared about her.  She loses herself to drugs.  In the end she loses her very soul to drugs and rock and roll.  It was a very cautionary tale of be careful what you wish for.

Not the Messiah

If you are a man of a certain age, you were probably a monty python fan.  Oddly monty python tended to skew more towards male fans than women.  I think it's because they were based mostly on a bunch of men arguing with each other.  They'd argue over the existence of cheese or whether a parrot was a alive or dead but as a group they were clearly very confrontational. 

The thing about a sketch show is that you can trim the fat and go right to the meat.  No need to ease in and out of the good bits, just cut to the pet shop and start in on norwegian blues pining for the fjords.  This format translated to most of their films.  "The Meaning of Life," for example didn't have a plot but rather an over arching theme that the sketches could (sometimes vaguely) latch onto.  "The Life of Brian," was a very different affair.  It would wander a bit like a smart lad with ADD, but mostly it was the coherent story of how one jewish lad was mistaken for the Messiah and what happened to the poor bugger.

Well, it's been a while.  Quite a while.  People have grown older, and some have passed on.  Luckily, before the last members became ex parrots they started getting back together and doing things.  "Not the Messiah," is one of those things.  It is a live taping from Albert Hall of a musical rendition of "Life of Brian."  Eric Idol leads the show and is ably helped by some old members and fresh young voices.  The comedy is nowhere near as sharp as the movie, but the music is stirring and the crowd adds a lot of excitement and energy.  If you are a Python fan and want to see how the old boys are getting along, then please do give it a look.