Cinema Eaters

Cutie Honey

2007-03-14T00:49:22Z

murnkay waxed ecstatic about it here.

On April 17, you can finally own it legitimately:

Chopper Chicks in Zombietown

2007-01-10T04:23:09Z

Four of the self-described Cycle Sluts.

So, um, yeah. Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. This is one of those Troma movies whose title is better than anything in the movie. And like most of what Troma shovels out, it's actively trying to be so-bad-it's-good (at least I hope it is), which is never a good thing.

The Cycle Sluts, headed by Jamie Rose (who had her own short-lived Dirty Harriet show Lady Blue) and Catherine Carlen (giving the best performance as the self-professed bull-dyke leader), ride into a town where the creepy coroner (Don Calfa of Return of the Living Dead, reviewed here by my brother in B-movies yendi) is implanting batteries into dead people to turn them into zombies.

Why? I don't know.

I also don't know why there's no nudity to be found anywhere in this thing, except for a shot of Don Calfa's ass. If you're going to have chopper chicks — named the Cycle Sluts — gratuitous T&A is almost mandatory, no? If only so that we can laugh at how gratuitous it is.

The packaging makes much of Billy Bob Thornton's appearance, which lasts maybe ten minutes. Hal Sparks is also in it as one of the blind students imperilled by zombies. Martha Quinn is supposedly in it, but I didn't spot her.

You can't make fun of the damn thing, because it's Troma; it's not trying to be anything other than the weak cheesefest it is. It certainly never scales the heights of exploitation heaven, either. It's just unfunny comedy, unconvincing biker-chick fights, and unconvincing zombie gore.

...Um...

2007-01-08T16:30:50Z

This is coming out tomorrow.

As murnkay might say: Wow. Just...wow.

BELDAR reviews the SoaP extras for us!

2007-01-05T19:56:58Z

[Hey, APK here. Beldar got an early copy of the SoaP DVD and agreed to review the extras and let us post it. So here it is! Thanks Beldar!]

Have you gotten your copy of the Snakes on a Plane DVD yet?

You're probably already aware of the plot (see title) and saw it in the theater.
But before taking off for the wilds of Arkansas last month, the_dark_snack and I got an advance copy of the SOAMFP disc and checked out the special features:

Having seen the film at the cinema on opening day, we watched it on DVD with the commentary on. The director and a couple of other crew spoke, as well as Samuel L. Jackson. (The "L" stands for "Motherfucker," as one of the others remarked in a making-of featurette).

Right off the bat, they got into a lot of the lore surrounding the making of the movie, including claiming that they never meant to change the title. They used the alternative title (which doesn't mention snakes) to help secure locations, caterers, etc. from people who wanted nothing to do with slithering reptiles. (The real snakes were mainly confined to the Vancouver soundstage anyway). But, once the Internet started buzzing about the "title change" they decided not to say otherwise, as the fan outrage was helping fuel the hype machine for the film. Anyway, that's their latest story, which they may be sticking with until Sam says something else in the next interview.

The commentary does reveal quite a bit about the making of the movie, where they used the digital effects, and even a continuity error near the end. They also note how small details can mess with a moviemaker, such as fog over L.A. on final approach to a clear blue Vancouver exterior set. Much smartass cutting up in the commentary, too, which helps with the campy mood of the movie.

The bloopers are mostly crack-ups, plus some improv by Flex and Keenan that goes weird, and a watch your head -bonk!- moment. Deleted scenes were mostly extended bits that were cut for flow, and extraneous bits about Juliana M.'s character studying to be a lawyer. The deleteds also have good commentary.

I didn't see the Easter Egg, find it yourself.

Naturally, the "Bring It" music video is included. Is it just me, or is that chick too skinny to truly be hot? Love how the song also plugs SnakesOnABlog.

Speaking of which, the SOAB Intarweb phenomenon gets its own documentary, with moments from the numerous online blank-on-a-blank parodies, including "Snakes on a Home Birth" (totally not making this up) and interviews with geeks like us, including Jeffrey Rowland, who we all know and adore from Wigu and Overcompensating.com, but who also designed the awesome SOAP T-shirt that Sam Jackson wears. We even see the SOAB folks and J-Ro on the red carpet at the premiere.

More awesome is unleased with "Meet the Reptiles," hosted by the manic snake-wrangler (Steve Irwin's South African snake-loving counterpart). It includes telling what venomous snakes the various king-snake stand-ins represent.

The "Pure Venom" making-of includes more detail, including how they had the aircraft-fuselage set on hydraulics, so that all the turbulence and shaking around would be real. They would even jolt the actors and stuntpeople without warning to get more genuine reactions.

I found the VFX featurette to be extremely boring. I suspect that even those for whom the geek-speak doesn't go over their heads might find it that way too.

But that's the only downside I found in the bonus features. All around its a very good package for a fun movie. Highly recommended.

It has been decided.

2007-01-03T01:50:13Z

Well, looks like you sadistic bastards want me to suffer through Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. So: Chopper Chicks in Zombietown it shall be.

However, if you feel really really strongly about another movie on the poll, it's not too late! Keep voting and perhaps you'll unseat Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. The poll will remain open until midnight tonight.

EDIT: Aaaand it's still Chopper Chicks in Zombietown.

Zombies!

2007-01-02T19:42:02Z

And what better way to begin a new year of cinemaeater than with...THE LIVING DEAD?

View Poll: #899168

Crappy (movie) new year!

2007-01-01T15:05:38Z

Hey, y'all.

I dunno if murnkay is into re-animating this thing of ours — he's too busy writing about zombies and hawks with pigeon slippers — but I kinda wanna kick-start it again.

What do you think? Weekly bad-movie reviews from yours truly? A return to the poll format wherein you vote on which horrible movie I sit through?

Reveal this to me in comments.

cinemaeater @ 2006-12-06T11:34:00

2006-12-06T16:35:14Z

via beldar:

The New Line Snakes on a Plane DVD press release says the disc info is as follows:

Disc release date is still Jan. 2, 2007.
Planned DVD Special Features include:
* Commentary from Samuel L. MF Jackson and director David R. Ellis
* Deleted scenes with optional commentary by Ellis
* "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)" Cobra Starship, et al, music video
* Gag reel
* "Pure Venom" behind-the-scenes commentary
* "Snakes on a Blog" featurette
* "Meet the Reptiles" featurette
* Snakes on a Plane VFX featurette
* Easter Egg (just one?)
* Teaser trailer
* Theatrical trailers for "Unleashed" and "Phobia"
* Five TV spots
* The film will be in 16x9 widescreen (2.35:1) with DTS 6.1 Dolby Digital 5.1 and Stereo Surround 2.0, with English and Spanish subtitles (but oddly, no Parseltongue)

'They shot the Giggler, man!'

2006-09-05T03:20:37Z

Steve Bunche writes perhaps the greatest Cinema Eaters review never to appear on Cinema Eaters.

For good measure, here's Vern laughing his ass off at Chaos. Both of these are truly hilarious reading.

Snakes. On a plane.

2006-08-18T12:10:26Z

Saw it last night. Will weigh in with a detailed rave later.

What you need to know, aside from that it's a fuckin' fun movie, is that it utterly must be experienced on opening weekend with the biggest, snarkiest audience you can see it with. Don't wait for DVD. Don't fuck around with a matinee. Go Friday or Saturday night. Order the tickets online, do what you have to do. But if you aren't seeing it with a huge, eager audience, you're not getting the full Snakes on a Plane experience.

Our audience? Not as packed as I would've liked. But when they applauded and hooted when the title came on the screen, I knew we were with the right kind of audience. And by the time Sam Jackson got around to saying the mighty line of dialogue, it was just...audience magic.

SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKIN' PLANE.

2006-08-16T14:51:57Z

Perhaps The Daily Show's finest moment ever.

Snakes on a Plane: the phenomenon

2006-08-09T01:57:43Z

You've been there:

You hear a band. Either at a grungy dive or on a CD foisted on you by a friend who insists you listen to it. You fall in love with the band's sound.

Then everyone else discovers the band. Frat boys, pretentious posers, people you hate. Suddenly the band isn't cool anymore.

They're the same band. They're still making music you enjoy (let's assume they don't hitch onto a major label and completely change their style). But you no longer want to be in the fan club. You don't want to be lumped in with these Johnny-come-lately asshole fans.

Which brings me to Snakes on a Plane.

We've been hearing about it for roughly a year now. Between the title and the involvement of He Who Says Motherfucker, it caught on and it caught on huge. We've seen the Internet cult grow around it in a way that's pretty much unprecedented. It's not a sequel, not based on anything else, didn't previously have a built-in audience. This was word-of-mouth like whoa.

Sometime this summer? Maybe you got sick of hearing about it.

Now it's ten days before showtime, and, yeah, you're pretty fucking sick of hearing about it. New Line knows what they have, and they are pimping it like whoa. You can have Samuel L. Jackson call your friend with a reminder to go see the movie, and shit like that. (I actually kinda hope this catches on and Nic Cage has to record something inviting your friend to go spend two hours buried alive with him in World Trade Center.)

Not only that, all the assholes now want to see it. Not for the right reasons, but because it's what's cool on the Internet and everyone's talking about it. You don't wanna be associated with these assholes. You don't wanna be in the same theater as these assholes. You don't wanna even go see the movie now.

But it's the same movie.

It's probably going to suck. But it's probably going to suck in an amusing, self-aware way. You knew that right from Jump Street. And there's probably going to be some sort of half-assed honor in the way it just is what it is. It's snakes. On a plane.

We all originally adored the idea of the movie for that very reason. There's a plane. And there are snakes on it. And Sam Jackson is in it. And there ya go. Simplicity.

So my advice is to ignore all the hype, all the assholes now clamoring to see it who didn't even know it existed a year ago, and go see Samuel L. Jackson bust a cap in some motherfucking snakes. Because that's what it's always been about.

cinemaeater @ 2006-08-07T23:06:00

2006-08-08T03:06:11Z

Finally saw V for Vendetta...

They took an amazing graphic novel and turned it into The Adventures of Guy Fawkes Man and his sidekick Angsty.

Christ.

Snakes in a book

2006-07-07T03:49:28Z

Snakes on a Plane: the novelization.

OH HELLS YES.

2006-07-07T01:56:31Z

It's even cooler in French.

DES SERPENTS DANS L'AVION, bitches.

AND I'M GOOD AT IT.

2006-06-27T00:20:29Z

NEW SNAKES ON A PLANE TRAILER, BITCHES.

The red kite, the scorpion, and...stuff.

2006-06-12T02:39:35Z

With all due respect, Snakes on a Plane is not the greatest movie title of all time. It is only the second greatest.

Any still image from this movie is great. (That poster is amazing, isn't it?) The music is stupefyingly awesome. (Check out this track if you doubt.) And yet...it doesn't quite add up to the movie you want it to be.

It's basically Carmilla meets Dracula. Ewa Stroemberg (who looks a lot like Ginger Spice) is a businesswoman who starts having dreams about man-hating lesbian countess Soledad Miranda (who died in a car accident not long after the film was done). Ginger Spice heads off to do business with Soledad and falls under her vampiric thrall. There's a female Renfield and a shrink who fancies himself a vampire killer. There's also a red kite that seems to be a herald of the vamp countess, and a scorpion that seems to stand in for her. There's also the goofy nightclub act Soledad does with a naked woman who poses like a mannequin. Twice. With the music at its most lunatic.

All of this sounds like a kick-ass Saturday-night flick, right? And yet Jess Franco, despite all the geek love he's received over the decades, cannot direct his way out of a soggy, perforated paper bag. The damn movie is a soporific. I should know, because I've given the thing two chances, and both times I found my attention wandering. And when you've got Ginger Spice feasting on Soledad Miranda's breastages, you do not expect your attention to drift off.

Vampyros Lesbos is one of those cult movies that appeal more just because they exist than because of anything actually in the film. That title, that music, those babes (not to mention the countess' hilarious minion Morpho)...it should all come together in a deliriously crappy stew. It's crappy, all right, but not nearly as much daffy fun as you'd certainly expect.

Essays on bad movies

2006-06-09T16:56:47Z

Just received via interlibrary loan: American Movie Critics, edited by Philip Lopate. It's an interesting, if unavoidably flawed, volume. For our purposes, though, the book contains two longish essays that are essential reading for bad-movie fans: Pauline Kael's 'Trash, Art, and the Movies' (which contains her often-misquoted line 'Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them') and J. Hoberman's 'Bad Movies,' which discusses, among others, Ed Wood and Oscar Micheaux.

Mo' motherfuckin' snakes on mo' motherfuckin' planes.

2006-06-09T15:17:06Z

Sam Jackson on the MTV Movie Awards.

Snakes on a Teaser

2006-06-05T17:38:27Z

So did anyone happen to catch The Break-Up last weekend and see the teaser trailer for Snakes on a Plane?

Funny-ass shit. Wouldn't dream of spoiling it for you. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be online yet. Not much footage, but whoever put it together definitely understands the fan base waiting for it. Why they would show it before The Break-Up is beyond me, other than that it's a Universal film (like The Break-Up). I hear tell they showed it before X3 in some parts of the country, too.

X-Men III

2006-06-05T14:41:36Z

So last night I saw X:3, The (thankfully) Final Stand. I'll review it below and try to stay away from too many spoilers, but there will be some because it's hard to talk about things with utterly none. So. Spoilers possible below the cut. (Hopefully later today I will review Doom)

Let's make a check list of things a movie can have: acting, script, directing, score, plot. That good enough for now? All right! Now let's see how X:3 did against our list!

Acting: Wooden and weak, except for McKellen and Stewart as always. Everyone else phoned this fucker in, if they were capable of doing that much (I'm looking at you, Halle Berry)

Script: If 1,000 monkeys sat at 1,000 typewriters they could produce Shakespeare. Fine. But take two of those monkeys and give them a Bic and you'd get this script. The lines are laughable and the supposed tension is utterly flat.

Directing: Two words - Bret Ratner.

Score: Weaker than the other two, which is sadly saying something. It was generic Hero Score #5.

Plot: Ever have a really good story to tell? How about 2 of them? Why not tell them both at once so that neither really makes sense or works and is instead just a mass of what the fuckery and pain? Yeah!

I mean, characters die and no one seems to care or notice past the first minute (if they notice for a day or two). Moral issues are brought up, discussed quickly and then ignored as people do whatever they want to get from A to B. It isn't a moral gray area, kids, if you just ignore it. It's just sloppy then. And that's what this whole movie was - sloppy.

Why did Character A die? Because we had nothing else for him to do. What about Character B? Well it'd introduce drama, except we pretty much ignore that one too. Plus we can ruin Characters 1 and 2 without really discussing the change in their lives from losing their powers and that's fine, we don't really need to discuss the ramifications at all! Oh and we'll do the same to Character 3 but then we'll show it might not have actually robbed him of powers - thereby proving the entire conflict of the film moot after the fact! Character C will die cause... well shit we couldn't be bothered to think of a way to resolve anything.

But the worst offense this film made? Continuity.

Rouge says something and leaves a room. Sunlight is coming in good and strong. She goes upstairs to her room. More sun. She walks downstairs and opens the front door. Dead of night.

The X-Jet leaves NY at full speed. They arrive in SF. Fight starts. A few minutes into the fight, Angel comes and does something. He can fly at Mach 3 or 4? Really?

Magneto takes bridge. Daylight! Turns bridge. Sunny day! Lowers bridge. Mmm sun light. Bridge touches down. Night time!

Come on, people. This shit ain't that hard.

Anyway. Huge body counts, a lot of characters dead for no good reason and a huge waste of time. And then the ending tidbits just made it all worse. Ugh. Just ugh.

BLOODRAYNE

2006-05-30T15:55:29Z

Yup. I took it to the limit this time, folks. I rented Bloodrayne and got two friends to sit through it with me. Hells yes.

UWE BOLL IN THE HIZZOUSE!

So how to discuss this? Awww fuck it, hey ho, let's go!

Uhmmm... this crapfest... I... So Rayne is a carny freak because she's a damphyr. Or to hear her mutter it "I'm damp here", which made me wonder if this was porn. Honestly, given that Kirstanna Loken was in Ternimator 3 and now this I think porn is the only thing left to her. She can't act, that's for sure.

So anyway, she's in a carnival and then she escapes (we see her strong enough to go kicking in doors and shit but they keep her locked up in a flimsy wooden shack. Smooth.) S'anyway she escapes and then gets some stuff and goes to find her dad, Ben Kingsley who became a vampire when he sent Robert Redford out for Pizza and then Michael Madsen is working with Michelle Rodriguez and some bland guy that looked kidna like MacGuyver except he was useless and then they all end up at a fight scene with no sense whatsoever and then Rayne is with Madsen and crew.

*breathe*

And then some stuff happens and she fucks MacGuyver and then they go somewhere else and we learn that Michelle Rodriguez's father is Billy Zane with a bad wig and some ~~bad orges~~Thralls attack and Michelle Rodriguez is evil and turns on people but everyone else left and then Rayne goes back because she read the script and fights Michelle Rodriguez in the water and why are they both wearing spandex in the 12th and a half cennnnnnnnnnnnnntury anyway?

*breathe*

And then people fight other people and Ben Kingsley and Rayne get into a bad stop motion fight so she can pose and he can move some and who thought it was a good idea to cast Madsen in this anyway, he hasn't had to move around this much since he was chased by cops. He looks like he doesn't like it. Sadly, it doesn't lend a badass air to him - like he's mad you made him run. Instead he looks like your fat uncle who only gets off the couch to get more beer.

*breathe*

AND THEN IT GETS STUPID.

The movies ends, all right? Rayne wins and has a Conan moment on her dad's dead throne but then we get a flashback scene. and it flashes through the entire motherfucking movie. And then it comes back to her in the throne and then it goes to credits. Why did we need a FIVE MINUTE recap of the movie at the end of the movie - without words or sound even? Why did we need that? Who let that go through?

Oh I know, Bob, they hated this piece of shit but let's make sure they get their money's worth and watch again in a 5 minute montage of what the fuckery!

Oh my fuck. It was just really bizarre.

That time again

2006-05-12T21:04:32Z

Thanks to autodidactic for pointing out the movie poster to me

Bad DVDs in June

2006-05-12T15:12:24Z

Some great bad stuff coming up...

- Mommie Dearest - A new edition with COMMENTARY BY JOHN WATERS.

- Plan 9 from Outer Space - Mike Nelson of MST3K does the commentary for this new edition of a flick we all probably already own. Mike also does a commentary for Little Shop of Horrors, out the same day.

- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - Finally we get this on a Region 1 DVD. This is the infamous Russ Meyer flick written by a young Roger Ebert. He also does the commentary. Released on the same day is the original Valley of the Dolls, which I just highly recommend ('Gabrielle, the wine almost got in my shoes').

- Two — count 'em, two — editions of The Perils of Gwendolyne in the Land of the Yik-Yak. A regular version, and a director's cut with, one assumes, more fleshiness.

- A sooper deluxe Criterion edition of Equinox. Hell yeah. Best cover art EVER.

cinemaeater @ 2006-03-27T10:29:00

2006-03-27T15:30:49Z

It's sort of a review... I wrote a comic about watching the movie Domino.