Month: February 2017

Cinema Dispatch: Rings

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Rings and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by F Javier Gutiérrez

What in the hell took them so long with this!?  Not only is this coming out over a decade since the last one, this one has been pushed back at least three times from its initial release date in November 2015 which is only a few months shy of Monster Trucks’s unimaginably long delay, and we all know how THAT turned out!  Then again, no one was stupid enough to mortgage their studio on THIS film, but I’m not all that optimistic either way.  There’s a hell of a lot going against this movie even before it was pushed back several times, so unless we’ve got the next  Fede Álvarez helming the damn thing, I don’t think there’s much hope of this being even halfway decent; otherwise they wouldn’t have waited until February to dump it on theaters.  All that said, you never know!  Hell, even Monster Trucks managed to be a LITTLE bit of fun, and it’s not like the first film was a sure thing either being a remake of a well-known Japanese horror film!  Maybe there’s something to this that the studios just didn’t see!  Yeah… that’s a bit of a long shot, BUT let’s find out anyway!

So if you’ve seen the trailers, it turns out they don’t actually tell you ANYTHING about the plot of the movie as they basically consist of the cold opening and the last five minutes.  What’s REALLY going on here is that Julia (Matilda Lutz) is a woman dating some dude who went off to college named Holt (Alex Roe) and she ends up worrying about him after he stops taking her calls.  Now in the REAL world this would mean that he’s found some campus squeeze, but instead she finds out that the Biology professor named Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) has him and a WHOLE bunch of other students working on some sort of study into a magic video tape that kills whoever watched it after seven days.  That is, unless the person makes a copy of the video and has someone else watch it, in which case the seven day curse resets and is put on the next person.  It’s not clear exactly what Gabriel’s end goal is here, but shit goes to hell when one of the students dies from Samara’s wrath (the ghost from the other Ring films) and it leaves Holt hanging who need someone to watch his copy soon.  Julia volunteers herself as tribute, but something goes wrong as the video is different, she can’t make a copy herself, and she gets some weird scar on her hand that no one else has gotten.  Clearly Samara is changing the rules on them, so the only way to stop her once and for all is to solve the mystery of what happened to her and why she’s so damn pissed!  No, not the mystery from the FIRST film!  This is a whole NEW mystery about her past that no one bothered to mention until now!  Can Julia and Holt figure out… whatever it is they need to figure out, before it’s too late?  Did Gabriel learn anything USEFUL by messing with the ghost for this long?  So can she just come through ANY screen now; even ones that aren’t TVs?  I wonder what would happen if she haunted a 3DS…

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“These fifty inch TVs are really nice!  So much roomier!”

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The NekoCon Diaries 2016: VOCAMERICA

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The biggest event at NekoCon this year (even more so than Mike McFarland!) has to have been the VOCAMERICA concert; the first (relatively) major Vocaloid concert made entirely by Western producers.  Sure, we’ve had Miku Expo here in the US for a few years now, but that was part of a bigger worldwide tour and frankly there are so few shows they have in the US that it’s almost impossible for most Vocaloid fans to go without a WHOLE lot of cash to drop on it.  VOCAMERICA is still small so the accessibility issue is still there, but if this gets enough momentum going, it could be the start of something that may never eclipse Hatsune Miku in terms of popularity but can be enjoyed by more fans of the genre; especially those outside of major cities.  Some of you may be wondering, just what IS a Vocaloid and who is this Hatsune Miku person?  Okay, if you’re reading this to begin with, you PROBABLY aren’t asking those questions, but let’s answer them anyway!

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Super Recaps: Riverdale Chapter 2 (A Touch of Evil)

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

Riverdale and all the images you see in this recap are owned Warner Bros Television Distribution and The CW

Episode directed by Lee Toland Krieger

We’re back with another episode of Riverdale: The Next Generation!  Now the first episode didn’t give me a WHOLE lot of hope that this is gonna resemble the original comics in the least, and adding some questionable subplots and story decision on top of that only lessened my enthusiasm.  Still, Betty and Veronica are great and Cheryl is fun if completely over the top and goofy, so there are definitely some things to like about it and room to grow as the series goes along.  Does this episode build off of what was good in the first one, or are we already getting the best that this series can offer?  Let’s find out!!

The episode begins with Jughead Marlowe as he narrates to us the events of the last episode with that same pulpy film noir style that continues unabated from the last episode.  Raymond Chandler, this guy is not, BUT it at least adds SOMETHING to the standard PREVIOUSLY ON recap that you see in front of shows like this and we also get a few details on what has happened since last time.  What DID happen last time anyway?  Well it turns out that the body of Cheryl Blossom’s brother Jason finally washed up on shore but it has a bullet hole right between the eyes which points to MURDER instead of merely an accident which is what Cheryl has been telling the police this whole time (the boat tipped over and he drowned) so I’m sure they’ll be wanting another chat with her sometime soon.  Of course, there’ still one piece of the puzzle that the cops aren’t aware of yet and that’s the secret Archie is hiding from everyone.  On The Fourth of July which is the day that Jason went missing, he was at the river where Cheryl and Jason were, and while he didn’t SEE anything, he definitely heard a gunshot.  However, he hasn’t told anyone yet because he was with his WAY older music teacher Miss Grundy (you can read my recap of episode one if you want my thoughts on THAT situation) and she’s convinced him that he can’t go the police.  Of course, finding out that Jason bid farewell to this cruel world with the help of Smith & Wesson isn’t making it any easier to keep this secret from eating away at his hunky insides.

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“All this deception is making my abs sad…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

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Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and all the images you see in this review are owned by Screen Gems

Directed by Paul WS Anderson

It has been quite a ride, hasn’t it?  I’ve always been a fan of Paul WS Anderson and his work, especially considering that he’s the only director other than Uwe Bowl who’s attempted to make more than one video game movie and is the one who ACTUALLY made it work.  People STILL say that we don’t have any good video game movies, but what they really mean is that there hasn’t been one that’s been critically acclaimed, and even THAT criterion is rather nebulous.  So what if Resident Evil or Mortal Kombat didn’t win Oscars?  Neither did Taxi Driver or Dr Strangelove!  It truly is the end of an era though considering how few franchises from the early years of the new millennium are still around, recent revivals like xXx non-withstanding, and there really isn’t anything like it to take its place now that it’s over.  Hell, this series DARED to be different from the source material which I can’t imagine ANY film getting away with now considering everything is about franchise management nowadays!  It’s kind of a sad day to see this series go, though it will be doubly so if this final chapter turns out to be a poor note to end things on.  Does Mr. Anderson manage to give us one hell of a sendoff to this beloved series, or has this franchise finally run out of steam right as it was about to reach the finish line?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with the world having ended for at least the second time and Alice (Milla Jovovich)  is all alone in the wastelands of what the world once was.  Of course, being the savior of all humanity that she is, someone eventually comes a-knocking for her to be the big hero once again.  This time, it’s… THE RED QUEEN!?  Yes!  The AI from the other films (played this time by Ever Gabo Anderson) that has been trying to kill her apparently wants to help her because Wesker (oh, spoiler alert: Wesker’s a bad guy again and is still played by Shawn Roberts) is just forty eight hours away from wiping out ALL of humanity and Alice has to stop him before then!  How?  Well apparently Umbrella developed an antidote for the T-Virus that no one bothered to mention up to this point and if she can release it into the world in time, all the zombies will die and humanity will be saved!  Of course, the antidote (along with Wesker) is all the way back in Raccoon City so she has to travel back there, go back to the secret underground Umbrella base, and punch as many zombies as possible in the process!  Can Alice save the world one last time before it’s too late, by which I mean the Resident Evil film rights expire?  What exactly brought upon this change of heart from the Red Queen, and could this all be one giant trap to finally destroy her one true enemy?  So wait, did she get her powers back or is she still human Alice?

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Practical?  Not really.   Awesome?  ABSOLUTELY!

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