Screenhead

Ken Robinson gets to add American Violet to his DVD library, congratulations!

Based on a true story, American Violet is a look at the harsh reality of injustice.

American Violet has been described as “AMAZING! The first must-see film for African-Americans in 2009,” by BET.com and Jeffrey Lyons of NBC Reel Talk has said “A powerful, compelling true story of a woman of courage.” The movie is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Inspired by a true story, American Violetfollows the struggle of a young African-American mother to clear her name after being wrongly arrested for dealing drugs in an impoverished Texas town. An honest woman with no hard evidence to justify the accusation, she is forced to risk everything in order fight unfair prosecution. The film stars touted newcomer Nicole Beharie, Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard, Will Patton, Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe, Tim Blake Nelson, Emmy Award winner Charles S. Dutton and Xzibit.

It is truly a compelling story that must be watched about survival and the persistence to never give up for your god-given right to be free.  

“EXCELLENT performances by Beharie, Woodard, Nelson and Patton”- The Washington Post 

“POWERFUL performance by newcomer Nicole Behaire” – B+, Entertainment Weekly 

“IDEAL MOVIE for an ideal time” -San Francisco Chronicle

Precioushas been on the festival circuit, getting rave reviews with some strong backers: Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry. The movie opens with a limited release November 6, 2009.  Precious is a strong, emotional film about survival and truth.  Yet, I don’t know if I could sit through this film as entertainment.  That is usually why I go to the movies,  I want to escape for two hours and not worry about the problems of society. What do you think?

Ben Foster stars as Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army officer, who has just returned home from a tourin Iraq and is assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Will is partnered with fellow officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to bear the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers.

Will seeks solace back home and finds himself drawn to Olivia (Samantha Morton), to whom he has just delivered the news of her husband’s death. Will becomes involved with Olivia and film peels away layers of surprising, humorous, moving and very human portrait of grief, friendship and survival.

The Messenger trailer is up at Apple in HD.  You can view it here.

First Showing nabbed the embedded code, so we have the trailer below, too.

Comparing the current Up in the Air trailer with the exclusive Internet trailer, I’d say this one is much beefier. George Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham is more defined with the rest of the cast.  We even get a chance to hear the original song “Help Yourself”.  The movie opens November 13, 2009 in select theaters.

Today I’m talking about a movie you probably haven’t heard of.

It was just released this week to theatres, mobile devices, online, and on DVD, and it’s called Rage, a film that will ensure you never look the same way at couture culture again.

It’s about a filmmaker that goes by the name of Michelangelo, a young man out to shoot a film on his cell phone about the fashion industry.  As his subjects slowly reveal bits and pieces about themselves, a series of crises bursts into life around them, and each must come to grips with the disasters in their own way.  But just how much of these are Michelangelo’s doing?  Or is everyone just in the wrong place at the right time?

There’s a mix of no-names bundled in with a bunch of big names–Jude Law’s sharing the screen alongside Simon Abkarian, and Steve Buscemi’s right there with Adriana Barraza.  There are plenty more recognizable names, and they’ll all turn in outstanding performances.

Why?  Because they HAVE TO.  They have literally no choice but to excel since there’s absolutely nothing in the shot but them.  No explosions, no other characters, no action, not even music, really–just the actor and his or her lines.

Rage proves the incredible power a movie can pack when it’s well written, and shows what little the Michael Bays of the world are actually doing.  The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Rage plenty of respect with a nine out of ten for an amazing display that only becomes predictable at all toward the end.

I thought that, when I first read this, either I had lost my mind or my wayward past had finally caught up with me.  But no…no such luck.  I was indeed reading about how Diablo “Gibberish? What Gibberish?” Cody was actually planning to stage a movie adaptation of the Sweet Valley High series of books.

For those of you not already in the know, and I only remember these because an old friend read these voraciously throughout much of high school (and if you happen to be reading this, hello Stephanie, and I hope you actually READ that copy of The Prince I gave you for graduation.), the Sweet Valley series revolved around Californian twins the Wakefields, who proceeded to engage in a pathologically ridiculous number of soap opera plots including lots of backstabbing and clandestine romances but an unsettlingly low number of chainsaw killings.  At the time, of course, I lamented that last and often got kicked in the shins for my opinion.

Early reports peg Cody as saying that her Sweet Valley movies will include the following: “Sharp comedy/satire, plenty of “sincere” SVH moments too. No werewolves. Plenty of Todd.”

Well, so much for the chainsaw killings….

Once again we’ve got a special super-secret advance preview for you, folks–today we’re talking about Pandemic, which will be available for you to see just in time for Halloween, October 27th.  And though it will be familiar ground to say the least, you should still get something out of it.

Pandemic brings us a small town veterinarian who’s discovered something very odd about the local wildlife.  It’s developing a particularly nasty bug that kills within hours (and not too many of them) of exposure.  Worse, this bug not only does horrendous things to critters, it also does likewise to humans. And once the army gets wind of it, well, here we go on the trail to Quarantine Town, with stops in Eventually We’re Going to Commit Mass Murder Village.  So now, our veterinarian is going to have to get to the bottom of all this and hopefully manage to get out alive in the process.

Yes, the comparisons between this and other pandemic titles like Outbreak and The Crazies and such will be so inevitable as to make most folks wonder what took them so long getting there, but they’re no less accurate for the inevitability.  If you couldn’t get enough of scientist heroes, then Pandemic is going to be right up your alley.  It’ll seem familiar, but this shouldn’t be interpreted as bad.  They don’t seriously screw anything up here and play it all very strictly by the numbers.

Advance warning, however–this sucker could not be much more depressing if it tried.  Of course, for those of you out there who believe that the United States government is actually capable of testing biological weapons on humanity, you’ll get a sort of cold vindication out of this movie.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Pandemic a six out of ten for a lot of unoriginal material, but for at least not bungling what it stole very hard.

First, let me say how awesome it is that Bronson Pinchot can still find work, even in this economy.  Second, let me further say that it isn’t every day I see a movie that actually makes me check my door locks and leaves me in fear for my safety.  Sounds kind of broad, I know, but as long as the writer of Mr. Art Critic is running around free and unmedicated, I’m gonna have a tough time sleeping at night.

Bronson Pinchot stars as M.J. Clayton, the titular Mr. Art Critic, who’s apparently become renowned for his blistering reviews of art galleries and their respective shows.  He sets off for a vacation on Mackinaw Island, proving once and for all that Michigan really IS the cheapest place to film movies.  And while on vacation in the wilds of northern Michigan, he runs into a previous victim who ends up getting a twisted challenge out of him–can the critic actually MAKE art?

Clearly, somebody involved with this production has been blasted by critics before.  So much so, in fact, that he felt the need to create an entire movie featuring one being systematically destroyed in every particular.

This movie represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire nature of criticism.  There are damn few critics working today that actually operate like M.J. Clayton, and with good reason.  Even if we’re so massively jaded that we can’t find anything we like anymore, chances are, we’ll still at least manage to connect SOMEBODY to it.  Those that don’t, meanwhile, generally burn out under the constant stream of venom they emit.  Real critics want to find something they like so they can tell everybody who reads them about it in a desperate bid to prove that their entire medium of choice (art, film, food, whatever) isn’t a completely irrelevant loss.

I’ve seen enough craptacular vampire movies to choke a horse, and I know that every single one I see has about a ninety-eight percent chance of sucking the second I settle in, but I can still manage to say that, if you like vampire movies, some certain titles might be good for you.  Anyone could go back through my own body of work and discover that, while I personally may have found a movie unpleasant, I could still recommend it to certain kinds of enthusiasts.  In fact, I’ll even have a specific recommendation for THIS crap sandwich.  Stay tuned.

One of the movie’s final lines is “don’t listen to the damn critics”, as though we had nothing useful to say.  The movie almost manages to begrudgingly admit that there are “some good critics out there”, as though it were being threatened with lawsuit or as some desperate last minute sop to the numerous critics who would be actually WRITING ABOUT THIS MOVIE.  But even this is much too little much too late as they’ll then gleefully carry on with the demolition of M.J. Clayton.

This bizarre poison pen letter can’t even properly be called a movie as there’s just so little going on here that isn’t aimed directly at critics.  I’m downright horrified that someone would write this.  The only way I could be more unnerved is if the islanders got together and MURDERED the guy at the end of the art show.

What’s the SEQUEL look like?  Clayton is publicly skinned and rolled in salt?

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, will rise above the repeated slanders and character assassinations, but in the end realizes that this is just some sad attempt at payback and hands this grotesque wish-fulfillment fantasy a one out of ten.  Don’t even bother seeing this unless you too have a mammoth grudge against critics.

See? Told you there’d be a specific recommendation!

Some darn good actresses are in this movie.  I never heard of  The Burning Plain until MSN sent me this clip today.  I don’t know how The Burning Plain slipped through my radar sighting, but it did.  It opens in theaters September 18, 2009 as a limited release.