Screenhead

Well, folks…bad news.  Terrible news in point of fact.

Apparently, Herr Doktor Uwe Boll hasn’t had enough of destroying video game to movie translations yet, because he’s somehow gotten access to the Far Cry series.

A trailer has emerged, and man, is it a doozy.  It has all the hallmarks of a Herr Doktor film–halfassed plot, weak dialogue, and lots of explosions.  The trailer doesn’t look too bad, but I’ve seen enough decent trailers built out of horrendous movies.  Naturally I’ll reserve judgment until the actual product emerges, but you’ll excuse my skepticism.

This IS, after all, Herr Doktor we’re talking about here.  Seriously, does the guy have any GOOD movies to his credit?  Sure, Postal was a riot but even that was still pretty weak. It’s hard to imagine a Boll movie going over well at all.

And of course, we have the trailer right here for you, so settle in and enjoy this newest wreckage in the making.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Well, folks, since the “stop Uwe Boll” petition crapped out at just over three hundred fifty thousand signatures, well short of the million required to put an end to Herr Doktor Uwe Boll’s movie career once and for all, he’ll be coming out with a new movie called–get this–Darfur.

As always, it includes a preposterous mix of has-beens and almost A-listers like Matt Frewer (this one hit me especially hard), Edward Furlong (what, no Crow knockoffs hiring?), Kristanna Loken (yeah, the T-X Kristanna Loken) and Billy Zane (possibly as part of an arbitration agreement after his distribution company so clearly let down Herr Doktor for Postal) come together to bring us a movie about the war-and-genocide capitol of the world.

Oh, and the best part?  Seems Herr Doktor couldn’t be bothered to get copy editors around to make sure the trailer had no typos.  Follow this link to check it out for yourselves and see the wonder he has spawned.

I’ll admit though, the movie itself doesn’t look that bad for a change.  Maybe Boll outside of video game knockoffs isn’t a complete disaster, but we’ll have some time to wait before we find out.

Popularity: unranked [?]

You’ve really got to hand it to Jason Statham.  The guy is practically a video game character in his own right–look at some of his recent roles.  He was a hitman in Crank who had to jump from adrenaline rush to adrenaline rush in order to keep his heart from collapsing under the influence of some weird Chinese nerve drug.  Then he shows up in In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, which actually WAS a video game before Uwe Boll got his hands on it and turned it into, well, another Uwe Boll film.

And then he shows up in Death Race, the remake of the original–which might well have been the first ever video game movie (Death Race actually was a video game at one point–I remember playing it in an old arcade).

This time, Statham plays a down-on-his-luck steelworker whose mill just shut down (shades of the current economy, huh?).  He goes home for the night, expecting a simple, safe night in with his wife and newborn daughter when it all goes horribly wrong.  Statham ends up in prison, framed for his wife’s murder, and offered a terrible choice.  Either he can spend his life in prison–which may not be that long–or he can join the Death Race circuit, a sort of gladiatorial stock car race in which prisoner drivers race heavily armed cars to the death.  Statham signs onto the Death Race circuit, racing as legendary driver Frankenstein, a man so disfigured by his numerous crashes that he needs to wear a mask.  Throughout the movie, we follow the Death Race circuit through a three-stage race (shown on pay-per-view for the ridiculous price of ninety-nine dollars a circuit or two hundred fifty dollars for all three) as Statham discovers that the race has plenty of secrets, and almost none of them good.

With a plot like that, we all have a pretty good idea that this isn’t going to be an Oscar contender.  Nor will it make a lot of sense.  Rest assured there will be several good plot holes going on here, and more than a few headscratching moments as racers you’ve never seen before suddenly die on the race track.  And though Oscar wouldn’t spit on this movie if it were soaked in its own high-test racing fuel and set on fire, you can take it to the bank that this will be at the very least a fun movie.  Plenty of blood and fire and explosions and attractive women in a supporting capacity say that this is eventually going to show up on Spike in an extremely edited fashion.  And the commercials leading up to its release will be absolutely nuts.

And that’s most of what you can say about Death Race–it’s big, it’s loud, it’s violent, and it’s crazy.  Jason Statham turns in a solid performance once again, and his supporting cast is no slouch in its own right.  In fact, there’s very little wrong with the movie.  It was made for a couple hours of shutting your brain off and watching stuff go vroom and stuff go boom.

You will probably enjoy it, as long as you don’t look too far under the hood.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I never thought a movie could actually HURT to watch it.

Please, bear in mind that I’m not some knock-kneed neophyte.  I’ve seen Ulli Lommel movies. Several of them.  I’ve seen Joe Castro, Charles Band, Uwe Boll, all the worst Hollywood has to offer.  And no movie has ever cause intestinal discomfort the way Step Brothers did.

For those of you who haven’t seen this wreckage yet–and be grateful you haven’t–it’s all about a middle aged man who finds love at a sales conference with a middle-aged woman.  This is actually quite happy news, but it’s not so well received by the couple’s sons.  Under normal circumstances, you might think this is some kind of Brady Bunch redux and shake your head knowingly as you understand that, soon, they won’t be stepbrothers, they’ll be BROTHERS.

Until you realize that the sons in question are in their mid-thirties and still living with their parents.

And don’t misunderstand–these are not down-on-their-luck victims of a bad economy, frantically combing the newspaper want ads for any job that can get them out of their parents’ house.  These are those most annoying type of mid-thirties gent–the kind that never grew up.  Think Failure To Launch without the hot surfer guy, and replace him with, oh, Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.

Yeah, I know.  I had a hard time keeping my lunch down too.

These guys are absolute IDIOTS.  I don’t know who greenlit this but I find myself wanting desperately to seize them by the collar, throw them against a wall and ask them “why?” in a very determined fashion.  It was quite possbly the first movie to ever give me stomach pains.    It literally HURT to watch these nimrods romp around the screen screaming about “Boats and Hos”.

And when a movie actually hurts to watch, well, you really can’t recommend it to anyone else in good conscience.  Except possibly masochists looking for a challenge.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Essentially destroying their careers, Lauren Holly and Luke Perry of television’s NCIS and Beverly Hills 90210, respectively, have joined the cast of The Storm, an upcoming thriller from infamous director Uwe Boll.

Boll is known best for his string of atrocious film adaptations of popular video game franchises, including House of the Dead and Bloodrayne.

In The Storm, an original post-apocalyptic thriller, Holly will play a dedicated wife who must deal with the doomsday scenario, which is heightened by the arrival of Perry who plays Silas, a person who holds the key to the approaching doom.

The film is currently being shot in Vancouver.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Uwe Boll, the infamous director who is hated universally, has begun shooting horror thriller The Storm with Steve Bacic, Lauren Holly and Luke Perry. He is working off a script by Tim McGregor for Brightlight Pictures.

The film tells the story of a stranger named Silas who emerges from a devastating storm seeking refuge with others ona  form. As they struggle to deal with the aftermath of the storm, it becomes clear that they are threatened by a danger that could far more catastrophic.

Boll is known for his work on extremely bad videogame film adaptations including House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You may not have heard of German director Uwe Boll, but you’ve probably heard of his movies. You almost certainly have never seen these movies, but instead passed by Screen 124 while on your way to  the blockbuster on Screen 1.  Boll has directed such classic crap as  Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne,  and House of the Dead. All three are adapted from relatively plotless video games. And with even fans of the games complaining, you can imagine how bad these films are.

In fact, people are so annoyed at Boll that after a facetious remark he made in an interview with The Guardian, stating that he’d quit if a million people asked him so, there is now a petition to do that very thing. Check it out here, and get voting!

In retaliation, Boll posted a hilarious video response, claiming that his work is genius and better than all that “social-critic George Clooney bullshit that you get every fucking weekend”.

It’s pretty obvious that Boll is very aware of himself and is generating self-promotion through such ridiculous claims. This is, after all, a man who challenged 5 of his worst critics to boxing matches (and won all five). His movies are flops, and he is only able to make them through a loophole in the German film industry tax-break scheme (am I the only one thinking of Max Bialystock?). Anyway, I implore you to turn the tables on Boll’s plan, and vote against him. Let th epublic decide!

Popularity: 2% [?]