Monday, February 2, 2015

Review of "How I Buried My Ex-Boyfriend's Body"

“The perfect crime… kind of… not really”

An action comedy from Fat Foot Films, directed by Dennis Nadeau, “How I Dumped My Ex-Boyfriend’s Body” (HIDMEBB) tells the story of Maxine and Shae as they look for a way to discretely dispose of a dead body, Maxine having accidentally killed her ex-boyfriend during an argument. Missteps along the way push the girls to ask Shae’s cousin Mikey (who has underground connections) for help. He recommends a “fixer” by the name of Tony, a cleaner for the mob. When Tony shows up, he is not at all what the girls expected, but does his job disposing of the body and covering all their tracks. The girls mistakenly believed that Tony did the job as a favor, when in reality, now they owe Tony $10,000, which they don’t have. This sets them off on another adventure to try and get that money before Tony comes back to collect.  All along the way, Maxine’s weird neighbor with an obsessive crush, Roger, bumbles in & out of their mess, creating even more missteps for our leading ladies.

This was a fun and raunchy comedy, made on the lowest of budgets. All the proper elements of a film combine well to prove Dennis Nadeau is a talented comedy director. While some of the story jokes are easy to pre-read, that doesn’t make them any less effective. The pacing of the action along with the camerawork and editing are spot-on for good comedic timing. The dialogue between the characters is witty and fun all the way through, however, I got the feeling (correctly) that even though the lead characters are women, the script was written by a man.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that (as George Constanza would say), and I know many women that are as crude or worse than their male counterparts, but it seems men have a tendency to steer any situation towards a dick joke when possible. However, in this case, I think it worked in the film’s benefit to have leading ladies rather than leading men, as it would have been a sausage-fest otherwise, but also it’s nice to see women in less stereotypical roles.





Saturday, December 6, 2014

Chelsea Peretti Says “LIKE” 430+ Times in Her New Comedy Special

Readers be like, "430 times, huh? He actually CLOCKED THIS?"
Yes, I did. It’d be easy to write a clickbait headline exaggerating something along the lines of “Chelsea Peretti Says ‘Like’ a Hundred Million Times” but I couldn’t in good conscience write an article based on hyperbole. (I tried to make a cool visual chart of the data, but failed miserably. If anyone has the skills to do so, feel free to download the CSV of "likes as lap times" here. )
I had picked Chelsea Peretti’s special “One of the Greats” over the multitude of stand-ups now on Netflix because, if she was good, I'd enjoy watching “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” just a little bit more. The first gold star for her was rolling up on that motorcycle in in front of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. No wussy little cruiser. A badass sport bike. I was getting turned on… maybe it was her Clint Eastwood voiceover, but regardless, her mission was already half-accomplished.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

What is a Movie Review?

I am a big movie buff. My favorite genres include comedy, action, horror, and occasionally sci-fi. That said, I don’t get a chance to go out to the movies as much anymore and therefore I tend to read a lot of user reviews before deciding which film to make the effort for. 
Why user reviews over critic reviews? I think they are just more honest and fun. Also, when looking to brush up on some old cult films or pulp classics, it's good to dig through user reviews to see which likeminded film fans agree are the truly classic films still worth an hour and a half of anyone's time. Horror film franchises especially benefit from the user review community - which saved me from the disasters of movies like "Critters 4" and "Hellraiser 9" ... well I skipped 3 & 4, 6-8, too, but "Hellraiser: Inferno" (2000) wasn't bad for straight-to-video.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A Celebration of the Horror Anthology (or Compilation)

First of all, let’s touch on the difference between a Compilation and an Anthology. I am not the expert on this, but for the sake of this article, an anthology is the collected works of a single group or artist, whereas a compilation is a collection of works by a variety of artists. Further, I would say that all anthologies are compilations, but not all compilations are anthologies. Like squares and rectangles.
I am not going to be exclusionary, as both anthologies and compilations have their strengths. The best thing about a horror anthology in particular is that when you have a good director, such as Lewis Teague who helmed “Cat’s Eye” (1985) or George A. Romero who directed “Creepshow” (1982), then you have a unique opportunity to let a talented storyteller take you on multiple rides for the price of one ticket. Not all stories need an hour and a half to be told. Basically any horror film that involves teenagers going camping is already wasting 15 minutes of precious “scare time” with the lame character setups as they all travel to wherever it is that they will eventually die bloody painful deaths. Why do we need to know which one is the slut, the jock, the nerd, or the good girl? We just came to see them die, and the sooner you get to the action, sex, or SFX, if not all three at once, the better.

Friday, January 14, 2011

The Bleeder

Is there a bit of slang in performance art called the “nosebleed?”   If not, there should be. I’m not sure what it would pertain to, but something to do with blasting through obstacles in a performance.  The urban dictionary has a few interesting definitions of nosebleed, and as is common with the urban dictionary, every word has to have at least two sexual definitions, whether they make sense or not.  One seemingly normal definition, however, was:
  1. Metaphorically used to describe incredible heights
  2. Metaphorically used to describe incredible speeds
I can get behind this definition as a starting point for deriving a whole new definition of the “nosebleed” in the context of performance art (such as Stand-up Comedy, for example).
nosebleed_2
Why the keen interest in the nosebleed? It comes from my latest travels during the holiday season.  While on the road, I spent some days in Portland, OR and there just happened to be a few Comedy Open Mics during the nights I was in town.  Well, hell yeah, I’ll sign up and do a few minutes of my shit for P-town. It was cool how many performers there actually were at the different clubs in town. Portland has a nice little comedy scene going, and it seems like the crowds are quite supportive.

Monday, August 2, 2010

saQi - Heart's Castle (EP)


The latest release from saQi is a a 5-track EP called Heart's Castle.
"The album is ... a humble offering from my heart to yours and serves as a dedication to my father and the beautiful life that he lived." - saQi
Released in May 2010, the album features vocalists: Kyrstyn Pixton, Luz Alena Mendoza, Christopher Worth, Cohen, Leslie Kernochan and additional musicians: Russel Scott & Chet Lyster. Album artwork by: Dee aka "Sweet Anomaly."

Stand-out tracks include Cancion del Corazon featuring Luz Alena Mendoza on vocals and some of saQi's signature trumpet over raw guitar work. Twilight In Bardo (Remix) featuring Kyrstyn Pixton is another of the highlights. Kyrston also lends her vocals to the title track, which itself is an amazing body-moving trip through a mix of emotions.

As stated in his dedication to his late father, Heart's Castle is an offering from the heart, and it speaks on many levels to those going through love & loss, reminding us of how great it is to feel the whole spectrum of emotions.

The 5-track EP is available for $5 at bandcamp.com. Click here to preview and download tracks from Heart's Castle.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Website Recovery Status

Some of you know, some may not, but SidFilmz attempted to upgrade our website at the end of April, and hit a snag. Unfortunately, Sid was so backed up with other projects (also know as "paying gigs"), that the team really hasn't had the chance to step up to finish rebuilding the website structure. You will notice, our header and side modules look a little bare, and we are slowly bringing some new content back into the blog.

In the meantime, Sid and the others are making tons of progress on other people's websites. For example, check out http://charlesguymusic.com, a new website launch for musician, Charles Guy. This was a fairly simple website set up for a local artist. Sid added some preview audio tracks for some of Charles Guy's albums, which are available to purchase via PayPal.

Another clean and simple website launch was completed recently for Dorris Construction (http://dorrisconstruction.com). This company focuses on environmentally conscious home and commercial building. The company owner, Gary Dorris, has received a number of awards for his excellence in the field.

The third new website for 2010 is a light-duty brochure website for Wheat Springs Bakery (http://wheatspringsbakery.com). This company belongs to a small, family owned wheat ranch in Gilliam County, Oregon. One of the owners was looking for a new way to market their staple crop, and came up with the great idea for Popped Wheat Berries.

Aside from all the website work, Sid is thrilled to be near the finish line of producing the 8-DVD Series for Tom Kane's 3-Day Film Workshop. This 12hrs+ of instruction on how to break down a film script into shootable days and build a budget that is accurate and in the limits of the studio's pocketbook, is a great resource for the aspiring filmmaker. SidFilmz took on the duties of editing this monstrous project, and has just completed DVD Authoring for all 7 video discs (there will also be 1 CD/DVD Manual). They are now in a studio being color-corrected and mastered for duplication. Look for them to be online and shipping by July 20.