Trailer Review: DEVIL

M. Night Shyamalan is back this time as an executive producer and "idea giver" in the new thriller/horror movie, DEVIL. This is the first installment under Shyamalan's self-titled "The Night Chronicles" series. The movie is directed by The Brothers Dowdle, whose most recent credit is the movie Quarantine. I know my fellow film geeks, as a whole, have a wonderful time comparing Shyamalan to George Lucas, but I really think he's super-ceded with this move. I'm sorry sir, I may be one of the few people who liked Lady in the Water, but I think you should concentrate more time on writing and directing, like you actually care about the people who sit down and pay to see your films. Not go throwing around the word Chronicle, every time you come up with an idea and just so happen to have two more that follow.

Its okay Chronicle, I promise to lead a campaign that will save you from having to be fucked by M. Nights title card on screen.

So the trailer opens up with these really striking images of what looks to be the New York City skyline upside down with taglines going across it. If you read my Catfish review you know how I feel about taglines, so we won't go there. It makes it seem like everything that's happening, the interactions and those who get in the elevator is all by chance. But the trailer still has to remind me that "everything happens for a reason"....

...fucking taglines....

Anyway the elevator stops, people start screaming and then we are given a series of images from the movie of all the crazy scenarios that will occur. This brings me to the second highlight of the trailer which is when all these images are happening the sound is drown out and there is this low monotone sound that screeches through the rest till we are given a jump scare. Now I really believe that if Shyamalan's name wasn't all over this movie, audiences would have less of a grudge against it. Yes, it looks like another hapless horror movie thriller, with an idea, that by the end could have more done with it, but doesn't change the fact that the trailer isn't all that bad looking. Its an interesting idea, simple enough, and put in a location that suits its claustrophobic and terrorizing needs; its just the filmmaker its associated with that gives it its bum rap right from the beginning.

In summation, I'm honestly curious to see how this entire movie plays out. Less for Shyamalan, but more for the writer and directors of this movie. See Mr. "Unbreakable" is only credited with a "story by" credit. For those of you who think that "screenplay by" and "story by" are the same thing...they are not, let me clarify.

Screenplay by means that they actually wrote an entire script out.

Story by means that Shyamalan could have done anything from walk into and office and say; "Yo...5 people...Elevator...feel the tension...mmmhmmm..can you feel it? AND THEN BAM ONE OF THE IS DEVIL. Package it, sell it, knick knack, patty whack, give a dog a bone!" Or he could have wrote an outline with some plots points and another writer flushed the rest of it out.

I think the latter is what happened but its fun to wonder.

I haven't seen Quarantine and even though I've heard bad things about it, doesn't change that the movie's main plug is that a news reporter is trapped inside a building and has to get out before horrible things happen to her. The writer of this movie is Brian Nelson, who wrote the script for 30 Days of Night and Hard Candy. Both films take place in one location, but do a whole hell of a lot to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible and bring as much tension to the idea of being trapped into its small, but simple story ideas. I'm going to try and go into this flick with the thought that Shyamalan did nothing more than give creative control over to other talented writers and filmmakers and let them do what he hasn't been able to since Unbreakable; and that is make an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

As always my final review will be when the credits roll and house like come up.


Dueces!
StuntmanBob

Trailer Review: CATFISH

Before you read, just know that this review has a spoiler for the movie District 9.

"Just True"

In recent years the docu-style of filmmaking has returned with movies like Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, District 9, and in theaters now, The Last Exorcism. Catfish is the next installment in that style of filmmaking. The trailer does a good job at establishing this hapless guy that we are following who is having an online relationship with a girl whose voice, we think we hear and pictures from her Facebook, that we hope are also her.

After the swooning and dirty text messages, his friends who are documenting this series of events, and him decide to drive up to her farm in Michigan and once they get out of the car, the trailer shifts and I'm happy and kinda annoyed at the same time.

Annoyed

"The Final Forty Minutes of this Film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won't be able to shake for days". - Chris BumBray Joblo.com

While this quote excited me when I first saw this trailer, it soon made me begin ask; are the last forty minutes of this film all I'm really going to be waiting for? Well... Yes! I think by adding quotes like these to trailers, the advertisement is literally telling me when things will get interesting in the movie! I think it sabotages the film in that your not letting the audience go on this journey and be surprised. I just wish the trailer did something with its already uneasy images to give it that same shift in tone. Instead it lazily relies on a quote.

Take a look at the trailer for District 9. Everyone I talked to said to me that it looked like another variation of a run-of-the-mill "alien invasion" movie; i.e. Independence Day. When in fact, sitting in the theater, you were rudely awakened. Discovering that the movie was more about a man who on the day of his promotion is infected in a way that would change his life forever and question his own treatment of the aliens.

Of course punch words like; "AMAZING", "OUT OF THIS WORLD", and "POWERFUL", were thrown around, as well they should be. But no where did it say in the trailer; "Just fucking wait till you see a scene where (SPOILER WARNING) they unwrap his hand and its an alien hand!, CRAZY!"

I just think for the sake of promotion, quotes like these should be chosen more carefully.

Also, while it won't deter my enjoyment of the movie, I highly question this film's validity in being "Just True". I don't know if any of you have seen the movie The Strangers, but that film was also based on a true story. However, it was later revealed that using that tagline, and I do think its more of a tagline now, was purely for advertisement. Although events depicted in the movie unfortunately do happen. The movie was just a look into those happenings. Which I think is what is happening in Catfish.

Happy

Aside from all that I will be definitely going to see Catfish. From the trailer alone I'm hooked. Get it? YucK YucK! It starts off as one thing, then shifts gears very quickly into something that we know is just bad. I like to see movies like this where the images are not all that clear, there is grain, you see people holding the camera; I just think it gives the movie more of a sense of realism and It will help establish the situation and actions more so.

Also with David Fincher's The Social Network coming to theaters a few weeks later, this movie I hope will crack open some interesting debate about social networking sites and meeting people over the internet.

As always my final review will be when the credits roll and the house lights go up!

Dueces!
StuntmanBob

Production Photos: Resident Evil: Rigor Mortis

A few production photos from the shooting of Resident Evil: Rigor Motis at the 2010 Chicago Comic Con.

Resident Evil: RIGOR MORTIS

While at the Chicago Comic Con, Dorian and I, came upon an epidemic that has slowly sucked the life out of rabid fans everywhere around the world. Here is that epidemic.

Machete Movie Review...Ah Fuck it, it was GREAT!

I remember my cousin Chris coming over when I was small to babysit my sister and I. Or more like watch, not babysit, cause you know I was never a baby, just a little man. More often than not he'd bring a movie over with him and one night it was Robert Rodriguez's Desperado.

I remember the guitar case full of guns. How mysterious and just badass it must be to walk around with one. The cool gun fights, the bad language and wanting to see the part where Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek just got it on like they were the last two people on the planet! I also remember not being able to see that part either. Sucked being little. But anyway from here on in, this was start of what I knew what I wanted to aspire to do with my life. Make movies.

But that's a whole other topic. We are here to talk Machete!

Machete was born in '07, out of a faux trailer, of the same name, that was part of RR and QT's Grindhouse collaboration; Planet Terror and Death Proof. And for all of you who are gushing over how great Machete is and you didn't see Grindhouse...SHAME ON YOU! You deserved to be violated in unholy places on your body by the blade of Machete.

So now three years later we are treated to a feature length film of that trailer. The movie begins in Mexico where Machete is out to save a missing girl from drug lord numero uno, Torrez, played masterfully by Steven Seagal. Torrez then makes Machete watch as he massacres his entire family and thus the bloody revenge of Machete begins. The back drop of this movie is the immigration issue that, some would say, plague this nation of ours. Machete, being a man who is solely out to get even with the people who wronged him, inadvertently becomes the face of this revolution.

Along the way we meet a dirty Senator, played by Robert De Niro, a hick border patrol guard played by Don Johnson, Jessica Alba who plays a conflicted immigration agent and Michelle Rodriguez who plays Luz a taco vendor who has connections to "She", a person who "gives the people what they want and fills their belly with something more than hate". Sound familiar?

From our trailer review both Dorian and myself were kinda worried about how the movie would eventually look and play out, given that so much of the trailer was dedicated to making it look like Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat threw up on itself. But I must say that all that hesitation was laid to rest. Aside from having an exploitative look at how this whole immigration thing might turn out, I was surprised to see that everyone in their roles was perfect! EVEN LINDSEY LOHAN!!!

There were a few parts that I kinda laughed at, and those were seeing Jessica Alba take up this militant leader role near the end of the film and the more I thought it about it, her delivery of it was perfect and it was meant to make us, the audience just go "OH GOD! that was corny," cause its meant to be that.

Hints of Rodriguez's Desperado were sprinkled everywhere. A scene in particular where men come to ambush Machete while he lays in bed with Alba was very reminiscent of the scene with Banderas and Hayek after their porn scene together. But these scenes work in the context of the movie, its not like they are just lazy throw in's. While Banderas was memorable in his execution of certain baddies. Alba takes the gold in a duel with a Luchador-mask wearing assassin. Much like Grindhouse, we are also treated to massive amounts of blood, gore, nudity, beheadings, and homemade weaponery (a la the weed-whack machete) to make this movie a literal crowd pleaser!

While I think Rodriguez gets the right amount of cred for his action and low budgets. No one really comments on the people he picks for his villains! Did you know to fund his first film El Mariachi, Rodriguez subjected himself to experimental drug trials for three months? For a fee of course; and the villain in El Mariachi was a guy he met during those trials? Pretty crazy right? But anyway, you have Joaquim De Almeida in Desperado, Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Bruce Willis in Planet Terror and now Robert De Niro, Don Johnson and Mr. Steven Seagal.

Seagal is at the top of his chessy self in Machete. Calling people puneta's at the start of each conversation and hearing him call other's carnal and speak with a spanish accent was just magical to behold. I really hope Seagal shows up in other future Machete movies or just other Rodriguez/Tarantino movies cause he has definitely opened up something that I'm not ready to close yet with Machete.

I don't think I have to tell you that I enjoyed this movie. So just go fucking see it!


Dueces!
StuntmanBob

The Couch Episode 3: MACHETE

Our 3rd episode sees Bobby and Dorian heading to the Chicago Comic Con to talk about the trailer to Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE!


Enjoy
StuntmanBob

Episode Tres Production Stills: Machete Trailer

Que Onda! Fellow movie lovers. Alright so Machete is out in theaters and our trailer review as well as a full movie review is up! Here are some Production stills from the making of our Machete episode from the Chicago Comic Con

UPDATES: Chicago Comic Con. The Crew. The New Logo.

We are officially one week away from our Chicago Comic Con Debut! Dorian and Myself have a lot of treats in store for all of you who check into our site regularly, so stay tuned.

CHICAGO COMIC CON:

We've just secured our very first interview with Alexandre O. Philippe, the writer/director of the documentary The People vs. George Lucas. Alexandre as well as Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday, and the upcoming Centurion), Drew and John Erick Dowdle (Devil), and Stuart Levy (Van Von Hunterr) will take part in a panel called "Moviemakers meet Moviegoers". The directors will lead various discussions about their work and other topics.

Also screening at the Con on Friday August 20th in Speaker Room A is The People vs. George Lucas . The doc will screen at 8:30pm, followed by a Q and A with writer/director Alexandre O. Philippe. This is just the tip of the ice berg for events at the Con.





THE CREW:

Aside from Dorian and Myself (Bobby Navia), I wanted to let you all know who will be our crew on this adventure of ours. This would not be happening if these individuals hadn't agreed to lend a hand.

As our DP/Cameraman is: Gregory Cozzi
As our on location audio tech is: Kieran Dennis
and
As our on location photographer: Tyler Crane

Guys you'll never know how much this means to me. Thank you.


THE LOGO:

This new logo, pictured above, which will be incorporated into our show from here on out is a Chicago Comic Con exclusive. The designer of this logo is a good friend of mine Mr. Dave Curbis




-See you at the Con
Bobby

Catch Up On Older Episodes!

So you say you've never seen an episode of The Couch? Well with our Comic Con debut coming up I think you should catch up. The Wolfman, directed by Joe Johnston was our first episode and Alice in Wonderland Directed by Tim Burton was our second both have recently been released on dvd and blu ray. Enjoy and leave comments.

Dueces!
StuntmanBob

The Couch. CHICAGO COMIC CON. Can you dig it?

A few days ago we got the go ahead to shoot an episode of The Couch at the 2010 Chicago Comic Con! This is really a dream for us as this was one of our goals when we first started our show. Dorian and myself would like to thank all of you who have been reading and supporting us. We are only going up from here!

The Comic Con takes place August 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd. Throughout those days we will hopefully get the opportunity to talk with some celebrities and comic scribes, get their thoughts on movie trailers and review a trailer for debut in September. Please try and come out and support the Comic Con and us. Check back as we will post who we will be interviewing and what trailer will get the royal treatment from Dorian and myself.

Ticket information for the con is here
http://www.wizardworld.com/home-ch.html

Thanks for reading and as always if you have any trailers you think we should check out, movie recommendations, or pointless bitching hit us up at guysonthecouch@gmail.com


Dueces!
StuntmanBob