Forgetting Sarah Marshall

What happens when you take your audience for granted, well Sting made a luth album, The Rolling Stones made disco albums, Schwarzenneger made a movie where he was pregnant, and these endeavours share one common symptom, they are not just mediocre, but they have a kind of an agressive mediocrity, a disrespect for fan's loyalty.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is such an exemple, although not that mediocre anyways, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is a film musician whose girlfriend is the smoking hot Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) the star of "Scene of the Crime", a series that bears a ressemblance to a certain CSI, the couple is disequilibred but functional, until the day the inevitable happens, Sarah Breaking up with Peter.

Peter doesn't take it well to say the least, since he is basically a man boy, think couch potato with a vengence, so after trying everything, he follows his brother's advice and goes to Hawaii to forget it all, and guess what, Sarah is also there with her new boyfriend, the rock star Adlous Snow (Russel Brand) the leader of Infant Sorrow.

One thing leads to another, and all the clichées of the genre fall like the moussoun, Rachel (Mila Kunis) is the hot receptionist who has a little thing for Peter, Matthew (Jonah Hill) as a restaurant employee trying to break into music, Chuck (Paul Rudd) as the Surf instructor, and the old story of Peter trying to make it big in the entertainment business using his frustration as creative stimuli, until reaching a predictable ending that will make you wonder when did it cease to be an Apatow production, and became a Sandra Bullock one.

Now don't get me wrong, it's the summer, and if you have nothing to do, it's a nice afternonn movie, but it's below the Apatow standards, like "SuperBad" we reviewed days ago, it's a predictable plot, what make an Apatow comedy is it's unpredictablity, and it suffers some problems in the level of character building, some of them like the fundamendalist couple, or the yoga instructor are just fillers, they just occupy vacant screen time, a special mention indeed for Russel Brand who saves the movie with his exotic brand of comedy, and his onscreen wit, you won't forget his performance here anytime soon.

Apatow and Co are working on a new thing, "Funny People" with Adam Sandler, and the usual people, now will Sandler drag Apatow below to the level of "big daddy" or will Apatow drag him up to the level of "Punch drunk love", a low point in the body of work of this great funny Apatow family, but we shall be indulgent, because they made us laugh so hard, and so many times.

Superbad

If you love American comedies nowadays then you live in the Apatow world, the guy behind "the 40 years old virgin", "knocked up", or "forgetting sarah marshall", with a little help of his friends, the likes of Seth Rogen, Adam Sandler, Micheal Cena, he know makes or produces, or supervises these blockbusters with an attention to detail, and also a respect to the audience smarts and the rules of the genres, just as he did with "SuperBad" in 2007.

Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) are best friends and are also in their senior year in highschool, like all the teens in their age, they like adult movies, booze, video games, and girls.... a little bit too much, but their success with the other sex is limited to say the least, because of their geekish looks and shyness, but this is about to change because Jules (Emma Stone) a girl Seth has been creaming over since forever asks him to be in charge of the booze details of her party, using the gorged ID of their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

This assignment is harder then what they thought, because they cross the paths of two crazy police officers (Bill Hader and Seth Rogen), a crazy driver, an alcoholic dude, the night will be long for the three of them, and because they are two weeks from graduation, their fear of the upcoming separation adds a lot of tension to their quest to take the booze where it belongs.

The Apatow formula is easy to understand but very hard to replicate, it's beyond the sterotype of "the geek meets the fly girl", this is an update on the Woody Allen formula, a strong plot with well drawn characters, and then the comedic artifacts enhance the final work, Seth and Evan are in the tradition of the comedic duos, their loyalty to each other carries the movie, their questo to get this booze to the party is involving for the audience, this level of craft is not what you'd expect in a movie made for the widest audience.

We all loved "American Pie" when it came out, but it was a guilty pleasure, but this is the kind of teen comedy you won't be ashamed to like, because it's brilliant and involving, indeed there are minor flaws here and there, some details we could live without, but if you like comedy, it's as good as it gets, and in these hard times you can't possibly spare a chance of a good laugh, life is too short for missing it's funny part.

Talladega Nights

The ballad of Ricky Bobby

Ricky (Will Ferrell) is meant to be a race driver, it's basically his destiny he is forced into when his Dad who has not once in 10 years cared for him, one day walks into his school and tells him that everyone who doesn't win is a loser. Ricky literary can only count to 1 but when he gets his chance to become a race driver he just takes it and becomes a star. When it looks like nobody can beat him, French driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) challenges him and it doesn't look as if Ricky could win that race.

This movie is some light sports comedy, wrapped up in a great cast. With Leslie Bibb, Michael Clarke Duncan and Gary Cole, Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen.

However it was maybe a nice idea for a movie but somehow it's just not funny enough to be entertaining. It should have been made into a TV movie or something like that, even though 6 award winnings speak a different language. A Nascar racing fan will have fun I guess so I leave it to you guys to make up and opinion on it!

Talladega Nights : The ballad of Ricky Bobby - Released August 2006

Role Models

Supposed to be funny

Wheeler (Seann William Scott) and Danny (Paul Rudo) were usually working for an energy drink producer doing advertising anti-drug/buy it sessions at schools. Their job sucks and somewhen they just mess it up. When their car is to be towed off they just jump in and try to escape. Well, they try. Not to go to jail they are signed up for a social program to care about kids, one kid each for a suitable amount of hours. But it turns out the kids they got are not just very different but also a bit complicated to handle. It all ends in a literarry battlefield.

Ok now, this movie is obviously supposed to be some kind of comedy. I guess. Problem is, I didn't really find it funny. Maybe that's just me, however it might not even be a movie you wanna watch with some popcorn and friends. But they certainly had only the best intentions with it ...


Role Models - released 2008

Full Frontal

A very strange but surprisingly good movie

This piece of film work is one of the most confusing things you will ever watch. It is a movie within a movie - within a movie - within a movie (probably within a movie). Since you are basically watching a movie anyway, it shouldn't matter to you if it is in the end just a movie but it does because somewhere in between you just lost the line and took it for real life - within a movie.

So here is the story. There is this actor, Nicholas (Blair Underwood), who shoots a movie with Brad Pitt. While he does that he is interviewed by a journalist (Julia Roberts) he falls in love with. But actually that is just a movie, too winding up to the personal life of the rest of the crew and actors around in Hollywood. There are so many movie shootings going on in that movie. It all ends with the death of the producer Gus (David Duchovny), while everyone is waiting for him on his birthday party. (Was it as birthday party at all?) Meanwhile we get a look at the lifes of the rest of the actors and crew. There is casting director Lee who wants to leave her husband but then his day goes so wrong that he doesn't even get the letter she wrote him to do so. Linda (Mary McCormack) meanwhile meets some guy online who says he's a 20 year old actor while in fact he's a mid 40s stageplay director, just releasing his new play on Hitler.

And in the end you get to know that also this personal life of the actors you watched was just a movie.

This is very confusing, and somehow brilliant! It takes a while to really get it but it's worth it. That is one of the most underrated movies of all times, just because it's hard to get. And it comes with a great cast, too. A better cast than you expect because the movie has on the first look the feeling of a B-movie, mostly because of the shooting quality. This is definitly to be recommended and even though it got really bad reviews I really like it!

Full Frontal - Released August 2002

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead

And don't tell my boss, I'm a cheater!

Mom is going on vacation - and she leaves her five kids at home alone for two months with a stone old babysitter. The babysitter dies - as old as she was - and the kids 'get rid of her' so that Mom wouldn't come back and disturb their holidays but unfortunately the dead babysitter had all the money for the eight weeks. Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate), the oldest of them 5 decides to get herself a job.

Realizing working at a fast food restaurant wouldn't do it for her she applies for a job as a receptionist for a fashion company. But her fake cv and references are to good and so she finds herself in a higher position than wanted. Meanwhile the rest of the kids screw up the house and trash the dishes and Sue Ellen soon discovers: Being a Mom sucks!

This lovely and funny movie was released in 1991 and that's what it looks like. It had a certain naive charm and a good cast. I guess it could go through as a teeny romance but on the other hand if I liked it, it can't be one.

Being an scheming, slimy storage keeper at the company Sue works for was also one of the first roles for David Duchovny, who I portrayed lately. His part is ... very small but remarkably unlikeable.

All in all it is some very entertaining, likeable movie and it goes straight to our highly recommended list!

Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's dead - Released June 1991

Burn After Reading (2008)

What do CIA signal interception, internet dating and the fitness culture have in common, not much you would say, not in the minds in the Coens they do, and the result is comedy called "Burn After Reading".

Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst in the Balkans Siging devision, he is married to a cutthroat bitch (Tilda Swinton) and lives in the velvet carpeted boring life of a princeton graduate in Washington DC, but his ejection from his job into a marginal position leaves him frustrated, and to make things worse Mrs Cox is not exactly a model wife, so out of frustration, he decides to write a memoir about his years in service, and to make things worse again, this memoirs fall accidently in the hands of Chad (Brad Pitt), and Lynda (Frances McDormand) fitness coaches at "hardbodies" a successful gym run by (Robert Jenkins), who see in this an oppurtunity to make some money.

Lynda who is into internet dating and "re-inventing herself" ends up meeting Harry Pfaffer (George Clooney), a treasury executive and who is inclined to filandering and buliding weird artifacts, and who is also a friends of the Cox's especially Mrs Cox.

This intricate web of characters relationships is what connects a rather impressive set of subplots, but hey these are the coens, and when it comes to multiplex plot and gourmet dialogue, they never disappoint, but what is essentialy a charcter movie populated with idiots in the big tradition of the much excellent "The Big lebowski" offers opportunitys of acting departure for it's stars, Brad Pitt is such a cartoon of himself in the perfect coenesque tradtion, miles away from the cool clever Rusty Rean from the "Ocean's Trilogy", Clooney continues his hilarious job for the coens, which he started with "O'brother", and continued with "Intolerable cruelty" as a larger then life buffoon.

And Frances McDormand is so touching as a fourtiesh woman trying to re-invent hersrlf, and getting acciedently in the world of espionnage for that, and Tilda Swinton plays her exact opposite, incredibly stuck-up and cold, and in this myriad of characters, the award goes to super John Malkovich, in the "Being John Malkovich" tradition, overworked, and over the edge, reminding everyone that when it goes wrong, it goes wrong all the way, all this set on a rythm of a beautiful paraniod soundtrack by Carter Burwell.

The Washinton DC politics , the fitness culture, the jogging buffs, the CIA bigshots mergey in this unlikely but very tasty stock, it is the Coens laughing at themselves and at everybody, who take themselves and their little stories too seriously, because if the DC people are like that, who can blame Canada.

The movie's weakness is perhaps the ending, which comes at a surprising moment, in a surprising way, it makes you wonder why, but i guess this whole movie is a "feel good movie" after the much darker "No Country For Old Men", and a near miss is also a near hit, but you will laugh your guts off when you see the artifact harry builds, it's a pure coen-clooney moment you can't affoard to miss, in the days of "40 years old virgin" type of gross comedy.

The Dukes Of Hazzard (2005)

How much sense is there in sensless, the answer would be, not much ! , but then again is sensless forcely a synonymous of bad, I watched this movie yesterday, and my answer is, not all that much!

So here is the story, three cousins living in Hazzard county Georgia, Bo (Sean William Scott), Luke (Johnny Knoxville), and Daisy (Jessica Simpson), the boys run a monshell business in the farm of their uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson), and they use a 69 Orange Dodge Challenger for transportation, and also for fun, since Bo is the five times consecutive winner of the Hazzard Rally.

Trouble Occurs when Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds), manipulates the local sheriff to seize the farm of the boys and their vehicle, the boys investigate to find out that Boss Hogg has sinister plans for the whole county, and that he is using the Rally as a diversion device by hiring the services of the local stock-car champion.

Now what do you expect from this, you have Stiffler from American Pie, and Johnny Knoxville from Jackass, with a bimbo pop star, this movie is not brilliant by any means, but it's not a terrible movie neither, it's just a sensless entertainment, and as far as I am concerned, it beats the hell out of watching House Md episodes for the zillonth time.

Funny fact is that Jessica Simpson's only purpouse in this movie is to show off her body, to advance the story, that's the only plot use of her character, the rest is an excuse for johnny knoxville to do some Jackass type stunts, for SWS to be as silly as the character which made him famous in American Pie, and for Willie Nelson to be Willie Nelson, the bad note in here is Burt Reynolds, well I am sure the check was tempting, but this man should be more careful when picking his roles.

So here is the deal, watch this movie because it's worth watching just to see the Dodge Challenger cruising through Atlanta, and to have a nice look at Jessica Simpsons Bombshell body, then go to youtube and watch her video from the movie "these boots are made for walking", because you can't watch "On the waterfront" class movies everyday, sometimes sensless is good, would it be for the sake of opening a mental parenthesis.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

The memoirs of some very misunderstood guy

Sidney Young is on his way to the top, unfortunately he thinks he already arrives at where he always wanted to be – as close as possible to the beautiful world of Hollywood glamour and the stardust surrounding it. He's got an offer from „Sharps“-magazine and hell yeah he's gonna take it! He's even going to wear his best dumbass shirt and pay the taxi to his new living – if only he could.

It turns out as it had to. His new home is worse than the only one if that's possible and the magazine – well Sidney doesn't really know what exactly is his job there. Nobody gives him a story to work on and nobody either cares about where he is, what he does and what he gets payed for. He doesn't fit in and the new colleagues don't even let them selfs down to make him feel it. An English boy in New York? Not that big a chance to make it to the top. He messes up with his boss, with the stars he should write about and if he makes a smart move it's mostly out of pure luck. But in the end he is where he always headed to – and doesn't like it there!

“How to make friends & Alienate people” is based on the memoir of writer Toby Young and it feels like one of those “I wanna make it to Hollywood, which way should I take?” movies, not the ones of the best kind usually.

And who could play the role of the smart kid from England who stumbles over his own feet into the star scene than Simon Pegg. Wait, who's that again? Yea right, it's the guy from „Run fat boy run“, who could forget about that „classic“ - which we have all seen, haven't we? No, we haven't, I haven't. I actually read it at the filmography and I've never seen Simon Pegg before. But that's good so I can comment only on his performance in this one movie right here.

I found it – not bad, but not so great either.
He fitted into the role, he really did. But that's it. Really.

Well it started up so funny but in the end I must say it was more the kind of movie you watch when you're not planning anything for the evening and quickly need to find a film that fits for all your friends. Then you should take this one, seriously. A bit funny, a bit interesting and a bit of a performance but well, there were better ones than this.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People – Released Oct 2008

Ghost Town

A typical Gervais and a good one, too

Frank just accidentally let his wife know that he cheats her with his gymnast when his estate agent called her about the apartment he bought for his girlfriend. And just that second Frank gets run over by a bus. Shit happens. What also happens is the dentist Bertrand Pincus, the ultimate asshole who hates all his clients and basically every human being that ever tried making
contact with him. He goes to the hospital for some small surgery and when he is released he sees people and for the worst – they are talking to him and asking him for favors! Well actually what he sees are the ghosts of the street of Manhattan who got unfinished business with their former loved ones and he is the first to be a link between them and the living in a long time. So he has to
help them or does he.

Frank is the most bothering of them and jumps on Pincus right away with the “small favor” of getting his former wife away from the suspicious new boyfriend of hers she is in love with. Not that he had much of a reason, he just thinks that is what he has to do. And Pincus – accepts doing him this favor under the condition that after this one they all leave him alone and he can go on quietly hating everything living.

Greg Kinnear and Ricky Gervais make such a great “couple” in this movie and Gervais is once again so … himself! Seriously – every time I see Ricky Gervais pissing of people I think to myself “man, you gotta learn from this guy!”.

There's nothing really bad to say about this movie. Good set up, funny as hell, great actors, a Gervais on his best and even a good soundtrack. It's one of these movies you gotta love, for real. It must be such a boring review to you ending with that critic, but well: Face it, we got a really good movie here!

Ghost Town – Released Sept 2008

The War of the Roses

Ever After / Never After


Okay you find the perfect person, your second half your media naranja, you complete each other's sentences, you fit morally, mentally and physically, isn't it a receipt for a perfect life, or is it just a slow falling down the hill to meet his highness the divorce attorney, well then this black comedy is just made to answer these questions.

Oliver and Barbara Rose (Micheal Douglas, and Kathleen Turner) met on a vacation on an island, they caught up immediately and were so happy together that they decided to marry, Oliver is a beginner lawyer in his firm, and Barbara is a waitress, move five years forward, Oliver is becoming more successful, and Barbara is still doing small jobs to help, they have a boy and a girl, over-spoiled overweight kids, but they are happy together, move forward and Oliver is a very successful lawyer, and she has started her catering career, the kids grew to become ivy league athletic young people, and they bought a dream house that Barbara took years to furnish with all the patience and the taste you can think off, but are they happy now ?...... think again !

Oliver experiences a traumatic event, and Barbara has a reaction he did not expect, so they find themselves less and less found of each other, which will lead them to the path of destroying property, shattered porcelain, sauna accidents, and to be stuck in a huge chandelier (both of them)

Well, think of this movie as the anti fairytale, a movie that will make you wonder about what you thought granted about love, marriage, and mutual life, when you see a super wealthy couple with everything you could dream off entering into this path of self destruction and mutual destruction, the most original part of it, is that it's narrated from the point of view of a divorce attorney (played by Danny DeVito, who also directs), but then again this is a comedy which means that it's still funny, and that's what makes it so enjoyable

So while strongly advising the engaged and the newly married to avoid this movie, the others are welcome to watch it, and enjoy really one of the couples with the best couples in American Cinema, with an unprecedented level of alchemy, and then you can project yourself twenty years later in 09 and it hasn't changed much, so it's really a movie for all seasons, but not for the weak at heart !.

Extras - Even moviestars are only human

Being an extra is alright but watching „Extras“ is even better! (Sorry, that one just slipped out)

„Extras“ is or was however a 12 episodes BBC series (plus one final movie lenght special episode) with Ricky Gervais as the main character Andy. Andy is an extra who wants to be a star instead of working with the big ones. Asked for what his job is, he always answers he's an actor and he tries to make his dream come true after 40 years waiting for it.

His friend Maggie (Ashley Jensen) is also a bit desperate about her full time job as an extra, being single, just as Andy, and on her side dreaming of going out with the movie stars. And so they use every single shooting day trying to get their thing done. Andy tries to get short speaking roles and Maggie meanwhile tries to catch the attention of the best looking guys on the set. But the so called stars are only human. Some are totally unlikeable and if one isn't Maggie does the trick to ruin it anyway by saying something very, very stupid.

In Season 2 which is episode 7-12 Andy even made it through to get hi own scripts produced as a weekly series but unfortunately it isn't as easy as he thought it would be and finally he is unhappy again with his so called fame.

This series is a must see, there is no way around it if you like movies, actors, some nice humor and likable characters. The 13 episodes are over far too fast in the end and you maybe even gonna miss the series a bit.

Beware, even your favorite actors will seem a bit too human to you after watching that but just give it a try. In those 13 episodes there do appear:

Ross Kemp & Vinnie Jones, Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet,Les Dennis, Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Stewart, Orlando Bloom, David Bowie, Daniel Radcliffe , Chris Martin , Ian McKellen, Robert De Niro

That is a damn lot of stars with some self irony to play themselves and even that makes it totally recommendable! The series won a Golden Globe and 7 other prices and now it won the status of one of the best concepts I've ever seen on screen! Go, watch it!

Trash as trash can be - 3 monster B-movies tested

It was a quiet afternoon when I thought "Let's go and watch some obviously bad movies". I looked around between DVDs and found 3 B-monster movies that looked exactly like what I was searching for. I grabbed "Bug" (1975) "Angiralus - It rips you in pieces" (aka "Razortooth")(2006) and "Mammoth" (also 2006). The last two promissed to be full of B - 3D effects and B - action which was what I wanted to see that afternoon.

I started up with "Mammoth".

Here's the story: Some scientists found a frozen mammoth. When they try to analyze what it died at and so on, they somehow touch an alien activating spot (?) and some meteor crashes down, reviving the frozen thing. From that second on an alien invaded zombie mammoth hunts people to pump off their life energy.

It sounds crappy already and hell yea, it is! I laughed my ass off when some scientist shouted "What a wooly beauty" and the cam turns, you see that bad animated zombie thing and guess what, it doesnt have a hair on his body, due to the bad animation! Also a running around human zombie hand is involved in this movie and yes it is quite fun to watch if you don't try to take it serious and just see it as some kind of comedy trash!

On a trash entertainment scale from 1 to 10 I shall give "Mammoth" a 7!

The second one I watched was "Angiralus".

Somewhere down in the swamp lands a scientist is breeding mutated eals. Last time he checked, his specimen was 2 months old and 2 meters long and of course they are hungry. That was two months ago and you guess it, the thing is now 4 meters long and hunting humans. And it is diabetic.

Well, I must say, the story is kinda nice but the animation at some points reaches a critical trash level. The eal looks like a huge eal and those half eaten people look a bit creepy (even if that repeats itself a bit often - eal attacks, half eats someone and the other half is layin around still shouting or walkin ...) but the eal changes its colour within the movie scenes. Nearly black, dark green, brown ... choose your favorite.

I give it 6.5 for the horror factor and the kept promisse "It rips you in pieces".

The last one was "Bug" which is completely different from the other movie same title, I reviewed earlier.

"Bug" is about some bugs comin out of some vulcanic fault. They are intelligent and still learning but also a bit dumb because they just explode from time to time. They kill their prey by burning it, nice trick and not so uncommon in today's fauna.

The funny fact in this movie is, that the bugs in the movie are supposed to be "special" but someone just took some hissing cockroaches, a nice pet by the way, and didnt even mind that they were snarling around the whole movie. If they wouldnt glow from time to time you wouldnt really get the point what shall make them dangerous but hey for a 70s movie it isnt soooo bad.

Anyway I just give it a 5 for the idea that cockroaches can form letters at the wall.

I must confess I loooove trash movies because you dont have to think so much about the story. You just lean back and expect the best you can get in a B- or C-movie! If you like them, too, you probably shouldnt miss those 3 films!

Short rev : Superhero movie

Okay let's put it this way: If you are a really big big big fan of Leslie Nielsen movies, if "You don't mess with the Zohan" was not tasteless to you and if you enjoy watching clips on the internet where kiddies on skateboards run against trees then you gonna love this movie!To everyone else random jokes about celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Cardinal Ratzinger, The Dalai Lama and not to forget Stephen Hawking - may be stupid, tasteless and unfunny.

The story could have been something because Superhero movie is a parody on every single superhero ever and some scenes weren't even so bad but Stephen Hawking flying from his chair crashing into a bee-hive is not funny, also some guy shouting to Nelson Mandela "I was in prison once, too" isn't really funny. Don't tell me I got no sense of humor, I really do - but that movie is just bad!

Short rev : You don't mess with the Zohan

A bit too much. The story could be worth a try if it wasn't completely over the top of good comedy. Good comedy is, let's say a few good laughs to remember, a background story and good actors. We got good actors here: Adam Sandler, John Turturro ... it could be good, it could if it wasn't totally dumb and flat. You don't know if you wanna cry or throw up when Zohan decides to "satisfy" every single old woman at the beauty salon and also the sarcastic over the top action special effects get boring in time - about 20 minutes from the start of the movie. Probably the only good thing at it is the soundtrack otherwise this movie may seem funnier when you're drunk.

Tremors 3 & 4 - Back in time and in storyboard

Time moved on and "Perfection" made his money based on the underground "worms" even though they are history. Burt Gummer, the weaponary freak who still waits for world war the 3rd went famous by showing the tv how to hunt graboids and theire mutations but when he comes back to visit his town after eleven years he has to face others made much more money out of nothing. Business guy Jack opened his safari tour, showing tourists around between faked special effects pretending to be hunted by the original worms. But Burt brings some graboids unwanted back on his track and once again "Perfection" is under attack - and that last time their enemies are able to fly!

Part 3 of "Tremors" wasn't as good as the first ones, somehow the laughs got lost on the way and except for Michael Gross (Burt Gummer) there is a new cast and the characters just seem to be less likeable. It was worth a try but from my point of view, part 2 should have skipped directly to part 4.

Part 4 takes us back in time. In 1889 the small village "Rejection" makes its fortune on silver mines. Some workers get killed while digging at the mines and so the village has to shut them down and wait for help. It is not really help what they get when Hiram Gummer, a man of the mining company, comes to look for what stopped the digging and so they have to hire the gunman "Black Hand Kelly" to get rid of the mini worms.

What a nice idea. Part 4 explains how Burt's ancestor came to like (lets say "love") guns & rifles, how "Rejection" became "Perfection" and all in all it's a Western ... Action ... Comedy movie par excellence! You meet relatives of the nowadays citizens of the small town and get to understand why they stick to the place that much - played by the same old cast!
And to me as good old special actors' fan this movie has a great bonus: Mr. Billy Drago as Black Hand Kelly! You don't wanna miss that, believe me! What part 3 missed is doubled at part 4, a great ending of the "Tremors" era.

So what is left to say about "Tremors". From 1990 to 2004 "Tremors" was a really entertaining piece of work with various cast but the same topic. You should think it'd get boring to watch ppl hunting underground monsters after the first movie already but since the directors and writers always came up with new mutations and ideas you get the feeling to have watched one really good movie in the end.

Millions of people bought and watched the 4 single masterpieces (okay 3, you know part 3 and so on ...) and I am one of them. Hopefully you are soon, too - really a good gimmick for 1, 2 film evenings with friends, nachos and soda. Enjoy!

Tremors & Tremors 2 - Please do not feed!

"Perfection" could be a silent little Western village with trailerparks and Chang's market as the center of everything happening around. It could. If not something would have lately attracted some monsters that no man has ever seen before. And why were they not seen? Right, because they are subterranian what basically means they live under your feet. The casual workers Val & Earl decide to fight against them, rather than running away and succeed. They soon find themselfs facing huge worms that move highspeed underground and pull down everything into the ground, they catch.

One who didn't watch those great film series yet may now think "Ok monsters ... that live in the ground? Wth wasn't Godzilla unrealistic enough?" but no, no, no there's an explanation for everything - coming in part 2-4.

Part 2 begins where part 1 ends. Logically. Somewhere in Mexico the monsters have been showing up - and this time they are prepared to change their look for the faster, smaller and breed themselfs in a minute. Now they are not huge worms anymore you can blow up easylie but fast, little, things that use infrared to catch their prey - which of course are the workers at the oil field and Earl who needs the money he'll get if he blows them up.

You are here looking at a classic! In 1990 when "Tremors" was released it was quite fresh and it came as a likeable funny and entertaining adventure movie with an unknown kind of monsters. This breed wasn't "evil", it was just ... hungry and learning! Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon make it a really watchable thing, you shouldn't miss.

Just one question remains unanswered even after 4 parts - why does the worm on the cinema posters and dvd covers always have teeth when he doesn't in the movie?

(Hold on for the rev of part 3 & 4 coming soon)

Short rev: Gate to heaven

Nisha works as cleaner at the airport, and would like to be a stewardess, where she meets Alexej whos an illegal immigrant trying to get a fake passport by working for a dubious guy - and would love to be a pilot. They fall in love but Nisha has a problem. In India shes still married to a guy from who she escaped because he beated her up but she had to leave her little son behind and now wants to take him with her to Germany. Alexej tries to help and also Mr. Nowak, a kinda boss at the airport, offers help.

"Gate to heaven" was produced in 2003 and is a total German production with a bit of a Bollywood flair inside the hard reality of illegal immigrants with no chance on a visa. Great performances of Valeri Nikolayev and Masumi Makhija and Udo Kier as Nowak make this movie a must see - but beware if you dont like romantic comedy movies you will find it quiet boring.

Salaam Namaste - Lazy boy meets arrogant girl

What you are looking here is a typical Bollywood production with star cast. So what makes this movie different from all the others? Maybe it's the charme of a couple that doesnt fit together at all, funny and colourful.

Nick (Saif Ali Khan) is a starcook in an Indian restaurant (and studied architecture) and shall be interviewed by the radio moderator (and medical student) Ambar (Preity Zinta) but when he misses the interview for he wakes up too late, she tries to ruin his career. And while they start to hate each other they meet on the marriage of a friend without knowing who they are talking to and end up as a couple - a very chaotic couple!

The story itself is more ironic and funny than romantic, the only thing that may disturb the usual movie watcher is the length - 2 and a half hours as usual in Bollywood.
And what may disturb the common Bollywood watcher are the bit too many Bikini- and Underwearscenes (The story itself is set in Melbourne and supposed to handle the topic of a modern lifestyle which may be an explanation).

Please make sure to watch this movie anyway if you are a fan of good stories and sarcastic dialogues, it's worth it!

Featured shortfilm: Big Buck Bunny

I start to become a fan of small online project movies. This time I present you this small project, created by 7 producers in 6 months - with open source software. Blender, as you will maybe know, is a 3-D-movie animation tool, that anyone can use and learn to master. The makers wanted to show that since the software became better and better it is now ready to create full movies with it!

But now for the story. Quite amusing, catchy animated, just sweet and kinda funny :)
It's not such a long short movie that I have to tell you much about it, just watch it!