by ·Comments Off on Bones (2001, Ernest R. Dickerson)

Demon Knight director returns with a gang of (mostly) lower-tier actors. Patrick buys a spooky murder house to turn it into a club with buddies Tia and The Resurrection Brothers. This makes Patrick’s rich realtor dad J-Bird and neighbor Pam Grier very nervous. Movie is boring and bad for 45 minutes, then they get to resurrecting Snoop Dogg and it turns crazy.

It seems Snoop was the local mensch until crack dealer Eddie Mack murdered him along with corrupt cop Loopy Lupovich, Snoop’s friend J-Bird and gf Grier betraying him out of fear. Resurrection bro Maurice finds Snoop’s skeleton and steals his ring, then Snoop reconstitutes a la Frank in Hellraiser and a ghost dog eats Maurice then vomits maggots all over Patrick and the club (also very Hellraiser). Undead Snoop proceeds to burn the place down then goes on a revenge spree until he and Grier self-immolate together. All this has already been covered in Biosalong.

Patrick had costarred with Tupac in Juice, and his girl / Grier’s daughter had recently played Diana Ross in a biopic. The corrupt cop costarred in Howling IV, realtor dad is from Dead Presidents, and the crack dealer was in Tales from the Hood, which is what Katy keeps calling this movie. Tia (the girl who gives the ghost dog a burger) is horror royalty, having starred in Ginger Snaps the year before.

Baddies:

Come die with us:

by ·Comments Off on Demon Knight (1995, Ernest R. Dickerson)

This has a cute intro sequence with John Larroquette and the Cryptkeeper to justify its Tales from the Crypt title, but really it’s a standalone feature with an excellent script and cast. I would’ve loved to see this follow the original Halloween model, an anthology movie series where every year a new cast of characters in a single location gets killed by demons to a pop metal soundtrack (I waited in vain for Sepultura’s “Policia”). That was probably the intention, but then Bordello of Blood starred Dennis Miller and nobody wanted to see that, and the dream died.

Pounder, Church:

Our location is a New Mexico hotel where Jada Pinkett works for CCH Pounder… angry fired postman Charles “Roger Rabbit” Fleischer and old-timer Dick Miller and prostitute Brenda Bakke are hanging out when the sheriff and Deputy Gary Farmer arrive to investigate a car crash. The drivers were Jesus Blood Defender William Sadler and Demon Lord Billy Zane, and soon the sheriff is dead, Pounder’s arm gets ripped off, and hunky latecomer Thomas Haden Church is challenging Sadler for command of the survivors.

Jada, Dick, Postman:

The Church-led brigade fails to escape through the ol’ abandoned mineshaft, but they do find a kid, who will later be possessed by a Tales from the Crypt comic book (unlike Dick Miller, possessed through a bare-tittied liquor fantasy). As more people get taken by demons, Sadler reveals his supernatural burden, passed on from a WWI buddy named Dickerson (haha), now handed off to Jada. Billy Zane (great in this) is hot on her trail at the end, eager to claim the blood key and start the demon apocalypse. Shot by Rick Bota (the three worst Hellraisers), Dickerson’s followup to a Most Dangerous Game movie with Ice T.

by ·Comments Off on The Wire season 4 (2006)

Watching at my usual slow pace. Ten months to watch thirteen episodes, oh my. At this point I’m probably willing to agree with people who’ve been saying this is the best show ever on television. Still one season to go.

New directors: Anthony Hemingway, who also worked on The Corner, steps up from being a longtime assistant director, David Platt (a Law & Order guy), Jim McKay (R.E.M.’s Tourfilm) and TV’s Seith Mann.

Low body count this season. Careers after death: Fruit, shot in the head in the first episode – Brandon Fobbs, who went on to appear in an Uwe Boll movie. Tyrell Baker (Little Kevin) starred in The Barbershop Chronicles, which is not a sequel to Barbershop. Cyrus Farmer (tough kid Michael’s stepdad), also of Oz, appeared in a Notorious B.I.G. bio-pic. And J.D. Williams (personable drug dealer Bodie Broadus, a regular since season 1), was in a short-lived show called The Kill Point.

by ·Comments Off on The Wire season 2 (2003)

Returning directors Ed Bianchi (now working on an alternate-reality King David miniseries), Steve Shill (whose Beyonce movie did pretty well) and Timothy Van Patten (of Master Ninja) are joined by Elodie Keene (two TV movies starring Linda Hamilton), Thomas J. Wright (Millennium, Firefly, a Hulk Hogan movie), Daniel Attias (Stephen King’s Silver Bullet), Rob Bailey (CSI), Ernest R. Dickerson (The V Word, Juice, cinematographer on Do The Right Thing) and series co-creator/producer Robert F. Colesberry (also first a.d. on Warhol’s Bad) who died six months after season two ended.

I briefly mentioned why I’d give a crap about TV episodes’ directors in my season one write-up – I started watching the show after reading an online fight over it. An auteurist extremist (heh) watched one late-season episode and wrote a tirade accusing the episode’s director (not the writer, not the series creator) of being homophobic and called the show “the most awful racist drek I have seen in years.” My favorite part: “The show, like a lot of current American TV, has deliberately bad exposition. This is designed to make you watch all 54 previous hours of the series, so you can figure out what the heck is going on.” This started a hundred-message discussion culminating in the dramatic exit of the list’s founder, and got me interested enough to finally watch the show which everyone but those two guys were passionately defending.

The Dead this season: D’Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.) moved on to The Machinist and Brad Anderson’s Fear Itself episode and some new Patrick Swayze show. Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer) was in Flags of Our Fathers, Broken Flowers, starred in Anderson’s Sounds Like, and is in a new vampire show. Stolen-goods warehouser George Glekas (Teddy Cañez) shows up in Law & Order from time to time. People who probably won’t be back (serving long prison terms or witness-protection): Nick Sobotka (Pablo “Liev’s brother” Schreiber) was in J. Demme’s Manchurian Candidate remake and Stuart Gordon’s Fear Itself episode (and should consider being Ben Affleck’s stand-in if he runs out of work). Ziggy Sobotka (James Ransone) was in Inside Man and Generation Kill. Dealer White Mike (Brook Yeaton) is actually The Wire’s props guy who worked with John Waters back in the day. Greek drug man Eton (Lev Gorn) played a dealer in Keane with at least two other Wire actors, and russian muscle guy Serge (Chris Ashworth) was 25th-billed in Terminator: Salvation.

I’d be here all week if I attempted a plot description. Season 2 was slow going at the start, pulling the team back together, but it got rolling towards a great/depressing ending, which should lead naturally right into another season. I wonder if there was no guarantee of a second season after #1, but after #2 a third was a sure thing.