VIDEODRONE

By only

Monday October 29, 2007

NEW MOVIE MONDAYS
SPIDERMAN 3
We completely used up our over-the-top rant about a lame summer movie on Transformers a few weeks ago, so we’ll keep it low key over here and say that Spiderman 3 is a piece of shit, and we’re not really sure how that happened. Spiderman 2 is arguably one of the best superhero movies ever, or at least one of the best of this new crop we’ve seen run rampant this past decade. Movies that cost over $100 million to make aren’t usually well written or character driven, but with a guy like Sam Raimi steering the ship, that’s all the Spiderman series seemed destined to be. You can take or leave the first one all you want, but part two is pure excellence. So what the fuck happened on part three? Well, who the fuck cares. It’s just another disappointment. We’re used to it.


DAY WATCH
It’s gotta be a huge embarrassment for America that a bunch of Ruskie fantasy nerds can out Matrix the Matrix for about 400 per cent less money. (See what we said about this movie when it was in theaters because we’re lazy.)


CAPTIVITY
Last week we had Hostel: Part 2, and this week we have this dumb thing. Of course we didn’t see Captivity in theaters, but we do remember there being some sort of an uproar over the ads for it. People were all freaking out because it was going to be another one of those “torture porn” movies, and Elisha Cuthbert (yes please) was going to get sexually mauled on-screen or something awesome like that. Christ, that would have been so effing worth it because she seems like such a see-you-next-Tuesday in real life, but nope. This is conventional boring horror (borror? bore-or? nah). There’s nothing graphic about it, hardly any blood worth mentioning, no nudity, no severed limbs, no scalpels or blow torches… nothing. Which brings us to this question: is there even a such genre as “torture porn”? There’s the first Hostel, and… nothing. Somebody, please prove us wrong.


TALK TO ME
By now it must be pretty evident how much we hate bio-pics, and this one certainly isn’t breaking any molds, but there is a simplicity and kindnes in the telling of the story of Washington D.C straight talker and popular folk hero Petey Green that we found it hard not to care about the guy. Back in 1965, Petey Green was just another convict who happened to host a radio show in prison. When he got out he got a job at WOL radio in D.C. and quickly became the voice of the people on the city’s most listened to soul station. His talk radio shows connected with African Americans at a time they were fighting in the streets to be heard. He released records, got his own TV show where he interviewed prominent and controversial black guests, and finally got his big break on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Apparently he totally blew it off on purpose with a line about how the mainly white audience must be waiting for him to do some nigger jokes. Too bad he didn’t know to never use the word “white” on Carson. Otherwise he might have become a household name.


MY SO CALLED LIFE
Finally out on DVD, this is the show that set the bar for teenage television dramas, caused a stir because of it’s frank talk about sex and whatnot, and got cancelled and then brought back because of the number of complaints sent in to the network. If you’re too young to remember this early ’90s show, it predates Freaks and Geeks, featured one of the earliest openly gay characters, dealt with school, parents, drugs, sex and gave Claire Daines and Jared Leto their starts. Oh the ’90s.