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'Your Highness' Review: A Half-Baked Tale of Might, Magic and Mary Jane

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Apr 8th 2011 11:00AM
Filed under: Reviews, Cinematical

If you're the kind of role-playing gamer who attempts to have sexual intercourse with every random NPC you come across, then 'Your Highness' was made specifically for you. This is the multi-million-dollar physical representation of a late night Dungeons and Dragons game with friends, one that's gone way past the point of anyone taking it seriously and sinking into that kind of "Who cares?" anarchy that happens when you're up way past your bedtime. You'll have to bring your own 20-sided die, but director / Dungeon Master David Gordon Green provides the rest.

There's a very specific kind of vibe that Green is attempting here -- it's loose, ribald, silly, and no one really seems to care how it all turns out in the end, but the film also wants to show respect to the sword-and-sorcery genre. The balance is such that the action sequences are meticulously staged to hold their own with any sword-clanging B-picture, while the comedy is so off-the-cuff that it's almost immediately forgettable. It doesn't help that there's basically only one kind of joke in 'Your Highness,' and the novelty of hearing co-writer and star Danny McBride utter anachronistic F-bombs is only slightly amusing the first time. By the 20th time, it's downright grating.
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The Week In Geek: 'Your Highness' Shows Its Roots With a Fantasy Triple Feature

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Apr 5th 2011 10:00PM
Filed under: Hot Topic, Columns, Sci-Fi, Cinematical

[The Week in Geek is a weekly Tuesday column that plunges headfirst into a deep pool of genre geekiness without ever coming up for air.]

If there's one thing the 'Lord of the Rings' movies are missing, it's a hefty dose of fun and stupidity. Before you can say, "They don't make 'em like they used to," along comes David Gordon Green's 'Your Highness' -- an idiocy-filled love letter to sword-clanging epics where the men were men and the women were topless. "I laugh at just the novelty that it exists," says Green, who conceived the film through a jokey game with 'Your Highness' star Danny McBride between takes on the set of 'All the Real Girls.' They'd make up a movie title, then spitball a plot right there on the spot.

"We just wanted to throw every rule imaginable out the door," Green elaborated on 'Your Highness,' which sees McBride and Franco as royal pot-smoking brothers on a quest to rescue a virginal damsel in distress (Zooey Deschanel) from an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Green's aiming to not only entice fans of dumb comedies, but old-school fantasy film buffs as well. With the help of Austin's Alamo Drafthouse, Green assembled a triple feature around his new film -- an all-out celebration of might and magic featuring 'Sword and the Sorcerer' and 'Krull.'
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The Week in Geek: New G.I. Joe Documentary 'Code Name: Blast Off' Goes Behind-the-Scenes at Hasbro

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Mar 29th 2011 10:00PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Documentaries, Sci-Fi, Cinematical

[The Week in Geek is a weekly Tuesday column that plunges headfirst into a deep pool of genre geekiness without ever coming up for air.]

We've all heard the news by now that 'GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra' is getting a sequel soon, but you don't have to wait another year for another GI Joe movie. There's a new feature-length documentary, 'Code Name: Blast Off,' that covers Hasbro's insanely successful GI Joe re-branding effort of 1982, turning the unassuming military doll into a bonafide larger-than-life franchise.

The film was created by Tristan Rudat, filmmaker and son of Hasbro designer Ron Rudat who visually spearheaded the GI Joe line from its ground-breaking heyday of 1982 till 1987. 'Code Name: Blast Off' (previously titled Operation Blast Off') tells the story of the re-branding effort through first-hand interviews with the artists, writers, and designers, as well as archival photos and art. Their effort just plain worked -- the revitalized, more super-heroic Joes have seen an incredible amount of longevity, existing in one form or another for over 25 years.

You can see the 'Code Name: Blast Off' trailer after the jump, as well as our exclusive interview with Tristan Rudat. He even gave us a little something extra for the hardcore GI Joe fans at the end of the interview...
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'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules' Review: Kid Favorite Returns for a Rambling, Wimpy Sequel

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Mar 25th 2011 12:20PM
Filed under: Reviews, Cinematical

Maybe we've gotten too accustomed to movies with plots. 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' was loose and episodic, but little schemer Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) had a mission -- to scale his social ladder by any means necessary. It wasn't complicated, but there was at least some measure of structure. 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules' has no beginning, middle, or natural end, playing out less like an actual movie and more like a marathon viewing of a season's worth of a cheap, unfunny kids' television show.

"Unfunny" is key here. Screenwriters Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah return, this time for director David Bowers ('Astro Boy'), and they've lost whatever grasp they had on the material the first time out. Their slapdash script, coupled with Bowers' flat, point-and-shoot direction, make for a series of inconsequential scenes that go nowhere, their calculated wackiness punctuated in all of the wrong ways by Edward Shearmur's too on-the-nose score.
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The Week In Geek: Which Director Should Take On 'The Wolverine'?

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Mar 22nd 2011 10:00PM
Filed under: Columns, Sci-Fi, Cinematical

[The Week in Geek is a weekly Tuesday column that plunges headfirst into a deep pool of genre geekiness without ever coming up for air.]

There's a very good chance that director Darren Aronofsky on 'The Wolverine' would have delivered one of the best comic book movies of all time -- a transcendent piece of pop entertainment; Marvel's 'Dark Knight,' if you will. But, yeah, that ain't happening. Aronofsky has moved on to other projects, citing the lengthy on-location shooting schedule as his reason for leaving. Some have speculated if he ever intended on directing it in the first place (see also, the 'Robocop' remake).

Fox is going to make another Wolverine film, but who's right for the director's chair? I'd imagine that Aronofsky had a remarkably singular take on the character; he's not exactly an interchangeable cog in the work-for-hire machine. My guess is that Fox will likely find someone who is more of a work-for-hire type, and not an auteur. The tricky part is finding someone who's enough of a name to gain back some measure of confidence from wary movie-goers who felt that 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' was a sloppy mess of a blockbuster (and it is).

So, who's right for 'The Wolverine?'
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'The Catechism Cataclysm' SXSW Review: Suffer These Fools Gladly

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Mar 22nd 2011 3:00PM
Filed under: Reviews, SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals

Because of advances in social media, most of us have experienced a friend request from someone we knew from our distant past, who we never really even talked to. Maybe we barely remember that person at all -- we certainly never counted them as a friend -- and we wonder just what in the world compelled them to seek us out (sometimes with cynical, dismissive suspicion). It's usually not just in the service of collecting as many digital friends as possible, and if we can look beyond the initial surprise of it, the real answer seems pretty plain.

Imagine all the people you've come across in your life that really impressed you or made an impact on you, despite your lack of a specific relationship with those people. Maybe one of your dad's buddies was so quick-witted that you never forgot him, even decades after the last time you laid eyes on him. What if a girl you went to elementary school with is still one of the most creative souls you've ever met? If those people exist for you, then you have to acknowledge that you may have made that kind of impact on other people. Those seemingly out-of-the-blue friend requests should be treated as compliments; they speak more about you than you might realize. 'The Catechism Cataclysm' recognizes this.
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'Becoming Santa' SXSW Review: A Jolly Infiltration of Santa's Secret Subculture

By John Gholson (Subscribe to John Gholson's posts), Posted Mar 16th 2011 11:00AM
Filed under: Documentaries, Reviews, SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical, Festivals

The worst Santa Claus I've ever seen was a scrawny teenager filling in at a local mall, forced into a baggy red and white suit roughly four sizes too large for him. He was mealy-mouthed and out of his element, mumbling "Merry Christmas" listlessly through a cheap beard, while the visibly disappointed parents wished they would have come to the mall on a different day. The funny thing is that the kids didn't seem to mind much. They were told they were seeing Santa, so, to them, that guy was Santa. It didn't matter how wrong he was for the part; the children wanted to believe.

Jack Sanderson, the subject of Jeff Myers' hilarious documentary 'Becoming Santa,' makes a great Santa Claus, but even he's not sure if he's right for the part. It's a massive responsibility. To become Santa, you have to be equal parts actor, rock star, magician, religious icon, and cartoon character, and Sanderson doesn't know if he has it in him. Luckily for him, there are plenty of people who do have it in them, and live every single day as if they were Santa Claus personified.
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