Heavy Rain is quickly turning into one of the most anticipated games for the PS3, perhaps short of God of War 3.  After viewing this footage it's not hard to see why.  Designed by the same team who previously gave us the story focused thriller Indigo Prophecy, this game promises to step up the cinematic feel of games in a way we've never seen before.

Personally, I love cinematic games and they're the quickest to suck me in.  I could play Uncharted 2 forever because it so well simulates a big budget action film.  But to watch this footage from Heavy Rain, my reaction was just "wow!"  They've actually crossed the thresshold for games in to territory where it becomes difficult to tell if you're watching a game or a live action movie.

Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Ashley Lynch

I was a huge supporter of Land of the Dead, the film which heralded the long waited return to the zombie genre by the very filmmaker that created it in the first place.  It partially due to my excitement of seeing the next installment, but also a huge sigh of relief knowing what a long road it was to get the movie made, punctuated even more painfully by such lacking films like Resident Evil, House of the Dead and the Dawn of the Dead remake finding a place in mainstream cinema.  Sure Land wasn't perfect, but it had a sure handed-ness and maturity that was beyond the other films that had preceeded it in the zombie revival era.  Also, after giving us the incredible and original Dawn of the Dead, which is still the masterpiece of the genre, Romero gets some leeway.

Of course Land wasn't a financial success, and largely passed unnoticed by a public who didn't even know who Romero was.  After all, his last entry in the series was 1985's Day of the Dead.  I think many of us had just come to accept that the Dead series would be quadrilogy and that Land would be Romero's last stab at the franchise.  But a few years later, he made the direct to video followup Diary of the Dead for Dimension which attempted to show video footage taken by a filmmaker during the beginning of the zombie invasion.  It was Blair Witch Project meets Night of the Living Dead. It was also a huge misstep and a thoroughly unimpressive movie.

My impressions upon watching the Survival of the Dead trailer, aside from the awkward title, are that it looks like Romero is going back to doing a dramatic narative and the premise seems like a good one.  A bunch of survivors have fled to an island to escape the zombie apocolypse.  After all, no zombies on an island... at least until someone dies.  The trailer features some good gore, some questionable acting, but overall the promise of something interesting.  What worries me though is I saw a significant amount of slapstick humour put in.  There's nothing wrong with situational comedy in these movies, in fact it makes all the difference and often shows a disturbing element of the humans.  But when I see a zombie holding a stick of dynamite and upon watching the fuse burn down, lets out a perfect comedically timed groan, then I start to worry.

This obviously is a very rough trailer and isn't indicitive of what the final product will be, but part of me worries that Romero just doesn't have it in him to do these types of movies anymore.

Ashley Lynch

When Californication first started airing, I was a little ambivalent.  But as I was totally sucked into Dexter at the time and on the prowl for new edgy shows, the critical acclaim of the show kept pulling me back in.  Once I finally got into the show, I found myself really enjoying it.  It also really spoke to me, probably because of my own tendencies as a tortured writer. (is there any other kind?)

But now that Californication is entering into it's 3rd season, and is doing so extremely strongly, I find it pulling ahead of all the other shows that I currently keep up with.  It continues to impress me with it's character development and situational comedy that feels both real and fresh in a disturbing way.  The writing for the show feels like it's constantly walking a tightrope where it can easily go awry or even worse, become boring.

The voice in the show is so strong and original that you can tell it's material very close to creator Tom Kapinos.  So it made me wonder who the hell is Tom Kapinos.  I looked him up on IMDb and was shocked with the results I found.  The only other credit to his name is as writer and producer on Dawson's Creek.  Dawson's Creek?!! Seriously?!  I've never been a big fan of the teenage drama series, and Dawson's Creek always seemed to represent some of the lamest of the genre.  Perhaps I'm wrong on that, as I never really watched the show to get into the nuances of the story and characters, but it seems so far removed from the enternally politically incorrect and soul damaging material that Californication love to wade in.  In fact, and I could be completely off base here, but it almost feels like the tale of a writer that is stuck in purgatory and trying to recapture his soul after selling it out may be more reality than fiction.

Tom Kapinos... more Cali, less Dawson.

Ashley

Ever since Dollhouse premiered on FOX last season, geeks had reason to celebrate and lament this new show.  After all, it was created by Joss Wedon who has an uber-fan base, what with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. In fact, Firefly was another FOX based show that suffered plummeting ratings, and despite critical success was given the axe after one season.  Right from the get go, fans had expected the same of Dollhouse.  In fact, most of the internet buzz as it trots on it's second season reads more like a dead pool wager, wondering when the show will finally be killed off prematurely by the network.

At this point, the show is indeed still continuing despite it's lackluster success.  The show has also been further crippled by the fact that some episodes, while high reaching, end up fumbling badly.  There have been rumors that FOX made a list of story requirements for the first half of the season in exchange for allowing Whedon and Co. to do whatever they wanted for the last half.

But now FOX's latest stunt is to remove Dollhouse for the entire month of November.  The explanation (actually there was no explanation, I had to hunt for this) is that they wanted to replace it for sweeps in favour of something that will bring higher advertising revenue for the network.  Dollhouse is slated to return in December with what they call "event" episodes.  So even though immediately people are saying the show has been cancelled, it is not true and FOX says they are committed to airing the entirety of season 2.

At what cost does FOX do this however?  Dollhouse is already four episodes into the new season and regular TV viewers have become familliar with the routine of programming.  To take a show like this that is already stumbling and suddenly remove it from existance for a whole month can be nothing but damaging.  How many viewers will forget to re-tune in?  How many will just lose patience or interest in the interim?  Decisions like this, despite the reason only make that dangling axe that sits omnipresently over the show dangle even more precariously.

At this point, I think everyone will be surprised to see a third season of Dollhouse.

Ashley Lynch

I finally bothered to watch G.I. Joe - The Rise of Cobra now that I can actually watch it for free.  After all who, could be expected to actually pay money for this train wreck of a movie?  Apparently almost $150 million worth.  This is not a review of the movie though.  I could cut it all to ribbons but we all know exactly what this is -- a cash grab based on a toy franchise.

Recently I started going back and listening to old podcasts.  While listening to the review on the slashfilmcast, they appropriately talked about how crappy it was while at the same time enjoying the (hopefully) unintended camp value.  But in their followup show an argument errupted with guest Laremy Legel from film.com who wrote about the increasing problem of people lowering expectations for movies.  The main example that he used to base this off of is people being willing to say "well it's based on a toy franchise, what do you expect?"  Laremy's counter-arguement was that this is no excuse and that as audience members, we should expect, nay, demand a good movie every time out.  In particular, Adam Quigley of the slashfilmcast argued that it's more dependant on what the filmmaker was intending and that if indeed Stephen Sommers, knowing the already ludicrous nature of the subject material, decided to make a ridiculous tale that didn't take itself seriously, then he succeeded.  In short, he wanted to make a stupid movie and achieved his goal.

This begs the question, is it okay to make what is essentually a purposefully stupid or "bad" movie?  My own opinion is that no it isn't.  No it's not valid to compare something like G.I. Joe to a Coen Brothers movie, but the simple fact is we've seen other debatably silly properties turned into great movies.  What would a director like Sam Raimi do with it?  How would Peter Jackson have handled Transformers?  Why is it Bryan Singer can make an excellent movie like X2 and Brett Ratner can completely undo everything with X3.  The simple fact is that some people are competant storytellers and some people are not.  Stephen Sommers has proven over the years that he is not a good filmmaker, and yes, I hope to one day be able to go up to Mr. Sommers and tell him to his face how crappy I thought Rush Hour 3 was, and while he's confused I'll already be heading for the door with his wallet in my pocket.

A good example of an intentionally "bad" movie would be the Crank series.  In that Neveldine/Taylor manage to make a balls-0ut, ludicrous and unapologetic movie.  The larger difference is that Crank so unabashedly pushes the envelopes of quality and taste in such an audacious way that it becomes an artform unto itself.  With something like G.I. Joe however, there's nothing over the top, groundbreaking, envelope pushing, original or inspired.  It really is a movie that is made specifically to please a carefully calculated test audience in as bland of way as possible.  For Sommers to say, and not that he has, or for people to defend this movie on the basis that it's supposed to be dumb, really is just a case of laziness and lowered expectation.

Despite my massive disagreement with Adam Quigley in this case, the slashfilmcast is still one of the best podcasts I've heard and I recomend listening to it on a regular basis.  I also heartily recommend them inviting me on as a guest. (hint, hint)

As the best example I've seen in awhile, in a couple weeks, the DTV movie Subtle Seduction hits the shelves which bears more than a striking resemblance to the already forgettable Obsessed.

There is no real secret to the fact that I'm a huge Sam Raimi fan.  I have been since the days of Evil Dead II and I've been following Sam's career through his success with the Spiderman films, championing him through the good and the bad.  To be honest, I never thought there would be a day when Sam Raimi would be considered one of the A-list directors in Hollywood.

So of course I was ecstatic to see something like Drag Me to Hell.  It's been triumphed ad naseum as Raimi's return to horror, but more appropriately, it's his return to slapstack-horror.  The key element in the Evil Dead movies was always the torture of Bruce on screen for our sick amusement, and here Alison Lohman picks up the mantle and is subjected to continuous abuse that never fails to entertain with it`s own brand of outrageous terror.  Yes, this is Raimi giving us his most perverse version of fun, and fun it is.  There`s a lot going for this movie that, let`s face it, is wrapped in a generic Grudge type shell that without Raimi`s zany humour would have resulted in a very forgettable movie.

The Blu-ray itself looks and sounds great, but is sorely lacking in the special feature department.  Most noteably missing is a commentary track.  I`ve actually given up caring about filmmaker commentaries for newer films, but Raimi`s films have always provided for very entertaining tracks.

Unfortunately Drag Me to Hell wasn`t much of a boxoffice success.  It did okay, but not great.  I suspect that it`s something that on video will really succeed and much like many of Raimi`s other films will retain cult status for years and years to come.