SURVIVAL TO BE DISTRIBUTED BY YORK ENTERTAINMENT!

Can I scoop my own stuff?

A horror picture I directed and co-wrote with amazing Kevin Woods (also produced) was picked up by York Entertainment for world wide distribution today!

We’ll keep you informed on the release date and other info.

Be sure to add the movie on myspace at www.myspace.com/survivalmovie

John Peters Reviews: Taxi to the Dark Side

When you plant a tree, you start with a seed, that will in time grow and blossom into a trunk. From there branches will sprout up and ascend, hopefully, full and orderly, but sometimes they can grow wild. I use this analogy because I feel it best describes government policies and how this documentary uncovers the information used here.

Governments plant a seed, say law or an order, then the trunk (politicians or generals) teaches and helps the branches grow (soldiers, let’s say) with that knowledge. All of this ideally speaking, of course. What happens when some of those branches grow astray?

This where Alex Gibney comes in, the director, and plants his seed. His seed is Dilawar, an Afghan who drives a taxi for a living, since he isn’t cut out for farm work. Gibney’s trunk is Tim Golden’s New York Times article of the interrogation of Dilawar, who was without a shadow of a doubt, innocent. Yet the article concludes with Dilawar’s death. Why?

“Taxi to the Dark Side” is a thorough investigation of key detention centers in Bagram, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and our policy of torture. Remember those photos of U.S. soldiers laughing and mocking those nude Iraqis? Much of the film covers all of the key members in those photos, the reasons why those humiliating acts occurred, and more importantly, following their orders from the change of command.

Clearly, torture is sadistic, whether is the “bad guys” or “good guys” doing it, and that’s why Geneva and the U.N. has set various laws and codes of conduct when handling POWs, because war can blind anyone. The film startles as it reveals through research, interviews, and news footage, how the Bush Administration, mainly Dick Cheney and Donald Rumbsfeld, used deceit and ambiguity to cloud intentions that can lead back to them direct orders of immoral torture. It’s a tough call to make, who’s wrong, when we are in this dogfight of a war against terrorism, but when basic human laws are taking away like habius corpus and when some intentions to mold or rewrite the Constitution are made, it’s not that hard to point fingers. Admit tingly, it has been easy to point fingers at this administration, but then from all their smoke and mirrors, when the smoke has cleared, we see them in the mirrors.

“Taxi to the Dark Side” might be a liberal documentary, but one that just examines the facts and tries to understand how torture is being used to obtain information. We’re the Land of the Free and we’ve stooped to torturing anyone. War has made a lot of people blind, due to the fear of terrorism, Gibney’s documentary makes us see that despite that fear we as people, as humans, must still handle and conduct ourselves and even our enemies properly and by a code of conduct. The film never takes a side much more than that, and it’s a respectable side to be on, but it does leaves us with one question: Directly or indirectly, if government officials break certain laws that can bring a trial against them for war crimes, like some Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials, then why can’t we bring Chaney, Bush, and Rumbsfeld in? It’s no spoiler that Dilawar was an innocent victim of wrong place, wrong time, and why after a few interrogators deemed him truly innocent, did they continue to torture him?

Jon Peters Reviews 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Cristian Mungiu created an equally powerful film as any that were Oscar nominated. “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” is devoid of those things that most directors use: over bearing score to manipulate emotions from the audience, flashy editing, and camera movement. Mungiu quietly uses those things in a very limited sense, even the score he has decided not to even use one. It’s this minimalist approach in which the film gathers its power.

The power slowly generates itself during the 117 minute running time, as we get to know two young college students, Otilia and Gabita, and in the final reel just explodes with some of the darkest, saddest, emotional climaxes from last year.

The film takes place in Romania, circa the 1980s, during the Ceausescu regime. Knowledge of his regime isn’t important to understanding in context of what a horrible regime he had, Mungiu will show you. Using long tracking shots, the camera displays a world in which life was hell. The oppression the girls lived in is everywhere; there’s no market, except the black market, even things like Tic Tacs are only purchasable through this way. Renting a hotel is even tougher, there’s strict rules in which they must follow. The streets are bare and the city looks like a huge slum. This is Ceausescu’s Romania.

We really don’t know much about the girls prior to the start of the film but we will learn so much about them after the film ends. “4 Months’” takes place all in a 24 hour period. Gabby is, for some reason, forced to get an abortion. The thing is Ceausescu ordered a 1966 Decree in which makes an abortion criminal. One could serve up to 25 years in prison, depending on the month of the fetus. Despite these terrible scenarios, Otilia will help her friend.

While the structure of the plot seems simple, it’s the choices, good or bonehead, which will escalate the situation and gives the film its power. Gabby is probably the most clueless and careless 20 something around. Her decision making skills put Otlilia through further hell, all the possibility of a jail term hanging over their head, if caught. The weight of the situation is all hers, despite the fact it’s not her who’s getting the abortion.

This is where I think Mungiu is brilliant. The conflict and nature of the plot is harrowing enough, so eliminating a score, actually intensifies the film. Having all the shots eye level with the characters, no high angles, no pans or anything of the sort, brings us with them as if we are an unseen third character. Long takes also have a similar impact. Mingiu uses a lot of handheld camera, gives the film a rawness.

The tone is somber and its one of Oscars biggest blunders not recognizing this film. It’s powerful and raw; perhaps the realest film of 2007. Due to its subject matter, the film takes no side on the abortion issue. It presents it as it, and hopefully, you can separate our own personal feelings and understand the women’s plight in a Communist regime, who only outlawed abortion, not for moral or religious reasons, but so he could have more followers.

SNAKE EYES!!!!!!

Aint It Cool has hit the jackpot today. Longtime Gi Joe writer Larry Hama posted the first official picture of Ray Park as Snake Eyes. ROCK ON!

YO JOE!!!

Joe Francis review - TV Junkie

This review isn’t exactly a spring chicken, nor is the movie. It’s almost two years old, and the footage ranges from 10 - 20+ years. I’m writing this review
A) Because I wasn’t writing reviews when I first saw this film a year ago and
B) After seeing it again, I felt it deserved a review.

HBO apparently started some addiction line of ’shows’, this being one of the flagships, I guess. Basically it’s Rick Kirkham documenting his life, and it’s an experience.

He started video taping journals in his early years, and continued on through his life. He was a successful news man for Inside Edition for many years, and through most of it suffered many bouts with drugs. Namely cocaine. The viewer is taken on one of the most tragic rides ever thrust upon the public and just when you think he’s learned and everything may make it okay..it only gets worse.

Not the movie, mind you, but his spiral downward. It’s really a sad tale and a must see. Like I said, I saw it a year or more ago on HBO late night and was really taken aback by it. It came on again, late night and I watched it again..only this time it hit twice as hard since I’ve become a father in between viewings.

It’s a tough pill to swallow seeing someone on top of the world, great wife and two baby boys, and allow it all to come crashing down due to a terrible addiction to crack-cocaine. It was especially rough to see how self involved Rick became when the cops were called, and his 4 year old son was crying, confused as to what was happening with mommy and daddy. It really tore me up to see a kid go through such a tough childhood, and who knows what kind of adolescence, because of his fathers addiction.

Everything you see is all ‘home video’ that either Rick or his wife recorded during a good decade of his life, maybe less. From what I’ve read, he never watched any of the footage he shot, until it came time to make this film.

It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, tragic, startling, and brilliant.

Brilliant because it serves as a cautionary tale and hopefully wake up call to anyone out there. It’s also one of the best documentaries you’ll ever witness.

hit up www.tvjunkie.tv for more info, and to order the film. It’s a definite must buy.

What Do You Mean, YOU PEOPLE???? Tropic Thunder Trailer!!!

The Official Trailer for “Tropic Thunder” is now up, and once again, I cannot wait to see it. Not only is it a take on overblown war movies, but on the dumbasses in hollywood who make them. Robert Downey Jr. will be praised for his part, or people will go apeshit, either way CAN’T WAIT!!!!

GO HERE TO BLOW SOME SHIT UP!

Jon Peters Reviews: Funny Games

America’s past time isn’t baseball as we all have thought its violent entertainment. I’m sure that’s a polarizing way to open a review, as some will agree and some won’t. But there’s no other way around it. We turn to the news to see what’s going on, and in response to that, the news gives us violence. Murder, war, death, all smashing through our media outlets, TV, radio, internet, and we accept it. If it wasn’t accepted, then why has the news continued to show us it? We want it.

Most will agree watching the news isn’t entertainment, but it stems from there. In our music, literature, and film, violence reigns supreme. Horror films have always been popular and in recent years we’ve accepted this so called “torture porn” cycle of horror. If not, then why do they continue to make them? We’ve paid to see them, so we get more. The last two Oscar winning Best Pictures have been violent opuses. We have an administration thriving on war, murder is a front page news article, and we slow down to see the mutilated remains at a car crash.

Most of what I’ve said seems brash, but in “Funny Games”, it’s slapped on a platter ready for us to devour it. The narrative is quite simple. A rich family is ready to enjoy their time away at their summer resort, when two young men, who are very polite, just won’t leave. Michael Haneke is remaking his own film from 1998, in hopes of having it seen widely, oh so said his producers. Haneke has a background in psychology, so there’s more to him remaking his own film, especially in his Hollywood debut, than his producers think. By using American actors for his American debut, he is employing what he sees from his native Austria. Which in turn, is one of a few fascinating comments that this film makes.

By giving Americans want they want in entertainment, violence, this could lead to another damaging view of America. If Europeans think we are a culture of violence, then how do we expect to shape a country riveted in violence?

Without getting too deep into politics, such a theory could be made. But the film is really an examination of what we like in our entertainment, for good or bad. If you leave the theater, maybe then you have taken a stand against what Haneke believes, if you stay, like I did, then why do we like violence? Haneke gives us our violence in spades. While not in a graphic “Hostel” or “Saw” like fashion, his deliberate long takes of scenes like Naomi Watts gathering herself after her son is brutally shot, half nude, and tied up, is a long winded exercise in violence.

While Haneke didn’t show anything specific, the implied is worse, because he has manipulated us much like the young boys have the family. By not showing us the actual violence, Haneke leaves us in our own American way, to imagine the scenes he didn’t show. It’s quite brilliant, because as the old adage goes, our imagination can think of things far worse than any filmmaker can show on screen.

The long static shots that Haneke is known for force us after our imagination stops thinking about the violent act, to endure, much like Tim Roth and Naomi Watts have too. This endurance is grueling and is the sole reason why some people will have a problem with the film. We are so use to quick cuts away, being forced to ride this out will test our patience. What’s the reward? Entertainment.

It’s inevitable the outcome of the film once you start the ride with Peter and Paul, the two young perpetrators. Maybe the one flaw with “Funny Games” is the role reality plays in. Is it a movie, an exercise, or a statement? Paul every once in a while gleefully breaks the fourth wall to ask us various things, like “I bet you’re siding with them” or acknowledging our presence as if they’re a ringmaster hosting a circus for us to enjoy. This again underlines the themes of “Funny Games”, so if this fourth wall breaking bothers you, then the ‘movie’ part might not work, since you’re aware of the exercise. Most people might think Haneke has over-stepped his theme and hurt the film, because of his finger wagging. Well, that’s one opinion of “Funny Games”. My initial opening sentence of the review, I stated it might polarize you. “Funny Games” is certainly made for polarizing a certain audience, so reaction will vary.

Will you find enjoyment in seeing this film? Ask yourself, either during or after the film, were you not entertained?

Jon Peters Reviews: Doomsday

With film making, things can just escape you. Whether it’s working with over ambition, more money, or whatever, a good intended film can lose its grounding and turn out to be a mess. Following “The Descent”, perhaps one of the scariest horror films in the last handful of years, “Doomsday” is a horrendous follow-up.

Neil Marshall was building a great start to his career, with the much-loved “Dog Soldiers” and of course the fore mentioned “Descent”. I noticed lots of fans of his work were willing to ignore the signs of this film being bad. It wasn’t screened for press and little to no buzz was being generated. Sadly, we’ve should’ve seen the writing on the wall.
“Doomsday” opens with an overly long prologue setting up the future we’ll eventually see after a deadly virus rips through Scotland. The virus causes the infected to be zombie like, puking up mucus, skin problems, amongst other things. England decides to quarantine them, which creates society to fend for itself. With no hope, Scotland survivors revert to violence and cannibalism to survive. When some scientists noticed that there are possible immune survivors, they send out a military team to extract them to save the infective English, as the virus reemerges.

It’s simple enough, but the biggest problem is that you can clearly see Neil Marshall’s influences. While the influences of George Miller (”Mad Max”) and John Carpenter (”Halloween”, “Escape from New York”) should have inspired him to create something new or original, we just get a bizarre film that copies the best parts of his influences. The film is so over-the-top and crazy you do almost get caught up it in. It’s hard to exactly say what the film is or where was it going for those reasons. It starts off like a “28 Days Later”, then shifts to “Escape from New York”, then that leads to a rip on “Road Warrior”, then “Excalibur”, then finishes with a “Mad Max” ending. Oh, in-between all of that add some Umberto Lenzi’s “Nightmare City (1980)” with a mock John Carpenter score. Insane.

You just can’t take it seriously or even at a fun level. There are some moments where the film might be a fun throwback, but the constant shifting tones and gears, disrupt everything. Obviously the trailers were touting it as some post-apocalyptic film, and it really isn’t. I think the marketing team had just as hard as time trying to sell the movie as I am writing this review. While there’s some good stuff, like the heroine’s video camera eye, the gore, some scenes like the end car chase, it’s just some parts and we needed the whole to work or enjoy.

Whatever the reason this film fails, I hope Neil Marshall notices. He’s a solid up and coming genre talent. Maybe he’s better with lower budgets or maybe he needed to take a step back and reread the script. It’s a mess of a film.

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