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Sunday, August 30, 2015

Deadly Record (1959)

Deadly Record is a modest unassuming low-budget British mystery dating from 1959. Some good performances are enough to make it worth a look.

Trevor Hamilton (Lee Patterson) is an airline pilot who arrives home to find his wife Jenny is not there. That’s nothing surprising. She isn’t home very often. Their marriage is pretty much a marriage in name only - as he remarks, they lead separate lives. In fact she lives in her studio at the back of her house. She was a dancer before her marriage and her one ambition is to return to the stage. Trevor is unconcerned by her absence, takes a sleeping tablet and goes to bed. In the morning he is awoken by a police constable investigating a minor traffic accident in which Jenny had been involved. The constable insists on looking around and much to Trevor’s surprise and consternation he discovers Jenny’s dead body in the studio. She has been murdered.

It’s never been much of a secret that the Hamiltons were not exactly a shining example of wedded bliss, so it’s natural enough for Superintendent Ambrose (Geoffrey Keen playing yet another role as a policeman) to consider Trevor to be the prime suspect.

Trevor’s problem is that although the evidence against him is purely circumstantial and not very strong he has no alibi and the lack of any other suspects is a definite worry. He thinks it might be a good idea to start doing a bit of investigating on his own.

He has one ally, in the person of his friend Susan (Barbara Shelley). It’s fairly obvious that there is some kind of emotional attachment between the two of them, which naturally tends to make Superintendent Ambrose even more suspicious. Trevor already knew that there were quite a few men in his wife’s life and he’s sure that one of them killed her but what he needs to do is to find some evidence.

He does find some evidence but it’s inconclusive and it’s clear that the police are more and more convinced that they already have their killer and they’re not especially interested in any other suspects. It would help if Trevor and Susan could find Jenny’s diary but it seems to have disappeared. Sooner or later time is going to run out and Superintendent Ambrose is going to arrest Trevor and while the case against him is not overwhelming it could be enough to get a conviction.

This is a fairly standard whodunit plot but it’s quite competently executed. Director Lawrence Huntington spent his whole career churning out unremarkable B-features but he does a solid enough job and there are a few quite atmospheric scenes. The low budget is evident in the limited number of sets but the production manages to avoid looking shoddy.

Lee Patterson was a Canadian-born actor who became a reliable B-movie leading man in British movies of the 50s before gaining some degree of fame as one of the stars of the American private eye TV series Surfside 6. He does well here being sympathetic without resorting to self-pity. Barbara Shelley makes a fine leading lady (as always). Playing a copper was no great challenge to Geoffrey Keen but he was a professional and he really did look exactly like the popular image of a 1950s British police detective. Peter Dyneley (best remembered as the voice of Jeff Tracy in the Thunderbirds TV series) is quite impressive as a very not ethical doctor.

The resolution of the plot is quite convincing and believable (which of course is not always the case with mystery movies). There are sufficient red herrings to keep things interesting and the pacing is satisfactorily taut (the very short 58-minute running time certainly helps)

Network’s DVD presentation is barebones but it does offer an excellent anamorphic transfer. The black-and-white cinematography looks quite impressive and suitably moody.

There’s nothing particularly outstanding about this movie but it does what it sets out to do quite effectively and the fine performances by the two leads are major pluses. It’s good low-key entertainment. Recommended.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

some reviews from my Cult Movies blog

Some reviews from my Cult Movies blog that might interest readers here:

The Magician (1926), a black magic melodrama based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel which in turn was inspired by the exploits of Aleister Crowley.

Our Man in Marrakesh (1966), an amusing spy spoof starring Tony Randall and Terry-Thomas.

Breakheart Pass (1975), an excellent murder mystery/thriller/western set on a train in the Wild West.

Innocent Bystanders (1972), quite decent spy thriller starring Stanley Baker.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Cottage To Let (1941)

Cottage To Let is a light-hearted 1941 British spy thriller. It’s really as much a spoof as a genuine spy thriller although it does boast a pretty decent and rather complicated plot, and a very very strong cast.

John Barrington (Leslie Banks) is an eccentric who just happens to be vital to the British war effort. He hates bureaucrats and he insists in carrying on his researches at his home in the Scottish Highlands. That home, usually a haven of peace among the lochs, has been thrown into chaos. Barrington’s wife (Jeanne de Casalis) is in her own way just as eccentric as her husband. Eager to help the war effort she has put a cottage at the disposal of the Army for use as a military hospital. Unfortunately she has also agreed to let the cottager be used to house children evacuated from London. And at the same time she has let the cottage to a Mr Dimble (Alistair Sim). It’s now a very overcrowded cottage indeed.

As a hospital the cottage has only a single patient, Flight-Lieutenant Perry (John Mills), a Spitfire pilot whose aircraft had been forced down in the loch. Not surprisingly there are soon signs of budding romance between the glamorous fighter pilot hero and Dr Barrington’s beautiful daughter Helen (Carla Lehmann). That’s not entirely to the liking of Dr Barrington’s assistant Trently (Michael Wilding).

Meanwhile the young evacuee Ronald (16-year-old George Cole at the beginning of an incredibly long career which happily continues to this day) is creating a certain amount of havoc. He’s a good-natured lad but high-spirited and being a Sherlock Holmes fan he fancies himself as an amateur detective which tends to cause more chaos.

Among this motley assortment of misfits there is at least one German spy. And at least one  British counter-spy. Scotland Yard knows the Germans will stop at nothing to steal Dr Barrington’s latest invention but Barrington is not the sort of man who takes kindly to having policemen snooping about the place, even if they are trying to protect him. This means the Yard’s efforts to protect him have to be secret - Dr Barrington has no idea of the identity of the British counter-spy, and of course neither does the audience.

To make things more confusing just about everybody seems to be behaving suspiciously. Which of course adds to the movie’s fun.

This is not really an action-oriented spy drama although it does have a few action scenes towards the end.

Anthony Asquith had a long and quite distinguished career as a director. His approach is straightforward but effective. The challenge with this type of movie is to balance the comedy and suspense elements and this is done quite successfully. The plot has enough twists to keep us interested while the humour is sufficiently well done to keep us amused.

It’s difficult to single out any one performance. This is an ensemble piece and everyone does a fine job. Fans of Alistair Sim will certainly be happy. Child characters are always a potential problem, especially when they’re precocious and high-spirited with delusions of being Sherlock Holmes, but George Cole is really quite delightful. He gets plenty of laughs and he’s never irritating. The humour in this movie is consistently good-natured and steers well clear of slapstick.

Since it’s important to keep the identity of the spy or spies a secret for as long as possible the actors have to avoid making these characters into stereotypical dastardly spy villains. This proves to be a good move. It also gives the movie less of a wartime propaganda movie feel than you might expect.

The one minor quibble is that a certain member of the cast does overdo things a little in his climactic scene when his treachery is revealed.

Cottage To Let was released in the US under the accurate but rather dull title Bombsight Stolen.

Network have as usual done a very good job with their DVD. Picture and sound quality are both very acceptable.

Cottage To Let is fine lightweight entertainment. If you’re a spy fan, a mystery fan or a devotee of British comedies you should enjoy it. In fact any classic movie fan should really enjoy this one. Highly recommended.

Monday, August 17, 2015

School for Scoundrels (1960)

The wickedly witty 1960 British comedy film School for Scoundrels (subtitled How to Win Without Actually Cheating) is, interestingly enough, based on a series of non-fiction self-help books.

Stephen Potter had enjoyed great success with these books, beginning in 1947 with Gamesmanship and continuing with One-Upmanship, Lifemanship and Supermanship. The idea behind them was to point out how to gain an unfair advantage in almost any situation without having to do anything that was technically illegal or against the rules. Although the intention behind the books was humorous they contained some extraordinarily penetrating insights into the ways in which some people almost invariably win while others almost invariably lose. Peter Ustinov had the idea of turning the ideas in the books into a comedy film and produced the first version of the screenplay although he does not receive a screen credit.

Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) most definitely belongs to the category of life’s losers. On the surface he has everything going for him. He’s wealthy, he owns his own company, he’s not bad looking and he’s a thoroughly decent chap. That’s the problem. Being a decent chap he is inclined to take the path of least resistance and as a result he lets people walk all over him. He is also chronically short of self-confidence. Things come to a head when he meets a lovely young woman, April Smith (Janette Scott), and falls hopelessly in love with her. Everything seems to be going fine until a dirty rotter named Raymond Delaunay (Terry-Thomas) arrives on the scene. Delaunay has boundless self-confidence and an instinctive knack for the techniques that make for winning.

Henry endures a string of humiliations until finally he determines to take drastic action. He enrolls in the College of Lifemanship run by a certain Stephen Potter (played by Alistair Sim). At the college he learns to apply the kinds of techniques that Delaunay uses instinctively but he learns to employ them in a scientific and systematic way. While Delaunay is  a mere amateur Henry becomes a skilled professional in the art of lifemanship, and amateurs are no match for professionals. Henry is soon turning the tables on Delaunay, and on everyone else who has humiliated him.

For Henry the object of the exercise is to win the hand of the fair April but while he now seems destined to do this he must face a personal dilemma - is it worth winning such a prize by unfair means?

School for Scoundrels has many things going for it, not the least of these being the presence of three of the greatest of all British comic actors in the three central roles. Ian Carmichael was always good at playing nice guys who are rather put-upon but he also had the ability to give his performances a bit of an edge when needed and he is thus equally adept at playing the hapless loser Henry of the first half of the movie and the smooth winner who graduates with a degree in lifemanship. Terry-Thomas is as usual a superb cad. Alistair Sim has great fun as the cynical Potter. And all three are in superlative form, so good that it would be impossible to choose favourites. As a bonus we get equally delightful performances by Dennis Price and Peter Jones, formidable comic talents themselves, as two oily used car salesmen.

The script takes full advantage of the opportunities for cynical comedy. Cynical perhaps, but very very funny.

What made Potter’s books so immensely popular, and what makes the film so successful, is that the dastardly techniques of gamesmanship and lifemanship really do work. In fact Potter’s work has had considerable influence on psychologists. The books may have been intended humorously but they can be used as instruction manuals in how to become an unscrupulous winner. This is humour, but humour with a sometimes disturbing edge. It’s impossible not to rejoice as Henry Palfrey takes his revenge on those who have injured him while at the same time we can’t help feeling a tiny bit uncomfortable at the unalloyed joy he gets from doing unto others as they have done unto him. In fact even though Raymond Delaunay is a cad and a rotter we feel slightly sorry for him as he finds himself outgunned by Henry’s armoury of dirty tricks.

The Region 4 DVD from Madman (part of their Ealing Comedy Collection although this is not an Ealing film) is barebones but offers an excellent anamorphic transfer. There have been several DVD releases of this movie, some of which are anamorphic and some of which are inferior pan-and-scanned transfers, so it pays to check before you buy.

School for Scoundrels is splendid British comedy and a glorious opportunity to see some of Britain’s finest comic talents at the top of their game. Highly recommended.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Gambit (1966)

Heist movies were insanely popular during the 1960s and Gambit is not only a fine example of the breed it also adds a few distinctive touches of its own.

In 1966 Shirley MacLaine was a very big star, big enough to be given the final choice of leading man for her films. In this instance Michael Caine turned out to be absolutely the ideal choice.

Caine plays Harry Dean, an English crook with very grandiose ambitions indeed. He has a plan, which he has no doubt is fool-proof, to rob the world’s richest man. Shahbandar (Herbert Lom) is an Arab oil billionaire with a fabulous art collection and Harry has set his sights on the most valuable of all Shahbandar’s artworks, a two thousand year old Chinese statue. The statue happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to the billionaire’s deceased wife and Harry thinks he can make use of this. All he needs to do is to find a girl who looks like the statue. He finds her in the person of Nicole Chang (Shirley MacLaine,) a small-time Eurasian dancer in a seedy bar in Hong Kong.

Harry thinks he has done his homework very thoroughly but in fact he’s made a few seriously dubious assumptions. Nonetheless the plan seems workable enough and he persuades Nicole to pay along. He persuades her by not telling her anything about the plan apart from the part she will have to play. This proves to be another slight misjudgment on Harry’s part. Nicole is not the sort of girl who likes to be deceived.

The essential framework for the heist movie is that there has to be a superbly ingenious plan that cannot possibly fail but of course in practice it doesn’t go quite so smoothly. Gambit follows this formula but with a few original twists. Unfortunately even to hint at the nature of those twists would ruin part of the enjoyment of the film so I’ll say as little as possible about the plot.

A heist movie needs more than a clever plot. It needs at least one charismatic star (two is even better), it needs sparkling dialogue, it needs to be visually impressive and ideally it needs generous side-orders of humour and romance. Gambit has all of these and they’re combined perfectly.

Ronald Neame directed. Neame doesn’t always get the attention he deserves. He made some fascinating movies in just about every genre and he demonstrates a natural flair for the heist movie. Gambit was nominated for three Oscars including best Art Direction and Best Costumes. It does indeed look terrific and Shirley MacLaine’s dresses are fabulous. Despite the exotic settings it was shot entirely in California (mostly on the backlot), with Santa Barbara standing in for the Riviera.

While MacLaine and Caine get top billing Herbert Lom’s character is every bit as important and he gets as much screen time as the two stars. This is a three-handed game and McLaine, Caine and Lom are all in scintillating form.

While Harry is definitely a wrong ’un he’s a nice guy, and Shahbandar is a pretty nice guy as well. That makes the battle of wits between them rather interesting - we don’t really want either of them to lose. In fact we’d like to see all three of the main characters win.

Shirley MacLaine figures prominently in the action right from the start but for the first half hour she doesn’t have a single line of dialogue. This was apparently her own idea and it’s a very good one (and one that the director embraced enthusiastically). To reveal why it’s such a good idea would be to risk a spoiler - one very intriguing feature of this movie is that the really clever plot twist comes at the beginning rather than the end.

Director Ronald Neame recorded the audio commentary for the DVD shortly before his death at the age of 99 but he still remembered a good deal about the making of the film. Although at times he wanders off on tangents he has plenty of interesting anecdotes about his long and exceptionally interesting career.

This is the kind of light-hearted romp that movie-makers just don’t seem to have the style or the lightness of touch to pull off any more. In the 60s though they did know how to do this sort of thing, and do it supremely well. Gambit is witty, clever, stylish, romantic, amusing and exciting. It’s pure entertainment of the highest order. Highly recommended.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Mr Denning Drives North (1952)

Mr Denning Drives North is a top-notch and slightly offbeat British mystery thriller from 1952, made even more enjoyable by a very fine cast.

Tom Denning (John Mills) is the chairman of a major British aircraft manufacturing firm. He’s wealthy and successful, he’s happily married and he has a charming daughter. So why is Tom Denning cracking up? The truth is that he is troubled by an incident that occurred a few weeks earlier. It was only a small matter of murder but now he’s rather puzzled because, as he puts it, there should have been a sequel to that event but the sequel has not materialised. He was confident that he would not be charged for the murder but he did at least expect that there would be a police investigation. He even went to the trouble of leaving the body where it would be certain to be found.

This is a suspense thriller rather than a mystery so it doesn’t matter that we know from the start that Tom Denning is a murderer. The question is not whodunit, but whether the killer will be caught and if so how. And there are many many plot twists to come.

Technically Tom Denning is guilty of manslaughter rather than murder and he did have very good reasons for his actions. Tom is not a bad man. He’s a thoroughly decent fellow, which is why he committed the killing in question. The problem is that having failed to report the incident to the police at the time it’s now going to look like a cleverly premeditated murder rather than manslaughter.

Now Tom Denning finds himself driving north once again, as he had done on that fatal night several ten weeks earlier. In fact he will find himself driving north of several further occasions. The old legend that murderers always return to the scene of their crime proves to be most prophetic in Mr Denning’s case. There just doesn’t seem to be any way he can avoid doing so.

Tom Denning’s daughter Liz is engaged to a rather pleasant young American patent lawyer named Chick Eddowes. The increasingly confused situation leads Chick to try his hand at criminal law. He has been called to the English Bar so he is entitled to do so but by the end of the story he wishes he’d stuck to patent law. He also wishes he’d never become involved with gypsies (gypsies play quite a crucial part in the plot).

Alec Coppel adapted the screenplay from his own (extremely good) novel of the same name. Director Anthony Kimmins had an uneven career but this film is a very fine effort indeed. There’s a hint of black comedy to the proceedings but both writer and director wisely keep this element as subtle as possible. The result is a gripping suspense film with major psychological thriller overtones. The slight touch of black comedy serves as a seasoning rather than overwhelming the dish.

The pacing is faultless (even if it seems to start just a little slowly this is time well spent in establishing Tom Denning’s state of mind). Making the lead character an aircraft manufacturer offers the opportunity of throwing in a few aerial sequences which add a bit more visual interest (and at least one suspenseful scene).

John Mills was rather good at playing sympathetic characters with a certain amount of depth and he’s in fine form. He gets solid support from Phyllis Calvert as Denning’s wife Kay and Sam Wanamaker as the good-natured but increasingly frazzled Chick. Herbert Lom is at his smooth but oily best as the unscrupulous and sinister Mados, the man who had hoped to marry Denning’s daughter. Bernard Lee plays (inevitably) a police inspector. Wilfrid Hyde-White goes close to stealing the picture (as he usually did) as the mortuary attendant whose memory is not as faultless as he thinks it is.

The movie was shot in black-and-white (always an advantage in this genre). The budget was clearly reasonably generous and there’s quite a bit of location shooting, making the movie look a bit more expansive than most British mystery thrillers of its era.

Network’s DVD release offers a superb transfer. The only extra is an image gallery.

Mr Denning Drives North is an exquisitely crafted suspense film filled with clever plot ideas and enlivened by some delightful performances. Highly recommended.


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Swimsuits For Every Zodiac Sign

Summer is in the air and swimsuit season is in full swing. Regardless of whether or not you tune into Zodiac signs when it comes to relationships and love, you have to admit…at times the predictions are dead on. Are you adventurous in fashion or […]

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description: Wide crawl of the web for November 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
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Diabetes & Our Body: Love, Forgiveness & Hope

Good morning! I hope you had a night of restful sleep and good blood sugars upon awakening. Mine was 104 this morning when I woke up. Can’t beat that! My husband’s sister and her 3 children are flying in this morning from South Carolina. I am so looking forward to seeing them tonight for dinner at my in-laws house and a bunch over the next week. It has been 3 years since I last saw them. In January when I had tickets to South Carolina to visit them, my cat Juniper become very ill. I stayed here to care for her and she miraculously survived. She is lying to the right of me now while my other cat Mabel is on my left. My husband lovingly calls this “Oreo” as they are two little black furry kitties.

Every morning on my Facebook page for Diabetes Light I share a quote – since day one! It is one of the first things I do when I wake up after testing my blood sugar of course and petting my sweet, cuddly cats. If I have a busy morning and somewhere to be early, my husband has mentioned a few times that I should skip posting a quote that day. This is not something I let happen. I feel that someone might need to hear the message I am sharing and that it may add a little light to their day. This is my hope anyway. Continue reading


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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

End and beginning

Merry, happy everything to all of you out there. Our Christmas was quiet, the only less-than-perfect was Nathaniel waking up at 4:00 in the morning with food poisoning from the party the night before. (John, Jen, and I had been at the same party and were fine, but none of us ate the sushi.) N's being off put a crimp in our Christmas -- and meant that John ate all the bacon himself. But after a bit, N. was not exactly fine but in good enough shape to have some of the maple pecan wreath bread that I make every year.

We had a quiet day -- eating and sitting by the fire and watching SNL from the first season (John and I just going out and were living together in Manhattan back then and, boy, those shows bring back memories. We had in-jokes about the Great Fabod and ...). But still it fell to me to do all the cooking and more of the cleaning than I would have liked, and so I am not too sorry that I'm stuck today at the Superior Court for jury duty and forced to sit. John probably doesn't mind too much either, since his plan for today was to do nothing and I'm not sure I could have allowed that :)

But it's raining, I've got Internet access. So far, a room full of people is just waiting and waiting. The dog -- she liked her presents, esp. the dried chicken breasts, and she lost no time burying her new bone in the back yard -- will miss me today.

We did hear sobering news of two deaths -- three if you count James Brown, and you really gotta. One of these was one of John's poker buddies who was part of the group we had dinner with last New Year's Eve. He wasn't exactly a friend of mine, for reasons I don't want to go into here, but still. Hella difference a year makes ... .

May be my last post before the big night, so best to you and may life be good to you in 2007.

No comments:


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For questions regarding application and renewal or other general questions, please contact Jason Brock at Jason.Brock1@wyo.gov. For questions regarding complaints and Board meetings, please contact Emily Cronbaugh at Emily.Cronbaugh@wyo.gov

Our office hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

Wyoming Dietetics Licensing Board
2001 Capitol Ave, Room 103
Cheyenne WY 82002

Jason Phone: (307) 777-7387
Emily Phone: (307) 777-6529
Fax: (307) 777-3508

The Wyoming Dietetics Licensing Board is staffed through the Professional Licensing Boards Office, a division of A&I.


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Oracle Configuration Support Manager: "next generation MetaLink expirience"

In a posting two months ago i wrote about a new tab in Oracle's MetaLink. Now Oracle changed the login behaviour of https://metalink.oracle.com.
Now you get a new login page where the default is now the "My Oracle Support".

The login is a little bit slow (>10s) but it shows this nice animated picture ;-)

But you can step back to the "Classic MetaLink" if something is not working. For viewing one Service Request i had to step back to the classic metalink, because of some encoding problems:

In addition cut & paste with firefox 3.0 and Linux does not work with this web based application, so i will use the classic one. But hopefully Oracle can fix all these errors in the next weeks...

1 Kommentar:

  1. I openend a SR at metalink about this encoding problem:
    ->severity 4, because i should use the old on.
    ->and immediately a hard close from Oracle


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Oracle Metalink: User experience (Error #1095 ;-)

Today i logged into metalink - ups - into support.oracle.com. The new interface with Adobe flash is really nice. Three months ago i had problems in viewing service requests, so i decided to stay with the old metalink interface (take a look at my posting).
Now i have to work with the new interface. This worked but more then 20 times i got the following error message:

I queried metalink itself for this error - nothing.
I queried google: and there i found a very nice page:
(Before following the link, read to the end!!!)
The posting at this link is nice but you should read the COMMENTS!!
Here a best of:

Here's my saga:
- Did everything as requested and on time (well before time) by tying my MetaLink account with Oracle SSO
- It stopped working promptly with the cutover with 'Account setup in progres ...' error.
- Had a colleage open an SR (strike 1) which was promptly closed by support without resolving the issue.
- Had my colleage open yet another SR (strike 2) which was promptly closed by support without resolving the issue
- My colleage called in the problem (strike 3) and of course support didn't resolve the problem.
- Many days pass by and yesterday I called it in (strike 4) and I was told to re-register. Didn't work as expected.
- Sent email to our customer rep in disgust
- Finally able to login this morning and what do you know they lost all my CSIs associated with the account.
- Call support again to have the CSI issue resolved again.
- I've many CSIs associated with my account (some of which I'm the admin) and was flooded with email (add/approve/... requests).
- A total of 9 days without access to the Support site; not that I needed to create any SRs.
- I was surprised to discover how much I depend on the Support site on a routine basis.

So, Oracle Support has
1.) intentionally decided to choose a competitors product to build their new front end (thereby declaring their own software products are inferior for the task),
2.) made themselves completely dependant upon a competitors ability (and/or desire) to quickly fix security and/or compatibility problems,
3.) wound up ignoring the largest installed base of browser on the web
4.) created a HTML version of the support site (to replace a version that was working fine, built with an Oracle product) that isn't supported!!!!!

My Oracle Support Services Error:
A server connection error occurred.
You cannot continue.
Please try again later.

Collection of exotic fly-by error messages we are receiving

"Unable to perform "" operation due to the following error: "BusinessException thrown from ReOpen First Step : updateSR() at 2009-12-02 14:59:12.488 CST"."

"Service Error: sr/home: javax.xml.rpc.soap.SOAPFaultException: Cannot perform client request"

"Error #1095"

"Error #1088"

And last but not the least - the neat and deadly
"Exception raised"

It would be nice to have an official admission by Support that says:

"Yes. We screwed up in a big way. We realize that out support system is in complete disarray. Here are the things that we know are completely and unacceptably messed up and here are the current statuses and what is being done."

or ....
Enjoy ;-) and remember Things can only get better!

1 Kommentar:

  1. Good day! I just want to offer you a big thumbs up for the
    excellent information you have got right here on this post.
    I am coming back to your site for more soon.


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Birmingham City Drive 2016

#BrumCityDrive Our thanks to everyone who got involved with Birmingham City Drive 2016 – we couldn’t have done it without you! In particular we would like to thank our sponsors, who helped us to have such a successful week: UnLtd West Midlands Academic Health Science Network Anthony Collins Solicitors ART Business Loans Unity Trust Bank […]


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Integrating Modern Pedagogies of Teaching
Asia and Middle East's First & Only Monthly Magazine, Web Portal on Innovation in Education

Integrating Modern Pedagogies of Teaching

Views: 875

Planet Kids
Year of inception: 2005
Founders: Chandu Jain; Amar Kapasi
Head office: Bangalore
Address: C-7, ‘Unity Buildings’, 1st Floor, J C Road,
Bangalore- 560 002
Website: www.planetkids.in
Email:info@planetkids.in; franchise@planetkids.in
Contact Numbers: +91 80 411-45744/844
Toll Free Line: 1-800-103-6766

SPlanet Kids is a start-up incepted in the year 2005 at Bangalore with an honest attempt to create a difference in the pre-schooling industry by providing an experience of international standards to the children as well as the parents. The company started off with company owned and operated model of preschools and was a pioneer in the field by integrating modern pedagogies of teaching combined with a state-of-the-art infrastructure at an affordable price point. With-in a very short span of time Planet Kids created an indelible impression in the industry at Bangalore for delivering high quality standards as well as pioneering creativity based activities for the children and a wholesome experience for the parents. Till date over 12000 children and thousands of happy parents have been a part of this hugely successful story and are fast growing by the day. Started with one school with three students in 2005 to 15 schools with over 2000 children in 2013, the journey indeed has been exciting and a fulfilling one. And yet we say, ‘we have just begun’ as there is a lot more to achieve and accomplish.

School’s Philosophy
The brand name ‘Planet Kids’ denotes a whole different world for the children to explore, learn and enjoy the process of growing up in a happy atmosphere along with acquiring learning skills ‘the fun way’. A planet of the children, for the children and created keeping in mind the various requirements of young learners. The name is synonymous to quality learning for children along with the endearing and friendly Lion mascot ‘Frizzy’.

USP of your Group
Excellent brand equity, young and creative team, extensive knowledge and know-how of Preschooling Industry, and extremely qualified training personnel

Franchise Process

Business Expansion
Presence across India –  Currently present at Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh
Franchise Option –  Yes
Number of franchise – 10
Expansion Plans –  Expansion Plans pan India

Requirement for taking Franchise:

A Planet Kids preschool centre can be started off in an area which is 2,500 sqft and above carpet area with an investment ranging from `12-20 lakh of rupees, depending on the location and set-up costs. Preferably it should be located on main roads of prime residential localities with ample outdoor play space and also good visibility and accessibility to customers.Deliverables for franchise owner:
Planet Kids will offer the franchisee extensive support to start and operate a centre. Basic guidelines on how to start operations,
the décor, and the materials required et cetera will be shared with the new franchisees. The in-depth Operations manual will
be a ready reckoner to the franchisee to get the framework of policies and procedures to be incorporated. A two day franchisee
induction programme will be conducted to help the new franchisee understand the pre-school industry and also how Planet
Kids functions. The teachers will be trained by academic leaders from Planet Kids at the beginning of the academic year and also
during the year if the need may arise. Constant on-going assistance via phone calls and e-mails will be available to the franchisee to help them settle any issues of concerns. Education coaches will visit the franchise centres and do classroom observations to help teachers perform better. Marketing co-laterals like advertisement designs, banner designs, leaf lets et cetera will also be given based on the needs.

Admission Process

Toddler Programme: 1 year – 1 year 8 months
Play Group: 1year 8 months – 2 years 8 months
Nursery: 2 years 8 months – 3 years 8 months
Lower Kindergarten: 3 years 8 months – 4 years 8 months
Upper Kindergarten: 4 years 8 months – 5 years 8 months
Daycare: 2 years to 8 years
Activity Hub: 2 years to 12 years
Fee Structure: Ranging from 24000 to 60000 per annum for preschool
Programmes for student development: X-SEED curriculum, Kinderdance, E-Blocks & Raise a Reader Programme
Qualifications required for teacher recruitment: Freshers/Qualified (NTT or Montessori Trained)/Exprienced
Training programme for teachers development: Regular Teacher Training & enrichment Programmes
Employment opportunity: : If you wish to work with Planet Kids in Teachers/Centre heads/Academic Head positions, please mail your profile to jobs@planetkids.in

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~Make your own self-rising flour! Just add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt to each cup of flour (most recipes I've seen call for 1/2 tsp of salt, but be careful! It can get too salty really fast)

~Greek yogurt will almost always make your baked goods rise higher, and fluffier than regular yogurt. Any recipe that calls for Greek yogurt can usually be substituted with sour cream (and vice versa) And any European recipe that calls for yogurt, use Greek. Their yogurt is much thicker than ours!

~Line your baking sheets with parchment paper, instead of greasing them. Your sheet stays clean, no need to wash, and you can use the paper over and over! Also useful for lining loaf and cake pans (but don't forget to grease those too!)

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Your comments really DO make my day, and I promise to try and reply to each and every one, either through email or on here :)


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Ding-Donger with Matt Braunger (general)

Oh man oh man oh man! Braunger didn't do a DDMB last week because of his birthday (what a child), so this week's episode is 45 minutes long. And change! His weekend in Palm Springs, a realization about his habit to walk everywhere, the time he became a serial killer online, and a childhood memory involving stacks of porn are all discussed, but it all goes deeper than that! Let's delve in, shall we, to the world of a Ding-Dong.

Direct download: DDMB61_You_KNOW_That_Guy__.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

Matt made this one earlier in the week, but there's no way you should be able to tell that unless I just told you. Whoops! This, the 60th triumph, finds our hero talking about relationships, being alone, his recent crazy weekend, how you have to accept your friends despite their horrible tastes, why you should hug your pets now, and the challenge of motivating yourself to work in hot Los Angeles. Guys! We're 60!

Direct download: DDMB60_We_ve_Made_It_So_Far_You_Guys.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

We're almost to 60 episodes, gang! When we get there, we'll all go swimming and dunk the baby. You'll have to listen to this week's episode to know what the hell I'm talking about. This ep, Matt gets into Weird Al, the taping of his new short film, his perfect card and gift for a one-year-old's birthday party, a horrible party guest he meets there, gay stuff, and a terrible movie that capped off the weekend. Thanks for picking him up!

Direct download: DDMB59_Dunk_the_Baby.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

Hey gang! Matt spends 22 minutes of this episode talking about getting stoned on camera in "Getting Doug with High," then extolls the genius of online savants Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart, & Hannah Hart, then explains how he plans on setting fire to himself in Palm Springs for his B-Day. Only three topics? Only three topics. This episode rocks ass.

Direct download: DDMB58_A_Stoned_Experiment.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

Happy 4th of July, Braungals and Braunguys. Matt's back with some tales again, because it's a weekly show and that's why! He's got the story of "Night of 1,000 Segers," how he almost just hit a guy with his car, getting "made" at the Comedy Store last night, why he's melting, why he's going to Palm Springs to melt more, and why he yelled "My tit!" earlier today. Happy 4th. Listen and it'll all make sense.

Direct download: DDMB57_Happy_4th_of_I_Almost_Killed_a_Guy.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

Taking a break (or maybe not) from rehearsing his song in the upcoming "Night of 1,000 Segers," Matt hops into your brain again. He just got back from driving a combined 60 miles to audition for the role of "Coach" on a sitcom. Yep. Just "Coach." He's talking about auditions in general, editing his special, 1,000 Segers rehearsals, the show he's developing with a guy you all love, and how the film "Jason Nash is Married" is awesome and should be seen by all. Let's work on our Night Moves together.

Direct download: DDMB56_Night_Moves.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

This week is a doozy and a half, folks! Lots to cover. Lemonheads in a big box, editing the new hour special, b-day plans, helping a friend in need, depression, Henry Phillips, the short film Matt shot over last weekend, a new Neil Diamond song he's writing without Neil's permission, and (most importantly) the definitive guide to most of the Game of Thrones characters. Phew! Tune in.

Direct download: DDMB55_The_Definitive_Guide_to_the_Game_of_Thrones_Characters.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:33am PST

Summer's underway! And that means a new DDMB. Well, so does Winter, Spring, you get the idea. Hope not having any discernible theme besides Matt Braunger's dumb life isn't driving you nuts. Anyhoos, this week Matt gets into a strange encounter/show at the Belly Room at the Comedy Store, talks a therapy encounter that made him go "Oh no," gets into the short film he's doing this weekend with Ron Funches, and describes his dumbest moment at the movies ever. On a date. Check check check check check ch-check it out!

Direct download: DDMB54_The_Wrong_Girls_Head.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST

What a week! Braunger's been all over the map. Listen to the tales of his adventures in an all new episode. Old friends, two tapings (one of them too sweaty), a wedding where he got too drunk, doing karaoke with Mom, how fucked up the end of that Game of Thrones was, and more! Here we go again on our own, going down the only road we've ever known."

Direct download: DDMB53_Im_Back_From_Portland_and_Brooklyn_and_the_Special_is_Taped.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:16pm PST

Hey kids, it's almost time for Matt to record his new special and he's going bonkers. Let's let him yammer on for a while to calm his nerves. He just got back from Denver, is doing a run-through of his set in Hollywood tonight, just did one of the last ever episodes of Chelsea Lately (it got cancelled today), and he's unveiling his set list for you. Out loud. Tune in and see what's up this week besides your nipples.

Direct download: DDMB52_Its_Coming.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00am PST


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Sunday, March 29, 2009

The first burden of anyone telling a haunted house story is to invent some excuse for their characters not to haul ass out the door at the first demonic whisper heard coming from the cellar or the first time black ooze churns up from the toilet and, for the most part, these are always lame contrivances. You know 'em all - bad weather, physical instability, sometimes just stubborn disbelief. Director Renny Harlin's Prison, however, hits on the perfect rationale - all its characters are locked in.

Based on a story by producer Irwin Yablans (Halloween) with reliable Empire and Full Moon scribe C. Courtney Joyner penning the screenplay (Joyner's name will be familiar to fans of '90s direct-to-video fare, with Trancers III, Lurking Fear, Doctor Mordrid as well as many of the Puppet Master sequels all to his credit), Prison is best described as The Shawshank Redemption meets The Shining, replete with an array of pre-CG splatter FX.

When a prisoner named Charlie Forsythe is wrongly executed in the Wyoming State Penitentiary in 1968, the facility is closed for years. But when overcrowding in surrounding prisons force it to be re-opened to relieve congested conditions, merciless warden Ethan Sharpe (Lane Smith) - a man who was intimately involved with that unjust death in '68 - finds that bars and cells can't keep old ghosts at bay. The new crop of arriving inmates, sent to the prison early to serve as a work crew to ready the prison for its official re-opening, will have to contend with both Sharpe's sadism and the malevolent force that haunts the prison grounds.

Representing one of the best 'guy' casts to be found in a genre film (along with Carpenter's The Thing and 1999's predominantly male cannibal opus Ravenous), Prison is stocked with seasoned character actors. The late Lane Smith is a stand-out as Sharpe, as is Lincoln Kilpatrick (familiar from hours of episodic TV in the '70s an '80s) as longtime inmate Cresus. Tom Everett of Texas Chainsaw III is the wily, escape-bound Rabbit; '80s wrestling superstar Tommy 'Tiny' Lister plays the hulking but good-intentioned Tiny; and Viggo Mortensen is Prison's lead in an early role as the brooding, newly incarcerated car thief Burke (even horror fave Kane Hodder is here under heavy make-up as the resurrected form of Charlie Forsythe).

Chelsea Field (Dust Devil) appears as the lone female of the cast, in a superfluous role as an official advocating penal reform. Field does the best she can with her part but whenever Harlin cuts away from events at the prison to continue her character's subplot, the film's tension is undermined. Harlin and co. should've stuck strictly to their male roster and kept the audience behind bars for the duration of the film.

Harlin foreshadows his work on the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street film here (an assignment which this film landed him) by staging a number of elaborate supernatural set-pieces, slaying characters by a variety of surreal, inventive means. One character finds himself impaled multiple times by steel rods that emerge from the walls of a shaft the hopeful escapee is crawling through. Another is burned alive when the cell he's in suddenly becomes a red-hot death trap; yet another victim is dispatched when yards of barbed wire wraps itself around them.

These gruesome deaths are all vivid and unpredictable - enough to mostly distract from the fact that Joyner's screenplay leaves too much unexplained to ever gel as a story. The vengeful spirit goes after prisoners as well as guards - but why is that? Why would it not just go directly for Sharpe? Joyner also suggests that Burke might be the reincarnation of the wrongly executed man but drops that possibility just as quickly. And for all its loose-ends, the film ends on a frustratingly abrupt note.

But yet Joyner's script supplies Harlin with the necessary framework to make Prison an effectively stylish work, filled with enough blue backlighting to rival Michael Mann's 1983 The Keep (ironically, Harlin's new film, 12 Rounds, opened this past weekend against the staunch competition of another ghost tale, The Haunting in Connecticut). Empire Productions wasn't known for its high success rate (outside of their collaborations with Stuart Gordon - though I will admit to having an affection for 1986's Zone Troopers) but thanks to its unique location, Harlin's artsy direction (that balances gloss and grit), bursts of grisly, garish FX and an appealing cast, this jailhouse rocks. It's just a crime that Prison hasn't been released to DVD yet.

Friday, March 27, 2009

The Haunting In Connecticut

The phrase 'based on true events' has been so overused in the name of hyping horror movies for so long now that I believe it needs to be permanently banned. And what's really galling is that few, if any, of these films are ever actually based on true events. I mean, there might be a germ of truth in there (as with Texas Chainsaw Massacre) but to these jaded, unbelieving eyes, when the claim 'based on true events' is used in conjunction with a tale of the supernatural, it shouldn't be taken as anything but a fabrication. People can tell all the stories they want about how ghosts chased them out of their house but I can't buy it as real. However, as a movie-goer, my skepticism doesn't prevent me from enjoying a good haunted house yarn. In fact, sometimes I even kind of like the lousy ones, like The Haunting in Connecticut.

Directed by Peter Cornwell (his first feature), The Haunting in Connecticut purports to be the real-life tale of, well, something involving ghosts. When a family starts renting a house in Connecticut in order to be closer to the hospital where their oldest son's cancer treatments are being administered, it isn't long before they realize - in true haunted house movie fashion - why the rent was so cheap on this property. As it happens, long ago this house was once a funeral home. Not just that, but seances were held there as well. If ever a house was likely to be haunted, it's this.

At first it's only Matt, the sick teen (Kyle Gallner), that witnesses the apparitions that populate his family's new home, and it's suggested that it's his treatments that are leading to vivid hallucinations. But pretty soon even the non-cancer patients in the house are in on the fun, too. Outside of his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen), though, the other residents of the house are on the forgettable side. They're so forgettable, in fact, that they may slip from your mind even while you're looking at them. For the record, the rest of the haunted clan are Martin Donovan as Peter Campbell, the overworked dad who may or may not be tempted to fall off the wagon; Amanda Crews as Wendy, the Campbell's teenaged niece, and Sophi Knight and Ty Wood as Mary and Billy Campbell, Matt's younger siblings. Even though this may reflect the make-up of the real family in question, for the purposes of the film, it makes the story feel overloaded with undistinguished characters who have no real function to the plot other than to stand around. Even Matt's fellow cancer patient, Reverend Popescu (Elias Koteas), who eventually gets roped in to put the restless spirits to bed doesn't really serve the story as much as he might initially appear to.

In Haunting's favor, Cornwell has enough of a feel for horror to create a mood of menace that offsets the clunkiness of the screenplay by Tim Metcalfe and Adam Simon. The cinematography of Adam Swica and production design by Alicia Keywan are ace contributions to the film and Haunting avoids the slickness of most modern horror without purposely affecting a retro look. For older horror fans, raised on '70s fear fare, the muted, washed-out frames of this film will feel a lot like, well, home.

Fans will also feel right at home with all the cliches included in the screenplay. Even casual horror fans will easily spot influences ranging from The Amityville Horror to Poltergeist to The Exorcist, among others. But what The Haunting in Connecticut lacks in originality or surprises, it makes up for in, well, it really doesn't make up for much (it has some great ghouls walking around, though, with blank eyes and writing inscribed on their ashen skin). But yet even though I wasn't that enthusiastic about The Haunting in Connecticut, I didn't mind this movie. One specific thing that endeared it to me is that this is the rare horror movie to feature a middle-to-lower class family. Horror used to be a genre that, as a rule, would align itself with the working class, blue-collar audience. In recent years, that's changed drastically.

I first noticed this with the 2006 remake of When A Stranger Calls in which instead of being set in a common suburban neighborhood, the new film took place in a remote home that few people outside of Bill Gates could possibly afford. Too many American horror films lately are set in homes of enormous wealth and I think that's an alienating trend. I don't know about you, but most of the people I know live pretty modestly - even the home owners I know don't live in anything close to being described as palatial. And judging by the economy, I think it's safe to say that most people are in the same boat. The characters in films like The Haunting of Molly Hartley, The Unborn, The Uninvited, and The Last House on the Left, however, all seem to be living awfully prosperous lives. Even the recent Friday the 13th remake had one of its characters putting his buddies up for the weekend at his rich family's pad. And the upcoming killer kid flick Orphan features a family living in an impossibly gorgeous home as well. It's become a real distraction to me so I appreciated seeing a more financially strapped American family represented in The Haunting in Connecticut. Obviously big, lavish homes are more cinematic to look at but what happened to the days of Halloween, Poltergeist, or A Nightmare on Elm Street where the characters in horror movies could be seen in homes and neighborhoods that looked like the ones you were familiar with? Horror ideally should hit us where we live, not be a window into a world that's out of our reach.

Maybe that's the saving grace of The Haunting in Connecticut being based on a 'true' story - even with its supernatural baggage, it can't run too far from reality.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Director Alex Proyas' latest genre foray doesn't follow the usual math, displaying an appreciable non-conformist streak. Maybe what's most unusual about Knowing is that Proyas affords his outlandish premise such serious consideration. There's no attempt to use irony to acknowledge or deflect the ludicrousness of the material. If anything, there's a real message that Proyas is preaching here. Whether you agree with that message or not is irrelevant - the fact that it evidences a point of view separates Knowing from what, say, Michael Bay might've done with this same story. Knowing feels personal in a way that big budget genre pieces seldom do.

The story that Knowing offers, passed through a succession of screenwriters and finally rewritten by the team of Stiles White and Juliet Snowden, is an equation for the End Times. When a time capsule filled with the drawings of elementary school children in the '50s is unearthed today, one entry falls into the hands of young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury), son to John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a MIT professor and Astrophysicist. Unlike all the other capsule entries, which are all drawings, this one is a series of seemingly unrelated numbers. When John believes that he's divined a startling purpose to these numbers, the movie becomes a race against time to stop the disastrous events that they predict.

Along the way, Proyas puts Cage's character in the middle of two spectacular disasters that, even with his foreknowledge, he can't avert. Most notable of the two being an airplane crashing on a crowded highway that's stunningly staged by Proyas and, in its fiery aftermath, belies Knowing's PG-13 rating. For a modern science fiction film, though, Knowing is far from being heavy on action or special effects and when such elements are employed here they don't seem there to spike the audiences' attention - they just seem there because the story demanded it. While Knowing is a visually stunning movie, Proyas doesn't go for cool shots that only serve to distract - he takes an assured, straight-forward approach that is unfashionable today. Even most dramas have more jittery camerawork than this does. Knowing seems cut from a cloth of an earlier age of filmmaking (even down to the wonderful score by Marco Beltrami, which harkens back to Bernard Herrmann).

In the later half of Knowing, as events escalate, the overriding question is as much how to accept the inevitable as to how to avert it. Do we choose our time or is the end already an immutable event? Is everything that happens in the universe part of an intelligent design or is it random occurrence? The threat of doomsday always looms in genre films - from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) to Armageddon (1998) - but no matter how dire the situation is, no matter how huge a rock is headed through space to pummel us, most are quick to end on the up note that our cards came up lucky and the Earth is safe again for another day. More brazen films, like Miracle Mile (1988) and The Rapture (1991) give their protagonists no recourse - except in their ideologies and in their dying dreams.

The beliefs in regards to our purpose on this planet and our place in the cosmic order that Knowing expresses are not universally shared - what beliefs are? - but even though they don't jibe with my personal philosophies, I appreciated the earnest presentation that Proyas gives them. Some might find the conclusion of Knowing too corny for words but putting my cynicism aside, I thought it was satisfying and true to itself. I think it's also true that any other resolution wouldn't have gone through in a movie of this size (reported budget: $50 million). But what some might perceive as a compromise feels like a genuine nod to spirituality to me. The epiphanies of the final stretch of Knowing would be come across as unbearable if they weren't played with the proper sincerity - and Proyas is successful in making a film with a certain set of convictions that is able to bear the merits of speculative entertainment rather than propoganda.

I don't know what kind of audience Knowing will find but I think it's a genre film worth attention and a confirmation of Proyas as director who possesses his own uncommon knowledge of how to avoid artistic catastrophes.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

2009: Year Of the Tire Iron

If the kick-ass trailer for the remake of 1983's House on Sorority Row is a fair indication of the movie's quality, then 2009 will be the year the tire iron will become the weapon that slasher fans can't stop talking about. It's the new machete!

Seriously, though, I'm shocked at how promising this looks. I understand that to some it might look like a formula slasher picture, not worth getting excited over. But if you're the type of person who gets excited about slasher films in the first place, then this trailer is more than likely going to give you a new reason to live. I didn't expect that the remake of House on Sorority Row would look capable of blowing the remakes of My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th out of the water but I think we've got a real contender on our hands. The only thing that could tank my enthusiasm is if it wasn't R. PG-13 is fine for some projects but slasher films should always be R, otherwise they're a waste of time. And in the eyes of this old-school slasher fanatic, this looks like anything but a waste of time.

SORORITY ROW trailer in HD

Monday, March 16, 2009

The Last House on The Left (2009)

There's something undeniably odd in seeing the most notorious horror films of the '70s - films that were once controversial staples of drive-ins and grindhouse theaters - brought back decades later as slick entertainment for the multiplexes. It's difficult for horror to be transgressive when films that were once examples of entertainment going beyond the pale are now regarded as venerable brands to be exploited and I belive Last House on the Left is hands-down the strangest choice of a remake so far. Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween...while I questioned the wisdom in trying to give any of these films a contemporary make-over, at least I could understand the commercial potential in each case. If you want to immediately have an audience for your zombie film, your slasher film, or your survivalist horror film...those titles are the ones you'd want to go after. Last House, however, is such an ugly tale that I have to wonder why Wes Craven and his fellow producers thought that the world was clamoring to see an updated tale of rape and revenge with better production values. You know, was this really the kind of thrill ride that was worth recreating? It was a milestone for its time, yes, but does the audience of 2009 need their own version? Based on the new film and its initial box office reception, I guess the answer is 'kind of'.

I'll be explictly discussing the ending of this film later in this review so if that's something you care to avoid, you should stop reading after this paragraph. The short answer for me on Last House '09 is that it was generally about as good as a remake of Craven's classic could be. It doesn't do much to try and improve on what Craven and Sean Cunningham did (except for making the film's tone more consistent - there's no moments of awkward comic relief here), it just tells the same age-old story with minor alterations (courtesy of writer Carl Ellsworth). A pair of girls still run afoul of heinous criminals, they're still cruelly violated, and although one girl lives through this ordeal where her character did not in the '72 version, the gang of dirtbags still unknowingly seek refuge in the household of the girl's parents and by the end of the night, the truth of their deeds is out and a vicious payback is served. It's a storyline that's hard to fuck up as long as it's played with conviction and director Dennis Iliadis and his cast don't disappoint on that count.

Among the cast of Last House '09, Garret Dillahunt is a real standout as the despicable Krug. The original film's David Hess left a lasting impression as a scumbag for the ages but Dillahunt is a memorable Krug in his own right. All the performances here are strong and this is easily the best ensemble cast for a horror film in some time - definitely since Frank Darabont's adaptation of The Mist (2007). As the daughter who survives Krug and co.'s abuse, Sara Paxton is very good, showing a sense of resiliency even when she's been as degraded by her attackers as she can get. There's been some consternation in fan circles about having this character live but I think for the purposes of this film it works and the dramatic way that Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn play their reactions to their daughter's condition and their urgent need not just to avenge her violation but to protect her from further harm and safely get her medical attention adds a layer of drama and suspense missing from the original.

As a director, Iliadis goes in the opposite direction of Craven's raw approach. This is a much more polished production - befitting its $10 million budget - and I think that was a wise move. It'd be disingenuous to try and purposely recreate the grainy, guerrilla filmmaking vibe of the first film. In tandem with cinematographer Sharone Meir, Iliadis creates many strikingly pretty moments amid the nasty events that unfold. But when the violence comes in, it's full-on.

My main complaint with the new Last House as it moves into its second half and the gang of criminals receive their comeuppance one-by-one is that I thought there could've been more thought into how these characters are dispatched. I missed the sense of planning and preparation that went into the parent's revenge in the original film. Here, it just seems like a lot a flailing around as the parents get into prolonged struggles with the individual gang members and that isn't as impactful as seeing the parents showing some cunning. I also think that an opportunity to make this film more troubling and morally complicated was forfeited. The presence of Krug's teenaged son Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) offered a chance to have a character who wasn't evil and who committed no crime himself have to suffer for his inaction. Although Justin never does anything to harm Mari or her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac), I thought it would've been dramatic to have him be included in the parent's retribution - that the parents are so enraged to know that this character did nothing to intervene while their daughter was being raped (and while her friend was killed) that this would be enough to make them unload on him. To kill Justin in cold blood would be something that the Collingwood's would surely instantly regret, but it would be an act that was committed out of pure anger and instinct - just a gut impulse to cleanse the world of everyone who was involved in what was done to their daughter. I believe that should've been the last scene, rather than the microwave kill which is prominently featured in the film's ads (not that I don't appreciate a film closing on a shot of a head exploding!). To see Emma Collingwood suddenly shoot Justin point blank just as the audience thinks the movie's over as the surviving characters are all on their way to safety wouldn't be an act of revenge that everyone in the audience would agree on (and it might even be one that the father would've been surprised by) but I think that's an element this film needed - some moral ambiguity and a chance to question how far the audience believes these parents are allowed to go. It would've allowed the ending of the film to resonate, rather than just go out on a crowd-pleasing moment.

As is, this is well acted, well directed, but uncomplicated - making the parent's revenge out to be unambiguously gratifying. For what it is, though, it's good. I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to but if you have to see one movie this year where a young girl suffers a prolonged rape and the people responsible for this crime are made to pay the ultimate price for it, then Last House on the Left is second to none.

Friday, March 13, 2009

There's Something Wrong With Esther

I love killer kid movies (my long-standing favorite being 1993's The Good Son starring Macaulay Culkin) and the new trailer for Dark Castle's Orphan makes this upcoming film (due July 24th) look like a winner in that category. I had high hopes for Joshua (2007) but that one didn't do much for me. Orphan was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who's last film was 2005's House of Wax remake, also for Dark Castle.

I loved the job Collet-Serra did on House of Wax and although it underperformed at the box office in May '05, I think it's a better 'body count' film than either the new My Bloody Valentine or Friday the 13th (and it boasted a genuinely spectacular climax as its surviving characters fought to escape a literal house of wax as it was consumed by flames). Since House of Wax I've been eagerly waiting for Collet-Serra to follow up on his debut and, at first glance, it looks like Orphan will be worth the wait.

ORPHAN trailer in HD

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Return of True Horror

I love the trailer for Sam Raimi's upcoming supernatural thriller Drag Me To Hell (click here to see it). Besides the fact that visually it looks like classic Raimi, I like the fable-like vibe its story carries wherein a young bank employee (Alison Lohman) looking to prove to herself to her boss denies a loan extension to a wizened old lady and subsequently finds herself on the receiving end of a gypsy curse - destined to be dragged to hell by "the most feared of all demons."

I suspect, though, that some fans will take umbrage to the trailer's boast that this is "the return of true horror". One, because fans like to take umbrage at everything. And also because of Drag Me To Hell's PG-13 rating, some will believe it can't really be "true" horror. Why anyone would have that perception baffles me - aren't Carnival of Souls, Robert Wise's The Haunting, The Others, or The Sixth Sense much more deserving of being referred to as "true horror" than the likes of Hostel or Saw? But besides the issue of gore, I think what Drag Me To Hell is promising to bring back to the genre is the spirit of supernatural fun and that would be a welcome move to me. This has been described by Raimi and producer Robert Tapert as a "spook-a-blast" and judging by the sight of a scary old gypsy, demonic apparitions, a seance-gone-wrong, and a nighttime trip to a graveyard during a rainstorm, it looks like Drag Me To Hell looks to be stoked with tried and true horror elements.

Advanced word has been extremely positive so I hope that come May 29th, Raimi's return to horror will prove to be cause for celebration.

Friday, March 6, 2009

In advance, I expected that I'd be giving the Watchmen adaptation all kinds of leeway to please me. After all, everyone agrees that the book isn't the most adaptation-friendly material so for it even to get Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic partly right would seem like a really neat feat. But while the first sight of a black Warner Bros. logo against a yellow background had me feeling that I was in for something special, as it turns out whatever slack I was willing to cut director Zack Synder and co. evaporated awfully quick - like by about the twenty five minute mark. There's so much I disliked about this movie, it's hard to pinpoint what turned me off the most but ultimately I just never felt involved with anything happening on screen. It felt more like a comic book than the comic book itself, a work so artificial and stylized that it was impossible to see its characters as real. And in condensing the comic's sprawling storyline, Watchmen the movie becomes too cramped with incidents to have a natural flow to its narrative and because of that, nothing that happens ever has any weight to it - not even the threat of doomsday.

Among the bigger issues I had with the movie was its violence. I'm all for gratuitous cinematic bloodshed but the adolescent glee that Zack Synder shows here for bone-breaking and meat cleavers to the head only points to why he was the altogether wrong choice for this film. He gets off on the fight scenes (every hero here is some kind of kung fu master, by the way - which might make some viewers unfamiliar with the comic wonder if all of these costumed characters are supposed to have superpowers) and the gore - but whenever someone isn't being beaten, dismembered or scalded, there's a lack of conviction. Even worse, for all the violence in the film he's unable to portray any of it as being truly harrowing. Rorschach's origin, which should close on a true heart of darkness moment, instead ends with a splatter gag that belongs in a Friday the 13th movie (a damn good Friday the 13th movie, yes, but a Friday the 13th movie nonetheless). Synder even caps the climatic death of a major character with a gore punchline. Several reviewers have cited the reflective Dr. Manhattan on Mars sequence as proving that Synder has more up his sleeve than just an eye for stylized violence but outside of the fact that this sequence is recreated almost verbatim from the comic - leaving little room for Synder to contribute his own vision - I feel that sequence missed capturing the original life-affirming poetry of that celebrated issue. Like the rest of the film (save for Jackie Earle Haley's indelible performance as Rorschach and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's equally strong turn as The Comedian), it feels wooden.

And although one of Moore's key points with Watchmen was that these self-styled superheroes were actually pathetic (as Dr. Manhattan remarks at one point: "...friendly middle-aged men who like to dress up..."), Synder is unwilling to be totally true to that. It may be hip to love Watchmen now but it's always been a story about uncool people and I don't think Synder understands how to do uncool. Under Synder's direction, a character like Laurie Juspeczyk aka Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) is portrayed as being what her comic book counterpart can only imagine she is - slick, sexy, dangerous. As Moore wrote these characters, they didn't turn into conventional superheroes when they put their costumes on. Moore showed psychological acuity, revealing his characters to be ridiculous in how they used their super ID's to compensate for their (sometimes literal) shortcomings. One of the lines of the comic that always stuck with me was the observation of a policemen while Rorschach was being arrested that "the runt wears elevator shoes!" - it showed Rorschach's arrest to be a personal humiliation, tearing away his mystique as a fearsome vigilante. It's those moments that made the book and it's the absence of them that keeps the movie from coming to life.

Before seeing the movie, I thought everything about it looked terrific, that Synder clearly understood the book. But his take on the material is a limited one - the work of someone who is in love with the surface of Watchmen as a book that was racier and more violent than other comics of its era. While the graphic novel was a leap forward in maturity for the comic medium, the movie - for all its technical proficiency - is a case of arrested development.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Now that horror franchises are an even bigger deal than ever with series like Halloween and Friday the 13th drawing massive crowds and smashing box office records, I can't help but look back fondly on the days of the late '80s, early '90s when no one made horror sequels for anyone but the diehard fans. More often than not, they may have been making them badly but I liked the fact that films like Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth or Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare weren't made for anyone but the same group of gullible gorehounds who would turn out opening weekend to support any horror movie.

In reality, it was a lousy time for the genre but what I miss is the feeling that when you went to a horror movie back then, you were part of a loyal club who still cared about these films long after the horror boom of the '80s had faded out. You had to put up with the fact that the new films were invariably disappointing but your affection for the genre kept you coming back, hoping for a break. To an extent, that ratio of crap to quality is how it still is but at least horror is a thriving business these days whereas it often seemed in danger of extinction during the early '90s. The amount of genre films that have already hit theaters in just the first two months of '09 would've constituted an incredible windfall for an entire year in the early '90s when horror was at such a low ebb that you looked forward to a Freddy or Chucky film just because, well, at least it was something to see on the big screen. Lousy or not, these movies gave horror-starved fans something to check out and when a movie was halfway decent, like Hellraiser III, you could definitely take that as a win.

Today, horror fans scoff at this third Hellraiser film and, really, they scoffed at it plenty during its 1993 release but while this did mark the downturn of the franchise, it's notable as the most lavishly budgeted Hellraiser to date (while still being low budget), lending this entry a bigger 'Hollywood' feel than any other entry in the series.

Directed by Anthony Hickox, who had already made a minor name for himself in horror circles thanks to the flawed but entertaining likes of Waxwork and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Hellraiser III was his biggest movie to date. There was a lot of worry at the time that - given the tongue-in-cheek tone of his previous films - that Hickox wouldn't be able to carry on the atmosphere established in the first two Hellraisers by Clive Barker and Tony Randel. Ultimately that turned out to be true - even with Hellbound: Hellraiser II writer Peter Atkins returning to pen the Hell On Earth screenplay - but this still ranked as Hickox's most serious outing to date. Next to Waxwork and Sundown, at least, this was pretty bad-ass. Hickox went for a more commercial tone, though, delivering large scale action, snazzy (and then still-novel) morphing FX, and a few one-liners (some even coming from Cenobites themselves). It's all very goofy but yet because he seems to be having fun with the material rather than just making a mockery out of it, Hickox makes it work.

This was also the first Hellraiser to really exploit Pinhead's status as a horror superstar. Whereas in the first film he had just been the Lead Cenobite and in the second film they tried to humanize Pinhead and make Dr. Channard into the main villain, in Hell On Earth, it's finally Pinhead's movie all the way (this is also the first Hellraiser where the character is actually referred to as Pinhead in the movie itself). This remains Doug Bradley's best showcase in the role, with more dialogue and screentime than in any other Hellraiser. Sure, Pinhead is so long-winded he makes Freddy Krueger look like Teller of Penn & Teller but if you've got to have a brimstone boogeyman who'll talk your ear off, be glad it's Bradley who's charged with delivering lines like "There is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors through flesh!"

In tandem with Pinhead's promotion to scenery-chewing arch-villain, more than any of the Hellraisers before or since, Hellraiser III embraces a comic book sensibility. The new Cenobites trade in the nightmarishness of their predecessors for super power-like capabilities such as a DJ being transformed into a Cenobite able to hurl deadly CD's that slice their victims and a TV cameraman fused with his camera, using the extending lens embedded in his eye to penetrate people's skulls (of course they give this character one-liners like "Ready for your close-up?" and "That's a wrap!"). These are villains straight out of a comic and like any good gang of comic book villains, they go on a climatic rampage in the middle of the city with the police doing their best to slow them down. This is the Superman II moment for Hellraiser III. It's General Zod and his gang trashing downtown Metropolis. How you feel about Hellraiser III I guess comes down to how you feel about this scene. It'll either strike you as being ridiculous and you'll love it or it'll strike you as ridiculous and you'll hate it. I'm in the former camp, clearly. I just love seeing these Rent-A-Cenobites striding down the middle of a street like the winners of a Hellraiser Idol contest, using their gimmicky weapons to cause mayhem. I guarantee that if the Hellraiser franchise gets up and running again that a scene like this will never appear in any future installments. Even if the new movies are bad, they'll be bad in the boring way that movies tend to be bad these days in which they suck but they suck in a very grim, humorless way. If I've got to watch a bad Hellraiser movie, I'd rather it be one where a CD Head Cenobite is running loose in the streets.

I happily saw this twice in the theater, for all the reasons listed above. Plus, I've got to credit Hickox for casting Terry Farrell as investigative reporter Joey Summerskill. Great horror heroines are hard to find but Hickox found a winner with Farrell (and a bonus shout-out to co-star Paula Marshall, another favorite of mine who Hickox went on to cast in Warlock: The Armageddon and Full Eclipse). For me, Farrell is the Amy Steel of the Hellraiser series. Farrell went on to find even greater geek fame as a cast member of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine but I didn't care for seeing her with leopard spots on her temples or whatever they had going on there so it's always been about Hellraiser for me. I kept hoping for her to return to horror but so far it hasn't happened. At least Hickox himself is back in genre territory with the psychological thriller Knife Edge, due sometime this year. I expect that it might not be the best movie, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. After all, the bonds forged in Hell aren't easily forgotten.