The Product:
It's long been a maxim of the business. Want to get your start in film? Make a horror movie. It's the easiest genre to gain acceptance in, and has a built in fanbase ready to defend even the most mediocre efforts. Unlike a drama, or comedy, you don't need good acting or great scripting to succeed. Just get a semi-competent cast, toss in a few phony body parts and a couple of gallons of fake blood and you've got yourself some product. Even the direction and overall production design doesn't matter – aficionados dig the fear artifice more than the actual motion picture art. Obviously, there are a great many flaws in such a career rationale. A bad fright flick can doom you just as easily as a tepid thriller or below-average action effort – and believe it or not, as wiling as they are to accept you, horror fans will turn on you at the drop of a disaster (right, Tobe Hooper?). It'...Read the entire review

The Product:
Here's an early warning for all you genre types – this is not going to be a pretty or pleasant experience. In the world of handmade horror, something like Dark Reality really undermines your faith in fear. Overreaching in its ambitions, shoddy in its stylistic approach, and so sickeningly self-confident that you can practically see the creators' egos growing as the storyline struggles along, this is a perfect example of why people typically hate outsider cinema. Instead of taking the audience into consideration first, the filmmakers follow their own objectives from the outset, surround themselves with likeminded individuals, and then deliver something that only they can relate to. As a result, Dark Reality is so insular that it implodes, becoming meaningless to anyone other than those directly connected to its creation.

The Plot:
A killer is kidnappin...Read the entire review

The Product:
When it was released back in 1982, Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case represented a kind of landmark in genre cinema. It was clearly the last of a dying breed of exploitation entertainment, celebrating the sleazy excess of New York's 42nd Street while simultaneously referencing the grindhouse offerings of the past. But there was more to it than that. Said story of conjoined twins, separated at birth but linked psychically – and more important, psychotically – to each other, announced the crest of the slasher cinema wave. Since Halloween in 1978, and Friday the 13th a year later, fright films were balanced precariously on the edge of a knife…and an axe, and a cleaver, and a chainsaw. Humans were considered far more horrifying that the classic creatures who used to shiver our terror timbers. Basket Case brought back the monster, made it a viable memb...Read the entire review

The movie

Soccer is one of the world's mostpopular sports - possibly the most popular- and is knownaffectionately as "the beautiful game." Certainly it has aglobal presence both in terms of soccer clubs and in sheer numbers offans worldwide, and inspires both excitement and loyalty in its fans.The Beautiful Century attempts to capture that excitement,looking back over the 100 years since FIFA (the FederationInternationale de Football Association) was founded.

The documentary is broken into fourparts, each about 26 minutes long. "Origins" talks aboutthe formation of FIFA and how the game expanded across the globe;"The Champion's Tale" focuses on the FIFA World Cups from1930-2002; "Soccer Missionaries" takes a look at the rootsof the game and how i...Read the entire review

Background:

Roscoe arrived in Los Angeles in April of 1913. He had played the vaudevillecircuits on his own since he was 15 years old. Now, at age 26, he was readyto break into the movies. Bringing his portfolio of pictures and reviewswith him, he dressed up in his best white suit and set off to the KeystoneStudios. As the story goes, which is probably apocryphal, when Roscoe arrivedat the lot, no one stopped or questioned him so he wandered around theopen stages and buildings. Someone opened a door and stepped out, turnedto Roscoe and spit chewing tobacco juice on his new white pants. The mansaid "You, big boy, be here tomorrow morning at eight." Then walked backin. The man was Mack Sennett, head of the studio. Roscoe "Fatty"Arbuckle had broken into the movies, and who would turn out to be one ofthe great silent comedians.