I'm a sucker for a good creature feature or monster movie, and some of the better ones have been coming from overseas lately, so you can imagine how interested I am in seeing STORAGE 24!
Synopsis: London is in chaos. A military cargo plane has crashed leaving its highly classified contents strewn across the city. Completely unaware London is in lockdown, Charlie (Noel Clarke) and Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), accompanied by best friends Mark (Colin O’Donoghue) and Nikki (Laura Haddock), are at Storage 24 dividing up their possessions after a recent break-up. Suddenly, the power goes off. Trapped in a dark maze of endless corridors, a mystery predator is hunting them one by one. In a place designed to keep things in, how do you get out?
The DVD and Blu-ray for STORAGE 24 will both be available on March 12th, and will be chock full o' extras including:
-- Feature Commentary -- Creature Development Featurette -- Production Design & Costume Featurette -- Music & Sound Design Featurette -- On Set Featurette -- Video Blogs -- A Day In the Life Of: Clarke & O’Donoghue -- Scene Commentaries -- Deleted Scenes -- Photo Gallery
Now let's give the trailer a quick look and see what we can see....
Despite being a modern "Alien" rip-off and using the "Prometheus scream" in the trailer, I'm pretty game to check out STORAGE 24, if only to get a better look at the film's mon-star. It's big, it's mean, and it looks like it can bite someone's head off without breaking a sweat! Sign me up!
Hey all! Just discovered a trailer for a new Horror/Comedy called "Detention." The first half of the trailer makes the movie look like a typical teen/high school comedy, and then people die! It actually looks pretty entertaining and I wouldn't mind giving it a look. Check out the trailer and see what you think:
That whole "Heath Ledger" joke caught me off guard and gave me a good laugh. ("What? Too soon?") In fact, it seems like this movie is going to have a lot of witty banter; I'm very curious about this one, and have added it to my "movies I need to see" list. (Yes I actually do have one of those.)
Next up is a trailer for an indie film called "Monster Brawl," a film where various legendary monsters battle it out in a wrestling ring to become the mightiest monster of all time. The lineup includes "Frankenstein," "Cyclops," "The Mummy," "Witch Bitch," "Swamp Gut," "Lady Vampire," "Zombie Man," and "Werewolf" and only one will survive this "fight of the living dead."
Hahahaha. "Monster Brawl" was an official selection of the Fantasia Film Festival this year and it looks totally ridiculous (holy shit! Jimmy Hart?!) but should be a fun watch. Visit the OFFICIAL SITE to learn more about the film and its mon-stars. There's no release date yet for this film, but it has been picked up for distribution so I'm thinking it'll get a release sometime in September or October.
Lastly, I need to get something off of my chest. "Super 8" has given me a craving to go back and revisit some of my favorite Spielbergian films from my childhood. I really wanted to watch "E.T." but I don't own it and NetFlix isn't streaming it at the moment (bastards!). So I opted for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" instead. I haven't seen this particular alien film in well over a decade, and it is surprising how much I didn't recall.
It's a great movie and Spielberg was at the top of his game when he wrote and filmed it. The film triggered my superhuman "nostaglia sense" and I felt like a kid again; it had me reminiscing about watching this film late one Summer night on The Disney Channel, long before it became cluttered with horrible "tweener" sitcoms.
However... after mulling it all over, I've come to a huge conclusion: The alien beings in this movie are complete dicks! (Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!)
"People of Earth..... F*CK YOU!"
First off, lets discuss how they first make their presence known to the scientific community in the film. The aliens come down and drop off a half-dozen World War II fighter planes, still in mint condition. Later, during the climax, they release all of their human captives, including the pilots of those six planes! While this is all well and good, you have to stop and consider this: The pilots have not aged; they've been missing for nearly forty years; everyone they knew is either old or dead; everything they knew is now either changed or gone.
These guys are going to have to adapt to (what they would consider) a more futuristic world with no family or friends to help them! (And that's even if they are allowed back into society; methinks the military would probably just keep them bottled up somewhere for vigorous questioning for the remainder of their lives.)
Secondly, along with giving (most likely) hundreds of people a bad sunburn, they also implant a sort of post-hypnotic suggestion in various folks, compelling them to come meet their eventual conquerors for a friendly chat at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. One of said folks is Richard Dreyfuss' character Roy Neary.
After his brief encounter with a U.F.O., Roy begins to have a near psychotic breakdown. He sees a certain mountainous shape in everything and tries to unlock the mystery behind it. He continuously creates a mountain-like shape out of everything and anything he can, whether it be shaving cream, modeling clay, or delicious mashed potatoes.
"This means something...... most likely divorce."
This causes him to act a wee bit crazy and it wrecks his entire life. He loses his job, his wife takes the kids and runs off (mainly because she's terrified), he destroys a good portion of his house to create a huge scale model of Devil's Tower, the neighbors think he's insane, and he seems pretty OK with it all once he discovers where Devil's Tower is.
He just picks up his stuff and drives off to Wyoming without a single thought, and risks life and limb to escape from military custody and witness the first contact between man and extraterrestrials. In the end, his reward for having his life on Earth completely destroyed, is to be chosen by his tormentors to go with them into outer space, where he is quite likely to be brutally (and frequently) anal-probed.
Finally, because they probably couldn't bear to leave Earth without giving us technologically inferior humans a final "f*ck you," the aliens totally snub the government's elite chosen crew of abductees. A group of personnel that we briefly see a few times throughout the film, were hand selected to go up to the stars and learn more about the aliens.
Their identities are taken, they are given a quiet moment of prayer, and then marched up to the mothership (with Richard Dreyfuss following gingerly along). The aliens approach the group of would-be galactic travelers, grab Richard Dreyfuss, and take off. ("Wait! Guys! You just unloaded about four dozen other kidnap victims, I think you have room for eight more people! Oh come on? Really?! You chose Richard Dreyfuss over US?! F*CK YOU ALIENS!")
And these are just the main indications that the superior race of beings that visits Earth in this film is made up of assholes. They also bait police officers into a "car chase," which ends with one cop driving off a cliff. (We never know what happens to this bit part character, so I'll assume he died in a fiery inferno of screaming metal.)
And they also kidnap a child and drive his mother as equally insane as Richard Dreyfuss. Do we, the people of Planet Earth get an apology for any of this, or even demand one? Hell no! They just mess with us, destroy lives and property, then wave goodbye. And we practically thank them for it! And for that, I guess we deserved to be on the receiving end of the antics of these visiting galactic fratboys.
Well that's my rant about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Its a classic, and a great film overall with all the right Spielbergian touches that made cinema of the 70's and 80's awesome. If you haven't seen it, or just haven't see it in a while, give it a watch. It is still widely available and currently streaming on NetFlix!
Check back tomorrow night for two new capsule reviews and enjoy the rest of this gorgeous Thursday!
As I've continued to work on my review for "Super 8" (coming soon I assure you!), I thought to myself, "Man, Spielberg sure likes his alien movies." Off the top of my head I recalled "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the remake of "War of the Worlds," plus he had aliens show up in both "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." And then I checked his IMDB page......
Films Spielberg has directed that somehow involve alien beings: 1964 - Firelight 1977 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1982 - E.T. - The Extraterrestrial 2001 - A.I. - Artificial Intelligence 2005 - War of the Worlds 2008 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Well nothing at all alarming there right? I mean the guy has done "Jurassic Park," "JAWS," "Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan," and an entire spectrum of films from nearly every genre. But then you look at the films he has produced / is producing, and the alarm bells start going off.
He's smiling because he's thinking of aliens and robots right at this very minute!
Films and TV series that Spielberg has produced, that somehow involve aliens:
1982 - E.T. - The Extraterrestrial
1987 - *batteries not included
1997 - Men in Black
2001 - Evolution
2001 - A.I. - Artificial Intelligence
2002 - Taken (one episode) 2002- Men In Black II
2007 - Transformers
2009 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2011 - Super 8
2011 - Terra Nova (Pilot episode)
2011 - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2011 - Cowboys and Aliens
2011 - Falling Skies (8 episodes)
2012 - Men in Black 3
And let's not forget the Spielberg-produced remake of "When Worlds Collide" that is coming out next year. No aliens, but humanity is about to be taken out by a rogue planet. However, there's a second, life-sustaining planet riding shotgun with it. Will some people (enough to repopulate) manage to make it to the other planet before Earth is eradicated?!
In any case, one really has to wonder.... what is Spielberg's sudden obsession with alien movies?!?!
There is only one answer: SPIELBERG IS AN ALIEN!
Also, Steven seems to have a spin-off obsession with robots now as well. Once again, allow me to list some films to prove this point:
Spielberg-directed robot movies:
1971 - Duel (I'm grasping here, but c'mon, it has a killer truck! It could be a robot in disguise...)
2001 - A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2002 - Minority Report (spider-bots!)
2005 - War of the Worlds (the alien "tripods")
2013 - Robopocalypse
Spielberg-produced robot movies:
1987 - *batteries not included
2001 - A.I. - Artificial Intelligence
2007 - Transformers
2009 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2011 - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2011 - Real Steel (Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots: the Movie!)
2013 - Robopocalypse
Ok yeah I may be really reaching here, but there's no denying that The Spielberg has suddenly gotten a huge hardon for robots and aliens lately. I'm not really complaining though because I too enjoy robot and alien cinema (which this has been a landmark year for), but I have to admit that its a bit eerie that he's directing and producing so many in so short a time. If you're worried about aliens, then continue to watch the skies. Me? I'm going to watch The Spielberg instead.....
