In her third horror remake within as many years, Jaime King (My Bloody Valentine 3D, Mother’s Day) stars as Aubrey Bradimore, a crossword-loving sheriff’s deputy forced to work on Christmas Eve — in particular, the annual Santa parade. She lives in a dreary small town where nothing really happens, but she’s in luck: There’s a […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Painted Skin: The Resurrection
Five hundred years ago, a fox demon (Xun Zhou, Cloud Atlas) was imprisoned in the ice. Five hundred years later, she is freed, is nursed back to health, and wants to be human, yet has a heart hot enough to melt ice. This being an Asian epic fantasy, that doesn’t strike the other characters as […]
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The Expendables 2
The remainder isn’t bad, either; in fact, it’s more fun than the 2010 original, while remaining every bit as big and dumb. Barney (Sylvester Stallone), Christmas (Jason Statham, Safe) and the rest of the Expendables are hired by Church (Bruce Willis) to retrieve a case from a downed plane in Russia. After doing so, they […]
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Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch / Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers / Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
And if there weren’t, why do the sequels keep being re-released? The first four recently were — yet again, but with valid reason to upgrade and/or double-dip. Modest theatrical hits in 1988 and 1989, respectively, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers make Blu-ray debuts courtesy of […]
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It’s a TV-on-DVD fall frenzy!
The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Now that the third season has started, I guess we’ll know soon enough, but The Walking Dead must figure out a way to deliver a consistent season. It delivers awesome season openers and closers, but the ones in between can be maddening; they can take several episodes to […]
Posted inMusic
Best of Bond … James Bond: 50 Years — 50 Tracks
With Skyfall landing in theaters Nov. 9, this season is no different … except that Capitol Records’ Best of Bond … James Bond has something else to celebrate: five full decades of the screen franchise. Therefore, this set throws in another disc’s worth of music that make it worth replacing the last disc you bought. […]
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Come, the new Jerusalem
Preachers — the sophomore album from indie-rock outfit My Jerusalem, playing Thursday at The Conservatory — is as much indebted to a certain ’80s horror sequel as it is any musical influence. “I was at my usual coffee shop, and I saw this guy that looked like the creepy old guy from Poltergeist II. I […]
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Lupe Fiasco — Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1
Despite the album’s title, Lupe’s new effort is far from patriotic. Throughout, he speaks critically of America and the country’s past and present actions, or lack of action. Problems he raps about include world hunger, violence, poverty, questionable military action, child molestation, racism and more. He criticizes politicians, religious officials and even other rappers. The […]
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Little Shop of Horrors: The Director’s Cut
That’s one fun fact I learned, but the real draw of this release is the film’s Holy Grail: the 23-minute original ending in its entirety and in full-color — not the unfinished black-and-white version — and it’s Quite Something to See. As many Little Shop fans know, but thought they’d never view, the movie stayed […]
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Hostel / Hostel: Part II
From 2005, Hostel drops three collegians into Amsterdam for a debauched vacation of pot and poon, only to accidentally become victims in a bizarre business in which the wealthy pay big bucks to torture the kidnapped in an underground warehouse. Roth spares nothing, leaving viewers to cringe at every slice of the Achilles tendon, snipped […]