Here, it’s Lucy (Emily Browning, Sucker Punch), a college student so strapped for cash that she holds four jobs: working at a café, doing Xerox duties in an office, participating in a medical study that requires a balloon and tube to be fed down her throat, and blowing guys at a bar. A fifth gig […]
naked
Posted inArts & Culture
The Hidden Face
Drowning his sorrows in drink soon leads Adrián into the warm embrace of a button-cute waitress, Fabiana (Martina García), and they fall in love. All’s well again, but the police suspect something is up with Belen’s inexplicable vanishing act. Something is up in The Hidden Face, a thriller from Spain new to DVD on the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Cats / Hate for Hate
Proof is in two 1960s obscurities making their MOD DVD debut from Warner Archive, both from Italy: The Cats, which is not about cats, and Hate for Hate, which I did not. One of the most memorable lines in 1968’s The Cats — aka The Bastard — is delivered by Rita Hayworth, whose hot-mess-of-a-mother character […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Night Wolf / Hidden
Werewolves are hot right now, but you wouldn’t know it from Night Wolf, a howlingly average and predictable British entry that sadly marks the final film of Simon MacCorkindale, ’80s star of TV’s Manimal and the misbegotten Jaws 3-D. The plot plops a bunch of slackers in a dark and empty family farmhouse on the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Eagleheart: Season One
For Chris Elliott fans, the Adult Swim series is worth rejoicing over. Unlike other shows of the late-night Cartoon Network showcase, this one enjoys well-crafted scripts filled with jokes that come from decades of edgy, experimental comedy experience, and not bong hits. Ostensibly a parody of Walker, Texas Ranger and perhaps a bit Justified, the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Killing: The Complete First Season
That’s the question posed by the first season of AMC’s The Killing, and also one famously answered — and then infamously not — by its finale (an extended cut of which is on the three-disc Blu-ray set) that incited the Internet equivalent of a riot. Whereas so many viewers were angry, I was elated: Seriously, […]
Posted inMusic
Giving them hell
You’ve heard The All-American Rejects’ mythology before. Talented small-town Stillwater high schoolers’ album gets scooped from the trash by a record label intern: music videos, hit singles, major-label deals, high-grossing worldwide tours and dalliances with celebrities ensue. In short, all the stuff that constitutes the first half of an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music: […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Nurses Collection
Part of the label’s ongoing and hopefully never-ending “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” line, The Nurses Collection presents a quadruple feature of the sexy, soapy, seriocomic flicks on two DVDs: 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses, 1972’s Night Call Nurses, 1971’s Private Duty Nurses and 1973’s The Young Nurses. As you may have noticed, they’re not presented in […]
Posted inNews
Munn ho!: Third in a series
Maybe it’s because her new NBC sitcom finally premiered to indifference, but the Interwebs aren’t as obsessed over former Oklahoman turned actress/model/geek icon Olivia Munn as in weeks past. “Perfect Couples” appears far from perfect. (Even CFN intern Bucky gave up after 15 minutes.) Entertainment Weekly lauded that it’s “just kind of … there.” The […]
Posted inFood & Drink
White water
However, price alone won’t bring you back. Fortunately, as a general rule, the quality is exceptional. “I was talking to a retailer the other day, and we had to think for quite a while before we could name a bad wine from Washington state,” said Scott Witherby, a wine rep with Premium Brands. Witherby had […]