To get this right out of the way: Shaft, it is not. Heck, it’s not even Shaft in Africa. But it’s good enough for a temporary kick, like a mild beer buzz. Per its trailer, “Cool Breeze is cold business.” To continue the Shaft math, Thalmus Rasulala (whose other blaxploitation forays included roles in — […]
trailer
Posted inArts & Culture
Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live
Secret World finds the Genesis founder fully entrenched in his world-music phase — still ongoing today — but still playing his solo hits, such as the never-not-excellent “Solsbury Hill” and the John Cusack’s boom box-co-opted “In Your Eyes,” which becomes an epic encore. All are sung with passion, with backup (and occasional duet duties, i.e. […]
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The Raid: Redemption
About to hit — and I do mean hit — Blu-ray and DVD after a limited but lauded theatrical release in April, the film carries the barest of plots. For 10 years, a much-feared mobster in a 15th-floor compound has ruled over a decrepit apartment building housing not only his narcotic enterprise, but also the dregs […]
Posted inMusic
The Last Challenge / The Hanging Tree
First, 1967’s The Last Challenge features the late Chad Everett (TV’s Medical Center) as Lot McGuire, a cocky quick draw who rolls into town, and Marshal Blaine (Glenn Ford, hangdog as ever) not only takes offense to that, but tries to run the jerk right back out. Coming between them is a saloon girl — […]
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No Mercy
Tired of living with corpses, police academy professor and top medical examiner Kang leaves to go start a new life with his daughter. That’s postponed a bit when a woman’s body is discovered washed up seaside, fully nude. All four of her limbs have been cut off, but remain there except for one arm missing […]
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Michael / Silver Tongues
Michael is no comedy, however, and refers to a balding, chubby, nerdy outcast who keeps a 10-year-old captive in his basement. Michael is more than a mere kidnapper: He’s a pedophile. The subject matter alone will keep many from giving the German-language film a try, but his most devilish acts of evil thankfully go unseen. […]
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Girls Gone Dead
In a case of having cake and eating it, too, one thoroughly repellent character refers to women as, among other things, “fish buckets,” “dumb twits” and “meat holes.” When he’s not referring to them as a whole, he zeroes in on certain parts of their anatomy, which he pegs as “piss flaps.” And yes, the […]
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A Three Stooges Celebration
That means they more or less hold the same contents — namely, four or five shorts (i.e. “Disorder in the Court” and “Sing a Song of Six Pants”) and many more of the seven-minute New Three Stooges cartoons from the mid-’60s, with live-action wraparound intros and outros that show how Moe and Larry had aged […]
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Total Recall: Mind-Bending Edition
Join him, won’t you? Before the Colin Farrell/Kate Beckinsale remake opens next week, take a return trip to the 1990 blockbuster with Lionsgate’s new “Mind-Bending Edition” on Blu-ray. And if you’ve never seen the sci-fi hit, then — to quote another character — “Get ready for a surprise!” (Oh, there are more classic lines to […]
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Marina Abramovi?: The Artist Is Present
Is it art? A fully nude woman suspended on a wall, perched on a bicycle seat. Is it art? A man lying on the floor with a skeleton reclining atop his naked body, perhaps as if his sexual partner. Is it art? A couple stands facing one another, nary a thread, and museum visitors must […]