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Deal Me Some Death, Baby: Kate Beckinsale does even more of what she does in UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING.

The UNDERWORLD franchise’s relentless, death-dealing vampire, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), goes under ice at the beginning of UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING, and so does most of the series’ political intrigue, swapping out the power struggles from the previous entries in favor of even more chases, gunplay, and explosions — lots and lots of explosions. Awakened into a (nominally) future world where humanity has decimated the vampire covens and their natural enemy, the werewolf-like lycans, Selene finds herself protecting the fate of the young vamp/lycan hybrid Eve (India Eisley), and on the run from a sinister pharmaceutical corporation, all in glorious 3D. You will believe a metal-barbed whip can poke your eye out.

Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons set their logic centers to neutral and debate what’s fun (i.e. Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight leather) and what’s not (plot) in this fourth installment, and whether there’s any future to UNDERWORLD’s future. They also discuss their gut-reactions to the latest crop of genre trailers, and Steve talks a little about a safe-driving film with a surprising production credit. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

GOING TO SEE THE WICKER TREE THIS WEEKEND?
TWEET YOUR #WalkAwayReview TO @cfqspotlight
(Please don’t tweet during the movie!)

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Ghost Protocol in the Machine: Tom Cruise (falling) shows Michael Nyqvist (demonstrating the wrong way to order at the McDonald's drive-thru) how to keep things moving in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL.

What says Christmas Spirit more than nuclear holocaust, life-or-death chases in an automated car park, and scaling the world’s tallest building? Maybe that’s why Paramount scheduled the release of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL for this most festive of seasons. Or maybe it’s that it’s just plain fun. Stripping the IM force down to leader Tom Cruise — aided and abetted by Paula Patton, Simon Pegg and new recruit Jeremy Renner — and paring the story down to a struggle to prevent a megalomaniacal terrorist from triggering WWIII,  the film (under the direction of animation vet Brad Bird, here making his live-action debut) unpacks some of the baggage accrued in the previous installments to become a lighter, wittier exercise in epic action.

Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons discuss their reaction to all the chaos, exploring how director Bird fares in his first foray in the tangible world, considering Tom Cruise’s future in the franchise and evaluating whether the IMAX format makes the Impossible Missions seem even… uh… impossibler.

Also: Larry delivers his verdict on THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and Steve gives his reaction to the THE DARK KNIGHT RISES prologue screened at MI’s IMAX venues.

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A Justified War: Robert Downey Jr. (right) faces down Jared Harris in SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS.

Abandon all propriety, ye who enter here. Once again, under the direction of Guy Ritchie and as embodied by Robert Downey Jr, the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes shakes off his tweedy cobwebs and gets down, dirty, and flat-out physical in SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS. Centered around the inevitable confrontation between Holmes and the formidable criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) — with world-wide stakes — the film takes the consulting detective and his steadfast friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law), plus Noomi Rapace as a self-reliant gypsy, on an epic tale of murder, conspiracy, and life-or-death chess games.

Come join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they weigh the merits and demerits of this further retooling of a literary classic. Also: Dan delivers his opinion on the new documentary, CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

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The Great Bird Has Landed: Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett in a candid moment from TREK NATION.

A son goes in search of the father he never quite knew, and the CFQ crew gets introspective enough to take a nostalgic trip back to explore one of the formative influences on their sense of wonder, Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK.

Come join our special guest, theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead, as he joins Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they discuss TREK NATION, the documentary by Roddenberry’s son, Eugene, that delves not only into the landmark show, its follow-ups, and its eternal fandom, but also the man behind the trek, his strengths and his flaws. Lasting influences will be identified, favorite episodes will be discussed, lives will be lived long, and prosperity will be… uh… prospered.

Also: What’s coming in theaters.

Guaranteed: 100% “Keep on Trekkin’” Free.

Continue reading »]]> 2011: Definitely a good year for aliens. They waylaid a couple of fanboys, staged a showdown with cowboys, wrecked a tween’s film project, invaded LA, twice (must be the universal lure of In-N-Out Burger) — yessir, if you had more than four limbs and a palate for human flesh, you had a home in theaters over the past twelve months.

But the extraterrestrial infestation wasn’t really the big news in genre film for 2011. With an open couple of weeks before the final onslaught of major science-fiction, fantasy, and horror releases, Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons decided to look back over the year and pick out their favorites in ten categories*, including Best Performance, Best Use of 3D, and Best Film, among others. The selection they’ve come up with may well surprise you. (Hint: A certain film featuring big-ass robots does better than expected.)

Click on the player to hear the show.

*And yes, we acknowledge that this is a provisional list, given that such titles as TINTIN, THE DARKEST HOUR, AND MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL have yet to screen.

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Untitled (Slide) (2011)

I’m a lucky guy. I’ve wanted a reason to break out of my cramped, unkempt studio and check out Carsten Höller: Experience, the new exhibit at the New Museum that provides a comprehensive survey of the German-born artist known for his immersive, sensory-confounding — and sometimes adrenaline-pumping — installations, and along comes Air France to sponsor my coverage.

And why not? Not only is Air France the gateway to Paris, New York’s only equal as a cultural capital (I’m not saying which city is actually better, but only one of them has original Picassos and Shake Shack), but the airline tends to express the romantic thrill of travelling to their home turf (yeah, there may be grungy areas in France, but I can’t think of any, offhand) by coming up with imagery like this:

Which is just a lovely way of expressing the feeling through pure kinetics.

Giant Triple Mushrooms (2010)

Interestingly, Carsten Höller is himself no stranger to employing kinetics as part of his toolset for provoking intense, and frequently visceral, responses from his viewers. Having left a career in science in the early 90′s, Höller has translated his clinical background into works that range from the grandly whimsical — the lobby of the New Museum boasts a garden of oversized mushrooms that Lewis Carroll would have felt right at home in — to the powerfully immersive. “Viewers” rarely remain passive observers in the artist’s efforts: Included in the exhibit are such works as Experience Corridor, a series of rooms containing strange, sensory experiments (most curious: The Pinocchio Effect, in which strategic application of a medical vibrator convinces one that one’s nose is growing); Giant Psycho Tank, a sensory deprivation pool; Mirror Carousel, in which the glistening replication of a stock, amusement park thrill-ride is paradoxically trimmed to a serene pace; and — the big draw for this exhibition — Untitled (Slide), a corkscrewing tube that briskly transports daring visitors from the museum’s fourth floor down to the second, landing them into the visual bombardment of a pulsing, Höller light installation.

The works have a singularly unique way of cutting through intellectual concerns to provoke pure, emotional responses — interesting for pieces that frequently present themselves as the products of an especially fanciful laboratory. I wanted to find out more about Höller’s motivations, so in addition to getting some interesting pics of the exhibit, I also spoke with associate curator Gary Carrion-Murayari. Click on the player to hear the discussion, and check out the link to the slide show below that

CHECK OUT FULL SLIDE & VIDEO SHOW
AT THE HUFFINGTON POST

BTW: I’m not likely to be shaken from my conviction that New York was, is, and forever will be the center of the cultural universe, but if anyone wants to check out what’s doing in Paris, hit up Air France, get yourself over there, and compile the evidence that’ll make me eat my words.

Continue reading »]]> The lunatics have taken over the Gotham, and fans of the Dark Knight are all asking, “Why didn’t this happen sooner?” Their patience has been paid off in BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, a new video game that takes the mayhem first encountered in BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM and spreads it out into Gotham City proper, to considerable praise (and probably some orgasmic moans) from gameplayers everywhere. We got a few minutes with a representative from game designer Rocksteady Studios to find out what motivated the new game’s broader canvas, and explore what happens when chaos reigns in the Caped Crusader’s home turf (as if it doesn’t always).

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Kids Strike Back: The cast of ATTACK THE BLOCK faces down an alien incursion.

You gotta love an alien invasion film where the aliens make the serious mistake of trying to invade some council estates (read, “projects”) in London and discover that the street-tough kids there are not going to yield the territory without racking up a body count. That’s the idea behind ATTACK THE BLOCK, Joe Cornish’s directorial debut that was exec produced by SHAUN OF THE DEAD’s Edgar Wright. It’s neatly pulled off with a surprising bit of depth, and worth checking out when it’s released on homevid on October 25th.

So a bunch of us were gathered in a room in New York Comic Con’s press warren, and got to throw questions indiscriminately (but incisively) at Joe. I managed to capture the session for this podcast.

Continue reading »]]> DC, Marvel, Dark Horse all claimed significant shares of turf at this year’s New York Comic Con, but only STAR WARS staked out its own universe, incorporating numerous vendors within the confines of its expansive area (including Hallmark, for all your limited-edition Xmas ornament needs).

And there in the midst of it was Ashley Eckstein — a.k.a. Ahsoka Tano of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS — greeting fans and promoting Her Universe, her own clothing line designed to appeal to the geek girl in all of us (but mostly in geek girls). We got a few minutes to talk to her, check out the garments, and ponder some universal truths in the war of geekish sexes.

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Continue reading »]]> You never forget your first Roger Corman film. Mine was THE TERROR, which I admittedly was drawn to out of a combined curiosity over a film that was shot in two days on leftover sets, and that featured a young Jack Nicholson before he became THE Jack Nicholson. But whether it was the cheap-ass drive-in fare with unforgettable titles like ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS or the surprisingly trenchant horror-comedy cheapies like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS or the lush Poe adaptations that essentially defined Vincent Price for the balance of his career, or the first shots he gave to directors like Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich (TARGETS, yeah!) and Joe Dante, or BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, the STAR WARS knock-off that was more entertaining than any of the official prequels, the man has placed his indelible stamp in the minds of countless genre film fans.

Corman was at the con to sign autographs and promote the new, career-spanning documentary, CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL, and took a few minutes to talk with us.