THINGS TO CHECK OUT // QUICK TAKES
BY CASSADY DIXON
A couple of promising foreign films have recently been released. First is the Palme d’Or winner at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. It goes by the mouthful of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The trailer sure makes this one seem very cerebral and eerie, and a Terrence Malick influence can’t be too far off here somewhere. I’m hoping for a similar yet less battering-ram approach to life-and-death than the recent Enter the Void. Second is the blood-and-guts Korean orgy known as I Saw the Devil. Word is that asking if this film is extreme is like asking if the Pope shits in the woods, which befits a story about a man getting revenge on a serial killer. Still, it’s hard to ignore any new output from this country.
Over on the small screen, perhaps my cultural barometer is simply not picking up the signals, but I have hardly heard a word on the interwebs about the two new programs from the fine folks over at The Onion. Both IFC’s Onion News Network and Comedy Central’s Onion SportsDome are hilarious. Granted, it took me an episode or two to marry the idea of The Onion’s brand of extreme satire with a transition to the visual medium, but it works. Both shows skewer their subjects (straight news and sports reporting, respectively) with an expert attention to detail. It’s like watching those hilarious headlines come to life.
In the podcast world, The Film Vault offers a funny and informative hour a week for movie fans. Ostensibly the show is a time for its two hosts (Adam Carolla’s aw-shucks sidekick Bryan Bishop and Loveline’s caustic Anderson Cowen) to delve into their top five picks on everything from bad performances by good actors to chick flicks to worst remakes. Mixed in around that, however, is a great collection of guests (Doug Benson, Paul Scheer, and others), new movie reviews and general discussions about the state of all things cinema-related.
Finally, for the ol’ Netflix queue, if you’re a fan of so-bad-it’s-good fare, stockpile your favorite mind-inhibiting substance(s), or just get high on life and laugh your ass off at Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take. In the grand tradition of Showgirls and Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher, Craven has made a bad film that is still more tightly packed with bizarre surprises than your average safe bet that hits the theaters on any given Friday. Much fun to be had, and at my particular viewing party, owing to how minorities don’t always make out well in the horror genre, the movie spawned a possible name for a punk band: The Asian Guy Dies First in the trailer below: