New Release Tuesday

This movie was filmed in Dallas so on occasion there would be a local news crew allowed to film on location and would show footage on the nightly news. The movie sounded and looked really bad but boy was my mind changed once I saw it in the theaters.  I went to the dollar theater several times to to watch this and enjoyed it the heck out of it.  To me this was the first action movie with such great satire and it had hard core violence on top of that.  This movie has never looked better and this is the unrated director's cut and the special features are aplenty too.  I remain cautiously optimistic about the reboot.   The highest of recommendations, creep.

 Boy, they don't waste time anymore on making movies of current events as this is the story of the 2009 hijacking of a U.S. cargo ship by Somali pirates.  From the always great director Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy) and some guy named Tom Hanks.  Looks good.

The first Machete was a fun movie made from a fake trailer and I expect the same here.  Director Robert Rodriguez knows his fan base and will give us a good time here.  Looking forward to the creative ways Machete offs guys.

Back in the day before the Titanic was discovered people thought the ship was still in one piece.  This is the story of that theory and bringing it to shore with a gazillion ping pong balls.

I never saw this creepy horror movie form the early 80s.  This is from Scream Factory so it will look and sound great.  Great cover on there!

A very thorough documentary on the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  A must watch for all horror fans.

Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Alamo!

Raiders of the Lost Ark will be at the Alamo tonight as part of their essential 100.  This is my first of many of these planned for the year.  So bring your hat and whip and we will see you there!
Alamo Drafthouse

Top 10 of 2013

I did not do this last year because I don't get to the theater much and studios release most of their best stuff at the end of the year now so I do not even watch some of these titles until months later.  I did not see Django Unchained until July!  Anyway all below are titles I have seen up until now and I can almost guarantee Inside Llewyn Davis will make this list at a later date. So behold the movies I’ve thought most highly of in the calendar year 2013.

Top 10:

The World's End

Mud

Gravity

Pain and Gain

Man of Steel

Fast 6

The Conjuring

Iron Man 3

Pacific Rim

Sound City

Honorable Mention:

Curse of Chucky

Thor: The Dark World

The Escape Plan

World War Z

Happy Birthday John Carpenter

Batman TV Show to DVD Finally!!!

Big news yesterday as there are reports all over that the 1960's Batman show with Adam West is finally getting released on DVD.  There is nothing official yet but this title has been stuck with legal rights issues for years but last year a toy line was finally approved so there was hope for the near future.  Stay tuned to this Bat channel for more details...

Archer Vice

Archer season 5 opened to its best ratings ever on Monday night for FX.  The show also went thru a reboot of sorts as the ISIS spy agency was shut down by the government so now the crew has turned into a drug cartel to sale all the drugs they have acquired thru the years.

The show will now shift tone from 60s/70s-era Bond inspired espionage to 1980s "Miami Vice"/"Scarface" style drug trafficking. Even so, it's the same show with the same characters and the same dark workplace comedy.  The already teased "Top Gun"-themed "Danger Zone" episode is scheduled to air on February 17th.  They also teased a good looking Smokey and the Bandit episode where Archer is dressed as The Bandit and Pam is The Snowman as they race around in a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am.  Looks like a fun season!

Rewind This!

Ah, the VCR.  This has to be one of the greatest inventions of all time.  For the first time ever you could watch anything (you had on tape) at any time and at home.    You could rent movies at a movie rental store, record them off TV, and could borrow a movie from the neighbors.  That was a lot sexier than going to a box at Walgreen’s or scrolling thru a menu on your TV.  

VHS has been on the comeback as guys (or movie snobs as we prefer) are hording any VCR they come across and are stock piling them in their attic.  They also shop at Thrift stores, used book stores, and flea markets to score as many VHS movies as possible.  Why, you ask?  Because even though DVD has thousands of titles available it is only about 2/3 of the titles that VHS produced over its life span, in the ballpark of DVD it has approximately 14,000 to VHS’s 25,000.   There is a ton of horror movies that have not been pressed on DVD yet and do not forget about Disney’s Song of the South. 

This is a great looking documentary that made the film circuit last year and got much positive praise behind it.  It starts with the history of VHS, the innovation it was, and how or why it is still hanging around today even though the format died years ago. Looks like a good watch.