To hell and back!
Drag Me To Hell [2009]
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long
Director: Sam Raimi
3.5/5

I've been anticipating this for a while. I was glad to see it getting strong reviews on it's release and it only made me more excited to see it.
The storyline is pretty straight forward: A young girl who works at a bank denies an ugly old woman an extension on her mortgage payment. Unfortunately for the young girl [who's name i don't remember, i think it was Kristine] the old woman is actually a witch....or something, and in a fit of anger, the old woman puts a curse on the girl for not helping her. The girl has 3 days before an evil spirit comes for her soul. She sets out to try and put an end to the curse, which in turn brings her face to face with a hooved demon, slimy corpse mouths rubbing on her face, flies up her nose and a whole lot of other fugly ass shit!

This turned out to be a lot funnier than i expected. It wasn't very scary unfortunately, but in typical Sam Raimi style, it was overly gross, silly and really enjoyable. I just can't believe how gross it was at times, lol! i was laughing so hard! You'll be cringing at a few scenes for sure.

One thing Sam is known for is his GREAT use of sound in his films, and this was FULL of them! He has a crazy imagination as well, some of the scenes were shot really well. The opening scenes before the credits were loud and visually very strong and the "curse" scene had some great camera work in it too. He has a really strong eye for dynamic direction, it's really enticing to the eyes.

I could recommend this to pretty much anyone, the balance of humor and horror would make it more appealing to a broader audience imo. You'll need to see it with a sense of humor though. If you're expecting a serious and slow burning dark horror film, you'll be disappointed. It's cartoony and over the top, and it makes no apologies for it, and that's what i liked about it. I also liked that they didn't cop out with the ending. It was a twist i THOUGHT i might see coming, but that didn't matter, i still liked the direction the final scene went in anyway.
I give credit to Alison Loham in this too, she took a very simple role and made her character really likeable. You actually gave a shit about her, and that doesn't happen a lot in horror films.

I'm tempted to give it a 4/5, and i think i will with another viewing. But for now, it's a 3.5.

See it!

Pod me!
I had a guest stint on a podcast which belongs to a friend of mine [Marcey] the other night. It's a loose discussion, just random babble about all things currently geek-tastic to us. Give it a listen at this link!

>>>>Marceyness Podcast: 21.7.09<<<<

lata.
xx

My POOR ears!

Artist: Brooke Hogan
Album: The Redemption
[2009]
0/5

Good LORD, where DO i start with THIS THING?

What an absolute shitty mess of an album. Her attempt at "DIS IS ME, STEP BACK HATAHS" attitude with the record is HUGELY pathetic beyond words. The album starts off like some sort of Christina Aguilera "Stripped" wannabe. I could think of nothing more uninteresting then Brooke Hogan telling me "her story" while using her wigga girl voice and doing West Side hand gestures. That's how lame this thing comes across.

The songs, well.......'Ruff Me Up' may as well just be 'Womanizer', there's hardly ANY differences between them. The stupidly titled 'Dear Mom' is some sort of synthy mid tempo piece of crap dedicated to her Mother's strength and love [coooorn!], and by the time you get to the END of this hideous record [which couldn't come quick enough, i assure you], it starts to sound like a whole bunch of Miley Cyrus ballads.

This girl is truly the most pathetic idiot twit alongside pop star wannabe HEIDIE MONGTAGE. Why do people produce songs for these dimwit bitches? The album wreaks of DESPERATION, there's NO originality in ANY of it and it's fake, forced and cheesy as hell. She's just another RICH DAUGHTER with NOTHING better to do with her time, so she creates a whole album dedicated to the DULL tabloid antics of her over tanned and fugly family. DOES SHE ACTUALLY THINK PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HER PROBLEMS? lmao!

It's outdated, it's bland, it's laughably written and pathetic in every way possible. Anybody who can listen to this and feel OK about it clearly has NO dignity. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, she goes and releases one of the most RIDICULOUS album covers to go along with this embarrassing mess of a record. I wondered WHY on Earth that album cover was chosen for this release? now i know why..............because the only way to represent this catastrophic attempt at cool is to give it a shit album cover to match the SHIT music content. See the cover HERE.

WORST album of 2009.

Brooke NOgan. end.

Titblade
Witchblade [2006]
The Complete Series
3.5/5

Excuse the main title, but seriously....if you guys saw this series, you'd have thought the exact same thing. This thing was tits central, and it was crotch central too, and ass central....and any other female body part central you can think of, lol. "Why?", you ask?......well, the studio who were responsible for it, specialize in a lot of over sexed anime. It's all very T&A and adult friendly. Does that take away from the actual story though? for me, no.

In case you don't know, Witchblade originally started as a comic book series in the mid 90's. I've got a few of them myself and they can be a decent read. The character of Witchblade [Sarah Pezinni] is one of the coolest chics i've ever seen in comics, and the entire concept of her armor being a living weapon on her body looks beautiful when drawn on paper [thanks to Michael Turner]. This anime however doesn't follow the comic storyline, it features a new character and a new location, Tokyo City. It does follow the basic premise of Witchblade though surrounding the armor and how it takes control of it's host like a parasite and forces the person to do it's work.

The storyline isn't overly complex, but it's interesting enough to keep you watching. The thing about anime tv shows that sometimes puts me off, is the fact that they run for around 24 episodes. And many of the times, anime can become a little overlong with that type of episodic format. This does suffer from it. It dragged a handful of times, and i did have to soldier on through those periods hoping the pacing got a bit better. Luckily it did. The times the series got good, it was surprisingly entertaining, and if it kept that pacing and intensity in the storyline throughout, it would have been pretty damn good.

The best part of the series was the relationship between the main character and her daughter. It was an unexpected aspect of the story that worked a lot more believably than i thought it would. And by the end of the series, it got surprisingly emotional. That Mother/Daughter theme runs through many of the other characters as well, in fact.........the entire theme throughout the whole show WAS around mothering. It was an interesting twist.

Is it for everyone?.....probably not. The over sexualized characters and fight scenes may put some people off if that sort of thing offends you. If you're like me though, and if you don't care about jiggly boobies and giant round female asses on screen a lot, then you'll just get used to seeing so much of it while watching the series and you'll just accept it and eventually become numb to it.
It has some pacing issues, and one VERY pointless "beach holiday" episode which really wasn't necessary. The last episode is a little anti climatic, but a decent enough finish to a series that had some really great moments. Overall, i'd recommend it.

The DVD set also comes with a great bonus disc that has a lot of Top Cow comics behind the scenes footage on it. Interviews with the artists and writers of the comic series, and some good stuff on how the anime series came about. That extra disc alone makes it's worth it for any diehard Witchblade fans.

Tit-on, Witchblade!