Corporate Vampires in "Daybreakers"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 08 January 2010 16:17

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Written and directed by: Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig
With: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill, Isabel Lucas

Australian writer-directors and special-effects artists Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig's gore-soaked shocker Daybreakers unfolds in a dystopian future where vampires constitute 95% of the world’s population and most humans are imprisoned in factory farms, systematically drained of blood and discarded when their veins run dry.

Despite the futuristic setting, the vampires are strictly old-school: There are no sparkly-skinned, undead heartthrobs mooning after moody teen girls, and plenty of predatory monsters who like nothing more than sinking their fangs into a nice, warm throat. But while the film’s future setting is sleek and filled with clever details, the story, in which one good vampire teams up with a scrappy band of free-range humans to fight the power, is timeworn and predictable. And while the copious gore will appeal to hardcore horror buffs, it will alienate more mainstream audiences, along with many sci-fi fans who might otherwise warm to the movie’s thinly veiled digs at money-grubbing business moguls and authority figures.

The year is 2019, ten years after a plague swept the world and left it swarming with vampires. Ruthless businessmen like Charles Bromley (Neill) have made a killing supplying blood to the thirsty masses. But demand is rapidly exceeding supply, and a growing population of “subsiders” — blood-deprived vamps who’ve degenerated into scaly, winged beasts — is scaring the hell out of civilized vampire citizens. Amid growing civil unrest, principled scientist Edward Dalton (Hawke) abandons his research into concocting an artificial blood substitute for Bromley’s corporation to join the human resistance, a small band of survivors whose leader (Dafoe) has proof that vampirism can be cured. But can it be cured before the last living human is caught and sucked dry by increasingly desperate vampires?

The nightmarish future against which the Spierigs (whose only previous credit is the goofy 2003 zombie comedy Undead) set their story is fully and effectively imagined, from the grey, glass-and-steel architecture that reflects the cold soullessness of vampires, to the coffee bars where cups of java come with blood instead of milk and the corporate blood farm where naked, comatose people are suspended in metal frames and connected to tubes that extract their blood with dehumanizing efficiency. The police round up homeless vampires like stray dogs, the military is filled with adrenaline-fueled thugs, and ordinary vampires, hooked on their creature comforts, are easily persuaded to set aside whatever consciences they have in the name of security.

But the story under this rich surface is simplistic and derivative; its influences including Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, written in 1954 and filmed three times to date; the 2006 movie Ultraviolet; and even Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis, the pioneering sci-fi allegory about rapacious businessmen, a ruthlessly exploited underclass and the complacent general population that would rather not know the human price of their comfy lives.

The Spierigs assembled a strong cast, but even their best efforts — notably by Neill, whose Bromley is the ultimate vampire squid, tentacles wrapped around the face of this scary new world — can’t pump any real life into the bloodless script.

 For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com

Sizzling Ballroom Revue "Burn the Floor"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 05 January 2010 16:31

Written by Lucy Komisar

Created & Directed by Jason Gilkison
With: Henry Byalkov, Sasha Farber, Anya Garnis, Patrick Helm, Pasha Kovalev, Peta Murgatroyd, Trent Whiddon,  Damian Whitewood, Robin Windsor

It starts with a light ball setting off two figures; she is in black underwear. Hot Latin drums keep a frenetic double time. Then for a change of pace comes a Lady in white silk and a man in a tux; they waltz and execute twirls through the air in a way you hadn’t seen. After that, 20s/30s jazz dancing; the guy wears a fedora and vest. A sailor and his partner jitterbug. A woman in pink is squired by a guy in a black leather jacket. (Costumes are by Janet Hine.)

The choreography is sophisticated and sensual. Some of the sounds are swing, some are brassy. The production is gorgeous. In one subtle exciting number, the female dancer is blindfolded and she dances with six men, then walks away seductively. A tango is campy.

Burn the Floor is an exciting review of ballroom dancing through the decades, from Latin and Afro-Brazilian rhythms to modern jazzy idioms. Through you never saw any of this in a real ballroom. The numbers, the wild fast movements, come out of competitive dancing that these couples have done all over the world. Their origins span the globe from Australia to Russia and Latin America.

The group has been touring since 1999 to over 160 cities in 30 countries. Some met on the competition circuit. They are ballet trained and do ballroom with a contemporary edge. The duos change. Most of the dancers are 18 or 19 years old. It’s a high energy craft. They insist it's not jazz dancing, though in some cases I’d beg to differ.

In any event, it’s a thrilling genre, not to be missed for those who love the dance.

Burn the Floor
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
New York, NY
212-239-6200
Opened August 2, 2009, closes January 10, 2010

For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com

 

Kevin's Digital Week 7 -A Genesis to Summer

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 31 December 2009 11:37

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-ray of the Week
(500) Days of Summer
(Fox)
Although debut director Marc Webb tries hard to make (500) Days of Summer as unwatchable as Away We Go, he’s blessed with much better actors in the leads, and consequently the movie doesn’t grate on the nerves. Rather, it gets by on the charm of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who make an attractive couple worth rooting for even though they are doomed from the start. Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt compensate for the too-cutesy quirkiness that Webb and writers Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter cram their movie with, including an embarrassing song-and-dance number, unnecessary clips from The Graduate and a “clever” ending that should have been cut from the script’s first draft.

And jabs at the greeting-card industry are like shooting fish in a barrel. But the stars nearly make one forget all that’s wrong with (500) Days of Summer, which has been given a good though not stellar visual treatment on Blu-ray. Among the usual extras (commentary, deleted scenes, a music video, audition tapes), there’s a Blu-ray exclusive, a half-hour making-of featurette.

DVD of the Week
Genesis: The Movie Box 1981-2007
(Rhino)
The fifth and final indispensible Genesis boxed set—following three sets covering the band’s studio albums and a fourth comprising the live albums—contains DVDs of four concert tours, all featuring Phil Collins as the lead singer: 1981-2, 1983-4, 1986-7 and 1992.and The Mama Tour have never been released on DVD before, while Live at Wembley Stadium and The Way We Walk are re-releases. Although the video quality of the older films is not completely up to snuff, the audio has once again been remixed by Nick Davis into DTS 5.1 sound, which are as revelatory as those done for the other sets. In addition to the four concerts, the fifth disc contains a new edit of the band’s Behind the Music episode, which originally aired on VH-1 in 1999.

There are apparently no full concerts of the Peter Gabriel-led band to be released, which is a shame: still, at least until Collins began overdoing the shtick during 86-87’s Invisible Touch tour, Genesis was a formidable live band, and these concert flicks prove that. Bonuses include bonus Three Sides Live audio-only tracks and behind-the-scenes documentaries from The Mama Tour and Wembley.