NinetyForChill: The #Podcast - Three Decades of Michael Biehn

NinetyForChill.com: The #Podcast

Episode 87: 3 Decades of Michael Biehn (If only I could some how incorporate Eva's toe beans.).

Three Decades of Michael Biehn - The Insatiable, Timebomb, The Victim

September 27, 2022

Michael Biehn should be as highly regarded as great character actors like Bill Paxton, but for whatever reason, his work seems to be more difficult to find. The man's characters handles themselves better in James Cameron movies that Mr. Game Over Man, so he deserves a lot more respect. Cool Movies Darth is a fan, and is quick to rent any feature, regardless of budget, that Mr. Biehn has acted in. Thus, NinetyForChill's host revisited some of these rentals.

Allow me to get out of third-person. Happy Prof. Shurtleff of Illinois Central College? I (CM Darth) will try not to make so much light of violent death in this summation. This is my declaration of changing perspective. 

I did my damnedest to set up a multiple guest panel to discuss Kevin Smith's filmography. Wildfires in California kept one guest from being able to commit to a panel. A podcast regular's work schedule changed without any notification. Another past guest did their best to come through at the last minute, but life happens for other people. This was not the fall out that I needed after my short term therapy program had concluded.

Fortunately, I have three stacks of sub 100-minute movies that star the same actor. One stack is dedicated to Sean Bean. Another consists of Gary Daniels movies. The third is devoted to Michael Biehn.

There are also two extra movies in the Biehn stack, but one belongs to Ally's Accessories Shop on Etsy's Trash Feature Revue while the other only features Biehn in a smaller supporting role. One of the features that will be discussed has him as the third lead, so I did not want to feature anything lesser that that on this episode.

For this episode, I had seen all of the features...mostly. "Timebomb" is one I had never seen from start to finish. As for "The Insatiable" and "The Victim", it has probably been 10 years since I watched either of them. 10 years ago, my focus was on appreciating low budget movies since I had aspirations to make my own, "Main Event of the Dead" (If you have means of advancing the feature to a crowd-funding stage or if you would like a script treatment, send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com). Am I still as forgiving as I was then?

I only own one of these films, "The Insatiable". Vampire "drama" is something that I have been fascinated with since I saw "Interview with the Vampire". Any chance to see these monsters as human is one that I will take. After falling into "The Boondock Saints" fandom, there was a subconscious desire to help further the career of Sean Patrick Flannery. Since this "horror" movie billed Michael Biehn, how could this feature not be worthwhile.

And then comes the surprise of it being a comedy. ThinkFilm is notorious for misleading trailers and box art. I would have featured the audio of the video above to describe the film on this episode, but it was clearly edited to better sell the film by other fans of it.

NinetyForChill: The #Podcast: Clerks: Existential Crises for All

 NinetyForChill.com: The #Podcast

Episode 86: Clerks: Existential Crises for All (It takes a village, as long as it is not is a flyover state.).

Clerks: Existential Crises for All

September 20, 2022

Cool Movies Darth has been wanting to record a Kevin Smith themed podcast, but did not want to spoil “Clerks III” by inane conversation a week after its debut. Our host immediately recorded his review and crushed dreams after checking out this Fathom Event.

Allow me to get out of third-person. Happy Prof. Shurtleff of Illinois Central College? I (CM Darth) will try not to make so much light of violent death in this summation. This is my declaration of changing perspective. 

As I have established, I like to produce solo episodes between each one that features guests. Last week just happened to be the same week that "Clerk III" finally debuted. My immediate proposal for the next episode was to bring on some friends for a Kevin Smith-themed episode, but to have a guest on might spoil the feature a week after it was released. The film still needed to be addressed, so it was ideal to just take this one on my own.

All there is to truly complain about with this film is that Smith has yet to push the bounds of his ability to direct. Like John Carpenter, he is concerned with protecting his narrative. If only Smith was a special effects hound, just depending of mise en scene would be fine. Lets hope that the "Tusk" sequel will be even more body horror heavy.

With that said, maybe body horror is what makes the best sub 100-minute movies. I did just buy David Cronenberg's NEW "Crimes of the Future". He has provided me with the best options the past two years. Will he three-peat, or are there not enough special effects to provide eight minutes of closing credits?

My only other wish is that we would have had actual actors this time around instead of everyone else being 30 years older. The story is essentially that Randall Graves is making the original "Clerks". I agree that it should be a shot-by-shot remake that he is producing, but to tell the stories of 24 year-olds with 52 year-olds is a bit distracting. At least Graves's vision means Veronica would not be judged as harshly for the number 37.

This assessment may just be jealousy on my behalf. I have been trying to get people to commit to "Main Event of the Dead" the past 11 years. Why would not my hometown of Morton, Illinois back a creative mind? Where were all the "friends" I made from Next Generation Wrestling who will not get as big a break starring in a pro-wrestling zombie comedy?

Kevin Smith got his hometown to make his career. This is a love letter to Leonardo, New Jersey. My love letter to Morton is my review for the anime "Burn-Up W".

Deviant Art - DenisM79 Denis Medri

Follow me on Twitter @catbusruss. If you want to be on the show, contact me on Twitter or send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com. All we need is a theme, movie, director, or actor and a focus on sub 100-minute material. As long as the credits start before the 1:39:59 mark on the runtime bar, the movie qualifies.

90-Minute Netflix: Hotel Artemis for Dogs

 If only Myspace could be viewed in its original beauty. It would allow me to see how prolific I was in blogging when the dancers at Big Al's declared me the most intellectual man in Peoria.

Do I miss 2007 to 2009? It was a time of contentment, and being comfortable is not something that I seem to deal with well. The difference between now and then is that I was not worried about the future. Guess it could just be hope was prevalent. Surely if I take the occasional bump and just throw movie, trucker or college kid critique on the Internet, success and security was destined.

Lose the girlfriend by being the post-modern strip club Socrates (Chris Rock's "No Sex" is advise for for first-time visitors), your income is halved because of a truck stop scammers catch you working a double shift, best friend moves out and you move home to constant Fox News broadcasts and a mother who was already missing W, all hope would seem to be lost. Thank the gods for cats or the time between then and now would be a wash. Unfortunately for me, I kind of have their attitude, so needless to say, it would be a while till much got done to correct myself. Smartphones did not help matters.

Why open up the laptop when you can pull up the information on your phone? Needless to say, little time was spent on Internet browsers that encouraged me writing during downtime. Well, blogging was gone, but I did keep up writing movie reviews. The problem is not knowing anyone who would want to take the time after putting eight hours in at a call center to transcribe them.

And then you end up at the iHotel where the employees who were there from day one to hear "If Mr. Fox sees you using downtime to write or study, you would be fired." No bumps and no ranting. It almost makes not realizing that they had given you two weeks of vacation time a fair exchange to take a less stressful hotel job.

The lesson here is not to think about your past when you already nailed down your movie review's blog title. You are left with only having, "that hotel may have been stressful, but not as much as the one Jodie Foster was manning," as your "smooth" transition to one of 2018's attempt to capture Quentin Tarantino's too hip vibe, "Hotel Artemis."

Hotel Artemis

Two brothers' bank heist is hindered by no one knowing how to break into or open the safe. With the water riots consuming Los Angeles, the rich are just trying to make sure their ill-begotten goods are secure. This leads the brothers to decide to settle on whatever goods disgruntled errand runners are willing to part with, including a fountain pen full of canary diamonds that the younger brother decides to take with him despite the warning of its courier.

It must have been cursed because upon leaving, the riot cops find that they are a better target to engage leaving one member of the crew dead and the other three suffering from wounds, the little brother critically. Fortunately, despite having been retired, the elder brother has kept up his membership dues with the Hotel Artemis, LA's premiere criminal emergency room, so they should be able to get fixed up and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

Now Waikiki and Honolulu upon checking in, Waikiki finds out there may be too many variables to survive the night. His ex-flame Nice, the premier hitwomen in the world, is obviously on a job, but we do not know the target. It is never good to have a coked up arms dealer with a never sunny disposition around, and the son of the Wolfking of Los Angeles is locking the place down to ensure that his wounded dad will not be turned away.

Everest is a beefed up health care professional and guardian whose talents operates both ways, but if the Wolfking finds out Honolulu has his diamonds, the no weapon policy may not be enough to allow any of the nurse's patients to get out alive. The nurse is also trying to save the life of a cop does not help matters. All the house rules will be broken, but that is what was bound to happen when you only care for rule breakers.

With a list of real tag team and women's champions already documented, perhaps trying to find the "Reservoir Dogs" knock off each year should be my next project. I will have to get around to "Bad Times at the El Royale" but until then, Drew Pearce's directorial debut "Hotel Artemis" gets to at least claim firsties for the title.

Pearce's feature either had actors who did not want to have fun or a script that was too focused on mechanics to keep most viewers' interest. He had written "Iron Man 3" and "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation." Both movies are enjoyable, but the construction of the stories are off compared to their predecessors. When we get to the action sequences, it is hard to know what we should be focused on and the ending leaves us with a lot of questions to what actually happened in the climax. The credits end with an invitation to return to the Hotel and a thanks for staying, but I would need extra honors point to inspire me to need those answers.

If the actors were given some witty dialogue along the way, perhaps be allowed to improvise, this would be a rewarding watch. Unfortunately, it is too involved moving the film forward (Batista, Jodie Foster and Jeff Goldblum might be too much for an hour and a half), we do not get it. Definitely a waste of a fine cast with an exception to Charlie Day who is playing his "Always Sunny" character without any meme-able lines.

I told my girlfriend about "Hotel Artemis" being another attempt to capture Tarantino's major film debut, and she responded with "why can't they let Reservoir Dogs just be Reservoir Dogs?" A proper response would be, "at least it was not a remake," but Tarantino has made us want action movies about archetypes. As long as there is that want, we are going to keep getting repackaged versions.

"Hotel Artemis" wants to have a clever story, but fails to realize that everything needs to be clever to be something we could picture Harvey Keitel in. Otherwise, release it straight to DVD the same week as "Guardians" and give Batista top bill. There is a lesson in profit.

behance.net

NinetyForChill: The #Podcast - An Explict Podcast for Ralph Bashki's "Fritz the Cat"

 NinetyForChill.com: The #Podcast

Episode 85: An Explict Podcast for Ralph Bashki's "Fritz the Cat" (Featuring Gregory Carl's live reaction to NWA 74: Night 2).

An Explicit Podcast for ”Fritz the Cat”.

September 13, 2022

Gregory Carl blesses "NinetyForChill: The #Podcast" with his presence again to discuss Ralph Bashki's "Fritz the Cat", the "first" X-Rated animated feature and the most successful independent animated film of all time. This is a movie that discusses a lot of issues that are still extremely sensitive today in regards to race relations while being as explicit as narratively possible, It is a film that needs to be chatted about, but not around the kiddies.

Allow me to get out of third-person. Happy Prof. Shurtleff of Illinois Central College? I (CM Darth) will try not to make so much light of violent death in this summation. This is my declaration of changing perspective. 

It was a bit inconvenient that Gregory agreed to the scheduled Zoom meeting while forgetting it was the NWA's 74th anniversary weekend, but when we are discussing a film that should not be shown to kids, his language is forgivable. As a budget-strung wrestling fan, the updates were nice. If anything, this podcast could serve as an advertisement for Motorola phones. They hear everything. We spend the first 10 minutes of our conversation about wrestling based on the audio that I was hearing.

Because I suspect that not all of my listeners are wrestling fans, those 10 minutes are placed at the end of the episode. Trust me. There are cues telling you when the movie chatter ends.

If I recall correctly, Gregory suggested this feature as a podcast subject on the ""They Live". We Podcast with Gregory Carl" episode. It has been a film that I have always wanted to get around to, but the reputation still seemed a bit much. How can you sexualize cats? (I guess that says I am responsible cat owner/servant.) I knew that the creator of the comic, the legendary Robert Crumb, disowned the feature, but I did not know it was about race relation issues.

As a fan of "American Pop" and who is appreciative of "The Lord of the Rings" and "Fire and Ice", I was surprised and impressed to see Bashki tackle such topics, but is he the person that should be addressing them?

Of course the issues was, were there any black voices in animation to direct such a feature? I bring up that my father's favorite feature is "Putney Swope", a film directed by Robert Downey Sr. It addresses how white men just ignore the voice of African Americans, when in truth, they may have a better understanding about the struggles of the marginalized. Because of this, why do we sell to solely rich white people when there are plenty of middle and lesser classes who want to feel included?

But again, the director is a white man. Could that movie be made today? At least Mel Brooks had Richard Pryor to write "Blazing Saddles" with.

Follow me on Twitter @catbusruss. If you want to be on the show, contact me on Twitter or send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com. All we need is a theme, movie, director, or actor and a focus on sub 100-minute material. As long as the credits start before the 1:39:59 mark on the runtime bar, the movie qualifies.

Hellbinders: Made for Rental Gold

 I may have to return to just trying to locate the an image for the movie for the film "Hellbinders" since Darthmaul.net is a lousy site, but if this cool visage sold "The Phantom Menace," it should sell my movie review...right?

Looking back on the past month, I'm about two to four blogs short, and I've got a slow start on October. Wouldn't have been the case if the dive I stayed out in Brookefield for Shimmer weekend had WiFi.

Actually they did, but at an hourly-rate placed, I'd feel like a dork asking how to access it. I'd probably got the, it's channel 49 response. My cynicism would have led me to reply with some Banky quotes from "Chasing Amy." We can see where this rant is going.

The point is it would have allowed me to beat the AAW website to posting the results of their show with a more editorial fashion. Damn broadband, web surfers do not have to read anything anymore when you can just post a Youtube video that loads immediately. It is a culture that makes me wonder if ICC's newspaper still makes it to newsprint.

Will we get to the review? I suppose I better. How interesting can my tails about four days of drinking and being social in an attempt to overcome being cock blocked by a Berwyn chicks daddy issues? It is just a fleeting concept (back to the "Amy" wrap around).

The stories I tell because my life is a soccer game (a more tasking activity than raining down sulfur). There is not much scoring, but when it happens, you go nuts.

Lets get away from the pregame, and to the movie review - Hellbinders: Made for Rental Gold.

The Billy Drago school of acting presents a celebration of faux hawks, monks in brown hoodies and MS Comic Sans font. Welcome to "A 1000 Ways to Die: The Bumpers: The Movies."

It is filed under H with the title "Hellbinders."

Max (Ray "Darth Make Up" Parks) is a mercenary who leads his team into a battle with a satanic cult. What was supposed to be a police-funded eradication is complicated when his comrades souls are taken over by Onis that have escaped from the fallen cult members. The only reason Max can escape is that he is immune to demonic coherence. Will he survive long enough for us to find out how?

MoviesDB.co.uk

Fortunately, a ninja (the second black Power Ranger...the lion and the frog) and the 700 year old last Templar show up to lead him on the path to redemption and ketchup-covered pancakes (that is not cheap special effect slang).

"Hellbinders" is an awesome midnight movie. Superior than any Syfy original, but maintains the same charm. Digital bullets, no squibs or blanks, and something for every horror make up fan to enjoy. If it did not revel it it cheapness, this could have worked on even more levels.

The script does hinder the story a bit. It does try a little too much to include religious chaos. Good thing it uses comic book frames for every scene transition, so you do not have to give much attention to the plot's attempts to be clever.

There is some sly dialogue and the director(s) try their best to capture the action. If you are making a cheap movie, it's good to know how to use camera tricks. It compensates for hindrances likes only having one light to brighten the scene. The team knows how to make this no budget film presentable and it is B-movie gold.

Ridiculous script, hokey effects, and over-the-top performances; the only thing limiting "Hellbinders" replay value is a lack of nudity. This is how B-movies should be made. Limitations are known and accepted; and any wise audience can appreciate this film that has a genuine Darth Maul performance.

NinetyForChill: The Podcast - From Blunt to Bacon & ThePoeticCritic-Nighy Sandwich

NinetyForChill.com: The #Podcast

Episode 84: From Blunt to Bacon & ThePoeticCritic-Nighy Sandwich (Would you rather slam her between two slices of Ryan Reynolds?).

From Blunt to Bacon & ThePoeticCritic-Nighy Sandwich

September 6, 2022

This week's Ally's Accessories Shop Trash Feature Revue is the hard to find (per DVD.com) British comedy "Wild Target" starring Emily Blunt. X is still a tough letter to represent, so Cool Movies Darth decides to have some fun with three degrees of Kevin Bacon as he also watched "Pokemon: Detective Pikachu" and "R.I.P.D." As a bonus treat, between the first two film, we get 25 minutes with ThePoeticCritic and what has been featured on her Letterboxd. Long live Ringo Star and Barbara Bach.

Allow me to get out of third-person. Happy Prof. Shurtleff of Illinois Central College? I (CM Darth) will try not to make so much light of violent death in this summation. This is my declaration of changing perspective. 

Being the accountant for my retailer is taking its toll on me. It is great that Podbean's links do a great job sharing my podcast episodes after immediately publishing them. This gives me the leeway to not immediately write the blog post dedicated to them. But, by this point, you know me. I do not like displaying a lack of discipline.

On the flipside, purchasing an Apple Watch is helping with the physical body. Who the hell decided that a light calorie burning goal is 370? Are they selling a lot of watches to kids?

I will say, with the walkie talkie function on them, giving a brat one of these would be better than giving them a smartphone. Pervs will hack your child's tech either way. One less screen in a kid's hand is a good thing.

The watch has also kept me distracted a bit. Yesterday (9/7/22) was the 18th anniversary of Stacia Hardin's passing. It made dealing with it a little easier. I am getting some ink tomorrow to help further honor her legacy. Ironic since I am honoring her by serving one of my addictions, but she would not take these needles away.

I am trying to sound a bit cynical, but without Stacia driving me, I definitely have no clue of what I am doing with myself. If it was not for my attempts to impress her, would we even have "NinetyForChill: The #Podcast"?

Again, I am ruining my discipline as a writer. With all the AEW title changes, a blog post is definitely needed for that. My little head trip there should have been saved for that. But I will be ripping into CM Punk, so that would just be ancillary drama.

If you lose your discipline, all can go to hell. Just like it did for Bill Nighy in the charming British comedy "Wild Target". It is a silly name for the narrative, and nothing to noteworthy occurs, except for antagonistic Martin Freeman. This is a flick for those who love John Cusack's hitmen features. Everyone loves "Grosse Point Blank", so everyone can appreciate this tale.