Documentary ‘Card Subject To Change’ set for public screenings.

(New Jersey - May , 2010) -- Iron River Films LLC and 3 Count Promotions are proud to announce the public release of  the highly anticipated new feature length documentary film Card Subject To Change.

    The documentary Card Subject To Change will bring you deep inside the underground and extraordinary  world of Professional Wrestling. The film follows several wrestlers working on the local "independent circuit" of pro wrestling. It's been compared to the Minor Leagues of professional baseball, but "Indy Wrestling" is truly unlike any other business in history.

    Card Subject To Change, a fillm by Tim Disbrow, profiles the lives of some of wrestling's most compelling personalities. From a talented up-and-comers to legends who have changed the scope of the industry. They all come together and perform in VFW halls, high school gyms, and Elk's lodges across the country. Card Subject To Change also features interviews with some of the most legendary names in the history of wrestling and classic footage that has never been seen before.

Card Subject To Change Features:

“The Taskmaster” Kevin Sullivan
Rhett Titus
Trent Acid
Necro Butcher
Lacey Von Erich
Sabu
“Sensational” Sherri Martel
Percy Pringle III (fka WWE’s “Paul Bearer”)
“The Ugandan Giant” Kamala
“Superstar” Billy Graham
Terry Funk
Jim Cornette
Bobby “The Brain” Heenan
Kip Supp (fka WWE’s “Billy Gunn”)
Brian James (fka WWE’s “Roaddogg”)
Matt Hyson (fka WWE’s “Spike Dudley”)
+ Many More

The documentary is set to screen at several film festivals in the next month.

May 28, 2010 - DocMiami International Film Festival
    1:50pm - Doral Golf Resort & Spa - Miami, FL

June 5, 2010 - Lighthouse International Film Festival
    Time & Venue TBA - Long Beach Island, NJ

June 8, 2010 - Hoboken International Film Festival
     2:00pm - Cedar Lane Cinemas - Teaneck, NJ

"With it's eclectic blend of wrestling legends, fallen stars, future hopefuls, disillusioned dreamers, and one hardcore, backwoods philosopher, 'Card Subject To Change' is an absorbing look at the journey - both up and down -the pro-wrestling ladder of success."

                             - Mick Foley
                                    Pro Wrestling Legend

"Card Subject To Change is a rare backstage pass into the carnival world of the Independent pro-wrestling circuit. Bear witness to the sometimes seedy underbelly of this wonderful, albeit strange subculture."

                            - Mr. Ken Anderson
                                               Tna Wrestling Superstar

"Card Subject To Change is as real as REAL can be! The highs & lows of Independent Wrestling is felt big time in this movie! "

                            -  Taz
                                      TNA Wrestling Superstar

“Overall the 94 min. feature-length documentary is a perfect storm of music, interviews, and footage, imagery, not to mention, a bit of nostalgia. Disbrow’s piece is truly brilliant, a must see for anyone with even a passing interest in wrestling, or the wrestling world.”

                            - The Tower Newspaper
                                Kean University, New Jersey

For more information please visit www.CardSubjectToChange.com

Hey Scott,

Wondering which comic book storylines you would most likely to see animated (time constraints don’t matter). Top 5 DC stories, and if you feel like it Top 5 Marvel… You can throw in some Image/Indy stuff if you like as well.

Also what would you rank as your favorite animated movies produced thus far? (all companies)

I’m not much of a Marvel guy so I probably couldn’t even name 5 story arcs I’ve read, let alone 5 I’d want to see movies about.  I’d say maybe Marvels but that one’s already really cinematic and might not work as well.  I think the concept of an everyman living out his normal life surrounded by heroes would work well, though. 

For DC, I think Identity Crisis (DC Comics) would translate really well as long as it was done for grownups and not PG-rated like the other ones.  I’m currently reading the trades for 52 and that would be a hell of a TV series thus far, kind of like 24.  I also think the Great Darkness Saga would be a hell of a big space battle movie, although once you know who the big bad guy is it kind of takes away from the reveal.  Plus the Legion of Super-Heroes would need a lot of backstory.  Ditto for something like Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, which I really like as a fan of Dan Jurgens but can see where the idiotic plot and surprise villain reveal would turn people off.

So yeah, kind of a weird trend emerged this past summer, as we got counter-programming against the big action movies in the form of new zany comedies about pre-history. You could probably even throw Night at the Museum 2 into that as well, but that DVD isn't out yet so I have to take my tenuous connections where I can get them.

For now, we explore the great question that has baffled moviemakers since the beginnings of film: Are cavemen and dinosaurs funny?

Um, no.

Land of the Lost

I've seen this movie twice now (once in theaters, once on DVD) and I still have no earthly idea who this thing is supposed to be appealing to. Like, I know studio executives are hard-up enough for ideas that they'll remake any TV show in search of a buck at this point, but Land of the Lost? It's not like the original show was such a classic that cranking up the budget and adding Will Ferrell was going to guarantee box-office dynamite. And yet that seems to be exactly what was thought by the people who produced it.

Ferrell stars as Rick Marshall, author of books about time-warps and parallel universes, famous only for a disastrous appearance on the Today Show before falling into Subway-fueled obscurity again. And yet there apparently really is another dimension (or universe, I'm not really sure and I don't think the writers were either) that can be accessed with a "tachyon emitter". To show you how limited the material here is, the big gag is that it's basically a piece of junk powered by an IPod, which in turn plays showtunes. Really? Out of the millions of jokes that they could have gone for, it's a lazy showtunes joke? But Holly (Anna Friel, who has amazing comic timing on Pushing Daisies but is forced to play it straight here) believes in him enough to go with him to a gift shop in the middle of nowhere for reasons that are never adequately explained. The important thing is that they meet Will (Danny McBride, as usual stealing the movie out from under whoever is unlucky enough to cross his path) and accidentally journey to The Land of the Lost.

And hey, it wouldn't be a Land of the Lost movie without slavish devotion to Sleestaks and Chaka and the alien dudes, would it? Well actually, it would, because no one remembers the original show enough to give a shit! I'm all for nerdish preservation of the original ideals if it's a piece of pop culture that people actually care about, like Star Trek or the James Bond movies, but the presumed audience for this movie is 22 year old stoners, not anyone who actually grew up watching the show. The annoying monkey boy sidekick holds no nostalgia value for me and just becomes a drag on the actual comedy.

Anyway, the other main problem with the movie, as a movie and not just as a nostalgia piece, is that it never seems to gain any momentum or direction. Marshall's ongoing war of wits with Grumpy the T-Rex kind of hints at the sort of absurdist humor that might have worked well with a better movie, but just never goes anywhere substantial here. Sometimes Grumpy is a super-intelligent dinosaur, sometimes he's a dumb beast acting out aggression because of stomach pains. Ferrell and McBride show promise every time they're allowed to just take a situation and make up their own dialogue, but the movie keeps forcing them (and us) back into contrived plot situations working under the mistaken assumption that anyone really gives a crap about the plot. Basically they want it both ways: We're supposed to laugh at the antics of the two lead actors playing off the cheap nostalgia pieces, but we're also supposed to somehow buy into "Enik the Altrusian" and his horde of guys in lizard costumes as a serious threat to the universe. Really? Can't we just have given Ferrell and McBride the basic story beats and let them make up the rest as they went along?

Did I laugh? A few times, yeah. The mosquito gag is pretty funny, Marshall's battles with Grumpy hold some comic potential, and Matt Lauer steals the movie. But when Matt Lauer is the funniest thing in the movie, you've done something horribly wrong. There's a pair of 10 minute sketches with Danny McBride, one featuring a "behind the scenes" look at the life of a big actor and the other a fake tour of the shop in the movie, which are both funnier than anything in the entire movie. In fact, Will Ferrell being a jerk to McBride in the makeup trailer and the director deciding to digitally replace him rather than spend another week working with him is HILARIOUS. They should have done a movie about those two making this piece of crap. It would have been much funnier. I think the saddest thing is the commentary from director Brad Silberling, as he seems to be genuinely a fan of the original show and also under the strange impression that he has made a good and worthwhile piece of cinema. I'm all for taking pride in your work, but he's discussing his "extended director's cut" that will apparently be released soon (in the same alternate universe as the movie takes place in, I'd guess) and everything we can look forward to therein. I'm thinking that particular DVD ends up in the Land of the Lost, too.

Trivia note: In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Will Ferrell played a character named Marshall Willenholly as Kevin Smith's little tribute to the original show. They should have left it at that.

Year One

This is another similar case as Land of the Lost. There's a lot of funny ideas and a lot of talented people, but it just doesn't add up to anything worthwhile. OK, let's be more specific here, there's a lot of funny ideas in the TRAILER and once you've seen that, you've pretty much got all the big laughs of the movie nailed down. The concept is funny, the actors are funny and the director/writer is funny, so what went wrong here?

Year One acts as kind of a throwback to 80s comedies like History of the World Part One and Life of Brian, tracing the evolution of a pair of cavemen from the trees all the way to the dying days of Sodom, condensed into 97 minutes. Jack Black plays Jack Black and Michael Cera plays Michael Cera, so you basically know what you're getting before you even see the movie. But while the idea of cavemen living through the biblical past (but using modern speech) might be funny, the execution suffers from heavyhanded editing and a total lack of payoff for any of the big gags. In fact, you could probably best describe it as a series of mid-level SNL skits with no punchlines. For instance, early in the movie Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) discover the Tree of Knowledge, prompting Zed to eat the forbidden fruit and thus gain existential knowledge for the first time. Oh gets attacked by a giant snake while Zed ponders the numerous solutions available, and his death appears imminent, but they simply jump to the next scene without any of kind of resolution or joke there. It becomes a very frustrating pattern, as the movie sets up a series of gags with good potential, and then just leaves us hanging while moving onto the next half-baked idea. One of the best bits (that wasn't in the trailer) sees the adventuring duo meeting feuding brothers Cain and Abel (played by David Cross and a totally wasted Paul Rudd). There's a movie right there! Instead they go for the obvious joke (although to the credit of the screenplay, Cain gets a LOT of mileage out of his denial about his role in Abel's death later on) and then it's off to meet Abraham and his family, and then onto Sodom. Things slow down once we're in Sodom, which is another problem, because now we're expected to somehow care about the plot after 40 minutes of random set changes and wondering where the hell this thing is supposed to be going.

Even the stuff that could have been funny in a more subtle context gets sledgehammered over our heads. Zed is allowed to lay with Adam's daughter Lilith, who rebukes his advances because she's history's first lesbian. But instead of just dropping the hint and letting Black do the heavy lifting by being clueless, the movie instead has her come right out and say it, several times, until it's finally like "OK, we get it already!". That happens a lot with this movie. Most of them involve Oliver Pratt as a flamboyant high priest in Sodom who definitely enjoys the local culture. And we know this because he hits on Oh for about 30 minutes straight, including a brutally unfunny scene where Oh has to pour hot oil on Pratt's "hilarious" hairy chest. Finally after 90 minutes of a plot that goes nowhere and bizarre subplot about Zed being the "chosen one" (you'd think having eaten the Forbidden Fruit they'd go somewhere with that character arc, but no) they tack on a big action ending to wrap everything up, and it's like something out of a totally different movie.

Maybe if it was raunchier (as the Judd Apatow production credit seems to suggest it might originally been) or smarter it might have enough going for it to suggest a cult classic, but as it stands it's the worst kind of bad comedy: A boring one.

The winner this time: I guess Year One because at least it knows that it's a comedy and has a few more laughs than Land of the Lost (assuming you haven't seen the trailer), but neither one is worth much more than a rental. I'd say watch Life of Brian instead of Year One if you have the option.

Howdy,

From across the seas I bring you new Lowbrow goodness:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/110200-g.i.-joes-future-hangs-in-the-balance/

I'd titled it Transform and Rise Up: Rise of Cobra and the Future of the G.I. Joe Brand, but editorial whim rules all.

Hope ya dig it.

Indeed I did.  Although I still haven’t seen the movie. 

Did see Inglourious Basterds as my birthday present to myself, and loved the fuck out of it.  Christoph Waltz absolutely deserves the Best Actor award if he does win it, as everyone is predicting already.  He’s amazing and brings such overwhelming suspense to the screen every second that he’s on.  What I also liked, much like Pulp Fiction before I had seen it 100 times, is that I had no fucking idea where anything was going and every little “chapter” was an adventure in cinema.  Did anyone think that the drinking game was going to end up in the place that it did?  Or indeed the ending itself, which I went into totally unspoiled and thus it shocked me as intended.  It is a bit too long by a half an hour, but we know how much Tarantino loves his dialogue.  I’d call it more on par with Jackie Brown than Pulp Fiction, so it’s ****1/2 instead of *****, basically. 

Your cable company sure picked a bad time to drop WWE 24/7. They're doing a Wild West theme this month and one of the things they're showing is this "gem" that thankfully they dropped quickly. It makes the old TNT comedy bits look like gold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmCQT_y4MwA

I’m still a little sore over the split between 24/7 and myself, but enough people have e-mailed me this that I figured I should post it.  It really makes Fuji Vice look like brilliant modern cinema, doesn’t it?

The term "thriller" when it comes to movies is unfortunately a pretty meaningless distinction these days, especially since so few of them actually thrill. It's become kind of a catch-all phrase to cover stuff that isn't easily shoehorned into other genres, but it does make it easier to shoehorn together a pair of smaller reviews into one of my patented two-in-one DVD reviews, so there's that.

First up this week is Passengers, a movie which I had not even heard of before Sony was kind enough to send it my way on DVD. It's got Anne Hathaway in it and everything, too. Expecting nothing, I gave it a shot based on the interesting premise, and it ended up being a movie that actually made me angry at the end, and not in the good way.

Hathaway stars as Claire Summers, a vaguely-defined therapist of some sort who is called in to administer her brand of hard-hitting therapy (sample question: "And how does that make you feel?") after a plane crashes and kills everyone but a few survivors. All of whom seem surprisingly not the worse for wear because of it. In particular, the movie focused on the relationship between Claire and a survivor named Eric, played by Patrick Wilson (lately of the Watchmen movie and the far superior thriller Lakeview Terrace). Now right away the movie starts losing focus because the story seems to be about carefree "met death and laughed" Eric, who was a money-hungry yuppie but now sees What It All Means and gives up his lifestyle. That's a fine if not particularly original or thrilling premise, but as we progress and he continues hitting on Claire despite no chemistry between them, the movie also focuses on her therapy sessions with the other passengers, who begin mysteriously disappearing with lots of meaningful music and dark shadowy figures in the background. Claire suspects that there's some sort of airline coverup going on and begins hounding vaguely-defined airline suit Mr. Arkin (played with usual hard-ass menace by David Morse) because the survivors might have seen or heard an explosion or something before the plane crashed. Lemme tell ya, for a movie that's only 90 minutes long, this movie packs in more red herrings and questionable figures than your average episode of Lost even attempts. The questions begin piling up as the movie trudges towards the end: What is being covered up by the airline? Who is the strange un-named neighbor that's looking out for Claire? Is her mentor actually working for the airline, and why?

But, and here's why the movie made me so angry, NONE OF IT MATTERS. Because of course there's a giant twist to end the movie, which by the way is spoiled by the DVD cover anyway, that renders everything that preceded it into one big meaningless headtrip. Sometimes, if the twist is good enough and the movie is entertaining enough (ie, The Usual Suspects), a game-changing twist can enhance rather than wreck a movie experience, but in this case it just made me groan and ask another million questions starting with "Well, if that's the case, then why…" before giving up and ejecting the DVD. If there's one thing I hate, it's having my time wasted for 70 minutes only to be told "Ha ha, GOT YOU!" One M. Night Shymalan terrorizing the cinematic world is enough, thank you. I bet a good chunk of the people reading this could have guessed the shocking twist just by reading the setup, and indeed if that's you, then watching the rest of the boring movie to get there isn't worth it. None of the red herrings pay off, none of the characters have a particularly interesting arc, and the ending wasn't particularly satisfying. Apparently Sony buried this one to keep it from hurting the Oscar buzz for Hathaway's much better turn in Rachel Getting Married, and I can see why. (Rating: **)

On the other side, you've got Taken, which is a movie for those who feel that Jack Bauer has been getting too soft on the criminal element as of late. Imagine if you will if James Bond decided to retire at the end of the Cold War and become a bodyguard for Britney Spears, only to be forced out of retirement when his daughter is kidnapped by slave traders. There is no big twists here, no extraneous characters, no bullshit red herrings, just a pissed off Liam Neeson killing the shit out of bad people for 93 minutes. The involvement of Luc Besson was a real blessing here, as it felt like a throwback to action movies of years past and yet still fresh enough to score huge at the box office.

So as mentioned, the plot sees former agent / mercenary Bryan Mills trying to re-establish ties with his teenaged daughter (played by Maggie Grace of Lost, as she plays it very giggly and silly to really drive home the point), a spoiled rich girl who wants to go to Europe and follow U2 around on tour with her BFF. How can THAT go wrong? Bryan, being the worldly guy that he is, tries to persuade her with logic and reason, but of course all 17 year old girls know everything. Until they're kidnapped by Eastern Bloc slave traders, of course, with nary a ransom note.

What I immediately like about Neeson's character here is that he's an ACTIVE participant in the plot. He doesn't wait around to hear from the kidnappers or try to figure out what to do, he ACTS. Based only on the sound of the leader's voice and a brief description from his terrified daughter, he is able to trace them to Paris and start causing havoc because he's taking it all very personally. And amazingly, the situation is never played past the point of absurdity like Arnold movies would have been, as everything he does is at the very least within the realm of believability for someone as highly trained as he is supposed to be. He is cold, ruthlessly efficient and best of all completely without mercy for the people who have put him in this situation. Yeah, basically Besson's The Professional again, but that was a hell of a movie so I'm not complaining. Plus there's some of the best death scenes here, in a PG-13 movie no less, this side of Commando. Action junkies need look no further to get their fix. (Rating: ****)

Taken is highly recommended, Passengers is maybe worth a rental if you haven't already been spoiled as to what the Big Twist is.

I was so completely blown away by this, not just because it was a perfect adaptation, but because it was such an amazing comment on superhero movies in general.  The people involved acted like ADULTS, complete with consequences for violence and people getting hot and bothered because of an adrenaline rush.  Rorschach was PERFECT and even though I knew what was coming, it was still very sad when it happened.  Comedian was also very much badass and felt more developed than in the comics, even though he wasn't a character you WANTED to root for or anything. 

My only gripes, protected by spoiler vagueness:

- The eventual villain is pretty much telegraphed if you've read the original comics.

- Too much big blue schlong, although it was balanced out by Malin Akerman getting naked, seemingly as per her contract.

- Patrick Wilson probably should have been a bit paunchier, but he nailed the role as well. 

Basically once we hit the Rorschach prison sequence my friend turned to me and said "This is EPIC!" and I'm inclined to agree.  Probably won't be for all tastes, but it was definitely for mine.  Highest recommendation!

Poor Bryan Fuller, every project he launches is just too far ahead of the curve for the world and dies before its time. The most spectacular example of that was Pushing Daisies, which had the best pilot I've ever seen and strong ratings to match, but died out in the wake of the writer's strike and a long hiatus. Before that, however, his most celebrated cause was Dead Like Me, which only ran for two seasons on Showtime before getting axed for reasons that are still kind of mysterious today. Ratings were fine, the show wasn't hugely expensive to produce and the network was generally happy with the product despite constant tinkering and notes from Day 1. In fact, Fuller left after the pilot, but his whimsical touch could be seen all through the run of the show. But now, as though revived by the Piemaker, Dead Like Me has been touched and brought back to life!

They probably shouldn't have bothered, though.

The Film

Dead Like Me follows the afterlife of Georgia "George" Lass, played by the unconventional Ellen Muth. I say that because she's not what you'd call "Hollywood pretty," which kind of allows her to sink deeper into the role of a fairly normal person stuck in a weird situation. Anyway, George gets hit by a toilet seat from the Russian space station on her 18^th birthday and she dies in a fiery explosion, but luckily her soul is saved by someone Up There, who has a job for her. She, along with mentor Rube (the awesome Mandy Patinkin) and a crew of weirdos, live out a cosmic 9-to-5 job reaping souls from the soon-to-be departed, thus ensuring that they get to the Great Beyond with a minimum of fuss and paperwork. At the same time, there's parallel stories involving George's former family and how they cope with the loss of her and the breakdown of their family unit as a result, through the use of flashbacks and such. It was this blend of the fantastic and mundane that made the original series so addicting, as freeing souls for Heaven was presented as essentially another daily chore for George to endure even after she had seemingly been freed of responsibility and "growing up". Unfortunately the show was cancelled abruptly and we never got any real resolution to the characters and their storylines, so five years later a direct-to-DVD sequel attempts to tie up those loose ends.

Life After Death picks up, as you'd expect, five years after the end of the series, and certainly visually things have changed. The movie aims for a more fantastic look, with a comic book theme and more cinematic shots, and it's kind of a jarring contrast to the more "everyday world" feel of the TV series. We immediately meet George again as she reaps a soul to introduce new viewers to the concept, and then the movie jumps into the first problem I had: Rube is gone. Since they couldn't get Patinkin to participate, they simply wrote him out and replaced him with Henry Ian Cusick, aka Desmond from Lost. Except now instead of a laid back father figure, we have a tightly-wound businessman who delivers assignments on PDAs instead of Post-It notes. And he's apparently not the altruistic savior he appears to be. This would be fine if that plot WENT anywhere, but it doesn't. We never actually discover his motivation for acting like a wank aside from some silly babble about "chaos theory", and it's really off-putting to wedge a new major character in there like that and then do nothing with him.

Next problem: They couldn't get Laura Harris to reprise her role as Daisy, so they went with her sister from 24 instead, Sarah Wynter. Now although Harris was pretty annoying in the first season of the show, by the second season she had totally made the character her own, which makes it all the more jarring when Wynter wrecks it again and turns her back into a ditzy blond actress-wannabe. Why they felt changing main characters with Rube was OK but didn't want to create a new one for Wynter is beyond me.

Those major issues aside, the rest is probably about as good as it was going to be given the limitations placed on it. We follow the three threads in George's life -- her job, her family, and her "fake" job at Happy Time Temp Agency -- as she finally does mature and comes to grips with adulthood. The stuff with her cat-crazy boss Dolores is tremendous and whole experience of being in charge at work for the first time foreshadows a plot twist that I probably should have seen coming but didn't, which was nice. Unfortunately too much time is spent on a subplot with her little sister (who grew up a LOT in the five years that have passed) and her secret romance with a football player who George just can't seem to reap. The end result is that the "movie" feels more like a 90 minute episode of the show that's been stretched out too thin at times, and that's disappointing given the wait for this. It had to both function as a sendoff for the series and a reintroduction should it get picked up again, and you just can't have it both ways. I feel like they should have just done a huge fan-wank type of big finale instead of paying lip-service to the hope of making this a backdoor pilot and thus having it be "accessible" to new viewers who aren't likely to pick it up anyway. I can't recommend it for anyone but fans of the original show, and even then you'll likely be disappointed so buyer beware. (Rating: ***)

Bonus Features

Only a couple of things, as you get a commentary track with the director and Ellen Muth that's well worth checking out for fans, and a 15 minute featurette with the stars of show talking about the challenges of resurrecting the show and such. Even then they don't sound too positive about it, noting how tough it was to get back into character after so long. Nothing is really said about WHY they're doing this, as in whether it's supposed to be one final goodbye or a new hello on some other network, and that's really what I was interested to know. (Rating: **1/2)

The Pulse:

I mostly enjoyed it for what it was, but I'm not holding out hope of seeing it on Showtime's fall schedule or anything, and if we don't get another DVD sequel (this one apparently sat on the shelf for quite a while before release anyway) I won't be too saddened either. A nice try, but maybe they should just let it die and go to the light, like the show so often preaches.

http://www.backofthehead.com/entertainment/2009-01-01.thewrestler.html

I especially liked his observation about how Randy puts forth a pro wrestling mentality to mundane things like playing Nintendo with a kid.  So very true. 

Just a brilliant piece of cinema.  Highest recommendation.