Director: Luke Meyer, Andrew Neel
Cast: Nerds, Geeks, Dweebs, Dorks, Nimrods, Dopes, Schmoes and lots more socially inept wierdos. (Sorry, but when you don’t have anyone listed in the IMDB that might as well be an open invitation for me…)
Release: HOTDOCS Film Festival, April 28-May 7 (2006) Toronto, Canada.
Synopsis: DARKON is a feature documentary that follows the real-life adventures of an unusual group of weekend “warrior knights,” fantasy role-playing gamers whose live action “battleground” is modern-day Baltimore, Maryland, re-imagined as a make-believe medieval world named Darkon. These live action gamers combine the physical drama of historical re-enactments with character-driven storylines inspired in part by such perennial favorite fantasy epics like the legends of King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, and the saga of Conan the Barbarian. As role players, they create alter-egos with rich emotional, psychological, and social lives. They costume themselves and physically act out their characters exploits both in intimate court intrigue and campouts and in panoramic battle scenarios involving competitive strategies, convincingly real props, and full contact “combat.” Because real life so often gets in the way, its easy to understand these players motivations. Everybody wants to be a hero.

Prognosis: Positive. I have ADHD.

It’s wicked bad.

Although it’s not really diagnosed by my doctor I know that my shorter than average attention span, which can be timed to a road flare, is an indication that I get really amped about some things and then, poof, it’s off to something, or someone, else. That’s why, right now, my spastic self is really rocking on the hour long ATTACK OF THE SHOW on the G4 channel every Monday through Thursday evening. I get all my geek news and reviews in one quick 25 minute block; it’s on the TiVo and, like I said, ADHD. One of the things that came up, then, a few weeks ago was this movie and after being able to sit through the entire segment without fast forwarding once I knew I had to peep the trailer.

This looks like a movie that will speak to any nerd who knows what it means to grok something; what it means to live in a geek culture surrounded by reality where others don’t get you; or, better yet, what it means to be slammed into metal lockers in high school and need to further that sense of outsidership in adulthood by dressing up in silly outfits having fake battles with one another. Really, someone should’ve shot Tolken before he had a chance to write those Goddammed books.

I kid because I kare, children.

I really like the way this movie looks simply by how the background of this movie takes shape. I liked TREKKIES for the same reason that this trailer’s opening sequence seems to really take a real look at the people who find dressing up in LOTR-style garb, and having fake battles, to be a pleasurable experience. You’ve got a guy in the very beginning buying cereal for his kid, you see him vacuuming the carpet all the while explaining that being a hero in everyday life isn’t something that’s always attainable. He looks like he’s a dad and you feel for him, sorta, but then we’re blasted with a real live geek, a real live wire, as he’s bombastically railing against his geek brother on the field of battle. The dudes are all sorts of dressed up in Old English uniforms, dragons and lions and headbands being de regur for pseudo-combat. You get the vibe quickly that these “men” were beat up a lot in high school. A lot.

Again, though, it’s fun. I find myself giddy at the prospect of being able to watch what a collective of egg heads looks like when they decide to pick up a battle ax or mace on a wooden stick.

And it’s sweet. Did I mention that? It’s so nice to see that people like this are so passionate about something whereas other folk are simply happy to live their lives in abject ignorance of their own desires. The sappy music playing underneath the sweeping visions of the landscape of the town that harnesses the collective geek sweat of dozens of these people really gets to you as understanding why these people dress up gives you that layer of understanding, that context.

One of the things I especially like, even after you get a feel for the major players involved in this escapade, is that the music takes everything over and all you’re left with are shots of how intricate this game has become. You visit the east coast of America, Pennsylvania for the Gettysburg reenactment that’s going to happen this year on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd let’s say, and you decide to watch what happens. You have two sides fighting on one battlefield. Here, though, you’ve got nerds swinging their battle axes and geeks firing their padded arrows from all sorts of directions at all hours of the night and day. There are multiple factions, multiple storylines happening, but when we cut to these same people doing their day jobs it’s odd. In a good way.

It’s hard to imagine many of us being able to participate in something so obviously steeped in fiction but it’s just as hard to look away from this trailer and not be entertained.

Director: Scott Marshall
Cast: Justin Chambers, Robin Tunney, Rory Culkin, Philip Baker Hall
Release: March 17th, 2006 (And where the hell was it? It didn’t come out near my house…)
Synopsis: Based on true events, THE ZODIAC is a psychological thriller detailing a string of gruesome murders in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and the impact on the victims, their families and the wider community. A small town cop (Justin Chambers) and his son (Rory Culkin) become obsessed with the Zodiac killer, endangering their family.

Prognosis: Negatively Confused. I was all sorts of amped when I glossed the offerings of trailers this week to see this one sitting there.

Shouldn’t there have been more of a fanfare? Was I catching some exclusive peek at a quietly released trailer for David Fincher’s latest foray into film? Wasn’t this going to be great?

No, it wasn’t any of these things.

Just like when juggernauts DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON were released around the same time, myself wondering what in hell could’ve cosmically been the case years prior when competing end-of-the-world pics went into production around the same time, this year will be the battleground for competing Zodiac dollars. It’s a curious thing when these moments pop up in moviedom but I can tell you that this picture, while I felt let down it wasn’t Fincher’s latest, doesn’t look like the smudge on the taint that IMPACT did when compared with the God-awfulness that was ARMAGEDDON.

You’ve got kids doing what they know how to do best, fogging up the windows in mom’s old Ford Festiva. The kids here, though, are looking to get themselves into some trouble of their own but leave it to the creepy darkened car that slowly pulls up alongside the kids’ car to be the one to make it a night none of them will remember.

Now, since I’m not completely familiar with how the Zodiac killer operated I can only assume his interest wasn’t in getting ladies but indiscriminately killing whoever and whatever he wanted judging by the opening sequence here. It’s a solid way to introduce me and the fact that we get the doctor from Grey’s Anatomy on the case, I don’t care what you say as I watched this trailer a half dozen times, it’s the doctor from Grey’s Anatomy. It’s not an actor playing the part. It’s the doctor, and this is how I am selling myself on it, and he’s looking to make a career change.

His old lady, Robin Tunney, comes right out and tells her man that she is scared. She should be as the lighting in this movie coats everything with a piss yellow hue. Her husband drags it with him to the office as the good doctor from Grey’s, who honestly doesn’t make the case he could be a po-po, gets an errie and spooky call from a dude who says he’s going to be kill some folks just for the fun of it.

Now, this part of the trailer is actually pretty interesting because we get some of the actual events that transpired with the way law enforcement was played every step of the way with this serial killer. Philip Baker Hall, best known to the world as Dean Patterson in HOW I GOT INTO COLLEGE, plays the TV doctor’s boss and admonishes him to catch this guy. I think that’s all well and good but as we’ve seen in previous incarnations of this story, this doesn’t happen. I mean I’ve watched the History channel. I know how this story is going to play out and I think that’s why I just don’t feel the panic that must have ran rampant though these lifers who were dedicated to catching dudes like The Zodiac. They’re playing up the drama but it doesn’t feel like it should be a drama.

And then, if you’re watching closely, his old lady and kid call him while he’s at work to start spilling diarrhea of the mouth as they both pour over astrological books to help dad out; we obviously know how that turns out. As if that isn’t enough, the good doctor’s son starts talking about the case with some girl in the neighborhood as if this Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy combo is what this case needs. It would’ve been sweet if the true definition of irony comes home to roost with the Zodiac taking out the meddling kids.

The ending of this trailer should be commended, though, in doing what it should have been doing from the beginning: creating an atmosphere of paranoia and frenetic activity. No one ever knew who this guy was, or is, and with every stranger being a potential suspect or target the trailer should have focused on this feeling from the very beginning.

I know you need to make it seem that this story has a human element but, I posit, the trailer plays it backward. You don’t feel that this is a movie about a serial killer but that this is a movie about how one guy deals with his family as it pertains to this case. While that’s fine it’s perhaps not the best route to take when you want and sell a movie with this much “reality” built into it.

Director: Doug Atchison
Cast: Angela Bassett, Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Curtis Armstrong
Release: April 28, 2006
Synopsis: A young girl from South Los Angeles tries to make it to the National Spelling Bee.

Prognosis: W-A-S-T-E O-F M-Y T-I-M-E. One of the things that must really be a drag when you’re a filmmaker is you think you have this great story and that no one else has done it and you’ve got this hawesome ass vision for a story and then, bam, BEE SEASON comes out just mere months before your movie.

Not only do you reel from the fact that you’ve got this spelling movie with Richard Gere coming out before yours but when the movie ends up tanking like the Exxon Valdez on theaters’ doorsteps you could understandably get a little fidgety. Unfortunately, I can’t see how this movie will fare any better.

What you’ve got opening this thing tells me everything I need to know about this film. You’ve got this one little girl winning her school’s first annual spelling bee and while this is all well and cheery something very Hollywoody happens. Lawrence Fishburne, along with his sidekick, Booger, nee Curtis Armstrong, jumps right into the festivities and demands this girl spell “prestidigitation.” Of course, besides the obvious weirdness of having some stranger start yelling crap at you, the camera quite visibly pulls in closer on the girl who, ta-da, does it. Her friend shiats herself, the place starts clapping but the speller girl in question bolts out of the room. It immediately feels false and hokey.

The question here is not what makes this movie so different than BEE SEASON but should be why we should care about the people in these films. The simple answer is that I don’t care about her. Unfortunately, what you get in the montage of moments of this movie which will ultimately lead to the great spelling bee is that this girl follows the time tested clichés of a wise old sage mentor educating his ward.

Yes, it must suck to live in a crap part of California. Yes, it must be rough as a black girl to have your brother harass you by comparing you to a white girl. Yes, it is hard to imagine that you have this old guy demanding you learn all these tough new words. Fact of the matter is that we’ve heard this story a lot of times before. Hard living, hard mentor, finding something to believe in are themes explored in the great BOYZ N THE HOOD, where Fishburne played his sage old guy part well, and the not-so-great FINDING FORRESTER where Sean Connery gave me nothing to believe in once he uttered. “You’re the man now, Dog.” Ugh.

This movie looks like a heated mash of both kind of dudes with the exception that there’s nothing new here. It’s well-worn and as our protagonist struggles with trying to believe in herself, never minding that she’s in grade school and not believing in anything just comes with the age, the manipulation of the music and the dramatic lighting is nothing more than just a lazy attempt to create interest where there isn’t any.

I’m sure this movie will appeal to young girls and prepubescents everywhere but, for the rest of us, this seems like an overwrought and saccharine packed sack of kiddie dramatics.

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