By Christopher Stipp
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ICE ROAD TRUCKERS – DVD Review
I once had a job where it was my job to obtain truck freight.
As I made my way all across the US I realized that everything that we get in this country is obtained by the trucking industry. Bottom line. From the keyboards that you and I write on, the chairs we sit in, the produce and food we eat, the clothes we wear, everything gets here by truck.
That’s why knowing this information makes for a good primer in understanding why Season Three of Ice Road Truckers is such a thrill to watch. While not necessarily family entertainment, some of these road dogs are a bit salty, the program continues to feed my appetite for good reality television and I’ll tell you why: these are people who literally live like the people from The Deadliest Catch. They live their lives one mile at a time and are always looking for ways to make some extra dough. They may not have a place where they clock in 9 to 5 but they know they can beef up their paycheck on any given day just by doing whatever it takes to go some extra distance.
This season is filled with the usual fare you’ve come to expect from the previous two seasons but, I’m telling you, in Blu-ray the whites of the ice and the black of the road that chunks up from time to time just pops right off the screen. The net effect of which is you getting a frightening feel for just how sharp you have to be to do this job. While it doesn’t take a college degree to drive a truck it does take someone with a little finesse to know exactly what their rig can and can’t do. This disc was an absolute delight to watch and it, honestly, will be put into rotation because it’s just that compelling.
About the program:
Just when you thought trucking couldn’t get more dangerous”¦ICE ROAD TRUCKERS: THE COMPLETE SEASON THREE BLU-RAY EDITION brings you to the most treacherous landscape on earth: northern Alaska.
In Prudhoe Bay (250 miles north of the Arctic Circle), a network of ice roads in the tundra crisscross river systems and open ocean to connect America’s booming North Slope oil fields to dry land. Every winter, truckers have less than three months to shuttle critical supplies over the ice. The only problem is there’s just one way to get to this remote location: 400 miles of ice-covered, mountainous terrain known as the Dalton Highway. The Dalton is the lifeline to Alaska’s oil industry. It’s also the most dangerous road in North America and has claimed the lives of more than 400 people since it was built just 30 years ago. The next chapter in the hit HISTORYâ„¢ series returns this season with veteran drivers Hugh Rowland and Alex Debogorski, new drivers (including the show’s first female trucker) and more heart-stopping adrenaline than ever before.
BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY – DVD Review
Words escape me when describing the fun I had watching this film.
I know it’s kind of en-vogue to make a movie look like it was shot for $5,000 but this movie isn’t being ironic. It wants to embrace its indie vibe and exploit everything in it for maximum effect.
The plot isn’t relevant here as the movie swirls around a bunch of young adults on their way to a concert only to find themselves in a town populated by real dumb vampires. On paper, this shouldn’t work. On paper, this is the most ridiculous idea ever conceived for a movie looking to take advantage of the current wave of vampire inspired programming.
But it works. It works real well.
A movie like this succeeds because of its attention to good fundamentals when it comes to low budget horror directing and it takes the spot in my Top 5 of 2010 so far of horror films that know how to express themselves honestly. Whether you have a low budget or a high budget what should ultimately matter is what you do with the money and I’m betting dollars to doughnuts these kids spent their money on fake blood because there is a lot of it here. As well, the movie succeeds because it’s genuinely funny in the way some of the best Troma films were back in the day. I found myself laughing at some parts but, really, it was finding myself enjoying watching some filmmakers know what they’re doing which was the most satisfying part.
If you can find this on Netflix rent it and watch it as I am 99% certain you will find something to like in this movie which just oozes passion from those who made it.
About the program:
If you’re looking for more blood, gore and vampires than Twilight and Saw put together topped off with a hefty dose of laugh-out-loud comedy, you’re in for a delectable treat with horror film festival favorite BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY, making its DVD debut this June!
Featuring hilarious cameos from genre favorites Nicholas Brendon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Criminal Minds”) and Tom Towles (Halloween, The Devil’s Rejects), BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY tells the blood-and-gore-ridden tale of three maladjusted twenty-somethings (Deva George, Nate Rubin and Robin Gierhart). While on their way to a rock concert, the trio accidentally wanders into a town populated by bloodthirsty, dim-witted vampires. With no way to escape, they join the last remaining humans and prepare for an all-out, no-holds-barred battle with an army of the undead.
Called “a Texas vampire opus” by Fangoria, BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY amassed numerous cult credentials during 2008-09 including: Winner, B-Movie Film Festival, Best Feature; Winner, Atlanta Underground, Best Horror Feature; Winner, Madison Horror Film Festival, Best Feature; Winner, Kimera Film Festival, Best Fantastic Feature; and Winner, Shockfest Film Festival, Best Feature; and was honored as an Official Selection at the AFI Dallas Film Festival, Fantaspoa Fantastic Film Festival (Brazil), Bram Stoker Film Festival (England), Hollywood Film Festival, San Antonio Film Festival, Shockerfest International Film Festival, Horrific Film Festival, Atlanta Horror Film Festival and Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival (Estonia).
MARY AND MAX – DVD Review
Filmmaker Adam Elliot is a master storyteller and has the Oscar gold to prove it but Mary and Max is perhaps his true masterpiece.
A film about pen pals who live on separate continents is so much more than a friendly back and forth narrative about their lives. The contents of this film are indeed not meant for young viewers but the contents of this film speak to the human condition of release, of wanting to be understood, of needing someone to simply hear them that there isn’t another film about loneliness I would rather have as a reference. It’s simply spectacular filmmaking from an animator who knows what the medium is capable of and pushes it to limits where bridging the gap between the perceived fiction of clay people is transformed into believability.
While on the surface there is something strange about an 8 year-old girl who is having a rough go at life in Australia starting a pen pal relationship with a 44 year-old single man in New York who has own emotional maladies but it works wonderfully.
Through the course of the film we get to see these individuals mature as people and it’s, I would posit, life affirming in a way to see how these two strangers come together in a way that’s unexpected but yet satisfying on so many levels. Adam Elliot, as well, should be seen as a Svengali when it comes to harnessing the abilities of claymation in a way that not only show up Nick Park with all the attention to detail that Elliot puts into this film but he also should be seen as having that ineffable quality that Pixar films have when they’re at their tear-jerking best: he understands there needs to be a connection with the characters and the people watching these characters. He does this better than most everyone else who toils in animation looking for a franchise or a “hit.”
This is a hit simply based on how long it lingers with you long after you see it.
About the program:
A chance “meeting” changes two lives forever in the extraordinary claymation feature MARY AND MAX, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette and Eric Bana. The full-length debut by the Oscar-winning director of Harvie Krumpet and Writer-director Adam Elliot brings the unique stop-motion style feature about the unlikeliest of friendships. In 1970s suburban Melbourne, lonely 8-year-old Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced by Bethany Whitmore, and later by Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Toni Collette of The United States of Tara), the only child of an alcoholic mother and a distant father, picks a name at random out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him. The recipient is Max Jerry Horovitz (Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote), an obese 44-year-old single man who, despite suffering from the behavioral disorder Asperger’s syndrome, responds in kind.
HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE: SEASON 2 – DVD Review
I had no idea what to tell my daughter when she asked how the Grand Canyon was made here in Arizona.
I live here in a desert, it’s hot out, what on earth could possibly have carved out a crevasse as wide and as deep as the hole up there in the northern part of the state. After watching the episode dedicated to actually showing me the erosion and how the Colorado River factored into it I can honestly say that now I know.
Many of you already know how slow I am when it comes to having knowledge dropped on me of an academic nature. I really have to pay attention, sometimes squint a little in order to funnel at that information into my brain, but this is what makes How The Earth Was Made series such a blast to watch with the kids. Instead of giving half-cocked answers that are probably wrong the History channel yet again is able to take some serious looks at the prevailing theories and physical evidence and make them real.
With talking heads that don’t bore you, with visuals that actually tell the story for guys like me who need to be shown a shiny object for me to get it, HTEWM succeeds where others fail in that it makes it, gasp, entertaining. I didn’t like science growing up but I am attune to what’s being said, for example, when they explain how Mt. St. Helens came to be simply because they know they need to set themselves apart from the stuffy guys who get paid by universities to bore students to death with the academics of it all.
By no means fluff, and certainly not a definitive dissertation on why their explanation is 100% accurate with no room for dissension, this series is something that the kids can enjoy watching along with their parents (I certainly appreciate programming like that) or that can be causally enjoyed by your average person who just wants to watch a wonderfully produced program about the Earth we live on. Cannot recommend this one enough.
About the program:
Spectacular on-location shooting, evidence from geologists in the field, and clear, dramatic graphics combine in HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE: THE COMPLETE SEASON TWO to show how immensely powerful, and at times violent, forces of geology have formed our planet. The stunning series from HISTORYâ„¢ peels back layers of rock, fills up river canyons, parts the oceans and investigates awe-inspiring formations on 4 DVDs featuring all Season Two episodes.
This season, HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE goes back in history ““ from 4.5 billion years ago to today ““to investigate the origins of some of the most well-known locations and geological phenomena in the world. With rocks as their clues and volcanoes, ice sheets and colliding continents as their suspects, scientists launch a forensic investigation that will help viewers visualize how the Earth has evolved and formed over millions of years. Mt. Everest, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Mt. St. Helens, Death Valley and Supervolcanoes are among the fascinating geological creations featured across 13 episodes of this innovative program.
IT CAME FROM KUCHAR – DVD Review
Bizarre.
If you could suppose who Tim and Eric were inspired by growing up I would have to imagine that saying “The Kuchar brothers” would be a dead lock for a right answer. A film dedicated to showing how two brothers shook up the world of underground filmmaking this documentary which really delivers on showing two guys who never gave up on their passion.
What’s remarkable about this movie is that you see how these kinds of people inspire others to do great work of their own. It’s not that they never had great success in their careers but, rather, they made other artists see the possibilities in things based on the work that these two guys put out there.
I certainly never heard of them before watching this film but watching their process and how they navigate their own film sets you begin to understand that these are not two eccentric men on a mission to triumph over the commercialism of film; they are two men, however, who know what they like and want to keep making films based on these likes. They seem undaunted in their quest to pump out movie after movie and it’s watching them go through the motions of making these things where you understand that for as long as they’ve been making these little films not a lot of people have watched they’re filled with the need, the drive to make more.
In a way this is a testament to people’s dreams and what it takes to realize them because they’re doing it. They’re living with it. John Waters and Buck Henry all have their own say about these movies but after watching this documentary I wasn’t left thinking here are a pair of weirdos. The label is my projection when, in fact, they are operating on a creative level I can only hope to attain someday. These are men among boys and this documentary ought to be required viewing for anyone wanting to know what kind of passion you have to have to make films because they have it by the truckload.
About the program:
Long before YouTube, there were the brilliantly insane, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. Ceating stars out of their friends and family with just consumer-grade cameras, the teenage Kuchar brothers went from the 1960’s New York City underground film scene of Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger to become the twin maestros of B-movie glamour and sleaze. This June, join IndiePix as they celebrate the wildly warped world of these inimitable auteurs with IT CAME FROM KUCHAR. Debuting on DVD following a highly successful film festival/theatrical run, don’t miss this special collector’s edition piling on more than 45 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, additional interviews, footage and secrets from the Kuchar Brothers fascinating and bizarre world.
In a mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness style, IT CAME FROM KUCHAR effortlessly weaves nostalgic footage of 1950’s New York, a “greatest hits” collection of Kuchar clips and present day interviews of an all-star lineup of fans including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Wayne Wang, Bill Griffith, Gerard Malanga, B. Ruby Rich and Guy Maddin. Both outrageous and lovable, George and Mike will inspire you to pick up a camera and start making movies. IT CAME FROM KUCHAR is a must see for lovers of film everywhere.
GREEN ZONE – DVD GIVEAWAY
This is a great contest for some lucky readers out there and I’ll tell you why: this movie was marketed by someone who got it in their head to spin as a what if. What if Jason Bourne ended up in a warzone?
The film couldn’t have been any different and the box office suffered for it. Luckily, the movie is a tight thriller that does not relent. I know there are some issues with pacing and at times the story is a little convoluted but, overall, this movie is a standout in a year with so-so and mediocre releases.
If you would like a chance to win one of these things just shoot me your name and address to Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com. While you’re at it, and to try and weed out those who would lazily just shoot in an entry, let me know your favorite Matt Damon film.
About the film:
Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) re-team for their latest electrifying thriller
in Green Zone, a film set in the chaotic early days of the Iraqi War when no one could be trusted and every decision could detonate unforeseen consequences.
During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his team of Army inspectors were dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that inverts the purpose of their mission.
Spun by operatives with intersecting agendas, Miller must hunt through covert and faulty intelligence hidden on foreign soil for answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war in an unstable region. And at this blistering time and in this combustible place, he will find the most elusive weapon of all is the truth.
A common refrain mentioned in reviews of immaculately shot films states, “You could take a frame of this movie and hang it in an art gallery.” When you think about it, it’s a silly rave, as cinema comprises 24 photographs a second, and numerous photographs contain a painterly quality. Naturally, the films where this line can be most readily applied enjoy the contributions of cinematographers with the keenest sense of landscape and portrait photography. Ergo, the beauty of 
