In 1987, director Richard Park teamed up with Tae Kwon Do grandmaster (and fledgling screenwriter-producer) Y.K. Kim to create Miami Connection, a martial arts action film about a multiracial rock group doing battle with a coke-dealing alliance of bikers and ninjas. The film opened in a measly eight theatres before being laughed off the screen, […]
Dave Howlett
Posted inArts + Music
From ABC to VHS
If you were worried that Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener was in danger of losing his edge any time soon, please consider this unused first idea for his contribution to the alphabet-inspired anthology horror film The ABCs Of Death: “We originally picked the letter N because we wanted to do something with nunchucks,” […]
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Little Shop Of Horrors
Making its debut on Blu-Ray in an extras-packed special edition, 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors has never looked, or sounded, better. The goofy, grisly musical comedy about a boy (Rick Moranis), a girl (Ellen Greene) and a hungry, homicidal houseplant is filled with hilarious cameos (like Bill Murray’s masochistic nutjob) and memorable musical numbers (Steve […]
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Critics’ picks: top DVDs, comedy and films
TOP 12 FILMS OF 2012: Jacob Boon Coast writer since 2011 Jacob Boon will sometimes check his email in the theatre during a bad movie. He is not a very nice person. Ruby Sparks (Fox Searchlight) Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris An introverted novelist’s dream girl magically springs to life from the […]
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Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
Over seven summers in the 1980s, a couple of kids named Eric Zala and Chris Strompolos painstakingly recreated Raiders of the Lost Ark in its entirety on Super-8 film, utilizing crude homemade special effects and a cast of neighbourhood kids. The often-tortured production is lovingly chronicled in Alan Eisenstock’s book, which plays out like a […]
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Before Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rise of the Planet of the Apes will hopefully consider the best of the six preceding Apes movies. Dave Howlett channels the simian series and makes a few suggestions. The original Planet of the Apes film ends with marooned astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) discovering, to his horror, that—spoiler alert!—the upside-down, simian-ruled world he’s been trapped […]