April 2007

Spidey Week

“With great power comes great responsibility (and 2 sequels).”  Hey true believers!  It’s Spidey Week here at RazorFine as we gear up to the release of Spider-Man 3 this Friday.  All week we’ll mix in some Spidey content with our regular dose of quixotic awesomeness!  We’ll take a look at Spidey on the big and small screen and delve into his comic origins and look at some of the best Spidey moments in both print and screen.

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Another Philip K. Dick Flick?  Skip it, and wait for the NEXT one

  • Title: Next
  • IMDB: link

next-posterGreat idea, horrible execution.  That’s Next in a nutshell.  To start off with the film has much working against it.  First off, it’s based on the Philip K. Dick short story “The Golden Man,” and we all know that Hollywood has had mixed success translating his work on screen. 

Add to that a floundering Nicholas Cage (anyone remember Ghost Rider?) and the curse of Jessica Biel (see Blade Trinity, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Illusionist, Summer Catch, Elizabethtown, Rules of Attraction, and Stealth) and you have all manner of disasters just waiting to occur.

The film centers around lackluster magician Cris Johnson (Cage), working under the name Frank Cadillac – we don’t care why, but the film feels a need to explain the name, which is about the only thing it seems to give a straight explanation. 

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The Worst Movie Ever?

  • Rating: NO STARS
  • Title: The Condemned
  • IMDB: link

There is a moment, one moment, in the film where a reporter (Angie Miliken) balks at the atrocity of a duel to the death battle royal and blames not only the creators of the show but the worldwide audience for tuning in.  For a split second the film takes a stand against decaying morality and standards, and the ill-effects of violence on our world.  And then it goes back and celebrates the same type of mindless torture it wanted to condemn for another half-hour.  I’ve always said Vince McMahon would strangle babies on stage for quarters if you let him, and here’s the film that proves me right. The Condemned might not be the worst film ever made, but it’s definitely in the conversation.

The set-up, basically stolen from The Running Man (a much better flick in every way possible), involves an unscrupulous television producer (Robert Mammone) who buys up death row inmates from around the world and drops them off on an island to kill each other.  The victor wins freedom, a big cash prize, and a trip off the island.

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WKRP in Cincinnati – The “Complete” First Season

  • Title: Castle – After Hours
  • tv.com: link

“Baby, if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me. I’m living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP. Got kind of tired packing and unpacking, town to town and up and down the dial. Maybe you and me were never meant to be, but baby think of me once in awhile. I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati.”

wkrp-season-one-dvdWKRP was a small time radio station in Cincinnati during the late 1970’s.  Run by the bumbling son, referred to as “the big guy” (Gordon Jump), of the station’s owner (Sylvia Sidney) and cursed with a staff of misfits the station was the black hole in radio.  Enter a new hot shot program director (Gary Sandy) and a format change to rock and roll and the station began to get some attention.

The cast included Howard Hessman as Dr. Johnny Fever and Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap, the stations two radio deejays.  Add in the worst sales manager played brillantly by Frank Bonner (complete with his trademark white belt), a neurotic farm report obessed newsman (Richard Sanders) with no knowledge of sports, a mousy office worker (Jan Smithers), and the hottest secretary in television history (Loni Anderson), and you’ve got all the necessary parts for some great fun.

Over the course of 22 first season episodes they would deal with the fallout of the format change, promote a concert for the punk band Scum of the Earth, fight of consistently bad publicity, and put on the most memorable Thanksgiving promotion ever.

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