Virtual Fools

A few years ago we had a brilliant idea for a movie called ‘Share the Load’.  The concept was simple: a fellowship of travellers has to assemble to throw the From Justin to Kelly DVD into the fires of Mordor. At some point we even had production art for this wonderful film (though it has now been lost to the ages).

We did, however end up shooting a brief montage for the film using the Taters Remix we got off of YTMND. I’m not sure where the song came from originally, so if you know please holler and … Continue Reading

I just got back from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Philadelphia, PA. No, this post does not have anything to do with film studies, being an academic, or describing the bulk of what and who I saw. Rather, I want to present a sort of roundabout way - a kind of thinking out-loud, or an unpatterned system of associations - which got me to thinking a lot about the Underworld song “Born Slippy/Nuxx.” You see, SCMS has a very large book exhibition where publishers of books in film and related fields bring their … Continue Reading

Combining kids and military matters is nothing new. Each year, thousands of American youth are sent to private military academies. Young kids enlist, participate in JROTC programs, and play paintball. Children can become experts in strategy and weaponry thanks to innumerable video games, tabletop miniature games, and the like.

The most beloved American film in the “children’s crusade” subgenre (youth + military) is Red Dawn (1986, John Milius). This is an established fact and cannot be debated. As former VF contributor Jimmy has put it, Red Dawn is “one of the best documentaries … Continue Reading

The Virtual Fools are proud to present the “best” of 2007. The judging criteria has been quite rigorous: “pick your favorites of the good stuff that you actually got to watch/read/hear/play/experience.” Read on!

Best Film

Kevin - The most touching film I saw this year was The Savages (directed by Tamara Jenkins). Despite the fact that it virtually oozed “indie” and felt similar to many recent vintage pop-indie films during key scenes (especially Little Miss Sunshine), it was by turns serious and funny. This will probably go down as the year of Philip Seymour Hoffman - though each … Continue Reading

[Note: The images that I intended to have accompany this piece are stuck on my cell phone, which for some reason does not want to synch up with my computer’s Bluetooth. Until then, verbal imagination, not visual!]

It has been roughly a week since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has hit shelves across the world. People - fans and newcomers alike - are deadly series about this book. This strikes as slightly funny, since the title is almost an oxymoron akin to Harry Potter and the Jumbo Shrimp…a hallow, of course, being associated with religious rites, presumably … Continue Reading

Walking on the beach today I saw a guy wearing this shirt:

What? Seriously. Of all the possible things you could be taking issue with in this world and want to display on your shirt for the hundreds of beachgoers to see, what is this all about? How about instead of a shirt that makes no sense, we just go for this:

Last month I came to the conclusion that I need to watch more movies. Between the time I spend at work and my other media habits, I was slacking on my Netflix rentals and felt there were some flicks I needed to add to my resume. So I set out to watch 25 movies in the course of 30 days. Not all were classics, not all were good, not all were even watchable, but I tried to pepper myself all around and watch different genres and eras. Below are my “four sentence reviews” for the 27 movies I ended up watching. Enjoy.

#1 Blade Runner
I began with this because I felt bad for never having seen it. I now understand why its the quintessential science fiction film. Harrison Ford has always played “Harrison Ford.” Amazing visuals for its era.

#2 28 Days Later
It had a great sense of style, was well paced, and the acting was great. It never felt campy in the way that some flicks of the genre do. Fast Zombies are scary. An outbreak like that might ease traffic congestion in London.

#3 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I could tell this was a pretty good movie, but I just didn’t care. As much as I liked Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, I didn’t feel invested in the outcome of their struggles. Michael Gondry should stick to music videos. I’ve come to realize I’m not a fan of writer Charlie Kaufman.

#4 Invincible
It’s biggest flaw is that there wasn’t anything wrong with it. As a inspirational Disney movie, it did exactly what it set out to do. It would be interesting to see how a different production company would have treated the same story. Watch it if you need a little motivation to work hard.

#5 Remo Williams
Wow. This 1985 movie starring Fred Ward was really bad in that enjoyable sort of way. It’s idiosyncrasies are its greatest strengths. It has the best “bullet dodging” in any film made before The Matrix.

#6 John Carpenter’s The Fog
A well told ghost story that I liked because it didn’t try to dress up its premise. As one of Carpenter’s earlier theatrical releases, you can see his visual composition and motifs developing. The simple use of fog machines and flashing lights validated all the work Kevin and I did on The House Between. Keeps me from wanting to move to a small coastal town.

#7 Three Businessmen
A truly brilliant film about globalization, the impact of technology, and hypermodernism. The entire plot serves as the film’s MacGuffin (the device that drives the story forward but is ultimately not important to the film’s “meaning”). It’s a movie that’s over before you know it and though you might feel nothing happened, it’s packed with layers of meaning. Ghost Riders in the Sky.

#8 Accepted
This was a “I’ve had four drinks and I have nothing to do” watch. It’s probably the only way to enjoy it, as the story was trite and none of the characters stood out. I recall laughing a few times but don’t remember why. The female lead is a POA.

#9 Dark City
I can’t tell whether this was a good concept with poor execution or a poor concept with good execution. I think it was that its 90 minutes actually felt a little rushed for such a deep concept. The noir/sci-fi mix was very enjoyable even if other parts were flawed. Oh, and three years before he was Jack Bauer, Keifer had a gun-pointed “we don’t have much time” line.

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X-Strike Studios, a group of rogue/underground filmmakers dedicated to ending the tyranny of Uwe Boll and his followers over the video-game-to-film market, have always been incredibly willing to share their work even at the roughest stages of production. Perhaps their ascendancy first came at MAGFest 2.0 in Williamsburg, VA in the Fall of 2003, when they unexpectedly blew the collective minds of people who almost certainly didn’t quite know what to make of a group of actors, technicians and creative talents all so engrossed in River … Continue Reading

The Re-Return of the Repressed in Return of the Living Dead: NecropolisLast October in Asheville, North Carolina, I had the pleasure of attending a theatrical viewing of Saw II (2005) with a group of experts. Don Mancini (creator of the Child’s Play franchise), Barry Sandler (screenwriter), and Ken Hanke (genre scholar and critic) shared my distaste for the film, which I felt to be slightly hard to pin-down at first. Saw II was imaginative, stylish, and often displayed verve, yet left me sour. It was certainly a cutting-edge (puns aside) horror film, symptomatic … Continue Reading

FantaSCI 07/23/05 - Chesapeake, Virginia

I’m not sure what first brought my attention to this one day sci-fi and fantasy con, but I was skeptical at first. Venue was my initial concern. Housed at the Chesapeake Central Library, it seemed like it had the potential for being a slapdash, apologetic sort of programming geared more toward wallets than toward interest. However, checking out the guest list and seeing the variety of what was going to be there, I figured that the cost of admission (free, but with … Continue Reading

The Son will become the Father and the Father will become the Son

What follows is a collection of thoughts, some erudite and many incidental, that amount to a review of Superman Returns (2006, Bryan Singer). I suppose that it contains spoilers, so beware if that sort of thing bothers you - however, don’t let that deter you, because the movie (for better or worse, depending upon your viewpoint) is predictable down to every particular.

Superman (Brandon Routh) has inexplicably gone on a five year hiatus, during which time he tried to locate the … Continue Reading

The other day I took my girlfriend out on a classic Dante Hicks Dinner and a Movie date. We went to a matinee showing of The Break-Up, the new sorta-romantic comedy with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston. In it, Gary (Vaughn) and Brooke (Aniston) get into a bad argument that terminates their relationship. The catch? Both refuse to leave the apartment and attempt to split it in half like a bad sit-com (though executed well here). Not a bad film. Good dialogue, funny writing, Vince Vaughn delivers a perfect Vice-Vaughny performance, and there’s a great supporting cast. But I’m not … Continue Reading

This genre-bending film from Peter Watkins is a highly political, somewhat dystopian projection of a new possible theater for world conflict. In fear of worldwide nuclear destruction, global superpowers stage highly irregular battles containing small teams of experts engaging in a limited, closed setting, all of which is controlled by a giant computer. While the soldiers battle it out, the nation’s generals watch from a privileged position away from the action. The rest of the world watches too, as an Italian pasta company sponsors a broadcast of the event, which is the highest rated program on the globe.

Watkins employees a … Continue Reading

Dawn of the Dead (2004) writer and Troma vet Gunn’s major directorial debut is a welcoming diversion from the recent cycle of sadistic horror films flooding American screens. After graduating from a recent obsession with “postmodern”/reflexive work (the Scream trilogy, the I Know… series, etc), American horror has most recently been manifested in J-horror remakes and “pain” films like Saw, Hostel, and The Devil’s Rejects. These films appeal to the depoliticized impulses of the “savage cinema” of the 1970s, taking their then virginal willingness to show graphic content on the screen, amplifying it, and removing most of the social commentary/protest. … Continue Reading

Winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Documentary, this “what-if” dramatization of nuclear war in Britain is light-years ahead of its time. Following the success of his imaginative Culloden (1964, a re-creation of a famous historical battle using very contemporary techniques and perspectives), Watkins wrote and directed this jarring, though thoroughly researched, film for the BBC. Upon completion, forces from within and without the government urged that the film not be broadcast, so its presentational medium was not the intended, affecting site of television, but rather the more selective theater circuit (though ultimately having the distinction of worldwide acclaim, television … Continue Reading

I promise to kick-start this column again, and have a whole slew of capsule reviews to keep it alive.

Cane Toads (Mark Lewis, 1988)

A sad-but-true slice of real Australian history, the ecstatic rise and giddy fall of the cane toad is detailed in Mark Lewis’ mockumentary named after the wretched beast. Lewis has subsequently made a career out of documenting the peculiar habits of animals (The Wonderful World of Dogs [1990], The Natural History of the Chicken [2000]) through a combination of hysterical camera work, adept sound effects, and brilliant interviews. Cane Toads traces the history of the introduction of … Continue Reading

At around 6PM X-Strike Studios premiered the new film Project: Snake (Low Budget Espionage), and let me be one of the first to announce on the Internet that it was awesome. Based on Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, Project: Snake was a hilarious spoof (and not at the expense of the story). They did have a few technical glitches (i.e. a bunch of their audio tracks dropped out in the last part of the movie), but it didn’t detract from the overall high production values. This is certainly X-Strike’s best movie to date.

Writer and … Continue Reading

We each picked a number of different categories to write on, some the same, some completely different. But here’s stuff from 2005 that Virtual Fools believes is worth getting a mention on the Internet.

Jimmy’s Picks
Best Movie: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” I’ll be honest: when I look back, it seems like I didn’t watch that many new movies in 2005. But of the ones I did see, I feel like I saw the best. “Hitchhiker’s Guide” gets top honors because it’s fun, it’s hilarious, it managed to breathe new life into a long-running and much-abused franchise etc. Plus, I … Continue Reading

Now that finals are over and my other work has started in full swing, I figure its time to get going with this column. Though I have not found time to post recently, I have been keeping up with the watching of films.

ROOM SERVICE - 1938

A slightly later Marx Brothers film, this typical romp delivers all of the zing and plith that one would expect. Though far from the manic craziness of efforts like DUCK SOUP, ROOM SERVICE aptly capitalizes on the personalities of the brothers, the lameness of their cohorts, and pokes fun at just about everything it can.

Here, … Continue Reading

So I was informed that I’d be getting a ticket to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to be viewed at 12:01 AM at the newly opened (and apted titled) New Town Cinemas in Williamsburg. Our ringleader/event planner Adam Stackhouse sent out an email…and…the rest is bizarre as shit. Read on to figure out our plans…

[Real names in brackets]

—

Muggles, wizards, and the like:

Please meet in the parking area behind Tucker Hall this evening at 11pm for transport and ticket to the new Harry Potter adventure. Joshua Malfoy wanted to arrive at the theater at 10:30, myself an hour later, … Continue Reading

When I have the time (re: when I am at home and bored) I like to “program” double-features for myself. In the past, films were screened theatrically in multiples. Rather than pay $9 to see Doom and some crappy commericals, you saw a news reel, some cartoons, a feature and a “B” picture. The “B” movies are the campy genre films that have been getting lots of nostalgic press in the last 20 years. They are generally genre quickies (film noir, sci-fi, westerns) that are short on starpower and short in length. Since going to the movies in America used … Continue Reading

As a man of the cinema, I find it a great joy to watch a bunch of films in a short span of time and then realize that there are some very big differences in movies, even at our contemporary moment. I had a busy weekend of going to films, of an evidently wide range of interests.

Thursday -> Friday at midnight, as my last blog post pointed out, I attended the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opening-night-stravaganza. I’ve read the first five books, but I generally only read them while sick. Literally, I forget … Continue Reading

Much in the spirit of surrealist films that I am about to celebrate, this post will consist of a main highlight followed by several items of interest.

Many see the birth of surrealist film as the famous premiere of Un Chien Andoulou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), a movie co-authored by Salvador Dali and the movement’s poster boy, Luis Buñuel. Surrealism is primarily known as a modern art movement in which artists (through a mixture of free association, the expression of the unconscious and a pledge to anarchic thought) undermine the taken-for-grantedness of everyday reality and instead look toward the vast worlds … Continue Reading

John Kenneth Muir’s Official Website

KF- I’ll start with the general. First off, one of my best friends is Chris Muir, and he is related to John Muir the naturalist. Are you?

JKM - I think so but I don’t know for sure. My ancestors were in Hoboken, New Jersey. One was a fire chief, in Hoboken, New Jersey in the 1880s, his name was John Muir. I have his fire lantern as an heirloom. I like to claim I’m related to the other John Muir, but that might be a lie.

KF - I’ve read other … Continue Reading

In an effort to illuminate a broad selection of films, from the abyssmal to the erudite, I’ve decided to dedicate Sunday to the cinema experience. Each week I’ll call attention to movies, trends, actors, directors, and cinematographers. To recitify for our lax treatment of Halloween (surely the most important of the secular holidays), my coverage starts out with what claims to be a horror film.

Scared to Death - 1981 - dir. William Malone

There is an unintentional visual joke in the very first shot of Scared to Death. The camera slowly pans right, showing a … Continue Reading

Presented below are short pieces on four films from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Japan. Geared toward recent releases, these writings attempt to situate these ostensibly “foreign” films for a Western viewer. In common to each of these is an attempt to reconcile genuinely unique cultural ways of seeing with film, a medium that has been dominated by Western ideas since its very inception.

Akira (1988)

Katshuhiro Otomo’s Akira is a morally and graphically charged film, preferring always to make its points in very large ways. In particular, Akira seems to … Continue Reading

Firstly, we wrote this article the same way we wrote Winter Break. We sat down and wrote it together. The font in blue belongs to Bobby, green belongs to Kevin, and red is that of Jimmy.

Jimmy, Kevin, Andy, and I were all watching comedy central last night (the Awesom-O episode of South Park. During the commercials we saw an advertisement for Comedy Central’s Big Big Movie of the week: Out Cold. It looked like your generic ski-comedy, much like Winter Break. In the words of Awesom-O 4000, “LAME!” we thought … Continue Reading

Square Balls Do Roll: Developing Identity Within the Dominant Ideology “You see, it’s a circle.” “Of course it is. Do you think it would roll if it was a square?”

Bringing Up Baby is a film about getting a square ball to roll. The screwball comedy, a genre in which the main characters are caught up in a “bizarre predicament” composed of frantic action and witty dialogue, was popularized in the 1930s (Cook 939). Director Howard Hawks made one of the greatest screwball comedies ever produced by masterfully combining … Continue Reading

Widely considered a masterpiece of low-budget silliness, Monty Python and the Holy Grail remains one of the most intelligent and popular films in the comedy canon. The film defies convention, tweaking many filmic and comedic conventions. At times, the Pythons may seem as if they are cheating, but their nonconformity as a group is for valid reasons. The odd-ball device most commonly employed is a tenacious sense of self-reflexivity, which helps the film on two levels: it not only provides for moments of comedy, but also helps keep the film well within the constraints of its … Continue Reading

Square Balls Do Roll: Developing Identity Within the Dominant Ideology “You see, it’s a circle.” “Of course it is. Do you think it would roll if it was a square?”

Bringing Up Baby is a film about getting a square ball to roll. The screwball comedy, a genre in which the main characters are caught up in a “bizarre predicament” composed of frantic action and witty dialogue, was popularized in the 1930s (Cook 939). Director Howard Hawks made one of the greatest screwball comedies ever produced by masterfully combining the cinematic elements best suited for the genre … Continue Reading

Shelter for the Stones: How the Maysles Brothers Try to Make Sense Out of Chaos

On December 6th, 1969 the Rolling Stones gave a free concert at Altamont Speedway in California. The concert is most remembered for the violent altercations that took place throughout the day which came to a head when a man was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels who was working security. If the crisis at Altamont came to its climax within the world of the Rolling Stones it’s valuable to explain it in that context. The Maysles’ documentary Gimme Shelter composes a reality … Continue Reading

Shelter for the Stones: How the Maysles Brothers Try to Make Sense Out of Chaos

On December 6th, 1969 the Rolling Stones gave a free concert at Altamont Speedway in California. The concert is most remembered for the violent altercations that took place throughout the day which came to a head when a man was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels who was working security. If the crisis at Altamont came to its climax within the world of the Rolling Stones it’s valuable to explain it in that context. The Maysles’ documentary Gimme Shelter composes … Continue Reading

First off, we have to establish how this article is written. We sat down and wrote it together. The font in blue belongs to Bobby. The font in red is that of Jimmy.

Jimmy and I were watching the South Park ‘Aspen’ episode and decided we needed to go to Blockbuster and rent a crappy 80’s skiing movie… like Aspen Extreme or Ski School. Our fuckin’ Blockbuster didn’t carry any of these fine movies so we were reduced to renting the next worst thing… Winter Break.

I had heard of Winter Break because two … Continue Reading

What do you get when you combine a teen slasher/comedy/haunted house/college cliche/no-nudity/low body count horror movie with Linda Blair and a tenuous idea? If you said Exorcist II: Heretic, you’d only be partially right. If you said Chopping Mall you’d be totally wrong. But, if by some off chance you said Hell Night (1981), you’d win the imaginary prize of pointless movie knowledge. Slightly ‘off’ in nearly every way, this film manages to totally avoid certain pratfalls and entirely succumb to others. The oft heard Oddball Movies mantra of “they don’t make ‘em like they … Continue Reading

J.T. Petty - Check out the Bill + Ted’s Excellent Adventure poster in the background

I had the pleasure of catching up with J.T. Petty at the William and Mary Cans Film Festival showcase of independent horror films. In addition to seeing the low budget slaughter of Amy Lynn Best’s Severe Injuries (2003), I witnessed firsthand the haunting absences and atmospheric chills of J.T.’s first film, Soft for Digging (2001). Since, I’ve had a chance to talk with … Continue Reading

Well, I’ve managed to find a movie that defies all of my attempts at logical enjoyment. Don’t get me wrong, I love bad movies, but I’ve finally found a bad movie worth writing about: since films like House of the Dead and Cheerleader Ninjas are still endlessly amusing, they cannot qualify…there is a campy fun to them that keeps them apart from this particular selection. No, the film in question comes to us from the hallowed year of 1975. The Ultimate Warrior represents one of the worst (much more on this … Continue Reading

Philosophical dialogue:
Some Dude: “ Oh God! Don’t tell me that you dudes are introducing another section to your already convoluted site!”

Me: “No, don’t worry man. Unlike the esoterically enhanced “Oddball Movies,” or the humorous “Shitty Movies,” or the generally serious “Good Movies,” there is no gimmick here. Short reviews that hopefully say something that hasn’t already been said, a few at a time, is all that this section hopes to achieve. At the very least, think of it as a guide to things that you may have considered watching at one point or another but … Continue Reading

Presented here, for the first time anywhere, is an interview with the proprieters of River City Rumble, X-Strike Studios. Conducted in the early morning hours of 11/02/03, shortly following THE CONCERT at MAGFest, this interview seeks to probe deep into the group’s collective psyche and ask the big questions that matter - or something equally impressive sounding.

Preliminary notes for River City Rumble: Written and directed Tim Ekkebus. Music by Mustin and others. The guys who were present at the interview, and their role(s) in the film:
Chad Williams - Slick, … Continue Reading

Let it be known first that I, hopeless film snob and critic of contemporary things on all fronts, was entirely not looking forward to seeing this film. Far too often in the past have I seen the newest work of a “great” director and lost nearly all of my respect for them (ahem, Artificial Intelligence comes to mind.) The thoughts that flooded my head after I left the theater and entered the bathroom, however, confirmed the fact that I had just witnessed the unique brand of genre-charged authorship that only the unapproachable Quentin … Continue Reading

While “cool” violence has arguably been around for longer (if you consider the gangsters in older American film noir films to be “cool,”) Jack Carter is probably the most badass murderer this side of Shaft. All of the glorious holdovers of successful cinema from the later 60’s, essentially drug, sex, and violence ‘o plenty, are thankfully preserved here, all with a gritty edge and very few of the usual action film clichés.

Jack Carter, an Englishman not to be messed with, travels north to Newcastle in order to investigate his brother’s mysterious … Continue Reading

Never heard of this movie? You probably aren’t alone. The only know of its existence for two reasons: 1) it has a soundtrack by Pink Floyd, released as an album under the name of Obscured by Clouds, and 2) because it is one of the few films starring Michael Gothard. Gothard (the name is French, but sounds funny if pronounced the straight-ahead, English way) is one of the great cult actors of all time. He has a very unique “pseudo-hippie” appearance, placing him in art films that demand not only the … Continue Reading

This weird hybrid sci-fi/horror/suspense thriller film is both very indicative of Cronenberg’s style and an example of the sort of film that James Woods would probably like to forget he was in. Max Renn (Woods) is a cable television programmer in Canada, working for a station that is known for violent, offensive and shocking programming- think Fox without the cartoons. Through a pirate satellite, he is able to intercept programming from around the world: he stumbles upon an amateurish looking show called “Videodrome,” and becomes instantly enthralled. This show is unlike anything that he has seen previously. … Continue Reading

To inaugurate our triumphant return, I have decided to pull out all the stops- to make this article one for the ages. Our absent months have been fraught with new experiences, culminating with several written discourses that you will have an opportunity to read. But for today, let us turn our sights to a film that has captured my imagination for the past few weeks, a little flick that I like to call The Warriors!

Released in 1979 to much fervor (reportedly, gang fights broke out at certain showings in New York,) The Warriors was able … Continue Reading

When I first saw this movie, it rocked my socks off. I remember playing “3 Ninjas” with two of my friends. I was always Colt because I never was the coolest, but I wasn’t the fatass either. We’d go around kicking the asses of invisible “bad guys” and saving the day.
But movies like this never gain the fame they deserve, so it’s up to those who love it to bring it back and showcase it for all to see. This article has been the most effort and most costly of all the articles I’ve done. … Continue Reading

Updated on 11/16/03 - Looking at this article in retrospect, there are many things that I’d now like to do with it. For starters, it, like much of the rest of the site, needs some minor editing so as to become more readable. Having seen some of these films a second time since, and having learned much more about film in general and the horror genre in particular, there are some notes that I’d like to add to supplement my original commentary. Finally, a new Freddy film has found its way … Continue Reading

Sure there are plenty of bad movies out there… But there are a select few that reign supreme. The Shitty Movie section focuses on awful movies that you love to hate. So, without further ado, I present to you, Destroy All Monsters (1968). Please excuse the slow load time

Now usually, I’m not one to pick up a movie like Destroy All Monsters, but there was one thing that attracted me to it.

See that there? Yeah, I’m talking about this guy. It’s my fuckin’ Variable Uncanny Embryo … Continue Reading

WTF was the phrase of choice upon rediscovering this gem. I remember in 8th grade, one Friday night in the dead of summer, I was happily enthralled in one of the coolest movies I had ever seen on TV (it was on the Independent Film Channel). You see, I had just began French, and this film was partially in French (luckily it had sub-titles), plus it wasn’t one of those old black-and-white clunkers. Anyway, it was really cool, cept the only part I had seen so far was a … Continue Reading