Drink Slay Love (Review)

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Tars Tarkas

Drink Slay Love

2017
Screenplay by Eirene Donohue
Based on the novel by Sarah Beth Durst
Directed by Vanessa Parise

A vampire novel about a vampire girl in high school that falls in love with a human, it’s Twilight in reverse! With a bunch of extra stuff thrown in to make the perfect YA fantasy novel. Combine that with a director that obviously knew the material needed to get some campy elements thanks to airing on Lifetime, and some actors delivering some neat performances (and a few skeletonizing the scenery every second they are on screen!), we get a surprisingly entertaining but incredibly cheesy flick with Drink Slay Love!

Vampire teen Pearl (Cierra Ramirez) is confident, way confident, so confident that life is but a bore as she’s so confident she’s already done it all. The invincibility of youth mixed with the actual invincibility of vampires. That all gets shattered like the mirrors that she can only vaguely see her reflection in (it’s complicated!) when she discovers she can survive in the sunshine! Sure, this happened right after a mysterious attack where she almost died but woke up fully healed at home. Suddenly a whole new world is open to her, but only her, the rest of her clan is still killable by the sun.

This coincides with the King of the Vampires deciding the family will host the 100 year huge party where everyone feeds the King their blood and then drinks his blood, which means everyone serves the King. Which isn’t all sorts of screwed up at all. To feed all the vampires coming for the party, Pearl is sent to school to recruit a whole host of victims, as vampires must be invited into houses and high school means she’ll be invited to slumber parties. Or would be if she wasn’t a goth girl. We all know she’s going to soon fall in love and the script gets flipped.

Continue reading →

From Straight A’s to XXX earns money for tuition on Lifetime!

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Tars Tarkas

[adrotate banner=”7″]Lifetime is bringing the porn biopics to tv, a genre I didn’t think they would start covering, but here we are. From Straight A’s to XXX(originally titled just From Straight A’s, but Lifetime knows that we want XXX!) is the story of a college student who made extra money as a porn star until everyone on campus found out and then started acting like jerks who totally weren’t downloading all her films the second they came out. Let’s see, she’s Miriam Weeks who worked under the stage name Belle Knox, now let’s totally innocently Google her name at work and OMG I’m totally fired again! Damn you, Lifetime! Somehow this is your fault and not my own…

Inspired by a true story, “From Straight A’s to XXX” tells the story of Miriam Weeks (Haley Pullos, “General Hospital”), a college freshman at Duke University who turns to porn in order to pay for her tuition expenses. But when a male student discovers who she is and exposes her secret, Miriam is faced with an onslaught of death threats and cyber-bullying. The film also stars Judd Nelson (“The Breakfast Club”), Sasha Clements (“Majority Rules!”) and Jessica Lu (“Awkward”).

Huh, I guess it isn’t another Vin Diesel XXX movie. That’s a positive in my book!

From Straight A’s to XXX stars Haley Pullos(The Misadventures of the Dunderheads), Judd Nelson(The Transformers: The Movie), Imali Perera(November Christmas), Peter Graham-Gaudreau(Pumpkin Pie Wars), Garrett Black(Distortion), Jessica Lu(Skirtchasers), and Jacky Lai(Silent Hill: Revelation 3D). It’s directed by Vanessa Parise (#PopFan) and written by Anne-Marie Hess (Britney Ever After)

From Straight A’s to XXX premieres Saturday, February 11th on Lifetime!

via Lifetime

Perfect High pops some Lifetime pills!

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Tars Tarkas

Drugs messed up my hair. Don’t do drugs, unless you got a brush.

[adrotate banner=”7″]If you can’t trust drug dealers, who can you trust? Unfortunately for these upper class youths, their drug dealer turns out to be a liar who is slipping them heroin. You might wonder how you can confuse heroin with other drugs, but since these kids start out with painkillers and then graduate to shoving any type of pill they can get their hands on in their mouths (even, presumably, Flintstones Vitamins!), they aren’t going to stop and look at the pill to see all the heroin oozing out of it. Okay, I don’t know what heroin pills look like, but perhaps they are liquicaps? Gel-caps? Whatever the case, there’s also love going on, guaranteeing Perfect High being filled with lots of perfect teenage angst and you can bet someone will be dead or wish they were by the time the credits roll. Most of you know that as why we watch the Lifetime flicks!

From the trailer there is a dance group, teens freaking out, taking random pills, and of course some idiot passes out while in a car, causing the teen actresses to scream and become dramatic scene chewers. It will be hilarious and awesome.

Inspired by a true story. A star high-school dancer starts using prescription painkillers after a knee injury sidelines her. Feeling isolated, she is adopted by a popular group, which leads to sharing her pills, having regular “pharm” parties and falling in love for the first time. But when her prescription runs out, they resort to buying pills, only to have their lives forever changed when they discover their classmate dealer has been selling them heroin under the guise of being a cheap Mexican painkiller.

Perfect High stars Bella Thorne (The DUFF), Israel Broussard (The Bling Ring), Daniela Bobadilla (The Cheating Pact), Ross Butler (Teen Beach 2), Matreya Fedor (My Mother’s Future Husband), Jasmine Sky Sarin (A Sister’s Nightmare), and Cassidy Alexa (pretty much just this movie). It’s directed by Vanessa Parise (PopFan) and written by Anne-Marie Hess (usually credited as an editor, this is her first full feature as a writer)

Perfect High premieres June 27th on Lifetime!

via Lifetime!

PopFan (Review)

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Tars Tarkas

PopFan

aka Lighthouse

2014
Written by Dean Orion
Directed by Vanessa Parise

PopFan is an amazing Lifetime flick that gives a truly disturbing take on the obsessive fan. It rises far above being simply a gender-swapped Misery to become a twisted tale of mental illness, obsession, and a critique of pop stars sexing up their image in an attempt to escape a squeaky clean background.

Chelsea Kane plays the pop princess Ava Maclaine is a pop star who is Miley Cyrus. Her hobbies are living life and partying, which means getting drunk and getting crunk. Ava has just put out her latest video and song, featuring a sexed up music video (yet still far less racy than you’ll see in many pop star’s videos!) She still has her boyfriend from her child-friendly days, Curtis Flemming, who has gone on to become a boring investment banker. Curtis is not in the mood to put up with her crazy party antics anymore, so Ava decides to make him jealous by dancing with a hot guy. And a hot girl! All of this is filmed on multiple cell phones, including the resulting fight with Curtis. Curtis congratulates her on making a video that will top her music video in views.

Ava then takes a long drive in the country to try to relax and think and write songs. She eventually ends up in Maine, and pumping her own gas. Or at least attempting to, she has help from a friendly service employee named Xavier. He warns here there is a Nor’easter coming and driving soon won’t be safe, but she continues anyway. Soon it is pouring rain and her car spins out and off the road. She awakens in a bed, with Xavier bringing her food and explaining he pulled her out of her burning car.

This alone is obviously creepy. By the next day, Xavier reveals they are in a lighthouse, and there is no phone line, no cell phone reception, and no internet. And the weather is still terrible, so they are trapped there. Xavier seems friendly, showing off the lighthouse and the work he’s been doing to the place. But he still has a creepy vibe. It soon comes apparent that he’s not all together mentally. He is physically insistent she not go into a certain room. His mood changes suddenly and dramatically. He keeps making excuses as to why they can’t go somewhere so she can contact her family to let them know she’s okay.

Continue reading →

Misery loves a PopFan on Lifetime!

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Tars Tarkas

I made the sauce with placenta leftover from when I kidnapped Britney Spears!

[adrotate banner=”1″]What if we gender-swapped Misery and made the victim a pop princess? Then you’d get the upcoming Lifetime Original movie PopFan!

A young pop star looking to recreate herself and her sound on a quiet trip to Maine is caught in a storm, crashes her car, and rescued by a young man who takes her to his secluded lighthouse to recuperate. But she soon discovers that he is not just her rescuer, but a mentally unstable and obsessed fan who believes she is the image created in her videos.

What could be a sensual romance book becomes a disturbing psychological terror thanks to the twist! But just how crazy is this lighthouse guy? I’m guessing pretty crazy, but there is no trailer up yet, so this is all a guess. But I’m pretty accurate with my crazy guesses.

PopFan stars Chelsea Kane – aka Chelsea Staub – who was Meredith Baxter Dimly from Bratz! So I’ll just view PopFan as a sequel to Bratz, because it’s not like we’re going to get a real sequel (unless you count Pretty Little Liars. Maybe we should…) It also stars Nolan Gerard Funk, who has a big enough fanbase they’ve been following the film since it was known as Lighthouse. Yes, Lifetime renamed another flick!

The director of PopFan is Vanessa Parise – who directed Status: Unknown, and is written by Angela Mancuso (who cowrote Aladdin and the Death Lamp and Pegasus vs. Chimera) and Dean Orion (Who wrote some episodes of The Invisible Man)

PopFan premieres Saturday, August 23rd on Lifetime! It will be the best film about a pop princess kidnapped by a guy who lives in a lighthouse you will ever see that night!