Piranhaconda (Review)

March 5, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Piranhaconda

2012
Written by Mike MacLean
Concept by J. Brad Wilke
Directed by Jim Wynorski

This won $20,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos!

Piranhaconda is like a mix of SyFy meets the softcore bikini film. Elements of both merge together while director Jim Wynorski returns to his favorite stomping ground of Hawaii. Thankfully, we don’t have a rehash of the Curse of the Komodo/Komodo vs Cobra/A.I. Assault script, and instead have something wholly new. While parts of it may not work, overall Piranhaconda isn’t terrible and gives enough death and destruction to knock it into mid-tier SyFy creature feature region.

Piranhaconda comes from the period where SyFy had begun to run low on monsters that exist in nature/mythology and needed to just combine fierce animals together to create new horrors. Sharktopus is the one that started this trend, which has expanded to include animal/natural disaster hybrids.

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Piranhaconda doesn’t waste time trying to come up with a fantastical origin of the creatures, it just throws out a line or two about how the monsters have always been there and just hibernate a lot. They even grab a supernatural name for their creature – Kepolo, a Polynesian river devil. In reality, the origin of the creatures does not matter, what matters is if things are a grand ol’ time while all the monster action is happening.

Let’s get this out of the way right now. Piranhaconda is a gigantic dong that slithers through the grass and attacks its prey, often spewing goo over the chest of female characters. I think we’ve moved a bit beyond subtext here into hilarity. The two Piranhacondas don’t like each other very well, which isn’t surprising considering what they represent, but they’ve also mated and dropped dozens and dozens of eggs. Throw that into the fake film being a slasher film, which have their own phallic symbols going on, and things reveal themselves nicely. So, yeah. Piranhaconda!

When we put our heads together…it hurts!

	Rose (Terri Ivens) – A producer concerned with work and handling the difficult actress on her film. Figures out all the dumb stuff Lovegrove is doing that’s endangering everyone.
	Jack (Rib Hillis) – Jack and Rose, huh? I guess their hearts did go on! A stunt guy with the hots for Rose, Jack helps save the day while avoiding dating Kimmy.
	Professor Robert Lovegrove (Michael Madsen) – A herpatologist who has spent his life studying the piranhacondas that killed his dad, and has finally proved they exist just in time to set them loose on a killing spree. What a nice guy!
	Kimmy Weston (Shandi Finnessey) – Famous b-movie actress, known for the line “Suck lead, you hillbilly buttnugget!” Shandi Finnessey is very convincing on playing the spoiled brat, adding a charm to the role a lesser actress wouldn’t know what to do with.
	Pike (Michael Swan) – Leader of the random heavily armed gang who kidnap several of the characters for “ransom”, despite being so weirdly incompetent their game plant makes little sense.
	Talia (Rachel Hunter ) – Female member of the random heavily armed gang who sort of has a thing with Pike. Is one of the smarter members, which means she dies quick so everyone else can do dumb things
	Piranhacondas (CGI) – A monster who chomps lots of people and pumps out dozens of eggs in between long hibernation cycles. Also goes in long quests for eggnapped eggs. Piranhacondas can even takes down helicopters. The origin of Kepolo, a Polynesian river devil. Like the creatures in Flying Monkeys, a mythological creature from another culture becomes a star in a Western film with a quick name change for how culture in the West would call them. There are hundreds of awesome monsters in cultural myths from around the globe, enough SyFy could make films for decades just on them alone.

This happens every day on the 101-N

InGood, Movie Reviews

Gangs of Wasseypur Part II (Review)

March 4, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Gangs of Wasseypur Part II

aka Gangs of वासेपुर II

2012
Written by Akhilesh Jaiswal, Anurag Kashyap, Sachin K. Ladia, Rutvik Oza, and Zeishan Quadri
Directed by Anurag Kashyap

Gangs of Wasseypur continues with Part II, thanks to the split the 320 minute film experience just so theaters would take a chance and play it. Part I was an amazing experience, and Part II almost lives up, creating a uniquely awesome long story. It took five writers – Akhilesh Jaiswal, Anurag Kashyap, Sachin K. Ladia, Rutvik Oza, and Zeishan Quadri – to bring Gangs of Wasseypur to life. Anurag Kashyap directs this ambitious project, which is one of many quality and critically successful films. Black Friday(2004), Dev D(2009), and That Girl in Yellow Boots(2011) are among his other well-known works.

When last we left our warring families, Sardar Khan has just gotten Sonny Corleoned (or was it Sonny Corle-OWNED!) and his son Danish Khan is now the defacto leader of the family, and he vows to kill the men who gunned down his father. Sultan Qureshi realizes Danish is trouble and kills him, and the Khan family now is lead by the marijuana smoking Faizal Khan, who neither seeked out nor wanted the leadership role. No one thinks that he can handle being a ruthless leader, but he proves them wrong by beheading a longtime friend who betrayed the location of his father to the assassins.

Faizal now leads the Khans as time continues and other sons of Sardar make waves. Sardar’s fourth son Perpendicular is a maniacal spoiled child who keeps a razor blade in his mouth and spends his time robbing local stores, who let him because he’s Sardar Khan’s son. His actions start to get out of control, and Faizal begins spending more time cleaning up his messes than he would like.

InGood, Movie Reviews

Gangs of Wasseypur Part I (Review)

March 3, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Gangs of Wasseypur Part I

aka Gangs of वासेपुर

2012
Written by Akhilesh Jaiswal, Anurag Kashyap, Sachin K. Ladia, Rutvik Oza, and Zeishan Quadri
Directed by Anurag Kashyap

Gangs of Wasseypur is an epic tale of the rise of the mafia in the Wasseypur region and tells of generations of families in conflict. The massive story originally was a single 319 minute film, but has been split into two parts for release, as few theaters would risk a 5+ hour film. The sweeping tale is consistently entertaining, with memorable characters and a fluid storyline that never seems too complicated despite the massive amount of characters, locations, and history of the Wasseypur region (whose history is just as complicated as the Khan-Singh rivalry!)

Anurag Kashyap is the force behind the Gangs of Wasseypur films, directing as well as helping to produce and write. Kashyap had been interested in doing a gang epic for years, and after hearing about the real life gang warfare and rise of the mafia in Wasseypur, he found a tale to tell. The story loosely follows real events, starting just before India’s independence in 1947 and concluding in near modern day. It is essentially a revenge tale, but not in a traditional sense.

The events spanning time show the economic shifts of India modernizing. In the 1940s, wood is the first item of value, then the real power becomes the coal mines. By the 1970s, it’s gasoline that becomes important, and soon after the Khan family is cornering the iron scrap economy, the conflict over this running through the second film. There is even a takeover of fishing rights just as an aside.

The long tale introduces a huge amount of characters as it passes through the decades, as people enter and exit the lives of the Khan family. Each major character gets a title card, and every character is unique with their own personalities, and just who lives and dies and when and where happens as it would in life, with characters you don’t expect dropping away and others suddenly thrust into larger roles. Everything is done in a manner that just feels like you’re watching true events and not a story punched up to be more Hollywood.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Desi Spiderman (Review)

March 2, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Desi Spiderman

2010
Written and directed by “Surendra Hinabar”???

Only Desi Spiderman can get your whites white!

Desi Spiderman is ridiculous, but it knows it is ridiculous, and some of the things that are crazy are intentionally done so for comedic effect. Other things are just weird and who knows why they are that way. That’s what you get when you get a film that is a very localized production that blurs the line between fan film and local production. Desi Spiderman was made in Ghaziabad, India, and brings to mind the Superman film from Supermen of Malegaon. So in that spirit we are happy to watch Desi Spiderman and the ridiculousness there in. Because it is ridiculous.

Desi Spiderman: More Patriotic Than You!

Desi Spiderman’s costume makes him look like a luchador by way of Dr. Seuss. He wears a red turtleneck sweatshirt, white gloves, gold spider mask with eye holes cut out, black pants and brown belt, gold shoes, and white circle with text in the middle of the red sweatshirt. The text is “Kanha Milk”, which I think had a sponsorship deal to help fund the film. But I’m not 100% sure, because there isn’t a lot of information about Desi Spiderman in English.

Suck on this, Spiderman 3!

Surendra Hinabar is the name I found listed for writer/director/song lyrics, so hopefully that’s correct because I’m running with it. I don’t have any other names for the cast list, but whoever plays the Desi Mary Jane does a hilarious job of ridiculous faces during the fantasy musical and wistful daydreaming sequences. PAL Films is generic enough I can’t find anything about it. If it wasn’t for YouTube, this would pass one without being known by the outside world, which would have been a shame. What I think is the director’s YouTube Channel (labeled Navneet Singh) promises another film, but hasn’t been updated in two years. Maybe someday…. But until then, Desi Spiderman!

No one supports the Broncos in my town!

	Desi Peter Parker (???) – A childish man who plays games with children all day, then accompanies Desi Mary Jane during her walks. She feels he is a failure at a protector, which saddens him until he’s given the power of Desi Spiderman!
	Desi Spiderman (???) – The hero India needs. The hero Desi Mary Jane deserves. Desi Spiderman punches bad guy after bad guy after bad guy. And does the laundry! Thanks to his Desi Spiderman powers, he can now date Desi Mary Jane. Desi Spiderman’s greatest power is teleportation, which he does all the time because that’s what real spiders are known for. Be sure to drink your Kanha Milk.
	Desi Mary Jane (???) – Local woman who falls for the only available young man who isn’t a criminal, Desi Peter Parker. That is, until that dreamboat Desi Spiderman shows up and saves her. Luckily, they turn out to be the same guy. Spends most of her time daydreaming musical fantasy sequences, walking, and getting sexually harassed by random goons. And for some reason, the director will randomly zoom in on her boobs.

Hey, I just realized you’re not El Santo!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Shanee (Review)

March 1, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Shanee

aka Shaani aka Shani

1989
Written by Agha Nazir Kawish
Directed by Saeed Rizvi

Pakistan goes science fiction for this take on 1984’s Starman movie, Shanee! Of course, it has to get Pakistani cinemaed up first, which means it is full of lots and lots of violence! Shani, Shaani, Shanee, however you want to spell it, is billed as Pakistan’s first science fiction film (and actually is, as far as I can tell) The entire film was a result of Saeed Rizvi, who directed, photographed, and did many of the visual effects. Rizvi started doing effects when he was directing commercials, This was the first of three effects heavy films Saeed Rizvi completed, followed by Beheaded Man/Sarkata Insaan and Mysterious Island/Talismi Jazeera (a Russian coproduction).

Shanee is the first big budget science fiction effects film for Pakistan, and was designed to rival the bit 1980s US effects films like ET, Close Encounters, and Star Wars. It doesn’t quite live up to the hype. There are practical models, glowy aliens, video toaster effects, cartoon lasers and beams and glowy eyes, animated bats, animated crocodiles, a guy with a retractable knife arm, and fakey skeletons. Plus real owls and cobras, and lots and lots of explosions. Even the credits are designed to look like the ones from Superman

Whenever anything interesting is happening, the Shanee theme will blare, the refrain becoming annoying very quickly and unintentionally ridiculous soon after. Now the damn song is stuck in my head and has a good chance of being my last words when slipping from the mortal coil. Damn you, Shanee… There is a limited amount of songs in Shani, but not the no songs that the director claims in interviews. Shanee won a couple of Nigar awards (the Pakistani equivalent to the Oscars) including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for Asif Khan.

Shanee is an Urdu language film Thus we’re forced to dive in without subtitles. But this is TarsTarkas.NET, and we don’t need no stinking subtitles! Luckily, the film is easy to follow without subtitles, and the few points that were confusing were easily cleared up by the review at the sadly now defunct TheHotSpotOnline.com, accessed through Archive.org. Also because it is Urdu, there isn’t a straight translation of the title, so for opening credits sake we’re calling the film Shanee, but the main character Shani, to avoid confusion by only being a little confusing. Got it? Good! Now let’s get Shaneed!

	Shani (Sherry Malik) – Shani was horribly murdered by Shamsher Khan during a failed attempt to bring down the criminal. But now he’s back, because an alien went into Heena’s house, saw a picture of Shani, and then transformed into him. No one seems to notice Shani acts like a weirdo except briefly when he declares he doesn’t want to get married. And this includes Shane using his strange alien powers on people. Shani even saves Korans from falling on the ground, because that’s what super powered aliens do! Sherry Malik was a model before he made this film, and then he moved on to obscurity.
	Heena (Babra Sharif) – Local villager Heena mourns the death of her fiance and lives at her parents house, at least until her beloved Shani is back, in strange alien form. But who cares, even if you have an alien baby with the imposter, it’s still love and all. Babra Sharif played the villainess Dolly in International Gorillay, at least until she’s seduced by the power of our awesome heroes and goes good.
	Shamsher Khan (Asif Khan) – A bad guy who controls the local area with a bunch of armed goons. Involved in thuggery, theft, murder, and human trafficking. Also he beats his girlfriend. Really hates Shani, and shocked that the guy he killed is not back and impossible to defeat. At one point his arm gets ripped off, and he has it replaced with a retractable knife arm, which makes him awesome. Asif Khan played the villain in Cat-Beast/Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay, and was sporting a mustache.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (Review)

February 20, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Lizzie Borden Took an Ax

2014
Written by Stephen Kay
Directed by Nick Gomez

Lifetime has been breaking out the event movies more and more, which has been leading to some ratings wins. So time to check out Lizzie Borden Took an Ax, the new take on America’s first legendary criminal starring Christina Ricci as the infamous Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden Took an Ax certainly shows its chops as a higher caliber Lifetime television movie, but it’s still a television movie and suffers from the limitations thereof. That being said, the majority of the film is well paced and gives us a good look at both Borden’s home life before the killings, and the drama surrounding the trial and aftermath. And some of it is pretty fun, too!

Christina Ricci’s attitude and attire as Lizzie Borden and the more historical setting just can’t keep one from thinking this could be a story of Wednesday Addams all grown up and killing on her own. Lizzie Borden Took an Ax does a bit to capitalize on this, with Ricci wandering around being creepy from time to time.

Where Lizzie Borden Took an Ax gets weakest is that it’s not really a murder mystery, it’s a psychological look at Lizzie Borden. Except it isn’t, really, and might be a murder mystery after all. Or is it? The film’s lack of pure focus is annoying, and despite the script being more tooled for the drama of the trial and the “did she do it?” aspect, the editing has already made up its mind, and doesn’t hesitate to show you via insert after bloody insert. These rapid cuts (ha-ha!) are cool and all, I just wish they were more impactful (ha-ha!) with regard to Borden’s grip on reality. As the weight of the trial bears upon her, Borden becomes medicated and thus less lucid during testimonies. There should be some cool drama here contrasted to her upbringing, but it’s all disregardful for a more straight narrative.

Lack of focus aside, the parts of Lizzie Borden Took an Ax that are fun are very fun, and Borden is a bad girl having fun. Stephen Kay did some research on Lizzie Borden, and theories and conjecture are presented as facts, but also innuendo that might only be picked up if you are familiar with the case. Other parts are not so subtle, and things are fudged a bit for dramatic effect. Things are kept mostly contemporary, except occasional modern rock/rockabilly used for scene transitions setting up the next act.

	Lizzie Borden (Christina Ricci) – A willful daughter sick of her controlling father and controlling 1890s lifestyle, so she goes out and parties, even if it means stealing and walking alone at night. Is a Sunday School teacher but “only on Sundays”. The film takes great joy in having Lizzie Borden act creepy, often popping into the scene to be disturbing and even creeping out her sister. I half expected her to be floating above the ground as a creepy ghost or something.
	Andrew Borden (Stephen McHattie) – The Borden patriarch, a domineering man who never found a penny he couldn’t pinch. Is shown ripping off his workers and making enemies all over town. Has a rough relationship with his youngest daughter as she rebels against his controlling ways. But she also uses their connection to her advantage, trying to turn him against his new wife. He gets whacked.
	Emma Borden (Clea DuVall) – Lizzie’s sister, she’s far more reserved that Lizzie. Away from town at the time of the murders, she returns to find her world in disarray, but stands by her sister through all the tragedy and trials. At least until a party happens.

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