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Crying Fiddle
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Crying Fiddle (Review)

August 12, 2011By

Crying Fiddle

aka แว่วเสียงซอ

2004
Directed by Jarin Parnsain

Time once again for some Thai shot on video horror! It’s when the guessing game is the horror in the film…or the film itself??? Usually it’s the film. Will it be the case this time? Duh!

This time we have the story of a girl who dies and comes back as a vengeful ghost who also happens to be green. Why green? Why the heck not? It’s not like we’re treading new ground with green ghosts, remember Slimer? But there will be no Ghostbusting…oh, there IS Ghostbusting, by a few Thai Buddhist priests, but they are the ones who get busted instead! Bustin’ doesn’t make them feel good, I tell you what.

For 73 minutes of generic ghost gunk, the film is okay. But it is the type of film you finish, go “Oooooookay…”, and then immediately start another film and never think about it again. Unless you write reviews on the internet, in which case you spend 30 minutes writing up a review and then never think about it again. You see what I go through for TarsTarkas.NET?

Pring (Koontira Sattabongkot) – Pring is a rich girl who is smitten with her family’s servent Thai, but dad gets angry, which goes bad when she shows up dead. It’s murder, and the rapey murderer Sorn soon gets revenged on.
Thai (Ninnart Sinchai) – Thai is a servant of a rich family that gets fired because their daughter has the hots for him. Wouldn’t you know, but soon she’s dead and back in green ghost form, bugging Thai. Thai can’t catch a break. Actor Ninnart Sinchai was also in the Thai horror flick Immortal Enemy
Sorn (???) – Sorn is a spoiled jerk who always gets his way. And if you stand in his way, he’ll rape you dead!
Cha-em (???) – Cha-em is the other girl in the film that somehow is obsessed with Thai, even though her character is useless.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Men Suddenly In Love

August 10, 2011By

Men Suddenly in Love

aka 猛男滾死隊

2011
Written and directed by Wong Jing

Ever get tired of the non-stop sugar sweetness of the Hong Kong New Years comedies where everyone gets married and lives happily ever after? Well, don’t worry, because Wong Jing is here to throw a dose of jaded bitterness all over the institution of marriage with Men Suddenly in Love! Cheating, seduction, treachery, plotting, conspiracies, the game of thrones that is marriage in Wong Jing land is all laid bare before you. And despite the bad message, the film has some entertaining parts, but not enough to keep me happy.

The title references the similarly toned Men Suddenly In Black (2003), though where In Black shines in it’s unique portrait of marriage, In Love seems like a hollow copy, half-hearted in its conspiracies, too focused on setting up random scenarios than coalescing everything into a major narrative. Though probably done to get around the filming schedules of the stars, there are few scenes where everyone is together. It’s more like a series of stories that randomly intersect.

If you love films where hot lang mo models want to get with old old dudes, then you will love Men Suddenly In Love. If you aren’t an old dude, then you probably are rolling your eyes (if you are an old dude, you are probably combing your hair, anticipating hot models to come wandering in your room any moment!) The irony of these new models is some of the wives they are replacing were once considered the hotties of the Hong Kong cinema world, though said hotties were less likely to be strutting around in a bikini or bras for their films.

The main characters are a group of guys who over the years were students of a teacher named Master Jude, who reunite to celebrate the 80th birthday of Master Jude. Each guy has gone on to a life of success thanks to the teachings of Master Jude, and though they are married, the marriages have their own flaws and levels of dissatisfaction. These different men of different ages and different class years at school are also portrayed as deep friends solely due to their bond with Master Jude, though it is not explained why they hang out together despite the large age differences..

Master Jude (Richard Ng Yiu-Hon) – A great teacher and inspiration for the young males at his school, Master Jude’s greatest students get together to celebrate his 80th birthday. Dies in the first third of the film, but don’t worry, he’s soon back as Master Jude the White. On his deathbed, makes the students present promise that when they have sex with the models to call out his name.
York Ng (Eric Tsang Chi-Wai) – A reactionary politician. His wife is Hillary Lau (Maggie Cheung Hoh-Yee), a busy lawyer, she has no time for sex, and York must fill out application for time. Has an affair with Tina Ma (Chrissie Chau Sau-Na)
Claude Cheung (Jim Chim Sui-Man) – A dedicated actor, immerses himself in his craft. His latest flick is Ip Man vs Haunted Echoes of the Rainbow Has to pretend that his wife Sze (Harriet Yeung Sze-Man) is his cousin for professional reason. Has an affair with Audrey Or (Jessica Xu/Jessica Tsui)
Sam Fu (Wong Jing) – A gyneologist who tries to be good. His wife is Nana Lam (Monica Chan Fat-Yung), who is too busy watching tv or complaining about itchy beards Has an affair with Peril Ngai (Caroline Chu Yulin/Caroline Zhu)
Keith Szeto (Chapman To Man-Chat) – A medium, psychic, ghostbuster, fung shui master, all that jazz. So is his wife, who is even more famous than him, Du-Gu Ling Ling (played by famous Hong Kong medium Mak Ling-Ling). There is never an astrological suitable day to have sex! Has an affair with Jeanne (Carol Yeung Tsz-Yiu)
Charlie Lam (Det Di Yee-Tat) – Runs a dance studio. His wife Nancy Chan (Jacqueline Chong Si-Man) is a jealous gangster girl who also has her gangster brother staying in their bedroom at the foot of the bed criticizing their lovemaking technique. Has an affair with Eleven (Betrys Kong Yi)

Super Batman & Mazinger V
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Super Batman & Mazinger V (Review)

August 8, 2011By

Super Batman & Mazinger V

aka Super Betaman aka 스타짱가 II 마징가V 슈퍼베타맨

1990
Written and Directed by Yeong-han Kim

Viewmaster…Attack!

What if Batman was some goofy Power Rangers kid show. And it sucked. Welcome to the world of Super Batman & Mazinger V! For those of you in the know, South Korea during the 80s and 90s produced a whole slew of copyright violating children’s programming that put the insane in the brain, much of which had tie-in low-quality toys. All of these films are horribly awful, and most of them are unknown in the West, rotting away on Korean VHS tapes. But occasionally some of them get brought out into the light of day, blinking in the sunlight, exposure to the bigger world a new and surreal experience for them. And TarsTarkas.NET tells them how much they suck!

Coming soon to the next Nolan film!

This time, Batman has gone all Power Rangers, and is either called Super Batman or Super Betaman (the film and related media cannot make up its mind!) He looks like he should be fighting Krankor and the Neptune Men, but instead fights a space witch and her crappy wolfman army. Besides making a horrific-looking Batman, they also steal wholesale from Mazinger V, an anime you’ve heard of if you’re into giant robot stuff, or will hear of once the new movie comes out in a few years (if you are reading this in the future and the movie already has come out, then read that sentence as past tense, but at least you get to fly hovercars!)

Hey, Teen Wolf Cosplay Guy, carsurfing was outlawed for a reason!

Other Korean kiddie programming includes Our Friend, Power 5 (Wurideul-ui chingu pawo 5) – A 1989 Ninja Turtles ripoff, Ddaeng-Chil and Double Light (땡칠이와 쌍라이트) – A 1990 alien invasion film where Yoda and apes show up, Eagle Man (who looks like another Batman clone), Dragonball: Goku Fights, Goku Wins (1990) – A Dragonball feature that follows the plot closer than any official Dragonball movie, and literally dozens more. Some of the films are all live action, some are all animation, and many are mixed in between, with models waved around and goofy alien costumes. The most frustrating part of the little information I’ve been able to find about these films is that they only have been released on decaying vhs tapes and will probably soon wither away into nothingness. The common denominator of many of this films seem to be to sell cheap toys, heck in this film a character carries around the toy of the giant robot! The legality of the toys I am sure is questionable at best.

Hi, we’re going to go all Star Wars Holiday Special on your ass!

As the film is in Korean with no subtitles (We don’t need no stinking subtitles!), character names are guesses or descriptions, and the plot is put together from what can be understood from the pictures. As it is a kid’s program, the plot isn’t that complicated, so no worries there. We’ve even found this handy plot synopsis: The witch Rinke rules over the plant Astro with an iron fist. She decides that she needs the super-powered robot, Zangga, to spread her rule to other planets. She learns that Zangga is lying dormant somewhere on Earth and sends her agents, Kats and Kobra, to find and collect him. However, she did not count on the intervention of Betaman and some Earth children who are also looking for Zangga.

That doesn’t help at all! Okay, it sort of has what is happening. Is Kobra the name of the Wolfman? I couldn’t ID any of the actors, but I added some names to the tags just in case. And I hope the mysterious II in the Korean title doesn’t mean there is another Super Batman film out there…because…::shudders::

Batman poses for photos, thousands die.

Batman (???) – Batman defends the rights of the ugly, and flies around and shoots lasers from his hands and wears a goofy yellow costume. Sometimes he turns into a cartoon and fights cartoon animals. Korea! (Sometimes Betaman depending on who is talking)
Fatty (???) – A manchild from space who lost his robot, so he carried around a toy robot. Uh, yeah.
Annoying Family – Weenie, Freckles, Girl, Woman, and Band-aid (???) – The annoying family that adopts Fatty for his mission on Earth. Some of these people must have been buried under an avalanche of ugly trees. The real tragedy of Super Batman & Mazinger V is that this family isn’t wiped out.
Evil Space Queen Rinke (???) – The Evil Space Queen who is looking for the lost robot and hopes to find it before Fatty does. She almost wins, but before Fatty dies of cardiac failure, he befriends the ugly family and they help him. If only the robot was lost in America, Fatty would be dead of a heart attack so powerful it destroys major cities! Rinke has a mysterious female companion who does nothing in the film except be by her side. And she has blue hair in cartoon form!
Evil Space Queen Henchmen – Wolfman, Dog Guy, Other Dog Guy, Mysterious Female Companion, Cartoon Ninja, Catman (???) – Evil Space Queen Rinke has a variety of henchmen that escaped from a play for preschool kids and are now menacing a family of ugly people. Luckily, Batman, defender of the ugly, is there to stop them with vaguely choreographed battles.
Looks like some lucky family got their family portraits back from JC Penney!
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

La Verdadera Historia de Barman y Droguin (Review)

August 6, 2011By

La Verdadera Historia de Barman y Droguin


1991
Directed by Gilberto de Anda
Written by Gilberto de Anda and Valentín Trujillo

La Verdadera Historia de Barman y Droguin is a Mexican Batman parody film, made in the wake of the Burton Batman film with a distinctly cantina feel. Because the characters are based out of a cantina and have alcoholic beverage themed logos. It betrays where the idea for the flick probably originated from.

For a Batman parody film, Barman y Droguin spends a good portion of the film dicking around before it gets to the point. And not even an origin story, the main characters go to a movies multiple times before things begin. Someone crams 50 pounds of Rambo parody in this 3 pound Batman sack.

Víctor Trujillo is a comedian and host best known for his character Brozo the Creepy Clown, but beyond being an anti-clown, Brozo is also a political crusader! In 2004, the Brozo show El Mañanero debuted hidden footage of corruption of political figures, including a tape of then personal secretary to former Mexico City mayor (and unsuccessful Mexico Presidential Candidate) Andrés Manuel López Obrador, René Bejarano (who was elected to the Mexico city legislature), accepting a $45,000 bribe. Mexican congressman Federico Döring aired the video on Brozo’s show, and Brozo crewmembers found Obrador in the same building and got him to agree to an immediate interview, where he was shown the footage for the first time and had to respond while shocked (he tried to play it off as a campaign donation from Argentinian businessman Carlos Ahumada Kurtz for another person’s campaign.) More bribery videos were released (it became known as the videoscandals) and more corruption was shown. Bejarano spent a year in jail before a controversial release, Carlos Ahumada Kurtz was arrested and fled the country, but was brought back and later acquitted and left Mexico for good. I can’t seem to find the video of the original incident, but here is part of a followup interview and you can see Víctor Trujillo as Brozo in all his glory.

A few years later (and no longer dressed as a clown, as Trujillo retired the Brozo show after his wife passed on, though Brozo makes occasional appearances) Trujillo once again made news taking down a corrupt politician, when he confirmed that there were inquiries into the fortune of Governor Arturo Montiel, a presidential precandidate. Montiel denied the charges, but his career was over. The evidence of corruption has only grown, despite another acquittal. Montiel has also been linked to a murder.

Mexican Batman is awesome. Christian Bale just yells at lighting guys.

We have a nice video toaster opening credits with all the characters drawn MSPaint style and run as a slideshow as the credits go by. Helps set up the non-serious tone.

Bruno (Víctor Trujillo) – Bruno runs a bar and has his hands full making sure his crazy friend doesn’t rob places. But then he dresses up as a bat and decides to fight crime. Weird. In the Mexican translations of the Batman comics, Bruce Wayne was called Bruno Diaz, and Dick Grayson was Ricardo Tapia. Hence the alter-ego names here.
Barman (Víctor Trujillo) – Barman wears a bat logoed Bacardi shirt. Fear the Barman! That cardboard batman figure above the name of the bar is totally not going to clue in anyone!
Ricardo (Ausencio Cruz) – Ricardo is a loser who tries to rope Bruno into his crazy schemes. But one scheme convinces Bruno, this Barman and Droguin scheme. Amazing. Ausencio Cruz was a longtime partner of Víctor Trujillo.
Droguin (Ausencio Cruz) – He’s not Robin, he’s Droguin! Get it right or pay the price!
Clown Guy (José Luis Cordero ‘Pocholo’) – This Clown Prince of Kidnapping takes the “kid” part literally and kidnaps a kid. Luckily, Barman and Droguin are there to also get kidnapped. There is no official name for the Joker knockoff I could tell, and he’s just listed as Secuestrador in the credits.
Female Reporter (Lizbeth Castro) – Hey, don’t yell at me, her character doesn’t have a name in the credits! All she gets is Periodista. So we’ll call her…Lois Lopez! Put on the Barman story, and helps Barman out of his car accident problem.
Pingüino (Ramiro Gómez) – Pingüino is just a dude who modifies cars and dresses up like the Penguin while doing so. It just makes sense!

Flying Centipede
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Flying Centipede (Review)

August 1, 2011By

Flying Centipede

aka Fei tian wu gong aka 飞天蜈蚣

1994
Directed by Qingguo Sun

Flying Centipede is a guy who likes to dress up as a Batman copy, except he looks more like a Mothman and call himself Flying Centipede for some reason. Flying Centipede also machine guns down lots of cops, instantly making his hero status questionable. Maybe if we were told all these guys were corrupt cops, it would be better, but instead Flying Centipede is just painted as a villain despite being a super hero. And as this is a Mainland China production, we can’t have villains get away with their crimes. What kind of moral standard is that? So everyone dies. Spoiler alert!

Thanks to our crack research team, we were able to find….not much about Flying Centipede. Time to fire the research team, or at least force them to learn Chinese.

Flying Centipede (It is a mystery) – Don’t reveal the secret identity of Flying Centipede. But it’s revealed below under a spoiler alert.
Ouyang Long (Wu Gang) – He’s a cop, whose job it is to take down Flying Centipede. And also to shoot mushrooms, dancing spiders, and fleas without messing up the trackball too much.
Ailina (Qu Ying) – Ouyang’s female friend and secretary to the Police Chief. Qu Ying is a mainland model/actress/singer who has had a busy career, including roles in Fight For Justice(2004) and Zhang Yimou’s Keep Cool, and in the 2000 mainland China production Charlie Angels.
Black Widow (Xie Xu) – Female gang leader whose gang wears black lines drawn on their faces. I guess she’s watched The Warriors too many times and thinks her gang needs a theme.
Cops Hua and Fatty (??? and ???) – More cops from Ouyang’s group, who help him on his quest of justice.

Fairly Oddparents Grow Up Timmy Turner
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! (Review)

July 28, 2011By

A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!


2011
Directed by Savage Steve Holland
Written by Butch Hartman & Scott Fellows

When A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! was first announced as a live-action feature film, it sounded like it would be terrible. Who needed yet another live action film for a cartoon? Haven’t we suffered enough? But, Grow up, Timmy Turner! instead turned out to be a good surprise, keeping the tone of the cartoon while delving into raging manchild territory with a plot so off the walls that it is brilliant. And yes, that means I liked it very much. I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you! Who knew that I would end up enjoying what appeared to be a terrible Disney Channel-type film? But Grow Up, Timmy Turner is much more than that, it’s fun, and sort of has a message about the need to grow up and move on with your life buried beneath the wacky antics of the hijinks that ensue.

For those of you out of the loop, The Fairly Oddparents is a cartoon series about a child named Timmy Turner’s fairly godparents who grant him wishes, and all the adventures that entails. The series’ bizarro humor helped earn it a cult following among more than little kids, with viewers of all ages tuning in. There has been sporadic tv-movie specials for The Fairly Oddparents, though this is the first live-action special.

Grow Up, Timmy Turner continues the same basic plot, except Timmy is now 23 years old, still in the same grade at school, still living at home, and still not grown up, because being grown up loses you your fairy godparents. It’s in the rules, trust us, they break out the rules to read during the movie!

Cameos from the cartoon show up all over the place. Jorgen Von Strangle (Mark Gibbon), the strongest fairy and the boss of all fairies, appears repeatedly throughout the film to threaten Timmy. He’s an obvious Arnold Schwarzenegger parody. Timmy’s childhood friend Chester McBadBat and A.J. (Chris Anderson and Jesse Reid) appear sporadically as adults assuming the still-childlike Timmy is jealous of their “successes”, though the successes are never elaborated on.

Director Savage Steve Holland was an 80s genius with such classic films as Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, and How I Got Into College. He got into tv with The New Adventures of Beans Baxter and the Encyclopedia Brown series on HBO, but his greatest television creation was Eek! the Cat (and accompanying cartoons.) He’s since been making a living directing episodes of family fare tv series, making him perfect for this film packed with Nickelodeon teens.

Timmy (Drake Bell) – Timmy Turner has been 10 years old for the past 13 years. Not literally 10 years old, but living as a 10 year old despite being 23. Thanks to his magical fairy godparents, he can wish for whatever he wants. And what he wants is to keep being able to wish for whatever he wants. But things may change…
Tootie (Daniella Monet) – Tootie was the childhood gross girl that crushed on Timmy Turner despite him thinking girls were gross. But now she’s all hot and Timmy’s like “DAAAAA-YUUUMMM!!!” Daniella Monet has a role in the series VICTORiOUS
Fairy Godparents – Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof – (Susanne Blakeslee, Daran Norris, Jason Alexander, Cheryl Hines, Randy Jackson) – Timmy’s fairy godparents show up for the most part as CGI constructs, but during a few sequences turn into Jason Alexander and Cheryl Hines.
Denzel Crocker (David Lewis) – Mr. Crocker is Timmy’s fairy-obsessed teacher, and has been his teacher for 13 years. It is a tough decision deciding which is less mature.
Hugh J. Magnate (Steven Weber) – It’s your standard evil billionaire with a lost childhood, except he doesn’t have a sled or anything. Though he is evil.

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