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InBad, Movie Reviews

Yatterman

January 6, 2013By

Yatterman

aka ヤッターマン aka Yattāman

2009
Screenplay by Masashi Sogo
Story by Tatsuo Yoshida
Directed by Takashi Miike

Yatterman
It’s posin’ time!

Yatterman is a big pile of dumb fun. Based on a cartoon show from back in the day (back in the Japan day) of 1977. Smart people (or people who know how to quickly Google things) will know that Yatterman was the second show in the Time Bokan Series, which is a group of cartoons from Tatsunoko Productions. The cartoons evolve and feature similar groups of heroes and villains. Yatterman was the longest running series, and has even sported a revival cartoon in 2008.

Yatterman is about two super-heroes who fight a variety of monsters/giant robots that are the work of the Doronbo Gang, baddies attempting to get the pieces of the Skull Stone together to awful things will happen…and also the Doronbo Gang gets rich. The hero is the teenage son of a toy store owner who has modified his dad’s toys into weapons to fight evil, and does so with his girlfriend. Yes, the concept is nuts, and that’s why we love it.

Yatterman
Subtext? What’s that?

Genre fans of Takashi Miike might be disappointed that there is no slicing of nipples, piano wire, or transexuals firing darts from their vaginas. But then, if that’s still all you expect from Miike by now, you really need to get out more. This isn’t 2001, people. Miike brings his usual over-the-top exuberance to Yatterman, this time translating it into the cartoony style that fits perfectly with the universe.

The Yatterman world is a ridiculous one, but also full of whimsy and wonder. Evil villains scheme and build giant robot machines, but are easily defeated. Characters are both stereotypical archetypes but also complex and developed personalities underneath.

Yatterman
The extra Ds are for a double dose of Doronbo!

Like all the best films, the villains are a thousand times more interesting than the heroes. Lady Doronjo is the hot girl who is evil, yet also hopelessly in love with her biggest nemesis. Tonzura aspires to be a wrestling champion and barely seems evil, while Boyacky is that guy who’s leering at you the entire bus ride. He’s also a mechanical genius and hopelessly in love with Lady Doronjo.

The entire film is packed with sexual innuendo. By innuendo, I mean totally blatant. Giant robots have breasts or what looks suspiciously like a giant wang (and all of these things fire things out of them) and there is a disturbing scene involving robot ants. Yatterman is one big pervert’s paradise.

Throughout the film, The Doronbo Gang embarks in a series of scams to acquire a large amount of money to build their mechanical creations in order to battle the Yatterman squad. Their methods are often genius, and all three of them could easily find legitimate employment and make buckets full of money, but they love the freedom of being able to do whatever they want, and also the dream of getting even richer and more powerful.

Yatterman
This is the best movie ever.

Because this film is weirdtacular and strange, it must be thoroughly examined and gets a full scale breakdown. Yatterman style!

Takada Gan/Gan-chan/Yatterman No. 1 (Sho Sakurai) – Takada Gan is the son of a toy store owner who builds his own mecha out of his father’s toys. Dresses up as Yatterman No. 1 to battle evil, and ropes his girlfriend along with him. Sho Sakurai is part of the male singing group Arashi
Kaminari Ai/Ai-chan/Yatterman No. 2 (Saki Fukuda) – Gan-chan’s girlfriend who goes and plays Yatterman with him as Yatterman No. 2. Becomes rather jealous of Takada Gan as other women begin to show interest in him.
Lady Doronjo (Kyoko Fukada) – Leader of the Doronbo Gang and sexy woman of desire of more than one main character. Wants to be rich, but also wants to settle down and get married. Leads her group’s search of the Skull Stones.
Boyacky (Katsuhisa Namase) – Doronbo Gang member who wears a big nose with big rabbit teeth. He builds all the mecha for the group. Is also a gigantic perv, probably the biggest pervert on the planet. Katsuhisa Namase specializes in playing characters who wear comical wigs, which I didn’t know was a thing.
Tonzura (Kendo Kobayashi) – Tough guy of the Doronbo Gang who wears a pig nose, because wearing animal noses are where it’s at these days. Dreams of becoming an amazing wrestler.
Yatterman
If you count all the skulls in this movie, you will unlock the secret number from the movie Pi!
Machine Man Bangla
InMovie News

Vampire Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach

January 6, 2013By

It’s that time again to go over all the stories that I was too lazy to write about when they came out, what with the real world getting in my face with all this Christmas cheer and ODing on candy canes. Well, I’m out of the candy cane rehab clinic and back. We got some awful things that have appeared, some less than awful things, and some curiosities. As usual, I have some links to cool articles, though I am always looking for more cool things, so feel free to suggest for the next roundup! Now, let’s roll!

**The live action film about Acme – the company that Wile E. Coyote gets all his gadgets from, is moving forward and is becoming basically an unofficial Steve Jobs biopic. Producer Dan Lin spoke about how it will allow them to do all sorts of wacky inventions. But without those inventions leading to cartoon violence, I’m not so certain. Who wants to see an actual human plummet off a cliff to his doom? Will it be like Roger Rabbit when a steamrollered Judge Doom gets up and things look freaky? In any event, I’d rather stay at home draining suckers dry when the river gets dealt thanks to a Party Poker bonus code. But we’ll see. Did you know that Broomcorn’s Uncle is an actual poker term? That’s make a good film title…

**The book series Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead is becoming a film, with Heathers writer Dan Waters doing the script and his brother and Mean Girls director Mark Waters helming the film. The books sound just like you think they do, with a female teenage lead and vampire politics. Sadly there is no vampire who makes sound effects with his mouth. What kind of lame Academy movie is that??

Set in the present day against a hidden universe of vampires, half-humans, alchemy, and magic. Richelle Mead shifts the focus from the brooding male vampires of Twilight, “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries” to that of a strong, yet flawed 17-year-old female who confronts her world with grit, determination, and lots of moxie. Rose Hathaway is a dhampir, half human/half vampire, and guardian of the Moroi, a race of peaceful and magical mortal vampires who can walk in the daylight, survive by feeding off willing blood donors, grow old and die. Hidden deep in the forests of Montana is St. Vladimir’s Academy, where Moroi and dhampirs learn to take their place in Moroi society.

Rose must master her inherited abilities as a dhampir and earn the approval of the Royal Council, as guardian to Princess Lissa, her best friend and sole heir of one of the twelve Royal families of Moroi. Rose and Lissa share a mysterious psychic bond and sense of destiny, but first they must survive an intense social scene, politics, and the physical challenges of Moroi life at the Academy. Outside the sanctuary of St. Vladimir’s waits their greatest threat of all, the Strigoi, a race of bloodthirsty immortal vampires and predators of the Moroi.

**BleedingCool has some pics of the cancelled Pixar flick Newt, which got the ax when it turned out it was too similar in plot to Rio. Good thing no one told Pixar about Antz…
Newt Pixar

**Battle of the Year 3D is The Mighty Ducks, except with b-boy crews. And the Koreans are evil once again, because this must take place in the Red Dawn remake universe. Chris Brown does finally get put into jail, but only movie jail, and he’s seen punching a bag in the trailer. Good job there, guys. You gotta love a dance crew that has a battle cry of “3D!” And by love, I mean go catch a matinee of The Hobbit instead.

**Pre-Code goes gangster for Blondie Johnson!

**OutlawVern hunts down Django Unchained!

**Have you been following the 200 Best Hong Kong Films Ever countdown on LoveHKFilm? You better be!

**The Great White Dope gets spied by the Eyes of a Stranger!

**Radiation Cinema! counts to The 27th Day!

**Carol tells us the comics she liked in 2012 at The Cultural Gutter!

**I got my MOSS Secret Santa swag from Miguel at Monster Island Resort Podcast. The Dredd badge came right after I watched Dredd, which was freaking awesome and has a rad soundtrack too boot. That Tanya flick is famous in the “chick bones an ape” genre of films. And, yes, that is a vintage 8mm Varan the Unbelievable reel, which is awesome for the cover box art alone. Thanks, Miguel!
MOSS Secret Santa
Check out the latest podcast where Miguel discusses the Gillman from the Creature from the Black Lagoon flicks!

**Bill Plympton has a new flick up on Kickstarter raising funds – Cheatin’ – so if you like his stuff and want to throw money at him, now’s your chance!

**Dodging Myths is my new favorite Kickstarter of all time. Remember to watch all the Word Warrior videos, because you will not be disappointed. That is the word.

Until next time, remember to not enroll in any random academies unless they are Police Academies!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Haywire

January 4, 2013By

Haywire


2012
Written by Lem Dobbs
Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Why is the hallway all lime green all of a sudden?

Versatile director Steven Soderbergh has a cinematic talent and creative desire that he will work in almost any genre at any level of funding. Soderbergh also has a realistic view on his output, he knew he was in a creative funk at one point (and used one of his own films to help inspire him to greatness) and knows he will get jaded at film directed again, so is setting his eyes on becoming a painter. But before critics with even snootier voices begin tearing into his work, it’s still our time! Haywire is Soderbergh’s action spectacle, a femme fighter basher that gives us some great fights. Continuing Soderbergh’s trend of using nontraditional actors, MMA fighter Gina Carano making her major film debut (she was previously in the DTV flick Blood and Bone, was an American Gladiator as Crush, and is featured in the video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 as Natasha).

Oh, honey, that’s not how you apply foundation!

Opening with an on the run Mallory Kane meeting Aaron at a diner, Kane quickly ends up beating him up, as he’s assigned to take her in. Now in a stolen car, she relates her tale to her hostage Scott, letting us into her recent escapades in Barcelona and subsequent betrayal in Ireland. Though fleeing from every law enforcement branch in the country, she remains calm and collected while trying to evade her pursuers.

Haywire‘s greatest strength is the choreography, but unfortunately I’ve seen things that may Haywire look like a snooze in the park. Haywire does excel at showing just how brutal violence is, especially physical violence in close quarters. Mallory Kane battles several men in claustrophobic situations, either trapped or led to an isolated area. Kane doesn’t back down from the fights, either out of a sense of desperate survival or a sense of duty to track the one man who escaped the raid on a hostage situation.

I’m just gonna take a big smoke on my phallic symbol…

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) – Our heroine, former marine, and private military agent who goes on the run when she’s framed for murder and flagged as wanted. There is lots of looking and slightly squinting eyes by Gina, it is called acting. It’s probably even a method acting, under the great Franz von Lookensquint.
Aaron (Channing Tatum) – Fellow agent who also works for Mallory’s employer, is sent to go get her when she goes on the run.
Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) – Kane’s former husband and her employer, though she’s leaving his business.
Paul (Michael Fassbender) – British agent who is teamed with Mallory in Ireland…where’s she’s betrayed. Will turn out to not be a big fan of ladies’ thighs…
John Kane (Bill Paxton) – Kane’s father. The two aren’t close, he’s retired military and spends his time writing long military fiction. It is unknown if any of his books are about bughunts.
Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas) – Spanish agent who doesn’t like Kane and her team playing in his pool. There is more going on than that, though…
Hi, yes, I recently bought your Automatic 2000 garage door opener, and I think there may be a problem…
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Beware

January 2, 2013By

Beware


1946
Written by John E. Gordon
Directed by Bud Pollard
Beware
A black cast Race Movie made entirely to give an excuse for Louis Jordan to play his jazz for over half the running time, Beware succeeds marvelously in it’s goal, because Louis Jordan is awesome. Everything else, though, is freaking terrible! The flat actors seem pulled from community theater, and occasionally fumble their lines, but the scene continues as if nothing happened.

Louis Jordan is joined by his Tympany Band, at this time the line up is: William Davis on Piano, Joshua W. Jackson on Sax, Aaron Izenhall on Trumpet, Carl Hogan on Guitar, Jesse Simpkins on Bass, and Eddie Byrd on Drums. Also credited is The “ARISTO-GENES” Girls Club, who did some of the dancing.
Beware
An interesting feature is aside from Jordan and his band, all of the adult black characters with authority are light-skinned. The Dean, the Professor, and even love interest Annabelle are light complexion. Even more odd, the villain, Charles Ware the Third, is the lightest skinned of them all! The students and minor characters like a guy at the train station are generally darker. I don’t know if there was a conscious effort to cast a more lighter main cast (some of the all black cast films do things like that, Oscar Micheaux did is constantly in his films) or just the film stock has degraded to point where everyone is lighter skinned.

Director Bud Pollard’s first flick was Girls for Sale (1927), a precode white slavery “epic” that he cowrote and codirected. But as John Donaldson at the Classic Horror Film Board detected, there was a bit more to the story. Girls for Sale started out as a German film called Das Frauenhaus von Rio and was advertised as Rio’s Road to Hell, until Brazil’s government go offended and suddenly the title was just Road to Hell. It played at least once with live action nude models (which I think was a stage show that was ripping off the “sex education” films like Mom and Dad) I honestly can’t tell if this film still exists.

Pollard dabbled in all sorts of exploitation fare, from race films like The Black King (1932), It Happened in Harlem (1945), Beware, and Tall, Tan, and Terrific (1946). He made at least one Yiddish language film, Victims of Persecution (1933), and an Italian language film, O Festino o la Legge (1932). He’s probably best known for Alice in Wonderland (1931) and The Horror (1932). Pollard would even appear on film in The Road to Hollywood (1947), which is a collection of Bing Crosby shorts packaged and renamed to cash in on his Road to... flicks, with Bud Pollard hosting the interstitials. You can watch it for free at Archive.org. Heck, you can even watch Beware there!
Beware
Beware is a quick way to pass the time and filled with lots of cool jazz. Though in this day and age you can just download tons and tons of Louis Jordan tunes, turning Beware more into an interesting artifact of the time. What will people say of Katy Perry: Part of Me in 60 years?

Louis Jordan/Lucius Brokenshire Jordan (Louis Jordan) – “The King of the Jukebox” was one of the greatest musicians of all time and deserved better films than Beware. But you got to make lemonade with whatever weird fruit life throws at you. Jordan deserves books written about him that a blurb on a website won’t fill. In this film, he is a Ware College alumni named Lucius who disappeared right before Louis Jordan appeared on the national stage.
Annabelle Brown (Valerie Black) – Athletic instructor at Ware College and former mutual college crush of Lucius Jordan. But that jerk Benjamin Ware the Third ruined everything. You never see her do any athletic instruction.
Benjamin Ware III (Milton Woods) – Heir to the Ware family fortune and guardian of the Ware College fund…which he says is broke, but that’s a lie! Ware wants Annabelle as his bride, but she knows he sucks and refuses. Thus, Ware will burn down everything unless some jazz singer saves the day…

Beware

InMovie News

Bomb City: The Legend of 2012

January 1, 2013By

Oogieloves

2012 is long gone now, and despite it being an amazing year for cinema, there were some duds and some thuds. SO get out your suds and wash off the stink of these 2012 box office disasters!

Where would we be if the world didn’t have The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure? Probably with plenty of lunar colonies. Even though Oogieloves came out in August, it retroactively set mankind back decades. The brainchild of a marketing genius who decided to give the world a movie where 1 year olds could interact with the screen while their parents paid attention to their iPhones, the concept failed to catch on as any child older than 3 instantly got bored, and all children younger got bored after 30 minutes or so. It flopped hard, making just $445,000 in its opening weekend. Oogieloves beat out Delgo as the record setting worst box office performance for a film opening in over 2000 theaters. Oogieloves finished with just over $1 million gross, costing $20 million and spending $40 on marketing.

2012 saw the unfortunate trend of more right wing documentary propaganda at the theater, with 2016: Obama’s America tearing up the box office and a plethora of bandwagon documentaries and awful 1/3rd novel adaptations following in the footsteps: Occupy Unmasked, Atlas Shrugged Part 2, Hating Breitbart, and Runaway Slave. We detailed this mess with it’s own post filled with all the horrible details

Reprehensible garbage Won’t Back Down was pure anti-teacher union propaganda from Walden Media and Philip Anschutz, and thankfully crashed and burned. It had the worst opening for a film released at 2,500+ theaters with $2.6 million, and barely made double that by the end of its run.

Nickelodeon’s odd tween flick Fun Size became a trick and not a treat when it crashed at the box office, the third worst opening for a film with 3000+ theaters in history. The $4.1 million is still shockingly high for a film that couldn’t deicde if it was a kids movie or an adults movie.

Chasing Mavericks is another 2012 flick with a terrible opening. I knew it would bomb from the increasingly desperate invites to free screenings I was getting. It finished 11th worst for 2000+ theaters, with $2.6 million. Gerald Butler almost died making this film. Just think about what his legacy would have been.

Now let’s go to the lowest of the lows. The Ghastly Love of Johnny X earned just $117 during it’s one week run, making it the lowest grossing movie of the year. Of course, the press declared Playback starring Christian Slater the lowest grossing film of the year, but it make a whole $264. But The Ghastly Love of Johnny X has no former big names to rag on in the press, and spending ten seconds checking facts is hard, so the Playback story got copy/pasted on movies sites throughout the web. Thanks for showing just why web movie reporting is awful, guys!

What about John Carter? That legendary bomb that cost Disney $200 million still made a respectable $73 million in the US and $209 million more worldwide, which in any other world would be a hit. Think about how much money it would have made had it been advertised at all and still called John Carter of Mars (dammit!)

The TV movie homefront saw Home Alone 5 and Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor in Lifetime’s Liz & Dick.

Probably the worst thing that appeared in 2012 was the animation abomination Foodfight!, which got a European DVD release and soon was on YouTube giving Americans an aversion to food. After 11 years (and a do-over after a hero stole the original film!) the best they could come up with was one of the worst things ever made.

Will 2013 continue 2012’s proud tradition of shattering records? We shall see…we shall see..

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Live a Little, Love a Little

January 1, 2013By

Live a Little, Love a Little

1968
Written by Michael A. Hoey and Dan Greenburg
Directed by Norman Taurog

Someone’s too excited about Elvis’ naked body. Then again, anyone being excited at all about Elvis’ naked body is a scary, scary thing.

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, starred in 31 motion pictures between 1956 and 1969. He did it because he loved movies, and his management loved money. Every movie rolled out with a tie-in album that promised a lucrative pot of gold, and while Mr. Presley desired to be another Brando, his management fashioned him instead as a low rent James Dean. A rebel with a cause, and that cause was a bag covered in dollar signs.

I’ve been watching through the Elvis filmography the last couple of months, half because I find dated cultural artifacts fascinating and half because I’m a total glutton for punishment. The films he’s mostly remembered for are big gaudy musicals like Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas, but these are, politely, the tip of the iceberg.

It’s always an awkward love triangle when there’s a Darren involved.

Usually he’s a pretty typical character: race car driver/airplane pilot/bon vivant who is a part time singer and a bit of a sex machine who gets himself in a bit of trouble.  If I told you there was a film where Elvis was fighting his brother in the Civil War, would you be surprised? One where he was mistaken for a spy and chased around the world? One where he plays a Native American in redface? One where he plays a dual role and both Elvises chase around a bunch of sexy bumpkins through the Appalachians?

And I’m only listing out ones that I’ve seen. For all I know, there’s an Elvis movie out there where he plays a giant poodle. Hell, this one comes close.

I’m not going to write about every Elvis movie for TarsTarkas.Net, but I wanted to highlight a few of the most unbelievable. Because maybe if someone believed me when I talk about these films, if someone else knew the pain involved in just how bad some of these are… maybe they won’t be quite so painful.

If you stick with me through these reviews, you may pick up on the fact that most Elvis films have a view of women that nowadays is considered slightly more mature than those held by most cavemen.

Greg Nolan (Elvis Presley) – Not a driver or a flyer this go around (though he does own a rockin’ dune buggy), but a photojournalist. He also, of course, knows kung fu.
Live a Little Love a Yowza Bernice Bernice (Michelle Carey) – A dippy chick who is known by a range of different names by her many male acquaintances. She drives Elvis nuts, but we’ll touch more on that below.
Live a Little Dick Sargent Harry (Dick Sargent) – Bernice’s ex-husband. Or is it current husband? I don’t know, he keeps showing up to annoy Elvis, and is about as square as square can be.
Live a Little Sterling Holloway Milkman (Sterling Holloway) – Okay, so the milkman doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the film, but it’s Sterling Holloway! He was a twerpy character actor from the 1930’s onward. Look at how old he is!
Albert (Brutus) – Albert is Bernice’s Great Dane who seems just as obsessed with the man as Bernice is. Albert is played by Elvis’ own Dane, Brutus. Et tu, Elvis?

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