Wholesale and Distribution Movie Reviews

I knew that the Blood Brothers had joined a major label, which seemed like a ludicrous idea to me; nevertheless, I am anxiously anticipating the new album. For those unititiated in The Blood Brothers universe, they are a bizarre and spastic blend of hardcore, prog rock, and about a dozen other genres. The key here is spastic though. They also have two vocalists, not so much to cover two different vocal ranges, but more out of necessity at live shows. Because they spew forth their verse at such rapid speed and with such erratic dynamics, they need both to cover the whole spectrum of a song. I feel this DVD adequately captures the frenzy of their live show, although some of the more melodic sensibilities are lost in the raw live setting. Also, some of my favorite songs by them are missing (Piano Song!). Of course, that's just personal preference. If you are a Blood Brothers fan, you probably already have this, and if you aren't, go ahead and pick it up. It's cheap and if you don't like it, there will always be someone who will.

To me this movie makes me laugh because of the cheesy moves the characters do. I think half of the actors in this film didn't really know Kung Fu; this is probably why theirs so many camera cuts of the fighters flying back and forth, also flipping in the air. Yes there are bloody scenes in the movie and that's one of the things that make this old school flick OK! A Japanese Master goes around killing Chinese Kung Fu masters claiming He's the best until he meets his match. Like I said, it's funny to me with all the jumping & blood. This is a good, clear copy of this move with a widescreen transfer.

Basically it's about a bunch of Japanese martial arts experts harassing a Chinese village on the lookout for the sectret 'dragon herb'. The Japs face hard resistance from the Chinese fighters who run a martial arts academy up in the mountains. Unanticipated assistance in terms of fighting expertise, however, comes from a refugee on the run.

The fighting scenes are not very realistic but cool anyway. A classic!

An interesting flick from the vast outpour of cheapies by the mastermind moviemaker Corman. If you love Corman for the 10 Poe adaptions he made between 1960 and 1965, you might be disappointed, because this one is quite far from the Gothic beauty he created later. A beatnik artist's society is quite well portrayed and the film is definitely worth a watch, but you might want to buy the Roger Corman retrospective, vol 1 instead - you'll get two more flicks and that's always good!

CANTONEN IRON KUNG FU (1979) boasts an enjoyable central performance by second-tier kung fu star Leung Kar Yan (aka Liang Jia Ren, star of SLEEPING FIST, THUNDERING MANTIS, many others), who essays the role of "Iron Bridge Kun," a kung fu-fighting Cantonese laborer who fends off attempts by a corrupt merchant to take over his town in the 19th century. There are some rigorous training scenes and a couple of well-staged fights late in the film, although one has to sit through an underdeveloped plotline to get there. Also, aside from the star and shorter turns by Wang Chung and Kao Fei (aka Phillip Ko), the cast is largely unfamiliar, at least to this longtime kung fu fan.

However, the original 35mm print from which this high-quality letter-boxed DVD transfer was made (courtesy of Crash Cinema's Pagoda Films Premium Collection) was in such pristine condition that it gives viewers a rare chance to see an old-school kung fu film in something approximating the way it was meant to be seen. While the film itself is no classic, it is well-made and entertaining enough to justify watching simply because it is in so much better condition than 95% of the kung fu films so far available in the U.S. My only quibble with the DVD is that it wasn't enhanced for 16:9 presentation.

This is the second CKY DVD I've seen (after #4). Some of the stunts featured here were later revamped; such as the hilarious gay roller-bladers & Raab Himself peeing on an electric fence, but personally I found this version to be much funnier.
Other bits include the guys kicking footballs at passing cars, tying string to a bee, breaking wind in each others faces (fart gags always fare well)& a guy dressed as a bird up in a tree & dropping eggs out of his butt onto the walking stack of hair known as Rake Yohn while he's trying to impress some babe on a picnic (but I guess Rake COULD easily be mistaken for a bird's nest, so you can see the twisted logic in it).
There's also a whole string of stunts having to do with faeces- memorably a guy picking up a dollar bill off the ground that has dookie smeared on it but when the guys let him in on the joke he goes ape. Some people have no sense of humor. Other poop stunts include Raab Himself doing his biz off the top of a four story building after consuming 18 laxatives- even though there is a warning on the box not to take more than 2 at a time!
Inevitably there are also the skateboarding scenes, which I found boring so skaties will raise my rating by at least a star. And of course, no CKY DVD would be the same without old Phil Margera taking a pounding! (But the stuff here is nowhere near as funny as the hilarious stunt of Phil mowing the lawn in CKY4). Man! And you thought Ozzy's family were dysfunctional!
But to cap my review off, what makes this installment special is that it's a pioneering work. It's to JACKASS what THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) is to the horror film genre. I just hope the best is yet to come. Check it out. Again I will add that this DVD is NOT recommended for prudes or the elderly. I just hope these DVDs help open the floodgates to more liberal censorship laws in NZ...

This fun horror classic stars the great Bela Lugosi in one of his best roles! Don't expect the plot to make much sense since nothing is ever really explained. Bela plays a creepy doctor who raises orchids and gives them to virgin girls who are about to be married. When the brides smell them, they go into a comatose state and seem to be dead to everyone. Bela and his henchmen (which includes a dwarf played by Angelo Rossitti from the classic film "Freaks") then steal the bodies by posing as morgue workers with a hearse. Once Bela has the brides at his laboratory he removes some of their 'fluids', which he uses to keep his sick aging wife youthful looking (his wife is played by the great 40s scream queen Elizabeth Russell). Soon a spunky female 'Louis Lane' type reporter played by Luana Walters is on to Bela, and when she tries to investigate (with the help of a hapless doctor), she discovers that Bela and his wife like to sleep in coffins and other odd things. When she confronts Bela about the coffin beds, he calmly replies in one of his most memorable lines ever: "I find a coffin much more comfortable than a bed". Classic 1940s b-movie fun. See it!

Like "Sailor Moon"? Like "Card Captor Sakura"?
Like "Reboot"? Like anything that deals
with magic girls? This shows is similar
to that. The plot is that Yui goes to try to
stop the old Compnet Host, Grosser, and his minons
from weaking the Net. It's up to Yui and IR, her
cute mascot in similar to the other sidekicks
such as Luna (from Sailor Moon) and Kerbos
(Card Captor Sakura) saving the day. The japanese
sounds good, and though the dub is at least
OK in my book...thought I hadn't to watch
the dub track for one full eposide.

Well, first of all, forget the lurid cover. The movies is based on Julain May's 1951 heavily-anthologized short story "Dune Roller". And you know, someone in the movie actually SAYS "dune roller". That's about the closest the story and film resemble each other, though.

The disc starts with a "drive-in" theme, but don't expect the full "Something Weird" treatment. All you'll get here is some half-nekkid gals swarming over a car collecting "admission", and then some pointless commentary (complete with really bad jokes) before the film actually begins. That's it (thank goodness!) Taking his cue from Ed Wood, anti-auteur Harry Essex has a super-somber narrator voice-over, "There were two witnesses to the fall of the meteor". The first, a generic "Indian", is incinerated into powder. "The second was a fish", more specifically, a hammerhead shark, who seems to have picked the wrong time to wander into Lake Michigan. Yes, that's right - this is SUPPOSED to be on the shores of Lake Michigan. How can you tell? Besides the fact that's where the original story is set, the characters keep making ridiculous references to things like "busy as Main Street in Muskegon". Apparently Mr. Essex (whose previous movie was "Octaman", if you wanted to know) had never been to my home state. The characters all talk as if they are from either the Deep South or from Maine. The shores of the lake vary from 300-foot cliffs to vast, level, sandy beaches, usually within the same scene. The setting itself is sort of left up to the viewer - no one actually comes out and SAYS "here on the shores of Lake Michigan", but oh, well, why bother?

Our protagonist is sporting the longish hair and black turtleneck that were de rigueur for the early 70's intellectual, especially one who is devoted to getting the word "ecology" into the common vocabulary. He finds an unusual-looking rock in a pool (PLEASE tell me that isn't a "tide pool"....) and decides to send it off to Ann Arbor (see, told ya so) for analysis. As it turns out, the unusual-looking rocks are part of the giant ball of fire we saw toasting the "Indian". And for whatever reason, that ball is now on the rampage, looking for it's scattered remains and burning up who- or what-ever gets between it and it's....offspring? That's not enough - apparently it has a personality - it can get angry or remain apathetic. (Great - a giant ball of fire with mood swings....) As you can readily predict, there's going to be more than a couple of folks turned into the equivalent of a full ashtray before the....momma-ball? daddy-ball? is satisfied. The film's composer shows an unusual amount of exposure to classical music - about halfway through, he begins ripping off Shostakovich shamelessly, and for the last two minutes of the movie, he just plain settles for Holst's "Mars".

The leading lady is played by Maria de Aragon, who gets a 10-minute interview after the movie. Why her, and not "star" Marvin Howard? Probably because Howard wanted to crawl under a rock and never be seen again. Ms. de Aragon, on the other hand, was actually in the original "Star Wars"! Huh? you say? Where? Why, she was.......Greedo! (Boy, and she'll let you know it, too - she even has a web site selling autographed pics of "Greedo" and autograped copies of this classic.)

Overall impression - pretty dull stuff, considering the plot. Ms. Aragon says the entire flick cost $50,000. I'm surprised it was THAT much. Nowhere NEAR as fun as most of Ed Wood's stuff, but NOT as painful as, say, Francis Coleman or one of the Dr. Orloff euro-trash flicks. Save this one for when you want to chase away relatives who've hung around after Christmas too long.

Dave Koz and his excellent 5 piece band perform live here in Trinidad. Dave is a superb jazz saxophonist and the rest of the band are superb jazz musicians as well- drums, keyboards (B3 is featured), bass, and two guitar players.

The venue is hard to determine, possible a large ballroom in a hotel or maybe an outside courtyard. Whichever, the atmosphere here is very relaxed and casual. Feels and looks like a fun relaxing night at your favorite local nightclub/bar on a Saturday night. The crowd here, dressed casually, is seated and thoroughly enjoying the concert. So did I.

Musically, the smooth jazz here is light and upbeat. The exact type of light saxophone jazz heard on smooth jazz radio stations. And Dave Koz is heard often on those radio stations. If you've ever listened to smooth jazz radio, the songs in this concert will sound familiar, as they did to me.

Sometimes smooth jazz radio gets boring, but fortunately, there is a lot more energy and fun here in this concert that smooth jazz radio often fails to project for some reason. This band has a lot of fun playing live, and while this style of jazz is not very complex harmonically, it has immediate toe-tapping appeal. This isn't swing or fusion or experimental jazz, go elsewhere for that.

If you don't like a lot of sax, then skip this dvd. Every song here is a Dave Koz sax feature (recorder on one). He leads the band, plays the melodies most of the time, and is the only one performing lengthy improvisations.

If you love sax, don't hesitate to get this. However, I love sax too but I also like to hear other instruments too. Unfortunately, the other superb musicians here only have the chance very briefly to solo. This is a shame because they are each very good and only get brief moments to improvise.

Dave leads the band in all songs, mostly on alto sax but also on soprano sax and recorder in one song, and works up a tremdous sweat and makes very expressive facial and body gestures while playing, whether it's a big high loud note (that he often holds for a long time until he's just about completely out of breath) to the softest note where his facial expressions portray gentle tenderness.

I found Dave's extended improv solos too often less sophisticated musically and instead stick on a few notes for dramatic effect. When he improvises, he likes to find one note he can stick with and this allows him to play a few notes around that note with just his left hand, which frees up his right hand, which then he'll make a fist and pump 'air' for dramatic effect. On a long high note, he'll bend back and play straight up towards the ceiling until he runs out of breath. All this showmanship is a bit over-dramatic, but he's having a lot of spontaneous good natured fun that's rare to see in a lot of musicians these days.

Dave does his best to create a nice 'gutsy' sax tone, but most of the time I didn't feel it was all that 'gutsy'. Too often high notes are just loud and kinda 'sqealy'. But when he gets to the softer parts in a solo, this is when his sax tone really changes into a beautiful sax tone. Several songs end in a very effective quite note, which are quite nice. He is a master of creating a 'soft-as-a-feather' sax tone. He has also mastered the ability to end a note in a perfect fade. But only a few songs feature his soft playing.

One interesting segment has Koz playing solo with a 20-30 piece steel drum band (they are not in the concert, this is a cutaway segment). This was fairly interesting but only lasted a minute or two. Dave also plays recorder on one song, and even sings on another, and he's not too bad at all (but not a great singer either).

You'll get about an hour of what I just described above. A nice light jazz concert that would be fine to play at your next party through your stereo speakers, with or without the video. The audio mix is absolutely perfect and every part is heard clearly in fine detail.

A bonus is four Dave Koz music videos. These are ok muscially (good smooth jazz but nothing sophisticated) but are not too interesting visually except for one that was shot on a beach in beatiful mono-color tones. It's a beatiful music video.

Forget the hype about being in Trinidad that you'll find on the back of the dvd case. You won't see much of Trinidad at all except for a very brief scene of the ocean (and a beautiful woman Dave walks around on the beach with, but only for a minute), the other edited-in clips of a carnival look like old footage from the 70's. It's nothing but painted skin street carnival folk and truly awful costumes that are created with cheap paint, etc...

It's hard to know really for sure if the concert venue is even in Trinidad- no scenery in the background. I like outdoor concerts with scenery in the background and good cinematography, but this in not an outdoor concert. Instead, this is in a dark room (stage is well lit, but the room is dark). This video is not very interesting cinematically. However, the good news is that the camera follows the music very well most of the time with no goofy editing effects.

But a truly wonderful opportunity was lost here- by not filming more of the beautiful woman we see walking on the beach in one brief scene! If they had cut out the carnival shots, and featured a lot more of her, I would have given this video five stars! Instead I give it 3.5 stars (amazon needs to make decimals possible).