When Mike (Josh Randall) and his girlfriend, Sheryl (Brianna Brown), go hiking in West Virginia, their idyllic getaway quickly turns into a nightmare they can't seem to wake from. Their choice to follow a less-traveled trail brings them face to face with a homicidal backwoods family with a creepy religious agenda. The next day, when Sheryl vanishes, Mike must comb the woods to find her, enduring a series of horrific events.

That is the basic plot for Timber Falls, directed by Tony Giglio, and starring Josh Randall, Brianna Brown, Nick Searcy, and Beth Broderick.

This movie was so much better than I thought it would be, I just rented it because I love horror/slasher flicks, but it didn't disappoint at all.
It had a pretty intelligent story, pretty decent acting, and it moved at a pretty fast clip.
There wasn't a single moment you could turn away from the screen due to any type of boredom, it really kept you involved and paying close attention.
It has all of the elements that are lacking from other horror movies, and that you wish those other movies had, like the decent story and decent acting.

Our main characters, played by Randall and Brown, are two of the dumbest hikers ever though, they do one stupid thing after another in the beginning of the movie like taking a trail that they know is not patrolled by the park rangers, continuing on that same trail even after meeting up with some backwood rednecks that are far from helpful and nice, and Brown (the girlfriend Sheryl) is especially stupid for going for a morning swim in the lake by herself after the troubles they had just the day before.

The twisted backwood religious family, is absolutely crazy and sadistic, but absolutely totally enjoyable!
Their whole need for kidnapping young couples is because the wife, Ida, cannot carry a child of her own to term, and with the help of her husband and park ranger himself, Clyde, and her deformed by fire brother Deacon, they kidnap and force young healthy couples to have sex and conceive a child for Ida to raise as her own.
If the couple isn't married, Ida marries them in the eyes of the lord, and then forces them by horribly torturous means, to produce a child for her and her husband.
They (Sheryl and Mike) probably would have complied with the forced sex if maybe, just maybe, the religious freaks would have cleaned the blood off of Sheryl, and put her in something a little more enticing like a nicer nightie or some sort of sexy babydolls lingerie.
Blood and a white gown with a big ol' cross on it, isn't exactly sexually appealing.

Mike (Randall) endures the absolute worst of all the injuries and torture in this movie.
When he realizes Sheryl is gone, he goes running through the woods to find her, trips, and ends up with a stick stabbing him deep in his arm.
He removes it and ties a bandanna around it, only to run into the first group of rednecks again, and getting into a knife and gunfight where he's hit hard several times, and cut across one of his legs.
He survives that, only to step in a bear trap just a few minutes later.
He is "rescued" by Ida only to find out just a little later, that she is the captor of his girlfriend Sheryl.
He is whipped by cat o' 9 tails, branded with a branding iron, beaten, stabbed, hit about the head with the butt end of a shotgun, a shovel, fists, and finally a huge knife to the gut.

I don't want to tell you any more, I really think that if you are a fan of slashers and horror films, that this is one you should definitely rent because of how much slashing takes place, and because it's actually a very intelligent horror film.
I was very surprised at just how well the story was done, and I really think that if they had a bigger budget, some better cameras, and some A-list actors in the lead roles, that this movie could have done really great in theaters.
It was only released in 49 theaters nationwide.
I really believe that despite the above, that this is a really good movie, and it even left it open for a part 2, which I would definitely see.

It scored poorly on Rotten Tomatoes for some silly parts, (what horror movie doesn't have a few laughable scenes?) only having 1 "fair" review out of a total of 4 reviews, but ranks highly of the reviewers on Netflix, getting 3.5 stars out of 5.
It gets an "ok" rating and a pretty good review at BoxOffice.com, calling it "a perfectly serviceable scary movie."

On a scale of 1-5 stars, I give it a 4.5.

When a book on Lenny Bruce falls into the right young, disaffected, youthful hands, the FCC has its work cut out for it. Christian Slater plays a quiet high school student whose alter ego "Hard Harry" cries injustice and spins punk and rap records from his basement at night for a growing fan base who finds his radio frequency. When the ultra-conservative school administration starts swinging, Hard Harry's fans rally, and Slater gets the girl.

And unlike most teen movies of the 80's and 90's, there is no prom, there is no wrong side of the tracks love story with a super happy ending and pretty pink dress, this is teen rebellion with all it's angst and problems, from suicide, to coming out of the closet in a defining moment kind of way.
Instead of the usual stereotyping of being a fag, Hard Harry instead tells the young male caller how he finds the bravery of people to be amazing, and with that he signs off for the night leaving his listening fans to ponder the coming out confession and who they are as well.

The movie has it's absolutely silly moments as well, it's truly stupid in some parts, but hey, no movie is without it's flaws.
But Pump Up the Volume is a really decent flick and has an amazing soundtrack.
Liquid Jesus' anthem- Stand, to Chagall Guevera's Tale O' The Twister, and Concrete Blonde, Peter Murphy, The Pixies, Soundgarden and Sonic Youth.
The opening song that is played several times throughout the film, Everybody Knows, is done by both Leonard Cohen and Concrete Blonde in the film, yet Cohen's version is noticeably missing from the soundtrack.
I prefer his version over the latter myself.
His voice is raw and real, and his version is slowed down a bit, allowing you to hear every word, and really get a feel for the meaning behind the lyrics.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Anyway, it's a good a movie, on a scale of 1-5 stars, I give it a 3.5, and only that low because of some of the silliness.
I really think they could have left that out and had a truly remarkable teen rebellion film on their hands that was unlike every other teen movie past or present.

There are 5 short films on the disc, Father's Day, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, Something to Tide You Over, The Crate, and They're Creeping Up On You.
All of the actors of these short stories are very famous stars, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, Ted Danson, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, and as he always has done, even Stephen King himself makes an appearance in the starring role of Jordy Verill.

All of the stories are good, and even though the movie is 26 years old now, it still holds up pretty well.
For the time, 1982, the special effects were on par with all of Hollywood, they look completely out-dated now, of course, and in some of them like Father's day, totally cheesy, but one of them still scares the crap out of me to this day.

The Crate.
It's the longest one on the disc.
It stars Hal Holbrook as a sort of loser professor at a local college, whose wife is a horribly nasty woman.
"Billie" is played by Adrienne Barbeau, a drunk and offensive old hag, who makes his (Holbrook) life hell.
When a colleague of his finds a really old crate under the stairs at the college with a really hungry creature locked away inside that has eaten two people already, he finally finds a way to get rid of his verbally abusive and hated wife.
He lures her to the college on a made up story of a young co-ed being sexually assaulted by his colleague, telling her she's the only one who can coax the young girl out from under the stairs.
Once she gets down there, he stirs the monster awake, it devours her, and then he dumps the crate off a cliff into the ocean.
He and his colleague think it's all over, no evidence of any foul play, but the monster breaks free of it's crate under the sea in the very last scene.
This is also the bloodiest one of the five, and it's definitely the scariest.

I've seen Creepshow about a dozen or more times over the years, and it still doesn't disappoint as a fun movie.

We watched Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer tonight, and it is absolutely fascinating.
The story is so well done, the narration, the acting, and the period dress, everything about this movie is perfect.
It is rated R for "aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images", and yes, it deserves that rating, but wow, this is just such a great story.
It's disturbing and dark, Jean-Baptiste's obsession with capturing the scent of women as pure essence oils, and what he does to get them, is disturbing yet sensual.
He takes great care of their skin and hair, gentle touches to the skin, it's painful to him.

Each perfume is made up of a top note, a middle note, and a base note.
By adding just one more oil, you completely change the scent of the perfume, and Jean-Baptiste wants nothing more than to capture and save forever, the very essence, the souls, of women.
His obsession leads him to first try to get women to let him cover them in animal fat, wrap them in cloth, and then after a few hours, unwrap them and squeeze the fat into a pot mixed with alcohol to boil it, and have the liquid evaporate and rise to the top of the oil maker, where the essence oil will then drip down into a vial.
But the women think he's just some kind of kinky rapist, they don't understand, so they try to escape and he's left with no choice but to kill them in order to capture their scents.
I will not spoil this for any of you who may be interested in renting it from Netflix or your fave movie rental place, but it has a really great and sad ending, yet the perfect closing for the tale.

This really is a very interesting and captivating movie.
It held both the teens attention through the entire movie, a full 2 hours and 27 minutes, and when it was over, they said how much they liked it, and that I picked a really good one this time.
Haha! I pick a lot of good movies dammit!

I rented Frontier(s) and Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer, but I just got done watching Frontier(s).

As riots break out all over Paris after a right-wing government is elected, reluctant thief Yasmina (Karina Testa) recruits a few friends to exploit the bedlam by looting. With the police on their tail, the gang splits up and regroups at a hostel near the Luxembourg border to divide their haul. But the decision proves fateful when the innkeepers turn out to be neo-Nazi freaks who want to make Yasmina the brood mare for a new Aryan master race.

The movie is in French with English subtitles, but it's very easy to follow along.
That is if you are keeping your eyes open, or peeping through your fingers as they cover your face.
Frontier(s) was part of the 8 Films to Die For for 2008, but because of it's extreme gore and graphic imagery, the director was told to cut out a bunch of stuff in order to remain part of the horror fest, or go it alone and be rated NC-17.
The director loved his film, every single scene, so he chose to take the NC-17 rating, and be forced to a very limited theater release on May 9th, and then it went straight to dvd on May 13th, in the same full unrated, uncut, "sadistic glory" it was meant to be seen in.

I just got done watching it, and OMG, it is so graphic, so violent, and if I ever do get to travel to anywhere in Europe, I will never stay in a hostel, and I will definitely get myself some travel health insurance before I go just in case here are sickos at the normal hotels too.
Every single European movie I've seen in the last few years has had it's victims stay in hostels, and they all die horrible deaths save for one person, the sole surviving hero or heroine.

This movie was really good if you are a fan of gore and torture type movies.
If you loved the Hostel series, and enjoyed the graphic violence of High Tension, you'll like Frontier(s).
It's kind of like Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Hostel.
We have a seriously whacked out Neo-Nazi cannibalistic family, looking for a healthy young woman to breed new members of their pure blood family.
When Yasmine and her band of thieves make the terrible mistake of staying at the hostel, things quickly go wrong.
Each person gets picked off one by one in very gruesome ways.
A lot of the stuff is some of what you've seen before, but it's action packed, fast paced, and our heroine gets a bit crazy, as anyone would in this type of situation, and she makes it out alive in some very tough and bloody battles.
I won't tell you much more, but Yasmina is a likable character, you sympathize with her, you want her to survive and get out of there even if the cops she's running from are the only way to escape.
Anyway, it's a decent film, I can totally see why it's rated NC-17, it's really gory and graphic, but very good.

Anyway, the movie is about a girl named Dawn who is at first, cursed with vagina dentata of mythology.
Many cultures believed in this, that some women had teeth down there, and it would take a hero to conquer them, breaking the teeth away, and thus making the girl into a woman.
It's the threat of sexual intercourse for men, they enter as proud men but leave diminished.

Dawn has these teeth, and at first, it is the most terrifying thing for her.
She's a young girl saving her virginity for marriage, but lust wins out and she ends up having sex with a boy who claimed he was also saving himself.
The fear of sex for Dawn causes the teeth to come forward and bite her lovers penis off.
He runs off into the woods and eventually dies.
Another young man wants to help her, or claims to really care for her, and during the act she learns he's only with her on a bet, and yup, buh bye penis.
She soon learns the power she has, she can control the teeth, she can freely have sex if she chooses, but if the man is using her, only wants her for the sex, doesn't really care for her, then out come the teeth.

The movie is so not for the squeamish, there are several truly gory moments, men will be clutching onto themselves and turning pale at they very idea of teeth in a vagina.
It was an interesting movie, I enjoyed it anyway. It's not OMG great, but quite humorous.
I loved the part where the pervert gyno was trying to cop a feel of Dawn and her first time in stirrups.
I actually yelled at the tv for him to stop being such a pig or he's going to get more than he's bargained for.
Like losing a few fingers.
Ha!

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

Reservation Road stars Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino.

A powerful human story of anger, revenge and great courage, this film takes you on an intense journey that follows two fathers as their families and lives converge after the events of one fateful night.

The film goes on to show how this accident and death, affects both men.
Ethan is devastated, angry, and wanting justice.
Dwight is afraid, filled with guilt, but terrified of turning himself in for fear of losing all of his custodial rights to his son.

It's a small town, and coincidence after coincidence, the story builds.
Dwight's ex-wife (Sorvino) was the son's music teacher and is now teaching Ethan's daughter piano.
Ethan, eager for justice, fearful the police aren't doing enough, hires a law firm to get private investigators and pursue a civil suit.
The law firm Dwight works at, and Dwight is placed in charge of his case.

As Ethan becomes more and more agitated that the police aren't doing enough to find the hit and run killer, he calls his attorney around the clock.
Ethan only recalls pieces of the accident, his memory is fuzzy, until the night of his daughter's recital a month and a half after the night his son was killed.
Dwight is at the recital too, his son Lucas is in it, and after it's over, he calls to his son which triggers the memory of the accident in Ethan.
The movie is very suspenseful, watching, waiting for either man to make his move.
Hoping Dwight turns himself in, hoping Ethan doesn't destroy his own life for revenge, justice in his mind.

This was an excellent movie, hard to watch in some places because the grief of losing a child is too much to bear, and both Phoenix and Connelly are so honest in their portrayal of grieving parents.
Ruffalo does an amazing job of a man wracked with guilt, you feel incredible pity for him even though you probably shouldn't. You feel as though you understand his reasons for not turning himself in, for not stopping, he suffers incredibly throughout the film wanting to say something but terrified of losing his son forever, a son he loves more than anything, just like Ethan loves his son.
It builds to a very dramatic ending for both men.

I would give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Williams has won an Academy award, 6 Golden Globes, 2 SAGs, and a Grammy.

On tonights SVU, Williams plays Merrit Rook, an engineer who poses as a police officer to get managers at a fast food chain to detain and strip search young female employees, as well as other criminal acts perpetrated by phone.
He serves as his own lawyer and is found not guilty, which leads to publicity and followers from his anti-authority message.
No sheep.

Williams plays the role of Rook so very real, it's creepy.
He's a true psychopath.
He can impersonate people, he's very intelligent, and highly manipulative.
When he takes Detective Olivia Benson, things get even more intense.
Williams is a phenomenal actor.
No matter what type of role he plays, comedic, dramatic, or full on psycho, he plays it with incredible conviction.
This character was so believable, so frightening and pathological, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.
This was an incredible episode, Law and Order SVU never disappoints me with it's story lines and guest appearances.
It just keeps getting better and better.

The Lookout stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, Brick, Mysterious Skin) as Chris, a young man who had everything ahead of him--until a car accident killed two of his friends and left him with brain damage. Now reduced to being a janitor at a bank, Chris struggles to maintain some semblance of order in his life. When a guy he meets at a bar turns out to be an old classmate, Chris succumbs to his flattery, not suspecting that the guy's intentions are criminal.

It also stars Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher and Carla Gugino.

Chris (Gordon-Levitt) had everything going for him, hockey player adored by the fans, a beautiful girlfriend, great friends, and a loving family, until one night of stupidity.
He, his girlfriend, and 2 friends, were driving down the road, Chris at the wheel, and he wanted to show them how the fireflies light up the night.
He shut off his headlights as he drove down an old farm road, turning them back on too late to notice the large combine broke down on the side of the road.
His 2 friends died, his girlfriend's leg cut off, and he ended up with brain damage.

He has hardly any memories of that night, he can no longer get through the day without writing down what he's supposed to do, no immediate memory of events that just happened.
Everyday, he wakes up
takes a shower
with soap
gets dressed
eats breakfast
goes to the learning center
goes home
eats dinner
goes to work.
His life is a series of lists of what to do next.
Chris lives with Lewis, (Daniels) who is blind, and together they make a pretty good team, they cook, keep their home, and have plans to open a restaurant.

But a guy named Gary Spargo (Goode) meets up with Chris in a bar one night, and makes Chris believe they are friends, helps him get a girl, party, treat him as family, all to get Chris to help him and his friends rob the bank Chris works at.
Being so frustrated with his life, not being able to advance at work beyond janitor due to his brain injury, and having his parents pay his rent, his car insurance, everything for him, because no one thinks he can do it himself, Chris decides to help Gary rob the bank.
On the night it goes down however, Chris has a change of mind and tries to get out of it.

What happens for the rest of the movie is unpredictable, and suspenseful.
Chris uses his notebook to write down all the directions from Gary, 'he who has the money, has the power', what time, who does what, everything he's supposed to do in order, sequencing.
He also uses that notebook to get out of having to help with the robbery, and change his and Lewis' life.

Gordon-Levitt does a great job portraying Chris, Jeff Daniels is terrific as his blind room mate with a great insight into people.
This was just a really well done film, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

One of the things that struck me though, was how much Gordon-Levitt resembles the late Heath Ledger.
Maybe I'll be the only person to ever say that, but take a look at this side-by-side comparison I put together.
You can click for larger.

I am in no way comparing the acting abilities of either man, but if they were to ever make a film about Ledger, here's the perfect actor for the role.

It stars Ellen Page (Juno), Patrick Wilson, and Sandra Oh.

This movie was very controversial when it came out, a young girl meeting a much older man she met on the internet, for what he thinks will be a good time with a 14 year old girl.
Hayley however, is not quite so innocent. Everything she says to Jeff is carefully planned, she knows what to say to him to make him think he's going to be having sex with her at some point during their meet-up.
She has other plans, devious ones.
She psychologically tortures Jeff, ties him up, plans to castrate him, all in an attempt to get him to confess to kidnapping and raping another girl who is now missing.
This is at times, hard to watch, not because of the graphic scenes, but because the script was just lacking in a few places.
Page ends up acting terrified when her character is clearly in control, always had control, and so the mixed emotions she displays, come out all wrong.
The dialog is also very quiet. We had the volume all the way up and missed some of their lines no doubt.

The director also tries to hard too make twists and turns in the story as he goes. Up, down, over here, over there, wait, where were we going with this again?

Overall, the movie was gripping, suspenseful, and timely in this day and age of almost every teen on the planet, having an internet connection and myspace page.
I give it a 7 on a scale of 1-10.

It's a pretty bad ass song with some amazing guitar riffs.
Awesome.

The pc viewing used to be based on what you paid, so if your plan was $16.99 a month, you had 17 hours of instant watch movie time available to you.
This new plan means you get unlimited hours of movie watching on your computer, and that is so awesome for people like me who can go through my mailed movies very quickly, and then have to wait for my next shipment.

This was done after the news that Apple iTunes movie rentals would start in February.
Steve Jobs says they currently have about 1,000 movie titles for users to buy and download.
iTunes store is a very direct competitor to Amazon Unbox, while iTunes and Netflix Watch It Now play to very different segments of the audience. Apple offers up mostly new releases, available 30 days after the DVD release, and you have to pay up before you can play. There's no subscription fee, though.

Netflix currently has over 6,000 watch it now titles available for instant viewing, and are adding more every day.

Surprisingly, Netflix and Blockbuster stock shares fell after the announcement from Apple.
Blockbuster shares tumbled 14% to $2.79 on volume of over 9 million. The issue's 30-day average volume is about 4.4 million shares. The stock hit a new 52-week low of $2.74 intraday.

Shares of Netflix fell 5.4% to $21.55 on volume of over 4 million. The issue's 30-day average volume is about 1.5 million.
But analysts say it's nothing to worry about as Apples iTunes movies will be more for people on the go, using their ipods to watch movies on their commute, and not watching them at home.

Best Motion Picture - Drama
Atonement

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama
Julie Christie – Away From Her

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
Daniel Day-Lewis – There Will Be Blood

Best Motion Picture - Musical Or Comedy
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Marion Cotillard – La Vie En Rose

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical Or Comedy
Johnny Depp – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Cate Blanchett – I'm Not There

Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Javier Bardem – No Country For Old Men

Best Animated Feature Film
Ratatouille

Best Foreign Language Film
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (France, United States)

Best Director - Motion Picture
Julian Schnabel – The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
No Country For Old Men

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
Atonement
Composed by Dario Marianelli

Best Original Song - Motion Picture
"Guaranteed" – Into The Wild
Music & Lyrics By: Eddie Vedder

Best Television Series - Drama
Mad Men (AMC)

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series - Drama
Glenn Close – Damages (FX NETWORK)

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series - Drama
Jon Hamm – Mad Men (AMC)

Best Television Series - Musical Or Comedy
Extras (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series - Musical Or Comedy
Tina Fey – 30 Rock (NBC)

Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series - Musical Or Comedy
David Duchovny – Californication (SHOWTIME)

Best Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made for Television
Longford (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actress In A Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Queen Latifah – Life Support (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jim Broadbent – Longford (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Samantha Morton – Longford (HBO)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jeremy Piven – Entourage (HBO)