When I first read the release, I saw the words meth and snake, and immediately thought this was about something else entirely.

Variety reports that Dimension Films has just picked up the rights to Clifford Meth’s series Snaked. It is a horror-noir that follows a government employee who lives in a world of dirty politics, unfaithful women, and backstabbing friends — and one day, abruptly sheds his skin and grows some fangs. It’s a loaded metaphor, you see, and plenty of sex and violence follow.

Meth will be penning the screenplay himself. No director has been named yet, but the project is being overseen by producer Richard Saperstein, who was behind the studio’s 1408, The Mist, and the Rob Zombie Halloween remake. The premise of Snaked seems to fit right in — and I think IDW and Dimension are becoming the best of friends. The studio optioned their Joe Hill series Locke & Key only weeks ago.

I haven’t read Snaked (Hollywood is buying these up faster than I can read them), so someone is going to have to fill me in. The premise seems to fit perfectly with Dimension — I’m envisioning lots of gore and female nudity.

One of the many comedies debuting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Assassination of a High School President is a school-set spoof of film noir, with school paper journalist Bobby Funke (Reece Thompson) going from outcast to in-crowd when he dopes out who’s been lifting SAT papers from the administration’s office. Funke hits the means, motive and opportunity triple play and pins the thefts on student council president and basketball star Paul Moore (Patrick Taylor); his article earns him a coveted internship with Northwestern’s journalism program and the affections of Moore’s ex, Francesca (Mischa Barton). It’s all looking good. Until it isn’t. Funke learns new facts that make his sure-thing story look shaky; Northwestern is calling to fact-check the story, and if they find holes, his internship’s over before its begun. But Funke’s ready to walk the mean halls of St. Donovan’s and scour the Jersey suburbs to get the story right. …

Many critics and observers have already pigeonholed Assassination of a High School President as”Brick played for laughs.” And yeah, that’s a fairly simplistic assessment; then again, Assassination of a High School President’s a fairly simplistic film. Written by ex-South Park production assistants Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski (and between this film and Hamlet 2, it’s interesting how the road to Park City, Utah seems to have had an on-ramp in South Park, Colorado this year), Assassination never quite clicks as a total experience. Yes, it’s amusing when Thompson, in his self-celebrating inner monologue, says he’ll be on the case ” … like pink rubber bands on your sister’s braces.” And director Brett Simon finds lively, well-shot moments of visual excitement in the clichés of high school life: detention is shot like the big house, a party sequence moves and grooves with giddy chaos. But Assassination has a meandering plot line that dithers when it should drive forward, and lingers at times it should leap ahead. As Funke works leads, we get scenes that expand the running time instead of advance the plot. And yes, holding this film’s central pitch up to the life-and-death stakes of Brick – one of the best films I’ve ever seen in seven years of attending Sundance — is going to make the funny-and-goofy stakes of Assassination seem slighter in comparison.

Continue reading Sundance Review: Assassination of a High School President

In Bruges, the opening night film at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, comes at you sideways; the opening moments and slick snap of the dialogue lull you into believing that you’re in for yet another standard-issue post-Tarantino film. Hit man protagonists; punchy, poppy, profane digressions about everything but the matter at hand that lead to punchy, poppy, profane digressions about the matter at hand; characters whose capacity with vocabulary is matched by their capacity for violence. But then, Martin McDonagh’s script moves in unexpected directions - and, more importantly, in unexpected directions which are the kind of unexpected that you do not actually expect. In Bruges, with two killers exiled to Belgium after a badly botched London hit until the heat comes off, turns into something different from the standard-issue post-Tarantino film; it becomes the post-post Tarantino film, one where the talk talk bang bang is actually, just as it was in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, about something.

In Bruges, in fact, reminded me of nothing less than an earlier excellent example of the post-post-Tarantino film, Christopher McQuarrie’s excellent, underrated and under-seen The Way of the Gun. Both are about a group of tough guys who, through extraordinary variations on their normally extraordinary lives, find out precisely how tough they really are, the hard way. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are in Bruges, and all of their quibbling about Bruges’s scenic destinations and charm is a way for them to talk constantly without actually talking about what they need to talk about — which is how off-the-charts wrong one of their jobs has gone. They’re not on their familiar London turf; they’re in, as Ken relates from the guidebook, “The most well-preserved medieval city in Belgium, apparently.” Ken is enjoying the trip; Ray is not. “I hated history, didn’t you?” Ray asks. “It’s all just a load of stuff that’s already happened.” As McDonagh’s script carefully, firmly lays out why Ken and Ray are in exile amid the cobblestone streets and Gothic cathedrals, Ray’s desire to avoid thinking about what’s already happened becomes completely understandable.

Continue reading Sundance Review: In Bruges

A potentially compelling film noir story delivered in an irritatingly bright and overzealous package, Cleaner has two very excellent things going for it — and their names are Samuel L. Jackson and Ed Harris. If you’re a serious fan of either actor (and if you’re not, you should be), then you’ll definitely want to rent Cleaner once it (eventually) pops up in your local theater video store. Beyond the contributions from Jackson and Harris, however, there’s very little worth talking about where Cleaner is concerned.

We start off with a potentially juicy concept: Sam Jackson plays a ‘hazardous waste cleaner’ who gets framed for a murder he (probably) didn’t commit. And when I say ‘hazardous waste cleaner’ I mean that this is the guy who’d come to your house to eliminate the gore if someone happened to have their brains blown out in your living room. So things look pretty promising at the outset: We’ve got a great actor playing a strange role and doing a fine job of it — and then the plot kicks in.

Seems that our “cleaner” has just cleaned up a murder that the police know nothing about. And even if they DID have a clue, they’d probably be thrilled about it because the victim was a stool pigeon who was about to blow the lid off some serious police corruption charges. So when Cleaner guy realizes that he forgot to return the house key, he’s distressed to learn that The Wife (Eva Mendes) knows nothing about any bloodshed in her living room. But, oddly enough, her husband has just gone missing. (dun dun dunnnnn)

Continue reading TIFF Review: Cleaner