The Hollywood of the modern era is well and truly obsessed with designing films by committee and targeting the lowest common denominator to cast as wide a net as possible over the wallets of the average consumers.  While works with more integrity and vision sometimes slip through the cracks (the recently excellent Mad Max: Fury Road comes to mind), it is far more usual to end up with incoherent messes like Hot Pursuit.  As Hollywood begins to crush itself under the weight of its hundreds of sequels, reboots and throwbacks, the movie industries in countries like India (Bollywood) and Russia (Rollywood?) have been steadily picking up the pace by increasingly often producing more risky and unique films than Hollywood has dared to in decades.  Forbidden Empire (or Viy as it is called everywhere else including the film’s own title screen) was made by a largely Russian cast and crew and loosely based around a Ukrainian short story of the same name, so even though it features a couple of familiar faces like Jason Flemyng and Charles Dance, from the moment it starts you can tell it is not of the same ilk as your average Hollywood flick.

(more…)

The modern disillusionment with the compromises wrought by big studios in the entertainment industry has brought on a Renaissance of sorts for indie games and movies. Social media networks make it easier than it has ever been for smaller productions to reach out and gain the kind of viewership that was previously possible only with the help of big-name studios and their deep pockets. As more and more of these small budget/big idea productions come out each year though, it is becoming increasingly obvious that for every Reservoir Dogs there are a dozen or so movies that just should never have been made and for each The Stanley Parable or Antichamber there are countless indie games made by people that shouldn’t even be allowed near a computer. Robyn Miller (pictured above as The Immortal Augustus Gladstone’s eponymous character) is known primarily for creating the immensely popular Myst and Riven PC games with his brother back in the mid-90s and essentially nothing else until the aforementioned indie mockumentary movie. Does The Immortal Augustus Gladstone (TIAG) live up to Robyn Miller’s reputation for groundbreaking story telling or does it suffer from the feeble blandness characteristic of all too many poorly executed indie ventures? Read on to find out just how immortal I found this movie to be.

(more…)

Halloween is just around the corner, pumpkin spice-flavoured everything adorns the restaurants and stores, and both horror games and horror movies are crawling out of their respective purgatories to try to spook you in the night.  Aside from the collection of horror games that we’ve been playing for Game Usagi Plays, we were given the opportunity to watch a horror movie (from Canada no less) before it hits theatres next Wednesday, Oct. 30th.  Boasting intriguing actors like Christopher Lloyd (from Back to the Future, but also more recently from the likes of The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure and Piranha 3DD) and Kevin McDonald (from Kids in the Hall) in addition to credentials like “Canada’s first stereoscopic live-action 3D feature film” and that it “confirms April Mullen as the youngest and first female to direct a live action fully stereoscopic 3D feature film”.  Does Dead Before Dawn 3D enjoy a place among the finer horror/comedy movies or does it ironically fall victim to the seeming curse on Canadian productions that has long kept them in the land of painful mediocrity?  Read on to see whether or not this movie left us dead before dawn.

(more…)