Christmas is Coming: O Holy Night

"O Holy Night" sung by Josh Groben with clips from "The Nativity" serving as the visuals.



Enjoy the season, everyone. May it be a happy one for you!

Christmas is coming, so here's Heart & Hou

Self Control: A Pop Song of Horror

We all probably have several songs that bring to mind our childhood and/or teenage years. For me, one of those songs is "Self Control." It is a great pop song from the mid-1980s that fed my imagination. It's even done so as recently as 12 or so years ago, as it helped spark the idea for a major alien race in my "Star Wars" RPG campaign, as well as shaping the personalities of a couple of key NPCs that belong to it.

When I was a kid, I thought this song was spooky. As an adult, I still find it so... why it's never been used as the theme in a horror movie, I'll never know.

Laura Branigan

And the video for the Laura Branigan version is like a little horror movie, so it's a perfect match to the song.



Here's a less creepy modern (from 2011) cover by the Danish outfit, ironically, named Infernal. However, as the video progresses, the horror aspect of the song fully asserts itself. It's nice to see that even though they took a dance tune with spooky undertones and made it even more up-tempo, they paid attention to the details. That's a rate thing, I think.




And here's the version recorded by Raf, the song's co-writer. It was a hit all across Europe in 1984, at the same time that Branigan's version was enjoying an even greater level of popularity. If memory serves, this was actually the first version I encountered. It's not as atmospheric as Branigan's version--and it feels more like the "creatures of the night" in the song are just party-goers and clubbers rather than mysterious monsters--but it was certainly deserving of the hit status it enjoyed.




Here's a version by Sunday Girl. It tries to take the horror aspects of the song and bring them to the forefront. The video succeeds. The song itself? Not so much.

'The Fourth Kind' is kind of a waste

The Fourth Kind (2009)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas and Will Patton
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After the strange death of her husband, Nome-based psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Jovovich) vows to carry on his work, investigating sleep disorders. She discovers that the root cause is alien abductions, only to be targeted by the aliens herself. Or is she being targeted?


"The Fourth Kind" is a different sort of hoax movie than "The Blair Witch Project" or "Paranormal Activity." While it lays claim to being just as real, it takes a "America's Most Wanted" or "Unsolved Mysteries" approach, mixing re-actments with supposedly real video footage and audio tapes. They also decide to use a split-screen approach in many cases, trying to bolster their claim of reality by placing the reenactments side-by-side and even merged with the "documentary footage and recordings."

Of course, it's all a bunch of hooey. Just like no student filmmakers vanished in the forest and there is no demon-possessed Katie wandering the streets of San Diego, there is no Abigail Tyler and the people of Nome aren't disappearing because of alien abductions; they're disappearing because drunkenness and harsh winters don't mix (or so says the FBI).

But that doesn't mean the notion of space aliens preying on Alaskans isn't a good idea for a hoax movie. If it is, though, it didn't translate into this film. Writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi spends too much time showing off his cleverness with split-screens and sharing his apparent love with areal shots of Alaska and overlong establishing shots to make the movie scary or even interesting. It moves too slowly to ever be truly exciting, and the characters are too drab for it to be scary, because we never really get invested in them. The one truly scary moment in the film is a BOO-Gatcha! moment that doesn't come close to making up for the boring build-up. Not even the secret surrounding the death of Tyler's husband turns out to be all that interesting. (Although it does make you wonder why stronger action wasn't taken against Tyler sooner.)

Ultimately, this is a forgettable film that is badly put together. The most remarkable thing about it is Jovovich's greener-than-green eyes.

Christmas is Coming: What Child is This... Hava Nagila?

Christmas is fast approaching. From now, until the 25th, I'll be posting music videos featuring nice Christmas song to help you get in the proper spirit! (I'll even throw in a clip or two for those out there who hate Christmas... it is the season for giving after all. Even to misanthropes, fanatical atheists, and the closted homos of al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.)

I'm kicking things off with a little something that combines things everyone should love--Christmas, kittens, and cute dogs!



This is also the first of several renditions of "What Child Is This?" that will be appearing here this month.

"What Child Is This?" is a Christmas carol written in 1865. At the age of twenty-nine, English writer William Chatterton Dix was struck with a sudden near-fatal illness and confined to bedrest for several months, during which he went into a deep depression. Yet out of his near-death experience, Dix wrote many hymns, including "What Child is This?", later set to the traditional English tune "Greensleeves." (For more information, visit Wikipedia by clicking here.)

Day of the Turkey: Community College

It's Thanksgiving Day here in the United States... and at Cinema Steve, we celebrate with turkeys, just like everyone else. (It's just that these are turkeys that may not be worth giving thanks for..)

Community College (2012)
Starring: Jordan McSorley, Tim Dean, Jon Dean, Tommy Avallone, Brian Hagan, and Mike Hadfield
Director: Tommy Avallone
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

 Four friends (Avallone, Dean, Dean, and McSorley), drunken slackers who are eternal students at their local community college, decide to pull themselves together and graduate so they can get enough money to buy their favorite bar so it doesn't close.

 "Community College" is one of those low-budget comedies that will keep you watching because the cast is so enthusiastic about what they're doing and because there are just enough jokes that work you keep thinking the film is on the verge of coming together and turning out for the better. But, as is usually the case, you will, when the end credits roll, find that your hope was in vain.

The biggest disappointment with "Community College", though, is that I have the sense it could have been a much better film if parts of it hadn't felt as if it was created by someone as lazy as its heroes. There is an inconsistency in tone throughout the movie, as it keeps flipping back and forth between a semi-realistic comedy (ala "Back to School") and bizarre comedy (ala "Animal House" or even "Airplane"); the first time it happens, you think one of the characters is hallucinating... but no--there really is a guy in bar dressed like an octopus.

Further, there are numerous plot-threads and joke set-ups that are either left under-developed or so badly exploited that you wish writer/director/co-star Tommy Avallone hadn't bothered. The worst of these manifests itself in the much-vaunted bowling ability of Jonny-300, as when we finally get to the point where he goes bowling, there isn't even a real shot of him doing so. In fact, the only jokes/plot elements that felt fully realized in the film was the strange environment of the friends' favorite bar, and the rivalry that develops between them and a little girl and her father over lemonade stands. Everything else has a half-assed, half-baked feel to it.

Near as I can tell, "Community College" has had a six-year journey from its filming (in 2006), through screenings at festivals and direct DVD sales by the producers (around 2009), until it was finally picked up and released by distributor Chemical Burn in the summer of 2012 -- a step that may have been prompted by the critically acclaimed comedy series "Community."

"Community College" isn't a total loss. If you are desperate for entertainment, there are worse ways you could spend your time. Also, the Chemical Burn DVD is crammed with bonus features, such as music videos and some seriously twisted cartoons which you may find more worthwhile than the main feature. As such, while the main feature may only rate Three Stars, the overall package gets a Six for bonus features that are quite extravagant when compared to what is offered on most discs.

Note: This review was based on a preview DVD provided by the distributor, Chemical Burn.

Bringing ancient history to life (sort of)

Caesar the Conqueror (1962)
Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Rik Battagalia, Raffaella Carra, Ivo Payer, and Dominique Wilms
Director: Tanio Boccia
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

In 54 BC, Julius Caesar defied the will of the Roman Senate and led his army against Gallic rebels in a winner-takes-all approach to once and for all solidify Roman power over Europe. Standing in his way are forces led by Vercingetorix (Battagalia), a barbarian chieftain Caesar once showed mercy to, and Queen Astrid (Carra) of the Gauls... and if he fails, it will mean more than just the lives of him and his soldiers.

The opening credits of this film proclaim that it is based on Caesar's writings (specifically Book VII of "The Gallic War"), but it is based loosely on them. History is dominant at the film's beginning and kinda-sorta makes a reappearance during its third act, and the characters are mostly based upon historical figures, but the bulk of the story, with its evil queen and her lusty barbarian warriors, has more in common with your run-of-the-mill Maciste or Sword and Sandals film than the history of Caeasar's campaigns against the Gauls.

That said, "Caesar the Conqueror" is actually more entertaining than most Maciste/Sword and Sandal "epics." The director at the helm spent his entire career making movies like this, and this is perhaps one of his better efforts. The presence of historical figures also helps the film along, because I'm not certain it is even possible to make a boring movie that has Caesar as a major figure, as his coldblooded politicking married with his warrior's honor makes him both a hero and a villain in the story, all depending on what he is trying to accomplish at that time.

That's not to say this film is perfect. There are some absolutely miserable stretches where we have to sit through under-rehearsed and under-budgeted battle scenes and performances so bland by some of the supporting cast that we desperately wish for Mitchell's Caesar to  come strutting back onto the screen, evenif just to tell us what he had for lunch that day. Another misstep that the filmmakers made was to have Caesar refer to himself in the third person whenever he is speaking of himself, retaining the stylistic flourish that the general used when he wrote his accounts of his battles. It makes Caesar seem a little comical at times when he shouldn't be... and I don't know that there's any historical evidence to support that Caesar actually did that constantly... Asterix and Obelix adventures aside.

"Caesar the Conqueror" is included in several DVD multi-packs, and I think it's a worthy addition to them all if you like the genre. I just don't think you'd be doing yourself any favors if you tried to watch it instead of reading actual books if you're doing a paper for school.

(If this sort of fictionalized history is something you enjoy, you might also be interested in "Oriental Stories, Vol. 1", a collection of novelettes by Robert E. Howard that I have edited. Click here for details.)