Week of 31 August 2009
Dead Snow **** (Blu-ray; Stars Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jeppe Laursen; £22.99; UK cert 18) It's Nazis. Dead Nazis. And they're zombies. It really doesn't get any better than this! A bunch of Norwegian college kids head up to a cabin in the snow for the weekend. Cue kids trudging through the snow talking about classic kids-slaughtered-in-the-cabin-in-the-woods films like Friday the 13th and Evil Dead. Cue a very clever homage to the early work of Sam Raimi. It's a slow build, but the climax is a killer – lots of Nazi zombies doing what zombies like to do ... bite people, especially in the nether regions (ouch). It's a smart, funny film that's quite inventive – you will never see a more clever use for zombie intestines. And yes, there's chainsaw action too. Extras: Four featurettes – Ein! Zwei! Die!: The Making of Dead Snow; Cast & Crew at Sundance; Make-up; and Special Effects – and some trailers — Stuart O'Connor
Brendon Burns Sober Not Clean **** (Stars Brendon Burns; £17.99; UK cert 18) Like me, Brendon Burns is a brash, mouthy Aussie. Unlike me, Burns is very, very funny. His act is confrontational, loud and very, very foul mouthed. But his humour is sharp and always on target. No topic is off limits, particularly Burns's own past as a drug addict. Unlike last year's DVD release of his award-winning Edinburgh show, So I Suppose THIS is Offensive Now?, this one is just a straight standup event. But when the jokes are this clever, that's good enough for me. No extras — Stuart O'Connor
Law & Order Special Victims Unit: Season 9 **½ (Stars Christopher Meloni, Mariska Hargitay, Michaela McManus, Adam Beach, Robin Williams, Cynthia Nixon, Bill Pullman; £44.99; UK cert 15) The ninth season of this successful spin-off from the main Law & Order franchise continues the mix of police procedural with its more detailed look at the lives of the main characters (Stabler and Benson). Adam Beach (as Chester Lake) a guest star in the last season joins the regular cast and there are heavyweight cameos from Hollywood stars Robin Williams and Bill Pullman, plus Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon – who won an Emmy for her performance. Despite the show approaching its 10-year anniversary, the 19 episodes in this five-disc set suggest that the writers have not strayed far away from the franchise’s core value: character-driven rather than story-led plots. The camerawork is slick; the pace well-judged and the performances are consistent. It’s just a shame a show that trades heavily on the need for a regular fanbase cannot supply these supporters with anything resembling DVD extras. For a show that offers such insight into its leads, these discs offer no insight into the team that so successfully creates them. No extras — Robert Hull
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Week of 17 August 2009
Slacker Uprising *** (Stars Michael Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Eddie Vedder, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck; £9.99; UK cert 12) Also know as Captain Mike Across America, Slacker Uprising sees "controversial" (ie, conservatives hate him) filmmaker Mike Moore travelling across the United States to encourage young people to get out and vote in the 2004 federal election. He mainly speaks at college campuses, and the Republicans do all they can to silence him. And as we know (because all this happened FIVE years ago), George W Bush beat Democrat candidate John Kerry and retained the White House for another four, hellish years. We don't really learn anything that new in this documentary: Moore likes to stir things up, fanatics (of any creed) are scary, lots of Americans are too apathetic to vote, and GW Bush was an utter moron. But it's an entertaining ride nonetheless. No extras — Stuart O'Connor
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Week of 10 August 2009
No.3 ** (Stars Choi Mink-sik, Song Kang-ho | Written by Song Neun-han; £14.99; UK cert 18) Over the years we’ve seen plenty of gangster comedies from Western cinema, spoofing the key works of icons like Scorsese and Coppola. Films like Jim Abraham’s “Jane Austen’s Mafia!”. But we now have that genre moving successfully in South Korea, and Song Neun-han’s black-comedy “No. 3” is what started it all. The film centres around Tae-ju, a fumbling gangster who dreams of becoming the boss of his crime outfit. He achieves the rank of third in the syndicate after a deadly assault by a rival gang. His desire to be number one is continuously hindered by his wannabe poet wife, who seems fascinated with sleeping with rival gang members, and other shit-stirring shenanigans. The main problem with this funny film is that it just isn’t funny. The humour is quite simply dumb (see the villainous Ashtray - weapon of choice, ashtray), and so slapstick as it is, the film finds it hard to identify itself when it mixes its sincere scenes of romance. What makes it worse is that the subtitles are so off, your chance of being able to come to terms with any witty dialogue is none. With stars such as Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho plastered on the boxart with their “Oldboy” and “The Host” respective credits, you’re far better off giving this a miss and them a watch. Extras: Loads of trailers of films with obscure titles, (bad) English subtitles, making of documentary. — Adam Stephen Kelly
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