Li Fong lives in Bejing and trains at a Kung-Fu school. He lost his brother after a tournament. When his mother gets a job in New York, Li befriends Mia. Of course, even when he promised his mother the fighting is over, Li finds himself in situations compelled to fight.
Entwistle made a very ‘vanilla’ and predictable fighting drama in which Jackie Chan can be the Kung Fu master one more time. Besides Kung Fu, Li also has to study Karate and I do not think I give too much of a spoiler when I say that in spite of setbacks, Li wins an important tournament and the heart of a girl.
The death of an actor can be a reason to look up a film. Michael Madsen passed away, so last weekend we watched “Die Another Day” and “Species”. Madsen played in a lot of film with very low IMDb ratings, “Species” is rated 5.9. I may have seen it before.
In a laboratorium an alien is bred who is human-looking. When it proves to be dangerous, the child-like-looking alien is about to be gassed, but she gets away. Growing quickly, the alien soon is a sexy full grown woman looking to create offspring.
A bit of action, a bit of thriller, sex scenes as they were always in movies of these days. Quite a stack of actors too, such as Ben Kingsley and Forest Witaker (in a weak role). Not a great film. The IMDb rating is even a bit high.
A strange, little girl with black and white hair causes problems at school and her mother decides to leave theor little town and move to London. During a stop underway, mother gets an accident and Estella flees the scene. She ends up in London and befriends two young criminals.
Ten years down the line, Estella is employed by a pomp fashion queen and it turns out that there is an open bill between the two. Estella uses her alter-ego Cruella to terrorize the fasion queen.
Gillespie made a film with a bit of a Tim Burton vibe, with some heist elements, a pinch of V For Vendetta, resulting in an amusing film starring Emma Stone, Emma Thompson and Mark Strong.
In a fairly unimaginative story we follow common guy Mike (Mark Wahlberg) who is recruited by his ex girlfriend Roxanne (Halle Berry) for some super secret agency. He is forced into a crashcoarse and sent on a mission.
A computer containing all information of every employer of every agency has been stolen and is about to be auctioned. Of course “The Union” sets out to prevent that.
“The Union” is an alright action film with no surprises, but there are some amusing scenes and of course a lot of action.
These mini series (10 episodes) are frequently recommended when someone is looking for something strange. The first episodes are indeed amusingly set in some surreal retro future, but following episodes are rather only strange because the concept allowed the creators to make weird episodes (dreams).
We follow the boring (and autistic) Owen who unsuccessfully tries to keep distance to his decadent family. Then we have Annie who lost her lust for life when her sister died. For different reasons, the two end up at some experimental psychological institute where in a combination of drugs and brain stimulation, they are exposed to their darkest dreams.
I never really noticed Emma Stone before “Poor Things“, but she is great. Especially what she can do with facial expressions is amazing. For some reason Annie and Owen encounter each other in their dreams. This and other encounters result in an unlikely relationship.
Then we have that odd institute led by James Mantleray (a great Justin Theroux) and Azumi Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno) which is based on an AI computer with psychological problems.
Indeed, not your average series, but “Maniac” is not that strange. Quite an amusing watch though.
On her deathbed, the mother of Juan tells him to visit the village where she met his father. Juan finds a completely desolate village. The story of his father, Pedro Páramo, slowly unfolds,
Páramo saw a youth love leave his village. After that he decided to become the most powerful man in the neighbourhood and he succeeded. He was quite a villainous overlord too.
The film is told in a cut-up way, with a dreamy, surrealistic atmosphere.
In a weird fictional future, Paul is hired by the mysterious company J.W. Wells. His assignment turned out to be: find the missing portable door of director Humphrey Wells (a great Christopher Waltz).
The film has quite the absurdist and surreal atmosphere of Tel Toro or Wes Anderson. A bit of (suppressed) romance, weird characters, a pretty odd story, subtle humour. Quite amuzing.
I am not entirely sure what the story of this documentary is. I do not think I heard of it before I noticed a screening on the 2025 Wave Gotik Treffen program. It seems that the documentary was funded with a crowdfunding and that the people who invested have already received their DVDs. The website of the label that released the film sells a “collectors edition” limited to 200 copies, which are: “a leftover item from our crowdfunding campaign”. Also tickets to a 12 June 2025 screening in Malmö are still available in the webshop, so it seems that the film premiered at the Wave Gotik Treffen (8 June 2025). IMDb.com says that the release date is 8 November 2024 though.
Anyway, a documentary about the rise and fall of Cold Meat Industry. It is mostly the story of Roger Karlsson (later “Karmanik”) (1965-) told by himself (in an interview) with additional information through interviews with people such as Tomas Pettersson (Ordo), both Peter Anderssons (Deutsch Nepal and Raison d’Être), Peter Bjärgo (Arcana), Håvard Ellefsen (Mortiis), Jouni Havukainen (In Slaughter Natives), etc., but also with people whose connections I do not really see.
I was quite in the middle of things, but on the other hand, it seems that I was not. Like I wrote before, I learned about CMI when Mortiis got in contact with Karmanik. I asked Roger if he was not afraid to become part of the black metal trend by that signing. He was not. The documentary shows that he was, but that there is more to that story. Mortiis certainly was a catalyst.
Karmanik originally was not from Linköping (pronounced “LIN-shə-ping” by the way), but he moved there as a punk. Experimenting with electronic music, he learned about other people who experimented with electronic music as well and in the end, he founded Cold Meat Industry. The label grew and the documentary is full of funny anecdotes and recollections of artists. There are stories about the first shows and festivals, growing friendships (“Karmanik family”), etc.
After a while it seemed that some of the artists had more potential than Karmanik could muster by himself in his basement (and later upper floor) and when after the signing of Mortiis the entire label and its artists entered the limelight, things became too much for Karmanik. It was around the same time that I started losing interest in the label and I did not really experience the tensions, bands that left the label or simply stopped and the bankruptcy of CMI in 2011. This was not only a ‘business thing’ though.
The viewer gets a very personal and very heavy look into the life of Karmanik himself. His oldest daughter is one of the interviewees. We hear about Karmanik’s drinking problems, breakdown, depression and his tiredness of living. This coincided with a growing dissatisfaction of some of the bands and in the end, CMI simply ‘bled out’.
It was only a few years later that a young Pole, Vlad Janicek of Death Disco concert promotions, wanted to celebrate his 30th birthday with a CMI reunion and this became the 30 years CMI festival in Stockholm in november 2017. No quarrels, no reproaches, just a party that saved Karmanik’s life and made some of the artists that had stopped, realise that people from all over the world were still interested in their music.
The documentary consists of interviews (in English, dubbed and subtitled), interesting archival material (video and photo) and weird news snippets the reasons for which elude me. There is some information that was new to me, but there are also things that I wonder why they are not included or mentioned.
I do not know how you have to get to see the documentary, but I guess/hope that there will be a regular release sometime soon.
An interesting documentary which gives a not too often seen idea of what goes on in the heads and lives of people involved in ‘dark music’. Recognisable and therefor not an easy watch.
We were in a holiday home with a stack of old, German DVDs and picked out “Honeymoon in Vegas”. An amusing comedy with Nicholas Cage and a pretty Sarah Jessica Parker.
Cage plays Jack who is haunted by the advice of his mother never to get married. While living a boring life, he meets the girl of his dreams who -of course- has one big wish.
In the end, the two decide to get married in Vegas, where Sarah (Parker) is spotted by the top criminal Tommy who elaborately arranges to steal Sarah from Jack leading to all kinds of weird situations.
I do not think I ever really played it, but I do know the Sonic game. I saw a glimpse of the film (or films, there are three by now) and thought it was some sort of action comedy with comic book elements. Not really. The film is more kids movie with a cuddly hero.
Sonic is portrayed as a lighting fast little creature who is sent to another planet when his life was in danger. That new planet is earth. Trying to life behind the scenes, Sonic becomes the centre of attention when in an angry mood he causes a power surge. Super technician Dr. Robotnik (a very amusing Jim Carrey) is sent after him to capture him.
There is not much to the story. There is the usual obligatory drama, jokes, dumb characters and of course a fuzzy hedghog.
