Thursday, September 30, 2010

Come Stay At The Severed Inn

It’s time to look at Legion Film’s local horror film The Severed Inn.
The Severed Inn was an originally part of another movie the company was making called Mind Morgue, in which it was a short story titled The Collector. The segment soon took on a life of its own and became a full length film.
Let’s get into the review. First, I want to talk about Shawn C. Phillips and M. Kelly a.k.a M.J. Kelly, they played the sons, Louie and Archie, of Inn owner Uncle Bob who was brought to life by Paul Braccioforte. I’ve been watching Phillips YouTube channel Coolduder for sometime and nice to see someone with a love of horror able to be in these types of movies. Phillips and Kelly play of each other well and they give the best performances of the film.
Now, let’s talk about the severed body parts. The film is actually about a man running an inn that makes home made sausage out of people and then serves it to his paying guests. He makes this sausage by cutting up people and then grinding parts in a meat grinder. When we see severed body part in the film they are done well.
Now let’s move over to the story. I basically explained the plot above and my honest opinion this is where the film really lacks. There were just too many things going on, we have Uncle Bob’s son picking up girls for their father, three people getting stranded in the middle of nowhere, a young couple vacationing in the inn with an older couple and Uncle Bob making breakfast and barbequing, there is a lot going on and it all leads to an anti-climatic end.
The story could have been much stronger if they just adjusted everything. First, I would have dropped that young couple, their performances weren’t great and their story was not even interesting to watch. Dropping that young couple would have made the three stranded characters storyline stronger, because they could have had more screen time. Yet, the storyline they should have really expanded on was Archie and Louie’s, that’s your movie right there. The film just needed really to cut down on characters so they could have developed Uncle Bob and his sons more.
The other thing that bothered me was the cell phone and no signal dialogue. I know that a lot of horror movies now days feel the need to establish that their characters are cut off from the world but can we find another way of doing this? I don’t need them to tell me time and time again that they have no bars. If you don’t have bars why don’t you head back the way you came until you get bars – problem solved.
Summing everything up, the Severed Inn shows promise where the effects are concerned but for the story and some of the acting is where the film gets dragged down. Yet, watching the movie you see promise in little pieces of it and with more experience these pieces can eventually grow and come together.
If you are interested in purchasing the film, you can do so on their website at http://severedinn.com/.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Interview With Tantric

Bleachers brought another big band to the city, and it was Tantric.
Tantric, made up of Hugo Ferreira on vocals, Marcus Ratzenbeck on Electric Violin, Joe Pessia on guitar, Erik Leonhardt on bass and Kevin Figueiredo on drums.
In 1999, the band came together when three former members of Days of the New — Jesse Vest, Todd Whitener and Matt Taul — and Merge singer Hugo Ferreira started the band C-14. The name C-14 was later changed to Tantric and the group was signed to Maverick Records.
The guys’ first album was self-titled and debuted in February 2001, reaching No. 193 on the Billboard 200. The album went platinum because of the hit single “Breakdown” and the touring they were doing with Kid Rock and Creed at the time.

In 2004, they released their second album, “After We Go,” but the band, as it was, ended. The third album introduced new band members Pessia, Leonhardt, Ratzenboeck and Figueiredo. Ferreira brought them all together and they brought Tantric back from the dead.

The third album, “The End Begins,” spawned the Top 5 Active Rock single “Down and Out.” The song has a very well known opening thanks to the talents of Ratzenbeck on his violin.

Ratzenbeck has a long history of playing various instruments, starting with the guitar while he was in middle school and then moving onto the violin and even playing in orchestras.

“I wasn’t performing rock at all,” said Ratzenbeck. “I was teaching violin at the University of Louisville and I got into some session work and then playing as a ringer for some bigger bands.”

Ratzenbeck grew up around music and listened to mostly everything.
“I was big into Led Zeppelin, but I listened to whatever my dad was listening to,” said Ratzenbeck. “I listen to pretty much everything.”
Yet, when Ratzenbeck and the rest of Tantric are on tour, he doesn’t pay much attention to the radio.
“I stay out of touch,” he said.
Tantric has toured with some great bands in the past, but a few bands really stuck out for them.
“We really like playing with Shinedown, Three Doors Down and Alice in Chains, because a lot of our fans are Alice in Chains fans,” said Ratzenbeck.
The band put together their latest album, “Mind Control,” after touring for two years, headlining and supporting bands like Saliva and Drowning Pool. “Mind Control” came together not in a rehearsal space, but from the band member’s homes scattered across the United States. What they wrote separately, they’d send as electronic files to Ferreira, who would make them into working demos. “It was a really unique way of approaching a record,” said Ferreira. “It was definitely more of collaboration than the last record in terms of writing. And we wrote it together even though we were thousands of miles apart. I don’t know how, but we really wrote an incredible record in a short period of time. I’ve always wanted to make a record like this.”

With a host of popular singles, Tantric touches on all their hits from all the records. Yet, when deciding which one is Ratzenbeck’s favorite to perform, it becomes a very tough decision.

“It’s really hard to pick, it’s like picking one of your children. The highest energy level is ‘Down and Out,’” he said.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

2010 Fall Premiere Schedule

Wednesday, September 8
Hellcats - The CW

Thursday, September 9
The Vampire Diaries - The CW
Nikita - The CW

Monday, September 13
90210 - The CW
Gossip Girl - The CW

Tuesday, September 14
Parenthood - NBC
One Tree Hill - The CW
Life Unexpected - The CW

Wednesday, September 15
Outlaw - NBC

Sunday, September 19
Boardwalk Empire - HBO

Monday, September 20
Castle - ABC
Hawaii Five-O - CBS
House - Fox
Lone Star - Fox
Chuck - NBC
The Event - NBC
Chase - NBC

Tuesday, September 21
Detroit 1-8-7 - ABC
NCIS - CBS
NCIS: Los Angeles (two-hour premiere) - CBS
Glee - Fox

Wednesday, September 22
The Whole Truth - ABC
Criminal Minds - CBS
The Defenders - CBS
Undercovers - NBC
Law & Order: SVU (two-hour premiere) - NBC

Thursday, September 23
My Generation - ABC
Grey's Anatomy - ABC
Private Practice - ABC
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - CBS
The Mentalist - CBS
Bones - Fox
Fringe - Fox

Friday, September 24
Medium - CBS
CSI: NY - CBS
Blue Bloods - CBS
Human Target - Fox
The Good Guys - Fox
Smallville - The CW
Supernatural - The CW

Sunday, September 26
Desperate Housewives - ABC
Brothers & Sisters - ABC

Tuesday, September 28
No Ordinary Family - ABC
The Good Wife - CBS

Wednesday, September 29
Law & Order: Los Angeles - NBC

Sunday, October 3
CSI: Miami - CBS

Sunday, October 31

The Walking Dead - AMC

Wednesday, November 10
Lie to Me - Fox

Drzewiecki vs. Carroll

The college football season kicked off last night and continues through Monday night, but for Executive Sports Editor Brad Carroll and myself it had already begun.
Carroll and I sat down for the first time in awhile to play a few games of EA Sports’ Madden and a game of NCAA Football.
I’m just going to get to the interesting stuff and not bore you about how I destroyed him in Madden as I believe the score of our final game was 53-13.
Clearly Mr. Carroll can’t beat me in Madden, so I was confident going up against him in college. And I jumped out of the gate extremely quick. In no time, I, playing as Southern Cal, led 28-7 over his Florida Gators.

Of course, with what I’ll call a decided computer-cheat advantage, Brad and the Gators started their comeback and never looked back.

My demise started once my players decided that they were going to forget to hold onto to the football, as Carroll obviously found the button that allowed him to cause fumbles and intercept passes. I would be fine if it only happened a couple of times, but no, the turnovers kept coming and it allowed Carroll to take the improbable, come from behind victory by the final, 49-42.
I have to admit I was shocked because I talked a big game going in and after a big victory in Madden I was feeling untouchable.
Yet, his huge comeback during the game leads me to believe that he might have planned on the comeback and everything before that was for show. I think he’s a hustler.
Carroll and I will be sitting down again to have a rematch in college football and I’m pretty sure I can walk away with a victory this time ... or not. I don’t want to be that confident because it didn’t work out the last time.
Now if you are one of those people who still haven’t gotten into the wonderful world of sports gaming, I think it’s about time you try.
This year’s college game has several new features and tweaks that make it worth picking up for the $60 price tag.
The assignment AI gives you new running lanes to double-team blocking. This makes the offensive performance feel more in-depth and that can only be a good thing. The next feature is the locomotion system. This system has an all-new authentic running mechanics. You will be able to stop your momentum when you want to and also rebalance yourself after an over-pursuit.
That feature made me remember something and that’s the speed of college players in the game. Why are they so fast? They’re not that fast in real life and when Carroll and I were playing one of my guys moved so fast he was almost a blur, it was like watching the Flash (yeah I just made a comic book reference, don’t judge me).
In other news, EA Sports will be releasing its new NHL game titled simply NHL 11 this upcoming Tuesday. These games in the past have really raised the bar for hockey games and this year they have a whole new real-time physics engine that promises to bring even more realism.
EA is making some huge promises with this game, the biggest being this will be the most complete hockey game that has ever been created.
Let’s hope they can live up to that or there is going to be a lot of dissapointed hockey fans out there ... like Paul Angilly. Although I don’t think Angilly plays hockey games.