According to i09, Sarah Connor Chronicles has been officially axed, while Dollhouse is getting a new creative direction, a lower budget, and is still damned to Friday nights.
Now, Sarah Connor’s fate I’m only a little surprised about. It was a decent show, but prone to Lost-style filler. I’d stopped watching somewhere in the first handful of episodes of the second season, and never even knew about its switch to Friday nights until the season was almost finished. Still, with the release of the new Terminator movie (this weekend, in fact), …

Director: Daisuke Goto
Starring: Ryoko Asagi, Horyu Nakamura
Genre: Drama
Ah, the pink film. The only genre where a melancholic exploration of loneliness and love in the face of dementia can be made into an erotic tale of illicit love, role playing, and tit-milking. Yep. I said tit-milking.
A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn (aka: Chikan gifu: Musuko no yome to…) tells the tale of Noriko (Ryoko Asagi), a young widow tasked with caring for her elderly father-in-law, Shukichi (Horyu Nakamura), on a small dairy farm in rural Japan. Slowly losing his sanity to …

And….we’re back. The past month and a half has seen little in the way of updates, but not without good reason. I’ve finished my degree in Software Engineering (with honors and a Mathematics minor), Kris and I both started new jobs (Kris at Cisco, me at On-Site.com), and we took some well deserved time off for Christmas. During that time the review queue has piled up something fierce. I won’t bother to relate all the titles to you here, but suffice it to say in the next few weeks, you’ll …

These past few weeks haven’t allowed much time for films, and accordingly, not much time for reviews (Though Kris has been doing an awesome job on this front. Be sure to check out her reviews of Happiness of the Katakuris, Shogun Assassin Collectors’ Set, and Quantum of Solace). That said, I have been able to check out a few interesting things here and there on the tube. So, in lieu of my weekly review, here’s a rundown of the various television shows we’ve been checking out this season. —Chris
Legend …

Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Kenji Sawada, Keiko Matsuzaka, Naomi Nishida
Genre: Japan, Comedy, Curious, Fantasy
When Chris and I first saw Happiness of the Katakuris several years ago, we weren’t exactly impressed. Sometimes it just takes a second round. Lately I find it delightfully campy like the Rocky Horror Picture Show with its random wacky balls-out awkwardly endearing song and dance numbers (even enka karaoke), or harkening Beetlejuice when it employs grim prosthetics and surreal stop-animation, or even Sound of Music on acid. Anything now, it seems, is amazingly tame …

Episodes: 9-11
Genre: romance, comedy, educational
Release Date: May 6, 2008

And the Shuffle! coverage continues. If you haven’t already, check out my reviews of volumes 1 and 2.
At the end of the last volume I was finding my interest in Shuffle! to be waning. Episodes 5 through 8 were interesting bits of animated relationship education, but the events of the individual episodes were rather mundane, and the sukebe insertions exceedingly juvenile, and borderline uncomfortable. However, with this volume the show has definitely regained its footing. While episodes 9 through 11 …

I just received another big batch of titles (Shuffle, Black Blood Bros, and more), so I’ll just take care of some of my pending reviews in one fell swoop. I’ll be back with a full review of Glass Fleet vol 6 in the coming weeks. On to the reviews.
School Rumble vol. 6
After seeing the incredibly funny vol. 5, you could say I was looking forward to seeing the final disc of School Rumble. In fact, I did a little digging to get a little more info regarding the …

Director: Ryuichi Honda
Starring: Kei Mizutani, Nao Iguchi
Genre: Indie, Bad Ass Chicks, Japan, Action
Let’s start with the positives first. I think, outside of experimental art and music DVDs, Operation Pussycat boasts THE best DVD cover art of the past few years. It’s simple, clean, instantly catches your eye… It just pops. Cult DVD distributors would do well to follow its example (here’s looking at you, Discotek Media). As for the film contained within this awesome cover….well, let’s just say, you would think a Russ Meyer homage …

Episodes: 5-8
Genre: romance, comedy, educational
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Those of you who read my review of the previous volume of Shuffle! will recall that I liked the series, but wasn’t able to put my finger on an exact reason why (If you haven’t already, check out my Shuffle! vol.1 Review). This time out, though, I think I’ve got it. We already know Shuffle!’s not the panty-flash sukebe dating harem show it would like you to think it is. However, what probably wasn’t as obvious is the fact that …

Is it possible for completely clichéd material to provide any modicum of entertainment these days? I’m not talking about a simple peppering of genre clichés across an uninspired me-too narrative. Instead, I am referring to the laying out of entire plots based on setups so tired and well worn they make the aforementioned efforts seem fresh and new. If you asked me such a question last weekend, I would reply firmly in the negative. But now having seen Shuffle, I might just have to reconsider such a statement.
Shuffle’s setup has …

I have a feeling that what I saw in Teeth was infinitely funnier, grosser, and better thought out and executed than anything in Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy. In the vein of Frankenhooker, Heathers, and Donnie Darko, Teeth is a late-night crowd pleaser concerning a God-fearing girl cursed with a vagina-dentata (that’s a toothed vagina, for you non-Latin speakers). [...]

Given my distaste for any and all things business related, you might wonder why I would have any interest in a film whose primary focus is on Japan’s Bubble economy, and what could have been done to preserve that economic prosperity. Well, what if I told you that that film was also a time-travel-comedy, featuring none other than a household washing machine as the vehicle of choice for 4th-dimensional travel? It may sound absurd, but what better way to visit a bubble, than on a swath of highly-concentrated detergent foam?
The …

Murder Party
SHE SAID:
Somewhere there is a man who looks like Chris Elliot, but you will actually care if he dies. Chris Sharp plays Christopher S. Hawley, a totally blah, totally random alprazolam-popping traffic cop whose sorry socialization solely involves interactions with his cat. One Halloween, when the battle for the armchair is again lost to said cat, Chris’ video marathon is thwarted and he decides to uncharacteristically trek out to a mysterious “Murder Party” after claiming a discarded invitation on the sidewalk. In a nifty silent montage, we see his …

It’s no secret. The American horror scene is all but dead. The ultra corporatization of the horror film has stuffed our cineplexes with remakes, sequels, and tired “re-imaginings” on a near weekly basis. Take The Hills Have Eyes 2, Black-Christmas, Hostel, and Rob Zombie’s upcoming empty-headed Halloween remake for instance. The British horror scene, on the other hand, is positively thriving. Horror’s renegade spirit is alive and well in films such as Shaun of the Dead, The Descent, and Evil Aliens – all infinitely more memorable than …

It takes a special kind of weird to make me crack up. It’s the type of comedy that is so out of left field, so unpredictably off the wall it challenges viewers to even describe its humor. Shows like Aqua Teen and early South Park pull this off wonderfully. You either get these shows, or you’re left hopelessly in the dark. Joining these esteemed ranks (for myself at least) is Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, the manga turned anime featuring a golden-afro’d hero with 6’ long nose hairs of steel, and a crazed …

We’ve received another guest review, this time courtesy of Craig Merry, upstanding citizen and longtime friend of Dreamlogic.net. I know a lot of you out there are probably fans of either The 40 Year-Old Virgin or Freaks and Geeks, and therefore are interested in seeing this film. I know I am. Without further ado, on to Craig’s review.
My assumption just from the title, Knocked Up, was that it was another teen sex comedy. But, like “40-year old virgin”, I was surprised at the depth of the plot. …

Blades of Glory is unabashedly funny stuff. Just imagining Will Farrell and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) carving and twirling in ridiculously revealing costumes is giggle worthy, but there were a lot of truly hilarious scenes.
Jon Heder plays beyond innocent if not metrosexual Jimmy MacElroy, adopted by the always uncomfortably comical William Fichtner from a young age and groomed to be the best, no exceptions. Will Farrell is Chazz Michael Michaels, MacElroy’s rival and opposite in every way; his ice routine consists mostly of leather swathed …

The main motley crew consists of an oversized “Happy Meal”: whiny egotistical Master Shake, levitating sleeve of french fries and voice of reason Frylock, and a naïve little raw meatball named Meatwad.