Love Letter to the late great Don LaFontaine

Do yourself a favor and start your day to this sensational mashup of Don LaFontaine expressions you'll be using whenever possible - hilarious! Volume definitely required...

Sunday, Bloody Sunday: The Walking Dead: Season 4

Grab your shovels and crossbows and watch your back, because this Sunday the dead return!

Season 4 of AMC's ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead has us wondering just what to expect - and the unknown is always scary, right? We had quite the body count last season that's bound to find our surviving characters in a shattered state of recovery.

The series has another new showrunner - Scott Gimple, who's written some of the show's strongest episodes, a good sign. We don't have a clearly recognizable setting initially that compares with the farm of season 2 or Woodbury of season 3 - though it looks like we're going to be returning to the prison as season 4 begins. Michonne appears to have a horse, which gives her a nifty Samurai vibe!

There are bound to me new characters and new threats this year, and potentially more casualties, as The Walking Dead has come to rival Game of Thrones or Sons of Anarchy as a series where cast members read their scripts nervously. But one thing's for sure, The Walking Dead has always put character front and center, never letting us forget that the survivors of this horrific outbreak are people - good, bad and ugly - all the while serving up extreme doses of suspense and terror. When someone is lost it moves us - we care. The Walking Dead is a show that refuses to play it safe, and that unpredictable depiction of society's aftermath has struck a nerve with viewers in a major way.

At my house, we're more than ready for Sunday, whatever it may bring...

Hanging by a thread: the awe of Gravity

Once in great while a film captures the imagination of the public and ascends to the lofty sphere of a bona fide phenomenon – films like Titanic, Avatar or The Exorcist, to name a few. Gravity now joins that list of particularly rare films that don’t just serve up entertainment, they give the audience an experience like they’ve never had before. At turns both epic and intimate, Gravity is an incredible breath of fresh air. Director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men) has given us something new and utterly compelling – yes, something new.

When I first heard the plot of Gravity, I was a little underwhelmed. Sandra Bullock, floating for her life, just her? Isn’t there a Thor sequel about to come out? I could not have been more wrong. Gravity begins with a 17 minute uninterrupted shot. I went in knowing this, but was never conscious of it. After about ten minutes, it suddenly occurred to me: Oh, my God – they haven’t cut yet! – because I was completely spellbound. When that part of my brain began trying to process how what I was seeing had been achieved, it basically short-circuited. The camera placement, the movement of the characters around the orbiting structure, Clooney in his jet pack, circling the shuttle, the overwhelming sense of reality, of hanging miles above the Earth – the feeling of each point of existence being a complete precipice – everything looked so completely real and convincing with no sense of artifice. These must be visual effects – but how the heck did they do it? You feel completely immersed and there. Then you immediately stop trying to analyze because the movie pulls you back into the moment – into “reality” – as things begin to unwind.

There isn’t just one catastrophe in Gravity – things go horribly wrong more than once. There are sequences in the film where my heart was in my throat and the anxiety level was uncomfortably high. Highest possible praise must to go to Sandra Bullock here, who’s a revelation. She anchors the emotional reality of this film with phenomenal heart. When disaster strikes, her character isn't just adrift in space – she’s struggled to just continue existing in life after coping with horrible grief – she’s also adrift psychologically, and that feeling of hanging by a literal and figurative thread connect her to the audience in a powerfully compelling way. Gravity is full of awe and terror – but it never loses sight of emotion – despite the icy cruelty of the environment, and I suspect that this, combined with the novelty of a “being there” experience is why this picture is resonating so strongly. Despite the fact that you’re seeing a whole new level of what’s possible with effects technology, it never feels like visual effects – and perhaps that’s the real breakthrough.

Lately I’ve avoided most 3D presentations as gimmicks – not here. Gravity was designed to make maximum use of the format in ways the serve to further immerse you, evoke the grandeur of scale and the terror of simple physics. If you can find IMAX 3D, all the better.

Space has always been a source of inspiration – a canvas of awe and fear. Gravity gives us that same sense of wonder we had in the Apollo era – of men and machines – of the engineer as superhero – but puts us there in a way we've never experienced before. Gravity unflinchingly shows us how exploration can quickly turn to survival – but never lets us forget that the same spark ignites both impulses. A new era of filmmaking possibilities appears to have arrived – Cuarón has taken his own giant leap here. Highest possible recommendation.

Thor hits the shelves!

First (and supposedly rarest) of Hasbro's new figures from Thor: The Dark World - a Dark Elf, formidable enemies of Asgard!

Getting ready for season four...

Finally installing my Walking Dead figures. New wave with Carl should be arriving any day!

Zombie Dark Thirty: World War Z

World War Z was a mighty troubled production. Extensive re-shoots, last minute rewrites, creative conflicts, release date bumps and a budget north of $190 million had pundits thinking this adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie apocalypse saga would be an outright box office apocalypse of its own. The surprise is that producer/star Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster (The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace) have delivered a pretty spectacularly entertaining movie. Like the hungry ghouls it depicts, World War Z came back from the dead.

The novel has less of a narrative through-line (there is no main character, per se) and reads more like a mosaic. Pitt was drawn to the project intent on using a genre picture “…as a Trojan horse for sociopolitical problems, and what would the effect on the world be if everything we knew was upside-down and pulled out from under us?” World War Z begins with an almost comedic succession of production company logos that threaten to go on forever – but the team that cut this movie knew what the hell they were doing. From almost the first shot, World War Z is a relentless exercise in tension.

The “Zekes” of World War Z are more reminiscent of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later than the rotting ratings champs of The Walking Dead. These undead are infected with super-charged rabies, often moving in ferocious swarms. Pitt is a retired United Nations investigator who’s just trying to take care of his family when the zom-pocalypse busts loose – and bust loose it does, in spectacular fashion, as Pitt and his family are stuck in gridlock, quickly realizing that something very wrong is happening around them. His unique skill set gives him little choice but to join the team tasked with tracking down the original source of the pandemic, in the hope of finding a cure. The bulk of the film is an Outbreak-style virus thriller, globe-trotting to locations like South Korea and Israel like some kind of catastrophic Bond movie.

The film is full of incredible action sequences, stress and anxiety. Pitt’s in just about every scene and his resourcefulness carries the movie. Look for new Doctor Who Peter Capaldi as a W.H.O. Doctor, oddly enough. Original cinematographer Robert Richardson left the film near the end of principal photography to begin shooting Django Unchained – he later had his name removed from the film, unhappy at the conversion to 3-D against his wishes. By all accounts the third-act rewrite work by Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard very likely saved the picture and helped turn things around. The score by Marco Beltrami drives the feeling of chaos and combines with the editing of Roger Barton (The Grey) and Matt Chesse to deliver a mood of palpable dread and unease.

Production woes may have ruled the day, but this is a great looking and enthralling epic that seldom drags and is infinitely better than one might have expected. World War Z does a great job of considering the frayed tether of society and disease and letting us freak out at the prospect of it all coming unraveled. A must-rent.

Sorcerer: The greatest thriller you haven't seen

When William Friedkin's Sorcerer came out in 1977, it had some challenges finding an audience. It was released right around the same time as Star Wars, which became a global pop cultural phenomenon. Sorcerer - starring Roy Scheider - was a gritty existential thriller about four outcasts driving truckloads of explosive nitroglycerin over treacherous South American terrain. Loosely inspired by The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer was considered a disappointment. But like another failed picture of a similar vintage - Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate - Sorcerer has found a resurgence of critical acclaim, and is now considered an overlooked gem - if not an outright masterpiece. Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) considers the film his favorite, as well as the most challenging and personal film he ever made.The haunting electronic score by Tangerine Dream is remarkable. Co-produced by Paramount and Universal, Sorcerer was held up in lengthy legal disputes which have finally been resolved.

Friedkin has supervised a complete digital restoration of the film, premiering the new print last month at the Venice Film Festival. At long last, Sorcerer will arrive on blu-ray from Warner Brothers on April 14th, 2014, following a limited theatrical release. The disc will have audio commentary as well as extras.

Originally intended as a vehicle for Steve McQueen, Sorcerer is one of the last of the seventies classics, a victim of changing eras. The restoration and rediscovery of one of the most tense and suspenseful films of all time is going to be an incredible thrill.