ron2112

It's an awful movie, but it's a great awful movie, if that's your thing. Shuny Bee is the triple threat (writer/director/star) behind this masterpiece, and he is glorious. Think YK Kim meets Neil Breen, and yes he wears a black tank top. If that means anything to you, you need to see this. He does terrible martial arts while saying wa-TAH! He's barely intelligible! Oh, and his character's name is Brandon. So that's perfect. Did I mention the movie ends before the third act?

After reading so many reviews saying how hyper-gruesome this movie is - it puts the Saw and Hostel movies to shame, etc. - I finally decided to check it out. Don't believe the hype. Yeah, there are a small number of violent scenes, but the average episode of The Walking Dead is ten times as grisly as this movie. When the credits finally ran, I threw my hands up and said, "THAT'S IT???" Mind you, I don't *require* gore in my horror movies. But this one simply wasn't all that engaging on any level. And when so many people are selling it as a shock-fest, you go into it with certain expectations. They are sadly not fulfilled. As modern horror movies go, this one's pretty timid.

For Steely Dan fans, this video is a must. The performances and sound are absolutely wonderful. No complaints there. But the video direction and editing are less than great. Admittedly, SD is not the most visually dynamic band on stage, and I imagine it was difficult to try to breathe life into a bunch of guys basically standing (or sitting) there. But the shots used in this video, which I'm sure someone thought were very artistic, are more often annoying. Out of focus shots, extreme off-center shots, shaky-cam shots, all edited together very sloppily make for a distracting experience. Rarely does the camera give us a close up on a soloing player -- I want to watch that player play! Instead we cut to a slightly fuzzy shot of the drummer on a 15-degree angle stuck down in the lower left corner of the frame (or something to that effect). They should have gone with a more conventional style on this video.

I know I've spent a lot of words complaining about this point, which might make it sound like I didn't enjoy the video. The truth is that it's very worth watching, the weakness of the visuals aside. It's still a great band and a great performance, and there are brief vignettes between songs that I found very entertaining. If you dig the Dan, you must check out this vid. Try not to be too disappointed with the camera/editing work; if it gets irritating just close your eyes -- you won't be missing much anyway.