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California Literary Review

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Trailer Watch: The Expendables 2

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May 4th, 2012

Whatever you felt about the The Expendables, you are meant to feel ten times over about the sequel. That is about the most substantial analysis this trailer can stand.

Blu-Ray/DVD Review: The Wicker Tree

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April 24th, 2012

The rites themselves have changed in practice if not in spirit, and the movie rekindles enough of its ancestor’s spirit that it’s hard to imagine a better result. What more were all the naysayers expecting?

I Say! Hammer Plans A Woman In Black Sequel?

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April 5th, 2012

The Hammer Studio has announced a sequel, but what are we to expect in revisiting the tidily packaged horror of The Woman In Black?

Blu-Ray Review – Battle Royale: The Complete Collection

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March 26th, 2012

Quentin Tarantino proclaims ”My favorite movie of the last 20 years! I wish I had made this movie.” That is as perfect an endorsement as a film distributor could hope to have, especially when selling a film like Battle Royale to a hungry cult audience.

The Walking Dead Recap: “Triggerfinger” (Season 2, Episode 9)

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February 20th, 2012

Hershel gets a taste of the real world. Photo credit Gene Page/AMC. Where we left off in last week’s The Walking Dead, Lori found herself in a sticky situation when her car overturned, leaving her unconscious and vulnerable. She awakens just in time to kill the one corpse that’s crunching at her broken windshield. Gun [...]

The Walking Dead Recap: “Nebraska” (Season 2, Episode 8)

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February 13th, 2012

The Walking Dead resurrected last night for the second half of its much-bemoaned second season. (I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Zombies beg for puns.) The first half of the season was frustratingly slow, and ended in a hail of gunfire that injected some necessary action. Are our survivors finally going to leave the apparent [...]

Yes Academy, We Do Need To Talk About Kevin

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February 9th, 2012

This film will upset you. This film will follow you home and haunt you. This film takes courage to face. You will not forget We Need To Talk About Kevin.

The Weekly Listicle: The Stage On Screen

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December 17th, 2011

As the holiday season builds to its peak, we movie watchers face a release pattern that seems a bit less robust than usual. However, there are plenty of perfectly interesting options out there. In addition to the major franchises sequels like Sherlock Holmes and Mission Impossible, there are a few titles running on the outside [...]

May Day! May Day! It’s Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Tree

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December 14th, 2011

Early press for The Wicker Tree has not been overwhelmingly good, but one might say it has been encouragingly mixed. The original Wicker Man did not become known as “the Citizen Kane of horror films” overnight, or even during the horror boom of the 1970s. It vanished into relative obscurity for some time before its rediscovery, and look at that baby burn now!

The Walking Dead Recap: Pretty Much Dead Already (Season 2, Episode 7)

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November 29th, 2011

So far in this season of The Walking Dead, the writers can’t seem to figure out what to do with the characters, and in the interest of prolonging a suspenseful plot point (Sophia’s disappearance) they let the protagonists dig their own graves with us discontented viewers. Look, I get it: these people are barely surviving [...]

The Walking Dead Recap: Secrets (Season 2, Episode 6)

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November 21st, 2011

The name of this episode, which marks the middle point of season 2, should be “Open Secrets.” In last week’s “Chupacabra,” AMC poked us awake – prodded us into caring after the first half of the season put us to sleep. (The heated comments on my snarky review of last week’s episode bear witness to [...]

The Weekly Listicle: Celebrating Monstrous Matchups

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November 20th, 2011

“Vampires versus werewolves” is only one of the time-tested feuds that film and television have offered for our amusement. This week, Brett Harrison Davinger and I (Dan Fields) take a look at some other monstrous matchups, scary skirmishes, and curious critter clashes.

The Walking Dead Recap: Chupacabra (Season 2, Episode 5)

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November 14th, 2011

Following last week’s romantic gestures, last night’s episode of The Walking Dead treated us to some frustrating reversion. Shane won’t quit harping on his duty to Lori and Carl; Andrea manages to take one step forward and two steps back. We finally get another dose of Merle’s vicious hatred (though not in the way you’d [...]

The Walking Dead Recap: Cherokee Rose (Season 2, Episode 4)

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November 7th, 2011

Three long episodes ago, Carl got shot and Sophia went missing. It’s only now, a third of the way through the season, that we’re beginning to think the kids might actually be all right. With Hershel’s help and at the expense of Otis’s life and Shane’s sanity (which to be fair was already slipping), Carl [...]

Trailer Watch: Sherlock Holmes 2, The Woman In Black, Chronicle

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October 20th, 2011

This week is rife with compelling but problematic new trailers. Compelling but problematic but informative. Without excessive judgment before the fact, here are a few early impressions.

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