Showing posts with label slither. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slither. Show all posts

Sunday, September 16, 2007


BLACK SHEEP
(Review)

Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) returns to the sheep farm he half-owns fifteen years after the misfortunate confluence of a tasteless practical joke and a family tragedy caused him to develop ovinophobia, the irrational fear of sheep. What Henry doesn’t know is that his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has been conducting genetic experiments on the livestock.
Soon, there’s a massive flock of killer sheep, and Henry receives some hard therapy to get over his phobia.

Black Sheep, written and directed by Jonathan King, is B-movie horror/comedy by way of New Zealand. Think of it as the spiritual successor to Peter Jackson’s early low budget efforts like Dead Alive.
Appropriately enough, Jackson’s Weta Workshop executes the creature and make up effects for Black Sheep, which involves lots of old school, practical effects that make the film a fun, little bloody romp through the rolling hills and woods of New Zealand farm country.

Though the film does get some laughs at the expense of new age thinking and environmentalists, the narrative does address filial legacies and sibling rivalries; in its own B-movie way, of course. It also affords Henry a neat little character arc as he must come to terms with his ovinophobia, and all the underlying issues that the fear is a symptom of.

Granted, Black Sheep does lack a little something that keeps it from the wildly entertaining heights of recent B-movie horror/comedies like Slither and Feast, it is nonetheless a solid entry in the genre, fun, and funny—and naughty—when it needs to be.
It also plays a lot better than the mad cows of Ireland’s Dead Meat, so if B-movies are your thing, you should seriously check out Black Sheep.

(Black Sheep OS courtesy of postergeek.com.)

Friday, March 30, 2007


AFTERTHOUGHTS (4)

4.1 Brandon Routh won the Best Male Newcomer in the Empire Readers Awards 2007. Hurrah! Superman Returns and Bryan Singer were also shortlisted in the Best Film and Best Director categories, which were won by Casino Royale and Christopher Nolan (for The Prestige), respectively. Additionally, Superman Returns also wound up on the Best Sci-fi/Fantasy shortlist, which El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) won, and in Scene Of The Year, for the awesome Space Shuttle rescue. (To Mark Stetson, Visual Effects Supervisor; Joyce Cox, Visual Effects Producer; Sony Pictures Imageworks and Pixel Liberation Front, thanx for the brilliant work on that sequence.)
Additionally, Best Horror was won by Hostel (Hostel: Part II releases June 8!), and Best Thriller, by The Departed.

Also shortlisted in the following categories were:

Best Male Newcomer
Rian Johnson (for directing Brick)
Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine)
Dominic Cooper (The History Boys and Starter For Ten)

Best Female Newcomer
Rebecca Hall (The Prestige and Starter For Ten)
Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine)
Ellen Page (Hard Candy)
Vera Farmiga (The Departed)

Best Film
El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)
The Departed

Best Director
Martin Scorsese (The Departed)
Guillermo Del Toro (El Laberinto Del Fauno)

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed)
Christian Bale (The Prestige)

Best Actress
Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Kate Winslet (Little Children)

Best Sci-fi/Fantasy
Children of Men

Best British Film
The Queen

Best Horror
Gwoemul (The Host)
Slither

Scene Of The Year
The foot chase (Brick)
Frank and Mr. French interrogate Costigan (The Departed)
Attack on the car (Children of Men)

Congratulations one and all.
Check out the list to see if your favorite films made the cut.

(Superman image courtesy of brandonrouth.com.)