Slight delay this week at getting my theatrical and DVD recommendations posted. I had a few other updates I wanted to make and this is the one that ended up getting pushed to the back burner for the short term.

That all being said, it actually is a surprisingly strong week for theatrical releases, as Tyson, The Limits of Control and Tokyo Sonata are all released. While I was underwhelmed by Tyson, The Limits of Control and Tokyo Sonata are incredibly strong choices for those who don’t want to watch the latest Ron Howard vehicle.

As for DVD releases, While the Internet has been a buzz about Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, a couple other films caught my eye. The first is the practically direct to DVD film Outlander, which was snuck into a few theaters early in the year then quickly dropped from booking schedules. Outside of the Vikings vs Aliens premise I know little about it, but really, do you need to know anything else?

The other film that I’m excited to see is the French horror film Eden Log. A sci-fi cyberpunk styled film that takes places underground and is shot entirely using hand held cameras. The look of the film reminds me quite a bit of The Descent, and if it can capture the same clausterphobic feel of that film, Eden Log could potentially be on hell of a horror film.

As always trailers are after the break!

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During the course of our relationship I have “forced” Anna to watch several movies that she had absolutely no interest in, thus resulting in several treacherous crossroads for us to navigate. And even with huge successes like The Descent, Fight Club and American Movie, it has still proven to be quite the struggle to convince her that my love of a particular film might actually translate into being worth her time to view it. Recently such an event happened involving Slither.

Now when Slither was released about 2 years ago we had been dating for several months and my birthday was fast approaching. I had gotten some passes to an advance screening of the film that was to occur on my birthday. Now, with a March birthday it can be a bit of a struggle to find even a competent birthday film, so I was quite excited at the prospect of watching a halfway decent horror comedy as my own personal birthday present to myself.
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When I was growing up in Wisconsin I would often times kill time at my local video store. I would roam through the aisles, looking at the VHS boxes, searching for something interesting to watch. I was fascinated with genre mash-ups and Ralph Bakshi’s films and quickly immersed myself in them. But Waukesha wasn’t exactly stationed along the cutting edge of pop culture, so I had some rather sizable gaps in both my film knowledge and exposure.

It wasn’t until college that I began meeting people who were giving enough to introduce me to German Expressionism, Italian neorealism, and Turner Classic Movies. From then on I always have had great respect for people who introduce me to new and exciting things, especially when it comes to films.

Which brings me to my girlfriend, Anna. I found my first excuse to talk to her when she was reading Watership Down, which was one of my favorite books (as well as animated films) as a child. Much to my delight she had never read it before so it afforded me the perfect opportunity to lay down some serious knowledge, and from there we soon began introducing each other to all sorts of of new experiences. One interesting thing to note is she was far more open to trying out my recommendations early on then I was with hers. This is quite simply explained. She likes Bjork, Dogville, and Ayn Rand. I like cool crap.

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