Win Weiner on DVD

Win Weiner on DVD

To celebrate the release of Weiner on DVD, I've teamed up with Madman Home Entertainment to give you a chance to score a copy!

About Weiner

Anthony Weiner was a young congressman on the cusp of higher office when a sexting scandal forced a humiliating resignation. Just two years later, he ran for mayor of New York City, betting that his ideas would trump his indiscretions. 

He was wrong. 

With unprecedented access to Weiner, his family, and his campaign team, WEINER is a thrilling look inside a political comeback-turned-meltdown. What begins as an unexpected surge to the top of the polls takes a sharp turn once Weiner is forced to admit to new sexting allegations. As the media descends and dissects his every move, Weiner desperately tries to forge ahead, but the increasing pressure and crippling 24-hour news coverage halt his political aspirations. WEINER walks the line between political farce and personal tragedy. 

With the city of New York as a loud and bustling backdrop, this documentary charges through an increasingly baffling political campaign with unflinching clarity, humor, and pathos.

To enter simply email to this address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or click here  and in the subject line put WEINER. 

Please include your name and address and good luck!
Competition closes October 27th.

Dead Rising Trilogy: PS4 Review

Dead Rising Trilogy: PS4 Review

Released by Capcom
Platform: PS4

The dead will rise again with this next gen port of the infamous Dead Rising series.

The survival horror series first dropped in August 2006 and centres around freelance photographer Frank West who's dropped into a Colorado mall amid a zombie meltdown. From there, it's survival time for Frank, as well as a time to pull together anyone who's still alive and make it out over a 72 hour period.

The second Dead Rising 2 and Off The Record (all neatly packaged together) are much the same ethos with you being supplanted into the role of Chuck Greene a motorcross rider who's got to face the same undead problems as Frank did - as well as ensuring his daughter gets a constant supply of Zombrex to stop her tipping over to the baddies side. Off the Record puts Frank into the same story and lets you play as the original.

As a trilogy of releases and a port over to the next gen consoles, the Dead Rising Trilogy looks pretty much as it did for the last gen release. Even if the HD elements of the next gen machines mean the games look a lot jerkier than they should do, these are still crispy executed do-overs. But it still looks ever so slightly terrible in its shinier new home and it's good in many ways to see that Capcom's embraced the rougher edges of the series.

Off The Record gains a sandbox mode with challenges but for the large part this is the game you played 10 years ago - zombies stutter and shamble towards death and there's a lot of button mashing to escape their clutches.

All in all, the Dead Rising trilogy feels like a nostalgic curtain raiser to the arrival of Dead Rising 4 in December - it's a welcome blast from the past, but it  perhaps feels a little old hat in this current day and age. Here's hoping the fourth outing has a little more of an edge when it shows up.

HITMAN - Season Finale Episode 6 Announced

HITMAN - Season Finale Episode 6 Announced

The Season Finale – October 31

HITMAN™ - Episode 6: Hokkaido

SYDNEY, 13^TH October 2016 – Io-Interactive is excited to announce the destination and release date for the Season Finale of HITMAN, which will take place in Hokkaido, Japan on October 31.   

The Season Finale for HITMAN Season One features a mission called “Situs Inversus” and is the culmination of everything players will have learnt in terms of both gameplay and story.

The Hokkaido location is set within the grounds of the hyper-exclusive GAMA private hospital and resort. This secluded facility is a fusion of Japanese beauty and cutting-edge technology, featuring its own Zen gardens, organic sushi restaurant and traditional Japanese hot spring. Agent 47 must locate two targets in this climactic Season Finale. 

“It was a brave decision to go fully digital episodic with Hitman, fundamentally changing how we make the game, and for us it has been a major success,” said Hannes Seifert, Studio Head, Io-Interactive. “I want to say a big thank you to all the players for making this possible! Together we’ve built and run the biggest and most replayable locations of any Hitman game and added new live content every single week since launch. And although we’re now completing season one, this is only the beginning for our ever expanding World of Assassination.”

HITMAN began with a Prologue and Paris location in March, continued with Episode 2: Sapienza in April, Episode 3: Marrakesh in May, the Summer Bonus Episode in July, Episode 4: Bangkok in August, Episode 5: Colorado in September and the season finale, Episode 6: Hokkaido on October 31. 

Show Me Shorts Film festival 2016 review

Show Me Shorts Film festival 2016 review

The Show Me Shorts Film Festival is now on and with it, a sign once again that short film-making is in very rude health.

The team's spent six months sifting through 1500 entries from 60 countries, an increase of 50%, and now with a clutch of world premieres, the festival's been spewed out into the public domain to be gorged upon (the reason for that choice of wording will become clearer...)

And with the opening in Auckland gifting out the winners with accolades, there's no sign that this festival is going to slow any time soon, which is great.

As Flicks points out  the big winner on the night was an animated 5 minute short, called Spring Jam.
This is a joyous and comic ode to a stag in mating season finding his feet and his amorous edge in the annual rutting competition that is mating season.

SpringJam

With ACME levels and Looney Tunes edges of lunacy, as well as packed full of vibrant inventiveness in its very short run time, this riff on the senses is fun, frivolous and utterly charming, guaranteeing you to be grinning from beginning to end.
It's a rightful winner of the top award, and a sign that NZ animation doesn't just have to be of a fantastical nature. Based on this Ned Wenlock's got a great future ahead, and with the validation of the top award, it's a sign that animation here is once again world-class.

Going about as far as you can from the happy bright spring rituals, Schmeat's darker almost Grimm Fairy Tale edges are as much a dichotomy of Burton-eseque edges as you'd expect.

Opening on a skull with some kind of huhu grub crawling out, this animated vision of a dystopian NZ where meat is scarce has a nutty scientist and a poem as its guide.
There are horror overtones present in this and they're welcome, but the fact it's animated means it never goes over the edge, and if anything  Matasila Freshwater's ideas are more worthy of a Horrible History than an outright scare. It's reminiscent of Frankenweenie crossed with a deliciously dark tone, and it's a welcome watch.
More Gru from Despicable Me than outright gruesome, the scientist's adorable edges are offset only by spiky teeth - and the story's got a spike to it as well which is welcome.

Home

One of the spikier and more timely stories in the programme is Home, one of the NZ premieres.
Written by BAFTA winning director Daniel Mulloy, this sly subversion of the refugee crisis is as prescient as it is frightening.

Jack O'Connell and Holliday Grainger bundle up their two kids and look to be heading on a family holiday but there are shocks ahead as this uncertainty of hope plays out.
As frailties of trust play out and the purpose of the story becomes clearer, it's obvious why Home is such a hot potato of a film - and with the subtlest of movements on Jack O'Connell's face protraying and betraying so much, the power of Home hits you long after it's ended. And as you dwell on it, it may make you nauseous.

Certainly guaranteed to make you nauseous is the puke-fest that is Shout At the Ground.
If ever a short film packed as much puking in as one scene did in Stand By Me, it's yet to cross my eyes.
A band reflect on a weekend that saw them robbed of their takings - and as the winding road to resolution plays out both literally and figuratively, there's plenty of blowing chunks.

Comedic and ribbed with escalating chaos, this comedy in a Kombi may test your own resolve and stomach lining, but Joe Leonie certainly has fired something different together. Subtlety is not its forte, but some nice reflective character moments and a pacy twist pack a punch give it an edge to stand out in the festival.

Leading proceedings in Shout At The Ground and Break In The Weather is actress Aidee Walker, who appears to be one of the 2016 MVPs.

Break In The Weather

A complete story of regret, coping and caring, Break In The Weather sees an estranged daughter Jamie forced back to care for her father (Peter Elliott) after a stroke.

Forced together, reflections on the past and also present conditions add much emotional weight to proceedings and give Break In The Weather a mournful power that's hard to deny.
Tensions and reflections are subtly underplayed, and Walker who wrote and directed this piece displays a great eye for not only embracing the full current context of a short but also manages to pack in plenty of backstory to give the feud and rift some real emotional heft, depth and context.

All in all, The Show Me Shorts festival is clearly on the up, and given numbers of submissions have vastly increased, it shows no sign of dying.

With international talent emerging at all quarters, and Kiwi film-makers holding their own and even beating them at their own game, there's no better time to embrace the festival and dive in - because based on this smattering from the smorgasbord from the short form cinema, there's more than enough to satiate any appetite.

Get the Show Me Shorts programme and festival info here.

The Clan: Film Review

The Clan: Film Review

Cast: Guillermo Francella, Peter Lanzani, Steffania Koessel
Director: Pablo Trapero

Fresh from wowing the crowds at the New Zealand International Film Festival, Argentina's darkly polished crime drama The Clan finds its place into NZ Cinemas.

With its true crime edges and sheen, the slick - and sick - tale of the Puccio Clan case that rocked the country back in 1985 is worthy of entry into the pantheon of crim-flicks.

For those uninitiated with the work done by the Puccio and their notoriety, they were famed for kidnapping, holding hostages in their basement, waiting for ransoms to be paid and then executing their victims regardless. Our guide into this glossy story, complete with soundtrack gems from the likes of the Kinks is floppy haired son Alejandro (Lanzani), a rugby player, son and bait for the lures of many.

It's the usual kind of story of its ilk and Trapero doesn't shatter the boundaries with the delivery - a naive innocent gradually becomes aware of what is happening and the extent of it all. But in a slight twist, Alejandro is conflicted by his involvement and the growing insidious nature of what is happening.

If Trapero delivers something which is stylish and slickly executed, it's in his Secret In Their Eyes leading man Francella that the film soars. His calm exterior and delicious delivery of deviousness sets the tone for what's in - there's not been a family head this loveable since Tony Soprano graced our screens. Mixing domestic issues while screams erupt from scenes in the basement provide a bleakly black background to proceedings and give The Clan an edge that's hard to shake.

It may be provocative in parts with the extent of what's going on gradually revealed, and it's as stylishly executed as any Netflix true crime offering, but The Clan manages to continue to shock even up to its very final sequence and scenes, as the credits roll.

The Walking Dead: Season 6: Blu Ray Review

The Walking Dead: Season 6: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

The sixth season of The Walking Dead is about one thing - Negan.

The arrival of the biggest threat Rick and his gang of survivors has ever faced hangs heavily over most of the episodes of this season and bizarrely also represents some of the most negativity the show's faced.

But let's back up first; season 6 sees Rick and the group trying to divert a mass horde of Walkers away from Alexandria. However, this plan all goes to hell when a group of others attack (known as the Wolves, with W carved in their heads and teased repeatedly in season 5). As the group tries to protect Alexandria and its inhabitants, distant threats edge ever closer.

Season 6 is a great season for action sequences, but a frustrating one for treatment of some of its characters.

An apparent death of Glenn at the hands of Walkers is perhaps the biggest surprise, but becomes the show's biggest albatross as his fate isn't revealed. A second further non death later in the season for Glenn doesn't help - and ultimately, the writers came under fire for messing with a fan favourite who has a set path in the comics to follow.

But while there are moments that irritate in Season 6 of The Walking Dead, the exploration of some themes such as the nature of consequence and whether Rick's right to do what he does makes for fascinating viewing. With the return of Lennie James' peace-loving Morgan, the juxtaposition of contradictory viewpoints makes for compelling banter between Rick and Morgan, as well as the show's ethos of what it would be like to survive in this world and how far you'd go

However, the real thrill comes in the final episode with the arrival of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan. Simply put, Morgan owns the screen from the second he's on, and it's no wonder the writers refused to show who dies at Lucille's hands - any death would have taken from Negan's arrival and would detract from the sterling work done by all the cast at the end of the run.

Season 7 of The Walking Dead starts soon, and while there are a few mis-fires in season 6, the game's changed - and it's with feverish anticipation that we see what's next.

Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie: Film Review

Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie: Film Review

Cast: Louis Theroux, Marty Rathbun, The Church of Scientology
Director: John Dower

It's easy to see why Louis Theroux was pulled into the world of Scientology.

His career's been built on the quirky, with the MO of giving those enough rope with which to hang themselves. Theroux's entire back catalogue of interviews show him as non-confrontational, naive to the point of annoying and simply content to let the subjects do the talking with the occasional prodding.

His technique belies his intelligence, but often demonstrates his adroitness at shedding more light on things than a traditional interview would do.

But in the case of Scientology (a cult so marvellously indicted by Alex Gibney's wonderful Going Clear doco), Theroux finds himself thwarted from the start and given no access to anyone within the church, leading him to the quandary of how you build a doco with no subject matter?

Despite throwing a genuine request online to see if any Scientologists would get in touch, Theroux is told to prepare for the loonies and to batten down the hatches. His goal is altruistic - to see the Church in a more positive light as opposed to the increasing lunatic fringe front that's portrayed in general media.

Recruiting former Scientologist Marty Rathbun to the cause, Theroux decides the way to illustrate the Church's edges is to get actors to play the roles of Tom Cruise and church leader David Miscavige and sets about auditioning them. It's a clever touch rather than simply relying on archive footage, and when it appears one of the actors must be in league with the church, Theroux begins to feel the tendrils of the Church tracking him (equally, with a humorous visit from actress Paz De La Huerta, whom Theroux labels a "honey trap").

It's in these moments that Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie starts to come to life; with a defter lighter touch to proceedings and the trademark Theroux wit adding a great deal. Because at the end of the day, Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie is a very unfulfilling piece, due simply to the fact he has no real access to those in the upper echelons of the Church - and the film very much suffers because of a lack of them.

More interesting though is the relationship that Theroux and Rathbun cultivate; it's one of unease and in this way, Theroux has gained his greatest insight into the church's machinations and workings.

But there's never a real sense of a killer blow against the Church or its methodology.

This is a doco that feels like it wants to poke and provoke the fires of outrage and runs away when anything greater than a spark grows. It's a frivolous frippery of a film that wants to rattle the Church's leader but ends up feeling more like a Miscavage of Justice rather than a damnation of what goes on behind the walls.