I’m a little late to the party, but I thought I’d pass along news that Death Race 2 started filming in South America in February and March 2010. Evidently this film will be a prequel to explain the rise of insane driver Frankenstein on the Death Race circuit.

It actually seems to have a pretty good cast – with Luke Goss (Hellboy 2: The Golden Army), Ving Rhames (Con Air, Pulp Fiction), Sean Bean (National Treasure, Lord of the Rings trilogy), Danny Trejo (Planet Terror, USA Network’s Burn Notice), and Lauren Cohan (The CW’s Supernatural). Let’s hope director Roel Reiné (The Marine 2, The Lost Tribe) can do justice to the Death Race circuit.

I enjoyed the remake of Death Race back in 2008 starring Jason Statham. So we’ll see if the prequel can hold up.

Here’s the synopsis:

Death Race 2 takes place in the very near future, as the United States economy begins to decline and violent crime starts to spiral out of control. To contain the growing criminal population, a vast network of for-profit, private prisons springs up, creating a lawless subculture ruled by gangs, cold-blooded killers and sociopaths. The worst of these prisons is Terminal Island. Convicted cop-killer Carl Lucas arrives on the Island to serve his life sentence just as ruthlessly ambitious television personality September Jones launches the ultimate reality show, Death Race. A brutal prison yard demolition derby that pits prisoners against each other in steel reinforced, heavily armed vehicles, Death Race offers the winner the ultimate prize: freedom — if he can survive to enjoy it. When Lucas signs up to be a driver, the stage is set for the birth of a legendary racer.

Let’s see what happens with this one – might even be a direct to DVD release. No release date yet, but due out sometime in 2011.

–Fitz

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Kevin Reilly, President, Entertainment for Fox announced the news Monday.

“FRINGE tapped into a deep creative mine this year that built momentum throughout the season and helped give us our first real foothold on TV’s most competitive night,” said Reilly. “The entire FRINGE team – from the producers and writers to the cast and crew – has taken smart storytelling and top production quality to a whole new level. The rest of this season is mind-blowing, and we can’t wait to get started on the third installment of this amazing journey.”

As a dedicated viewer, I have to say I’m excited to see what’s in store for Walter, Peter, and Olivia. Each new episode provides humor, bizarre science, and more pieces to the puzzle of how two worlds could possibly collide.

Evidently in season 2, Fringe caught the attention of more viewers in their time slot – with Bones (another of our favorite shows) as a lead in. The show’s average Thursday rating among adults 18-49 was up by more than 50%. Amazing results.

So stay tuned for the continuing saga… The next episode airs on Thursday, April 1st on FOX. I know I’ll be watching.

–Fitz

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Sad news to report. Corey Haim passed away today, perhaps due to an accidental drug overdose. The actor was in numerous movies through the 1980s and ’90s, including Lost Boys, License to Drive, Dream a Little Dream, Blown Away, and others. You rarely saw him in a movie without his friend Corey Feldman and now the Two Coreys will just be One.

I think the fame went to his head in the 1980s and a repeated cycle of drugs and alcohol wasted far too much of his life. It’s rumored that he was clean and working on revitalizing his acting career, so his untimely death comes as a shock to everyone.

Condolences to his family and friends. Guess we’ll never know what new movies he might have find his way into…

–Fitz

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Back in May, I had a chance to review LeapFrog Letter Factory with my youngest daughter who will be starting kindergarten in the Fall. We enjoyed exploring the alphabet with Tad on his musical journey. And we were on the lookout for more fun educational videos to help give her a head start and the LeapFrog brand has always provided.

Now we have seen the LeapFrog Math Adventure to the Moon, which focuses on counting, sorting, patterns, and simple addition. This time we have Tad and Lilly learning about counting for a school project. They have to come up with a collection of ten things, but they are having a hard time counting that high or figuring out what to collect.

For the next 30 minutes, the viewer, Tad, and Lilly are led on a long trip by their good friend Edison, the firefly. Edison has a few tricks up his sleeve to help the kids learn how to count by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, and so on as well as other math-related skills. Where does Edison take the pair? To the moon of course! What would be more cool than to show a collection of ten moon rocks in class?

The LeapFrog team has once again put together a great lesson integrating fun songs, activities, and comic elements as well as a bit of suspense. The suspense part surprised me a bit, as it seemed a bit dark and destructive for a kindergarten-age audience. In this case, it was a space storm threatening to either suck everything in or blow everything away. Everything worked out alright in the end and the trio managed to save the day for some space aliens along the way.

I was impressed with the seamless integration of patterns into the story. The characters had to unlock the launch code to take off in their spaceship. And to do that they needed to figure out the pattern of shapes and colors and enter the right pattern to start the ship. It was a great way to introduce the pattern concept while also introducing the idea of a password or “launch code” to start something up.

My only complaint with this adventure was that it seemed too short. That however may have been because we were enjoying ourselves and didn’t want it to end. At 36 minutes long, it’s about the same length as LeapFrog Letter Factory so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

In addition to the main adventure, the DVD includes a few special features including a Sorting Game you can play with the DVD remote, a few sing-along songs, and the Alphabet Song from Let’s Go to School (another LeapFrog adventure).

If you’re looking for a good math-based educational adventure for your kindergarten-aged youngsters, LeapFrog Math Adventure to the Moon should be a great fit. I know we’re looking forward to finding other LeapFrog adventures to enjoy!

–Fitz

p.s. Click below to find this and other LeapFrog adventures at Amazon!

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Do you remember the 1980s? It was an era of action movies from Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and Steven Seagal. These were not the best actors, but they didn’t try to be. Their films were meant to entertain us with fight choreography, slow motion, and tough guy characters. Movies like Bloodsport and Hard Target, Above the Law and Marked for Death, Universal Soldier and Showdown in Little Tokyo – they all had a simple premise and you knew what you were in for going in.

Now we live in an age where Direct-to-DVD isn’t necessarily the kiss of death. Movies like Fight Night and Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassin’s Ball prove that you can produce great movies without having a huge budget and still get them out to an audience that will appreciate them. Unfortunately, not every movie can be a masterpiece. And the Direct-to-DVD market still has some stinkers.

Ninja stars Scott Adkins as Casey and Tsuyoshi Ihara as Masazuka – two martial arts students learning the ways of the ninja in a remote dojo in Japan. When Masazuka breaks the rules and attacks Casey with a real sword (not a wooden one) during a demonstration, he is kicked out of the school to find his own way. Like any bad seed, he finds his way back again to take his revenge and take the ancient ninja treasures locked in an ancient box. Casey must stop his old school mate from taking what isn’t his.

The plot isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, going back to the Ninja and American Ninja movies of the 1980s, which I have to admit I watched as I was growing up. Back then the good guys even wore white ninja apparel sometimes to set them apart from the bad ninjas, who always wore black. No such luck in this film.

I think that the lack of any originality was my biggest problem with this incarnation of Ninja. There just wasn’t much to hold on to. The plot could come from any bad martial arts movie of the 1980s. The fight choreography was ok, but not spectacular. The gratuitous blood spraying everywhere as limbs and heads were sliced off was pushing it a bit too far. One bright spot was the use of a crutch as a staff during a fight on a subway where Namiko (Mika Hijii) broke a guy’s arm. Pretty sad when that was the high point.

Adkins isn’t the best actor, but he was certainly in amazing physical shape for this movie. He did his level best during all the fight scenes to make them exciting. And it was difficult to fault all the Japanese-speaking characters for their performances as the typical staid, strong, silent warriors they portrayed. But as I sat through this movie, the lack of emotion from everyone involved almost put me to sleep.

There were no extras, just a few trailers for other First Look Studios films on DVD such as Lost City Raiders and Triangle.

If you’re in the market for a ninja movie, I’d look for 2009’s Ninja Assassin on DVD (March 16, 2010) from the Wachowski brothers and director James McTeigue. The fights were even more bloody, but much more original in their choreography.

–Fitz

p.s. Pick up this and other Ninja movies at Amazon below!

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Burn Notice began airing in June 2007 on the USA Network. The series, created by Matt Nix, centers on Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), a spy “burned” by his own agency who ends up in Miami, Florida. When a spy is “burned,” he is considered a threat to national security and dumped somewhere he cannot leave. It’s tough to go anywhere when your bank accounts are frozen and you have no assets. Since the beginning, Westen has been trying to find out who burned him and how to get back into the agency’s good graces.

Luckily for Westen, he has friends and family in Miami. His mom, Madeline (played to the hilt by a chain-smoking Sharon Gless), lives in Miami, as does his friend and former FBI agent Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) and his former IRA operative girlfriend Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar). This odd quartet mixes camp humor and action in an explosive combination.

This Thursday, Burn Notice ends its third season with another cliffhanger to hold us over until the fourth season begins in June 2010. As the season ramps down, actors Donovan and Anwar took some time out of their schedules to answer a few questions.

It was obvious from the beginning of the conference call that the pair had a good relationship off camera as well as on the set. The duo laughed genially a lot at many of our questions but seemed happy to answer just about whatever came up.

When asked what drew the actors to the show and their characters, Anwar said it was the initial script and how her character Fiona was written. “I couldn’t believe that a man had actually written the script,” she said. “I mean at least her character. When I first met Matt Nix, who created and wrote the script, I actually said to him ‘You must have a remarkable relationship with your wife, because you have such incredible insight.’” She continued with “When you sign up for a TV show, you don’t know if it’s going to be for a pilot or for the rest of your life, so I wanted to play a characater that I enjoyed thoroughly – and there weren’t that many of them out there.”

Answering the same question, Donovan said he was hooked by the introduction. “The first page is a voiceover. It says ‘You know what it’s like to be a spy?’” The opportunity to not only play a spy, but play a burned spy and “on top of that… talk to the audience about what it’s like being a spy [as a voiceover]” piqued his interest.

Another reporter asked about the actors’ success in television and why they keep coming back to do more TV work. Donovan said that, especially with cable, “it’s an avenue to be creative.” He said “I think why people are drawn more now to cable shows than ever is that they take more risks – they’re creatively pushing the envelope. I think that the networks have to answer to a bigger advertising calling, whereas the smaller cable [channels] have lower ceilings they can bump their heads on.”

He continued. “And if you think about it, we make 16 one-hour movies a season. You don’t get an opportunity like that in movies.”

Anwar said she likes the stability of television – “the continuity of having a lifestyle where I know I can pay my rent at the end of each month.” And as a mother, she said it was “nice for all of us to sort of know we’re going to be in a specific place for a certain amount of time. I’ve never known that in my career. So I’m really quite grateful at this point that I get to have this sort of double existence and can rely on both.”

When asked if actor/director Tim Matheson would return as ‘Larry’ – Westen’s former insane spy partner who has gone freelance – Donovan was quite outspoken about the actor. “He’s a terrific character and Tim’s such a wonderful man and an extraordinary actor. One, we were lucky to get him, and two – he’s actually happy to be on the show and wants to continually come back.”

During the call we also learned that Matheson will be directing the premiere episode for season four, which is great. He acted in and directed a few episodes of season 2 and 3, and whenever his character Larry shows up, the audience knows something bad will happen to poor Michael Westen.

Later in the call, Anwar was asked about working with Sharon Gless and how Fiona and Madeline’s characters have grown closer over the seasons. She definitely agreed with that assessment… “I think that these two women have a tremendous amount of respect for each other. There’s so little spoken about what’s really being felt and really being witnessed with that connection to Michael, I think it’s pretty accurate to real life, especially with in-law figures. There’s so much that’s not spoken out loud, and yet there are so many physical undertones and it’s very apparent – and that’s thanks to Sharon. I mean, her performance is so beautifully nuanced and I find it terribly inspiring. She’s a wonderful woman and actress.”

When Donovan was asked about what he does in his off time, he mentioned he golfs as regularly as he can. “Luckily down in Florida, there’s a lot of golf courses. And I just put a golf hat on and take my sticks out and usually walk a course. Sometimes I’m by myself and sometimes I just kind of walk onto a twosome or threesome and join them. And most people just kind of leave me alone. That’s my quiet time. I love walking about four or five hours on a golf course.”

This season, we were introduced to Mason Gilroy, a violent psychopathic villain played almost gleefully by Chris Vance (recently on FOX’s Mental). The characters of Gilroy and Westen seem on screen to be like two coiled vipers waiting to strike each other. When I asked Donovan and Anwar about working with him this season, they seemed quite happy with the opportunity.

“Yes, he’s definitely added a great tension to every scene that I’m in with him,” said Donovan. “And I think [he's] kind of a great super villain that governs over the show. I think the best part of Burn Notice is always when the villain or guest star is more talented, smarter, or crazier than the rest of the cast because it ups all our game.”

Anwar agreed, adding “There’s nothing more inspiring than to have to pull everything you have out of your back pocket on the stage. And we have so little time to rehearse and to find everything imaginable in one scene, that when you do have this fantastic talent to work with it really is fun, [and] it makes it that much more enjoyable.”

It’s obvious that these two great actors enjoy the series they’re on, their characters, the setting, and the chance to act with some other great actors in the process. Burn Notice is one of the best, most interesting series on TV right now and I hope it continues long into the indefinite future.

Be sure to tune into the Burn Notice Season 3 finale this Thursday night on the USA network!

–Fitz

p.s. Pick up Burn Notice on DVD at Amazon!

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Smart, suspenseful horror. It’s rare to see those three words together. But The Crazies manages to blend them without breaking much of a sweat. Amazing to think that a movie with a $20 million budget can provide this kind of thrill ride in the age of $500 million movies. And to think it was also a remake of a film from the early 1970s… Shocking!

Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Starring Timothy Olyphant as upbeat, optimistic Sheriff Dutten and Radha Mitchell as his wife, the pragmatic town Dr., The Crazies dives into the horrific scenario of what happens if a biological warfare agent gets released in the United States. What would the response be?

It starts with an absolutely killer opening scene with the town drunk, now a few years sober, walking onto a high school baseball field with a shotgun in the middle of a game. From the moment that the Sheriff deals with this bizarre behavior decisively to the very end, it’s a heck of a ride.

Suffice it to say that Deputy Clank (Joe Anderson) stole the show for me. Olyphant and Mitchell were fine in their roles as optimist and pragmatist, but the deputy embodied not only some great comic relief but showed the self sacrifice of a true hero under pressure even at the end.

Here’s the synopsis:

Imagine living in a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. Imagine your friends and neighbors going quickly and horrifically insane. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

David Dutten (Timothy Olyphant) is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his own house…after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Within days, the town has transformed into a sickening asylum; people who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives have now become depraved, blood-thirsty killers, hiding in the darkness with guns and knives. Sheriff Dutten tries to make sense of what’s happening as the horrific, nonsensical violence escalates. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh…with insanity.

Now complete anarchy reigns as one by one the townsfolk succumb to an unknown toxin and turn sadistically violent. In an effort to keep the madness contained, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out – even those uninfected. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutten; his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutten’s deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for survival as they do their best to get out of town alive.

Honestly I don’t know why this film didn’t make more than the reported $18 million in its opening weekend. It’s one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in ages. I hope it goes on to earn many more millions for the actors, writers, director, and studio. A solid 4 out of 4 stars.

What did you think?

–Fitz

p.s. Check out the ’70s version at Amazon below!

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Just about a year ago I had the opportunity to review Tyrone Wells‘ album Remain. Tough to believe that it’s been twelve months. And now he’s releasing an acoustic album called Metal & Wood that proves he continues to mature and develop as an artist.

Wells has once again brought compelling, socially-conscious lyrics into sync with rhythms and melodies that provide additional layers. Add to that his soulful voice and gift for putting his emotion into a performance and you begin to see a pattern emerge between Remain and Metal & Wood. I’ve always found that when you strip an artist down to the bare essentials of acoustic performances, you hear their true talents emerge. Without a doubt, Wells is the real thing.

This album opens strong and doesn’t let up. But when I started listening to the title song – “Metal and Wood” – Wells had me from the opening strum. Using traditional folk guitar styles and merging them with the edge of rock/pop, the song calls to listeners to make the world a better place for our children for we won’t be here forever. “We took the music from the schools / and left the darkest gaping hole / where will our children be / if they don’t learn to sing / millions of voices fallen silent til they’re gone…”

“Metal and Wood” really hits home for me as a parent of two young kids. As a product of the public school systems of the State of Colorado, much of who I am was courtesy of the art and music programs in my schools and the wonderful teachers who knew those programs were building more complete kids. I wonder where we’ll be when the arts are totally gone. I’m not sure I want to find out. Without music the world would be a very dreary place. So bravo to Wells for bringing up this issue close to my heart.

Another song that stands out is the duet with Jason Reeves called “Give Me One Reason,” which has some beautiful harmonies from the very beginning. It’s about two people in a troubled relationship like two stars orbiting each other and waiting for an opportunity to escape their gravity. “You’re like a shadow that I cannot hold on to / I’m not a prison / I cannot tie you down” he sings hoping that she gives him one reason to stay.

And “Use Somebody,” which I’ve heard on local radio stations from the Kings of Leon, gets a nice acoustic makeover. This is a simpler, slower version that really lets the melodies, the lyrics, and the guitar come out loud and clear. It’s a great cover.

The whole album really cruises along to a mix of wistful, romantic tunes like “Running Around in My Dreams” to the more serious “Metal and Wood” and “Give Me One Reason” to the bluesy beats and happy lyrics of “And the Birds Sing”. We could all use a bit more sunshine as Wells sings “it warms your skin and the soul within as the birds sing…”

Really that’s what hits me about this album. Where Remain focused on a bit darker subject matter, Metal & Wood focuses more on the happy side of the equation. In a time when the world has its own issues, it’s great to have a positive message now and then. I’m a fan.

So if you’re looking for more Tyrone Wells and something a bit different than Remain, be sure to check out Metal & Wood which will be released March 2!

–Fitz

p.s. Pick up this and other Tyrone Wells albums at Amazon below!

Who is Dan Black? Apparently he is a master of mixing musical elements and styles from multiple sources to create something unique. It’s as though the world of music provides an infinite variety of sounds for him to choose from and he simply arranges them to suit his needs for a particular composition. I’ve heard other electronica acts, but nothing quite like his. ((UN)) is “one” in French to signify his debut album, but the title provides a variety of other meanings according to Black starting with the fact that he wanted the album to be “un-rock, un-hip hop, un-everything…” I think he’s succeeded.

Black managed to write, play, program, and produce every note of every track on the album. Add to that the fact that he handled his own artwork and videos and you have one heck of an artistic and productive individual. These are not your average pop, rock, or hip hop songs. But they certainly hold together nicely. The blend of styles and influences is seamless across the board.

From the opening strains of “Symphonies” to the last notes of “Let Go,” he’s managed to collect, capture, and synthesize his own world in these tracks. It’s taken two years of writing, tinkering, and adjusting but he’s created a heck of a masterpiece for his first release.

Though the whole album is rich with rhythm, harmony, and lyrics, I found myself drawn to three songs in particular.

The maddeningly addictive baseline of “Alone” was immediately stuck in my mind bouncing around. And like the lyrics of the song, it “would not leave me alone.” This isn’t the pop music of today and hearkens back to almost a disco feel while staying current.

Then you’re hit with the insane guitar and percussion of “Yours” which again rattled around my braincase and wouldn’t fall out. In some ways, this one reminded me of classic Duran Duran from the 1980s.

Lastly for me, there’s something about the industrial beats and keyboards of “I Love Life” which continues the hypnotic effect of the album. More hip hop than I usually finding myself like, there’s something about the rhythms that wouldn’t let me go.

Perhaps Dan Black’s name rings a bell for you? It might be because it was shouted from the rooftops by folks such as Zane Lowe and Perez Hilton raving about “HYPNTZ,” the Notorious BIG cover which put Black in the limelight in 2008 before he was signed by A&M. It was the success of the “HYPNTZ” experiment on MySpace that spawned the songs of ((UN)).

Black has done an amazing job pulling together a fantastic array of music I’d expect to hear on any number of different stations. It’s the synthesis of rock, pop, hip hop, with a bit of fusion jazz thrown in for good measure. If you are tired of the humdrum, homogeneous pop/rock album, be sure to give Dan Black’s ((UN)) a listen.

–Fitz

p.s. Pick up this album at Amazon below!

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I’ve seen Brandi Carlile once in concert when she opened for Sheryl Crow at Red Rocks a few years ago and was immediately entranced. Her soaring vocals and unique musical style have stuck with me.

“That Year” is off her latest album Give Up the Ghost and its simple themes of seasonal change echo in the lyrics of the song. The snow, dandelion seeds floating in the wind, and even the bee in soft focus enhance the already quiet power of the song.

Check it out here:

Hopefully Brandi and her band will continue to create great music for many years to come!

–Fitz

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