“Sounded like another week of largely unimpressive films on offer—from the ridiculous Nicolas Cage flick Knowing (called “the silliest apocalyptic pot-boiler of all time, edging out even M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening” by Eye’s Adam Nayman) through the depressingly formulaic Miss March (absurd, considering it comes from people who made their name on YouTube, of all things)—until we remembered that this week saw the release of I Love You, Man.”

I like Paul Rudd.

“We’re all sick of “torture porn” by now—and just as sick of using the phrase—so the new remake of The Last House on the Left shouldn’t even be worth mentioning as an “also playing…” in this column. Except we saw the trailer and—as much as we hate to say this—we were captivated.”

Street Horrrsing could well be my favourite album of last year.

“One of the films that Stephen McHattie is in this week is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars (well, it’s likely to) after a blanket marketing campaign and on the strength of the source material; the other one isn’t.”

You should all see Pontypool.

“In all honesty, Torontoist hasn’t had a lot of space in its brain for film this week—it’s been almost completely taken up with thoughts of Street Fighter IV, the latest (and long awaited) sequel in the premier fighting game series. With our head filled with thoughts of attempting to focus attack cancel Sakura’s super into her air juggle (don’t worry if that makes no sense) it’s entirely likely that there’s a similar group of people—lost in similar thoughts—that might accidentally wander into a movie theatre and purchase a ticket for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.”

Street Fighter IV is flawed – I mostly agree with what David Sirlin has said, and I pretty much hated SSFIITHDR – but I can’t stop playing it!

“We were recently pleased to see Not Another Teen Movie playing on a basic cable channel recently, because we rather like that film: it’s easily the best of the genre-parody genre, because it’s knowing, not just randomly gross, and TV – split up by adverts, the swears cut out – always feels like the place where it’s most fun to watch these films. You know – you’re flicking channels and you find it midway through; you don’t really need to invest in it, just enjoy the jokes when you look up from your laptop or whatever. The point we’re making? That we’re looking forward to catching Fired Up – a cheerleader comedy starring Not Another Teen Movie’s antagonist Eric Christian Olsen – when it hits basic cable.”

Other films especially well suited for the basic cable, half-of-my-attention treatment include some of the Happy Madison output and pretty much every film produced in the 80s.

“Okay, so you know by now that we often come to our conclusions on the films that we mention in this column after only watching the trailer, but I don’t think anyone is going to argue with us when we say that The International has quite easily the most boring trailer ever. There’s some kind of conspiracy involving a corrupt bank and Clive Owen and Naomi Watts have to solve it before you fall asleep!”

I moan about how bad the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween is in this article, too. It’s so bad I feel embarrassed to even be thinking about it.

“February has begun, and it’s as if all of the movie distributors have woken up after hibernation, because there’s a sudden deluge of films, and astonishingly not all of them have been shoved out just to get it over and done with.”

Films!

“To everyone who has seen The Wrestler, we always have the same advice: ‘see Beyond The Mat.’ The clear influence behind the story of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, it displays the very highs and lows of ‘sports entertainment’ that The Wrestler fictionalizes. Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero isn’t quite as successful.”

This column is actually largely a capsule review of the Vampiro biopic. I also mention North Korean Kaiju film Pulgasari which I’ve now seen and (to be honest) didn’t consider especially good.

“While watching the trailers for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans that have been wallpapering TV recently, you may have wondered two things. First of all, “Rise of the Lichens?” and then probably, “Who is that beardy bloke who keeps yelling?”

We’ll tell you who it is. It’s only bloody Tony Blair!”

This is probably funnier as an non-sequitur.

(I also made a post about a new game development group in Toronto this week.)

“So where were you last night when the power cut hit? We can tell you where we were—sitting in the Bloor Cinema watching some old-school trailers and waiting for the Rue Morgue screening of the original My Bloody Valentine to start. While initially confusing—the lights going off in a cinema is, after all, expected, and the power had the grace to cut off directly as a trailer ended—it was unfortunate that after that point there was nothing left to do but go home without being able to ingest a classic Canadian slasher flick.”

I mention the fact I was off to see Chandni Chowk to China in an almost offhand fashion in this column. Well, I’ve seen it now, and I can quite easily say it may turn out to be one of my favourite films of this year. I sincerely recommend you check it out if you have any interest in either Bollywood or Kung Fu films, because it’s a brilliant mash-ups of the two.