DESIGN: Local athletes bring soccer to Buffalo

Starting in September 2009, my friend Nick Mendola asked if I could help him and co-owners Scott Frauenhofer and Ryan Knapp to create a logo for a soccer team that they were bringing to the area. A member of the National Premier Soccer League, FC Buffalo was born. It is a great organization that looks to really help expose the sport to Buffalonians and Western New Yorkers in general. As the site says, this squad will be “a mix of the area’s best amateur, collegiate and post-collegiate players suiting up…

Read More

REVIEW: 마더 [Mother] [2009]

“See, anyone is capable of murder” The poster for Bong Joon-ho’s newest work 마더 [Mother], along with the one word title, screams thriller where the mother at hand will do anything for her child. Bin Won’s Yoon Do-joon appears wide-eyed and scared, hiding himself behind Hye-ja Kim, a woman with steely determination to protect him. So, when the film begins with an odd sequence of Kim wandering aimlessly through a field of tall grass, eventually breaking out into an interpretative dance to the music superimposed over the imagery, I couldn’t…

Read More

REVIEW: Date Night [2010]

“And you brought your androgynous friend” It is amazing what a month can do to change one’s tastes. I’m a fan of Steve Carell, have been since his days on “The Daily Show”, but recently couldn’t get past how much I hated his role in “The Office”, not to mention having wrote off the show last season. And then there’s Tina Fey, a comedienne that I respect and thought did a wonderful job with Mean Girls, but whom I really had no opinion of—I stopped watching “SNL” when Farley died.…

Read More

REVIEW: Parallel Lines [2010]

“Five very different films. One piece of dialogue” Bravo Phillips for coming up with one of the best marketing maneuvers I’ve seen this side of BMW, (I still love The Hire and have the DVD). Not only did they commission five short films to comprise Parallel Lines, helping showcase their new Cinema 21:9 LCD TV, they put a very specific constraint on the project. The directors involved—commercial and music video auteurs—could create whatever their heart desired, in whatever medium from live action to animation, yet they had to use the…

Read More

REVIEW: Bitch Slap [2009]

“Lusting after strapping Latvian gymnasts” What did I just watch? To say Bitch Slap is an oddity would be an understatement. Half soft-core porn without the nudity and half blood-soaked action orgy, Rick Jacobson’s film is a fourteen year old’s wet dream. Sitting through it is like watching a movie from the mind of Donald Kaufman, the fictional brother in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, putting action and sex above any semblance of quality acting or coherent storytelling. I laughed throughout and do believe that reaction was intended despite it’s attempts at…

Read More

REVIEW: Pixels [2010]

“It’s an 8-bit conversion” There really isn’t much to say about Pixels, the under three minute short from director Patrick Jean at Paris-based One More Production. You will either appreciate the nostalgia of seeing a city convert to 8-bit pixels reminiscent of your old Ataris and NESs or not. I for one loved it. The animation is crisp and realistically adapted to the live-action backgrounds it enhances. With seamless morphing of objects like cars and buildings from video to colored squares, the visuals cannot be beat. Make sure when watching…

Read More

REVIEW: The Slammin’ Salmon [2009]

“Feed my pretties—Feed!” Those Broken Lizard boys had quite the run. After needing to visit colleges for screenings of their debut Puddle Cruiser, the comedy troupe struck it big with Super Troopers, in effect giving them free reign to see both follow-ups have their day in multiplexes, albeit to low returns. As a result—Club Dread is admittedly weak, but Beerfest found some of that magic from their Trooper days—the new flick wasn’t given a wide release, instead relegated to DVD and the hopes word of mouth and fan base will…

Read More

REVIEW: Ninja Assassin [2009]

“Weakness compels strength, betrayal begets blood” Sometimes story really doesn’t matter. I don’t say that because Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski penned a horrid piece of drivel in Ninja Assassin, but instead to make mention of the absolute lack of story at all. When you have ninja warfare with swords and awesome chained hooks, (see the cool poster), that bare resemblance to Vincent Cassel’s weapon at the end of Brotherhood of the Wolf coupled with enough computer generated blood to fill a few swimming pools, the script exists solely…

Read More

REVIEW: Breaking Away [1979]

“Oh Dave, try not to become Catholic on us” It may be dated and it may be somewhat obvious—aren’t all sports feel-good films—but Breaking Away is a pretty great piece of cinema, melding coming-of-age dramedy with underdog athleticism. I’m not sure you could really pigeonhole it solely into one of those two categories; it’s definitely a symbiotic relationship. Centered on a foursome of childhood friends in Bloomington, Indiana, (where the entire movie was shot), director/producer Peter Yates and writer Steve Tesich shares a tale of finding one’s place and identity…

Read More

BNFF10 PREVIEW: The 4th Annual Buffalo Niagara Film Festival

Year four is here for the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival taking place at both Dipson’s Market Arcade Centre downtown and the Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda. I’ve attended the past two entries and have been impressed by the quality of films and improvements made. 2009 saw the world premiere of Steve Coogan and Hillary Duff’s What Goes Up, a sub-par movie with only lackluster guests in attendance, but a cool event to be a part of anyway. To date, 2008’s The Cake Eaters and last year’s Boppin’ at the Glue…

Read More

REVIEW: The Ghost Writer [2010]

“It’s in the beginnings” I remember being so perplexed during the 2008 Oscars because Michael Clayton was up for Best Picture of 2007. To me it was a solid thriller and just didn’t seem to deserve the vaunted status or the company it was keeping. That all changed minutes after the completion of Roman Polanski’s newest The Ghost Writer, however. Through the entire thing I kept recalling how taut Tony Gilroy’s movie was—lean, mean, and edge of your seat thrills in the dangerous world of political intrigue. With all the…

Read More