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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/9/9/4/avatarimage.jpgSix shooter - check. Poncho - check. Cigar - check. Dusty cowboy gear - check. Mule - check. Scowl - check. Right, now we can begin. MGM release three Sergio Leone special editions this week, offering documentaries and commentaries similar to what could be found on the existing editions of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West digital video discs. These films came from the greatest Spaghetti Western director, Sergio Leone. Of course, that was not really hard since arguably most Spaghettis were infamously awful. These Italian made, located in Spain films have made a lasting impact on action cinema, reducing the need for clean cut heroes and influencing directors like Peckinpah to push the boundaries of screen violence in the Wild Bunch. Unlike the clean cut Cavalry men of John Ford movies, the heroes of the Spaghettis are scowling bounty hunters, mercenaries and ambitious gunslingers...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/2/4/8/whologo.jpg Doctor Who 2005, Episode One – “Rose” It’s been a long wait. A very long wait, considering that in my opinion the Paul McGann TV-movie was awful. A very very long wait, considering that in my opinion, “Survival” ( The final Sylvester McCoy Dr Who arc ) was one of the best stories in the series’ history. The darker aspects of the Doctor’s character were beginning to be explored, and more and more hints were being dropped that there was still a LOT more to his history – and his relationship with OUR history – than we knew about. So… the new series, then.

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/9/9/4/picture-1_thumb.jpgAs a cinema employee, I have the chance to watch movies before they come out. My first staff showing was off this, Hide and Seek, starring Robert DeNiro as a psychologist whose daughter (played magnificently by Dakota Fanning (Man on Fire)) is traumatised after seeing her mother dead from an apparent suicide in the bath. She moves into the country, finding an imaginary friend named Charlie. Then strange things start happening. Despite a magnifcient cast (Robert DeNiro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen), this film is dire. The plot is unoriginal, and the talent on-screen wasted on clichéd thriller moves like hiding in wardrobes. The story borrows heavily from Secret Window, so fans of that movie will recognise several of the ‘twists’ used here. Several scenes from the movie are remarkably similar. By the three-quarter mark Hide and Seek falls into farce, borrowing from several classic thrillers (Psycho,...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/7/4/6/9/xboardingtrax_thumb.jpgSee what they did there? They used X to show how ‘cool, hip and extreme’ this DVD is. Yeah the marketing boys sticking X on everything extreme is annoying me at the moment. Still I reckon that’s about the worst thing I can say about this DVD. It’s basically a hoard of snowboarding video clips showing some of the world’s top boarders sailing through the air, sliding along rails, over tables and also doing some nifty helicopter drops. It has to be said some of the camera shots leave you thinking “I reckon the camera mans crazier than the guy in the air” but not too often, ’cause these guys on the boards have some serious balls. So if you’re into boarding or just like watching x-treme sports you'll be quite happy with this. However, unlike a lot of these types of DVD it’s pretty clear they have given a lot more consideration to the tunes and I was left really wondering if this was a Extreme snowboard...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/2/0/4/8/outfoxed_thumb.jpg"Fair and Balanced" I don't know if anyone else, apart from me and my uncle, watch FOX News on a regular basis in this country. We find the complete bias the station spews hilarious but, apparently, in America they haven't caught on yet. Rupert Murdoch's brainwashing is, thus far, working. People like Bill O' Reilly, Sean Hannity and Brit Hume are famous in America whilst they constantly fuzz the line between journalism and commentary; making the viewer believe their opinions to be fact. Outfoxed attempts to be the cure to this virus infecting "24 Hour News". Important people from watchdogs like FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) come on time and time again to point out bias after bias and that is what this documentary is. Over an hour of people saying that FOX News is pro-Republican and then shows you segments of the channel to prove it. ...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/9/9/4/picture-5_thumb.jpgWhen I go and see a remake, I often find myself comparing it to the original. However, when I went to see Assault on Precinct 13, I made the effort not to compare it with John Carpenter’s 1976 movie of the same name and take it on face value. The John Carpenter version wasn’t wholly original in itself, being loosely based on an old John Wayne movie called Rio Bravo, but let’s not go into that. Gang leader Marion Bishop (Lawrence Fishbourne) and a few other petty criminals are being transported through a storm on New Years Eve. Meanwhile, in the soon-to-be-closed Precinct 13, Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), Jasper O’Shea (Brian Dennehy) and Iris Ferry (Drea de Matteo) are packing up and getting ready to celebrate the New Year. Things don’t go to plan though, as the bus is forced to pull in and sit out the storm. What follows is a seige situation, where a band of crooked cops – led by Lieut. Holloway...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/7/4/6/9/phys_graf_dvd_sleeve_thumb.jpgPhysical Graffiti is a no-nonsense DVD that contains some of the most groundbreaking extreme sports and self-mutilation footage to date. Well that’s what the blurb said, when it was originally released in the late nineties. Perhaps it was groundbreaking then but now I’m not so sure. The premise for this DVD is basically the connection between body modification and extreme sports which in a lot of cases go hand in hand – after all if you have the balls to go 90mph through the air on a dirt bike then why would you be scared of a little needle? The DVD does a good job of covering most types of modification: Tattoos, piercing, implants, suspension and more. This is all intertwined with extreme sports stars like Shaun Palmer, Christian Fletcher, Jason Jesse, etc talking about their motivation to get body mods and also shows a fair bit of them surfing, skating, snowboarding or what ever they do...

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http://www.alternativenation.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=40849&stc=1Predator 2 – Special Edition. ( DVD, 2004 ) Back before Stephen Hopkins was giving Sky One the opportunity to indulge in its annoying habit of giving away the next big plot development in its trailers for the next episode of 24, he took on the daunting task of directing a sequel to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie – Without Arnold Schwarzenegger. The original Predator was already a classic of the genre – And stood alongside the two Alien movies that had been made to date, The Terminator and Blade Runner, as one of the few sci-fi films that crossed over into horror just enough to appeal to an adult audience without descending into the realms of the “blood-and-guts splatterfest with barely enough plot to tie the gore scenes together”. True, it was “An Arnie Movie”, but like The Terminator before it, the stunning creature design and the smarter-than-usual plot stood it apart from his more...

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Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore Michael Moore is biased. This seems to be about as close to an absolute truth as you can get in modern political discourse. It's a given, right from the off, every time he's about to release a new work, that before anyone's even seen it, it will be written off as being hopelessly lopsided and chock-full of sneaky editing by all of the right and even large chunks of the centre. With US presidential elections looming, the campaign to discredit Moore is going into overdrive (witness: 'Michael Moore Hates America', a counter documentary by Michael Wilson, or David Hardy and Jason Clarke's undoubtedly precociously subtle book 'Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man'). The curious oversight made by many assessing these claims is in looking at who is making them: the White House (of course), Fox 'News', the NRA; hardly considered paragons of virtue, truth, or impartiality. To be 'biased', by dictionary definition, is to act unfairly based...

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Just noticed the film section of the Mag isn't there any more. Woe is me. White Noise comes across as a horror movie that tries to do something original before they are forced into doing a remake of an Asian film. It will still draw comparison with Hideo Nakata’s Ring trilogy because of the static TV’s but that is unfair due to the subject. The subject being Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) which is a paranormal occurrence where the dead contact the living through static recorded on the TV or a sound recording device. Original enough to make a movie about plus scary things jumping out of a static TV is relevant to the subject. Yay Hollywood. The apparent decent plot and the not-too-shabby cast headed by Michael Keaton actually had me very eager to see this, such a shame then that the movie actually doesn’t do what it says on the tin. The first half of the movie is a decent drama about the loss of a mans wife and his obsession with contacting her from beyond the grave...