Bitch Slap DVD Review

Bitch Slap (2009) - R

 (DVD Unrated Version)

****

"What can I say? We're all just bitches in the end."

WARNING: This review might contain SPOILERS!

Where to begin? The beginning? Well the movie itself doesn't begin at the beginning so why should this review. HA! In a nutshell the writers/producers wanted to make a movie with the world's longest chick fight aka "Bitch Slap" for the soul purpose of their own enjoyment. Well I think this film achieved that. I'm not sure if it made the record for being the longest chick fight in cinema history but it is basically just a long drawn out chick fight with some flashback exposition in the attempt to give the long chick fight some storyline. Of course most straight male viewers (and a few female viewers) between the ages of say 12 to 35 (the target audience) wouldn't notice if there was a plot to this thing. It does manage to keep the fight relatively "clean". The only nudity in the film is topless dancers in a flashback scene, the fight itself doesn't have any nudity. The only real wardrobe malfunctions if you can call them that would be a very quick crotch shot (nothing shows) and maybe maybe a nipslip or two. My TV is only 20" at the most so there could be more. I don't have all the hi-tech super duper "toys" so what?

One of the main reasons I picked up this DVD as a blind buy was because of the Cameos of Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst (Their parts are a little more than just cameos) from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor from Xena: Warrior Princess (Whose cameos are just cameos). Bitch Slap Producer Rick Jacobson directed some episodes of those two fantasy/adventure shows. He also directed six episodes of the sci-fi adventure Cleopatra 2525 another slightly larger than shoe-string budget television series filmed in Ozland that I enjoy. I have the DVDs for that as well, but not Herc and Xena. Their original DVD releases were by season and too expensive at the time.

Also appearing in this film is stunt woman/actress Zoe Bell and Ausie native who worked on all those other shows mainly as a stunt woman her main role in the entertainment world. She plays the character Rawhide in this as well as doing much of the stunt work and the main choreographer of the stunts. In one of the behind the scenes segments on the DVD or in the commentaries maybe in both either Zoe or Erin Cummings gives a shot by shot commentary of when Zoe was doing the fighting for the characters in the final battle. To see more of Zoe watch the Death Proof segment of Grindhouse (2007) she plays herself. In some countries the segments were shown as two separate movies (Death Proof and Planet Terror) in others they were shown together.

I don't want to spoil to much even though I posted a spoiler warning, but come to think of it there is somewhat of a storyline that involves stolen diamonds, weapons of mass destruction and spies and stuff. OH and lots of scantily clad Girls Women Chicks Babes Sluts Bitches fighting each other. There are loads CGI/green screen special effects many of which are totally ridiculous, but that is all part of the name of this game.

So an intellectual cinematic masterpiece this is not. It is also not a family movie. It could be viewed as sexist and juvenile. However, it is entertaining, and in places quite funny.

Starring:Julia Voth, Erin Cummings, America Olivo, Michael Hurst, Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor, Zoe Bell

Directed by: Rick Jacobson

Bombshell Pictures, IM Global

DVD Release Date: 02 Mar 2010

Region 1

1 Disc - 109 Minutes (Unrated) / 106 (R)

I gave this DVD 4 stars ****

DVD Update: Wizards & Warriors

Wizards & Warriors (1983)

WARNING: This is an ANCIENT Post! Only slightly updated.

This post has been sitting around for a few many many months almost years since the September 2014 release. I just was never motivated to continue with it, plus once again scanning photos or surfing the web for an appropriate image caused me to dilly dally and procrastinate. While trying to clear out my dusty drafts folder I decided it would be better to go ahead and post an out of date old post, and add some images, rather than delete it wasting any effort I put into it.

The long awaited television series Wizards and Warriors (1983) has finally come to DVD 30 years after it originally aired sort of. Unfortunately the series was very short lived having only 8 episodes total. I'm not even sure if all of them were aired. Again an unfortunate event is it is only available as an "On Demand" Title. Meaning it is made to order ONLY when ordered online and burned onto a DVD-R not a regular mass printing.

Marco (Walter Olkewicz) and Prince Erik Greystone (Jeff Conaway)

The series was a sword and sorcery fantasy series that starred Jeff Conaway, Clive Revill, Duncan Regehr, Ian Wolfe, Walter Olkewicz, Julia Duffy and Randi Brooks with an appearance (well two) by Christine De Lisle. It was very tongue planted securely in cheek slapstick campy humor. Sort of a Dungeons and Dragons version of the 1970s When Things Were Rotten. Which was a short lived Robin Hood series produced by Mel Brooks.

When I first heard this was coming to DVD I was super excited since I loved the show and hadn't seen it since the original airings. Sure some people have been selling pirated copies on all formats (even some VHS copies) on Ebay for years. However, they were typical pirate low-quality copies not even worth watching. Most copied from an ancient VHS copy.

The Wizard Vector (Clive Revill) and The Witch Bethal (Randi Brooks)

I'm not sure if I am going to take the plunge on this one. I'm not too thrilled about the ON Demand concept. There are some other titles of shows/movies that are in this same ON DEMAND DVD-R boat. I can't think of those titles at this moment and I don't want to do any more research for this ancient post. I would love to get this, but I'm just not sure.

The best photos of the show seem to be at a fan website called wizardsandwarriors.org of course. It is an old site and probably hasn't been updated. That is the site I got the screen shots from. It seems to be the only site people have gotten stuff from, they have the most variety of images, i.e. more than just what a quick Google image search gives you. The DVD cover shot is at several sites, most of them I think are from people who got the DVD and reviewed it on some online forum.

Show links on imdb.com
Wizards and Warriors (1983)
When Things Were Rotten (1975)

A Recent Read Number 17

"Again Langdon forced himself to consider the implausible. If the Illuminati were still alive, and if they stole the anti-matter, what would be their intention? What would be their target?"

NOTE: This review may contain SPOILERS.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. I'm getting to this review very late. I read this book around December '09 to January '10. After reading it I re-watched the movie adaption of The Da Vinci Code and watched the movie of this book (I will probably point out the differences as I go along). Chronologically this book was written before The Da Vinci Code but the movies were released in reverse order and the Da Vinci Code movie claims that adventure as the main character Robert Langdon's first mystery case. That forced the producers of the movie to act as if this adventure came later.

The mystery begins with the murder of a physicist working with anti-matter experiments at the CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire AKA: European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Left by the body is an ambigram (an artistic depiction of a word to make it read the same way from another angle usually upside down) depicting the word Illuminati. The main character Robert Langdon is brought in because he is an expert in symbology. An odd and grisly fact about the murder is one of the scientists eyes was removed. The reason is soon discovered a container holding a piece of anti-matter was stolen from a lab that had a sophisticated retina reading security system. The big problem is the anti-matter has to be contained in a certain way, without this containment it becomes a bomb with a set time to explode, unless it is returned to it's containment system. Only two people had access from the secure lab the murdered scientist and his partner/daughter. Of course Langdon falls in love with Vittoria Vetra.The movie version changes the murder victim to being an assistant of Vittoria The movie also changed some of the other character's personalities around, making one of the characters I didn't like in the book likable in the movie.

The main goal of this adventure is to get back the anti-matter before is explodes In the meantime the Pope has recently passed away and the Vatican is in the process of electing a new Pope. One big problem the main candidates for the Papacy turn up missing. It is made known that the Illuminati are indeed alive and are responsible for the disappearance of the main candidates. Soon they start showing up dead. Langdon now has to not only race against the clock to keep the bomb from exploding but he has to help find the missing cardinals before all of them end up dead.

Like The Da Vinci Code this book digs deep into Catholic traditions and culture. It also gives some very vivid descriptions of areas of Rome and the Vatican. As part of his investigation Langdon has to gain access to the Vatican's Library vaults to research the Illuminati and follow all the clues to finding the cardinals in time. As with the other book it has a nice fast pace to it and was difficult to put down. 

As I said I read this book before seeing the film version I am glad I did because it helped to understand somethings about the movie, but as I said they did make changes to some things. It is always interesting to see a film adaptation of a book you have read. There were a few scenes in the movie that were completely different from what I had envisioned while reading the book. I think a few of them could have been done the way I imagined, but one or two of them couldn't. The ones that I thought could have been done I was a little disappointed with how the movie handled them. Oh Well.

My review of The Da Vinci Code.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown 2000 (2006) Pocket Books 710 pages. - ****