4 Razors

Kiss Me Like a Stranger

  • Title: Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search For Love and Art

Kiss Me Like a Stranger

Gene Wilder is a complex man who has battled unhappiness and uncertainty while giving pleasure to millions with his brilliant comic performances.  Kiss Me Like a Stranger is a narrative look at pivotal moments in Wilder’s life that through fate or coincidence made him who he is today.

The biography is broken up into different sections of Wilder’s life.  The first examines his childhood, the second his early career, the third his working with Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor, and the last his life with Gilda Radner.

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Skatchamagowza!

  • Title: Greg the Bunny – The Complete Series
  • IMDb: link

“I don’t want to sing this song with Dottie!  I don’t want to sing this song with Blah!  I want to sing it all by myself!  Me, me, me, me, ME!”
“Warren, that’s not the message we’re trying to convey with the Sharing Song.”

Greg the Bunny

Here’s something you might not know – puppets are real.  There are 3.2 million puppets in the United States.  Sesame Street and the Muppet Show are populated by real life puppet actors.  A lesser known show is called Sweetknuckle Junction, a low rated kiddie show which includes a Count with a speech impediment, a pill popping orangutang, a retarded turtle, and a bunny with ADHD.  Throw in the human element with Seth Green, Susan Silverman, and Eugene Levy and you have one hell of a show.

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Capote

  • Title: Capote
  • IMDb: link

Capote is the latest biographical film that provides a wonderful juicy role for an actor, this time for Philip Seymour Hoffman.  The film is well shot and pieced together, and cleverly cast with great performances.  Yet….there is something missing.  Although this is a very good film, almost completely overshadowed by Hoffman’s performance, it never becomes the great film it aspires to be.

The film looks at Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) during his period of researching and writing his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood.  Traveling to Kansas with him is his friend and confidant Harper Lee (Catherine Keener).  Capote interviews the town sheriff Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) and his family about the murder of a local family.

Two men are arrested and charged for the crime, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino).  They are tried and sentenced to hang for the murders.  Capote befriends Perry and gets them a new lawyer to file an appeal in order to keep the two alive long enough for him to get the full story of the murders for his book.

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Heads You Win, Tails You Die

  • Title: Domino
  • IMDB: link

domino-posterWhat an entertaining ride.  Although rather messy and with more than a couple of flaws, Domino delivers one of the most enjoyable and watchable films this year.  Comparison to Tarantino’s Kill Bill are probably inevitable, but this is a far superior film with actual heart.  And damn, is it fun!!

Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley) is a glamour girl with a thirst for violence turned bounty hunter.  As the film opens Domino is in custody telling FBI Agent Taryn Miles (Lucy Liu) discussing what went wrong and landed her handcuffed in the interrogation room.  Something horrible happened on the last bounty and the movie is a series of flashbacks inter-cut with Knightley telling her story and finding her own understanding of what happened out in the desert.

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Can’t Stop the Signal

  • Title: Serenity
  • IMDB: link

“I would rather have a show that a hundred people need to see than a thousand people like to see.” —Joss Whedon

serenity-posterHere’s a peculiar story, a television show that only aired for four months and was cancelled after a dozen episodes has been made into a movie. Joss Whedon’s short lived, but much beloved, Firefly told the story of Malcolm Reynolds and his crew in the distant future, got the whack from Fox Television.  Cancelled after only half a season into its run it produced big numbers when released on DVD and Whedon was asked to revive the franchise on the big screen.  So what’s the result?  Damn good if you ask me.

The movie begins four to eight months after the last episode of the series Objects in Space took place.  Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew are still doing what they do, trying to make a living, legal or criminal, out in the blackness of space.  The crew includes firstmate Zoe (Gina Torres) who served with Mal in the war for independence, on the losing side, her husband and pilot of the ship Wash (Adam Tudyk), the ship’s mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite), and the rather dim-witted muscle Jayne (Adam Baldwin).

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