Hey Dude! It’s Harold and Kumar 2!

Dude... Kal Penn and John Cho return in Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay (Warner Bros.)

By Tony Galindo

Four years after the original, Harold and Kumar 2: Escape from Guantanamo Bay is set to open in theaters Friday April 25th. Though four years has passed since the release of the first film, the sequel picks up right were we left off at the end of the first movie as Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) prepare for Amsterdam in search of the girl of Harold's dreams. After meeting up with a new love interest of Kumar's at the airport the boys are finally on their way. A little later when we see the boys on the plane Kumar has the brilliant idea to test out his new invention -- the smokeless bong. Not being able to wait till they arrive at the "weed" capital of the world, he lights up in the bathroom only to be spotted by a paranoid old lady who yells out, "Bomb!" It is this incident that makes everyone think the boys are terrorists. This causes their arrest and they are sent to prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But they are only there for what seems like five minutes before they escape and must seek help from friends to help clear their names and finally get on to Amsterdam.

Again, I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I signed up to review this movie, although I already knew what the first Harold and Kumar film was about and what this one could be like. The theater for the preview screening was packed and full of rambunctious fans as we got ready to enjoy the film. Beach balls were being tossed around the theater, hit left and right; people were fighting for seats; and many were jumping up and down at the chance to get free Harold and Kumar stuff that was being thrown into the audience.

This movie turned out to be just like the original. You have your tasteless comedy, drugs, and of course Neil Patrick Harris playing Neil Patrick Harris. It delivered well on the funny factor with a scene involving George Bush hiding from Cheney, and heading off to go light it up with the boys. There was also the racist comedy -- poking fun at the KKK and racial stereotypes held by the government officials -- that you could enjoy.

These two aspects have been present in both this film and the previous one I reviewed, Zombie Strippers. Everyone seems to be getting their last shots at Bush before he leaves office and we have someone new to make fun of.

I enjoyed this movie -- what can I say it was funny and it made me laugh. Though rated R for obvious reasons (strong use of drugs and some nudity), it was a fun time -- you know being in a crowd with people constantly yelling 4-20! Definitely something I would go see just for fun.

-- Tony Galindo is a senior at Mount Miguel High. He was recently accepted at the Art Institute of San Diego where he wants to major in game art design and pursue a career in environmental design. Writing is a hobby of his as well as watching movies, so he thought it would be great to be able to share his opinions on film with people.

Zombie Strippers: FInal Round

By Eric Wilson

Wow... I think. I can honestly say I've never seen a movie quite like this before. It had zombies. It had strippers. It had Zombie Strippers! (Now playing exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Theaters.)

Set in the near future, President Bush just got elected for his fourth term. He dismissed congress. He went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Iran, Canada, and Alaska. And he sent scientists on a mission to develop a zombie gene so soldiers killed in battle can pop back up and keep on fighting. He has also banned any form of public nudity, which has created underground "strip-easies."

During a training exercise, a special "anti-zombie" team is told to do something, which actually won't work. Unknown to the other members, their newest recruit is bitten by a zombie and runs away to keep from being killed. He stumbles into a strip club and, after about 15 minutes of stripping, bites the star stripper, Kat (Jenna Jameson), in the throat. She dies, then reanimates... with an increased energy for stripping and a craving for flesh.

She puts on a show, and then chooses a victim for a "private show," which ends with another zombie being created. It turns out that the zombie virus runs along the X chromosome, so women are given super powers and men are turned into the classic zombies.

One by one the other strippers [including Roxy Saint pictured above left] beg to be turned into zombies for "performance boosts," and more and more customers become prey. Eventually the cellar full of zombies is released, and it turns into a giant slaughter by zombies. During this time there is a topless zombie stripper fight in which Kat fires ping-pong balls and billiard balls at her rival from her "woo-ha."

With a few humans left hiding, naturally the Special Forces team enters the club to battle the zombies. They then discover that the zombie virus was intended to get out and infect civilians in order to "draw attention from the economy and foreign matters."

I honestly don't know if it was intended to be a strict parody or if it was just that poorly acted, but it was hilarious. Many of the gunshots didn't synch right, the lines were badly delivered (maybe they were rehearsed to sound poorly acted), and the plot was... incredibly unique. If you don't mind seeing A LOT of topless women and want to see something hilarious, I'd recommend Zombie Strippers (rated R). However, some scenes may disturb you, and always remember: It is impossible to un-see something.

-- Eric Wilson is a senior attending Mount Miguel High. He's a big fan of fantasy and adventure, and spends a lot of his free time playing World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. He also enjoys spending time at Balboa Park, wandering the nature trails or messing around at the archery range. Although he has wanted to be an architect or engineer, he would love to be able to get paid to review movies and he hopes this experience might help him get his foot in the door.

The Good, the Bad and the Undead: Zombie Strippers

Icons: Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund in Zombie Strippers (Sony)

By Alexander Bennett

The title alone to this film caught my eye, Zombie Strippers! Sounds like something that would be pretty funny to see and, hey I love zombie movies so this should be great I thought. This movie is definitely not one to take the family to or for the faint of heart. I'm not sure if raunchy even begins to describe it. When I saw that it was staring porn star Jenna Jameson I knew I was in for it, but I had no idea that it would be as bad as it was. I wasn't prepared for zombie boobs!

Zombie Strippers (playing exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Theaters) certainly was an experience to remember. I'm just still not sure if it was a good one or not. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee takes us into his twisted vision of the near future where Bush is taking his fourth term as President; the U.S. is at war with more nations than you can count; and crowds are cheering to see undead super strippers! I never thought sex and zombies could go hand in hand, but here it has been done. In the search for better soldiers, the U.S. creates a serum that can reanimate the dead soldiers so they can fight again. This doesn't go so well though because the reanimated troops are highly aggressive and want to feast on your flesh. Oops! Looks like we got zombies on hand now. That's where Z-squad comes in to get rid of the problem. But while eliminating the "problem," one of the human squad members gets infected and escapes before his squad buddies can take out. He makes his way to a local strip joint, Rhinos, and mauls one of the performers infecting her. It is here we infuse sex with the grotesque. As the stripper Kat (played by Jenna Jameson) reanimates the story really begins to go downhill. As she continues to dance and drives the masses wild, the competition to be the better stripper begins. Kat dazzles patrons and then selects a lucky -- or so he thinks -- patron to go into the back room, where she devours him. Afterward they themselves become zombies adding to the problems.

Teen Critic Reveals All (Well Almost) About Zombie Strippers

Roxy Saint offers a lap dance to Robert Englund. Oh my! Zombie Strippers (Sony)

By Tony Galindo

Having already been given a chance to review one zombie flick this year I eagerly jumped at the chance to review another. Taking a quick glance at a trailer on Youtube I would have no idea what I was in for that night, and oh boy was I in for it with this movie. Zombie Strippers (opened Aptil 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters) definitely has a title to catch anyone's attention, and is a movie to maintain everyone's eye -- or at least those old enough to see it [it's rated R for obvious reasons]. Directed by Jay Lee this low budget horror film shot in a few weeks was created more out of a joke then a serious take on an old horror theme.

Set in the "near future," we find out that Bush is in his fourth presidential term and has abolished congress because they were cramping his style. We are at war with everyone including Canada and our own state of Alaska.  The America we knew is long gone. To deal with wars all over, the government's solution to the countless loss of soldiers is a new chemical virus created to reanimate the corpses of soldiers, thus creating a zombie army. As undead soldiers,  they are stronger, faster, and better at what they do, which is kill people. After dealing with a breakout of the virus at a lab, a bitten soldier runs off in fear of being found out. He stumbles into an underground strip joint. After fully turning undead, the soldier launches himself -- due to his thirst for meat and blood -- at the club's star stripper Kat, played by Jenna Jameson. It's Kat's transformation to a undead super stripper that starts controversy amongst her fellow dancers and more problems for the club.

We find the strippers are split between who wants to conform and become undead to get paid more, and the more intelligent women who decide to stay alive. In this complete satire we find many hints of racist comedy as well as the struggle with conformity and doing whatever it takes to make the crowd love you. Even if this means giving up your life to strip like an undead superstar.

Seen by friends and I as "The best piece of S&!@ this year," this movie will not only make those willing to see it laugh, but also hide their face at the more then graphic scenes of testicle chewing and face splitting action that add to the film. The seemingly bad acting and special effects helped to make this movie the cheesy crap it came out to be. I mean really, I could count several times when the gunfire ceased but actors were still pretending to shoot while the flash of the shots fired had disappeared. Who would have thought that bad acting, horrid gore, sex scenes/humor, undead strippers, and Robert Englund playing a germ-aphobic club owner would make a horribly great film.

It was so hard to describe how I felt after seeing this film Monday night -- I loved it and hated it all at the same time. This movie is not for the faint of heart and greatly deserves the R rating it has received. When I say gore I mean GORE, with scenes that will make you want to run and turn away, only to make you turn back wanting more. If you are looking forward to seeing it, watching it with a live audience definitely adds to the experience with the random clapping and "hell yeah's" being yelled as the strippers began to fight and rip skin off. Or reacting to a certain undead gal deciding to shoot ping-pong and billiard balls out of somewhere never thought possible. I recommend this movie to all those willing to watch, to those into zombie flicks, and yes to those who only noticed "stripper" in the title. Some sexual content included in viewing of course, and not all considered pleasant. With all said and done, you'll either love it or hate it. All I can say is, "make like a bread truck, and get those buns moving."

-- Tony Galindo is a senior at Mount Miguel High. He was recently accepted at the Art Institute of San Diego where he wants to major in game art design and pursue a career in environmental design. Writing is a hobby of his as well as watching movies, so he thought it would be great to be able to share his opinions on film with people.

Zombie Strippers

Jenna Jameson (not yet dead) brings double-D dimensions to Zombie Strippers (Sony)

Naked women, undead hordes, Robert Englund and Friedrich Nietzsche all in one movie! I'd call Zombie Strippers (opening April 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters, where you can still find George Romero's Diary of the Dead playing as a perfect second feature or warm up act) a guilty pleasure but I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt about enjoying it so much. I mean Zombie Strippers, what a brilliant idea. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee brings a whole new double-D dimension to the zombie genre - sex! With porn star Jenna Jameson as a zombie stripper, being undead has never been so cool or so sexy. Those lumbering, silent reanimated corpses have never been presented as sexy and honestly I never thought I'd want to see one of them naked but in Lee's hands, the idea works. [But if you are easily offended, I suggest you don't read on.]

NEW: Just added the audio from our Film Club discussion of Zombie Strippers. And just to be clear the Bush bashing I bring up is about George Bush but I didn't get to finish my comment.

FilmOut

A Four Letter Word opens this year's FilmOut.

FilmOut San Diego celebrates its tenth anniversary this month, expanding for the first time to a full week of films. The festival was created as a showcase for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender works. The event kicks off April 11 at Landmark's Ken Cinema with the San Diego premiere of A Four Letter Word.

The Signal

Do you have the crazy? That's the question The Signal asks. (Magnolia Pictures)

Calling TV a wasteland is old news. But suggesting that our televisions -- and also cell phones and radios -- could be the means by which people are transformed into homicidal maniacs, well that's a bit fresher. The Signal (opened on February 22 throughout San Diego) serves up a triptych of horror, with each segment helmed by a different filmmaker.

The Signal opens like a 70s low budget grindhouse picture, something American International could have produced. An obviously deranged killer brutalizes women on the screen. Is this the movie we've paid to see? At first we're not sure but then the image distorts and eventually degrades into mere noise on the screen, and we realize we were watching an image on a TV. We find ourselves in a dark, claustrophobic bedroom where the TV has gone on the fritz. We also discover a pair of young lovers in the room. It makes you wonder, though, was the slasher film meant to fuel their passion or was it just something that came on late at night without them noticing? It doesn't seem the type of thing either Ben (Justin Welborn) or Mya (Anessa Ramsey) would be interested in, so it makes you wonder if it was on for some other reason (more on that later). The apartment belongs to Ben and he's having an affair with Mya. He keeps trying to convince Mya to leave her husband Lewis (A.J. Bowen) but to no avail. She insists that she has to return to Lewis, or there might be bad consequences. She even tries to call Lewis from Ben's apartment to warn him that she'll be home late. But the phones, like the TV, don't work and are just transmitting some kind of static noise.

Teen Critics on Diary of the Dead

I want to introduce you to something new here on the Movie Blog -- Teen Critics. That's right, I will be working with a group of students taking a Film and Lit class at Mount Miguel High School, and having them post reviews on a regular basis. I'm very excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons. First of all, I think these are a great group of students and I enjoy hearing their opinions. Plus, those opinions come from a very different place than my own and that makes for a livlier discussion. Second, I have always felt that the great thing about public broadcasting is the diversity of voices, and hearing from a younger generation about the pop entertainment that they consume so ravenously is a point of view that's worth checking out. And finally, I feel that the best thing we can do for the next generation of filmgoers is to get them thinking critically about what they see. So I hope that writing these reviews will help this group of students learn to view film more critically, and that by example they may encourage others their age to look at film from a more thougtful perspective. That being said, this is not going to be a dry academic exercise. This is all about movies so there's definitely room for fun. For out first Teen Critics outing, I took them to see George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (playing exclusively at AMC Palm Promenade Theaters). So here for the first time -- drum roll please -- are the Teen Critics sounding off on the undead. I am including five reviews here, and short bios of the students participating. In the future, each reviewer will post his or her review separately. And just to prove that I haven't tried to influence their opinions, you will notice that a few of them disagree with my own reaction to Romero's latest zombie outing. I hope you will both enjoy their perspectives and encourage their efforts.

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

The dead are coming back to life... again. Diary of the Dead (The Weinstein Company)

Let me be upfront about this – I love zombie movies. I don’t know what it is about the lumbering undead that I find so endearing but they definitely charm me. And George A. Romero is THE master of zombie horror, having essentially created the genre with his 1968 black and white film, Night of the Living Dead. (There were some zombies before Romero but he defined them as we know them today, and anyone who saw him at his panel at last year's Comic-Con should be convinced of his master status in the horror genre.) This year, the 67-year-old Romero delivers his fifth zombie film, Diary of the Dead  (opening February 15 exclusively at the AMC Palm Promenade Theaters), so run, don’t “shamble,” over to catch the undead’s latest uprising.

The great thing about Romero’s zombies films is that you can enjoy them in any of a number of ways. If you just want a zombie gorefest, he delivers a bloody thrill ride of horror fun. But his films can also be appreciated as truly independent filmmaking in which Romero has complete control of everything; his films serve up primers on how to make a film on little or no money outside Hollywood. And finally, if you want something a little meatier, you can always find social commentary mixed in with all the blood and gore. Romero’s latest, Diary of the Dead, satisfies on all three levels.

George A. Romero Interview

George A. Romero reanimates the zombie genre with Diary of the Dead (Weinstein Company)

When George A. Romero made The Night of the Living Dead in 1968, he essentially invented a genre. But potential distributors were not initially impressed. In fact, they asked him to change the film's bleak ending. But he simply said, “F--k you.” That pretty much set the tone for Romero's relationship with the mainstream film industry. Like John Waters, he's a filmmaker who has remained outside the industry (Pittsburgh for Romero and Baltimore for Waters) making the films he wants. This year he delivers the much-anticipated zombie outing, Diary of the Dead (opening exclusively at the Palm Promenade Theaters).

“It's not a continuation, it's not sort of a fifth film in the series,” Romero explains, “It goes back to the first night when the dead are coming back. I sort of felt that I had gone far enough with Land of the Dead, and I was ready to get off of that train… There was a collection of short stories, actually two volumes, called Book of the Dead, and they were all stories about what happened on that first night. I came to realize that I could sort of keep doing stories about different people over those first two or three nights.”