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We will no longer be updating this blogger page. We created a brand new site with new updates and you can check it out by going to DVDsequels.com

BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA 2 Blu-Ray™/ DVD Combo Pack Giveaway

DVDSequels.com is hosting our very first online contest and the fine folks at Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment were kind enough to help us out by giving us a copy of their brand new release, BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA 2 on Blu-Ray™/ DVD Combo Pack.

Here is how you can win a copy of the Blu-Ray™

Actress Odette Yustman is the voice of Chloe in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2. What other Disney film did that actress star in last year? If you can answer that question, then you have a chance at winning.

Please email your answer, along with your full name and mailing address to dvdsequels@aol.com . In the subject line put Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 Giveaway.

The deadline for the contest is Friday, Feb.4th. The winner will be picked at random and then sent an email.

You must live within the United States to enter.

BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA 2 will be released on Blu-Ray™ & DVD on Tuesday, Feb 1st. Make sure to check out the trailer for the film below.

Toxic Twins: The Toxic Avenger V...NOW FILMING !!!!!

I have fond memories of the original Toxic Avenger (The Unrated Version).  The film opened my eyes as a kid to a whole new kind of film making.  The Troma film was born in the early 80's when the first superhero from New Jersey made his way onto the video store shelves.  Ok, so the sequels sucked, but it does not stop Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman from getting back in the director's chair to try it once again.  I am glad to see Toxie coming back for a fifth time, and this time, he has his little Toxies with him. Is it just me, or are twins supposed to be the same height? They have their mothers eyes and their fathers...everything else.  I just hope it does not take as long for this film to his DVD as it did the last one.  I think Citizen Toxie was finished almost 2 years before it actually was released.

Death Race 2: Movie Review

You know, sometimes life brings you down unexpected roads. I never asked to be the guy who liked Paul Not Thomas Anderson’s gratuitous remake of DEATH RACE 2000. It just didn’t seem like something that would happen to me, especially after I skipped the movie in theaters and everybody told me it was shit. But then the DVD came along and I wanted to see what it was like and I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it. (In other words I will not be damned. I did enjoy it.)

And this week life struck again. Turns out I also like DEATH RACE 2, the DTV prequel.

DEATH RACE 2 is what I consider a prestige DTV release – the kind that was not only put out by a major studio but where they put a little bit of money in it and tried to hire good people instead of just dump it out and hope the title attracts suckers. Honestly the production value seems about on par with the DEATH RACE part 1 from 2008, and although it doesn’t do anything drastically different from the first one it’s surprisingly decent and enjoyable. To me anyway, but remember what I said about the first one.

Let’s get the problem out of the way upfront: this is a prequel. Maybe they’re leaving it open in case they want to do a theatrical sequel, so they could continue the adventures of Jason Statham’s Frankenstein and Tyreses’s Machine Gun Joe, and they could expand the sport from the enclosed circuit they used in that one to something more like the cross country, gimmicky-car pedestrian runoverathon from the original. I mean the Paul Bartel directed original DEATH RACE 2000. Man, they make it hard these days – I never know how to refer to the remake that’s being prequelized. I can’t really call it “the original” or “the first one.” I guess maybe “part 1″ works.

Anyway that’s obviously the direction it should go. But to do it at DTV prices they had to put it in ‘reverse’ instead of ‘drive’ and do the origin of the Death Race sport and the Frankenstein persona. The new star, Luke Goss, is somewhat Statham-esque. Throw a track suit on him and chase him around town with twelve cameraphones, have some kids cut it together in iMovie and you got a DTV Crank 3. But here he’s not playing the character Statham originated, he’s supposed to be the original Frankenstein originally voiced by David Carradine. I mean, the part 1 original Frankenstein that was a reference to the original DEATH RACE 2000 Frankenstein also played by David Carradine.

I like Goss. He’s a specialist in part 2s, having played Nomak in BLADE 2 and the elf prince sword guy in HELLBOY 2. Here he plays Carl Lucas, a getaway driver in the nearer-than-in-part-1 future. Trusted with the secrets of Sean Bean’s criminal empire, he also has to work with Bean’s dumbass nephews in a bank robbery that does not go well. Not only do they break his 20 year streak of not hurting anybody during robberies, they really break it by dumping a bunch of grenades out the back of his car and blowing up a whole bunch of cops. Then he gets busted and sent to Terminal Island.

I’m sure Joan Allen begged to come back as the warden Hennessy, but unfortunately for the three-time Oscar nominee this takes place before that character’s reign. Sorry, Toots. The prison is already privately run for profit and a sleazy ex-Miss Universe named September Jones (Lauren Cohan) covers their riots live on TV, but they got an old school warden who’s not happy about it. (Later we see Allen’s photo attached to a resume and hear that she “comes highly recommended by Halliburton”.)

There’s a pretty good cast of characters here. Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo play actual roles, not DTV cameos like DAY OF THE DEAD UNSPEAKABLY HORRIBLE REMAKE or URBAN JUSTICE. If you’re wondering which versions of our boys show up it’s actually probly the reverse of what you’d guess: it’s mean Ving, friendly Trejo. Ving is the cold-blooded head of Weyland International (I know, corny ALIENS reference), Trejo is the helpful new buddy in prison who also is the head of his pit crew when the Death Racing starts. And there are two returning (preturning?) cons, Robin MORTAL KOMAT Shou as the Triad 14K and Frederick KATE AND ALLY Koehler as the mildly autistic fact-spewer called Lists. (This is another problem with prequels: there’s not as much tension when we know most of the main characters have to be alive and imprisoned at the end.)

There are lots of villains in this movie and most of them have at least one funny bit of ludicrousness. For Sean Bean it’s his overly convoluted attempts at snappy dialogue. Before killing a guy he says, “The box, with its implications of rigidity and squareness, symbolizes unimaginative thinking and painful frustration.” (Bang!) “Sometimes we just need to step back and see if the solution to our problem is outside the box.”
(In other words, “Let off some steam, Bennett!”)

He also has a part where he throws a fit and smashes a flat screen TV. Funny, because those things have been around for a long time, and there’s a grand tradition of dramatic TV smashing in movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done with a flat screen until now. History is made.
For September Jones I gotta say the greatest moment is when she makes a proposal to Lucas while he’s naked in the prison shower. Not only does she comment on his junk but there’s a long shot of her eyes looking conspicuously downward. Funny stuff.

Rhames isn’t phoning it in the way he sometimes does. He deserves credit for adding a few weird moments. It’s not a mega-performance in my opinion, but he makes some funny decisions and does some good reactions. His best scene is when he comes up with the prize and the name for Death Race, which plays out kind of the way it would if Death Race was a real sport and a TV biopic was made about its creator. When he’s explaining that life and freedom are a prize more valuable than money he takes a long breath through his nose like he’s smelling life and freedom. I bet that wasn’t in the script.
(By the way, attentive Death Racists will note that in part 1 they said Hennessy invented the Death Race, now they’re saying somebody else. Don’t worry, there’s a goofy line that explains the discrepancy. Like I said, they make an actual effort on this one.}

I also love the scene where Rhames turns his back on September Jones and gets on an escalator, and she makes him finish the conversation by hitting the emergency stop button. He just stands there on the step, even though I’m pretty sure he would be capable of, you know, walking down. He takes a look, considers his options, and decides to stay and listen. I think maybe he just figures she’s earned the chance to talk to him by having the balls to do that to him. If that’s not it then the guy must be really, really lazy.

The director is Roel Reine, who also found lots of odd little character moments like that in PISTOL WHIPPED, the last Seagal picture that I thoroughly enjoyed. He did a pretty good job on the car races, which like part 1 are pretty much all real car stunts. I noticed a couple green screens, that’s it. Not a bunch of digital shit.

There’s all kinds of mayhem, and a good car chase before he even goes to prison. And his car is yellow in that one, not grey like all the prison cars. Livens things up. There are lots of explosions, a random flip, some gruesome car deaths (both satisfying and upsetting). My favorite action moment is when a driver climbs out of his car onto another one to shank the other driver. Hey, it’s a prison movie, you gotta have one of those.
The big missed opportunity is the Death Matches before the invention of Death Race. We learn that the video game type format where the cars can be armed if they drive over a certain spot when it’s lit up comes from an earlier carless form of televised combat. We get to see some of this and there are plenty of cool things that happen (including a blowtorch duel), but the shots don’t really flow together and the editing is way too choppy, it’s hard to get very excited about what’s going on. This would’ve been a way to distinguish it from part 1 if there had been some really topnotch fight choreography right here.

By the end of the movie we’ve seen Lucas get burned up and put on his Frankenstein costume and I started thinking about the DARKMAN sequels. I gotta admit, I’m ready for a part 3. I don’t know where there is to go in the world of pre-Jason-Statham’s-character death racing, but hopefully they’ll figure out something good. Maybe a secret international Death Race tournament that nobody is allowed to ever speak of, even in part 1.

- Vern
Check out Vern's site below
outlawvern.com

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years Comes To DVD This Summer

 

Marley & Me: The Puppy Years (Originally titled Marley & Me: The Terrible 2's) is set to arrive on DVD & Blu-ray this June.  From the title, I suspect that the film will focus on Marley as a puppy.  One thing that caught my attention was who the director of this film is.  If you grew up in the 1980's, you may know the name Michael Damian.    He was a soap-opera star turned pop singer.  You can check out Damian's Rock On music video below from the Dream A Little Dream soundtrack (which had it's own DTV sequel)

Death Race 2 - Available This Week On DVD & Blu Ray

Death Race 2 takes place in the very near future, as the United States economy begins to decline and violent crime starts to spiral out of control. To contain the growing criminal population, a vast network of for-profit, private prisons springs up, creating a lawless subculture ruled by gangs, cold-blooded killers and sociopaths. The worst of these prisons is Terminal Island, where inmates fight each other in a highly rated televised death match, where there are no rules, and the winner is the one who survives the gladiator-style, no-holds-barred competition. Convicted cop-killer Carl Lucas (Luke Goss) arrives on the Island to serve his life sentence just as ruthlessly ambitious television personality September Jones evolves the death match into the ultimate reality show – Death Race. A brutal prison yard demolition derby that pits prisoners against each other in steel reinforced, heavily armed vehicles, Death Race offers the winner the ultimate prize: freedom — if he can survive to enjoy it.

Death Race 2 Order Link (DVD Version)

S.W.A.T. Firefight : Movie Trailer

S.W.A.T.: Firefight DVD Artwork Revealed

Los Angeles S.W.A.T. officer, Lt. Paul Cutler (Macht), is sent to train the Detroit S.W.A.T. team on new anti-terrorism and homeland security techniques. Cutler has a hard time settling into his assignment as he locks horns with his new captain and encounters resistance from the team he must lead. Cutler begins to adjust to his new assignment, starting a budding romance with police psychologist Kim Byers (Pope) along the way. Unexpectedly, a routine hostage call turns deadly, and a relentless ex-government agent named Walter Hatch (Patrick) vows revenge on Cutler and the entire S.W.A.T. team for killing the woman he loves. Cutler must use his considerable S.W.A.T. training and knowledge to save his teammates and defeat a trained killer. The film also stars Giancarlo Esposito as Cutler’s reluctant Detroit S.W.A.T. team leader.

Pre-Order the DVD  & Blu-Ray On Amazon Below

S.W.A.T.: Firefight [Blu-ray]

S.W.A.T.: Firefight

Universal Planning Death Race 3 Before Death Race 2 Hits Store Shelves

Death Race 2 arrives on DVD & Blu-Ray on Jan. 18th.  Based on the international reception to Death Race 2, Universal Home Entertainment has put Death Race 3 into development.

Death Race 2 takes place before the events of the 2008 remake of the classic Roger Corman movie.  It is not yet known if this upcoming 3^rd film in the franchise will be a direct sequel to the direct-to-DVD prequel, or if it will be during another time line.

So far, the reviews have been pretty positive on Death Race 2, which is a rare thing for a Direct To DVD sequel.

Michael Jai White Brings Us "Never Back Down 2"

Michael Jai White will be pulled double duty as star/director for Never Back Down 2. This is a direct-to-DVD sequel of the 2008 theatrical film. In the sequel, Four fighters from different backgrounds come together to train under an ex MMA rising star and then ultimately have to fight each other and the traitor in heir midst.

Never Back Down 2 is currently in post production and will be hitting DVD sometime this summer.