Starz Inside: Fantastic Flesh (2008)

Practical effects slowly seem to become a dying art as CGI has taken over most of the effect work. Of course a lot is still done with prosthetic makeup, but working with miniatures and building creatures is becoming a thing of the past. When the first Star Wars trilogy came out a lot of practical effects were used whereas the second trilogy mainly used green screen and everything else being generated by computers. Often the result of this is that a lot just doesn’t feel real, it just seems to be too perfect. Fantastic Flesh shows the practical side of effects work and is a fantastic look into this amazing world of “screen magic”. Continue reading

Machete (2010)

When Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were making the Grindhouse movies (Death Proof and Planet Terror), they wanted to show some fake trailers between the movies. One of those trailers was Machete, which was about a Mexican who was hired to kill someone, but finds out it’s a trap and as a result is hunted by a lot of people. Time for him to take revenge on those responsible.

The trailer turned out to be so popular (I really liked it as well when I first saw it) that Rodriguez got a lot of questions about it. People actually wanted to see the movie so he decided to make a feature length film of it. Is the movie just as much fun as the trailer or shouldn’t Rodriguez have bothered? Continue reading