Tag Archives: Josh Nelson

Tonight’s Next Guest is EVIL! “Late Night with the Devil!” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Limited-Edition 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Check Out the Package on Second Sight’s Latest Limited Edition – “Late Night with the Devil!

In the golden age of late-night television shows, Jack Delroy was one of the hottest late-night comedians and talk show hosts of the early 1970s, only to be beaten out by inches by rival talk show host Johnny Carson every year.  By 1977, Delroy’s viewers and popularity on his show Night Owls was slipping after multiple failed attempts to revive the show’s viewership figures and to hit the number one spot for syndicated station UBL during sweeps week year after year.  That years Halloween episode, during the sweeps week, would promise to be one to be remembered when Delroy brings a medium, a magician-turned-magician promulgator, a paranormal psychologist, and her adopted subject, a young girl who was the last known survival of a Satanic cult.  While the lineup entertains the live audience and those viewers at home throughout the night as well as being excellent for the ratings game, Halloween thins the layer between the real world and the supernatural world and an awry demon summoning goes horribly wrong, caught on the station’s camera, and with Jack Delroy and his guests caught in the middle.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing “100 Bloody Acres,” the 2012, underrated Australian comedy-horror has a fine entertaining balance of black humor, gore, and suspense.  The directors behind the little-known venture, brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes, may not have moved the needle with their debut feature in Australia, nor globally for that matter, but their latest, a 1970s, found footage, period piece surrounding demonic catastrophe on live television entitled “Late Night with the Devil,” carries with it significance and growth, personally and globally.  Having also written the script, the Cairnes recreate a time period when television use to capture grotesque and jarring images to shock the masses in full, unbridled color through the whimsical lens of a late-night television show.  In a production company opening that seemingly would never end, “Late Night with the Devil” is a conglomerate effort from IFC Films, Shudder, Image Nation Abu Dhabi, Spooky Pictures, Good Fiend Films, AGC Studios, VicScreen, and Future Pictures and produced by Adam White, Steven Schneider (“Trap”), John Mulloy (“Killing Ground”), Mat Govoni, Derek Dauchy (“Watcher”), and Roy Lee (“Barbarian”).

In order for “Late Night with the Devil” to work, the Carines brothers needed a principal lead to understand what it means to be a charismatic and funny host of 1970s late night television.  They found niche trait in “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” and James Gunn’s “Suicide Squad’s” David Dastmalchian who is an adamant man of horror himself from genre scripts, articles, and comic books to being a horror themed host himself as Dr. Fearless hosted by Dark Horse comics.  Dastmalchian plays a different sort of host for the film, a quick-wit, neat as a pin, and handsome Jack Delroy who has lofty goals of elevating his show to the number one spot in the domestic market.  Early success drives Delroy who will do anything to outscore late night king Johnny Carson but when his wife (Georgina Haig, “Road Train”) falls ill and dies early, the ratings battle slows for Delory’s show until his return to try and revive glory with kitschy content.  Halloween 1977, sweeps weeks, proves to be a chance for Delroy and his manager (Josh Quong Tart, “Little Monsters”) to spice things up with phantasmagoric guests in Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), an arrogant former magician turned cynic (Ian Bliss, “The Matrix Reloaded”), and a paranormal psychologist (Laura Gordon, “Saw V”) and her adopted subject Lilly, the debut feature-length film of Ingrid Torelli.  Aside from Chicago-born Dastmalchian, the rest of the Australian production is casted natively and do an impeccable vocal mimicry of an American accent while stunning and convincing in their respective roles, especially for Torelli whose piercing blue eyes, rounded check line, and gently raspy voice gives her an uneasy accompaniment to her off-putting innocence that works to the story’s advantage.  The cast rounds out with key principal Rhys Auteri playing Jack Delroy’s quirky sidekick host Gus McConnell whose story progression trajectory borders the voice of reason ironically enough and without McConnell and Auteri’s spot-on depiction of host announcer and comedic adjutant, there wouldn’t be steady fidelity for those who grew up on late night TV.

Late night TV essence is beautifully captured with mock production set of a 70s television studio, acquired era garbs, costumes, and accessories, and performances that provide a real flavor for programming of that time, and I would know as I would obsessively glue my attention to Johnny Carson reruns at a young age in the 1980s to early 90s.  The Cairnes and director of photography Matthew Temple deploy a studio reproduction of a three-way camera system to unfold the carnage; yet the forementioned behind-the-scenes moments in between live-air tapings feels forced, unnecessary, and artificial to the story with a lack of explanation to who and why these in-betweens are being done.  The black-and-white scenes vary in cameraperson positions from behind the coffee and snack table, behind fake floral, or just right in their face that steals from the live-tape realism.  What then ensues when the demonic light beams from one of the guest’s split open head does redirect attention to the psychokinesis death and destruction and this removes those behind-the-scenes fabrications with a replaced personal, interdimensional Hell for Delroy, shot in a more conventional style outside the confines of found footage under omnipotent means.  Cameron and Colin’s part-documentary, part-found footage, and part-conventional efforts prologue the story with an out, one that sets up connections to link violence on a single character lightning rod with maximum collateral damage, and that lead up of information almost seems trivial but works to the advantage on not only the character’s background but also generates a real spark of juicy, full-circle, nearly imperceptible greed that comes with a cost. 

Second Sight Films knows a good movie when they see one and quickly snatches up the rights to release “Late Night with the Devil” on a limited-edition, dual-format collector’s set.  The UK distributor’s 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray combo box comes with an HVEC encoded, HDR with Dolby Vision 2160p, BD66  and an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, both formats decoding at a refresh rate around 24 frames per second and presented in the three aspect ratios to reproduce 70’s era television ratios with a 1.33:1 and European ratio 1.66:1 as well as seldomly switching to a 2.39:1 widescreen for more down the rabbit hole sequences.  Much like the variety of aspect ratios, an intentional ebb and flow design between color and black-and-white draws demarcating lines from the colorful live tapings to the monochromic backstage footage after the live cameras stop broadcasting.  To help lift the period piece, three-way studio cameras film within a broadcast simulated fuzzy aberration, interlacing or analog abnormalities, and color reduction used to flatten out the vibrancy some, just enough to be perceptible, until the transcendental camera takes hold and the color because richer, glossier in a moment of unclear clarity.  Textures are often lost in the fuzziness but emerge better out of the backstage footage and the eye-in-the-sky scenes.  The lossless English language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 adds an eclectic charge to the mostly grounded television broadcast, rooted by a single set nearly most of the duration.  In frame band elements and instrumentation adds that upbeat and jazzier score denoting late night introductions and commercial breaks.  Vocals are often muffled when viewing the show on a screen and in depth but becomes more robust and clearer when switched to camera angle; this goes hand-in-hand with the dialogue which is clear and acute when needed.  The demonic presence can come off as artificial but still manages to work within the construct.  The range is impressive for a single setting that sees audience’s reactions and loop tracks, the hustle and bustle of backstage when off air, spontaneous combustion, sickening wrangling of bodies, and, naturally of course, a blazing beam of light.  English subtitles are optionally available for the hearing impaired.  With Second Sight’s limited-edition contents, you know you’re getting your money’s worth in exclusives.  Both formats include bonus features, which is surprising considering the UHD takes up a lot of space.  These features include a new audio commentary by film critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson, a new interview with The Cairnes brothers Bringing Their ‘A’ Game, an interview with actor Ian Bliss Mind if I Smoke?, an interview with actress Ingrid Torelli We’re Gonna Make a Horror Movie, an interview with actor Rhys Auteri Extremely Lucky, a video essay entitled Cult Hits by Second Sight content creating regular Zoë “Zobo With A Shotgun” Rose Smith, behind-the-scenes, the making-of the Night Owls brassy band music, the SXSW 2023 Q&A panel with star David Dastmalchian and directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes.  Limited-edition contents come with a rigid, black slipcase of minimalistic but effective artistic work of Jack Delroy and the devil’s pitchfork complete with pentagram on the backside.  Inside the slipcase is a tall, media jewel case to hold both discs on each side, each represented with a story character in front of black backdrop.  A 120-page color book provides new essays by Kat Hughes, James Rose, Rebecca Sayce, Graham Skipper, Juliann Stipids, and Emma Westwood, plus storyboards, costume designs, and a behind-the-scenes gallery.  Lastly, there are six 5 ½’ by 7” character collector cards.  Second Sight’s Blu-ray release is hard encoded region B playback only but the 4K is region free with both formats clocking in with a runtime of 93 minutes and are UK certified 15 for strong horror, violence, gore, and language.

Last Rites: Once again, Second Sight Films clearly has their eyes on the prize and contributes to dishing out the best possible transfers and exclusives when considering physical media. Their latest, “Late Night with the Devil,” is no longer the host but the hosted with a tricked out limited-edition set best watched from under the sheets late at night and thoroughly enjoyed within its special features after the film credits roll.

Check Out the Package on Second Sight’s Latest Limited Edition – “Late Night with the Devil!

Eric Bana Embraces EVIL’s Infamy! “Chopper” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Mark “Chopper” Read is one of Australia’s bestselling authors.  Read is also one of Australia’s most notorious criminals having wrote his autobiography in prison.  The pathological criminal’s life begins in the H Division of the Pentridge Prison in the late 70s where he quickly establishes himself a leader of a small three-man gang and viciously murders a rival leader at the chagrin of his acolytes, Jimmy Loughnan and Bluey Barnes.  When Jimmy turns on Chopper, stabbing him multiple times and then accusing him of attacking first, the ordeal has a subtle effect on the wildly shrewd and wayward Chopper who 8 years later is released with massively suppressed paranoia as old flings and old acquaintances are believed to be going behind his back or contracting a kill order on his head.  Under the delusions of working for the police, a paranoid, suspicious-filled, and unpredictable Chopper takes the opportunity to revisit old accomplices, such as the treacherous prison mate now turned drug addicted family man Jimmy Loughnan, after rumors circulate of Loughnan’s involvement in placing a contract on Chopper that results in conspiracy and murder.

Not to be confused as being completely autobiographical, or even semi-biographical, “Chopper” is a highly-stylized and self-proclaimed embellished account of the late Mark Brandon Read.  The Australian feature written-and-directed by Andrew Dominik (“Killing Them Softly”) was once the highest grossing Australian films of all time and still marks as a predominant, early 2000 release to accentuate Chopper’s high energy, erraticism, and violent behavior along with a stellar, method-acting performance from the lead star Eric Bana, who before turning into one of Hollywood’s most recognizable Australian actors was a former sketch comedian and stand-up comic.  Shot in Melbourne, Victoria, “Chopper” is produced by Michele Bennett and Michael Gudinski (“Wolf Creek,” “Cut”) with Al Clark (“Gothic”) and Marin Fabinyi (“Bait’) as executive producers under the state funded Australian Film Finance Corp. as well as Mushroom Pictures and Pariah Entertainment. 

As mentioned, Eric Bana, star of Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” and having villainous roles in the J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” prequel and “Deadfall” alongside Olivia Wilde, helms the titular character with a plumped-up version of himself, grows a wicked handlebar mustache, and engrosses himself into the peculiar persona that is Mark Brandon Read.  “Chopper” really puts Bana’s range on display with a crucial to success performance and the actor lets Read sublease headspace in what is an aberrated humor and darkly concerning ball of a biography.  Bana manages to make Chopper likeable yet terrifying, funny yet ferocious, and human yet monstrous as an unpredictable juggernaut of paranoia and survival that only knows how to protect himself by thwarting violence with violence.  Chopper mingles with other unsavory, carnivalesque characters in his journey through a jailbird’s life with what he considered his number one mate in prison Jimmy Loughnan (Simon Lydon, “Blackrock”), an old foe in Neville Bartos (Vince Colosimo, “Daybreakers”), and druggie girlfriend Tanya (Kate Beahan, “The Return”).  In Chopper’s post-near death eyes, enemies and friends are now subject to his suspicions, making him truly lonely in his own world of crime.  Performances shepherd in waves of volatility, intensity, and even immodest humor that force the scenes between them and Chopper into a pool of frigid and death-calling ice water, yet somehow, in the same breath, Dominik is able to take those performances in “Chopper” and turn them into one-giant joke at Read’s expense while still managing to keep afloat some sort of baseline truth to this period in time of his existence.  “Chopper’s” cast fills out with other colorful roles from Dan Wyllie, David Field, Gary Waddell, Hilton Henderson, Kenny Graham, Brian Mannix, Sam Houli, Robert Rabiah, Skye Wansey, and Terry Willesee. 

Most Americans will likely never understand “Chopper” as the comedy Dominik intends.  Bana does so damn good at his job, especially in his feature film debut, and Dominik’s black humor becomes murky by subsequent and sudden jerks toward humanization that audiences will grasp in different directions on how they’re supposed to feel and relate toward a character who stabs a man to death in the face and then cry in compassion for him or beats his girlfriend and then next scene unzips his pants and pulls out his manhood under the bar countertop to show his now ex-girlfriend while talking to two police investigators about his delusions of undercover responsibilities at the other end of the bar.  In its two-tone theme of the 1970’s thin, assured, and incarcerated Read and the decade later bulkier, paranoid, and free Read, “Chopper” has paradoxical and against the grain tones of wildly encompassing visualized thoughts stitched stylistically in the same fashion for pure entertainment value to symbolize Read’s emotively internalized expression.   Though fully linear, Dominik’s narrative structure can also be off-putting to audiences, digging into the entertainment value with crude edits and choppy segues that hardly shapes a timeframe and that can be tough for viewers invested in a particular storyline only to be abruptly pulled out of it and placed into another decade and an entirely different situation altogether.  Then again, “Chopper” essentially has no conventional plot other than the fleeting, distinct stages of a bumpy and insecure Mark Brandon Read’s course through crimes of contract and charisma of character. 

“Chopper” arrives onto a Second Sight Films Limited Edition Blu-ray set and a Standard Edition Blu-ray in association with Vertigo Releasing.  This reviewer was able to get hands on the Standard Edition that’s an AVC encoded BD50 with 1080p High-Definition resolution of a 2K graded, restored scan presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  A steely graded first act leads into vivid variability with color, matching Chopper’s descent tenor from shaking stability to a rocky road of mistrust. Decoding at a bitrate of approx. 23Mbps, Second Sight Films’ scan has elevated the details within the tumble of stylistic choices that closely symbolizes specific Chopper eras in which a very different Chopper is exclusive to one or the other while retaining a great amount of natural grain of the 35mm print. Audio specs include an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which, though lossy, has great compressed fidelity mostly in the dialogue department. Plenty of reverberations captured onsite at the Pentridge Penitentiary scenes that add a slither of realism instead of isolating solely the actors’ discourse. Dialogue itself is clean and clear without obstruction. When moved past Pentridge, the environment layers are scaled back to more isolated effects driven by the actors, i.e. gunshots, scuffles, etc., and so we lose that bit of realism deeper we go into Chopper’s psyche and the soundtrack from “Deliver Us From Evil’s” Mick Harvey pumps a little harder. Optional English subtitles are available. Though missing out on some of the physical lot in the bonus content, the standard release still offers a bountiful built-in special feature of old and new with fresh commentaries by Australian critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Australian film scholar Josh Nelson, new interviews by writer-director Andrew Dominik Stand-up Comedy and Violence, new interview with composer Mick Harvey Not your Typical Film Composer, and a new interview with editor Ken Sallows A Tale of Two Halves. Archived bonus material regains new life and traction with commentaries from Chopper himself Mark Read and one with Andrew Dominik, a behind-the-scenes that sees raw film footage and cast and crew tidbits, a Weekend With Chopper is raw and untouched home video footage of Andrew Dominik and Eric Bana spending a couple of days with a wildly excited Read giving anecdotal accounts of his prison life and discussing his disbelief with a film where the subject is himself, and deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary. This particular Second Sight release comes off a little different than past dispersions in physical attributes with a clear green Amary Blu-ray case, something I have not seen before from the UK label. Detail illustration of Eric Bana as the titular Chopper holding a gun to his head in ebullience is quite striking and explicit in its purple-green coloring. Inside is what you roughly get with any standard release with no insert, but the disc is pressed with the same cinereal-alike art representing one of the Chopper’s frequent locations in the story. ”Chopper” is regionally locked on B for the feature that has a 94-minute runtime and is UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language. Unlike any criminal to have ever lived and to have ever been represented on screen, “Chopper” wily tussles with Western audiences despite the dedication of Eric Bana but the work and the film can’t be denied as anything but great about an unusual man in a hyper dramatization that pierces more truth than fiction and now Second Sight cements a next level, Hi-Def release to better legitimize the irregular gang member and thug Chopper into cinema homes around the globe.