DANGEROUS DAYS

---

Were you watching "Sons of Anarchy" last season? Probably not...most people weren't. But no thanks to your ass, the awesome biker show is returning for it's second season on September 8th and this time you should be a little less of a square and check it out.

Why, you ask? Well...why the hell not? It's about an outlaw biker gang - that's awesome. It's got a great cast of actors including, but not limited to Ron Perlman (Hellboy, City of Lost Children), Katey Sagal (Futurama, Married With Children), Charlie Hunnam (Undeclared, Queer As Folk), Mitch Pileggi (X-Files) and Dayton Callie (Deadwood) - that's cool, right? It was created by one of the head writers for "The Shield" - we all love Vic Mackey, don't we? So what the hell's your excuse?

Check out Season 1 on DVD and get ready for some methed out madness, some warm beer and cold women and some serious biker badness. Check the promo for Season 2 below:

---

The Starz Network has never been known for their original programming, but they're hoping to throw their hat into the ring with "Spartacus: Blood and Sand". The obvious comparison to make here is to Zack Snyder's "300" adaptation and I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid that parallel. It looks an awful lot like "300", no doubt, but that might be pretty cool if done right.

HBO's "Rome" and "Deadwood" have shown us that historical epics can work pretty damn well as TV shows, so this could actually be a big hit for Starz if they're able to pull it off in convincing fashion. Excessive decapitation and dismemberment, gratuitous raunchy sex, over-the-top CGI blood splatter, seedy political intrigue, Lucy "I'm ditching Battlestar Galactica to go make Footballer's Wives" Lawless...it certainly seems like they're on the right track. All the pieces are in place - now all that remains to be seen is if they can get it to air without making it totally suck in the process. Hopefully they'll do something really cool to make up for the complete lack of Kirk Douglas. This almost does it.

Peep the trailer:

---

Let it be known that although everybody and their mom is jizzing all over this "Book of Eli" trailer, I for one am not amused. I know what you're saying, "But Chris, it's post-apocalyptic, there are bandits with machetes, rocket-launchers and dilapidated urban landscapes! How could you not be into that?"

It's true, superficially this movie should be the dog's bollocks, but it's most assuredly going to be garbage and I'll tell you how I know that:

1. Denzel Washington is a one-dimensional actor that plays the same character in every movie.
2. Almost every shot in the trailer has all the focus in the center of the frame which almost always = uninspired. That immediately puts this on par with the artistic excellence that was "Ghost Rider".
3. Stock wasteland baddies circle around the lone hero as he proceeds to take them all out one-by-one using highly choreographed martial arts and CQC as the camera tracks around the action like this is a fuckin' Jet Li movie. Remember how out of place the choreographed fighting was in "Watchmen"?
4. The persistently sunglass-clad badass kicks open the door with a shotgun in hand and stands motionless in the door frame before entering to emphasize the badassery that drips from his every pore. I'd be very surprised if Denzel didn't drop a brooding badass one-liner at that very moment in the film. And chances are it wont be anywhere near the quality of "I came to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum".
5. And finally - there hasn't been a big-budget genre movie in the last decade or so that looked awesome in trailers and ended up actually being good in full format, so simply by law of averages this movie will suck.

But don't let my sour, unimpressed rantings mold your opinion - check it out for yourself:

---

Mexico - the next hotbed for sci-fi filmmaking. Mark my words, folks. "De Día O De Noche" ("By Day or By Night") is an upcoming film from first time director Alejandro Molina. Society has been genetically engineered so that half the population lives by day and the other half by night in order to deal with overcrowding. The government keeps a tight leash on the population, who are expected to keep their emotions in check, avoid all physical contact and only live in their appointed shift. In other words, everything's gone to shit, but of course, the only reason to depict a society that's gone to shit in a movie is if you're going to have someone come along and rebel against it. Enter Aurora. She falls in love with some doctor that lives the night shift...and then there's some other older dude who also wants to live in both shifts...and then there's this little kid, I don't know what the hell her deal is, but she's important to the story somehow...

Obviously, not a whole lot of info has come out about this movie since Dangerous Days previewed it back in February via our column on Airlock Alpha, so we can't say too solidly what the story is about, but finally we've got a trailer! And a long one too! Looks like it's shaping up to be a slow, somber artistic meditation on a society that suppresses itself almost completely for the sake of order. Looks interesting, check it out!