Dan Persons

Author's details

Date registered: March 16, 2009
URL: http://
Jabber / Google Talk: DanPersons

Latest posts

  1. Cinefantastique Spotlight: BATTLESHIP — May 21, 2012
  2. Cinefantastique Spotlight: DARK SHADOWS — May 14, 2012
  3. Nadine Labaki on WHERE DO WE GO NOW? — May 11, 2012
  4. The Indie on Demand Movie Review: FIGHTVILLE — May 9, 2012
  5. Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE AVENGERS — May 7, 2012

Most commented posts

  1. Director Matt Aselton on GIGANTIC — 3 comments
  2. Tatia Rosenthal on $9.99 — 2 comments
  3. (Almost) Live from London: PIRATE RADIO vs. THE BOAT THAT ROCKED — 2 comments
  4. Rupert Wyatt on THE ESCAPIST — 1 comment
  5. Director Donny Moss on BLINDERS — 1 comment

Author's posts listings

May
21

Cinefantastique Spotlight: BATTLESHIP

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by Dan Persons

Aloha, Stranger: Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna are somewhere down there beholding the might of an alien invasion force in BATTLESHIP.

The aliens have landed! Yes. Again. This time they’ve invaded off the coast of Hawaii, so it’s just like Pearl Harbor, if the attack on Pearl Harbor had included such devastating weaponry as Giant Exploding Pegs and Hot-Rodding Robot Fireballs. Can slacker sailor Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), finding himself in command of the lone, surviving …

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May
14

Cinefantastique Spotlight: DARK SHADOWS

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by Dan Persons

The Fangs are Almost as Big as the Lapels: An undead Johnny Depp braves the ravages of the 70's in DARK SHADOWS.

Two hundred years is a long time to revive a vampire, but then again, forty years is long time to revive the first horror soap opera (not counting an earlier, feature adaptation and a TV reboot in the ’90s). In Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is cursed into vampirehood by spurned lover …

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May
11

Nadine Labaki on WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

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by Dan Persons

Are You Really Going to Leave THESE Girls Behind?: The women of a Lebanese village recruit some unusual allies to stave off a war in WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

A comedy about dire consequences, WHERE DO WE GO NOW? takes a look at the ease with which humanity slips into war, and the sometimes insurmountable difficulties that arise as people struggle to avoid it. Setting the film in a small Lebanese village where Christian and Muslim live side-by-side, director/writer/actress Nadine Labaki tells the tale …

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May
09

The Indie on Demand Movie Review: FIGHTVILLE

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by Dan Persons

Dustin Poirier in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's FIGHTVILLE.

I’d like to think humanity has advanced beyond the primal necessity of raw combat, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole lot of people who are willing to pay good money to see a couple of guys get locked in a cage and beat on each other for a while. Fightville is a documentary …

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May
07

Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE AVENGERS

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by Dan Persons

Left to right: Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey Jr, and a mass of pixels that look kinda like Mark Ruffalo prepare to do some avenging, because they are THE AVENGERS.

There are so many ways a grand conglomeration of super heroes could turn into a car wreck (case in point: THE FANTASTIC FOUR), that we should be grateful when a film manages just to clear that bar. Fortunately, and quite happily, THE AVENGERS not only manages that base-line feat, but goes far beyond it, becoming …

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May
04

Temple of Bad: SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND

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by Dan Persons

They're Magical! They're Muscial! They're So Very, Very Wrong!: Peter Frampton (right) joins forces with the Bee Gees (left) in SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND.

Like a black velvet reproduction of Guernica, SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, the movie, takes one of the landmark works of art of the twentieth century and renders it shallow, pointless and silly. Included in its list of crimes: entrusting the Beatles’ most innovative work to the likes of the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, …

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Apr
30

Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE RAVEN

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by Dan Persons

Tom Jones' Fans Just Throw Their Underwear on the Stage: An admirer takes his love of Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack, right) too far in THE RAVEN.

If truth is stranger than fiction, then can a serial killer inspired by the eminently strange writings of Edgar Allan Poe be said to be even stranger still? In THE RAVEN, a mad murderer has managed to engineer the deaths of his victims in ways that accurately (and in some cases, implausibly) replicate the works …

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Apr
29

Tribeca 2012 Diary: FUTURE WEATHER Director Jenny Deller

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by Dan Persons

A young girl is forced to confront inconvenient truths both global and personal in the drama FUTURE WEATHER. Making her Tribeca debut, director Jenny Deller has gathered a cast that includes Amy Madigan, Lili Taylor, and William Sadler to tell the story of a teenager (Perla Haney-Jardine) who’s abandoned by her mother and tries to …

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Apr
27

Tribeca 2012 Diary: NANCY, PLEASE Director Andrew Semans

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by Dan Persons

Why let others torture you when you can cut out the middle man and do it yourself? In NANCY, PLEASE, twenty-something Paul (Will Rogers) tries to retrieve a book from his former roommate, Nancy (Eléonore Hendricks), a task complicated both by the fact that the woman appears to be an unholy gene-splice between the Marquis …

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Apr
26

Tribeca 2012 Diary: ANY DAY NOW Director Travis Fine

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by Dan Persons

Sometimes the 70′s weren’t about wide lapels and avocado-colored kitchen appliances. Sometimes they were about ignorance, fear, and bigotry. In Any Day Now, a gay couple (Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt) rescue a teen with Down syndrome (Isaac Leyva) from his abusive mother, but when they try to make their de facto family legal, the …

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