Dawg, Silent Hill and Dollhouse

Last night I sat down to watch Dawg, previously released in Australia as Bad Boy. I picked it up at Chickenfeed for the princely sum of $2. It is an average movie, but one that does have a few decent moments, my main reason for the purchase is Dennis Leary. He plays Dawg, otherwise known as Doug Manfred. He is a quite a ladies man, something that his now deceased grandmother did not approve of. Enter Elizabeth Hurly, she is Doug's late grandmother's lawyer and will executor. Doug is the sole beneficiary of her $1million dollar estate, but only on one condition. He must get a "substantial" number of his conquests to forgive him for using them. The movie then takes the form of a road trip as Doug and the lawyer set out to find 12 of his prior lady friends and seek their forgiveness. What starts out as just a game to Doug soon gets quite serious as he realizes some of the consequences his prior indiscretions may have caused.

It is not an overly bad movie and does have some genuinely funny moments. It also has a heart, albeit in the wrong place most of the time. The film could have really worked, but never achieves anything greater than its B movie status and then ending could have done with a re-write.

Why do horror movies always have the best cinematography and sound design... Christophe Gans' Silent Hill has some of the best camera work I have ever seen, with some amazingly cool crane and dolly work. It also boasts one of the most active and genuinely creepy soundtracks I have heard for a movie in a long time. I expected great things from Silent Hill, after all Brotherhood of the Wolf was an excellent movie, Sean Bean and Rhada Mitchell are a fine cast, but something about the movie just doesn't click with me. It has some great scares and some awe inspiring set designs, most of the "monsters" are unlike anything else seen and it had the potential to be a great horror film. It is let down mostly by pacing and story. The film would almost have been better without Sean Bean and that entire "reality" involved. It still wouldn't save the mediocre ending though. I re-watched my Region 3 DVD and I must admit I would be really interested to catch this on Blu-ray, I own it mainly because it is still a creepy film and it really does show off a decent home theatre set up. I hear that a sequel is in the works for 2010, but it doesn't look like Cristophe will be returning, which is a shame as he certainly is a very gifted director.

Okay...shift in topic... as Dollhouse is on break this week I thought I would post something music related for it. As this took me ages to find... (although it is free on iTunes, I am not an Apple Sheep) I have uploaded it for anyone else who was looking for it.

Here is the main title music for Dollhouse by Jonatha Brooke titled What You Don't Know

Sorry, No Longer Available to Download

In other TV news there should be new episodes of Castle and Chuck this evening and hopefully a movie in there somewhere too...